Aisha’s cabin had a small window which let in a bit of daylight in the morning, but nothing at all at night. With the almost reckless lurching of the Blue Breeze II, she had doused her lantern and sat huddled in her bed, braced against the frame to keep herself from being thrown against the walls. All she could do was pray to her goddess that the battle would go well.

Those who could do something about her fate were all on the deck.

Thornby took the helm and thrust his leather hat into the hands of the nearest swabbie. The man was new to the sea and gleefully ran below deck to stow it before the high winds could tear it away. Thornby’s attention was on the pirate vessel. His gaze sharp and keep, completely independent of his body atop the bouncing vessel. The darkness shrouded the Aillesterrans, but he peeled it back with effort and experience.

“They’re rowing! The fools!” he bellowed with a laugh, and his crew returned the laugh until he started barking new orders for the rigging. Boxes of spears were laid out for when the time was right. Grappling hooks and bows too, but the first foray would be swift and rough. The two captains contended for speed, shifting this way and that, curving their crafts between the waves and both leeching from the winds ever faster.

“BRACE!” Thornby roared, throwing the helm and turning the ship just so on their collision course that both prows met at once. The reinforced prow of the Blue Breeze II met the iron-clad snakehead of the pirate ship. Wood exploded into shrapnel, spraying both decks with pointed debris. The decks became laden with shards and hardly a man didn’t feel something skewer his skin.

But it was the Vassish ship that came out with speed. The pirates had pulled their oars in, but not enough. The prow flew on, catching half of them on the port side, snapping each like kindling wood. The two ships grinded against each other, pushing for space and ripping adornments off one another as the two sets of sailors ventured to glare at one another.

In a moment, they sized up each other’s crews. Thornby’s emaciated twenty–a ship his size should have had at least fifty, no matter how skilled–to their forty. Partially, this was a lie. On the deck he only had the experienced seamen, those he could count on to pull rope and change sails no matter the danger. The rest of his crew were below deck fortifying themselves with brandy.

The pirates were emboldened despite the damage. Both vessels curved back around, sweeping in for another collision. Thornby read their intentions at once. “Shields!” he ordered, and the sailors scrambled to pick up plankards of wood and sheets of hide. “Men, ten more, starboard!” he added with a stomp of his heel while finessing the rudder. Ten more sailors emerged from below, sliding over to the railings and snatching up spears as they piled behind the shields.

Rather than an attempt to sink them with a blow to their side, the eastern captain put his faith in his crew. Half his prow was missing, the sheets of iron dangling useless, but he seemingly outnumbered the Vassish. Perfectly standard naval practice at such a time to soften the enemy with arrows and board them. They attempted to do so, landing a few dozen arrow shafts into the shields and scoring a few injuries.

However, they were the ones to be boarded. While grappling ropes were still being wung, Sera Lynnfield took a sprinting leap off the railing with all the strength her stigmata could muster and landed amidst them. Her metal-clad boots hammered the deck as Thornby shouted, “Give her a hand, boys!” and a return folly of arrows flew back at the Aillesterrans.

The foreign pirates were not incapable in a fight, but there is always a certain edge to momentum. Sera landed mid ship, almost next to their main mast. Half the crew were still stowing their oars properly–letting the more eager pirates loose arrows and sling hooks–when she laid into them. From one throat, to another chest, and arms and legs and any bit of tawny flesh that she could split and turn red. She hacked and drove them back, trampling their benches and skewering archers from behind before their more competent fighters could reach her.

The first one that did, had a [Berserker] stigmata of his own, somewhat rare for an Aillesterran. A true shame for him that at the time, Thornby had handed over the helm and marched to the prow of his ship. When he saw the pirate dancing with Sera, he snatched up a spear and launched it across the ships. While the pirates were hooking the two ships together, his return missile smashed into the berserker. Sera took the man’s head off an instant later.

As such, the pirates would have been slaughtered quite handily, but momentum is a fickle thing, tied at the hip to morale and plagued by confusion. Before the Vassish could seal the deal, before even they had done more than even the odds of an all-out brawl, an explosion rocked the sea to their south. Water shot high as though from the blow hole of an unspeakable monster–some misbegotten child of Sapphira. From that pillar of white emerged a vessel that dwarfed their own.

Black sailed and circling round.

“Four more ships, sir!” his spotter atop the main mast shouted, pointing to the south east, in the direction of the wastelands.

At once, Thornby wished the man had said nothing at all. Nearly his entire crew hesitated and looked to the horizon, peering for smudges of darkness in the night. “Arrows, you fools!” he bellowed, but it was too late. The momentum had shifted. The next volley came from teh Aillesterrans, pelting the whole of his deck. One of the rough-tipped shafts ripped through the sleeve of his coat and punctured his arm.

With a curse of pain and frustration, he cut to his decision. Even as several pirates came clambering over and were met by spears and swords, almost more to get away from Sera than to kill the Vassish, he ordered, “Break! Lynnfield, get back here while you can.”

She froze nearly to the prow of the pirate ship. Spinning on her heels, she slashed the skin of the rowers and made her own leap for the Blue Breeze II.(1) The men were already hacking ropes off and changing their rigging. Some of the pirates were so bold as to jam their oars out like docking poles and push the two ships apart. Even with superhuman strength, she nearly missed the railing. Her sword went flying across the deck as she grabbed the railing and Thornby had to help haul her up before the anchor was tossed out the back.

With a lurch of cracked wood, the Blue Breeze II pulled back from her foe and let the pirates spur on towards the merchants.

“Rally! Get some bandages. There’s more coming. Those damned stingy lords, I outta throttle those engineers,” he shouted, working his rage up to a froth inside until he had the grit to rip the arrow shaft out of his arm.

Sera had to grab onto the railing for support as the backlash of her stigmata began to take its toll. Exhaustion several orders more than regular exertion was the price she paid as soon as the fighting stopped, but it was always better to be tired than injured. “What are you doing? We have to stop them. We’re the defenders of the fleet, aren’t we?”

Thornby growled, squeezing his arm and feeling warm blood drip through his sleeve. His arm burned enough to make him grind his teeth. “Not the only defenders,” he said. “Just the first.” He jerked his chin towards the aft of the Aillesterran ship.

It swam past them, riding wave after wave and closing in on the main transport. The gold leaf adornments suckered them in like moths to flames. While the merchant leviathan couldn’t maneuver in the least, it didn’t need to. As far as the pirates ever knew, there was the sound of a metal hammer striking stone followed by a crash of stone. Then there was a hole through their hull, in one side and out the other beneath the water.

It was only moments later that the sea devoured the ship and a few dozen killers were left to feed the sharks and anything else that might come to find them.

The rest of the Aillesterran fleet regrouped and kept their distance. They lurked on the horizon, letting the Vassish pass south to the now-visible light of Aliston’s port. Perhaps they fished some of their comrades out of the water, I was never able to confirm that detail. The curious thing was Sera’s intuition as she watched the Aillesterran flagship. “Someone’s watching us. That must be the Cyclops.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Thornby said as he slumped against the mast and watched his crew patch their own wounds. “Oh, that’s not good,” he said as he held up the shaft of the arrow which had pierced him.

The metal tip was missing from it; lodged inside his arm and tight against the bone.

As a brief aside, when Leomund Tolzi heard the tale of this fight, I almost immediately had to conspire to keep the two of them apart. I was afraid he would try for some kind of duel with poor Sammy. Her fighting him off would have only made him want her more.