The Golden Minute

by John Birmingham

  She struggled awkwardly to her feet, bracing herself in the corner against the wild derangement of the Atlantic in tempest. When she focused on the sounds of men, on their shouting and cursing, on the hammering of feet and the rumble of something rolling across the deck, she could tell the crew were frantically preparing for some sort of engagement. It seemed insane that they would try to fight in these conditions. She could barely stand, and every chaotic motion of the ship, every rolling drop and vertiginous climb up some unseen, moving mountain of water, threatened to send her sprawling across the floor.

  A cannon boomed. A single thunderclap that made her jump with fright before the altogether louder, uglier roar of a massed artillery blast shook the very timbers of the ship and, it seemed, every organ within Cady’s body. She half-staggered, half-fell across the cabin onto the padded bench on the captain’s window seat.

  Forgetting her earlier fear of a rogue wave smashing through the glass and carrying her off, Cady pressed her face to the largest pane looking desperately for some sign of what was happening out there.

  She could see nothing, and a roll of the ship threw her away from the window just before another thunderous report shook the entire vessel. This was different, though. Not the volcanic roar of the Herald’s cannons, but the monstrous impact of the pirates’ return volley crashing home. Half of the glass in the window shattered. The Herald seemed to stiffen, like a man struck by a bullet, before collapsing into some vast oceanic canyon, the hull smacking down with a terrific boom. And then Cady was pressed into the deck again as the vessel climbed out of the moving valley and loosed another barrage on the unseen attackers.

  Torn between wanting to know what was happening—wanting to know how she was going to die—and the entirely rational desire not to get blown to pieces, Cady stayed low and looked around for cover.

  There was none.

  She imagined a cannonball punching through the timbers and turning her into loose meat. That got her crawling toward the cabin door, until another volley from the pirates struck the Herald and stopped Cady in her tracks. She knew less than nothing about modern ships, let alone one of these old tubs, but nobody here was firing smart munitions. They were probably aiming at the ‘engine’ of the ship, which meant the sails, intending to cripple the Herald for boarding and looting. No point sinking your prize.

  Although every nerve ending in her body urged her to flee, to run and just keep running, Cady overrode the animal urge and forced herself to breathe. Deeply and slowly. She was just beginning to get some control over her runaway fears, when she felt water dripping from above, looked up, and realized with horror that it was blood, seeping through cracks between the boards on the deck overhead. She didn’t scream, but she did shudder with deep revulsion, hastily trying to wipe the hot red droplets from her face, only to smear them everywhere.

  “Omigod, so fucking gross,” she said, before another fusillade of cannon-shot carried away her revulsion, replacing it with a more immediate fear for her life.

  She started casting around, looking for a weapon, knowing it was hopeless even if she found one. She could barely fire Smith’s guns, let alone one of the arcane museum pieces on this ship. And having seen men fighting with edged weapons before, she had no illusions about how long she would last against a blood-drunk savage with even modest skills or experience of fighting with sharpened steel.

  They wouldn’t have any experience of eating a face full of pepper spray, though.

  Rolling around on the wooden deck, she searched all of her pockets for the Sabre 3-in-1. Panicking when she couldn’t find it, Cady forced herself to slow down and search methodically for the small black tube of pepper spray and CS gas. She found it where she’d hidden it: in a velcro-sealed pouch inside a larger pocket, which was itself difficult to find. Almost like the designers had intended it that way, for hiding cash and documents. A great weight seemed to lift off her chest when she had the tiny weapon in her hand, and then her spirits lifted even further when she realized the other object hidden and forgotten in that smuggler’s pouch was an emergency food bar.

  Tactical Fruit-n-Nutz!

  Not chocolate, but despite her seasickness she wanted those four hundred high density calories and she tore off the wrapper.

  Outside the cabin the battle thundered on for what seemed like hours. The first, furious exchanges of fire became less frequent, as if the captains were searching each other out. The Herald rose and fell and pitched and yawed on a roiling sea that gradually calmed itself to merely unpleasant. More blood seeped through the cabin roof, or whatever they called the roof on a ship. And Cady, searching for more forgotten Fruit-n-Nutz, found the Altoids tin containing her hand-drawn wiresaw. She’d stashed it in another pocket after breaking out of the Salem jailhouse and not thought of it again. Now, still needing a weapon to supplement the Sabre, she searched the cabin with a more particular eye, finally lighting upon a long leather tube; a map or paper case, she realized, when she saw the documents rolled up inside.

  It was about three feet long, and narrow enough for her to grip with one hand.

  After some futzing around and a few nasty cuts, Cady had crudely but effectively tied the length of saw-chain around one end of the tube case, creating a simple club topped with a cruel fist of small steel fangs. She paled at the idea of hitting anybody with it, but she’d learned some hard lessons recently. Some people, it turned out, were not very nice.

  Cady hefted the improvised weapon in her right hand, and made sure she knew how to hose somebody down with the aerosol in her left. It had a simple locking top mechanism, which she now twisted open. Finger grips positioned the nozzle to shoot thirty-five discrete bursts, up to ten feet.

  She had no intention of joining Bowditch or the others on deck. Not even the Sabre’s ‘maximum strength formula’ would protect her from a cannonball in the ass. She cocked an ear to the sounds of battle, suddenly mindful that she hadn’t heard the thunder of the guns for a few minutes. The mad fury of the sea had tapered off as well.

  That thought had only just formed in her head when the whole world went sideways with a crashing roar of splintering ships’ timbers and the terrible, crunching soundstorm of two wooden vessels grinding into each other. The impact threw Cady across the room, and she slammed into a cupboard full of dinnerware, breaking open the doors, which sent pewter plates and tankards crashing to the floor. The noise outside was louder. There was no mistaking the animal ferocity of men hacking and stabbing at each other. She heard individual pistol shots, but no more cannon fire, and the bark of handguns lasted only a few seconds.

  She was hyperventilating. The edges of her vision blurring out to gray. All of her limbs felt heavy and light at the same time. Numb but tingling. The rolling of the deck matched the head-spins and vertigo which tried to sit her on her ass.

  She drew in one long, shuddering breath. Let it go.

  Another.

  And let it go.

  She had never wanted to see Smith again more than she did at that moment. He would gently push her back behind him and plant his massive frame between her all too mortal frailty and whatever was sure to come through that door, surfing a wave of mutilation.

  And then the door did crash open, but all she saw was the back of the man who’d been forced through it.

  The savage din and feral discord of men hacking at each, screaming their defiance, their terror and their final cries, came rushing in with him. Cady was about to start flailing at the guy with her saw-chain club when he shouted, “Get back, Mistress Smith! Get back!”

  It was Bowditch. His white linen shirt now pink with blood and gore. Both hands full of edged metal. He slashed and stabbed and roared and kicked at the men trying to get at him, or past him, or simply through him. The Herald’s first officer conceded just enough ground to give him as much elbow room as he needed to hack freely at his attackers, who were bunched up in the narrow passageway outside. But no more than that.

  Cady found herself caught
between the warring impulses to help the man trying to save her life, and to get as far the fuck away as fucking fast as possible. For two seconds, which felt like seven long and terrible years, she hesitated on the balance point between fight and flight, then Bowditch took a sword slash on the arm, cried out in pain as bright red blood painted the low ceiling, and gave way before the onslaught.

  Two, then three berserkers charged him.

  They looked more like demons than men, their faces covered in tattoos and nobbled ridges of scar tissue and old dead flesh from branding irons. They were half naked and slicked with gore.

  All of them shrieked like banshees, and their bloodied swords threshed at the officer like the cutting tools of a mad machine in a Stephen King story.

  Their eyes found Cady. Lips skinned back from canines and incisors like rabid dogs.

  She took one step towards them, raised the tiny tube of chemicals and sprayed the motherfuckers down.

  Two shots, three heads.

  They were so tightly packed as they struggled to get through the cabin door that none of the surprisingly narrow stream was wasted. It painted their grotesque faces, dousing wide eyes, flaring nostrils and open mouths. The effect was instant and extraordinary.

  They screamed as though she’d napalmed them, raking at their eyes and trying to get back out of the door they’d fought so hard to break through. Cady didn’t let them. She shouldered Bowditch out of the way and slashed at the nearest of the pirates with her makeshift club.

  The razor fist of saw-chain links tore into his face at the first blow and he went down in a demented convulsing of arms and legs. Cady’s earlier paralysis vanished. She lashed out with her Docs, kicking the fallen man in the dark ruin of his face. His shipmates were jammed into the doorway, screaming in shock and horror at the unknown bane she had laid upon them. Cady whipped at their backs with her scourge, gouging deep, bloody trenches from their flesh.

  She realized, even so far gone in her killing rage, that she probably wasn’t going to be able to actually kill them with the weapon she had fashioned. The realization punctured her frenzy, and her attack faltered.

  Bowditch stepped forward and thrust his largest sword deep into the back of the second man, driving the pointed shaft all the way through and into the third attacker. The screams and stink of voided bowels completely undid her, and she staggered back as he hacked at the neck of the fallen pirate with his second blade, a shorter, cruder thing that looked like a machete.

  “What is that?” he panted, indicating the small tube in her left hand.

  “Poison,” she lied.

  It seemed a reasonable explanation to Bowditch, having seen its effect on their enemy.

  “The fight goes poorly, mistress,” he said. “I apologize but I must away.”

  “I’ll come with,” Cady shouted, after only a half second’s hesitation. As much as she didn’t want to, she felt even less like being left alone. She could hurt anybody who came at her, fuck them up bad. But she didn’t think she could kill them, and the Herald was now swarming with assholes who were desperately in need of being killed.

  “Your poison…” Bowditch said, looking as though he was torn between locking her in the cabin and pushing her in front of him to give any pirate they encountered a spritz of CS gas.

  “It blinds and hurts like a sonofabitch,” Cady shouted over the din. “But it won’t kill you. I have enough to blind two dozen men.”

  “Then if you will come with me, mistress, I will vouchsafe your passage and we shall take their eyes from them.”

  Cady felt a momentary lessening of her resolve, but she pushed through it.

  “After you,” she said, and Bowditch led her out into the fray.

  The Herald was awash with blood.

  Cady might’ve gagged or even fainted had she blundered into the carnage, unprepared. But the fight in Captain Garvey’s cabin had overwhelmed her sensitivities. If she lived she might spend the next month screaming in her sleep, but for now, she waded grimly into the floating slaughterhouse behind ‘Blades’ Bowditch, who was dual-wielding like a motherfucker.

  The Herald’s first officer led her forward and below decks, where his shipmates struggled to repel the boarders who had swarmed across from Le Sournois. The caterwauling din of hand-to-hand combat was deafening. Terrifying. But she forced herself onward. She and Bowditch soon settled into a rough rhythm of his engaging one or even two pirates, fixing their attention on him, whereupon Cady would mace the motherfuckers. Each time the effect was the same. The men were inured to the violence and horror of close-quarter battle with knives and swords. They were not prepared to be set aflame by invisible fire, to be blinded and burned without obvious cause. Each time they screamed in shock and outrage, Bowditch drove home his attack, thrusting the point of his sword into a face, a throat, a thrashing, writhing blood-slicked torso. Cady tried to keep count of the shots she had used, but soon lost track in the chaos and madness of the fight.

  It didn’t matter.

  The sudden appearance of some inexplicable weapon quickly turned the tide of the struggle against the boarders. More of the Herald’s men rallied to their side as the numbers of enemy fighters dropped away. It seemed to Cady that they hadn’t advanced much more than a third of the way along the hull of the ship when the resistance ahead of them gave way and the Herald’s crew surged forward on a wave of war shouts and sharpened steel. She lost contact with Bowditch, who led the counterattack without her, and she was abandoned in the wake of the fighting, surrounded by the dead and dying.

  The frenzy, which carried her into the battle, collapsed and so did she, falling to her knees in the dimness of the lower decks and the red slurry of carnage.

  “Mistress Smith?”

  Cady was numb.

  Probably in shock, she thought.

  Could you think that, when you were in shock? Were you self-aware like that?

  “Mistress, please?”

  It was the boy, little Pip.

  He looked a horror, soaked in gore. A long open slash disfigured half his face. But he looked at her as though she was in worse shape.

  “Mistress? I am ordered to secure your person from further outrages.”

  “What?” she said dumbly.

  “If you will come with me, mistress. I will secure you in the captain’s quarters again.”

  “But… Bowditch,” was all she could come up with.

  “Mr Bowditch takes the issue to Quarrel’s men, Mistress Smith,” Pip said. His voice shook, but he seemed unnaturally still. “He will lead our boys above and take the freebooters at their disadvantage. They will perish on our swords or by the hangman’s rope in due course, mistress. If you would please?”

  She understood very little of what he meant, but he seemed to be a lot more chilled about shit than her.

  Was it minutes, or hours? She didn’t have a clue.

  Pip held out one arm, and she realized he meant for her to link her own arm through it. She did and, staggering against the roll of the ship, they returned to Garvey’s cabin.

  21

  “What is wrong?” Koffler said. And then, “… oh, I see.”

  They stood shaking hands in a woodland. Primordial, old-growth forest pressed in all around. At first, Smith thought they had arrived in the dead of night, but his eyes soon adjusted to the preternatural gloom after the bright, summer noonday light they had left behind in Berlin. A heavy canopy of red maple, beech, sycamore and pine trees blocked out much of the sun and carpeted the forest floor in a soft layer of rotting mulch.

  “The wrong damn watch,” Smith cussed. “I used the wrong watch, Koffler.”

  Both men realized at the same instant that they were still holding hands, and each let go of the other’s grip awkwardly, almost apologetically.

  “The wrong watch?” Koffler said. “I don’t understand. Which…”

  “Chumley’s,” Smith explained. “Mr. Wu’s weren’t no good. We done used it up gettin' to Salem. We had to us
e Chumley’s watch. But I lost her in doin’ it. Goddamn it!”

  He was not a man given to hard blasphemy, but it felt good and proper at that moment. Smith looked around and judged them to be lost deep in a howling wilderness.

  “Oh this is a fine mess. We could be anywhere.”

  Koffler took a few steps towards a patch of grassland lit by a shaft of sunlight that peeked through the overhead. A great tree, dead, fallen years ago and wreathed with bright, alien fungi and verdant moss prevented him going any farther in that direction. He cocked an ear, sniffed at the air, furrowed his brows and finally planted both hands on his hips.

  “The second watch. The one you took to Berlin. You had this from the Apprentice you killed in Rome?”

  “Aye,” Smith confirmed. He was beginning to recover his balance. “You would know of it, surely.”

  “Of course, of course,” Koffler agreed. “Miss Cadence wrote of it, naturally. I was simply taken aback by the vehemence of your mistemper. But fear not, Smith. I do not think us irredeemably lost. Indeed, I am certain we are near Salem, within ten to fifteen miles, as long as you can be sure we left Berlin close to the point of your arrival.”

  Smith shucked off the overcoat. He didn’t much want to, for it protected him from the chill air. But it would excite the attention of the indigenes; assuming such even existed. Koffler followed him, removing his overcoat, rolling it tightly and stuffing it under the great fallen tree. He gestured for Smith to do the same.

  “Why would you be so certain of our whereabouts, Professor?” Smith asked.

  Koffler rubbed his hands together as though appreciating a worthy challenge.

  “I do believe we left within the golden minute,” he said. “We should have stepped back to whichever time you last visited. Might I see both watches?”

  Smith handed them over, if a tad reluctant like. The professor furrowed his brow as he examined both.

  “What marvelous craftsmanship. I have only read of them, naturally. To hold not one, but two…”