Guild Wars: Sea Of Sorrows Part 23

The third vessel, the one leading them all, was the Indomitable.

At Cobiah's side, Tenzin murmured, "My father told me of the day he fought the Orrians at your side, when the Pride captured the Salma's Grace-and then turned to fight the true enemy. He described it to me in great detail. Even though he'd fought waves of their s.h.i.+ps defending Lion's Arch, he told me that the first time you see them-the first time you realize that 'Dead s.h.i.+p' is more than a fanciful name-you're never the same." The Krytan had gone pale, his eyes wide and staring at the dark vision on the horizon.

"Don't worry." Cobiah gulped, trying to calm himself even as his knuckles turned white on the balcony rail. "You never get used to it." The two men shared a terse smile.

Creatures with wings of sea-foam and spittle glided above them, distant voices singing maddened, ancient songs. The stink of fetid flesh rolled in on the wind, striking Cobiah's nostrils with a fearful stench.

In the distance, a swell of magic rolled up like a tide before the two Orrian galleys. Even from here, Cobiah could see dead men in articulated armor swarming their decks. Sixty cannons glowed like demonic eyes, thirty to a side, rolling out thunder and balled lightning from the snarling mouths of their guns. "What are those?" Tenzin pointed, squinting to see them more clearly through the cannon smoke.

"They're Orrian vessels called xebecs. Like our s.h.i.+ps of the line, but instead of cannons, they rely heavily on ancient magic. I've fought one before, about half the size of one of those."

"And you defeated it?" the Krytan asked hopefully.

"I defeated one. Half as big," Cobiah repeated. "And it nearly took us without a scratch on its hull." He shook his head wearily, watching the ma.s.sive red-sailed s.h.i.+ps cresting the waves amid the Orrian armada. "I can't imagine defeating two of them that size. Their enchanted guns alone . . ."

As if speaking of them had triggered the weapons, one of the xebecs fired a broadside at a nearby Krytan brigantine. Green lightning flickered and danced over the water, floating neither high nor low, but rus.h.i.+ng forward in a straight line. Like relentless motes of pollen, they raced toward their target, exploding huge sections of its wooden hull from upper deck down to the waterline. From the crackling explosions, great arcs and tentacles of lightning burst outward to cascade over the deck of the s.h.i.+p. Cobiah could see figures leap from the deck of the xebec to the brigantine, dark shadows launching themselves onto screaming Krytan sailors. Weapons swung and pistols cracked as howls erupted from the combat. Cobiah could imagine what was happening to those sailors. Flesh melting from electric a.s.saults, souls shriveling. Just like the sailors aboard his s.h.i.+p. Like Tosh, and Vost, and Sethus . . .

Isaye grabbed Cobiah's arm and twisted him to face her. "I know what you're thinking. You think it every time the Indomitable is part of an attack. Don't look, Cobiah. Those things aren't your friends."

He stared at her, trying to pull his thoughts away, but all he could see was death. A death he'd escaped, a fate that had taken his friends and turned them into monsters. "They were," he whispered.

"You aren't responsible for their deaths, Cobiah," Isaye said, her hands bracing his shoulders. "Don't think about the dead. Concentrate on the living. We need you."

"I won't give up if you don't." He blurted the words without thinking, and his face reddened with the admission. "I-"

"Deal," she said immediately, and smiled.

Despite everything, so did he.

"Heeee-yaaaaah!" Bronn and Grymm had climbed up onto the rails of the balcony, untying the boat above from its moorings. As the little boat fell, they pushed it out, away from the Balthazar's Trident, fighting with gravity and balance to make sure it didn't crash against the balcony, get stuck on a porthole, or crack its keel falling into the water. Unfortunately, in the tumult, Bronn slipped off the balcony, arms spinning over the railing. He tumbled, howling all the way down into the waves.

When he came up again, the mustached norn threw his hand over the rowboat's side and waved. The norn's smile faded as he cast a look back at the two doomed s.h.i.+ps. "The Nomad's waiting. Come, let us away!"

- The small craft made good time, plowing through rising waves in the gray of a cloud-covered morning. When they reached the Nomad II, Isaye's crew was rus.h.i.+ng about in a furor, loading the cannons and readying her wide sails. Her bosun stood at the gunwale, a thin, reedy woman whom Isaye greeted as Rahli. She had neither Verahd's creepy style nor Henst's burly sense of threat but carried herself with the chilly, straightforward efficiency of a schoolmarm.

"Captain!" Rahli grasped Isaye's hand and helped her up onto the deck. "We received a message from the s.h.i.+ning Blade to expect you. I've never known them to lie, but I have to say, I didn't believe it until I saw the rowboat approaching." Bronn boosted Cobiah up, helping him scramble aboard the Nomad II. Tenzin followed, and after him, the two norn climbed up as easily as if they were scaling cliffs in the s.h.i.+verpeak Mountains. "Even so, Prince Edair left several of his guard aboard the s.h.i.+p to 'watch' us. We 'watched' them to unconsciousness with belaying pins and detained them in the hold. I hope that's acceptable."

"I'd have thrown them over the side, armor and all," Isaye growled. She paused to sigh and rubbed her eyes with a shaking hand. "No, I wouldn't have. But I'd have wanted to. That's fine, Rahli. Be sure our sailors are armed, ready the sails, and await my command."

Rahli hurried off to carry out her orders. Isaye turned to Cobiah as a sailor brought him a sword. "What do we do?"

The Krytan fleet had engaged the Orrian armada but fought in scattered clumps. Here and there, a captain had enough hold over his crew to keep them fighting, but other s.h.i.+ps broke the line, fleeing, the rotted s.h.i.+ps of Orr at their heels.

"Sail straight for the Orrian line." Cobiah drew the sword. "We've got to get their attention."

"Who?" Isaye's eyebrows shot up. "The Krytans or the Orrians?"

"Both. We need the Orrians to concentrate their fire on the Nomad, and we need the Krytans to see that we can withstand it. If the Krytans get their courage back and start to follow our tactic of a.s.sault, we can still turn the tide."

"What's our tactic?" Tenzin had grabbed a long-barreled rifle, packing it with gunpowder and shot as he listened to Cobiah's plan.

"Draw their attention and pull them into the city's harbor."

"Toward Lion's Arch?" Grymm looked concerned.

"Toward Claw Island," Cobiah clarified. "Toward the guns and the fortifications of the city. Even if the Krytans can't fight worth a d.a.m.n, the fort can still hold its own."

Isaye considered. "There are only two flaws in this plan. One, the city guns weren't built to hold off a fleet by themselves. They can't load fast enough, and if the Dead s.h.i.+ps storm the city, they'll get within firing range and be able to blow out the cliffs. That'll be the end of the gunnery emplacements.

"Two." Isaye pointed out at the two ma.s.sive, red-sailed Orrian xebec. "The Nomad has no elementalists. Those s.h.i.+ps wield immense magics. If they catch us, we'll have no defense at all."

Cobiah could see only one path through. "The Nomad has to close and fight at close range with the Indomitable," he replied. "Her guns are larger, but she doesn't have the support of Orrian enchantments. If we're brus.h.i.+ng her hull, the xebecs won't be able to use their magic against us without damaging their flags.h.i.+p."

"Just like baiting a snow cat." Grymm smiled broadly, cracking his knuckles as the Nomad II turned in her traces and spread her sails against the wind. "Once you're up against its belly, you can gut it without fear of the claws."

Bronn frowned. "If we have to stay that close, how will we get them to follow us to the city's fortifications?"

"The hooks!" Isaye snapped her fingers. "On one of our last runs, we towed a stranded asuran paddle s.h.i.+p. We ran lines to it: ropes, tied off with iron grappling hooks stuck through into their hull. Tenzin." She spun to him, her hair swinging, gray and mahogany, against her muscled back. "If we set those grapnels in the harpoon guns, can you hit the Indomitable's low rigging with them? Tangle them around the masts or sink the hooks into their hatches?"

"I can use a harpoon just fine. It's not so different from a rifle, once you have the weight and heft of it. I once used one to bull's-eye a bosun's pin from three s.h.i.+p-lengths away. Won fifty gold." Tenzin tossed back his hair c.o.c.kily and set the rifle on his shoulder. "I'll have to set position somewhere high, maybe up on the yardarm. Keep the hook-loaded guns coming, and I'll see that the grappling irons are placed solidly."

"With the lines in place, we can tow the Indomitable." Isaye turned back to Cobiah, her gold-green eyes alight. "We'll never leave her side . . . and we'll draw her straight into the city's guns. When we're close to Claw Island, we cut the lines, the Nomad pulls away into the harbor, and the fortress can open fire."

"Won't the undead sailors cut the lines?" Tenzin asked. "It's what I'd do."

Cobiah shook his head, considering Isaye's idea. "They're bloodthirsty. They want us close. One thing I've learned fighting Dead s.h.i.+ps for so many years is that most Orrians don't do a lot of long-term thinking. If they see a target, they attack, and they don't think about much else."

Tenzin looked skeptical. "But what about leverage? Our s.h.i.+p's smaller. All we'll do is pull ourselves closer to the Indomitable."

"It won't matter who's towing who so long as we can keep both boats within the current. The Nomad's weight will pull them with us toward the island," Isaye replied.

"There's another problem," Cobiah said. "We need to keep the undead aboard that flags.h.i.+p from slaughtering us all while the Nomad gives her a tow."

"Leave that to my brother and me." Grymm folded his arms, the muscles standing out as if they were carved from granite. While the others were talking, Bronn had demanded the sailors bring another ma.s.sive sword from the Nomad II's armory to replace the one the Seraph had stripped from him. He slid one hand up the glistening blade, testing the sharpness of the steel.

Cobiah turned to the norn. "You think you can keep the undead from swarming our deck?"

"Just tell the sailors to hold their own, Commodore." Grymm Svaard smiled, tugging on his braided beard.

His brother's teeth flashed beneath a thick mustache. "We'll do the rest."

As the sun began to break through the gray fog of morning, Sorrow's Bay was a tossing expanse of whitecapped waves, racing from the distant sh.o.r.e toward the depths of the sea. The tide was outbound, carrying with it traces of driftwood and washes of lingering foam. The chop of the sea was extreme, curdled by a thras.h.i.+ng wind and the wakes of multiple s.h.i.+ps tacking left and right either to engage or to escape.

The Nomad II valiantly split the waves as she sailed toward her opponent. Her sails were fully extended, s.h.i.+fted against the wind to set her forward at full speed. All around her, white puffs of smoke rose from Krytan s.h.i.+ps, their cannonb.a.l.l.s hurtling toward the enemy. Orrian s.h.i.+ps returned fire, but instead of leaden b.a.l.l.s, they fired skulls set alight by dark magic. Isaye gave orders to the sailors working the rudder, but the captain's eyes continually followed the Balthazar's Trident within the Krytan armada, though the galleon was still far behind the line of fire.

s.h.i.+ps were taking damage on all sides. Although the Krytans were excellent hand to hand, the Orrian s.h.i.+ps weren't closing. Only a few of the human s.h.i.+ps had fighting aboard their decks, and those were the ones being swarmed by the undead crawling up their hulls from beneath the dark waves. Off the port bow, a Krytan frigate was shoved forward on the waves, masts collapsing, sails set alight by wicked purplish fire. She careened slowly into an Orrian clipper, smas.h.i.+ng her prow into the rotted s.h.i.+p's side. The fire quickly spread from the frigate's masts onto the Orrian s.h.i.+p. Clearly, the Dead s.h.i.+ps were not immune to their own flame.

Isaye was giving orders to adjust the s.h.i.+p's rigging, s.h.i.+ft the rudder, and watch for undead rising from below. Her sailors leapt to the task, their faces white but their hands steady on the till. "Watch to starboard. There's a shadow beneath the waves!"

"Acknowledged, Cap'n!" Bosun Rahli yelled, calling to the s.h.i.+p's sailors. They rushed to the side of the s.h.i.+p and met the a.s.sault with flas.h.i.+ng swords.

The things that crawled and slithered onto the Nomad II's deck weren't human. It wasn't clear from their forms whether they had ever been human. Tentacles swayed from sockets, and reverse-jointed knees bent as their huge, hooked claws sank into the s.h.i.+p's pine hull. One of the monstrosities had the rotting head of a shark, while another was made of seaweed-bound bone and sharp shards of coral.

Grymm strode into the beasts, gripping the shark-headed one by its wretched arm and driving his fist into the monster's nose. His brother was close behind him, greatsword slas.h.i.+ng out in a wide arc. It caught one of the tentacles as it pa.s.sed by, severing the festering limb. Sliced away, the tentacle twisted and snarled on the oak boards of the s.h.i.+p's deck.

Gunfire rang out from the yardarm, and the creature of bone and coral jerked and spun from a blow to the shoulder. A second shot cracked almost immediately thereafter, and fragments of skull exploded from the monster's head. It howled in rage, but Bronn's sword caught it, lifting it as the blade cut through and tossing both halves of the horror back into the sea.

"There she is." Isaye pointed just ahead of the Nomad II's bow. "The Indomitable."

The mighty s.h.i.+p of the line crested the waves before them. Her hull had blackened over the years, rot spreading in dark patches on the ruined wood. Fleshy mold clung to the keel and hull boards, and long threads of kelp fluttered like banners from the horizontal spars of her three masts. Her black sails s.h.i.+vered in the wind, pulling the galleon forward with the might of a foul-smelling gale. Rotted sailors hung from the Indomitable's rigging, some firing pistols and others addressing the set of her yardarms. They sang, and howled, and caterwauled, the cries drifting across the rolling waves in an eerie cacophony. At the s.h.i.+p's wallowing prow rode the bra.s.s lady, the demon with six arms spread wide in malicious glee, green tarnish blighting her features like a disease.

The dark galleon's guns roared a challenge, blasting through a smaller s.h.i.+p in the Krytan armada as the Indomitable rolled toward the Nomad II. Her hull struck the side of the schooner with enough force to crack its keel, twisting the boards until the Krytan s.h.i.+p's frame gave way. The brigantine broke apart, scattering boards to the tide and pouring her crew into the grasp of gruesome undead horrors beneath the waves.

They were running perpendicular to the Indomitable, and the larger s.h.i.+p was slower than the Nomad II. Still, the sea between them was wide and filled with writhing monstrosities. "Can we catch them?" Cobiah shouted to Isaye. She didn't respond, glancing back at him with worry in her hazel eyes as the valiant clipper bore forward into battle.

"May Grenth shatter their bones!" Cobiah cursed, running his hands through his graying hair. "I wish we had the Pride's engines," he said, striding to Isaye's side. "Or even that old clunker we had on the Havoc. I wish we had Verahd to give us the gale! We need more speed." He glanced to the port side, where one of the Orrian xebecs was disemboweling a Krytan galleon.

"We'll catch them," Isaye said through gritted teeth. "Come on, come on . . ."

"We have to!"

"We will." Throwing a glance down at her pilot's compa.s.s, Isaye grinned fiercely. "There! We just crossed into the harbor current. Now it's our turn."

"Our turn to what?" Cobiah asked, but as he got the words out, he felt the Nomad II shudder. The s.h.i.+p began to pick up speed, slowly at first and then faster, her prow rising as it bit deeply into the harbor's waves. "What's happening?"

"We've caught the warm inbound current, the one that heads westward. It'll push against the Indomitable, slowing her down. That'll make it d.a.m.n hard to steer the Nomad, but she'll be faster in her pa.s.sage, that's for certain." Though the increase in speed built slowly, it was notable. Bit by bit, the distance lessened between the two. "Make ready!" Isaye called to the sailors on the deck. The norn had cleared it of creatures, but several men and women aboard the s.h.i.+p were injured. Even Bronn was hurt, twisting a sc.r.a.p of sail around his arm to bind a long slash. "Tenzin?" Isaye s.h.i.+elded her eyes and looked up.

From the upper yardarm, the dark-haired Krytan waved. The sailors had rigged a bucket of harpoon rifles near him, each loaded with a thick grappling hook and a long reel of hemp line. Grymm and Rahli prepared the sailors: one group under the norn, ready to fight off the undead, and a second mustering at Bosun Rahli's command to heave the lines once hooks pierced the enemy's deck. "Once we get the ropes clamped down," Isaye commanded, "we turn the Nomad west, toward Claw Island's fortress. We'll still be in the current, and that should help with our leverage. We need to get the Indomitable within range of the island's guns."

"Acknowledged, Cap'n." Rahli relayed the orders to the crew.

Before she'd finished speaking, the Indomitable opened fire. The boom of cannons rang in their ears and the smell of scorched gunpowder filled their noses. Shrill whistles accompanied the heft of cannonb.a.l.l.s as they hurtled through the air, hurling up white-foamed spray where they struck the water, ripping wide rifts in the Nomad II's sails and landing with shuddering explosions against her hull.

"Return fire!" Isaye shouted, and her crew was quick to obey. The Nomad II's guns were fewer than those of the Indomitable but had greater range, and Cobiah saw breaches tear open along the black s.h.i.+p's hull where Isaye's gunners struck their mark.

The wounds to the Indomitable's hull wouldn't slow her, nor would the Dead s.h.i.+p take on water as the Nomad II would. But as they closed on the black-sailed s.h.i.+p of the line, Cobiah found himself counting. They had nineteen seconds until the Dead s.h.i.+p's cannons could fire again.

The Nomad reached her in sixteen.

With a steady heave, the smaller clipper s.h.i.+p pulled alongside her enemy's deck and blasted her first grappling lines through the Indomitable's hull. The proximity prevented either s.h.i.+p's cannons from doing damage; neither could fire their big guns on such a close target without doing equal damage to their own hull.

Her crew was another matter. Undead sailors swarmed the gunwale, leaping across the gap between the vessels before planking could be laid between them. The rotting, filthy corpses of once-living men had no fear of falling, nor of water, nor of the beasts that lashed about beneath the fetid waves. They wielded rusted swords or swung bare fingers with sharpened bones protruding through the tips of greenish flesh.

Pistols fired aboard the Nomad II as the living sailors defended themselves. Bronn followed the first rush of flying lead with a long swipe of steel. His ma.s.sive great-sword sliced through flesh, bone, and all, chopping through undead as they leapt onto the s.h.i.+p. He managed to skewer one on the tip of his sword, but it did not stop him-after a few more chops, the zombie body fell in pieces from the blade.

Not to be outdone, Grymm plowed into the fray with a yell, sounding for all the world like an avalanche tumbling downhill. He lifted one zombie bodily, snapping it in half with his bare hands. The big bearded norn shoved another of the walking dead from the s.h.i.+p, but its clutching hand gripped his s.h.i.+rtsleeve. Defiant, Grymm placed his hand on the zombie's shoulder and heaved, ripping dead cartilage from shattered bone. He grabbed the dead sailor's arm and began to beat another zombie with it, caving in the rotting sailor's skull.

Cobiah emptied his pistols into the enemy, aiming for eyes and joints. The bullets would do no significant harm against raw flesh, so he had to use them sparingly. Once the guns were empty, Cobiah drew his cutla.s.s from his waist and set his feet firmly.

He could hear Tenzin's harpoon gun above him, its unmistakable report cracking through the sound of battle. The sharpshooter lay along a high yardarm, reloading and firing the rope-bearing harpoons as quickly as he was able. Already, six ropes stretched from the Nomad II to the Indomitable, their far ends tangled tightly around the galleon's rigging, sunk into her hull or through the rotting boards of her ribs. Another flew out as Cobiah watched, the sharp hooks of the grapple shredding sail and wrapping tightly around the Indomitable's rear mast.

"Make ready to pull!" Rahli yelled as she cracked another zombie with a belaying pin. "On the captain's command!"

But as she called out the order, a terrible voice cut through the chaos, with power behind it enough to rattle the s.h.i.+p's boards. "There's only one captain here, mortal woman." The sound was inhuman, chilling Cobiah's blood to ice. "I am he."

On the deck of the Indomitable, a horrific figure lowered the flintlock it held in a putrid hand. Its skull was square of jaw, the flesh rotted from it entirely, leaving greenish bone open to the salt of the sea. A once-pale coat, now stained with seeping black blood and festering mold, clung to muscles stretching tautly over jagged bone. Ruffles hung at the nape of the creature's neck and at its wrists, antique lace fluttering in the bitter ocean wind. No more the sheepish schoolboy, Captain Whiting had, with the corruption of Orr, become an abomination.

Cobiah staggered back, his breath torn from his chest.

"Chernock," the captain hissed. "Do your duty."

A second figure approached the gunwale. This one had skin like taut leather, a dried mummy of flesh stretched over a warped skeletal frame. Her grin was frozen in a rictus and her hands glowed with a sickly magical chill. "Aye, Captain Whiting. It'd be my honor."

Aubrey Chernock still wore her service medals, but now they were sewn to her skin, the Krytan coat lost somewhere to the sea. She hissed and leapt high above the gunwale, arching up like a shot and then down again, claws spread wide with feral glee. Grymm managed to get his fists in the air before she landed, but her claws seared through flesh and bone, ripping the norn's forearms open with the barest touch.

The norn yelled in pain, las.h.i.+ng out with a fist. The strike caught Chernock's jaw, snapping her head to the side with a jarring crack of bone. But instead of falling to the ground, the vicious creature simply paused and cracked its head upright once more, the sinews and broken vertebrae in her neck restoring themselves as wormy ropes of flesh crawled out of her skin and lashed themselves around the wound.

"Grenth's mercy," Isaye choked out, falling back to the s.h.i.+p's wheel.

"The ropes are in place!" Tenzin cried out above them.

Though she was clutching one of the wheel spokes in a white-knuckled hand, Isaye quickly took up the cry. "Haul the lines, men, and draw her close. The current will do the rest!" She grabbed the hoop of the rudder line and wrapped it over the wheel spoke to hold course northward into the Lion's Arch harbor.

Captain Whiting fired his gun, the pistol's report cracking like the snap of a rigging line. The bullet hurtled through the air, leaving a trail of black fumes in its wake as it sped toward Grymm Svaard. "Grymm! No!" Bronn Svaard leapt in front of his brother. The shot struck the swordsman, spinning him in a complete circle, knocking him to his knees.

"Brother!" howled Grymm. He tried to push past the snarling Chernock, but her claws carved deep into his flesh. Pinned by the awful wight, Grymm struggled and fought but could find no way to reach his twin.

"Haul the lines!" Isaye was yelling over the chaos, and her sailors risked and lost their lives to obey. But with every heave on the thick hemp rope, the Indomitable and the Nomad s.h.i.+fted closer together, drifting along the tide toward the fortress on Claw Island.

Cobiah spun, unloading his pistols at Captain Whiting. Both shots tore into the rotting captain's coat, shattering bone and spewing pus from beneath the putrescent flesh, but the Orrian monstrosity didn't flinch. Instead, it began to laugh, recognizing Cobiah at last.

Captain Whiting extended a filthy, blackened finger toward Cobiah. "Marriner." The beast's eyes glowed, greenish pinp.r.i.c.ks within the skull's dark, moldy sockets.

"You swore to serve my s.h.i.+p for a full tour, Marriner. Her voyage has not yet ended. You escaped the Indomitable once, at the mouth of Orr. Again when we seized Port Stalwart.

"You will not evade commission a third time."

The crew pulled with all their might, hauling the ropes so fiercely that their hands left bloodstains on the fibers. The Indomitable sc.r.a.ped against the Nomad II's side, her hull leaving stripes of black mold along the Nomad II's weathered boards. Creatures crawled across the deck, rotting hands tearing at any sailors they could find. Red water drenched the deck as blood and salt mixed beneath churning boots.

The Indomitable's canvases hung in ruined tatters from her masts, and the wind swelled only the clipper's sails. The Nomad II's guns continued to tear at the Indomitable's rigging, shredding the rotting fabric from her yardarms. On the deck, Chernock slashed at Grymm again and again with her taloned claws. The norn was berserk with rage. He punched the wight directly in her face, and bones cracked beneath leathery skin as he forced her to retreat across the deck. She was quick, though, and clever, leaping to attack at any opportunity, her claws slas.h.i.+ng open the skin of his arms and raking across the pugilist's chest. Grymm grabbed Chernock by the neck and snapped it roughly, and at last, the wight fell limp. Disgusted, Grymm hurled the creature away and raced toward Bronn.

Chernock landed with a thump on the deck. Within moments, her head twisted back around, the bones in her neck crackling loudly, her flesh reweaving itself as the creature struggled to heal the wounds she had been dealt. She was down-but not yet out.

Across the deck, Grymm fell to his knees, hands reaching to clasp his brother's shoulders. He lifted his brother from the floor, tipping Bronn backward onto his knees. "You'll be fine, old cuss," Grymm said firmly, denying any other possible outcome. Bronn writhed in his arms, dark steam issuing from the gunshot wound in his chest. His mouth fell open, and more smoke wafted from his throat and poured from the norn's nostrils. He made a low, guttural sound deep within his chest.

"Bronn?" Grymm let go, drawing his hands back. His arms were b.l.o.o.d.y from Chernock's aggressive strikes, and his long beard was matted with salt foam. "Bronn, can you hear me?" His brother's head tipped forward awkwardly, and his eyes closed. Grymm wept openly, cradling his brother's body to his chest. "My brother . . . my brother," he murmured in grief and pain.

But as it had been in the fight with Chernock, death was not the end of Bronn Svaard. His body twitched in his brother's hands, startling Grymm, who stared down at the bearded norn in renewed hope. "Bronn?" he asked softly, touching the side of his brother's face.