“I think I can hit their bow, D’keeper,” Gavith said, as Tide Child caught up with the boat. Joron heard the anger in the boy’s voice and was surprised by it. Had he become part of the ship so quickly? He felt that same anger, that for the raiders to hit Tide Child with a bolt was an insult to him, not just the ship, and he was tempted for a moment to let Gavith take out the bow. But no, his job was to stay calm, to think.
“Hole the boat below the water if you can, Gavith. Tempting to avenge their shot, I know that, but sinking the boat will kill those who fired the bow as sure as a bolt.”
“Ey, D’keeper.”
The blue boat rose and fell on the waves and Tide Child fell and rose as it came alongside. Joron could make out the bowteam on the flukeboat trying to spin the bow for another shot, but the boat was so crowded with raiders they got in each other’s way. Then Poisonous Hostir spoke, the bolt flying too fast for the eye to follow but the impact apparent: a fountain of water at the rear of the blue boat. The bolt did not simply hole the flukeboat but collapsed its entire rear, spilling the bowteam into the sea, quickly followed by those around them. The boat dragged itself to a halt, its beak rising into the air, sending more and more crew into the water. Then the screaming started. Long, white, serrated backs had appeared in the water around the stricken vessel.
“Longthresh in the water!”
There cannot have been a woman or man on Tide Child’s decks who did not shudder at that call. Of all the many ocean predators, longthresh were the most feared. Some grew as long as a boneship. Their flint-white skin encased bone plates that armoured the whole creature, and long, tapering wings propelled them through the water as fast as any ship. Those who encountered a longthresh wished only that it would kill them quickly, but they rarely did. Longthresh played with their food, biting off arms and legs before taking the body.
Below Tide Child huge mouths full of needle teeth opened in the sea, biting into the women and men in the water. The sheer amount of prey drove the longthresh into a frenzy, and the lucky were swallowed whole by the creatures. The beasts bit and bit and bit, chewing through whatever they came into contact with. A group attacked the boat itself, grinding through the sinking hull and the screaming crew who begged for Tide Child to rescue them.
But three enemy ships remained, and Tide Child flew on.
A bow launched, and Joron heard screams in reply over the spinning of the bow as his own team worked Poisonous Hostir.
“Down!” shouted Meas again, and Joron felt another bolt hit Tide Child, but further down the hull where the bone was thick. The smaller bows of the flukeboats lacked the power to do real damage to Tide Child’s hull. “Two points on the shadow to landward, Oarturner. Gullaime, keep the wind coming. Gallowbows, loose when ready.”
“Ey, Shipwife,” shouted Joron in return and stared down the deck and over the bowspine of Tide Child as the ship turned and the second flukeboat slowly came into view, this one painted gaudy yellow and orange.
“If we catch it and you can do what you did before, Gavith,” said Joron, “you’ll get my ration of eggs on the morran.”
“I love an egg, D’keeper,” said Gavith, and he nestled forward into the bow.
“Steady,” said Joron. “Steady now.” When the target was fully lined up he put his hand on Gavith’s shoulder. “Loose when you are ready.” And the ships moved up and down, down and up.
Gavith loosed.
“Hag’s tits, too late.”
The bolt had missed the hull but, more by luck than design, hit the spine of the boat. It seemed the world paused for a second, and then the spine and the gaudy wing it held came crashing down, splashing into the sea and pulling the boat around to seaward.
“Gallowbows,” shouted Meas, “rake them as we pass. Loose as quick as you can!” And the world was lost to Joron in a welter of shouted commands – Spin! Load! Loose! – sweat and the song of the great bows as they peppered the stricken boat with bolts, leaving it sinking amid water churned white and red by more longthresh.
“Maiden bless ’em,” said Anzir. “No woman or man deserves to die by the longthresh.”
“But many will today,” said Gavith.
Joron gave the command to spin again, and the bow was primed and loaded before Meas shouted to cease loosing.
Tide Child ploughed through the wreckage, once again ignoring all pleas for rescue. Meas had no intention of stopping.
“Gullaime, more wind, if you will.” She said it so calmly it was difficult to believe she commanded a ship of war. “Gallowbows be ready.”
Joron’s bow swung, and he saw the final two boats. Both were well ahead of Tide Child, but the black ship had unfurled all its wings; even the flyers, extra wings sticking out of the side of the ship, were set. The gullaime, now bent almost double, was still conjuring a steady breeze. Before them he saw the further flukeboat heel to one side. It seemed every woman and man aboard had crowded over to seaward, and above the wind he heard their voices screaming in triumph as they cast their spears into the sea below them.
The gullaime let out an anguished screech and collapsed on the deck.
The sea below the flukeboat bowed; a curved shell of water rose, and the boat was thrown bodily from the sea by a flipper as long as Tide Child and crusted with white shells and coral. As the flukeboat crashed back into the water, the flipper smashed through it, breaking the vessel in half and scattering its crew into the water.
Such a display of power – together with the ships Tide Child had destroyed – was clearly too much for the surviving raiders, and the last boat veered away from the huge creature below the water.
But it had also slowed, and Meas was shouting once more.
“Gallowbows, loose when we close with the boat, then we’ll ram the storm-cursed thing and be done with it.”
The boneship bore down on the flukeboat. Those who crewed it no longer screamed in fury or with thoughts of triumph. There was clearly panic aboard, both at the ease with which the arakeesian had smashed their comrades’ boat and at the closing black ship.
“Loose!” shouted Joron, and the for’ard bows spoke, the middle bows spoke, and then the bolt from his bow’s twin on the seaward side loosed and all smashed into the flukeboat. Joron was grabbing hold of the bow once more, and every deckchild aboard was finding something to hold tight to as Meas shouted, “Brace! Brace!” and Tide Child heeled over. It was as if the ship itself felt rage. Tide Child smashed into the flukeboat amidships, shuddering and screeching as it broke the craft in two.
Then there was only sea before them.
The sea and the leviathan.
And on the deck of Tide Child lay a frail and broken avian body that had given all it had.
Joron felt that they should have been jubilant. This had been Tide Child’s first successful action, as different from the shambles at Corfynhulme as it was possible to be. The boneship had cut through his opposition like a harpoon through a kivelly.
Yet, after the first shouts when the final flukeboat was ground under the hull of Tide Child had died away a strange silence followed. Maybe it was the screaming of the women and men in the water behind them as the longthresh went to work on their frail bodies, a reminder that they were not in their environment, that the sea welcomed no man and that the only woman it looked kindly upon was the Hag, who waited at the bottom for all those lost upon the waves. That Tide Child, strong as he seemed against the flukeboats, was simply a dot on the vast ocean that swelled beneath him. They were tolerated here. And they were here to die.