CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Well, thank the gods, sir,” the coastland skipper of the galley blurted, his nasal singsong accent strong under fairly fluent Confed.
“Yes?” Justiciar Demansk replied, raising an eyebrow. “I merely said you should adjust the rowing pace as you saw fit.”
“I was thanking the gods I’d gotten one who understands a ship isn’t commanded from the same end as a velipod. Sir. Thank you, sir. I don’t mind the risk of getting killed, it goes with this trade, but I’d rather not lose my ship because some damnfool landsman won’t listen. Thank you again, sir.”
Demansk nodded frostily and turned his attention elsewhere. The Confederacy’s Grand Fleet of the West was making as good time as he could expect . . . when everyone was supposed to keep station so close their oars were almost touching. Speaker Emeritus Jeschonyk thought that that would reduce the risk of the fleet being disordered; as long as they kept to the holy line, the faster, lighter Islander vessels wouldn’t be able to nip in with ram-and-run attacks.
It’s won naval battles for us before, Demansk thought sourly, shifting his injured left arm to test it. A little pain, not too bad—not nearly as disagreeable as making Helga stay on shore had been; in the end he’d had to point out that coming might mean watching her precious Emerald die.
I just don’t like the implications of this formation. We’re conceding that the enemy are better than we are. That was true, on salt water; he still didn’t like admitting it. The Confed fleet was fighting the way Emerald phalanxes had, in the old days; shield to shield, all spears out. It had a lot of punch—one of Demansk’s ancestors had written in his memoirs that seeing four thousand men come over the brow of a hill in perfect alignment was the most frightening thing he’d ever seen in his life—but it lacked flexibility. That was how the Confed armies had beaten the Emeralds, using small units under independent command to work around flanks and into gaps, coming to close quarters with the stabbing assegai.
“At least it’s calm,” he muttered, and the sailing master nodded again. A calm sea was like fighting on a flat, even field—everything in plain sight, no surprises, no broken ground to disorder the formations. If he had to fight in a phalanx, that was the best place to do it.
Thing is, I just don’t like fighting a battle this way, relying on brute strength and massive ignorance, he thought. It was . . . uncraftsmanlike.
He had to admit that the fleet made an imposing sight. The working parties that had gotten them ready for sea hadn’t stinted on paint and gilding, either. The hulls and upperworks were almost as bright as the helmet plumes and armor of the officers, lacking only the fierce glint that the sun broke off edged steel. Each craft had a figurehead in the form of a snarling direbeast; there was a remote mythological connection, to the legendary pair who’d supposedly been raised by one and founded Vanbert. He was surprised that the Confederation made so much of that myth, sometimes—the rest of it wasn’t at all creditable, involving fratricide, kidnapping, woman-stealing and general mayhem. But then, Vanbert had been founded by a bunch of bandit fleecebeast herders, if you read between the lines.
“We’ve come a long way,” he said to himself, watching the vermillion-painted oars flashing in unison, churning the wine-purple sea to foam, the bronze beaks lunging forward and splitting V’s of white to either side. The oarsmen knew their business, hired men mostly, with some conscripted fishermen from the coastal villages. They were used to the shattering labor, but not really to working in teams; there had only been a month or so to train them.
Ahead, the Islander fleet was matching them stroke for stroke—backward, southwest, away from the shore, on a course that would take them out past Preble if it went on long enough; he could see the walls and stubby towers in the ocean beyond them. Demansk’s squadron was second in from the left, landward flank of the fleet, and that section had come a little forward; it gave him a good view down to the massive quinqueremes of the center, where Jeschonyk’s personal banner flew. The ability of the Islander fleet to back water as fast as the Confeds were advancing was dauntingly impressive, in its way—they weren’t charging, but the pace wasn’t leisurely, by any manner of means.
He stared ahead and to his right. King Casull’s banner there—standard formation, like ours, quinqueremes in the center, triremes on the flanks. The great ships rode the ocean like floating wooden walls, each with two banks of huge five-man oars swinging with ponderous force. Casull’s capital ships looked a little different, with low wooden forts on their forward decks, spanning the gangways along either flank. Hmmmm. That must make them a little more sluggish, he thought. I wonder why they’re doing that? Usually they stay as nimble as they can. And what’s that column of black smoke from behind the flagship?
He sincerely hoped it wasn’t some sort of incendiary trick. He was getting thoroughly sick of those. He also hoped Jeschonyk wasn’t just going to mirror their movement until the Confederacy fleet had been drawn well out to sea. Right now, the left flank at least was secure, anchored on the land. Out in deep water, the Islanders might get up to any amount of devilment.
A messenger galley came racing down the line of ships, flying Jeschonyk’s banner and pulling just under their sterns; orders from the command, then. It was a light shell, undecked, with no ram—and a mast still stepped, although it hadn’t set any sail. A galley always unstepped and stowed its mast before action, of course; the shock of ramming would send it overboard, otherwise. Demansk took the sailing master’s speaking trumpet and stepped to the rail.
“This is Justiciar Demansk!” he shouted as the light craft came within hailing distance. His voice was a hoarse bull roar, roughened by a lifetime of cutting through the clamor of battle. “What orders?”
In theory, the officer commanding the racing shell shouldn’t have told him anything. In reality, a Justiciar was hard to refuse.
“The left-flank squadron is to move forward and cover the causeway, while we resume construction,” he shouted. “All other ships to maintain station.”
“Carry on!” Demansk said aloud. Oh, shit.
“What in the Shades are they doing?” Esmond muttered from the quarterdeck of the ship he’d named Nanya’s Revenge.
“Not what they should,” Adrian said. “But then, neither are we.”
correct, Center said. Center and Raj had agreed—they didn’t, always—that Casull should put his gun-equipped ships out to the left, seaward, and use them to crumple the Confed line inward. That would throw them into disorder, and then the more agile Islander vessels could strike at the flanks of maneuvering quinqueremes. Instead, Casull was playing it safe, keeping all the heavy ships, the ones with the cannon, and the steam ram with him in the center.
Usually a mistake, when you’re the weaker party but have better quality troops, Raj noted clinically. That’s when you have to throw double or nothing, and hope to win big. If you fight a battle of attrition, it usually ends up with the last battalion making the difference.
“We’ve been here most of the day,” Esmond fretted. “And done damn-all but back up. They’re not going to follow us out to sea, and even with summer it’s going to get dark in five, six hours. We should—wait a minute, they’re not just getting out of line, they’re moving.”
Ten triremes of the Confed fleet’s landward wing were moving, their oarsmen stretching out in a stroke . . . stroke . . . stroke . . . pace that they could keep up for an hour or so, but that wouldn’t exhaust them the way ramming speed did. Their smaller line was ragged as it drew away from the main body, but not impossibly so.
They’re heading for the causeway, Raj thought. Probably the Confed commander got nervous and decided he had to do something. A mistake. Anything that opens this battle up is to our advantage.
“They’re heading along the coast, south to the causeway,” Adrian said. “Esmond, they’re going to cover the causeway—start getting it repaired. We can’t let them do that.”
“We certainly can’t,” Esmond said; he’d put too much work and risk and blood into turning that into a disaster for the Confeds. “I’ll send a dispatch to the King.”
Adrian caught his arm. “No time,” he said. “We’re in the perfect position to intercept them, here on the right flank. If we wait, they’ll be past us and we’ll have a stern chase.”
Esmond hesitated, looking around. He was in command of the right, the landward anchor of the Islander line, six triremes manned entirely by Emeralds—most of their people had some seagoing experience, after all. Adrian’s arquebusiers were on board too, and the Strikers were working in their flexible light-infantry armor. It made the ships a bit heavier, but it would give any Confed that tried boarding a nasty surprise, and they were still faster and more agile than any but the very best of the enemy vessels.
“Six to ten . . .” he mused. Then, decisively: “We’ll do it. Signal follow me and prepare to engage.” To the helmsmen at the steering oars: “Come about. Oarmaster, take us up to cruising speed.”
Esmond’s Revenge heeled, turning in almost its own length, then came level on a course that would intercept the ten Confed vessels, bouncing forward with a surge that made most on the quarterdeck grab for rail or rigging. “Half a mile,” he mused. “Flank speed!”
“All-father Greatest and Best,” Justiciar Demansk said. “They’re going to be massacred.”
The Confed triremes were strung out almost in a line, as close to the shore as they could and not be in the surf. Demansk was no seaman, but he could see the mistake there—the commanders were landsmen like him, and they thought of the shore as safety. Instead it was a trap waiting to kill them on their left hand, while the Islander squadrons’ rams—
No, not Islanders, by the gods! he thought. A banner was flying from the quarterdeck of the leading enemy ship, and it had the silver owl of Solinga on it! Not royal ships. Mercenaries. That must be Esmond Gellert, the man who’d vowed to see Vanbert burn.
Justiciar Demansk lowered his head a little, unconscious of the movement, like an old battered greatbeast, lord of the herd, snuffling the air and shaking his battered horns. We’ll see about that, bucko, he thought.
A quick glance showed him that his squadron overlapped the landward end of the Islander fleet now; the ships there were opening out their spacing to compensate for the squadron that had peeled off, moving with dancer’s grace. Still, they’d be thinner—probably wouldn’t try anything, not for a while.
And while Esmond-burn-the-Confeds Gellert takes the detached squadron in their flank, I can take him in his, he mused.
“Signal,” he said. “Squadron will form on me, and advance to the attack. Flank speed!”
“They’re coming after us,” Esmond said, pounding one fist lightly on the rail. “Damn! That’s more initiative than I’d have expected from a Confed commander, and as tight a formation as they’ve been keeping.”
“They’re certainly making a hash of it, though,” Adrian said, watching two of the Confed triremes fall afoul of each other, oars clashing. Confusion followed, until enough oars could be remanned to push the vessels apart. “They’ll be late to the party.”
Esmond shook his head, looking right to the Confed squadron that was his prey, and left to the other arrowing in to the rescue. “Or waddling to the rescue,” he said. “They might as well be barges, but we can’t let ourselves get trapped between them.” He swore again, vicious disappointment in his tone.
“No, wait!” Adrian said, pointing seaward. “Look!”
There where the massive quinqueremes faced each other, something was happening. A snarling cheer ran down the Islander line, and a drumbeat signal from ship to ship. Signalers with flags relayed it.
“General Attack, by the Gray-Eyed Lady of Solinga,” Esmond swore, but happily this time. His head whipped back towards the Confed line. The squadron that had lunged out to protect its comrades had halted. No, they were backing water! Probably recalled by their high command, to meet the Islander charge.
“Steady as she goes!” he shouted exultantly, looking ahead to the ten Confed ships. “Their arses are ours!”
“Ram, sir?” the helmsman said.
“By no means,” Esmond laughed. “Bring us parallel, just out of dart-caster range.”
He grinned like a direbeast, and Adrian nodded agreement. The enemy ships grew nearer with the always-surprising speed of meetings at sea, where you could be alongside one minute and hull-down when you looked back. Suddenly the ant-tiny figures along the enemy rail were men, and human limbs could be seen through the oar ports of the outriggers as their rowers strained and heaved to a quickening beat of the hortator’s mallets.
Adrian winced mentally, imagining being down there . . . never knowing when a dart, or fire, or the bone-crushing blow of an enemy’s ram was going to come through. Solinga had been a democracy for a long time after the League Wars—a democracy as far as freeborn male citizens were concerned, at least—and the main claim of the lower classes to equality with the farmers who provided their own armor was that it was the poor freemen who rowed the City’s ships to battle. The Scholars of the Grove had always held that a specious argument, a sign of the City’s decline. Now he was inclined to agree with the rowers.
His voice was steady as he spoke: “Aim for their catapults. The catapults only until further orders.”
“Sor, yessor,” Simun said, looking up from the port rail. The long weapons were leveled now, men kneeling with a hand over the lock to keep spray out of the priming powder, their barrels out over the uniform centipede motion of the oars. “Catapults it is, sor.”
“Signaler, pass it along!”
Turning southward, the Emerald-manned ships were a line parallel to the coast, coming up on the Confed ships from the rear, with Esmond’s in the lead. Four minutes of straining effort brought it level with the foremost Confed. Water was creaming up along the ram, curling down the side, and the ship had a slight rocking-horse motion as it clove the low swell.
“Open fire!”
Baaammmm.
Twenty arquebuses fired as one. The Confed ship had three catapults a side, two dart-casters and a stone-thrower, on pivot mounts. The stone-thrower fired, as the man standing behind it yanked the release-cord—not voluntarily, but as he was thrown backwards by a four-ounce lead ball smashing through his body and out the other side, to kill the man behind him as well. The rock fell halfway between the ships, a moment’s unnoticed fleck of foam against the green-blue of the shallows.
Baamm. Baaam. Baaam. Over and over again, the long jet of dirt-colored smoke. The smell swept aft, sulfur and rotten eggs and the flint-on-steel scent underneath it. Less than half the shots struck the enemy ship, and less than half of those landed around the catapults, but enough did. He saw splinters flying from the machines and the deck they were mounted on; a throwing arm snapped forward as a holding line was cut; another pinwheeled up as a ball sliced through the twisted greatbeast sinew that powered it.
“They’re out of action,” Adrian said.
Esmond nodded, still smiling that disquieting smile. “Steersman, close us in—long arrow-shot.”
Adrian turned to Simun. “Take out their archers and slingers.”
Those had been crowding to the rail as the Emerald-manned ships approached, with the twenty or so Confed regulars standing behind them—as much to keep them to their tasks as to back them up; the missile troops were hirelings or noncitizen allied levies. A flight of arrows winged out, and fell a little beyond the foam lashed up by the galley’s port oars.
“Fire!”
Baaammmm.
This time the target was bigger. Four men flew backwards, dead or dying—the heavy balls of the three-man arquebus would rip a limb completely off or turn a torso into a draining sack of ruptured flesh and shattered bone.
Baaam. Baaam. Baaam.
One of the arquebusiers whooped exultantly. “This is like gaffing fish out of a garden pond!” he shouted, and fired again.
Esmond nodded; he was looking back along the line. The other ships of his squadron were keeping pace and repeating his tactics; a little slower, perhaps, without Adrian to keep their arquebusiers on-target, but getting the job done.
When he turned back to look at the closest ship, the slingers and archers had vanished. He saw one take a running leap over the landward side of his vessel, and come up again swimming overarm—no Confed landsman there. Another tried the same, to fall overside with a Confed regular’s assegai through his back. More were leaping down the hatchways, and the steady pace of the enemy vessel’s oars went ragged as the missile troops threw themselves down on the lower gangway between the benches, anywhere to get away from the crushing, invisible death of the lead balls.
“Steersman! Close in!” he shouted exultantly.
The Confed marines threw their futile darts and waited behind raised shields—all but the last; he threw his down and ran, howling, until he splashed overside. He wasn’t going anywhere but to the bottom, not with fifty pounds of armor on him. Esmond’s ship was barely beyond oar’s length from its opponent now.
“Adrian!”
His brother nodded. “Gunmen!” he called. “Targets of opportunity—grenadiers, prepare to throw.” There was the slightest trace of a sigh in his voice. “Throw!”
His own grenade arched out with four others. Three struck; one straight down a hatchway, as if guided by Wodep’s hand. The explosions were quieter than arquebus fire over this distance, but they scythed the trireme’s decks free; the remaining sailors were over the side and swimming like eels, those not lying silent or thrashing and screaming. The arquebusiers were firing straight into the oarbanks now, through the ports or through the light planking of the deck; the massed shrilling of the oarsmen was deafeningly loud. And . . .
“Sor!” Simun shouted from the gangway. “She’s afire, my lords! Burnin’!”
Another look back along the line of ships showed two more in flames; one was grappled alongside a galley of his, and taken; another two were adrift, their oars limp as their entire crews swam for it. That left four unengaged, and they’d turned for the shore, hoping to beach their ships—at a guess, the Confed marines aboard had “insisted” on that with their assegais pressed to the helmsmens’ kidneys, and others guarding the hatchways to keep the oarsmen at their tasks.
“Well enough,” he laughed. “We can tow them off when they’re beached. Bit of a present for the King!” He turned, shading his eyes with a hand. “I wonder how that’s going?”
“Speaker Jeschonyk!”
The Speaker Emeritus of the Council of Vanbert was in a small boat, with an aide and two men rowing. He looked up at Demansk.
“My flagship is gone,” he said. “There.”
Demansk looked up as hands pulled the commander onto the trireme’s quarterdeck. The Speaker’s great quinquereme was wallowing, its starboard oars broken. From beyond it came a shape like nothing Demansk had ever seen by land or by sea, like a great turtle with two tubes belching smoke from the uppermost part of its . . . deck, he supposed it should be called . . . and a small square structure just before them. Wheels thrashed the water on either side, churning up more foam than a quinquereme’s oars, and driving it forward as fast as a trireme at ramming speed. It gleamed like wet iron . . . it was iron.
“But iron can’t float!” he heard himself say.
“It is iron,” Jeschonyk said bitterly from beside him; he started slightly. “Arrows bounce off it, catapult bolts do no damage—it sheared off the starboard oars of my ship and the one next to it in line, and—”
The iron ship was turning, a wide circle, much wider than a galley. After a moment it lay a hundred yards off, pointing at the command quinquereme’s stern; the ram that split the water ahead of it as it gathered speed was entirely comprehensible, unlike the rest of it. Demansk could hear a mysterious chuff . . . chuff . . . from it as it made its run, like the panting of some monstrous beast.
“A monstreme?” he said, bewildered. “A galley propelled by monsters?”
The wheels reversed and whipped froth mast-high as the ram slid into the quinquereme’s stern with a smashing crunch of timbers. The weird vessel backed off smoothly, and the quinquereme settled by the stern as water rushed into the huge rift. Its deck boiled with men as the hundreds of oarsmen ran screaming on deck, brushing aside the marines posted at the hatchway and throwing themselves into the water like fleas from a dying dog, heads turning the water black.
“What makes it move?” Jeschonyk cried, bewildered.
“At a guess, sir, it has something to do with fire—look at the smoke coming out of those two tubes.”
Demansk thought that that was the most likely logical explanation. He sympathized with the half-dozen vessels he saw beating a hasty retreat northwards, although he’d see their commanders poled and their crews decimated if he survived this. His gut was showing him pictures of monstrous clawed feet pounding a treadmill inside that iron weirdness, and huge fanged mouths gasping out chuff . . . chuff . . . Jeschonyk was flinching in time with it, nerve shattered.
A thunder-loud noise rippled across the water, overriding the clash of timbers and the screams of thousands of men in pain and fear of death. A billow of smoke rose from the odd square structure on the forecastle of an Islander quinquereme. Less than a second later, a fountain of splinters and body parts rose from a Confed vessel. More jets of smoke, and the prow of the Confed vessel dissolved in a shower of smoke and wreckage; when it cleared water was already running over the decking. Square fins rose out of the water and swam closer, waiting. Demansk could feel the blank black eyes and hungry mouths beneath them. That was normal, at least. They always got scavengers around a battlefield, land or sea.
Then the Islander vessel’s forepeak vanished in an explosion even louder, and left a huge bite out of the structure—enough to shatter the upper part of its hull as well.
“Whatever that thunder-weapon is, it isn’t always reliable,” Demansk said aloud. “They smote themselves, by the gods!”
He looked around. “You! Escort the Speaker below!” There was a cubbyhole of a captain’s cabin on a trireme. “Sailing master!”
“Sir?”
“Take a look at that . . . thing. Doesn’t it look to you as if those wheels are pushing it through the water?”
“Sir . . . I’ve never seen anything like it in all my life, and I’ve been at sea since I was six. Yes, that’s as likely as anything.”
The iron ship had just rammed another Confed quinquereme. This time it hung up for a moment, ram caught by a pinch of its victim’s shattered timbers. Brave men leapt down from the quinquereme to its deck . . . and over into the sea, as their hobnailed sandals slipped and slid helplessly down the sloping iron. Demansk could see one man striking sparks as he windmilled for an instant and then went over with a splash.
“Lay me a course to ram it right in the center of the port wheel. Hundred-commander!”
The underofficer in command of the ship’s Confed marines came up at a run. His face might have been carved from granite, but it was wet with sweat and rigid with tension under the transverse-crested helmet.
“Sir!”
“Have your men take off their marching sandals—I want ’em barefoot.”
“Sir?” The man had been obviously, prayerfully thankful for orders; now he looked as if he feared the Justiciar might have joined the day’s madness.
“Look at that thing. No, don’t stare, just look. It’s obviously timber, plated over with iron like a scale cuirass. Hobnails won’t grip. Feet will! There are men inside, and I intend to kill those men.”
“Yes, sir!”
The man strode off, bawling at his command. Demansk caught a strong whiff of the smoke boiling out of the iron ship as his trireme heeled and turned; honest woodsmoke, right enough.
If there are men inside, and not monsters—he thrust an image of claws on treadmills aside—then they have to be steering from that little boxlike thing in front of the tubes. So they can’t have a very good view, looking through slits like a close-helmet, and with all that smoke.
He gave a quick, unaccustomed prayer to Wodep and Allfather Greatest and Best that he was right. His life and the Confederacy’s western provinces both depended on it.
“Ramming speed!” he ordered. The iron ship was swelling with frightful suddenness.
“That’s discouraging them,” Esmond said.
Another Confed trooper on the beach staggered three steps backward and dropped, arms flung wide and shield spinning away. An arquebusier beside one of the Revenge’s steering oars chuckled and stepped back, letting his assistant and loader work. They moved in a coordinated dance, automatic now, grinning past the powder smuts that turned their faces into the masks of pantomime devils. Esmond’s galley rose and fell with the surf, but the gunmen on it and the rest of his squadron were keeping the hundred-odd Confed troopers on shore from interfering.
“Line’s hitched!” a sailor said, climbing over the stern naked and glistening wet.
Esmond nodded. “Take her out.”
The oars had been poised, waiting. Now they dipped, driving deep; there was a unanimous heaving grunt from below, and again, and again . . .
“She floats!” the steersman said, letting his oar pivot down into water deep enough for it. “We’ve got her off!”
Esmond looked about with pride; five of his six ships were towing captives, the enemy ships coming after them oarless and sternfirst, the traditional sign of victory at sea. The other five triremes of the Confed squadron were burning hulks, or sunk. One was sticking out of the waves, its bronze beak planted firmly in the sandy mud of the shallow coastal waters. Wreckage floated past with the tide . . .
. . . an awful lot of wreckage. Esmond looked seaward, losing the diamond focus of commanding his own small section of the battle, and shaped a soundless whistle.
“Wodep!” he blurted.
The neat lines had vanished—he looked up at the sun and blinked astonishment—in only an hour. Instead there was a melee that stretched from here to the edge of sight, and almost to within catapult range of Preble’s walls. Galleys were burning and sinking everywhere he looked; as he watched, a Confed quinquereme went nosedown and slid under the waves, shedding what looked like a coating of black fur at this distance, and that he knew was men clinging desperately to a life that sank beneath them. A little further off an Islander capital ship fired its four cannon directly into the deck of a Confed trireme, shattering the marines clumped to board into an abattoir mass of blood and torn meat, and punching through the deck into the crowded oar benches beneath. Even as it did a Confed quinquereme ranged up along its other side, and the boarding ramps slung up by ropes crashed down to link the ships, driving their iron beaks into the lower deck of the Islander vessel. Marines launched a volley of their weighted darts, and then swarmed across like implacable warrior ants. Here, there, a confusion no eye could take in. . . .
“Where’s the ram?” Adrian was half-shouting, his eyes wild. “What has that donkey-fucking idiot done with my ship?”
“Allfather!” Demansk snapped.
The shock of impact threw him to his hands and knees on the deck, driving bits of armor into his flesh. He pulled himself upright again, watching with savage glee as the deck of the enemy vessel surged backward and the wheel beat itself to flinders on the bronze-sheathed timber of his ship’s ram. Splinters rained back, as dangerous as flying knives, but he ignored them. Then the remnants of the wheel froze, and an odd muffled screaming sound came from within the . . . Iron Monstreme, Demansk thought. The monster-chuffing breath ceased abruptly.
“Follow me!” he roared. “Whatever it is, we hurt it! Now we finish it off!”
The boarding ramp fell. The iron spike penetrated at least a little, and Demansk ran down it. The iron plates felt strange beneath his bare feet, but skin gripped—the only problem was that it was just short of painfully hot. He crouched, holding his round officer’s shield out for balance, and ran up the low curve towards the square blockhouse forward of the smoke cylinders. He could hear men following him, and one despairing scream as somebody slipped and slid into the water on his way to the bottom, and then they were crouched around the blockhouse. It was iron plates on timber, the same as the rest of the strange construction, but steam was leaking out of the slits—oddly like a bathhouse.
A hatchway on top of the blockhouse opened, and a man stumbled up and out, wavering, pawing at his crimson face. A dart landed in his gut with a wet thwack that was all too clear at this range.
“Prisoners!” Demansk shouted. “I want prisoners!”
Men clambered on to the roof of the blockhouse, and one of them gave Demansk a hand. The hatchway proved to be about the size of an ordinary door, but the space beyond was a ghostly mass of steam and vague thrashing figures.
Like an orgy in the steam room, Demansk thought, dazed. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this.
“We surrender!” a voice coughed, hoarse and rough, an Islander accent. “Let us out, for the love of the Mother!”
“Come out with your hands empty,” Demansk called down.
A man came up, showing empty palms; one side of his face was a huge blister. “Spare us, lord! Mercy!”
“Who are you?” Demansk barked. “And what is this thing?”
Even as he spoke, he realized the futility of the question. Whatever this was, it probably couldn’t be explained by a wounded man at assegai-point.
“Sharlz Thicelt,” the man said. “Water, lord?” Demansk nodded, and a man handed over a canteen. The Islander drank, gasped, coughed, drank again. “I’m skipper of the Wodep’s Fist—or was.”
He spat some of the water on the corpse of the first man who left the hatchway, and tore off his turban in a gesture of pure rage, revealing a long shaven skull. The gold hoops in his ears bounced with the vehemence of his motion as he threw the turban after the spittle. Demansk thought that if the footing had been better, he’d have run over and kicked the corpse as well.
“And that was Prince Tenny, may the Sun God reincarnate him as the blind bastard of a pox-ridden half-arnket whore. The gods-forsaken little sodomite lost us the battle.”
“Lord King!” Adrian said.
The King of the Isles was still wearing his gilded armor, hacked and battered and blood-splashed. That took some courage, in a small launch. There was no need to ask what had happened to the flagship; it was not a thousand yards off, with two battered but still floating Confed quinqueremes lashed to either side.
Casull stalked to the quarterdeck, his eyes travelling over the chaos that reigned on this stretch of reddened ocean. “I do not abide by a plan that has failed,” he grated. “We’ll retreat.” He looked at the Revenge’s steersman. “Set course for the nearest ship still in our hands. We’ll have to arrange a rearguard, if we’re to get to Preble in one piece.”
He looked at Esmond then. “Where is my son?”
Esmond met his eyes. “Lord King, the enemy holds the Wodep’s Fist. Beyond that, I do not know.”
Casull sighed, his eyes dull. “If he lives, we’ll hear before sunset; demands for ransom, enough to leave the kingdom poor. If not . . . if not, we’ll drink his spirit home to the Sun.”