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As Brashen crossed the deck, his coat snagged on something.

He spun in annoyance to free it, and found a flush-faced Clef hanging on to him.

The boy held a long knife in his right hand and his blue eyes were wide.

He quailed at Brashen’s stern look but did not let go of his jacket.

‘’m watchen your back, Cap’n,’ he announced.

A disdainful toss of his head indicated Lavoy and the men around him.

‘Wait,’ Clef suggested in a lowered voice. ‘Jes watch’em for a minute.’

‘Let go,’ Brashen ordered him in annoyance. The boy complied, but followed him as closely as a shadow as Brashen headed for the foredeck.

‘Come here! I’ll kill you all! Come closer!

’ Paragon shouted gleefully at the pirates in the small boats.

His voice was deeper and hoarser than Brashen had ever heard it.

If not for the volume of the words, he would not have known it was his ship.

He felt Paragon’s bloodlust himself for an instant; a boy’s wild determination to prove himself spiked with a man’s drive to crush any who opposed him.

It chilled him, and his spine grew colder as he heard Lavoy’s wild shout of laughter.

Was Lavoy unknowingly feeding off Paragon’s wild emotions?

The mate goaded the ship on. ‘You bet we will, laddie. I’ll cry you where to strike and you knock them. Give him his staff, woman! Let him show these rogues what a Bingtown liveship can do!’

‘I decide.’ Amber’s voice was not sharp, but the pitch of it made it carry.

‘The captain put me in charge of this. I decide when the ship needs a weapon. We’ve been ordered to flee, not fight.

’ He thought he heard an edge of fear in her voice, but the cold anger masked it well.

In a quiet, earnest voice, he heard her exhort Paragon, ‘It’s not too late.

We can still outrun them. No one has to die. ’

‘Give me my staff!’ Paragon demanded, his voice going shrill on the last word. ‘I’ll kill the bastards! I’ll kill them all!’

Brashen could see them now, a tableau on the foredeck. Amber stood, Paragon’s long staff gripped in both hands. Lavoy’s stance was confrontational, but despite his words and the men at his back, he hadn’t dared to set a hand on the staff. Amber looked past him to Paragon.

‘Paragon!’ Amber pleaded. ‘Do you truly want blood on your decks again?’

‘Give it to him!’ Lavoy urged. ‘Don’t try to hide a whole ship behind your skirts, woman! Let him fight if he wants to! We don’t need to run.’

Paragon’s answer was interrupted by a different sound. Behind Brashen, a grapple thudded to the deck, rattled across it and caught for an instant in the railing before it fell back into the water. Eager shouts rang out from below, and another grapple was thrown.

‘Boarders!’ Haff cried out. ‘Starboard aft!’

Brashen put steel in his voice as he swiftly mounted the foredeck. ‘Lavoy! Get aft. Repel those boarders! Archers. To the railing and hold the boats off us. Paragon. Answer the helm, with no wallowing. Are you a ship or a raft? I want us out of here.’

There was the tiniest pause before Lavoy answered, ‘Aye, sir!’ As he moved aft to obey, his hearties went with him.

Brashen could not see what glance passed between Amber and Lavoy as he passed her, but he marked the white pinch of Amber’s lips.

Her clenched hands tightened on the weapon she had shaped for the ship.

He wondered what she would have done if Lavoy had tried to take it.

Brashen stored the incident in his mind, to deal with later.

He stepped to the railing, and leaned over it to shout at the figurehead.

‘Paragon! Stop thrashing about and sail. I’d rather put these vermin behind us than fight them.’

‘I won’t flee!’ Paragon declared wildly. His voice went boyish and broke on the words. ‘Only cowards run! There’s no glory in running from a fight!’

‘Too late to run!’ Clef’s excited voice piped from behind them. ‘They’ve caught us, sir.’

In dismay, Brashen spun to survey Paragon’s deck.

Half a dozen boarders had already gained the deck in two places.

They were practised fighters, and they held their formation, keeping a clear place behind them for their fellows swarming up the grappling lines.

For now, the invaders sought only to defend the small gain they had made, and they did it very well.

Brashen’s inexperienced fighters got in one another’s way as they attacked as a mob.

Even as he watched, another grapple fell to the deck, slid, and caught.

Almost as soon as it was secure, he saw a man’s hand reaching for the top of the railing.

His own men were so busy fighting those on board they did not even notice this new threat.

Only Clef leaped away from him, to charge across the main deck and confront the men coming up. Brashen was horrified.

‘All hands, repel boarders!’ he roared. He spun back to Paragon. ‘We’re not ready for this yet! Ship, they’ll take us if you don’t get us clear of them. Make him see reason!’ he shouted at Amber.

He sprang away to follow Clef, but to his dismay, Althea was there before him.

As the boy darted his knife at the man trying to come over the railing, Althea tugged vainly at the grappling hook.

The three-tined hook was set well into the railing, and the weight of the men swarming up the line attached to it only encouraged the metal to bite deeper into the wood.

A shot of chain fastened directly behind the hook prevented the defenders from simply cutting the hook free.

Before Brashen could reach them, Clef gave a wild scream and thrust frenziedly with his knife.

It bit deeply into the throat of the grinning pirate who had just thrown an arm over the railing.

The blood gouted dark red, spouting past the man’s beard to drench both Clef and Althea before spattering onto the deck.

A deep shout from Paragon told Brashen the ship had felt it.

The dying man fell backwards. Brashen heard the impact as he crashed heavily in the small boat below.

Cries told him the falling body had done damage.

Brashen shouldered Althea aside. ‘Stay safe!’ he ordered her.

‘Get back!’ He swung one leg over the railing, and locked the other through it, so he straddled it firmly.

He thrust down with his sword, slashing the face of a pirate who still clung to the line.

Fortune had favoured them. The falling man had near swamped the boat below and knocked down the man who had been bracing the line.

As the second pirate lost his grip and fell, Brashen saw his chance.

He sprang back to the deck and jerked the grapple loose.

With a triumphant cry, he threw it down into the sea.

He spun about, grinning, expecting Althea and Clef to share his victory.

Instead, Althea’s face was twisted with anger.

Clef still looked numbly at the knife in his hands and the blood that coated them.

A shout from aft turned his head. The fight was not going well there.

He leaned down and shook Clef’s shoulder. ‘Think later, boy! Come on, now.’

His words broke the boy from his trance, and he followed as Brashen charged down the deck.

It seemed to him that in the same moment the ship suddenly picked up momentum.

He felt a moment of relief that Althea had not followed him as he plunged into the battle.

Three of his own men were down, rolling and punching with a pirate as if this were a tavern brawl.

He sprang past them to engage the blade of a tattooed man with a gleaming bald pate.

Brashen let the man parry his blade easily so that he could lunge past him and spear his true target: the pirate who was just flinging a leg over the railing.

As the man fell back, clutching his chest, Brashen paid for his audacity.

The bald pirate slashed at him, a cut that Brashen almost evaded by flinging himself to one side.

He felt the blade tug at his shirt as the fabric parted.

An instant later, a line of fire down his ribs seared him with pain.

He heard Clef’s hoarse cry of horror, and then the boy plunged into the thick of it.

He came in low, jabbing at the man’s feet and calves.

The astonished pirate leaped backwards to avoid the boy’s cuts.

Brashen surged to his feet, thrusting his blade before him two-handed.

As he came up, the tip of his blade found the bald man’s breast and bit deep.

The man hit the railing and tipped backwards over it, screaming as he fell.

Brashen and Clef had broken the magic circle of the defending pirates.

His crew surged forwards, turning the battle into a brawl.

This was fighting they understood; they piled atop the remaining pirates, kicking and stamping.

Brashen dragged himself clear of the mêlée and glanced about his deck.

Aloft, the men were yelling that the pirate ship was falling behind as Paragon found his speed.

A quick dash to the starboard side showed him that Lavoy and his men seemed to have handled their share of the attackers.

Two of his crew were down, but still moving.

Three of the pirates were still on Paragon’s deck, but their comrades below in the boat were shouting at them to jump, to give it up.