He wasn’t ill. He should have been. Sometimes not to be ill meant you were broken inside. Then a hand gripped his shoulder. Not Ensyl’s hand. It was Thasha; she had raced out along the spar; she was begging him to come down while he could.
Trimming the giant sails was harder than spinning a wheel, of course: the Chathrand’s turn actually slowed her at first, and that was when the dlomu pounced. Grapples flew over the rails port and starboard, and a second team assaulted the stern, keeping well clear of the rudder. It was all very organized. Those still in the water swam very close to the hull, protected by its curve from any shots from the deck or gunports. The attackers were quiet and purposeful, as if they had done this sort of thing before.
The sailors cut their climbing-ropes with a will, and not a single dlomu gained the topdeck by that means. But many climbed twenty or thirty feet on the ropes, and then switched to hand-hooks. Soon there were ladders of these embedded hooks ascending from the waterline, and the Chathrand resembled some great prone beast assaulted by columns of ants.
The upper gun deck became a war zone. Dlomu flung themselves in through the gunports, which had been kept open for the cannon. The Turachs met them head-on, and killed many before they even gained their feet. Common sailors, armed with everything from cutlasses to galley knives, backed up the marines. Still a number of the dlomu managed to scatter deeper into the ship.
The unthinkable audacity of such an attack nearly let it succeed. But the sails were trimmed, the canvas did billow and pull, and the bulk of the attacking force was still a stone’s throw behind. For all their ferocity, moreover, the exhausted dlomu who entered at the stern fared badly against the Turachs-rested, furious and armored head to foot. Haddismal fought at the vanguard of his men, laying on in the wreckage of the wardroom with a great double-bladed axe, hacking off limbs that reached through the shattered windows, hurling down chairs and candlesticks and the bodies of the slain at those still climbing.
In the adjoining compartment, a luxury cabin, some twenty dlomu broke through the Turach ranks and sprinted up the Silver Stair. The few men who resisted them were swept away. They were one stairlength from the topdeck, and would have gained it if Hercol had not stepped into their path. Above the open hatch he stood, the black sword in his left hand and Sandor Ott’s white knife in the other, and his face was terrible to behold. Still the dlomu pressed the attack, for they could hear the Turachs storming after them from below. Hercol whirled and struck, his arms two blurs of black and white, and the dlomu began to fall. One after another they came, eyes maddened with the nearness of death, and one after another they died.
The ports were sealed, and the battle for the upper gun deck turned in the Chathrand’s favor. But from the quarterdeck, Fiffengurt looked down and cursed. The dlomu had fastened drag lines to the ship, scores of them, and flung them backward to their swimming comrades. A hundred at least had grabbed hold already, and more were piling on.
Then it came: a desperate warning, relayed from below by a living chain of ixchel: the attackers had uncoiled a flexible saw-blade, they cried, and were drawing it over the rudder in whiplash strokes. Left to it they would, in a matter of minutes, saw the rudder off at its base.
Fiffengurt closed his eyes and made the sign of the Tree. Then he snatched the rigging-axe from its hook on the taffrail and climbed up among the oil drums lashed between the lamps. With a few strokes he broke their seals, and lamp oil gushed in slippery torrents down the Chathrand’s stern, sloshing over the windows, soaking Fiffengurt and the dlomu alike, spreading in a great stain among the swimmers.
Fiffengurt looked up at the deck, his eyes full of murder and rage. “Matches, Stukey, damn you to the Pits!”
Uskins came to life, unlidded the match-pot, churned the live coals with a stub.
“Never mind, give it here!” bellowed Fiffengurt. Seizing the match-pot, he emptied it in a shower of sparks over the side.
There was no explosion, no inferno of flames, no screams of agony. There was only a great whoosh, and orange light, and sudden silence from the army below. Everyone stumbled: the Chathrand had just leaped forward, a carthorse cut free of its cart. Fiffengurt toppled between the lamps, staring, and once again it was Thasha who went, unbidden, Thasha who caught him before he could fall, only to stand there swaying, transfixed herself at the sight of the great pillow of fire upon the gulf, wider than the ship and widening still, falling behind them in little streamers of flame.
“Rin forgive me,” muttered Fiffengurt. He was blind: oil in his good eye, oil on the hand that tried to wipe it away.
“Don’t worry,” she told him, “there’s nothing to forgive.”
Beyond the fire, a dark mass trod water. The dlomu had known what was coming: they had dropped from the ship and the trailing lines, dived underwater, surfaced well behind the blaze.
3. Technically true. The Book of the Old Faith contains certain apocryphal material, including the Address of the Vengeful Seraph, who states: “To defeat the foes of Eternal Truth, lesser truths may be sacrificed, and deception wielded like a knife in the dark.” The materials appear in no copies of the Book before its third century of existence, however, and it appears likely that they were added by a war-like king, precisely to justify the training of a guild of holy assassins. Like the pruning of young oaks, editorship is power over a future one will never see. - EDITOR.
THE EDITOR RECOMMENDS OTHER READING TO THE FAINT OF HEART
To my thus-far-loyal readers: Happiness is not nothing. One should embrace it. The world groans under the weight of serious minds bent miserably over their books, over their smithy’s bench, their ledger or their laundry or their weevil-withered crops. Happiness may vanish in an eyeblink, never to return. Why should anyone spend the length of a tea-sip on a story that does not guarantee-absolutely guarantee-the emotion’s increase?
My purpose here is simply a warning. If you are part of that infinitesimally small (and ever smaller) band of dissidents with the wealth, time and inclination to set your hands on the printed word, I suggest you consider the arguments against the current volume. To wit: the tale is morbid, the persons depicted are clumsy when they are not evil, the world is inconvenient to visit and quite changed from what is here described, the plot at this early juncture is already complex beyond all reason, the moral cannot be stated, and the editor is intrusive.4
The story most obviously imperils the young. But certain others should weigh the benefits of persevering; these include the old, who after all will perish soon enough; the able-bodied, whose vigor may decline if they make a habit of reading at length; the unmarried, who had best cultivate more sociable pastimes; the married, who find the freedom to read only by neglecting commitments; those whose religious views are policed by employer, priest, king, grandmother or guilt internal; the nearsighted; the nervous; the gleefully patriotic.
But the first criticism-the sheer gray gloom of the tale-is the most damning. To that end, and conscious of my duties as a curator of this splendid archive, I have assembled a list of some seven hundred titles surpassing The Chathrand Voyage in both brevity and good cheer. Among them:
• Bissep, Mother K., The Good Millipede of Wilber Meadow
• Tennyson, Virzel, Kh’iguar Mutis (“Great Scaly Things Defeated,” bilingual edition)
• Lace, Helium, And Then They Were Married
• Slabbe, Lord Cuprius, What I Eat
• Ungrok, Egar, Battle for Battle’s Sake: An Adventure for Boys
The complete list is available upon request. It is quite startling how much one has to choose from. I merely implore you to recall that life is fleeting, and that choices must be made.
4. Do not misunderstand me: The Chathrand Voyage has merits aplenty. Why else would I dedicate this last effort of my life to its telling? Why else would the lord of this domain have granted me five (young, ambitious, “promising,” petty, cynical, rude) editorial assistants, and a meal allowance? Never mind that Holub’s Curse of the Violet King is better known. I know Mr. Holub. I wish him well and feel no envy, and incidentally he suffers miserably from ringworm.
