Page 69 of The Sea Witch (Salt & Sorcery #1)

Alys and her crew dragged the boat just onto the sand and charged onto the beach. Dense forest lay fifty feet beyond the beach.

“What is it we are looking for?” Stasia asked. Eris flapped on her shoulder.

“No idea,” Alys replied. “Little George wouldn’t have us dance such a merry jig, only to drop whatever it is we’re hunting

right in our laps.”

“Whatever we are after,” Susannah said tightly, her gaze fixed behind Alys, “they want it as well.”

A cutter boat loaded with fully armed marines sped toward them, with an officer riding at the rear of the boat. He’d already

drawn his cutlass, and even from a distance, she could see his eyes glitter with eagerness for the fight to come.

Alys quickly counted over thirty marines in the cutter, plus half a dozen seamen rowing, outnumbering her own forces six to

one.

At least the Sea Witch had sailed away to safety.

“Are you ready, my beauties?” she cried to her crew as she pulled her cutlass from its sheath. She summoned a fiery magical

shield on her free arm.

“Ready,” her crew shouted back. Each woman bared her teeth and took a wide stance as they prepared themselves for the fight of their lives. They drew their blades, shimmering with magic, and summoned shields, while Stasia, Susannah, and Thérèse raised glowing hands.

As the cutter neared, a line of marines raised their long guns, pointing them at Alys and her crew.

“A wall of stone, now!” she shouted to the other witches.

They threw up a gleaming barrier, sturdy as granite. At the same time, the marines fired.

The bullets pinged off the wall.

“Now, a wave,” Alys cried.

She joined the witches as they shoved against the water. It formed a wave that knocked sideways into the cutter with enormous

force. A handful of marines fell overboard and disappeared beneath the surface.

The cutter drew closer and a second group of marines shouldered their guns, preparing to fire.

“The wall of stone again,” Alys bellowed. The spell sprang up, a moment before the marines discharged their weapons. Bullets

slammed into the magical barrier. The wall shuddered from the force, glowing cracks forming in the barrier’s surface. Seconds

later, the wall collapsed in a hail of sparks.

The cutter landed. Seamen leapt out to drag the boat onto the sand, and marines quickly alit to form ordered lines upon the

beach. Their commander shouted orders. More of the armed men aimed their long guns.

Stasia slapped the sand, and it rolled up in a wave. It formed a thick berm five feet high, rising between Alys’s crew and

the marines.

The armed men fired. Clouds of smoke billowed from the detonating gunpowder. The bullets whizzed, and then lodged in the ridge

of sand.

The infantrymen wasted no time in affixing bayonets to their guns.

“Charge!” their commander shouted.

The marines attacked in regimented lines, coats bright red beneath the blue sky. The first line ran toward the berm, with over two dozen men behind them.

“I’ll heat the guns!” Thérèse yelled.

She aimed her magic toward the rifles’ metal fittings. The iron and brass began to smolder, dully at first, and then they

glowed red.

Screaming, the first line of marines dropped their weapons. They fell back and shook out their hands as they tried to cool

their singed skin.

A second line of armed men charged with their bayonet-topped rifles.

“Hit them with sand flies,” Alys shouted to her witches.

She and the others called forth black clouds of tiny but countless insects. The bugs swarmed around the marines, hazing their

vision and stinging their skin. Crying out, swearing, the infantrymen swatted at the sand flies and shoved their faces into

the crooks of their arms to avoid the insects’ assault.

Yet the third line of marines advanced. With them was the naval officer Alys had seen in the cutter. He gritted his teeth

and ploughed ahead, leading the final group of marines. The first line of armed men picked up their now cooled weapons, and

joined their comrades in a frontal attack.

Inés and Dayanna waited until some of the marines were close enough. Then the women fired their braces of pistols in quick

succession. Three men fell. And still, more rushed at them. Dayanna and Inés drew their cutlasses and launched into counterattacks

against the infantrymen’s bayonets.

Susannah and Thérèse raised their cutlasses. The metal blades glowed with magical energy. Both witches rushed toward the marines.

Teeth bared, they fought against the men.

Facing off against two marines, Alys traded strikes and used a magical shield to block their blows. They pushed her up the beach with their attacks. She kept them at bay, and yet she couldn’t get in a direct hit, always busy combating one of the men or the other without pause.

She kicked at the sand, and muttered a spell under her breath. The sand transformed into fire ants that landed on the men’s

faces and arms. They howled as innumerable red insects mindlessly bit their flesh.

No sooner had they retreated than an officer, a burly man with a cruel smile, took their place.

“The Tanner bitch,” he sneered. He lunged with his cutlass.

“Tanner witch ,” she corrected, blocking his attack. “A bitch as well.”

He was even more trained than the marines, and it was all she could do to defend herself as his attacks rained relentlessly

down on her.

“Alys, back!” Stasia shouted.

Alys leapt away as lightning shot from Stasia’s fingers.

The bolt of electricity glanced off the officer. It shot into the fringe trees at the edge of the beach, singeing leaves that

sent curls of smoke into the sky.

With a smirk, the officer reached beneath the neck of his shirt. He pulled out a tiny metal octagon, suspended on a leather

cord. Markings were stamped onto the metallic piece.

“Warne set me up, nice and proper.” The officer tucked the medallion back under this clothing.

“Hellfire,” Alys growled.

He attacked again. Alys parried his strike, but he kept on coming.

There were just too many of the marines. And no matter how Alys tried, she simply could not get the better of the officer.

A venomous gleam shone in his eyes as he fought. Nothing, it seemed, gave him greater pleasure than fighting her.

“Get. The fuck. Away. From her.”

Both Alys and the officer whirled to face the water.

Ben strode from the sea.

Water cascaded down from his hair and his clothing, and the waves churned at his boots as he stalked from the surf.

His markings glowed on his body, and his eyes glittered with rage.

Manacles with broken chains hung from each of his wrists, while the fragments of shackles remained on his booted ankles.

Relief that he was alive poured through her, and she nearly stumbled from the force of it.

For a moment, everyone froze, staring at him.

Ben was unarmed, but the marines’ commander collected himself. He rushed at him. Ben kicked the man in the chest. As the commander

went flying, Ben snatched his cutlass from the air. He slashed at another advancing marine, and the man crumpled.

“Traitor,” the officer beside Alys shouted.

“I’m sending you to hell, Oliver,” Ben gritted. He shouldered a path through the marines, and strode over the berm, until

he faced the naval officer.

Oliver lunged at Ben, who parried the blade strike with his cutlass.

“Captain!” Stasia cried to Alys. When Alys ran to her friend, Stasia said, “We need a bulwark made of sand. It is not something

I can do alone.”

They both placed their hands upon the sand. Alys concentrated, summoning the constructive force of a mound-building termite.

She and Stasia forced magic into the sand, pushing it with their combined power.

The sand jolted up in a long embankment. It rose fifteen feet high, with the Sea Witch crew, Ben, and Oliver at the top. The infantrymen below tried to slog through a trench of wet sand at the base of the bulwark,

yet their feet kept sticking in the thick sludge.

Ben rammed his fist into Oliver’s chest. The naval officer toppled down the bulwark. He landed in a stunned heap at the bottom,

mired in the wet sand.

“Go, both of you,” Stasia shouted to Alys and Ben. She jerked her head toward the forest. “Find the kataraménos thing we have nearly died for.”

“I won’t leave you,” Alys yelled back.

“We will hold them off,” Stasia answered as she launched a gale of wind down the bulwark, pushing the marines back. Susannah

and Thérèse summoned stinging beetles to cascade onto the men as Inés and Dayanna fired their pistols, pausing long enough

to reload, and fire again.

“Go, now!” Stasia urged.

Alys and Ben didn’t wait. They sped into the forest.

As they ran, they reached for each other, and clasped hands as they sprinted toward the prize they had been seeking for so

long. The stars only knew what would happen if they failed to find it.

Ben and Alys were only a dozen strides into the forest before he stopped and pulled Alys into his arms.

“Thank God,” he breathed. “Thank God.”

“Thank the goddesses,” she shakily corrected him.

“I don’t care who’s responsible. All that signifies is that you’re safe.”

They held each other tightly for a moment, and he didn’t know who was trembling, him, Alys, or both of them. Yet the sounds

of battle raged just beyond the tree line behind them.

He and Alys stepped apart, and kept pushing through the woods.

“I believed you were dead,” she said, ducking under a liana. “I couldn’t feel you.”

“Warne, the Jupiter ’s mage. He severed our connection after you and I dreamwalked. There wasn’t a damned thing I could do to warn you, and it

bloody killed me.”

“I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

He paused, and she did, too, long enough for him to stroke his fingers along her face. “I’ll always return to you. Nothing in the whole of this cursed world can keep me away from you.”

She gripped his wrist, and he couldn’t stop the hiss of pain.

“Those chains aren’t decorative.” She looked down at the angry charred flesh of his wrists and sucked in a breath.