Romulus’ foundling pistol boomed all six times, as fast as it would cock and fire. An instant later he dove out the window, catching the line with one hand and then swinging his legs over it. With surprising speed and lightness the big man raced across to join me and Ma. We all poked our heads out of the cabin window, waiting to see if Sha’ira emerged.
She didn’t, but some hapless Croatan crewman did, hurled bodily out the stern of his ship and into the churning sea. Another followed him a second later. From the thumps we heard some more of them had hit the walls harder than they’d liked. After a moment of quiet Sha’ira popped out onto the sill, played with the mechanism of her grapple arrow, and slid it out of the oak and into her quiver. Wrapping the mermaid line around one wrist, she swung down to land feet-first against the Kiss’ hull. No sooner had her body left the Croatan’s window than a great scaly arm with taloned hand, at least five feet long and as thick as my waist, shot out to clutch at where she’d just been. If she’d tried to climb across the way the rest of us had the giant would’ve caught her. With the agility of a monkey Sha’ira ran up the side of our ship, walked her way around to the stern, and let us haul her in.
“What was that thing?” I asked.
“The big one?” she laughed. “Venoma’s cousin, I think. Toxicus. He took offense to my cutting off one of his fingers.”
“Touchy, ain’t he?” Jasper snorted. “Not like he don’t have spares.”
“Let’s go,” Ma said, leading the way out of Pitcairn’s cabin. “We have to warn them.”
She ran into the passage and up the first ladder. All of us climbed as fast as we could until the bright afternoon sun made us squint. Standing on the aft main deck, near the helmsman, I looked toward the bow to see how things stood. Nothing seemed too amiss, despite all the yelling and shooting on the Croatan. Maybe that’s a daily occurrence over there. Pitcairn conversed with a heavyset fellow in a blue brocade coat whom I took to be his fellow ship commander. Maybe ten officers and crew from the Croatan stood at ease behind him. Several times that many crowded the rail of the Obverse ship, watching the festivities. The other captain held a pewter tankard, which he slurped out of non-stop while speaking. My ears picked up a lot of what they said, but it seemed to be just bloviating about nothing. You could tell that each captain knew what the other wanted but both were observing some sort of parlay etiquette. When enough time had passed to satisfy the rules they’d get down to some real business.
That time seemed to come when the Croatan commander set eyes on me. I caught a subtle change in his expression which he tried to cover. I also noticed that his hooked nose dripped like an old spigot. Smiling at Pitcairn, he bowed and thanked him for his hospitality. He twisted his head to Roberta, who stood next to her man, and did the same. Turning away, the stocky man took a step toward the rail where his ship had been lashed to ours. Then he drew his cutlass, spun right, and tried to behead Pitcairn with as quick and sneaky a move as I’d ever seen.
But the buccaneer met that blade with his own, as if he’d read the fellow’s mind, or at least his nose. Binding the cutlass down and away, Pitcairn aimed a thrust at his bosom which the big man swatted aside with his tankard. Roberta drew her own sword and leaped backward as the Obverse men on the Kiss’ deck changed into their demon shapes and charged. With a roar those on the Croatan vaulted over the rail nets and did the same.
41/ Battling Demons
“I’m out of practice, but it’s just like riding a centaur,” Ma went on, eyes closed again. “You never really forget.”
“Well,” sighed Jasper, “I guess a warnin’ would be superfluous, huh?”
“But some help won’t be,” I said, pulling Morphageus from my belt. I turned to Ernie, squatting on Romulus’ shoulder. “Take the Marines and whoever you need. Get those grapple ropes cut. Part the ships. Give Mr. Nickleby room to use his guns. ” The Marshal mouse clapped his paws and leaped down without a word. Gracchus and his combat rats followed. In no time they’d disappeared back down the hatch.
Next I turned to Sha’ira, raising my voice over the shouting and gunfire. A pistol ball whizzed past us, making me flinch down. “Pitcairn needs to have the odds evened. Can you two do that?”
The dreamwriter laid a familiar hand on Romulus’ arm. “It will be like old times, hmm? Teaching the Obverse a lesson. Do you recall taking that fort on Malta?”
Romulus smiled, then shook his head and gestured down his great bulk. “I does. But back then I was in real fightin’ shape.”
I choked at that. He thinks he don’t have the right body for a scrap? Then just who does? But in another moment I saw what he meant.Sha’ira looked at Ma. “Can you counter the spell? Restore the old Romulus?”
“On a ship? In the open sea?” Ma asked, as if she’d been requested to fly to the moon. “No one can. The charm would be as likely to make him explode as shift him.”
“Don’t look with your eyes, but with your soul. Surely you can feel that this ship is no ordinary vessel.”
Ma closed her blue eyes and took a deep breath. Then her peepers snapped open. “This can’t be possible!”
Holding Morphageus in front of her, I let its shape flow from shield to armored fist to tin cup and back to runesword. “Trust us, it’s possible,” I assured her. “The Merchantry found a way to turn a boat into dry land.”
“But I still can’t embrace a Songline here,” Ma said. “That takes true contact with Mother Earth. My natural soul-store won’t last long in combat.”
Hearing my placid mother talk about combat sent a weird chill up my spine. I bet there’s some stories she can tell me, once this is over. “A little while should be enough,” Sha’ira said. “The Obverse has not sent its best here. These are just thugs, drones for the most part. Plus, it is daylight. Demons are easier to kill when the sun is up. Can you do the shift? Relaxing a curse should be safer for him than a new shape-change.”
One pale hand held out in front of her, palm-up, Ma started muttering a chant in some odd tongue, just like Sha’ira had done on the beach. Pale blue flames enclosed in a rainbow globe shimmered up, looking like a strange sort of inverted jellyfish. With a snap of her fingers it winked out. Opening her eyes, Ma gave me a wicked smile. “Oh, I can do a lot more than that, believe me. This will be fun.”
Fun? My mom just said demon-fightin’ is fun?
“I’m out of practice, but it’s just like riding a centaur,” Ma went on, eyes closed again. “You never really forget.” A centaur? Oh, yeah, Ma, we do need to talk.
That chant started up again, a primitive song full of liquid vowels and ringing R’s. The air around her shimmered like distant summertime air. I smelled the familiar tang of lily that bathed me when using Morphageus. No odor of brimstone, though. Wonder what that means? Next to me, Romulus began to diminish, to melt like an old snowman. His face drooped into masses of velvety blue-black wrinkles, with an immense dewlap beneath the chin. The nose became wide and wet, the eyes sad but noble. A great pink tongue slipped out of the adorable floppy face, to match the equally-adorable floppy ears. As for the rest of the animal, it kept all of the Marshal’s mass. Sleek and muscle-bound, he seemed the size of a small lion, with a tail like one of the ropes that held up our sails.
I nodded, mighty impressed. “Now that’s what I call a pooch.”
“Hope he’s house-broken,” Jasper added. “Might need hip-boots otherwise.”
“He’s a Neapolitan mastiff, the guard dog of the Caesars,” Sha’ira said in something close to awe, stroking the giant’s head. “Romulus always wishes he could be back there again, sleeping by Hadrian’s fire.”
The mighty dog jumped up, nearly knocking Ma flat as he licked her face with his bath towel of a tongue. She giggled and pushed him back down. “You’re welcome! You’re welcome!” she laughed. “Now get to work, you.”
I still tried to grasp the dreamwriter’s comment. Romulus is two thousand years old? Are you kiddin’ me? No time now to discuss that now. Pitcai
rn’s company was hard-pressed to hold off the Obverse attack. With the deepest woof I’d ever heard from a dog Romulus bounded down to the main deck, Sha’ira at his side. They waded into the demons’ flank, bringing down three of them before our enemies even knew they’d arrived.
Ma touched my shoulder, turning me back to her. Looking at me with her round freckled face, full of laugh lines, and the worry lines I’d never noticed before, she said, “Stay here. Leave this to us. The Obverse wants you and the Stone. Until we give you more battle training you’re too vulnerable in such a melee.”
I protested out of reflex, not because I hankered to slug it out with fifty monsters. “But, Ma, I already been---”
“I know you have,” she smiled, stroking my face. “A blind man can see you’ve grown up twenty years since I last saw you. You’ve taken everything they can throw at you and here you are. But please don’t expose yourself unless it’s necessary. Not till you’ve been taught better.”
Assuming I’d stay put, Ma skipped off to where Sha’ira and Romulus had entered the fight. Stunned at all I’d had to absorb in the last couple of hours, I did just that. Standing next to Mr. Bridgewater, the burly helmsman from Cork in Irlann, I watched her join my friends in the confused mess that swarmed across the deck of the Penelope’s Kiss. From behind my Jasper shield, which I held up to prevent any sharpshooters from getting lucky, we saw a fight that a writer of fairy tales might be hard put to invent.
Pitcairn and the captain of the Croatan put on a fencing exhibition. The husky man in blue kept human form, though all his crew had shed theirs in favor of their perverted demonic shapes. Maybe he kept to some sort of pirate code and chose not to take advantage in the middle of a duel. Or maybe it took too much effort to dance with Pitcairn’s blade and also do magick. Either way, the fight proved to be a thing of beauty. I had to keep reminding myself that they were intent on killing one another. Our commander held his war-worn belaying pin in his left hand, using it to parry when needed or to sneak in a sweeping blow at his opponent’s head. The other captain no longer held the pewter mug, but had picked up another cutlass and fought two-handed. Now I saw that he was a gray-haired fellow with a full salt-and-pepper beard, forked at the chin. His eyes were like steel ball bearings, soulless and cruel. A gold tooth shone in the bright Atlantic sun. From the way he fought I gathered that he had grown used to bowling others over with sheer might. Those great arms of his pounded at Pitcairn’s elegant smallsword, hoping to disarm him or snap the thin blade. But every time he tried that the greyhound-thin buccaneer deceived the move, going under or around the curved cutlass to aim death at the Obverse leader. Only the extra sword preserved the enemy commander’s hide as Pitcairn feinted, bound, coupe´d, and croise´d, his sword point darting like an angry hornet. By the same token, all my captain’s moves seemed to be just a hair late. That blue-coated enemy had more speed than a normal mortal. His reflexes pulled him out of trouble again and again.
A few feet away Roberta, her cutlass resembling her parrot’s beak, had an easier time. Clearly she’d either learned from Pitcairn, or he from her (I so hoped it was the latter), because their blades moved in similar patterns. Since the heavier blade she used wasn’t given to as quick a use as his needle-like weapon, Roberta added some less than ladylike tricks. Three times I saw her make huge cuts to the tops of Obverse heads, or what seemed to be their heads, forcing them to parry high. When they did she snapped a boot up into their groins. Twice the monsters groaned and sank down, to be skewered with her cutlass point. The third time the creature, a slimy yellow slug-like thing with eyes on stalks, just laughed like she’d tickled him. Okay, that’s good to remember. Not everybody’s bits are where you think they might be. Not missing a beat, though, Pitcairn’s lady pulled the pearl-handed dagger from her bosom and sliced off both eyes from their stems. As thick black blood fountained into the air, Roberta leaned back and stabbed the ugly thing six times in as many different spots, just to make certain she hit something vital.
All around them the battle raged, the greater numbers of the Obverse beginning to press the Kiss’ crew into a clump where it’d soon be harder and harder to use their weapons. No matter how many slobbering abominations were stabbed, shot, or clubbed there always seemed to be just enough for superior weight to be brought to bear. The sea air, thick with salty language and with blood, both red and black, grew heavy with powder smoke from muskets and pistols. I saw Fergus discharge his blunderbuss into a pair of charging beetle-men. Bug parts flew all over as the charge of buckshot, musket balls, and nails shredded the demons. So many bodies, friend and foe, lay on the deck that half the combatants tripped over them. Those that didn’t slipped on the deck, traction destroyed by fluids oozing from wounds, despite the sand which had been intended to help avoid that. Limbs and heads added to the poor footing as they slid across the planking with the roll of the ship.
But help was on the way. At the stern end of the battle crush, demon after demon yelped and went down like wheat at harvest time. The great mastiff, with Romulus’ three hundred pounds of muscle and bone, hit them like a runaway train. He’d latch those mighty jaws onto whatever arm, leg, or tentacle presented itself, pull and twist at the same time, and they’d hit the deck, never to rise again as their vitals were savaged by fearsome teeth. Anybody who tried to fight with blade or other weapon, be it claw, stinger, or whatever, soon found it parried by Sha’ira’s sword. That scimitar, quick as a rattlesnake, struck with just as much venom. Acting as an unstoppable team, the dreamwriter and the ancient dog cut a bloody black swath through the Obverse flank.
On the other side, nearer the bow, Ma had taken up a position beneath the foremast. Her hands glowed pale blue with a magick fire. Her eyes did the same, not unlike Sha’ira’s on the beach. Energy made her dark brown hair flow out around her head as if she were underwater. Odd as that seemed, something struck me as even stranger. For a moment I couldn’t understand what it was. Then a rat scurried right beneath her foot and I noticed that she didn’t quite touch the deck. Whatever magick she used bore her up with its power. Bullets and pikes rebounded around her, deflected by a just-visible shield that she held up with her left palm. The right hand threw balls of sparkly gold-violet light around the shield’s edge. They wouldn’t always travel in a straight line, either, but sought out whatever target she’d selected, often traveling in serpentine paths to get there. Each time one of them struck a demon he turned to what looked like pale gray stone. But in an instant the sea breeze or a bump from another fighter knocked the statue into powdery ash which blew away in an eye-blink. Just in the time I stood there beside the wheel I saw at least eight of our enemies shuffle off this mortal coil that way. My heart raced to see Ma, my ordinary shirt-stitching mother, the woman who’d raised my alone and put up with all manner of trouble to do so, dispatching monsters with magick I’d never known she could command. Give it to ‘em, Ma!
But she might not be commanding it much longer. Her unstoppable assault had gotten the Obverse’s attention. On the foremast of the Croatan two or three fellows who still held mortal shape climbed into the rigging with muskets. They clearly intended to shoot down at her while her attention lay elsewhere. The shield didn’t extend high enough to block their shots if she didn’t notice them up there. She was awful busy defending herself at deck level.
My feet started moving before my brain started thinking. I ran down onto the main deck, Morphageus dissolving into a razor-toothed boomerang. My shouts to Sha’ira to use her bow on the sharpshooters were lost in the din of battle. A demon that looked like a Cyclops minotaur with four arms tried to grab me. I rolled beneath his grasp, slashed the back of his hoofed leg at the knee, and got back up and running before his first bellow began. A tentacle with ivory hooks clutched at my waist, but I spun out of it with Stone-born agility. Ahead, still a hundred feet away, the trio of musketmen had almost reached the first yardarm. That looked to be where they’d steady their barrels and fire. Hoping that my rushed aim woul
d be good enough, I cocked my arm back and let fly.
The boomerang whoosh-whooshed up like some prehistoric bird, seeming to take a month to get to its target. As I held my breath, hoping like all get out that Jasper would guide Morphageus as he always had, the first man laid his musket across the yardarm and aimed at Ma. I yelled for joy as the wicked blades of my weapon sliced his left arm to the bone, making him drop the gun into the sea. Before he even knew what had hit him the boomerang had returned to my hand. I heaved it again, intentionally missing the next man, who raised his musket to block my attack. While he laughed at me for an errant throw, my will brought the weapon around to whack him a glancing blow on the side of the head. It kept twirling back to me as the Obverse marksman’s stunned form lost its grip and tumbled down to the Croatan’s deck.
I snatched the boomerang from the air, keeping my eyes on the last assassin. He ignored me, intent on sighting down his barrel at my unsuspecting mother, who kept on blasting monsters. This remaining sharpshooter knew his business. Staying calm, letting none of the battle chaos distract him, he pulled the gun’s hammer back to full-cock and eased his finger onto the trigger. Reminding myself to do the same, I cleared my mind of all the fighting, screaming, and shooting that surrounded me and raised the boomerang a third time.
My arm wouldn’t go forward. Something held it as if it’d been bolted into a vise. Looking up, I saw a pink, lumpy, sticky mess wrapped around my wrist. What the heck? Snapping my head back, I gasped at what had grabbed me. An enormous frog face, with a tiger’s body. Its tongue had flashed out to latch onto me like I was an unlucky fly. Despite my Stone-strength the thing started to reel me in toward its rubbery maw, intent on eating me.
“Sort of…I don’t know…what’s the word for a time like this?” Jasper said. “Ignominious. That’s it.”
Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) Page 43