The pirate captain nodded his agreement. "Continue to bring us in," he ordered. Then his smile broadened. "And… catapults away," he added almost negligently.
The hull of the Shark jarred beneath his feet as the vessel's twin catapults fired.
****
"They're firing! Take cover!" Djan screamed from the sterncastle.
Around him, Teldin heard the scurrying of feet as the crew took Djan's suggestion and found shelter. He wanted to do the same thing himself, wanted to crouch behind the metal glacis of the turret.
But saving his own life wasn't the only thing he had to worry about at the moment. The ship and its entire crew were his responsibility. The helm was down, and the Boundless truly helpless…
Unless he did something about it.
The squid ship jolted hard as a catapult shot struck the low port quarter of the bow. In his peripheral vision the Cloakmaster saw the second shot hurtle by, a couple of yards away.
"They're reloading!" Djan called.
Teldin took a deep breath-so deep that his chest felt as though it would burst-then let all the air spill out of his lungs. A sense of calm came down upon him, stilling the knotting fear in his belly. The sounds around him-the creak of the windlass as the weapon crew wound back the main catapult, the thunder of feet on the deck-seemed suddenly muffled, not as sharp, somehow. And yet he could hear everything, even those noises normally much too quiet for his ears to detect. He felt the presence of the cloak on his back.
The cloak felt warm around his shoulders-not the simple, passive warmth of a garment, more like the vibrant warmth of a living thing. Even though he couldn't see it, he knew it was starting to glow with a pink light. He felt his awareness start to blossom, to expand. I am the ship….
Julia grabbed his arm, and the glow-and the expanded perception associated with it-faded slightly. "Get below," she told him. "You're exposed out here."
He shook his head. "No time. I have to take over the ship now."
She gripped tighter. "You can do that from anywhere!" she shouted at him. "If you get yourself killed up here, what good will that do the rest of us?"
He wanted to argue but had to accept the sense of her words. He let the awareness, the sense of the cloak's power, slip away. Then he turned and followed her down into the forecastle.
*****
The squid ship still hadn't moved, Berglund saw. It still just hung there against the backdrop of the Flow, like a strangely shaped fruit ripe for the picking. He turned to his second mate.
"Rejhan, bring us in along their axis, full on the bow," he ordered.
The dark-haired man looked aghast. "On the bow… ?" he echoed. "But… but captain, all they have to do is roll and we're in their main catapult's field of fire, at point-blank range."
"Follow my orders," Berglund said, his voice deceptively calm.
Rejhan blanched even more and jumped to obey.
Berglund smiled. But behind that smile, he was doubting. Am I depending too much on the mystery man's promises? he asked himself. The next two minutes would tell.
*****
Teldin hurried into his cabin, flung himself into a chair, and tried to recapture the sense of calm. To his surprise, it returned almost at once. Again he felt his perception, his awareness, expand beyond the physical limits of his body, until it encompassed the whole ship. Again, he was the ship: he could feel its every plank, its every dowel. Its keel was his spine, its thwarts his ribs, its hull his skin, and its sheets and lines his muscles. He could sense the minor damage inflicted on the hull by the enemy's catapult shot, and the torn and twisted rigging, as a strange tingling, a kind of pain-yet-not-pain. The cabin brightened as the cloak began to glow with a rosy pink light.
With his expanded perception, he could see the approaching enemy clearly, even though he was inside the ship, and the other vessel was screened by the squid ship's own bow. The adversary was close enough now for him to make out details without the benefit of a spyglass.
A dolphin, Djan had called it, and the name was appropriate. It was a smooth-lined ship reminiscent of a huge fish-maybe a jumping trout, Teldin thought-with its horizontal fluked tail raised higher than the main body. A turret atop the tail contained one catapult-heavy or medium, he couldn't be sure-while another catapult was mounted on the main deck just forward of the mast. The whole vessel, painted a misty blue-gray, was as long as the squid ship and slightly broader, hinting at a greater tonnage. The battle dolphin was coming in slowly, though Teldin had the unmistakable feeling it could move fast enough when necessary.
There was something about the ship's approach that bothered Teldin. It took him a moment to realize what it was.
"They're coming in wrong," the Cloakmaster said to Julia, who was standing in the cabin doorway. In his own ears, his voice sounded emotionless, detached. "It's as if they're daring us to roll and use our catapult. What do they know that we don't?"
Julia opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak Teldin's answer came from the deck above him. A crash and screams of fright came from the forward turret. The Cloakmaster's perception instantly focused on the foredeck.
The catapult had torn itself apart, he saw at once. As the crew had been winding back the shaft, one of the thick skeins of hemp fiber that provided the weapon's power had torn. The unbalanced force had wrenched the shaft to one side, tearing it loose from one of the bearings. A man in the weapon crew had been struck by the shaft and seemed to have a broken arm. The others were unharmed, he was glad to see.
But the catapult-the squid ship's only forward-firing weapon-had been rendered useless.
How did the enemy captain know… ?
*****
The Sharks second mate lowered his spyglass and shot a sidelong glance at Berglund. "Their catapult's down, Captain," he said.
Berglund just nodded. "Clear their decks, Rejhan," he ordered simply.
The second mate jumped to relay the order, but the unasked question still echoed in his head: How had the captain known… ?
*****
"Firing again!"
Teldin could hear Djan's voice twice-once, muffled, through his own ears; and once, clear as crystal, via his expanded perception. Even against the distracting background of the flow, he could track the enemy's catapult shots coming in. This time they weren't single stones, but clusters of pebbles. This "grape shot" couldn't harm a ship's hull or rigging, but was absolute murder on an exposed crew. He tried to call out a warning, but was a moment too late.
The tiny stones rattled off the foredeck over Teldin's head, sounding like a sudden lashing of hail. His ears were filled with screams. All over the ship he saw crewmen stagger and fall as the tiny stones tore into their flesh. Djan's forearm was laid open to the bone, but he kept his position by the speaking tube.
I've got to get us out of this, Teldin told himself, or they'll slaughter us. He extended the power of the cloak, the ultimate helm, and tested the squid ship's response.
With the first touch of power it surged forward responsively, but it resisted turning and rolling as if it were a live thing. It must be the rigging damage, Teldin realized, with a chill feeling in his stomach. Even with the ultimate helm, a ship needs rigging if it's to maneuver. He cut back on the power and examined the situation.
It wasn't good. As he'd discovered from experimenting with the Fool, he could drive a ship with any degree of speed or control only forward. That meant the Boundless's possible range of motion could be pictured as a flaring cone centered around the line of its keel. In this case, it was a narrow funnel, because he couldn't turn the ship's bow rapidly. No matter how fast he drove the ship, he'd still be within the battle dolphin's fire pattern for several minutes, the last portion of which he'd be at point-blank range.