Sorcerers on both sides feverishly conjured protective energy fields; shimmering, near transparent bubbles shot through with rippling colours. Enchantments glanced off them. Incoming spells were dampened.

Shortly, the numinous barrage died down, which came as no surprise. Everybody knew matters would only be settled at close-quarters.

Drums pounded. The ships manoeuvred and closed the space separating them, their scowling crews tensed. Then hulls collided sidelong, timbers grinding. Seamen roared. Forests of boarding ladders rose. Scores of tethered grappling hooks were circled like lassos, and tossed. Waves of fighters, brandishing pikes, cutlasses, swords and axes, clashed at the guardrails and the slaughter began in earnest.

Nowhere was the conflict more furious than on the largest of the raiders’ ships. Braver than their opponents, or simply more desperate, a pack of islanders had fought their way aboard. They were paying for it. The bloody, frantic, trampling melee rapidly thinned their ranks. Outnumbered, forced back, the islanders compressed to a knot. A many-limbed, quilled beast, bristling steel, they stood fast for the final onslaught. Hard-eyed buccaneers started to close in on them.

Men shouted. Not war cries or screams of pain but incredulous yells. Some pointed upwards.

A figure fell from the sky.

He was dressed in black, a billowing cloak giving him the look of a gigantic bat. His hair, long and free, was a raven nimbus. His eyes could have been coals.

As he landed on the deck, sure-footed as a cat, many thought he must be a glamour, or a demon. They were wrong. Only a man could fight with such maniacal fury.