Calliope stumbled back as the troll swung its massive fist into the wheel, showering the foggy darkness with splintered timber. Incanting quickly she wove a sphere of silence around the vessel, abruptly cutting off sound that might pass to other ships questing for them in the fog. Calliope didn’t think there were other mages out there but she didn’t want to do anything further to give away their position. Instead she drew her own slender blade and thrust at the back of the trolls leg as it focused on tearing Markus limb from limb. The sharp steel turned on the things tough leathery skin, flexing the thing steel of the blade. 

Cursing she turned to find a bill hook or a firelock in time to see an Arad stumble through the magical fog. He was naked from the waist up and clutched a scimitar that looked as though it weighed as much as she did. Without hesitation she lunged at the man, her light weapon too quick for the corsair, caught him in the right side. He stumbled back, blood bubbling from his lips. The rapier point opened his throat and send him tumbling over the rail into the water between the two ships. By their cries more corsairs were swarming onto the deck. She could hear Sketti roaring down in the waist and could hear the whistle thunk of his axe as it chopped through something meaty. 

The troll howled in rage and pain as Markus struck home, though even that was hard to make out in the gloom. Another corsair stumbled out of the mist but this one was clutching a wound in his chest, dying from a pistol shot. Calliope seized one of the pike like boat hooks and turned to find Markus on the trolls back, stabbing down between its shoulder blades while the thing twisted its ape like arms to try and tear him free. Putting her slight weight behind it she thrust the boat hook into the knotted muscles and tendons of its left shoulder and was rewarded with a howl of pain. It pivoted to swat her but she stepped back, letting the hook, still lodged in the things shoulder swing free. Blood was pouring down its back from where Markus was chopping at it. She knew that fire was the best thing for trolls but a fire on a ship at sea was at least as deadly to the crew as it would be to the beat.

A freak gust of wind cleared enough of the fog that she could glimpse the enemy ship snugged up to them with grappling lines. Set into the railing were a number of small swivel guns. Glancing about she seized a loose line and leaped fluttering out over the gap where the ships tumbled home and landing on the deck. Most of the crew were away now but a few startled pirates looked up in shock as she landed cat like on the deck.

The deck of the enemy galley was a narrow walkway that ringed a large open waist in which two banks of oarsmen could be seated. The fog was too thick for Calliope to see how many of the crew were still at their posts. She was in the process of prying up the swivel gun when a sudden rush of air warned her and she pivoted aside as a turbaned man with a heavy scimitar rushed at her out of the gloom. She ducked under the blow, driving her shoulder up into the man's bulging stomach, they both went down in a tangle of limbs and prying fingers. Calliopes sharp fingernails raked the mans neck bloody, but he outwiehed her by a hundred pounts and he rolled atop of her pinning her to the deck. In desperation she grabbed for the nearest object and her hand closed around a two pound ball for one of the swivels. The mans fat fingers closed around her throat and he howled with triump a moment before the steel ball caved in the side of his skull and he slumped to the side, oozing blood from his nose and babbling stupidly. Gasping for air Calliope pulled herself to her feet and grabbed the fallen scimitar, finishing the man off with a quick thrust to the heart. With the heavy blade in hand she began to work her way aft, severing each of the grappling lines with a swipe of the heavy blade. The enemy corsair was pulling away from the Witch as the cabled tethering the ships were cut and timbers and ropes creaked under the strain.

“Wait!” called a voice from behind her and Calliope spun, scimitar gripped in both hands. Behind her was one of the small forward masts that the ship could use to hoist a spanker if she needed to tack hard. Affixed to the mast from a rusting metal hook was an iron cage a little bigger than a man. Inside of the cage was a dusky skinned man of Arad descent. He was dressed in what had once been fine silks, but the fabric was soiled with blood, salt and the man's own waste. His face was badly beaten but even so he had the sharp aquiline features of Arad nobility.

“Take me with you, I can pay my weight in gold!” he begged in a thick Arad accent. Calliope’s only reply was to swing her scimitar at the lock that held the door shut. It was poorly crafted and split like timber as the heavy steel blade cut it free with a shower of sparks. The fellow tried to jump free but his limbs were obviously atrophied from long imprisonment in his tiny cage and he collapsed face first onto the deck. Calliope hauled him to his feet and tried to ignore the stink. The remaining boarding lines were giving way with a series of musical twangs as the tension on each rope became too much to hold. Rushing to the aft she grabbed one of the lines not yet pulled taut and tied it around the prisoners silken girdle. Another Corsair rushed her and she split his head open with the Scimitar, abandoning the blade as it lodged in his skull. In a final act of pique she kicked over a bag of powder that had been bought for one of the cannons, spilling the grey powder over the coiled cordage and sail cloth, then whispered a word. Fire sprang up in a sheet, engulfing powder and cord in a moment. The prisoner screamed but Calliope had already severed the line, it jerked them both into empty air as the Witch staggered free of her attacker, the fire already spreading over the doomed corsairs decks.