Rising screams from the water told of some new development; warily, Locke glanced over the edge. A roiling, gelatinous mass floated beside the boat like a translucent blanket, pulsing with a faint internal luminescence that was visible even by day. As Locke watched, a swimming man was drawn, screaming, into this mass. In seconds, the gooey substance around his legs clouded red and he began to spasm. The thing was drawing the blood out of his pores as a man might suck the juice from a pulpy fruit.
A death-lantern, drawn as ever to the scent of blood in the water. A gods-awful way to go, even for people Locke was actively trying to kill — but it and the others sure to come would take care of the swimmers. No more Sovereigns were climbing up the sides; the few left in the boat below were frantically trying to escape the thing in the water beside them. Locke dropped his spear and took a few much-needed deep breaths. A second later an arrow hit the rail two feet above his head; another hissed past it completely; a third struck the wheel.
"Cover," he hollered, looking around frantically for a shield. A moment later Jean grabbed him and dragged him to the right, where he was holding Gwillem's body up before him. Jabril crawled behind the binnacle, while Mumchance and his mate mimicked Jean's ploy with Streva's body. Locke felt the impact as at least one arrow sank into the quartermaster's corpse.
"Might feel bad later about using the dead like this," hollered Jean, "but hell, there's certainly enough of them around."
11
Ydrena Koros came over the rail and nearly killed Zamira with the first slash of her scimitar. The blade rebounded off Elderglass — still, Zamira burned at the thought that her guard had slipped. She struck back with both sabres but Ydrena, small and lithe, had all the room she needed to parry one and avoid the other. So fast, so effortlessly fast — Zamira gritted her teeth. Two blades on one, and Koros still filled the air between them with a deadly silver blur; Zamira lost her hat and very nearly her neck, parrying only at the last second. Another slash hissed against her vest, a second sliced one of her bracers. Shit — she backed into one of her own sailors. There was nowhere else to go on the deck.
Koros conjured a curving, broad-bladed dagger in her left hand, feinted with it and swept her scimitar at Zamira's knees. Zamira released her sabres and stepped into Koros's guard, putting them chest to chest. She grabbed Ydrena's arms with her own, forcing them out and down with all her strength. In that, at last, she had the advantage — that and one thing more: fighting dirty usually prevailed over fighting prettily.
Zamira brought her left knee up into Ydrena's stomach. Ydrena sank; Zamira grabbed her hair and slammed her in the chin. The smaller woman's teeth made a sound like clattering billiard balls. Zamira heaved her to her feet and threw her backward, onto the sword of the Sovereign directly behind her. A brief look of surprise flared on the woman's blood-smeared face, then died with her. Zamira felt more relief than triumph.
She fetched her sabres from the deck where thed'r fallen; as the sailor now in front of her pulled his sword from Ydrena and let her body drop, he suddenly found one of Zamira's blades in his chest. The battle ground on, and her actions became mechanical — her sabres rose and fell against the screaming tide of Rodanov's people, and the deaths ran together into one red cacophony. Arrows flew, blood slicked the deck beneath her feet and the ships rolled and yawed atop the sea, lending a nightmarish shifting quality to everything.
It might have been minutes or ages before she found Ezri at her arm, pulling her away from the rail. Rodanov's people were falling back to regroup; the deck was thick with dead and wounded; her own survivors were all but standing on them as they stumbled into one another and fell back themselves. "Del," gasped Zamira, "you hurt?"
"No." Ezri was covered in blood; her leathers had been slashed and her hair was partially askew, but otherwise she appeared to be intact. "The flying company?" "No idea, Captain." "Nasreen? Utgar?" "Nasreen's dead. Haven't seen Utgar since the fight started."
"Drakasha," came a voice above the moans and mutterings of the confusion on both sides. Rodanov's voice. "Drakasha! Cease fighting! Everyone, cease fighting! Drakasha, listen to me!"
12
Rodanov glanced at the arrow sunk into his right upper arm. Painful, but not the deep, grinding agony that told of a touch to the bone. He grimaced, used his left hand to steady the arrowhead and then reached up with his right to snap the shaft just above it. He gasped, but that would do until he could deal with it properly. He hefted his club again, shaking blood onto the deck of the Sovereign.
Ydrena dead; gods-damn it, his first mate for five years, on the bloody deck. He" d laid about with his club to get to her side, splintering shields and beating aside spears. At least half a dozen Orchids to him, and he'd been their match — Dantierre he'd knocked clean over the side. But the fighting space was too narrow, the rolling of the ships unpredictable, his crewfolk too thin around him. Zamira" d suffered miserably, but at this confined point of contact he was stymied. A lack of brawling at the Orchid's stern meant that the boats had probably fared the same. Shit. Half his crew was gone, at least. It was time to spring his second surprise. His calling a halt to the battle was the signal to bring it on. All in, now — last game, last hand, last turn of the cards. "Zamira, don't make me destroy your ship!" "Go to hell, you oath-breaking son of a bitch! You come and try again, if you think you still have any crewfolk willing to die in a hurry!"
Locke had left Jabril, Mumchance and Mumchance's mate — along with the death-lanterns, he supposed — to guard the stern. He and Jean hurried forward, through the strangeness of air suddenly free from arrows, past the mounds of dead and wounded. Scholar Treganne stumped past, her false leg loud against the desk, single-handedly dragging Rask behind her. At the waist, Utgar stood, using a hook to pull up the main-deck cargo-hatch grating. A leather satchel was at his feet; Locke presumed he was on some business for the captain and ignored him.
They found Drakasha and Delmastro at the bow, with about twenty surviving Orchids staring at twice their number of Sovereigns across the way. Ezri hugged Jean fiercely; she looked as though she'd been through a great deal of blood but not yet lost any of her own. Up here the Orchid seemed to have no deck; only a surface layer of dead and nearly dead. Blood drained off the sides in streams. "Not me," shouted Rodanov. "Here," yelled Utgar at the Orchid's waist. "Here, Drakasha!"
Locke turned to see Utgar holding a grey sphere, perhaps eight inches in diameter, with a curiously greasy surface. He cradled it in his left hand, holding it over the open cargo hatch, and his right hand clutched something sticking out of the top of the sphere. "Utgar," said Drakasha, "what the hell do you think you're—"
"Don't make a fucking move, right? Or you know what I'll do with this thing." "Gods above," whispered Ezri, "I don't believe this." "What the hell is that?" Locke asked. "Bad news," she said. "Fucking awful news. That's a shipbane sphere." Jean listened as she explained quickly.
"Alchemy, black alchemy, expensive as hell. You have to be fucking crazy to bring one to sea, same reason most captains shy away from fire-oil. But worse. Whole thing goes white-hot. You can't touch it; can't get close. Leave it on deck and it burns right through, down into the innards, and it sets anything on fire. Hell, it can probably set water on fire. Sure doesn't go out when you douse it." "Utgar," said Drakasha, "you motherfucker, you traitor, how could—"
"Traitor? No. I'm Rodanov's man; am and have been since before I joined. His idea, hey? If I" ve done you good service, Drakasha, I" ve just been doing my job." "Have him shot," said Jean. "That thing he's holding is the twist-match fuse," said Ezri. "He moves his right hand, or we kill him and make that thing drop, it comes right out and ignites. This is what those damned things are for, get it? One man can hold a hundred prisoner if he just stands in the right spot." "Utgar," Drakasha said, "Utgar, we're winning this fight." "You might" ve been. Why do you think I stepped in?"