The third Syndari galley burst out of the fog behind them, its oars sweeping the water to either side like great white wings as the hostile ship bore down on them.. Despite its menace, Alain could not help admiring the beauty of the sight and the pounding menace of the drum. But instead of ordering another immediate course change, the Gray Lady’s captain watched calmly, still listening. Alain, concentrating, could now catch a sound ahead as well, a murmuring and soft roaring he could not identify.
The galley was closing rapidly, Mari and her fellow Mechanics preparing to open fire again with their Mechanic weapons.
The captain suddenly roared a command back to the helm. “Hard right rudder! Six points to starboard!” Under the strong rudder, the Gray Lady yawed heavily, her deck listing at a high angle as the nimble ship swung to the right with an agility the larger, fast-moving galley couldn’t match. Alain caught a glimpse of white surf breaking on rocks to port as the Gray Lady turned away, realizing that the officers on the galley wouldn’t have heard the surf over the noise of its own passage and probably couldn’t stop in time.
They didn’t. Realizing too late the trap they had been led into, the galley tried to turn away in the Gray Lady’s wake, her banks of oars halting in the air, then frantically coming down in the opposite direction to try to check the galley’s speed. But the oars began clashing and banging against each other as panicky rowers lost discipline, and the smooth rhythm of the oars fell apart. The galley turned partway under the push of its rudder, but it was too late to avoid the rocks.
As the Gray Lady showed her stern to the galley, the Syndari ship suddenly shuddered violently. Alain could see oars on the side away from them, the side facing the rocks, bending and cracking. Distant cries of pain from battered oar handlers drifted across the water. The galley, having turned just enough to avoid running hard aground, bounced away from contact with the rocks, staggering like a drunkard from the force of the impact and the damage doubtless done to its hull. As the galley wobbled away from the rocks, Alain could see the bow dipping and guessed enough planks had been stove in by the collision to allow dangerous flooding of the ship.
His attention on the wrecked galley, Alain was shocked when Mechanic Alli slapped his shoulder.
She was laughing. “Don’t mess with momentum!”
Mari came up beside them, grinning. “Or momentum will mess with you,” she said. Both Mechanics laughed again at some shared joke that was incomprehensible to Alain. He wondered who Momentum was and what he or she had to do with what had just happened.
The laughter of the Mechanics died as another lingering fog bank shredded to reveal the first galley, looking crippled with its mast missing but pivoting nimbly under the push of its oars to charge again at the Gray Lady.
Chapter Three
“Alli,” Mari said, her angry gaze fixed on the galley, “I’m tired of watching the rowers suffer while the bosses on these galleys keep ordering them to come at us. I want whoever is giving the orders on that ship stopped.”
“You got it.” Alain watched as Mechanic Alli knelt to steady her weapon on the ship’s rail. “What about whoever is at the helm?”
“Dav, Bev, and I will target the helm. You take out the officers.”
“No problem.” Alli squinted along the barrel of her rifle. “There’s a guy with a lot of gold on him. Inlaid armor. Very pretty. Hey, tell the captain to hold this ship steady, will you?”
“Captain!” Mari called. “Hold the ship steady!”
The captain looked startled, but passed the order to the helm. The Gray Lady stopped turning, cutting smoothly through the still-placid waters of the Jules Sea. The wind had steadied as well, filling the sails and pushing the ship along at an even clip.
Asha came to stand beside Alain. “What do the Mechanics do, Mage Alain?”
“They will use their weapons to kill those in charge on that ship,” he explained. “It matters to Mari that only those shadows of the lowest status have been harmed.”
“Why?” Asha said.
“She regards each shadow as another like herself,” Alain said.
“That is very strange. Yet I recall you saying it was because Mari saw you as one like herself that she saved your life when all she knew of you was that you were a Mage. Do all Mechanics believe this?”
“Many do not,” Alain said. He noticed Mechanic Bev tossing a puzzled look at him and Asha and guessed she was baffled that he and Asha could be having such a dispassionate conversation while the enemy galley bore down on them. “But those with Mari follow her ways of thinking.”
“Like Mechanic Dav. It is useful to have such companions,” Asha concluded, “and such weapons as theirs when the power to use Mage spells is lacking. Though now I sense more power available with each moment.”
“It is because we are moving,” Alain explained. “I am still weary. Can you cast a spell?”
“It is possible. Where is it needed?”
A weak point, Mari had said. This galley had already lost its mast, and losing a single oar wouldn’t harm it much. “Do you see the large wheel that the sailors call a helm? If something were to happen to that, it would hurt the ship.”
“I will see what can be done.”
The galley was coming toward them, the drum cadence fast, the oars flashing up and down in a quick beat that drove the enemy warship closer at ever-increasing speed. Soldiers packed the forward fighting platform, swords in hand, ready to fight hand-to-hand. “He means to ram us!” the captain called from the quarterdeck, sounding very anxious.
“Hold your course!” Mari called back. She was aiming along her rifle like the other Mechanics, still looking angry. “Why do people make us do this?” she grumbled to Alain. “Why do they have to try to harm others?”
“I do not know,” Alain said.
The crash of Mechanic Alli’s weapon surprised everyone. There was a pause as Alli worked the lever to load a new bullet, then a figure in grandiose armor staggered backwards on the Syndari quarterdeck and fell.
Alli bent to aim again as chaos erupted on the galley.
“Get the helm!” Mari ordered.
The enemy ship seemed very close indeed as the three other Mechanic weapons boomed almost in unison. Two more figures fell, but the galley kept on.
“Move however you want!” Mari called to the captain of the Gray Lady, and a moment later the clipper heeled over hard as she turned away from the charging galley.
The sailors at the galley’s helm began turning to stay on a collision course with the Gray Lady, but as Alain watched they suddenly staggered back, the wheel free in their hands instead of firmly attached to the post where it had been.
He felt someone slump against him, then Alain and Mage Dav were holding the limp figure of Mage Asha, who had exhausted herself with her spell.
Mechanic Alli fired again, and another grandly dressed figure dropped on the galley. The other Mechanics fired a volley, though with everyone scrambling around on the galley’s quarterdeck and falling against each other it was hard to see the effect. What Alain could tell was that the galley was swinging wildly to one side, its earlier turn becoming more and more extreme with no means of controlling the ship’s rudder. The drumbeat broke off, the oars trying to stop and instead crashing into each other.
Once again the Mechanic weapons fired, and this time everyone visible on the galley went flat or dove for cover. Its oars in a shambles and the useless wheel sliding unheeded off one side of the quarterdeck into the water, the galley glided past the stern of the Gray Lady.