“You can only shoot once,” the English speaker said reasonably.
“Not so. This gun can shoot many times. Do you think that the man who invented the firedrake and the fervefactum cannot make a pistol that will fire more than once?”
He could not tell what effect this had, but he noted that the men in the boats seemed to have become quite statuelike.
“Now,” Ben went on, “I’ve told you who I am. Let me tell you who you are. You are the men who wronged my friends.”
“We do what we do for Venice,” the fellow replied.
“Well, and here I would be saving your precious Venice were it not that I had to come and fetch my friends from the likes of you. Now, understand this: I don’t really give a good God-rot-you who owns Venice in a few days, or whether she sinks into the sea—far less what happens to you clown-faced fellows. But at the moment, I do care; for I am her guest, and I do not want my accommodations moved to Muscovy. And so I will go back to defend your city, whilst you brave patriots skulk here in the dark after fierce young women to kidnap. You have my leave to go, my fellows.”
“That won’t do,” the man said, reaching into his cloak.
“Well and good,” Ben replied, and shot him clean in the face, smashing the mask below the nose and all his teeth besides. “Away,” he snapped to Hassim, reaching for his other pistol, marveling at the luck of his shot. He was amazed at how cold and calm he felt.
A second gun—one of the enemy’s—blazed in the narrow way, and Ben heard the bullet whine from one wall to the next. Hassim had begun working the oar when Ben pointed carefully, slowly, the way Robert had taught him, and fired again, producing a harsh gurgle from someone.
Then Ben turned on his aegis and tried to stand so as to shield Lenka and Hassim.
“Red Shoes—” Lenka shouted from behind.
“Later!” Ben grunted. “It’ll have to be later!”
Then the real thunder began, and Ben had barely time to hope that the aegis would withstand a fusillade better than it had a single bullet back in Prague. Weirdly enough, it seemed that the shots somehow resounded, not just in the alleyway, but in the sky itself.
11.
The Long Black Being
Red Shoes stretched his stiff muscles and glanced around the chamber, knowing that he didn’t have long to prepare himself. The scent of his soul drifted thickly in the deeps surrounding him, and he had no place left to hide.
A pragmatic part of him noted the guard’s fallen pistol, and he picked that up, taking his smallsword and dagger as well before manacling the unconscious man where he himself had been imprisoned a few moments before. That done, he righted the stool, sat on it, and began a chant.
“Red Panther of the East
Loan me your eyes,
Loan me your strength,
I stand amongst graves in the Darkening Land.
I have need of you.
“Red Peregrine of the East
Loan me your sharp breast,
Loan me your flint talons,
The Imprecator names me in the Ghostland.
I have need of you.
“Red Thunder of the East
Loan me your copper war club,
Loan me your rattlesnake armbands,
The Black Spider watches me from the Sundeath Country.
I have need of you.”
As he chanted, his ghost sight awoke. In his weakened state, it was hard not to be pulled entirely in, to forget about his mortal eyes—as had ancient Panther Dreaming in the village of Abika, who never remembered how to see the living world again, who mumbled constantly of things unseen and did not notice the drool on his own chin. Thus did isht ahollo die, when they died. Not the harsh, bright victory of a battlefield death, but the terrible unraveling of soul bereft of shadow.
Courage, he thought, and chanted a little more of the war song, the quickening song, the song for remembering the path. And now the spirit water engulfed him. He took it into his lungs and began to drown.
A ball of molten shot spattered red an inch from Ben’s eyes, but the other projectiles twisted around him, struck sparks from the walls; and despite himself he laughed. Hassim had his stroke, now, and the gondola was gliding fast. As they turned the corner, their attackers remained stationary, frantically reloading their weapons or trying to doctor their companions. In the distance, titans still pounded on their drums. The attack on Venice was renewed.
“We have to go back for Red Shoes,” Lenka insisted.
“We can’t,” Ben said. “I’m sorry. I’m grateful to him, for he helped me find you; and I swear that afterward, if I can, I will find him. But listen! The tsar is firing his cannon, and we do not want to be in Venice when he reaches her, I assure you. Never mind that I am sworn to be elsewhere at the very moment, that many more people are depending upon me. The Indian made his choice.”
“He might not be able to swim. Did you think of that?”
“I thought of it,” Ben snapped, angry at his own guilt—for he knew the Indian couldn’t swim. “But if we go back, those men will kill us, do you see, and this will have all been for naught, for I’m not going to let you die.”
A shaft of light glanced down from a high window, and her face appeared for a moment, determined, tear wet, astonished. “Listen,” he said, “Red Shoes was ransomed, too. They won’t do anything to him.”
“You shot some of them,” she said. “That might make them a bit unreasonable.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Ben asked, exasperated. “Leave you to have bombs dropped on you? Hand you back to those nice fellows? Come, Lenka, with your sharp tongue, tell me what, in hindsight, I should have done!” He caught his breath for a sullen second. “And to think that I thought—” Then he checked himself, glad for the darkness, and took another deep breath, and another, relieved to have stopped short of making an even greater ass of himself.
“Thought what?” she asked.
“Nothing. Keep quiet—they might be following.”
She did keep quiet, too, long enough for him to begin to regret himself. He was so tired, so worn—yet Lenka must have endured much more, chained in the dark for days.
“Listen,” Hassim hissed, but Ben had already heard—Among the duel of giants, from back the way they had come, a sudden flurry of small gunfire echoed. Lenka gasped, but said nothing, and they traveled for a while in silence.
Drowning, he gazed into the stillness of a swamp, its water like iron in the last minutes of the sun’s rays. Between the sinewed columns of cypress rose the inconstant green glow of fireflies, and the air creaked with frog songs and the disconsolate imprecation of a whippoorwill. He knew where he was: near the beginning of things. The obscure shadowed hill behind him was Nanih Waiyah, from whose caves the Choctaw had first emerged. It was a thin place on the skin of the Earth, saturated in the swamp his people called Lunsa, the Darkening.
Something across from the Darkening, grinning a faintly phosphorescent grin. It was as long and lean as a snake, nearly as sinuous, but as it emerged it unfolded narrow limbs—like a praying mantis or a walkingstick, with fingers as thin and sharp as porcupine quills. Its skin was not uniformly black, but mottled like a frog’s, or even more like the tail of a peacock, darker and somehow more iridescent. As it towered over him, eyes blinked open in its palms, fingers, wrists, elbows, scattered across its torso, green as the fireflies with the vertical black pupils of a copperhead.
“I have been awaiting you, Long Black Being,” Red Shoes said.
“Indeed?” The thing even sounded drawn thin, as if its voice were still under the earth and water, traveling up through a long pipe. “I thought you were hiding from me.”
“Waiting. To meet you when I wished.”
“What a pity. You seem to have failed.”
“You are welcome to believe so,” Red Shoes said. “Do you have anything to say before I kill you, Long Black Being?”
The spirit giggled, a remarkably childish and entirely chilling
sound. “Only that you were warned. Only that you have betrayed us.”
“I never betrayed you. You tried to claim me; I claimed you instead.”
“You were chosen. It was not your place to refuse or twist our intent. You should have listened to the guide we sent you as a child. You should not have provoked me into coming. Now we can leave you nothing. We must empty you out and fill you up, that through you we may hunt others of your traitorous kind.”
Red Shoes smiled wanly. “I do not think it will come to that, Long Black Being. Can you see into the living world, the world above?”
“This is the living world. Yours is naught but clay.”
“Yes, yes. Can you see into my world? No, I think you cannot—or not well, not without human eyes.”
“Make your point.”
Red Shoes could feel the strength of the thing; it was beyond belief. And he was so weak. If it should strike, catch him with those claws, it would do as it said: wear his skin back to the land of the Choctaw and slay his kin. It would never come to that.
“Kwanakasha,” he said, calling up the diminutive spirit from its prison. “Go kill that thing.”
Kwanakasha seemed to sprout up from the ground between him and the Long Black Being. It still looked like a little man, but its face held both terror and anger. “I cannot kill a great one. You cannot set me upon him.”
“I can and do,” Red Shoes said. “You were the one who summoned him, yes? Who complained to him of your treatment? Well, I do not think that I will die alone, Kwanakasha. It is always sweeter to die with an enemy.”
“Do not waste my time,” the Long Black Being crooned. “It will only make me angrier.”
“Yes,” Kwanakasha pleaded. “Do not waste his time.”
“I taught you some tricks,” Red Shoes said. “Use them now, and perhaps both of us will live.”
The Kwanakasha seemed to swallow its dismay. It clenched its eyes shut for a moment; and when it opened them, they were flame. It turned to face the monster.
“This is not of my choosing, master,” the dwarf said.
“Then do not do it,” the Long Black Being said.
“He is yet strong. But when you kill me, he will be without strength.”
“Then I shall kill you,” the creature said, whipping outward like a chain made of knives.
Kwanakasha darted forward with the speed of a musket ball. For Red Shoes, the scene became confused, for the appearance his mind made of them was not what they were, and the battle they fought was not of flesh and blood. Like hearing a slightly known language spoken too quickly, he could not sort it all out. They were whirlwinds, sparking wheels, joined and separate, braiding and unbraiding, knotting and, finally, tearing. In the end what he saw was Kwanakasha swallowed, moving down the throat of the Long Black Being like an egg down the length of a snake.
But in the meantime, Red Shoes had a moment to do what he now knew he must. He raised the pistol with both hands and placed the muzzle between his eyes.
“Another,” Crecy said, peering through the spyglass, “the largest I’ve seen.”
Adrienne turned to see what Crecy meant. The fleet proceeded with more caution now, and following her suggestions, used more prosaic means of detection. The biggest surprise that morning had brought had been the ships. While it was clear that most of the balloon bombs had been deployed from small craft, the real bases of operation were a number of large ships—ships of the line, sloops, caravels. More strange yet, they flew not Venetian or even Turkish standards but British and French ones.
It was one of these ships at which Crecy was now pointing. Straining to peer through the artificial fog, Adrienne saw two balloons of truly immense proportions inflating on the deck. They were attached to something she couldn’t make out.
“What is it?” the tsar pressed.
“Captain, I do not know. Two more large balloons, that much is clear. But what they are attached to—”
“Can you render them quiescent, as you did the rest?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Do so then.” He paused for an instant, his chin pressed hard into one fist. “Board that one,” he grunted to one of his officers. “Send down the word. I want that ship boarded. I have a feeling …” He seemed vague for a moment, as if listening to distant music, and Adrienne suddenly noticed a malakus, almost imperceptible, drifting—no, rather, merged—with the tsar.
“Charles!” the tsar muttered.
Below, one of the ships dropped lower still. And then, quite suddenly, the balloons and their mysterious cargo vanished.
Charles XII stood fuming at the rail of the Carolina Prophet as Ben, Hassim, and Lenka arrived.
“I should kill you,” he shouted down.
“Who will fly the Madman if you do that, Captain Frisk?” Ben retorted, catching the lines thrown to him.
“The only reason I don’t shoot you!” Charles hurled back. “Even now, I doubt me that there is time!” He gestured at two of the hulking airships, moving toward them.
“Yes,” Ben said, “but the balloons—” A flight of balloons lifting toward the underbellies of the airships paused just fifty feet from the surface and started to fall again. Men scrambled into the water as the first touched gently down, and then a fountain of flame obliterated the view.
“Sweet Jesus,” he gasped. “They’ve some way of cooling the air!” He was on deck by now. “Your Majesty, is the Madman loaded?” He could see the billowing, inflated envelope. So, certainly, could the Muscovites.
“Yes,” Charles said impatiently.
“Then activate the aegis, now, and best tell Captain Teach to set sail!”
“It’s only you we’ve been awaiting.” But he shouted the order over his shoulder.
The ships were close, one high, one very low. Even as Charles spoke, so did the Russian cannon. The water around them was suddenly alive with spray, and the main sheet—halfway up, in preparation for sailing—suddenly burst into flame. A ball of fire appeared fifty feet away almost on the bow, flinging men from it like scraps of meat.
“Jesus,” Ben swore again. “Lenka, with me! Hassim!” He reached down and hugged Lenka beneath her arms, lifting her onto the deck.
“Not on the Madman,” Charles snapped. “We’ve no room.”
“You’ll make room unless you want to fly it yourself,” Ben returned, leading Lenka across the rocking deck. “The Prophet is no safe place!”
Blackbeard met them halfway to the Madman.
Charles bowed to the pirate. “I thank you again, sir, for the use of your ship. You have done us all a great service.”
Charles spoke in German, of course, and so Ben had to quickly translate. Blackbeard nodded grimly and gestured at the approaching Russian ships, looming lower each moment. “I don’t know this new-fashioned aerial fightin’, but I’ll be damned if they don’t look as if they want to board us. Get this Swedish king off my ship, Benjamin Franklin. I’ll show these Moscovados the proper way to hell.”
“I don’t doubt you know it, Captain.” Ben grinned.
“I’ll see you there, one day, Franklin, never doubt it. Go, and show them up at their own game.”
Ben nodded, and they jogged onto the afterdeck.
The Madman was a strange, hybrid thing: a light wooden frame, roughly the shape of a longboat, but covered in and out with taut, tough canvas. Her sails were two enormous silken envelopes. Whereas the smaller balloons had been inflated mostly by open flame, two scientifical furnaces had been found to give the Madman her lift. The furnaces changed the state of air passing through them, though more slowly then Ben would have liked; inflating and keeping the great balloons swollen had turned out to be a chore.
Of course, he could see none of this, for his command had gone ahead, and the aegis that he had cobbled together was in operation. He only hoped now that whatever science had been used to cool his balloons could not penetrate the unpredictable force, or the last hope of Venice was done.
As the th
ree of them drew within a yard of the ship, the aegis suddenly twinkled out, revealing Robert and eight tough-looking men—four Swedes and four Janissaries. The ship itself, straining at the tethers, suddenly seemed to sag a bit.
“Hurry!” Ben boosted Lenka into the craft, but Hassim hung back. “Come, Hassim. Things will be very hot on the Revenge in a moment or two.”
“Yes,” he said. “And Hassim stay here to fight.”
“No. Come on,” he repeated, but when Hassim shook his head, he wasted no more time debating, but just stuck out his hand, gave Hassim’s a brisk shake, and then leapt into the ship.
“About goddamn time,” Robert snapped.
“Had business.” Ben grunted, gesturing at Lenka. “Cut the lines.”
The sun suddenly turned prism. The boat shook gently as the mooring cables were cut, then more fiercely as the Muscovite cannon spoke again. The Prophet, her cannon upslung in hastily modified carriages, replied, and the world became smoke.
The Madman was not lifting.
“They cooled us, somehow,” groaned Ben.
“Boarders!” Charles shouted tightly. “They’re dropping them down on ropes!”
The distinctive rattle of murder guns cut over Charles’ proclamation, small-bore cannon spitting clouds of molten lead, followed an instant later by clashing of steel. Ben did his best to ignore all that, struggling instead with the small firedrake mounted near the prow.
“Help me, damn it!” he shouted. Robert was already there, and now one of the Swedes, who was assisting him in wrenching the alchemical weapon from its mount. Shadows wrestled in the corner of his eye, one of which had to be Blackbeard, by the bellowing it produced. They got the drake—a thing like a cannon some two feet long—positioned and aimed straight up the silken canopy.
“It’ll burn it!” Robert snapped.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Ben replied. “But experimentation is the essence of science.” He pulled the trigger, and a jet of blue flame hurled itself up into the envelope. Ben gasped on a mouthful of air so hot it burned his lips and singed his eyelashes. The Madman shuddered, her prow lifting and swinging aimlessly. He pulled the trigger again, and at the same instant something struck the Madman so hard that she flipped nearly over, a deafening explosion ringing their ears. The fire-drake rocked in his grip and the sulfurous jet ran up against the silk envelope.
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