A brief eruption of blood and brains came puffing out through the crack, leaking down across the forehead and the pale skin of the seaman's face. The force of the .44 slug punched Flynn's head against the paneling with a solid thumping noise. The actual sound of the Astra firing was muffled by the barrel's being jammed inside the wretch's open mouth. But it was still sufficiently loud to be heard throughout the length of the ship.
Pyra Quadde held Johnny upright, gripped by the throat, as his heels drummed against the cabin door. The Duo dropped from the dead man's fingers, rattling on the floor. Smiling broadly, she removed the pistol from Flynn's mouth, tugging it from where he'd clamped his jaws on it in a dying spasm of pain and shock.
As she released him, the corpse clattered to the deck, twitching. She pushed at it with her foot, her smile now directed at Ryan.
"We'll have this removed and tossed over the side, I think. Unless we leave it here to spice our pleasure. What thinkest thou, Outlander Cawdor?"
Ryan thought that the pressure of the shotgun had eased a little. But still not enough for him to make the play that his life would totally depend on.
The Salvationshuddered gently, as if some great undersea creature had scraped itself beneath her keel. The captain turned immediately, sensitive to every shift and movement of her beloved vessel.
"What was?.." she began.
Now they couid hear feet pattering on the deck — the heels of combat boots — shouts and the unmistakable chattering sound of an Uzi submachine gun.
The captain swung around to face Ryan, her ornate finery rustling. Her heavy features were convulsed with an almost insensate anger, and a worm of spittle inched down her chin. "By all the gods!" she spit. "Thou bastard... bastard! We are done!"
Walsh was heading for the door, but his boots slipped in the spreading puddle of Johnny Flynn's blood, sending him careening sideways. He clutched at the arm of Brandt, who held the scattergun, finger on the slim trigger.
The jolting shock was all that it took. The sawed-off blaster boomed, both barrels firing in a single convulsive explosion.
Brandt had been half turning, eager to get out of the confines of the cabin and onto the deck. Walsh had been less than a foot away from him. At that range, the double shock of the 10-gauge lifted him clear off his feet and threw him across the cabin, where he knocked into Quadde, sending her tumbling backward. Her pistol rattled into the corner beneath the long stern window. The second mate thrashed on the floor, his blood and guts adding to Flynn's. The entrance hole in Walsh's stomach was smaller than the fist of a woman, but the buckshot had ripped him apart, the exit wound large enough to hold an iron bucket. Fragments of splintered bone were embedded in the far wall, along with the clotted pellets of distorted lead.
Brandt staggered, holding the empty, smoking blaster, his face slack with shock. Jehu had fallen to his knees in the slippery scarlet lake, still gripping the belaying pin. Ryan could see no sign of Walsh's battered Glock. The floor was so deep in blood and intestines that the blaster could have fallen anywhere.
Above his head, he could hear yelling and more blasters going off. He hadn't the least doubt that a rescue party had emerged from out of the fog.
Pyra Quadde was struggling to rise, reaching for her gun. Brandt was between Ryan and the door, and Jehu was weeping loudly, seemingly out of it.
Ryan tried for the razor with his left hand, missing at first grab. Brandt punched him across the top of the leg, numbing the muscle, then grappled with him. Ryan's right hand, flat on the cluttered tabletop, brushed against the hypodermic syringe. He grabbed it in desperation, driving it without a moment's hesitation into the man's right eye.
Brandt screamed and let go of him, putting a hand to his own blinded eye. It gave Ryan the chance to pick up the open razor and slash it against the sailor's exposed throat.
A crimson mouth gaped open, revealing the whiteness of bone in its maw. Brandt tried to scream, choking in his own frothing blood. He fell away from Ryan, onto the bed, patterning the pale sheets with gouts of arterial red.
"Basssstard!" the woman hissed, still unable to get up, her dress now sodden with blood. For a moment her fingertips had the butt of the Astra, then it slithered away from her.
Without a way of getting his hands on another weapon, Ryan decided to join his friends on deck.
Jehu had other ideas.
"Outlanders must all perish!" he screeched, shuffling on his knees to block off Ryan's exit.
"Fireblast!" Ryan swore, still holding the blood-slick razor in his right hand, aware that the captain might snatch up her fallen blaster at any moment.
"Repent, repent," the madman moaned, his little round mouth working and twitching, his hands clawing toward the outlander.
"Get out of the bastard way!" Ryan snarled, raising the honed steel.
"Nay, for I know the world, and the world..."
In midsentence Jehu grabbed suddenly at the razor, nearly catching Ryan off guard. The crazie's fingers actually grasped the single-edged steel. Ryan, holding the handle, jerked it back with even greater violence.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pyra Quadde finally grasp her blaster, fumbling with hands made slippery by blood.
Jehu screamed like a scalded baby, as the singing edge of the razor was drawn through his palm, across the inside of the knuckles. Ryan felt the steel grate against bone and yet more blood flowed from the horrendous cuts.
Now Ryan was at the door, pulling at the handle, his own fingers slick with hot crimson, knowing that he could expect a .44 round between the shoulders at any second.
Jehu was dancing, boots slopping on the deck, trying to hold his cut hand to his chest, yet wanting to attack Ryan at the same time.
"Get out the poxing way!" Captain Quadde shouted from behind the iron bed.
"Hurt me, he has, he's hurt me!" Jehu moaned.
At last, after an eternity of sluggish seconds, the handle turned and Ryan faced the corridor and the companionway that led to the deck. He caught the sound of Doc Tanner's voice, bellowing a warning to someone, which was followed by the echoing boom of the big Le Mat pistol.
He felt someone clawing at him from behind, and heard the plaintive shrilling voice of Jehu in his ear. Nails tore at his jacket, holding him helpless in the doorway. Ryan tried to reach around with the razor and cut at the sailor's face, but the constricting space trapped him.
"Let me go!" he raged.
The flat bang of the short-muzzle .44 interrupted him, and he felt Jehu thrust hard against him, propel him into the corridor. The door slammed shut behind them.
"Done me," the seaman gasped in a small, frail voice, slipping to his knees like a lad at his first communion, hands clasped in front of him. Blood dripped steadily from his hands and mouth. As he toppled at Ryan's feet, the dark hole in the back of Jehu's sweater showed where Pyra Quadde's bullet had hit.
There was an eerie screech of frustrated rage from behind the cabin door. Ryan heard three more shots as he dodged toward the steps, and three chunks of white, splintered oak flew across the passage.
He glanced to the rear, saw the absurdly tiny head of Jehu roll. "Done me, she has. Oh, dear, dear."
It wasn't a time to hesitate. Ryan leaped up to the top of the steps, seeing from the open hatch that the mist wasn't quite as thick. Alongside the Salvation— coming up on her port quarter — was another tall-masted sailing vessel, with cables already hooked to the rigging of the Salvation. Several men, faces only blurs in the dim light, lined the bulwarks of the stranger, though none of them seemed to be taking any part in the fight. A tall, grizzled man stood on the other ship's quarterdeck, watching the scenes on board the Salvation.