Kingdom River

shouting.

It seemed to Martha like a dream – so odd and wild and unexpected – unreal as a dream, so she might simply fly away into the air and dream of something else.

'If,' the Queen said, 'if I'm down, disarmed, and it seems I'll be taken – '

'Kill you?' Butter smiled. 'I won't do it – and Martha won't do it. So, Queen, don't go down, don't fumble. I've understood Trappers were dire fighters, and I expect to see a sample of it.'

'You had better hope, Edward,' the Queen said, knotting her scarf tight around her throat, 'with this fucking impudence of yours, you had better hope these savages kill us.'

'I rely on it, sweetheart,' Master Butter said, and seemed to Martha happier than she'd ever seen him.

The marines fired another volley – and again almost cleared the nets. Martha could hear a ripple of smack-smack-smack as the bolts struck. It had grown very cold; she saw her breath frosting in the air. Her hands were cold; her left hand was shaking. She put it on her dagger's hilt and held on hard.

'Soon, now,' Master Butter said. 'And there'll be blood freezing on this decking, ladies. So mind your footing; let's have no comic pratfalls.'

Martha'd never heard 'pratfalls,' but she knew what he meant.

The marines fired another volley – but arrows had been killing them, and their fewer bolts didn't sweep the netting clear. It hung in tangles along both sides of the Mischief's bow, and Kipchaks were coming through it, howling war cries.

Someone called an order, the marines drew short swords all together, and that same person – it wasn't Captain Neal – called another order. Then the marines marched down to the bow as if there was no hurry, and struck the tribesmen all together. Martha heard the musical sounds she and Master Butter made, practicing with steel – but this was much louder and many more, and there were screams.

Sailors shouted and went running down with axes and pikes, following the marines. The whole forward part of the ship seemed to Martha to become like the river's wind-waves and whirlpools, but made of fighting men, with the marines in ranks like sand-bars in the current, flooded with furred fighters. There was terrible noise over the ringing steel, as if animals were killing children.

Martha turned away to look at anything else, and saw herds of horses wandering out on the ice, with only a few Kipchaks to keep them. Their riders had come to the Mischief.

'Gauntlets and helms,' Master Butter said. He sounded just as he had at their lessons. 'Draw, and guard.' He drew his long sword from its sheath. A heavy sword, Martha saw – only a few inches of its top edge sharpened.

The Queen, standing between them, settled her helmet, pulled on her mail gauntlets. 'Rachel,' she said, as if her daughter were with them, ' – how will you do?' Then, driving the point of one assag into the deck to rest within reach, she spun the shaft of the other in her right hand for a comfortable grip, and drew her Trapper knife with her left. Ready, she stood relaxed – so at ease, it seemed to Martha she looked younger.

Martha pulled her gauntlets from her belt, let her ax hang from its thong as she tugged them on, then fitted her helmet. She could feel her heart thumping… thumping.

'And what are you to remember, Martha?'

'My knife, sir.'

'That's right,' said Master Butter. There was a change in the noise below them; it had come closer, risen up the slanting main deck.

'What I will remember,' the Queen said, 'while I remember, are my dear friends beside me.'

Martha stepped forward and could see, over the poop's rail, more Kipchaks swarming, fighting with sailors up the sloping deck. She saw no marines still standing.

The horsemen, smaller, stockier than the sailors, yelped to each other as they came. They reached the helm's wheel, just below and out of sight from where she stood.

Martha heard sounds that drove her back to her place beside the Queen. She drew her dagger so as not to forget it, held it low at her left side… It still startled her, after such fearful waiting, when one of the Kipchaks – an older man with a gray mustache, his round wind-burned face framed in a dark fur hood – stepped up off the port- side ladder, and started toward them. He looked serious, but not angry, and was holding a short, curved sword running bright drops of blood.

It seemed to Martha that this man intended to say something – another tribesman had come up the ladder behind him – but the Queen stepped out in two long strides and stuck her assag's blade into the man's belly. He looked amazed, turned as if to walk away… then seemed to melt down to the deck.

'First blood,' said the Queen – and the second Kipchak came howling.

Martha was sure Master Butter killed that one, though she didn't see it. She was sure because she'd heard the sudden thrum of a sword-blade whipped through air, and the man's shout stop. Then two… and a third horseman came running from the starboard ladder and her ax met one before she even thought about it. She stuck the other with her dagger and didn't know what happened to him, because the third man was on her, shoving, and swinging a sword.

She was surprised he wasn't stronger than she was – and perhaps he was surprised, too, since he guarded against the ax but forgot the dagger. Master Butter had been right about the knife.

Something hit her left side, and Martha thought she was hurt – more Kipchaks were coming up both ladders – but she glanced over and it was the Queen, wrestling, cutting a man's throat. He hit Martha, trying to dodge away, and left warm stuff on her neck and shoulder. Blood. Don't slip… don't slip! Two more men came and ran into her, tried to knock her down, struggling to get sword-points in.

Then she used the ax – second time she'd used it. She'd lost her temper. Another man – or one of those two, maybe, was still standing in front of her. His jaw was hacked and hanging down so his tongue was out in squirting blood. Martha supposed she'd done it. A very strong man edged past a mantelet, cut her hard at her right hip, and drove her, drove her back into a scorpion. This man was much stronger than she was. She smelled his breath, fresh as a child's, as he grappled with her, working to get his sword's edge across her throat. Martha crouched suddenly, so he'd think she'd fallen down – then stuck her dagger hard as she could into his nuts, and wrenched, wrenched at the blade with all her might to draw it up into his belly. The dagger blade was caught – then sliced its way free and ran up into him.

The man made a terrible noise, and she was able to pull away from him. He'd been very strong. Martha was standing against the curve of a scorpion's bow; couldn't remember how she got there. She hacked her ax's spike into another man's shoulder as he struck at her – used that to haul him off-balance – then turned the ax's handle to chop its blade into his eyes, and was surprised at how easily she'd done it. He made a mewing sound, like a kitten, and stumbled away. Blinded, he bumped into a mantelet's edge.

Someone limped across and thrust a spear into the blind man's back, so he screamed and fell down. Martha smelled shit, and supposed it was from him. She saw it was the Queen who'd done it. Her beautiful helmet was off – its lacing broken – and strands of her long hair, red and gray and red again with blood, were down past her shoulders.

Martha looked around as if she were waking up, and saw no more horsemen coming at them, though several – they had the oddest slanting eyes – still stood down the narrow way, at the head of the ladders. There were six… seven men lying still on the deck, one man sitting up, and two men crawling. The wind was making bright red puddles stream and run along the deck. The blood crinkled, freezing as it ran.

There were noises from below… shouts and cheering. Martha saw things thrown high in the air from the main deck. She thought they were hats, then saw they were heads.

'So far, so good,' Master Butter said – a copybook phrase so perfect it sounded just made up. He was leaning on his long sword's point, his short-sword in his left hand. Three of the men lay before him, two piled across each other, looking like killed animals with their furs rumpled and soaked with blood. 'Well enough, so far, since it seems we're only an afterthought, up here.'

Martha saw they'd all had been pushed back against the scorpions' rigs and timbers. The Kipchaks had forced them back there, fighting.

There was stinging in Martha's left arm. She looked down and saw the mail sleeve had been sliced open, and