As the pointed ram of the squid ship penetrated the plane of the portal, the large vessel's motion changed noticeably, and Teldin realized his first mate might not have been exaggerating the dangers after all. If he'd been aboard one of the small river craft he'd know as a youth, he'd have guessed the ship had been caught by an eddy of some kind. Here, without anything for there to be an eddy in, it had to be some kind of attribute of the portal itself. The hull proper entered the portal, and the sideways, twisting motion became more pronounced. Spars creaked and lines groaned as the rigging took the strain. Then the mainmast itself was through, and the canvas of the mainsail cracked like a bombard as a blast of wind struck it from an unexpected direction.
"Look out above! It's…" The rest of Julia's screamed warning was drowned out by the scream of tortured wood. Instantly, Teldin snapped his head up.
The gaff boom, mounted on the aft side of the mainmast, was angled far out-way too far out-over the starboard rail of the squid ship. The sail, still bellied out, was applying force to pivot it even farther out of line. The only things keeping the boom from being torn away altogether were its mount-a metal bolt-and-eye bracket on the mainmast-and two half-inch ropes that ran down from its tip to belaying-pin racks on the port and starboard rails.
"Strike the mainsail, now," the Cloakmaster bellowed, "or we'll lose the boom, maybe the mast!" Crewmen sprinted to where the main sheets were cleated off and struggled to release them against the abnormal pressures of the sail.
A shrill scream echoed the length of the Boundless. Teldin raised his gaze higher, above the twisted bracket that supported the boom. "Paladine's blood!" he screamed. "The lookout! Get her down!" The force generated by the flapping mainsail was being transmitted through the boom into the mainmast itself, twisting and torquing it in ways it had never been designed to resist. The mast top lashed back and forth like the end of a riding crop. To Teldin, on the deck below, it looked as though the mast were a live thing, purposefully trying to shake the shrieking Merrienne out of the crow's nest.
Julia saw the girl's peril, too. "Crew aloft!" she yelled. A handful of crewmen ran to the ratlines, then stopped in bafflement. On the starboard side, the boom was already tangled in the ratlines, twisting what were usually broad rope ladders into warped renderings of spiderwebs. On the port side, the mast's contortions were transferred directly to the ratlines, making them jerk and vibrate like the strings of a plucked lute. There was no way anyone could climb them.
"Strike that sail!" Djan cried, echoing Teldin's order.
But it was too late. Even as the crew members freed the main sheet to let the mainsail flap free, the line connecting the boom to the port rail parted with a crack like a giant's whip, With nothing to stop it, the gaff boom swung farther around, out over the starboard rail, and pivoted completely until it pointed almost dead forward.
The mounting bracket, already hideously strained, failed. With a screech of tearing metal, the boom came loose from the mainmast and crashed to the foredeck, striking the glacis of the catapult turret.
As the boom came free and the torque it had produced vanished, the mainmast twanged audibly, its tip flailing wildly. With a piercing scream, Merrienne was snapped out of the crow's nest to land with a sickening thud on the main deck.
"Strike the sails!" the Cloakmaster roared. "All of them! And bring the helm down!" As the crew leaped to obey his orders, Teldin couldn't drag his gaze from the small, huddled figure lying on the planking, her head surrounded by a halo of fine blond hair that had been shaken free from its bun. The ship's two healers knelt beside the woman, blocking the Cloakmaster's view. He turned away.
Then, suddenly, a sickening thought struck him. Julia was on the foredeck, where the boom had landed!
Teldin almost jumped down the ladder and sprinted across the foredeck. He staved off a massive jolt of guilt as he passed Merrienne's huddled body. The healers can do more for her than I can, he told himself. He sprinted up the portside ladder to the forecastle.
Julia was unscathed, he saw immediately, but another crewman hadn't been so lucky. The falling boom had bounced off the metal facing of the turret, shattering the port foredeck rail as if it were kindling. Somewhere along its path it had struck someone with the ill fortune to be standing just aft of the catapult shot hopper. Julia was kneeling beside the fallen man, her ear pressed to his chest, listening for a heartbeat.
Teldin didn't have to come any closer to know it was futile. The man's left shoulder and neck had taken the brunt of the impact, pulping the bones. The side of the man's skull, too, looked soft, like an overripe fruit. Even though the victim's face was distorted, Teldin recognized him easily as Allyn, the gunner's mate. The wind-tanned old man who'd survived a career in space that was longer than Teldin's entire life.
For what? the captain found himself wondering. To come here, to die in the service of Teldin Moore, Cloakmaster?
He looked up into the chaotic "sky" of the phlogiston that now surrounded the ship, tears blurring his view. Why? he silently demanded. Just what in the Abyss is it all for? One more dead-maybe two, if the healers' expressions were any indication. And the voyage had barely begun. How many more would fall before it was all over?
"Ship ahoy!"
The hoarse shout cut through Teldin's dark thoughts. He snapped his head around toward the source of the voice.
It was Dargeth, the half-orc, a member of the catapult crew. He was leaning against the forward rail of the turret, pointing out into the Flow. "Ship ahoy!" he repeated. "High on the port bow."
Teldin's gaze quartered the area of space Dargeth had specified. Nothing…
Yes, there it was, a black shape against the riotous colors of the phlogiston. It was close, too-closer than a ship had any right to be without being spotted… "What's the ship?" Teldin yelled. "And what course?"
The answer came from the afterdeck. Djan stood braced against the mizzenmast, Teldin's brass spyglass to his eye. "Battle dolphin," he called back. "And it's on an intercept course."
"A battle dolphin, confirmed," Djan sang out again a moment later. "It's maneuvering, probably trying to come in below us."
Even without a spyglass, Teldin could see that the half-elf was right. The black shape of the enemy ship was sinking toward the starboard rail. Soon it would be masked from view-and from weapon shot-by the squid ship's own hull.
"Load all weapons!" the Cloakmaster ordered. "Helm up now!"
"It'll take a couple of minutes to warm it up," Julia reminded him.
Teldin cursed under his breath, remembering his own order to bring the helm down. They didn't have a couple of minutes. But, at least, they did have other options.
"Get Beth-Abz up on deck," he told Julia. Then he planted his back against the mainmast and braced his feet. With an effort, he forced his breathing to slow and his muscles to relax.
*****
Berglund lowered his spyglass and snorted in amazement. The mystery man had proven himself right on two counts. Here was the target squid ship, right on time-and, lo and behold, dead in space. Would wonders never cease?
He flashed the other members of his bridge crew a predatory smile. "Bring us in," he ordered quietly. "Below their hull, if you please."
"Yesss, ssir," his first mate, an olive-scaled lizardman, hissed. Surprisingly fast for his heavy build, he hurried down the ladder to the helm compartment directly below, to convey his captain's orders.
"They're not maneuvering," Rejhan, Berglund's second mate, told him. "Their helm must be down."