Hell's Foundations Quiver (123 page)

He paused for a single heartbeat, letting Hainz bull past him, then followed at a run.

*   *   *

“Pistols!”
Sergeant Sedwei Garzha bawled as the men of Captain Hainz's detachment rolled—and fell—out of their berth deck hammocks, rubbing at sleep-crusted eyes while their brains tried to catch up. All around them, members of the galleon's crew were jerking awake, rolling out, hitting the deck, and his voice rose over the tumult like a trumpet.

“
Take
your fucking
pistols!
” he shouted. “Let's move!
Move, Shan-wei take you!
”

*   *   *

Nimue opened the door to the captain's day cabin rather more sedately than the last one she'd encountered. She stepped through it, then stopped suddenly on the threshold. Sir Ahrnahld Mahkzwail and Greyghor Whytmyn might have been sound asleep when the attack began, but they were waiting inside the cabin. Somehow, they'd gotten daggers past the watchful eyes of their “escort,” and steel gleamed in their hands as they stood shoulder to shoulder between her and their families. She saw the combined desperation and determination in their postures and expressions, and she raised her left hand quickly, elevating the shotgun muzzle to point at the deckhead instead of them.

“Wait!” she said sharply while Merlin's fire rolled and thundered behind her. “We're not here to hurt you. We're here to
rescue
you!”

Mahkzwail had already begun a hopeless lunge. Now he managed to abort it somehow and skidded to a halt, staring at her. She turned slightly, letting the lamplight fall fully on the blazon of the Charisian Imperial Guard on her breastplate, marred now with a long smear of lead from the sentry's bullet, and his eyes narrowed.

“I don't have time to explain,” she said quickly, wondering if that sounded as idiotic to them as it did to her. Of
course
she didn't have time to explain! There was a damned
firefight
going on on deck! “Clyntahn wants you in Zion to control Earl Thirsk. Eventually, he's going to kill the Earl, and both of you know it as well as I do. What do you think Clyntahn's going to do with his children and his grandchildren when that happens?”

The two men darted glances at each other, and she saw the grim recognition in their eyes. They knew exactly what would happen to their wives and children on that day.

“We don't want that to happen,” she went on hurriedly. “I don't know exactly what
will
happen; that's going to depend on things no one can predict right now. But Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan have instructed me to give you their personal word that you and your families will be safe in Charisian custody, no matter what else happens.”

Mahkzwail and Whytmyn looked at each other again, and then, in unison, they lowered their daggers. Nimue heaved a huge sigh of relief, PICA or no PICA, and nodded to them.

“Get everyone together in the stern cabin,” she said. “Keep them there.” She smiled coldly. “No one's getting past me to hurt them.”

*   *   *

Gyairmoh Hainz charged up the steep ladder to the main hatch and hurled himself through it. He saw a tall, black shape turning towards him, and the double-barreled pistol in his right hand belched fire and recoiled sharply. He rode the recoil, brought it down, reacquired his target, and—

A charge of buckshot hit him in the head, effectively decapitating him, and his corpse fell back down the ladder.

*   *   *

Merlin saw Hainz disappear in an explosion of blood, but there was someone else right behind the captain. Whether it was courage, or faith, or simply an instinctive reaction by men who hadn't yet realized what they faced,
Saint Frydhelm
's crew and Gyairmoh Hainz' guardsmen swarmed up the ladders to defend their ship.

Another shotgun thundered behind him and he knew Nimue had reemerged from beneath the quarterdeck. That was her position, her task: to be the fortress between Thirsk's family and any threat, and nothing was going to move her. He'd seen her expression when he laid out the plan for this attack, known she realized why he'd assigned her to guard the civilians. She'd wanted to protest, but she hadn't, and he'd been grateful.

But that didn't mean she couldn't watch his back, and her shotgun bellowed again and again.

He advanced on the main hatch, working the slide, firing another round each time his right foot came down, ripping the mass of men trying to reach him with fire and gunsmoke and lead. He drove them back into the hatch, then down the ladder. He hit the release button inside the trigger guard and another empty magazine dropped free. He reloaded on the fly, worked the slide, squeezed the trigger, and reached the edge of the hatch. Pistol fire ripped up at him as he silhouetted himself against the dim glow of the deck lights. At least half a dozen bullets hit his breastplate or hauberk and ricocheted, and his eyes were pitiless, frozen sapphire come fresh from the heart of hell as he fired straight down the hatch into the crowded men at the foot of the ladder again and again.

*   *   *

Syndail Rahdgyrz went down as a charge of buckshot amputated his right leg at the knee. The same buckshot killed another man and wounded two others, and Sergeant Garzha flew backward with the next racketing blast. The deck was hot and steamy-slick with blood, the bodies heaped at the foot of the ladder blocked it like some crazed butcher's barricade, and
still
that implacable black shape towered above the hatch, raining death down upon them.

Rahdgyrz saw it happening. He felt the blood—and life—pumping from his shattered leg, felt the darkness coming down, and in those fading moments, he saw his crew break. Saw them realize no one could dare that hatch and live. Saw them falling back.

“Open the armory, lads!” he said weakly. “Get to the muskets! Get to—”

His world dwindled into darkness.

No one heard him at all.

*   *   *

“That's right, Gyffry,” Stefyny Mahkzwail said encouragingly. “Just slide down the rope, like the
seijin
says.”

As she'd hoped, the word “
seijin
” worked its charm. Gyffry had all of any eleven-year-old boy child's fascination with fantastic tales and bloody adventures.
Seijins
were a staple of his favorite stories, and the exotic dark-haired, armored woman smiling as she effortlessly boosted him over the sternwalk rail to reach the rope hanging down from the taffrail was the very embodiment of those selfsame stories.

Stefyny was grateful the
seijin
had been able to return to them, leaving the deck to her companion, and she was grateful for the strength of the arms lifting Gyffry, yet her heart was in her throat as her son shinnied down the knotted line. Ahrnahld had gone first, with four-year-old Zhosifyn strapped tightly to his back, sliding down to steady the rope and catch anyone who slipped on their own way to the
seijins'
fishing boat. Mahgdylynah Harpahr had gone second, displaying a surprising agility for someone in her fifties, and she stood in the boat as it rose and fell on the waves, with one arm around Ahlyxzandyr, who'd been the first of the children to dare the descent, and the other around Zhosifyn.

Stefyny had no idea where this night's madness was likely to end, and part of her screamed to turn around, to retreat from the
seijins
' false promises of safety. They served Cayleb and Sharleyan of Charis. Surely they hoped only to find a way to use her family against her father! And even if they didn't—her father had always said Cayleb was an honorable man, so perhaps they wouldn't—what about her children's
souls?
If Mother Church was right, these weren't
seijins
; they were demons, claiming to be the reincarnation of those ancient champions of God and the Archangels only so that they might entice ever more souls into damnation!

Yet at this time, in this world, Mother Church spoke with
Zhaspahr Clyntahn
's voice, not God's. She believed that—she
knew
that—just as she knew why Clyntahn had wanted her, and her sisters, and their children in Zion. And so, even as terror pulled her in one direction, reason and courage drove her towards those ropes and that wave-surging fishing boat.

“Help me tie this.”

She turned towards Zhoahna's voice. Hailyn had Zhudyth on her back, clinging like a terrified spider monkey, and Stefyny smiled at her niece as bravely as she could. She kissed the little girl on the top of her head, then helped Zhoahna loop the rope around Hailyn and Zhudyth and tied it with one of the knots their sailor father had taught them as children.

“Never thought it would come in handy
this
way,” she said.

“Me neither,” Hailyn agreed as Zhoahna ran another rope around her, under her armpits, and tied it off, as well.

Stefyny double-checked her own knot and met her youngest sister's eyes. Zhoahna's expression was grim and as frightened as her own, yet she seemed less worried about trusting Cayleb Ahrmahk's emissaries than any of the other adults. It was odd, Stefyny thought, but then she'd always admired and secretly envied the serenity of her sister's faith. Perhaps that was what lent her the calm acceptance to navigate through this night's screaming madness?

“Greyghor!” she called, and her brother-in-law appeared beside her. He reached out to cup the back of his daughter's head in one hand, then kissed Hailyn and took the rope from Stefyny.

“All right, love,” he told Hailyn. “I've got both of you. Climb down the line, and I'll steady you. You can't fall as long as I hold on, and you know I'll hold on no matter what.”

“Of course we do,” Hailyn said very firmly, as much or more for Zhudyth's benefit as for herself. “Ready, baby?”

“Y-yes, Ma'am,” Zhudyth said in a tiny voice, and Hailyn backed over the sternwalk rail holding the knotted climbing rope, and started down it.

Behind them, a shotgun boomed again, and then again, as the
seijin
still holding the deck covered their flight.

“Lots of time, honey,” Stefyny said, hugging Kahrmyncetah against her side. “Lots of time.”

*   *   *

“Time to go,” Nimue's voice said over Merlin's built-in communicator.

His eyes never flickered, never stopped their sweep of the body-choked ladder to the main hatch or the bulwark of bodies he'd piled around the fore hatch when they'd tried a pincer up both approaches. A dozen of them had tried climbing out gunports and scaling the ship's side, as well, but the hovering SNARC had spotted them, and his merciless shotgun had been waiting when they topped the bulwark.

They'd gotten to the ship's armory, and he'd been hit at least fifteen more times now. A remote corner of his brain, somewhere down below the icy control he'd fastened upon himself, said the defenders deserved far better than those bullets had accomplished. His armor and antiballistic clothing had stopped all of them, not that they could have significantly damaged a PICA even if they'd gotten through.

No one seemed willing to risk another rush, yet they hadn't given up entirely. They knew he was the most deadly enemy any of them had ever faced, that not a single man who'd gone up one of those hatches had survived, yet even now they had the courage to try yet again. They weren't whispering to each other down there in the bloody, reeking, slaughterhouse horror which had once been a galleon's gundeck because they'd given up. They were trying to come up with a plan that would work.

But they were out of time for planning.

He didn't have to look away from the hatches, away from the bodies. The images Owl projected into his vision showed him Nimue sliding down the rope one-handed, the other arm crooked around Kahrmyncetah Gardynyr while Stefyny Mahkzwail and Zhoahna Gardynyr stood on the fishing boat's deck reaching up to receive their niece. Nimue and Kahrmyncetah were the last. Now Merlin stood alone on
Saint Frydhelm
's bloody deck, and he backed steadily towards the stern.

“Ready, Owl?” he asked over the com.

“Yes, Commander Athrawes,” the AI replied, and Merlin grunted in satisfaction.

While everyone's attention had been concentrated on him and Nimue, four of Owl's smallest remotes had crept stealthily aboard the ship and spiked the vents of
Saint Frydhelm
's upperdeck guns. None of them that could be used against the fishing boat, assuming anyone thought of that and was prepared to kill Thirsk's family in order to prevent them from being “kidnapped.”

Of course, they wouldn't have very long to think about it.

He passed the wheel, which was lashed to hold the galleon on a steady course. That had been Nimue's work, and he nodded approval as he reached the after end of the quarterdeck and the open ports for the chasers.

This would all have been a lot simpler if we didn't need an explanation for the Mahkzwails and the Whytmyns
, he thought.
But the butcher's bill would be the same in the end, either way. Maybe it's only fair we have to get the blood on our own hands directly
.

He slung the shotgun across his back, bent and stepped through the porthole, gripped the rope in one hand, and slid swiftly down it. By the time his boots hit the deck, Nimue had cut the lines tethering the fishing boat to the galleon and
Saint Frydhelm
began to draw rapidly away into the night. Merlin turned towards the tiller, then paused, and Nimue grinned at him.

“One advantage of rescuing an admiral's family!” she said almost gaily, flinging out an arm in a broad, sweeping gesture, and Merlin had to nod. He and Nimue could have managed the twin-masted fishing boat just fine by themselves; it was actually smaller than the yacht Nimue Alban had sailed a thousand years ago on another planet. But Thirsk's sons-in-law and the two older boys clearly knew what they were doing. Sir Ahrnahld was at the tiller, and he put it hard over, bearing away to the southwest and taking the wind on the starboard beam while Greyghor Whytmyn, Gyffry, and Ahlyxzandyr managed the sails. The fishing boat was only fifty-five feet long, but she was much younger—and faster—than her unprepossessing appearance might have led the casual observer to assume. She was actually only two five-days old, her artfully aged hull's lines taken from something called a “pilot boat schooner” from Old Earth. She was made for speed in moderate and light weather, and she heeled sharply as she went scudding through the waves.