The youth frowned. “But...”

“No buts. Hold the beach.”

She trusted the youth to do just that. He was to be a Varin Knight, a level beyond the rest of these men. Even at the tender age of fifteen she suspected he was a superior swordsman to most others on this island.

She dashed off with Sir Penrose Brightwood, rushing away as battle rang out across the strand. The godsteel mail made movement difficult for her, yet such was the strength of her Bladeborn blood that the weight would soon reduce. They passed into the woods, hurrying along a decked path, the planks rattling underfoot. Shouts rang out, and the ring of steel. The chaos was spreading like wildfire.

She guided Sir Penrose along, passing skirmishes along the way. Evidently some of the soldiers had decided to join the revolt, even using it as an excuse to settle scores with other men they did not like. Elsewhere they had already yielded, throwing down their arms, dropping to their knees. In a clearing, Amara glimpsed Sir Ryger engaged in battle with a foe, another of the Seal King’s Bladeborn thralls. The fighting looked fierce, a fine knightly duel, misting steel connecting, clanging, bursting in puffs of silver smoke.

They rushed past, making hard for the corridor of trees that led to the Lard Lord’s palace. Amara’s thighs were aflame, her lungs burning. They turned a corner, reaching the trees, running beneath the branches. Outside the door of hanging vines, several men lay dead. One was Sir Mordant, she saw at once, his neck opened up to the bone, face twisted into an eternal rictus of pain. Another Amara recognised as one of the two burly champions who watched the Seal King’s door. He was slumped forward on his knees, cradling his intestines, his belly opened up beneath his breastplate. Sir Penrose stepped forward, shoved him aside with his foot, and a nest of pink snakes slithered to the floor, steaming and stinking.

There was shouting beyond, a high-pitched screaming, the puff of men in combat, steel kissing steel. Sir Penrose swept the vines aside and rushed in. Amara followed. The earthy interior of the Seal King’s palace came into view. The feasting table was overturned, plates of food and jugs of wine splashed and smashed all over the floor. About it, Sir Connor Crawfield and Carly Flame Mane were in battle with the Seal King’s second guard. Connor, upright, stance wide, striking forth in clean form; Carly leaping and slashing, using her agility. There was blood all over the girl, sprayed across her face, covering her hands, further reddening her fiery hair. Sir Connor looked to have taken a wound to his left shoulder, the flesh hewn open, but it was shallow.

There was screaming in the corner of the room, a maidservant cowering away, shaking all over, urine running down the inside of her leg. Another girl was dead, lying in a pool of spreading blood, caught by an errant blade most likely. The top of her head had been sliced clean off.

Amara raised her eyes to the rear, beyond the Great One’s massive oaken throne. A trail of blood led through another door of vines. There was a sound of choked whimpering back there.

“Pen, help them.”

She left the knight to help finish off their foe, stepping around the overturned table, up past the stage and oaken throne, through the hanging vines. The Seal King’s bedchamber was beyond, a large room, furnished with rugs, with candles burning in little alcoves along the walls and a hundred little lanterns dangling from the ceiling on vines, all at different heights, flickering in the darkness like fireflies.

The Great One lay on his enormous bed, undressed but for a sail-sized breechclout that wrapped about his immense girth. There was blood everywhere, his skin turned grey to red. A dozen stab wounds had disabled him, each shallow, cutting at his blubber. There was blood spray on the walls and the floor, gouts spattered across the room like stars in a night sky. His body was grotesque, mountainous, flesh flowing over the sides of the bed frame. A plaintive bleating sound was bubbling off his lips, eyes running with tears.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” Amara said, from the doorway.

He saw her, eyes widening. His cheeks and chins were quivering, blood bubbling about the corners of his blowhole of a mouth. “The girl…she…she stabbed me. She said…she said…”

“That she would lay with you if you let her leave? Yes, I know.” Amara continued into the room. “Did anything happen? Did you touch her?”

“I never…we never got that far. I was only…we were only talking and then…then she reached down and…” He coughed, his entire body rippling with a great wave of bloodied blubber. Amara had seen whale hunts before, watched the great ocean beasts hauled onto shore, harpoons sticking out of their flesh, great swells of blood and oil pulsing and pouring down their hides. She was reminded of them now. “I never saw the…the knife until…” He shuddered, convulsing, and turned his head, spewing vomit across his shoulder.

Amara watched, disgusted. Yet there was a part of her that pitied him too. She had not forgotten what he’d told her of cruelty. This man has lost a lot. A son, a daughter, he watched his mother raped and murdered, his father slain by a rival. He had admitted his faults and follies to her, but it wasn’t enough to save him. “You should have let us leave,” she told him. “You would have spared yourself a deal of pain. And your men as well. Listen.”

The sound of battle was still ringing out across the island, echoing between the great rock walls of the cavern. Another shudder and blubbery ripple. The Great One wretched again. “I never…I was only trying to…”

“Protect them? Or yourself?”

“Both,” he admitted, coughing the word out. “Both, of course both. I am a glutton, my lady, I…I admit it freely. A glutton and a pig and a cruel one too. But my children…my children…” His face screwed up in pain, features squashing together to hide his eyes. “I had to think of them, my lady. If I had opened these islands, we’d have been swamped and overwhelmed. When a ship goes down, most men go down with it. There are only so many…so many who can fit on a raft…”

She understood the analogy, but it wasn’t going to save him. “I would consider letting you live if I trusted you,” she said. “I don’t. And I have made promises.” She drew her knife and stepped closer.

He heaved, trying to shift his great bulk off the bed, waving a flipper for purchase. Blood bubbled up out of his wounds, scarring his belly and chest, shoulders, and arms, seeping through the slashes and cuts. He screamed out for help, tears streaming from his tiny little eyes. “Please, my lady…please, you don’t need to do this. I’ll serve you…I will. I’ll be yours to command, your loyal servant…please, please…”

“It’s too late for all that.” She slashed at his throat, the godsteel dagger slicing through the meat and muscle. The flesh of his neck parted, opening out as the blood came gushing forth. He slapped a flipper down to stem the flow, beady eyes bulging, but it would make no difference. It was instinctive, Vesryn had once told her. Everyone did it. Even seals, it would seem.

She left him there to choke and die, stepping back out of the bedchamber to find that the Great One’s second champion was dead. Sir Connor stood above him, valiant and victorious, pulling his blade from the man’s chest. Beyond the palace, sounds of battle could still be heard, though more distantly now. “Go,” Amara said at once. “I want this battle done as soon as possible.”

They all made for the door, Sir Connor and Sir Penrose leading, Carly remaining at Amara’s side. “You finished him off?” the girl asked, blood dripping down her face.

Amara nodded. “Cut this throat.” They moved out through the hanging vines, past the bodies on the ground.

“What happened to Mondant?” Carly asked, seeing him there.

“Other Bladeborn guard got him,” said Sir Connor Crawfield. “I got him back in return.”

The worst of the fighting was down at the beach, as Sir Ryger Joyce had foretold, men clashing with sword and axe and spear by the light of the bioluminescent moss, glowing on the cavern ceiling. At the mouth of the cave, moonlight poured in from outside, reflecting off the water, and there Amara saw several longships and smaller fishing boats skimming out toward the river. Fleeing, she thought. She didn’t blame them, with all this bloodshed. She left the others to add their blades to the fray - all but Sir Penrose, who remained on guard at her side - and marched straight down to where Captain stood at his boat, observing the action. His oarsmen were with him, though their numbers seemed to have swelled dramatically since last Amara saw.

“You have new friends,” she said.

“I’m a popular man, always was.” He grinned.

Amara recognised many of the new faces from the village. Some were men, young and old, oarsmen who she’d seen coming and going from the island. Others were fishermen, shark-killers and seal-hunters. There were some women too, sail-stitchers and net-makers, and some of them had children with them, even babes still on the breast.

“What are they all doing here?” Amara asked. “Do they want to leave?”

“After all this? Aye. Some of them are old enough to remember the old wars out here, back when the Great One won his throne. They call it the War of the Lakeland Lords. Was a bloody business, so I’m told, though before my time. They fear a repeat, now that the Great One’s dead.” He paused, peering at her. “He is dead, isn’t he?”

She nodded. “He’s eaten his last herring, shall we say.”

Captain laughed. “The fish o’ the lake will sleep easy tonight.”

“So they expect the other pirate lords will make a claim for this sanctuary?”

“Aye. That’s the fear, same as last time. Soon as word of all this gets out, all them bloody pirates will be at each other’s throats. The Great One kept things stable, in a way. And there are some nasty men out there, m’lady. This lot here would rather take their chances somewhere else.”

That was a headache Amara could do without. “There will be no civil war for control of these islands,” she said. “I plan to send soldiers here to take control, but in the meantime, I hoped to put the seneschal in charge. You are quite aware of that, Captain. We have spoken of it already.”

“We have, aye, but not these.” He thumbed over his shoulder at the villagers. “They got no idea any of this would happen tonight, and are flocking to the new power, m’lady, as all serfs tend to do. That’s you.”

“No. I’m not staying. The new power will be the seneschal who will take temporary charge.” That was assuming he hadn’t already escaped. “I hope you didn’t see him fleeing on some boat, Captain?”

“I saw him try,” the Seaborn said.

“Try? What do you mean?”

“I mean he tried to scramble onto one o’ those longships, but Sir Montague managed to stop him before he could. Got him penned up in the butchering hut as we speak. That seneschal’s always been a little squeamish o’ blood, m’lady, so Monty thought it would be a good idea to keep him there, while he awaits you.”

That made Amara want to let him squirm a little longer, but she had a pressing urge to get all this business done. “I’ll go and talk to him now. Make sure you impress upon these people that they will be safer staying here. Tell them help will come, and they will be protected. But if they leave, they are on their own. I cannot offer them my protection.”

“Aye, m’lady, I’ll tell ‘em.”

She walked in the direction of the butcher’s hut, Sir Penrose at her side. “How’s it going out there, Pen?” she asked, knowing the knight would be keeping watch.

“It’s calming, my lady. I suspect it will be over soon.”

“Can you see Jovyn?”

“I can. He is with Ben and Sir Talmer. There is no sign of Sir Hockney. He may have been killed at the armoury.”