An Appropriate Response

This time they saw a group of liveried guards arrive with an old woman, two young children, a teenage girl and a man in his middle years whom Brandon thought might have been one of the magisters. The group began to board the vessel.

"I will, my lord. Just one ship?" The young drgonrider readied himself to go.

They saw two more men heading towards the Lysene ship.

Orys nodded and flew off. Captain Maegyr was able to spare two ships which began heading towards the small port.

Brandon sees five swordsmen hurrying towards the Lyseni ship at present, but they seem to be the last.

A short time later, the ship did indeed set sail. Brandon could not yet see his allies approaching, however.

The two Volantene ships were on their way but both they and the Lyseni ship had unfurled all their sails, and the Lyseni had the advantage thus far. But they hadn't seen the dragon yet.

Luckily for Brandon, the dragon's flame burned across the deck. Men screamed and panicked. The dragon slammed down against the mast, its wait driving the huge trunk of wood from its setting and heaving it over. Wood splintered as it crashed to the deck, crushing two men beneath it, and injuring others. Men screamed and then Brandon heard a woman screaming too, her voice cutting through him more sharply than the cries of the wounded men. Chaos was everywhere. He saw men throw the rowboat into the sea while another threw down a rope ladder and urged a woman and weeping child to descend.

Brandon managed to cut several men down but the screams were growing louder and the flames burned higher and brighter, getting closer to him. He knew he would have to get off the ship somehow. Meanwhile, the women and children were making for the rowboat, and some of the men threw themselves into the water rather than burn or fight. Brandon realised there was a high possibility the ship would go down with anyone still aboard it, if the fire wasn't put out.

A huge wave splashed over onto the ship, extinguishing part of the flames but not all.

The rowboat halted. In it were the women and children and a handful of men at the oars. An old man sat in the stern. He looked up at Brandon, trembling. "Mercy, lord. We are simply trying to protect our women and children."

"The families of Ormollen and Forellin," the old man said. "My daughter is wife of Magister Forellin." He indicated one of the women, who gathered her children round her and eyed Brandon with fear. "He stayed on the ship, the fool, thought you would leave us be."

One of the other men looked up from his oar, though he looked too plump and well fed to have managed it well if they had escaped. "Magister Ormollen was my brother. He died because of your kind, dragonspawn." He spat into the sea in contempt.

"There wasn't time," Ormollen confided. "And you know we have no place to run. We had to safeguard our children and our own lives."

There were more screams and splashes into the water as men fled from the vessel, attempting to save their lives and swim for shore, which now seemed a very long distance away.

Some of the men seemed to find bits of debris but he saw other treading water or swimming desperately, while one went down under the water and didn't come back up again.

"We fled, before they had the chance to make the decision," Ormollen admitted. "It seemed the safest option."

"Aye," the old man grumbled. "So you insisted. I wish we'd stayed and turned you over to this fellow and his beast. I might as well have taken my chances in Lys, for all the good flight did me. I came for my daughter, no other reason."

Ormollen said angrily "How could we go down to the cabin to get our gold? Gold is heavy, and it was in the cabins. You set our ship alight. How much time do you think we had?"