The First Mate bolted ahead, shouting orders to his crew. Kalam saw the marines crouch low to the deck, readying for the impact. Faint screams reached the assassin from the pirate vessel. The taut square sail, storm-jibbed, billowed suddenly, the ship’s prow pitching away as the pirate crew made a last, doomed effort to avoid the collision.

The gods were grinning down on the scene, but it was the rictus of a death’s head. A swell lifted Ragstopper high just before the contact, then dropped the trader down onto the raider’s low gunnels, just behind the peaked prow. Wood exploded, splintered and shuddered. Kalam was thrown forward, losing his grip on the starboard stern rail. He pitched from the sterncastle, struck the main deck with a tucked shoulder, rolling as the momentum carried him forward.

Masts snapped somewhere above him, sails whipping like ghost wings in the rain-tracked air.

Ragstopper settled, grinding, popping, canting heavily. Sailors were screaming, shrieking on all sides, but Kalam could see little of what was happening from where he lay. Groaning, he worked his way upright.

The last of the marines were plunging over the forward port rail, down and out of sight – presumably onto the raider’s deck. Or what’s left of it. The clash of weapons rose muted beneath the wailing wind.

The assassin turned, but the captain was nowhere in sight. Nor was there anyone at the tiller. The wreckage of a snapped spar cluttered the sterncastle.

Kalam made his way aft.

The locked ships had no steerage. Waves were pummelling Ragstopper’s starboard hull, flinging sheets of foaming water across the main deck. A body lay in that wash, face down and leaking blood that stretched weblike in the rolling water.

Reaching the man, Kalam turned him over. It was the First Mate, his forehead sharply caved in. The blood was coming from nose and throat; the water had washed clean the killing blow, and the assassin stared at the damage for half a dozen heartbeats before rising and stepping over the corpse.

Not so seasick after all.

He climbed to the sterncastle and began searching through the wreckage. The man at the tiller had lost most of his head, only a few twisted ropes of flesh and skin holding what was left of it to the body. He examined the slash across the neck. Two-handed, a step behind and to the left. The spar crushed what was already dead.

He found the captain and one of the treasurer’s bodyguards beneath the sail. Splinters of wood jutted from the giant tribesman’s chest and throat. He still gripped his two-handed tulwar. The captain’s hands were shredded ribbons closed on the blade-end, blood pulsing from them to stain the swirling wash of seawater. A massive discolouring reached the span of the man’s brow, but his breathing was steady.

Kalam pried the captain’s fingers from the tulwar blade and dragged him free of the wreckage.