Blue Sea Burning (27 page)

“Get the girls! Tons of these!”

“That's not powder—”

“Ain't gonna use powder! Gonna chop a hole in the wall!”

That made sense. Much more sense than explosives.

“You get the girls,” I told him. “I'll start chopping.”

I took the ax from him and headed for the shed while Guts ran toward the vat, yelling for Millicent and Kira.

THE WALL WAS THICKER
than it looked. By the time Guts and the girls showed up, all them carrying axes, I'd gotten in half a dozen good whacks without much to show for it except a lot of splinters.

“Hit it along the grain!” Millicent told me.

“What do you think I'm doing?”

“Let me try.”

I stepped aside to let Millicent take a whack at the splintered gash I'd been working on. Kira was around the corner of the building, looking for a weaker spot that might be easier to chop through, when I heard her call out.

“Guts! Come here!”

“Ugh! Blast!” Millicent had gotten her ax stuck in the wall.

“Here, let me—”

“No, I've—ugh! Fine.” She stepped back, giving me room to try to tug her ax out.

“Run down and see!” I heard Kira say to Guts, but I didn't think anything of it. I was too busy trying to yank Millicent's ax out of the wall.

Then a moment later, I heard Guts call out to Kira, but I didn't catch the words. I'd just dislodged Millicent's ax and was handing it back to her when Kira appeared at my elbow, her voice urgent and tight.

“There are torches on the road! Headed up the hill!”

Unshackled

“HOW MANY WERE THERE?”
I yelled at Guts as he came around the corner of the shed.

“Mado laki! Exto padela!”
Kira was yelling through the wall at the Okalu.

“How many what?”

“Torches!”

“Step back! You want your head chopped off?” Millicent had her ax cocked to take another swing at the wall.

“Kamenaso!”

“Casu pata aliza!”
The Okalu were yelling back at Kira.

Shunk!
Millicent made contact.

“Twenty?” Guts was twitching hard.

“
Twenty torches?!
How many men?”

“Dunno! Could be more. Lots more.”

“Bataka lamai!”

My heart was pounding. Twenty torches on the road, heading toward us.

The Ripper's men. It had to be.

Shunk!
Millicent struck another blow. The wall was finally starting to split down the grain of the wood.

“Quit gaping and swing your ax!” she yelled at me as she wrestled hers out of the wall.

When Millicent stepped back, I buried my ax head into the top of the crack she'd started—and a four-foot-long fracture opened up with a loud, satisfying
crrrrrk.

I could hear excited voices on the other side as the Okalu realized we'd breached the wall.

Kira was in a hurried back-and-forth with one of them. I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying.

“Now cut sideways,” Millicent told me. “At the top and bottom. So we can—” She flapped her hand back and forth, and I got the idea. If we hacked crosswise into the wall at both ends of the fracture, we might be able to peel open a passage wide enough to let the Okalu out.

I moved a few feet to one side and swung my ax in a sidearm motion at the top of the cut. Splinters flew.

I was yanking my ax out of the wall when Millicent swung her own ax down low, just missing my lower leg.

“Watch it!” I yelled at her.

Kira emptied the slings from a pair of rucksacks. “Get rocks!” she told Guts, handing him the empty sacks. He ran off toward one of the giant mounds of broken rock to collect ammunition.

Shunk!

“Blast!” Millicent's ax was stuck in the wall again.

“Watch your head!” I swung my own ax at the higher spot, a few feet above where Millicent was crouched, trying to tug her ax loose.

“Egg! You trying to kill me?!”

I ignored her. “How close were the torches?” I asked Kira.

“I don't know.”

“Well, do we have seconds? Or minutes?” I pulled my ax free and swung it again.

“Not enough of either.” She went back to her conversation with the unseen Okalu, her hands busy untangling the pile of slings.

Millicent and I kept swinging the axes as fast as we could, somehow managing not to cut each other in half. The wall shuddered with every swing.

Guts had just returned with two sacks of rocks when one of Millicent's swings produced another loud
crrrrrk,
and for an instant, the fracture opened wide enough that I caught a glimpse of movement on the other side.

“Push it in!” said Millicent. We dropped our axes and shoved against the opening.

A swarm of hands and arms appeared, pulling from within, and I got a whiff of stink like the kind belowdecks on a ship after too many days at sea.

And the arms pulling against the wood were so skinny—
so skinny—
but they were making a fierce effort, and suddenly we lurched forward as the wood splintered away. Millicent and I nearly fell into the shed, and when I straightened up, I saw the first Okalu's face.

He was a ghost—all bone and grime-streaked skin and dark hollows in his cheeks and eyes. His hair was all gone except for a few thin wisps, and the loincloth he wore was as dark with soot as the rest of him.

There was no light in the shed, and I could just barely make out the other men clustered behind him, all as rail-thin as he was. Farther back in the darkness, I could hear the sound of many more—a clanking, impatient mass of men.

Why are they clanking?

“Muto! Muto!”
Kira beckoned for the first Okalu to step though the hole that we'd opened up, a couple of feet off the ground and more than wide enough for his skeleton's body.

He hesitated, and the hollow men behind him craned their necks, wondering like we were why he wasn't coming out.

He gritted his teeth and tried to hop over the splintered wood, but he tripped and fell, splaying out onto the ground with a rattling clank—and I realized what all the clanking was coming from, and why he'd had so much trouble stepping over the low section of wall.

His legs were manacled together at the ankles with an iron chain.

“Where are the keys?” Kira asked me.

I looked around for the rucksack I'd left on the ground when I started swinging the ax. After a panicky moment, I spied it a few feet away and quickly fetched the ring of skeleton keys from it.

By the time I did, Kira had helped the first Okalu to his feet, five more were standing beside him, and Guts and Millicent were on either side of the hole in the wall, helping to support the next man so he could get his manacled legs up and over the splintered wood.

I knelt down at the first Okalu's feet and inspected the manacles. Each collar had a small keyhole near the back, just above the tab where the chain attached.

“Hurry, Egg!”

I tried a key. It was too big for the keyhole.

The sound of clanking iron was building on all sides. Helped by Millicent and Guts, the Okalu were filing out of the shed in a steady stream. They crowded around me, blocking out the moonlight.

“Kira, tell them to back away! I can't see what I'm doing.”

She did. I could see again, just barely. I went back to the ring and searched the keys until I found a small one.

It was still too big for the lock.

“Hurry!” Kira said again. “The pirates are coming!”

I could hear her handing rocks and slings to the men as they traded urgent words in Okalu over the sound of the clanking chains. But with those chains on their legs, the slings were next to useless, because the men couldn't step forward and put their weight behind the throws.

I fumbled with the ring, looking for the one key—I
hoped
there was one—small enough to fit.

“Hurry!” The fear was rising in Kira' voice.

I dropped the ring.

When I picked it up, my hands found the small key almost immediately. I tried it.

Too big.

That's the last one.
I could feel panic tightening my throat.

“Hurry!”

Try the other one again.

I searched out the other small key, the one I'd tried before.

No. This was different. A squared edge, not a rounded one.

I must have accidentally stuck in the same key twice.

I tried the small square one. It slid into the lock.

But it wouldn't turn.

I jiggled it, back and forth, in and out—

Click.

The first manacle opened on its hinge and fell away.

A few more seconds, and I got the second one off.
Click.

Clank.
The manacle fell off, and the first man was free.

“Gadda.”
I didn't need to know Okalu to understand he was thanking me. Before I could look up, his bone-thin legs stepped away, and another pair of legs clanked into place in front of me.

“
Hurry,
Egg!” It was Millicent. She didn't need to tell me. I knew.

Click . . .

Click . . .

Clank.

The second set of manacles fell away. Two more skinny legs stepped up, clanking as they came.

So thin . . . Their legs are so thin . . .

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
As I pushed away the discarded manacles, another Okalu stepped up.

Kira was trying to organize the men. Their voices mixed with hers, increasingly loud and urgent.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

“We need more stones!” It was Millicent's voice.

The men were running off as soon as I unshackled them. I tried to glance up to see where they were going, but all I could make out were more legs.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

They were crowding me again. I didn't have light to see.

“Back away, please!”

They didn't back away.

“KIRA!”

She was gone. I didn't know where.

“Guts! Millicent!”

They were gone, too.
Where did they go?
I felt for the next set of legs. They were turned the wrong way, and I couldn't find the keyhole.

“BACK AWAY! I CAN'T SEE!”

For an agonizing moment, nothing happened.

Then an Okalu voice called out,
“Kotay balu na!”

Others took up the call.
“Kotay balu na!”

The circle widened. I could see again, just barely.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

“Kira? Guts? MILLICENT?”

Where did they go?

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.
The empty manacles were piling up. I had to scurry backward on all fours to give myself more room to discard them.

The sea of clanking legs moved with me.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click—

A gunshot rang out.

Then a dozen of them, going off like firecrackers.

Voices were yelling—Rovian voices, shouting in anger and surprise—and they were close.
Much
too close.

Now the Okalu were yelling. The clanking around me grew so loud it nearly washed out the gunfire that kept crackling in my ears. The men around me were desperate to get their chains off before the pirates fell on them.

Don't panic. Keep working.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

There was no lull between the gunshots now—they just kept popping off, one after the other.

It takes time to reload a gun. There had to be a lot of them for that kind of barrage.

Keep working.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

There were screams and grunts and curses and more gunshots and the awful sounds of men fighting to the death with their hands.

They sounded like they were on top of me. I couldn't look up. There were too many chains to unlock.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

My hands were shaking.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

I couldn't see again.

“BACK OFF!”

“Kotay balu na! Kotay balu na!”

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

More gunshots. More screams.

“Millicent? Guts? Kira?”

No answer. I risked a quick glance up, in the direction of the road. All I could see were skinny legs and grimy loincloths.

I yelled as I worked. “Speak Rovian? Anyone? Rovian?”

No answer.

Just do your job.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

More gunshots. Someone cried out in agony. Men were running, calling to each other in Okalu.

“What's happening?”

No answer.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

“Who speaks Rovian?”

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

“Anybody speak Rovian?”

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

“I speak.”

I looked up. I wasn't sure which of the dozens of men surrounding me spoke Rovian.

“What's
happening
?” I asked.

“Fast! You go fast!”

I lowered my head and kept working.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

Click . . . Click . . . Clank.

FINALLY—
HOW LONG
had it been? Minutes? Hours?—
I unshackled a man, and when he ran off, no one stepped up to take his place.

I raised my head and looked around. I'd started out maybe five feet from the hole in the shed. Now I was fifty feet from it, with nothing between me and the shed but a dark, ugly field of discarded manacles.

I was staring at that field of manacles, dumbstruck, too numb to wonder why the sounds of battle had died away, when I heard a voice.

“Egg?”