by Powers, Tim
Most of this poorly reanimated crew was rushing to the port bow, where a lot of similarly ruinous mariners were clambering across the shattered rail from the de Lagrimas.
Shandy wanted very much to jump back down into the water. He had seen things like these in the most horrible of his childhood dreams, and he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t drop dead himself if one of these creatures were to turn its dreadfully knowing gaze full on him.
Then he knew they were aware of him, for several of them were moving toward him at an eerie plodding-but-rapid pace, brandishing corroded but very solid-looking cutlasses.
His voice shrill with panic, Shandy yelled the beginning phrases of the Hail Mary as he jumped to the deck, wrenched out his saber and stepped into one of the counters against multiple attack that Davies had been making him practice; he feinted as if to charge between two of his attackers, then ducked to the side, engaging another opponent’s blade in a screeching bind that sent Shandy’s blade corkscrewing in to chop heavily into the pearly neck. Leaping over the tumbling, nearly beheaded figure, he saw several men shambling toward him—and, on the next deck up, he saw the bedraggled figure of Leo Friend, who was looking both furious and frightened. Friend was staring at something behind and above Shandy, and after he’d done a quick feint-and-slash-and-run and got past his immediate attackers, Shandy risked a quick glance back.
Benjamin Hurwood hung unsupported in midair a dozen feet above the ship’s rail and a few yards out from it, and through the white hair that was blowing around his face he was smiling almost affectionately at Friend. “I brought you along,” the old man said, and, though he spoke quietly, the clanging, thumping racket of the fighting ghost-crews was muted when he spoke, so that the words carried clearly; “I showed you the way past the impasse you had reached, showed you the place you had failed to discover by yourself.” The smile grew wider, beginning to look skull-like. “Did you really think you were superior to me, that you could advance so far that I could not follow you? Hah. I’m glad you revealed your treacherous nature now—eventually you might have become powerful enough to do me harm.” He closed his eyes.
Other pirates had clambered aboard now, and, after the initial astonishment, were doggedly trading sword-strokes with the cadaverous mariners, quickly catching on that the things had to be dismembered, and fairly thoroughly, to be put out of the fight. The things were quick, too, in a spasmodic, insectlike way, and several of Davies’ men were bloodily down in the first few minutes.
Shandy could hear someone banging behind a door below the deck Friend was on, and he guessed it was Beth who was locked in there, but he was finding it more and more difficult to make any headway across the deck. His sword arm was getting tired, and it was all he could do to parry the cutlass chops now—he was just too exhausted to lunge forward and swing his own sword in any effective riposte.
Then one of the lively corpses danced ponderously up to him and whirled a green cutlass at his head—Shandy heaved his saber up and caught the blow on his forte, but the force of it knocked the sword out of his hand. It clattered away, out of reach. The dead thing, too close to run from, drew back its arm for a killing stroke, and Shandy had no choice but to scramble inside its guard and grapple with it.
Its body smelled like unfresh fish and felt like chains and jelly in a wet leather bag, and Shandy actually had to fight to keep himself from fainting at the horror of its proximity. The creature was hissing and thrashing and pounding Shandy’s back with the brass guard of its cutlass, but Shandy managed to hobble to the starboard rail and roll the dead sailor over it. The gray hands clung to the lapels of Shandy’s jacket, and for several seconds Shandy was bent over the rail staring down into the curdled eyes of the pendulous dead man; then one elbow, and a moment later the other, parted inside the thing’s sleeves, and the body plummeted away to splash into the sea, leaving its hands and forearms locked onto Shandy’s lapels.
Weaponless now, he stared around wildly for his dropped sword, but even in this panic his attention was caught by what was happening to Leo Friend. The fat young magician had risen from the poop deck up into the air, and flames were licking brightly around him, though his hair and clothing so far remained unscorched. Shandy glanced out beyond the starboard bow at Hurwood and saw flames around him too, though not as much, and he realized he was in the presence of a to-the-death duel between two supremely powerful sorcerors.
“Behind you, Jack!” came a yell from Davies, and Shandy leaped forward, the gray arms on his jacket swinging wildly, an instant before a cutlass blade whistled through the space his head had just been occupying. This put him dangerously close to another of the Charlotte Bailey’s crew, who expressionlessly cocked a rubbery arm for a sword swing, but before it could deliver the blow its head sprang tumbling from its shoulders as Davies’ blade clunked through its neck.
“Look around you!” Davies snapped, kicking the doubly-dead man’s weapon to Shandy. “Didn’t I tell you that?”
“Yeah, Phil,” Shandy gasped, stooping to pick up the discouragingly heavy cutlass.
None of the Charlotte Bailey’s crew were right nearby, and Davies took hold of his own sword with his left hand and then flexed his free right hand; Shandy saw the pirate’s eyes narrow as he did it, and he remembered that Davies had apparently burned that hand in the jungle.
“Is your hand—” he began, then yelled, “Look out yourself!” and hopped past Davies to knock away an in-thrusting blade and split the jellyfish face of the figure wielding it. “Is your hand workable?”
“It’s got no choice,” said Davies tightly, gripping his sword again and looking around the littered deck. “Listen, we’ve got to make sure Friend loses this fight; try to—”
From behind Shandy came a screeching of overstressed wood, followed by loud cracking and snapping, and looking aft he saw that Friend had stretched his hand down, and though Friend was hovering a dozen yards above the deck and his pudgy hand scarcely extended down past his belt, most of the overdeck and bulkhead had been torn away from the cabin; the ripped-up planks and beams hung in midair for a moment, then were dropped carelessly into the waist, and Shandy heard screams through the clattering and thudding, and he knew that some of the men from the Jenny had been under the dumped lumber.
Then Friend raised his cupped hand, and up into the sunlight from the now roofless cabin floated Beth Hurwood, struggling against something invisible that held her arms pinned to her sides.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
OH MY GOD, thought Shandy in sudden panic, he’s using her as a diversion; he’s probably already raped her, and now he’s going to set her on fire or something just to distract Hurwood.
Shandy started toward her across the blood-slippery deck, and he didn’t even notice that one of the dead men between himself and the unroofed cabin had focused its attention on him and was now crouched, holding its green cutlass low and ready.
Davies saw it, though. “Goddammit, Jack,” he burst out wearily, sprinting forward to get to the necrotic sailor before Shandy did.
Venner, his shirt torn and his red hair made even redder by a long scalp wound, and his habitual ingratiating grin replaced by a snarl of desperate effort, took in the situation at a glance—and he deliberately stepped in Davies’ way and drove his burly shoulder into the older man’s chest.
Half-winded by the impact, Davies reeled but nevertheless forced himself onward after casting back at Venner one quick glance full of anger and promise.
Shandy had had to duck around a knot of gasping, clanging combat, but now he was running straight toward the ascending figure of Beth Hurwood—and toward the patient, still-unnoticed dead mariner.
Davies had no time for a deceptive attack; he ran the last few steps to the undead sailor and simply swung his sword at the thing’s neck.
The blade struck deep, but with his bad hand and lack of breath Davies hadn’t been able to put enough force behind the blow to cut the head entirely off, and the dead eyes rolled toward him—
and before he could pull his sword free, the thing’s corroded cutlass was driven horrifyingly far up into his abdomen.
Suddenly ashen, Davies hitchingly breathed a curse, then tightened his burned hand around the grip of his sword, and with a convulsive heave that was as much a violent shudder of disgust as it was an attacking move, shoved his blade across the gray neck with his last strength, sawing the head free.
The two dead bodies tumbled away across the deck.
SHANDY HADN’T even noticed the encounter. Near Beth now, he dropped his sword and strained every muscle and tendon in a high jump for her, but his upstretched fingers brushed against an invisible resistance a foot short of her—though for a moment her downward staring eyes met his imploringly, and her lips formed words he couldn’t hear.
Then he fell, rebounding painfully from the splintered cabin bulkhead to sprawl breathless on the sun-hot deck and wait, completely exhausted now, for a green blade or two to nail him to the planks.
But suddenly all the lich combatants were paler, translucent against the bright sky. The weight of the dead man’s forearms on his chest all but disappeared.
At the same moment Shandy became aware that he was lying on the well-remembered quarterdeck of the Vociferous Carmichael, staring at armored planks he remembered having bolted in place himself—and he guessed that Friend was too busy defending himself against Hurwood to maintain the spell that had provided him with a crew.
“I could kill her,” Friend said, relaxing his frown of concentration and baring bloody teeth in a smile.
It was Hurwood who wavered now, and Friend pointed his free hand at the older sorceror—and a ball of fire, white-bright even in the cloudless noon, rushed through yielding rigging straight at Hurwood.
The one-armed man parried it with a flailing gesture and it rebounded down into the Jenny where it was greeted with alarmed yells; but Hurwood fell a couple of feet and then caught himself joltingly, and he whimpered and reached out his hand toward his daughter, on the other side of the waist, who was slowly rising toward his adversary. There was no fire at all now flickering around Friend, who, grinning and swollen with triumph, looked like some grotesque, beribboned hot-air balloon.
The young magician inhaled deeply, leaned back and stretched his arms out to either side.
Then in spite of the strong breeze the air was foul with the smell of an empty iron skillet on a fire, and the ship was the squat, multi-decked Charlotte Bailey again, and the English and Spanish sailors were not only substantial again but alive-looking—ruddy cheeks, tanned arms, brightly flashing eyes—and Friend was actually glowing in the sky, brightly, like a man-shaped sun ...
LEO FRIEND knew he was close to understanding it all now; he was on the very threshold of godhood—and without any external help, without drawing on anything but his own resources! He could see now that that was how it had to be. You did it for yourself or it didn’t happen; and to overpower Benjamin Hurwood he would have to do it, and do it right now.
But to be God—which of course meant to have been God all along—he had to justify every event in his past, define every action in terms that made it consistent with godhood ...there could no longer be any incidents that were too uncomfortable to remember.
With superhuman rapidity he held up for mental review year after year of remembered behavior—the torturing of pets, the malice toward playmates, the poisoned candy left near schoolyards and workhouses—and he was able to face, and incorporate into divinity, every bit of it, and he could feel himself growing incalculably more powerful as he bloomed closer and closer to the perfect self-satisfaction that would bring omnipotence ...
And finally, with Hurwood virtually vanquished, there was only one incident of Friend’s life that needed to be sanctified out of plain squalid reality ...but it was the most harrowing and traumatic experience he’d ever undergone, and even just facing it, even just making himself remember it, was supremely difficult ...but now, as he hung in midair over his ship, facing his all-but-shattered enemy and watching his all-but-won prize rising up from the broken cabin beneath him, he forced himself to relive it.
He was fifteen years old, standing beside the bookcase in his cluttered, smelly bedroom ...no, in his elegant panelled bed-chamber, aromatic with the jasmine breeze wafting in through the open casements and the breath of fine leather bindings ... it had always been this way, there had never been the shabby, polluted room ...and his mother opened the door and came in. Only for a moment was she a fat, gray-haired old drudge in a black bag dress—then she was a tall, handsome woman in a patterned silk robe that was open down the front ...Seven years earlier he had discovered magic, and he had pursued it diligently since, and knew a lot now, and he wanted to share the wealth in his mind with the only person who had ever appreciated that mind ...
He went to her and kissed her ...
But it was beginning to get away from him, she was the dumpy old woman again, just come upstairs to put fresh sheets on his bed, and the room was the grubby room again and he was a startled fat boy interrupted in the midst of one of his solitary self-administrations, and he was kissing her dizzily because in his heart-pounding delirium he had misunderstood the reason for her visit. “Oh, Mommy,” he was gasping, “you and I can have the world, I know magic, I can do stuff ...”
With a huge effort of will he forced her to be the beautiful robed woman, forced the room to expand back out to its regal dimensions ...and he did it just in time, too, for he knew that his father, his mother’s husband, entered the room next, and he really doubted that he could live through that scene again as it had really happened.
Well, he told himself unsteadily, I’m making reality here. In a few minutes that unbearable memory won’t be what really happened.
Footsteps boomed ponderously on the stairs, ascending. Friend concentrated, and the steps diminished in volume until it might have been a child climbing the stairs. There was a lamp on the landing below, and a huge, bristling shadow darkened the open doorway and began to damage the room ...but again Friend fought it down to insignificance—now a stooped, thin shadow grew in the doorway, dim, as if the thing casting it wasn’t solid.
Now a little man like an upright rat in baggy trousers shambled into the room, obviously of no danger to anyone, in spite of its squinting and scowling. “What’s—” it began in a deafening roar, but Friend concentrated again and its voice came out scratchy and petulant: “What’s going on here?” The thing’s breath was foul with liquor and tobacco. The father-creature now swaggered ludicrously across the tiled floor to Leo Friend, and in this version of reality the blow it leveled at him was a light, trembling slap.
The mother faced the intruder, and just her gaze made the unshaven creature recoil away from the boy. “You ignorant animal,” she said softly to it, her low, musical voice echoing from the panelled walls and blending with the random tinkling of the fountains and wind chimes outside. “You thing of grime and sweat and laborer’s tools. Beauty and brilliance are beyond your grubby perceptions. Go.”
The thing stumbled in confusion back toward the door, its stinks receding, though bits of its ill-fitting black overcoat and leather boots flaked off to mar the floor tiles.
HURWOOD FELL another foot; he was almost down to the level of the deck now. Sweat plastered his white hair across his forehead and he was breathing in harsh gasps. His eyes were shut—but for a moment one opened, just a slit, and there seemed to be a gleam of guile in it, of almost perfectly concealed triumph.
IT JARRED Friend, and for a moment his control shook; and in the remembered bedchamber the father began to get bigger and walk away slower. The room was decaying back to its original form, and Friend’s mother was babbling, “What’d you hit Leo for, yer always hittin’ ’im ...” and the father started to turn around to face them.
High above the poop deck Leo Friend clenched his glowing fists and used all his willpower; and, slowly, the father was pushed down again, the paneling became at least dimly visible on the
walls ...
THEN HURWOOD stopped pretending defeat, and laughed openly, and struck.
AND FRIEND’S father, though his back was still turned to him, grew until the doorway lintel was almost too low and narrow for him, and when he turned around he had Hurwood’s grinning face, and he opened his huge mouth and assailed Friend’s eardrums with the sentence that Friend had tried desperately to trim out of reality: “What’re ye doin’ t’yer mother, ye little freak? Look, ye’ve got ’er sickin’ up on the floor!”
Moaning in abject horror, Leo Friend turned to his mother, but in the moments since he’d last looked at her she’d deteriorated, and she was now a thing like a fat, hairless dog backing away from him on all fours, its belly heaving as it regurgitated its internal organs out onto the dirty floor ...
The room had not only devolved back to its original shabbiness, but was becoming even darker, the air staler. Friend tried to escape from it back to the clean sea air and the Charlotte Bailey, or even the Vociferous Carmichael, but he couldn’t find a way out.
“You used it up too fast,” said the terrible thing that was his father and Benjamin Hurwood and every other strong grownup who had ever despised him—and then it rushed in, as the room went totally dark, to devour him.
A THUNDERCLAP concussed the air and not only deafened Shandy, who had just climbed to his feet, but staggered him too, so that he had to grab a line of rigging to keep from falling, and when he glanced around, choking in the redoubled metallic stench, he saw that the ship had returned to being the familiar old Carmichael again and that the resurrected fighters were just dim shadows. The arms on his jacket were gone.
He glanced up. Beth Hurwood hung motionless in midair twenty feet above the poop deck, but Friend was rushing upward into the blue sky, and though he was glowing more brightly than ever now, almost too brightly to stare at, he was thrashing like a man attacked by wasps, and even over the ringing in his ears Shandy could hear him screaming. Finally, far above, there was a flash that left a red blot in front of Shandy’s eyes wherever he looked, and the sky was full of fine white ash.