Free 01 - The Burning Shore by Robert Ear - (ebook by Undead) Page B

mahogany inlay that surrounded the trapdoor, the Destrier reared her head, heroically breaching the crest of a wave and sending
Lorenzo slipping helplessly back down the deck.
    He scratched at the wood with his nails as he shot back down the sudden slope
of the deck, back towards his cabin. With a bang he hit the wall only three feet
to the left of where he’d started out.
    But before he had time to despair the Destrier charged, storming the
cavern that had followed the wave, and Lorenzo was sent spinning back towards
the hatch.
    He hit it with a thump, his hands and teeth gripping the wood as he hugged
himself into it, fastening onto the carpentry as tightly as one of the barnacles
that slated the Destrier ’s hull.
    She reared up again, climbing the next wave, and in the second of relative
calm that followed Lorenzo reached over and grabbed at the solid wooden handles
that opened the hatch. He turned at them expectantly, already anticipating the
sweet respite that awaited him below decks.
    The handles remained solid. Stubborn.
    Unmoving.
    Baring his teeth in desperation, Lorenzo twisted and pulled harder, but
nothing gave. The Destrier ’s charge was broken as she dropped into a
sudden chasm with a bone-jarring thud, and Lorenzo, half stunned, tried again.
    “Gods damn it!” he swore at the sudden rush of water that smacked into him,
pulling playfully at his legs.
    Then he tried to turn the handles the other way.
    Still nothing.
    Lorenzo howled with frustration and, refusing to relinquish his precious
handholds, banged the hatch with his head.
    Suddenly the handles were turning of their own accord. The hatch winked open,
and he felt hands pulling him roughly inside. He was dragged down a short ladder
as the trapdoor was once more secured into place above him.
    At first Lorenzo could think of nothing but the relative silence and calm of
this welcome underworld. Even the stench of refuse and bilge-water seemed sweet
to him after the terrible, scouring freshness of the world above. And the dozen
or so men who stood hunched over him, their faces distorted into gargoyle masks
by the flickering light of their lantern, looked like angels.
    Then their leader pushed his way through them, bent almost double beneath the
low ceiling, and looked down with a terrible satisfaction.
    “Well, well. Look who it is,” said Jacques, as he knelt down to study his
lads’ catch. “The captain’s monkey.”
    “That boot didn’t do much for your looks,” Lorenzo told him, and spat a
mouthful of blood and salt water into the bilges at Jacques’ feet.
    “No matter,” the mercenary agreed smugly. “The girls always love a winner.”
    “So I see,” Lorenzo looked around pointedly.
    Jacques laughed and slapped his catch on the shoulder.
    “You’re a real diplomat, little man,” he cackled. “But you can get stuffed.
I’m not making the same mistake twice. Your fop of a master turned out to be a
real killer, gods alone know what a runt like you would turn out to be.”
    “What I am,” Lorenzo shrugged, grabbing at the ladder as the Destrier leapt upon another peak, “is in a hurry. The fevers got a hold of Fl… of the
captain. Seems the surgeon’s better at drinking the spirit than using it on his
patients.”
    “I’m sorry to hear it,” Jacques frowned. “He wasn’t a bad fellow. For an
officer.”
    “Isn’t such a bad fellow,” Lorenzo muttered. “But anyway, if you’ll just show
me where the water’s kept I’d better get back to him.”
    “Surely,” Jacques nodded. “You’ll have to ask the sergeant first, though.
Turns out he isn’t just a pretty face either.”
    “Sergeant? You mean one of the Kislevites?”
    “No. Orbrant, of course. Kislevites!” he spat. “Those rotten bastards
wouldn’t piss on their own grandmothers to put them out. That captain they hide
behind won’t even let us leave our sick in the upper decks. That’s why we’re all
stuck down here.”
    “You have a