Daybreak (45 page)

“Blast it all!” he shouted when the end fell.

“Silence, pirate. I’ll deal with you just as soon as I’m finished here,” the mage snapped.

Lysander was about to retort when a chorus of howls drowned his voice.

It was a frightening thing — the call of a beast so bloodthirsty and powerful that not even Midlan stood a chance against it. And it made Lysander grin.

“I’d start running if I were you,” he warned.

His grin only widened when he heard the mage’s boots tromp up the steps. He flinched away from what he knew was the searing tip of the dagger. But the rope only stretched so far. When he reached its end, the mage pressed the red-hot metal tighter against his ribs.

“What do you know?” he hissed.

The dagger burned through Lysander’s tunic and stung his flesh. He gasped against the pain, but still managed to hold his grin. “You’ll see … don’t want to spoil … the surprise.”

Something hissed across the mage’s dagger, the start of a spell. Lysander had bared his teeth against what he knew would be a singeing pain when the noise came to a halt.

Everything had gone quiet: the soldiers’ screams, the rattling of their gold-tinged armor. Even the howling ended. When Lysander strained his ears, he thought he could hear the faintest march of steps — an army of feet clad in soft boots led by a pair that clomped its heels into the cobblestone.

The mage laughed. “Mountain rats. They fight like savages, so you’d better kill them quickly. I’ll take care of the leader,” he said as he thumped down the stairs. Then he raised his voice: “You’ve made a deadly mistake, trespassing on His Majesty’s land — and you’ll be made to pay for it.”

“I’ll tell you exactly what I told the men at the gate: I don’t carry coin. So you can either step aside, or we’ll cut through your middle,” a woman’s voice replied. “It makes me no difference.”

“Oh, good Gravy,” Lysander muttered through his grin. “If that’s who I think it is, you’d better let her through.”

“Shut it, pirate,” the mage snapped. Then he yelled again: “The King’s servants yield to no one, least of all a swarm of mountain rats.”

With a roar, he loosed his spell. Lysander heard it hiss through the air, heard the
whoosh
as it struck a body on the other side of the square. And for half a moment, there was silence once again.

Then the mage began to scream. “Whisperers! Move — get out of my way!”

Another spell blasted up as the mage tried to escape. It knocked out the gallows’ front legs and the platform rocked forward, sending Lysander to his knees. Bits of armor clanged onto the ground all around him. Howls pierced the air.

He listened to the mage’s panicked steps as he tried to race away. There was the sound of some object ripping through the air, a woman’s furious cry, and then a fleshy
thunk
brought the mage’s sprint to a halt.

The battle ended quickly: the howling warriors silenced Midlan with a bone-crushing attack, laughing as they fought. Lysander grimaced when he heard another
thunk
from where the mage’s body had fallen.

“I hate mages,” the woman growled. “The only way to kill them is to cut off their heads.”

“Wisdom indeed, my Thane,” a man purred in reply.

“How many times have I got to tell you, Silas? I’m not —”
 

“Actually, mages die in as many ways as anybody else,” Lysander called. The floor beneath him creaked dangerously as the broken gallows shifted. One wrong move, and he might fall through. “Ah, would you mind cutting me free?”

He flinched when something struck the rope above him, and the sudden slack dropped him onto his face.

“Be careful, Lydia,” the woman said as she clomped up the stairs. “We don’t know what’s under there.”

“Don’t you remember me?”

“Well …” her voice came a mere inch from his nose, “you do sound a bit familiar.”

“It’s me — Captain Lysander.”

“The pirate?”

“Yes. Now if you’ll kindly take this sack off my head —”

“You didn’t mean to wear it?”

“No! Why would I put a sack over my head?”

“I don’t understand anything you lowlanders do. It’s been one strange sight after the next since we left the mountains.”

Lysander blinked when the sack was torn away, and he found himself staring into the face of a wildwoman. Paint adorned her features and stained her lips. Her short crop of bright red hair seemed to almost stand on end as her eyes wandered over him.

“What are you doing here, pirate?”

“Well, it’s a rather long —”

“Taste blood, tinheads!”

“Aye — hold on, Captain! We’re coming to set you free!”

The pirates’ furious charge ended abruptly when they nearly collided with the wildmen. From the looks of things, they’d managed to raid the armory: they’d retrieved their cutlasses — and quite a few other weapons, besides.

Jonathan’s bare feet slapped to a stop, and his mouth fell open. “Pig’s feathers … what are you lot doing here?”

The wildmen hailed him with grins and bloodied weapons.

Shamus, on the other hand, looked far less pleased. “I can’t believe it. A few moments more, and these fellows would’ve sprung us. Now I’ve got no pride and a memory I can’t put back.”

“Oh, quit your moaning. It wasn’t all that —”

The wildmen erupted in laughter when Jonathan turned — revealing the torn-out seat of his breeches. 

Gwen rolled her eyes. “Lowlanders,” she muttered.

*******

Apparently, Midlan hadn’t quite managed to capture the ships that’d been stuck at the docks. “Some of the fisherfolk took off with them,” one of the villagers said when Lysander asked. “They were out before dawn and saw Midlan coming over the hill. So they grabbed as many ships as they could manage and sunk the rest. Left all of us merchants here to rot.”

Lysander tried not to think about the fact that
Anchorgloam
might well be sunk. Instead, he focused himself on trying to find the pirates.

They found Perceval’s men locked inside a blacksmith’s shop, along with a few merchants from the Valley. There was a company of soldiers hiding inside a row of tents — and the wildmen dealt with them handily. Lysander had started to lose hope when he heard Jonathan yelling from one of the jewelry shops.

“Hello, mates! How about a bit of fresh air, eh?”

A familiar chorus of cheers sent Lysander running. He slapped the pirates on their backs as they climbed out of the cellar. Several of them had full pockets, and they jingled suspiciously as they walked.

“We didn’t know how long we’d be caged in, so we thought we might as well do a bit of looting on the way down. A bad idea, locking pirates up in a jeweler’s shop,” one of them said with a wink.

Lysander wasn’t the least bit surprised. “I’m just glad you’re all —”

“Well, it’s about blasted time!” a man cried from behind him.

Lysander turned and was more than a little shocked to see Alders crawling out of the cellar — and he was more than a little furious when he saw what he wore. “Is that one of our tunics?”

“It’s all right, Captain. We agreed to hide him, and he agreed to call our ships back the moment we escaped. They’ve got a signal worked out with the fisherfolk.”

Lysander found that rather hard to believe. “You’d better not be lying, Alders.”

He glared as he stood. “I’m not. Do you think this is the first time Harborville’s been invaded? Where do you think the bandits go, once they’ve been kicked out of Crow’s Cross? The ships are in a cove not far from here. They’ll return at my signal.”
 

Lysander grabbed Alders around the tunic and thrust him out the door with a growl. “Then you’d better get signaling.”

The pirates seemed thrilled to see the their companions from the mountains. They dug into their pockets and fished out handfuls of jewels, which they passed around the wildmen.

Gwen frowned at the necklace Jonathan pressed into her hand: a golden chain with a teardrop ruby hanging from its middle. She held it out as if it might bite her. “What’s this for?”

“What do you mean, what’s it for? It’s your share of the loot,” he said, nudging her with an elbow.

She wrinkled her nose at it. “But what do I do with
loot
?”

“Wear it, trade it, give it to somebody else — it’s yours to use however you want,” Jonathan called as he loped away.

Gwen glared at it a moment longer before she held it out to Silas. “Here. Do something with this.”

“Yes, my Thane.”

“I’m not a Thane anymore,” she growled as he took it.

Lysander couldn’t hide his surprise. “You’re not?”

“No. My brother’s better suited to rule our people. He’s far wiser than me. I only wish I’d seen it sooner.” Her face went dark for a moment before she straightened up. “I’ve agreed to stay on as his Warchief, though. He gave me a small army and sent me to find the Wright — we need his help.”

At a snap of her fingers, Silas drew a small, worn book from the pocket of his breeches. Lysander recognized it immediately as the book Kael used to read. “Where did you —?”

“We know he lives here,” Gwen said, pointing at the map. “We just don’t know how to get there.”

“That’s my village. I’ll be happy to show you the way, lass,” Shamus called.

“Yes, as soon as we’re done at the chancellor’s castle, we’ll take you straight to Copperdock,” Lysander said. He didn’t even bother to hide his grin: with the wildmen’s help, things with the council might just work out.

Silas edged in next to Gwen. “Shall I let your wild ones know, my Thane?”

“Yes.” She grabbed him roughly by the collar. “And I’m not going to tell you again, cat. Don’t call me a Thane.”

Silas didn’t look at all concerned. As his glowing eyes swept across her face, they seemed to trace every dip and swirl of her paint. His hands slid up and when they’d gone, he’d somehow clasped the teardrop necklace around her throat.

Gwen frowned as he slipped away, a curious red arched behind her paint. “What are you looking at, pirate?” she said when she caught Lysander watching.

He thought it best to feign indifference. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just wondering when those blasted ships are going to come in.”

He snatched Alders by the hair as he tried to slink away and twisted hard. “Ah! Any moment, now — they’ll be in at any moment!” he cried.

“They’d better be. There’s a full village here that’s willing to look the other way if the captain decides to gut you,” Shamus warned.

Fortunately for Alders, the ships came in a few moments later. The pirates lit the torches along the docks and watched as the ships’ lanterns drifted closer to harbor. When Lysander saw
Anchorgloam
sailing in at their head, his relief nearly sank him to his knees.

“There you are, Captain! I knew she’d be all right. No one could put a hole through such a beauty,” Shamus said cheerily, slapping a thick arm across his back.

But though the docks were well-lit, the ships came to a halt just outside of the harbor. Alders swore when he saw their anchors drop. “What are you doing? Sail in, blast you!”

“No, Alders. We’ve had enough.” A large fisherman stood upon
Anchorgloam
’s bow. His arms crossed over his thick chest and even from a distance, Lysander could see him glaring in the lantern light. “You starved us as a manager, swindled us a merchant. We swore that if we ever got the chance to better our lot, we would. You can either step down, or watch as we sail off with your fleet.”

 
“All right, then. Go,” Alders scoffed. “You won’t get far without supplies — and Midlan’s likely to scoop you up the moment you weigh anchor.”

“We’ll stick to the islands. They can’t get us if we don’t go inland. And there’s enough supplies on this ship to last us a long while,” he added, slapping a thick hand across
Anchorgloam
’s
rails.

 
Normally, Lysander would’ve been all for Alders losing everything. But there was a problem. “That isn’t his fleet — that’s my ship!”

The fisherman’s eyes disappeared beneath his scowl. “You’re a merchant too, aren’t you? I’m sure you’re no better than the rest of them.”

“The council will hear of this! You won’t get far. There’ll be an army waiting for you at every port between here and Whitebone. They’ll lock you away!” Alders insisted.

The fisherman smiled. “I wonder how they’re going to hear about it without your ships? I wouldn’t try going across land, after what you’ve done to Midlan.”

They went on arguing, but Lysander wasn’t listening. He stripped off his tunic and kicked his boots away. There wasn’t a chance he was going to let the fishermen take off with
Anchorgloam
. Even if he had to swim for a hundred miles in her wake —

“No, Captain! You’ll never catch them,” Shamus said. When Lysander fought his grip, the pirates swarmed in around him.

“Let me go!”

“You’re going to get yourself killed!”

“I don’t care!”

A young boy appeared next to the fisherman, drawn up by the noise of the pirates’ fight. He grinned as he watched them haul Lysander onto the docks. The fisherman laughed.

“Think this is funny, do you?” Lysander bellowed at them. “I hope someone sails off with the thing you love someday — and I hope I’m there to see it!”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll claw your way back into riches. You merchants always seem to find some poor, honest throat to stand on.”

“He isn’t a merchant — he’s a pirate,” Jonathan bellowed, striding to the front of the docks. “And if you steal his ship, he’ll hunt you down and deal with you in a
pirate’s
way: a slow skinning and a quick drop to the sharks.”

While the fisherman rolled his eyes, the boy gaped at Jonathan. He tugged roughly on the fisherman’s tunic and seemed unable to look away. There was so much distance between them that Lysander couldn’t hear what he said. But when he pointed to Jonathan, the fisherman’s scowl softened.

Soon his face had changed completely. Though his voice still carried, it wasn’t nearly as sharp as it’d been before. “My son says he knows you, forest man. Said you came through here with a merchant’s caravan back when Reginald had us living like thieves … said you and another lad fed him. He says you got the whole caravan passing out its wares.”