help thinking, like a newly opened grave. His clothing was wet from the immersion in the river, and he was cold, but his body still found enough heat to break out in perspiration. It surprised him.
“You aren’t planning on camping out up there, are you?” Mat called up. He sounded good-natured about it, but someone who knew him well could have detected the small tension in his voice.
“It’s the view, you know,” Darrick called down. And it amused him that they acted as if they were there for a lark instead of serious business. But it had always been that way between them.
They were twenty-three years old, Darrick being seven months the elder, and they’d spent most of those years as friends growing up in Hillsfar. They’d lived among the hill people, loaded freight in the river port, and learned to kill when barbarian tribes had come down from the north hoping to loot and pillage. When they’d turned fifteen, they’d journeyed to Westmarch and pledged loyalty in the king’s navy. Darrick had gone to escape his father, but Mat had left behind a good family and prospects at the family mill. If Darrick had not left, Mat might not ever have left, and some days Darrick felt guilty about that. Dispatches from home always made Mat talk of the family he missed.
Focusing himself again, Darrick stared out across the broken land at the harbor less than two hundred yards away. Another pirate sentry was encamped on the cliff along the way. The man had built a small, yellow-tongued fire that couldn’t be seen from the river.
Beyond, three tall-masted cogs, round-bodied ships built for river travel as well as coastal waters rather than the deep sea, lay at anchor in a dish-shaped natural harbor fronting the ruins of a city. Captain Tollifer’s maps had listed the city as Tauruk’s Port, but not much was known about it except that it had been deserted years ago.
Lanterns and torches moved along the ships, but a few also roved through the city, carried by pirates, Darrick felt certain. Though why they should be so industrious this early in the morning was beyond him. The swirling fog laced with condensation made seeing across the distance hard, but Darrick could make out that much.
The longboat held fifteen men, including Darrick. He figured that they were outnumbered at least eight to one by the pirates. Staying for a prolonged engagement was out of the question, but perhaps spiriting the king’s nephew away and costing the pirates a few ships were possible. Darrick had volunteered for such work before, and he’d come through it alive.
So far, bucko, Darrick told himself with grim realization.
Although he was afraid, part of him was excited at the challenge. He clung to the wall, lifted a boot, and shoved himself upward again. The top of the cliff ledge was less than ten feet away. From there, it looked as if he could gain safe ground and walk toward the city ruins and the hidden port. His fingers and toes ached from the climb, but he put the discomfort out of his mind and kept moving.
When he reached the clifftop, he had to restrain a cry of triumph. He turned and looked back down at Mat, curling his hand into a fist.
Even at the distance, Darrick saw the look of horror that filled Mat’s face. “Look out!”
Whipping his head back up, some inner sense warning him of the movement, Darrick caught a glimpse of moonlight-silvered steel sweeping toward him. He pulled his head down and released his hold on the cliff as he grabbed for another along the cliff’s edge.
The sword chopped into the stone cliff, striking sparks from the high iron ore content just as Darrick’s hands closed around the small ledge he’d pushed up from last. His body slammed hard against the mountainside.
“I told you I saw somebody out here,” a man said as he drew his sword back again and stepped with care along the cliff’s edge. His hobnailed boots scraped stone.
“Yeah,” the second man agreed, joining the first in the pursuit of Darrick.
Scrambling, holding tight to the edge of the cliff, Darrick pressed his boots against the stone and tried in vain to find suitable purchase to allow him to push himself up. He gave thanks to the Light that the pirates were almost as challenged by the terrain as he was. His boot soles scraped and slid as he tried to pull himself up.
“Cut his fingers off, Lon,” the man in back urged. He was a short, weasel-faced man with an ale belly pressing against his frayed shirt. Maniacal lights gleamed in his eyes. “Cut his fingers off, and watch him fall on the others down there. Before they can make it up, we can nip on down to the bonfire and warn Captain Raithen they’s coming.”
Darrick filed the name away. During his years as part of the Westmarch Navy, he’d heard of Raithen. In fact, Captain Tollifer had said that the Captain’s Table, the quarterly meeting of chosen ships’ captains in Westmarch, had suggested Raithen as a possible candidate for the guilty party in the matter of the pirate raids. It was good to know, but staying alive to relate the news might prove difficult.
“Stand back, Orphik,” Lon growled. “You keep abuzzing around me like a bee, and I’m gonna stick you myself.”
“Shove off, Lon. I’ll do for him.” The little man’s voice tittered with naked excitement.
“Damn you,” Lon cursed. “Get out of the way.”
Quick as a fox in a henhouse, Orphik ducked under his companion’s outstretched free arm and dashed at Darrick with long-bladed knives that were almost short swords in their own right. He laughed. “I’ve got him, Lon. I’ve got him. Just sit you back and watch. I bet he screams the whole way down.”
Keeping his weight distributed as evenly as possible, going with the renewed strength that flowed through his body from the adrenaline surge, Darrick swung from hand to hand, dodging the chopping blows Orphik delivered. Still, one of the pirate’s attempts slashed across the knuckle of his left hand’s little finger. Pain shot up Darrick’s arm, but he was more afraid of how the blood flow would turn his grip slippery.
“Damn you!” Orphik swore, striking sparks from the stone again. “Just stay still, and this will be over with in a trice.”
Lon reeled back away from the smaller man. “Look out, Orphik! Someone down there has a bow!” The bigger pirate held up a sleeve and displayed the arrow that had caught on its fletchings and still hung there.
Distracted by the presence of the arrow and aware that another could be joining it at any moment, Orphik stepped back a little. He drew up a boot and lashed out at his intended victim’s head.
Darrick swung to one side and grabbed for the little man’s leg with his bloody hand, not wanting to trade it for the certain grip of his right. He knotted his fingers in the pirate’s breeches. Even though the breeches were tucked into the hobnailed boots, there was plenty of slack to seize. Balancing his weight from one hand on the cliff, Darrick yanked hard with the other.
“Damn him! Lon, give me your hand before this bilge rat yanks me off the cliff!” Orphik reached for the other man, who caught his hand in his own. Another arrow fired from below clattered against the cliff wall behind them and caused them both to duck.
Taking advantage of the confusion, knowing he’d never get a better chance, Darrick swung his weight to the side and up. He pushed his feet ahead of him, throwing his body behind, hoping to clear the cliff’s edge or he would fall. Maybe the rope tied around his loins would hold him, or maybe Mat and the other men below had forgotten it in the mad rush of events.
Arching his body and rolling toward the ledge, Darrick hit hard. He started
