An Affinity for Steel

Book 0: Aeons' Gate

by Sam Sykes

Genres: Action & Adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

There are only a few productive things a man can do once he picks up a sword. And the very lowest of these is to become an adventurer, like Lenk and his companions. For the right price, no deed is too dirty, no task is too dangerous, no foe too ferocious. Not even a demon. From wars ancient and terrible, wounds are bleeding. From seas deep and fathomless, demons are rising. From the mouth of hell, the Kraken Queen is calling. And all that stands between the damned and the mortal world are a pack of degenerates and the steel they carry. Seas will rise. Heaven will fall. Now, for the first time the breakout trilogy by Sam Sykes is collected in one volume.

Release date: December 15, 2015

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 1472

Sample

In the span of a breath, colour and sound died on the wind.

The green of the ocean, the flutter of sails, the tang of salt in the air vanished from Lenk’s senses. The world faded into darkness, leaving only the tall, leather-skinned man before him and the sword clutched in his hands.

The man loosed a silent howl and leapt forwards. Lenk’s sword rose just as his foe’s curved blade came crashing down.

They met in a kiss of sparks. Life returned to Lenk’s senses in the groan of the grinding blades. He was aware of many things at once: the man’s towering size, the sound of curses boiling out of tattooed lips, the odour of sweat and the blood staining the wood under their feet.

The man uttered something through a yellow-toothed smile; Lenk watched every writhing twitch of his mouth, hearing no words behind them. No time to wonder. He saw the man’s free hand clutching a smaller, crueller blade, whipping up to seek his ribs.

The steel embrace shattered. Lenk leapt backwards, feeling his boots slide along the red-tinged salt beneath him. His heels struck something fleshy and solid and unmoving; his backpedal halted.

Don’t look, he urged himself, not yet.

He had eyes for nothing but his foe’s larger blade as it came hurtling down upon him. Lenk darted away, watched the cutlass bite into the slick timbers and embed itself. He saw the twitch of the man’s eye—the realisation of his mistake and the instant in which futile hope existed.

And then died.

Lenk lunged, sword up and down in a flashing arc. His senses returned with painful slowness; he could hear the echo of the man’s shriek, feel the sticky life spatter across his face, taste the tang of copper on his lips. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, the man knelt before his own severed arm, shifting a wide-eyed stare from the leaking appendage to the young man standing over him.

Not yet.

Lenk’s sword flashed again, biting deeply into meat and sliding out again. Only when its tip lowered, steady, to the timbers, only when his opponent collapsed, unmoving, did he allow himself to take in the sight.

The pirate’s eyes were quivering pudding: stark white against the leather of his flesh. They looked stolen, wearing an expression that belonged to a smaller, more fearful man. Lenk met his foe’s gaze, seeing his own blue stare reflected in the whites until the light behind them sputtered out in the span of a sole, ragged breath.

He drew a lock of silver hair from his eyes, ran his hand down his face, wiping the sweat and substance from his brow. His fingers came back to him trembling and stained.

Lenk drew in a breath.

In that breath, the battle had ended. The roar of the pirates’ retreat and the hesitant, hasty battle cries of sailors had faded on the wind. The steel that had flashed under the light of a shameless staring sun now lay on the ground in limp hands. The stench ebbed on the breeze, filled the sails overhead and beckoned the hungry gulls to follow.

The dead remained.

They were everywhere, having ceased to be men. Now they were litter, so many obstacles of drained flesh and broken bones lying motionless on the deck. Pirates lay here and there, amongst the sailors they had taken with them. Some embraced their foes with rigor-stiffening limbs. Most lay on their backs, eyes turned to Gods that had no answers for the questions that had died on their lips.

Disconcerting.

His thought seemed an understatement, perhaps insultingly so, but he had seen many bodies in his life, many not half as peacefully gone. He had drawn back trembling hands many times before, flicked blood from his sword many times before, as he did now. And he was certain that the stale breath he drew would not be the last to be scented with death.

“Astounding congratulations should be proffered for so ruby a sport, good sir!”

Lenk whirled about at the voice, blade up. The pirate standing upon the railing of the Riptide, however, seemed less than impressed, if the banana-coloured grin on his face was any indication. He extended a long, tattooed limb and made an elaborate bow.

“It is the sole pleasure of the Linkmaster’s crew, myself included, to look forward to offering a suitable retort for,” the pirate paused to gesture to the human litter, “our less fortunate complements, of suitable fury and adequately accompanying disembowelment.”

“Uh,” Lenk said, blinking, “what?”

Had he time and wit enough about him to decipher the tattooed man’s expression, he would, he assured himself, have come up with a more suitable retort.

“Do hold that thought, kind sir. I shall return anon to carve it out.”

Like some particularly eloquent hairless ape, the pirate fell to all fours and scampered nimbly across a chain swaying over the gap of quickly shifting sea between the two ships. He was but one of many, Lenk noted, as the remaining tattooed survivors fled back over the railings of their own vessel.

“Cragsmen,” the young man muttered, spitting on the deck at the sight of the inked masses.

Their leviathan ship shared their love of decoration, it seemed. Its title was painted in bold, violent crimson upon a black hull, sharp as a knife: Linkmaster. And in equally threatening display were crude scrawlings of ships of various sizes beneath the title, each one with a triumphant red cross drawn through it.

Save one that bore a peculiar resemblance to the Riptide’s triple masts.

“Eager little bastards,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes. “They’ve already picked out a spot for us.”

He blinked. That realisation carried a heavy weight, one that struck him suddenly. He had thought that the pirates were chance raiders and the Riptide nothing more than an unlucky victim. This particular drawing, apparently painted days before, suggested something else.

“Khetashe,” Lenk cursed under his breath, “they’ve been waiting for us.”

“Were they?” someone grunted from behind him, a voice that seemed to think it should be feminine but wasn’t quite convinced.

He turned about and immediately regretted doing so. A pair of slender hands in fingerless leather gloves reached down to grip an arrow’s shaft jutting from a man’s chest. He should have been used to the sound of arrowheads being wrenched out of flesh, he knew, but he couldn’t help cringing.

Somehow, one never got all the way used to Kataria.

“Because if this is an ambush,” the pale creature said as she inspected the bloody arrow, “it’s a rather pitiful excuse for one.” She caught his uncomfortable stare and offered an equally unpleasant grin as she tapped her chin with the missile’s head. “But then, humans have never been very good at this sort of thing, have they?”

Her ears were always the first thing he noticed about Kataria: long, pointed spears of pale flesh peeking out from locks of dirty blonde hair, three deep notches running the length of each as they twitched and trembled like beings unto themselves. Those ears, as long as the feathers laced in her hair, were certainly the most prominent markers of her shictish heritage.

The immense, fur-wrapped bow she carried on her back, as well as the short-cut leathers she wore about what only barely constituted a bosom, leaving her muscular midsection exposed, were also indicative of her savage custom.

“You looked as surprised as any to find them aboard,” Lenk replied. With a sudden awareness, he cast a glance about the deck. “So did Denaos, come to think of it. Where did he go?”

“Well…” She tapped the missile’s fletching against her chin as she inspected the deck. “I suppose if you just find the trail of urine and follow it, you’ll eventually reach him.”

“Whereas one need only follow your stench to find you?” he asked, daring a little smirk.

“Correction,” she replied, unfazed, “one need only look for the clear winner.” She pushed a stray lock of hair behind the leather band about her brow, glanced at the corpse at Lenk’s feet. “What’s that? Your first one today?”

“Second.”

“Well, well, well.” Her smile was as unpleasant as the red-painted arrows she held before her, her canines as prominent and sharp as their glistening heads. “I win.”

“This isn’t a game, you know.”

“You only say that because you’re losing.” She replaced the bloodied missiles in the quiver on her back. “What’s it matter to you, anyway? They’re dead. We’re not. Seems a pretty favourable situation to me.”

“That last one snuck up on me.” He kicked the body. “Nearly gutted me. I told you to watch my back.”

“What? When?”

“First, when we came up here.” He counted off on his fingers. “Next, when everyone started screaming, ‘Pirates! Pirates!’ And then, when I became distinctly aware of the possibility of someone shoving steel into my kidneys. Any of these sound familiar?”

“Vaguely,” she said, scratching her backside. “I mean, not the actual words, but I do recall the whining.” She offered a broader smile to cut off his retort. “You tell me lots of things: ‘Watch my back, watch his back, put an arrow in his back.’ Watch backs. Shoot humans. I got the idea.”

“I said shoot Cragsmen.” Upon seeing her unregistering blink, he sighed and kicked the corpse again. “These things! The pirates! Don’t shoot our humans!”

“I haven’t,” she replied with a smirk. “Yet.”

“Are you planning to start?” he asked.

“If I run out of the other kind, maybe.”

Lenk looked out over the railing and sighed.

No chance of that happening anytime soon.

The crew of the Linkmaster stood at the railings of their vessel, poised over the clanking chain bridges with barely restrained eagerness. And yet, Lenk noted with a narrowing of his eyes, restrained all the same. Their leering, eager faces outnumbered the Riptide’s panicked expressions, their cutlasses shone brighter than any staff or club their victims had managed to cobble together.

And yet, all the same, they remained on their ship, content to throw at the Riptide nothing more than hungry stares and the occasional declaration of what they planned to do with Kataria, no matter what upper assets she might lack. The phrase “segregate those weeping dandelions ’twixt a furious hammer” was shouted more than once.

Any other day, he would have taken the time to ponder the meaning behind that. At that moment, another question consumed his thoughts.

“What are they waiting for?”

“Right now?” Kataria growled, flattened ears suggesting she heard quite clearly their intentions and divined their meaning. “Possibly for me to put an arrow in their gullets.”

“They could easily overrun us,” he muttered. “Why wouldn’t they attack now, while they still have the advantage?”

“Scared?”

“Concerned.”

“About what?”

Largely, he told himself, that we’re going to die and you’re going to be the cause. His thoughts throbbed painfully in the back of his head. They’re waiting for something, I know it, and when they finally decide to attack, all I’ve got is a lunatic shict to fight them. Where are the others? Where’s Dreadaeleon? Where’s Denaos? Why do I even keep them around? I could do this. I could survive this if they were gone.

If she were…

He felt her stare upon him as surely as if she’d shot him. From the corner of his own eye, he could see hers staring at him. No, he thought, studying. Studying with an unnerving steadiness that exceeded even the unpleasantness of her long-vanished smile.

His skin twitched under her gaze, he shifted, turned a shoulder to her.

Stop staring at me.

She canted her head to one side. “What?”

Any response he might have had degenerated into a sudden cry of surprise, one lost amidst countless others, as the deck shifted violently beneath him, sending him hurtling to one knee. He was rendered deaf by the roar of waves as the Riptide rent the sea beneath it with the force of its turn, but even the ocean could not drown out the furious howl from the Riptide’s helm.

“More men!” the voice screeched. “Get more men to the railing! What are you doing, you thrice-fondled sons of six-legged whores from hell? Get those chains off!”

Not an eye could help turning to the ship’s wheel, and the slim, dark figure behind it. A bald beacon, Captain Argaol’s hairless head shone with sweat as his muscles strained to guide his bride of wood and sails away from her pursuer. Eyes white and wide in furious snarl, he turned a scowl onto Lenk.

“What in Zamanthras’s name are you blasphemers being paid for?” He thrust a finger towards the railings. “Get. Them. OFF!”

Several bodies pushed past Lenk, hatchets in hand as they rushed the chains biting into the Riptide’s hull. At this, a lilting voice cut across the gap of the sea, sharp as a blade to Lenk’s ears as he pulled himself to his feet.

“I say, kind Captain, that hardly seems the proper way to address the gentlemen in your employ, does it?” The helmsman of the Linkmaster taunted with little effort as he guided the black vessel to keep pace with its prey. “Truly, sirrah, perhaps you could benefit from a tongue more silver than brass?”

“Stuff your metaphors in your eyes and burn them, Cragscum!” Argaol split his roar in twain, hurling the rest of his fury at his crew below. “Faster! Work faster, you hairless monkeys! Get the chains off!”

“Do we help?” Kataria asked, looking from the chains to Lenk. “I mean, aren’t you a monkey?”

“Monkeys lack a sense of business etiquette,” Lenk replied. “Argaol isn’t the one who pays us.” His eyes drifted down, along with his frown, to the dull iron fingers peeking over the edge of the Riptide’s hull. “Besides, no amount of screaming is going to smash that thing loose.”

Her eyes followed his, and so did her lips, at the sight of the massive metal claw. A “mother claw,” some sailors had shrieked upon seeing it: a massive bridge of links, each the size of a housecat, ending in six massive talons that clung to its victim ship like an overconfident drunkard.

“Were slander but one key upon a ring of victory, good Captain, I dare suggest you’d not be in such delicate circumstance,” the Linkmaster’s helmsman called from across the gap. “Alas, a lack of manners more frequently begets sharp devices embedded in kidneys. If I might be so brash as to suggest surrender as a means of keeping your internal organs free of metallic intrusion?”

The mother claw had since lived up to its title, resisting any attempt to dislodge it. What swords could be cobbled together had been broken upon it. The sailors that might have been able to dislodge it when the Cragsmen attacked were also the first to be cut down or grievously wounded. All attempts to tear away from its embrace had proved useless.

Not that it seems to stop Argaol from trying, Lenk noted.

“You might,” the captain roared to his rival, “but only if I might suggest shoving said suggestion square up your—”

The vulgarity was lost in the wooden groan of the Riptide as Argaol pulled the wheel sharply, sending his ship cutting through salt like a scythe. The mother chain wailed in metal panic, going taut and pulling the Linkmaster back alongside its prey. A collective roar of surprise went up from the crew as they were sent sprawling. Lenk’s own was a muffled grunt, as Kataria’s modest weight was hurled against him.

His breath was struck from him and his senses with it. When they returned to him, he was conscious of many things at once: the sticky deck beneath him, the calls of angry gulls above him and the groan of sailors clambering to their feet.

And her.

His breath seeped into his nostrils slowly, carrying with it a new scent that overwhelmed the stench of decay. He tasted her sweat on his tongue, smelled blood that wept from the few scratches on her torso, and felt the warmth of her slick flesh pressed against him, seeping through his stained tunic and into his skin like a contagion.

He opened his eyes and found hers boring into his. He saw his own slack jaw reflected in their green depths, unable to look away.

“Hardly worthy of praise, Captain,” the Linkmaster’s helmsman called out, drawing their attentions. “Might one suggest even the faintest caress of Lady Reason would e’er do your plight well?”

“So…” Kataria said, screwing up her face in befuddlement, “do they all talk like that?”

“Cragsmen are lunatics,” he muttered in reply. “Their mothers drink ink when they’re still in the womb, so every one of them comes out tattooed and out of his skull.”

“What? Really?”

“Khetashe, I don’t know,” he grunted, shoving her off and clambering to his feet. “The point is that, in a few moments when they finally decide to board again, they’re going to run us over, cut us open and shove our intestines up our noses!” He glanced her over. “Well, I mean, they’ll kill me, at least. You, they said they’d like to—”

“Yeah,” she snarled, “I heard them. But that’s only if they board.”

“And what makes you think they’re not going to?” He flailed in the general direction of the mother chain. “So long as that thing is there, they can just come over and visit whenever the fancy takes them!”

“So we get rid of it!”

“How? Nothing can move it!”

“Gariath could move it.”

“Gariath could do a lot of things,” Lenk snarled, scowling across the deck to the companionway that led to the ship’s hold. “He could come out here and help us instead of waiting for us all to die, but since he hasn’t, he could just choke on his own vomit and I’d be perfectly happy.”

“Well, I hope you won’t take offence if I’m not willing to sit around and wait with you to die.”

“Good! No waiting required! Just jump up to the front and get it over quickly!”

“Typical human,” she said, sneering and showing a large canine. “You’re giving up before the bodies are even hung and feeding the trees.”

“What does that even mean?” he roared back at her. Before she could retort, he held up a hand and sighed. “One moment. Let’s… let’s just pretend that death is slightly less imminent and think for a moment.”

“Think about what?” she asked, rolling her shoulders. “The situation seems pretty solved to you, at least. What are we supposed to do?”

Lenk’s eyes became blue flurries, darting about the ship. He looked from the chains and their massive mother to the men futilely trying to dislodge them. He looked from the companionway to Argaol shrieking at the helm. He looked from Kataria’s hard green stare to the Riptide’s rail…

And to the lifeboat dangling from its riggings.

“What, indeed—”

“Well,” a voice soft and sharp as a knife drawn from leather hissed, “you know my advice.”

Lenk turned and was immediately greeted by what resembled a bipedal cockroach. The man was crouched over a Cragsman’s corpse, studying it through dark eyes that suggested he might actually eat it if left alone. His leathers glistened like a dark carapace, his fingers twitched like feelers as they ran down the body’s leg.

Denaos’s smile, however, was wholly human, if a little unpleasant.

“And what advice is that?” Kataria asked, sneering at the man. “Run? Hide? Offer up various orifices in a desperate exchange for mercy?”

“Oh, they won’t be patient enough to let you offer, I assure you.” The rogue’s smile only grew broader at the insult. “Curb that savage organ you call a tongue, however, and I might be generous enough to share a notion of escape with you.”

“You’ve been plotting an escape this whole time the rest of us have been fighting?” Lenk didn’t bother to frown; Denaos’s lack of shame had rendered him immune to even the sharpest twist of lips. “Did you have so little faith in us?”

Denaos gave a cursory glance over the deck and shrugged. “I count exactly five dead Cragsmen, only one more than I had anticipated.”

“We don’t get paid by the body,” Lenk replied.

“Perhaps you should negotiate a new contract,” Kataria offered.

“We have a contract?” The rogue’s eyes lit up brightly.

“She was being sarcastic,” Lenk said.

Immediately, Denaos’s face darkened. “Sarcasm implies humour,” he growled. “There’s not a damn thing funny about not having money.” He levelled a finger at the shict. “What you were being was facetious, a quality of speech reserved only for the lowest and most cruel of jokes. Regardless,” he turned back to the corpse, “it was clear you didn’t need me.”

“Not need you in a fight?” Lenk cracked a grin. “I’m quickly getting used to the idea.”

“We should just use him as a shield next time,” Kataria said, nodding, “see if we can’t get at least some benefit from him.”

“I hate to agree with her,” Lenk said with a sigh, “but… well, I mean you make it so easy, Denaos. Where were you when the fighting began, anyway?”

“Elsewhere,” the rogue said with a shrug.

“One of us could have been killed,” Lenk replied sharply.

Denaos glanced from Lenk to Kataria, expression unchanging. “Well, that might have been a mild inconvenience or a cause for celebration, depending. As both of you are alive, however, I can only assume that my initial theory was correct. As to where I was—”

“Hiding?” Kataria interrupted. “Crying? Soiling yourself?”

“Correction.” Denaos’s reply was as smooth and easy as the knife that leapt from his belt to his hand. “I was hiding and soiling myself, if you want to call it that. At the moment…” He slid the dagger into the leg-seam of the Cragsman’s trousers. “I’m looting.”

“Uh-huh.” Lenk got the vague sensation that continuing to watch the rogue work would be a mistake, but was unable to turn his head away as Denaos began to cut. “And… out of curiosity, what would you call what you were doing?”

“I believe the proper term is ‘reconnaissance’.”

“Scouting is what I do,” Kataria replied, making a show of her twitching ears.

“Yes, you’re very good at sniffing faeces and hunting beasts. What I do is…” He looked up from his macabre activities, waving his weapon as he searched for the word. “Of a more philosophical nature.”

“Go on,” Lenk said, ignoring the glare Kataria shot him for indulging the man.

“Given our circumstances, I’d say what I do is more along the lines of planning for the future,” Denaos said, finishing the long cut up the trouser leg.

Heavy masks of shock settled over the young man and shict’s faces, neither of them able to muster the energy to cringe as Denaos slid a long arm into the slit and reached up the Cragsman’s leg. Quietly, Kataria cleared her throat and leaned over to Lenk.

“Are… are you going to ask him?”

“I would,” he muttered, “but I really don’t think I want to know.”

“Now then, as I was saying,” Denaos continued with all the nonchalance of a man who did not have his arm up another man’s trouser leg, “being reasonable men and insane pointy-eared savages alike, I assume we’re thinking the same thing.”

“Somehow,” Lenk said, watching with morbid fascination, “I sincerely doubt that.”

“That is,” Denaos continued, heedless, “we’re thinking of running, aren’t we?”

“You are,” Kataria growled. “And no one’s surprised. The rest of us already have a plan.”

“Which would be?” Denaos wore a look of deep contemplation. “Lenk and I have rather limited options: fight and die or run and live.” He looked up and cast a disparaging glance at Kataria’s chest. “Yours are improved only by the chance that they might mistake you for a pointy-eared, pubescent boy instead of a woman.” He shrugged. “Then again, they might prefer that.”

“You stinking, cowardly round-ear,” she snarled, baring her canines at him. “The plan is to neither run nor die, but to fight!” She jabbed her elbow into Lenk’s side. “The leader says so!”

“You do?” Denaos asked, looking genuinely perplexed.

“Well, I… uh…” Lenk frowned, watching the movement of Denaos’s hand through the Cragsman’s trousers. “I think you might…” He finally shook his head. “Look, I don’t disapprove of looting, really, but I think I might have a problem with whatever it is you’re doing here.”

“Looting, as I said.”

Denaos’s hand suddenly stiffened, seizing something as a wicked smile came over his face. Lenk cringed and turned away as the man’s long fingers tensed, twisted and pulled violently. When he looked back, the man was dangling a small leather purse between his fingers.

“The third pocket,” the rogue explained, wiping the purse off on the man’s trousers, “where all reasonable men hide their wealth.”

“Including you?” Lenk asked.

“Assuming I had any wealth to spend,” Denaos replied, “I would hide it in a spot that would make a looter give long, hard thought as to just how badly he wanted it.” He slipped the pouch into his belt. “At any rate, this is likely as good as it’s going to get for me.”

“For us, you mean,” Lenk said.

“Oh, no, no. For you, it’s going to get much worse, since you seem rather intent on staying here.”

“We are in the employ of—”

“We are adventurers in the employ of Evenhands,” Denaos pointed out. “And what has he done for us? We’ve been at sea for a month and all we’ve got to show for it is dirty clothes, seasickness and the occasional native-borne disease.” He looked at Lenk intently. “Out at sea, there’s no chance to make an honest living. We’re as like to be killed as get paid, and Evenhands knows that.”

He shook a trembling finger, as though a great idea boiled on the tip of it.

“Now,” he continued, “if we run, we can sneak back to Toha and catch a ship back to the mainland. On the continent proper, we can go anywhere, do anything: mercenary work for the legions in Karneria, bodyguarding the fashas in Cier’Djaal. We’ll earn real coin without all these promises that Evenhands is offering us. Out here, we’re just penniless.”

“We’ll be just as penniless on the mainland,” Lenk countered. “We run, the only thing we’ve earned is a reputation for letting employers, godly employers, die.”

“And the dead spend no money,” Denaos replied smoothly. “Besides, we won’t need to take jobs to make money.” He glanced at Kataria, gesturing with his chin. “We can sell the shict to a brothel.” He coughed. “Or a zoo of some kind.”

“Try it,” Kataria levelled her growl at both men, “and what parts of you I don’t shoot full of holes, I’ll hack off and wear as a hat.” She bared her teeth at Denaos. “And just because you plan to die—”

“The plan is not to die, haven’t you been listening? And before you ask, yes, I’m certain that we will die when they return, for two reasons.”

“If they return,” Kataria interjected. “We scared them off before.”

“When they return,” Denaos countered. “Which coincides with the first reason: this was just the probe.”

“The what?”

“Ah, excuse me,” the man said as he rose up. “I forgot I was talking to a savage. Allow me to explain the finer points of business.”

Lenk spared a moment to think, not for the first time, that it was decidedly unfair that the rogue should stand nearly a head taller than himself. It’s not as though the length of your trousers matters when you piss them routinely, he thought resentfully.

“Piracy,” the tall man continued, “like all forms of murder, is a matter of business. It’s a haggle, a matter of bidding and buying. What they just sent over,” he paused to nudge the corpse at his feet, “is their initial bid, an investment. It’s the price they paid to see how many more men they’d need to take the ship.”

“That’s a lot of philosophy to justify running away,” Lenk said, arching an eyebrow.

“You had a lot of time to think while hiding?” Kataria asked.

“It’s really more a matter of instinct,” Denaos replied.

“The instinct of a rat,” Kataria hissed, “is to run, hide and eat their own excrement. There’s a reason no one listens to them.”

“Forgive me, I misspoke.” He held up his hands, offering an offensively smarmy smile. “By ‘instinct’, I meant to say ‘it’s blindingly obvious to anyone but a stupid shict’. See, if I were attacking a ship bearing a half-clad, half-mad barbarian that at least resembled a woman wearing breeches tighter than the skin on an overfed hog, I would most certainly want to know how many men I needed to take her with no more holes in her than I could realistically use.”

She opened her mouth, ready to launch a hailstorm of retorts. Her indignation turned into a blink, as though she were confused when nothing would come. Coughing, she looked down.

“So it’s not that bad an idea,” she muttered. Finding a sudden surge of courage, she looked back up. “But, I mean, we killed the first ones. We can kill them again.”

“Kill how many?” Denaos replied. “Three? Six? That leaves roughly three dozen left to kill.” He pointed a finger over the railing. “And reason number two.”

Lenk saw the object of attention right away; it was impossible not to once the amalgamation of metal and flesh strode to the fore.

“Rashodd,” Lenk muttered.

He had heard the name gasped in fear when the Linkmaster first arrived. He heard it again now as the captain of the black ship stood before his crew, the echo of his