The Maelstrom Eye

The next thing he knew, he was hovering over the forecastle ballista. A half-elven gunner gripped the loaded weapon, aiming at a nearby scorpion ship. To Teldin's surprise, Gaye was there, too, the kender ready to crank back the weapon after it fired. There was no sound. Everything had stopped dead.

Teldin looked around, down at the main deck. The bodies of several crewmen lay with their faces turned to the wooden deck or staring open-mouthed at the sky. There was Old Hok, an ex-slave of the neogi, who used to call Teldin 'Talon.' Near him was a cargo hand, Mamnilla the halfling, who now lay curled around a pool of dark crimson. The survivors stood by the railing, poised to fire their bows and crossbows, their faces set as they looked at their last battle.

Teldin drifted back from the forecastle deck over the ship. It felt perfectly normal to move this way. It was all a dream anyway, wasn't it? The killing had stopped. Nothing would hurt his ship and his friends.

He hadn't thought about it, but he headed for the spare helm room, on the main deck to his right, beneath the stern castle. He looked through the open door and saw a new hole in the port wall, where a ballista bolt had passed through. The bolt was now embedded in the helm, the helm's wood split through where the flat-headed bolt had struck it. Two men were trying to pull the bolt out. Teldin saw that their efforts were wasted. The secondary helm was destroyed.

The Probe had no power.

Teldin left the sight and hovered over the stern castle. The star-filled space before the hammership was filled with yellow scorpion ships, green and blue viperships, and even a long, cherry-red squid ship with a ram. All bore insignia and flags of black, on which a fat red spider stood out. To port, Teldin could see another wall of ships lined against the distant stars. A huge stony ship, shaped like a pyramid, hovered perhaps only a quarter of a mile away. The nearest enemy vessel was dead ahead, a vipership perhaps a few hundred feet distant.

The Probe could no longer be saved.

So I will have to save it, thought Teldin. It was the most logical thing to do.

Time was going to start up now, he knew (without knowing quite how he knew), so he would have to hurry. I will become the ship, he thought. And he did.

He was now the Probe. Painlessly, he felt the great holes and tears in his hull, the shattered wood beams, the missing left eye of the hammerhead shape, the torn-away spanker at the tail. The ship's spine still held, however.

We're getting out of here, Teldin thought. Right now.

Time began.

Spiral was lost behind them. Before them was a shatters hammership. The fight was over as quickly as it had started. The admiral had wasted his time in bringing all that smoke-powder, General Vorr reflected. But it was just as well. The old scro was entirely too fond of the stuff.

'Prepare for boarding!' Vorr shouted to his scro marines. The Venomous Hullсatcher would be the first marine vessel to reach the hammership, but Vorr's ship would be close behind it. Vorr would have preferred the first boarding go to a more experienced crew on another scorpion ship, particularly the Eyecutter, but the scro of the Venomous Hullkatcher could use the experience, and it was, after all, the closest marine ship. If the crew on the vipership Hellfang held back on its jettison fire, the operation would be over within a matter of two or three minutes.

The whole thing was rather a waste of time, Vorr thought, given the way the hammership was so overwhelmed. He should have taken out just six ships at most, maybe four, and made it a challenge. He still wondered how the false lich was able to know that the cloak-wearing human had taken a ship to Ironpiece from the Rock of Bral. He'd have to check the lich's equipment over after he killed it; maybe Usso would get a present out of it.

'The pyramid is signaling, sir,' the scro at his right elbow observed. General Vorr looked across the black gulf to the lich's pyramidal spelljammer. Bright light flashed out from each of the four corners of the pyramid, spelling out a short message in scro pulse code. The lich-or whatever that skeletal, robed thing was-had been remarkably efficient at installing the magical lights and at learning basic scro codes. The undead thing had admitted to being quite taken with this method of communication; it gave the lich ideas, the lich had said.

'The commander of the pyramid asks you to cease fire, to prevent harm to the cloak,' the scro read.

Vorr nodded, having seen the same message. 'Signal to him that we are about to board,' the general muttered. 'We will cease fire.' He looked back at the ruined hammership and again thought about the joy he would have, wrapping his thick fingers around the lich-thing's skull and shattering it into a thousand-

The hammership moved. Rather, it shot forward so fast that Vorr could barely follow it. He saw its bow slice through the upper deck of the vipership ahead of it, then its mast smash against the lower hull of a scorpion ship farther ahead, splitting the scorpion almost in two. The hammership's main mast snapped off only ten feet above its forecastle deck, the pole carried away in the collision. Then the hammership was through the whole formation and was fading from sight on a course dead-set for the flat world of Ironpiece.

Vorr simply stared. Precious seconds slipped by before he regained his thoughts and voice.

'Go after it!' he roared. 'Signal all ships! Get that damned hammership!'

The scro at his elbow grabbed at the signaling switch on the railing before him and prepared to bock out the message, but he was distracted by the flashing of another ship's lights, from the hammership Chain Master just to starboard. The scro read the message, then spun around and looked up and aft.

'Armada, by Dukagsh!' he yelled, pointing. 'Elves!'

Vorr turned, eyes wide. From out of nowhere, out of nothing at all, a titanic orange butterfly had appeared. It was right behind Admiral Halker's elephant-faced flagship, an ogre mammoth called the Thundertusk, easily within weapons' reach. This the gigantic elven ship proved by opening fire at point-blank range, above and aft of its huge, oval target.

Fireballs and lightning bolts exploded across the Thundertusk's upper deck. Vorr saw ogres and scro hurled like cornhusk dolls into space from the mammoth's back, their black armor aflame. Shattered and burning planking burst in all directions, backlit by a stupendous fireball that punched into the rear of the reconditioned mammoth like a god's sledgehammer. A flaming wood-and-metal shield, a section of the mammoth's starboard ear, was thrown whirling into space.

'All units! Attack!' Vorr shouted at the top of his lungs. The admiral would have to save himself, if saving he needed. The scro hastily flashed Vorr's message as his own ship's catapults came to life, flinging two-ton loads of stone up at the gigantic wings of the elven warship above them. The first shots were off, but the gunners were already adjusting the sighting.

By the Tomb of Dukagsh, this was a fight! the general thought with a mixture of shock and excitement. An armada, an elven capital ship! But how could it have just appeared there? Were the rumors of cloaking devices on elven ships true? Could the elves hide entire battleships right up to the moment of attack?

'We'll know soon enough, when we peel your skin off,' the general said aloud. The scro next to him wisely said nothing. 'It shouldn't take long. Twenty-seven ships to one seems fair enough to me.' Vorr smiled.

At that moment, he saw a second elven ship, a man-o-war, appear out of nowhere and open fire on a vipership. The smaller vessel immediately burst apart in flames, its back broken.

Another man-o-war then appeared and went for its prey. Then a third and a fourth one came out of nowhere.

Ten minutes later, the gnomes arrived and shot at everyone.

*****

Teldin wondered when the dream would end. He felt very warm and light-headed. He still couldn't move his legs, but they felt fine now. Numb, but fine.

In one way, Teldin could still see the companionway around him, with the buckled port wall and the hole in the ceiling where the galley had been. In another way, he was looking ahead of the Probe, as if he were still hovering above it like a guardian spirit. The curve of Ironpiece's distant edge now filled the forward view. The near edge of the world was below them and falling sternward rapidly. The ship was going right where Teldin wanted it: down to the ground.

I need a lake, he thought, as he watched one pass far beneath the ship. The Probe