The North Wind was sinking! Meri abandoned her position at the helm and leapt into ankle deep water rising in the forecastle where Sedal was hurriedly collecting his instruments and stuffing them into a miniature trunk.
"Where's Orda!" he yelled at Meri without taking his eyes away from his things. He laid a cloth between the knives and the probes on top of which he piled clean rags.
"Aboard I suppose," she answered. The first mate picked her way between hammocks that had tangled themselves around one another and tables that had toppled with the first hit from the Regal Dawn. Her trunk sat at the far end of the hold. There was nothing particularly valuable inside but Meri wasn't in the mind to leave her bandoleer of throwing knives. She broke the latch on the lid and kicked it open. Water, seeping in from the planks above, immediately soaked the extra clothes and assortment of rolled papers. She shouted a string of curses as time seemed to be wasted as she tried to pull the knives from the chest. Finally the buckle slipped free of its unknown captor and the lid slammed as she wrapped it around her waste.
"Got it?" Sedal asked humorlessly. Meri ignored the guilt of her selfishness and rushed past the surgeon, mounting the deck.
She took in her surroundings in one disbelieving glance: the North Wind was suffocatingly sandwiched between the two black-sailed ships. It was momentarily frightening. Then she gathered her senses about her and snatched an idle grapnel from the deck. She hardly needed the device to reach the ship just inches away, but she was aiming for a spot on the corsair-ship's starboard side. Swinging the hook over her head she tossed it towards the Regal Dawn where she was immediately thrust into the jarring discomforts of battle.
* * * *
Marx ran ahead of Sedal and his boy to storm the forecastle along with five of his crewmates. Few men were below and those that were met their unlucky end at Marx's cutlass.
"There's no doctor here!" Sedal exclaimed over the raucous.
Marx nodded hurriedly. "S'not unusual. Can you set up on that table?" he pointed with his sword.
"Of course. Orda!" he shoved the case of tools into Orda's arms and pushed him towards the bench. He was setting up his doctoring in the hold of the enemy's ship: outrageous!
"I'm leaving these four as active sentinels. I don't doubt you'll be needing them." At that moment Callath and Luc all but tumbled down the steps, shocked too at the idea of setting up their infirmary on corsair turf.
"S' unnatural," Luc shook his head and kicked away the dead corsairs to clear a way for the bringing of Gondorian patients. "S' bad luck and it's not goin' ta be safe neither. Thar's no guarantee we'll be takin this ship." He shook his head again as he disappeared up the stairs with Callath before him, "S'not natural."
In Progress...
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