Leir raised his foot and stomped again, this time with a grinding of his heel. Satisfied that the man was dead he wheeled and made to chase after the pirate he had thrown into the hot coals of a cookfire. Just in time to see a knife go right through his shoulderblade and into his heart. He dropped like a stone.
"Good throw," Leir said with a deadpan sort of encouragement. He was less enthusiastic about the stew.
"The first food I've seen in eight fucking days," he said with disgust.
It looked as though they had a moment to rest. And so he took it, sitting down atop a log the pirates had dragged next to their fire. He nudged a dead man's arm out of his way and stretched his legs.
He took a long look around the camp. Two short sabers, one camp axe (more of a hatchet, really), a crossbow, three or four knives--not counting the one having its handle burned away with that dead man's flesh--and a few good sets of boots, if they were lucky.
And, with his keen nightvision, he spied something else. Beyond the corpse which still smoldered and burned away like a grotesque lamp, something broke up the soft waves of the surf. A small boat, with a side pontoon. Which meant the Noose was within paddling distance.
"Do you see that?" he pointed. "If I didn't need to go inland, I'd say we could just go hijack Djokole's ship."