The River of Shadows (13 page)

The sun began to set. Fiffengurt hobbled for the quarterdeck, bellowing down ladderways, firing orders up the masts. Tarboys streamed up the Holy Stair, lugging cannonballs and buckets of powder; gunners darted about with match-pots like small, fiery lunch pails. Ixchel were everywhere: racing up the shrouds ahead of sailors to warn them of broken ratlines, adjusting the chafing fleece where ropes abraded, diving into guns to scrape the rust out of fuse-holes, retying sailors’ bandannas before they could slip. Humanity was their science: not a task existed on the Great Ship that they had not watched in secret.

As they ran north the sandbar grew taller, closer to the surface. The waves broke over it, choppy and low. Ship and swimmers were converging on the same point: that deeper blue where the bar finally ended, where the ship could jackknife east and run with the wind at her back, every inch of squaresail thrusting her faster. Lookouts scanned the gulf: no boats, no place to hide them. Whatever the attackers were doing, they were doing alone.

Off the starboard bow the water grew shallower yet, the waves collapsing into foam. “Ease away windward, helmsmen,” shouted Fiffengurt. “If we shave that bar the game’s up. Steady on.”

Pazel arrived just as Fiffengurt was starting up the quarterdeck ladder. He could see that the man was in pain—a rat’s jaws had savaged his left foot, and the wound had not yet healed. Pazel tried to steady him from behind, but Fiffengurt shook him off with a twitch.

“Pathkendle, I want you right
there
”—he pointed at the tip of the mizzenmast yard, twenty feet higher than the quarterdeck and about as many out over the gulf—“with a great blary Turach shield. We’ll have to judge depth by eyeball, see? Look straight down from out there. When that point clears the sandbar, you shout,
‘Mark!’
Not a second before—and not a second later, lad.”

“Oppo, sir. But our practice shields would be better up there. Hard to handle all that Turach steel.”

Fiffengurt waved consent. “Just don’t fall in the blessed sea.”

Warning cries from the stern: the dlömu force had split in two. One mass of men continued straight at the
Chathrand;
the other broke east, toward the sandbar. Moments later the shouts were renewed, this time mixed with shock: the splinter group was wading. Thigh-deep, knee-deep, and then they were running in mere inches of foam, sprinting along the sandbar’s crest. The fastest were drawing level with the
Chathrand
. Pazel stared, transfixed. Their belts jangled with strange hooks and daggers and coiled ropes. Their silver eyes looked the ship up and down.

BOOM
.

The first carronade shook the timbers under Pazel’s feet. Through the smoke Pazel saw the huge ball’s impact, the white spray, and two black figures crushed into the sand as if by a giant stake. The others did not flinch; indeed they put on a burst of speed. Then Pazel heard Metharon’s cry, and the shrill twanging of longbows. Six or eight more dlömu fell.

“Pathkendle!”
raged Fiffengurt.

Pazel’s trance shattered; he swung out to the mizzenmast shrouds. Even as he climbed he felt tiny hands on his shirt, a tiny foot on his shoulder. “Get down, Ensyl!” he cried. “You won’t be safe out there! I don’t need help, I’m just a spotter!”

“Two can spot better than one,” she said.

Pazel argued no further: to judge by that grip, he wouldn’t lose her unless he lost his hair.

Four more blasts—and hideous carnage among the runners. The ship had opened up with grapeshot guns from the stern windows. The spray of flying metal ripped bodies to pieces. Yet those behind came on undeterred, through the pink foam, leaping the fallen and the maimed. Pazel felt his body clench with nausea. The gunners reloaded, visibly shocked at their handiwork. Ensyl was retching. Pazel forced himself on.

More arrows now, more death.
What are they doing, what do they want
? Pazel stepped onto the footropes, eased out along the mizzenmast yard. Beneath him, Hercól and Metharon fired their bows with deadly accuracy, bringing down one soldier after another.

In the waning light, Pazel could just make out the end of the sandbar, sixty or eighty yards ahead. He caught Fiffengurt’s eye and nodded, laying a finger beside his eye:
I’m watching
. Then someone among the dlömu gave a short, clipped command, and in perfect synchrony the runners dived back into the waves.

There were ragged cheers: some of the men thought the attackers were retreating. But who could tell? The dlömu had dived deep; Pazel could see no more than shadows in the depths. The archers hesitated; all their targets were gone. For a moment no one was shouting. They had fifty yards to go.

It was Uskins who broke the silence. “Oil, pour the oil!” he screamed suddenly. Pazel hadn’t noticed the first mate until now, and neither, it seemed, had Mr. Fiffengurt, who whirled on him in a rage. “Belay that order! Stukey—”

“Do it! Pour the oil!” shrieked Uskins, more desperate than before.

“Belay!” roared Fiffengurt again. “Stukey, you guano-eating worm! I ordered you to clear off the quarterdeck!”

For an instant Uskins’ eyes flashed with rebellion. He had been cowed after nearly destroying the ship in the Vortex, but his hatred of the quartermaster was stronger than his shame. Livid, he advanced toward Fiffengurt. “Ordered
me
? You’re not the Gods-damned—”

“CAPTAIN FIFFENGURT!” howled a topman. “THEY’RE BOARDING! THEY’RE BOARDING PORTSIDE AFT!”

All eyes turned to port. At that moment a sailor at the gunwale screamed and twisted. A light, barbed grappling hook had just arced over the rail and snapped back, pinning him by the hand. Other grapples followed.

“Damn it, we can’t see
anything
here,” said Pazel.

“Yes we can,” said Ensyl, pointing down at their wake.

Pazel gasped. Half a dozen dlömu were clinging to the rudder. No, not just clinging—scaling it. They were swinging those scythe-shaped hooks, embedding them in the wood of the rudder stem, hauling themselves like ice-climbers up toward the deck.

Pazel howled a warning—and the climbers heard. Silver eyes snapped onto him: the only person on the
Chathrand
from whom they were not hidden by the ship itself. Two of the dlömu put their hands into small, tight shoulder pouches, tugging something loose. Then the hands flicked violently. Fierce insect whines sounded around Pazel, and near his left hand something struck the yardarm with a
tok!
It was a star of razor-sharp steel.

“Oh
credek.
”

Pazel yanked in his legs and clung sidelong to the spar, hiding as much of himself as he could. He saw Turachs leaning out from the taffrail. They had seen the dlömu on the rudder at last, but could still not get off a decent shot. The dlömu could certainly take shots at Pazel, however, and did: once again he heard the whines, and the
t-t-tok!
of steel striking wood.

“Don’t move!” said Ensyl. “I’ll watch the sandbar, you keep us alive.” She had curled herself into a ball, her feet on his neck, holding tight to his shirt and hair as she leaned out over the gulf, staring straight down. Even in that moment he was stunned by her fearlessness.
This is why Dri wanted her for a disciple
.

“Twenty yards,” she said. “You must shout to Fiffengurt—he’s listening for your voice, not mine. Fifteen—”

Breaking glass. Pazel peeked under the yard. The attackers had smashed a window in the stern. The officers’ wardroom, he thought.

“Ten yards, eight—”

Surely the Turachs were already there. Surely someone had dispatched them.

“Now!” hissed Ensyl.

Pazel shouted,
“Mark!”
with all his strength, and heard Fiffengurt respond instantly with commands of his own. Then the creak of the wheel, the groaning of cables and counterweights—and sudden howls of agony from below. The dlömu were being crushed between rudder and sternpost. Pazel looked, wished he hadn’t, wished he could spit the images back out of his mind. Their skin was not human; it ruptured like the flesh of some dark, plump fruit. But under the surface there was no difference—the blood, the muscle, the shards of bone …

“Pazel!”

He wasn’t ill. He should have been. Sometimes not to be ill meant you were broken inside. Then a hand gripped his shoulder. Not Ensyl’s hand. It was Thasha; she had raced out along the spar; she was begging him to come down while he could.

Trimming the giant sails was harder than spinning a wheel, of course: the
Chathrand
’s turn actually slowed her at first, and that was when the dlömu pounced. Grapples flew over the rails port and starboard, and a second team assaulted the stern, keeping well clear of the rudder. It was all very organized. Those still in the water swam very close to the hull, protected by its curve from any shots from the deck or gunports. The attackers were quiet and purposeful, as if they had done this sort of thing before.

The sailors cut their climbing-ropes with a will, and not a single dlömu gained the topdeck by that means. But many climbed twenty or thirty feet on the ropes, and then switched to hand-hooks. Soon there were ladders of these embedded hooks ascending from the waterline, and the
Chathrand
resembled some great prone beast assaulted by columns of ants.

The upper gun deck became a war zone. Dlömu flung themselves in through the gunports, which had been kept open for the cannon. The Turachs met them head-on, and killed many before they even gained their feet. Common sailors, armed with everything from cutlasses to galley knives, backed up the marines. Still a number of the dlömu managed to scatter deeper into the ship.

The unthinkable audacity of such an attack nearly let it succeed. But the sails were trimmed, the canvas did billow and pull, and the bulk of the attacking force was still a stone’s throw behind. For all their ferocity, moreover, the exhausted dlömu who entered at the stern fared badly against the Turachs—rested, furious and armored head to foot. Haddismal fought at the vanguard of his men, laying on in the wreckage of the wardroom with a great double-bladed axe, hacking off limbs that reached through the shattered windows, hurling down chairs and candlesticks and the bodies of the slain at those still climbing.

In the adjoining compartment, a luxury cabin, some twenty dlömu broke through the Turach ranks and sprinted up the Silver Stair. The few men who resisted them were swept away. They were one stairlength from the topdeck, and would have gained it if Hercól had not stepped into their path. Above the open hatch he stood, the black sword in his left hand and Sandor Ott’s white knife in the other, and his face was terrible to behold. Still the dlömu pressed the attack, for they could hear the Turachs storming after them from below. Hercól whirled and struck, his arms two blurs of black and white, and the dlömu began to fall. One after another they came, eyes maddened with the nearness of death, and one after another they died.

The ports were sealed, and the battle for the upper gun deck turned in the
Chathrand
’s favor. But from the quarterdeck, Fiffengurt looked down and cursed. The dlömu had fastened drag lines to the ship, scores of them, and flung them backward to their swimming comrades. A hundred at least had grabbed hold already, and more were piling on.

Then it came: a desperate warning, relayed from below by a living chain of ixchel: the attackers had uncoiled a flexible saw-blade, they cried, and were drawing it over the rudder in whiplash strokes. Left to it they would, in a matter of minutes, saw the rudder off at its base.

Fiffengurt closed his eyes and made the sign of the Tree. Then he snatched the rigging-axe from its hook on the taffrail and climbed up among the oil drums lashed between the lamps. With a few strokes he broke their seals, and lamp oil gushed in slippery torrents down the
Chathrand
’s stern, sloshing over the windows, soaking Fiffengurt and the dlömu alike, spreading in a great stain among the swimmers.

Fiffengurt looked up at the deck, his eyes full of murder and rage. “Matches, Stukey, damn you to the Pits!”

Uskins came to life, unlidded the match-pot, churned the live coals with a stub.

“Never mind, give it here!” bellowed Fiffengurt. Seizing the match-pot, he emptied it in a shower of sparks over the side.

There was no explosion, no inferno of flames, no screams of agony. There was only a great
whoosh
, and orange light, and sudden silence from the army below. Everyone stumbled: the
Chathrand
had just leaped forward, a carthorse cut free of its cart. Fiffengurt toppled between the lamps, staring, and once again it was Thasha who went, unbidden, Thasha who caught him before he could fall, only to stand there swaying, transfixed herself at the sight of the great pillow of fire upon the gulf, wider than the ship and widening still, falling behind them in little streamers of flame.

“Rin forgive me,” muttered Fiffengurt. He was blind: oil in his good eye, oil on the hand that tried to wipe it away.

“Don’t worry,” she told him, “there’s nothing to forgive.”

Beyond the fire, a dark mass trod water. The dlömu had known what was coming: they had dropped from the ship and the trailing lines, dived underwater, surfaced well behind the blaze.

3
. Technically true. The Book of the Old Faith contains certain apocryphal material, including the Address of the Vengeful Seraph, who states: “To defeat the foes of Eternal Truth, lesser truths may be sacrificed, and deception wielded like a knife in the dark.” The materials appear in no copies of the Book before its third century of existence, however, and it appears likely that they were added by a war-like king, precisely to justify the training of a guild of holy assassins. Like the pruning of young oaks, editorship is power over a future one will never see. —E
DITOR
.