Then he froze. Expecting the job.
'That sly old dog,' he said, turning to look at Neeps. 'Rose is doing it all for them, don't you see? The powder-charge inside the gun deck, the hopeless shots, now this big muck-up. He's making us look like clowns on purpose. He's setting a blary trap.'
Understanding spread across Neeps' face. 'You're right. You must be! He's reeling that Admiral Kuminzat in. But what happens if he falls for it? We're not as lame as all this, but they really can outgun us two to one.'
A shout from the quarterdeck: Rose himself was beckoning them near. When they had raced up the ladder the big man bent level with their faces.
'You both climb well,' he said. 'I need you aloft the spankermast, now, and clewing up the topgallant.'
'Captain,' said Pazel, 'we've never worked your sails. We don't know the spanker rigging.'
'Exactly,' said Rose, 'you'll look like perfect imbeciles up there. Climb!'
The boys glanced at each other. Pazel's theory was apparently proved, but they took no satisfaction from it. 'We might do some harm up there,' Neeps protested.
'See that you don't,' said Rose. 'Find a line that's bent to the topsails and foul it up, that's all — not badly, just plain to see. And keep worrying it 'til nightfall, unless I call you down.'
'Or we're shot down,' said Pazel. 'You wouldn't mind that at all.'
Rose struck at him with his massive fist. But the thousand blows Hercol and Thasha had landed on him had not been in vain. Just in time he leaped backwards, and found himself in fighting-stance, almost without conscious thought. It was the same pose that had so amused Drellarek, moments before the Turach died.
But Rose was not at all amused. 'You offal-brained Ormali layabout,' he said. 'I'm the captain of this ship! What if I'm not mad, eh, and we survive this engagement? Do you know how many ways I can make you wish you'd been killed? Get up that mast!'
There was no help for it: Rose was sincere in his threats, if in little else. Once more the boys took to the shrouds, bare feet on the decrepit ratlines, hands on the sturdier ropes. This time the ascent was horrifying. The topgallants rode a hundred feet above the quarterdeck, and before he'd climbed thirty Pazel began to suffer fantasies of falling, flying, letting go. The wind was like a frigid hand trying to claw them from the ship; the rain flew at them horizontally in a ceaseless, biting spray. Over and over the ratlines snapped, letting them half-drop through the shrouds, feet kicking wildly. And now the Jistrolloq was close enough for him to see the fire leaping from her chaser-guns.
Don't clench your hands! Captain Nestef had taught him. If you squeeze the blood out of 'em they'll soon be too tired to hold on. That's one of the fifty ways fear can kill you.
But Pazel was afraid — he was cold and dizzy and scared to death. Neeps' skin was pale; he looked as if the wind were trying to melt him down to bone. Up and up they went, like a pair of deranged hermits scaling a cliff in the Tsordons, going to meet the gods. At ninety feet Pazel looked down and saw Thasha pointing up at them, arguing with the captain. Then he saw Alyash grin and gesture at the stern as the largest wave yet passed like a moving hill under the vessel. A sixty-footer, thought Pazel, and vomited into the storm.
When they reached the topgallant yard the array of snapping ropes and heaving wheelblocks was a perfect mystery. Neeps groped to Pazel's side and shouted in his ear. Pazel could not make out a word.
Out along the yard, feet on the clew line, arms over the huge wooden beam. They flailed from rope to rope, hauling at each to see where it led. But the wind's strength so completely outmatched their own that they could barely move the thick hemp lines.
Half a mile between the ships. The Jistrolloq was firing selectively now. She would not have to wait long for point-blank accuracy.
Was Rose committing suicide? The Jistrolloq was as good a target as she would ever be, until she began to pass and rake them with her own huge array of cannon. Pazel knew for a fact that a dozen guns could fire from the Chathrand 's stern — thrice as many as could be wielded from the enemy's sleek bow. Yet still no guns fired from the Chathrand save the beleaguered nine on the starboard quarter. He's risking everything to lure them closer. What in the Nine Pits for?
Keep breathing. Think of something else. Strategy, tactics. What had Rose been going on about in his cabin? Motives, that was it. What had driven Kuminzat to take his vessel even this little distance onto the Ruling Sea? What did he want?
Revenge, of course, for his daughter and the Babqri Father. But Rose had clearly believed that something else was at stake for the man. Hope of glory? Love of country? Proof of Arqual's deception?
The mast shuddered. A ball from the White Reaper had punched a hole in the spanker mainsail.
What proof would the Sizzies have, though, if they sank the Chathrand out here in the Nelluroq? And if killing them was glorious, wasn't it ten times more so to expose a plot that could destroy the Mzithrin Empire?
They must have wanted to take us alive. Some of us, at least. But thanks to Diadrelu's warning we made it out of the Black Shoulders without a scratch. And now their settling for slaughter.
A quarter-mile. The Jistrolloq was pitching wildly now, and her mainsails fell limp for three or four seconds at the bottom of each trough, the wind cut off by the waves towering above her. She was slowing, she had to be: but not enough for the Chathrand to pull ahead.
There was a scream of fire. A blazing thing like a comet streaked from the Jistrolloq and exploded against the Great Ship's foremast. Dragon's egg! men were howling. Everyone had heard of the weapons, but Pazel had never met a soul who had lived to describe them first-hand. Now he saw why. Deck and mast were suddenly engulfed in a dripping blue flame; and hideous to behold, so were the men, leaping from the ropes, tearing at their oilskins in a frenzy. In blind agony the fire-drenched figures scattered on the deck, as luckier men hauled desperately at the pumps and hoses.
For once the rain was their ally: the fire did not spread, not even on the tar-coated rigging. But the men at the blast's epicentre had lost control of their sails. The huge forecourse swung disastrously to leeward, tearing at the standing rigging, and the Chathrand heeled in the same direction, her bow diving and her stern lifting like a bucking mule. Pazel locked his elbow around a brace as his feet were torn from the clew line, and for a moment his body lifted away from the spar like a scrap of canvas. When the ship righted he crashed down painfully against the timber. He glanced over his shoulder, and a prayer of joy welled up inside him: Neeps was still there.
The Chathrand was yawing, rolling, and it would be minutes yet before the fore-topmen came to grips with the chaos of the sail. Pazel looked down and saw six men at the wheel, Rose among them, fighting to keep the ship from turning sidelong to the waves. And now the Jistrolloq was racing towards them, chaser-cannon firing one after another, and teams on her forecastle running out the hull-smashing carronades.
Another terrible crash, and the roof of the wheelhouse was blown to pieces. At nearly the same instant the mizzenmast tilted leeward with a groan: a wooden ballista-spear, dragging a kite's tail of iron barbs, had ripped through her starboard shrouds.
Pazel looked at Neeps and made a jerking motion: The hell with this. It's over. Neeps understood, and nodded. His lips formed one word: Thasha.
Pazel caught his meaning instantly. Go to her, Neeps was telling him, while there's time to say goodbye.
They were creeping back towards the mast when something inside the Chathrand roared. Pazel looked down and saw black smoke boiling up and over the quarterdeck, and around both sides of the hull. They had run out the stern cannon at last.
The Jistrolloq's bow plating was tempered steel, but four square openings pierced it: one for each of the chaser-guns harrying her enemy. It was those four cannon, Pazel saw now, that Rose had targeted, and with devastating results. Two of the guns were utterly destroyed, splintered like bottle-stems before his eyes. The other two were blown backwards through their ports and out of sight. The Jistrolloq herself was all but unblemished, but she would not get another shot at the Chathrand until she drew up alongside.
Except for those two grim carronades on the forecastle. Such weapons were absurdly inaccurate, being roughly shaped like whiskey barrels, but they threw shot so enormous that one hit at short range could stave in a hull, dropping a ship to the sea floor in minutes. Even now the Mzithrinis were taking aim: Rose's strategy had left them wide open. Pazel thought of the gun-teams on the Chathrand, reloading as fast as humanly possible. It would not be fast enough.
Then, somehow, fire leaped again from the Great Ship. It was a different sort of smoke plume, ragged spokes instead of a single billowing cloud. And Pazel remembered: the grapeshot guns in Rose's cabin. They too were best at point-blank range, for they riddled a wide space with iron pellets: useless for damaging a ship, but deadly against
