“We can deal with them afterward,” yelled Fengel. “Now shut up and lift this strut!”
Allen and Omari both shared a look, then bent to work. A shadow fell across them all, and Fengel felt a moment’s relief. Finally.
“Henry, help Omari. Lina, put your weight on that lever with Allen. Euron, try not to get in—”
He froze at the look of alarm on Natasha’s face. She opened her mouth to shout denial, reaching for a broken plank at her side. Then a cutlass speared down past Fengel’s shoulder and buried itself in her chest.
Natasha’s eyes popped wide as she slammed back down to the deck. Her breath left in a gasp, and she grabbed at the blade.
“No!” Fengel turned and rose, raising both fists in a two-handed blow at the swordsman behind him. He connected, staggering the man back.
It was a Revenant. He wore a tattered outfit several decades out of date, with a greying beard and wrinkled, well-tanned skin. An eye patch covered a missing eye, a lesser injury than the gaping wound in his chest that had killed him. Fengel didn’t know him, and he didn’t know how he’d gotten here.
The dead man seemed to notice him for the first time. Fengel drew his saber as it swung its cutlass, slow and awkward, though still fast enough to be lethal. Their blades clashed, sending sparks between them both.
The head. Take off the head! Omari’s accursed undead were usually slow and easily handled. She’d said again and again that they weren’t dangerous unless first threatened.
A cutlass blade chopped neatly through the neck of the one-eyed Revenant. Its head tumbled away off down the deck, and it seemed to freeze. Then the corpse toppled, revealing Euron Blackheart with blade in hand. Henry, Lina, and Imogen stood behind him.
“Morgan One-Eye!” he snarled. “Ye traitor! I warned ye I’d kill ye if ye ever left that island unguarded.”
Henry caught Fengel’s eye. “There are others on the deck, and they’re just as angry.”
A chorus of undead groans echoed about the Dawnhawk, underlining his point. Fengel didn’t reply. He turned again and dropped to his knees, letting go his saber and fumbling for a handkerchief, a rag, anything at all to stanch the bleeding. Omari and Allen were there, trying to help but just getting in the way. Natasha was gasping, clutching at her shirt where the cutlass had impaled her. He shoved the two crewmen out of the way and came in close to help her, but she only growled and swatted him away with her free hand.
Natasha reached into the tatters of her puffy pirate’s shirt and fished something out. She flung it to the deck and then fell back with a groan.
It was a small book, the one he’d given her. How to Pillage Friends and Intimidate People. The little folio had been almost severed through by the Revenant’s cutlass. Almost.
“Looks like...it came in handy...after all,” she gasped at him.
Fengel wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “I told you,” he said.
“That you did.” Natasha rubbed her chest. “Argh. Still fells like someone took a hammer to my tit. Now quite staring, and will you three get this damned strut off of my legs?”
“Oh,” said Fengel. “Right. Allen, grab your lever. Omari—”
“What are ye doing down here!”
Euron staggered over to stand above them all. “Dad?” said Natasha, surprised.
“Aye! And I asked ye a question, girl. I sent ye off to secure the Stormhammer. So what are ye doing back here?”
Natasha looked as if she’d spit black tar. “You sent me off to keep me away from the fighting,” she snarled back. “To the Realms Below with that! I leave for a day, and you let the whole town get overrun by Perinese! It’s a damned good thing we found our own, working Voornish weapon. Unlike that junk pile up north.”
“Well, of course it didn’t work! Ye would have had to fix it. Should have taken ye days!”
Natasha’s eyes widened. “You knew. You knew that it wasn’t working!”
“Of course he did,” said Fengel. “He never intended to save Haventown. All he wanted was a glorious death.”
As the old pirate rounded on him, a volley of musket fire rang out. Hot lead whipped all around them, splintering wood and ricocheting off metal. Euron jerked violently, almost falling over. Then he looked down at his ragged shirt with a grunt. He touched his chest gingerly, pulling back fingertips tinged by blood. Looking up at Fengel, he narrowed his eyes.
“Me only regret,” he said clearly, “was that I never killed ye myself, popinjay.” Then, turning to Natasha, he reached out to her and collapsed.
“Dad!” yelled Natasha.
Fengel whirled, grabbing up his saber as he did and ignoring the pain in his ankle.
A dozen Bluecoats with smoking muskets knelt on the platform just below the Dawnhawk. They looked ragged, bloody, and angry. Admiral Wintermourn stood in their midst. He clutched his side with his spare hand, and his wig hung askew, but his grip was sure on his saber, and he glared at Fengel hatefully.
Captain Fengel ran down the deck, heedless of all the little protests his agonized body responded with. Using his momentum, he climbed up the starboard exhaust pipe, then leaped down into the Bluecoats. He landed hard in their midst, and something in his injured ankle crunched.
Agony shot up through his leg. Fengel let out a yell and tried not to fall. Wintermourn and the Bluecoats, momentarily taken aback, moved to swarm him. They dropped their muskets and drew their smallswords.
Fengel cursed wordlessly. Never let them see you stumble.
He parried the first, awkward, desperate blow aimed for his head. Returning the riposte, he skewered the soldier through his shoulder, then brought the bell guard of his saber around just fast enough to deflect the next blade that came for him.
“You’ve failed, Fengel,” said Wintermourn. The admiral stood behind the soldiers and let them do his fighting. “Now you’re injured and outnumbered. Lie down and get this over with, so that I can execute the rest of you degenerate pirates.”
Fengel's leg flared with pain as he moved. He shifted his weight, bit his tongue, and used every bit of sheer, bloody-minded willpower he had to keep his footing and keep on fighting.
A ragged battle cry echoed out from behind Fengel. Henry joined him at his side, along with Lina Stone. Others seemed to appear from nowhere: Farouk and Rastalak and Reaver Jane, all converging from wherever they’d been thrown in the crash, bloodied but able to fight.
The pop of pistol shots sounded behind him as well. Fengel cut at a Bluecoat’s eyes and used the time to risk a look back. It was Natasha, standing on the gunwales of his wrecked airship, free now and supported by Omari, with Allen limping painfully behind her. His wife glared coldly at the Perinese and fired shot after shot at them, taking pistols from a hastily donned bandolier.
Fengel choked up. Then an errant shot took his hat clean off. He ducked with a curse, the movement forcing agony up his leg. Natasha wasn’t a great shot, even at the best of times.
He rounded back to the fight, bringing his saber back up into guard. No one was trying to take his head off, at least for the moment. The Bluecoat marines fought his crewmen, who’d earned him a moment’s respite.
“I’m hardly alone, Wintermourn!” he yelled to the man.
Admiral Wintermourn glared back at him. “A more ragged band I’ve never seen. Lambs coming to slaughter. They won’t...save...you...”
The admiral trailed off, his look of disdain twisting into one of horror. He stared, not at Fengel, but past him. Natasha shouted a warning back aboard the Dawnhawk, but it was Wintermourn who took a step backward.
Fengel turned to see Allen and Omari both flee from a lurching figure rising up out of the wreckage. It grabbed for them with undead claws, and Natasha fired a pistol straight into its chest. The Revenant staggered, then reached for her again. Imogen tripped the thing with a broken length of wood, then all three of them scrabbled off of the airship’s deck.
Revenants appeared all over the Dawnhawk, like maggots from a burn
ing corpse. There were a mere dozen still on deck, though all moved with malevolent purpose. Others were crawling out from belowdecks, from out the crack in the hull leading to the cargo hold. They were Perinese, pirate, and even a few of his own crew.
What in the Realms Below happened on my ship? Fengel didn’t have time to wonder—the Revenants were at his back, but they were slow. The Perinese were right in front of him.
He looked back to see the fight spreading out across the platform, turning into a general melee. Admiral Wintermourn stood frozen in sheer horror. Then he turned and tried to flee, shoving to get through the Bluecoats at his back.
Revenants later. Time to push the advantage! Fengel threw himself into a limping charge after Wintermourn, trying not to cry out at every breath. You won’t get away. You’re mine now.
He hacked and cut, forcing the men before him to dive aside into the waiting blades of his crewmen. The admiral cast a glance back at him and swore, grabbing a Bluecoat and pushing him out in front of Fengel as a shield. Fengel bashed the fellow in the face with the guard of his saber, then pushed on with an overhand chop at the back of Wintermourn’s head. Someone—the soldier he’d just hit or one of the ones at his side—fell against Fengel, pushing him back at the last second. The tip of his saber caught his quarry just barely, nicking through the white wig of curls and down his back rather than burying itself in his skull.
Admiral Wintermourn yelled and turned to face him, bringing up his own blade while he tore away the wig with his free hand and sought out the wound. His fingertips came back crimson, and he stared at them in surprise before fixing his gaze hatefully upon Fengel.
“Your abominations won’t save you,” he snarled.
“Worry less about me,” said Fengel, assuming a guard. “And more about yourself.” He gestured with his head at the melee around them.
Wintermourn opened his mouth to retort and was stopped short by a battle cry. Past them both, at the edge of the platform, new figures appeared. Ragged and bloodied, they looked like Revenants themselves, but were infinitely more welcome to Fengel’s eyes. Lucian led the charge with a cutlass in each hand, followed by the towering form of Sarah Lome and then his aetherites, Maxim and Konrad, empty of Workings but clutching blades of their own as they shouted Omari’s name as a battle cry.
His reinforcements charged the Perinese, adding their weight to the fight and evening the odds even further. Behind them all, the Revenants continued to advance from the burning airship.
Fengel smiled maliciously. “Well, now. Not so easy, is it? When numbers aren’t on your side?”
The Lord High Admiral of the Sea glanced about in a panic, his eyes wide, seeking for escape. “No,” he said. “I am a Wintermourn. I do not fail. I do not fall here, at the claws of these abominations.”
Enough talk. The admiral dropped his blade half an inch, and Fengel saw an opportunity. He beat forward, knocking his adversary’s saber aside, then twisting to stab down through Wintermourn’s thigh. The man fell to one knee with a scream as Fengel pulled back his saber, red and wet with gore.
Captain Fengel reared back for the killing blow. Then the staccato pop of musket fire rang out somewhere ahead. Deadly lead flew past close enough for Fengel to feel, and one bullet even slammed into his upraised saber. It jerked and snapped, and the ball continued on, taking half of the blade with it.
A huge shape appeared through the gloom and the smoke. It was the enemy airship, the Glory of Perinault, coming in low on the opposite end of the platform from the wreck of the Dawnhawk. Great galvanic lanterns flared into life, casting stark, brilliant illumination across the fight. Then a ramp slid out from the gondola to slam onto the Gasworks platform.
Perinese reinforcements strode out from the Glory. A single figure led them, a handsome young man in rich, dark clothing. He wielded not a saber but an old-style longsword, obviously Worked and glowing with a golden light. At his back came four Perinese royal guards, hefting long-bladed halberds etched with the sunburst of Perinault.
“You seem to be in a spot of trouble!” said the youth. “Worry not, my good admiral.”
“Gwydion?” cried Admiral Wintermourn.
“Of course! Now just sit tight while I save the day.”
Wintermourn stared behind him, then snarled wordlessly in rage and frustration. He flung himself up at Fengel, tackling him and throwing them both to the ground. Fengel tried to hold on to the hilt of his broken blade, but Wintermourn had one hand around his wrist and slammed it into the platform until he was forced to let go. Fengel grabbed with his other hand for the admiral’s throat, finding a grip on his jacket instead.
They rolled on the ground, flailing. Boots stomped all about them. Fengel fought his hand free, then formed a fist and slammed it repeatedly into the admiral’s gut. There wasn’t any art now, no swordplay. Just two men trying to kill each other. A distant, detached part of Fengel wondered why it always seemed to come to this.
Wintermourn wrapped his hands around Fengel’s throat and rolled atop him, trying to choke the life out of him. Fengel heaved, throwing the man aside, though he still had ahold of his neck. Someone yelped and fell past: Lina Stone, with a bloodied hatchet.
Fengel kicked with his good leg, trying to knee the wound he’d made earlier. He connected, but Wintermourn butted his head forward and left Fengel seeing stars.
The admiral rolled atop him again, his hoary old hands still locked tight upon Fengel’s throat. Fengel’s lungs were ragged now, crying out for air. He battered against his opponent’s grip, but nothing seemed to work.
Someone moved into view just above them both. Hands burned into black claws reached down for Wintermourn, who did a double-take, then threw himself aside with a hoarse scream of pure horror. Fengel gasped, then looked up into the undead face of Euron Blackheart.
“Euron?” gasped Fengel.
The Revenant gave a satisfied groan as it grabbed him by the face with both hands. Oh, Fengel realized, as he flailed and fought anew. Euron’s corpse hadn’t come to help him at all.
A blade flashed out, lopping the head off of Fengel’s undead father-in-law. The Revenant spasmed, and Fengel threw his claws away. Euron Blackheart toppled, revealing Lucian standing behind him with a cocksure grin.
“I know you wanted to do for him yourself,” he said. “But I think we’re a bit pressed at the moment.”
Fengel laughed, his throat sore. “So long as I was able to watch,” he replied.
Lucian reached out a hand to help him up. “Well,” he said, pulling Fengel to a half-standing position. “I do apologize for being late. Both here and below. It’s been—”
Two feet of glowing, golden steel burst through his chest.
“Tsk,” said Gwydion from just behind the dying first mate. “Mind your surroundings, now.” He pulled the gleaming blade free, and Fengel’s first mate crumpled to the ground.
“Lucian!” cried Fengel.
Gwydion smiled and brought his longsword back into a two-handed guard. “Captain Fengel, I presume? Your bitch of a wife gave me a thrashing, earlier. I intend to repay the debt now. Know that when you meet the Goddess, it was Crown Prince Gwydion of the Kingdom of Perinault who—”
He folded around a massive fist and was flung suddenly away. Sarah Lome appeared, yelling in rage. Royal guards charged out of the gloom, moving to protect their charge as she turned to face them. The first she knocked down with her cutlass, but then two more were there, one spearing her in the side with the tip of his halberd.
“Gunney,” croaked Fengel. He cast about for a sword, a dagger, anything to help her with. No, wait. Lucian. Stanch the bleeding. I can still try to save Lucian.
It dawned horribly upon Fengel that he couldn’t do both.
A fist slammed into his jaw, knocking him back and preventing him from doing either. It was Wintermourn. He threw another punch, catching Fengel still off-balance while grabbing his jacket with his off hand. Fengel grabbed him in turn, rolling with the blow. They
fell, tumbling together across the Gasworks platform, fighting for advantage.
Fengel lashed out, took blows of his own, bit, spat, and swore. The old man was tough, like teak hardened by time. He clouted Fengel across the sides of his head with both fists, and for a moment the world swam. When he blinked it away, the admiral was atop him again, squeezing his throat with an iron-hard grip. Fengel flailed. The old sailor would not budge.
“Your time...is...over,” snarled Wintermourn. “I can see you...flagging. Failing. You’ve got nothing left!”
Fengel let go the admiral’s grip. He grabbed about him for a weapon, some debris, anything. His fingers scrabbled across nothing. It was true. He had nothing at hand, nothing left to change the odds with.
Almost.
He grabbed with his left hand for the chain on his chest. It brushed against his fingers, still there after all this time and trouble. He made a fist around it, yanking at his monocle. It came free, small and round and weirdly-shaped ever since Almhazlik.
Captain Fengel slammed it onto the platform. The cracked lens broke free of its housing and fell into his palm. He gripped it between his fingers and rammed the sharpest edge up into Wintermourn’s throat.
The admiral let out a croak of surprise. He let go of Fengel and reached up to stop him. Fengel followed, reaching up and grabbing Wintermourn by the back of the neck with his free hand. Then he sawed.
Admiral Wintermourn fought. He flailed at Fengel and tried to twist away. Fengel held on as blows and blood both rained down on him, blinding him as he worked. The admiral gave a keening cry of agonized denial. Fengel ignored it. He thought of Lucian, Phred, Geoffrey Lords, Mechanist Clangfoot, and all those who’d been killed in this pointless, brutal invasion.
The blows lessened. They turned to slaps. Fengel couldn’t see anymore through all the blood. Gradually, Wintermourn weakened. There was a burbling noise, as of someone choking on their own ichor. Then Wintermourn went limp. Fengel didn’t stop cutting until the man fell off of him.
He lay a moment, panting, ears ringing and a thick coppery tang filling his mouth. Lucian. Sarah. I’ve got to help them. And where’s Natasha?
Beneath a Burning Sky (The Dawnhawk Trilogy Book 3) Page 39