Kingdom River

apparently.

'No, ma'am,' Martha said, and stayed close to keep the Queen's right side safe.

A single horseman galloped past the other way, just beneath their rail. He looked up – showing a young face and black hair in several braids – drew a short bow, and shot it as Master Butter reached to hold his hand in front of the Queen's throat. But wherever that boy's arrow went, it came not to them.

'Oh, for my bow,' the Queen said.

Orders were shouted amid other shouts, and the Mischief leaned, skating… leaned more, and took a wide curving course north and easterly. The long line of warships to port and starboard, each fluttering bright little signal flags, leaned as she'd leaned, and raced with her into the turn.

'Ah, my Fleet, my dear ones…' The Queen turned almost a girl's face, beaming. 'Martha, do you see them?'

'Yes, ma'am,' Martha said, though she winced as a crushed horse shrieked beneath them. She'd wondered about battle, found it dull… then found it dreadful. Now, she hated it – hated more than anything the slaughter of horses, who never meant harm to anyone.

'We're cutting the Khan's people off from West-bank.' First Officer Neal stood just behind them; Martha hadn't noticed him come up. An arrow, or falling tackle, had cut Neal across the forehead, and blood had run down into his left eye. 'These seem to be their right-wing regiments.' He pointed out across the ice, where drifts of gray maneuvered in bright afternoon light. 'Another pass – and they'll have to run farther east.'

'And the army?' The Queen shaded her eyes to look north. 'Where's Aiken – where is he?'

'West, ma'am.' Neal pointed almost behind them. 'West – and from the signals we're passed, doing very well.'

'Then Lady Weather bless that man! – And we chase?'

'We chase,' Neal said, and smiled. His left eye-socket was full of blood.

A wind gust suddenly thudded into the sails above them, rattled the tackle and gear aloft so Martha was startled, and ducked a little.

'And you,' the Queen said to Neal, and raised her voice to be heard above the wind, the harsh swift sliding of the Mischief's skates, ' – you've lost your young brother on that Chancy ship?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Officer Neal,' the Queen said, and seemed to Martha to become even more a queen, 'I will see that boy is remembered… as I will see you and all your family remembered, and favored by the Crown.'

Neal bowed, and when he straightened, Martha saw tears of blood run from his eye.

A trumpet called from forward, and Neal was gone and down the ladder to the deck.

'If we can win this day,' the Queen said, her breath frosting, 'and Small-Sam ruins the Khan in the south, then, dear Floating Jesus, I will let the bishop come to Island and stay.'

'Don't offer too much,' Master Butter said, and the Queen laughed and hit his shoulder with her fist.

The Mischief lifted slightly off its starboard skates, buoyed by richer wind – and racing where distant Kipchak divisions labored to work west, passed nearly a regiment of horsemen scattered in ragged squadrons here and there, fugitives on the field of ice as the battle-line sailed on.

The scorpion crews practiced at those, cutting a number down as Mischief passed them swiftly by. But still, arrows followed, coming… then falling like weary birds to rest in deck or rigging, and sometimes in a sailor.

The ship ran quieter now, no shouts, only a single scream by someone wounded. Orders were given quietly, in speaking voices, so Mischief, though sailing so fast, seemed to Martha to be resting, taking long breaths of the cold west wind that sang in its rigging.

Marines, here and there, fired their heavy crossbows out into the air – crack-twang – to ease them from cocked tension, the bolts vanishing at an horizon of ice beneath gray sky.

'Your Majesty,' Captain Dearborn called up from the wheel, 'no one injured there?'

Master Butter glanced back at the scorpion-crews; their captains shook their heads. 'No one hurt up here!' Butter called, and Martha heard the captain say, 'Lucky.'

Then, with hardly a pause, as if that 'Lucky' had called bad luck, the man high in the raven's-nest screamed, 'Lead! LEAD!' The Queen stretched out over the rail to see, Master Butter holding one of her arms, Martha the other, to keep her on the ship.

'Water,' the Queen said, looking forward along the hull. 'A stretch of lead water.'

Martha heard Captain Dearborn shout, 'Way starboard! Strike those fucking sails!' And the ship leaned to the right… tilting farther and farther, its main deck foaming with crewmen like a pot of soup boiled over. Men ran like squirrels in the rigging. Others worked with knives along the belaying rail, so lines whipped free – and heavy crosstrees, their stays sliced, fell smashing, the great sails collapsed.

Awkward on the tilting deck, Martha leaned out beside the Queen. She could just see a widening crack in the river's ice – black, and spidering across the Mischief's course.

The ship ground and bucked into its steep turn, swinging hard… hard to starboard, long clouds of powdered iced streaming away from its steering blades on the wind. Master Butter shouted, 'Get hold!' Behind them, one of the scorpions' great bows broke its tackle and swung free to smash the right-side rail.

The Mischief seemed to balance for a moment, like a person running the top of rough fencing. It felt strange to Martha, as if she were balancing, she and the ship together. Then the warship fell.

Water thundered up along the port side in a spray that fanned away and as high as the raven's-nest, and the Mischief splintered itself along the open edge of the ice – then struck and stopped still.

All else kept flying. The tops of the masts split loose and sailed forward. Weapons, gear, and men sailed also… flew through the crowded air like birds, and broke when they struck.

Every grip was lost. The Queen, Master Butter, and Martha were pitched together into the poop's cross-deck rail – and would have been injured, but that rolled hammocks had been packed there to shelter the helmsmen, just beneath, from arrows. Only the fat canvas, and their mail, saved them broken bones.

CHAPTER 24

There were a few moments of silence, except for crashes and clatter as things came to rest. And a sort of sobbing as Mischief's great timbers twisted out of true.

'Up!' Master Butter stood, then heaved the women onto their feet.

'My assags…' The Queen bent to retrieve one spear from coils of fallen rough brown rope. Martha found her ax still gripped in her hand.

The ship rested once more on the ice. But – her back broken as she'd struck the lead, then crashed across it – she lay with her great stern tilted high in the air, like a sleeping child's bottom, her bow fallen, collapsed.

An officer was shouting orders – Neal, not the captain – and men began to stir, but many didn't.

'The pinnace!'

'Sir… Somebody help – '

'Shut up and die, Weather damn you!' Neal. 'Hiram-bosun, rig the pinnace out! Cut that crap away and get her out. Her Majesty – '

'Oh, Jesus! Sir, sir, Master Cate is dead!'

'I'm not leaving here,' the Queen said, then called down to the ruined deck, 'I'm not leaving!'

'Ma'am,' Neal called back, 'you'll do as you're damn well told!'

Other officers, petty officers, were calling orders. Martha had never heard such cursing, not even from horse dealers or teamsters at Stoneville Fair.

'Edward,' the Queen said to Master Butter, 'go down there and tell that young fool I'm staying with them. No need to go skating away nowhere because there's been an accident!'