This is what it had always been like with the crew of the Daughter. Friggin' in the Riggin' is what Master Carpenter Duggen called it--getting right romantic with the enemy on his own homeship. Except in those days so shortly gone by he'd have had at least twenty more men on his side. And now all he had was Skandra the Lucky Duck Human.
He fought like a stubborn bastard, alright, and hade more than one devil's trick up his sleeve. But the odds were still pretty far.
"This," Skandra growled as he climbed. "Is miserable."
"I was just thinking that," Leir said. He hauled himself quickly up the ropes, the swathe of foggy glass-blue beneath them growing ever larger as they made their ascent.
"Something for the memoir," he added. And then they were on the deck. He had a naked sword in his hand, his pointer finger hooked around a ring hidden inside the ornate schiavona hilt. This would be close quarters fencing.
The Bastard Captain was huge. Skin dark as Carthen rum and smelling just as bad. Big shoulders like an ox, and if Leir guessed correctly, he had to be seven feet tall. And there was Skandra, running right at him--which is exactly what Leir had been planning.
A wonderful coincidence, followed by another: they both eneded up right on the fucking deck. How the hell was a big boulder piece of ballast like Djokole that quick?
Skandra was glancing about the decks like an angry animal, waiting to be pushed into a corner so that he could fight his way back out. The ship bucked beneath them. Leir could barely focus, but his blurry vision never left Djokole. He stalked slowly toward them, booming out his command with the voice of a kettle drum.
"Get his attention," Leir said quietly. "I'll try and hit his liver. Or something."
Leir stood--no, swam really--to his feet, still punch drunk. So he simply turned it off; he broke down the connection between his rational, planning mind and the form which wrapped around it. And the weariness of their battle, the hot blood dried to his skin, the grog-slosh in his brain from that kick: vanished.
His sword stood out in front of him, finger still in the ring, and flicked once quick as a dragonfly.