Chapter 23

  The longship was already pulling away when a hand caught my shoulder. I was leaning over the rail without remembering how I’d gotten there, fingers white on the wood, watching the oars bite the water.

  The sea foamed behind them as they turned north, a white streak cutting over the blue. My sword arm twitched, the blade lifting an inch, as if my body meant to reach out and cut through them from a distance.

  “Lord Galladon.”

  I blinked. Grey’s voice was hoarse. He pulled harder, dragging me back a step.

  My boots slipped on the deck, slick beneath my feet. I looked down and saw why. Blood everywhere, pooled between planks, smeared into dark handprints and dragged bodies. A man lay face-down at my feet, one of ours by the look of his red jerkin, eyes open and already glassy.

  “How many?” I asked. My mouth felt thick.

  Grey swallowed. He didn’t look at me when he answered. “Nine.”

  I stared at him.

  “Nine who can still sail,” he added. “And that’s counting you, Jack, Jace, and me.”

  The sounds of the ship crept back in then. The timbers seemed to groan as if in pain. Someone retched over the rail. A man was crying by the mast, hunched over the body of a fellow crewman.

  “Eleven breathing,” Grey went on. “Two of them… not for long.”

  I nodded once. Thirteen, then. Soon to be fifteen. I didn’t say it aloud. The crew of the Fair Winds had been twenty before we stepped on board. Only five would live to see the sunset.

  My sword felt too light in my hand. I looked at it, at the way the steel was darkened nearly to the hilt. Frowning, I tried to remember the first man I’d killed when the fighting began.

  I couldn’t. It was all a jumble. Only fragments came back to me. Impact, resistance, the jolt up my arm when steel met bone. Their faces blurred together, young and old, wind-bitten, scarred, eyes wrinkled as if they were used to laughter.

  I knew I’d been shouting at some point, just roaring nonsense and warcries, but I couldn’t remember the words. My chest still rose and fell too fast, heat thrumming through my limbs, a restless pressure that begged for motion.

  The longship dwindled in the distance, and I wanted to chase it.

  The thought was sudden and violent, like a spark thrown onto dry kindling. To take an oar, turn the cog, drive her forward until we ran them down. Until there was nothing left to run. I would just kill and kill and keep killing until the deck of their longship looked much like ours.

  My hand tightened on the rail again before I forced myself to let go.

  “They’re rowing upwind,” Grey said quietly, as if reading it on my face. “We won’t catch them.”

  I knew that. Some part of me did. The rest snarled in protest. Something inside me wanted to see it all finished.

  That’s when I heard the shouts. They rose from the far end of the deck, faint and distant. I turned, pulse suddenly kicking harder.

  The carrack.

  A finger of dark smoke curled up to the sky, faint but unmistakable. On the sea, the Lannister colors were still visible, tangled with the sails of the galley I didn’t recognize.

  They were too far to hear clearly, but I could imagine the sounds easily enough. The ring of steel. Men screaming. Begging. Crying. Ser Gerion would be out there, no doubt, fighting amongst the men.

  I wiped my blade on my sleeve and sheathed it with a jerk. “We’re going to them.”

  Behind me, a murmur rippled through what remained of the crew. I turned to them ready to yell, only to freeze. It was exhaustion, not cowardice, that I saw on their bloodied faces. They slumped against each other, eyes wary, cuts and nicks leaking red beneath slashed shirts.

  “The captain’s dead,” someone said. I didn’t see who. “And the first mate.”

  Jerek, I thought. I had seen him fall, cut down by the silver-haired man who’d almost gotten the best of me. He moved like a ballet dancer with that sword of his, its single-edged blade meant to cut and hack. A dangerous man. Old Jerek didn’t stand a chance. He died quickly.

  “We’ve done enough fighting for one morning,” another crewman said.

  I looked past them across the deck. The planks seemed reddened as if someone had thrown a coat of pain over the wood. Corpses littered the floor in knots of flesh and limbs. A taller wave splashed over board, the salty seawater washing over the blood and disturbing the dead.

  I saw the boy, then.

  Young man, really, the one I’d run into on my second day aboard. Daven by name. I’d talked to him a few times throughout the trip. Red cheeks, eager eyes, always too quick with a grin. He asked me about Tarth and I asked about his family. He had two younger sisters, the same as I, and he’s worked on ships since he was a boy to put food on the table for them and his ailing mother.

  Now, he lay crumpled near the mast, throat opened from ear to ear, blood soaking into the deck beneath his head. His eyes were closed, at least.

  My stomach clenched. After all the men I killed, it was seeing his lifeless body that made me want to puke. A young life just thrown away like that, as if it was nothing.

  It could’ve just as easily been me. Or Gray or one of the twins. I felt bile rise up my throat like battery acid.

  No time for this, I told myself, fists clamped tight. Right now, with the men watching and the carrack at risk, I had to be strong. I pushed the sick feeling down until it became a tightly wound ball inside me. I could deal with it later.

  “The living come first,” I croaked. My voice sounded strange to my own ears, like it’d been scraped raw. “We dump the bodies and head for the Western Will. Now.”

  With Grey already moving, no one argued after that. Maybe they were too tired to complain. Or too scared. They’d seen me cut down a dozen men not ten minutes prior. That kind of thing bred compliance even beyond my noble status.

  Ropes were pulled, buckets of water were hauled up to wash the deck. The dead were lifted. Ours gently, theirs not. Yet still they all slid over the side like butchered meat. The sea swallowed them without ceremony, and I watched until the last body disappeared beneath the waves, until the water closed smooth again. Only then did I say my prayers to the crew. To Jerek. To Daven and his sisters.

  When the rigging was fixed, I turned toward the sails as they snapped in the wind.

  “Downwind,” I muttered. “We can reach them in minutes.”

  Finally, the ship began to move. Small as my cog was, it didn’t need a large crew to run. I left Grey helping the dying crewmen and went to find the twins. Jack had gone down during the fighting, apparently, but his wounds had not been fatal.

  I found them in the small aftercastle arguing about something. Jace was fussing over his brother with a bolt of white linen, kneeling above him as Jack tried to bat away at his hands.

  “Is it bad?” I asked in lieu of announcing myself.

  They glanced up at me. Jace gave me a respectful nod, but he soon turned back to caring for the cut on Jack’s leg..

  “No, m’lord,” the man himself said, grinning through the pain as his brother tightened up the make-shift bandage. “Some of the ladies back home have done worse.” When Jace pressed a hand to the wound, he nearly elbowed his brother in the face. “Ack, careful with that.”

  I watched them bicker for a second before I shook my head, smiling despite myself. My lads would be fine, but I didn’t want them fighting again. The crew had been right when someone said they’d done enough fighting for the day.

  Besides, as we pulled closer to the besieged carrack and I could make out what was truly happening there, I realized there were better ways for them to help me.

  As if reading my mind, Jack pushed his brother away and jumped to his feet. He wobbled a bit, had to lean over to grab a rail to keep his feet.

  “Ready for some boarding action, m’lord,” His smile was true and eager. “Always wanted to do a bit o’ pirating myself, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  I chuckled. I had really trained them too well.

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  “Not this time, Jack,” I told him. “You’re all better use to me up here.” When they made to complain, I just lifted up a hand. “Trust me. Here’s the plan.”

  xxx

  I was swinging from the top mast before our portside touched the hull of the Western Will. Air wooshed around me as I fell, the rope burning against my hand, but then I was coming back up and over the side of the carrack.

  I sliced a man from collar bone to groin before my boots slammed into planks slick with blood and seawater. The carrack’s deck looked worse than ours. Bodies lay strewn across the floor, pirates mostly, men in mismatched leathers and bright sashes, some twisted around crossbow bolts that pinned them where they fell, others sprawled face-down with stab-wounds showing on chests and throats. A few still twitched.

  I barely registered them. Steel flashed to my left. I turned, blade already up.

  They’d seen us coming. A cog can’t exactly sneak across the ocean. Four men rushed me at once, shouting in three different tongues, feet skidding as they tried to close. I backpedaled, felt the rail bump my waist, and braced.

  Two of them never reached me. Arrows hissed past my shoulders from the Fair Winds. One pirate’s head snapped sideways as a shaft punched through his cheek. Another stumbled, gurgling, bolt buried in his chest, hands clawing uselessly at the wood as he went down.

  The other two hesitated just long enough to die. Sending a silent thanks to my lads behind me, I stepped inside the first man’s swing and drove my sword up under his ribs. I felt the resistance give way wetly. It was a sickening sound, and I ignored it entirely.

  He screamed once, breath bursting out of him, before he sagged against me. I shoved him aside and turned with the motion, blade already moving again.

  The last pirate raised his axe too late. My cut took him across the neck, clean and quick. Blood sprayed warm against my face and he fell without a sound.

  I stood there a second, chest heaving, ears ringing. The deck rolled just enough to make the horizon tilt. Sounds echoed from everywhere at once, steel on steel, men screaming orders and curses, the thud of boots on stairs.

  I looked to where the fighting was thickest. The forecastle, bodies packed tight on the narrow steps leading up to where the carrack’s crew held the high ground. Another knot of men barred the door to the cabins below, shields locked, backs pressed hard against the wood.

  A few men could hold such positions for long, but not forever.

  I turned, scanning through the chaos, pushing past a man fumbling with a short spear and another dragging a wounded comrade clear. I saw him then—halfway up the stairs, red-and-gold lion on his breastplate dulled by grime, helm gone.

  Ser Gerion was bleeding, his yellow hair matted and dark against his skull. A thin line of blood ran down one side of his head where an ear should’ve been.

  A man with bright blue hair barred his path, wide-brimmed hat pulled low, his thin sword darting in quick, precise thrusts. He moved like a fencer, light on the balls of his feet, blade flickering in and out, always just out of reach.

  Ser Gerion fought hard, but he was penned in by the stairs, forced to give ground inch by inch. A slash caught him under the arm. He hissed, staggered, almost slipped on a blood-slick step.

  “Fuck,” I breathed.

  Picking up a discarded shield from the ground, I dashed in and hit the press like a battering ram. A pirate cried out when the metal boss cracked against his spine and he fell, body twisting in pain.

  Another lunged at me from the side; I smashed him aside with my shoulder and cut down as he fell. One more tried to block me. He parried my thrust and tried to skewer me in return, but I caught the tip of the sword on the naked shield. Twisting his blade aside, I shoved my own sword past his guard and into his throat.

  I didn’t wait to see him go down. I didn’t stop moving, didn’t slow, didn’t think. The world narrowed to a tunnel of bodies and steel and the sound of my own breath roaring in my ears. Someone slashed at my back. The blow glanced off my mail with a jolt that rattled my teeth. I just spun and killed him without breaking stride.

  I should’ve been tired, arms heavy and flagging, but I knew I could keep going. I wanted to keep going. Could there be another ship nearby with pirates to kill?

  Ahead, the blue-haired man laughed as Ser Gerion stumbled again. I shoved a pirate off the stairs and took them two at a time. Then, behind me, the cabins erupted.

  The door burst open and men poured out, Lannister sailors and guards who’d been bottled up inside, faces grim, blades raised. They hit the pirates from behind with a resounding cry of, “Casterly Rock!” and “Lannister!”, then crashed like a steel wrecking ball into unprotected backs.

  Men screamed as they were cut down from both sides. The press loosened around me, somehow making it all more chaotic. Bodies tumbled. I shoved men aside with my shield, nearly sliced a Lannister guard down before I caught his tabard, lost my feet for a second as the footing grew treacherous.

  I was almost to Ser Gerion when something massive slammed into my vision.

  A warhammer the size of my forearm whistled past my face close enough to ruffle my hair. I threw myself aside, heart leaping into my throat, and the hammer crushed into the deck where my head had been an instant before. Wood splintered like glass.

  I rolled and came up in a crouch. I looked up, only to keep looking. The man holding the warhammer was a giant. Broad as a bull, thick-necked, bare arms corded with muscle. His hammer head was stained dark with blood, crisscrossed with notches and furrows from a dozen blades.

  He grinned at me with rotten yellow teeth and raised it again with frightening ease. Standing, I stepped back, sword up, feet sliding on gore. Then he came at me like a falling wall.

  I parried his first swing, barely. When the second struck my shield, the impact shuddered up my arms. My fingers grew numb. However much stronger I thought I was than other people crumbled in the face of a true monster.

  He laughed and swung again, faster than a man his size had any right to. I dodged, felt the wind of it brush my cheek, and slashed at his side. My blade bit shallow, slicing through jerking and grazing skin. The giant didn’t even grunt.

  We traded strikes fast, arming sword and hammer rising and falling like a choreography of steel, until I was too late on a counter and a glancing blow slipped past my guard and caught me in the chest.

  Mail crunched like a struck bell. Mail or one of my ribs. All the air tore out of my lungs in a soundless rush. I flew backward and hit the deck hard, vision exploding into white sparks.

  I lay there a heartbeat, gasping, chest refusing to work, the world tilting crazily.

  Is this it?

  The thought came unbidden, cold and sharp. I saw myself trampled, crushed into the planks, a nameless body among dozens. I tried to breathe and couldn’t.

  The shadow loomed over me. The hammer rose. I rolled.

  It smashed down where my head had been, splinters flying. I clawed for purchase, dragging myself across the deck, lungs burning, vision tunneling and blurry. My sword slipped from my trembling fingers and skidded out of reach.

  Behind me, the giant laughed again and kicked it away. I scrabbled, hand closing around something cold and familiar tied around my right boot. My knife.

  Desperate, moving on instinct alone, I got to one knee as the warhammer came around again, and I lunged. I went low, under his swing, and slammed my shoulder into his legs.

  He staggered, surprised more than hurt. I hooked his ankle with my foot and shoved. The giant went down hard, as they are prone to do, his hammer clanging away.

  I didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even have the time to think. I was on him in an instant, straddling his chest, knife rising and falling in short, brutal strokes. He roared and bucked, hands clawing at me, but I drove the blade down again and again until his movements slowed, then stopped.

  I sat there for a moment, gasping, knife slick in my hand. My chest screamed at me every time I tried to draw breath. Swallowing bloody saliva, I turned around to realize something had shifted aboard the Western Will.

  The remaining pirates were mostly on their knees, arms up in surrender. Lannister guards and sailors went about taking their weapons away, some more brutally than others. More than one pleading pirate got a pommel to the side of the head for his trouble.

  I pushed myself up unsteadily. Blood dripped from my hair into my eyes. I didn’t know if my vision was still blurry or if the blood had gotten on my lashes. Grunting, I wiped it away with the back of my hand.

  On the stairs, Ser Gerion stood braced against the railing, breathing hard, sword lowered. But he was alive. The blue-haired man knelt before him. His thin blade lay discarded to the side, his crew taken prisoner. Still, a smile played on his lips.

  I made my way toward them, legs trembling now that the fight had ebbed.

  “You hurt, Lannister?” I asked.

  Ser Gerion’s green eyes lit up when he saw me. “Ah, our hero presents himself.”

  I snorted. Leave it to the smirking lion to find humor despite the half-a-hundred dead men around us.

  He glanced down at himself and smiled. “Nothing I haven’t had worse,” he said. “Took a cut to the ribs, but—”

  The pirate laughed. A thin, delighted sound. “Oh, you’ll feel it soon enough, lion,” he said slyly. “Give it a moment.”

  Ser Gerion frowned. Then he swayed. I saw the color drain from his face in a heartbeat.

  “Ser?” I caught him as his knees buckled. His weight sagged into me, sudden and heavy. His skin felt clammy through the leather.

  “Poison,” he muttered, and then his eyes rolled back. He went limp.

  Something cold settled in my gut. I did not want to have Tywin’s brother die in my arms. My thoughts ran as I quickly planned the next steps.

  I turned to the surviving Lannister crew. “There a healer among you?”

  Shaken heads was not a good answer. A few men rushed forward, though, and helped me lay Ser Gerion flat on the planks. His breathing was shallow and uneven. It was better than nothing.

  I looked up to find a broad-shouldered man pushing through the press, red lion on his surcoat dark with sweat and blood. He gave me a shallow bow.

  “Ser Galladon,” he said, eyes flitting between me and the downed Lannister. “I’m Ser Sarek Hill. I was second in Ser Gerion’s guard.” He struggled for a moment. “What should we do, my lord?”

  His captain had died, then, and he was not used to command. I could see it in his fidgety hands. Taking a deep breath that burned at my chest, I forced my thoughts into order.

  “Secure the prisoners,” I told him. “Bind them well. Especially him.” I jerked my chin at the blue-haired pirate. “He comes with us. We’re moving Ser Gerion to the Fair Winds,” I went on. “Get oars over and as many hands as you can spare. We’re turning back to Sunspear. He needs a maester and he needs it now.”

  We’d been lucky that the pirates had come to us here. If anyone could cure a poisoned man it would be the Dornish. They were practiced in such things, and the difference between the poison and the medicine was but the dose.

  The man nodded once and started doling out the commands. The sailors and remaining guards rushed to obey him, gathering the pirates and moving the gear I asked for. It seemed he could be competent enough once he was under orders.

  “Ser Sarek,” I called, and he turned at once. “You will personally take a squad and go through that galley. The captain’s quarters too. Find anything that could be poison: powders, vials, blades. Whatever you can find, you bring it.”

  His jaw tightened. “Aye, my lord.”

  I pulled another man to the side, an older man who seemed to be the ship’s newest captain, and told him to work on untangling the sails and getting the carrack ready to move. We’d be going out first on the Fair Winds, but I wanted him to tow back the galley behind us as soon as possible.

  A few minutes later, I knelt beside Ser Gerion as they lifted him, watched his chest rise and fall weakly. The blue-haired man met my gaze as he was dragged onto the cog, wrists bound, and he smiled at me like this was all the funniest thing in the world.