Kingdom River

her muscles. 'If you have to pee, dear, do it now.'

'I don't have to.'

'A lot of Kipchaks,' Dearborn said, looking out over the ice. 'Thousands.'

'But not thirty thousand,' said the Queen. 'The fucking Khan has gone south, and taken half his savages with him!'

Martha heard a trumpet, and saw another great ship skating, sailing fast enough to port to draw even with the Mischief. Though far across the ice, the men aboard her must have seen the Queen's banner at the mast-head. Tiny figures waved from her rigging. Martha heard them cheering.

'The Ill Wind.' Captain Dearborn smiled. 'Old Teddy Pelham…'

The Queen stood clear at the poop's port rail, raised an assag's gleaming head, and waved the weapon in great sweeping strokes. The cheers came even clearer then. And Martha saw, past that ship, another… then a third came skating to run side by side across miles of ice. And more ships, and more distant, came sailing up and abreast, port and starboard, until there were warships skating in a massive line of stripe-painted hulls and hard-bellied white heights of sails, sun-flashing skates and bright banners. Drums, drums were thundering along the line of great ships stretching so far to the left and right that they diminished into distant, seeming-toys, bright as jewelry.

'My darlings,' the Queen said – the first time Martha'd heard that copybook word used. 'My Fleet!'

Captain Dearborn said, 'Ladies, step away,' and called, 'Fighting stands!… Fighting stands!'

That cry was taken up by officers, bosuns, and rattling shaman drums – and the Mischief's decks, which had looked to Martha busy enough before, suddenly stirred as ground wasps stirred in summer's last week. Sailors snatched pole-arms and axes from chain-loops at the masts, as marines, in band armor enameled half-blue, half-green, marched to their places along the rail, or climbed rope ladders to the fighting tops, and the huge crossbows waiting there.

Sailors came jostling up the two narrow ladders to the poop, saying, 'Pardon… pardon,' as they shouldered Martha and the Queen aside, then bent to winches and began to wind the two scorpions' giant steel bows slowly back… and back, the machines' captains calling, 'Faster – faster!'

Two men unfolded tall, hinged mantelets – stood the heavy rectangles of linden-wood in four places to shield the scorpions' crews – then fastened them by thick steel hooks to thicker steel rings set into Mischief's deck.

'Back from these bows!' One of the machine captains hustled Martha and the Queen forward, past the mantelets and against the poop's railing, paying no attention to majesty. Martha saw the Queen enjoyed it, and went where she was told, perhaps pleased by moments of not being a queen at all.

She and Martha stood watching as the great steel arcs were drawn back to a final solid clack, so the machines lay fully cocked – both already loaded with five slender steel javelins, each a little longer than a man was tall.

Now the noise of battle, no longer odd and distant, sounded near, hammered from shouts and screaming.

Martha was looking down the line of ships, racing, trailing long plumes of powdered ice behind their runners – and saw men galloping small horses right between Mischief and the nearest ship, the Ill News, but going in the other direction. Twenty, perhaps thirty horsemen, galloping over the ice.

'Look!' Martha called – and the Queen and one of the sailors looked – but the riders were gone, and no one seemed to have noticed, or shot at them.

'Kipchaks,' Martha said. 'I saw them.'

'More where those came from,' the sailor said, and pointed forward along the port rail. The Queen and Martha leaned out to see along the ship's side. The ice lying a distance before the Mischief's bow was not white, but as deep a stirring gray as storm clouds.

Horsemen.

The ship jolted, then ran on, and Martha saw a great ball of blazing pitch heave up from the Mischief's bow catapult, and rise… rise into the air.

'Bow chaser,' a sailor said, and his machine's captain said, 'Be silent for orders.'

Martha watched through tangles of rigging as the burning thing went. It seemed to arc away like a rainbow, though with no color but hot fire. Then, very slowly, it fell… and fell out of sight. Men were cheering at the Mischief's bow.

The Queen unfastened her long lynx cloak, and spun the fur away, out over the ice as the Mischief skated. 'To Floating Jesus,' she said, then loosened her long Trapper knife in its sheath, and twirled the shaft of an assag over her fingers.

'Ma'am.' Martha was breathless as if she'd been running. 'Please… you should go below.'

The Queen just looked at her, and smiled.

Martha sighed, unfastened her cloak, draped it over the poop's low railing, and reached over her right shoulder to lift her ax from its scabbard.

'You're a good girl.' The Queen looked comfortable in her chain-mail. Comfortable leaning on a spear's shaft. Her blue eyes, narrowed in the wind, seemed to Martha a tribesman's, some warrior down from the ice-wall. Which, of course, was really so. ' – A good girl,' the Queen said. 'I'm… fond of you.'

'And so you should be! She's a wonder with that ax.' Master Butter, his cloak's fur hood thrown back, climbed the last ladder rungs to the poop, and bowed. '… Just your humble postilion, Majesty – with a flatter purse after paying boatmen to follow your galley north, and a sore ass from that damn sled horse's back.' Butter stood squatly massive in heavy mail, belting two straight swords, one long, one short. The wind had reddened his round cheeks.

'You.…' The Queen turned a cold look. 'You have no business here. You were ordered – '

'I know. You said to keep away for a year, my dear.' Master Butter glanced around the poop's deck, narrowed by the great scorpions and their warding mantelets. 'But this year has proven exceptionally short, so I came to keep you company.'

'Company I don't want. Stay away as you were fucking told to stay. At least… at least go elsewhere on the boat!'

'Of course, Majesty, as soon as possible.' Master Butter went to the rail, leaned over, and looked toward the bow. 'Dearborn's going to ram them!'

'I won't tell you again – ' But the Queen said no more as Master Butter turned, caught her and Martha in his arms – left and right – lifted them, and drove them back behind a mantelet as a snake-hiss of arrows came. One cracked into the mantelet's linden, humming, its bright head just peeping through.

'A sort of punctuation,' Master Butter said of the arrow, and let the Queen and Martha go as the Mischief's crew roared a cheer. The great ship seemed to leap ahead, borne by hard- gusting wind – then crashed, shuddering, driving up and into a low hill of impacts, horse screams and men's screams, the multiplied faint crackle of breaking bones.

Blood jetted onto the snow along Mischief's hull as she drove on and over, huge skate-runners slicing packed cavalry that then was knifed aside, fanning in a fur-lumped blood-red skirt as the ship sailed through them.

And as the Mischief – so every other warship of the racing line.

The scorpions began their slow-paced slamming from the poop – noise loud enough to hurt Martha's ears – and at each release of those mighty bows, five steel javelins whipped whining away over the ice, to flash like magic through drifts of mounted Kipchaks the battle-ships had shrugged aside.

The mast-head's smaller scorpions, the heavier machines along the main-deck rails, the chasers at the bow – all hurled steel, clustered stone, or molten pitch as the ship skated on, its massive blades brisk on bloody ice, then muffled, crunching where they met men and horses.

The Queen shoved clear of Master Butter and went to the rail for a better view. Kipchak arrows still came, but sighing, failing with distance.

Butter stepped to the Queen's left. Martha to her right.

'Joan – ' Master Butter leaned to shield her.

'Edward, I have to see.' The Queen pushed at Martha. 'Girl, get behind those things.' Meaning the mantelets,