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As the undead ship hove up alongside the Cormorant, gunnery teams lit fuses and stood back. Cannons blew. They shot crystal orbs filled with acid, which broke upon the ship and sprayed out over it and ate at it. Still, the vessel bore on. Boarders hurled grapnels, the metal weights thudding to the decks and rattling as they dragged back to lodge in the ship’s rail. Heaving mightily, the men hauled the ships together.

“Board her!”

The men cleated off the lines and leaped for the deck of the undead ship, careful to avoid the spots eaten by acid.

Rytlock and Garm went with them, bounding side by side onto the enemy vessel. Their feet left solid wood and landed on rot and slime.

“Squishy,” Rytlock said.

Garm’s hackles rose, sensing enemies, though the deck was clear.

“Where are they?” Rytlock snarled, holding up Sohothin to light the darkness. “Show yourselves!”

The hatches flew back, and undead sailors stomped up in greatcoats emblazoned with ancient heraldry.

“Pistols!” shouted a nearby seaman.

The sailors lifted blunderbusses and discharged them. The shots ripped through the undead to pepper the waves beyond. Tossing aside their guns, they slashed with cutlasses. Though blades cleaved flesh and bone, the undead came on.

Fingers of death, cold as the grave, pierced the sailors’ flesh and ripped it warm from their bones. They screamed as they came apart. At the moment when each died, though, the screaming stopped, and what was left of their flesh turned gray.

The shivering cadavers then spun about to join the ranks of the undead.

“Not good!” shouted Rytlock, swinging Sohothin like a torch to keep the undead at bay. Garm circled behind him, snarling at the wall of monsters.

Behind the phalanx of undead, a figure strode down from the aft deck and crossed over amidships. The man was large and amorphous beneath a tattered cape—a norn warrior. He lurched forward on leech-covered legs and strode toward the fore of the ship.

“That’s him,” Rytlock said. “That’s Morgus Lethe.”

But to reach Lethe, they would have to fight through a wall of undead.

While the battle raged on both decks below, Caithe began her invasion from above.

She leaped from the crow’s nest of the Cormorant and slid down the ratlines, knocking off numerous undead on her way. Then she swung out onto the lowest spar and balanced lithely across it. The yardarm extended beyond the ship’s sides, nearly touching the boom of the undead ship. It was a simple thing, therefore, to walk out on a beam of solid wood and walk in on a beam of rot.

Caithe reached the mainmast of the enemy ship and wondered at it, soft and slimy to the touch. “Weak points.” She drew an enchanted dagger from her hip and plunged it into the mainmast. It gave no more resistance than wet clay. She twisted the blade, wondering if it would—“Amazing!”

The mast severed and tilted outward and plunged.

With a great whoosh, the upper half of the ship’s mast dropped to the deck, smashing a dozen undead below. Staying in the tops, Caithe could cut down the mizzenmast and the fore and the aft—

Except that undead were climbing the ratlines toward her.

She winged a dagger at one of them, but the blade buried itself in the thing’s chest, and it just came on. That didn’t work. Caithe ran along the spar, slicing loose the lines that held the sail and gathering the cloth. She flung it around the ratlines, pinning the undead to it. She tied off her trap with a double-shank knot.

On the other side of the mast, though, undead had topped the spar and were treading toward her. Caithe approached, cutting more lines. The first creature grasped her shoulder, icy fingers piercing her skin. Screaming, Caithe wrapped one of the severed lines around its neck, cinched it, and kicked the dead man from the spar. It jolted out, hanged in midair.

This was fun. Why were the others so frightened?

Hauling on another line, Caithe swung away from the undead that reached toward her. She landed on the mizzenmast and cut it down as she had the main. Then she grabbed a line and swung out and around,