Sword and Shadow (15 page)

Chapter Nineteen

“Sails ahead!” came the cry from the crow’s nest. Val’s head jerked up and she glanced over at the captain, who stood on the poop deck in full regalia for the first time since they’d broken free of the ice.

The sun came out from behind a cloud, bathing the ship in brilliant sunlight for a moment. She caught sight of Goban in the corner of her eye, staring in the direction of the sails with a speculative expression.

Her gaze flicked to Bryon, standing at the bow, then Morrigan, not ten feet away from the boy. She shook her head at herself. She didn’t really consider Bryon a boy, but Raven certainly did, and since their conversation, his perceptions were obviously affecting her own.

Like how she was seeing Goban now. Something was wrong with him, something she couldn’t put her finger on. It was almost as though he’d changed from the gruff, self-possessed man she’d met that evening so long ago; where once he’d been bold and cynical, there had grown a furtive air about him.

She didn’t like it.

“How many ships?” the captain yelled up to the ’nest.

“Six or seven,” the man called back.

“Can we run from them?” she asked him.

“Run where?” the captain growled. “I’m sure we could, but we’ll never get away.”

She glanced up at the sun and realized it was still several hours until dusk. Raven wouldn’t rise to save them unless they managed to stay ahead of the small fleet that long. “How long can we stay ahead of them?”

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“Depends on what kind of ships they are,” he replied. “If they’re larger, we might have a chance. You’re trying to hold out until nightfall, right?”

She nodded. “With that many ships, we have no chance of dodging them in the dark, or, even of outrunning them, do we?”

He gave her a serious look in return. “We have almost no chance, milady. Of either. This ship is doubtlessly faster and more maneuverable than those larger merchantmen usually used by the Church. But as you said, we’re not going to be able to escape entirely unless we manage to dodge right across the leading edge of a big blow, and I don’t see that happening.” His glance led her gaze up to the crystalline blue sky.

She nodded. “Then do what you can, Captain, and we’ll all keep alive the hope we can outrun these bastards long enough.”

Neither mentioned the very likely possibility that Deacons aboard those ships—she had no doubt the ships themselves had been commandeered by the Church—would be using magic to catch up all the quicker.

“Morrigan, can you do something to help?”

“Was wondering when you were going to ask,” the immortal replied with a dry chuckle from her habitual spot on the bow. Her two crows had taken to perching there on the rails at her back, black feathers rustling in the wind arching over the sides of the bow.

Val found the crows unsettling. Their stares were so intelligent, so piercing, that she couldn’t bear being around them for long. It might have helped if she could have read them, but they weren’t sending anything out she could pick up. As closed up as Raven himself.

“I can think of a few things I can do,” Morrigan said. “The ships are warded, so I can’t attack them directly, but there are other ways to skin the cat.”

Val winced. She recognized the saying, but had spent enough time on Starhaven to find it more than a little gauche. “Do what you need to.

Accelerating us would be a good start. Or maybe—”

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“Bringing in a little fog
and
kicking up a little speed should be possible,” Morrigan interjected. “I’d rather do that than attack their ships.”

“Best get to work, then. We don’t have a lot of time.”

They raced ahead of the fog under a full moon. Looking back, it almost looked as though the sea itself was on fire, the fog rising from the water like thick black smoke. Raven hung halfway up the mainmast, his radar-like gaze sweeping the darkness boiling from the ocean. “You said there were seven?” he called out to the captain, who stood on the forecastle with his spyglass to his eye.

Pointless, really, but Raven had to admire his dedication to his job.

He could no more peer through that fog than he could to the bottom of the ocean.

“Seven!” the captain agreed.

Raven nodded. Through his web of far-sight strands, he could only make out four ships behind them. He didn’t think the others had simply dropped off. They’d probably come up with some way to get ahead of them. As far as he knew, they didn’t use transit tubes, but he thought it unlikely that they’d never figure them out.

“Morrigan!”

“No need to yell,” she called down from her perch on the foremast somewhere over his head. She swung down and dropped to the deck beside him. “What do you think?”

“I think there’s at least three or four ships ahead of us somewhere that we can’t see right now. Probably rushing to cut us off.”

She nodded. “We can’t very well race back up north, now can we?

We’ve got to figure out a way to get past them.”

Raven glanced to port and realized they were only a couple of miles from what would have been, on his Earth, the Japanese isles. “Head for those islands,” he told the captain.

The man winced and shook his head. “We can’t. My crew will revolt!”

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Saje Williams

The vampire whirled on him, fast as thought. “We don’t have a choice.” Of course he’d heard the superstitious nonsense that the Japanese islands on this Earth were inhabited by cannibals, but cannibals were the last thing
he
was worried about. Between him, Val, and Morrigan, any cannibals who appeared would be taking one hell of a risk. “We’ll have to chance it.”

The captain must have noticed a hint of mockery in his voice, for his response was as dry as a Saharan wind. “Yes, sir.”

His irritation couldn’t have been more obvious. Irritation mixed with a note of fear. Raven gave him a single curt nod and turned back to scan the ships behind them. Where had the others gone?

“Now what?” the captain asked some minutes later, as the ship’s sails were reefed and the anchor dropped. “It’s not as though they can’t find us, fog or no. It will lift eventually and—”

“I plan to have us well-hidden before that happens,” Raven told him.

“But first things first. Morrigan, Val, and I are going to do a little recon to set your sailors’ minds at ease. I would assume they’d trust my judgment by this point?”

The captain thought about it, then nodded, scratching at the unruly beard crawling across his face. “I think so.”

“Good. You know the drill, Captain. I’m going to hide the ship, so don’t let any of your men go ashore no matter
what
happens. If you do, they’ll not be able to find the ship again.”

He looked anything but pleased by this, but nodded again. It wasn’t as though he really had any choice in the matter. “You two ready?”

Raven asked the women.

“Always,” Morrigan answered with a grin. “Let’s take a walk on the wild side.”

Val crouched in the crawling shadows, eyes wide as dinner plates as she took in what was happening in the clearing before her. The silver 138

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archway of light could only be a worldgate, and the creatures manning it as familiar to her as they would be to any denizen of Starhaven.

Hybrids—primarily feline, she noted, but she thought she recognized a few more obscure breeds.

The placement of this little encampment made no sense to her. What was the purpose of smuggling in a handful of hybrids at a time in such an unpopulated area? They could be using this particular island to gather an army before launching an attack anywhere on the mainland, but, unless she was sorely mistaken, that wasn’t what they were doing at all.

If not for the evidence in front of her face, she would never have imagined they’d find hybrids here. The cult of the Three-Fold God, for all of its other failings, had never manipulated the people by fear of monsters or other outsiders. This precluded them using the hybrids as a tactic for spreading superstitious terror.

But it did explain the reputation these islands had as home to cannibals. They weren’t cannibals at all…or, at least, not quite what anyone meant when they used the term.
If a human/animal hybrid eats a
person, does it make him a half-cannibal?

She spotted Morrigan squatting a few yards away and slowly inched her way to her side. The immortal noticed her approach and raised a finger to her lips. Unnecessarily, as it turned out. Val already knew how sensitive hybrid hearing could be. They all had enough skill in woodcraft to sneak around without being noticed, but a single spoken word could reveal their presence faster than a burning flare.

Where has Raven gone?
she wondered. The man could appear and disappear with more alacrity than anyone she’d ever seen. He had a talent for being unnoticed. For all she knew he was standing in their midst, ready to carve a bloody swath through the dozen or so of them around the ’gate.

Of course, it made her wonder what the hybrids were all waiting for.

If they were patient enough, they might find out, but, unfortunately, they might end up beneath an unfolding dawn, which certainly wouldn’t be healthy for Raven.

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She could guess what his plan would be—kill the hybrids, destroy the

’gate, and get the hell back to the ship before daybreak. But more than anything she wanted a hybrid to question. Since they were officially listed as enemies, her psychic ethics wouldn’t be conflicted if she decided she needed to read them.

If only her telepathic gifts were more dependable, she thought. At this distance she couldn’t sense anything and she was afraid to push it. The few times she’d strained to use her telepathic talents over greater distances, she’d quickly discovered that her efforts might well leap to her telekinetic functions and instead have the unintended effect of pummeling the person she’d meant to read.

Definitely not a good idea in these circumstances. She made a quick head count of the hybrids and stifled a groan. They must have still been emerging from the ’gate, since where she’d first seen half a dozen or so, now stood at least ten.

Maybe not a challenge for Raven or Morrigan, but Val knew her skills weren’t up to handling more than a couple of them, and then only if they weren’t particularly well-trained. She wasn’t about to place a bet on the likelihood of that being the case.

Where is Raven?

Just as the thought reformed in her head, the shadows surrounding the ’gate rippled and Raven materialized in the midst of the hybrids, who reacted with superhuman speed, though not nearly quick enough. He tore through them as if they were standing still, sending humanoid cats, weasels, and other creatures flying through the air.

Morrigan leaped into the open and caught one of the flailing figures as it tumbled past, reaching around and snapping its neck with a sort of casual grace that made Val’s blood run a little chill. Two more of the creatures, evading Raven’s swath of destruction, came at her at a full-out sprint.

Morrigan side-stepped, arm extending like a steel girder to sweep one of the creatures—a taut-muscled jungle cat of some kind—off its feet.

Black claws glittered in the radiant light spewing from the open ’gate as the second cat lashed out at her.

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Val sent a burst of telekinetic power at it, blasting it down like a bolt from the heavens. She drew her blade and leaped from the bushes, spearing another creature—this one had obviously come from weasel stock—through the chest with her rapier. She kicked it off the end of the blade and spun to meet the charge of another creature straight out of the mouth of the ’gate.

This one was armed with a sword of its own, a heavy, slightly curved blade she was hard-pressed to deflect. She turned the blade and drove it toward the ground, punching the creature in the side of the neck with her free hand. The beast lurched away and raked its claws down her left arm. She gasped in pain and focused a powerful telekinetic bolt into the center of its chest, sending it tumbling away.

She glanced up to see what the others were doing just in time to see Raven disabling the ’gate device. The silver archway dissolved into nothingness and plunged the clearing into darkness.

When she felt a hand on her shoulder she turned to fight, but found herself caught in a vice-like grip. “It’s me, Val,” Raven murmured in her ear. “You’re hurt.”

“A scratch,” she replied, allowing herself to sag against him. The two strong telekinetic blasts so close together had drained her and she felt a dull throbbing in her head that beat in time with the throbbing in her wounded arm.

“My ass,” he answered back, pulling her arm up to look at it more closely. “He got you good. Let’s see if we can find any medical equipment around here.” He led her across a few splayed corpses and searched around the ’gate module, finally unearthing a small blue box. “Ah-hah.”

He smiled as he pulled off her jacket, his gaze both soft and concerned as he set the coat aside and tore her shirt away from her forearm. She heaved a sigh and smiled back. “You and Morrigan make a good team,” she said.

He gave her a mild frown. “She’s a killer,” he said. “No surprise there.

So am I. When you need killers, we’re a good choice. Doesn’t mean anything more than that.”

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He sounded a bit defensive and she smiled again to ease his discomfort. “And I’m glad you two handled it so well. If I had stumbled upon this by myself, I would’ve been seriously screwed.”

“You’re right.” He flipped open the small blue box. “What the hell?”

He reached in and extracted a small, one-liter plastic bottle filled with what appeared to be a clear liquid or gel. He popped the cap and sniffed.