flesh. Pazel could see the proof of that: Mzithrinis dead or squirming in their blood or crouching in fear behind the carronades. One of the guns, already loosed for firing, disgorged its knee-high iron shot onto the forecastle. The ball raced aft, catching a man by the heel and crushing him instantly; then it changed directions with the pitch of the ship and smashed through the starboard rail. Pazel could only watch, sickened and stunned. All that with one cannon's grapeshot.
Another of the four guns boomed, killing an officer as he stood to rally the surviving carronade gunners. A third erupted when relief gunners tried to swarm up the ladder onto the forecastle. Pazel realised with a sense of awe that the team in Rose's cabin would be able to reload the first of the four guns before the last had fired, and that such a relay could go on indefinitely. The Jistrolloq had given up her forecastle, and Chathrand 's twelve stern cannon would soon be ready to fire again.
He's going to sink them. He's going to kill them all, right before my eyes.
Whether that indeed was Rose's intention Pazel never learned, for at the height of the next swell the Chathrand 's foremast tore her stays, ripped free her starboard shrouds; and then the whole towering mass of spars and sail and rigging crashed down over the portside rail.
Dead! thought Pazel, as the Chathrand heeled terribly sidelong, and cables snapped around him. The dangling, half-submerged mast would drag their bow under as surely as a hold full of seawater; it was unthinkable that they would have enough time to cut it free. The Chathrand wallowed backwards down the wave; he saw the nine open gunports being wrenched shut in a panic, and a row of mailed Turachs falling like dominoes, and two sailors vanishing overboard into a cauldron of white froth. He saw Neeps struck in the chest by a flying wheelblock; they would not last another five minutes on this spar. But would the ship herself fare any better?
Even as he framed the thought, they rolled: the following sea had caught the Chathrand straight across her beam. The mast where they clung with locked limbs dived towards the sea, while beneath them the crown of the breaking wave swept right over the waist of the ship, making her quarterdeck and forecastle look for a moment like two rafts separated by eight hundred feet of white-water. In that torrent men clung to ropes, rails, cleats, anything that did not move, and still many were carried away.
Pazel had a blurred impression of the White Reaper at a hundred yards, as perfectly in control as they were perfectly flailing, her bowsprit pointed like a sword at Chathrand 's tilting flank. Dauntless, her gunners were making a third charge onto the forecastle. No grapeshot would drive them off this time, and if they managed to fire those killer carronades they could hardly miss with their eyes shut.
But then the Chathrand righted. Pazel could not believe what his senses were telling him. Had the foremast gone by the board? How, how had they done it? But there was no doubt, they were righting, and as he flew skywards with even more sickening speed than before, Pazel caught a sound he had only heard once before in his life — the day Rose had destroyed the whaler in a rippling broadside.
All along the starboard hull, gunports had flown open again: not just the earlier nine, but thirty, forty perhaps; and bow to stern they belched fire and smoke, straight at the Jistrolloq, across the trough between the passing wave and the next. Then just seconds before the wave reached them the doors were yanked shut again. Once more the Great Ship rolled.
Now at last Pazel caught a glimpse of their saviours: the augrongs, Refeg and Rer. Waist deep in foam, the creatures were even now taking axes to the last of the foremast rigging, while teams of men strained at the harnesses they wore, struggling to keep them from washing into the sea. Bless their hides, thought Pazel, those brutes could part a halyard with one stroke.
This time it took far longer to rise — who could say how much water had flooded the ship, or by how many routes? — but when they did at last Pazel knew it was over. Horrible, horrible sight! The Jistrolloq had lost her own foremast to the Chathrand 's guns, and her main was torsioned hopelessly to windward. But it was not the canvas she had lost that had doomed her; it was the canvas that survived. Like the Chathrand, the Mzithrini warship had slewed round, and the great power of the surviving squaresails was now pressing down on her bow, like a torturer's hand forcing his victim's head underwater, deeper, and deeper still. The next wave caught her broad on the starboard quarter, a blow the smaller ship could not absorb. Over she went on her beam-ends, masts slapping the waves, so close to the Chathrand they seemed almost like bridges her men might run across to safety. As the wave passed she tried to right herself, but a hundred thousand tons of water on her sails could not be shed in an instant, and the next wave buried her completely. By then the Great Ship had veered downwind just enough to ride the wave out, and Pazel felt the monstrous sidelong lurching come to an end. He and Neeps gained the shrouds, and as he began his descent at last Pazel looked for the enemy and saw nothing, nothing at all — and then a twisted length of white sailcloth, one proud red star in the corner, moving like the spectre of a whale beneath the surface, only to reach some absolute decision, and dive.
30
Sunday, 26 Freala 941. If this is what victory feels like, you may spare me the distinction for the rest of my days. We are alive (most of us) amp; the Grey Lady took no immediately fatal damage in the engagement, amp; no ship in Alifros can follow or even spot us now — yes, for all that I am thankful. And who could fail to be relieved that the storm is abating, this the 3rd night since our escape from Sandplume Cove? Two cheers for the mercy of the Nelluroq amp; the undeniable cunning of Captain Nilus Rose.
But never was I less inclined to celebrate. Sixteen men lost overboard amp; twenty more laid out dead in our surgical annexe, among them Coxilrane 'Firecracker' Frix, busybody, coward amp; a dedicated sailor to his entrails. Like me a product of Wasthog Strand, that unpaved, unloved corner of Etherhorde, pinched between the ironworks and the slaughterhouses. I used to see him with his pack of boys when we were young. They dressed like Burnscove thugs, a sort of fashion then, amp; threw rocks at us over the King's Canal. Frix always looked apologetic amp; out of place, a skinny dog trotting along at their heels, needing to be noticed amp; at the same time afraid to be. Nothing much ever changed in his life, Rin rest his soul.
Courage. One might celebrate that, I suppose, amp; set aside the question of whether it was given wisely or in vain. Our dead gunners had courage: with waves like cliffs bearing down on them, they kicked open their gunports, blasted the Jistrolloq's rigging to pieces, slammed the ports again in the nick of time — and suffocated on their own smoke, in a deck sealed tight as a crypt. Tanner wept for his boys, though his own lungs were burned black. I sat by him three hours tonight in Chadfallow's surgery. Even his last wheezing breath smelled of gunpowder.
Pathkendle amp; Undrabust have courage: that spankermast would have been the next to fall, if the chaser- guns on the Jistrolloq had gotten off another round or two. The boys have bullwhip-scars all over their bodies, from ropes cracking in the wind. Thasha Isiq has courage, facing Rose's lunacy concerning ghosts, amp; fighting to get her friends brought down off that lethal spar even when the captain threatened to pitch her over the stern. Elkstem amp; I exchanged a look: we were with Rose in 927, when he did pitch a girl off the stern of the Great Ship; but that is another story.
Felthrup has courage, wherever he is. The youths are beside themselves, searching for him everywhere, sniffing about the lower decks with Thasha's dogs. All to no avail.
And tonight a woman I might once have killed without a thought told me I had courage. I refer of course to the crawly, Diadrelu. She was back in the stateroom when I brought Pathkendle amp; Co. their dinner amp; she walked up bold as brass amp; looked me in the eye. 'Quartermaster, ' says she, 'I salute your wisdom and bravery.'
Now that the crisis was over it seemed even less natural to be talking to a crawly. I looked away amp; mumbled about how they'd picked up the pieces well. For the stateroom had been in pieces: a 24-pounder had sailed right through the big stern window, split the dining table in half, shattered the washroom door, put a whopping dent in the cast-iron tub, ricocheted back into the main cabin amp; blasted a stanchion to woodchips. By the grace of Rin no one was in its path; Thasha had locked her dogs in her own cabin.
I gestured at the shattered window, sealed for now with a nailed-up tarpaulin. 'We have glass stowed away for repairs,' I added. 'We can fix the casement, too, though it won't hinge no more.'
