the leap of the heating anger igniting and spreading. It was a Wit thing, a surging of hearts on the animal level that flooded us with hate.
We drove the Rurisk forward, sending her skimming up finally into the shallows of the cove and then we leaped out and ran her up the beach just as we had practised. The fog was a treacherous ally, concealing us from the attackers that we would in turn attack, but concealing from us also the lie of the land and a view of exactly what was happening. Weapons were seized and we rushed toward the sounds of the fighting. Justin stayed with the Rurisk, standing and staring into the fog toward Buckkeep earnestly, as if that would help him Skill the news to Serene.
The Red Ship was drawn up on the sand, just as the Rurisk was. Not far from her were the two small boats that served as ferries to the mainland. Both had been stove in. There had been Six Duchies men down here on the beach when the Red Ships arrived. Some of them were still there. Carnage. We ran past crumpled bodies leaking blood into the sand. All of them seemed to be our own folk. Suddenly the Antler Island inner tower loomed grey above us. On top of it her signal fire burned a ghostly yellow in the fog. The tower was besieged. The Raiders were dark, muscular men, wiry rather than massive. Most were heavily bearded and their hair hung black and wild to their shoulders. They wore body armour of plaited leather and carried heavy blades and axes. Some wore helms of metal. Their bared arms were marked with coils of scarlet, but whether this was tattoo or paint I could not tell. They were confident, swaggering, laughing and talking like workmen completing a task. The guardians of the tower were cornered; the structure had been built as a basis for a signal light, not as a defensible rampart. It was a matter of time before all the cornered men were dead. The Outislanders did not look back toward us as we came pouring up the rocky incline. They believed they had nothing to fear from behind them. One tower gate hung on its hinges, a huddle of men inside barricaded behind a wall of bodies. As we advanced, they sent a thin hail of arrows out toward the encircled Raiders. None of them hit.
I gave a cry between a whoop and a howl, terrible fear and vengeful joy merged into one sound. The emotions of those who ran beside me found vent in me, and spurred me on. The attackers turned to see us as we closed with them.
We caught the Raiders between us. Our ship’s crew outnumbered them, and at sight of us, the beleaguered defenders of the tower took heart and poured forth themselves. Scattered bodies about the tower gate attested to several efforts before this one. The young watchman still lay where I had seen him fall in my dream. Blood had spilled from his mouth and soaked into his embroidered shirt. A dagger thrown from behind had taken him. An odd detail to note as we rushed forward to join in the mêlée.
There was no strategy, no formation, no plan of battle. Simply a group of men and women suddenly offered the opportunity for vengeance. It was more than enough.
If I thought I had been one with the crew before, I was now engulfed in them. Emotions battered and thrust me forward. I will never know how much or which feelings were my own. They overwhelmed me, and FitzChivalry was lost in them. I became the emotions of the crew. Axe raised, roaring, I led the way. I had no desire for the position I had seized. Instead I was thrust forward by the crew’s extreme desire for someone to follow. I suddenly wanted to kill as many Raiders as I could, as fast as I could. I wanted my muscles to crack with each swing, I wanted to fling myself forward through a tide of dispossessed souls, to tread on the bodies of fallen Raiders. And I did.
I had heard legends of berserks. I had thought them animalistic brutes, powered by bloodlust, insensitive to the damage they wrought. Perhaps, instead, they were oversensitized, unable to defend their own minds from the emotions that rushed in to drive them, unable to heed the pain signals of their own bodies. I do not know.
I have heard tales of myself on that day. Even a song. I do not recall that I frothed and roared as I fought. But neither do I recall that I did not. Somewhere, within me, were both Verity and Nighteyes, but they too were drowned in the passions of those around me. I know I killed the first Raider that went down before our mad rush. I also know that I finished the last standing man, in a battle we fought axe to axe. The song says it was the master of the Red Ship vessel. I suppose it could have been. His leather surcoat was well made, and spattered with the blood of other men. I don’t recall another thing about him except how my axe crushed his helm deep into his skull, and how the blood gouted from beneath the metal as he sank to his knees.
So the battle ended, and defenders rushed forth to embrace our crew, to shout the victory and pound one another’s backs. The change was too much for me. I stood, leaning on my axe, and wondered where my strength had fled. The anger had abandoned me as suddenly as carris seed leaves an addict. I felt drained and disoriented, as if I had wakened from one dream into another. I could have dropped and slept amongst the bodies, so totally exhausted was I. It was Nonge, one of the Outislanders in the crew, who brought me water, and then walked me clear of the bodies so I could sit down to drink it. Then he waded back in among the carnage, to join in the looting. When he came back to me a while later, he held out to me a bloodied medallion. It was hammered gold, on a silver chain. A crescent moon. When I did not reach to take it from him, he looped it over the gory head of my axe. ‘It was Harek’s,’ he said, finding the Six Duchies words slowly. ‘You fought him well. He died well. He’d want you to have it. He was a good man, before the Korriks took his heart.’ I did not even ask him which one had been Harek. I did not want any of them to have names.
After a time, I began to feel alive again. I helped to clear the bodies from the door of the tower, and then from the battlefield. The Raiders we burned, the Six Duchies men we laid out and covered, for kin to claim. I remember odd things about that long afternoon. How a dead man’s heels leave a snaking trail in the sand when you drag him. How the young watchman with the dagger in him wasn’t quite dead when we went to gather him up. Not that he lasted long afterwards. He soon was just one more body to add to a row that was too long already.
We left our warriors with what was left of the tower guard, to help fill up the watches until more men could be sent out. We admired the vessel we’d captured. Verity would be pleased, I thought to myself. Another ship. A very well-made one. I knew all these things, but felt nothing about any of them. We returned to the Rurisk, where a pale Justin awaited us. In a numbed silence, we launched the Rurisk and took our places at the oars and headed back to Buckkeep.
We encountered other boats before we were halfway there. A hastily-organized flotilla of fishing vessels laden with soldiers hailed us. The King-in-Waiting had sent them, at Justin’s urgently Skilled behest. They seemed almost disappointed to find that the fighting was over, but our master assured them they would be welcomed at the tower. That, I think, was when I realized I could no longer sense Verity. And hadn’t for some time. I groped after Nighteyes immediately, as another man might grope after his purse. He was there. But distant. Exhausted, and awed. Never have I smelt so much blood, he told me. I agreed. I still stank of it.
Verity had been busy. We were scarcely off the Rurisk before there was another crew aboard to take her back to Antler Island tower. Watch soldiers and another crew of rowers set her heavy in the water. Verity’s prize would be tied up at his home dock by this night. Another open boat followed them, to bring our slain home. The master, the mate and Justin departed on provided horses to report directly to Verity. I felt only relief that I hadn’t been summoned also. Instead, I went with my crewmates. Faster than I would have thought possible, word of the battle and our prize spread through Buckkeep Town. There was not a tavern that was not anxious to pour us full of ale and hear our exploits. It was almost like a second battle frenzy, for wherever we went, folk ignited around us with savage satisfaction in what we had done. I felt drunk on the surging emotions of those around me long before the ale overwhelmed me. Not that I held back from that. I told few tales of what we had done, but my drinking more than made up for it. I threw up twice, once in an alley, and later in the street. I drank more to kill the taste of the vomit. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Nighteyes was frantic. Poison. That water is poisoned. I couldn’t frame a thought to reassure him.
