Page 47 of The Sea Witch (Salt & Sorcery #1)

Blade out, Alys sprung toward him. Her cutlass slashed through his belt, and, using the tip of her sword, she flung the belt

to the other side of the deck.

The mage kicked her in the stomach. She gasped as she flew backward.

He clapped his hands together, sending out waves of invisible force. The ship rocked.

“A signal,” she shouted to her crew. “For reinforcements.”

The mage chuckled. “Enjoy your last moments alive, witch.”

Alys ran at him. He pulled his cutlass, charged with glowing green energy. He leapt at her and she spun to evade his sword.

She parried another strike, jolting from the force of his magic-infused weapon. Regaining her balance, she countered with

her own blow. The mage snarled as they fought past the forms of dozens of marines and seamen littered the deck. Groggy and

stupefied, they could only mutter and flop bonelessly as pirates bound their hands.

One of the seamen still on his feet turned a swivel gun toward the Sea Witch and prepared to fire.

Gritting her teeth, Alys hurled lightning toward the swivel gun. The gunpowder in the weapon ignited and it exploded.

Pain blazed in her thigh. She screamed as the mage’s power-charged cutlass struck her in the leg. The wound was exactly where

she’d cut him.

She buckled from the pain as his weapon remained stuck in her leg.

“Retribution tastes sweet.” He loomed over her, his hands upraised with the red light of a killing spell.

“Like honey.” She pulled the sword from her thigh and stabbed it through his foot. The blade sank through the leather of his

boot, into flesh, muscle and bone, and into the deck.

The mage screamed. Yet when he tried to leap back, his pinned foot kept him trapped.

With her own cutlass, she stabbed into the center of his chest. The mage looked down at her sword, stuck between his ribs.

He tried to pry the blade from his body, then fell backward. His lifeless eyes no longer glowed. His body went slack as his

foot remained pinned to the deck. Blood, tainted with the glittering gleam from the potion, pooled on the wood.

Alys panted and stared at the mage’s body. Her leg buckled beneath her as blood poured from her wound.

The captain took a step toward her, his rapier raised.

“I would not.” Olachi pressed the tip of her cutlass against the captain’s throat. Slowly, he lowered his sword.

“She has a far better use for your ship,” Alys said to the captain, and Olachi nodded.

One by one, the remaining conscious seamen and marines laid down their weapons. They raised their hands in surrender.

Stasia was at Alys’s side, supporting her when she could barely hold her own weight. “Let us finish this.”

“Get the navy men in the jolly boats and cutters,” Alys commanded her crew as more blood flowed down her leg. “Lively, now.

The hourglass quickly empties.”

The women did as they were instructed. They loaded the Ajax ’s crew into two jolly boats and two cutters. The boats lay low in the water, overfilled with the crew.

The captain was the last one set into a cutter. Just as he climbed into the small vessel, both the Ajax and the Sea Witch jolted.

“Good. Fucking. God,” Alys growled.

Everyone, even the sailors and naval officers, cried out in alarm.

The sleek, sharp scales of a leviathan broke the waves. Circling the Ajax and the Sea Witch , it twisted and spun in the water, long and serpentine, and impossibly huge. Its head, the size of a jolly boat, breached the

surface. Glowing eyes with slitted pupils stared up at her. Opening its enormous mouth, rows of teeth like cutlasses flashed.

This was the nearest she’d ever been to a leviathan. Alys had seen one from a distance, back in St. Gertrude, when one had

destroyed the Diabolique . This close, the size of the beast stole her breath. Fighting a creature such as this was hopeless.

Only one leviathan was known for attacking ships. Where that beast was, the naval flagship wouldn’t be far behind.

“Those that sail with the Sea Witch ,” Alys shouted, “to the ship. Now! ”

Women began swinging back to the Sea Witch in a mad rush. The others, who wished to stay with Olachi and join her mission, remained behind.

Alys winced as Stasia helped her limp to the ropes connecting the Ajax and the Sea Witch . She grabbed one of the ropes, but a hand on hers stopped her.

“Ije oma,” Olachi said, her dark eyes warm. “Safe journey.”

“And to you,” Alys answered. “We’ll see each other again.”

“Of that, I do not doubt.”

Olachi stepped back, and Alys hoisted herself up before swinging across the gap between the two ships. As she flew through

the air, she looked down at the leviathan. Agitated, its tail lashed the churning water. Its open maw gaped, dark and terrifying.

Its sharp teeth glinted in the sunlight. The creature could easily swallow her whole.

A moment later, she landed awkwardly on the deck of the Sea Witch . Searing pain shot up her leg but she kept standing long enough to make sure that everyone who wanted back on the Sea Witch was aboard, and those who intended to sail with Olachi were on the Ajax.

The leviathan bumped its head against the two ships with greater force, sending both vessels rocking violently. Crew clung

to the railings as they fought to stay on their feet and not tumble into the water, where death awaited.

The ropes lashing the ships together were frantically cut just as the leviathan made another pass between the ships. Both

vessels shuddered and rolled from the impact. The Ajax and the Sea Witch needed distance between the two ships.

“Enemy vessel approaching, Cap’n,” Susannah cried. “Off the starboard bow!”

Stasia shoved a spyglass into Alys’s hand, and Alys used it to look starboard. She cursed.

“The Jupiter ,” she growled.

The first-rate one-hundred-gun man-o’-war sailed right for them. The full-rigged sails billowed, the wind charged with a mage’s power. Within moments, the massive ship would be upon them.

Another beast swam beside it.

“A kraken!” Stasia shouted. Fear laced her voice.

“Not possible.” Alys aimed the spyglass and cursed.

The gargantuan beast’s tentacles stretched far, far behind it as it cut through the water. The kraken’s huge reddish bulbous

head broke the surface. Even from this distance, there was no mistaking the predatory intent in its yellow eyes.

Alys’s mind whirled. There had to be something they could do. Or else there’d be no surviving the attack of a leviathan, a kraken, and the naval flagship.

Rage poured into her, hot and acidic. She couldn’t fail her crew, or Olachi and the other freed women.

“All witches,” Alys shouted to the women aboard her ship as well as the Ajax . “Send your voices to the bottom of the sea! We’ve been hunted and hounded, made to feel ashamed, killed for who we are.

Bought and sold. Now’s the time. Scream. All of your fury, put it into your screams! Send them silently to the bottom of the

sea.”

Witches on both vessels opened their mouths. Alys screamed, too, for herself, for Ellen, for Stasia and Olachi and the women

of Norham and women everywhere. She screamed her outrage and grief and defiance.

Dozens of women released their fury at a world that refused to understand or accept them.

The witches of both ships shrieked noiselessly, their faces darkening with the venting of centuries of suppressed anger. Even

the familiars opened their mouths on silent cries.

Alys clenched her fists as she used her magic to gather the screams and guide them as they sank deep beneath the water. Sweat poured from her as she struggled to shape them into a massive sphere, large as a house. All of their voices collected within the bubble.

The Jupiter grew closer, its guns trained on the Sea Witch and the Ajax . The kraken’s tentacles rose from the sea, ready to wrap around the hull and masts. The leviathan opened its maw.

Alys and crew braced for the attacks.

The bubble of screams broke the water’s surface and burst, releasing the voices with deafening force. The crew aboard the

Jupiter , and the sailors in the jolly boats and cutters, covered their ears and grimaced in pain. The creatures halted, frozen in

place.

The force of their fury pushed into the Jupiter . The naval vessel was swept backward on surges of water, while the leviathan and the kraken were pushed away on the churning

sea. A hundred feet separated the flagship and creatures from the Ajax and the Sea Witch .

“My witch sisters,” Alys cried, “summon the winds to make our escape.”

Her magic had been taxed to its limits, yet Alys joined her crew as she called upon the strongest winds to fill the sails

of the Sea Witch and the Ajax. They roused them from every corner of the Caribbean, all the breezes and gales and gusts. Anything that could help them flee

promised destruction.

Winds gathered, filling the Sea Witch ’s and Ajax ’s sails with a surge. Propelled by the blasts of air, the two ships cut through the sea and away from each other. It was

as though they had been shot from a cannon. Distance grew between themselves and the naval flagship. A quarter mile, a half

mile. A mile.

The Ajax sailed off on its own course.

Only when the Jupiter and the creatures disappeared over the horizon did Alys permit herself to exhale.

Pain from her wound returned in a rush, coupled with her exhaustion in the wake of using so much magic.

She gripped the rail to keep herself upright.

Around her, witches sank down to the deck, while other members of the crew nursed wounds sustained in the battle.

Fatima led a group of crew members to mend injuries for some, and balance others with food and gentle, careful touch.

Alys pulled off her coat, then tore the sleeve of her shirt into a long strip. She bound the fabric around her wounded thigh.

Blood immediately soaked through the linen.

When Fatima approached Alys, she waved the doctor off. “Others need more attention.”

“I suppose this blood on your thigh and dripping onto the deck belongs to someone else,” Fatima said.

“The crew first,” Alys growled. When the doctor looked as though she might argue, Alys added, “Don’t make today the first

time you disobey a direct order.”

Fatima shook her head, but moved on to attend to the rest of the company.

A moment later, Stasia was at Alys’s side. “I have unfortunate news.”

Alys braced herself. “Tell me.”

“Josephine left to join Olachi,” Stasia said somberly. “We are going to need another cook.”

A ragged laugh escaped Alys. “You’re always saying that no one here can brew decent coffee. Now’s your chance to take the

tiller.”

“Coffee is the extent of my talent in the kitchen. It is one of the reasons why I left my village. I would rather sail a ship

than roll grape leaves to make dolmades. Do not put too much weight on your leg.”

“I have to.” Alys groaned as she limped toward the companionway. “There’s something I must do.”