Chapter 30 #2
I lunged for a man with a score of eyes clustered across a pink spiderlike face. He dropped the cup he had been about to drink
from, grabbing a double-ended hatchet.
I decapitated him with a single blow.
Another time the feat would have shocked, perhaps even horrified me. Not tonight. I cut through the men who had attacked my
ship, threatened my people, and signed their souls over to a foreign butcher with all the supernatural strength I had.
Perhaps if I’d had more time, more mercy, I might have tried to reason with them. But I was out of time and so were they.
They had chosen to join this monster, to remain at his side as he tortured and murdered a score of innocent villagers. I would
do what needed to be done to put a stop to it.
I sent one man flying with a blow to his chest, whipping around lightning fast to rip open the belly of another attempting
to sneak up on me, but then I stumbled, thrown off-balance by the ease of the strike. My strength, my speed... both vastly
improved, yes, but my strike was an adjustment probably not best made in the heat of battle. Around me, Magnun’s men were grappling with Falco’s, doing their best against the magically
enhanced warriors. Across the camp, I briefly spotted the small group of my crew. Bound in ropes and almost certainly unarmed,
they were throwing themselves against their guards with shouts and curses.
I tried to reach them, only to be blocked by another of Falco’s warriors—a far more hulking specimen than the ones I had dispatched.
He came rushing my way, sporting six crab arms and a mouth full of shark’s teeth.
I barely ducked an enormous pair of his pincers, whirling around to swing my axe at his head before he blocked that with another arm.
“Raksh!” I shouted, spotting my husband hiding behind a rock. “A little help!”
In response, Raksh threw his mace at the both of us, nearly taking my head off and missing my opponent entirely.
That useless motherfucker . I gritted my teeth, shoving the handle of my axe between serrated claws that had been about to rip my face off. The claws
jerked back but took my axe with them. I grabbed for one of my swords, slashing down across the man’s chest.
It was a blow that would have ripped open a human. But my foe was no longer that, and all the sword did was slide along the
crab-shell-like carapace glistening beneath his torn shirt. My blade didn’t even leave a scratch, though there was something
clearly capable of piercing it: a spectral seaweed tether just like the one that had been in the scout’s chest.
The man misinterpreted the shock on my face, smirking with all his shark’s teeth (do not attempt to envision this—it is a
deeply cursed sight) and running an admiring claw down the rock-hard carapace protecting his chest. “Even better than armor
if I do say so myself.”
“You look like a fucking prawn.” Acting on instinct, I reached for my meteor blade.
He snorted. “Is it a spider you plan to kill with that puny thing?”
“Not quite.” I lunged forward and sliced through his spectral chain. The meteor blade cut through the seaweed tether with
a sizzling flash of light.
The effect was instantaneous. Falco’s fighter sucked for breath like a fish on land, lurching back as though he’d lost control of his limbs.
His armored carapace vanished, melting into all-too-human skin.
The man didn’t even have a chance to scream before his extra limbs also fell away, the pincer claws reduced to the size of small crabs by the time they landed in the sand.
With a low cry of disbelief, he clutched his chest, grasping the bony gray-blue stinger emerging from his sternum.
Diminished, he fell to his knees. “You freed me,” he said hoarsely, touching his human teeth and bare belly with palpable
despair. “Falco... I cannot feel him.”
“Where is he?” I demanded. “Help me and I’ll spare you.”
“ Help you? ” He laughed, the sound hollow. “Do you know the price I paid for this? I stood by while my cousin was eaten alive.” He gazed
up, hate scorching in his eyes. “Bitch, I wanted it.”
He sprang at me, but it was a desperate move and it was nothing to shove the dagger into his heart. I yanked it out and his
body crumpled back to the sand. Breathing fast, I stared in astonishment at the meteor blade, reflected firelight dancing
in its depth.
Raksh peeked out from behind his rock. “What did you do ?”
I think I figured out how to strip Falco’s men of their magic . But there was no way I was telling my cowardly, could-swap-sides-at-any-time spouse that.
Instead I glared at him. “Right. New plan since you seem more likely to hurt me than the person I’m fighting. Free my men,
then get to the cave.”
He gave me a nervous look. “Falco might be in the cave.”
“Yes, idiot, and hopefully so are the rest of my crew. You’re the trickster, aren’t you? Find a way to free them so they can
fight and possibly delay Falco. And save you ,” I added, putting it in terms he could understand. “Go!”
Raksh swore but ran off, and I turned back toward Magnun’s warriors. If I could cut the spectral tethers from Falco’s remaining
fighters, defeating them would be child’s play for the Socotran pirates.
But I’d barely taken two steps when a heavy blow rang out against my helmet, knocking me nearly senseless.
I staggered, my ears ringing, and the helmet was ripped off entirely. Falco’s beast of a man—Yazid, the mercenary who had twisted and tied up an iron bar like it was a piece of rope—stood behind me.
Surprise lit his blood-streaked face. “Al-Sirafi,” he exhaled. In one of his hands was my scimitar.
Oh, God, my head hurt. “Came back for my blade,” I said, trying to wish away the stars dancing merrily before my vision. “You
mind?”
Yazid licked his lips. “Come and get it.”
Now, past experience has taught me that those kinds of challenges typically speak poorly of their boasters—efforts to boost
their own ineptitude or low confidence.
Regrettably, it took less than a minute of action with Yazid to learn he had earned every bit of his mocking arrogance.
He moved faster than I could blink. Forget the meteor blade, I barely had enough time to raise my sword before his blows were
hammering down on me like those of a furious carpenter venting their frustration on a broken nail. My strength might have
been improved, but it was nowhere close to Yazid’s. As we parried back and forth, he pressed me farther into the shadows,
away from my allies.
“You were a fool not to join us when Falco invited you, al-Sirafi,” Yazid said, his eyes glittering. “He would have given
you the world.”
I grunted in frustration, fending off another of Yazid’s blows. There was a weird mix of bitterness and jealousy in his voice;
maybe someone was feeling insecure in his relationship with the Frankish sorcerer. “Is that what he told your shipmates before
feeding half of them to a sea monster?”
Yazid swung down hard— with my own sword —and I stumbled, barely avoiding the steel as it swept over my face.
Closer now, I could see his spectral leash, glowing healthy and bright as it draped from his chest to the ground.
Severing it seemed my only hope, but Yazid had me completely on my toes.
Needing to wield my sword with both hands, I’d shoved the iron dagger in my belt early in our fight, nearly dropping it in my haste.
Growing desperate, I fled backward, hoping to buy myself even the briefest of openings to snatch the knife. But I’d badly
miscalculated. Yazid was as swift as he was strong, and he made use of the distance between us to slash down wide and fast
with the sword. I twisted away, the blade sliding on my chain mail instead of ripping open my abdomen, but the blow was still
hard enough that I would swear I felt a rib crack.
Yazid took advantage of his strike, kicking me in the same spot. I gasped in pain, the wind knocked from my lungs, and he
swept my feet out from under me.
I fell to the sand. Abandoning my sword, I made a wild grab for the meteor blade, but my fingers had barely closed on its
hilt when he knocked it out of my hand, returning to press a booted foot on my ribs, pinning me in place. I cried out in equal
parts pain and frustrated rage as he stood over my body. Yazid raised his sword— my sword—over my heart, murderous triumph blazing in his expression.
A familiar scream ripped through the air. Familiar enough that despite my likely imminent death, I glanced to my left...
to see Tinbu .
Looking like a possessed rabbit, my friend hopped madly in our direction, his bandaged leg held at an awkward angle, some
sort of crutch under one arm and a flaming piece of driftwood in his other hand. It was such a bizarre apparition that even
Yazid briefly paused my murder, glancing wildly at Tinbu just before my first mate flung himself at Yazid—broken leg, crutch,
flaming driftwood, and all.
Under most circumstances, I suspect Tinbu would have made for little more than a fly pestering Yazid, but even villainous warriors get surprised when a torch-bearing, hopping man screams and throws himself at your face.
Yazid staggered back, swatting and cursing as Tinbu thrust the flaming driftwood at his eyes.
Finally with a solid smack, Yazid knocked my friend away, and Tinbu fell hard to the ground, landing on his bad leg and letting out an anguished shriek.
But still he clawed in my direction, using the crutch to drag himself across the sand, his face pale as parchment.
“Amina,” he choked out, his voice thick with grief and pain. “ Cover your face .”
Cover my...
Then I realized it wasn’t a crutch Tinbu was using.
It was Dalila’s staff.
A shadow fell across us, a petite form in a billowing tattered gown standing before the roaring bonfire. Bruises and bloodstains
ringed her wrists from where she’d been bound, her hair wild and blowing everywhere. Her ribbon cap was clenched in one hand,