The Chosen

last they came to a complex of wheels and pipes.

'That one!' Adams shouted, pointing. Then he looked down the side of the ship. 'Oh, Jesus, the barnacles are showing-Jesus Son of God, Mary Mother, she's going to go over.'

'No she isn't,' John said, fighting off a moments image of drowning in the dark with air only a few unreachable feet away through the hull. He spat on his hands. 'Let's do it.'

The spoked steel wheel was about a yard in diameter, locked by a chain and pin. Adams snatched it out, and John locked his hands on the wheel. It moved a quarter of an inch, stopped, moved again, halted. John braced a foot against the wall and heaved until his muscles crackled and threatened to tear loose from his pelvis.

'Jammed,' Adams said. 'Must've jammed-shaft torqued by the explosion.'

'Then we'll unjam it.'

John looked around. Resting in brackets on the side of the central island of the ship were an ax, sledgehammer, and prybar.

'Jam these through the spokes,' he said briskly. 'Here and here. Now both of you together, heave.'

They strained; there was silence except for grunts of effort and the distant shouts on the dock. Then the ax handle snapped across with a gunshot crack. Barrjen skipped aside with a curse as the axhead whipped past him and bounced off the wall, leaving a streak of shiny metal scraped free of paint on the wall.

'Fuck this,' John shouted.

He snatched the sledgehammer from Adams hands, jammed the crowbar firmly in place, and braced himself to strike. That was difficult; the ship was well past its center of gravity now, A few more minutes, and the intakes for the flood valves would be above the surface. That would happen seconds before she went over.

Clung. The vibrating jolt shivered painfully back up his arms, into his shoulders, starting a pain in the small of his back. He took a deep breath as the sledge swung up again, focused, exhaled in a grunt of total concentration as the hammer came down. Clung. Clung. Clung.

Adams' nerve broke and he fled back up the ladder. Two strikes later Barrjen spoke, at first a breathy whisper as he stared at the wheel with sweat running down his face.

'She's moving.' Then a shout: 'The boor's moving!'

It was; John had to reposition himself as it turned a quarter revolution. Easier now. He flung the sledgehammer aside and pulled the crowbar free, grabbing at the wheel with his hands. Barrjen did likewise on the other side. Both men strained at the reluctant metal, faces red and gasping with the effort, bodies knotted into straining statue-shapes. The wheel jerked, moved, jerked. Then spun, faster and faster.

A new sound came from beneath their feet, a vibrating rumble.

'Either that works, or she's already too far gone,' John gasped. 'Let's see from the dock.'

There was a crowd waiting. They cheered as John and the stocky ex-Marine jumped from the tilted deck to the wharfside, a score of hands reaching to steady them. John ignored the babbled questions. He did take a proffered flask of brandy, sipping once or twice before handing it back and never taking his eyes from the ship.

'She's not tilting any further,' Barrjen said.

'And she's settling fast.'

Four minutes and the decks were awash. Another and they heard a deep rumbling bong, a sound felt through the soles of their feet more than through the ears. The funnels, central island and crane-masts of the merchantman trembled through a thirty-degree arc to a position that was nearly vertical as the relatively flat bottom of the ship rolled it nearly upright on the mud of the harbor bottom.

John flexed his hands and took a deep breath. 'Right,' he said, when the cheers died down. 'Get some small explosive charges here, we'll want to kill off any sea life.' Scavengers were swarming in. 'We'll need diving suits, air pumps, more ropes. Get moving!'

He looked up into the darkening evening sky, then over towards the castle. He was just in time to see the great bottle-shaped spearhead of flame show over the courtyard walls. The siege howitzers were in action at last. His shoulders tensed as he listened to the whirring, ripping sound of the shell's passage, toning lower and lower as it approached. The three-hundred-pound projectile came closer, closer. . then went by overhead. John pivoted on one heel, part of a mass movement that turned the crowd like sunflowers following the sun across the sky. A red gout of flame billowed up from the gun batteries holding the approaches to the harbor. Seconds later the other heavy howitzer in the castle fired, and the high-velocity guns in the batteries were in fixed revetments. They couldn't be turned to face the castle, and wouldn't be able to elevate that high if they did. .

'I'll be damned,' John said softly. 'The garrison went over to the government side.'

Probably after killing all their officers. The Unionaise regular army was short-service conscript.

Barrjen pounded him on the back. 'We won, eh, sir? Goddam.'

John shook his head. 'We won some time.' He looked at the celebrating crowd. 'Let's see if we can get the snail-eaters to make some use of it.'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There were no Land dirigibles in the air over the city of Skinrit. Commander Horst Raske felt a little uneasy without the quiver of stamped-aluminum deckplates beneath his feet. Several of the other Air Service captains around him looked as if they felt the same, and everyone in the Chosen party looked unnatural out of uniform-still more as they were in something resembling Unionaise civil dress. Raske kept his horse to a quick walk and spent the time looking around.

'Bad air currents here,' he muttered.

Several of his companions nodded. Skinrit itself was nothing remarkable, a little port about three steps up from a fishing village, smelling of stale water inside the breakwater, and strong stinks from the packing and canning plants that were its main industries-the cold currents down here below the main continent were heavy with sea life. Hundreds of trawlers crowded the quays, and battered-looking tramp steamers to take their cargoes of salted and frozen and canned fish to the north. The area around the town was hilly farmland and pasture; most of the buildings were in the whitewashed Unionaise style and quite new-built since their predecessors were burnt in the Errifean Revolt ten years ago. Around them reared real mountains, ten thousand feet and more, their peaks gleaming salt- white with year-round snow, their sides dark with forests of oak, maple, birch, and pine.

Vicious, he thought. Convection currents, crosswinds, unpredictable gusts. Oathtaking is bad, but this will be worse.

None of the crowds in the street seemed to be taking much notice of them, which was all to the good. Most were Unionaise themselves, sailors or settlers here; the remainder Errife in long robes, striped or checked or splotched in the patterns of their clans. Occasionally soldiers would come through, usually walking in pairs with their rifles slung, and always surrounded by an empty bubble of fear-inspired space. They wore the khaki battledress of the Union Legion, and its fore-and-aft peaked cap with a tassel. Raske thought that last a little silly, but there was nothing laughable about the troops themselves; quite respectable, about as tough-looking as Protege infantry, looking straight ahead as they swung through the crowd.

They moved out of the street into the main plaza of Skinrit, past the legion HQ with its motto in black stone above the door: Vive le Mart-Long Live Death. A couple of Errife skulls were nailed to the lintel, with scraps of weathered flesh and their long braided hair still clinging to them. It was a reassuring sight, rather homelike, in fact. .

The governor's palace was large and lumpy, in a Unionaise style long obsolete. Errif had been a Unionaise possession in theory for some time, although they'd held little of the ten thousand square miles of rock, mountain, and forest until a few decades ago. Just enough to stop the pirate raids that had once been the terror of the whole southern coast of the continent; a few Errife corsairs had gotten as far north as the Land, although they'd seldom returned to the islands alive.

Servants showed them into a square room with benches, probably some sort of guard chamber.

'Masquerade's over,' Raske said.

'Good!' one of his officers said.

She stripped off the Unionaise clothing with venom; back in the Land, only Protege women wore skirts. They