Kingdom River

'My dear,' Master Butter said, 'those stray Kipchaks we passed – and butchered some, passing? I believe they'll now be coming to call. So yes, you are leaving – and quickly.'

'How bad?' First Officer Neal had spoken quietly, well down the steep-sloping deck and through the sounds of men at desperate work, but Martha heard him. It was the only question being asked.

A person said, 'Sprung and split.'

' – But she'll skate!'

'No, sir,' the person said. 'Wouldn' make not a mile. Fall all to kindlin'.'

The Queen – her second spear found under a fallen spar's fold of sail – stood, seeming to listen to other than the Mischief’s voices. Then she said, 'So, no pinnace and scurrying away. – Neal!'

They heard his 'Ma'am…' as he half-climbed the main deck's rise, stepping over wreckage his men labored on.

He came up the narrow port-side ladder, his left eye still plugged with blood. 'Ma'am?'

'The captain?'

'Captain's dead, ma'am. Skull broken when we struck.'

'And no pinnace.'

'No, ma'am. Launch also smashed – I knew that, soon as I stood up.'

'I see… And the chances of another ship coming?'

'Oh, another ship will come, ma'am; a lookout certainly saw us wreck.' Neal paused, stared out over the ice, one-eyed, where the Fleet had gone. 'But the line was sweeping east on the wind. Ships'll have to tack and tack again to get back to us.'

'How long?' Master Butter said.

'Sir… ma'am, I believe a glass-hour at least.'

'And probably more?'

'Yes, ma'am. Probably more.' Neal glanced at the scorpions' crews. 'You people get down on main deck. Your pieces won't depress at this angle to do any good at all.'

'Leave 'em?' A sailor put his hand on a massive machine as if it were a family dog.

'Yes, Freddy,' Neal said, 'leave 'em. All of you go on down, now.'

Below, an officer called, 'I said, rig out more boarding net, Carson! Are you fucking deaf?… Leave that. Leave it! The man's dead.'

'Company coming?' Master Butter said.

'… Why yes,' Neal said, 'I believe so, sir. Ma'am, you'd do better below, where the marines might hold the hatches.'

'Might?' The Queen smiled at him. 'No. I like it here. Now, get back to your people, Captain Neal.'

Neal bowed, then turned for the ladder to follow the scorpion crews down – looking, it seemed to Martha, pleased as if the Mischief still sailed and was sound under his promotion.

'Captain Neal,' the Queen called after him, 'I expect this ship, though ruined, still to kill the Kingdom's enemies.'

'Oh, we will do that, ma'am,' Neal said, and was gone to the deck.

'… Children,' the Queen said. 'They're all children.' She looked at Martha and Master Butter. 'And my doing, that both of you are here.' She reached a cold strong hand to Martha's cheek. 'Another child… And you, Edward, you foolish man.'

'Only an old friend, my dear – who would be no place else on earth.'

… There was no longer a raven's-nest, so it was from some lower perch a sailor shouted. 'The fuckers is comin'! Comin' west by west!'

Martha went to the back of the poop – edging past the mantelets, then between the scorpions – to look out from the stern, now reared so high. She saw only ice behind them at first, then darker places that seemed to move from side to side as much as forward through late afternoon's sun-shadows. She stood watching until, as if her watching made it so, those darker places became groups of riders… Soon, she could make out single horsemen among them, coming swarming like late-summer bees. Dozens. A hundred… perhaps two hundred, skirting the end of the water lead as they rode. Then, many more. Their right arms were moving oddly, and Martha saw they were whipping their horses on. She heard a war horn's mournful note.

Battle whistles shrilled down the Mischief's sloping deck. A drum rattled. Sailors and marines – those with no bones broken in the wreck, or at least no crippling injury – took up their battle- standings.

Martha went back to the Queen, and said, 'They're coming,' feeling foolish, since of course they were coming.

But the Queen only nodded, and said, 'Infuriating, the things I have left undone…'

'Not a bad place to fight, though.' Master Butter paced the poop deck. 'Considerable slope, and fairly narrow… crowded with machinery. They can't climb to us up the hull, stuck this high in the air, so our backsides will be safe enough. May take arrows, of course, once they have the main deck, if they get up into the rigging…'

'If there were only one ladder coming up here…'

'Yes, dear, but there are two, and twenty feet apart. When they come up both, we won't be able to hold them.' Butter stepped out a space… backing between the tall mantelets, the two scorpions. 'Just here, I think.'

The Queen walked up the tilted deck. 'Yes. Wide enough,' she said, 'but not too wide.'

It seemed to Martha they were only interested, not frightened as she was frightened.

The Queen said, 'Shit,' and the back of her left hand was bleeding. Arrows murmured past them and snapped into timber. Two thumped into rolled hammocks, and men shouted below. The Queen looked at her hand. 'Nothing,' she said, and flicked the blood away. 'Most of the fools are shooting blind up to this deck.'

Hoofbeats clattered down the ice along the ship's side. Shouts and orders along the main deck below. Deep twanging music from crossbows, heavier crashes from the Mischief's machinery still able to bear.

'So, our company's come.' Master Butter rubbed his hands together. 'Three can stand here, though no room for more – a space, what, ten… eleven feet across? Just over three feet for each of us to hold.' He nodded. 'Mantelets forward on both sides to funnel them onto our blades, while – let's hope – catching their shafts… And these scorpions, beside and behind us, each a mess of gears and cable, timbers and steel.' He smiled at Martha. 'Could it be better, my student?'

'Better not to be here,' Martha said. An arrow hummed high over her head.

'Sensible Martha,' the Queen said. 'But really, this place is so high, so good, we might hold it a glass-hour.'

Martha saw many Kipchaks out on the ice… riding, circling in like hearth smoke swirling to an opened door.

'Would that we could,' Master Butter said, and was difficult to hear over rising noise. Shouts, and the ship's crashing war-machinery. 'Martha, you will fight at the Queen's right side; I'll be on her left. Keep two things in mind. It's cold, and will grow colder, so consider your grip on your ax – might want to thong the handle to your wrist. And, remember you have a dagger as well. I don't want to see that knife sleeping in its sheath.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Orders for me, also, Edward?'

'No, my dear. You need no one to tell you how to fight. But knot that scarf tighter; don't leave the ends loose for someone to seize.'

Men bayed like hounds along the Mischief's slanted hull, and Martha looked over the poop-deck rail and saw gray-furred Kipchaks in the boarder nettings down at the bow. They'd climbed to that lowest place… were slashing at the netting with short, curved swords. As she watched, ranks of marines turned from the ship's rails, and their crossbow bolts – fired almost together – emptied the nets of nearly all those men, as if with magic.

But then the nets were full again – being sliced apart by more horsemen, by many more, climbing up