The Destruction of the Books (15 page)

“Ornne,” the captain called up. An arrow struck the stern deck only inches below his feet. In the next second, two more arrows lodged in the wood of the railing that fronted the stern deck. Captain Attikus stood his ground. Juhg knew the captain had no choice. If he elected to hide or flinch, his crew would lose faith in him and themselves.

The goblins had the distance now, but still lacked skill as true archers.

Elven bowmen, Juhg knew from experience, could have been at three times the distance and picked off their targets easily even as the sea rose and fell. He slid around the base of the mainmast, putting the thick column of wood between himself and the attack. Arrows slapped into the wood and Juhg felt the vibration of the impacts against his back.

“Ornne,” Captain Attikus called. “Find me that wizard.”

“Cap’n,” Ornne protested from the crow’s-nest, which was festooned with arrows, “mayhap that wizard ain’t with them.”

Two sailors aboard
Windchaser
went down with arrows through them. They yelled in fear and agony as they flopped on the deck.

“Cap’n,” Navin called back, pacing nervously at the back of his crew. “We need to strike back.”

“Patience, Navin,” the captain said, his gaze never leaving the goblin ship. “Would you rather face a wizard or a goblin crew?”

Navin scowled and cursed beneath his breath.

Back to the mainmast, Juhg peered at the goblin ship. The two ships rode nearly the same wave now, but
Blowfly
remained ahead of
Windchaser,
rising on the crest for a little while longer. By the time
Windchaser
came down after the goblin ship, her position on the wave put her almost on top of the other vessel. Several times while gazing over the ship’s side, Juhg had the distinct belief that
Windchaser
was going to crash down on top of
Blowfly
and crush both ships.

“There!” Ornne screamed. “In the stern, Cap’n! The wizard’s in the stern!”

Wiping the stinging brine from his eyes, Juhg stared at the goblin ship’s stern. As he watched, the wizard trudged up the stairs leading to the stern castle. The goblin bowmen separated around the wizened figure in arcane robes.

“Archers,” Captain Attikus ordered instantly, “take aim!”

“Aye, Cap’n,” the archers responded.

The goblins continued to unleash uneven volleys of arrows. Three more sailors went down, one of them transfixed through the throat. The sight of the mortally wounded man pushed the fear inside Juhg to a fever pitch.

Another arrow struck Captain Attikus in the shoulder, driving him back a step.

For a moment, Juhg thought the arrow had pierced the man’s heart.

Gathering himself, though obviously in pain, Captain Attikus reached for the arrow and snapped off the fletched end. Blood soaked his blouse, but his gaze rested unerringly on the goblin ship. He was a hunter in that moment, and the only thing that mattered was the ship he pursued as prey. “Steady, lads. Just hold steady.” His voice betrayed no hint of fear or pain.

Windchaser
steadily climbed out of the latest trough. With
Blowfly
dead in the water,
Windchaser
was in danger of pulling past the goblin ship on the port side.

“Steady,” Captain Attikus urged. “Just hold steady and true, lads, and I’ll see you through this.”

Juhg watched, helplessly hypnotized by the action about to take place. Every archer in the
Windchaser
group stood tense as a bowstring, the fletchings pulled back nearly to their ears now.

Then
Windchaser
was over the wave, descending on the goblin ship like a fisherhawk diving for a fat prize just below the ocean’s surface. She was still ten feet above
Blowfly
’s decks when Captain Attikus gave the order.

“Fire!”

Almost as one man, the archers loosed their shafts. Deadly and true, the arrows feathered the goblins and drove them back and down.

The wizard flung up a hand and something blurred in the air before him. Arrows stopped in mid-flight less than two feet away from him, then clattered to the stern deck. The wind tore at his hair and beard, but he stood irresolute.

“Archers,” Captain Attikus yelled. “Fire at will!”

The archers already had their second shafts nocked and were picking out targets.

“Boarding crews,” the captain bellowed, “prepare grappling hooks. I don’t mean to miss that ship and let her have at our backside.”

A dozen crewmen stepped forward with iron grappling hooks at the ends of chains. Regular grappling lines were made of hemp and could be thrown farther, but Captain Attikus preferred chain because even a sharp axe couldn’t sever the heavy links on a first blow. Usually, even an axe drove the links deeply into the wooden railing.

The human archers fired again and again, spending their arrows with a miser’s care but as quickly as they could pull the bowstring. The shafts fell with telling accuracy among the goblinkin. Squalling and cursing with utter ferocity and crudity, the goblins gave ground and fell back.

“Stand and fight, you blasted creatures!” the wizard snarled as he stood on the stern deck with imperious dignity. “I am Ertonomous Dron, and I will have your loyalty or I will have you dead!”

The goblin crew halted the mad scurry from the stern, but the creatures didn’t appear willing to once more take up the fight.

“By the Dark Lord,” the wizard thundered. “You’ll not ignore my wishes.” He lifted a skinny arm and pointed his wand at the nearest goblin.

A pulse of almost invisible movement roiled over the hapless goblin and stripped away its clothing and flesh in a flash of eldritch blue fire, leaving only a gory skeleton standing in the boots it had been wearing. With the next heave of the waves, the skeleton came apart and loose bones clattered across the deck.

More properly motivated now, the goblins once more took up the battle, surging forward to try to be the first at the railing.

The display also somewhat weakened the resolve of
Windchaser
’s crew and gave hesitation to the archers. Juhg saw that effect in the slack-jawed look of amazement on the men’s faces. No one—human, elf, dwarf, or goblin—wanted to get crossways with a wizard. Nearly everyone luckless enough to get in one’s path or earn his ire didn’t live to tell the story.

Or else they spend the rest of their life as a toad,
Juhg thought. The wizard Craugh, who was a personal friend of the Grandmagister’s, was reputed to have increased the populations of toads in several places where he was made unhappy or found villains working to thwart his designs.

“Grapplers,” Captain Attikus commanded. “Heave the lines!”

Immediately, the sailors holding the grappling hooks hurled them at the other ship.

Wide-eyed, Juhg watched the hooks sail over the goblin ship’s railing. The heavy hooks fell onto the deck, all save for one, which ended up over a goblin’s shoulder. Tines scraped fresh white scars across the wooden deck as the sailors hauled the chains back. The hook that had fallen on the goblin buried itself in the creature’s flesh, leaving it squalling and crying as it was spitted like a specimen in a butterfly collector’s case.

“Free those lines,” Ertonomous Dron shouted. “Keep those people back from this ship.” The wizard paced behind the pack of howling goblins.

“’Yards,” Captain Attikus called. “Away with you!”

Instantly, the dozen sailors who had been up in
Windchaser
’s rigging after furling the sails stepped forward and revealed themselves. Ornne bailed out from the crow’s-nest, running confidently across the topmost ’yards to join the rigging crew.

The rigging crew perched at the ends of the ’yards like ungainly birds, waited for the pitch and yaw of the two ships to favor them, then launched themselves across twenty feet of open water and landed in the rigging of the goblin ship, catching fresh holds with uncommon skill.

Goblin archers wheeled to deal with the first wave of the invasion that was to come. As the goblins did, the creatures became targets for
Windchaser
’s archers. Arrows slammed into the goblinkin creatures and knocked them down.

The grappling crews aboard
Windchaser
secured the other ends of the chains that bound them to the goblin ship. The two vessels rubbed hulls with thunderous poundings that Juhg would have sworn meant they were both coming apart at the seams.

One of the grapples pulled free, tearing through a weakened section of railing that snapped like kindling. The goblin pinned by the grappling hook fought to escape but couldn’t. Even so, when the goblin went slack in death, the grappling hook found no solid purchase and yanked the creature’s corpse over the side. Still, ten grappling hooks held, binding
Blowfly
’s fate to
Windchaser
’s own.

“Boarders,” Captain Attikus roared, “away!”

In quick order that showed practice and cunning, the sailors hoisted themselves up and threw themselves from
Windchaser
’s railing onto the goblin ship’s deck. Swords flashed between the two crews, and the blades suddenly turned crimson.

High above the deck, the sailors in the goblin ship’s rigging worked with sharp knives, slashing through the ropes and dropping the huge sheets of canvas onto the deck and crew. Even if the boarding attempt failed,
Blowfly
would be in no shape to try to evade
Windchaser
without effecting serious repairs. Quite possibly, the goblin crew wasn’t even trained to restring the rigging and would end up at the sea’s cold mercy.

At the back of the boarding party, the frown and frustration on his face clearly showing that he didn’t like where he was, Raisho dropped his bow and quiver, then raked his cutlass from his sash. He turned to Juhg.

“C’mon, then, bookworm!” Raisho grinned. “Don’t you want to be a hero?”

No,
Juhg thought. Most heroes were dead heroes, and they never truly met easy ends. He’d learned that from all the history chronicles he’d read. The books from Hralbomm’s Wing that Grandmagister Lamplighter treasured so much guaranteed a much happier end for heroes.

Juhg put his fear aside, concentrating on the idea of the book in goblin hands. He crossed the heaving deck, made even more treacherous by
Blowfly
’s drag, and stood behind Raisho. There was no time to wait, because as soon as Juhg arrived, the boarding party’s wave of movement had reached Raisho.

Without hesitation, Raisho jumped lithely to the railing and held on to a ratline. He yelled in warning, then threw himself onto the other ship.

Juhg climbed to the top of the twisting railing more warily, not at all sure if he could leap the distance to
Blowfly.
He rocked with
Windchaser
’s motion, finding his balance despite the ship’s heaving because he was a dweller and possessed incredible balance.

Raisho landed on the deck and fell into a swordsman’s crouch immediately. The cutlass flashed in his right hand and he used a long knife in his left to parry. A trio of goblinkin confronted him as he surged forward to make room. Shifting quickly, Raisho disemboweled one goblin and continued spinning to the left. He parried a heavy slash aimed at its stomach with the dagger, driving the goblin’s cutlass to the deck, where it tore out a chunk of wood. Then Raisho struck again, lopping the head from the third goblin. Still moving, he lifted his right foot and drove it into the face of the second goblin before the creature could free its cutlass from Raisho’s dagger.

In an eye blink, a space was clear on
Blowfly
’s deck. Blood stained the wood, reminding Juhg of the cost that had been paid so far and yet remained to be paid still.

“Juhg!” Raisho barked, looking back over his shoulder.

8

Death in the Water

Galvanized into action because he knew his friend would stand there and be a target, Juhg took two lightning-fast steps across the nearest grappling chain, felt the links beneath his bare feet, and hurled himself onto the deck.

As surefooted as he’d been crossing the chain, though, he wasn’t nearly as graceful meeting
Blowfly
’s shifting deck. It came up as he was going down, tripping him neatly and sending him sprawling.

Not,
Juhg thought ruefully,
exactly a hero’s arrival.
But his embarrassment was short-lived. When he rolled over, he discovered he’d gone several feet past the area Raisho had cleared. On his back now, he stared up at a goblin that grinned down at him.

“Come all this way to up an’ die, did ye, halfer?” the goblin taunted. It took a two-handed grip on its cutlass and swung.

Juhg tried to move, but the bloody deck beneath him didn’t allow him to get his footing. His hands slid out from under him and he sprawled again.

Then a cutlass intercepted the goblin’s blade, sliding under it with a shriek of metal. Still, Juhg knew the blade was going to get him after all and split his skull because the cutlass couldn’t halt the power of the downward swing. But the cutlass continued forward, catching the goblin’s blade on the hilt, then the curved point dug into the deck on the other side of Juhg.

Staring up at the blade that had halted only inches from his head (because the defending cutlass had used the deck as a fulcrum to turn the blow), Juhg couldn’t believe he was still alive. The goblin couldn’t believe it either. An angry grimace melted the triumphant smile the foul creature had worn prior to the defense.

The goblin pulled its blade back and turned to face Raisho. Before the goblin could get set, Raisho spun and kicked his opponent in the face. Propelled by the blow, the goblin flew backward and toppled over the ship’s railing. It squalled for an instant, then
Windchaser
and
Blowfly
came together in another thunderous
boom
as the hulls met.

Lying on his back, his attention focused on the railing area where the goblin had gone over, Juhg thought,
Squished. Now, that’s a horrible way to die.