The Demon Lord looked around when a faint scream mingled with the howling wind. He knew at once that the healer had been swept overboard. His magically enhanced senses told him so. With a distasteful look at the grey ocean, he loped back to the men amidships. They all fled but one, who slipped and fell.
Bane seized him and shouted over his gibbering shrieks, “The healer fell in, go and get her!”
The Demon Lord tossed him overboard, and the raging sea swallowed him. A smirk tugged at Bane’s lips. “Not able to swim, huh? I will wager that stupid girl cannot, either.” He frowned. “So be it. Good riddance.”
Still, her death brought him no satisfaction, and, as he stood at the railing and stared down, a strange sense of loss came over him. Bane fought it. He did not need her. She was just a toy, one with which he was growing tired of playing. Her pain was hardly gratifying anymore, and her death would please his father. His father. Of course, the Black Lord was behind this, not a freak wave. Bane smiled. This was a challenge.