They looked down. Turachs and sailors once more held the deck, which from where he stood resembled the floor of a slaughterhouse. Big Skip was hurriedly climbing the shrouds.
'The bastards wormed their way up a light-shaft, got round behind us!' he boomed. 'Come down, lads, the fighting's nearly done. Just the hold to take back now.'
There were muttered thanks to Rin. 'We still have to set that muckin' sail,' said Jervik, glancing hastily at the Vortex.
Pazel sighed. 'Right. Let's do it, then.'
'I never found Marila,' said Neeps. 'Uskins nabbed me the minute I came outside.'
'She's dead, I reckon,' said Jervik bluntly. 'I saw what them rats-Eh! Crawly! Crawly!'
He was shouting, pointing at a spot in the topmast shrouds, about eight feet from them. There in his swallow-suit, looking very small and harried in the wind, clung Taliktrum.
They hushed Jervik with some difficulty. The ixchel man watched, clearly impatient. 'You should get down from the rigging,' he said at last, bending his voice so they all could hear.
'We've got a job to do,' said Neeps. 'What do you want?'
'Do the job later,' said Taliktrum. 'Right now you must all get down. We don't mean to kill you.'
'Kill us, is it?' growled Jervik. 'Like to see him try, the little louse!'
'Diadrelu revealed our presence to so many of you, you understand?' said Taliktrum. 'She left me no choice. I had to act before Rose killed us. And I was right, wasn't I? Even now he's getting ready to poison the hold.'
'What are you saying?' Pazel demanded. 'What do you have to do?'
'Seize the ship,' said Taliktrum.
At that very moment a man above them gave a shrill cry. The crowd on the fighting top jumped and cried out: a body had snagged in the rigging, five feet from them. It was one of the sailors who had not helped with the fight. The arm that had caught in the rigging was wrenched at an unnatural angle.
Thasha was closest, and carefully edged nearer. 'He's still breathing,' she said. 'He's… asleep!'
Pazel looked down again. His eyes landed first on Big Skip: the carpenter's mate was dangling, arms and legs through the shrouds, head lolled to one side. On the deck, a Turach was slapping a fellow soldier hard in the face. Beside them Mr Uskins was pumping his fist, screaming at a midshipman. But even as Pazel watched, the sailor stumbled, raised a hand to his forehead, and slid languidly to the boards.
Pazel whirled on Taliktrum. 'You vicious little fool. It's blane, isn't it? You shot them with blane.'
'We shot no one,' said Taliktrum. 'You drank it yourselves. All of you. In your water, over the last many days. A slow-acting variety; we had to make sure everyone aboard got a taste, before you saw what was happening.'
'Abandon masts! Abandon masts, you fools! Climb down before it hits you!'
It was Fiffengurt, hobbling aft at a near-run, and leaving a bloody footprint at every other step. His voice snapped the men out of their shock; they began to swarm downwards towards the deck.
Thasha was still looking at Taliktrum. 'You blary idiot. We're sliding into the Vortex.'
'Get down,' said Taliktrum once again, 'we can't talk if you fall to your deaths.'
'What's there to talk about?' Neeps shouted. 'You've got to use your antidote, that's all. Otherwise we all go down together.'
'Damn you, giants! There is no more antidote! Dri stole the last of it for your little caper in Simja! But we're not butchering you, as you planned to do with us! It's a dilute formula. You'll all wake naturally, perfectly unharmed.'
'How soon?' asked Pazel.
Taliktrum was staring at the Vortex. 'Not very soon,' he said.
He let go of the rigging, teetering a moment in the wind. 'You can't judge me,' he said. 'This is war. I'm a general, and more than a general. I've been selected — yes, selected, chosen, to lead my people home. Don't deceive yourselves. If it was your family you'd have done exactly the same.'
The three friends were wide awake when they reached the topdeck, but scores of others were not so lucky. A man from Tressek Tarn had dropped from the mizzenmast and struck the rail; the fall killed him instantly. Fiffengurt was organizing men with safety lines to climb up and rescue those tangled in the rigging. Even as he did so another man vanished from the bowsprit into the sea.
Taliktrum had vanished; several Turach archers had fired arrows in his direction. What had he wanted to tell them? Pazel wondered desperately. Could it have been some clue as to how to beat the drug?
'I'm not sleepy,' said Neeps. 'Maybe they didn't manage to get it in everyone's water.'
'He sounded sure that they had,' said Pazel. 'Come to think of it, that was the only thing he sounded sure of.'
'They had this in mind all along, didn't they?' said Thasha. 'Ensyl and her friends knew about it — why else would they say the ixchel didn't need our protection? Which means Dri must have known too. Oh, how could she keep it from us? How could she?'
Pazel had no answer. All he felt certain of was that Taliktrum had unleashed forces beyond his control.
Fiffengurt came stumbling back their way, his wounded foot making a squilch each time it touched the deck. 'Lord Rin, children, what now?' he cried. 'Sleeping sickness?'
'Not quite,' said Pazel. They told the quartermaster about the ixchel's drug. Fiffengurt pulled miserably at his whiskers.
'It's not too late,' he said. 'We're still thirty miles from the eye of the Vortex. Elkstem worked miracles with the lads he could muster, but the best they could do was hold us steady. To break out we need hands on deck now. We can work the sails with safety lines, bring the lads down when they pass out, send others up in their places, but-Lo, there, midshipman! Don't lean over that blary shaft!'
A young man swayed away from the gunner's-pole hatch. The salute he tried to give Fiffengurt dissolved into a half-hearted wave. And when Pazel looked back at the quartermaster, he found to his shock that the man had sunk to his knees.
'Not too late,' he repeated, and collapsed.
Over the next quarter-hour, most of the ship's company joined him. The topdeck looked like a battlefield without victors, just a few shocked refugees wandering among the dead. Uskins snored upon a mound of dead rats. Bolutu lay curled by the No. 3 hatch, as if he had just managed to crawl into the open air before the sleep took hold. Elkstem dropped on the quarterdeck, hands clenched on a rope. He had apparently intended to lash the wheel (and hence the rudder) in a fixed position, but no one knew just what position, or what spread of sail might have accompanied it.
Neeps had begun to stumble and blink. 'Marila,' he said, again and again.
Supporting him, they ran down the No. 4 ladderway. There were bodies spread-eagled on the stairs; one man lay sleeping with a biscuit clenched in his teeth. The gun decks lay silent as a morgue. Lonely cries of Help! and Wake up! echoed from the darkness.
But farther down there were signs of life. On the orlop, men shouted and lanterns blazed. Turachs were dragging sleepers into cabins with sturdy doors. Far below, Pazel could still make out the howling of the rats.
They descended the narrow ladderway to the mercy deck, and hurried to the central compartment. Just inside the doorway they met Hercol and Chadfallow. The doctor spoke with quiet urgency. 'Get to the stateroom, you three! The fight here is lost!'
Lost? Pazel looked past the doctor. Sailors and Turachs filled the deck; the only rats in sight were dead ones. But of the hundreds of men, only a few dozen remained on their feet, and most of these were clustered about the tonnage hatch, staring into the hold, weapons in hand. The voices of the rats issued up from this darkness, cursing and insulting the men.
Even as Pazel looked, one of the men on guard began to sway. At once another sailor came forwards and and took his spear, pushing him away from the hatch.
'Rose and Haddismal are doing their best to keep up appearances,' said Hercol. 'The rats do not yet suspect what is happening. They are not affected: the ixchel did not bother to poison whatever slime or sludge they find to drink.'
'How many rats are left alive?' said Thasha.
'Too many,' said Hercol. 'A hundred, perhaps more. They are thick about both hatches, and both ladderways, yet hiding from our archers. We can kill no more without an assault on the hold, and there are not enough of us for
