by Brent Weeks
“Birds!” Kip shouted as a flock of pigeons exploded from the deck of the Gargantua. Pigeons?
“Ironbeaks!” one of the Blackguard shouted.
Kip lost sight of the birds and the ship itself as the skimmer dodged in and out. In the sudden lurching, he thought he was going to be sick.
I’m going to be seasick? In the middle of a battle?
He looked to the horizon to try to steady his stomach. Two of the sea chariot drivers who’d both lost their archers had gone out the range of the guns and abandoned one chariot, pulling another cord that made the luxin fall apart at the seams. Gavin hadn’t wanted the secret of how to make the chariots falling into enemy hands. But beyond them, Kip saw a galley coming, its triple oar decks moving the small ship quickly.
“Got a galley coming,” Kip shouted. He pulled up the binocle and almost puked as the magnified vision seemed to magnify the swaying. “No flag.”
Gavin shot a look up. “Probably pirates looking for an easy kill, not Vecchio’s. Keep an eye on it.”
Then they were back into the fight. They came out from under the stern galley onto the starboard side and saw an explosion blow one of the cannons on the lowest gun deck completely out the side into the water in a spray of wood and fire and smoke. One of the Blackguards—Kip though it was Cruxer—whooped.
An instant later, Kip saw one of the pigeons dive at Cruxer. It hit his chest, stuck.
Cruxer slapped the bird off his chest. It splashed into the water and less than a second later exploded.
Then Kip understood. Like the hellhounds Trainer Fisk had told them about, these birds were natural birds, but they’d been infused with a drafter’s will to do one thing—attack the Blackguards. And in this case, they’d also been equipped with small grenadoes.
Which meant several dozen small flying bombs were circling the great ship—small, intelligent bombs.
As intelligent as pigeons, anyway.
And if that wasn’t quite terrifying, seeing half a dozen of them hit a Blackguard team that had slowed to throw a grenado into a gunport was. A second later, both driver and archer were ripped apart by the explosions. The grenado the woman had thrown bounced harmlessly off the blindage—which hadn’t been pulled off on this side of the ship—and exploded in the water, barely so much as scoring the wood of the hull.
The Gargantua was a floating castle. The fires weren’t spreading. It was invincible.
“Reeds,” Gavin said to Ironfist.
The big man seemed to know what he meant instantly, because he took Gavin’s reed and began propelling the skimmer by himself.
“Kip, hold my feet down. All your weight.”
Gavin was already weaving something between his hands. Kip practically dove onto his feet. Instant obedience. Then he followed Gavin’s eyes.
The entire flock of the remaining ironbeaks was headed straight at them. With only Ironfist on the reeds, the birds were catching up.
Gavin didn’t finish until the first bird was practically within arm’s reach. Then he threw both hands out and a net of yellow luxin spun out from him. It engulfed all of the birds. Then Gavin yanked his arms down and was nearly pulled from Kip’s grasp. But the pressure lasted only a second.
There was no such thing as action at a distance with luxin. To throw something, you had to throw it; to slap something down onto a deck, you had to yank it down. Gavin had made the luxin a lever, and he’d cast the entire net of the birds onto the deck of the Gargantua.
Where they exploded. Kip saw half a man and a helmet flying off the deck.
Not an empty helmet.
Gavin scrambled back into place, and Kip saw an orange drafter peek over the deck and spray luxin down on the burning hull, extinguishing the flames.
Ironfist saw him, too, and put a blue spike in his skull. The man tumbled into the sea.
“They’re organizing into musket teams,” Ironfist said. And the effect was almost immediate. The men on the decks must have started putting the best marksmen in front, while those farther back reloaded and gave them fresh muskets, because both the rate and the accuracy of fire increased.
A sea chariot driver just behind them crumpled, turning the pipes wildly to one side. Her chariot flipped, flinging her archer into the sea.
“Guard overboard!” Kip cried.
Ironfist’s and Gavin’s reaction was immediate. Catching a peak, they shot hard to starboard. The skimmer flipped completely backward before they hit the next wave.
All of them were nearly torn off the skimmer from the sudden change in direction, but neither Gavin nor Ironfist slowed. Kip thought he was going to tear the post behind him right off, but it held. Both men pulled grenadoes from their bandoliers and tossed them in high arcs. Then another.
“Sub-red on any muskets you see, Kip!” Gavin shouted.
They sped toward the swimming young man.
“I got the reeds,” Gavin said. He took them both and headed straight for the Blackguard. Kip thought he was going too close, but as he popped over the last wave, Gavin turned slightly and they splashed barely a hand’s breadth from the Blackguard. Ironfist reached down and between Ironfist’s strength and the Blackguard’s, the man popped out of the water in barely a second.
Kip hadn’t seen what effect the grenadoes had on the deck, but the musket fire had slowed. Then he saw one of the swivel guns on a lower deck being turned toward them.
The other Blackguards on their sea chariots had rallied around them, and they were spraying red luxin everywhere, the yellows casting flashbombs to dazzle and distract, but the sheer number of them congregating in one sector was enough to encourage the cannoneers to turn the big guns.
The screams of the furious and the shouts of anger and the moans of the injured and the cries of urgent orders and the crackling of fireballs and the snapping of distant muskets and booms of cannons and the whistle of the big mortars and the snap of sails and the wash of the waves and hissing of the wind and the moans of the dying and the shrieks of the wights faded, grew distant, hushed. Kip could hear only the deep, slow whoosh of his own heartbeat, ludicrously slow, and around and beneath that a sighing, like the beach when the tide goes out. For a moment, he had a wild notion that he was hearing the sunlight hit the waves.
He saw one of the Blackguard archers drawing an arrow back. The string touched her lips and the arrow leapt out at the very moment a musket ball tore her jaw off.
Whoosh. The world looked beyond real. Kip realized he was seeing the whole spectrum at once. He could see dozens of guns. The skimmer was directly broadside to the Gargantua. And he could see the glow of men, the glow of matches and slow fuses. He could see the gleam of metal on the powder barrels through the open gunports, could see straight through the smoke.
He swept a hand out and fanned superviolet strands like spiderwebs out to every gun and barrel he could see. The superviolet was so fast and light, it hit its targets almost the instant he chose them. Then he swept his hand back, releasing little bursts of firecrystals so hot they burned his hand even as he shot them out at unbelievable speed.
Satisfaction swept through him even before the next big whoosh of his heartbeat rolled through his ears.
Struck by the firecrystals, every loaded musket and cannon on the starboard side of the Gargantua went off at once. Cannons that were in the middle of being loaded went off, muskets that men were standing over with ramrod in hand went off. Loaded muskets being handed up to marksmen went off. Some of the cannons hadn’t been charged yet, and Kip felt vexed. Others, though, had been fully loaded but not yet pushed back into place, and they blew holes out of the sides of the gun decks.
The entire ship was rocked to the side from the simultaneous concussive force.
Not bad.
And then, on three different gun decks, powder barrels exploded. Flames and smoke and wood and cannons and men and parts of men blasted fresh holes in every deck.
The roar ripped over the Blackguards and Kip blinked. Time was back. He
was back.
Men were screaming. Terrible, terrible screams. He could see men on fire, skin blackened and sloughing off, running to jump into the sea. Fires leapt out of all three gun decks.
The skimmer shuddered and Gavin and Ironfist threw their will into getting back up to speed.
“Four ships coming in, half a league,” Kip said. He felt empty, stunned.
“Under the beakhead,” Gavin said.
“Not so sure that’s a good—” Ironfist said.
“Under the beak! The wights will be up on deck any second. We’ve got one chance at this!”
Ironfist acquiesced instantly and they sped in front of the ship, hardly any muskets barking now. They came under the front of the still-moving ship, and Ironfist took the reeds, maneuvering them so that the ship didn’t plow right over them. The wooden beakhead loomed just above their heads, close enough that when the waves lifted them, it almost smashed Kip’s head. Gavin wrapped one fist in fire and punched into the hull overhead.
When the wave receded, Gavin was yanked into the air, his fist still stuck into the wood. Kip lunged, but missed him.
“Leave him!” Ironfist shouted. “You see anyone, you light ’em up!”
Kip could see then that Gavin was drafting still, heedless of his body hanging by one arm.
I don’t think I even could hold myself up by one arm.
Gavin was doing it and drafting—and drafting something horrendously complicated, if it was taking him this much time. Then he was done. When the skimmer rose on the next wave, Gavin touched down on the deck as gracefully as a dancer.
“Two minutes,” he said. “We need to keep the drafters busy.”
And so they circled again, Commander Ironfist giving hand signals to the three remaining sea chariots. They concentrated on hurling luxin and exhausted their grenadoes, some of them successfully tossing them into the huge holes Kip’s explosions had created. Somewhere in the fighting, one of the teams had successfully cut all the rigging to the foremast, and another had set fire to the lateen sails, but the mainsail and mainmast were still whole.
The great ship seemed invincible.
Gavin swooped in and destroyed the capsized sea chariot, and then after perhaps thirty seconds they circled wider, out more than a hundred paces. With so many of the big guns silenced for the moment, it was close enough to still be a threat, but far enough away to be safer from all but the luckiest musket shot.
The Prism and one beefy female Blackguard were the only ones who had the strength and the endurance remaining to continue bombarding the Gargantua with magic. Everyone had gone through all their grenadoes. The archers had used up most of their arrows, and the four ships Kip had seen earlier—two small galleons and two caravels—were bearing down on them.
Gavin gave a quiet oath. “If it doesn’t happen in the next—”
A deep whoomping explosion drowned out his words. It seemed to shake the sea itself in its bed.
Kip shot a look at Gavin. His father looked oddly bereaved. “Their powder room was below the waterline. Makes it a lot harder for a stray shell to hit it, but… poor bastards.”
When the smoke began to clear, Kip saw that both sides of the hull had been blown out right in the middle of the ship. With wood creaking and snapping, the mainmast plunged off to one side like a man jumping overboard, throwing men from both of its crow’s nests and slashing through the weakened deck at the ship’s waist.
Some few men were leaping from the decks, and fire was everywhere. Smaller explosions sounded like popping corn. Then the waist collapsed and the ship folded in on itself. The front half of the great ship went down almost instantly, far faster than Kip would have believed something made entirely of wood should sink. The stern rolled over on its side, open decks gaping like open wounds, swallowing the seas in great burbling gulps.
Deck by burning deck, the great ship plunged into the sea, hissing and spitting and vomiting up flotsam and broken men.
Before it even slipped under the waves, Ironfist asked, “Mop up the swimmers?”
Gavin looked toward the coming ships.
Mop up? Commander Ironfist meant, Should we kill the men who survived?
“You see any wights make it out?” Gavin asked.
“Didn’t see any. Doesn’t mean there weren’t some,” Ironfist said.
“I didn’t see any either,” the Blackguard they’d pulled out of the waves earlier said.
Kip watched the last of the Gargantua slip beneath the waves. There was a lot of junk afloat in the waves, but not many men. Gavin had said there were seven hundred men on board.
Orholam have mercy.
Because your Prism won’t.
“No,” Gavin said. “I’d rather be a mystery and a wild tale. We don’t have it in us to sink four more. Let’s go home.”
They headed out two leagues to regroup, and the sea chariots came alongside and with difficulty in the heaving waves, they reformed the big skimmer. They’d lost seven Blackguards. Another had taken a ball in the elbow. She would be crippled. The rest had minor injuries: burns and little cuts and pulled muscles from maneuvering their chariots too sharply. One had a musket-ball burn in a streak along his neck that was going to leave a scar. He looked perversely pleased about it. A breath more to the left and it would have cut his carotid. Cruxer was wide-eyed, blinking a lot, but unhurt.
“Breaker,” Cruxer said, “did you do what I think you did back there?” He looked at the Blackguards. “Am I the only one who saw him blow up half the ship?”
“I saw,” one said. Others nodded, though not all of them.
“We saw,” Ironfist said. “Well done, Breaker.”
“Well done? It was fucking awesome!” Cruxer said.
The Blackguards laughed, and even Ironfist grinned and didn’t reprove Cruxer for cursing.
“Did you blow up the whole ship, too?” Cruxer asked.
“No, that was him,” Kip said. He’d been looking at his father already. Gavin was staring at him with a strange intensity that wasn’t wholly approving. Kip thought he would be proud of him, but again, there it was, that sense that under everything, Gavin was holding out on Kip. Avoiding embracing him fully.
“How’d you do it?” a Blackguard asked Gavin. Kip thought his name was Norl.
Gavin looked displeased. For a moment, Kip thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then Gavin’s eyes passed over the rest of the Blackguards. They’d lost almost half their number today.
“I made a golem of a rat, and willed it to go to the powder keg to explode,” Gavin said quietly. “It’s the kind of thing a wight would think of, so there would have been one posted in the hall to stop any such thing. I figured the explosion gave me an opening. Figured right.”
“But making golems is forbidden,” Kip said. He knew it was stupid the second he said it. It had worked. It had probably saved their lives. It had definitely won the fight.
“I’ll decide what’s forbidden,” Gavin said. But his voice wasn’t strident; it was weary. “We’ll eat here, dress the wounds we can, then head home.”
They ate silently, everyone aware of the places that were empty. They’d won. They’d killed seven hundred men or more, at the cost of seven. By any measure, it wasn’t only a victory, it was a great victory. And yet the Blackguards were silent, eating like automatons, not hungry but disciplined enough to know that their bodies needed the sustenance after a hard fight.
“You do this all the time,” Ironfist said, “don’t you?” They were sitting on the deck, munching hard biscuits and sausage.
“Sink ships?” Gavin asked. It sounded like he was making an effort to regain his levity. He was Prism; he needed to set an example. Ironfist refused to take the bait. “That ship could have sunk half our navy before we arrived in Atash, but we didn’t even know it was here. The threat’s gone, so to those idiot generals it will be like this never happened. We’ll tell the story of what we did today, and some won’t believe us. Most will believe we’re exagger
ating to make ourselves look good. But even those who do believe us won’t know what we went through to do it. They won’t understand what we faced here.”
Gavin gave a little shrug.
“You do this all the time. You’ve been doing this since the war. You save people, without them even knowing. You’ve stopped wars, you’ve sunk pirates, you’ve put down wights, you’ve killed brigand companies single-handed. All without bragging or even asking for thanks. You are He Who Fights Before Us indeed,” Ironfist said. “Promachos.”
Gavin said nothing for a time. “Today we were promachoi together.”
“The Spectrum granted you that title long ago, and then they took it away. They can take your title, my lord, but they can’t take your name. We Blackguards know about secret names. We know about naming a thing what it is. You, Lord Prism, are Promachos.”
“Promachos,” the other Blackguards said quietly.
“Promachos,” Ironfist said, sealing the name. “Thank you, Promachos. For all you’ve done that I don’t know. For the prices you’ve paid that I can’t understand. For doing what others couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Thank you. And know this, the Blackguard was created with twin purposes: to watch for and to watch the Prism. You’ve always distrusted us because of the latter, as well you should. But I tell you this day that the Blackguard will never turn against you so long as I draw breath. It is an honor to serve you, Promachos, and serve we shall, blood and bone.”
“Blood and bone,” said the Blackguards.
“Blood and bone,” Ironfist said, sealing them to him.
Gavin couldn’t meet their eyes. “I’m not the man you think I am,” he said very quietly.
“Are you the man I’ve served these past ten years?” Ironfist asked.
“I am.”
“Then perhaps, my lord, you’re not the man you think you are.”
Gavin flashed a grin and seemed abruptly himself once more. “You’ve got a stubborn streak a league wide, don’t you?”
“And two leagues deep,” Commander Ironfist said. “And don’t you forget it.” He stood up and turned to the Blackguards. “All right, you laggards, ready up! Let’s go home. Tomorrow we do it again.”