In the water, the pirates contained by the skeletons began to coordinate.
Not aloud — hand signals, the language sailors developed after years of working in conditions where sound didn't carry. The south flank's sub‑captain coordinating from the water, without a Mark but with twenty years of maritime combat and the intelligence of someone who understood that when power fails, tactics have to compensate.
The pirates in the water coordinated toward a specific target.
Not the team's boat.
The skeletons.
If they broke Raven's concentration — if they forced F3 to redistribute to defend more points simultaneously — each individual skeleton's radius would shrink.
And if the radius shrank, the pirates could move through the gaps.
The sub‑captain looked at the one hundred twelve skeletons distributed in the ocean.
He calculated the gaps between them.
He calculated how many pirates needed to attack how many skeletons simultaneously for F3's redistribution to create usable gaps.
