‘Emmel,’ he called, ‘the anchor’s come loose and we’re sliding in towards shore.’

‘The Lady’s Ire we are,’ Emmel growled and, coming up to him, dutifully leaned out to test the chain. Reuth saw his chance and lunged, hammering the man high in the back and sending him tumbling over the side.

Things all rushed together then. Jands called, sharpish, ‘What was that?’

Emmel managed one gurgled call before going under. Emmel, it appeared, belonged to that majority of sailors who did not know how to swim. Reuth yelled: ‘Gods below! Emmel’s fallen overboard!’

‘What?’ Jands appeared in a rush.

‘He was testing the anchor chain …’

Jands, too, leaned out. But something tipped him, perhaps the strangeness of the situation, or Reuth acted too quickly. In any case, his push, intended to send him after Emmel, merely had the first mate tumbling to the deck.

‘Lying little sneak!’ the man growled, and came at him obviously intending to beat him to a pulp. The point of no return had been reached for Reuth. He swiped the blade out across his front as the man lunged. He hadn’t wanted to, and he closed his eyes and flinched backwards as he did so.

Jands let go a fierce yelp of surprise combined with a disbelieving snarl of pain and rage. Reuth forced himself to open his eyes to see the man staggering back, a hand clenched to his forearm where a long deep gash welled blood that dripped from his fingertips to hit the deck in big wet droplets.

‘Bastard sneaky snotty upstart,’ Jands was cursing under his breath as he made his way to the mid-decks. Reuth knew what the man was going for and turned to the pin that secured the chain of his manacles. Using the heavy knife like an axe, he hacked at the wood on either side of the pin. Chips of fresh bright yellow wood jumped to the deck.

Jands yelled from somewhere out of sight: ‘Shoulda killed you right away! There’s those of us who argued so. But no, Storval had to save your skin till we reached the goldfields. Well, you brat …’ he appeared, a rag tied around one arm and a shortsword in his other hand, ‘… we’re here now, aren’t we.’

Reuth hacked at the timber in near-blind panicked desperation. The man closed and swung. Reuth parried the awkward blow and realized that the man was swinging with his off-hand. Thank the gods for that. Snarling, Jands swung again, and Reuth, completely unfamiliar with knife-fighting, or any other sort of fighting for that matter, barely managed to deflect the blow, which struck him high in the head and sent a white-hot spike of pain across his mind.

Through a pink haze he saw Jands pulling the weapon back for a straight killing thrust. He remembered then, almost giddy, that Gren always carried two dirks. No sooner had he thought that, or imagined it, then he threw with all his might, falling forward to the wet decking as he loosed the blade.