It was too stripped down, too long, too lean. Brother Herman who had a questionable past before he found the Light claimed it was a pirate vessel out of Port Blood. Its sails bore the mark of a Black Kraken, an ominous sign indeed.

The men who had put ashore bore no resemblance to royal sailors. They wore a motley assembly of tunics, head-bands and lace finery that might have come from some wealthy nobleman’s chest. They carried well-oiled weapons. Their leader was a tall, regal looking man with a hatchet-face like that on Siderean coinage.

In the king’s name he demanded to be let in and given food and water. The Preacher refused and that’s when the Black Priest stepped forward at a command from the pirate leader.

Perhaps stepped was the wrong word. He glided, as if his feet did not quite touch the ground. His robes were black. The folds of his sleeves hid his hands. A cowl obscured his face. He spread his arms, emitted eerie sounds in a language that did not sound human. Demons came, like mist taking solid form out of the cold night air. They passed over the walls in a mass of swirling tentacles and terrifying features that the survivors could not quite recall.

The gate buckled at the Black Priest’s touch. The pirates entered Wood’s Edge and worked their will on villagers too terrified to resist. Lorenzo and his mother had somehow found themselves at the edge of the wood, leading the children under the shadow of the trees. They had cowered there, listening to the screams and howls of terror until they stopped and the pirates departed. They emerged to see if they could find any survivors and hid again when the three Siderean ships showed up this morning.

“When did the pirates go?” Kormak asked.

“They camped in the village overnight and they left with the dawn,” said the boy. “I crept along to Headland Point and watched them set out from the woods there. They took the prisoners with them.”

“Prisoners?” Kormak asked.

“Some of the older people. The Preacher.”

“That makes no sense,” said Zamara. “Slavers take men in their prime and young women. That’s not what happened here.”

“I know who they took,” the boy said. “I saw them go.”

“Which way?” Zamara asked. “Out to sea—towards the Sunset Islands?” It was a way of asking whether they had sailed west.

The boy shook his head. “They went upriver.”

The captain looked at him open-mouthed. “Upriver. Are you sure?”

“Yes—they had oars out and they went up against the current. It was not what I would have expected either.”

The captain shook his head. “That can’t be right.”

The woman said, “It is right.