Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

  Ryan was fairly sure he was about to get chilled. “Fireblast...”

  Doc shifted his sword from a low guard to high as he observed the enemy swordsmen. “Oh dear.”

  Manrape sighed. “This should be interesting.”

  Kang pointed his whip at Ryan and snarled in terrible English. “Kill One-Eye!”

  The swordsmen boiled onto the boarding ramp, whirling their blades like human food processors. “IRONMANNNNN!”

  Ryan and his crew strode forward to meet them

  A water barrel on the quarterdeck suddenly turned a slick, wet gray color and uncoiled. Mr. Squid rose to her full height on four arms while her other four extended J.B. Specials. Squid squeezed all four triggers and turned the boarding ramp into a slaughter chute. Seven of the eight Koreans fell. The eighth screamed and turned to run. Mr. Squid launched herself through the air. Her mantle fell across the Korean’s head and shoulders, and she pulled him over the ramp to the sea below, accompanied by skull-crunching sounds.

  For one second Kang appeared genuinely appalled.

  Ryan shook his bloody saber skyward and charged the ramp. “Glory!”

  Kang turned away as Ryan and his guards ran up the ramp for the Ironman’s quarterdeck. The junk’s rail was so high and curved it was impossible to see what was happening on their decks. What was happening was that Emmanuel Sabbath was waiting. His own twelve-man, ax-bearing guard surrounded him. Some had one ax, some carried two.

  Sabbath’s voice was quiet, but it carried over the sound of battle. “Mr. Kang, take the rest of the Canadians. Hit Glory amidships.”

  Kang nodded. “Aye.” He took three giant strides and leaped from the quarter to the main deck. It was loaded with Canadians brandishing war clubs, tomahawks and knives.

  Sabbath drew a sword with a very nasty-looking hook on the back of the blade. He pointed it at Ryan. “Now, as for you, Deathlander...”

  Chapter Thirty

  Krysty dropped her J.B Special. She had saved her Smith & Wesson for the brawl. Sweet Marie appeared by Krysty’s side and admired the revolver. Sweet Marie held up a nickel-plated derringer missing most of its finish. “Good girl. A woman should always save herself a few rounds for the boarding action.”

  Krysty hurled a look to the prow. “The Phalanx!”

  “My pike broke. That slobbering idiot Onetongue said ‘Th’tay by Kryth’ty!’ so here I am. And here they come!”

  Howling, screaming face-painted men hit the Glory’s main deck in a wave. Krysty took her time and put a bullet each into five men. Sweet Marie gave a man both barrels and hefted a freshly sharpened machete. “Stay by me, girlie!”

  Krysty reloaded and moved forward on Sweet Marie’s six. The deck was a whirling mass of fights. Krysty put a bullet into any man that charged Sweet Marie, and the big girl cut the man down.

  “Empty!” Krysty dropped to one knee and ejected the spent shells. She dug into her pocket for her last reloads.

  An inhumanly deep voice roared in happy, horribly accented English. “Flame pussy for Kang!”

  Krysty snapped around as a shadow eclipsed her. An enormous Asian man, with what appeared to be a fistful of knotted hawsers, grinned as he swung. The nine ropes spread as they whirled. Krysty snapped her revolver shut and brought it to bear. Her vision went white as the ropes hit her from neck to hip and sent her flying. She bounced on the deck and her revolver left her hand. Instinct made Krysty crane her head and claw for the weapon. The Smith & Wesson clattered away from her fingertips and slid in terrible slow motion across the bloody, pitching deck. The blaster spun and pointed at her as if in one plaintive, last look. Krysty felt the gut punch of irreversible fate as her weapon hit a starboard scupper like a perfect billiards shot and fell away to the great water below.

  Sweet Marie snarled and charged. “Not today, High Pockets!

  Krysty drew her issued dirk and rose brokenly.

  Sweet Marie fell at her feet, clutching a face the ropes had torn into ruins.

  The giant Kang stepped forward and swung. “You Kang’s bitch now!” The knotted ropes hit Kristy, but the shortened blow made the coils slam and wrap around her in a terrible contusing embrace. With practiced ease the giant suddenly leaned back, twisted and yanked. Kang’s game of crack the whip centrifuged Krysty into the mainmast. She fell against the great wooden pillar and toppled down the main hatch. Krysty could have sworn she hit every step on the way down. She lay there gasping and knew she had to get up, but her limbs would not obey her. Her dirk was gone. Two cannons went off and half a dozen weapons were blasting.

  Krysty dimly heard the ring of steel and the screams of the fighting and dying around her. She knew the enemy had managed to get men belowdecks through the blaster ports. Krysty stared up the main hatch. Down below she was out of the wind, and the sun bathed and limned her in a rectangle of warm light. In her own way, like Ryan, she had known it would always come down to this.

  “Gaia, Earth Mother, hear my prayer, aid me in my time of need...”

  * * *

  RYAN FELT THE BURN of cold steel across his forearm. He was losing and badly. None of his wounds were fatal, but they were bad enough. Sabbath was picking him apart. It was as if Sabbath had no bones in his right wrist. His short-sword pinwheeled around his hand and the wicked hook on the back kept catching Ryan’s blade for just an eye blink, just enough to pull it out of line while Sabbath threw a short cut or slice. None was deep, none was vital, but Ryan had seven of them and three were on his sword arm. He was bleeding all over the deck and slowing. One cut was over his good eye, and blood poured into it. The rest of the battle raged across the Ironman’s quarterdeck. Doc shouted Ryan’s name, but he’d been cut off and three ax men forced him down the gangway toward the main deck.

  Ryan became very aware that everyone else was letting the two captains duel.

  It was a battle he was pretty much doomed to lose. Sabbath drove him back. The rails of the Ironman’s quarterdeck opened like gates for boarding. Ryan suddenly realized what was about to happen. He’d been maneuvered into position, and he had no power to stop what happened next. Sabbath took a high cut at Ryan’s head, and the one-eyed warrior barely brought up his sword in time. Sabbath stepped in and put his shoe into Ryan’s stomach. The one-eyed man tumbled down the boarding ramp to the quarterdeck of the Glory. He just barely kept hold of his sword. Ryan managed to roll up and steady himself against the remains of the binnacle.

  Emmanuel Sabbath stepped onto the quarterdeck of the Glory, lifted his chin into the wind and sighed. “It has been too long. Thank you, you Deathlands cyclops, for bringing me back my ship.”

  Ryan sagged against the binnacle. He couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. Neither did he seem to have enough blood left in his body, much less his arm, to raise his Falklands saber.

  “Did you like how I kicked you down the deck? I’m going to do it again, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.” Sabbath marched across the deck with evil purpose. Ryan thought of Krysty and managed to raise his saber and swing it like a drunk. Sabbath hooked it and cut Ryan’s sword arm again. Ryan felt his grip loosen against his will and watched his saber clatter to the deck. Sabbath smiled, flicked up his right foot and kicked Ryan in the face.

  Ryan fell over the quarterdeck rail and dropped the seven feet to the main deck. Throughout the shrieks and screams and shouts of battle an undercurrent of moans went up as the Glory crew saw Ryan’s fall. He distantly knew that once he was dead it was very likely the crew would surrender the ship. Commander Miles and Manrape would be executed as too dangerous to live. Glory’s female crew would be reduced to rape slaves. The able seamen slaughtered. The remaining crew would submit and go back to the bad old days of being a Sabbath crew.

  Ryan pushed himself to hands and knees. The battle on the deck boiled, but none came to save him. It seemed battles between captains were sacred. Ryan wished someone had told him. His saber clanged contemptuously to the deck beside him. Sabbath wanted an example made.
/>   “Pick it up.” Ryan looked at his right arm. It was soaked in his blood from shoulder to fingertips. He glared back at Sabbath and filled his left hand with his dirk. Sabbath spoke quietly for just the two of them. “I will give you one thing—or rad-blasted scum, I have always heard you Deathlanders were tough. They say you have to be, given the pesthole you live in. But you? You are also brave, and no man since the breaking has ever risen to captain so fast. I salute your seamanship and your courage. But now I must humiliate you for the benefit of all crews concerned. You will be marked in no books. You and your friends shall die and be forgotten, and now I must humiliate you. Rise.”

  Ryan’s limbs betrayed him and fell back to hands and knees.

  Ironman sailors roared. Sabbath’s voice rose. He was used to shouting orders in a gale. “Oracle! The doomie! He swore I would die the day I took back the Glory!” The battle slackened. The numbers were almost even now, but the Glory crew backed off to watch Ryan’s demise. “He foretold I would die by his right hand!”

  Four Ironman sailors came up the hatch and hurled Oracle’s body to the deck. They had stripped and mutilated him. The Ironman and Lady Evil crews cheered. The Glory crew stared in stunned horror. Sweet Marie let go of her ruined face and let out a terrible cry. Many fell to their knees. Sabbath looked up. His daughter, Blue, held the prow. He looked to Kang and tilted his head at Ryan. “Let him be beaten.”

  Kang laid into Ryan. The knotted ropes slammed into him. All fighting had ceased. Sailors were rare things in the world, and Sabbath wanted most of them. The Glory crew flinched and cried out with each blow. Ryan could do nothing to save himself. His one solace was that he wasn’t screaming.

  After a dozen blows, Sabbath held up a hand. Kang ceased and wiped his whip so it would bite better. Sabbath held out his hand. “Now, rise, One-Eye.” Ryan tried to push himself up. He got two crawling steps forward and fell. “Rise now and know the mercy of my blade, or lie to be beaten to death like a dog on the deck.”

  Ryan’s left hand found his dirk. He could hear his crew weeping at the sight of him. Ryan felt an uncomfortable jab in his chest. He put his right hand beneath him. His palm sank into the stiff orange fur of a mutated ape’s mummified backhand. Ryan’s fingers laced between the horrible digits like it was a five-bladed push-dagger. He pushed himself to his hands and knees and saw Sabbath’s shadow cast onto the deck before him. Once more he felt Oracle’s last letter burning against his breast. He heard Oracle’s words of hope and doom in his head. Sabbath raised his short sword for the decapitation. Ryan saw Jak down, with his white hair clotted with blood. Ricky lay on the deck clutching his right hand with a pair of cutlasses pointed at him. J.B. and Mildred were nowhere to be seen.

  Doc shouted from somewhere on the other ship. The ring of his steel told he was the last Glory man fighting. “Ryan!”

  Ryan saw the shadow of the blade behind him swing.

  He thought of Krysty and decided on his last act on Earth.

  Ryan lurched up and shoved out his dirk. Sabbath’s blow deflected and shaved flesh off his shoulder. Ryan got one foot beneath him and stabbed the mutant paw up. Three of the outsized, silver-clawed digits punched into Emmanuel Sabbath’s throat. Sabbath’s jaw dropped open in shock as he gagged on the mutant phalanges stopping his glottis. Ryan ripped the paw free. Sabbath fell blinking, gaping and drowning in his own blood. Ryan reeled. Blue screamed for her father from the prow.

  Ironman sailors screamed in terror as Mr. Squid came arm-scuttling at full height down the gangway from the quarterdeck on four arms with a boarding ax, a Korean sword and two pikes in the rest. Manrape, covered with blood, came down the other gangway followed by Rood and Strawmaker. His held his scattergun reversed. The bayonet was gone and he tapped the buttstock into his palm. “I’ll kill anything that moves!”

  Doc’s head appeared over the rail. Like Ryan his right arm was covered with gore from shoulder to sword point. Unlike Ryan it all appeared to belong to others. He peered quizzically at the tableau before him. “Did we win?”

  “Kill them all!” Kang bellowed.

  A thudding sound erupted, as if a giant was running up the main hatch. Krysty erupted onto the main deck as if on invisible wings. She was covered in blood from Kang’s beating. Her titian tresses snaked around her head. It could have been a trick of the light, but she seemed to glow from within. She held a pair of spare capstan bars in each hand. She hit a cluster of Canadians like a berserk windmill reaping limbs and bodies like wheat. Sabbath’s crew screamed, and Krysty suddenly whirled on Kang.

  Ryan shoved the monkey paw skyward and managed one last ragged shout. “Oracle!”

  The crew of the Hand of Glory fell on their attackers screaming like banshees. “ORACLLLLLLLLLLE!”

  Ryan fell on his face.

  * * *

  “COME ON, CAPTAIN.” Mildred’s voice came through a dense dark fog. “Ryan? Ryan? Come on, I know you’re in there. You were here this morning.” Ryan opened his eye. He was lying on his stomach. Mildred was trying to put some soup in his mouth with a spoon.

  “Krysty,” Ryan croaked.

  “Right here.”

  Ryan turned his head. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  Krysty looked drawn and disheveled but not injured. “How are you doing?”

  “I lost my boots, I lost my blaster, nearly lost you.”

  Ryan looked to Mildred. “How long?”

  “You’ve been in and out for the past forty-eight hours.” Her eyes were grave with concern. “I’ve seen you take some damage. This was bad.”

  Ryan’s body was a pulsing mass of pain. “How bad?”

  “I’ve never seen you take a beating like that. We won’t talk about the duel beforehand or the scurvy you haven’t quite recovered from yet.”

  “And?”

  “To stop Ryan Cawdor, you’ve got put a stake through his heart and bury him six feet down. Then, you still better run like hell. I was on deck when you stood up. It was biblical.”

  Ryan suspected he would live. “Who’s in command?”

  “Commander Miles and Miss Loral are taking turns, though Manrape is doing most of the heavy lifting.”

  “What happened below?”

  “Well, they loved our cannon work and wanted J.B. bad. They swarmed him when he was out of ammo and beat him down, oh, and speak of the devil...”

  J.B. walked in with a limp and a lumped face. “You look like shit.”

  “Feel like it,” Ryan acknowledged.

  J.B. stared at Krysty intently. She blinked. “What?”

  “I heard your blaster went overboard.”

  Krysty sighed. She couldn’t begin to count the things she and her revolver had been through together. “Yeah.”

  J.B. squared his shoulders and reached under his ship’s jersey. “Here, take mine.”

  The med went silent as J.B. held out his new Glock.

  “Oh, my God.” Mildred’s jaw dropped. “J.B. Dix, sharing his toys!”

  Even Ryan was surprised. He shook his head and quoted Doc. “We live in an age of wonders.”

  “Always figured you needed something bigger anyway.”

  Krysty cradled the blaster. “Never used semiautos much.”

  “Yeah, well, when you get tired of semiauto, you can flip the lever on the side and go full.”

  “Thank you, J.B. You’ll have to teach me how to shoot it.”

  J.B sighed and let go of his regret of giving up the blaster. “Course I will.”

  Ryan changed the subject for J.B.’s benefit. “Everyone else?”

  Mildred nodded. “We’re okay. I released Ricky and Jak. They’re resting in their hammocks.”

  “Doc?”

  “I swear to God he becomes a murder machine when you take him aboard a boat. The water agrees with him.”

  Ryan smiled.

  “He wrote the tale of the battle in Mr. Forgiven’s book. Last night he read it to the crew. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. He’s a he
ro. You?” Mildred made a noise. “They worship you like a god.”

  Ryan looked at J.B. “What happened to Blue?”

  “Captured alive. Koa told her if she agrees to train Polynesian crews, there will be no repercussions. He said if she agrees to give him a child, he’ll give her the first sailing ship they capture or build to her specifications.”

  “And?”

  “She agreed to all of it. Koa is turning into an ocean of fertility.”

  Ryan laughed and it hurt. “What are the dispositions of the ships?”

  “Salvageable according to Manrape. There’s been a lot of comingling of crews in the last few days. We have to, to keep all the ships afloat and seaworthy. Most of the surviving Sabbath crew seems to like the Glory model of sailing.”

  Ryan nodded. “My coat.”

  Mildred snorted. “Gypsyfair declared it unsalvageable.”

  “There was a note in it.”

  Mildred pulled it out of her pocket. The note was crusted with Ryan’s blood. “How about I throw it over the side.”

  “Where’s Oracle?”

  “We buried him at sea. You were asleep. Doc said words. There was a lot of weeping.”

  “Where’re Oracle’s hands?”

  The cabin med spoke quietly. “We sewed the monkey’s paw into his shroud along with a cannonball and sent it down with him. Everyone agreed it had done its job, and no one wanted its curse aboard.”

  “What about the other one?”

  Mildred shuddered. “No one wanted to touch it, and when we slid Oracle off the board, it rose up from the deck on its fingertips, walked to a scupper like a spider and, to quote the crew, it followed the captain down to the Old Place. I say good riddance. That shit is still freaking me out.”

  Ryan obeyed his captain’s last command. “Open the note.”