“I believe we’ve lost them,” said Holm.
“No, we haven’t.”
CHAPTER 26
The missing two shell racers had been hiding behind a house-sized iceberg. As Holm’s boat went past they burst out and closed in from either side.
Tali fired at the biggest man in the leading racer and struck him in the shoulder. He lost his stroke and clutched at the wound, baring his teeth.
The ferret-faced man behind him yelled, “Row, dammit!
The injured man took hold of the oar with a bloody hand and resumed his beat. She snatched another bolt, laid it in the groove of the crossbow and gave the crank a furious turn. Too furious — the bolt slipped sideways, jammed, and before she could free it the racer was alongside. The injured man and the fellow at the bow held it steady while the other two began to scramble up onto Holm’s boat.
She dropped the crossbow, picked up a length of anchor chain and swung it like a flail, striking the ferret-faced boarder around the head. He fell back into the racer, which rocked wildly. The rower at the bow lost his grip but the injured man did not, and now the second man was aboard and coming right for her.
She swung the chain again. He caught it, tore it out of her hands and tossed it aside. He wore a sword but did not draw it — clearly, he wanted her alive and unharmed. Tali backpedalled around the deck, looking for something she could use to hold him off. There, under the rail, was a boathook used for hauling in lines. She grabbed it and moved it back and forth in front of her. It was a poor weapon because the hook was U-shaped, the point facing her.
The man she had shot in the shoulder was holding the shell racer against the side of the boat. His sleeve was drenched in blood and he was white-faced, swaying in his seat. She did not think she had to worry about him. The fellow she had knocked back into his own position in the racer had recovered. He began to haul himself aboard, blood dribbling from his ear, a gash on his right cheek and a deadly expression on his ferret face.
Now the second craft was only yards away. With eight against two there was no hope. Where was Holm? The boat was drifting. She could not see him anywhere.
“Holm?” she yelled. “Holm, where are you?”
It came out as a screech. Her opponent grinned — he didn’t think much of her. She struck at him with the boathook, missed. Struck again, and this time the curving brass hook slammed into his knuckles. He tried to snatch it out of her hands but she managed to tear it free, gashing his arm.
Tali swung the boathook wildly. It caught in one of the sail lines. She freed it and backed away, but she was up against the side with nowhere to go.
“Holm, they’re aboard! Get out here.”
He burst up from a hatch at the bow, carrying a metal canister the size of the porridge pot, with a lid on. Tali’s opponent drew his sword and went for Holm. Holm bent, did something with the canister then, almost casually, tossed it at the approaching shell racer. It smacked into the water near the bow, sank, and went off like a small Cythonian bombast.
The bow of the racer was lifted fifteen feet into the air. The stern remained where it was. The bow kept going up, up, up until it was vertical, tumbling the rowers back onto the lowest man, then the craft sliced down through the water, carrying the four rowers with it, and disappeared.
The boat heeled violently under the water-blast but Tali, who had her back to the rail, kept her feet. The ferret-faced man had fallen to one knee. She sprang across the deck and dealt him a monumental blow to the head with the boathook, right where she had hit him with the chain. It felled him but did not knock him out. He struggled to his hands and knees, collapsed and struggled up again, fumbling out a knife.
If it’s you or me, thought Tali, it’s not going to be me. She whacked him again and this time he did not get up.
Where were the others? She looked around. The man who had gone for Holm lay unconscious — no, surely dead with that great wound in his neck. Holm was pursuing another man around the deck with the weapon that had done the damage — a harpoon. The fellow turned and struck at Holm with a curved sword like a scimitar.
He ran backwards, raising the harpoon. “Surrender or die.”
The man lunged at him and Holm put the harpoon through his breastbone.
Holm wrenched it out, went to the side and said to the injured man holding the boat, “I’ll give you the same choice.”
The man looked at the bloody harpoon, and then at Holm, and said, “I’m going.”
“Take him with you.”
Holm dragged the semi-conscious ferret-faced man to the side, heaved him onto it, then dropped him into the shell racer, head-first. The injured man rowed awkwardly away.
“Give us a hand with these, will you?” said Holm.
He took the man with the neck wound under the arms. Tali lifted his feet and they heaved him over. The harpooned man was much bigger. It took three goes before they could get him up onto the side and by then Tali was seeing double. She held the man there; Holm rolled him into the sea.
They watched the little shell racer limp out of sight. “Do you think they’ll get back to tell the story?” she said, swaying on her feet.
“With that injury, I’ll be surprised if he gets a mile. Better sit down before you fall down.”
Tali slumped down with her back to the mast. “What about the other racer? The fifth one?”
“I’d say we’ve lost it. But keep an eye out, just in case.”
Holm sighed, collected water in a bucket on a rope and scrubbed the blood off the deck. Tali crawled across to the crossbow, cleared the jammed bolt and put it away, trying not to think about the violence and her part in all those men’s deaths.
“How did you make that canister go off like that?”
“Got the idea from some of the enemy’s weapons,” said Holm. “I used to dabble in alchymie when I was young — ”
“Is there anything you haven’t done?”
“Not much, but now isn’t the time for it. You’re shaking. Come inside, I’ll make you a cup of tea?”
“Thank you. And maybe I’ll have the bacon and eggs after all. I think I could hold it down now.”
“It’s hungry work, fighting for your life.”
“And taking other people’s lives.”
“It was them or us.”
“We still killed them.”
“I know, I know.”
Holm set a course south and east, heading inshore until they were within sight of land, where the icebergs were fewer and further apart. They ate bacon and eggs, soaked up the fat with chunks of bread, and sailed on. In an hour or two they were passing The Cape, an outjutting finger of mountainous land that marked the south-westerly end of Hightspall.
“Beyond here we’ll be sailing east, through the straits between Hightspall and ice-bound Suden. We’ll have to keep a sharp lookout there. The straits are shallow, treacherous waters, full of rocky reefs and sandbanks, and the tidal currents are fast and treacherous.”
“Anything else we have to worry about?”
“As I said earlier, it’s Cythonian territory.”
“But they’re not sailors, are they?”
“You know them better than anyone. You tell me.”
“I never heard of any of them being sailors… though they could have practised sailing on the lake at night.”
“I’d better keep a sharp lookout.”
“I’ll take a watch,” said Tali.
“Not now you won’t. Go below, have a sleep and don’t come back ’til dark.”
Despite her exhaustion, sleep was a long time coming. She kept seeing the faces of the dead, and the way each man had died… Tali woke abruptly and she could still see daylight through the porthole. What had roused her?
“Tali!”
It was Holm, yelling. “What’s the matter?” she said sleepily, pulling on the oversized sea boots he had given her.