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Ydrena Koros came over the rail and nearly killed Zamira with the first slash of her scimitar. The blade rebounded off Elderglass — still, Zamira burned at the thought that her guard had slipped. She struck back with both sabres but Ydrena, small and lithe, had all the room she needed to parry one and avoid the other. So fast, so effortlessly fast — Zamira gritted her teeth. Two blades on one, and Koros still filled the air between them with a deadly silver blur; Zamira lost her hat and very nearly her neck, parrying only at the last second. Another slash hissed against her vest, a second sliced one of her bracers. Shit — she backed into one of her own sailors. There was nowhere else to go on the deck.
Koros conjured a curving, broad-bladed dagger in her left hand, feinted with it and swept her scimitar at Zamira's knees. Zamira released her sabres and stepped into Koros's guard, putting them chest to chest. She grabbed Ydrena's arms with her own, forcing them out and down with all her strength. In that, at last, she had the advantage — that and one thing more: fighting dirty usually prevailed over fighting prettily.
Zamira brought her left knee up into Ydrena's stomach. Ydrena sank; Zamira grabbed her hair and slammed her in the chin. The smaller woman's teeth made a sound like clattering billiard balls. Zamira heaved her to her feet and threw her backward, onto the sword of the Sovereign directly behind her. A brief look of surprise flared on the woman's blood-smeared face, then died with her. Zamira felt more relief than triumph.
She fetched her sabres from the deck where thed'r fallen; as the sailor now in front of her pulled his sword from Ydrena and let her body drop, he suddenly found one of Zamira's blades in his chest. The battle ground on, and her actions became mechanical — her sabres rose and fell against the screaming tide of Rodanov's people, and the deaths ran together into one red cacophony. Arrows flew, blood slicked the deck beneath her feet and the ships rolled and yawed atop the sea, lending a nightmarish shifting quality to everything.
It might have been minutes or ages before she found Ezri at her arm, pulling her away from the rail. Rodanov's people were falling back to regroup; the deck was thick with dead and wounded; her own survivors were all but standing on them as they stumbled into one another and fell back themselves. "Del," gasped Zamira, "you hurt?"
"No." Ezri was covered in blood; her leathers had been slashed and her hair was partially askew, but otherwise she appeared to be intact. "The flying company?" "No idea, Captain." "Nasreen? Utgar?" "Nasreen's dead. Haven't seen Utgar since the fight started."
"Drakasha," came a voice above the moans and mutterings of the confusion on both sides. Rodanov's voice. "Drakasha! Cease fighting! Everyone, cease fighting! Drakasha, listen to me!"
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Rodanov glanced at the arrow sunk into his right upper arm. Painful, but not the deep, grinding agony that told of a touch to the bone. He grimaced, used his left hand to steady the arrowhead and then reached up with his right to snap the shaft just above it. He gasped, but that would do until he could deal with it properly. He hefted his club again, shaking blood onto the deck of the Sovereign.
Ydrena dead; gods-damn it, his first mate for five years, on the bloody deck. He" d laid about with his club to get to her side, splintering shields and beating aside spears. At least half a dozen Orchids to him, and he'd been their match — Dantierre he'd knocked clean over the side. But the fighting space was too narrow, the rolling of the ships unpredictable, his crewfolk too thin around him. Zamira" d suffered miserably, but at this confined point of contact he was stymied. A lack of brawling at the Orchid's stern meant that the boats had probably fared the same. Shit. Half his crew was gone, at least. It was time to spring his second surprise. His calling a halt to the battle was the signal to bring it on. All in, now — last game, last hand, last turn of the cards. "Zamira, don't make me destroy your ship!" "Go to hell, you oath-breaking son of a bitch! You come and try again, if you think you still have any crewfolk willing to die in a hurry!"
Locke had left Jabril, Mumchance and Mumchance's mate — along with the death-lanterns, he supposed — to guard the stern. He and Jean hurried forward, through the strangeness of air suddenly free from arrows, past the mounds of dead and wounded. Scholar Trega
They found Drakasha and Delmastro at the bow, with about twenty surviving Orchids staring at twice their number of Sovereigns across the way. Ezri hugged Jean fiercely; she looked as though she'd been through a great deal of blood but not yet lost any of her own. Up here the Orchid seemed to have no deck; only a surface layer of dead and nearly dead. Blood drained off the sides in streams. "Not me," shouted Rodanov. "Here," yelled Utgar at the Orchid's waist. "Here, Drakasha!"
Locke turned to see Utgar holding a grey sphere, perhaps eight inches in diameter, with a curiously greasy surface. He cradled it in his left hand, holding it over the open cargo hatch, and his right hand clutched something sticking out of the top of the sphere. "Utgar," said Drakasha, "what the hell do you think you're—"
"Don't make a fucking move, right? Or you know what I'll do with this thing." "Gods above," whispered Ezri, "I don't believe this." "What the hell is that?" Locke asked. "Bad news," she said. "Fucking awful news. That's a shipbane sphere." Jean listened as she explained quickly.
"Alchemy, black alchemy, expensive as hell. You have to be fucking crazy to bring one to sea, same reason most captains shy away from fire-oil. But worse. Whole thing goes white-hot. You can't touch it; can't get close. Leave it on deck and it burns right through, down into the i
"Traitor? No. I'm Rodanov's man; am and have been since before I joined. His idea, hey? If I" ve done you good service, Drakasha, I" ve just been doing my job." "Have him shot," said Jean. "That thing he's holding is the twist-match fuse," said Ezri. "He moves his right hand, or we kill him and make that thing drop, it comes right out and ignites. This is what those damned things are for, get it? One man can hold a hundred prisoner if he just stands in the right spot." "Utgar," Drakasha said, "Utgar, we're wi
"Utgar, please. This ship is heaped with wounded. My children are down there!"
"Yeah. I know. So you" d best lay down your arms, hey? Back up against the starboard rail. Archers down from the masts. Everybody calm — and I'm sure for everyone but you, Drakasha, there's a happy arrangement waiting."
"Throats cut and over the side," shouted Trega
But the scholar's deed was already done; Utgar jumped and shuddered as the bolt sank into the small of his back. The grey sphere tipped forward and fell from his left hand; his right hand pulled away, trailing a thin, white cord. He toppled to the deck, and his device vanished from sight into the hold below. "Oh, hell," said Jean. "No, no, no," Ezri whispered. "Children,"Jean found himself saying, "I can get them—"