Bows clattered to the deck. The ensuing gasps and breathless screams as the netherlings clutched at severed windpipes went unheard. Sheraptus appeared less than concerned with the females, thrusting his fingers, and the ensuing whip of lightning, at his elusive prey.
‘Why is this such an issue for you?’ he cried to be heard above the crackling electric blast. ‘I’ve never heard of you before. Why are you so obsessed with me?’
‘Your eradication is a service to more than one power. You are a violator,’ the man replied sharply. ‘In every sense of the word.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I met your victim.’
‘Which?’
‘You took everything from her, including her name.’
‘It comes down to females again?’ Sheraptus snarled, thrusting a finger and sending a jagged blue arc over the man’s bald, brown head. ‘Are vaginae truly so scarce on this world as to be worth this much trouble?’
Lenk took it as his good fortune that the longface’s attentions were so focused elsewhere. His eyes were drawn past the robed figure to the doors of the cabin, just as his thoughts were drawn to Kataria, undoubtedly inside. It would be a simple matter of crossing, infiltrating and retrieving with Sheraptus so distracted.
As simple as matters involving wizards can be, at least.
As if on cue, he felt a familiar hand, far too scrawny and sweaty as to be particularly worrying, on his shoulder. He turned to see Dreadaeleon’s sweat-slick visage and purple-circled eyes staring intently at him.
‘You’ve been busy,’ he noted.
‘It’s incredible.’ The intensity of the boy’s grin raised some concern in Lenk. ‘All of a sudden, the weakness … it was gone! I … I can cast again, Lenk. I can channel it. It feels …’
His eyes went unnervingly wide as he rose up. His pelvis, Lenk noted, was far too close to Lenk’s face before the boastful thrusting began.
‘Look! Not a drop of moisture, not a trace of fire, not a wisp of smoke!’ the boy proclaimed loudly. ‘Look! Look!’
‘No! No!’ Lenk seized him by his belt, pulling forcibly down. ‘Now, listen, the longface is distracted and you’re feeling …’ He paused, shook his head. ‘We’re not talking about that anymore. Denaos very clearly didn’t make it or he’d have let us know. We’ve got to go in and—’
‘Save them,’ Dreadaeleon said, nodding. ‘I can feel it, just thinking about it. The power … I can feel the surge. Isn’t that fascinating? Venarie is internal, to be sure, but it’s ruled by thought and logic, not emotion. For it to work this way is—’
‘Can you go out and get burned alive or something distracting?’ Lenk asked. ‘That … bird-man-thing can’t hold him off forever.’
‘The Librarians are trained to great feats of endurance and power, Lenk,’ the boy replied. ‘He can do more than you or I could.’ He winced. ‘And, you know, I’m technically obligated to help him as a member of the Venarium.’
‘Treason, treachery, betrayal,’ the voice, frigid and sharp hissed inside Lenk’s head. ‘They are useless. We are—’
‘Dead,’ the voice, feverish and burning roared inside Lenk’s brain. ‘You’re dead. You had your chance. You’re going to—’
‘Ignore that. Focus on duty. Focus on—’
‘Her. She’s dead, too. You’re all dead and—’
‘Enough, enough, enough,’ Lenk growled to all assembled. ‘I can do this without any of you.’ He glared at Dreadaeleon. ‘If you’re going to be useless, I can do it without you, too.’
‘Useless?’ The boy mopped sweat off his brow, flicked it at Lenk. ‘Do you think I got this from jogging in place all this time you’ve been unconscious, vulnerable and oh-so-stabbable? I’ve been setting on fire, freezing into ice, frying into blackness and otherwise harming the longfaces. There were ten more on this deck before you woke!’
‘Eleven.’
The longface came shortly after the word, leading in with a purple fist that drove into Dreadaeleon’s jaw and sent him sprawling to the deck. Lenk had scarcely enough time to blink before her hand jerked backward and slammed him against the mast while she took a moment to drive a foot into the writhing boy’s ribs.
‘He’s already—’ Lenk began to protest.
‘No,’ the longface interrupted, smashing her fist into his face.
He felt the bone-deep quake, felt his skin ripple across his flesh with the force of the blow. His vision did not so much swim as struggle to keep from drowning, eyesight fading as he saw first the remorseless, uncaring long face, then blackness, then her drawn-back fist, then darkness again.
He felt the knuckles connect with his jaw, even if he didn’t see them.
Perhaps he was still dizzy from his previous awakening, he thought. That’s why this was so easy for the longface to beat him so savagely. Perhaps this one was just particularly strong, or perhaps they had all been stronger than he suspected. Or had he always been weaker than he thought?
By the fourth blow, and the torrents of glistening red pouring from his nose, his thoughts shifted to something else.
Sword, he told himself. Need my sword. The head … where is it? Sword, head, sword, head … someone …
‘We need no one,’ the voice rang across rime.
‘No one will come for you,’ the voice hissed across fever.
And they, too, faded, with every blow the longface rained on him. His neck felt like a willow branch, his head like a lead weight. His arms were impotent as he tried to shield himself from her attacks. He felt bruises blossoming under his skin, cuts opening on his brow, his jaw. Eyelids fluttering, he stared at the longface as she stared back, appraisingly.
‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Don’t stop to talk before you kill ’em and they just fold right up, don’t they?’
She might have had a point, as the only words he could muster were vain pleas – whether to her or someone else, anyone else, he didn’t know – through blistered lips and a tongue swelling with coppery taste. She didn’t seem to be listening, in any case, as she knelt down before him and pulled a jagged, short blade from her belt and brought it down in a vicious chop.
He caught her arm as a tree branch catches a boulder. His wrist threatened to snap under the pressure, trembling as she strove to bring the blade down towards his soft throat, which twitched so invitingly.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lenk took a quick, despairing stock. Dreadaeleon lay fallen. Gariath was still far over the edge. Denaos was dead, Asper likely with him and Kataria …
Kataria was standing there, not twenty feet away.
She was scrambling across the deck hurriedly, pausing only to snatch up a fallen bow and a pair of arrows. Her eyes were on the companionway at the opposite end of the ship, ignoring Sheraptus hurling curses and fire at the sky, the Librarian spewing frost back at him.
She didn’t even see Lenk.
‘Kat!’
Not until he screamed, anyway.
She skidded to a halt, looking at him with worrying confusion. She seemed to recognise him in another instant and frowned, either at him or his situation, he wasn’t sure.
‘Kat! Help!’
His plea for aid twisted in his throat and became a shriek of agony as the longface’s blade came crashing down into the tender meat of his shoulder. He fought back against her still, but even as he kept the blade from biting deeper into his flesh, the jagged teeth sawed at him. His ears were filled with the sound of each sinewy strand snapping under it so that he was only scarcely sure he was still screaming.
‘KATARIA!’