Thornhold - Elaine Cunningham [109]
The man shouted and slashed blindly with his blade. Bronwyn still had her grip on the dead man’s hair, and she spun around to duck behind him. The body jolted from the impact. Bronwyn released him and danced back, almost losing her footing on the blood-slick deck.
Again the slaver lashed out. Bronwyn dropped into a crouch, ducking the blow so narrowly that she felt the wind of it. Before he could reverse his swing for another attack, she tensed for the spring and came up, knife leading.
Her blade punched hard into his ribcage. The blow registered in his eyes, but he did not go down, and his grim expression proclaimed his intent to take her with him to the gates of death.
Bronwyn wrenched her knife free and jumped up, bringing her knee up high and hard as she came. She connected in a profoundly debilitating blow. The man’s forgotten sword clattered to the deck.
She stepped back, breathing in quick, shallow bursts.
“Behind you, girl!”
The woman’s shout snapped Bronwyn back into the battle. She whirled to face the grim-faced dwarf who was preparing to apply the spiked nail in his club to the base of Bronwyn’s spine.
Instinct and memory took over. “For Stoneshaft!” she shrieked in the dwarvish tongue, remembering what her long-ago dwarf friend told her about rallying cries.
Her response clearly startled the dwarf. He lowered the club, and the red haze of battle-lust faded from his face. For a moment he peered keenly at Bronwyn. Apparently he recognized her as someone other than one of his captors, for he gave a curt nod and went off in search of another fight.
But the battle was nearly over The sounds of fighting had dwindled to a few clashes of steel, a few screams of pain- some of which ended with chilling abruptness.
Captain Orwig’s bombastic voice could easily be heard over the ebbing tide of battle, ordering his crew to round up the dead of both sides and all the slavers and toss them into the sea as Umberlee’s due. This rallied even the dwarves, who cared not a wit for the Sea Goddess. They took to the task with such grim gusto that they didn’t even seem to notice that they were taking orders from an ogre.
Bronwyn tucked her knife into its sheath just as the barbarian’s eyes rolled back in her head. Bronwyn caught the woman as she fell and lowered her to the deck-not an easy task given the difference in their size, but at least she managed to ease the woman down to a gentler landing than she would otherwise have had.
Bronwyn tore a strip from the hem of the woman’s tunic and pressed it to the wound, holding it firm until the bleeding stopped, then shrugged off her cloak and tucked it over the woman’s broad shoulders to keep her warm until the cold sickness ebbed. That was all the help Bronwyn could give her, and she hoped it would be enough.
Narwhal’s crew had not gone unscathed. Some of the dead tossed overboard wore familiar faces. One of them was the ogress who had played the deadly game of catch with Bronwyn, thus accepting her, if for one brief moment, as a comrade. Bronwyn took a deep breath and headed back to the stern, where stood a small, wooden shack built over the helm.
In this, as she had expected, she found the ship’s records. Quickly she thumbed through the pages, looking for something that would provide a clue to the identity of the people who had destroyed the dwarves’ home and stolen from them their freedom-and from her, her father.
But the transaction was coded. In time, she could probably figure out what it said. There was, however, a lengthy list of cargo neatly written up in Common, the language of trade. Bronwyn skimmed it and whistled softly. This would be enough and more to satisfy Narwhal’s captain’s and crew’s desire for booty. It might also help her negotiate with Orwig on a delicate matter. He was an ogre. Even in tolerant Water-deep, he would be closely watched. And he was a smuggler, which meant his affairs would not hold up to close scrutiny. Yet she could not subject Ebenezer and his kin to the