Fight! Had that not been John Hand’s command?
Fight, Packer thought. Not kill.
Yes, yes, Packer realized, his stomach falling. His request had been to fight; the orders had been to fight. And now he realized he needn’t kill. It would work the other way just as well. Perhaps better!
And even as the thought was forming, he was in motion. He moved even more quickly now, now that he wasn’t dealing deadly blows, now that he was slashing at a neck, or skewering a knee from behind, loosing blows at legs, arms, shoulders, striking anywhere there was no armor, any opening, one strike every second, then two every second, inflicting blindside, blinding pain, pain that in every case was followed quickly by another Vast victory. Packer did the distracting now, pulled the enemy’s attention away—and in the pause, the wince, the cry, Packer’s shipmates finished it.
Packer had the speed, the training, and the motivation to attack a hundred men in this manner every minute. He could feel an enemy coming up behind him and know, without looking, exactly how much time he had before he needed to turn to face him. Packer could use each second to score another hit, two hits. One more strike, and then he must turn…Strike! Turn and strike! Move, strike, strike, yet another, feel the presence from behind, hear the footsteps, don’t turn yet…Strike! Not yet…Strike! No need yet, the man has paused, he is unsure, strike another! And another! Now he’s decided, turn and strike!
The Supreme Commander of the Armada stood at his command post and watched his Drammune warriors fall. He was appalled. The battle had turned suddenly, instantly. His sailors had been invincible, it was only a matter of time. But now they fell as though an angel of death passed among them.
And then he saw that angel, a white-clad, yellow-haired warrior who flicked among them like a hornet, fighting not like a man of valor, but like a coward. And yet he was winning the day for the Vast.
Mux pulled his pistol to take him down, but the boy moved too quickly. He was never still, never stopped moving, and his movements were all jerks and starts, smooth but without flow, rhythmic but without steady rhythm. It was impossible to draw a bead on him.
As the Supreme Commander of the Armada tried to find a clear shot, the Admiral of the Fleet took careful aim. Nothing stood between John Hand and Fen Abbaka Mux, and neither man was moving but for the gentle rocking of ships at sea. And these two ships were lashed together.
The salt-and-pepper-haired admiral with the long rifle in his hands came into Mux’s line of vision. Mux saw the insignia, knew from his briefings that this must be John Hand. Certainly, it was not the pirate captain.
John Hand saw Fen Abbaka Mux, but he felt Scatter Wilkins. The dark-bearded commander now aimed back at him. The odd sensation of familiarity vanished, however, when Fen Abbaka Mux lowered his pistol and bared his teeth. He was taunting. “Nochtai Vastcha!” he cried.
John Hand understood the words well. He fired just as Mux lowered his head, a bull ready to charge. Hand did not miss. The musket ball struck Abbaka Mux square on the top of his skull and slammed him backward against the mainmast of the Rahk Thanu.
Hand lowered his rifle. But instead of watching the body of his enemy collapse onto the deck, he saw Mux raise his chin and snarl, enraged. His helmet had stopped the ball.
Now Mux raised his pistol.
Hand’s eyes widened in surprise, and his head disappeared behind the wheel casing, just as Mux’s musket ball took a spindle off the Chase’s wheel. The Drammune commander grimaced, lowered his smoking pistol.
That small distraction over, Mux assessed the scene again. He was still losing. The number of Drammune warriors continued to dwindle, and the fight was now spilling down onto his decks. In minutes, the Thanu would be overrun.
Mux looked for help from the Fahn, but that ship was out of range again, having kept moving while the Thanu tied itself, and its fate, to the enemy ship.
Cheers began to rise from the Trophy Chase. Mux growled aloud. Even the Pawns knew victory could be had. Somehow the salamanders were escaping his hammer.
He called the retreat. “Enahai! Enahai!” He was not naïve. His courage was tempered by realism. “Karba zhal!” Cut us loose!
The remaining Drammune sailors obeyed instantly, pouring back down over the rail, fleeing to their own ship, cutting as they came the lines that bound them to their otherwise-certain demise. The Vast warriors whooped their full-throated approval. They did not, however, follow their enemies onto the Thanu.
John Hand felt enormous relief knowing they would now escape with their lives, and the Chase would indeed outrun the Armada to safety. Then suddenly, he felt victory slipping from his grasp. Their commander would escape. The Rahk Thanu would survive. He had in front of him an opportunity, a moment in which he could not just delay the certain attack on Nearing Vast, but possibly affect the outcome of the war. This chance had suddenly bubbled to the surface of the cauldron, and he could not ignore it.
“Attack!” he shouted. “Board that vessel! I want their commander!”
The Vast sailors hesitated only a moment, and then followed Packer Throme, who now leaped down to the decks of the Thanu. The Drammune warriors gave Packer a wide berth, none wanting to venture close to that stinging sword.
“Enka charnak!” Mux called out. Load and fire!
But it was too late. The remainder of the Chase’s crew flooded the decks of the Thanu, fifty men chasing down fifteen. Within minutes, the Drammune had their hands in the air, and half a dozen Chase crewmen, including Packer Throme, surrounded their commander. Seven swords hovered at Fen Abbaka Mux’s throat. Packer and Mux stood eye to eye.
Mux snarled his disdain.
“We got ’im, Admiral!” Andrew Haas called out. “What now?”
John Hand did not have time for anything elaborate. The Kaza Fahn was back in range. “Bring their commander, put the rest overboard alive. Find me their battle plans if you can do it quickly. But cut the rest of those grappling lines loose!”
Mux unbuckled his sword belt and held it in his hands, sheathed. He hated the Vast, hated the Chase, hated most of all this yellow-haired boy and what he had done to his warriors. Honor demanded he give his sword to the enemy commander who had defeated him. He would not give it to anyone of lesser rank.
The cannon from the approaching Kaza Fahn barked, and the Chase shuddered. “Hurry now, men! Let’s fly!”
Vast crewmen took great pleasure in shoving, prodding, and otherwise inviting the beaten Drammune sailors over their own ship’s gunwales and into the sea, calling out to them in gleeful taunts as they did.
As the Drammune floundered, Delaney came up from below decks with a leather-covered strong box. He was followed by Mutter Cabe, with Mux’s falcon perched on his fist, riding on Mux’s heavy leather glove. “Looky here!” Cabe announced to anyone who cared to pay attention. “Got me a hawk!” But just then the bird’s great wings flapped and it rose from Mutter’s fist, talons out, and attacked, going for his eyes. He ducked and shook the glove off his hand. The bird rose, glove now dangling from its leather thong, circled once, and then headed east toward Drammun.
“A gold coin to the man who kills it!” John Hand bellowed, fearing it bore some message. Several muskets and pistols barked. The bird’s wings flapped in an ungainly effort to stay airborne. More shots rang out, and it plummeted into the sea. Arguments began immediately as to who was responsible, and who should claim the coin.
Mux snarled, hating to see his falcon’s demise, hating all that was happening around him. He then made his way as slowly as he thought reasonably prudent to the bloody decks of the Trophy Chase. The decks of the Thanu, already emptied of Drammune warriors, were quickly cleared of Vast sailors as well. The two ships began to drift apart.
Mux handed his sword to a grim but respectful John Hand. His honor-bound duty accomplished, the Supreme Commander of the Armada and the leader of the Glorious Drammune Military then spat on the deck at John Hand’s feet. “Nochtai Vastcha!” he seethed, and raised bo
th fists in defiance.
John Hand quickly brought the hilt of Mux’s sword up hard into Mux’s jaw, stunning but not toppling him. “Nochta Vastcha!” the admiral seethed as the cut he’d opened on Mux’s chin dripped red into his dark beard.
The crew of the Chase looked at their admiral, amazed at his apparently perfect use of the Drammune tongue. But what was it he said?
John Hand turned to his crew and held high the Drammune sword. Then he looked at the Armada, still fanned out across the sea, but closing in. “NochTA Vastcha, you sons of the devil! Death FROM the Vast!”
The crew whooped. “NochTA Vastcha!” John Hand called out again, and then repeated it in a slow, staccato cadence that encouraged a chant. The crew picked it up almost instantly, adding their own flourish to the second word. “Knock-TAH Vast-CHAH! Knock-TAH Vast-CHAH!”
Freed from her tethering lines, the Trophy Chase bounded forward, almost instantly putting distance between herself and the Thanu. The surviving members of the crew, every man with breath enough aboard the Trophy Chase, whether loading cannon or unfurling sail, continued to call out the chant, the catcall, the taunt, NochTAH VastCHAH!
Death from the Vast!
Abbaka Mux trembled with rage as his blood ran down his neck. He wiped it away angrily and watched his own ship, the pride of Drammun, the very Fist of the Law fall back away, battered and desolate. Beaten.
And still these Pawns chanted.
From far below, the Firefish watched Deep Fin.
The creature had fled the surface after seeing that face, the eyes and eyes, the bright spirit with the single blade tooth. Then the flashes of lightning and roaring thunder intensified. The beast waited there beneath the waves, energized and alive with longing, anxious and patient. It saw and felt the thunderous first pass of the Chase, watched the great creature turn, stand, and begin a second attack. It saw Deep Fin close in on its prey, pulling it close even as the storm grew, and the thunder crashed. It knew that the great predator was killing its prey, destroying it, devouring it from its shell.
And then the beast smelled blood, blood that flowed from the feasting above. It wanted to attack the slow one, to join in the feast. But it did not. This was Deep Fin’s prey. So it waited, trembling with anticipation. But now the great creature moved away! And morsels, lovely morsels floated down from the slow one. Splashing, flapping morsels floated on the surface around it. And so the Firefish could wait no longer. It had no reason to wait. Deep Fin had left meat behind! Deep Fin knew the Firefish, knew what it needed, what it wanted.
So the beast dove deep, deep, deep into the cold, black darkness. It turned for the surface and flew, flew fast and famished, mouth agape, up and up, directly toward the slow one. The speed of this beast, inspired as it was, far exceeded any speed it had ever attained before. When it hit the underbelly of its victim, its huge teeth formed a pocket that covered more than a third of its width.
The impact did not slow the monster. It did not raise the Thanu an inch from the waterline. The Firefish broke through cleanly, a cannonball through a thatched roof, leaving a Firefish-shaped hole. It hurtled upward through the decking.
It had aimed as best it could for the storm creature’s heart, which in the beast’s predacious brain meant a target roughly one-quarter of its length from its head. The beast lost some speed as it went through one, then two floors below decks, as it encountered and engulfed stores of rations, meat, and barrels of Drammune grog. Satisfying victuals. And then it hit the foredeck. It emerged between the foremast and the mainmast.
The chanting aboard the Trophy Chase died instantly as the loud crack of the Thanu’s deck produced a rising Firefish, aglow with the kill. The cannon from the Kaza Fahn went silent. All ships, all sailors, Drammune and Vast, watched as shattered boards and planking and splinters flew, as the great beast rose up through crimson sails, ripping them like bits of gauze, and went through the rigging, severing it like gossamer threads. It clamped its jaws on the frail bones of the slow one, swallowing as it did its bellyful of provisions.
Lightning leaped from the beast’s mouth, jumping to the highest rigging, St. Elmo’s fire in bright yellow, an image branded forever in the mind’s eye of the sailors who saw it.
And up it went yet, slowing noticeably now, until its head was even with the crow’s nest. The taper of its tail still had not cleared the deck when it paused, almost thoughtfully, hanging in the air. All the glistening, shimmering, golden-glowing body of the beast was visible, lit, ablaze even in the now-bright sunlight.
Then, at the apex of its climb, the beast turned its head and looked across the water to Deep Fin, watching the great creature as it sped away. And it opened its jaws again—as if, Packer thought, to speak. But it was silent.
Sailors aboard the Chase would swear they saw the beast grin, like a jack-o’-lantern afire. Packer would disagree. To him, it was the look of a howling wolf, sad and unfulfilled, unable to be fulfilled. And it began its descent.
It fell, inclined toward the Chase, never taking its eyes off Deep Fin. As it crashed downward, it split the Rahk Thanu from centerline to starboard rail, crashing through its decking as if the ship had been made of matchsticks and toothpicks. Then the Thanu broke in two.
A solid wall of water rose on either side of the beast as it crashed into the sea, obscuring everything. A hole in the sea opened, pulling the two halves of the Drammune ship down into it. And then just as suddenly, the hole filled, with a loud boom, a deep and melodious drumbeat, creating a fountain of water, then a mountain of water that rose twenty-five feet into the air.
The mountain filled the open wounds of the Thanu, and within seconds both the prow and the stern ends were under the waves. Masts splintered, yardarms cracked, canvas ripped.
And then the Rahk Thanu was gone.
The sea rose and fell, and then went calm.
The sailors aboard the Trophy Chase stood stock still, trying to comprehend what they had just witnessed. Where the Rahk Thanu had stood just moments ago, where they had stood on its decks…in that spot could now be seen only churning black seawater, flotsam popping up. Flotsam and Drammune sailors, who now swam for their lives.
Then the Firefish returned to the surface, sleek and subtle, and snapped them up.
CHAPTER 13
Bloodstained
The Trophy Chase sailed east, easily outdistancing an Armada that suddenly had no flagship, no supreme commander, and no desire to pursue. As the western horizon swallowed up their enemies, the crew hailed Packer Throme without reserve, and without bounds. Every last one of them, including the pirates late of the Seventh Seal, held him in the highest possible esteem, feeling to the bottom of their hearts that he was the finest example of a sailor to ever set to sea, of a warrior to ever wage war, of a man to ever manage the taming of a beast. They pounded him on the back, they shook his marred hand, they picked him up and paraded him around the decks.
He had shown them, once and for all, that he did indeed have the favor of God. And now they believed they had it, too. He was a hero, a saint, and a warrior. As were they all.
And so it did not take Packer long to become—perhaps inevitably—completely and utterly miserable. Somewhere between the two-hundredth and three-hundredth chorus of “Death from the Vast,” while he was grinning modestly at the thankful, almost worshipful sailors who simply had to come by to pat him on the back one more time and say the most wonderful things they could dredge up from their hearts and souls about his swordsmanship and his bravery and his humanity, offering the highest praises their limited verbal skills could muster—things like “Heavin’ good with a sword, you are,” and “How about starin’ that devil-blasted Fish right in the eye, eh?”—somewhere in the midst of this earthy celebration, while he was dutifully if not very effectively mopping up blood and stray pieces of dismembered flesh, it hit him.
Fully half, and maybe more than half, of the dead Drammune sailors who were now being merrily stripped of their armor and chucked into p
iles were dead because of his sword. The blood under his feet, on his mop, and in his bucket suddenly turned bright red. He could smell it; it reeked like the back alley behind the butcher shop in Mann. His hands were sticky with it. He looked down at himself. His white uniform was crimson in great patches where the blood had gushed, speckled red where it had spattered, pink in places where it had mingled with sweat, and white only in small, isolated patches that had remained, somehow, unspotted. He had a sudden vision of his clothes not as clothes at all, but as his very soul, soiled and spoiled in almost every way, innocence gone forever, a purity lost that never, ever would return. The soul of a butcher, long gone from Eden.
He reached up to his face, felt the stickiness, and then felt the clumping and cracking of dried blood in his hair. He recalled the way Scatter Wilkins had looked after the great Achawuk battle, and knew he looked the same.
Men killing other men with every ounce of strength they have.
Packer Throme killing men with every ounce of strength he had. And worse, praying to God for the strength to do it.
What had happened? God had granted his request. Yes, God had answered his prayer. But still, Packer had descended from the rigging into the fray. He had unsheathed his sword. He had joined in. He had not just joined in; he had exceeded all others. He was Levi with a sword, Samson with a jawbone. And when it was done he not only joined in the guttural, visceral celebrations around him, he accepted his companions’ praise as though he deserved it, as though he had accomplished some great feat by his own strength, his own might, his own great power.
He began to shake. A dark cloud engulfed his spirit. What had he just done? Yes, God had answered his prayer. Yes, absolutely—Packer had prayed for the strength to fight, and God had granted it in enormous measure. But did that mean it was good? Because it came from God, did that mean God was pleased? And in the end, didn’t He give Samson power to kill himself? The Almighty visited a spirit of oppression on Saul. And didn’t He send Israel a king because they asked, even though He was angry with them for it?
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