‘Board!’ Rillish roared. Men swung down on ropes or jumped. One fell short and grasped an oar, only to disappear with a shriek as the sides pounded together. A rope ladder was tossed, unrolling, and Rillish grasped hold of it. Marese marines waited below in dark leathers. A volley of arrows slashed the side of the Malazan transport. Men and women fell, striking the deck with leaden thumps.
Rillish crashed heavily to the deck, righted himself. Around him marines pushed forward to the stern. The Marese had raised a shield-wall amidships and from behind this bow-fire raked the boarders. Rillish drew his two slim duelling blades. ‘Forward!’
More of the heavy infantry reached the deck, adding their weight to the surge against the shieldwall. Rillish clawed his way to the front rank. He danced high, stabbing down over a shield to feel the blade flense cheek, grate from teeth. The man screamed, gurgled, fell. Rillish tumbled down on top of him. In the cramped confines of the narrow vessel a marine fell across Rillish and as she did so a gout of water shot from her mouth and even from her ears. Her dead eyes rolled blood-red, their vessels burst.
Sea-magics! The ship’s mage! Rillish straightened, wiped the foul water from his face. There! At the stern, hair wild in the wind, gold torcs at his arms, gesturing, and with each wave a swath of marines falling, clutching their throats. Rillish gulped for air. ‘Take the stern, heavies! For the Empire!’
The press heaved against the shieldwall, but the Marese held. The ship’s mage wreaked murder through the marines. His powers seemed unlimited here in his element. Then a great bull of a trooper in bright mail broke through the wall and, wielding a two-handed blade that he chopped up and down more like an axe, reached the sterncastle stairs. The shieldwall was shattered, disintegrating. The trooper reached the stairway and marines poured up with him. The ship’s mage threw some magery that levelled many, but the trooper in the bright mail coat, the helm cast to resemble a snarling wolf’s head, shook it off to reach the man with a great two-handed blow that severed him from collarbone to sternum.
Rillish came clambering up to the stern to see the marine pull off the helm to show what he’d suspected: the matted silver hair and flushed sweaty face of Captain Peles. Rillish clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Well fought, Captain.’
She inclined her head to Rillish. ‘And not many Fists lead a charge against a shieldwall.’
Rillish waved that aside. ‘The mage — he didn’t slow you down…’
Panting, the woman gave a modest shrug. ‘The Wolves were with me this day, sir.’
‘Well, thank them for that.’
A sailor saluted Rillish. ‘Captain’s regards, Fist. The transport is stove through, irretrievable.’
‘Have all personnel transferred over. Cut the lines.’
‘All, sir? That’s far too much weight for a vessel this size. We’ll wallow in these high waves, take on water…’
Rillish just laughed. ‘Haven’t you heard, man? These vessels are unsinkable.’
After the sailor left, shaking his head, Peles regarded Rillish. She pushed back her sodden hair. ‘Now what, sir?’
‘Well, as the man said. We’re overcrowded.’ He gave Peles a grin. ‘I think we could use another ship.’
Peles was cleaning her two-handed blade on the robes of the dead mage. ‘Aye, sir. That we could.’
*
Suth’s Blue transport was secured side by side with a twin as a kind of gigantic catamaran. They carried suspended between them some sort of beam construction as long as the ships themselves. Despite this awkward arrangement they made good time, had bulled through swaths of burning sea, knocked aside rudderless hulks, submerged countless souls shouting and begging from the waves, and looked to be keeping place as the standard-bearer for the charge to the Fist coast. Dawn was nearing and in the half-light more Marese war galleys could be glimpsed cutting across their bows. ‘Too many,’ Len said, his elbows on the railing. ‘Don’t know how we’ll make it.’
Orders rang out and Blue sailors, indistinguishable from their marine brethren, climbed the rigging. More sail unfurled, billowed and bellied, taking the wind aslant. Suth watched the tall mainmast, amazed by the sight.
‘Still too slow,’ Len grumbled.
A Moranth sailor in the crow’s nest gave a warning shout.
‘Here they come,’ said Len.
The sleek black war galleys closed from either side, lunging like tossed javelins. As they closed the Blue captain found an extra ounce of speed from somewhere to slip just ahead. The troops sent up a great cheer as the Marese coursed across the transport’s broad foaming wake.
‘We won’t surprise them like that-’ Len was beginning when twin reports as of siege arbalests sounded from the Marese galleys and missiles came hissing through the air to crash into the transport’s stern. The vessel lurched almost to a standstill and everyone’s feet were cut from beneath them while barrels tumbled overboard and ropes snapped, singing.
Recovering, Suth clambered to the rear. Here among the wreckage of broken wood and twisted iron Blue marines were hacking at what appeared to be giant grapnels that had gouged hold of the stern.
‘Cut them!’ someone shouted.
‘They’re chain!’
‘We’re dragging!’
A Blue officer appeared, yelled orders. Axes emerged. Out amid the brightening waves Suth saw more Mare vessels closing. The grapnels led via lengths of chain to thick ropes that stretched to the two war galleys. Both were backing oars, sending up a great churning froth of water.
‘Cut them!’
‘Chop the wood!’
Then the young Adjunct was there. He brushed aside the Blue axemen. ‘Room,’ he shouted, and drew his blade. Sunlight blinded Suth, flashing from the curved ivory blade. The Adjunct swung it overhead two-handed, hacking, raising high piercing shrieks of metal. The transport lurched forward. A marine almost fell overboard but was pulled back. The Adjunct swung again and the ship sprang free, surging ahead. Suth stared where the chains swung, severed cleanly just back from the grapnel.
The Adjunct sheathed his blade.
‘It cut,’ someone whispered. ‘Cut iron…’
‘Did you ever see the like…’
The Adjunct glared with his dark eyes as if expecting some sort of challenge, then turned away without a word.
Later, Suth, like many, went to examine the severed links. He found the iron mirror-bright and clean. Its edge was so sharp it cut one of his fingers.
They had pushed on through the greatest concentration of Mare vessels. Behind, bursts of orange glare and a banner of thick black smoke hanging low over the water obscured dawn. A final war galley rammed them on the port forward of the mainmast, but a volley of lobbed munitions from the Moranth left the ship so devastated that it drifted away, seemingly unmanned. As for the transport, while Suth was bent over the gunwale inspecting the great hole punched into the side, a Blue marine just said: ‘Our ships are also hard to sink.’
Orders came later that day to return to the hold to get some sleep. The assault would come tomorrow. The marines filed back down. Talk now lingered on this Adjunct. Who was he? Where was he from? One crazy rumour had him once serving among the mercenary company the Crimson Guard.
‘I hope he’s with us tomorrow,’ Dim said.
For once, Pyke had nothing to say.
*
Their captured Mare war galley rocked dead in the water as it was too jammed with marines to row effectively. Rillish and the Malazan captain, a mariner named Sketh out of the Seven Cities region, argued over everything in their new overcrowded vessel. The captain berated Rillish for heaping everyone into the war galley; Rillish responded by inviting him to rejoin his crippled former command. The captain told him to keep his mouth shut, as he was the captain; Rillish pointed out that Seven Cities was a desert.