The Sword of the Lady (76 page)

A globe flew towards them from the bow engine of the other ship. It trailed smoke in a low flat arc. There was a
crack
as it struck near the
Bou el-Mogdad
′s own prow, and the onrushing bow wave scrubbed its load of liquid fire off to float oily orange-red on the ice-blue waters.

″Shoot!″ Rudi shouted.

He hardly needed to. Arrows lifted in a rushing cloud from the
Bou el-Mogdad
at Edain′s bark of
wholly together!
A like volley came back, and every one of the broadside engines on the other ship cut loose. Most of their loads struck the water harmlessly—even at maximum elevation their angle was bad. The arrows were another matter. Rudi swept his knight′s shield up, giving the corsair shelter as well. Three shafts stuck quivering in it, and one banged off his left greave and skittered off across the deck. More rattled like metal hail on the sloped shield of the engine Mathilda commanded.

The
tunggg
of its discharge sounded very loud, and all the starboard broadside machines and the bow-chaser shot in the next half second. Sheet-metal shields rang and distorted and collapsed as the heavy granite balls struck; some of them went over the barricade or through it, plowing gruesomely through flesh and sending snapped rigging and wood splinters flying.

Abdou was screaming orders at the crew on the rigging lines and at the helm; the men there crouched and spun the wheel. The schooner paid off suddenly and heeled southward; booms swung out as it turned to run before the wind, and Rudi ducked as the thick timber swept by overhead. The
Gisandu
turned behind them; the world swung with disconcerting speed, and suddenly he could look over his shoulder and see the other vessel appallingly close. Another globe of napalm snapped out. There was a crash below as of glass and shutters, and a wisp of smoke billowed up.

″Falilu!″ Abdou barked.

The bosun led a rush of men with buckets of sand and water. Then the slim Moorish captain shook his head in amazement.

″He not talk! Just try to kill me, his brother!″

″He′s not his own man, Abdou al-Naari,″ Rudi said grimly. ″His mind and soul are not his own.″

″Now I believe,″ the corsair said grimly. ″Not before. But now, yes.″

Mathilda jerked the lanyard as the stern rose. Rudi could feel the deck quiver a little beneath his feet as the force of the throwing arms was transmitted through the turntable. The stone ball skipped twice, plunked through the very top of a wave and then caught the
Gisandu
′s bowsprit at its base. There was a cracking sound loud enough to hear, and Abdou winced even then; he must love these ships like his own children.

Falilu came back upside; there were scorchmarks on his clothing. He spoke in rapid Wolof, moving his hands in a fashion that left no doubt as to what he was saying.

″Old pagan dog not get use of
Bou el-Mogdad
after all,″ Abdou said with grim amusement. ″Falilu make fire slow, not able put out. Ship burn to waterline. Soon now, soon.″

They both ducked, but the bolt from the
Gisandu
′s bow-catapult hit the steel protection of their stern-chaser and pinwheeled away and up in fragments. Shields were raised and men ducked across the deck against that hail. Father Ignatius came to the wheel, wiping off hands bloody from field surgery.

″Two dead, five wounded,″ he said.

Rudi thought swiftly and spoke to Abdou. ″Take her straight in and to the dock.″

″Dock?″

″
That
dock!″ Rudi said.

Abdou blinked as if he were only then aware of the tangle of quays ahead. Rudi realized with a chill in some distant part of his mind that the Moor
hadn′t
seen them until that moment.

″Ram it. We′ll leap off—the ship is doomed anyway. Ignatius, see that the wounded all have someone to carry them.″

Unexpectedly, Abdou spoke: ″I, my men not fight. We carry hurt, though.″

Rudi nodded grateful acknowledgment as the corsair called orders in his own language.

″Ingolf?″ he went on.

The Richlander swallowed. Rudi didn′t think that was the dangers of battle that brought the sheen of sweat to his face despite the cold.

″I came in the other way. But . . . right up that street from the harbor, the one the maps call
Center
, and then left where it forks. The house with the pillars on your right. I think. It was . . . mixed up, there, at the end.″

″That′s what we′ll do, then. You lead and—″

Ignatius shook his head. ″You and the Princess must go first, Your Majesty,″ he said. ″I will hold the rearguard with the rest.″

He smiled when Rudi started to object. ″What have we made this journey for if not to get
you
to the Sword? And the Princess is my charge. If you would save us, accomplish your mission swiftly.″

The smile grew broader as he patted his own hilt. ″Gain your Lady′s Sword, your Majesty. I also have a sword blessed by a Lady, and a mission laid upon me. I
will
fulfill it.″

″Right,″ Rudi said tightly.

More smoke was coming out of the stern windows, trailing along on either side of them as the wind that pushed the ship took it. It gave a little cover, and the
Gisandu
had to turn slightly every time she fired; the bow-chaser couldn′t shoot directly over her own bowsprit. The stern-chaser on their own ship could, but . . .

″The deck′s starting to get very hot here!″ Mathilda called; not alarmed, just reporting.

She jerked the lanyard.
Tunnnggg.
This time there was a splintering
crack
almost immediately, as the shot caught the other vessel at the waterline. They were gliding southeast through a narrow passage now. A broadside of incendiaries came flying at them as they came about to head directly south and the harbor opened out around them, a broad shallow lagoon. Two globes smashed against the steel shields and hissing fire ran down. Their own replied, and a sail came rattling down on the
Gisandu
as a stay was severed. Corsairs worked frantically at a deck pump to wash the napalm down and into the sea before it started another fire.

Edain and his picked archers crowded onto the poop deck. He was firing like a machine across the hundred-yard gap, draw-aim-loose nock-draw, chanting under his breath:

″
We are the darts that
—got you bad, bastard!—
Hecate cast!
″

Rudi made himself turn. As he did he realized that
something
had been inhibiting him, something besides his natural desire to keep his eyes on the men trying to kill them all. He blinked and shook his head, but there was nothing wrong with his eyes. It was as if he saw multiple images laid one upon another, like paintings on layers of glass. A festival where men and women danced through snow. Tall-masted ships tied at the docks. Something smooth and silvery and massive that
floated
above the water, then turned its nose skyward and rose with impossible speed . . .

Then a very solid dock and roadway, wharfs on barnacle-encrusted tree trunks, what looked like a street of low brick buildings, interspersed with white-trimmed gray shingle shops and leafless winter trees, with church steeples rearing beyond. No dwellers . . . or was that a band in oilskins with duffel bags over their shoulders? No, they were gone. And the dock was
there
.

″Brace for impact!″ he shouted, as it loomed before their bowsprit, and looped his elbow around a line.

Crack.
His feet skidded out from beneath him. A long crunching, grinding sound, and the bow reared up as the huge momentum of the two-hundred-ton vessel ground into timber and stone. Nearly everyone else fell too; Mathilda went sliding past him as the impact pitched her off the gunner′s seat of the weapon, and he snagged her with a leg. She clung to his sword belt as the long echoing crash continued and the deck canted more and more steeply beneath them. Their helmets rang together as the foremast broke with a sound like thunder and came down on the shattered dock.

Silence except for snapping wood and the growing burr of the fire beneath them.

″Go, go, go!″ Ignatius shouted.

Rudi hauled Mathilda upright as if her solid weight and the armor were nothing. They ran along the side to the buckled rail, up to it, down onto the crazy-quilt mess of the dock where the schooner′s weight had struck. His leg went through a broken board and he wrenched it free. Then they were running, up past a dry fountain and onto a stretch of cobbles. His weight pounded down through his boots, but the sound was too
deep
, as if he were walking on a drumhead. An arrow went past them . . . but it
floated
past. His run turned to steps in a dream, one where you floated. He floated, past primeval forests, past a rough hamlet hacked from the woods where folk in rust-colored coats and high-steepled hats and long dresses gaped at him, past the street he′d first seen, but dense with the cars and trucks of the ancient world, past the same with ox carts heaped with fish . . .

 

 

 

″Here. We′ll hold them here!″ Ignatius shouted; the stone basin of the fountain blocked part of the street.

Shields locked on either side, and the archers fanned out in two forward-slanting wings from side to side of the roadway. The
Bou el-Mogdad
was burning like a pillar of fire now, delaying the men the
Gisandu
carried and making it impossible for her deck engines to shoot. They came staggering out of the smoke anyway, and first was a man in a tattered red robe the color of dried blood. His hands were held out before him like claws, and his eyes were windows into negation.

The endless wail was as much shriek as word, and less a protest than a single long scream of what he
was
, or what the thing that wore the man like a glove was. Ignatius raised his sword and brought up his shield, but behind the visor of his helm he shouted for joy as his gaze met those wells of night without end.

″Yes!″ he cried. ″Eternally,
yes
!″

Behind him Edain barked: ″Let the gray geese fly. Wholly together—
Shoot!
″

The bows snapped, and men went down in the ragged mob of Bekwa and Sword troopers and corsairs who rushed forward as the arrows sleeted into them, but there were too many, far too many. Three punched into the High Seeker, but his body simply flexed and came on.

″You shall not pass, Hollow Man!″ Ignatius cried.

And then—

Knight-brother Ignatius snatched at his sword. It wasn′t there, nor was his armor and gear. Instead he wore the simple Benedictine robe and cowl; after an instant he was conscious that he sat on a bench. Before him was a cloister, slender white stone columns supporting arches on three sides of a garden and fountain where water played before an image of the Virgin. The shadows within the walk hid tall doors; behind them was a hint of bookcases full of leather-bound volumes. Within the court the sun ran dappled on the water that lifted and fell in its basin, shifting in spots of brightness through the leaves of tall beeches; a few flower beds stood in troughs between walkways of worn brick, shimmering in gold and silver and hyacinth blue.

The day was mild and dry and warm, with scents of rock and wet and warm dust, and somewhere a hint of incense. It was very quiet; the sound of the plashing fountain, a few
cu-currrus
from doves that stalked past, perhaps very faintly a hint of chanted plainsong in the distance. He smiled. It wasn′t Mt. Angel, but it was as if . . .

As if it is the distilled essence of everything I loved about the abbey
, he thought.
Peace, beauty, wisdom. God.

Beside him another monk sat; the man threw back his cowl and smiled. Ignatius′ eyes went a little wide. It was Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski, but as he′d first seen him as a postulant, the square hard face amused at his earnestness but in a way that was kindly, not mocking.

″Am I . . . is this . . .″

″No, you are not, my son,″ the abbot answered.

″Then, you—″

Dmwoski laughed; it had been a rare thing on Mt. Angel, but it lit the warrior-cleric′s sternness like a candle through the glass shutter of a lantern.

″Not yet, as your life thread is drawn;
there
I am currently fighting the sin of despair, and grappling with a sea of troubles. Time is different here. Or rather, we′re not entirely in time as men understand it.″

″I always thought you would be a saint,″ Ignatius blurted.

Dmwoski frowned. ″All human souls are, potentially. I . . . have been allowed to progress.″

″And this is—″

Another chuckle: ″And yes, this
is
where you think it is. Or as much of this . . . one of the many mansions . . . as you can currently understand. Think of it as a metaphor, but a true one.″