The Hail

Tom stood.

He stood because Marrow's blood was soaking the sand black beneath them, and because the captain's breath had begun to whistle through his teeth in a way Tom had heard once before, from a man who did not see the next dawn. Pride was a thing for the living. He cupped one hand to his mouth.

"Hoy! Hoy, the beach! A wounded man here!"

The two figures stopped. For a long, awful moment they did not move at all. Then they turned together — too smoothly, Tom thought, like one creature with two bodies — and started toward him at an unhurried walk.

Tom's free hand crept to the pistol at his belt. He did not draw it. He held the oilcloth packet hidden against his ribs through the cloth of his shirt and prayed his face did not show it.

They came on. Tall, both of them, and lean as cured rope. Dark stained leather, linen the color of old rust, faces shaded under broad woven hats. The taller carried a long fowling-piece across his forearm with the easy grip of a man who had not put it down in years. The other bore no firearm Tom could see — only a curved blade at his hip and a coil of fine cord looped at his shoulder.

Twenty paces off, the taller one raised an empty hand.

"Englishman?" he called. The accent was strange — not French, not Dutch, something underneath both.

"Aye," Tom said. "Off the Black Wren. My captain's hurt bad."

The two exchanged a glance. The shorter one smiled without warmth.

"The Wren," he said softly. "We were told there were no survivors." Told. Not heard. Told.