The wind gusted a little and the rigging creaked as the sails pulled hard. The dim outlines of the ship they were aiming for became clearer, sails furled, at anchor. The crew of Pebbles kept to their grim task, certain of success.
Aboard the Growler the lookouts were too busy talking among themselves to notice old Pebbles. After the excitement of the day's fighting, the quiet of the night with nothing but a handful of lights in the distance to look at was disappointing. They talked among themselves about the fighting and how what had happened to Uisbank had been foretold. Wasn't Uisbank one of those God-damned priest lovers? Always calling on "He Who Eats" for guidance and all that. It just went to show that the heretics were right. "He Who Eats" had less power than the older gods.
Wrapped up in such concerns, their first intimation of trouble came from the sudden odor of paraffin wafting in on the breeze.
Heads came up, and they stared out into the dark.
"What is that smell?" said a voice.
"That be oil of black tar. I remember it from Pangifica."
Out on the starboard side, something dimly visible was in motion.
"Ahoy there, what ship?"
A dark shape was appearing, a small vessel, less than a tenth Growler's size. She was just a couple of hundred yards away, and her sails were painted black.
"What ship goes there?" roared the lookout.
"Away on the starboard side, a ship!"
By then Captain Shuzt was on deck and had grasped the peril.
"Cut anchor!" he bawled.
Feet thundered on the deck.
"Cut that anchor, get on with it now!" The officers were frantic.
Old Pebbles was close enough to be seen, so close that her embrace was inevitable.
That was why the Dronned shipwrights had spent the day working on Pebbles's prow, where she now sported a sharp beak covered in a sheet of steel from Graedon's furnace.
A lantern had been run up the yard to throw more light out onto the dark stranger, and they saw that it was too late by far. Long before they could saw through the anchor cables, the cog was going to strike amidships.
"Belay that order, leave the anchor cables. Prepare to board the enemy."
But it really was too late. A few moments later the cog arrived, and a sharp shudder ran through the bigger ship as the ram stove in the timbers at the waterline with the suicidal fury of a bee.
"Man the pumps!" was the cry, and crewmembers were already in motion when it came.
The enemy crew was diving overboard and swimming away, all but one, who bent down and pulled out a darkened lantern, opened it to expose the flame, then lit a length of oil-soaked rope. He tossed the rope into the hold. Almost instantly the paraffin vapor in the hold caught fire and a blue flare of flame shot up. Then the bales ignited.
The pitch-covered sails caught next, and in a few seconds were a sheet of flame. The rising conflagration bathed the ends of the yards of the mainmast. The furled sails caught fire while men climbed screaming into the rigging to try and douse them.
Meanwhile, the roaring flames from the cog's hold were scorching the side of the Growler in the most villainous way. The paint had peeled away, and the timbers were blackening.
Desperate men threw buckets of water down the side, but it was too little too late.
The main yard was well and truly alight. A man fell, screaming from the yard and slapped the main deck. Flaming fragments fell from the yard and men ran hither and yon with shrieks as they stamped them out.
Now the side of the ship was catching fire. Black smoke was filling the carpenter's walk inside the hull and seeping into the cabins and storerooms belowdecks. More men were there throwing water on the timbers.
And the cog still burned with unlimited fury. The Growler's upper yards were alight, and men were scrambling down, trying to avoid the fire that was consuming the mainsail. Some rigging fell with a crash of tackle and blocks. A man was knocked off the siderail and fell to the sea with a wail.
Then came a loud, horrified shout. The flames had taken hold on the top yard of the mizzenmast. More men went scrambling above to try and stop them.
Men ran, scrambled, hurled buckets, and ran again, but still the cog's deadly cargo sent up sheets of scorching fire that had not only blackened Growler's side but had ignited the hatches and their frame timbers. Now fire exploded out of a stores locker on the main deck, where an ember had set light to dried, folded sails. Captain Shuzt howled for help as he ran to fight the fire himself with an ax, knocking down the blazing planks of the locker and hauling out the sails and hurling them overboard, still blazing and smoking.
The fire on the main yard was out of control though, and it set the mast above it alight. In moments the yards on the foremast caught, too, and the disaster was complete. A wooden ship is always vulnerable to fire, her masts and rigging can easily catch and her hull is by necessity dry and waterproof.
Now the Growler began to go, and though the fire that scorched her side timbers never actually went past that, the flames that fell from the burning masts took hold first here and then over there, and before long the ship was ablaze from one end to the other.
Old Pebbles was by then consumed; her timbers sank, hissing into the waters of the bay, but her mission was completed. The rest of the fleet could do little except put down boats to pick up men and women who hurled themselves into the sea for survival. Unfortunately, many could not swim.
The ship's fiery death throes were visible for many miles up and down the coast.
Growler burned to the waterline. A thousand men and women perished, and Filek Biswas had a huge emergency in treating hundreds of survivors with burns and broken bones.
Admiral Heuze wasted no time on pulling his fleet out of the bay. Anvil hauled her anchor and ran down the line and started beating her way out to the freer waters beyond. He wasn't going to be caught again by some damned cog full of pestilential monkeys and oil. The other ships, led by Sword, fell in behind, and through the hours of darkness the fleet worked its way out of the bay and ran south on the wind.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
It had been a difficult night for the Blitzer Regiment. Their failures on the previous day had been deeply disturbing. Twice they'd been bested by the pestilential monkeys, and the very name of their regiment had been called in question.
Then came the fireship attack on the Growler and the night was lit up with flames and filled with the distant shrieking of the doomed. This was hardly reassuring, and afterward they struggled to get any sleep at all on the shingle beach.
Later, when the moon rose, they realized that the fleet had gone. Officers went around to assure everyone that the fleet would be back and that the rest of the army was going to be set down beside them. They would spend the day resting up, letting the monkeys stew and worry, and attack in the afternoon with double the strength of the day before. But still there was a feeling of abandonment, and some men began to mutter against the sailors and the priests, too.
Since the plague there had been a great deal of muttering. Rukkh tried not to listen to it. He hated the priests like everyone else, but complaining did no good. At one point he felt physically sick to his stomach. The thought that the army could actually be in any danger in this position was still close to unthinkable. How could they be in danger from the fucking monkeys? No, the day before had been a fluke. Tomorrow the men of the Blitz Regiment would go forward, and this time they would succeed.
But still... What if the fleet couldn't get back in? What if no reinforcements came? How many monkeys might actually be out there? They'd seen an estimated five thousand enemy the day before. What if there were ten thousand more coming? How great might the odds become? All were uncomfortable questions.
In the hour before dawn they kept up a very keen watch, absolutely determined to make sure the monkeys didn't creep up on them. Nothing that moved, even down to some crows, was ignored.
On the right of their front the open ground ended and there
was an area filled with low-walled gardens edging the road that lay behind. Then the soil became sand and the ground rose into the sand dunes that skirted the beach farther down on their right. That was where they'd been whipped the day before. Now that section of the line was held by the Sixth Regiment.
Just thinking about being rescued by the Sixth Regiment was enough to make any Blitzer burn inside.
Unfortunately, their careful scrutiny of the ground was wasted. The monkeys had made their move hours earlier, while the Growler was burning out in the bay and every eye was glued to it.
Now there was a mot regiment crouched in the garden allotments, just two hundred feet from the top of the beach where the Blitzers had their line. It was a bold gamble by Toshak, but since the men had lost the top of the dunes they could not see into the gardens, even though the walls were barely three feet high.
The mots waited through the darkness until the light broke in the east. They watched the men relax and stand down. After a minute or so, as the light became stronger, most of the men who'd been keeping watch behind their frail palisade of sticks left the line and went down to the cook fires to try and get some early breakfast. It was hungry work, standing in the cold before dawn staring into the darkness, looking for enemy movements.
The commander of the mot regiment, Nusi Climoth, judged the moment had come. With as little noise as possible the regiment stirred, stood up, and rushed forward. With shield and spears in hand they ran flat out for the ditch and palisade. Speed was vital, that was what Toshak had emphasized in his address to them the night before.
The first Rukkh heard of it was the sudden explosion of noise when the charging monkeys were finally spotted. Shouts, almost in disbelief, then in anger rippled off the line. The shingle beach was suddenly alive with men jumping to their feet.
Rukkh had only dozed off in the last couple of hours, and he felt somewhat logy and sleepy as he staggered up. His spear and shield came to hand without conscious thought, and he joined the column of figures heading up the beach. They moved at a quick step, shaking heads to clear them in preparation for fighting.
How had an attack arrived so quickly? The enemy lines were half a mile distant, and the watch had been so keen. It seemed impossible.
The men ahead of him had stopped. Something had held up the whole column that was moving up the beach. Sergeants were bellowing on the right, and then, shockingly, there were men, mixed up with monkeys in a thrashing mob coming back down the beach.
Beyond that there were monkeys all over the place. Clearly the line, with its prepared ditch and stockade, had been overrun.
One of the men directly ahead of him gave a scream and a spearhead seemed to explode through his back. He went down, and Rukkh found himself fighting one of the larger type of monkeys, a hellishly strong one, too. The spear stabbed at his head. He jerked up his shield to deflect and the enemy smashed his shield against Rukkh's before Rukkh could use his own spear. Rukkh felt himself jerked back a step and almost went down.
The monkey's spear sliced down his cheek and slid off the cheekpiece of his helmet as he jerked aside. By the Great God's wrath that was too fucking close!
Rukkh cut up with the shield edge, caught the monkey's shield, and turned it. He lashed out with a foot before the monkey could recover and felt his blow slam into the monkey's crotch. It buckled, and Rukkh stabbed down with his own spear, but the monkey's shield blocked him, and then the damned thing stabbed back. Again Rukkh had to defend with his shield.
To his right there came a sudden movement, and the whole line buckled from that direction and men came falling and stumbling into him. Rukkh felt a spear lance into his side and then he was down with his shield lying on top of him and someone on top of that scrabbling around while someone else was lying on his legs.
The shouts, screams, and constant keening from the fornicating monkeys was all deafening. Rukkh struggled to move, terrified of being buried alive under so many bodies. His side stung, and there was wetness on his hip so he knew he was cut.
Someone trod on his back, ramming him facedown to the shingle. There was a very loud shriek, someone else fell over the pile, and Rukkh struggled to breathe. Other men were trying to move; he kicked out and dislodged the one on his legs and then shoved and wriggled until he got his knees under him. Lastly he heaved the weight off his back. As he got up he found that his leather breastplate had saved his life. There was a gouge down the side of it and a shallow wound in his side above his hip.
Monkeys were everywhere. Their screaming noise filled the air. Knots of men were surrounded by the sheer mass of them. The Blitz Regiment's position had broken up completely.
"By the Great God, Rukkh, I need a hand."
Rukkh got hold of Forjal and pulled him to his feet. Forjal's belly was open and he was literally holding his guts inside. Standing up made that hard, but Forjal was tough. He kept moving.
"Gotta make it to the water," he gasped. "There'll be boats to take us off, right?"
Rukkh knew there were no ships in the bay, therefore no boats either.
Oggi came up and helped cover them. Monkeys veered away from their spears. The situation was completely chaotic.
A bugle sounded, off to his left, another to his right. The army was responding, finally. Forces would move in to cut off this attack and restore the line. But for the time being the hellish, deafening keening and ululating of the monkeys was all around them.
Other bugles were calling. A lot of men were in motion. Lurgi and Chaz went by with shields up. Rukkh saw Sergeant Burok run past, too, bellowing something about forming in fours. Forjal was still walking, somehow.
But the monkeys were also moving. Rukkh heard a new shout and looked back to his left. The fornicating monkeys were pouring down the sand dune and attacking the Sixth Regiment's line.
"By the stinking shit of He Who Eats, what is going on today?" said Oggi in despair.
Rukkh didn't have an answer to blasphemy like that. But he kept a firm grip on his spear and held his shield up as they edged back down the dune while monkeys came in at them from all directions. Rukkh swung right, spun a bit until his back was to the sea, and jerked his shield behind the edge of the leading attacker's shield. He pulled back and exposed the monkey to his spear thrust. As the spear went in below the leather breastplate, the monkey made a little sound and folded up.
He had to heave the spearpoint out and that slowed his response. A spearhead just missed his eyes in the next moment, clanging off his helmet. Something else nicked under the edge of his shield and hit him hard in the shin. But for the leather greave, it would have broken bone. As it was, he went down, rolled into someone else, and came up again behind Oggi. The monkeys had stabbed Mushukk, who'd fallen over him as he rolled.
This was rapidly turning into the worst day in Rukkh's entire life.
Forjal had broken free and was running, somehow, in a slow crazy tilt down the beach. Sergeant Burok was steadying a small but growing line of resistance. Rukkh saw Chaz was there. Big Uruk was there, too. Half a dozen others, all with shields up and spears ready.
"Get in line, Rukkh!" roared Burok. They were dressing right automatically and spacing out at shieldswidth.
And then the monkeys were on them again. Spears flicking and stabbing, shields slamming and cracking against the oncoming tide of the fornicating sons of sodomites. The monkeys came on, but the monkeys died there, because these men had their backs to the sea and were fighting with all the terrible skill of their kind.
Soon the line had thickened further; more men had struggled through the throngs of keening monkeys. The initial assault had broken the Blitzers completely, but now they were able to re-form because the monkeys had no battle discipline. Their formations broke down into mobs as soon as they engaged.
Soon the monkeys were streaming back up the dune while archers shot them down. And then the two flank forces came in and joined up in front of them, reknitting the army's line of battle.
Burok wa
s there to help steady them. More men joined up, coming in from all over the beach.
"Forward, let's kill the fucking monkeys!" shouted Burok.
Rukkh and the others roared the war cry and hurled themselves forward.
Now they were taking the monkeys in the flank and the killing was easy. Soon the monkeys broke and ran. Back up the shingle beach they went, across the short strip of sand at the top and on to the low walls of the allotments.
After them came Rukkh and the rest of the surviving Blitzers, their war cry on their lips.
At the wall a fresh force of monkeys stood up. Hundreds of bows let fly, and a swarm of arrows fell on the Blitzers. A loud crack-whine from the top of the dune signified another of those damned seven-foot-long spears and it zinged into their ranks a moment later, but missed and slammed harmlessly into the sand.
Big Uruk hauled it out and waved it at the pullulating, pestilential monkeys, and they all cheered.
Then they were up on the wall and fighting toe-to-toe with a solid line of monkeys.
The fight teetered there for several minutes as the two lines stabbed and hacked at each other. The Blitzers gave it everything, but the monkeys would not step back. Dead bodies heaped up on both sides of the shallow walls. The little vegetable gardens were smashed to pulp beneath the feet of the combatants.
Then, just as the monkeys were starting to give—big Uruk had thrown one bodily through their shield wall and Chaz had exploited the gap with a beautiful thrust of the spear—there came a lot of noise from the left and another mob of monkeys came running up and threw themselves into the fight.
At their head was one who wielded only a sword. He fought with such speed and grace that men's bodies tumbled away from him to either side with a steady, relentlessness that was terrifying to see. There was something familiar about him to Rukkh. And then he recalled him from a fight in the streets of a small place they had taken and burned.
Oggi was on Rukkh's right. He was the next to engage the monkey with the sword. Rukkh was squeezed between Oggi and Konigswat and he missed the next series of motions, but it ended with Oggi's scream, a last shriek of hate and anger. Then, as the sword flashed and Oggi's head flew away, the shriek cut off instantly.
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