'SOVEREIGN!'
'What do our enemies scream when they speak the name of their doom at the judgment of the gods?'
'SOVEREIGN!'
'We are!' He waved his club above his head. 'And we have some surprises for Zamira Drakasha! Bring the cages forward!'
Three teams of six sailors apiece brought canvas-covered cages to the forecastle deck. These cages had wooden carrying handles set well beyond their steel-mesh sides. They were about six feet long, and half as wide and high.
'Nothing to eat since yesterday, right?'
'No,' said Ydrena.
'Good.' Rodanov double-checked the sections of the starboard rail his carpenter had weakened so that one good shove would knock them over for about a ten-foot length. A blemish on his beloved Sovereign, but one that could be fixed easily enough later. 'Set them down over here. And kick the cages. Let's get them riled up.'
6
The two ships crashed through the waves toward one another, and for a second time Locke Lamora found himself about to get involved rather intimately in a battle at sea.
'Steady, Mum,' called Drakasha, who stood peering out over the larboard quarterdeck rail. Locke and Jean waited nearby, armed with hatchets and sabres. Jean also had a pair of leather bracers liberated from the property of Basryn, who was nowhere to be seen since he alone had gone over the side with the small boat. My boat, Locke thought, somewhat bitterly.
For their 'flying company', Locke and Jean had Malakasti, Jabril and Streva, as well as Gwillem. All save the latter had shields and spears; the timid-looking quartermaster wore a leather apron stuffed with heavy lead bullets for the sling he carried in his left hand.
Most of the crew waited amidships, ranked as Drakasha had ordered: those with large shields and stabbing swords up front, those with polearms behind them. The mainsails were drawn up, fire buckets were set out, the larboard entry port was protected by what Delmastro had called a 'skinner net' and the Poison Orchid was rushing into the Dread Sovereign's embrace like a long-separated lover.
Delmastro appeared out of the mess at the waist. She looked much as she had the first time Locke had ever seen her, with her leather armour and her hair pulled back for action. Paying no heed to the weapons they were carrying at their belts, she leapt onto Jean, wrapping her arms and legs around him. He put his arms behind her back and they kissed until Locke chuckled out loud. Not the sort of thing one saw just before most battles, he imagined.
'This day is ours,' she said when they parted at last.
'Try not to kill everyone over there before I even get involved, right?' Jean grinned down at her, and she handed him something in a small silk bag.
'What's this?'
'Lock of my hair,' she said. 'Meant to give it to you days ago, but we got busy with all the raiding. You know. Piracy. Hectic life.'
'Thank you, love,' he said.
'Now, if you find yourself in trouble wherever you go, you can hold up that little bag to whoever's bothering you, and you can say, "You have no idea who you're fucking with. I'm under the protection of the lady who gave me this object of her favour."'
'And that's supposed to make them stop?'
'Shit no, that's just to confuse them. Then you kill them while they're standing there looking at you funny.'
They hugged again, and Drakasha cleared her throat.
'Del, if it's not too much trouble, we're planning to attack that ship just ahead of us, so could you?
'Oh, yeah, the fight for our lives. I suppose I could help you out for a few minutes, Captain.'
'Luck, Del.'
'Luck, Zamira.'
'Captain,' said Mumchance, 'now?
'Nasreen!' Drakasha bellowed at the top of her considerable voice. 'Starboard anchor away!''
'Sound collision,' called Delmastro a moment later, 'all hands brace yourselves! Up aloft! Grab a mast, grab a line!'
Someone began to ring the foremast bell frantically. The two ships were closing with astonishing speed. Locke and Jean crouched on the larboard quarterdeck stairs, clinging tight to the inner rail. Locke glanced over at Drakasha and saw that she was counting something, mouthing each number intently to herself. Curious, he tried to puzzle them out and concluded she wasn't counting in Therin.
'Captain,' said Mumchance, calm as someone ordering coffee, 'other ship?
'Helm hard-a-larboard,' Drakasha shouted. Mumchance and his mate began manhandling the ship's wheel to the left. Suddenly there was a creak and a snapping noise from the bow; the ship shuddered end to end and was jerked to starboard as though caught in the teeth of a gale. Locke felt his stomach protesting and clung to the rail with all of his strength.
'Anchor party,' yelled Drakasha, 'cut the cable!'
Locke had an excellent view of the Dread Sovereign rushing down on
them, scarcely a hundred yards away. He gasped to think of that heavy ship's bowsprit plunging like a spear into the Orchid or her massed crewfolk, but even as he watched, the three-master heeled over to larboard, making a turn of her own.
Rodanov avoided a head-on collision, and Locke had to guess that was intentional; while it might have done serious damage to the Orchid, it would have locked his ship precisely where Zamira could best resist his boarders, and possibly sunk both ships sooner or later.
What happened was spectacular enough: the sea creamed white between the two vessels and Locke heard the protesting waves hissing like steam baking furiously from hot coals. There was no way for the Sovereign or the Orchid to shed all their forward momentum, but they slid into one another along their sides with a rolling cushion of water between them. The whole world seemed to shake as they met; timbers creaked, masts shuddered and high overhead an Orchid was pitched from her position. She struck the Sovereign's deck, becoming the first casualty of the battle.
'Spanker! Spanker!' Zamira cried, and everyone on the quarterdeck looked up in unison as the Orchid's spanker sail was unfurled in the most unseamanlike fashion possible by the small crew detailed to it. Fluttering down to full extension, it was braced in place with desperate speed. Ordinarily, the fore-and-aft sail would never have been placed side-on to a wind, but in this case the stiff breeze from the east pushed against it by intention, heaving the Orchid's stern away from contact with the Dread Sovereign. Mumchance hauled his wheel to starboard now, trying to help the process along.
There was a series of screams and snapping noises from forward; the Dread Sovereign's bowsprit was destroying or fouling much of the forward rigging, but Drakasha's plan appeared to be working. That bowsprit hadn't punched a hole in the hull, and now Rodanov's starboard bow was the only part of his ship in contact with Drakasha's larboard side. From high above, Locke thought, the gods might have seen the two ships as drunken fencers, their bowsprits crossed but doing relatively little harm as they waved about.
Unseen things clawed the air with a snakelike hiss, and Locke realized that arrows were raining around him. The fight had well and truly begun.
7
'Clever Syresti bitch,' muttered Rodanov and he crawled back to his feet after the collision. Drakasha was using her spanker for leverage to prevent full broadside-to-broadside contact. So be it; he had his own advantages ready to play.
'Let 'em loose!' he shouted.
A crewman standing well back from the rear of the three cages (with shield-bearers flanking him) pulled the rope that released their doors. These were set just inches back from the collapsible section of the rail, which had been conveniently knocked clean away when the ships met.
A trio of adult valcona - starving, shaken up and pissed off beyond all measure - exploded from their confinement shrieking like the vengeful undead. The first thing they laid eyes on was the group of Orchids lining up across the way. Though heavily armed and armoured, Zami-ra's people had no doubt expected to repel human boarders first.
The three attack birds launched themselves through the air and landed amidst shields and polearms, laying about with their beaks and their dagger-sized claws. Orchids screamed, shoved against one another and caused utter chaos in their desperate struggle either to swing at or flee from the ferocious beasts.
Rodanov grinned fiercely. They'd been worth it - even though they'd cost too much in Prodigal, even though they'd stunk up the hold, even though they'd be dead soon enough. Every Orchid they mutilated was one less for his people to face, and it was always impossible to put a price on making your enemy shit their breeches.
'Away boats,' he yelled. 'Sovereigns! On me!'
8
The screams from forward were more than human; Locke scrambled up the quarterdeck stairs on his hands and knees, straining to see what was going on. Brown shapes were flailing about within the packed masses of Zamira's 'legions' along the larboard side. What the hell was that? Drakasha herself dashed past, twin sabres out, running for the point of greatest chaos.
Several sailors aboard Rodanov's ship hurled grappling hooks across the gap between the vessels. A team of Drakasha's crewfolk, waiting for this, hurried to the larboard rail to sever the grappling lines with
I
hatchets. One of them toppled with an arrow in his throat; the rest made short work of every line Locke could see.
A sharp, flat thwack told of an arrow landing nearby; Jean grabbed him by his tunic collar and hauled him all the way onto the quarterdeck. His 'flying company' was crouched behind their small shields; Malakasti was using hers to cover Mumchance as well, who manned the wheel from a crouch. Someone screamed and fell from the rigging aboard the Sovereign; a second later Jabril cried, 'Gah!' as an arrow struck splinters from the taffrail beside his head.
To Locke's surprise, Gwillem suddenly stood up in the midst of all this and, with a placid look on his face, began to whirl a bullet overhand in the cradle of his sling. As his arm went up he released one of the sling's cords, and a second later a bowman on the Sovereign's quarterdeck fell backward. Jean pulled Gwillem back to the deck when the Vadran began to reach for another projectile.
'Boats,' hollered Streva, 'boats coming around her!'
Two boats, each carrying about twenty sailors, were pulling fast from behind the Dread Sovereign, curving around to approach the Orchid's stern. Locke wished mightily for a few arrows to season their passage, but the archers above had orders to ignore the boats. They were strictly the business of that legendary hero of the plunging beer-cask, Orrin Ravelle.
He did, however, have one major advantage, and as usual its name was Jean Tannen. Sitting incongruously on the polished witchwood planks of the deck were several large, round stones, plucked laboriously from the ship's ballast.
'Do the brute thing, Jerome,' Locke shouted.
As the first boat of Sovereigns approached the taffrail, a pair of sailors armed with crossbows stood up to clear the way for a woman readying a grappling hook. Gwillem wound up and flung one of his stones downward, opening a bowman's head and toppling his body backward into the mess of would-be boarders. A moment later Jean stepped to the taffrail, hoisting a ninety-pound rock the size of an ordinary man's chest over his head. He hollered wordlessly and flung it down into the boat, where it shattered not just the legs of two rowers but the deck of the little craft itself. As water began to gush up through the hole, panic ensued.
Then crossbow bolts came from the second boat. Streva, caught up watching the travails of the first, took one in the ribs and fell backward
onto Locke. He pushed the unfortunate young man away, knowing it was beyond his power to help. The deck was already bright red with blood. A moment later Malakasti gasped as an arrow from the Sovereign's upper yards punched through her back; she fell against the taffrail and her shield went over the side.
Jabril pushed her spear away and yanked her down to the deck. Locke could see that the arrow had punctured one of her lungs, and the wet-sounding breaths she was fighting for now would be her last. Jabril, anguish on his face, tried to cover her with his body until Locke shouted at him: 'More coming! Don't lose your fucking head!'
Gods-damned hypocrite, he thought to himself, heart hammering.
On the sinking boat below, another sailor wound up to toss a grappling hook. Gwillem struck again, shattering the man's arm. Yet another rock followed from Jean. That was it for the remaining Sovereigns; with the boat going down and corpses crowding the seats, the survivors were spilling over the side. They might be trouble again in a few minutes, but for now they were out of the fight.
So was a third of Locke's 'company'. The second enemy boat came on, wary enough of the stones to keep well back. It circled around the stern and darted for the starboard side, a shark with wounded prey.
9
Zamira pulled her sabre from the body of the last valcona and hollered at her people along the larboard side: 'Re-form! Re-form! Plug the fucking gap, there!'
Valcona! Damn Rodanov for a clever bastard; at least five of her people lay dead because of the bloody things, and gods knew how many more had been injured or shaken. He'd been expecting her to try to go broadside-to-bow; the beasts had been waiting like a spring-loaded trap.
And there he was - impossible to miss, nearly the size of two men, wearing a dark coat and those damned gauntlets of his. In his hands, a club that must have weighed twenty pounds. His people flooded around him, cheering, and they poured against her first rank through the gap Rodanov had somehow contrived in his starboard rail. The point of decision was exactly the mess she'd expected: stabbing spears, flailing shields, corpses and living fighters alike too pressed by the crowd on either side to move, except downward. Some slipped through the
ever-changing gap between ships, to be drowned or ground to a pulp as the two vessels scraped together again.
'Crossbows,' she yelled, 'crossbows!'
Behind her spear-carriers, nearly every crossbow on the ship had been set out and loaded. The rear rank of waiting Orchids seized these and fired a ragged volley between the forward ranks; eight or nine of Rodanov's people toppled, but he himself seemed untouched. A moment later there was a return volley from the deck of the Sovereign; Rodanov had had the same idea. Screaming men and women fell out of Zamira's lines with feathered shafts in their heads and chests, not one of them a person she could spare.
