The Mercenaries - Ed Greenwood [12]
Sharessa ducked aside, holding out her blade, and sheared an arm off the undead thing as it spun past her, smashed into the rail, and flew out to sea in a rain of separate bones.
Kurthe grinned at her, clapped her on the shoulder, and set off up the deck again at a lumbering run, slipping in oil from time to time. There seemed to be only a few skeletons left, but flames were snarling everywhere now, and Sharessa's heart sank. They might yet die as drowned ashes.
"Shadow!" Belmer called, and she spun around. Somehow the little fat man had reached the stern again. Now he was trudging back the length of the boat with his arms locked around a squirming bundle that was larger and heavier than he was. "I need you to throw sand-the buckets are aft, with Belgin!"
As Sharessa nodded and hurried down the boat, she saw that Belmer's burden was the fat old captain, his eyes rolling in terror.
"Cease, fishbrains, or I'll cut off one of your fingers and make you eat it!" she heard Belmer hiss. Turbalt squealed in wide-eyed terror and vigorously, but vainly, tried to hit and kick his way clear of the smaller man. Sharessa hadn't yet reached the open hold where Belgin was when their employer shouted another order.
"Rings! Brindra! Stop amusing yourselves with those bonewalkers and tie this lout to his own mainmast! I haven't time to waste on keeping him aboard and alive just now!"
Sharessa heard the dwarf whoop as she reached the hold and saw Belgin's sweating face looking up at her. A line of buckets was waiting just below the Hp of the open hatch; he boosted them up to her. "Mind you don't get those buckets burnt!" he warned, puffing.
"Ah, the glorious life of a pirate!" she hissed, staggering and nearly falling under the weight of two full buckets of sand.
By the time she'd emptied her load, the other Sharkers were hastening aft to help-and Belmer was running along the rails opening all the sluice-chutes.
She thought she was fast on her feet, but by the time she reached the open hatch again, Belmer was there before her, calmly handing out orders again. "Buckets all-except Kurthe."
The Konigheimer's head snapped up, and his brows drew together.
"You," Belmer told him, "are going to pump. Sharessa can hold the hose. What we can't smother, shell wash off the decks into the sea, and it can burn the waves instead of us."
"And just what will you be doing?" Kurthe grunted.
Belmer gave him a cold look and turned away without a word. Kurthe stared after him for a moment, his eyes twin flames, and then shrugged and went below. The hose nozzle soared up through the hatch and crashed onto the deck next to Sharessa a breath or two later. She trapped it with her foot out of habit, her attention on Belmer.
Their fat employer was scurrying around among the deck boats, doing something with ropes. Coils of hose slapped against Sharessa's boots, and she caught up several loops and started to trudge along the deck, heading for the flames. Sharkers were trotting past, lurching under the weight of their sand buckets. Sharessa barely saw them.
Belmer was lashing several of the deck boats together. Then he unchocked their rail-ramps, tested the pry bars that would propel them along those ramps and over the side, and nodded as if satisfied. He loped along the decks to where the flames were fiercest and came back gingerly juggling flaming debris, shouting at Ingrar to keep clear when the youth helpfully offered his full sand bucket.
The hose in Sharessa's hands jerked, grew heavy and cold, and then trembled in earnest as cold black bilge-water spewed from it. She hastened to a good location on the smoking deck and tried to sluice the burning oil out of the chutes Belmer had opened-gods, but the little man had been busy-as the burning wreckage tumbled down into the bottom of one of the boats.
He was burning their only escape…
Sharessa went closer with the hose. Could she strike him with the stream of water and stop his destruction? She looked back along the moonlit