“I know that, and you know that, and that’s all I care about.”
Urtzi bent forward and captured her lips again, just as hungry as before—but then their whole world shook with a shuddering halt.
“What?” The word was out of his mouth, but only in reflex. He knew just as well as she did what that was. They both answered the question in an overlapping echo.
“The sand bottom.”
Rolling flat on their bellies, they lifted the starboard cover. Land was less than two ship’s lengths away. The mountains were snowcapped though it was summer, the trees atop the Divide cliffs thick stands of junipers. Actually, there was a true beach in the angling distance, which meant they were likely rounding the corner of the continent, away from the Divide and toward the open water. It would be hard to tell without a view to the other side to gauge the location of Eritri.
“That’s either Pyrenee or Ardenia,” Ula whispered.
Urtzi nodded as there was a huge splash and the boat lilted so far to portside that he had to brace himself to keep from rolling straight into Ula. “And that was the anchor.”
“But we’re not at a port…” Ula surmised. They knew every port and even with what they could see it was obvious that they were not in a harbor.
But of course, they weren’t. These wererealpirates. They couldn’t easily dock at a main royal port without notice, especially in a ship like this. It was possible to pay off a harbormaster but not everyone with eyes.
Ula grabbed Urtzi’s shoulder with a panicked twist of grip. “They’re boarding the boats.”
Urtzi cursed.
Sure enough, there was suddenly a certain thud and clang of bodies and movement and boats swaying upon their ship side. Through a slit in the cover, they confirmed that pirates were scaling the chains keeping the rowboats secure.
One by one, they dropped to each rowboat, removed the covering and tossed it upward, laddering the covers until each was stored up upon the boat. After each vessel was uncovered, its crew would climb down into it. Four to a boat, as it appeared, with Geneva up front. She was their mark, but she was also too far for an accurate hit with a knife, and they had no arrows.
Stars and hell.
Theirs was the last boat on the line. The lowest and the farthest toward the end of the ship. They couldn’t simply drop it to the water and blend in with the four people needing to board it.
Ula judged the distance between themselves and the shore. “Urtzi, how well can you swim?”
“I bet you I doggie paddle better than that black wolf of Luca’s.”
“Good, because I have a plan.”
INthe shadow of the great black pirate ship, Ula and Urtzi watched as four of the Warlord’s soldiers assigned to their rowboat dropped to the vessel and trounced around. It didn’t take long for them to realize they were up a creek—so to speak.
“Where are the paddles?” one asked, very loud and very annoyed and very concerned with the fact that the first rowboats were already landing ashore and taking off for the horses gathered in a clearing up from the beach.
“What do you mean, where are the paddles? Mine are right here.”
There was a great show as this person held them aloft, into the bright summer morning.
The annoyed voice came again. “There aretwobut notfour.”
More trouncing. More discussion. And finally, someone from the boat above, which couldn’t lower without the one below it doing so first, shouted down, loud and decisive, “We best get going or they’ll leave us altogether. Get in the water and be slow or sink. Just get out of our way.”
“Come, help me with these chains,” someone said.
The boat lowered with a splash. Then the next one up. The top boat with the four oars immediately started moving the moment it hit the water, but it took the hampered boat time to get settled.
“If we’re slow, we’ll lose them,” said one who hadn’t spoken yet. “Do you know where they’re going?”
“Of course, I do,” the annoyed voice replied. “And besides, it’ll take them time to get the horses moving. We’ll make it up.”
There was some rustling, shifting about, settling of the four onto two benches.
“I hope so,” said one of the others, “I don’t want any trouble from the dragon lady.”
