Thornhold - Elaine Cunningham [108]
“Git back here, you durned thief!” roared Ebenezer, but though he mustered some impressive volume, his heart wasn’t in it. In fact, his grin was so wide it threatened to raise up his ears a mite and leave them there. Better Clem went up armed than not. And if Ebenezer couldn’t get in on the fighting, at least his hammer would shatter a skull or two.
“What’s the holdup? Dull blade?” taunted a gruff dwarven voice.
Among dwarves, that insult was roughly on a level with a reference to an orcish ancestor. Ebenezer whirled toward the direction of the sound and stabbed his forefinger at the dwarf who’d spoken. “Damn it, Jeston, you could shave with this blade!”
“I’d be willing to, if’n you’d turn me lose.”
The faintly pleading note in the tough smith’s voice smote Ebenezer’s heart, and he wavered in his decision to leave this ornery cuss for last. He hefted his axe for the first blow. “Just might be I’ll hold you to that,” he muttered.
* * * * *
On the deck above, Bronwyn heard her friend’s shout resounding from the hold. Her first response was relief that he had made it across safely. Her second reaction was a quick stab of concern. Judging by the number of grim-faced dwarves staggering about the deck, whacking away at their captors with rough, makeshift clubs, she suspected that Ebenezer had little fighting support below decks.
Bronwyn edged toward the hatch. A mercenary lunged at her, his cutlass whistling down toward her in a quick, deadly sweep. She sidestepped the attack and struck down hard with her knife, pressing the cutlass down to the deck. Then she pivoted toward the joined blades and kicked out high and hard with her left foot. Her boot sank deep, just above the man’s weapon belt. The cutiass clattered to the deck, and the man staggered back-into the outstretched hands of a waiting ogress. The sailor grinned horribly, her fangs flashing. She spun the man around a couple of times as if they were children playing at blind man’s bluff, and then flung him back toward Bronwyn.
“Catch!” she roared.
Bronwyn brought up her knife. The man fell heavily on it, and his weight slumped against her. For a moment they were eye to eye.
Bronwyn had seen death before, more times than she liked to count, but never at such close range. The life drained away from his face, surely as a receding tide, and his black eyes went empty and flat. Then he jerked back with a suddenness that left Bronwyn staggering for balance.
The ogress held the man by the collar as a boy might hold a puppy by the scruff of the neck. She grunted with approval at the sight of Bronwyn’s dripping knife, then flung the dead man aside.
Bronwyn turned back to the hold and was nearly knocked over by the dwarf lad who exploded from the hatch as if he’d been launched by a smoke-powder canon. She noted the hammer he held clenched in his hand and understood the source of Ebenezer’s ire. Reassured that her friend was not besieged by foes, she picked her next battle.
Narwhal’s first mate, a hugely muscled barbarian woman, was pinned down by two fighters, her back against the mast and her sword flailing. Bronwyn noted the jerky motion of the blade, the huge beads of sweat on the massive woman’s brow. Just then one of the attackers ducked, and Bronwyn caught sight of the wound that slashed across the sailor’s collarbone. It didn’t look fatal of itself, but the woman’s tunic was sodden with her own blood, and the cold sickness that followed a battle wound was settling upon bet
Bronwyn waded in, dodging a pair of dwarves who carried a human male between them, one dwarf holding the man’s hands and one holding his feet. Their captive writhed and struggled and cursed, but the dwarves moved inexorably toward the rail, intent upon hurling him over.
She seized one of the first mate’s attackers by the hair and jerked his head back. Without hesitation, she lifted her knife and drew it hard and fast across the man’s throat. His startled oath, though quite quickly and literally cut short, drew his partner’s attention. The second man turned toward the sound, only