“Cat! Don’t come out of the water!” Drake shouted, but I could not see him.
A thread slithered down from the sky to slap the water. It was a rope ladder, lowered as by Ba’al’s heavenly messengers. I stared at it as if it were a serpent sliding close to strike, for its swaying bounce hypnotized me. Two figures scrambled down. The first gripped a lamp’s hook in strong white teeth. As he turned to take in the scene on the dark shore, he spotted me, let go one hand from the ladder, and drew a very impressive knife from a harness crossed on a dark chest.
I brandished my sword to make sure he knew I had it. I could take a cursed knife, but I wasn’t so sure about taking him, for he had the posture of a man who knew how to fight and kill. Although his willingness to raid a plague island filled with brain-rotted dying people who could easily infest him did not inspire confidence in his intelligence.
The person above, the one without a lamp held in his mouth, spoke. “Gal! Yee hear me?”
“I’m just a lost woman, no threat to you,” I cried. “Can you get me out of here?”
“No salter, she.” By the voice it was a woman. She seemed to be explaining things to the man with the lamp and the knife, thus giving me even less faith in his wit. “She be in the water, see? Therewise not a salter.”
I kept my guard up although he sheathed the knife and swung around to peer at the beach.
“Cat! Get on the ship! Go up now!” Definitely that was Drake’s impatient voice.
He pushed down through the salters without fear, dragging Abby. She lurched like a broken toy, sobbing in fear. He led her to the edge of the water. A wave brushed up over her bare feet and she whimpered with a horrible hurt dog sound. The salters backed away from Drake as from poison, but yet they so yearned for my blood that they kept coming back and retreating, all in time to the sough of the waves.
Drake tugged Abby against him as in an embrace. He ripped away her blouse, uncovering her torso and breasts. The gleam of my sword and the light of the ladder man’s lamp illuminated a suppurating wound gouged into her side. The wound oozed with a slime that glittered like phosphorous. Drake pressed a hand against it, fingers smeared into the oily mess. She cried out, then stilled as abruptly as if he had stabbed her. I yelled a protest and splashed forward to save her.
A salter grabbed at me. My training snapped me into a lunge, weight and force thrusting the blade’s tip into his shoulder.