Luka was in now. The air was hot and filthy. The nearest gun-bays had been abandoned, presumably after the powder blast. Luka saw streaked puddles of blood on the deck where men, injured by shrapnel, had been dragged away.
He made his way forward. In a few heartbeats, he encountered the first of the resistance. Gunners, most dressed in little but calico trousers and scarves, rushed the boarding gang. They had armed themselves with cutlasses and ramming rods. Luka, and all the men-at-arms with him, were weighed down with several firearms apiece, each one primed and strung on a lanyard ribbon for ease of use. Luka raised a snaphance pistol in each hand and crackled off the shots. Two gunners collapsed and died. The men-at-arms with him fired as well, and the narrow companionway filled with acrid white smoke.
Luka dropped the snaphances on their ribbon-cords, so they swung down at his hips, and snatched up the next two. Casaudor pushed past him, a matchlock in one hand and a boarding axe in the other. He shot one of Guido’s bastards as the man came running forward and, as the fellow fell, finished him with a back-chop of the heavy axe.
Behind him, Luka could hear shots and cries as the next wave of boarders came in through the hole.
He found steps, a narrow wooden flight that led up to the mid-deck. The Reiver beside him lurched backwards, blown open as the blast of a musketoon punched through him. Luka glanced up and saw the man with the musketoon on the steps, trying to reload. He fired both pistols, and brought the man’s body bumping and cracking down the step-well.
As he stormed up the steps, Luka felt the Demiurge shake hard as another pounding from Tusk’s guns ripped into its starboard side. He heard a whickering, chopping sound from the deck above—the unmistakable, wicked sound of chain shot in the air—and winced at the terrible screams that followed. Fresh blood poured down the hatch-top at the stairhead, drooling over the edges, like run-off in a heavy sea.
He reached the deck with the first of his men-at-arms. The place was a mess of smoke and broken wood, bodies and blood. At once they found themselves in a ferocious running battle with the Demiurge’s crew. Pistols barked, blades flashed and chimed. Luka fired the last of his loaded guns, then drew his shamshir. He hacked its edge through the throat of a man armed with a sabre, and used the butt of the spent snaphance in his left hand as a club against another.
This was the worst phase of any sea-fight, and Luka knew it. Close quarters; the hand-to-hand. Cannon-action was a thunderous thing, and often settled any fight before it became this personal, this dirty. But when it came down to the level of face-to-face killing, it was all about brute strength, terror and the savage temper of the pirate. Whole engagements could be won or lost in a close brawl like this. If Guido’s men drove off or slaughtered the boarding party, he might yet cut free and win the day, despite the bloody beating he had taken thus far.
It was hard to see more than a few feet in any direction, such was the thickness of the smoke. White coils, lifting from gunfire, mixed with the boiling black clouds, laden with sparks and glowing ash, that rose from the sections of the Demiurge that were on fire. The Lightning Tree’s guns had fallen silent. Tusk had spied that Luka’s men were now aboard the enemy, and did not wish to do them harm. Instead, calivers were cracking, as Tusk’s marksmen got up into the yards and began an assault. The Lightning Tree closed in. Bullets thumped into the deck, or into flesh. Men fled. Arrows and pellets from slings and bullet crossbows lashed down too. The deck was littered with dead.
“For Manann, for King Death, and for the Reivers!” Luka yelled, raising his shamshir, and his men cheered as they layed in. Turning, Luka performed a radical trepanning on the Lightfinger who tried to close with him, then pulled his wet blade free. A rapier flashed at him, and sliced him across the left arm. Gasping in pain, Luka re-presented, blocked the next strike, and found himself sparring with Alberto Long.
“You picked the wrong side,” Luka growled, and threw himself forward.
Nearby, Casaudor and a gang of four men-at-arms reached the binnacle and engaged with a mob of Guido’s crew. Few men had the strength of arm to wield a cutlass like Casaudor, and he spattered the deck with blood as he ploughed in. Handsome Onofre, howling his master’s name, confronted the Rumour’s master mate, and tagged him across the cheek with the tip of his Arabyan nimcha. It was a deep and gruesome wound that would scar Casaudor’s face for the rest of his life.
Casaudor hit back, striking at Handsome Onofre with his cutlass and forcing him into retreat. Onofre fought to return, raging and feral, and actually wounded one of his own men close by in his fury to gut Casaudor.
Their blades tangled and wedged, Onofre grunting as he tried to force the advantage of his longer edge across the guard of Casaudor’s cutlass. But Casaudor knew that the only way to defeat treacherous dogs like Guido’s mob was to outdo them in treachery.
He kicked Onofre squarely between the legs. As the man shrilled and staggered, quite folded up in agony, Casaudor swung his cutlass and cut more, smashing it side-on into Onofre’s face.
As he fell, dead, onto the deck, Handsome Onofre no longer deserved the epithet.
Blindly, his eardrums ringing from the awful bombardment, Sesto moved through the smoke. He’d recovered a dadao from a dead Lightfinger he’d found sprawled on the afterdeck. The sword, a heavy, two-handed cleaver from Cathay, felt awkward and unwieldy in his grip, accustomed as he was to lighter, more refined blades like the sabre or the rapier.
But he held it tight. It was a sword, at least. Belissi’s chisel was tucked into his belt.
He was closing on the poop-deck stairs. Quite nearby, but utterly invisible in the thick smoke-wash, he could hear a tremendous fight raging across the port side of the mid-deck. He glimpsed figures toiling and dancing in the gloom.
The deck shook as another blast detonated deep below. A grenade? A powder keg firing? If the flames reached the mail-screened magazine deep below, there would be no deck left at all to shake, no Demiurge.
A pikeman ran at Sesto, his face bloody from a scalp wound. Sesto side-stepped the stabbing pole, and put both arms into his sword-stroke. The dadao, heavy but razor-sharp along its single, curved edge, cut the end off the pike, and Sesto was suddenly glad he had taken it up.
The pikeman dropped his severed pole in fear and backed away.
For the life of him, Sesto couldn’t bring himself to hack at an unarmed man.
“Run,” he suggested.
The pikeman did as he was told.
Gripping the dadao in both hands, Sesto climbed the short flight of steps onto the poop deck.
Through the streaming vapour, he caught sight of Guido, near the wheel alongside Kazuriband, fighting to turn the tiller and rip away from the Safire. The lee helmsman, decapitated by chain shot, lay dead at their feet. Curcozo was at the port rail, firing a caliver down at the Safire’s deck.
“Guido!” Sesto yelled, coming forward, hoping his entry was dramatic enough to stay the renegade in his tracks.
It seemed to be, for Guido stared at the young man of Luccini in horrified disbelief.
Then something interposed itself between Sesto and his target. Vinegar Bruno, gleefully banging his tambour against his thigh, rushed out at Sesto with a sabre.
Sesto tried to ward off the attack, but the cumbersome dadao was too slow and heavy to swing it like he wanted to. He merely succeeded in blocking Bruno’s blade, catching it across the old sword’s hooked quillons. For a moment, they struggled, neither wanting to break and offer advantage. Then Sesto wrenched hard, twisting his sword around. He meant only to throw his opponent off. Almost by accident, he poked the tip of the curved blade in under the corner of Vinegar Bruno’s jaw.
Blood, hot and bright, jetted out onto Sesto’s face. Dropping his sabre and his tambour, Vinegar Bruno backed away. He clutched at his throat, gazing at Sesto in disbelief.
Sesto was so amazed, he actually said, “I’m sorry.”
Vinegar Bruno fell onto his back, a prodigious quantity of blood pooling a
round him, and went into his death throes. His body shook and vibrated, his feet and the heels of his hands drumming the deck more vigorously than he had ever beaten his tambour.
Sesto gazed, frozen, at Bruno. He was utterly unprepared for Curcozo.
The Lightfinger’s master mate threw aside his spent caliver and charged across the deck, drawing a dirk. He slammed into Sesto and crushed him against the rail. Sesto gasped and dropped his sword. Curcozo punched Sesto in the face and then drew his dagger up to spear him through the left eye.
An expression of dismay and disappointment crossed Alberto Long’s face. He dropped his rapier with a clatter and embraced Luka Silvaro. Luka felt the man’s hot breath against his cheek.
“Feel that?” he asked.
“I do,” Alberto Long gasped.
Luka’s shamshir was buried up to the hilt in Alberto Long’s midriff. Luka broke the embrace and wrenched the blade out. Most of Alberto Long’s entrails burst free from the newly-formed exit.
Yelping in stifled agony, Alberto Long fell down on his knees.
“Like I said, you picked the wrong side.”
“For the love of Manaan,” Long replied, blood bubbling at his lips. “Make it quick.”
Swinging his shamshir like a scythe, Luka Silvaro obliged.
Curcozo’s dirk stabbed down, but suddenly he reeled away. Something had smashed into the side of his head and removed his left ear. Released, Sesto fell. Curcozo staggered away, blood streaming down his thick neck, and found himself facing the boucaner Ymgrawl.
“I left you for dead!” Curcozo cried.
“Not as dead as thee might have liked,” Ymgrawl said, and hacked at Curcozo with his cutlass. The bleeding master mate blocked frantically with his dirk.
There was a crack, and a pistol ball missed Ymgrawl’s head by a tiny fraction. Ymgrawl turned and, with his left hand, hurled his tanning knife. It impaled Guido through the right shoulder. Guido Lightfinger screamed and fell, dropping the wheel-lock pistol he had just discharged.
Kazuriband left the wheel and ran at Ymgrawl, sweeping with a double-fullered, Kang dynasty dao that had been his father’s before him. Ymgrawl ducked and leapt back, avoiding the next stroke, and clashed his little cutlass against the edge of the big Cathayan sword. He stroked low, then high again, and menaced Kazuriband’s loose left quarter guard, forcing the helmsman to tighten his arms and parry short.
Then Ymgrawl feinted cleverly, drew his blade tight in, and delivered a thrust that punched the cutlass through Kazuriband’s neck. Ymgrawl yanked the blade free and the helmsman fell on his face.
A big fist hit Ymgrawl on the side of the head and knocked him onto the deck. Two more savage punches followed, forcing him to curl up into a protective ball. Curcozo kicked the cutlass away and wrapped his meaty fingers around the boucaner’s throat, throttling the life out of him.
Ymgrawl fought and kicked, but the bigger man was all over him, impossible to dislodge. Curcozo’s fingers tightened, and Ymgrawl began to feel the cords of his neck buckle and collapse.
There was a solid impact, metal forced into meat and bone. Curcozo’s grip suddenly slackened, and he toppled away from Ymgrawl. The boucaner sat up, wheezing and coughing, and saw the chisel sticking out of the back of Curcozo’s skull.
Ymgrawl looked up at Sesto.
“I’m the one supposed to be protecting thee,” he gurgled.
“Well, consider that an act of gratitude,” Sesto smiled.
Blade in hand, Luka reached the poop deck, just as Casaudor led the charge up the opposite stair. But the fight was done and over. The bodies of Kazuriband, Curcozo, Vinegar Bruno and the lee helmsman were draped across the bloody deck. Sesto was pulling Ymgrawl to his feet.
Luka crossed to them and shook Sesto by the shoulders.
“Gods of the deep, but I’m glad to see you!”
Sesto smiled. A lesser man might have thought Luka only interested in reserving his reward, but there was a look in his eye, a genuine happiness that Sesto was still alive.
“I knew you’d come,” Sesto grinned.
Luka laughed, and got up onto the rail, waving his arms at the Lightning Tree. “Cease fire! Cease fire and hold!” he yelled.
On the high stern deck of the Lightning Tree, Luka saw Jeremiah Tusk wave back, and give orders to his men.
“May I kill him,” Casaudor asked, “or do you want that honour yourself?”
Luka looked around, and saw that Casaudor had his blade edge against Guido’s throat. The master of the Lightfingers was on his back, a long knife stuck through his right shoulder. There was a look of abject fear in Guido’s face.
“That’s mine,” Ymgrawl said, and wrenched the tanning knife out of Guido’s shoulder. Guido wailed in agony.
“Don’t kill him,” Luka said quietly.
“By all the daemons of the sea, you’re not going to give him yet another chance, are you?” Casaudor cried.
“No,” said Luka. “He’s used them all up. But he got the sea to lie for him, and before he dies, I’ll know how he did it.”
XXVI
Burning, the Demiurge was cut free. Sobbing clouds of black smoke from its hull, it drifted away from its conquerors, and listed into the swelling waves. Already, it was low in the water, the sea having flooded in through its ruptured hull. Unguided, it bellied away for half an hour, its starboard side tipping slowly towards the sea line. It tipped again, and the black smoke gushing from it suddenly extinguished itself, and was replaced by a rapid rush of vapour, as sea water met fire, and created steam.
Rolling away across the heaving grey sea, the barque slumped further, its masts leaning out, draping the water with torn canvas and dragging ropes. A huge litter of debris washed out behind it, falling and rising on the waves: pieces of wood, scraps of kindling, clothes, the private possessions of the dead crew, bodies and Vinegar Bruno’s tambour.
Just before evening set in, the hull finally gave way. A melancholy splintering sound echoed across the waves, and the Demiurge folded up, timbers collapsing under stress. It took less than three minutes for the mighty barque to sink beneath the waves, leaving nothing except a seething blot of air bubbles bursting where it had been.
“Well, Guido,” Luka said. “You cheated me or you cheated the sea. One or the other. I want to know how you did it.”
Pale, weak from loss of blood, Guido simply shook his head.
They were on the foredeck of the Lightning Tree. The sun was setting, the seas had eased greatly, and there was little in the way of chop. The Safire lay off their port quarter.
“We’ll test him again,” Luka said. He glanced over his shoulder at Jeremiah Tusk, Casaudor, Sesto and Ymgrawl.
“If you must,” Tusk replied and clapped his hands for the work to be set.
“There’s no need,” Sesto said. “I know how he did it. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m sure I know.”
“So tell me,” Luka said.
Tusk’s men had secured the board to the side rail of the Lightning Tree. There was no need to summon the eaters this evening. The blood and the bodies in the water from the brutal fight had brought them in, in their hundreds. Looking over the rail in the fading daylight, Sesto watched them churn and fight in their frenzy.
“Are you sure?” Luka asked him.
“No, but can you think of a better explanation? The sea itself would never cheat you, Silvaro. It must have been Guido’s handiwork.”
“We’re ready!” Honduro cried.
“Bring him forward,” Luka said. Guido was manhandled to the rail and set up on the end of the board.
“What?” he cried defiantly. “Will you not bind my arms? Mask me?”
“Not this time,” Luka said. “You’ll simply walk the test, eyes open. You can do that, surely?”
Guido glanced down at the threshing, moonlit waters, waters that churned with eater-fish.
“Go on, now,” Luka said.
Guido began to edge his way along the plank, his arms spl
ayed out to keep his balance. His footsteps became timorous and careful.
“Hard, isn’t it?” Luka called. “I mean, without Vinegar Bruno’s beat to keep you informed.”
“What?” Guido gasped, wavering.
“That’s how you did it, isn’t it? Bruno and his drum. His rowdy-dow-dow. The beat of it told you where you were. How much board there was left. That’s how you cheated me.”
“In the name of holiness, Luka, I don’t know what you mean!”
“Oh, I think you do, Guido.”
“Please, brother! For you are my brother when all other things are aside! Show me mercy! Show me mercy now!”
Luka looked at Tusk and Casaudor. Then he turned back to stare at Guido halfway along the plank. “Mercy. It is the name Honduro has given to this fine axe.”
“What?”
Luka stepped forward and raised the huge, curved Arabyan axe Tusk’s master mate had leant him. With one hefty blow, he severed the plank at the rail end.
The rest of the board, and Guido, dropped into the black water.
Guido screamed. He went under and then surfaced, and screamed again. The eater-fish closed around him, scything in, their fins cutting the water.
One of them took him down. Dark blood frothed the surface.
“And that’s an end of it,” Luka said, handing the axe back to Honduro.
Guido suddenly surfaced again, screaming and flailing. The water around him was black with blood. Eater-fish swung in, taking chunks out of him.
“He hangs on to life, that one,” Tusk remarked.
“Get me a pistol,” Luka said.
“Wait… oh gods,” Sesto exclaimed, clutching Luka’s arm. “Look!”
The water all about Guido was suddenly frothing and swirling. Like a whirlpool, like a maelstrom, it was twisting and lapping so fiercely the Lightning Tree rocked.
“Oh dear Manann…” Sesto gasped.