Karah drew and loosed, catching one in the gut. He kept his grip on the rope long enough to swing back over his own ship before he dropped. Another landed on a barrel that toppled beneath him; agile as a dancer he jumped free and landed ready to fight Karah dropped her bow and went for her sword, sickeningly conscious that it would not be in time. The Tseldene got a clear patch of deck to stand on and poised not five feet from her, raising his light axe to throw.
A swordpoint came out his breast. His expression froze, then melted as he toppled forward off the steel. Behind him was Amourgin the law-speaker, blade extended in perfect line with his arm and back leg, left hand on hip, knee bent—the long lunge of the sword-schools of Olmya.
"Thanks!" Karah shouted, getting her own blade out and drawing a fighting knife with a bell guard in her left hand Then: "Oh, shit!"
The soldiers along the bulwark behind Amourgin had dropped their pikes and drawn their swords as the Tseldene marines swarmed over the side. There was no chance to repeat the measured volley-fire that had saved the other side of the ship; the musketeers were stepping forward, sticking the muzzles of their weapons between the ranks and firing with the business end nearly touching enemy bodies. Then they clubbed the firearms and waded in, or drew their own swords. Knots of the enemy were breaking through, deadly amid the unarmored musketeers and sailors.
One was behind Amourgin. He didn't know, but he did see Eowlie kneel and take careful aim, apparently directly at him. Karah could see his eyes go wide, but there was nothing wrong with his reflexes—he dropped like a stone and rolled Eowlie fired, the crack of the shot lost in the continuous crackle of musket fire. On his back, Amourgin could see a small hole suddenly appear in the silvered breastplate of the Tseldene officer who'd been raising a scimitar over his head with both hands. Blood shot out from the gilded filigree of the man's face mask, as the bullet and fragments of breastplate and rib bone sawed through his lungs and flooded his gasping mouth.
"Come on!" Karah shouted.
There seemed to be nothing else to do, so she led the rush across the pen; tripping and stumbling and jumping over their own baggage, slipping on decks slick with blood—she suddenly noticed the planks were actually running with it. The barricade of boxes at the other side was half-tumbled by the press of bodies against it She slashed a Tseldene across the back of the neck without even thinking about it, and there was a sudden ugly jarring thump up the blade of her sword and into her wrist and shoulder—a little like cutting a sheep carcass, which she'd done for practice—but not much. Somewhere very deep down she knew that later she'd remember this, but there was no time. Now there were only noise and smoke, screaming horses and screaming wild-eyed faces coming at her.
Amourgin was up on his feet again, blade in both hands. He whipped it around in a tight circle, cut through a spear shaft, then through both wrists of the Tseldene on the return stroke. The marine pivoted, howling and blinding the one behind him with the blood spouting from the stumps; the law-speaker spitted him through the throat, withdrew with a twist of the blade. Beside him Eowlie swung the butt of her carbine into a man's face, still yowling her cat-in-agony warcry. Karah scrambled amid boxes and spilled hardtack, caught a barbed spearhead on the guard of her knife, chopped down into the back of the knee of the enemy marine who'd thrust it at her, drawing the cut He collapsed backward into the melee. Something hit her hard on the corselet, winding her, utterly without warning.
"Ufff." She staggered sideways, wheezing and trying to breathe.
The Tseldene jerked his spear back, aiming at her eyes this time, below the brim of her bowl helmet. Her arms were moving through molasses, slow and weak. The steel spike glittered; he grinned at her, shoulders tensing. It would go right in through her nose and out the back of her head…
Doe Ditech stuck her long wheel-lock pistol into the side of the Tseldene's head and fired He had just enough time to realize what was happening as the flint struck the revolving steel, and then his face ballooned with hydrostatic shock as the heavy lead ball punched through behind his eyes. Karah wished she hadn't been looking; the eyeballs popped out of his head as he spun away.
"Thanks," she wheezed, straightening.
She and Doe and Korgi and Borte stepped up to what was left of the barricade together, swords out. To their left Amourgin was moving with easy grace, blocking and thrusting and using an occasional economical backhand cut. The Tseldenes seemed to be avoiding him, perhaps because of Eowlie. The sound of her screeching rose even over the roar and crash of battle; she had a long knife in one hand, but her fanged muzzle was a mask of blood as she prowled crouching around the perimeter of the circle held by Amourgin's blade, and there seemed to be a glistening red glove on her other hand and its claws.
Oh, shit, Karah thought again. They were directly opposite one of the Tseldene boarding planks, and the Imperial line around it was not holding.
"Gurah! Gurah!"
The Tseldene marines poured up the plank, forming a knot on the Sea Mare's planking. Behind them came more enemy troops, these armed with monstrous two-man muskets. If they got onto the deck…
"Oh, shit."
"Back, you sibsucker," Bren panted.
The scimitar crashed down on the basket hilt of his sword. It hurt; the Tseldene was even shorter than Bren, but built like an ox and strong as one. Bren pivoted slightly and rammed the point of his parrying dagger home beneath the edge of the Tseldene's armor, through a leather groin protector; the enemy marine shrieked and dropped. Bren stamped on the back of his neck as he led the rush to the edge of the quarterdeck. There was a queasy, crunching feeling under his boot, unpleasantly familiar.
"Not good," he gasped, looking down on the threshing chaos of the main deck.
The halberdiers on the forecastle and sterncastle were holding out; the extra height gave an advantage. On the starboard the Tseldenes were still struggling for a foothold along the bulwarks. There was plenty of noise, shouting and the scrap-metal sounds of hand-to-hand battle. Few shots; nobody had time to reload, but the musketeers on the starboard side were managing to keep up a slow trickle of point-blank fire, saving it for times when the enemy managed to push onto the Sea Mare's deck, helping the pike-and-sword fighters to knock them back.
It was to port that things looked really bad. Knots of the enemy were on the Sea Mare's deck, pushing in against the crumbling defense. If they pushed the Imperial fighters back into their comrades on the other side of the ship, broke their formation…
Bren looked down at the Tseldene galley. It was nearly two hundred feet long, but flush-decked except for a low quarterdeck aft—a smooth deck of planking broken by closed grills. Through them came the wading of the rowers' fear, and a stink that was stunning enough even among the salt-and-shit odors of close-quarter battle. Tarin Tseld used chained slave rowers; on Tykissian ships the oar-pullers were freemen, armed and part of the crew. The grills were closed down, except…
"Captain!" he barked. The seaman looked up from helping to reload one of the swivel guns mounted on the sterncastle's rail. "I'm leaving you half the halberds. Ddrad, you take your orders from him. Mercele, get your surprise. The rest of you, follow me!"
Karah grunted through a gummy dry mouth, catching the axe on her crossed sword and dagger. Metal rang and the shock pushed her back, jarring everything down to the small of her back. Everyone else was too busy to help, and the marine was strong. The spike of the axe—the blade was reversed—pressed closer toward her eyes. If she weakened it would be through her face in an instant; she couldn't move, either, the brace of her legs was all that was keeping her upright. Her arms were buckling…
Something flickered at the edge of her sight. The axe stopped pressing at her; she flicked it backward and slashed with her sword in the same motion, across the bare taut throat before her. Blood hit her jaw and throat, running down into the stickiness under her corselet, the thick salt taste in her mouth. She spat without thinking, then saw First Captain Morkaarin moving past her with
a cluster of halberdiers at his back. The chopping blades swung in full-armed cuts, sheering through armor and limbs and topping heads like hard-boiled eggs…although eggs didn't come attached to spasming bodies.
"Follow me!" Bren roared; his helmet was off, and his tow-colored hair thick with blood. "Follow me!"
Karah found herself responding without thought. She followed, vaguely conscious of the other scouts with her, surprised they were still alive, or mostly—bodies were lying all around, still or twitching or trying to crawl out of the way, and fighters were tripping over them. The solid wedge of halberdiers cleaved through the press, stabbing and hacking, collecting sailors with cutlasses and soldiers swinging clubbed muskets or stabbing with swords and shortened pikes. Bren moved through at the apex of it, and the solid professional she'd known and loathed was transformed, moving like a thing of steel springs and leopard fire, killing with an easy metronomic regularity and shouting from a face gone white pale and staring.
Karah followed; they all did, and the Tseldenes buckled, wavering backward from success. Suddenly they were at the edge of the deck, and Bren leaped up onto the boarding plank, boots rutching on the heavy rope matting nailed to it. A Tseldene officer barred his way, curved sword in hand; for a long moment they fought, steel blurring in a pattern of strike and counterstrike too fast for the eye to follow, and then Bren was wrenching his point out of the southron's face.
"Wolf and Falcon!" he shouted, and Karah jumped up beside him, howling. "Holy Three, Holy Three!"
She batted a spearhead out of the way with her dagger and thrust past Bren's shoulder; they advanced a step, another, the board slanting down toward the deck of the galley. She cut at spear shafts, at the legs of men fighting the man beside her, at sailors trying to crowd around the edge of the plank holding to the rope-and-pole railing on either side. The press stopped them, but only two or three could meet them at one time. Beyond on the deck two marines were taking aim at Bren—and at her—one holding the barrel of the huge musket on his shoulder, the other aiming from behind Its barrel was six feet long and only three or four times that away… The muzzle looked big enough to put her fist down, and it was pointing right at her.
"Now, Mercele!" Bren shouted "Now, now!"
A barrel soared over her head; she nearly died watching it as a Tseldene probed for her life. It went an impossible distance, down and down, hitting the deck next to the musketeers who were about to fire. One of them dropped his weapon and leaped for it, fingers closing—no, just missing it as he crashed to the deck and the iron-hooped barrel rolled and bounced, the hissing fuse stuck through a cork-stopped bung at one end drawing patterns of sparks through the air. It rolled beyond his frantic scrabble; even then there was something amusing in a man trying to grab a barrel full of gunpowder. Rolled, slowed, tipped… and fell through the open grillwork before the galleys mainmast.
The explosion blasted the grill up in a fountain of sparks and smoke and metal, a mushroom with a red flash at the center. The great mainmast of the galley fell seconds later, the stay ropes breaking with plucking noises like giant harpstrings; it fell right onto the foremast and broke it off flush with the deck. Fire followed, taking heat-dried pine decking with appalling speed; the screams of the rowers below were like damned souls in a Toboran hell. She could feel the shudder through the hull of the galley in the plank beneath her feet. Bren was backing up; in the cold aftermath of whatever frenzy had made her follow him, that looked like a good idea.
"Drive 'em back!" he shouted, as they skipped up onto the bulwark of the Sea Mare.
The Tseldenes gave a huge groaning shout of terror as the galley began to burn. Drums and trumpets sounded from its quarterdeck; the marines gave way with the suddenness of water bursting through a dam. Some fought to hold the boardingplanks for their comrades; others threw their weapons away and leaped down to the galleys deck. A few even ran across it and jumped into the water, near-suicide for men in armor. The officers raged along the galleys deck, their steel-tipped whips flailing as they drove men to the pumps. The deck and hold belched steam as seawater struck flame and scorched wood.
"Come on," Bren said, in a more normal tone.
Halberdiers were prying at the plank with their heavy weapons. The spikes on its bottom edge came free of the wood with a screech, and Karah's shoulder hit it beside the officer's. It slid away; she could see a growing stretch of clear water below, a triangle of blue between the hulls. The planks forward twisted free, as the torque of the separating ships flung their weight against the spikes. The last Tseldenes dropped into the water between the galley and the Imperial ship; the marines sank like stones, but a few sailors bobbed up and began swimming. Almost as one, the Imperial soldiers on the port side turned. The enemy commander on the other southron galley saw which way the fight was going; before Bren or his followers could reach the rail the Tseldenes had retreated in good order to their deck and cast free. The oars shot out on either side, pushing against the Sea Mare's hull and dipping into the water.
The captain's voice suddenly rang out from the quarterdeck:
"All hands aloft! Set the jib, we need steerage way or she'll ram us!"
Gun smoke was still puffing from the crow's nests, but there seemed to be enough sailors to scramble aloft.
Bren's sword sank in his hand. Humanness returned to his face; he coughed and looked around. Recognition flickered as he saw Karah.
"Well, you've been blooded," he said dryly.
Karah wiped at her face, feeling the greasy smear of congealing blood on it; the whole front of her body was covered in the stuff, like stinking salt-honey. Suddenly her gut twisted and she staggered to the rail, heedless of the bodies she stumbled over, heaving a few painful cups of sour bile into the water.
"Here." Bren offered a flask.
She rinsed out her mouth; it was water cut with brandy. A second swallow made her feel a little better; she could look around. Amourgin was helping Eowlie bandage a cut on her thigh; Doe and Korgi knelt weeping over Borte—oh, shit—soldiers were staggering about, looking dazed. The noncoms were hustling them into action, pushing and shoving and sometimes slapping faces, getting them to pick up weapons and start separating the living from the wounded, taking those below to the priest-surgeon.
"What now, sir?" Karah asked respectfully. She hadn't expected to live when the Tseldene galleys laid alongside.
Bren Morkaarin started to reply, then looked over her shoulder. His face changed; she twisted painfully to follow his gaze.
The water was littered with ships, burning and sinking, locked together or stalking a victim. As she watched, a tublike transport rolled slowly over, its belly black with soldiers clinging and scrambling to stay ahead of the waters. A Tseldene galley backed off for another ramming run at it, only to be caught in the stern by a Tykissian warship and heel three-quarter over itself. Beyond that a long black finger pointed for a moment at the sky, a Southron galley going down by the stern—she could see it jerk and hear the rumble as the cannon at the bow broke loose and fell all down through its rowing compartment and out the rear. Then it slid out of sight below the waves with scarcely even foam to mark its passing.
That wasn't what was making Bren stare. The wind was still rising, cold against her sweat-soaked skin, and purple-black clouds hid the coastline of Meltroon. Lightning stabbed through them as they swept down the mountains, and she could see spray blowing from the tops of waves. A moaning shriek sounded as the outliers of the waves hit the Sea Mare's rigging, and the ship heeled sharply, canvas straining and creaking. Sailors were scrambling again, this time cutting sail loose rather than trying to strike it.
"We're in for a bad blow," Bren said in an almost conversational tone. Then a shout as he strode away: "Get everything secured—wounded below! Move your arses if you want to live, damn you!"
Oh, shit, Karah thought. It wasn't original; she seemed to be saying and thinking that a lot today, but it fit.
She tried to open her hands, but the fin
gers seemed glued to her hilts. On the third try it worked; she walked over to Amourgin and the others, looking for something to wipe the steel.
"We'd better do what the man says," she said wryly. "Godsall, but it would be silly to drown after all this."
CHAPTER X
Bren watched the war dissolve in the face of a common enemy.
All around the Sea Mare, the ships that were still able to, began making for whatever ports they might find. The battle disintegrated into a hasty retreat on both sides. Sailors on seaworthy ships raced up and down ratlines to reef the sails, and in a flock, the oared warships began to turn tail and run for the island harbors. Waves swelled and crashed around the Sea Mare, and the sky grew even darker. The first huge spatters of rain hit the blood-soaked deck.
But the Sea Mare didn't follow in the wake of either fleet. It wallowed, instead, like a pig in mud, lurching up and down the swells, taking on water as waves hit broadside and sea-water streamed across the decks.
Bren raced past seamen intent on their work; he wanted the ship's captain. He found him at last on the quarterdeck, issuing orders to the seamen and completely ignoring the tall wheel that should have steered the Sea Mare toward safe harbor.
"What's happened?" Bren shouted.
The ship's captain turned a weary face toward Bren. "We're screwed," he yelled back. "That's the short tale. The long is, they shot off our rudder, and this mudsucking puddle barge has no oars and no backup and a keel like a fucking meadbarrel. We'll try to set a sea anchor, keep nose to tail with the storm and run before the wind, but mor' n' likely, the sea will swallow us. With luck we'll run aground and a few of us will live. That's with luck. Without luck, I imagine we're all dead. Get your people out of their armor," he added. "Maybe some of them can swim."
The wind shrieked louder, and for an instant, Bren fancied he could hear voices in it Then the ship's captain stared over Bren's shoulder at the open sea, pressed his fist to his heart and bellowed, "Dear gods, deliver us!"
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