“All of you,” she said, “pick up your blades and get ready to repel boarders.” If Joron had been quicker, braver, maybe he would have taken that moment to defy her. To shout her down. The raiders would like nothing more than to be presented with a boneship without a fight and would probably welcome him among them. But in the back of his mind was his father’s voice and a hundred stories of the glorious fleet, and he couldn’t bring himself to betray them.
Betray her? Yes. But his father? Never.
“Did you not hear the shipwife?” shouted Barlay from behind him. “She said prepare to repel borders.”
There was a pause then, as if Tide Child, balanced on the reef, and could have fallen either way, stayed marooned in the bright light of Skearith’s Eye or fallen to sink into darkness.
Then Meas jumped on to the ship’s rail. Arrows were flying from the approaching flukeboats but she acted as if they were nothing.
“Well?” she shouted. “Are you fleet? Or are you scum?” She raised her sword. “For I am fleet!”
As Tide Child tipped, a lone voice called out. Joron did not know whose voice it was, but it was clear enough in the moment.
“Ey! We are fleet!”
And with that it was decided. All those around him picked up weapons. Joron glanced at the approaching boats, those aboard bare-chested, shaking spears and brandishing their bows.
“You are hurt,” he said to Meas.
She looked at him like he was a fool and tried to raise her left arm, grimaced.
“Ey.” She walked to the stump of the mainspine. “A dislocation, nothing more.” And with that she drove herself into the wildly canted spine, pushing her shoulder joint back into place, and though she did not scream her knees almost buckled at the pain. The crew watched her, as if her actions gave them some sort of power. “It is better now,” she said. “It takes more than a little pain to stop a deckchild, ey?” This she said to the nearest woman, who grinned back at her, showing teeth black from chewing harsi gum. “Bring the wings down. We’ll bunch them up and use them as a shield against arrows. One along this rail, one back on the rump. Get to it.” The woman nodded and ran. Others scaled the rigging, and he heard the sound of axes cutting rigging, bringing the mainwing down to be swiftly repositioned along the front of the rumpdeck.
And the boats came, and they came.
Another wing was pushed against the rail on the side of the ship.
And the boats came, and they came.
Arrows started to hit the sides of Tide Child.
Joron stared at the women and men on the flukeboats; there were so many. The two big boats were overflowing with raiders furious for blood, their bodies red with paint. The rowing boats – he counted eight of them – held at least six raiders in each, and he found himself mesmerised by what he was sure was his approaching death.
Meas pulled him down as a shower of arrows fell across the decks of Tide Child.
“Do we have bows aboard, Deckkeeper?” He did not know, looked at her blankly. “Never matter. I’ve sent crew to close the bowpeeks on the lower decks so they won’t be getting in there. All may not be over, Twiner.” She was smiling, and her breath was coming quickly. He couldn’t understand why she was smiling when they were all about to die. When everything had gone so terribly wrong. “There are no children in those boats, we got here in time.”
“Or they were on the boats we shot out of the water.”
“They were heading towards land when we came. We have interrupted them, and now we must crush them against our ship, broken as he is.”
“There are so many.”
“They are rabble, Deckkeeper. And we are fleet.” She turned to the man crouching next to her, scar-faced and gap-toothed. “Did you hear that, what are we?”
“Fleet,” he said. But too quietly for Meas.
“Then show some pride in it, man. Shout it.” She stood, oblivious to the arrows coming in, the light glinting from the feathers in her hair and the fishskin on her tunic. “They are rabble! Nothing! We are fleet! We are Hundred Isles and they cannot touch us!”
And all around Joron glances were exchanged; small smiles crept on to tanned and scarred faces, and her words were repeated, becoming louder and stronger as the arrows rained down. He thought her mad, but it seemed Meas’s words were true as not one arrow found flesh.
She leaned over, her mouth close to his ear. “We fight here to start, when they come over the rail. When it gets too much we lead the crew back to the rump.”
All around the shouting.
“We are fleet! We are Hundred Isles!”
Were they all mad, was this what battle did to women and men?
Meas straightened, held her sword aloft. Arrows fell about her, bounced off the deck, stuck in the rail, left her untouched.
“Come to me!” she shouted at the incoming boats. “Come and die at the hand of Lucky Meas and her crew!” Joron heard the bump of a flukeboat hitting the side of the ship – his father ground between the hulls – and a roar. A hand appeared on the rail. Meas lunged and there was a scream. When she held her sword aloft again blood ran from it. More swarmed up the ship, faces in the gaps between rumpled black wing and the ornate uprights of the rail. Some were bloody already, cut by Tide Child’s spiked hull.
Joron found he was standing close to the rail, had no memory of moving. He turned. Old Briaret. She pushed a spear into his hand.
“Better for this work, D’keeper,” she said. A face appeared between the uprights, hands scrabbling to find purchase on the rail, leaving wet, dark smears of blood where Tide Child had claimed his price. Joron jabbed his spear at the man’s face, feeling it jar his hands as it cut through flesh and found bone. The man fell back with a cry, hands to his gaping wound.
And that was how it was. Shouting, stabbing, screaming, confusion.
If a face came at him from the direction of the rail then he jabbed at it. He jabbed at hands, he jabbed at bodies. He jabbed at legs and was surprised by how easy it was. How being on the slate of Tide Child gave him such an advantage over the raiders scaling the ship. He began to believe it would end here and end quickly.
A scream from down the deck.
He turned.
A group of raiders had managed to get aboard at the beak of the ship and were cutting into the end of the line of defenders. Meas took a step back from the rail, pulled one of the small crossbows that hung on her blue coat from its cord and calmly loosed a bolt down the deck. Tossing the crossbow aside before the bolt took a woman in the throat, her next crossbow already in her hand.
“Look to the beak!” she shouted. Better-trained deckchilder may have reacted more quickly, rushed to counter the attack, but this crew were not drilled; they were lost in their violence. Another bolt sang down the deck, but now raiders were swarming over the beak of the ship. Screaming in their triumph. “Twiner,” shouted Meas. “Pull them back to the rump. Come, do it!”
Joron grabbed Old Briaret, shouting, “Retreat!” in her face. The woman was grinning, covered in blood, eyes alight with joy. In her fury she looked years younger. “Back,” he shouted. “Back!”
Old Briaret turned and hurled her spear down the deck at the raiders and took up the call. “You’ll need your curnow now, D’keeper,” she said, and grabbed Farys, dragging her away from the rail. Joron threw his own spear, taking a man in the stomach. Hearing the calls to retreat, the attackers surged forward, as fierce and strong as a riptide. Cutting down those in their path. All around, the crew of Tide Child were fleeing down the ship, those crew at the rail peeling away. As they did, more raiders came over the rail like a froth of boiling water coming over the edge of a pan.