The Safire smashed into the Kymera’s port bow, fracturing wood and exploding boards. It locked against the Butcher Ship’s side for a moment, burning furiously, and then crumpled away, its back broken. There was a fierce gush of steam and sucking water, and it went down, stern first. The broken bow-end rose up out of the waves like the beak of a whale, and then slithered away rapidly as if it was rolling backwards down a launch ramp. A veil of steam and smoke rose up out of the whirling vortex of Whitewater, and there came the sound of timbers cracking and decks compressing. Still burning from the unquenchable eldritch flame, the Safire, like its crewmen before it, sank away, still visible under the water as a ruddy, pulsating glow that slowly, slowly disappeared into the deep.
Sesto was astonished. Silke had always seemed one of the more slippery, less reliable men in the company, with affections as much for Guido as for Luka. But he had gone to his end in such a display of tenacious courage and loyalty to the company that Sesto suddenly wished he had known the man better. All pirates wear disguises and mask their true selves, for better or for ill. Sailing with the Reivers had taught Sesto that at least. But Silke’s crafty, distanced exterior had clearly concealed a most excellent and intrepid heart.
In truth though, and this was galling to see, Silke’s sacrifice had won little or no advantage. Though blackened and torn, the Kymera’s bows were still sound. It had withstood the ramming action.
As if exhilarated by the overthrow of a second adversary, the Butcher Ship renewed its attack on the Rumour, doubling its fury. Its guns howled and boomed across the storm-driven spray, and piteous injury was taken by the brigantine. Though warded against the infection of the red flame, the Rumour was still vulnerable to the force of the whizzing cannon balls. Gunwales exploded in blizzards of fine wood-shards. Men exploded in mists of gore. Chunks of the main wale burst like the skin of a fruit. Three metres of the jib boom tore off at the jack staff. Shrouds and tackle stripped away from the mainmast like spider-web in a typhoon. There was a terrible cracking and rending of hull timbers.
Two of the Kymera’s shots had impacted just above the waist and ripped into the gun deck. By some lucky chance, no powder was touched, but two positions—the second culverin and the third cannon—were obliterated. The terrible impacts destroyed the weapons, shattering solid wood carriages and fracturing the iron of muzzles. The gun-teams manning each weapon were either struck dead by the concussion of the hits, or slaughtered in the welter of fragments and shrapnel that immediately followed. Two powder boys died too, and men in adjacent teams were wounded. Smoke, thick and hot, filled the gun deck.
Sheerglas got to his feet. He had been knocked down by the blast. He winced, and looked down to see a splinter of gun carriage wood, the length of a man’s forearm, impaled through his belly. Sheerglas grimaced and slowly dragged it out of him. No blood came with it. It had missed his heart by a finger length.
“Better luck next time, Henri,” he growled, and tossed the splinter away.
“On your feet! On your feet!” he started to yell. “Resume firing! Fire at will, as ready! Move, you dogs, or I’ll sup upon you! Come on, now!”
The pale gun-teams scrambled to their master’s bidding.
“Clear this tangle away!” Sheerglas demanded, indicating the wreckage and the broken bodies. “You men on the port! Do it! Bring two cannon across in rapid fashion! No, three! There’s hole enough for three now!”
The gunners hurried forward, shovelling the debris clear and showing no care for the mutilated bodies they swept aside. If there was time for service later, so be it. Hauling on the drag ropes, they heaved three of the port-side weapons over and lashed them in place, their muzzles running out through the scar in the Rumour’s side where two gun ports had previously stood.
“Charge them!” Sheerglas yelled, as the other guns started to boom and roar again. He felt weak, giddy.
“To me, boy!” he called to the nearest powder monkey, a lad of fourteen years. Knowing what was expected, the boy hurried over and turned his head to the left. Sheerglas leaned over and bit deep, taking his measure from the youth’s neck.
“Good lad,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Now back to your duties quick smart.”
Sheerglas felt better at once, lifted, vitalised. “Quicker with the rods, you bastards! Quicker and quicker still! Let’s pound this monster down to devil Manann’s locker!”
The thunder of the Rumour’s guns renewed, and Luka was glad. But still the Kymera was punishing them fiercely. Simple logic dictated that they would eventually lose this frenzied brawl. The Butcher Ship was bigger, and outgunned them.
“We have to close!” Roque yelled, running up onto the poop. “Let us bring this down to sword and pistol and try it that way, for this cannon fight can only end in our deaths!”
Roque seemed almost wild in his countenance. His shirt was ripped open, and where every other man on the Rumour was sweating like a hog, his skin was dry and tight. Sesto could see that he was agitated. There were marks upon his exposed left shoulder, around the fresh scar there. Splinter wounds, most would believe. But Sesto realised they were the marks of feverish scratching.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“Yes!” Roque snapped at him. “This is not the time for—”
“I think it is,” Sesto said.
“Shut your mouth!” Roque turned back to Luka. “For damnation’s sake, let’s close now, while I still have men left in the pavis line to put aboard!”
“If we come in, we’ll be right at their mercy for the last few yards,” Luka said.
“We’re at their mercy now!” Roque cried.
“You know how this works, Roque. The closer we bring ourselves, the more they will strike us, and the harder. Attempting to close and board under this assault could finish us.”
“I think we’re finished anyway,” Casaudor said quietly. “Let’s do as Roque says and come in. We’ve nothing left to lose.”
A fresh noise came in, across the rush of the storm and the fury of the bombardment: the crump of distant guns. Plumes of water burst up from the roiling sea around the Butcher Ship.
Silvaro and the others ran to the port-side rail and gazed out into the rain and the tempest darkness. Red flashes again, another round of guns, out in the distance, in the outer limits of the bay.
And then they saw her.
Full sheeted, coming in at them like a monster of the deep, square-rigged and glorious under the ink-black sky.
The Lightning Tree.
“The old rogue has not forgotten us after all,” Silvaro murmured. “Gods bless him for his loyalty.”
Regal and splendid, and every bit a match for the Kymera in size and guns, the Lightning Tree bore down, firing as she came. She left an immense, fuming wake of white gunsmoke trailing off behind her on the wind.
“Now we close!” Luka cried. “Now we damn well close!”
Tende hauled on the wheel, Saybee adding his muscle to the effort. Roque leapt down off the poop and ordered his men-at-arms up to ready. The shields clattered together, and the pikes ran out through them. The caliver men began firing at the Kymera’s port side as it rushed close in.
The Lightning Tree ran around the sterns of the two ships in such a wide turn her sails were momentarily taken aback. She gybed hard, and bit into the wind again, riding up along the Butcher Ship’s starboard quarter and unleashing firepower from her yawning gun ports.
Vento’s men threw out fenders as the Rumour came in against the crimson monster’s port beam. The calivers and swivel guns set off a fizzling tumult as the two ships came together, and bowmen in the ratlines stuck the enemy deck with arrows and bolts.
In the misty, glowing redness of the Kymera’s decks, the Reivers could see the figures of its crew, silent and unnaturally still, waiting for the assault.
The ships thumped and scraped together with a violent judder. The Reivers hurled out lines and hooks, catching at the rail and gunwales and hauling the vessels tight a
gainst one another. Musket and caliver fire rang out from the Kymera’s sheets, and men in Roque’s line dropped or lurched backwards. Some of the shots had actually punched through the targettes and raised shields.
“On them. On them!” Roque yelled, leading the boarding charge. He had never been so thirsty in his life. He wished only to wash the dryness from his gullet. Blood would do it.
The first wave of men went across into the red glow suffusing the Butcher Ship’s deck. Luka clambered over the rail of the poop and swung across, his boarding axe in his hand. Casaudor followed.
Ymgrawl looked at Sesto. “Don’t thee even think on it,” he said, and leapt across onto the Kymera in one panther-bound.
“Yes,” Sesto smiled after the boucaner. “Right.”
Luka landed on the stern deck, feet first. He had entered a world of red luminescence. A dry world too. The deck seemed parched and baked, the boards shrunk, and the air griddle-hot. Three metres away, on the Rumour’s poop, the air was cold and dark and filled with rain. Here, it was like a hot autumn night during a drought. There was the oddest scent of resin on the wind. On the far side of the ship, he could hear the Lightning Tree firing as it closed, and now also the ferocious reply of the Kymera’s starboard guns.
Luka started to hack away the sheets and cordage with his sharp boarding axe, cutting painters and ratlines and thick hawsers, intent on crippling the Kymera’s aft running gear. Casaudor and Ymgrawl boarded behind him and started doing the same, Casaudor with an axe, and Ymgrawl with his cutlass. Other Reivers followed them, Tende and Saybee, Fanciman and Laughing George, a dozen more. From the mid-deck came a furious clamour of fighting as Roque’s men-at-arms stormed aboard and tore into Henri’s main complement. The red-lit air fumed with powder smoke.
Luka pushed on, hacking and chopping at gear and blocks. A figure loomed in the ruddy glow ahead of him. One of Henri’s men at last, face to face. Luka didn’t break stride. He swung the axe and sank it deep into the man’s collarbone.
The man kept moving. He didn’t even flinch. He plucked the axe out of his shoulder with his good hand and threw it aside. Luka saw him properly now. Eyes blank and sunken, skin taut and dry, the structure of his bones sticking out starkly from his wizened flesh.
A deathless thing, dressed in the rotting clothes of a pirate.
XXXII
Luka baulked in horror. The zombie swung at him stiffly with a cutlass. Casaudor’s musketoon boomed and the ghoul flew backwards across the deck, its head torn off.
“My thanks,” Luka whispered.
More lurching figures appeared, menacing with blades and cudgels. Casaudor tossed his musketoon aside and slammed his boarding axe down through the skull of the first. It tottered and fell, but continued to writhe upon the deck.
Luka snatched up two of the wheel-locks dangling on their lanyards around his torso, and fired them at the next lumbering devil. The shots blew it backwards, shredding off both its arms at the shoulders in billows of dry, dusty scraps. Luka dropped the wheel-locks so that they swung at his hip, and raised the third, firing it almost point-blank into the forehead of the next zombie. Its skull exploded with a hollow, sooty cough, like a flawed pot bursting in the heat of a kiln. It toppled over.
Ymgrawl had hacked another undead thing down with his cutlass. “What is this?” he cried. “What manner of curse hath taken this ship down?”
The fighting quickly became desperate and hand-to-hand. The ghastly crew members of the Butcher Ship, plodding and emaciated, came in from all sides. Luka took off a head with his shamshir, and exploded another skull with his powerful presentation piece. Casaudor hacked about with his axe, removing arms and hands. Tende laid in with his Ebonian blade, and nearby Saybee was whirling a two-handed sword that ripped through dried fibres and warped bones.
Jan Casson shrieked as a zombie ran him through with a rusty lance. Laughing George was pulled limb from limb by clawing, undead hands, and his torment was so excruciating, several other Reivers were stunned in their tracks, and fell prey to zombie fury themselves.
Fanciman ran out of pistols—even though he’d brought nine, and felled as many zombies—and drew his rapier. The blade broke across the rotting breastplate and shrivelled ribcage of his next attacker. Fanciman plunged the broken blade end in again and again, and his body continued to repeat that action for several seconds after the zombie’s scimitar had taken off his head. Spurting blood like a geyser from its severed neck, Fanciman’s body fell.
Many of the husk-zombies dropped to their knees and began to suck up the blood spilt over the deck-boards from the fallen Reivers. Luka and Casaudor hacked some of them apart while they were thus occupied. The dry, severed hands and arms of despatched zombies clenched and grabbed at the Reivers’ feet.
Luka pressed ahead, scything and striking. He could see the Lightning Tree over the rail. It was hurt, and billowing red flame. Then a figure interposed itself between Luka and his view.
It was Henri the Breton, Red Henri himself.
A massive man, built like an ox, Henri was clad in black velvet and black half-armour. He had always ruled his crew with the power of his arm and the fury of his nature. Luka had admired him, and had counted him a friend.
Not one spark of that person remained, except for a vague physical semblance. Henri’s face, cased inside the comb morion helm, was devoid of life or intellect. The flesh was swollen and white, as if bloated up. He looked like a drowned soul plucked lately from the flood, swelled up by decomposition.
“Henri?” Luka gasped. “Is it you?”
In reply, Red Henri the Breton swung his sabre at Luka Silvaro.
On the Butcher Ship’s quarter deck, Roque and the force of men-at-arms were caught in a pitched battle against the greater part of the Butcher Ship’s crew. There was a dreadful din of clashing blades and discharging shot, but all the cries and oaths and screams of pain came from the Reivers. The ghouls of the Kymera fought on in stiff, flat-eyed silence.
In the midst of the carnage, Roque could see that the starboard guns of the Butcher Ship were still pounding the Lightning Tree, doing it grave harm and preventing it from closing to board. He tried to fight through the press, hoping to lead an armed party below and silence the guns. But the numbers of the vile enemy were too great. Although they could be stopped by hacking or blasting them apart into dusty scraps, it often took three or four of the sort of blows that would have clean-killed an ordinary mortal man to finish one of these. Reivers were beginning to die as they were overwhelmed by the lurching foe.
A sudden throaty cheer went up. Hacking a sword away from his face, Roque turned and saw armoured men boarding the Kymera over the bow-rail, coming up from below. Two of the Fuega’s launches had survived the devastating demise of their mothership, and their furious, determined rowing had finally brought them against the Butcher Ship. Captain Duero led his men over the rail, all firing with muskets and pistols.
Their arrival was enough to swing the flow of the battle. The focus of the fighting became the foredecks. Able to break free from the melee, Roque headed for the nearest deck hatch. Three of his men-at-arms—Tall Willm, Sabatini and Rafael Guzman—followed him.
“Reload your guns!” Roque said, quickly charging his heavy flintlock. Tall Willm and Guzman had musketoons and Sabatini a good caliver.
“Any grenades?” Roque asked.
“I’ve one,” Tall Willm replied.
“Two here,” Guzman said.
“Let’s go! Let’s spike that gun deck for good and all!”
The Estalian master-at-arms led the way. The thirst upon him, the dryness in his throat, was now so great it had half-driven him mad. He ached only to kill and destroy, and that desire he turned upon the Kymera’s ghouls.
The upper starboard gun deck was so thick with smoke and poorly lit, it was hard to see at first. But the flashes of the guns lit the scene in brief flickers. Roque saw more of the deathless ghouls manning the cannons, loading and firing, their actions stiff a
nd mechanical, like marionettes or clockwork automata.
Roque and his three men came in down the deck, firing at the gun crews, blasting the desiccated creatures into shreds. The heavy musketoons did the most damage. Some of the ghouls turned and snatched up weapons to fend off the attackers, but Guzman tossed one of his grenades.
“Get back!” Roque cried, and the four of them just managed to cower in behind the heavy oak bulkheads before the scorching fireball blistered along the deck, incinerating the rag-and-bones ghouls and blasting some of the guns out through the ship’s side into the sea.
Roque and his men reloaded their weapons quickly while the smoke boiled through the darkness around them.
“Willm!” Roque said. “Take your grenade and see what you can do to cripple the portside decks. Sabatini, go with him. Guzman, follow me.”
The Kymera’s lower gun deck on the starboard side was still firing sustained salvoes. Roque and Guzman plunged down the narrow stairs into the hot gloom, but barely got into the lower gun deck before the wretched ghouls fell on them. Guzman fired his musketoon, but almost immediately was pinned to the bulkhead by a cutlass that went through his chest. The last grenade fell from his twitching hand and rolled away before it could be lit or thrown.
Hacking with his sabre, Roque tried to fight clear. He saw two kegs of powder that had been brought up from the magazine to furnish the guns. The lid of one had just been prised off when he and Guzman had burst in.
Hurling himself backwards towards the doorway, Roque threw his cocked and loaded pistol at the kegs. The weapon struck the deck right beside the kegs, and did so with enough force to jar the mechanism so that the lock snapped shut and struck the flint.
The gun discharged, and the blurt of flame from its muzzle touched off the powder kegs.
A monstrous blast tore through the side of the Kymera, annihilating guns and ripping sections of the hull out. The force of the blast lifted Roque and threw him down a companionway and clear through a wooden coping into the hold. He landed amongst rotting sacks and the shrivelled bodies of dead rats.