“What’s it look like I’m doing, ye useless popinjay? I’ve come to drive the Perinese off me town and out o’ me isles!”
“If you’re in town, then you’re needed back at the Skydocks. If Brunehilde and Tooley can join Weatherby, we can slow the warships—”
“Pah!” Euron shook his head. “They’re all lickin’ their wounds. They fled when things were lost, cowards all! Not that I saw ye up there! How’d ye get back to town, Fengel?”
Fengel ground his teeth together. The Mechanists, the light-air mines, and the escape plan—none of it was worth explaining. Instead, he gestured back out at the lagoon, where the Moonchaser flew, chased by the Glory of Perinault. “Everyone follows you. They’ll listen if you order them back up! And we need people up there! Brunehilde and Tooley will follow your orders, no matter how injured they are. Weatherby, Cadmus, and Matice are just barely—”
“What? And leave the stinkin’ Bluecoats in me town? Not a chance!” Euron drew his cutlass and thrust it into the air, forcing Shannon MacKinnon back with a curse. “We’ll drive the dogs back into the sea and then pillage like we’ve never pillaged before!”
“You and what men?” cried Fengel, exasperated. He gestured to the eight old, tired pirates flanking Euron. “You had fifty before this morning, and now you’re down to eight! They’ve been with you for decades, and you’re going to get what’s left of them killed!”
“What? Nonsense! And I see a good two dozen hands here sittin’ idle with ye.” He turned to face the crowd. “Come, all of ye who would see the invaders out, who want to see vengeance and bloody glory!”
A ragged cheer rose from the crew of the Windhaunter. Fengel watched, incredulous, as Euron led them, first across the square and then down the Waterdock stair. Shannon MacKinnon swore and ran after them with an apologetic shrug at Fengel. In moments the only ones remaining in the square were Imogen, the Mechanists, and surprisingly, Captain Tooley’s aetherite.
Fengel raised an eyebrow at her. “At least you had the good sense to stay behind, Danica.”
The aetherite gave another shrug. “You ordered me to stay with you, Captain.”
“Does he even know about the automatons?” asked Imogen.
“No,” replied Fengel, his voice low and tight. “And he’s going to get them all killed.” He drew his saber in one smooth motion, taking pleasure in how it felt in his hand. “Come on. We make for the Smuggler’s Warehouse.” He stumbled over Cubbins with a curse, then reached down and yanked the tabby cat up by the scruff of its neck. Fengel shoved it into the arms of a passing Mechanist. “Take care of this!”
He turned away from the rather surprised young man and stalked towards the stair down to the next terrace. “But what about all the others?” asked Danica Barker worriedly. The shells on her belt jangled as she hurried to keep up with him.
“They made their choice!” he all but shouted back at her.
Cannon blast and musket retort washed over Fengel as he stalked after Euron—the stair he’d taken was the only path down to the Waterdocks. Fengel stomped angrily down the old wooden steps, his saber gripped in a white-knuckled fist.
The man was infuriating. Absolutely infuriating. Here they were, with a dozen warships on their doorstep and hundreds of soldiers in their door, and all Euron could think to do was charge. Worse, everyone listened to him! Well enough. Enough and more than enough. They can all rot while I do what needs to be done.
Haventown’s lowest terrace was a sprawling collection of warehouses, criminal shipwrights, and all the other diverse structures that needed to be near the water. The Waterdocks sprawled, a third of the entire pirate township by itself and a ramshackle place where structures leaned against each other. Construction wasn’t regulated in Haventown. You simply built where you had room, if someone didn’t stop you.
A number of years ago, it had half burned down. He’d wed Natasha, and she was trying to kill him, of course, and a simple spark had resulted in an inferno. Looking around, it seemed that no one had really taken the lesson to heart.
The old Smuggler’s Warehouse was built near the northern third of the terrace, opposite the lagoon and up tight against the cliffs. Fengel left the pirate king and his followers to their fate, threading his way through streets and alleys that were all but empty. There weren’t many people on the Waterdocks at the busiest of times, but it seemed the more permanent residents had either fled the invasion or gone to fight it. Those he saw clustered in the doorways and windows, seemingly oblivious of each other, waiting.
They need to group up. Fengel shook his head. Everyone is hiding in little gangs, even ready to fight, but we need the strength that comes from numbers. Euron should have gathered them up, brought them on his mad charge down the throat of the enemy. Maybe...maybe then he might have had a chance. Now it was too late.
He ran through intersections and through alleys, ignoring the sounds of battle. Finally, he stopped at a junction, their destination in view, and Danica and Imogen ran into him. The Smuggler’s Warehouse was located down a narrow alley and up against the face of the cliff, all but hidden in the shadow of the Craftwright’s Terrace above. To his left the street continued on, twisting past a coal yard and an old warehouse roofed with whale bones. Shouts echoed down to him—the cries of pirates and soldiers just out of sight.
“Here we are,” said Fengel. Now up close, he could see several great brass pipes running out from the Smuggler’s Warehouse to the rest of the town above. “Imogen, you’re sure this is the entrance to the mine?”
The young Mechanist nodded, distractedly. She stared down the street towards the battle raging just out of sight. “Just at the back, behind a fake stack of crates.” She looked at him. “Shouldn’t we...shouldn’t we do something to help?”
“We are,” he replied frostily.
Fengel took a step forward just as the nearby conflict reached a crescendo. “By the Goddess,” someone shouted, “they’re unstoppable! Flee fer yer lives!”
He stopped despite himself as a number of panicked men and women from the Windhaunter came into view, fleeing the fight or trying desperately to hold ground. The pirates fought not Bluecoats but the twenty armored and shining automatons he’d spied earlier. They tromped forward, moving in a tight wedge that drove the pirates before them.
These machines were like neither the clumsy, steam-driven Brass Horses of Triskelion nor the ancient and spindly Voornish automatons. They stood taller than a man, armored like the storybook tales of the old Order Gallant. Past the plates, though, pistons and flywheels moved, while steam puffed from an exhaust pipe behind the right shoulder. Each held a heavy, complicated musket with several barrels bundled together, like a pepperbox pistol writ large. They pressed the defenders back with an implacable tread and a brutal, inhuman efficiency, their armor shining beneath eaves made of grinning whale skulls and the shadows cast by warring airships.
Euron and his geriatric reavers held firmest, trying to stand their ground against the things. Fengel pointedly looked away, back to the Smuggler’s Warehouse.
Damned old fool neither wants nor needs my help. He looked to Imogen and Danica, who stared at the nearby struggle as pirates fled past them. And so what if he falls? We’re better off without that mad old bastard.
The sharp snap of shattering steel caught his attention. It was Euron, fighting the automaton at the head of their pack, backed up by two of his men. The pirate king had tried a heavy, two-handed chop with his cutlass. Only the automaton had raised its musket and shattered the old, oft-nicked blade. The automaton did not pause; instead, it lowered its weapon and fired to one side. Thunder erupted, obliterating a pirate.
Euron opened his mouth in a shout of rage or denial. But he never got the chance. The automaton swung out with the barrel of his weapon, catching the pirate king full in the chest and sending him flying.
Fengel winced. He looked away, only to see the two women behind him watching. We’re better off without him. Better off!
<
br /> A hoarse scream echoed down the street as he took a step for the Smuggler’s Warehouse. Fengel turned back in time to see an automaton lift one of Euron’s remaining men with one gauntlet and slam him into a brick wall with a sickening crunch. The pirate king himself rose to his feet and limped back into the fray, a bare handful of his former crew and those of the Windhaunter still standing.
Damn it all. Damn him to the Realms Below!
Fengel sheathed his saber. “Danica. You said you’ve still a few Workings?”
She nodded in distraction. “Aye, Captain. Goriot—ah my familiar, is pretty pleased with all the carnage going on.”
“Follow me. Use whatever you can to help.”
“Wait, what?” asked Imogen. “What about me?”
“Wait here. I’m going to rescue that cantankerous old bastard—and whoever else I can.”
The young Mechanist reached for her satchel. “I’ve got something for this. I can—”
“Wait here!”
Fengel jogged down the boardwalk street. Reaching out, he grabbed an unfired musket from a fleeing pirate, who cursed him but ran on.
No alleys were present, a mixed blessing; while no Bluecoats would be flanking him around behind the other buildings, it also meant he couldn’t do the same. Which would have been nice. He needed something, any advantage at all if he was going to pull this off somehow. The gleaming brass of the automatons whirled and twisted, flailing about with their pepperbox muskets like clubs, seemingly impervious to any blows the pirates rained upon them. The machines had even kept their wedge formation, gaining ground steadily.
Behind their automatons crept the Bluecoat invaders. All appeared ragged and injured. They hung back a goodly distance, letting their machines do all the work for them while they recovered from the effects of the siren.
Only eight men and women on his side still stood, holding the thin line of the battle. Fengel came up beside Shannon MacKinnon, who fired pistol after pistol into the head of an automaton before her. The lead balls ricocheted off the armored helm of the thing, ringing it like a bell.
“We’re outmatched!” he shouted at her. “Pull everyone back!”
“Oh aye,” she yelled back at him. “I’m just standing here for the fun of it! We’re dropping like flies in autumn. Euron refuses to leave!”
“Just pull back! I’ll take care of him.”
An automaton on their left crushed the skull of an old pirate, then lurched their way. Hissing, spitting liquid light slammed into the thing, knocking it back against the wall of the warehouse. The automaton toppled but immediately began righting itself. The chest plate it wore was scored and burned, but otherwise uninjured.
Fengel glanced back to where Danica Barker stood, both hands clenched over a Working that seeped droplets of something that sizzled on the boardwalk planks.
“Hurry!” she said, unleashing another awful blast.
Fengel turned to Shannon. “Just go!”
Then he twisted away, ducking past as another of Euron’s men fell to the machines. Arcane light sizzled overhead as Danica unleashing her Working to distract the automaton fighting the pirate king.
Fengel came up behind Euron, down now to a single minion and his own broken sword. As the clockwork knight bludgeoned Euron’s man down to the boardwalk, Fengel used the opening, ducking low and thrusting his musket out like a spear, not at the machine’s torso, but between its legs. Throwing his weight into it, he rushed past, feeling the barrel catch against the knee of the construct. Swordplay might be useless here, but as he so often told Lina Stone, that just meant he needed to improvise.
His opponent toppled, reaching clumsily for him as he stepped neatly out of the way. Another of the war machines was waiting behind its fellow. Fengel raised the musket and jammed it into the space where its chest plate met the neck, right into the spinning flywheels and twisting pistons. He pulled the trigger, letting go and turning his head away.
The weapon exploded, knocking the automaton back even as it knocked Fengel’s monocle free and showered the side of his neck with hot metal. Fengel gave thanks to the Realms Above even through the pain—it could have been much, much worse.
There wasn’t time to recover, though. He leaped away, back over the first automaton that was even now climbing to its feet. Euron was frozen, staring, surprised by Fengel’s appearance.
Fengel slammed a fist into the pirate king’s gut, a blow he’d been waiting years to deliver. The old man folded with a whooshing gasp, dropping his broken weapon. Fengel kneeled and lifted his father-in-law up onto his shoulder. The man was lighter than he would have thought.
The pirates beside him didn’t even notice. Those few left standing were already turning to flee back, past where Danica Barker threw caustic light and Shannon MacKinnon emptied her bandolier. A figure darted into view from the other direction, on his left.
It was Imogen, the young Mechanist. She pulled something from her satchel, heavy and black and complicated. Fengel didn’t need to see the hissing fuse at its top to recognize it as some sort of bomb.
Fengel yelled at her wordlessly, even as he pushed on into a sprint, with the old man flailing on his shoulder and his monocle dangling on its chain. He needn’t have bothered. Imogen planted the bomb up against the brick wall of the old warehouse just as an automaton before her lowered its weapon. She ducked aside as it fired, missing her by a handbreadth and gouging a spray of brick dust out of the wall. Imogen twisted about clumsily and joined him as he sprinted away.
The bomb erupted behind him with the force of a thunderclap, lifting and throwing him. He lost Euron and was thrown painfully to the ground.
Slowly, the world ordered itself again. The street was piled high with crumbled brick, old wood, and the bones of long-dead leviathans, all shrouded from the sun by a cloud of dusty ruin. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard the distant din of the battle being fought elsewhere and the hoarse calls of Perinese Bluecoats. None of the automatons were visible. He felt sore, and his leg hurt; the right leg of his trousers was dark with spreading blood. It was only a flesh wound, thank the Goddess, though it bled freely enough.
Others picked themselves up off the boardwalk planks nearby. Imogen stood, unharmed thanks to her heavy Mechanist’s garb, though she shook her head, as if her ears were ringing. Shannon MacKinnon was covered in scrapes, her broad-brimmed hat missing. She held Danica Barker in her arms. The aetherite was unmoving, either dead or unconscious, her dark curls matted and wet with blood. Old Euron Blackheart groaned from his hands and knees, looking around blearily. Of any others, Fengel saw no sign.
Euron Blackheart glared at him. “Ye damned, craven peacock! What did you—”
Fengel rose to his feet, driven by frustrated rage. The pain in his leg flared, but he ignored it, grabbing up the pirate king by the shredded lapels of his outdated coat and hoisting him up like a butcher would a side of beef.
“Shut your damned yap,” he snarled.
The pirate king’s eyes widened. “How dare ye—”
“I dare plenty!” roared Fengel. “Because you’ve not got the good sense the Goddess gave a scryn!” He gestured about them at the ruined street shrouded in dust and rubble, at the half-seen bulk of the Moonchaser fighting with the Glory overhead.
“Look!” continued Fengel. “Look around! Where are your men? Where are your loyal crew? They’re dead! Half the Windhaunter’s crew are gone as well—and Goddess knows how many townsfolk. You’ve led them to their deaths and gained not a damned thing in return!”
“They went with pride,” hissed Euron, shaking now, angered himself. “They went with glory, fighting th’ enemy, when all ye do is run—”
“There’s no glory here! There’s no honor! Look around you, Euron. The enemy is here, on your doorstep. Your gambit with the Stormhammer has failed, and we are losing. You’re spending lives pointlessly!”
“I don’t expect ye to understand,” spat the pirate king. “Yer a peacock, a popinjay.”
/>
It came to him then. Fengel threw the old man to the ground, panting with the effort of holding him up. “I understand just fine,” he snarled. “You never wanted to win. You’re just looking for one last battle to die in. You sent Natasha off to keep her safe. I wonder if the Voorn weapon is even real. Now you’ll burn the rest of us just so you can go out in glory.”
Euron glared at him hatefully. Slowly, without breaking his gaze, Fengel put his monocle back into place.
“Shannon,” he said after a moment.
The Windhaunter’s first lieutenant looked at him, the aetherite in her arms still unmoving. “Aye, Fengel?”
“I’m going to save what I can of this town. Get this bag of bones back up to the Skydocks. Have him get the other airships moving. I don’t care how broken up they are or what it takes. Send whoever can be spared back down here or to the Craftwright’s Terrace. I promise them that there’s still a chance, so long as we can buy time. If the pirate king here won’t give the orders, tell Brunehilde and Tooley that he isn’t in charge anymore. I am.”
Euron Blackheart rocked back in surprise. “Ye mutinous dog! How dare ye?”
“I dare,” he snarled at the old man, “because you can’t stop me.”
He brushed past Euron without another glance, stalking towards the Smuggler’s Warehouse and the secret the Mechanists had hidden so cleverly. If he moved quickly, he might even be able to keep that promise.
Chapter Thirteen
Lina’s arm was getting tired.
She hefted her daggers again as violence threatened to erupt for the dozenth time inside the ancient Voornish pyramid. Runt wove threateningly atop her shoulders, further throwing off her balance.
“I’m asking you, again, how do we turn on the Stormhammer?” growled Natasha. Butterbeak punctuated her demand with an angry squawk.
“And I’m askin’ ye, again, how ye knew of it!” replied Morgan One-Eye, spokes-pirate for the Castaways.
Euron’s old crew hadn’t turned out to be as welcoming as they had hoped. The twelve Castaways, as they called themselves, were cantankerous, unhelpful, and downright curmudgeonly. The weapons they brandished seemed frail and weathered, though Lina and her crewmates kept up their guard. Just as they wanted to know about the Stormhammer, the Castaways asked a thousand questions about the crew of the Dawnhawk. Natasha was, of course, being utterly contrary, refusing to answer a thing. The air within the ancient Voornish pyramid had been fraught with tension for the last three quarters of a glass.
Beneath a Burning Sky (The Dawnhawk Trilogy Book 3) Page 21