The wind whipping, his fringe moving slightly before his eyes, Markus never lost focus on the western ship. Behind him, the men began to push the cannons up the small rocky paths they had attempted to clear, using carefully tied and well placed ropes and leverage to help guide them up into position. So far there was no activity save the western ship lazily guiding through the channels. Markus made a small grunt. "That's odd." he said, and he handed Calliope the brass telescope. 

Calliope gave him a raised eyebrow at his statement, but took the telescope as she was bid. 

The ship was a cog, one of the less expensive transport options for merchants and traders to haul cargo and goods across the Sea of Swords. It was slower than almost any other ship save a dingy (though of course it was still far faster than land travel), but it could hold quite a good bit of cargo. The biggest problem with Cogs were that they were only sea worthy to a limited capacity. A cog crossing the entirety of the Sea of Swords was a dangerous proposition, and even if it could be done, it was almost never attempted. Yet here was a cog of northern make, somehow right by the Arad Luin coast. It didn't seem right. He voiced his suspicions aloud to her as she looked. 

Behind them, Halvar's roar at the deckhands and the grunts of the work showed they were still at it, though likely making good progress. Markus double checked the trajectory and distance between here and just past the cog, and judged this was as fine a spot as any to place the guns. They were well within range, and their 12 pounders from this height would devastate all but the largest flagships. That and no one would have a good vantage point to fire back at them. 

There was something else that tugged at Markus' mind, however. Something off... Some lost detail that made him uneasy, but he couldn't put his finger on it. It was this lost detail that Calliope saw through the telescope as the image came into focus. The Cog seemed ordinary enough, with all the furnishings one would expect. The white sails covered most of the deck, keeping much of the crew concealed. But it wasn't the ship or the sails that she noticed, but the waves beneath the Cog. 

There were no ripples from the ship's wake. 

Swiftly, Calliope cast her magesight, and the entire ship lit up brighter than the sun. The beautiful sorceress nearly dropped the telescope in shock. "Illusion!" she all but screamed, realizing their folly a fraction too late. One of the men's grunts from behind sounded suspiciously painful, and as Markus felt his stomach sink when he opened up his own magesight at the ship, Calliope turned in time to see one of the men near the edge of the drop had been skewered with a falchion, and had been pulled off to fall to his death by a Corsair that had replaced him. 

Hard, ragged men of the Blood Axes pulled themselves over the lip of the crevice, having hauled themselves up on hooks silently over the jagged mountainside, behind an outcropping of rocks. "Avast! To arms!" Markus called, unsheathing his sword in a fierce motion and casting a fireball at the nearest group of Blood Axes, incinerating the front two and sending the other two screaming to their deaths. The fire display caught his men's attention, and Halvar and the rest took up what arms they had, though they hadn't expected an engagement and only had belt knives. 

The melee was brutal but short, with the new crew members being mostly deckhands and unused to combat. Halvar tossed a few Corsairs over the edge and kept a trio of wicked looking pirates at bay with a waving knife. The center man without a left arm, but the way his right arm coiled and slid through the air with his scimitar showed he was perhaps the deadliest one, grinning terribly. Markus whirled, ducking and dodging and riposting, slaying a striking brown skinned pirate with a well timed thrust. Not five seconds had passed before Calliope felt an immense shock from behind her head. The thick bun of hair on her head likely cushioning the blow just enough to keep her skull from cracking open. 

The pirates had surrounded them, the leanest and most wiry of them having climbed from the steeper flank of their position. Without being able to pause and regain her sense, she was grabbed from behind, her hair yanked back and a knife to her throat. She could feel cold steel nipping at her skin, parting it teasingly. 

"Drop thay wehpawns!" a voice cried by her ear. The way the world spun and her head ached, it was entirely too loud. She felt his grip on her tighten, and the knife drew blood. "Drop an' we spahe your crew! Refuse and die!!!" There was just enough competence in his crazed voice to beggar some kind of truth, and after only hesitating twice, Markus obliged, his sword clanging to the stone of the mountain. The rest of the surviving men followed suit, and before Calliope's world went black, she would see someone striking Markus from behind with the hilt of their sword.