The Seascape Tattoo (36 page)

Aros fingered Flaygod. It was true, and in his less reasonable moments, he considered it bloody unfair.

“What's your point?”

“That if steam, and all these machines make experience less important, how much more likely is it that they will be used by … inexperienced people?”

“Much.” Gold's bushy eyebrows narrowed.

“And what is the most important thing in a storm?”

“To ride her. To know when to strike the sails, when to drop anchor or turn the ship to take a wave head-on rather than broadside.”

Neoloth's voice lowered. “And what teaches a man to do such things?”

Gold smiled. “Experience,” he said.

Then Gold raised his voice. “Ahoy, mates! Oars in the water, sails at full! Throw everything overboard we don't need to fight!”

“The food, Cap'n?” one of his men said.

“Aye. We're just two days out of Quillia, and we won't starve before we get there. Everything over the side!”

The men fell to, heaving furniture and gear over the side. Oars extruded from belowdecks, and the men broke their backs straining in rhythm, digging at the waves.

“Will we make it?” the princess asked. “Is there any magic that can help?”

“I think we're about out of magic,” Neoloth said. Looked to Drasilljah and the Red Nun.

“I'm stripped,” the Red Nun said. “In these magic-poor times, I'm surprised to have done what we have.”

Captain Gold fingered his beard. “Here's what I say,” he said. “Before those ships reach firing distance, the water will be no sea of glass. And then we'll see what kind of captains they have.”

*   *   *

The sun had disappeared behind the clouds, and the sea itself grown angry before the first cannons blazed behind them.

Aros ran back to the forecastle and used the spyglass. The ships were clearly visible, and if the light had been better, he could have made out the men on the deck. The steam farters were powerful, but not faster than a good sail under a capable captain—if the wind was right.

But the wind was starting to shift and blow against them, slowing their progress despite the backbreaking labor of the oarsmen.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“We won't make it,” Gold said soberly. “Unless…” Something had occurred to him, and he trained his spyglass south.

“Yes. The wind has shifted. We're slowing, but the storm is coming our way.”

“Damned good,” Aros said. “At the very least, I'm hoping we can force these bastards to close quarters.”

“It's a fleet of the damned ships,” Gold said. “We're probably outnumbered at least ten to one.”

“I don't give a damn,” he said. “If I die, I die, but I don't want to just be blown out of the water.”

“They'll want to cripple us and come on board to be sure they've got the princess,” Gold said, and spit overboard. “That's one small blessing.”

“Probably want to torture me, as well,” Aros said, philosophically.

“My kind of men,” Gold said, and slapped his shoulder.

The cannon rang again.

The
Pelican
had two cannon positions in her stern and was capable of making a reply. As Gold had thought, their range seemed better. But although, at Gold's command, the cannon roared, they missed … and then hit one of the steamers, and the men cheered as it burst amidships, was consumed in flame.

“We must have hit the powder magazine!” Gold cried. “That's givin' it to 'em, boys!”

Initial enthusiasm gave way to disappointment when the next three shots hit nothing but water, and then a shot from the steamers smashed through the gallery at the
Pelican
's stern.

Some of the men screamed in pain and anger. Never fear, Aros noted. Whatever else might be said of them, these were stout rascals.

*   *   *

The princess stood with Neoloth, his arm around her, protecting her from the wind … and then the rain. It fell in cold drops at first, and then in sheets, and the men cheered.

They were in the storm. The waves roughened and then became walls of water slamming into them … and into the steamers as well.

“How are they handling the waves?” Aros asked.

Gold's eyes narrowed. “Better than I'd hoped, but I'll wager not as well as they'd wish. I think they're getting water down the pipe, and that will trouble the fires driving the damned things.”

The oars fought against the steam engines after the
Pelican
struck her sails. If they hadn't, the wind would have driven them right into their enemy's arms.

Another fusillade from both sides. They hit another ship, which began to burn. The men cheered …

Then, with a stroke of lightning, the cheers died, because on the northern horizon were at least a dozen more of the steam ships.

“By the Feathered One,” Aros breathed. There was no way they could fight half that many ships. The courage and will were bleeding out of the men as he watched.

And then …

From behind them a roar of cannon, and with despair Captain Gold pivoted. “Damnation!” he screamed against the wind and the crashing waves. “How in hell did they get behind us?”

It was Princess Tahlia who ran back to the forecastle, looking out into the darkness, her eyes widening as, from the spray and the darkness, emerged the silhouettes of a vast armada.

Sailing ships, not steamers.

“It's the fleet!” she screamed, sobbing in relief and joy. “It's my mother's fleet!”

And it was, breaking from the mist beneath a hollow moon, the Quillian fleet heading north.

Neoloth's desperate message to the queen had gone through.

 

FORTY-ONE

Boarding

In an instant, the game had changed. The steamers ceased to concentrate their fire on the
Pelican
and began to array for battle against the Quillian fleet. Although they were outmatched in size and cannon, they outnumbered the fleet two to one and were far more mobile.

The steamers rose and fell on the crashing waves that now sent floods of water and deafening noise onto the deck of the
Pelican.

Pelican
sped forward as if its heart was buoyed by the arrival of allies. The first of the Quillian ships closed around her, blocking her from the first line of steamers.

Aros, Gold, Tahlia, the Red Nun, and Drasilljah stood at the poop, watching the battle rage. The Quillian fleet had the gun power to defeat the smaller boats … if only they would stand still. But steamers could maneuver against the wind with a baffling facility, their plumes of steam rising up through the rain, the smaller vessels rising and falling on the swells, which the Quillian ships had never prepared for.

The roar of cannon was deafening, and the smell of the smoke, even in the drenching rain, hung over them in a pall.

The entire Quillian fleet was not here, as those aboard the
Pelican
had originally thought. It was six ships against twenty smaller ones and two larger ships, and through the telescope, Neoloth watched the bow of the flagship and saw General Silith's massive shape on the bow, surrounded by officers.

Neoloth handed the glass to Aros, and he focused in turn. “That's not Silith,” he said. “But this is the Shrike navy, and I'm betting most of these men think that it's him.”

One of the Quillian ships was burning now, foundering, having taken cannonade after cannonade. As they watched, it began to break in two, sailors leaping overboard into the maelstrom, most quickly sucked down.

“Oh my God,” Tahlia whispered. “We can't win.”

And then … something happened. Out of the blackness of the ocean something horrible came. An eight-foot writhing tentacle grasped one of the sailors, but instead of pulling him down, it lifted him
up
and placed him on the deck of the
Pelican
.

Something was happening to one of the steamers. It began spinning in a circle, as if its rudder had been broken or bent. Another of the steamers began to founder, its bow dipping down until the sailors screamed, and the water flooded its boiler so that the steam died.

Neoloth watched carefully, eyes narrowed, water pouring down his face from the rain, and he pointed. “There!”

They saw a finny tail shape on the waves, swiftly diving out of sight.

“Merfolk!” he cried. The Merfolk and their allies had arrived.

And, almost overwhelmed with relief as he was, he understood what this meant. The magical folk, driven to the ocean's depths or to the desert barrens to survive, understood that this was the last stand for all of them. If the magicians of the Hundred had their way, they would bring devices from the future more powerful than magic, draining the magic from the world in the process. They would control everything, and everyone.

Magic might already be a dying form, a dead art. But this would accelerate it. Here and now, in the ocean north of Quillia, they had decided to take their stand.

There were shapes in the ocean that he had never seen, and hoped never to see again. Monsters and monstrous shapes that were not fish or land animals or men but squiddy things with parrot beaks and arms that reached out to the decks and lifted men up to rend them apart.

So exposed, the cannon could find them, and the steamers had more, had the ability to gush fire in the rain, a harmless weapon against waterlogged ships but searing to flesh, even flesh so strange as this.

They could hear the screams, smell charred meat when the wind shifted to their direction.

Even with the magical folk, the battle seemed too even. And then … it was not even anymore.

Shrike's flagship bore forward, and now when they saw it more clearly, saw that the bow was reinforced with metal, some kind of cutting arrangement, such that as it came forward it struck one of the Quillian vessels amidships. With a grinding crash, the ship split, wood splinters cascading in all directions as the ship died.

It was coming directly at them. Coming straight for them.

“To your cabin, Princess!” Gold screamed.

“I'll miss it all! Drasilljah, no!”

A cannon's roar exploded wood splinters across the deck, and Neoloth felt it pluck at him and was dazed.

“Drop anchor!” Gold screamed, and they heard the chain whir as the anchor was released. It struck bottom, and the chain slacked, then tautened. The
Pelican
began to swing sideways, so that the flagship could not strike her solidly.

But grappling hooks attached to thick brown ropes were cast down from the higher deck, piercing the
Pelican
's sides.

Men jumped down from the higher deck onto their ship, brandishing swords and shoulder pipes, and the battle was on.

*   *   *

Now, at last, Aros had something to do other than watch the carnage. Snarling, he threw himself into the fray, Flaygod in one hand and Captain Gold's good strong Quillian steel in the other. Shrike's men came in waves, but the
Pelican
's crew had been wound like springs, running all day from their foe, and now that the enemies were before them, the crew was eager to come to close quarters and do real damage.

The storm thundered down on the desperate struggle, the waves crashing against the bow, shaking it repeatedly under the black clouds, the lightning above and the flash of steel below creating a nightmarish situation where the enemy was only clearly visible for moments at a time. But in those moments, the cleaving of skulls and lopping of limbs, the screams as men were blasted at close range by the shoulder cannons were terrifying.

And now there was another crash that shook them all, as one of the Quillian fleet smashed into the enemy vessel from the far side, and it was boarded in turn. Clearly, everyone understood that this vessel, the
Pelican
, was the key to all of it. This was where the fight would end. Most of the ships were heading toward them, tying on with grapnels such that the maze of steamers and sail ships, of rope and chains and hooks, the swarms of Shrikian and Quillian sailors swarming along the lines toward them made, in the middle of the storm, something like a floating island peopled by men and ruled by madness.

Aros noted that Neoloth, the Red Nun, and Drasilljah were on the quarterdeck before the princess's room, barring passage. Lights swirled up there, and men who tried to approach were skewered by lightning that rocked the ship. A storm must make lightning easy for wizards.

Even granting that, Aros was confused. This was mighty magic. From whence could such power be drawn? Then three men came at him, and he was forced to wipe the water and blood out of his face, set his feet, and fight.

His Quillian steel wrought havoc, but it was Flaygod that cut the widest swath. Aros cleared the deck around him, smashing bones and caving skulls as much as cutting flesh. With the deck around him cleared for a moment, he put the sword between his teeth, slammed Flaygod into its scabbard, and climbed the rigging, seeking a better view of what was happening.

There was a balance, precarious now, between the forces of Quillia and those of Shrike and the mermen and their allies, now battling across the decks and in the ocean, cannon, swords, and tentacles all taking their share of lives below him.

He saw Captain Gold battling in the forecastle next to his nephew Dorgan, who was flinging men around like dolls. Not much of a swordsman, yet the giant was worth three of the others in sheer ferocity.

“For the princess!” men cried. “For Shrike!” others answered, and the uniforms mingled so that, often, men seemed not to know who was a brother and who an enemy until they were face-to-face, close enough to see the style of sword.

And then … Aros saw General Silith.

Silith was dead, of course. It had to be the wizard Neoloth had spoken of, Belot. But watching him, even if a double, cutting his (her? its?) way through the troops made his heart sink. Double or not, the wizard had the general's style, as if taking his visage allowed him to access that skill. He was heading toward Neoloth, and the princess.