The Destruction of the Books (16 page)

Raisho grabbed him by his blouse and yanked him to his feet. He thrust his face into Juhg’s and spoke loudly. “Are ye all right, Juhg?”

Juhg nodded and tried to speak twice before he could make any sound come out. “Yes.”

“Good.” Raisho released him. “Then see that ye stay that way. I’d not have the good Cap’n Attikus vexed at me ’cause I’d gone off an’ let ye get skewered.”

Juhg didn’t want that either.

Beyond them, the fight continued.
Windchaser
’s crew slowly made headway against the goblins. The sailors weren’t pretty in their swordplay as Raisho was. They were fierce fighting men, but not true swordsmen. Mainly, they hacked and slashed their way across the deck with brute force and some canny skills, working together and presenting a solid front. Goblins fell and gave ground before them.

High above the deck, the sabotage crew started clambering down. They cut ratlines and rigging free, swinging down to join the fray. With surprise, Juhg noted that Herby and Gust were among them. The young thief and the monk threw sections of rigging down over the goblin group, entangling them and causing no end of problems.

Navin stepped back from the boarding party and glanced up at the stern castle, where the wizard stood surrounded by a dozen goblins. “The wizard!” he shouted. “Get the wizard!”

A group of sailors split off from the main boarding party and hurried up the stairs. The goblins raced to intercept them. In a moment, the sailors’ running advance was slowed to a crawl of inches.

Raisho growled and stamped his foot.

Juhg knew his friend longed to be part of the action.

Angry and frustrated, Raisho turned to Juhg. “The book. Will the wizard have the book?”

Steel on steel clanged around them and distracted Juhg terribly. He gazed up at the wizard, aware that the man stared at him.

It’s my imagination,
Juhg told himself.
That’s what it has to be. This ship is so filled with enemy sailors, the wizard wouldn’t notice me at all.

But the wizard did. More than that, the wizard stretched out his arm and mouthed words as he pointed his wand.

“Raisho!” Juhg knew the young sailor hadn’t seen the threatening move because he was engaged with a goblin that had fought through the main line. Juhg threw himself at Raisho’s back and bore his friend down.

The goblin battling Raisho grinned maniacally as it assumed it had the upper hand. Raisho struggled to get his blade lifted for a defense, and for a moment Juhg thought he’d gotten the young sailor killed in spite of his efforts.

Just as the goblin swung, a green lightning bolt sizzled through the air where Juhg and Raisho had stood. Caught by the lightning bolt, the goblin exploded into splotchy gray-green chunks of burned meat and broken bone. Gore covered Juhg’s face, letting him know how near a thing the encounter had been.

Raisho moved instantly, pushing himself once more to his feet. He caught Juhg’s collar with his dagger hand and yanked the dweller to his big feet.

“That wizard must have recognized what a fierce fighter I am,” Raisho growled, peering up at the stern castle.

Juhg didn’t bother to mention that the wizard had directed the lightning bolt at him and Raisho happened to be in the way.
Why would a wizard target me?
Juhg wondered. Then Raisho pushed him into motion and rescued him from another goblin’s cutlass.

Raisho fought quickly, outmatching the goblin in a few short, clanging strokes. When the goblin fell back, its head split open by a wicked cutlass blow, Raisho turned to Juhg.

“Do ye think the wizard has the book, then?” Raisho demanded.

The book.
Somehow in the heat of the battle, Juhg had forgotten the reason he was there.

On the stern castle, the small group of sailors fought past the last of the goblin defenders. They raced toward the wizard, who stood his ground fearlessly. When they were almost upon him, the wizard mouthed more words, then swept his arm toward the sailors.

Arcane power blurred the air between them. The sailors fell back, great cuts opening across their bodies as if the same sword blow had hit each of them. They turned from a pack of fighting men into a group of dead and dying.

Juhg recognized all of them and felt their loss. Tears sprang to his eyes as he realized that he would no longer listen to those men’s stories or songs, nor have the chance to regale them with his own.

Raisho cursed and started toward the stern castle.

Catching his friend’s arm, Juhg said, “The wizard won’t have the book.”

Torn, obviously angry and hurting over the loss of so many of his friends, Raisho glared at Juhg. “Ye don’t know that.”

“I believe it to be true,” Juhg said. “The book is under the wizard’s care, Raisho. It doesn’t belong to him. Otherwise he would have had it on his person that night in the harbor.”

Raisho took a fresh grip on his sword and looked determined to scale the stern castle himself. “He killed them, Juhg! He killed them all!”

The dead sailors’ bodies sprawled across the stern deck. Unseeing eyes stared from their pain-wracked faces.

“I know,” Juhg said. “I’m sorry. But you can’t do anything for them.”

“I can avenge them.”

Juhg stepped in front of his friend, aware that they were targets on the deck. Navin and the rest of the boarding party held back the goblin crew, pressing the creatures toward the ship’s prow as they fought through the tangle of fallen sails.

“Avenge them by taking the prize,” Juhg said, locking eyes with his friend. “That’s what they died for.” He glanced back at the stern castle, afraid that at any moment the wizard would blast them to bits with another lightning bolt.

Ertonomous Dron, however, appeared weakened. Though he alone stood alive on the stern deck, he leaned back against the railing and seemed to struggle to stay on his feet on the heaving deck.
Blowfly
continued to strain against the binding chains that held her fast to
Windchaser
. Juhg had no doubt that the ride aboard
Windchaser
was no easy thing either.

“The wizard has spellcast himself to weakness,” Raisho argued.

“Or he’s playing possum,” Juhg pointed out.

“He killed our
friends,
” Raisho growled.

Juhg looked at the young sailor. “And I’ll not suffer the loss of another if I can help it. This ship is a dead thing, Raisho. Even if we don’t kill the wizard, he won’t make it out of these waters alive. Not without a ship’s crew. Not without a ship.”

Two goblinkin broke free of Navin’s boarding party. Sailors shouted warnings to Raisho. Wheeling quickly, the young sailor met the blades of the goblins with his own, knocking the creatures aside. Moving into the creatures he stomped on one goblin’s knee, breaking the limb with a short, vicious crack, then slitting his opponent’s throat with his dagger as the goblin fell. He made a cunning twist against the other goblin and dropped the creature’s headless corpse to the deck.

Standing, breathing hard and covered in goblin gore, Raisho looked at Juhg. “All right, then. Belowdecks it is. We’ll get that book, an’ if that wizard still lives, I swear I’ll make him pay for the lives of our mates.”

Juhg shuddered at the ferocity of the oath. He had never truly seen this side of his friend during the time they had shared together.

Raisho jerked his head toward the middle hold only a few feet behind the line Navin and the other boarders held. He pushed Juhg into motion and fell in beside and one step ahead of him.

Blowfly
tilted sharply, twisting back toward her stern as she slid over another tall wave and
Windchaser
held her back. The slippery blood caused Juhg’s feet to go out from under him. He fell, skidded, and caught himself. Just as he was about to grab onto the hold and heave himself inside, a loose sprawl of canvas from the fallen sails slid over the hold and covered it to block the way.

“No,” Juhg wailed, pulling at the heavy canvas. The sail proved too heavy for him to manage by himself. For a moment, he thought the canvas had been cast there by some spell on the wizard’s part, but a glance back at Ertonomous Dron showed the man still holding on to the stern railing to support himself.

Without warning, Gust dropped to the deck beside Juhg. The little monk shrilled and shook his hairy fingers at Juhg, then grabbed the sailcloth and tugged. Unable to move the sailcloth, Gust shrilled angrily and shook his hands at Juhg.

“Move aside,” Raisho commanded in a voice strained by emotion. “Ye too, ye flea-bitten imp.”

Feeling helpless, Juhg scrambled to one side. Gust leapt up and caught the lowest section of nearby rigging. He chattered the whole time as if disgusted and feeling abused.

Raisho plunged his cutlass into the center of the canvas covering the hold. The blade sliced through the sailcloth easily. The young sailor withdrew the cutlass and slashed again, inscribing a large X that defined the perimeters of the hatch opening.

“There,” Raisho said as he drew the cutlass back again.

Juhg peered down into the hold and caught a metallic glint. He dodged back just in time to avoid the spear thrust that nearly caught him in the eye.

“Goblin!” Juhg yelped as the goblin thrust again with the spear.

Raisho lifted his foot, then slammed his boot into the creature’s face. Knocked from the ladder, the goblin fell back into the waist.

“Well,” Raisho commented, “at least it’s not gonna be dull down there.” He took a fresh grip on his cutlass. “Ye stay back aways, then, bookworm. I’ll clear the way.” He swung over the hold’s side and onto the ladder, clutching it with his left hand crooked so he could grip with his wrist and maintain the hold on the dagger.

Peering down into the darkened hold, Juhg was suddenly of a mind that perhaps confronting the wizard in the grim daylight provided by the storm conditions might be a better option than running through the narrow confines of the decks below. By that time, though, Raisho had already set off into the waist, heading—no doubt—for the wizard’s quarters.

Move,
Juhg commanded himself.
You can’t let Raisho go alone to brave those enchantments that protect the book.

Gathering his courage, he threw a leg over the side of the hold and descended into the shadowy darkness below. The goblin that had fallen at the foot of the ladder suffered from a broken neck. Juhg knew that at once by the grotesque twist of the creature’s head because it was very nearly looking at its own back.

The stench of the goblinkin ship was almost overwhelming, even worse than Juhg remembered.
Of course, that might have something to do with expecting one of them to come lunging out of the darkness at any moment.
Memory of the sailors felled by Ertonomous Dron’s wizardly magic pummeled his thoughts and chipped away at his confidence as he stumbled over
Blowfly
’s uneven deck while the ship pitched and yawed and fought her tethers to
Windchaser.

Undaunted by anything that had happened, Raisho forged ahead. The lanterns mounted on the hallway walls streamed thin wisps of smoke up against the ceiling.

A goblin charged from the other end of the hallway with an uplifted axe. Another climbed up from the hold below with a lighted lantern in one hand.

Raisho roared a battle cry and rushed forward at once. He caught the goblin’s axe with his dagger and halted the weapon’s descent. Still pushing, Raisho shoved the goblin back into the creature behind it, revealing yet a third goblin climbing up from the hold.

The lantern light gleamed as it played over the goblins. The realization that the goblins were wet unleashed a new fear inside Juhg.

We’re sinking!
Perhaps he might have been jumping to conclusions, but he figured that line of thought was much better than thinking everything was all right when in fact it wasn’t.

A blood-curdling yell behind Juhg caused him to jump. Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted two more goblins coming from the prow end of the ship.

Raisho had his hands full with the three goblins he’d already taken on.

Knowing he couldn’t take the goblins on in armed combat and hope to survive, Juhg ran. A desperate plan formed in his mind as he spotted the door to the wizard’s quarters. He only hoped that Ertonomous Dron hadn’t relocated in the last two days.

He grabbed the handle and twisted.
Locked!
He tried the handle again with the same result.
Of course it would be locked. And probably better than it was last time.

By that time, the lead goblin was almost upon him. Juhg turned to face the brute. He lifted his hands before him, knowing that Raisho would not arrive in time to save him.

“Halfer,” the goblin grinned as it faced Juhg. The word held all the contempt the goblins had for the dwellers. It pulled its heavy battle-axe back and prepared to swing. “I’m gonna chop you into tiny bits, and then make soup outta what’s left.”

Always with the speeches,
Juhg thought.
They don’t threaten Raisho when they fight him.
His thinking skated crazily in his mind, propelled by terror and the certainty that he was doomed. But he prepared himself. Struggling in the goblin mines and venturing out across the mainland with Grandmagister Lamplighter had prepared him to take his fate in his own hands when he had no choice.

And the Old Ones had blessed dwellers with uncommon quickness. Juhg noticed the way the goblin’s upper body tensed, then ducked under a horrendous blow that would have cleaved him in twain had it hit. Desperately, Juhg grabbed the goblin’s foot while it was off balance and yanked with all his might.

Behind Juhg, the door broke loose from its moorings under the goblin’s forceful blow and fell inward. The goblin’s foot came up as the creature rocked back with the axe blow, and Juhg kept the limb moving till his opponent fell backward.

The goblin landed on its nether regions and also knocked the nearest goblin down. The felled creature glared up at Juhg with murderous fury. “Now you’re gonna die, halfer.”