She winced slightly at the thought of what the high-speed weights of steel were doing as they bounced and ricocheted down that packed stinking darkness.
“You know, Toa, if I’d wanted to do this sort of thing for a living, I’d have joined the bloody Navy.”
He grunted. “Too right. Just a bit of a risk, maybe a skirmish now and then, a big score and away again home, that’s what you told me.”
“And you believed me,” she replied dryly, and they both chuckled.
“Believed your Mum, too,” he said. “When I was no older than you are now.”
“Exactly. So who’s the fool there?”
Another broadside; three shots missed, though narrowly. Seven more smacked into the galley’s quarterdeck in a group far too tightly placed to be accidental, sending the wheel up in a spray of splinters and leaving mangled flesh scattered across planks running red out the scuppers.
“Nice to know you’re not trying to rescue incompetents,” Pip said thoughtfully. “And forty-five seconds, that’s very good practice with standard throwers. They must have a full crew to pump the jacks that fast.”
The motionless galley began to list and go down by the bows; the remaining crew leapt overboard. There were fins in the water, but most of them would probably be picked up by the praus following, or even just swim to shallow enough water to stand up in. The rowers chained to the benches probably wouldn’t, though a few were staggering up through the hatchways with broken fetters dangling from their ankles and following their masters into the water.
“Heavy metal for a trader, pricey stuff!” Toa said thoughtfully. “Not a warship, though. She’d have ’em on a gundeck below if she was. Merchantman-privateer, mebbe.”
“Like us, but bigger,” Pip confirmed.
The schooner turned back towards her. Pip focused on the name in black-and-gold letters beneath her sharp but figure-head-less prow:
“Tarshish Queen,” she read. That brought her spyglass up to look at the gaff top again. “Blow a bit, little windie. . . . Yes, a Crowned Mountain and Sword, green and silver-white—Montivallans!”
That was interesting. She’d never actually met any, since there hadn’t been any in Townsville lately, and none in Darwin on the times she’d gone along on one of her mother’s visits. She’d heard a fair bit about the weirdly varied kingdom on North America’s west coast, though. There was a house flag flying from the foremast, a stylized schooner soaring upwards. That prompted a memory of a visit to Darwin; it was recorded in the Company’s books as a firm they did business with now and then.
“It’ll be interesting to meet them,” she said. “If they’re not dead by then, of course.”
“Never did much fancy conversations with deaders,” Toa agreed. “One-sided. Straight-up dull.”
Pip nodded. “We’ll come due north of them, so we don’t mask their broadside,” she said, giving Kombagle the direction. “Then come about and hold station off their bow and rake the galleys and praus until they’re safe and the Raja’s boats arrive.”
She cast an exasperated glance westward. “If they ever do!”
“Well, if they don’t, we’re most likely going to die,” Toa said, with a sort of gloomy relish. “We’ll have to mix it in then, unless we let the Pallid Mask take the ship an’ her catapults.”
She swung her telescope towards the delicate towers of the citadel of Carcosa for a moment. Was that a hint of tattered yellow robes in the tall twisted minaret?
“I think it’s not just the Pallid Mask,” she said quietly. “The Raja Kuning is watching himself.”
* * *
“Three feet of water in the hold and gaining fast, Cap’n!” Radavindraban called, his head just out of the hatchway. “The pump crews cannot work down here very much longer, no indeed!”
“Keep them going as long as you can, Mr. Mate,” Feldman called crisply, not taking his telescope from his eye. “It’s a little crowded on deck and likely to be busy. Tell them help is on the way—I see a signal reading coming to your assistance on the Aussie.”
He laughed, honestly and easily. “And conform to our movements. Not likely to do anything else, am I? Until our keel touches bottom, at least.”
John shrugged his shoulder to settle the shield on its guige strap. The hot humid air made his skin feel still more swampy than usual beneath the plate and padding. He nodded to Fayard; the Protector’s Guard crossbowmen were in their half-armor, waiting kneeling on the deck to stay out of the way until they could rise and shoot at close range. A few of them were telling their rosaries. One of them laid his crossbow on the planks as John watched, drew his sword and used a ceramic sharpening-stick for a moment, then sheathed it and went back to the port-arms position. They had come a long way from their home villages to die, but the stolid yokel faces were impassive, gleaming with sweat beneath the brows of the flared sallet helms.
I suppose if I end up in the drink, I’ll be cool while I drown, he thought, as he walked down the line and gave each a hand on the shoulder and a word. And the thing is, they really appreciate it. That and having me here and not looking afraid.
“I wonder if there are fountains in Purgatory?” he said aloud. “Nice cool fountains with shady arbors?”
Privately he doubted it. His mother had had a vision of her father in Purgatory while she was at the Kingmaking at Lost Lake, and while his fate there hadn’t been torture, it had been a hard penance for his deeds.
I hope I’m not as great a sinner as Grandfather was. On the other hand, only God knows that one for sure. And at that, Grandfather was shriven just before he died. He must have made an honest confession, too. God’s forgiveness is infinite, or he’d be roasting.
Thora was beside him. “Cooler still in Hella’s hall,” she said, and they grinned at each other.
Deor had the nose-guarded, boar-crested helm of his folk pushed back on his head, and the raven shield of Hraefnbeorg on his arm. His other hand whipped his Saxon broadsword in a figure-eight to loosen his wrist. As he did he chanted, a deep rolling poetry that worked by a wave-like rhythm in each stanza:
“Næs hie ðære fylle gefean hæfdon,
manfordædlan, þæt hie me þegon—”
Then he repeated it in the modern tongue:
Those fell creatures—shall have no fill
Of rejoicing—that they consume me,
Assembled at feast—at the sea bottom
But in the morning—wounded by blades
They will lie on the shore—put to sleep by swords
So that never after—will they hinder sailors
In their course on the sea.
The light from the east,
Bright beacon of Woden!
John let the words roll through him; they were oddly soothing.
Not exactly calm, he thought. But as calm as can be expected! Father, I’m your son . . . and Mother, if I can’t spare you more grief, at least I won’t make you ashamed.
There were six of the galleys, not counting the one they’d just battered into a hulk; all of them had slowed down to come on in a line, bypassing their sinking friend. None of them had masts up or sails set, but they did have poles for their flags, and the prahus behind them had their odd upside-down triangular sails deployed. Banners and sails alike bore the same image, a yellow disk with a mask on it in white—the sketched outline of an oval face, features barely suggested, but the elongated eyes blankly golden and a dot he couldn’t make out between the brows.
“Catapults, we’ll start on the bow of the third galley from the left!” Feldman called crisply. “One broadside per ship, on my command!”
John realized it was slightly larger than the others; possibly that meant it was a flagship. And much more sensible than trying to hit them all. Captain Feldman isn’t just smart, he’s smart when people around him are losing their heads—literally.
/> There was a saying both his parents were fond of, that trying to be strong everywhere meant you were weak everywhere. He’d understood it, but it was only now that he realized just how powerful the temptation to try to cover everything could be, as the impulse to scream sink them all, now now now! washed through him.
The bow-chaser gave its massive whack-tunng and the others followed at intervals of about a second, he could feel the deck heel backward a little under his feet amid the deafening giant’s-anvil chorus. He wasn’t nervous about the way the slides of the catapults pistoned backward as they cut loose, part-cocking the mechanism. He’d been around war-machines all his life, but it was different somehow now that they were throwing real metal at real people, not earthen mounds or piles of bailed hay.
Like the thought going through his head, something visible only as a blurred streak went by. It was four feet over his helmet, but he could feel the wind of its passage on his sweating face, and he was already ducking when a massive crunching CRACK sound as the roundshot hit the boom of the mizzen mainsail. The six-inch thickness of Sitka spruce leapt and vibrated all along the lower edge of the sail and then cracked where the steel had gouged it and the leverage of wind and sail still bent it like a bow. Splinters flew; one foot-long wooden spear took the Bosun in mid-stride, lancing through her thigh. Ruan pounced, whipping out a spare bowstring to use as a tourniquet, then dusting antiseptic and bandaging and administering a syringe of morphine. Two other crewfolk dragged the semiconscious form over to where the ship’s doctor was frantically busy with patients brought up from the half-flooded lazarette and the steady trickle of gruesome casualities from the enemy projectiles and the splinters and whip-cracking rope-ends they produced.
John suppressed an impulse to lower his visor—a nine- or ten-pound ball of steel like that would just take his head off if it hit him, helm and all—but promptly went to one knee, which put all of him below the four-foot height of the bulwarks if he ducked a little, and the others did likewise. If it was good enough for Fayard and the crossbowmen, it was good enough for him, and there was nothing to do—the catapults all had a full set of hands on their cocking pumps, and what the rest of what the crew did was skilled teamwork with no room for outsiders.
I can pray a bit, he thought, and did. To St. Michael, for courage and strength; and then to God.
Give my people victory, O Lord, and rescue them from the fury of their enemies. Let me be their shield, as is the duty laid upon me by You at my birth.
He disliked that, sometimes, and God certainly knew that, but like or dislike didn’t really matter if you did it. Though complaining about it was comforting now and then. He could do that with Órlaith; Mother got . . . stroppy about it. He forced his mind to concentrate on the prayer again:
Yet let Thy will be done, not mine, and give me that which is best for me, though it be that which I most fear.
“Amen,” he murmured, kissed the crucifix and tucked it away.
The Tarshish Queen’s broadside cut loose again, and he popped his head up. The galleys were shockingly close now, close enough that he could see the bunched roundshot hammer into the bows of another, planks shattering in a cloud of splinters. This time it didn’t dismount the catapult, but all ten shot hit between deck and waterline. The stempost broke, a broad gap opened in the bows, and the forward motion of the long sweeps immediately rammed a huge slug of water into the oar-deck. They were only a few hundred yards away now, and he could clearly hear the screaming as the sea swept in and the long slender hull reared up at the stern and slid slowly downward.
And I think they’re chained in there, he thought.
That made him feel strange, as if his stomach was running a fever and the back of his neck was hot and cold at once. His father had once told him that in every battle in the Prophet’s War he’d felt sick to his stomach for a little while, thinking of all the men on the other side who’d just been levied from their homes and farms, serving evil unwillingly, often enough simply thinking they were defending their households and kin. It had seemed a little fanciful then, and not all like a chanson. At least those had been enemies with weapons in their hands. The rowers on those galleys hadn’t just been levied, they’d been abducted and then shackled to be parts in an engine. Now they were dying in the dark, terrified and despairing.
He was almost glad for the interruption when a roundshot struck the bulwark not far from his head. The timber cracked, and pieces and splinters scythed across the deck. One struck his shield with a sharp slapping sound, driving him back on his heel as if it had been a war-hammer. Another tinged off his helmet, wrenching at his neck. That turned his gaze just enough to see a sailor leaping for a severed rope hit by another of the steel balls, and shatter in a cloud of pink mist.
His name had been Brian—John had recognized the twin-raven tattoo on his back—and he came from Boise, wandering westward to the coast because he wanted to see the world and because he was fourth child on a farm none too large, and he’d been saving to buy his own fishing smack and settle down. He had a fiancée in Newport, too.
Parts thumped down wetly. Other sailors grabbed the body . . . the main chunks . . . and pitched them over the side to clear a passage. More of them ran into the rigging with their knives in their teeth as shot whistled through and heavy rigging-lines parted with sounds like giant unturned lutes popping a string.
“One more broadside on the northernmost galley!” Feldman called, cutting through the clangor with his speaking-trumpet. “Then load canister!”
That meant tubes full of palm-length finned darts. The tube stopped at the end of the catapult’s throwing-trough, and the darts went on like a spreading cloud of lethal wasps. It was a short-range weapon, just not quite as short-range as grapeshot. Feldman didn’t think the catapults were going to stop all the galleys, and if they didn’t they’d get boarders over the rail and stop the sailors tending the lines, and then the ship would stop. And the question would be if they sank first or were overrun.
Thora hadn’t been looking at the approaching galleys or the praus behind them. She hissed, staring northward.
“That Aussie ship is close,” she said. “Very close, boring right in. They’ve got guts, by almighty Thor!”
John nodded, hopefully coolly, and looked that way himself, over the Queen’s bow. The smaller ship was bowsprit-on to them, green water purling back around the shark-mouth painted at her waterline, as if the savage teeth had foam on them. There were a surprising number of warriors on board, mostly squatting with only their heads and the shafts of spears showing. There were weapons along the side too, catapults of some sort, light things about the size of a man lying down, set on pintle mounts, the sloped steel shields on either side of the throwing-trough concealing any details.
“Nice to know we won’t die alone,” Thora said cheerfully, and Deor thumped her on the back of her lobster-tail helmet with the edge of his shield.
“When you get a dinner invitation from the High One, you say . . .”
“. . . perhaps another day?” Thora answered, and they both laughed.
John joined in the chuckle. He felt warmed by it and a little excluded at the same time.
“Your Highness!” Feldman’s voice came, still brisk and taut. “You and your party to the bows, please. They’ll be coming over the starboard foc’sle.”
In a slightly different tone: “And the hand of the Lord of Hosts be with you and shelter you, my Prince.”
John flushed again. Once past his first childhood, he’d spent a good deal of his life wondering about the motives of people who tried to be friendly, even though his parents were harsh on flatterers and would-be sycophants and had the Sword to read the truth of men’s words. Now he was in a situation where he was feeling somehow genuinely flattered simply to receive respect.
They went forward in an almost-duckwalk to keep their heads below the bulwark. More roundshot went by ov
erhead, or twice thumped into the thick wood with crunching sounds. Thora cast an experienced eye upward.
“They’re shooting for our rigging and masts,” she said. “Trying to cripple us so they can board at leisure.”
Ruan joined them, longbow in hand, and snuck a glance over the bulwark. “Close enough for bow work soon,” he said, his voice tight.
Deor put a hand on his shoulder. “All men fear, in battle,” he said gently. “Even if Victory-Father lifts their hearts.”
“I’m not afraid!” the young man blurted. Then: “Well, yes, by the Threefold Morrigú, I am! But it’s not that, mostly.”
A hesitation: “The last time I went into battle with a lover . . . I lost him.”
Deor hugged him for a moment and kissed him gently. “I’ve been in many a fight, dear heart. It’s not my proper trade—”
Thora snorted and rolled her eyes.
“—but I’ve done it full often. It’s part of life. And I’m not feasting with Woden yet! The more often you walk away from this table, the less likely you are to be carried off, like any other skill.”
Unspoken went the command: so don’t you die on me now!
Ruan’s face went from pale to flushed to almost normal in a few heartbeats, as the hard clang of the bow-chaser overrode speech and thought for an instant. Thora took a more direct approach.
“Care to try a few shafts?” she said. “I’d like to see how this new bow does at real work.”
She was wearing a quiver slung over her armored back, and the scabbard designed for a saddlebow and usually buckled before a rider’s right knee. She pulled the weapon out as she spoke. Most of the short, powerful killing tools used from horseback were built up of layers of horn, sinew and wood glued together and then lacquered and varnished against the wet, but this was one she’d acquired recently.
The bnei Yaakov of the Mojave Desert they’d met and allied with on their way to the cursed castle in the Valley of Death had a different solution to the same technical challenge of making a bow with a long powerful draw short enough to use mounted. They took the great scimitar-shaped horns of the dryland antelope known as gemsbok, trimmed them, softened them by steam, then put them in a set of sinuous clamps in the hard dry heat of the desert to set in the double-curve shape. The riser joining them was carved from mesquite root, immensely hard and durable, and the whole was just about as waterproof as simple staves of varnished yew. Ruan looked at it with interest. The Clan Mackenzie were a people of the bow, whatever else they did.
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