by Rj Barker
“Mevans has wandered up to the room used by those on guard here,” said Farys, “with Jennil and Jirrid. When we arrive they will attack.”
“How many are there?”
“Ten in the room now, and another ten up the tower. I will leave Panir here with twenty to barricade the doors and hold the rear, though I think five could hold it.”
“Better to be sure, Farys,” he said. “Once they realise what we are about, then they will throw everything they have at that door.”
“My deckchilder will hold it, Shipwife,” she said.
“I know they will,” he replied, and clapped her on the arm.
“If the congratulations are over,” said Cwell, “there is plenty killing to be done.”
“Ey, that is true.” He drew the sword from his scabbard. “Now come,” he said to the others, “Mevans awaits us.”
With that his crew ran ahead, leaving Joron behind. He knew how they were used to shouting and whooping when battle came and felt inordinately proud that not one of them made a noise as they made their way, barefoot and almost silent, through the infirmary. At the corridor leading to the guardroom they stopped. Joron pushed through the throng of warm bodies, peered around the corner. Saw Mevans sharing a drink with the guards. Laughing. Occasionally he would glance down the corridor and when he saw Joron they shared a look. Mevans gave him a short nod. Joron breathed in a deep breath. Shouted, “Now!” Attacked. Closely followed by Cwell. Closely followed by Farys. Closely followed by Camin and behind her another and another. Running down the corridor. Now was the time to shout and to scream and to make a noise. Before the guards could close their door Joron was through. A straight lunge took a woman running at him in the throat. Cwell passed him, going to landward. Farys went to seaward, cutting out with her curnow, slashing and hacking. With a roar, Mevans attacked. Blood flew. Death came quick, and these were women and men they killed, not girls who were little more than childer themselves. And then they were done. Finished. Breathing heavily, the smell of blood hanging in the air, blood sprayed from cut arteries like paint left for luck on the walls. Mevans grinned at him.
A figure appeared in the arch at the bottom of the spiral stairwell that lead up into the tower. A look of shock, almost comically exaggerated as he stared up the room toward where Joron stood. One of Cwell’s knives flew across the room. Not quick enough. The knife hit only stone as the observer ran back up the spiral.
“After them,” shouted Joron.
“I will lead,” shouted Jennil, “I am landward-handed, easier for me to fight up a spiral stair.” Then they were running again, up the tight spiral, feet slipping on worn stone steps until Jennil met resistance at the entrance to the next floor. The clash of arms. Shouting. Pushing. A curse from Jennil and she fell back, a nasty cut to her arm.
“Have Garriya see to that,” shouted Joron, and he pushed himself past on the stairwell, straightsword held out. The enemy clustered in the doorway, pushing him back down the stair. As he stepped back he sensed something above him. Cwell, using a deckchilder’s trick in a tight space to move up the low, curved ceiling, arms and legs wedged against the curved stone. The defenders of the tower were not deckchilder, and were unprepared for such tactics. All eyes were on the man before them, not on the woman who appeared from above. This furious, spitting, screaming, fighting creature suddenly among them. The space she made gave Joron room to advance and he pushed forward, then it was as if a boneboard in a ship’s hull had broken and the deckchilder were water, rushing in, cutting and killing until another room fell silent. “We do not stop,” shouted Joron. “We do not stop until the top of the tower is ours.”
They met no more resistance – everyone had been pulled down into the tower by the noise of the attack, and all that waited for them at the top was the giant gallowbow. Across from them was the other tower and its crew, gathered around their own bow. Alert, waiting. Aware something was wrong. When Joron’s women and men appeared on the top their tower a shout went up: ‘Enemies, on the seaward tower!’ Then he saw furious industry and they started to work on their gallowbow.
“Mevans!” shouted Joron, “we need to bring the bow around!”
And Mevans was there by him. Standing back, rubbing his chin and looking at the great bow.
“Problem is the track, see, Shipwife,” he said, pointing at the wooden rails the bow sat on. “Ey, that it is. See, it don’t go far round enough to target the other tower.”
“I do not want an explanation of the technicalities,” said Joron, “I want a solution,” and he heard the echoes of Meas in his voice.
“A solution, ey?” said Mevans. He scratched at his cheek. “Well it does happen, Shipwife, I reckons I have one.”
“And it is?”
“One moment,” he said, and vanished back the way they had come. Joron glanced at the tower opposite where much shouting and pointing was happening around that gallowbow, then he ran to the door, shouting down the twisting stair to Mevans. “Will you hurry on, Mevans? They’re hardly sat idle and waiting our leisure on that other tower.”
“Don’t worry yourself, Shipwife,” he shouted back, “for we have a great advantage over them.” He appeared around the curve of the stair.
“And what is that, Mevans?”
“Well, Shipwife, they will want to take care of that weapon. And us?” He grinned as he pushed through the doorway and held up a great hammer. “We have no such concerns.” He ran over to the gallowbow and starting enthusiastically smashing away the bone and stone around the end of the track. On the tower opposite voices were raised, there was more pointing and Joron heard the sounds of hammering drifting across to them.
“Seems them lot have caught on.” Mevans glanced over his shoulder, “Well,” he said to the other deckchilder, “push it round, we’ll need everyone spare to catch it at the end of the track and handle the thing into position.” Then it was all about who was the quickest, which deckchilder were more efficient, and as Joron stared at the other tower it became clear there was little in it.
“Come on!” shouted Mevans. Shoulders put to the weapon. Grunts and groans as they pushed the bow around. All mirrored on the opposite tower.
With a crash the gallowbow came off the track, and then with much swearing and cursing of the Hag it was made stable and pointed at the opposite tower.
“Spin!” shouted Joron, and he heard his word echoed from across the gate. “Spin for your lives!” And they did. Two towers, mirrors of each other, two great bows inching back cords, filling them with violent intent. Two sets of loaders struggling with stone wingbolts.
There could only be one winner.
The warmoan of the bow.
“Loose!”
Stone smashed into the great bow, scattering those around it, throwing them out into the empty air. A shout of triumph went up from those around Joron while he sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the Mother that Lucky Meas had trained her bowcrews so well. There were none faster and he was well glad of it. He pulled his nearglass from his jacket, a brief look at the ruined bow opposite, the dead scattered around it. Then swinging the nearglass so he looked out to sea.
“Where is the shipwife?” said Mevans.
“I do not know,” said Joron, “but get a team down into the winding room and lift that gate. And another team to drag this bow right around, so we can loose on anyone in the town who tries to get a ship out.”
“We need some sort of signal,” said Cwell.
“Ey,” said Joron, and he looked around, and seeing the great brazier for signals, but either the crew were lax or deliveries had not been made yet as there was no fuel for it. “We must think of something.”
51
What Coughlin Did
There is little to please a warrior more than a plan well carried out and an enemy surprised by that plan, and so it was that Coughlin found himself well pleased. He sat, with eight of his, in the ruin of a house by the harbour. He did not know why it was ruined, and he was not cu
rious about it as he was not a curious man, or a man who was interested in the world around him. Not unless it directly affected the now, for the now was where Coughlin lived and the now was where Coughlin was safest. He lived by the blade and when that was your profession the now was the only guarantee you had, for the future may not exist, as it no longer did for poor Berhof, and the past was a place full of sorrows and lost friends.
The air around him had the faint tinge of fire, and the stonework of the building was blackened by it. Maybe there had been some great calamity here that still carried ill luck, as the people of Sleighthulme seemed to avoid the ruin. All the better for Coughlin and his.
Before them was a town square, mostly filled by the base of the giant mangonel, and between him and the siege weapon barricades had been erected. Within those barricades sat and slumped the women and men meant to be guarding it. Not seaguard, he thought. They were a motley mix of deckchilder, who at least would know how to look after themselves, and civilians who looked uncomfortable with the weapons they held, despite they must be Hundred Isles raised, and familiar with such things. The two groups kept to themselves. Coughlin was not surprised – he well knew how deckchilder thought all those who did not tread the slate of a ship were somehow less than them. He had been on the end of that disrespect for long on long until, at some point, he had not been, and now he was one of them. Without even realising it he looked now upon the armed civilians and thought them fools, unable to tell the beak of a ship from the rump.
What was behind those civilians and deckchilder worried him more. Ten figures only, and the man who must be leading them, dressed in the straps and embroidered trews of the Kept. They were seaguard, keeping themselves separate from the civilian and the deckchilder and, he was sure, considering themselves as far above the deckchilder as the deckchilder considered themselves above the seaguard.
Such was the way of things in the Hundred Isles.
The mangonel – he had learned it was named “Skearith’s Wing” – was the largest he had ever seen. Four thick legs rising to a swivel joint and axle that allowed the great arm, rising higher than a boneship’s mainspine, to throw its burning payloads right out into the sea. He had seen such weapons before. Knew there were multiple ways to take them down, most temporary. Cut the ropes, smash the winders, unhitch the arm somehow. Though if all else failed then the fools of Sleighthulme had done his job for him, packing the hagspit used to put fire to the projectiles around the base of the mangonel in a makeshift hut of dried gion. If all went his way, he could present Meas with a working mangonel and she would be pleased at that, and though he did not entirely understand why that was so important to him, he knew that to please her would please him. So he would not skimp or stop in his efforts to take the giant weapon. But at the same time, if it came to it, it was more important that it be put out of action or the shipwife may never even make it into the harbour.
Coughlin, in his life, had done many terrible things, hurt many people, but he had always had what he believed was a good reason for it. Those poor souls trapped within the belly of the Maiden’s Bounty haunted him. He could see no good reason for what was done to them. None that he would agree with. Kill someone for wronging you, even make it hurt if they wronged you enough. That made sense. But this machine of death and misery? That did not sit right with him. And it did not sit right with his shipwife. So he would do his bit.
And so would his men: Varin, Porran, Lamba, Chil; his new second, Lossick – who had been with him a long time and was the last of those brought over from Mulvan Cahanny’s criminal enterprise back in Bernshulme; and Rassa and Bers – who were both women but he still thought of them as his men, since seaguard were always men and that was the way things were done.
He looked them over, proud of his command and realised he had changed much since he had come aboard the black ship.
He would never fall for the trick with the bonebores now.
A noise. He turned, taking out the bone knife he wore strapped to his thigh, ready to silence whoever may have come upon them unawares. Every. Muscle. Tensing. Then relaxing as he recognised Chiff, one of the deckchilder.
“Farys says an hour, at most. And it took me a quarter of one to get here, so tell me you are ready?”
“Ey,” said Coughlin, for the deckchilder did not say “Aye” like normal women and men, “we are ready. You may stay and join us if you wish?”
“Fair little chance of that, Seaguard,” said Chiff. “I reckon my chances much better on the tower than they are going up against all ’o them.” She pointed at the soldiers before the giant catapult.
“If you do your jobs right,” said Lossick, “all o’ them won’t be there.”
“Well,” said the deckchild as she melted back into the building, “let’s hope we all do our jobs right, ey?”
Then they settled in to wait, to let time wash over them like sea over rocks – though time was even more dependable and relentless than the sea. He watched those around him settle, for up until this moment it had always been possible – if you really wished to believe it – to tell yourself the fight would not happen, but now they were committed and a place in time existed, not far in the future, when the terrible red work of war would start. They knew, as each and every one of them had been bloodied many times before, that they were most at risk – their position was the furthest extended and most susceptible to counter-attack. If the deckkeeper and those in the tower succeeded they could barricade themselves in, but if Coughlin and his men succeeded then they had no such succour. They must hide themselves and hope that Meas arrived in time to save them from those within the town. Coughlin had accepted this, and sat waiting, bone-straight and stiff. Varin and Porran had cleared a patch of ground and were playing some form of dice game. Lamba was sitting with both hands on the hilt of his curnow, the blade propped point down in the dirt, staring morosely at something only he could see. Chil appeared to be asleep. Rassa and Bers spoke quietly to one another and Lossick was carving something into a stick of bone.
And they waited and time ebbed away, leaving only the dry mouths and hollow stomachs of women and men about to pit their skill and strength against the skill and strength of others. Women and men knowing if they were not the more skilful, or stronger, or luckier, then these would be their last moments before they met the Hag.
“They are going,” said Lossick quietly. Though it was needless. A woman had run in to the square, shouting about the tower and an attack. In answer it seemed every woman and man rose up, grabbed the nearest weapon and ran from the square. Though it was not all – the Hag did not love Tide Child’s crew that much. The seaguard remained, their officer stood behind them. Lossick made to move forward but Coughlin grabbed his arm.
“Wait,” he said. “It would only take one of these deckchilder to glance behind and see us and they’ll all come rushing back, then we are lost before we even start. So wait.” Lossick nodded. In his mind Coughlin counted out the seconds the way he had heard the shipwife do when she stood on the rump and threw the rock to gauge Tide Child’s speed. When he reached thirty-two, he judged it a good amount of time, partly because he knew how twisty the streets were around here, and that those who had run must be out of sight by now. And partly because that was as far as his numbers went. “I am not one for speeches,” he said, and wished he had listened to the things the shipwife said more, “but let us avenge Dinyl and the Bonebore.” And there was no rousing shout. Only a shuffling of feet and small smiles that, though small, he knew were those of women and men who had heard something they liked.
It was not hard to cross the square, and it was not hard to pass through the fences that had once housed the ragtag mixture of deckchilder and armed civilians. They did this at speed, with curnow by their side and small shields held across their chests. And those defending the catapult, the paltry group not much bigger than Coughlin’s, were almost unable to believe what they saw, this small armed group running toward them. But they were seaguard,
and their surprise did not last. At a single shout from their leader they arranged themselves into a thin line, bristling with spears. Something soared within Coughlin. This was what he was, this was why he was here. This was what made him worthwhile to the shipwife. This was his purpose.
He saw the leader of the seaguard shouting as they ran forward. The line of men drew back their arms and threw spears.
“Shields!” shouted Coughlin. And shields came up, spears deflected, digging into the ground.
And they ran on.
Except Coughlin.
Who did not.
And he did not understand why.
He had the will.
He was not afraid.
Anything but afraid.
Never afraid.
But in pain. Pain in his stomach, like someone had punched him hard, and kept on punching him. He watched his troops smash into the line of seaguard, curnows rising and falling. Saw the line pushed back as the charge hit. He was on his knees. Which was not in his plan. Not his intention at all. He was going to lead. He was going to kill the leader of the other seaguard. He could see them. Slashing back and forth with their curnow.
Why was he kneeling on the floor?
Looked down. ’Oh,’ he thought. A strange disconnected thought. ’Oh,’ because the pain made sense now. A spear, through his gut.
He watched Lossick die. Cut down by the leader. Saw his people were losing, being pushed back. But they were fighting, hard as they could to hold their ground. To one side of the fighting was a gap in the bone wall barricade around the mangonel. Through that gap was the hagspit.
The spear in his gut, the spear was a problem.
He wrapped his arms around it and was about to pull when he noticed another spear lying on the floor. It had vicious barbs on it. No hope of pulling out such a thing. So he pushed it instead, driving the handle of the spear through his body. The pain was immense, furious. But his screams were lost in the screams of those fighting and like all things, it was eventually over and then he was lying on the floor. Sweating. Hurting.
