“Go, boys, go!” said Lord Ermenwyr happily, clinging to the mast. “Isn’t there some sort of colorful rhythmic chant one does at moments like these?”
The demons strained slightly, and the Kingfisher’s Nest groaned and began to slither sideways.
“That’s it!” Smith yelled. “Keep going!”
The Kingfisher’s Nest wobbled, creaked, and—
“Go! Go! Go!”
—lurched into deep water with a splash, and a wave rose and slopped along the riverbank.
“Stand to,” said Smith. As he bent to loose the cable, he became aware of a sound like low thunder. Looking up over his shoulder, he pinpointed the source of the noise. Strangel was growling, glaring into the forest with eyes of flame, and it was not a metaphor.
Smith went on the defensive at once, groping for weapons he did not have. As he followed Strangel’s line of sight, he saw them too: five green men in a green forest, cloaked in green, staring back coldly from the shadows, and each man wore a baldric studded with little points of green, and each man had in his hand a cane tube.
Strangel roared, and charged them.
Their arms moved in such perfect unison they might have been playing music, but instead of a perfect flute chord a flight of darts came forth, striking each one home into Strangel’s wide chest.
He kept coming as though he felt nothing, and they fell back wide-eyed but readied a second barrage, with the same eerie synchronization. The darts struck home again. They couldn’t have missed. Strangel seemed to lose a little of his momentum, but he was still advancing, and smashing aside branches as he came. Not until the third flight of darts had struck him did his roar die in his throat. He slowed. He stopped. His arms remained up, great taloned hands flexed for murder. Their forward weight toppled him and he fell, rigid, and rolled over like a log rolling.
His snarling features seemed cut from stone. The lights of his eyes had died.
The Yendri stared down at him in astonishment.
Smith turned and dove into the river.
He was scrambling over the rail of the Kingfisher’s Nest when the first dart struck wood beside his hand. He felt Willowspear seize his collar and pull him over, to sprawl flat on the deck, and he thought he saw Lord Ermenwyr running forward. Cutt, Crish, and Stabb gave voice to a keening ululation, above which very little else could be heard; but Smith made out the clang that meant someone had closed the stopcock, followed by a tinkly noise like silver rain. He looked up dazedly and saw poisoned darts hitting the boiler domes, bouncing off harmlessly, and Lord Ermenwyr on his hands and knees behind the domes.
“Rope! Rope!” he was shouting, and Smith realized what he meant. The Kingfisher’s Nest had been borne backward on the current, stopped only by the cable that he had not managed to loose in time. It swung now on the flood, its cable straight as a bar. Smith dragged himself forward to the tool chest by the boiler domes, and, groping frantically, there he found a kindling hatchet.
He rose to his knees, saw two Yendri directly opposite him on the bank in the act of loading their cane tubes, and took a half dozen frenzied whacks at the cable before diving flat again. The darts flew without noise. But he heard them strike the domes again, and one dart bounced and landed point down on his hand. He shook it off frantically, noting in horror the tarry smear on his skin where the dart had lain. Someone seized the hatchet out of his hand and he rolled to see Willowspear bringing it down on the cable, bang, and the cable parted and they shot away backward down the river, wheeling round in the current like a leaf.
The oars had begun to beat again by the time Smith could scramble to the helm and bring her around, thanking all the gods they hadn’t grounded a second time.
“Was anybody hit?” he cried. The demons were still howling, hurling threats palpable as boulders back upriver. “Shut up! Was anybody hit?”
“I wasn’t,” said Willowspear, picking himself up. “My lord? My lord!”
Smith spotted Lord Ermenwyr still crouched behind the boilers, his teeth bared, his eyes squeezed shut. Sweat was pouring from his face. Smith groaned and punched the wheel, and Willowspear was beside his liege lord at once, struggling to open his collar; but Lord Ermenwyr shook his head.
“I’m not hit,” he said.
“But what’s—”
“I lost one of them,” he said, opening sick eyes. “And Mother’s right. It hurts worse than anything I’ve ever known. Damn, damn, damn.”
“What can I do for you, my lord?” Willowspear lowered his voice.
“Help me up,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “They need me to do something.”
“Who were those people? What happens now?” Smith asked, steering downriver.
The lordling did not reply, but steadied himself on his feet with Willowspear’s help. He brushed himself off and marched aft to Cutt, Crish, and Stabb. By the time he reached them he was swaggering.
“Now, boys, that’s enough! What good will shouting do?” he demanded.
They fell silent at once and turned to him meekly, and Smith was astonished to see their hideous faces wet with tears.
“Now we are no longer a set of four, Master,” said Cutt.
“Of course you are. Look! I’ve caught old Strangel right here.” Lord Ermenwyr held up a button he’d plucked from his waistcoat. “See? There’s his living soul. I’ll put it in a new body as soon as ever we’re home. But what does he need now?”
The demons stared at him, blank. Then they looked at one another, blanker still.
“Revenge!” Lord Ermenwyr told them. “Lots of bloody and terrible revenge! And who’s going to be the hideous force that dishes it out, eh?”
“…Us?” Stabb’s eyes lit again, and so did Cutt’s and so did the eyes of Crish.
“Yes!” Lord Ermenwyr sang, prancing back and forth before them. “Yes, you! Kill, kill, kill, kill! You’re going to break heads! You’re going to rip off limbs! You’re going to do amusing things with entrails!”
“Kill, kill, kill!” the demons chanted, lurching from foot to foot, and the deck boomed under their feet.
“Happy, happy, happy!”
“Happy, happy, happy!” The planks creaked alarmingly.
“Kill, kill, kill!”
“Kill, kill, kill!”
A while later they had come about and were steaming back up the river again, at their best speed.
“Half a point starboard!” Smith called down from the masthead. Below him, Willowspear at the helm steered to his direction cautiously, glancing now and then at the backs of his hands, where STARBOARD was chalked on the right and PORT on the left. On either side stood Cutt and Crish, shielding him each with a stateroom door removed from its hinges. Lord Ermenwyr sat behind him in a folding chair, shadowed over by Stabb with yet a third door. The lordling had his smoking tube out, but its barrel was loaded with poison darts gleaned from the deck, and he rolled it in his fingers and glared at the forest gliding past.
They drew level with the place where they had been attacked, and there was the cut cable trailing in the water; but of their assailants there was no sign.
“Two points to port,” Smith advised, and peered ahead.
The fogbanks of the coast lay far behind them; the air was clear and bright as a candle flame. From his high seat he could see forest rolling away for miles, thinning to yellow savanna far to the north and east, and he knew that the grain country of Troon was out beyond there. Westward the land rose gradually to a mountain range that paralleled the river. Far ahead, nearly over the curve of the world perhaps, the mountains got quite sharp, with a pallor nastily suggestive of snow though it was high summer.