“Do you think we can make it out?” Gallen asked Tallea.
“Inhuman seeks converts, not corpses,” Tallea said. “They might let us go. But if choose to kill-” She shrugged, as if to say that neither Gallen nor anyone else could stop them.
Maggie pounded on the door of one last passenger-the albino girl who was too frightened to leave her room during most of the trip, but the girl would not open her door now.
Gallen rushed up to the end of the hall, peeked through the door’s small window out over the deck, then backed up slowly. “They’ve got half the crew out there.”
Tallea nodded. “We should wait. I can’t see well in dark.”
“I can lighten things up for you,” Gallen said. grabbed his pack from Maggie, pulled out his incendiary rifle, and connected the barrel to the stock.
He opened the door and fired once. Burning white plasma streamed out, bright as the sun, and sprayed over the crowd, dousing the mainmast. Gallen shouted for the others to follow, and he leapt out onto the main deck.
Silently, Tallea raced out after him, followed by Orick and Maggie. On the quarterdeck, one Tekkar was a seething inferno. For a moment his skeleton remained standing, blazing like a torch, the bones fusing together, and then the skeleton crumbled. Several of the small red-skinned sailors had taken minor hits as plasma splattered from the rifle, and they screamed and spun about, madly dancing as they tried to escape. But with plasma heating to ten thousand degrees on their arms or torsos, even a minor wound was cooking them alive.
The bottom of the mainmast incinerated in a moment, and the sail began to topple forward, held only by the rigging. Maggie shouted for Ceravanne to follow her.
Ahead of her, Gallen and Tallea were in a deadly duel, pitted against a dozen hosts of the Inhuman. Maggie saw Tallea lop the hand off one red-skinned foe, stab a giant in the eyes with her dueling fork. Gallen cut a giant down at the knees, and engaged two black sailors with bony ridges on their foreheads and long white hair.
The remaining Tekkar, a man with his hand tattooed red, rushed forward, his body a blur, and stabbed one of his own men in the back to move him out of his way as he sought to engage Gallen.
In seconds, the two were spinning madly, exchanging parries and thrusts. Maggie had imagined that with his mantle-which helped speed Gallen tenfold and which had the fighting experience of six thousand years stored in its memory crystals-no one should have been able to challenge him in single combat. But for fifty seconds the two traded punches and kicks, slashing and blocking with their swords, and it soon appeared that the match was even.
Each blow was jarring, so that when Gallen parried the deck rang with the sound, and Maggie was surprised that the swords didn’t splinter under the impact. And Maggie knew that Gallen was strong. He’d been training as a guard from his childhood, and his wrists and arms were far thicker than a normal man’s. Yet each blow by the Tekkar would knock Gallen back.
One sailor swung a pole at Gallen’s feet, trying to divert his attention, and the Tekkar dove in low, throwing his whole body forward in a deadly lunge, sword thrust outward. Gallen parried the sword away with his knife, and blood went splashing over the deck-though Maggie could not see whose-then the Tekkar’s body slammed into Gallen, knocking him back onto the deck.
For a moment they struggled together, the Tekkar on top trying to wrestle Gallen’s knife away, and it was growling.
Orick rushed to Gallen’s aid, but a sailor moved in to intercept him.
Maggie tossed the vibro-sword at the sailor, so that it flew end over end. It caught the man in the neck, slicing him open, and Orick barreled past, jumped on the Tekkar, and bit his shoulder.
In that second, Gallen wrested the knife away and brought it up into the Tekkar’s kidney with a violent jerk, so that the blade shot upward, spraying blood.
Then Gallen shoved so hard that the Tekkar flew back three yards and lay clawing the deck. Gallen surged up into the fray. He gutted the sailor who’d swung at his feet, leapt and kicked another in the head so hard that his neck snapped. Four sailors rushed away from him, and Maggie turned to see how Tallea was doing.
The woman knelt on the deck, holding her guts in with one hand, astonishment on her face. Three bloody-handed sailors advanced on her, aiming for a killing blow.
Maggie had no weapons, but without thought she shrieked and leapt forward, tossing her pack. It hit one man, driving his own sword back so that it split his nose.
Then Maggie was in front of them, shouting furiously, “Get out of my way, or I’ll cut your nuts off and send them home to your wives!” All three sailors stared at her, seeing that her hands were empty, yet somehow not trusting their own eyes.
And Maggie had a sudden thought. There were thousands of subspecies in the southlands, more than anyone person could know, and you couldn’t always tell the dangerous ones by looking at them.
“Believe me, friends,” she threatened. “You don’t wrestle a Tihrglassian, and walk away alive.”
The three servants of the Inhuman stood watching her, uncertain. Maggie raised her hands and bared her fingers threateningly, as if she had talons on them, and two of the men actually backed away.
One of them leapt forward with a roar, jabbing his sword swiftly for a killing blow. Maggie heard a gasp behind her, and suddenly the Caldurian’s own sword darted out, caught the tip of their foe’s sword and knocked it away with a flourish. With a deadly lunge Tallea let her own sword slide up the attacker’s arm, till it bit deep into the sailor’s ribs. The last two foes turned and fled, knowing themselves to be no match for Maggie and the wounded Caldurian.
The sails had become sheets of flame, and suddenly the mainmast fell forward, crushing the forecastle, sending up a shower of sparks. And then Maggie was running, pulling on Tallea’s arm. The warrior woman slumped to the deck, crying weakly, “Leave me!” And Maggie pulled her up, shouting to be heard above the flames. “Not for a fortune. I want to hire your services, if you live through this!”
“Agreed,” the Caldurian said.
Someone pushed Maggie from behind, and she looked back. Orick had her pack in his teeth, and Ceravanne was stooping to grab Gallen’s incendiary rifle. Gallen was leaping toward them all through the flames. Maggie saw with relief that the timid albino girl had come out, that she was running to the far side of the ship.
In a moment, Gallen was beside Maggie, half carrying Tallea. They rushed to the aft of the ship, found sailors lowering a lifeboat. It had just hit water, and already some of them were scurrying down the rope ladders to get in.
Gallen aimed his incendiary rifle, shouted to them, “Go on, all of you. Get away from the boat!” And the sailors stopped. One man leapt off the ladder, began swimming for shore, while another raced back up to the deck. The sailors at the ropes all rushed to the far side of the ship, hoping to get to the other lifeboat before the ship burned.
Gallen stood on the weather deck, keeping the sailors at bay, while Maggie and the others climbed the rope ladders down to the boat. Maggie held the Caldurian in her lap, for the woman had saved her life, and with her own hands she pushed the woman’s intestines back in place. The Caldurian’s brown face was a mask of pain, and she looked up toward the stars, her dark eyes fixed, unfocused.
Then everyone was in the boat, and Ceravanne was pulling at the oars, splashing them all with water in her hurry to leave. Gallen stood in the prow, balancing on a seat, incendiary rifle in hand.
Fire-lit smoke streamed across the water, and the ship was a roaring inferno. Maggie looked up. The batlike scouts were circling the burning ship, and Orick said to Gallen sadly, “You can’t let them get away, lad. It’s a man’s work you have to do.”