“You’d be Tormalin, by your accent,” Naldeth commented cautiously.

The pirate looked at him. “Savorgan bred. What’s it to you?”

Naldeth shrugged. “Nothing, just making conversation.”

The pirate turned back to the apprentice lad. “You’ve got an answer for Muredarch yet?”

The lad looked scared. “I’m not sure.”

“You’ll be asked once the shares are made.” The pirate nodded at the patient knot of people waiting with pails and pannikins as barrels of salt fish and dried peas were broached. The woman in green had joined a sandy-haired pirate who was opening a succession of small bottles and flagons. He took a cautious taste of one before holding it up. “Green oil.”

A woman raised her hand and hurried forward to take it. Spiced vinegar and mustard oil were claimed with similar alacrity but the woman in green waved away a man wanting a jar of physic oil. The sandy-haired pirate rinsed his mouth from a waterskin at his belt and spat before continuing his sampling.

“Who’s she?” Naldeth watched as a growing selection of condiments and luxuries were stacked at the woman’s feet.

“Ingella.” The scarred pirate sounded wary. “Muredarch’s woman.”

The woman looked around and shouted to a grey-headed man in the rags of a sailor’s breeches. His feet were bare, lash marks criss-crossing his naked back. He flinched as if he expected to be hit when the woman pointed to her new possessions.

“That’s your lot if you don’t take the oath,” the pirate commented with friendly concern. “Every man’s slave and no man’s friend.”

Parrail tugged at Naldeth’s sleeve and they edged away along the wall walk. “What are you going to do?”

“Swear, I suppose,” the mage whispered uneasily.

Parrail paled beneath the dirt on his face. “It doesn’t bother you, being forsworn?”

“I don’t suppose Raeponin will hold it against me.” Naldeth’s feeble attempt at a smile failed.

A new flurry of activity caught everyone’s attention. A burly pirate was dragging a youth up from the shoreline. The lad tried to hold on to his unlaced breeches but lost his grip and stumbled as they fell down around his ankles. He was pulled along regardless, naked buttocks pale in the sun, humiliation burning his face scarlet.

His captor dumped him prone before Muredarch, expression eloquent of outrage even if the gusting wind snatched his words away. Muredarch listened with close attention and then turned the lad over with a booted toe, bending over to talk to the cowering youth.

“Which hand will it be?” chuckled the Tormalin pirate.

“What’s he done?” asked Parrail.

“Shat in the wrong place.” The pirate sucked condemnatory teeth. “Muredarch says no one’s to foul the sound. You drop your breeches where the tide’ll clean the rocks or that’s what you’ll get.”

A heavyset man came up, shirtless beneath a buff jerkin and swinging a five-stranded whip. Parrail recognised him as the one who’d nailed Gede to his own mast and winced as the lad was stripped of his shirt and tied to an upright spar planted down by the water. Muredarch held up a hand for everyone to see. It was the four-fingered hand, prompting a general murmur of approval.

The Tormalin pirate nodded. “That’ll learn the lad without crippling him.”

But the man with the whip still set to with a will, barbed lashes ripping into the boy’s skin, blood spattering in all directions. Naldeth and Parrail both turned away, sickened, but saw more pirates had come into the stockade to chat apparently idly with their captives.

“Do you suppose many turn pirate just for the chance to dress like whoremasters on market day?” The mage watched a bald-headed pirate in an incongruously lace-trimmed shirt advancing on a meek-looking girl.

Parrail watched the raider’s expansive gestures, doubtless offering all manner of inducements. All smiles, he wasn’t about to let the girl escape him, rough fingers stroking her hair and her cheek.

“Muredarch did say rape was forbidden.” Parrail looked sick as the girl’s feeble protests waned. She stood mute with misery as the pirate put a proprietorial arm around her shoulder.

“Holding a lass down and ripping up her petticoats, maybe.” Naldeth rubbed his hands together as if his fingers pained him. “Scaring some poor poult into laying herself down seems allowed.”

A ship’s bell rang and the pirates amiably socialising inside the stockade abruptly changed tack.

“Down the ladder,” ordered the Tormalin on the wall walk, sharp face brooking no argument. Naldeth and Parrail hastily obeyed, hurrying to the back of the huddle of captives as the gates opened wide.

Muredarch stood in the centre, his smile welcoming, his height forbidding, eagled-eyed henchmen stern on either side. “You first.”

He summoned a middle-aged man nervously twisting a kerchief between his hands. “I’m just a miller, your honour,” he blurted out.

Muredarch nodded. “And now we’ve got wheat, thanks to your ship. Will you grind it for us? I’ve a fancy for fresh bread after a season and a half of twice-baked biscuit.”

The miller’s face creased with confusion. “I can’t think what’s best—”

“Take all the time you need.” Muredarch laid a reassuring hand on the cowering man’s shoulder before nodding to a flat-faced brute with tattoos all down one arm. “In the meantime, you can start paying your debts.”

The tattooed pirate held the miller fast while the man who’d flogged the boy stripped him of gown, shirt, socks and boots. The tattooed pirate knotted a thick leather strap securely around the miller’s neck and, using it as a handhold, hauled him away. “If you won’t grind the wheat, you can carry the sacks, old fool.”

“Let me know when you’ve made your mind up,” Muredarch called genially before pointing at the next man who met his eye.

The erstwhile sailor ducked his head in a hasty bow. “I’ll swear but I won’t go raiding.”

“Fairly spoken,” said Muredarch in an oddly formal tone. He drew himself up to his full height. “Do you swear to obey me in all things, to treat all so sworn as your brothers and sisters in oath? Do you put your fate in my hands according to the vow we all trust in?”

“Yes.” The sailor managed a strangled whisper.

“I so swear,” the whip man prompted with a ferocious scowl.

“I so swear.”

Muredarch looked at his new recruit for a long contemplative moment. “Go see Ingella. Set your mark or your thumb to your name in the muster book and she’ll sort you out a pitch.”

The next few all swore the oath, some with visible reluctance, two women stammering through their fear to insist they wouldn’t take part in any piracy. Muredarch treated them both with exquisite courtesy. The defiant few were stripped and either dragged off to some toil or thrown to the back of the stockade. Naldeth and Parrail watched glumly as pirates came to pick over the heap of clothes and boots on offer. Some of the apprentices who’d sworn Muredarch’s oath with suspicious enthusiasm joined them.

“Do you swear to obey me in all things, to treat all so sworn as your brothers and sisters in oath? Do you put your fate in my hands according to the vow we all trust in?” Muredarch was smiling at the woman who’d nearly been dropped in the water the day before.

“I so—” She broke off and swallowed hard. ”I so—” She tugged at the neck of the chemise below her bodice but the collar was neither high nor tight. “I so—” The woman coughed, face scarlet as she choked. She fell to her hands and knees, struggling for breath as Muredarch looked down impassively.

“Mama!” Her daughter screamed and would have run to her but the tattooed pirate caught her, one broad hand slapping over her mouth.

The woman collapsed, panting like a stricken animal, lips fading to a deathly blue.

The remaining prisoners stood frozen with shock but few of the raiders, men and women alike, spared more than a passing, regretful shake of their heads.