Gavin and Ironfist cut wide around the burning slick and then cut close to the ship.
“Musketeer! Third—fourth crow’s nest!” Kip shouted. He couldn’t even yell his warnings right.
There were half a dozen men along the high castle manning swivel
guns. They had to aim between the bars of the blindage, but they didn’t seem to be having much trouble. Kip threw sub-red at them, had no idea if he’d hit anything, and then hit the deck as one of the big cannons went off mere feet from his head as the skimmer pulled even to the ship. The world disappeared as cannons roared and great billowing clouds of black smoke and cordite gushed from their throats.
Seen through the sub-red lenses, the world was delineated into great flashes of exploding guns, the sharp tongues of spitting muskets, the muted bursts of the grenadoes, and the ghostly shadows of men.
Then they were out of the smoke. They immediately cut hard to port, passing in the very shadow of the beakhead. Gavin and Ironfist both hurled grenadoes into that deck overhead. Gavin’s was wrapped in red luxin, and stuck; Ironfist’s was spiked, and stuck. Twin explosions and showers of wood and flame announced their success. None of the cannons on the port side of the
Garguntua
had been fired, so Kip was able to see clearly once more.
Flames sprang up on the mainsail—and were immediately extinguished in sprays of orange luxin. A few of the lines had been successfully cut, but those that had been merely set aflame were also saved.
“Brace!” Gavin shouted.
The skimmer curved to starboard to get some separation, and just as they rose out of a trough, Gavin shot a huge ball of flaming red luxin at the first crow’s nest. The drafter saw it coming and tried to blast it aside, but the ball merely shattered and drenched him and the crow’s nest in flame.
But Kip barely saw that, because the concussion of Gavin throwing something so massive just as they went airborne threw the skimmer hard to the side, and had they not hit the crest of another wave, they probably would have capsized.
Instead, they simply slowed to a crawl as Ironfist and Gavin were thrown off the reeds for a moment, and the skimmer turned the wrong way, bobbing in the waves. Kip saw two men training swivel guns on them even as a man engulfed in flames pitched out of the crow’s nest, tangling in the lines as he fell, shrieking.
Then the gunners disappeared in a wash of flame and exploding yellow light as four of the sea chariots closed around the Prism.
The port-side cannons began firing, and Kip saw one of the archers
on the back of her chariot simply disappear. The blindage was afire, and Kip saw the sailors and soldiers above them struggling to throw it over the side. One of the Blackguards had painted a line of red luxin down the entire length of the
Gargantua
’s hull, and as the cannons roared, it lit.
Within seconds, Gavin and Ironfist had the skimmer back up to speed. Musket balls whistled past them, dimpling the water. Several of the archers were firing now at great speed. And Kip could tell that the soldiers were only beginning to make it to the deck.
“Birds!” Kip shouted as a flock of pigeons exploded from the deck of the
Gargantua
. Pigeons?
“Ironbeaks!” one of the Blackguard shouted.
Kip lost sight of the birds and the ship itself as the skimmer dodged in and out. In the sudden lurching, he thought he was going to be sick.
I’m going to be seasick? In the middle of a battle?
He looked to the horizon to try to steady his stomach. Two of the sea chariot drivers who’d both lost their archers had gone out the range of the guns and abandoned one chariot, pulling another cord that made the luxin fall apart at the seams. Gavin hadn’t wanted the secret of how to make the chariots falling into enemy hands. But beyond them, Kip saw a galley coming, its triple oar decks moving the small ship quickly.
“Got a galley coming,” Kip shouted. He pulled up the binocle and almost puked as the magnified vision seemed to magnify the swaying. “No flag.”
Gavin shot a look up. “Probably pirates looking for an easy kill, not Vecchio’s. Keep an eye on it.”
Then they were back into the fight. They came out from under the stern galley onto the starboard side and saw an explosion blow one of the cannons on the lowest gun deck completely out the side into the water in a spray of wood and fire and smoke. One of the Blackguards—Kip though it was Cruxer—whooped.
An instant later, Kip saw one of the pigeons dive at Cruxer. It hit his chest, stuck.
Cruxer slapped the bird off his chest. It splashed into the water and less than a second later exploded.
Then Kip understood. Like the hellhounds Trainer Fisk had told
them about, these birds were natural birds, but they’d been infused with a drafter’s will to do one thing—attack the Blackguards. And in this case, they’d also been equipped with small grenadoes.
Which meant several dozen small flying bombs were circling the great ship—small, intelligent bombs.
As intelligent as pigeons, anyway.
And if that wasn’t quite terrifying, seeing half a dozen of them hit a Blackguard team that had slowed to throw a grenado into a gunport was. A second later, both driver and archer were ripped apart by the explosions. The grenado the woman had thrown bounced harmlessly off the blindage—which hadn’t been pulled off on this side of the ship—and exploded in the water, barely so much as scoring the wood of the hull.
The
Gargantua
was a floating castle. The fires weren’t spreading. It was invincible.
“Reeds,” Gavin said to Ironfist.
The big man seemed to know what he meant instantly, because he took Gavin’s reed and began propelling the skimmer by himself.
“Kip, hold my feet down. All your weight.”
Gavin was already weaving something between his hands. Kip practically dove onto his feet. Instant obedience. Then he followed Gavin’s eyes.
The entire flock of the remaining ironbeaks was headed straight at them. With only Ironfist on the reeds, the birds were catching up.
Gavin didn’t finish until the first bird was practically within arm’s reach. Then he threw both hands out and a net of yellow luxin spun out from him. It engulfed all of the birds. Then Gavin yanked his arms down and was nearly pulled from Kip’s grasp. But the pressure lasted only a second.
There was no such thing as action at a distance with luxin. To throw something, you had to throw it; to slap something down onto a deck, you had to yank it down. Gavin had made the luxin a lever, and he’d cast the entire net of the birds onto the deck of the
Gargantua
.
Where they exploded. Kip saw half a man and a helmet flying off the deck.
Not an empty helmet.
Gavin scrambled back into place, and Kip saw an orange drafter
peek over the deck and spray luxin down on the burning hull, extinguishing the flames.
Ironfist saw him, too, and put a blue spike in his skull. The man tumbled into the sea.
“They’re organizing into musket teams,” Ironfist said. And the effect was almost immediate. The men on the decks must have started putting the best marksmen in front, while those farther back reloaded and gave them fresh muskets, because both the rate and the accuracy of fire increased.
A sea chariot driver just behind them crumpled, turning the pipes wildly to one side. Her chariot flipped, flinging her archer into the sea.
“Guard overboard!” Kip cried.
Ironfist’s and Gavin’s reaction was immediate. Catching a peak, they shot hard to starboard. The skimmer flipped completely backward before they hit the next wave.
All of them were nearly torn off the skimmer from the sudden change in direction, but neither Gavin nor Ironfist slowed. Kip thought he was going to tear the post behind him right off, but it held. Both men pulled grenadoes from their bandoliers and tossed them in high arcs. Then another.
“Sub-red on any muskets you see, Kip!” Gavin shouted.
They sped toward the swimming young man.
“I got the reeds,” Gavin said. He took them both and headed straight for the Blackguard. Kip thought he was going too close, but as he popped over the last wave, Gavin turned slightly and they splashed barely a hand’s breadth from the Blackguard. Ironfist reached down and between Ironfist’s strength and the Blackguard’s, the man popped out of the water in barely a second.
Kip hadn’t seen what effect the grenadoes had on the deck, but the musket fire had slowed. Then he saw one of the swivel guns on a lower deck being turned toward them.
The other Blackguards on their sea chariots had rallied around them, and they were spraying red luxin everywhere, the yellows casting flashbombs to dazzle and distract, but the sheer number of them congregating in one sector was enough to encourage the cannoneers to turn the big guns.
The screams of the furious and the shouts of anger and the moans of the injured and the cries of urgent orders and the crackling of
fireballs and the snapping of distant muskets and booms of cannons and the whistle of the big mortars and the snap of sails and the wash of the waves and hissing of the wind and the moans of the dying and the shrieks of the wights faded, grew distant, hushed. Kip could hear only the deep, slow whoosh of his own heartbeat, ludicrously slow, and around and beneath that a sighing, like the beach when the tide goes out. For a moment, he had a wild notion that he was hearing the sunlight hit the waves.
He saw one of the Blackguard archers drawing an arrow back. The string touched her lips and the arrow leapt out at the very moment a musket ball tore her jaw off.
Whoosh.
The world looked beyond real. Kip realized he was seeing the whole spectrum at once. He could see dozens of guns. The skimmer was directly broadside to the
Gargantua
. And he could see the glow of men, the glow of matches and slow fuses. He could see the gleam of metal on the powder barrels through the open gunports, could see straight through the smoke.
He swept a hand out and fanned superviolet strands like spiderwebs out to every gun and barrel he could see. The superviolet was so fast and light, it hit its targets almost the instant he chose them. Then he swept his hand back, releasing little bursts of firecrystals so hot they burned his hand even as he shot them out at unbelievable speed.
Satisfaction swept through him even before the next big whoosh of his heartbeat rolled through his ears.
Struck by the firecrystals, every loaded musket and cannon on the starboard side of the
Gargantua
went off at once. Cannons that were in the middle of being loaded went off, muskets that men were standing over with ramrod in hand went off. Loaded muskets being handed up to marksmen went off. Some of the cannons hadn’t been charged yet, and Kip felt vexed. Others, though, had been fully loaded but not yet pushed back into place, and they blew holes out of the sides of the gun decks.
The entire ship was rocked to the side from the simultaneous concussive force.
Not bad.
And then, on three different gun decks, powder barrels exploded. Flames and smoke and wood and cannons and men and parts of men blasted fresh holes in every deck.
The roar ripped over the Blackguards and Kip blinked. Time was back. He was back.
Men were screaming. Terrible, terrible screams. He could see men on fire, skin blackened and sloughing off, running to jump into the sea. Fires leapt out of all three gun decks.
The skimmer shuddered and Gavin and Ironfist threw their will into getting back up to speed.
“Four ships coming in, half a league,” Kip said. He felt empty, stunned.
“Under the beakhead,” Gavin said.
“Not so sure that’s a good—” Ironfist said.
“Under the beak! The wights will be up on deck any second. We’ve got one chance at this!”
Ironfist acquiesced instantly and they sped in front of the ship, hardly any muskets barking now. They came under the front of the still-moving ship, and Ironfist took the reeds, maneuvering them so that the ship didn’t plow right over them. The wooden beakhead loomed just above their heads, close enough that when the waves lifted them, it almost smashed Kip’s head. Gavin wrapped one fist in fire and punched into the hull overhead.
When the wave receded, Gavin was yanked into the air, his fist still stuck into the wood. Kip lunged, but missed him.
“Leave him!” Ironfist shouted. “You see anyone, you light ’em up!”
Kip could see then that Gavin was drafting still, heedless of his body hanging by one arm.
I don’t think I even could hold myself up by one arm.
Gavin was doing it and drafting—and drafting something horrendously complicated, if it was taking him this much time. Then he was done. When the skimmer rose on the next wave, Gavin touched down on the deck as gracefully as a dancer.
“Two minutes,” he said. “We need to keep the drafters busy.”
And so they circled again, Commander Ironfist giving hand signals to the three remaining sea chariots. They concentrated on hurling luxin and exhausted their grenadoes, some of them successfully tossing them into the huge holes Kip’s explosions had created. Somewhere in the fighting, one of the teams had successfully cut all the rigging to the foremast, and another had set fire to the lateen sails, but the mainsail and mainmast were still whole.