IX

“Yoreno. Yoreno, wake up.”

Yoreno opened his eyes as Dantera kneeled beside him, her hand on his shoulder. He blinked. “Is it time?”

The crickets were chirping loudly. “Yes.”

“Right.” He rubbed his eyes and then grasped for his sword. It was there, lying over his legs. Right where he had put it.

Dantera stood. “We should leave our bags. We do not need the extra weight.”

Yoreno strapped his belt over his waist.

“Now come,” she said, leading the way through the first.

They stayed off the beach for the most part, sticking to the woods where they had further concealment from any wakeful eyes. After traversing through this rough terrain in the dark for some time, they came within eyeshot of the enemy camp, their lit torches and burning embers from their fires visible through the trees. Dantera turned to Yoreno. Her features were hard to make out in the darkness but he could see her finger in front of her lips as she signaled for quiet.

Together they left the forest and made for the beach. Yoreno was not a stealth fighter, but neither was Dantera. Despite that, she was far more suited to this style of ambush than he was. The sand concealed the noise of their footsteps as the smoke from the enemy’s mostly dead campfires filled his nostrils. Moving slowly, Dantera lead the way into the camp. She motioned for Yoreno to make his way toward the sleeping man near the fire while she went to the simple makeshift tent.

The sentries had fallen asleep. The man in front of Yoreno had a jug of something nestled in his arms. Probably hard alcohol. On his body he wore armor over black trousers and a sleeveless cloak with a hood. Yoreno shuffled up to him, his naked blade in his sweaty hands ready to come down should he wake. He glanced toward Dantera. She stood straight from her crouching position. Then her arm thrust out, her shoulder moving with the stroke of her sword as a wet metallic sound travelled to his ears.

She had just ended a sleeping man.

Yoreno looked at his target, his heart hammering inside his chest so hard his ears were throbbing. He bent and sliced his target’s neck with the edge of his blade. Blood poured out of his neck as his eyes shot open. With his vocal cords cut, he grunted, struggling to keep his life’s blood inside his body. Failing that, he rolled over and was still.

The blood and gore followed by a swift death was nothing new to Yoreno. But now he was killing men—not monsters. Dantera was fast at work as she took care of the other two targets.

She walked to him slowly. “That is all of them,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Come.”

She lead the way to the beached skiff. Yoreno moved up behind her and helped her push the small rowboat into the water. She jumped in and he after her. There were two ores. Yoreno took both, placed them in the gunnels and began to row the boat toward the ship. Besides the lanterns, the enemy ship was nothing more than a silhouette in the night waters.

“Take us to the bow, Yoreno,” she whispered.

He couldn’t make out her face. As far as Yoreno could tell, she could just as well be one of the faceless men they had just killed. Thankful that he had his hands on the ores, Yoreno nodded and directed the skiff toward the front of the ship.

“We can climb the anchor chair.”

Had it not been for his strong grasp on the ores Yoreno knew his hands would be trembling visibly if he held them out.

“Yoreno,” Dantera whispered. She made a motion with her hand that indicated a different course, one that broke right then curved toward the bow of the ship.

“All right.”

Had the night been a moonlit one, sneaking up on this ship in a skiff would have been impossible. Something else was aiding their approach now. The weather on this island was hot. The night would have been completely clear if it weren’t for the mists that began to close in on them.

“This is perfect,” Yoreno murmured.

“Yes it is.”

Gently pushing the ores into the water, Yoreno rowed them up against the ship. Their skiff knocked against the anchor chain, but the noise produced wasn’t overly loud. Dantera stood up and took hold of the chain and hauled herself up.

She made the climb look easy, but maybe that was because she was a top-tier adventurer. Yoreno took hold of a mooring line and wrapped it about the anchor chain so the skiff wouldn’t float away while they were aboard the ship

Then he climbed the chain. It took him some effort—mostly because of his armor, but managed without too much difficulty. He got his leg over the side and hauled himself up.

By the time he caught sight of Dantera, she was already cutting a sentry’s throat. She pushed him, his silhouette falling overboard with a splash.

She came to him then. “We must be quiet,” she whispered. “There are other sentries aboard the ship.

Yoreno nodded.

Dantera made her way down the forecastle steps and onto the middle deck. She cut left when a sentry walked into their path with his bright lantern in hand. Yoreno ducked behind a crate covered with a canvas tarp. Peeking out, he realized the sentry was coming their way.

This man did not look like the men they had killed ashore. He was a sailor, wearing voluminous trousers, sandals and a vest over a loose shirt. At his side hung a short sword in easy reach.

Dantera motioned to Yoreno that she would go around and distract the man, then Yoreno would—she dragged her flattened hand across her neck—kill him.

He nodded.

She moved and he waited. For the most part the ship was quiet, save for the gentle lapping of the water below, the occasional creak of the ship’s boards and the rigging knocking about.

The soft glow of the sentry’s lamp appeared on the decking. As it pushed forward, footsteps became audible. Yoreno couldn’t unsheathe his long sword at this time. He would have to do something else to take the sailor down once he was distracted.

A ball of apprehension forced inside his stomach. All it would take for them to fail was for one of these sentries spot them and scream for help.

Something knocked far off. The light on the decking shifted. Yoreno was aware that this was because the sailor had turned. “Hmm?”

Yoreno crouched out of his hiding place. He could have drawn his sword, but the noise would alert the sentry, so he reframed from doing so as he snuck up behind the man.

But then the sentry halted his head turning somewhat as he listened for the noise he had heard. “Who goes there?”

Yoreno’s heart stopped.

That didn’t stop him from moving forward behind the man. He reached around and put his hand over the sailor’s mouth. The man struggled, moaning and mumbling under Yoreno’s fingers. Grasping as hard as he could, he pulled his arm to the side in a twisting motion. The sentry’s head turned. He dropped his lamp and squirmed, but then Yoreno cracked his neck, the sentry’s body going limp. Before he fell to the deck, Yoreno shoved him over the side.

Dantera was there, half crouched, watching. She nodded her approval and then came to him, picking up the fallen lamp. “Inside the forecastle,” she said, nodding behind him.

Yoreno lead the way. The door was, of course, unlocked. They found themselves in a storage space covered in hanging nets, ropes and nestled against the bulkheads were crates and barrels. The space was surprisingly dry, the pungent smell of treated wood and lamp oil filing his nose.

Dantera moved straight to the barrels. “Hold this.” She passed him the lamp and removed her dagger so she could wedge the lid off. “Oil,” she said. “This is perfect.”

“We’re going to set the ship afire?”

“Si,” she said in Amalfi, then slammed her dagger into the top of one barrel.

“What are you doing?”

“We can”—she grunted—“turn the barrels over and roll them across the deck to spread the oil. Take this one. When you get to the end of the deck, tip the barrel upside down.”

“What are you doing to do?”

“I’m going to do the same,” she said, “but not before I open the rest of these and poor them all inside this area. They won’t be able to stop the fire from burning out the bow and sinking the ship.”

It was an excellent plan. The sailors on this ship obviously weren’t expecting anyone to come sneaking up onto their decks in the middle of the night—not when they thought they were alone on this isle.

Yoreno hung the lantern overhead then turned his barrel toward the door. It was heavy, but with some muscular force, wasn’t too hard to move about. He got it outside of the door and then tipped it over. Oil poured out, just as Dantera intended. He wheeled the full barrel across the deck on the port side of the ship and moved in the direction of the aft castle, oil spilling out in thick glugs as he went.

When he was almost at the aft castle, a light above that deck appeared, a sailor there looking down on him. “Hello?”

Yoreno’s first reaction was to crouch lower as his heart attempted to escape his ripcage.

“Hey!” the sentry called. Then realizing that Yoreno was not a crew member, he shouted, “INTRUDER! TO ARMS! TO ARMS!”

He turned around and ran.

“Damnation!” Yoreno hissed, rolling his barrel frantically as the man continued to call for help. He flipped it upside down as Dantera had suggested mere moments ago. As he ran back toward the forecastle, a warning bell clanged from the aft decks. This whole ship would be swarming with men waving swords in moments.

Dantera burst out of the forecastle door, her eyes wide. “Dammit!”

“There was nothing I could do,” Yoreno said.

Without answer Dantera turned and tossed the lamp into the forecastle hold. Flames flashed, warm and bright as the oil caught fire.

“Back to the skiff, Yoreno! Those other barrels will go up in moments. Come!”

He chased her up the forecastle stairs and watched her swing her leg over the side. Yoreno turned, saw man coming up onto the deck from below.

An arrow thudded into the wood beside him.

“COME ON, YORENO!”

He jerked toward the edge and practically threw himself over it. He almost lost his grip, bit managed to wrap the anchor chain with his legs as Dantera landed into the skiff.

Yoreno loosened his grip on the chain and slid down and tumbled into the skiff clumsily. Dantera pushed against the ship with her ore and they were away.

“Yoreno!” she called. “Take the ores. Now!”

He righted himself and did as she commanded. In his haste, he didn’t sink the ores as deep as they needed to go, giving his rowing an amateur quality to their escape.

“A little better, Yoreno!”

“I’m trying!”

She unsheathed her narrow sword as half-dressed sailors and warriors alike rushed to the edge of the railing while about ten more were working at the winches for the other two skiffs.

“This is not good,” Yoreno said under his breath as he rowed them back toward shore. Shafts flitted past them, missing the skiff by half a pace and sunk into the water. Dantera raised her sword, flicked her wrist and deflected an oncoming shaft, something Yoreno couldn’t do even in a practiced setting.

The skiff hadn’t even hit the sand yet when Dantera turned around and hopped out of the boat, splashing in the salty water wildly as Yoreno followed. They glanced back to see the two enemy skiffs already making their waiy toward them. The fires aboard the ship licked into the sky as the crew attempted to douse them, but the flames roaring at the forecastle were far too many to be put out with mere buckets of water.

“That ship will sink,” Dantera said. “Now we need to get out of here.”

She ran up the beach and into the trees. Yoreno wasn’t far behind her, and in this darkness, losing their pursuers wouldn’t be very hard. But running was hard work in armor. Yoreno was already breathing heavily, his legs burning from his exertions to keep up with Dantera who wore less armor than he did.

She didn’t seem to be winded in the least as she led, keeping their pace as they headed back toward the ruins. They soon left the forest and crossed the foothills. Yoreno could tell that Dantera didn’t want to run straight toward the dungeon ruins. Probably because the burning ship would be easily visible from there and the men encamped within would come out and make for the beach.

Sure enough, shouts erupted from the path leading to the dungeon as he and Dantera skirted around, back toward the ruins on the other side. Once they made it there, she stopped abruptly.

“We have to go in. If their mage is still inside, we must kill him!”

This worried Yoreno. They were not mages themselves, did not weild defensive and destructive magic other than the runes on their armor.

“If he’s in there, do you think we can defeat him?”

“We can,” she said, “if we work together and attack him quickly—before he realizes what is happening.”

Yoreno nodded. It was a reckless plan. But then going into combat was always reckless no matter how prepared one was. Perhaps this was the life of a knight—to go headlong into danger with the final result either being your own death, or the deaths of your enemies.

He nodded firmly. “Let’s finish this.”

She nodded back and led the way into the dungeon. Then they took the corridors Yoreno had used after climbing up that long flight of steps. Running about wildly, it wasn’t long before Yoreno and Dantera found themselves inside the chamber where Yoreno had seen the sarcophagi being desecrated. The dried out corpses were still there as they crossed through the wide chamber and down a flight of steps leading through an arch covered in ancient runes.

“If I remember correctly,” Dantera said, “this next chamber is the burial chamber.”

“Where is your monster, Herokelus?”

“I do not know,” she said, turning to address him. Her face shined in the light of the lit torches, a sheen of perspiration clearly visible. Yoreno too was sweating from their running about in this hot environment. “We must be vigilant. Now come.”

She led the way through the arch and Yoreno followed. There was a series of winding passageways, the sand on the floor clearly disturbed from the men who were here, siphoning dark magic as Dantera had said.

The passageway then opened into a large chamber full of sarcophagi. At the center was a heavy sandstone table with a hole cut in the center, a strange apparatus atop it. In the apparatus was a glowing crystal and a soft beam of purple light swirling with diaphanous tendrils of magic.

The man standing at the table, his hands raised in the air as he channeled the crystal, turned his head without taking his hands off the crystal.

“Guards!” he called. “Davy!”

A man came out of the arch on the other side of the chamber, his forearms covered in black armor with silver accents. He came forward.

“Kill these intruders!” the mage snapped.

The man called Davy unsheathed his sword as his men poured into the room. There were six of them.

“Don’t give them any quarter,” Dantera said quietly so only Yoreno could hear her. Then to the guards she said, “Put down your weapons, or suffer my wrath!”

Davy narrowed his eyes. “And who are you, pray tell, wench?”

Dantera took two steps forward and unsheathed her rapier. “I am Lady Dantera Brennovo, top-tier adventurer and knight of Aevalin!” She swung her sword in an arch, the blade coming to rest in front of her face. “And this is my sword, Ito Farralia. Surrender now—or I will kill you.”