Tarrskyn Eiddersbor

Tarrskyn had never held anything like the Yutül. It wasn’t made of wood, leather, metal, or anything else he recognized. Oh, bits of it were fine steel, but mostly it was just…black. Dense and heavy in his hand, and awkwardly shaped for fingers much shorter than his own. It took him minutes of scratching his head, turning it over, poking and prodding at it before he finally figured out that if he held it just so and pressed his thumb to a little knot on the side, it would click inward the faintest amount and…

With a hiss like waves on the beach, fine gritty sand poured out of the thing and somehow, impossibly, formed itself into a wide, flat plate about the size of Tarrskyn’s hand. Tarrskyn froze, too stunned to even throw the mysterious object away from himself, and blinked when it lit up from behind with swirling colors and shapes he couldn’t decipher. Some of them had to be runes or letters of some kind. Others were just little square pictures that made no sense.

Where the light came from, he couldn’t say. Not fire. Cold light, like the wide twisting ribbons in the northern sky, but tamed behind glass and formed into icons.

He stared at it in confusion, wondering what he should do next. Just reaching this moment had made his brain ache, but what was he supposed to do with a glass pane full of little pictures?

His question was answered when one of the tiny images pulsed three times. Then three times more a few heartbeats later. The likeness of a dwarf-hand appeared above it the third time, and moved as though tapping forward.

Tentatively, he imitated it and tapped on the glass, then blinked in both confusion and awe at what followed: The simple gesture summoned portraits. Paintings, but the most perfectly accurate he’d ever seen, utterly true to life, depicting Lady Ember and the two blue-eyed dwarves. The big ones were practically crushing Ember in a hug from either side, while she grinned out at Tarrskyn from the Yutül’s surface.

He stroked a finger across the surface to feel the texture of it and see if it had changed. The feel was the same, but the portrait seemed to fly aside out of sight to be replaced by another one, this time depicting the first dwarf adult Tarrskyn had seen. His skin was a deep, ruddy brown, hidden behind a strange mane of coarse black-and-grey stubble that framed his mouth and cheeks, rather than his neck and jaw.

Tarrskyn experimented by stroking his finger across it again in the other direction, and the first painting returned, flying back into view from the nothing it had vanished into. No matter how he stretched his brain, he couldn’t figure out where it was going, how it might be hiding in there, or what might be summoning it. It was…magic.

He stroked right-to-left twice, and found a new painting, and…stared.

It was…wrong. He was looking at a forested trail with wildflowers and trees on either side, but there was no sky. It looked like the ground just curled up and over, like a rolled carpet or the kind of boat-crushing wave the gods might send down on a crew who’d truly angered them. It hurt his mind to look at. There was…was that a city? An upside-down city, with unspeakably tall and skinny gods-halls clustered tight against one another, on the underside of the impossibly rolled landscape?

He turned his face away from it, disturbed and afraid, and swiped his finger randomly upward. He was rewarded with a simple rune that might depict a house or hall. When he tentatively prodded it with his finger, the impossible image was banished, and he was returned to the field of small square icons.

Other icons yielded less identifiable results. One was nothing but writing in the dwarf-runes, which he couldn’t read. Many were beyond his ability to decipher.

He yelped in surprise, however, when he reactivated the icon that had shown him the portraits, swiped past the first three, and found that the fourth was moving.

He dropped the Yutül as Ember’s face, as mobile and alive as if she was hiding inside the Yutül herself and speaking to him through its glass front, manifested and began talking. Her words were clear, though a little…small. Not high or squeaking, just lacking the fullness of the real thing. A copy, then, or…something.

He stole a glance at his crew, shivering in fear. It was beginning to dawn on him that dwarf-magic was powerful in ways he’d never conceived, and he may have done something very foolish by stealing the Yutül.

For it to speak and help Ember with her words was one thing, but to hold such impossible sights and tiny speaking copies of a real woman…It was enough to make his mind creak and complain like a ship in rough seas. And somehow…

Somehow he could tell what he’d found so far was just the simplest and least of what it could do. There was so much more he just wasn’t equipped to understand. Tarrskyn was many things, but a court magician was emphatically not one of them. Which didn’t matter; no magician he’d ever seen could conjure something like this!

“When are you going to stop playing with that stupid dwarf toy?”

Tarrskyn looked up and gave Shulft a glare as cold as a winter gale. It had no effect whatsoever.

“You’re getting impatient again,” he observed levelly and put the Yutül away in his bag, secretly glad to have something as mundane as a rock-headed bjerkar to deal with.

“We have a mission. And you’re sitting around.” Shulft even stood like a dwarf sometimes, planting his feet firmly on the ground and gripping his belt.

“Do not confuse action with effectiveness, or effectiveness with busyness,” Tarrskyn warned him. “I can do a lot while sitting around. Thinking, for instance. You should try it sometime.”

“I have had enough of your sitting around and thinking!” Shulft exploded forward and hauled Tarrskyn to his feet by the front of his shirt. And in a move that proved he wasn’t completely stupid, he grabbed Tarrskyn’s tail to control the poisoned dagger on the end. “We don’t have to remain here! We can fish and catch plumebacks on the way back over, and Wylderrjorssían’s crew cannot! We have more men than them! We are better fed than them! We have every advantage we could want, but you’d rather sit here and play with the toys of a dwarf child!”

“You’re a fool if you think this is a toy,” Tarrskyn growled at him.

“I don’t care what it is, Eiddersbor. I care about results! I care about returning with that little stain tied up on my deck, and I am sick of waiting for you to do your job!”

Shulft let go with enough of a shove to send Tarrskyn staggering back. “We get Wylderrjorssían tonight,” he threatened, “or you don’t get paid.”

With that, he turned and stalked back toward the prow. Tarrskyn waved down a few of his crew with a subtle gesture, bidding them leave their knives sheathed. He might be steaming angry himself, but murdering Shulft would be nothing but trouble for them. Instead he let the bjerkar get out of earshot, then gestured the men back to talk with him, as far from the big armored brute as he could.

“Fine. I’m not about to gamble our pay on his delusions of grandeur,” he said. “But we’ll never do another job for Lord Storm-Rider after this one.”

“Can we manage it, Skipper?” Borddi asked. “With those dwarves on his side…”

“The dwarves are slow. All their magic and tools won’t help them catch us on foot. So we’ll have to be fast. We go tonight, all of us. No warning, no quarter, no fair fight. We kill anyone who gets in the way, we grab the young lord, and then we pray to the gods for good seas on the way back.”

“It’ll be a hungry crossing,” Borddi fretted.

“How’s our water?”

“We’re full on clean water,” Ersib reported. “Still got some biscuit and stock meat. Not much, but…”

“But we won’t starve to death?”

“We’ll get to port hungry enough to eat our belts, but yeah. If the gods are kind…”

“And if they’re not, we can always eat Shulft,” Llif muttered darkly. That got a round of grim laughter.

Tarrskyn broke it up. “Alright. Grab your weapons, say your prayers, sharpen up. We move at sunset.”

“Yes, Skipper.” They left him alone and went to wake their crewmates or call them back from their other duties. Tarrskyn shot a glare at the unmoving statue-like figure of Shulft at the prow, then went back to studying the Yutül.

He had the strangest impression it had been listening…

Amber Houston

A sharp peeping sound next to Amber’s head woke her up.

She’d spent most of the evening configuring her new U-Tool, importing her settings, and discovering to her relief that her saved games, books, videos, and pictures had all been safely backed up on Launch 732. Really, it was like she hadn’t lost it at all, except the new one was genuinely new, fresh out of the packaging and unblemished. The old one had borne more than a few scrapes, scratches, and minor injuries from all the times it had been in her pocket when she fell over or whatever.

The peeping sound was her urgent message alert, the one that cut right through the usual nighttime do-not-disturb settings. There were only a few people who could send her an urgent message: Walker, the twins, her parents, and DANI.

She sat up, rubbed her eyes, then grabbed the U-Tool, and opened the message. She’d barely had time to sleep at all, maybe twenty minutes or so. It was nice, having an actual bunk with a little bedside table next to it, and some curtains for privacy. Compared to her bedroom up on the ship, it was nothing, but next to the bedrolls on the floor in a big communal pile in the middle of the room, it was luxury.

The message was from DANI.

URGENT—Intel gathered through your former U-tool suggests Shulft and Tarrskyn intend to assault Sjívull’s camp tonight. Probable time: shortly after you receive this message. Impossible to be more precise than that.

Strongly recommend you post double watch in case Tarrskyn’s crew also attack your camp. Please don’t do anything rash. Militia reinforcement launches will be beginning de-orbit and entry maneuver as you read this.

Amber flung herself out of bed and prowled over toward the twins’ bunk. Nikki was probably outside somewhere, patrolling their perimeter and keeping them safe, but the bottom bunk was thoroughly and heavily occupied by Roy’s inert mass.

She tried to shake him awake, but he was more or less an immovable boulder. “Roy, you fat lunk, wake up!” she hissed as quietly as she could.

The minor insult seemed to work. “Mmm…whuh?” He got one bleary-eyed look at her face, though, and snapped instantly awake. He flung himself to his feet, pulled on some shorts, and was already heading toward the lockers. “What’s wrong?”

“DANI thinks our friends are expecting company tonight.”

Roy swore up a brief but colorful storm, then pulled out his gear, planted his boots on the floor, and grabbed a pair of socks. “How soon?”

“Don’t know for sure. But soon.”

“Great.” He flopped onto his bed, which squealed loudly at the impact, and dragged his socks on. “The militia guys were supposed to arrive tonight…”

“In a couple of hours. They’re de-orbiting now.”

“That’s no good. You can’t rush de-orbit, and they’re gonna be weak and beat up from the trip, too.”

“I know. If we’re going to intervene…well, we are. But there’s no help coming.”

“Yeah. It’s the right thing to do, though, so I’ll do it. You get the rest of the older boys up and running patrol, I’ll go find Nik, an’ we’ll get ready.”

Roy looked around wildly, found his favorite fatigue pants—one of the few pairs that fit comfortably—yanked them on, and buttoned up the fly. He added his belt, too. His fighting belt, the one with the pistol, the magazines, and other tools of violence.

Amber threw on her own trail clothes as quickly as she could without tripping herself up, then did the rounds and woke up Doug, Danish, Tony, and Steve. By the time she’d explained the situation, got them moving, armed, and effectively emplaced, the twins were back and gearing up, donning armor and checking their weapons.

Amber had to admit…the pair of them looked fearsome in their fighting gear. Like they were born to it, and for different reasons, too. Roy was of course a huge and barely contained tank of a man, and a natural master at physical intimidation, but Nikki was something like a whipcord-lean wraith with all her tools at the ready. And where her brother was fizzing with muscular energy that wanted to explode into action…

She looked calm, like she was just ready. She gave Amber a smile, though.

“Kinda figured this was going to happen sooner rather than later,” she commented.

“I’d…rather have as little bloodshed as possible,” Amber suggested.

“As little as possible we can do. Can’t guarantee none. This is a fight we’re going into, Amber, and I doubt they’re gonna play around.”

Roy nodded seriously in agreement and seemed to puff up just a bit more in anticipation of the fight. Some niggling part of Amber’s mind wondered how and why two barely-fifteen-year-old teenagers—exceptional, admittedly—were so prepared to stand between the two warring parties and oppose them.

Then again…she was going to stand with them herself. She had to. After all, it was her decision to fight in the first place that had set the twins into motion.

She watched them finish their preparations in silence. It didn’t take long. Boots, sturdy trousers, utility belts, durable t-shirts. Weapons. Plural.

Roy took a deep breath once he’d managed to squeeze into his t-shirt. He gave Amber a steely look, bent over, and pulled out his militia-issued body armor from under the bunk. “Ready.”

“Ready,” Nikki agreed.

They looked at Amber, who took stock of herself. Boots, check. Trail outfit, check. U-Tool, check. Sick, lumpy, nervous feeling in her belly…check.

“Ready,” she said.

Tarrskyn Eiddersbor

Raids were always a thrilling, yet unpleasant business. Tarrskyn wasn’t a man who much enjoyed killing, but he wasn’t one to shy away from it, either. He did what he needed to do. In this case, he was compelled by Shulft’s indomitable stupidity to strike brazenly under the nose of their dwarven neighbors.

Of course, Shulft hadn’t met the dwarves. He didn’t know them. All he had to judge them by was second-hand gossip among the crew, and his own limited faculties of imagination. At least his stupidity didn’t extend to choosing a bright night. The moons were a pair of slim sickles tonight, clustered conspiratorially far in the eastern horizon in front of Tarrskyn, and barely able to muster much light between them. Perfect raiding weather.

Tarrskyn’s telescope was a great help. With it, he could just about make out movement around the beached Wavebird and their barricades. It looked like a standard sort of watch, with one man per barricade, and a couple patrolling from position to position. The young lord’s bjerkar was no fool, and the sentries were competent, but no such arrangement was perfect.

The terrain favored the defenders, naturally. They had moved their ship up onto a low ridge, well above the flood plain, which swept up into a rocky outcrop at its southwestern end. Tarrskyn was eyeing that outcrop as a potential inroad. That side of the camp was more lightly defended, trusting the terrain to protect their flank. If they could scale the rocks undetected in the dark, that would make getting in easier…

But on the other hand, if things went poorly, Tarrskyn and his men wouldn’t be able to withdraw easily and could find themselves caught. The entire point of a raid was to be able to withdraw quickly, and those rocks would slow them down on the way out. They’d have to punch through the northern barricades from behind and escape over the open flat ground.

To the northeast was forest, a curl of trees and bushes reaching out onto the ridge. Not a viable approach, being on the wrong side of the camp, but worth being aware of. There could be anything hidden amidst those trees, and Tarrskyn didn’t much fancy being shot sideways in his tail while assaulting the camp from the north side. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a plan. He could spend all night fretting, or he could commit, and Tarrskyn had long ago learned to recognize the moment for decisive action.

With a few sharp gestures, he urged his men forward and directed them where to go. In silence, they broke from the cover of the trees and bounded forward, low and speedy across the open ground, trusting the dark to conceal them. There were no cries of alarm, no horn or shriek-arrow from up on the ridge. Just tense silence as they rushed up to the rocky outcropping and started to climb.

So far so good.

The rocks were dry, cracked, and rugged, easy enough for experienced sailors to climb. It was slower going than running up a slope would have been, but Tarrskyn trusted the dark and the gods to conceal them as they got into position.

Last up, of course, was Shulft. He was the largest of them, thicker around his torso, weighed down by his armor, and less used to clambering up rough terrain. Tarrskyn and Llif had to pull him up the last little bit, with a grunt of effort. Shulft was heavy.

Heavy, but not unfit. Despite climbing the rocks in all that heavy brigandine, the bjerkar wasn’t even breathing heavily. Only his short legs had slowed him down, really. For once there was a glimmer of something more than unending resentment in his eyes. He looked around the raiding party, nodded sharply, and considered the camp.

“Ready?” he asked, softly.

“Ready,” Tarrskyn agreed.

“Go.”

And with that, Shulft led the charge.

Sjívull Wylderrjorssían

The raid came exactly when Ember and her friends had predicted, and exactly as Sjívull had always known it would. He’d seen it in Shulft’s eyes from their first meeting; Lord Storm-Rider’s man was not a patient foe.

Lord Wylderrjor had always counseled his son that the best way to defeat an impatient foe was to let him defeat himself. Draw him into making a mistake, feed him an opportunity to believe he had the upper hand…and then crush him. Sjívull had no hesitation in following his father’s wisdom there…

…But he’d never actually commanded men in battle before.

The dwarves had vanished, slipping away to the camp’s south. Somewhere out there, Nikí had taken up a watch, and apparently she had dwarf-magic that let her see in the dark as though it were clear daylight. At her warning, Ember and Roí had slipped out of the camp as quick and quiet as clouds with a promise to stop this fight before too much blood was spilled, and Sjívull wished them luck.

Sure enough, the attack came from the west without any battle cry or war horn to herald it. One moment there was the dark of an almost moonless night, the next instant Shulft Serkarssían came thundering out of the gloom with spear and shield, his teeth bared, and his eyes gleeful at the prospect of slaughter. Pious he may be, but a good man he was not.

Behind him were more than a dozen men, including Tarrskyn. Poor Efri, the sentry on the barricade, would have died then and there if not for the Dwarves’ warning. Instead he had two of his crewmates to either side of him, and at his cry of warning, they sprang up from their hiding places, and Shulft’s lethal spear stroke crunched into a shield rather than Efri’s chest.

They abandoned the barricade, falling sharply back toward the ship, as all around the camp Sjívull’s men rose, armed and ready, and the raiding party found a ready shield wall forming in front of them rather than a panicking crew of sleeping, ambushed sailors. To Sjívull’s right, Drynllaf threw his spear at Shulft. The other bjerkar got his shield up in time to catch it—the spear penetrated with a heavy splintering noise, and its soft iron tip bent, dragging the shield uselessly down. Shulft abandoned it with a curse, stepped back behind the protection of the shield wall forming around him, and replied by throwing his own spear, which Drynllaf calmly sidestepped.

Two lines of men clashed in a cacophony of barked orders and clattering wood. That wouldn’t do; neither force could survive a battle of attrition, and the two bjerkars knew it. Not that Shulft would have stopped at something so trivial as sacrificing Tarrskyn’s men…

Fortunately, he didn’t have the opportunity. Just as the lines were starting to buckle and wound one another, just as spears were drawing blood and lives were hanging in the balance, a bright, amber fire shot into the sky from nearby with a hiss and, by whatever dwarf-magic had made it, simply hung there. It was so bright it illuminated everything, but most especially the man who had conjured it into being.

Roí was armed for war, any fool could see that. And dwarf-wars must be terrible, with warriors like him on the lines…No. They must have been worse than terrible, because Roí, like Sjívull himself, was still only a boy.

Shulft wasn’t completely reckless. One glance at the warrior atop the ridge looking down upon them all in the baleful light was enough to make him pause, take stock, and think. Everyone stopped, and the two shield walls backed away from each other slowly. The dwarf’s arrival, his casual display of such powerful magic, and the sight of him standing there, daring them to do anything about it…

That alone was enough to stop the battle. The smaller, darker figure alongside him let the moment settle, then took a step forward.

“Shulft Serkarssían,” she announced in a clear, level voice that didn’t need raising in order to carry to every man there, “this is the magic of dwarves, and we have much more. You will parlay, or at one word from me, you will die.”

Sjívull almost shivered. Up until now, the thought of hearing his clever, softly-spoken friend deliver such an uncompromising ultimatum without a hint of weakness or hesitation in her voice would have been unthinkable.

Shulft glowered up at her, eyes dark with rage, but Tarrskyn stepped forward and whispered something into his ear, which flicked irritably. He glanced around. He considered Sjívull’s shield wall, the firm defense they’d put up, the hulking figure of Roí on the hill with that strange and fearsome weapon in his hands, and then looked up at the small drifting sun floating high above them.

With a visible effort of will, he sheathed his sword.

“Parlay,” he grunted.

Tarrskyn Eiddersbor

Tarrskyn found he was actually in a good mood, bizarrely. In seconds his raid had gone from an ambush on slumbering victims to a pitched battle that was far too even for his liking, to…Well, to peace, of a sort. The kind of peace that only fell when one lord’s army was vastly stronger than another’s, perhaps, but no more blood was being spilled, and Tarrskyn’s own odds of walking away without a spear in his belly had sharply improved. It was enough to put a jaunty pep in his step.

“You need to watch out, young Lord Wylderrjorssían!” he called as the two groups cautiously approached each other to talk. “It doesn’t pay to be indebted to somebody as powerful as these dwarves…”

“You’d rather be their enemy?” Sjívull retorted, and Tarrskyn chuckled appreciatively. The boy’s wits were as quick as ever.

There’d been a change in Lady Ember. At their first meeting, she’d been an intelligent and wary girl, wrestling with a difficult political situation, her duties, an unfamiliar situation, and the sudden weight of responsibility. A little naïve, even the day before when Tarrskyn had stolen her Yutül.

That girl was gone. The look she gave Tarrskyn was piercing, as though she could see into his head and know everything. Dwarves, it seemed, adapted quickly.

And they warred without compromise, to judge from Roí’s garb. That cold gaze of his missed nothing, and the strange, thick vest he wore—clearly armor of some kind—did nothing to disguise the truly ridiculous strength in his arms.

Shulft feigned being unimpressed. He gave the two dwarves a thorough look over, then harrumphed. “You spend too much time hefting boulders and barrels, boy.”

Roí’s eyes narrowed, but a kind of dark smile lifted one side of his face. His arms, bare and hanging at his side, tensed in an grotesque show of ability. Tarrskyn knew Roí only spoke the dwarf-words, but he clearly knew he’d been insulted…and didn’t care.

“You’re a terrible liar, Shulft,” Tarrskyn advised, earning himself a snarl and a glare from his employer, which he blithely ignored.

Drynllaf chuckled darkly. “Aye. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you some of the things I’ve seen him do, but he’s not the one to worry about. His sister’s worse.”

“…How?”

“She’ll be around here somewhere, unseen and watching, and ready to kill. Roí will at least do you the courtesy of murdering you in person. But the other one? You’d die without ever knowing you were in a fight, lad.”

Shulft sneered. “So these are dwarves, then. A people who send lost children to fight, who lean on their magic instead of their skill, and don’t have the courage or honor to do it properly where the gods can see them.”

“Strong words, from someone whose courage and honor extends to murdering men in their sleep,” Ember retorted. “You know nothing about us, bjerkar. Our magic doesn’t come from supernatural talent or divine knowledge. We earned it over thousands of years, in a time and space you could not dream. Our ways are beyond someone who would cross an ocean just to effect a kidnapping.”

Her glare was full of reprimand and criticism, rather than the hate and anger she got back from Shulft. If looks could kill, the air between them would have boiled.

“Do not lecture me, girl,” Shulft snarled. “I have served with faith and dignity since before your parents ever cast a hot look at each other!”

Drynllaf grunted, then stepped forward before their argument could get any more vicious. “You’re a pious man, Shulft. I respect that. So let’s resolve this in front of the gods, hmm? As bjerkar to the young Lord Sjívull Wylderrjorssían, I challenge you. Unscarred to Unscarred.”

Ember looked surprised and dismayed. “Drynllaf, that’s not what we—”

“Lady Ember,” Drynllaf interrupted her, “you are a proven friend to my young lord and his father, and I thank you for that. But this is what bjerkars are for. We are our masters’ champions, and the voice of the gods in such times. Let us be what we are.”

“And what of you, Tarrskyn?” young Lord Sjívull finally spoke up, having kept his own council until that moment. “How pious are you?”

“Not very,” Tarrskyn admitted breezily, “but I’ll respect the outcome of a duel between bjerkars, if you will.”

“Then it’s agreed. A duel between the Unscarred. If Drynllaf wins, Tarrskyn and his men will be left to return to their ship and to Lord Storm-Rider. If Shulft wins, I will go back with you as your captive, and you will leave my crew unharmed. Do you agree to those terms, Shulft?”

Tarrskyn could see that Ember was practically squirming with the urge to object, but she looked to Sjívull, whose reply was a grim stare, and she restrained herself with a look of futile resignation and kept silent.

By the code of honor Shulft valued so highly, he could have backed down and refused the challenge with no shame…but doing so would compel him to abandon his mission and return to Lord Storm-Rider empty-handed, and Shulft was much too proud for that. He watched Ember, made a satisfied noise when she kept her peace, then nodded at Sjívull.

“So agreed, young lord,” he declared. “By all the gods, your men will be spared. I accept your challenge, Drynllaf.”

Drynllaf nodded seriously. “So be it,” he said. He turned his head to give his men a stern look. “The gods are deciding this matter now, lads. You stay out of it, and you respect the result.”

Fights between Unscarred were not an everyday spectacle. Their prowess had earned them the right to pick and choose their fights and had blessed them before the gods. An Unscarred had a lot to lose by laying down such a challenge…and a lot to lose by accepting it, as well. The two crews backed off several paces, leaving them with a clear, open circle for their duel.

Like a ghost from the dark, there was suddenly a third dwarf at Ember’s side: Nikí. Shulft spared her a glance, frowned at the cool, level stare he got in reply, then shook off the unnerving dwarf-girl’s presence and focused on his opponent.

Tarrskyn watched Drynllaf with interest. He’d had plenty of time to size up Shulft, who was younger and stronger. Drynllaf, however, was an old Unscarred, which meant a deep store of wily tricks, battle knowledge, and experience. He would have crossed blades with a great many men in his time.

Both crews started beating their weapons against their shields, creating a steady drumming sound as the two bjerkars unbuckled their belts and removed their armor. For Drynllaf, it was a quick process—he’d been wearing a gambeson of thick stuffed cloth and sturdy leather gauntlets, both of which he handed to one of his crew before bending and stretching to limber himself up. He was quite flexible for an old man, and strong looking like well-aged wood, too.

Shulft’s brigandine, gauntlets, and boots took longer, and underneath it the bjerkar had an almost dwarfish physique, visible even through his long fur. Tarrskyn had no idea what kind of life the surly Unscarred had lived, or what kind of training he had put himself through to earn such broad shoulders or thick arms, but the results were impressive. Nor was he a plodding beast of burden. Shulft bared his teeth and bounced back and forth from toe to toe in an easy, quick motion. Tarrskyn reluctantly had to admit, leaden fool though he may be, Shulft Serkarssían was a fast and deadly man.

Their first closing was a blur of motion. It was a test, a probe for the two Unscarred to really assess each other, but it happened so fast, Tarrskyn hadn’t seen what happened.

Shulft bounced back a pace and kept his guard up. “You’re fast, old man.”

“You’re cocky, young pup,” Drynllaf retorted evenly. His next assault nearly Scarred Shulft then and there. It was swift and precise, without wasted effort, and it would have left Tarrskyn with a blade in his guts.

Shulft parried and retaliated in one fluid motion, the point of his sword never deviating a hair from the older bjerkar’s centerline, keeping himself safe and counterattacking at the same time.

Tarrskyn observed keenly. He was as a babe next to either of them, and would have stood absolutely no chance in a proper fight. All his dirty tricks, his concealed dagger, his low cunning from a lifetime of brawls and boarding actions, would have failed totally in the face of the disciplined, precise, perfect swordsmanship before him.

Like all good sword duels, there was no wasted action. Each movement was a test, each step a retort. The swords barely moved, angling up and down as each man shifted his stance and grip, each such change a question or reply. The fight happened entirely in the duelists’ minds, hands, feet, and eyes…

And then it was over. Shulft attacked, Drynllaf deflected and thrust, Shulft twisted aside, rolled his sword under the older bjerkar’s guard. Drynllaf fell to the sand, his sword twisted from his grasp by the same blow that cut him deeply up his arm from wrist to elbow, Unscarred no longer against a younger, faster, and vastly stronger foe.

Wylderrjorssían’s crew made dismayed noises and cursed as their champion fell, clamping a hand over his wound to stop the bleeding. At Tarrskyn’s back, there were muted cries of triumph from the crew of Syrlla’s Song. They would be going home with their prisoner and getting paid in full.

In the dirt, Drynllaf glanced toward his anguished young lord, conveying quite a lot in that moment of eye contact. Regret, sorrow, apology…then he looked back to Shulft, nodded grimly, and took a deep breath to steady himself.

For once, Shulft had no gloat or bluster. He raised his bloodied sword in salute. “You have my respect, Drynllaf Gwelinsjar,” he said in the softest tone Tarrskyn had ever heard him use. “The gods will welcome you into the warriors’ halls with honor.”

Drynllaf acknowledged the compliment with a bow of his head, then shut his eyes and steeled himself as Shulft advanced to deliver the killing blow.

That blow never landed.

With a curse in the dwarf-tongue that needed no translation, Roí did something abominably noble and brave…and incredibly stupid. Right at the moment of Shulft’s victory, the boy darted in to prevent it, snatching his Yutül from his belt.

With a hissing, tearing sound like nothing Tarrskyn had ever heard, a blade of light the color of forge coals seethed into being from nothing, painfully bright in the twilight. It cast bloody shadows and made faces into hollow death-masks as it slashed upward and passed cleanly through Shulft’s sword without slowing, carving it off only a finger’s width above the hilt. The blade spun away to land in the dirt, broken and useless. Shulft backed off with his eyes wide, staring in disbelief at the perfectly smooth cut where his expensive sword had been.

The shock and awe around the circle was like a cold wave breaking over them all.

Roí ignored it. He squared off against Shulft, held his burning dwarf-sword in a guard stance, and made his intent very clear with a single, simple word: “No!”

Shulft, his face the very image of righteous fury at this sacrilege, backed away and put his hand to the knife on his belt, tossing the useless hilt away.

“You are interfering!” he spat. “Step aside!”

Roí shook his head firmly and stepped forward to protect Drynllaf. His impossible sword whined like an insect as it cut the air. “No,” he repeated.

From his spot in the sand, Drynllaf shook his head and tried to warn him back. “Don’t, Roí…” he growled in frustration at the uncomprehending look the dwarf gave him. Of course, Roí barely knew any words outside his own tongue.

“Lady Ember,” Shulft snarled, “he must stand down. The gods have decided.”

Everyone’s attention turned to the tough, dark figure at the edge of the circle who’d been watching the duel with a tense, frightened expression. For a second she froze under their combined scrutiny. Then she looked down at Drynllaf, and across at Sjívull. Then at Roí. She asked him a question in the dwarf-tongue, and Roí nodded sharply, fierce determination written across his face.

She looked back at Shulft, then stood a little taller. Straightened her back. Tarrskyn straightened his own, too, in growing admiration. She might just be a girl, but there was a leader behind those scared eyes.

“Our gods have not yet spoken, Shulft Serkarssían,” she said.

Shulft gave Ember a calculating look, and then gave Roí a warrior’s appraisal. That was a high honor; the bastard had never given such due thought to Tarrskyn.

Though having watched that fight, he was forced to admit…Shulft would have been wrong to do so. The bjerkar harrumphed in apparent acceptance. “Very well. Drop your armor and your magicks, dwarf-man. We fight before the gods as they made us. Surely even you are not so honorless as to think otherwise!”

Roí gave Shulft a glare with steel in it as Ember translated, then wordlessly shifted his grip on his Yutül. Its impossible blade simply fell apart in a shower of gritty ash, and he tossed it behind him to land at the circle’s edge.

Sjívull darted forward and helped Drynllaf to stand and leave the circle, where members of his crew fetched bandages for the former Unscarred’s wound. As they did, Roí dropped his belt with a muffled whump in the sand, then reached down and pulled off his boots.

When he pulled off his heavy armor and dropped it with a much louder thump…there were gasps among the men. Tarrskyn managed to hold his own tongue, but honestly, he couldn’t blame them. None of them had really seen what a dwarf-man was built like under their clothes. He pulled off his trousers and the thin shirt he wore under that heavy armor. Standing there, clad only in a small garment around his hips to protect his modesty…

Gods.

Shulft didn’t seem too fazed, being somewhat dwarf-like himself. He was confident in his swordsmanship, but Tarrskyn wasn’t sure about Roí.

“You can’t duel without swords,” Drynllaf declared, “and you seem to have lost yours, Serkar’s heir. Honor demands I let you have mine.” He stooped and picked up his dropped weapon from the sand with his good arm.

“And Roí will use mine,” Sjívull added, untying the scabbard from his belt.

The big dwarf-man took a few warm-up swings with Sjívull’s sword. Raw form. A lot of power in the swing, and not unskilled at that, but it was all from the shoulder. Tarrskyn kept his expression neutral. Shulft was unquestionably more skilled…but any fool who’d ever been in a real fight knew raw power counted for a lot.

It was how Shulft had bested Drynllaf, after all.

Wavebird’s crew, Syrlla’s Song’s crew and Dandelion’s crew all stood back to watch and formed a circle. They circled each other warily, and it was then Tarrskyn got an inkling of just how much danger Shulft was really in. In the sand, and in his bare feet no less…Roí was light on his feet. No. Not light. Quick. Shulft decided to make a probing attack, and advanced, keeping the dwarf on point as he opened with a questing, easily defended thrust.

Roí parried too aggressively, deflected Shulft’s weapon too wide. Shulft sprang sideways and angled inward, probing the dwarf’s open defenses. His reward was an arm-jarring, ringing slap of steel on steel as Roí hammered the sword aside.

The dwarf was an amateur swordsman at best, but his strength simply eclipsed Shulft’s. The Unscarred did well to even hold onto his sword after a blow like that and danced backward before Roí could retaliate. His tail lashed furiously as he hopped sideways, then in.

Clash, clash. Tarrskyn barely followed the exchange. Shulft clearly hoped to press an advantage in speed, but to both his and Tarrskyn’s shock, he didn’t have such an advantage. Roí’s legs might be shorter and planted firmly on the ground, but there was nothing clumsy or slow about him. He kept the bjerkar on point and clearly had learned his lesson about leaving his guard open, because now his form was better. Unpracticed, but better.

Shulft attacked again. Clash, clatter…crunch.

Roí’s spare fist blurred out the moment their weapons met, almost too fast to see, and caught the bjerkar hard in his ribs. Shulft coughed violently and staggered back, raising his sword defensively as he put some distance between him and his foe.

The fight should have been over then and there. The bjerkar was reeling from an injury and barely able to hold up his sword. A more experienced man would have ended him without mercy.

Roí, it seemed, was reluctant to kill. Maybe he’d never done it before. Tarrskyn could still remember the first life he’d ended, and he could sympathize. It was a profound moment. He couldn’t blame the young man for balking at it.

Instead, the dwarf gave his foe a chance to back down and live. He pointed his sword at Shulft and spoke a strange word in his own tongue. “Geev.”

“He means ‘yield.’” Ember translated, “Yield, or he will break you.”

Tarrskyn grimaced at the rattling, bloody cough Shulft produced in reply. That had not been a healthy sound. “I think he already did…” he muttered to Ersib.

But the dwarves didn’t understand. Shulft had declared a duel before the gods, and while an honorless scoundrel like Tarrskyn wouldn’t have hesitated to limp away with a mere broken rib or three…bjerkars were too proud, and too pious.

And Shulft was no longer an Unscarred, either. He shot Roí a look of the most vicious hatred and seemed to forget his injury entirely as he charged in like a breaching bull plumeback.

The pure mad rage nearly cost the dwarf his life. Roí survived solely on his good instincts and better muscles. Impressive, since Tarrskyn felt like any other man would have had the sword battered from his numb grip by the heavy overhead strike Shulft brought crashing down on him.

Instead, the swords met with a tortured, ringing crash that ruined both their edges, then another, and another as the bjerkar went utterly mad on his foe.

Then, abruptly, it was over. Roí caught Shulft’s wrist. The bjerkar went flying over Roí’s shoulder and was rammed into the sandy dirt with a force Tarrskyn hardly believed. The ground shook from the impact, Shulft’s spine made a nauseating crunch, and the swords fell away unheeded into the sand. Roí pounced, tangled his heavy limbs around the stunned bjerkar, growled, and then…

Roí’s hulking body snapped instantly to attention, the writhing muscles under his naked skin suddenly impossibly huge to behold. Hardly a heartbeat later, there was a firm inward heave, and the sickly crack of breaking bones as the dwarf’s arms and legs slammed together. Shulft never even got the chance to scream, as in one instant the wind was crushed from his lungs, followed immediately by his lifeblood foaming out of his mouth. Whatever noise he might have made was lost under the sound of Roí’s anguished, violent roar as he literally smashed the life right out of his foe.

In the end, Shulft died without suffering a single cut or inflicting one on Roí in return. He lost his life in a contest of raw speed and pure, brute might. Roí had obviously never killed before, and it showed in the way he kept squeezing the squelching carcass long after it had given up its spirit. When he finally broke free of his blood-trance and stood, red in the face, breathing heavily, and his body shining with moisture, what he left behind was no longer a person. It was instead something as still and as dead as a loose sack of meat. Roí, once inescapably provoked to kill, had snapped the fearsome bjerkar like a twig.

He raised his head, glared at the Syrlla’s Song crew, and his eyes were those of a man who’d just taken his first life and would gladly take another if provoked.

Very, very carefully, Tarrskyn bowed and stepped back. His crew did likewise. He had been gravely mistaken. Dwarves were not slow. Dwarves were in fact much quicker and much stronger than they looked. They were not clumsy, or dull-witted, nor leaden in any way. Roí was so completely not those things, he’d destroyed an Unscarred bjerkar in personal combat, despite being a novice to the sword.

Tarrskyn resolved to never, ever test himself against one in a fair fight.

They were innocent, though. The look on Roí’s face, strange, flat and fey though it was, said he’d just lost something important. A real killer would have stopped the second the job was done. He wouldn’t be shaking or on the brink of tears.

Ember stepped forward from the edge of the circle. She glanced at what was left of Shulft, then put her hands on her friend’s arm as though she could heal him with her touch. She said something soft and quiet in the dwarf-tongue, then turned her gaze on Tarrskyn. Her eyes were sad, and deep, and wise beyond her years.

“You stole something of mine, Tarrskyn,” she said. “Give it back.”

Tarrskyn watched them both for a moment. His eyes flicked behind them to Roí’s sister, who was the only dwarf present whose expression hadn’t changed. He saw the way her fingers rested lightly on her weapon. He saw the way her eyes bored into him.

She, unlike her brother, was a cold killer.

He tossed the Yutül into the dirt at the victorious champion’s feet. “I will need Shulft’s signet,” he said carefully. “His lord will want to know how he died.”

“You would be wise to keep that story free of embellishment,” Drynllaf told him.

“It doesn’t need embellishment, bjerkar.”

“Good.” The tall warrior took a token from his pocket and tossed it to Tarrskyn. “My mark. So that Lord Storm-Rider knows a man of honor vouches for your account.”

Tarrskyn stooped to pick it up. Finally, he looked to the young Lord Wylderrjorssían. “Shall I tell your father where you are, young lord?”

Sjívull tore his gaze away from Shulft’s crumpled body. “What? Oh. You’d do that?”

“Lord Steel-Hand is reputed to be very fair. I’m sure he’ll express his gratitude to know his son is alive and safe…”

“Naturally.” Sjívull tossed his mane and sighed. “Take your tokens and leave, then.”

With rather more lightness of spirit than he felt, Tarrskyn swept a low bow. “Of course, young lord.”

He stepped forward to retrieve Shulft’s signet and Drynllaf’s mark, and—

There was a shriek the likes of which he’d never heard. A gale battered down on his shoulders and back, driving him down into the sand. He snatched up everything his hands could grab and stumbled back, looking up and blinking through flying sand at the impossible floating above his head.

Six steel longhouses, just like the storehouse by the forest, hung in the air at mast-height. As he looked up, the one at the front lit a beacon as bright as staring into the sun itself, and he backpedaled, blinded and panicking as dwarves on ropes zipped down from these ungodly flying steel ships with their cloaks billowing in the downdraft.

Confusion descended. Sjívull’s crew, Tarrskyn’s crew, the dwarves…for just a few deadly instants, chaos ruled. Only one person stood in the middle of the bedlam as though they knew exactly what was happening, and Tarrskyn instinctively turned toward Ember to ask her what in the four Hells was going on.

Roí grabbed his arm, and Tarrskyn panicked, spurred by a vision of Shulft’s fate. He tore the sheath off his tailtip blade and stabbed desperately with it, once, then twice. Roí recoiled with a curse, blood drawn.

Shit.

Tarrskyn sprang toward the ship, and his men were right ahead of him. Some instinct made him duck and jink to the side in the instant before a thunderbolt whip-crack sound snapped behind him, and something plucked at his clothing as it missed his shoulder by a hair’s breadth. Instead it caught Llif in the neck, and the younger man went sprawling in a puff of blood.

Despite himself, Tarrskyn glanced back. Through the bedlam he met Nik’s gaze, and the sheer icy, hateful disinterest in it nearly stopped him fatally in his tracks as she took aim again. It was the same look Tarrskyn wore when flicking the vermin in his hardtack overboard. She hadn’t just killed a man—she’d exterminated a pest.

Ember stepped in front, crying out frantically in the dwarf-tongue, “Stop! STOP!”

Tarrskyn stopped being a damn fool and ran for it. He spared Llif a glance and promptly gave up on him; living men didn’t have holes like that through their throats. There was nothing for it but to flee.

No pursuit followed them, thankfully. That may well have been due to Ember’s plea, but it was more likely due to the poisoned, agonizing death that would already be gripping Roí. The dwarf was a strong man, and it might be days…long enough for Tarrskyn and his crew to get far, far away…

Away from flying ships?

But what else could he do? He bent his back and fled like he’d never fled in his life.