The Dragon's Path

breaths then pulled his shield to the front and drew his sword.
    “Sound the charge,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”
    When they rounded the bend that led into the cove, a ragged volley of arrows met them. Marcus shouted, and his soldiers picked up the call. From the far end of the strip of sand, ten archers stood ground, loosing arrows and preparing to jump into the last hide boat and take to the safety of the water, the ships, and the sea. The other boats were already away, rowing fast toward the ships and loaded with enough men to defeat Marcus’s force.
    The first was a dozen yards from shore and already sinking.
    In the bright water, hidden by the glare of the sun, nearly a dozen Kurtadae with long knives put new holes in the boats.
    Marcus pulled up, waving to his own archers to take the shoreline while the Jasuru charged the enemy and their boat, howling like mad animals. A few figures appeared on the ships, staring out at the spectacle on shore and in the tidepool. The first boat vanished. The second was staying more nearly afloat as the men in it bailed frantically with helmets and hands. They weren’t rowing, though. It wouldn’t get them any farther.
    Marcus lifted his hand and his archers raised bows.
    “Surrender now and you won’t be harmed!” he shouted over the surf. “Or flee and be killed. Your choice.”
    In the surf, one of the sailors started kicking for the ships. Marcus pointed at him with his sword. It took three volleys before he stopped. As if on cue, the black bobbing heads of Ahariel and the other Kurtadae appeared in a rough line between the sinking boats and the ships. As Marcus watched, the swimming Kurtadae lifted their knives above the water, like the ocean growing teeth.
    “Leave your weapons in the water,” Marcus called. “Let’s end this gently.”
    They emerged from the waves, sullen and bedraggled. Marcus’s soldiers took them one by one, bound them, and left them sitting under guard.
    “Fifty-eight,” Yardem said.
    “There’s a few still on the ships,” Marcus said. “And there’s the one we poked full of arrows.”
    “Fifty-nine, then.”
    “Still outnumbered. Badly outnumbered,” Marcus said. And then, “We can exaggerate when we take it to the taphouse.”
    A young Firstblood man walked out of the sea. His beard was braided in the style of Carbal. His eyes were bright green, his face thin and sharp. His silk robe clung to his body, making his potbelly impossible to hide. Marcus kicked his horse and trotted up to him. He looked like a kitten that fell in a creek.
    “Macero Rinál?”
    The pirate captain looked up at Marcus with contempt that was as good as acknowledgment.
    “I’ve been looking for you,” Marcus said.
    The man said something obscene.
    Marcus had his tent set up at the top of the rise. The stretched leather clung to the frames and kept the wind out, if not the flies. Macero Rinál sat on a cushion wrapped in a wool blanket and stinking of brine. Marcus sat at his field desk with a plate of sausage and bread. Below them, as if on a stage, Marcus’s forces were involved with the long process of unloading the surrendered ship, hauling the cargo to land, and loading it onto wagons.
    “You picked the wrong ship,” Marcus said.
    “You picked the wrong man,” Rinál said. He had a smaller voice than Marcus had expected.
    “Five weeks ago, a ship called the
Stormcrow
was coming west from Maccia in the Free Cities heading for Porte Oliva in Birancour. It didn’t make it. Waylaid, the captain said. Is this sounding familiar?”
    “I am the cousin of Prince Esteban of Carbal. You and your magistrates have no power over me,” Rinál said, lifting his chin as he spoke. “I invoke the Treaty of Carcedon.”
    Marcus took a bite of sausage and chewed slowly. When he spoke, he drew the syllables out.
    “Captain Rinál? Look at me. Do I seem like a magistrate’s blade?”
    The chin didn’t descend, but a flicker of uncertainty came to the young man’s eyes.
    “I work for the Medean bank in Porte Oliva. My employers insured the
Stormcrow.
When you took the crates off that ship, you weren’t stealing from the sailors who were carrying them. You weren’t even stealing from the merchants who owned them. You were stealing from us.”
    The pirate’s face went grey. The leather flap opened with a rustle and Yardem came in. His earrings were back in place.
    “News?” Marcus said.
    “The cargo here matches the manifests,” Yardem