outward, followed by pieces of hull and deck erupting into the air, propelled by the violence of the explosion. There was a moment of eerie silence, and then Ivan flinched under the guttural impact of a loud boom. Crackling flames engulfed the entire center of the death ship, and the mainmast toppled away, dragging rigging and sails to the water in a tangle.
Ivan heard Sari’s triumphant shout mingling with his own hoarse cry, but there was no time for celebration. Immediately he set about reloading the mighty bow. Choppy seas made the task difficult, but he was aided by a small crane as he lifted another shaft from the hold and finally laid it in the firing track. Before him the stricken death ship careened to the side, fire spreading rapidly until the entire deck was alight, sails still aloft going up like crackling torches. By the time the Kiev swept past, the burning ship was listing, and black shapes, some of them afire, were spilling off the deck, dropping to the water, where they disappeared into the depths.
“It’s true what the Mexican said: even ghosts can drown,” the Cossack observed with satisfaction and a certain amount of surprise. A look behind showed him that the rest of the First Wing came on in full sail. Many other druid ships were launching their missiles, and other vessels in the armada erupted into flame before him and to port. Ivan picked out another target, closer this time, and fired a lethal shot into the belly of the black hull. Arrows darted toward him, hissing through the air and thumping into Kiev’s deck. The smell of carrion was even thicker now, making it very difficult to breathe.
Seeing three or four death ships surging before and aft, Ivan loaded his next shot as a canister, two dozen spheres filled with incendiary explosives nestling in the breech. With smooth gestures he cranked back the spring and launched the spray of metal balls, many of the weapons striking along the side of a hull looming barely a hundred yards away. As Sari steered him past, that ship reeled and groaned under the onset of six or eight small fires, blazes that quickly spread to engulf the entire hull.
But now they were in the midst of the enemy fleet. The druid steered with consummate skill, spinning her wind and guiding the tiller at the same time, pushing Kiev through a narrow gap between two looming black ships. More arrows whistled toward Ivan, and he grunted in pain as one of the missiles bit into his shoulder. There was a third death ship beyond, and they could not get past; instead, the little sailboat bumped hard into the ebony hull. Sari fell, pierced by a dozen barbed arrows as she cried out his name.
Hit by another black shaft, Ivan stumbled but still managed to draw his sword as he saw the ghosts coming down at him, mouths gaping but silent. One, in the garb of a Roman legionnaire, fell to the deck following a single slashing blow, Ivan’s blade cutting ghostly substance just as it would have carved into human flesh. But he could not recover in time to block the next attack, delivered by a bayonet on the end of a long, rifled musket by a shrouded warrior who wore a tattered uniform of an American army of the 1860s. The shadowy blade pierced the Cossack’s guts, and he fell, grunting in agony. The last sound he heard was Sari’s scream as a pair of swarthy Mongols set upon her with smoking, lethal blades.
“The First Wing is meeting with some success,” said Regillix Avatar, curling his neck around to cast a glance at Natac.
“Yes,” the warrior agreed, looking down in awe. The murk over the armada was darkened further by plumes of thick smoke spewing up from spots of bright orange flames. A hundred or more of the sinister ships had been wrecked in the first clash. “Better success than I could ever have hoped. Look at those black hulls burn!”
“It is time for us to attack, as well,” the dragon murmured, and Natac could only slap the hard scales in agreement.
“Be careful,” he whispered, as Regillix tucked his wings. The great body plummeted through the air, angling toward the front of the armada, beyond the leading boats of Fritzi’s wing. Natac saw one of the white-sailed boats smash into a death ship’s hull, wincing as tiny ghost warriors scrambled across the doomed Nayvian vessel. How many would die today? He couldn’t even try to imagine.
The clouds were thick and swelling to all sides, obscuring Natac’s view of the sky. The dragon leaned forward, sweeping under the thick smear of smoke. Then the air was filled with shrieks, and harpies by the dozens swarmed out of the murk above the armada. The dragon belched a great fireball, incinerating a score of the hateful flyers, but many more swept past, spitting gobs of oily fire that spattered on Natac’s leather armor and seared the dragon’s tender wings.
“Look out-to the right!” called the man, as a hundred or more of the haglike attackers dived from the concealment of a neighboring cloud. Still more of the creatures were swarming ahead of them, swirling through tight spirals, waiting for the proper time to attack.
The dragon twisted in the air, and Natac held on with both hands. He felt the heat as another great fireball erupted from the crocodilian jaws. Then the serpent banked away, veering around to leave the harpies behind, pulling for altitude and the clean air beyond the armada.
Their attack would have to wait.
Fritzi Koeppler stood upon the observation deck, a narrow platform raised ten or twelve feet over the deck of his sailboat, the Kaiser. He had admired the Cossack’s attack and noted the effectiveness of the fire weapons against the death ships. Now his responsibilities afforded him no time to grieve for the warrior or his druid as their impetuous rush carried them to doom within the armada.
“Raise the flag for a line formation-we’ll give them a volley!” he shouted down to the deck. His signaler, an elfmaid from Barantha named Faerwind, swiftly ran the appropriate banner, a long, slender pennant of silver and blue, up the post.
As the commander’s flagship, Kaiser was a bit larger than the standard druid boat. For one thing, she bore two batteries, one facing off either quarter of the bow, and in addition to Reza, who so resolutely spun the wind in the cockpit, she was crewed by a dozen elves to aid with communication as well as man the batteries.
Now the druids throughout the First Wing took note of the formation. The ranks of the sailboats changed shape smoothly, the squadrons merging line abreast to cut across the front of the shoreward-bound armada. The Kaiser, as well as a few dozen straggler vessels, sailed behind the line, but more than 250 batteries were arrayed in a row, each sighted upon one of the dark, looming death ships.
“Send up the order for a volley!” cried Fritzi. Faerwind was ready with the prearranged signal, and with a touch of a torch sent a sputtering rocket shooting straight up into the sky. Red smoke spumed from the tail, and throughout the wing the warriors took note of the order.
The sailboats lurched all along the line, recoiling as they launched their steely bolts into the black ships. One of the dark vessels veered as its masts were clipped off, while another turned to evade the shot and collided with its neighbor. Fires started instantly, a few smoldering hulls quickly consumed, more and more of the ships smoking and burning as the incendiary missiles exploded and began to burn within their bowels.
Within half a minute the entire front of the armada was a mass of flaming wreckage. Some of the black ships, borne by momentum and the strong ocean wind, collided with the burning hulls, and hungry flames leapt from deck to hull to sail with crackling eagerness. Here and there a dark prow burst through the line, shaking off the scraps of burning debris, until a dozen death ships forged ahead toward the sailboats arrayed in such a tenuous line. The rest of the armada’s vessels roiled and came about behind the line of fire, resulting in dozens of collisions, hundreds of ghost warriors toppling from their decks, vanishing under the wave-tossed waters.
Overhead, black clouds seethed and churned, thundering loudly, sparking with bright flashes of lightning. Monstrous thunderheads billowed magically, rising into the sky, then erupting. Rain pounded downward, drumming on the decks of many of the burning ships, dousing some of the fires but steaming away from the worst of the blazes.
Like a great charge! Fritzi couldn’t help but make the comparison, even fleetingly wishing he had a bugle. “Go, my warriors!” he shouted. “Take the battle to them!”
Now the druids sighted on individual targets, the ships that had pushed their way through the wrecked vanguard. Several of these advancing vessels burst into flames, one struck by a half dozen of the fire-bolts at once, exploding violently in a cascade of burning timbers, sails, and crewmen.
Fritzi looked along the line, three or four miles long, and took heart from the damage the enemy had suffered. Many ships were sinking, while others burned to the waterline or spumed black smoke from unseen blazes deep within the hulls. Beyond the druid fleet, however, hundreds of dark ships surged around the fires, strong winds bearing them toward shore.
The Prussian looked back, knew that the enemy had much more strength in this armada, thousands of ships that could eventually work around the other side of the firewall to trap his wing against the shore. He remembered his last day on Earth, the great charge on the Meuse-and that was nothing compared to this fight for the future of
