Episode 10:
Boarding the Black Ship

F OR MOST OF THAT DAY the two vessels chopped foamy water, the black ship keeping just ahead.

As the sun sank lower in the west, lanterns flamed upon the deck of The Falcon's Heart.

Neekin sat by herself upon the deck, still naked, her legs pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped about her knees, as she stared broodingly at nothing. Her sword she kept at her side. The crew pointedly ignored her, stepping carefully around her if they needed to pass. They were not sure how to treat her. Some clearly still eyed her with mistrust, seeing in her an ill omen. Others were, no doubt, embarrassed by their actions, or inactions, in having almost let her be slain by a mutinous mob.

She heard footsteps stop beside her, but refused to look up.

"Will you fight with us?" Alombo asked gently.

"Why should I?"

"Because the black ship is still the enemy. Charwan Kan's powers -- well, we cannot guess at them. We need every good blade to beat him." Seeing she was unmoved, he continued, "The crew behaved abominably. But you cannot blame them. Fear eats at a man, makes him do things he should not. But now that we face the true enemy, they no longer need to see one in you."

Slowly, Neekin rose to her feet. Alombo's eyes flickered unconsciously over her soft body, then met her hard gaze. "Aye, I'll fight the wizard, though I suspect you cannot even guess what awaits us."

Alombo nodded with a small grin, conceding the point. He made to brush her cheek, but she slapped his hand away. "You did nothing to try to save me."

He frowned. "I persuaded the captain to order a combat, which you won. Otherwise, you'd have been butchered in your bonds. I saved your life."

She sneered. "Yes, you did everything for me...except jeopardize your control by ordering them to stop. If we survive this, henceforth my cabin door, and my legs, are closed to you. Now I'm off to find something to wear." She turned and strode toward the below decks. She stopped, and looked behind him. "And you were wrong...I can blame them, and I do."

Frowning, Alombo watched her go.

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Dusk was starting to settle, the chase having lasted most of the day, pulling tight the strings of tension among the crew -- strings that were near the breaking to begin with, as Neekin well knew. She had avoided Alombo for most of the late afternoon, but finally, she went to him, dressed now in a brief loin cloth and a shirt, knotted beneath her breasts. "She's too slow," she said simply at last.

He laughed. "Nonsense, we're gaining."

"Not us, her. She's too slow. A ship that size, with those sails? She wants us to catch her."

He looked at her, doubt flashing momentarily in his eyes. Then he shook his head. "Why?"

"I was thinking on what the captain had once said, about Charwan Kan's unknown origins. He's clearly known in these parts. What if this place is his home? Where his power is greatest? And where, if things go awry, we have no where to run, no port to make for. For years the captain's hunted him, but never before to these devil waters, I'll wager." She stared at him intently.

Alombo shook off her hand. "Go below if you want, if you haven't a stomach for a fight. We'll have her with or without you." The mate strode off angrily to rally his men.

Neekin watched him go, her mouth tight. The captain had been on his quest for many years and even Alombo had sailed for three after Charwan Kan. Besides, each and every man knew, the sooner they met blade with blade, the sooner they could be away eastward and home. No man on board was about to turn back now.

She only hoped, if it was a trap, they would live to regret it.

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Waves thudded hollowly against the black boards of the dark ship's hull, an aspect of rot about the wood. Moss and sheer slime glistened on the ship's sides, giving it the wet look of a great whale. The Falcon's Heart pulled in along side.

"Grapplers stand ready!" shouted the mate. The captain fidgeted at his side, both of his swords drawn.

Charwan Kan's dark ship was higher than the deck of The Falcon's Heart, making any crew on board her invisible to the eye. Neekin felt a shudder run up her spine as she gripped her cutlass with bone-white knuckles. What crew manned a ship in such utter silence?

With a rattle of lines, grappling hooks bit into black wood and snagged slimey rails. The ropes snapped tight, the two ships now, inexorably, linked.

And then the black ship's crew attacked.

A mass of bodies in ragged garments, swords waving, flooded over the side in hellish silence, raining down on the deck like human hail. And the crew of hardened mercenaries knew fear.

Neekin was one of the first to face an opponent, and what she met made her skin crawl. Beneath tattered rags walked a corpse of grey, rotting flesh with eyes like cave mouths. Charwan Kan's mute agents from years ago, as the captain had told the tale, had gone to seed it seemed.

Bile rising in her throat, Neekin crashed her blade against the dead man's. It staggered a little under her assault, its jaw flapping uselessly, the stench of decomposition washing over her. They cut and hacked at each other while the cries and screams of her comrades sounded about them, the clang of steel on steel; the enemy, though, made no sound. The thing was not strong, nor particularly skilled. Twice she slipped through its defenses and raked her blade across its breast, splitting it open to the ribs. Yet no blood poured and its empty face registered no pain. She slipped on blood from a fallen comrade and went down, hard. Her attacker came forward, sword raised for a killing strike. Neekin rolled and her blade flashed, cutting her opponent's leg from its body. It fell, crippled, but continued swinging its sword vainly. Neekin's stomach heaved. Never had she seen a battle so clearly drawn for the mind of a madman.

Yet things began to make sense. Charwan Kan's agent who they had pursued earlier across the water, who seemed not to tire, who did not speak, who had only the barest understanding of self-preservation -- he had been one of these.

Around her many of the human sailors lay in pools of their own blood, beaten down by the numbers, or just the very horror of their foes. The enemy too lay about, hacked and torn but twitching still. She looked for Alombo and saw him clampering onto the black ship's deck, the captain in the lead, a dozen men at his side. Hacking aside a stumbling corpse-man, she ran nimbly up the grapple-line and landed at the mate's side. Behind her, the deck of The Falcon's Heart was overrun.

"We should stay on our ship," she called, ducking beneath a swung blade and skewering a grey figure on her sword. She twisted the blade, knocking the thing aside. "We must secure the ship if we're to escape!"

Alombo looked at her blankly, his eyes wet and wide with the horror he was seeing. He hacked and parried automatically.

"No!" roared El-Antiague, twin swords flashing, hewing grey arms from torsos, grey heads from shoulders. "Dorial!" he screamed, pressing forward, madly searching for his long ago kidnapped bride. "Dorial!!!"

Two more sailors went down beneath hacking blades, then a third. As Neekin became engaged with one corpse, she saw Alombo herded toward the stem of the ship by a half-dozen figures. He backed up the ladder to the forecastle, sword hacking down upon his opponents, and still they came, flooding up onto the front deck, 'till he was in the centre of a vortex of silent figures, grey arms rising and falling, blades pummeling. He disappeared screaming beneath the unnatural mass of living death. With an animal snarl, Neekin cut the head from her opponent and ran to her lover's aid. She mounted the deck and sliced into the unsuspecting figures from behind, using her sword as much like a cudgel as a blade. Rotted tissue parted easily, aged bones snapped like dry twigs.

She dropped to her knees and gathered Alombo up in her arms. His body was a mass of bloody gashes, his garments torn to rags. His dead eyes stared into enternity. Her throat caught as she held him close. Despite their falling out, she mourned him.

"Dorial!"

Neekin looked up. She was alone now, save for the captain: the last of the crew of The Falcon's Heart. Grey figures stumbled about dazedly on the deck below, arms hanging loosely, the boards slick with slime and human gore. El-Antiague was mounting the poop at the aft of the ship with a zealot's frenzy, blind to all but his goal. Beyond him Neekin glimpsed an ill-defined form. She blinked, stunned. For the briefest moment that form appeared not quite human; squatter, with a many-limbed aspect. Then the hallucination was dispelled and a man in a black robe, wide sleeves twisting in the breeze, stood before the taff-rail. His lean, ageless face was tattooed with green and blue eldritch symbols that, she knew in her heart, had no meaning in any land on the continent.

But the strangest sight stood between the two sworn enemies. A woman! Dressed in bridal white, she was beautiful with raven's hair swirling about her face.

"Dorial," called the captain softly, voice trembling. He advanced, Charwan Kan forgotten in the presence of his heart.

Neekin scowled. Alombo had claimed El-Antiague's wife had been taken years ago, yet this Dorial looked a youthful maiden. Neekin cried out: a warning, a curse, a wordless sound; she knew not. Leaving Alombo, the still-living her first concern, she vaulted over the forecastle's rail and landed on the lower deck. But El-Antiague was deaf to her cries as he gathered his bride in one arm and held her close, blade outstretched toward the sorcerer.

Neekin ran towards the poop. She saw fangs flash in a perfect mouth, saw eyes glow that were no longer human. Neekin screamed and her scream blended with the captain's as his true love sank her teeth into his throat.

Neekin stumbled to a halt. Eerie laughter cascaded over her as the black-robed figure named Charwan Kan turned his gaze from the death throes of his hated enemy -- turned toward her.

Numbly, she looked behind her.

Stumbling, staggering, crawling, dragging themselves along, the men of the black ship had returned in victory from The Falcon's Heart and advanced upon her. Among the grey and rot-eaten were newer faces, still pink and brown, streaked with blood. Charwan Kan had fresh conscripts. She slashed out with her blade, swinging left and right as she backed toward the ladder. Wordless mouths gaped at her, and for the first time she realized that every one bore pronounced canines -- even the newly dead of The Falcon's Heart. A figure pressed forward, blood on the scruff of his beard, eyes vacant in his handsome brown face, teeth bared.

With a strangled cry, Neekin turned from Alombo's outstretched hands and scrambled up the ladder to the poop. Dorial still crouched beast-like over her dead lover while Charwan Kan laughed the laugh of the mad.

Her mind a whirl, almost pressed beyond conscious thought, Neekin tried to see some hope, some way out. But it was so dark and growing darker still. There were no lanterns on the black ship.

And then she thought of the Manoori vessel, deliberately set ablaze. They had assumed by Charwan Kan, but seeing now how the sorcerer claimed his victims as his undead slaves, she wondered if instead the Manoori had burned their own vessel, and themselves, rather than face this destiny. And on the cay, too, Charwan Kan's man had been burned by the islanders. If a living corpse could not be stabbed or strangled, then that left but one method to destroy that which was already dead.

In eerie quiet the undead crawled up the ladder, over top of each other, in pursuit of her. Neekin gripped one of the lines and hacked it free with her sword. Then, stealing herself, she ran toward the hellish horde and leaped. Clammy fingers grabbed at her legs clumsily as she swung out over their heads and across the black ship.

She released the rope and landed painfully on the deserted deck of The Falcon's Heart. Gaining her feet, she ran along the side, chopping frantically with her sword at the taut grappling lines which snapped like whips as they broke. With the last link severed, the ships began drifting apart with frustrating sluggishness.

Grey bodies loomed silently at the rails of the black ship -- watching her with dead eyes.

Revulsed by the unnatural monstrosity before her, and remembering her conclusion about fire, Neekin grabbed one of the lanterns hanging on deck and flung it at the ship. It crashed against the hull, its oil catching, and flames licked at aged wood. She lobbed another lantern and it smashed across the deck. The third fell short and vanished into the cold water.

Waves rolled up, slapping hungrily at the hull of The Falcon's Heart, and the sails swelled with an easternly wind, pushing her further and further away from the nightmare ship. If the wind held, then even without a crew her vessel would drift naturally toward more travelled sea routes.

Charwan Kan's screams to his hellish crew echoed across the waves, as he tried to rally them to douse the flames. Perhaps dead flesh burned as readily as old wood, or perhaps the crew, fearless in the face of a second death, felt not their master's urgency. Whatever the reason, red and gold fire spread, seeming unchecked. It raced up the fore and aft decks and streaked the dark hull with fingers of living light. It licked at the masts, and grey sails smouldered then caught, turning vast sheets into lambent towers casting angry illumination on the dark water. The sails burned, then curled into black garlands writhing snake-like before plunging into the ocean.

Standing on the bloodied deck, Neekin leaned against a mast and stared at the glowing silhouette of the burning black ship. Her cutlass clattered to the deck and she began to tremble uncontrollably.