Kingdom River

by Mitchell Smith

  Neal bowed, and when he straightened, Martha saw tears of blood run from his eye.

  A trumpet called from forward, and Neal was gone and down the ladder to the deck.

  "If we can win this day," the Queen said, her breath frosting, "and Small-Sam ruins the Khan in the south, then, dear Floating Jesus, I will let the bishop come to Island and stay."

  "Don't offer too much," Master Butter said, and the Queen laughed and hit his shoulder with her fist.

  The Mischief lifted slightly off its starboard skates, buoyed by richer wind — and racing where distant Kipchak divisions labored to work west, passed nearly a regiment of horsemen scattered in ragged squadrons here and there, fugitives on the field of ice as the battle-line sailed on.

  The scorpion crews practiced at those, cutting a number down as Mischief passed them swiftly by. But still, arrows followed, coming… then falling like weary birds to rest in deck or rigging, and sometimes in a sailor.

  The ship ran quieter now, no shouts, only a single scream by someone wounded. Orders were given quietly, in speaking voices, so Mischief, though sailing so fast, seemed to Martha to be resting, taking long breaths of the cold west wind that sang in its rigging.

  Marines, here and there, fired their heavy crossbows out into the air — crack-twang — to ease them from cocked tension, the bolts vanishing at an horizon of ice beneath gray sky.

  "Your Majesty," Captain Dearborn called up from the wheel, "no one injured there?"

  Master Butter glanced back at the scorpion-crews; their captains shook their heads. "No one hurt up here!" Butter called, and Martha heard the captain say, "Lucky."

  Then, with hardly a pause, as if that 'Lucky' had called bad luck, the man high in the raven's-nest screamed, "Lead! LEAD!" The Queen stretched out over the rail to see, Master Butter holding one of her arms, Martha the other, to keep her on the ship.

  "Water," the Queen said, looking forward along the hull. "A stretch of lead water."

  Martha heard Captain Dearborn shout, "Way starboard! Strike those fucking sails!" And the ship leaned to the right... tilting farther and farther, its main deck foaming with crewmen like a pot of soup boiled over. Men ran like squirrels in the rigging. Others worked with knives along the belaying rail, so lines whipped free — and heavy crosstrees, their stays sliced, fell smashing, the great sails collapsed.

  Awkward on the tilting deck, Martha leaned out beside the Queen. She could just see a widening crack in the river's ice — black, and spidering across the Mischief's course.

  The ship ground and bucked into its steep turn, swinging hard... hard to starboard, long clouds of powdered iced streaming away from its steering blades on the wind. Master Butter shouted, "Get hold!" Behind them, one of the scorpions' great bows broke its tackle and swung free to smash the right-side rail.

  The Mischief seemed to balance for a moment, like a person running the top of rough fencing. It felt strange to Martha, as if she were balancing, she and the ship together. Then the warship fell.

  Water thundered up along the port side in a spray that fanned away and as high as the raven's-nest, and the Mischief splintered itself along the open edge of the ice — then struck and stopped still.

  All else kept flying. The tops of the masts split loose and sailed forward. Weapons, gear, and men sailed also... flew through the crowded air like birds, and broke when they struck.

  Every grip was lost. The Queen, Master Butter, and Martha were pitched together into the poop's cross-deck rail — and would have been injured, but that rolled hammocks had been packed there to shelter the helmsmen, just beneath, from arrows. Only the fat canvas, and their mail, saved them broken bones.

  CHAPTER 24

  There were a few moments of silence, except for crashes and clatter as things came to rest. And a sort of sobbing as Mischief's great timbers twisted out of true.

  "Up!" Master Butter stood, then heaved the women onto their feet.

  "My assags..." The Queen bent to retrieve one spear from coils of fallen rough brown rope. Martha found her ax still gripped in her hand.

  The ship rested once more on the ice. But — her back broken as she'd struck the lead, then crashed across it — she lay with her great stern tilted high in the air, like a sleeping child's bottom, her bow fallen, collapsed.

  An officer was shouting orders — Neal, not the captain — and men began to stir, but many didn't.

  "The pinnace!"

  "Sir.... Somebody help — "

  "Shut up and die, Weather damn you!" Neal. "Hiram-bosun, rig the pinnace out! Cut that crap away and get her out. Her Majesty — "

  "Oh, Jesus! Sir, sir, Master Cate is dead!"

  "I'm not leaving here," the Queen said, then called down to the ruined deck, "I'm not leaving!"

  "Ma'am," Neal called back, "you'll do as you're damn well told!"

  Other officers, petty officers, were calling orders. Martha had never heard such cursing, not even from horse dealers or teamsters at Stoneville Fair.

  "Edward," the Queen said to Master Butter, "go down there and tell that young fool I'm staying with them. No need to go skating away nowhere because there's been an accident!"

  "My dear," Master Butter said, "those stray Kipchaks we passed — and butchered some, passing? I believe they'll now be coming to call. So yes, you are leaving — and quickly."

  "How bad?" First Officer Neal had spoken quietly, well down the steep-sloping deck and through the sounds of men at desperate work, but Martha heard him. It was the only question being asked.

  A person said, "Sprung and split."

  " — But she'll skate!"

  "No, sir," the person said. "Wouldn' make not a mile. Fall all to kindlin'."

  The Queen — her second spear found under a fallen spar's fold of sail — stood, seeming to listen to other than the Mischief’s voices. Then she said, "So, no pinnace and scurrying away. — Neal!"

  They heard his "Ma'am…" as he half-climbed the main deck's rise, stepping over wreckage his men labored on.

  He came up the narrow port-side ladder, his left eye still plugged with blood. "Ma'am?"

  "The captain?"

  "Captain's dead, ma'am. Skull broken when we struck."

  "And no pinnace."

  "No, ma'am. Launch also smashed — I knew that, soon as I stood up."

  "I see.... And the chances of another ship coming?"

  "Oh, another ship will come, ma'am; a lookout certainly saw us wreck." Neal paused, stared out over the ice, one-eyed, where the Fleet had gone. "But the line was sweeping east on the wind. Ships'll have to tack and tack again to get back to us."

  "How long?" Master Butter said.

  "Sir... ma'am, I believe a glass-hour at least."

  "And probably more?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Probably more." Neal glanced at the scorpions' crews. "You people get down on main deck. Your pieces won't depress at this angle to do any good at all."

  "Leave 'em?" A sailor put his hand on a massive machine as if it were a family dog.

  "Yes, Freddy," Neal said, "leave 'em. All of you go on down, now."

  Below, an officer called, "I said, rig out more boarding net, Carson! Are you fucking deaf? …. Leave that. Leave it! The man's dead."

  "Company coming?" Master Butter said.

  "... Why yes," Neal said, "I believe so, sir. Ma'am, you'd do better below, where the marines might hold the hatches."

  "Might?" The Queen smiled at him. "No. I like it here. Now, get back to your people, Captain Neal."

  Neal bowed, then turned for the ladder to follow the scorpion crews down — looking, it seemed to Martha, pleased as if the Mischief still sailed and was sound under his promotion.

  "Captain Neal," the Queen called after him, "I expect this ship, though ruined, still to kill the Kingdom's enemies."

  "Oh, we will do that, ma'am," Neal said, and was gone to the deck.

  "... Children," the Queen said. "They're all children." She looked at Martha and Master Butter. "And my doing, th
at both of you are here." She reached a cold strong hand to Martha's cheek. "Another child…. And you, Edward, you foolish man."

  "Only an old friend, my dear — who would be no place else on earth."

  ... There was no longer a raven's-nest, so it was from some lower perch a sailor shouted. "The fuckers is comin'! Comin' west by west!"

  Martha went to the back of the poop — edging past the mantelets, then between the scorpions — to look out from the stern, now reared so high. She saw only ice behind them at first, then darker places that seemed to move from side to side as much as forward through late afternoon's sun-shadows. She stood watching until, as if her watching made it so, those darker places became groups of riders.... Soon, she could make out single horsemen among them, coming swarming like late-summer bees. Dozens. A hundred... perhaps two hundred, skirting the end of the water lead as they rode. Then, many more. Their right arms were moving oddly, and Martha saw they were whipping their horses on. She heard a war horn's mournful note.

  Battle whistles shrilled down the Mischief's sloping deck. A drum rattled. Sailors and marines — those with no bones broken in the wreck, or at least no crippling injury — took up their battle-standings.

  Martha went back to the Queen, and said, "They're coming," feeling foolish, since of course they were coming.

  But the Queen only nodded, and said, "Infuriating, the things I have left undone..."

  "Not a bad place to fight, though." Master Butter paced the poop deck. "Considerable slope, and fairly narrow… crowded with machinery. They can't climb to us up the hull, stuck this high in the air, so our backsides will be safe enough. May take arrows, of course, once they have the main deck, if they get up into the rigging..."

  "If there were only one ladder coming up here..."

  "Yes, dear, but there are two, and twenty feet apart. When they come up both, we won't be able to hold them." Butter stepped out a space... backing between the tall mantelets, the two scorpions. "Just here, I think."

  The Queen walked up the tilted deck. "Yes. Wide enough," she said, "but not too wide."

  It seemed to Martha they were only interested, not frightened as she was frightened.

  The Queen said, "Shit," and the back of her left hand was bleeding. Arrows murmured past them and snapped into timber. Two thumped into rolled hammocks, and men shouted below. The Queen looked at her hand. "Nothing," she said, and flicked the blood away. "Most of the fools are shooting blind up to this deck."

  Hoofbeats clattered down the ice along the ship's side. Shouts and orders along the main deck below. Deep twanging music from crossbows, heavier crashes from the Mischief's machinery still able to bear.

  "So, our company's come." Master Butter rubbed his hands together. "Three can stand here, though no room for more — a space, what, ten... eleven feet across? Just over three feet for each of us to hold." He nodded. "Mantelets forward on both sides to funnel them onto our blades, while — let's hope — catching their shafts.... And these scorpions, beside and behind us, each a mess of gears and cable, timbers and steel." He smiled at Martha. "Could it be better, my student?"

  "Better not to be here," Martha said. An arrow hummed high over her head.

  "Sensible Martha," the Queen said. "But really, this place is so high, so good, we might hold it a glass-hour."

  Martha saw many Kipchaks out on the ice... riding, circling in like hearth smoke swirling to an opened door.

  "Would that we could," Master Butter said, and was difficult to hear over rising noise. Shouts, and the ship's crashing war-machinery. "Martha, you will fight at the Queen's right side; I'll be on her left. Keep two things in mind. It's cold, and will grow colder, so consider your grip on your ax — might want to thong the handle to your wrist. And, remember you have a dagger as well. I don't want to see that knife sleeping in its sheath."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Orders for me, also, Edward?"

  "No, my dear. You need no one to tell you how to fight. But knot that scarf tighter; don't leave the ends loose for someone to seize."

  Men bayed like hounds along the Mischief's slanted hull, and Martha looked over the poop-deck rail and saw gray-furred Kipchaks in the boarder nettings down at the bow. They'd climbed to that lowest place… were slashing at the netting with short, curved swords. As she watched, ranks of marines turned from the ship's rails, and their crossbow bolts — fired almost together — emptied the nets of nearly all those men, as if with magic.

  But then the nets were full again — being sliced apart by more horsemen, by many more, climbing up shouting.

  It seemed to Martha like a dream — so odd and wild and unexpected — unreal as a dream, so she might simply fly away into the air and dream of something else.

  "If," the Queen said, "if I'm down, disarmed, and it seems I'll be taken — "

  "Kill you?" Butter smiled. "I won't do it — and Martha won't do it. So, Queen, don't go down, don't fumble. I've understood Trappers were dire fighters, and I expect to see a sample of it."

  "You had better hope, Edward," the Queen said, knotting her scarf tight around her throat, "with this fucking impudence of yours, you had better hope these savages kill us."

  "I rely on it, sweetheart," Master Butter said, and seemed to Martha happier than she'd ever seen him.

  The marines fired another volley — and again almost cleared the nets. Martha could hear a ripple of smack-smack-smack as the bolts struck. It had grown very cold; she saw her breath frosting in the air. Her hands were cold; her left hand was shaking. She put it on her dagger's hilt and held on hard.

  "Soon, now," Master Butter said. "And there'll be blood freezing on this decking, ladies. So mind your footing; let's have no comic pratfalls."

  Martha'd never heard 'pratfalls,' but she knew what he meant.

  The marines fired another volley — but arrows had been killing them, and their fewer bolts didn't sweep the netting clear. It hung in tangles along both sides of the Mischief's bow, and Kipchaks were coming through it, howling war cries.

  Someone called an order, the marines drew short swords all together, and that same person — it wasn't Captain Neal — called another order. Then the marines marched down to the bow as if there was no hurry, and struck the tribesmen all together. Martha heard the musical sounds she and Master Butter made, practicing with steel — but this was much louder and many more, and there were screams.

  Sailors shouted and went running down with axes and pikes, following the marines. The whole forward part of the ship seemed to Martha to become like the river's wind-waves and whirlpools, but made of fighting men, with the marines in ranks like sand-bars in the current, flooded with furred fighters. There was terrible noise over the ringing steel, as if animals were killing children.

  Martha turned away to look at anything else, and saw herds of horses wandering out on the ice, with only a few Kipchaks to keep them. Their riders had come to the Mischief.

  "Gauntlets and helms," Master Butter said. He sounded just as he had at their lessons. "Draw, and guard." He drew his long sword from its sheath. A heavy sword, Martha saw — only a few inches of its top edge sharpened.

  The Queen, standing between them, settled her helmet, pulled on her mail gauntlets. "Rachel," she said, as if her daughter were with them, " — how will you do?" Then, driving the point of one assag into the deck to rest within reach, she spun the shaft of the other in her right hand for a comfortable grip, and drew her Trapper knife with her left. Ready, she stood relaxed — so at ease, it seemed to Martha she looked younger.

  Martha pulled her gauntlets from her belt, let her ax hang from its thong as she tugged them on, then fitted her helmet. She could feel her heart thumping... thumping.

  "And what are you to remember, Martha?"

  "My knife, sir."

  "That's right," said Master Butter. There was a change in the noise below them; it had come closer, risen up the slanting main deck.

  "What I will remember," the Queen said, "while I remember, are
my dear friends beside me."

  Martha stepped forward and could see, over the poop's rail, more Kipchaks swarming, fighting with sailors up the sloping deck. She saw no marines still standing.

  The horsemen, smaller, stockier than the sailors, yelped to each other as they came. They reached the helm's wheel, just below and out of sight from where she stood.

  Martha heard sounds that drove her back to her place beside the Queen. She drew her dagger so as not to forget it, held it low at her left side.... It still startled her, after such fearful waiting, when one of the Kipchaks — an older man with a gray mustache, his round wind-burned face framed in a dark fur hood — stepped up off the port-side ladder, and started toward them. He looked serious, but not angry, and was holding a short, curved sword running bright drops of blood.

  It seemed to Martha that this man intended to say something — another tribesman had come up the ladder behind him — but the Queen stepped out in two long strides and stuck her assag's blade into the man's belly. He looked amazed, turned as if to walk away... then seemed to melt down to the deck.

  "First blood," said the Queen — and the second Kipchak came howling.

  Martha was sure Master Butter killed that one, though she didn't see it. She was sure because she'd heard the sudden thrum of a sword-blade whipped through air, and the man's shout stop. Then two... and a third horseman came running from the starboard ladder and her ax met one before she even thought about it. She stuck the other with her dagger and didn't know what happened to him, because the third man was on her, shoving, and swinging a sword.

  She was surprised he wasn't stronger than she was — and perhaps he was surprised, too, since he guarded against the ax but forgot the dagger. Master Butter had been right about the knife.

  Something hit her left side, and Martha thought she was hurt — more Kipchaks were coming up both ladders — but she glanced over and it was the Queen, wrestling, cutting a man's throat. He hit Martha, trying to dodge away, and left warm stuff on her neck and shoulder. Blood. Don't slip… don't slip! Two more men came and ran into her, tried to knock her down, struggling to get sword-points in.