Red Tide (47 page)

The Needles chose that moment to attack. Ten figures sprinted out of the alley opposite the
Crakehawk,
screaming as they shot their crossbows. They clearly hadn't discussed their targets beforehand, because of the six Augerans facing them, only two were hit. One of the surviving stone-skins leapt to meet the Needles. Bringing his shield up, he blocked an ax-swing, then shoved his assailant back into his onrushing companions. A Needle woman, finding herself at the front of the group, drew up. A spear thrown by one of the Augerans caught her in the chest, and she went down.

Galantas frowned. The Needle attack had already lost momentum, and against the more heavily armed stone-skins, there could be no doubt as to how the skirmish would end. Why should that matter to him, though? All along the waterfront, other parties of Rubyholters were making a dash for the ships, and Galantas should have been doing the same. Indeed he
would
have been were it not for Kalag's two Raptors. The bastards would be out there somewhere, watching his every move so they could report back to their chief. And how would Kalag react if he found out Galantas had left the Needles to their fate?
He preaches unity,
the Raptor would say,
yet when the time comes to back his words with actions, he runs.
And wouldn't he have a point? Had Galantas's words at the Hub been nothing but empty rhetoric?

Perhaps. But there was no need for the other clans to know that. Besides, if he helped the Needles, their chief, Malek, would owe him one. And you could never have too many people in your debt.

He lifted his crossbow.

His men wouldn't like this, but they would follow him regardless, not least because they outnumbered the enemy ten to four.

“Pick your targets carefully,” he said over his shoulder. “Let's show the Needles how this is done.”

*   *   *

Karmel crept along the alley. The wall to her left was covered with peeling posters slapped one atop another, while to her right was a half-open doorway. Caval moved past it and stopped. Karmel halted this side, listening for movement in the building beyond, but hearing only distant screams and sorcerous concussions from the Rubyholt attack on the harbor. When the raid had started, she'd hoped the distraction might make her task tonight easier, but thus far it had served only to stir Bezzle to new life. Twice on the way here, she and Caval had been forced to engage their powers to hide from stone-skin squads heading for the fighting.

Caval looked through the door before entering the building. Karmel slipped into his shadow, her throwing knives a reassuring weight in her hands.

Three stairs led down to the common room of a tavern. The bar was to Karmel's left, while to her right was a wall illuminated by rectangles of light coming through the windows on the opposite wall. Beyond one was the silhouette of an Augeran stationed outside. To the left of his position was a door leading to the waterfront.

The tavern must have been flooded recently, for the floor was submerged beneath a finger's width of water, inky black with blood and shadow, and covered with rushes. A handful of bodies were scattered about the room. A barmaid was sprawled at the foot of the stairs where Karmel stood, apparently cut down trying to flee. Strange that the corpses had been left here when they'd been removed from the houses earlier. Strange, but not a cause for concern. It wasn't as if a stone-skin would be playing dead among them on the off chance someone stopped by for a drink.

Caval made for a staircase on the north side of the room. Each time he passed a body, a cloud of needleflies took to the air. Only when he reached the stairs and signaled the all clear did Karmel move herself.

The water on the ground was cold against her sandaled feet. She picked her way through the wreckage of a smashed table, her gaze twitching all the while to the silhouetted stone-skin. Still no movement from the figure. Karmel was beginning to wonder if it might be a statue rather than a soldier, but a statue outside a tavern? In Bezzle?

A flash of sorcery from outside smeared the south-facing wall orange and yellow, the glow reflecting in the water on the floor. Karmel stepped over the corpse of a bare-chested man. His head was held to his neck by a flap of skin, and bile rose in the priestess's throat. Death never looked pretty close up. Easier to observe it from a distance where you could pretend there were no victims at all. Like from the top of the Dragon Gate, for example. Her foot snagged on something—

A hand seized her ankle, and the bottom fell out of her stomach. Instinctively she tried to pull away. Nails dug into her flesh. She was about to strike out with her knives when her leg suddenly came free, and she staggered forward, tottered, made a despairing grab for the bar. With her blades in her hands, though, she couldn't get a proper grip on it. She fell to her knees, jarred them on the stone floor. Water splashed her face. An image came to her of the arm's owner rearing up behind, and she scrambled forward, half turning to look back.

A Rubyholt man was propped on one elbow, reaching out. He must have taken a stone-skin blade across the face, for his eyes were gone, and all that remained of his nose was a splinter of bone. But then how had he seen her leg to seize it? Unless he'd merely flailed out as she brushed against him, and had the fortune—or misfortune—to grab her.

“Help me,” he croaked through blood-flecked lips.

Karmel silently swore, angry more at herself than at the stranger. What was she, a Shroud-cursed acolyte, that she'd panicked like that? A shock to be sure, but if she'd stopped to think, she would have realized the hand must have belonged to one of the Rubyholters. Outside the tavern, the “statue” came to life. Karmel heard the scrape of a sword being drawn from its scabbard.

Footsteps clomped toward the door.

Karmel froze in a half crouch, glanced across at Caval by the stairs. The merest flicker of his eyes toward the Islander told her to silence the man. It was too late for that, though. The door handle was already turning down.

“Help me,” the Rubyholter said again.

Karmel looked back at the man, imploring him with her gaze to be quiet. Then she remembered he couldn't see her.

The tavern door opened.

*   *   *

Amerel reached out with her Will. It wouldn't be easy persuading the Augeran he'd imagined the commotion, for with the Rubyholt attack on the harbor, the stone-skin sentries had become wide-eyed watchful. She could only hope the Chameleons had the sense to shut the dying man up before—

The sound of shattering glass broke her concentration—a perception not from her spiritual body, but from her corporeal one. She muttered an oath. Before she'd started spirit-walking, she'd found a house not far from the White Pool to take cover in, thinking that it would be far enough from the harbor to guarantee no callers. But she hadn't reckoned on the Rubyholt raid. She could hear shouts now, the stamp of running feet, the hollow note of a sword striking stone. Some of the Islanders must have been driven back from the waterfront toward her hiding place. And while it was unlikely any of them would blunder into her building, was she prepared to risk her life on “unlikely”?

A moment's hesitation, then she returned her attention to the tavern. The southern half of the common room was bathed in light from the torches on the waterfront, but the remaining half was a tangle of shadows. The dying Rubyholt man lay pale-faced and shivering. He was whispering “help me!” over and over, though what good he thought anyone could do when half his face was missing, Amerel didn't know. There was no sign of the Chameleons. Evidently they'd engaged their powers, and if the Guardian couldn't see them, then the stone-skin wouldn't be able to either. With luck, he'd put the Rubyholter out of his misery and return to the waterfront, no wiser to the Chameleons' presence.

A scream sounded in Amerel's corporeal ears, so loud the culprit might have been standing next to her body. This was going to be a problem. Hard to concentrate on the inn, after all, when there could be an Augeran about to test his sword on her throat. She had to check, didn't she? Odds were, the Chameleons wouldn't need her help here, and of course they still had Noon to watch their backs.

Her mind made up, Amerel flashed back to her body.

*   *   *

Karmel squinted against the light streaming through the tavern door. Two Augerans entered, instead of the one she'd been expecting. Their skin glittered where the light caught their faces. Both were carrying swords, and both wore black cloaks.

The lead soldier, the shorter of the two, stepped inside and halted. His reflection wavered in the rush-covered water. He took in the corpses, the open back door, the blinded man. The Islander pleaded for help. Karmel waited for the Augeran to advance and finish him, but the stone-skin held his ground. Perhaps he understood the common tongue enough to wonder who the Islander wanted help from. It seemed he wasn't going to take a chance on the Rubyholt corpses remaining dead, for he stepped to his left and drove his sword into the back of a woman. The body made no sound.

Karmel's thoughts raced. There were corpses to either side of her position, and if the Augeran meant to stab them all, he'd probably end up treading on her toes at some point. So what to do? Stay still and hope he missed her? Or strike when he came close? If she picked the right moment, it should be simple to dispose of him. But what about the second Augeran? She'd need to silence him too before he raised the alarm—or Caval would have to do it. The problem was, Karmel was facing away from her brother just now, with no way to signal her intent.

And yet he'd be ready to support her if she moved, wouldn't he?

As the first stone-skin strode around putting holes in more corpses, his companion circled to the south-facing wall so he could check no one was hiding behind the bar. Karmel's breath was so taut in her chest, it ached when she breathed. A needlefly landed on her cheek. She was glad for the gloom about the room, else the motion of the insects might have alerted the Augerans to her presence. The injured Rubyholter crawled away, only to bang his head against the tavern's bar. He flinched as if he'd bumped into a stone-skin's legs, then started sobbing and begging for mercy.
Mercy.
One word in the common tongue Karmel suspected the Augerans hadn't bothered learning.

The first Augeran was now half a dozen paces away. He raised his sword in readiness to stab the closest motionless figure, then noticed it was the man whose head had been all but severed from his body. A neat trick that would have been, playing dead without a head. The Augeran must have made a comment to that effect to his companion, for the man chuckled, not a snatch of tension between them.

The first stone-skin approached the wounded Islander. At any other time, Karmel would have left the man to his fate. What was he to her that she should risk her life and Caval's to help him? She had no choice but to attack the Augeran, though, and the best time to do so would be when the soldier's attention was fixed on the Rubyholter.

She could make out the stone-skin's face. He was younger than she'd expected, maybe as young as the priestess herself. Hard to be sure of his expression in the gloom, but it was best to imagine a sneer or a snigger. That would make it easier to do what had to be done. Her grip on her knives was steady. When she struck, she would go for the Augeran's throat in the hope her blade would choke off any cry he made.

The stone-skin halted over the injured Islander and drew back his sword arm.

Karmel sprang forward, her right hand coming round.

The stone-skin half turned, his expression disbelieving. He tried to bring his sword up to parry Karmel's knife, but too late. The priestess's blade buried itself to the hilt in his neck. Her momentum carried her crashing into him, and he staggered backward, toppled over a corpse, and splashed down, shattering the reflections in the water.

Karmel righted herself, then pulled back her left hand with her second throwing knife, looking for the other Augeran.

The man was already on his knees. Caval's dagger protruded from his chest over the heart. He fell forward onto his face.

Caval swept past Karmel, making no effort to silence his footfalls. “Come on,” he said. Then, when the priestess made to retrieve her knife from the first soldier's throat, “Leave it!”

There was an edge to his voice that could have been nervousness, but equally it could have been anger. Directed at her? She stumbled a pace after him before remembering the blinded Rubyholter. “Go back to being dead,” she said to him, then set off after Caval.

Her brother had reached the steps leading up to the back door. He leapt to the top in a single bound.

The door burst inward and thudded into him.

 

C
HAPTER
16

“W
ITHDRAW!” GALANTAS
shouted to his men. “Withdraw!”

Things weren't going as he'd planned. The stone-skins had spotted his group as soon as it broke cover, giving them time to bring their shields round against the volley of crossbow bolts that followed. Two of the warriors had survived, and now they retreated along the quay at which the
Crakehawk
was moored. Perhaps the remaining Needles, along with Galantas's Spears, would overrun them in time, but there was no longer any point in trying, for the Needle water-mage had just lost his head to an enemy sword stroke. Even if the Needles reached the ship, they wouldn't be going anywhere on it.

“To the
Fury
!” Galantas yelled. “Qinta, cover our retreat!” Then, to the Needles, “Pull back!”

The Needles needed no second invitation.

Galantas trotted along the waterfront. His mouth was dry as dust. Ahead a Needle two-master and a Spear warship he recognized as the
Saberfin
rose on waves of water-magic. They pulled away from the docks at the same instant, as if their captains had agreed on a race. Meanwhile, on the waterfront, Kalag's two Raptors loped toward Galantas, looking all about as if they were searching for someone. For Galantas, most likely. He drew his sword to make it look as if he'd been in the thick of the fighting.