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Chapter Fifteen


Who thinks to wrest the sea from us
Or rule us with the sword?
We grappled Occhlon vessels nigh,
And gave our brief, complete reply,
“Pikes, cutlasses, and board!”

from “The Southwastelanders’ War,”
a Mariner song


Gil came up the gangway just after sunrise, thankful to find the Gal’s deck firm under foot, forgetting she was still quayside on a quiet stretch of river.

He went to Gale-Baiter, who stood calmly by the rail. “Anything I can do?”

“Only in giving these lads room. We are overdue for rendezvous with the fleet, and shall back-and-fill down this river. At least the ebb tide’s with us.” He sniffed the air. “It be against a head wind, though.”

The American didn’t know what any of that meant. He kept out of the way, along with his saddlebags and the wrapped bundle of Dirge. Crewmen were freeing berthing hawsers from their bollards, while men in a longboat readied to warp the Long-Dock Gal into the current. The harpooner was bawling orders aloft; Gale-Baiter’s first officer had been lost in sea battle, and Wavewatcher was serving in his stead. Skewerskean seemed everywhere, noticing each detail, his sleeves’ bells sounding each movement. Gil liked the crisscross lines of laughter in the little man’s face.

Swan had led her column out shortly before, one of the troopers towing Jeb Stuart’s rein. They’d been near the end of any words they could say to one another.

“When I come back,” he’d insisted, “I’ll come through Glyffa, get Jeb, and see you in Region Blue.”

“In Region Blue,” she’d supported his contrivance. Then she’d taken up the mirror-bright helmet of her rank. Watching her horse being brought up, she’d added, “Once again now, you have nothing more to risk than your life.”

She’d never looked back. He’d felt an awful hollowness threaten, and made himself go to the dock imitating high spirits.

The Gal got into the current’s fairway. The longboat was brought aboard and topsails set for maneuvering. The Wheywater was green and wide here. The Mariners were calmer away from the quay. They’d be happier still on the open sea. His own discomfort, Gil thought, would grow proportionately.

Gale-Baiter didn’t have many men aloft; few were needed to man the topsails.

“Note how some of them be singing whilst others are a-sulk?” the captain inquired. “After repairs were done, some of them slicked up and went to try their fortune with your Glyffan playmates. And some were kindly received, and some not. Well, this is one place where the ladies’ decisions are not to be questioned; even these jolly-boys know that. I put the lucky ones up in the yards, where they are safe until the rest get over their snit.”

He spoke a command that Wavewatcher relayed with a roar, “Back that mainyard! And hop to; you move like a damn bargeman!” Backing the mainyard made the Gal drift broadside down the current’s fairway. Gradually, a bend in the river came in off the bow.

The captain had the foremast topsail backed too. Wind hit both sails’ forward surfaces, and the Gal took a stern-board. Gil began to think they were going to back downriver.

The brig was in position to stand fairly down the Wheywater. Yards pointed into the wind that came from the sea; she floated with the current and the ebb tide, moving with beautiful economy. Ahead, the green waterway spread broader. Gil congratulated himself on bypassing the campaign for this more pleasant transportation.

Later, Death’s Hold came into view around a point of land, alone on a wide gray delta to the north. Black smoke seeped from its cracked battlements and rose from its gutted spires, where the crab and the gull had dined on bloated carrion.

Gil was mesmerized by it, shivering. Death’s Hold was the place he’d glimpsed in the Dreamdrowse, but this devastation hadn’t been part of the vision. Gale-Baiter had assured him no Horseblooded had been found there. The American’s hope, redirected to the Isle of Keys, was more the product of insistence than of faith.

One of the hands aloft exclaimed and pointed. Two smaller craft had put out from the other shore, some way ahead. One was a dory-boat, the other a longboat of eight oars. They were packed with men, the sun splashing from brandished weapons. Their course was for interception. Gil counted a dozen men and more in the longboat, plus whatever the dory held. Besides himself and Gale-Baiter, there were nine men on deck to meet them. The captain called several more down from the yards; boarding was clearly the order of business. “That lice-ridden masquerader must have kept more men hidden below decks,” he rasped, “if he can afford to throw this many at us in a diversion, leaving them behind.”

Wavewatcher, who’d put his harpoon away, was feeling the point of a lance with his thumb. Other Mariners collected cutlasses from the racks, took up boarding pikes or strung bows. Gil tucked Dirge behind some coils of hawser and drew the Mauser. His satisfaction in his decision to sail had evaporated. When the last few rounds were gone it would be sword’s point, with him no different from anyone there. He’d have hocked his soul for a handful of bullets.

Gale-Baiter barked more orders, including one that the master’s cabin shutters be secured. The fore topsail filled, and the Gal drew ahead, her bow swinging slowly to the fore. The two boats pulled madly, the dory falling behind the longboat. Waiting at the rail, Gil heard Skewerskean mutter something about their luck that it was only two boats. Gil didn’t think their luck was running so hot. Men aloft in the yards waited anxiously for their captain’s orders to fill all, but the brig hadn’t cleared the river’s shelves yet, and Gale-Baiter bided his time.

The longboat was preparing—clumsily, Gil thought—to come alongside. A man stood in its bow with grapnel and line. Skewerskean had taken up his re-curve bow. He drew, aimed, released. The shot was long, the arrow missing by an arm’s length, but shields were raised in the longboat. The next shaft was true, but buried itself in leather plies.

The raised shields bore the flaming mandala of Yardiff Bey. The Mauser came up and blasted twice, Gil’s reflex reaction to the sorcerer’s blazonry, prodded, in part, by the Rage sleeping within him. The shots went wide. The Mariners were aghast, except Gale-Baiter, who’d heard a handgun at the White Tern. The American restrained himself. The shots hadn’t deterred the Occhlon; perhaps Bey had prepared them for the possibility of gunfire.

Resting both elbows on the rail, Gil squeezed off the Mauser’s last round. The man in the bow pitched into the water, his mail shimmering once, and was gone. Another rushed to replace him, and the grapnel whirled round and round.

Gil brought the Browning Hi-Power up carefully, resolved not to shoot unless he was certain he’d hit, and that it would make a difference. Gale-Baiter hollered, “Do for the coxswain, their steerer!” If the boat were pilotless, it might let the Gal slip by. Gil fired twice, too quickly. Tongues of spray leapt in the longboat’s wake.

“Should’ve saved ’em,” he rebuked himself. Holstering the Browning, he tugged Dunstan’s sword free. His hand gripped, loosened, gripped tighter on it. Skimming his hat aside, he considered removing his byrnie, in case he had to swim for it. Compromising, he only loosened its lacings.

The man in the longboat threw his grapnel, missed, and began reeling in furiously, aware that the brig could soon make faster way. He waited behind a shield through the next salvo of arrows and javelins, then cast again. The grapnel missed the rails, where the Mariners might have chopped it loose, and lodged where tiller connected to rudder across the sternpost, impossible to get without someone’s exposing himself to archers in the boat.

Wavewatcher saw what had happened. Gil, standing near, saw the man’s big, freckled paw reach for the belt knife hanging at the middle of his back, sailor-style, where either hand might take it. Gale-Baiter stopped him, saying, “It is my place. Stand away.” He took his own knife in his teeth and vaulted the rail.

Gale-Baiter let himself down quickly by the few handholds there were. Men in the longboat were hauling line rapidly, ducking under Mariner covering fire. The captain dropped the last few feet, to cling to the sternpost. The dripping line being too taut to release, he began sawing with his blade. Bowmen in the longboat hadn’t shot at the Mariners on deck, having no clear targets. But now arrows began to hiss, drilling the air.

One transfixed the captain’s leg to the rudder. Two more sank home, one in his thigh, one just below the scapula. Gil had one second’s look at Gale-Baiter’s face as the captain, pasted to the rail, realized he was dead. Falling, he tore loose the arrow holding his leg to the rudder. Rings of water sprang from his impact. The line remained. One Mariner got a leg up on the rail, meaning to retrieve his captain. Skewerskean caught his arm and flung him back. “He was dead, fool; so will we all be, if we do not stand together.”

Wavewatcher was howling in anguish. He grabbed his lance again, drew and aimed. Gil saw sudden, deadly grace, synthesis of hunter, athlete and soldier. The release was one of enormous force. The lance struck through a shield, pinning the grapnel man to the boat’s hull, penetrating the wood. The attackers pulled frantically, drawing themselves in under the protection of the stern while arrows rained down on them. Hidden by the stern’s projection, they’d be able to climb to the deck.

Wavewatcher took up a cutlass. It was small, almost frivolous in his huge band. “You aloft there, ’ware my commands! The rest, position yourselves about the deck.”

Gil picked a spot at the portside rail and waited, one hand on a ratline, and the other still tensing, loosening on his sword. There were outcries astern, the first of the boarders. He turned, about to help, when a clambering caught his ear. He leaned over the rail slowly and nearly had his head taken off. A Southwastelander clung there, showing his teeth in a sneer. The fingers clawing the hull for purchase were blunt and visibly strong, the Occhlon nimble in his light mesh armor, his curved weapon dangling from its sword loop. Unable to reach the American from where he was, he climbed directly upward, unnerving Gil, who would never have gone against an enemy waiting with the advantages of firm footing and weapon in hand.

The boarder abruptly began to edge sideways, catching Gil by surprise, to move away from him before trying the rail. The American followed, listening to the grunted, labored breathing, unsure what he’d do when he faced the man.

The boarder sprang the last few feet, screaming Yardiff Bey’s name. He had an arm and a leg over the rail when the other, galvanized by the hated name, got to him. Gil brought his heavy bastard blade around in a flat arc. The boarder could only spare one hand to raise his scimitar; the broadsword carried it backward and knocked the boarder off balance. Gil took a more resolute swing. The blade bit through the woven gorget and into the neck. Dropping away, the desert man’s face was awful in its disregard of his own death.

A shouted warning from Skewerskean made him spin. Another boarder, a shorter man, had dropped to the deck, ready to fight. Mariners and their foes staggered across the deck, locked in death duels. Wavewatcher had a cutlass in either hand now, the ringlets on his chest holding drops of enemy blood suspended among them.

Gil crossed swords with his new opponent, whose style relied on his edge. Yells from the Mariners told of more of the assault party making it to the deck. Seafarers raced to meet them, their bare feet slapping alarm on the planks.

Gil engaged the second man in a high line, putting down his own panic. They exchanged hair-raising strokes, edges laying back and forth. The man had a long, strong arm, but his footwork was conservative. The American pressed against that possibility as blood pounded at his temples. All sounds faded but the swords’ clanging and his own heartbeat. He kept control of their fencing distance, coming into range and getting out again to his own advantage. A shout penetrated his concentration; the tinkling of bells proclaimed Skewerskean in combat.

Gil’s opponent was slow responding to a croise, backing up against the head ledge of a hatch, and swaying. For a moment his defense was open, though the American could not ordinarily have exploited it. But something in him drove his point in under the vulnerable throat. The boarder fell back with a flopping of limbs and that same expression of loathing. Gil paused to catch his breath, hearing Wavewatcher call, “Ho, aloft! Prepare to fill-all on my—dammit!—on my order.”

The interruption had been another antagonist. The harpooner was busy both with the battle and monitoring the Gal’s progress downriver. With both topsails filled, the ship began to draw ahead at the wider mouth of the Wheywater. The harpooner called on the embattled men at the tiller to keep her off a little, to increase headway through the water.

There was a scraping at the ship’s side. The dory had come with a second wave of attackers. Snatching up a carpenter’s hatchet from a weapons rack, Gil ran farther toward the bow, to keep them from getting a line onto the Gal.

He was too late. Two boarders swarmed onto the deck together. With hatchet and sword he launched himself at them, swinging wildly. The world swam at him, begging combat through a red mist.

Berserkergang filled him; he coursed with a killing joy. His attack left one dead, the hatchet buried in his chest, the deck-roll playing with pooling blood. The second boarder joined Gil at the death-duel. The American felt exultation in the Rage. Dunstan’s sword seemed familiar now, sending strength and cunning up his arm. Always heavy before, the weapon hefted light as a fishing rod.

Berserker blade screamed against desert scimitar. Gil’s lips were drawn back, teeth locked, ears flattened to his skull in animal fury. He was hyperaware of time, distance and possibilities of slaughter. He disowned fencing to hack and hew without letup. The Occhlon was the bigger man, with a thick black mustache and angry brows. His attack was powerful and confident. But Gil, enfolded by savage depersonalization, met it, swinging Dunstan’s sword with a terrible vitality.

The Southwastelander gave ground to a flurry of wild slashes, then reversed field and came on again. Both hammered with swords held two-handed, notching and blunting them. Wavewatcher’s voice, bull-horning for the hoisting of jib and flying jib, trimming them by the wind, went unnoticed.

The Southwastelander’s exertions left him off balance. Gil pounced on the moment’s invitation, bashing the other’s guard aside, thrusting with Dunstan’s sword. Standing over the dying Occhlon, he knew a split second’s contentment, then whirled to find more slaughter.

Battle had passed; Mariners were clearing the deck of their enemies bodies and seeing to their wounded, but the Berserkergang didn’t recognize that. Gil moved suspiciously down the deck as seafarers drew back, watching him uneasily, seeing that something wasn’t right with him. Blood that had run down the fullers of his uplifted sword dribbled off his knuckles. He approached a pair of Mariners, seeing no reason why he shouldn’t attack them too.

His ankles were seized from behind with a tinkling of bells, his feet yanked from under him. He sprawled flat on the deck, cracking his chin, dashing breath from his lungs. A weight like all the Dark Rampart landed on him. In a moment the Mariners had wrested his sword from him, and pinned his arms. He fought and writhed like a salmon, but this was only the second time the Rage had come to him; it couldn’t yet drive him to the superhuman extremes that it had Dunstan. Eventually, the murderous fit dispersed, to be replaced, curiously, by nothing more than fatigue and calm.

“Better now?” piped Skewerskean, from where the little man held one of Gil’s legs. Gil, gasping, said he was.

Wavewatcher, sitting patiently on the American’s back, warned, “Whatever baresark malice you called upon, save it for the enemy. Enough is enough, agreed? Let him up, lads.” Gil felt as if he’d been through a wringer.

One of the men aloft yelled, sighting a sail. The big-bellied harpooner hauled Gil to his feet effortlessly, setting him against the rail among Mariners straining for a view. The Gal was standing clear of the Wheywater and out to sea. Another ship had rounded the point, appearing from behind Death’s Hold. A big sailing barque, she had on her foresail and mainsail the device of a golden sea horse on a red field. Spying the Gal, the barque had come about, wearing ship briskly. She had a brown-and-white bird painted on her bows.

Gil speculated dizzily whether he was up to an escape in one of the Gal’s boats, or swimming if he must. Then a triumphant cheer went up from the brig’s crew. When Wavewatcher called for sail on the starboard tack, men jumped readily for the ratlines. Some broke out flags, to hoist the signal that there were wounded aboard.

More vessels were appearing from behind the stronghold. A smile had parted the harpooner’s dense beard. He thumped the American on the back; Gil almost lost his hold on the rail. Wavewatcher laughed. “When you tell this tale, say you no sooner came to the sea than you encountered its very overlord.” He saw no understanding on the other’s face. “That four-master is his flagship; no less than our monarch, the Prince Who Sails Forever.”



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