Until the whites of their eyes could be seen, the Vogel would be ineffective.
But the first shot rang out all the same.
A distant boom, a puff of smoke, and a great splash some two hundred yards before them. The sound of drums ghosted after it. The hustle of men aboard the enemy ships gathered together, and the men upon Janez’s own snarled like dogs.
A warning.
And the first ships—their sisters, shouting in their tongue above all others—kissed.
It was an explosion of action and noise. Smoke billowed from decks. Shrill screams followed every crack and boom of the great guns. A sail was torn asunder; a mast buckled dangerously. A dark shape—flailing, a man—fell from a railing, and was lost. Great splinters burst like seed heads from hulls.
And the Vogel inched nearer, ever nearer.
Yet Janez saw the panic in the faces of the men as the first ships began to engage, and the Vogel began to turn to starboard. He saw their uncertainty. He saw their hesitance that could swiftly turn shy, and he drew his sword.
A great fleet, indeed, but they had defeated greater. A warning of death, to be sure, but they had all been warned before. And what, in the end, was death? Merely to sleep. To have peace from the world at last, where no enemy could be found.
The coolness of courage settled upon his soul, and he raised the sword aloft.
“For the king!”
The men took up the cry and echoed with one great voice.
And then they saw the whites of the enemy’s eyes.
“At the ready!” the captain boomed.
The man rallied.
Janez took a breath.
And—
Another man’s whites. Another. And another. The Vogel’s great sweep to her starboard brought her into line with a ship under an iceberg flag, and the captain roared the order.
“Fire!”
The explosion was deafening. The guns bellowed, one after another after another down the line. Their battle partner was raked, and raked them in return. Their sisters answered—and then the men rolled the guns back in and fired anew.
It was hot and smoky work. The acrid stench coated the air. By the fourth round, the enemy could not be seen but for the flashes of lights about her decks as she fired. Blind, they battled. Deafened, they fought on. Senseless and stupid, they warred by muscle memory and sheer luck alone, praying for their respective gods to save them.
Yet they had fought enough that the men knew the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. Their foe fired with great accuracy—for every flash, great splinters burst from their masts and railings. For every boom, great holes were torn in their sails. The deck was slippery with blood under Janez’s boots. But she had no great engineers, and her ships were weak-hulled. The men aimed their returning fire low, concentrating on sinking her rather than slaughter. They would not defeat her by strength of numbers, but by the strength of the sea. She would be felled through her belly, and only there.
They survived if they sank her, and all her vile sisters, and only then.
It seemed an age and a mere moment. Janez slipped amongst the guns, issuing orders, replacing lost boys where he could, dragging the wounded below where they might stand hope. It was a lifetime, and a second. His shoulder was torn open by a splinter the length of his arm. A lucky escape brought a fourteen-pounder ball within inches of his face, its heat melting a clump of his hair like butter in the sun.
He breathed death and fire and carried on. He slipped in other men’s lives and continued. He heard them fall and die about him, and pressed through. Cheered with the gunners when their enemy was finally breached and began to take water. Bellowed with the officers to bring the ship about, and renew their efforts on her sisters.
Here was no prince. Merely a man, desperately clinging to his own survival.
There was no arranged marriage. No miserable future. No war in the home—only this war, in his heart and lungs and head. He could fight his best, and die all the same.
Nothing stood in his way, but fate.
And then—
It came so suddenly that for a moment, he simply wondered.
Wondered why the men were dragging him to the deck, and shouting over one another at his side. Wondered why Held had left the spot he’d ordered him to occupy, and was clutching at his hand and arm. Wondered why he could hear that musical language that Held spoke as his birth-tongue, with no stuttering attempts to make Janez understand.
Janez wondered.
He’d heard the great boom of a gun, and the deck had rocked beneath his feet, but what was the matter? This was a ship in the midst of a battle. Had they not all felt it so?
Someone—someone was crying his name.
And then he felt the bite of rope about his knee, tight and hard, and looked down.
Oh.
His smoke-stained breeches and a bloody belt of rope. And nothing below.
Simply—nothing.
“I see,” Janez murmured, and then the sea herself rolled in. She bellowed in his ears and rocked under his shoulders, hard as wood yet so kind and soothing. He could feel nothing. Why could he feel nothing?
He could hear—
Mermaids.
He could hear mermaids calling his name from very far away.
And Janez opened his mouth to answer, and drowned.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
HELD SAW IT.
Like the world slowed, he saw the great ball, black and terrible, parting the smoke and fog before it.
He saw the impact, and the snap of white bone burst forth from Janez’s leg, tearing through cloth in a spray of red and tiny pink splinters as if nothing had ever been there to stop it.
He saw the entire lower leg come away, like a scale. Easy. Insignificant.
And he saw Janez—stop.
“No!”
Held reached him before he even fell, and when he did, it was a terrible and stuttering thing. His skin was smeared in black and red. His body shook in the hands of the men who helped him.
And the blood—the blood—
Held lashed out with the sword, slashing rope from one of the grey beasts, and abandoned the weapon to cinch the rope tight about the shattered remains of leg. Blood. Bleeding was—bleeding was bad. He didn’t have to have been a skyman all his life to know it. He hauled at the rope to close the blood from the gaping wound, and prayed to all the oceans that it would work.
A leg.
A leg.
Dear seas, he’d lost a leg.
“You will not leave me, you will not die— Janez, listen to me!”
Held was vaguely aware he was shouting. Yet Janez only stared down at the wound, muttered something inaudible, and—
Died.
He—
No.
He collapsed, fainted, passed out and was swept away—but he did not, could not, die.
He couldn’t.
HELD WOULD NOT leave.
The battle was over. A deathly hush coated the ship. The other skymen had wrapped Janez in great blankets and kept repeating a word—tot, tot—but Held wouldn’t let them move him further. He clutched at the body and snarled at any who tried to remove him; once, he lashed out with Janez’s dagger, and then the persistence ceased. They looked at him with great pity, and Held knew their thoughts. They thought the prince to be dead already, but he knew the truth.
He knew it.
He could sense no movement within Janez’s chest, and the air buffeting the cloud rendered him unable to feel if Janez breathed—but Held knew that he yet lived. For Held lived. And had the Witch not been clear? If Janez ceased to love him, then Held would turn to sea foam and die.
And dead men, sky or otherwise, didn’t love.
So he defended the body fiercely, not wanting them to tip it over the side as they had with all the other corpses, sewn up in their hammocks like bread in bags. And, when left alone, he rubbed warmth into Janez’s exposed head and hair. His curls were matted with blood. His face bore great
cuts that would surely scar, and his ear had been torn away on the left side. The blankets, wound tight about his body, left no illusions as to the state of his limbs.
Could skymen live without a leg?
A merman who lost his tail would certainly die as the loss of the fins rendered them unable to swim. And mer society was cold and cruel. A merman would have been abandoned to die, for Janez’s wounds. Even driven out of vulnerable nests, so they didn’t attract predators.
Held wouldn’t allow it to happen to Janez. If the skymen drove him out, then Held would go with him. He still had one leg. Maybe skymen could walk with one leg. And if Janez couldn’t walk, then Held would walk the places he needed to go. Perhaps he could learn to carry him. Or maybe that great animal that had carried them to the water, and had pulled the carriage, could carry Janez about all the time instead?
Whatever happened, Janez would live. And Held would protect him if the skymen turned on him.
They did not. Indeed, as darkness fell and the cloud quieted, they seemed to ignore Held and his charge—but for the man with the robes who came and muttered in rhythms, sprinkling sweet-smelling oil on Janez’s forehead. He came and went every hour or so, and dabbed Held’s hands with the oil too, and spoke…not to him, exactly, but Held had the odd sensation it was about him. As though the man in the robes was speaking to some invisible being about the two of them.
It was dawn before the soft rush and swell of the wood under Held’s feet began to shudder, and the men began to swarm about the cloud again, to corral their reluctant beast to obedience. Held paid them no mind, concentrating instead on unpicking the matted blood from Janez’s hair. His skin was a terrible grey, greyer than the cloth they’d wound him in, and the rope that Held had seized tight about the mangled limb was a knot of black, hard blood.
“This is why you are a myth,” Held whispered to him fervently, as he heard the telltale scrape of stone, and the cloud shuddered in agony. “Any merman would have died. But you are legend. Legends don’t die.”
They did, of course, but Held had utter faith. If Janez hadn’t died the moment that great ball had torn his leg away, then he wouldn’t die now. Held would insist upon it.
He flashed the knife again when the men came, but they bore a flat board, and moved gently and softly as they pulled back the blankets, lifted Janez upon it, and bound him by the waist. One of them kept repeating words Janez had taught him what seemed like an age ago—the words for well and good. And they murmured Janez’s title, too, almost in reverence.
Held trusted them—but not quite enough to release Janez’s blankets. He trailed alongside the board as it was lifted upon hefty shoulders, and borne to the walkway. He followed it down to the stone harbour side and knelt with it upon the flagstones as the men called for someone.
“Tot,” said a man with little round wires seated upon his nose after kneeling and taking Janez’s wrist. “Tot,” he repeated and shook his head.
The cry went up. “Tot, tot, der Prinz ist tot.” Unease rippled through the crowd; the men took their hats off, and a boy was cuffed about the head to do the same.
Held frowned. What did they mean? They’d said it aboard the cloud, too—was this their word for death? Did they mean—did that wire-wearing man mean—?
“Nein!” he insisted loudly, and took back Janez’s hand, clutching it fiercely between his own. “Nein!” How to—how to— “Not tot!” he attempted, but his word for not and theirs didn’t work well together, and the mutterings and confused looks said they didn’t understand.
Janez wasn’t dead. He wasn’t. He couldn’t be—
Clattering sounded upon the stones, and beasts broke through the men who parted before them. The red-faced man who had put Held in the stinking room when he’d first come to the land swung down from the animal, and the colour drained entirely from his face.
“Nein,” he murmured and then seemed to shake himself, barking orders to two of the men. He gestured at the castle, high upon the cliff side. The board was lifted again; Held stood with it, gripping Janez’s wrist hard in his hand. He was not dead. Held would not allow them to dispose of him like a corpse.
The board was carried upon the shoulders of four men, who wound after the beasts back up the hill. The entire town seemed to gawp—maids hung out of windows; men in doorways removed their hats, and everywhere that dreadful word whispered. “Tot, tot, tot.”
And then, in the shadow of the great gates, there was another clatter. A familiar one, though Held had only heard it once before. A gait that he knew.
The bright-coloured animal with the sweet disposition came careening from the open gates, bearing a single rider.
Janez’s brother.
Alarik.
Held had seen very little of him, and not at all since they’d gone away from the sea. He looked much like Father: he wore a great cloak over his shoulders, and from under a bright yellow hat, his hair streamed that same glorious golden-red as Janez’s. He looked splendid. Important. Regal.
And his face was wreathed in open-mouthed horror.
He brought the beast up short. It reared under him with a cry, but his eyes remained fixed upon the board.
Upon the body.
Upon Janez.
“Nein,” he breathed.
The red-faced man from the stinking room spoke, but Alarik entirely ignored him. He nearly fell from the beast. The board was lowered to the ground, slowly and reverently, and for a brief second, Alarik hovered over it, hands hung in the air and open, as though he was quite uncertain what to do.
And his face—
It cracked down the middle. His mouth sagged. His eyes gleamed. Lines broke out across his forehead and cheeks. Then the sound, the sound.
The king of this world above the sky made a shriek like a man dying and fell upon the body in a fit of anguish. He rocked like a mother with a dying child, clutching the broken head to his breast in much the same way. And Held didn’t speak the tongue, yet knew with utter certainty that Alarik spoke no words.
Simply—screamed.
The blood stained his fine shirt and great cloak; the splash of death and destruction against him looked almost absurd. The wailing of a grief-stricken child beneath the gold ought to have been ridiculous. It wasn’t.
The men crowded about, as if to shield the king from view with their own bodies. Held clutched tightly at the wrist in his grasp and fought for the word. Surely, Janez had told him the word for not. Surely, he had learned it somewhere, at some time, surely—
A creak of a voice, sharp and belligerent, broke through the ring of would-be guards, followed by its owner. Doktor crashed to the stone by the body, a great flatfish with bulging eyes, cold despite the sight and sound before him.
“Hör auf mit dem Geheule!” he snapped and forced Janez’s body down a little in Alarik’s arms. The king would not let go, but Doktor barked, “Ruhe!” and a deathly quiet fell as that shorn head pressed down into the blood-spattered cloth above Janez’s chest.
And paused.
Then he whispered, “Er lebt noch.”
Raised his head.
“Er lebt!” Doktor shouted, and a great cry rippled through the crowd. A mimicry as the word rang out again and again. Doktor rose to his feet—that shabby, funny-looking little skyman—and in that instant, the king was servant and Doktor was king.
Held squeezed the hand still clamped between his own and committed the words to memory.
Er lebt meant alive.
Chapter Forty
THE SUN HAD long since set by the time Doktor Hauser snuffed out the bright lanterns above the bed and drew the sheets up over the prince’s broken body.
“You can go,” he told his assistant, a dumb but keenly intelligent young man by the unfortunate name of Fleischer. “I will keep watch during the night. Return in the morning, with plenty of fresh water to be boiled.”
Fleischer nodded and scuttled out. Brilliant and uncouth, he didn’t bother to change his blood-soaked clothes b
efore he left. A faint, weary smile crossed Doktor Hauser’s face. That boy would make a fine surgeon in time.
Once the room was dulled to a gentler candlelight, Hauser stripped to the waist and went to work scrubbing the blood from his arms. Messy business, amputations. The left leg had been ripped away below the knee. The knee itself had been a shattered pulp of splintered bone and flesh. He had taken as little as he dared, and only time would tell if it had been enough. But Janez breathed.
Feebly, yes. His pulse hammered like a rabbit and jumped in a new rhythm quite inhuman. But he breathed. It beat. He lived.
For tonight.
Karl Hauser had never been a sentimental man. It didn’t do in his profession. Men died every day. Most men who met with cannon fire didn’t live long enough to meet the good doctor. Had Janez stood but a little lower to the ground, he too would have been dashed away, like a mouse before a lion.
He was lucky to breathe. And if he should die before the dawn—well, it wouldn’t be on Karl Hauser’s conscience.
Yet…he would regret it.
Blameless, yes, but he would regret it all the same. Like most surgeons, Hauser was ignorant of decorum and politic and said the wrong thing many a time, both accidentally and on purpose. His first meeting with Janez had been many summers ago, when the boy-prince had jumped from rocks into the sea and misjudged the depth.
“When you grow a tail and become a merman, then—only then—can you jump into the bay and not be considered a simpleton,” the doctor had said, whilst setting the broken bone as painfully as possible, to teach the wildling a lesson.
The little wildling had howled, as predicted. But the following morning, he’d hobbled down on his new crutches, all smiles and sunshine, and asked ‘Herr Doktor’ if he wouldn’t teach him the proper way to jump into the harbour so as not to break the other ankle.
(He had not.)
Blood scrubbed away, Hauser donned a fresh linen shirt and discarded the ruined apron. He then filled a cup with strong mead and sleeping powder and presented it to Held. The little foreigner had barely moved an inch from the bedside since bringing Janez in—although he’d gone green and been valiantly sick when they’d sawn the knee off. Now, he merely blinked sleepily and took the offered vessel.
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