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"Del, if it's not too much trouble, we're pla
"Oh, yeah, the fight for our lives. I suppose I could help you out for a few minutes, Captain." "Luck, Del." "Luck, Zamira." "Captain," said Mumchance, "now—"
"Nasreen!" Drakasha bellowed at the top of her considerable voice. "Starboard anchor away!""
"Sound collision," called Delmastro a moment later, "all hands brace yourselves! Up aloft! Grab a mast, grab a line!"
Someone began to ring the foremast bell frantically. The two ships were closing with astonishing speed. Locke and Jean crouched on the larboard quarterdeck stairs, clinging tight to the i
"Captain," said Mumchance, calm as someone ordering coffee, "other ship—"
"Helm hard-a-larboard," Drakasha shouted. Mumchance and his mate began manhandling the ship's wheel to the left. Suddenly there was a creak and a snapping noise from the bow; the ship shuddered end to end and was jerked to starboard as though caught in the teeth of a gale. Locke felt his stomach protesting and clung to the rail with all of his strength. "Anchor party," yelled Drakasha, "cut the cable!" Locke had an excellent view of the Dread Sovereign rushing down on them, scarcely a hundred yards away. He gasped to think of that heavy ship's bowsprit plunging like a spear into the Orchid or her massed crewfolk, but even as he watched, the three-master heeled over to larboard, making a turn of her own.
Rodanov avoided a head-on collision, and Locke had to guess that was intentional; while it might have done serious damage to the Orchid, it would have locked his ship precisely where Zamira could best resist his boarders, and possibly sunk both ships sooner or later.
What happened was spectacular enough: the sea creamed white between the two vessels and Locke heard the protesting waves hissing like steam baking furiously from hot coals. There was no way for the Sovereign or the Orchid to shed all their forward momentum, but they slid into one another along their sides with a rolling cushion of water between them. The whole world seemed to shake as they met; timbers creaked, masts shuddered and high overhead an Orchid was pitched from her position. She struck the Sovereign's deck, becoming the first casualty of the battle.
"Spanker! Spanker!" Zamira cried, and everyone on the quarterdeck looked up in unison as the Orchid's spanker sail was unfurled in the most unseamanlike fashion possible by the small crew detailed to it. Fluttering down to full extension, it was braced in place with desperate speed. Ordinarily, the fore-and-aft sail would never have been placed side-on to a wind, but in this case the stiff breeze from the east pushed against it by intention, heaving the Orchid's stern away from contact with the Dread Sovereign. Mumchance hauled his wheel to starboard now, trying to help the process along.
There was a series of screams and snapping noises from forward; the Dread Sovereign's bowsprit was destroying or fouling much of the forward rigging, but Drakasha's plan appeared to be working. That bowsprit hadn't punched a hole in the hull, and now Rodanov's starboard bow was the only part of his ship in contact with Drakasha's larboard side. From high above, Locke thought, the gods might have seen the two ships as drunken fencers, their bowsprits crossed but doing relatively little harm as they waved about.
Unseen things clawed the air with a snakelike hiss, and Locke realized that arrows were raining around him. The fight had well and truly begun.
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"Clever Syresti bitch," muttered Rodanov and he crawled back to his feet after the collision. Drakasha was using her spanker for leverage to prevent full broadside-to-broadside contact. So be it; he had his own advantages ready to play. "Let "em loose!" he shouted.
A crewman standing well back from the rear of the three cages (with shield-bearers flanking him) pulled the rope that released their doors. These were set just inches back from the collapsible section of the rail, which had been conveniently knocked clean away when the ships met.
A trio of adult valcona — starving, shaken up and pissed off beyond all measure — exploded from their confinement shrieking like the vengeful undead. The first thing they laid eyes on was the group of Orchids lining up across the way. Though heavily armed and armoured, Zami-ra's people had no doubt expected to repel human boarders first.
The three attack birds launched themselves through the air and landed amidst shields and polearms, laying about with their beaks and their dagger-sized claws. Orchids screamed, shoved against one another and caused utter chaos in their desperate struggle either to swing at or flee from the ferocious beasts.
Rodanov gri
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The screams from forward were more than human; Locke scrambled up the quarterdeck stairs on his hands and knees, straining to see what was going on. Brown shapes were flailing about within the packed masses of Zamira's "legions" along the larboard side. What the hell was that? Drakasha herself dashed past, twin sabres out, ru
Several sailors aboard Rodanov's ship hurled grappling hooks across the gap between the vessels. A team of Drakasha's crewfolk, waiting for this, hurried to the larboard rail to sever the grappling lines with hatchets. One of them toppled with an arrow in his throat; the rest made short work of every line Locke could see.
A sharp, flat thwack told of an arrow landing nearby; Jean grabbed him by his tunic collar and hauled him all the way onto the quarterdeck. His "flying company" was crouched behind their small shields; Malakasti was using hers to cover Mumchance as well, who ma
To Locke's surprise, Gwillem suddenly stood up in the midst of all this and, with a placid look on his face, began to whirl a bullet overhand in the cradle of his sling. As his arm went up he released one of the sling's cords, and a second later a bowman on the Sovereign's quarterdeck fell backward. Jean pulled Gwillem back to the deck when the Vadran began to reach for another projectile. "Boats," hollered Streva, "boats coming around her!"
Two boats, each carrying about twenty sailors, were pulling fast from behind the Dread Sovereign, curving around to approach the Orchid's stern. Locke wished mightily for a few arrows to season their passage, but the archers above had orders to ignore the boats. They were strictly the business of that legendary hero of the plunging beer-cask, Orrin Ravelle.
He did, however, have one major advantage, and as usual its name was Jean Ta
As the first boat of Sovereigns approached the taffrail, a pair of sailors armed with crossbows stood up to clear the way for a woman readying a grappling hook. Gwillem wound up and flung one of his stones downward, opening a bowman's head and toppling his body backward into the mess of would-be boarders. A moment later Jean stepped to the taffrail, hoisting a ninety-pound rock the size of an ordinary man's chest over his head. He hollered wordlessly and flung it down into the boat, where it shattered not just the legs of two rowers but the deck of the little craft itself. As water began to gush up through the hole, panic ensued.