The Great Rift by Edward W. Robertson Page A

on currents and a rather slack wind. Not that they were trying to outrun the Bloody Knuckles, so far as he knew. In fact, he had the impression that appearing to flee at full sail was a mere ploy to keep their would-be predators on the hunt. To avoid the ram too, he supposed. He was no admiral.
    The next few minutes were confusing ones. Dante waited behind an open door while the archers fired and crew strained with the rigging. Three men jogged down the aftercastle steps bearing a grimacing norren, an arrow projecting from his ribs.
    "Lay him on the deck!" Dante rushed into the open deck. The men stopped, glancing between each other as if he were a stranger in the street. Dante circled in front of them. "Put him down, gods damn it."
    They stretched the wounded man on the damp planks. Dante knelt, stripping the norren's shirt away from the arrow buried in the side of his furry chest. Blood slid to the wood. The man's eyes were open and moving, but he did no more than grimace as Dante tested the arrow, then yanked it wetly from the wound. Dante slung it aside and clamped his hands to the bleeding. Within moments, the blood stanched, scabbing.
    Dante rose, wiping his hands on his pants. "Get him below."
    "Will he be okay?" one of the clan warriors asked.
    "He's less fit to fight than a dropped baby bird, but he'll be fine."
    The norren knelt to offer the wounded man his shoulder. They limped towards the stairs. On the castle, men shouted. The Ransom loomed above the railing, oars pulled in as it swung alongside the smaller craft. Hooks and grapnels arced from the pirate vessel, clunking into the Boomer 's planks and rails. Sword-bearing norren charged to the railing to hack at the ropes drawing the two ships together. Arrows whisked from above, dropping two warriors and driving the others back.
    Men with knuckles wrapped in red cloth vaulted down the eight-foot rise between the ships. The norren met them, heavy swords hammering the pirates to the deck. Sabers and short swords flashed in the enemy's hands. Norren dropped along the line. Blays charged a tall, ragged-haired man, intercepting the enemy's incoming thrust with his left-hand blade, flicking his wrist and elbow in an upward snap. The parry deflected the pirate's sword past Blays' shoulder; Blays' right-hand weapon buried itself in the enemy's gut. Dante moved to Blays' flank. A spear jabbed at his ribs. He battered it down with a clumsy strike, then thrust out his empty hand. The nether punched straight through the spearman's neck. He collapsed into the railing.
    Nether speared down from the upper vessel, knocking three clan warriors from their feet. Blood pattered the deck. Above, a man in a long coat with a single stripe of hair atop his shaved head raised his hand in an eagle's claw. Dante fell back from the clanging melee, lashing a bolt of shadows at the chest of the man in the coat. The sorcerer's face blanked in shock. He jerked backwards, blasting raw nether at the incoming force, dashing it into the night. His gaze snapped to Dante. A rush of piercing energy followed. Dante knocked it aside with a wedge of shadows. They struggled this way for some seconds, needles of nether twining around one another and boiling away into nothing.
    Dante eased his resistance, falling back a step as the other man's dark tendrils wormed forward. The man in the coat smiled. Dante lashed out for the Ransom 's railing instead, pelting the man with a hail of hard splinters. His focus collapsed. Dante drove forward, lancing the man's heart with a bolt of raw force.
    To his right, a blade flicked at his face. Blays intercepted with crossed swords, scissoring the enemy weapon into the planks, then rolled his forearms, swinging his blades through a tight circle and snapping them into the attacker's jacket-padded collarbones. As the man staggered, Dante took him under the ribs with his sword.
    Humans and norren flopped and bled. No member of the Bloody Knuckles remained standing on the