"He won't fire again," said Sunscorch. "Don't need to, does he? We're slow enough now. Anything more might damage the loot."
This confident assessment was immediately undermined by the report of a cannon astern, resulting in another plume of water, this time well short.
"Then again, he might sink us for sport," added Sunscorch. He looked down at the main deck where the Denizens were hacking ineffectually with axes at the fallen yard. "Cut away! Don't slap at it! Cut! Doctor, if there's anything you can do, do it. No seamanship can save us now! I'm for an axe!"
"Carry on!" Catapillow called out as Sunscorch leapt down the companionway to the waist of the ship.
Arthur looked at the rapidly gaining pirate vessel, then at the living picture in its vast gilt frame. Even without calculating anything, it was clear the Shiver would catch them before they could get to the transfer portal. It was too far away...
Arthur suddenly had an idea.
"I don't know any sorcery or anything," Arthur said. "But that big painting is like a transfer plate you step on, isn't it?"
Scamandros nodded distractedly.
"So if we can't get to it in time, can it somehow be moved to us?"
Scamandros frowned, then cocked his head as if struck by Arthur's suggestion. Arthur noticed that all the small tattoos on the doctor's face were showing scenes of trouble. Storms at sea. Sunken ships. Exploding suns. Imploding planets.
Just as the Doctor opened his mouth to speak, the Shiver fired again.
"Interesting. Yes, it is theoretically possible to —"
Whatever Scamandros was going to say was lost as a cannonball struck the Moth's side just behind and below the wheel, smashing the heavy timber into a spray of deadly foot-long splinters that went whistling across the quarterdeck.
Seven
THE NEXT THING Arthur knew, he was lying on the deck, right up against the rail, with his good leg hanging overboard. He could hear screaming all around him, and shouting. For a moment he thought he'd suffered a sudden asthma attack and had passed out from lack of air. But his breathing was fine, or so his mind reported before it suddenly switched back to the current situation. The splinters flying through the air —
Arthur pulled his leg in, sat up, and stared around him. He was vaguely aware that his broken leg hurt, but that was nothing new. There was blood on his dressing gown, but it was bright blue. A pain in his left hand made him lift it up. There was blood there too — red blood, but not much of it. Arthur focused on his middle finger, and pulled out a needle-shaped splinter that had sliced across a knuckle and was still hanging there.
"Will you look at that?! Ruined!" said a voice next to Arthur. The boy slowly turned to look. There was a large hole on the far side of the deck. The planking was gouged all around and there was blue blood splattered all over the place, amid shattered wood and splinters.
Ichabod was pointing at his waistcoat. A splinter as long as Arthur's forearm was sticking out of the Denizen's stomach. Blue blood was trickling out of the wound and into his waistcoat pocket.
"Doesn't it hurt?" asked Arthur. He was in shock and part of his mind was telling him to check himself over again. He knew the Denizens could recover even from a beheading, but that didn't help. It also didn't apply to him. A wound like Ichabod's would kill him for sure.
"It certainly does hurt," replied Ichabod with a grimace. "But just look at my favourite waistcoat!"
Arthur looked along his own arms and legs. They were fine. He gingerly felt his stomach and head. They seemed fine too. Only his finger had been touched.
The Denizens around the wheel had not been so lucky. Arthur could hardly bear to look at them, they were so pierced by splinters. At least the blue blood didn't look so serious as real human blood would. And they were still standing, and complaining about their bad luck.
"Seriously wounded to the Captain's quarters!" instructed Doctor Scamandros. He didn't appear to be injured, but blue fluid dripped from the sleeve of his yellow greatcoat. "You too, mortal! You could be killed up here! Get below at once. Ichabod, take charge of our valuable passenger!"
Arthur struggled to his feet and hesitantly walked to the gangway, Ichabod at his side.
"Are you going to do something, Doctor?" asked Captain Catapillow plaintively, as he stared down at the spot where his foot and one of his third-best boots used to be. "I think that cannonball was coated in Nothing."
"You'd feel a lot worse if it was, Captain," said Doctor Scamandros. "As I was saying, it is theoretically possible to accelerate the transfer by bringing the portal to the traveller, rather than the other way around. It is of course exceedingly difficult and dangerous."
Everyone looked at the pirate vessel astern. It fired again, a great gout of water exploding out of the sea a little ahead and to the port side of the Moth.
"What could happen that would be worse than eternal slavery or a slow and torturous death by Nothing-based sorceries at the hands of Feverfew?" asked Concort. He didn't sound like he really wanted to know.
"If I fail, we shall transfer not into that Secondary Realm, but into the Void of Nothing, and be immediately expunged from existence."
"My collection too?" asked Captain Catapillow.
"The ship and everything on it or connected with it," said Scamandros. "Including all your stamps, sir. So what are your orders?"
Arthur hesitated on the steps, waiting to hear Catapillow's commands. Surely there was some other way? Perhaps he could escape via the Infinite Stair... no... not in his current state. He probably didn't have the power anymore...
"I can't have the collection fall into Feverfew's hands," said Captain Catapillow in a small voice. "All or... or Nothing!"
Arthur saw Scamandros open his yellow greatcoat. The inside was lined with dozens of pockets and loops for magical implements and apparatus. Scamandros selected two lengths of bronze rod with curved-back hooks set near their pointed ends. Though they were in miniature under his coat, only a few inches long, they expanded as he dragged them out, till they were at least a yard in length.
"Fire irons," said Ichabod. "Matching set. Very nice. Come along!"
Arthur started to follow Ichabod down the port-side ladder to the waist, where Sunscorch and the crew had finally succeeded in cutting away the last of the broken yard and its accompanying debris. But Arthur stopped on the companionway to look back. He saw Scamandros reaching out with a fire iron in each hand, the bronze rods continuing to extend till they became shafts of curdled sunlight that reached up into the sky, and to each side of the ship.
Only a few seconds later, the transformed fire irons reached all the way to the vast gilt-framed portal to the Secondary Realm. The hooks on the end were now easily thirty feet long. The irons wavered outside the edges of the frame, then Scamandros brought them in and seated them. As sun bronze met magical gilt, there was a horrendous metallic noise, like an angle grinder suddenly cutting into steel, magnified a hundred times.
Everyone on the ship stared up at the portal and the Doctor's two levers. Ichabod didn't protest or try to make Arthur go below. Like everyone else, he wanted to see what would happen next.
Scamandros shouted something, a word that passed through Arthur like a hot wire, causing him to cry out and clap his hands to his ears. The doctor shouted again, and Arthur, suddenly stripped of strength, fell down the ladder onto the deck, taking a surprised Ichabod with him.
Then Scamandros yanked the fire irons back towards himself. This action was magnified all along their sun-curdled length. With the squeal of ten thousand fingers on a giant blackboard, the entire vast doorway to Forlorn Island shuddered towards the Moth.