*
As more fires burst to life in the darkness all around, Devaleth stared, horrified. Her countrymen! She lurched to the side of the sterncastle, clenched the wood to keep from falling. Torched like vermin! This was outrageous! She turned on Nok. ‘You knew…’
The Admiral had the grace to appear pained. ‘I knew their intent, yes. But whether it will be enough…’ He shrugged.
‘This is barbaric! You Malazans claim to be civilized.’
His gaze sharpened. ‘Is leaving a man to drown any more civilized? Dead is dead.’
She turned from him. So, will it be enough? All around she felt Ruse stirring. Flames died, steam misting into a suppressing fog. Yet through the waters, even submerged, the foreign alchemies of the Moranth burned on, sizzling and bubbling.
‘Give the order to advance with the transports,’ Nok told the liaison.
Moments later a verdant green brilliance threw Devaleth’s shadow out across the water, flashing from the sides of vessels locked together, sails burning, dark shapes flailing amid the waves. A light rain, Ruse-summoned, began to fall.
They passed a Blue dromond assaulted by three Mare war galleys. Two had stove it in, rams entangled in broken wood. Grapnels shot like quarrels from crossbows mounted on the side of the Moranth vessel. They trailed rope that entangled the enemy ship. Staccato eruptions reached Devaleth as the Blues tossed munitions of some sort down on to one war galley; shattered wood flew, bodies spun over the sides, and the vessel lurched like a kicked toy.
Yet the battle was not all one-way. The Marese streaked like greyhounds, ramming at will. Many Blue vessels reared stern high, or wallowed, dead in the water. These the Marese ignored; in the shifting action of a naval engagement, to lose mobility was to be useless. That Blue man-of-war, rammed twice — even if it remained afloat, it was now so cumbersome it was for all purposes sunk.
A war galley emerged from the smoke, the swirling flames and the spume-topped waves, and charged the flagship. Its sides were scorched and smoke poured from its decking, yet the crew rowed no slower. Devaleth glanced back to the Admiral, who was watching its approach, a hand raised. The temptation to summon her Warren pulled at her. The fleshly demands of plain self-preservation. Yet to do so would announce herself to every ship’s mage present and invite a storm of reprisals.
It was close now; the oars had hit that unmistakable frantic ramming pace. The mage at the stern was a scarecrow figure in burned robes streaming smoke. They must have fought through the Lady’s own fury to reach them. At the last instant Nok gave the order and the flagship swung over with a swiftness startling for a vessel of its size. Bows turning, the Star now threatened to run over the war galley’s bank of oars, but a barked order from that ship’s master brought the sweeps high and the two vessels passed within an arm’s span of one another. Devaleth saw Nok salute the ship’s master at the tiller, who watched the Malazan vessel, his face unreadable. The war galley sped off into the night, its fate unknown. Did it engage another vessel? Did it at last, burned to the waterline, put her vaunted claims to the test?
That master’s face had been unreadable because, like myself, he probably had no reference for what was happening all around him. Things simply did not happen this way when the Marese went to sea. It was more than humbling. It was shattering.
*
Having been rammed and sunk on his first run to Korel lands, Rillish Jal Keth watched Mare war galleys manoeuvre out amid the dark ocean waves and felt a bowel-tightening sense of having seen all this before.
That the great ungainly transport still floated was something of a miracle. It had been a day of dodging and running, hiding behind the screen of Blue men-of-war. But the order had been given to break out. The fence was down and the wolves were in the fold. Now two war galleys cooperated in cornering the tall Quon three-master carrying over four hundred souls.
He turned to the transport’s master next to the ship’s tiller. ‘Not long, I think, Captain.’
‘Aye. It’s every man for himself out here now,’ the man grumbled.
Rillish crossed his arms, eyed the low sleek vessels cutting through the waves under oar and sail as swift as arrows. A light rain had started up, obscuring everything in a chilling grey haze. ‘I’ve heard they are unsinkable,’ he mused.
‘So they say.’
Rillish cocked his head to one side, wiped his face with the back of a hand, thought of the ramming he’d experienced before. ‘We have near four hundred Malazan heavy infantry on board this vessel, Captain. Their ships might be better than ours, but I’m willing to wager that our marines are more ferocious than theirs. How would you like a vessel that can’t sink under your feet?’
The ship’s master stroked his whiskered chin. His slit gaze shifted over to one Mare war galley sliding past, forcing a port turn from the sailing master. Then his gaze shifted back to Rillish. A broad smile split the man’s whiskers. He leaned over the railing of the sterncastle. ‘Ready all grapnels! Ready all boathooks! All troops on deck! Ready for boarding!’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ the mate shouted from amidships. ‘Ready for boarding!’
Rillish saluted the captain and went to his cabin. His aide helped him strap on his cuirass of banded iron, his vambraces and greaves. Last, he tied on his weapon belt and twinned Untan duelling swords. His helmet he tucked under an arm. Then he returned to the sterncastle. He found the ship’s captain and the sailing master both struggling with the long arm of the tiller.
‘Took your time,’ the captain called over the worsening weather. ‘Can’t hold them off any longer.’
‘Offer them a fat broadside target, Captain.’
The man spat with the wind. ‘Don’t tell me my business, landsman.’
‘I’ll be at the side.’
The captain waved him on. ‘Give them my sharp regards, yes?’
‘That’s my business, Captain.’ He descended to amidships and pushed his way through the crowd of heavies. He thrust his helmet at a nearby soldier, then climbed up into the ratlines. The spray of a wave crashing into the transport slashed over him. He regarded the crowded deck. ‘Soldiers of Malaz!’ he bellowed with all his strength. ‘We’re about to be rammed! There’s nothing to be done for it. But I’m glad!’ He pointed over the slate-grey waves. ‘Out there is a much better ship than this damned tub and they’re about to offer it to us! Now… what say you!’
Fists and swords thrust to the sky. A great answering roar momentarily drowned out the gusting wind, the booming sails. Rillish added his own raised fist. ‘Aye! Now — ready grapnels! Ready ropes! Ready boathooks!’
‘For the Fourth!’ rose a shout.
‘Eighth!’ came an answering call.
‘For the Empire!’ Rillish shouted.
A great roar answered that: ‘Aye!’
In no way did Rillish consider himself a sailor but even he could see the attack coming. One war galley threatened their port side, so the sailing master and the captain obligingly pressed their weight upon the arm to show the enemy their stern-plate and in so doing exposed their starboard to the second war galley, which was already lunging in upon them. Its bronze-capped ram thrust down into the dark green of a trough only to leap upwards again, throwing a crest of water high above the sleek vessel’s freeboard.
One more wave. ‘Brace for ramming!’ Rillish wrapped an arm and a leg in the ratlines.
The blow came as an enormous shudder, but such was the mass of the transport that it failed even to lurch sideways. Rillish was thrown yet managed to keep his grip on the ropes. Grapnels flew. The Marese crew back-oared powerfully. Canny Malazan marines used the boathooks to snare oars, throwing the banks into confusion. Shattered wood snarled as the master threw the tiller aside, bringing the vessels together. Marese oars snapped or were thrust down as the two ships swung to clash together. Rillish could imagine the carnage that must be occurring within the war galley.