An explosion shook the distant waters out where the Mighty had penetrated the first ring of ships. Ah, Ben-hadad had put a hull-wrecker on another of the galleons.
But the inner ring that they had just penetrated had closed tight behind the Mighty.
Gunports were rattling open on this side of the ships as the cannon crews slowly reacted to the threat that was the Mighty. Had the Mighty proceeded to attack the center island dragon, the cannons wouldn’t have been able to fire without endangering their own. But now the Mighty were turning back into range of safe and accurate fire.
A second explosion rocked the seas, this time on another of the ships in the inner circle, even as they sped toward it. Though the ship immediately sagged in the water, and all the cannon crews had been killed or stunned on that one ship, it did nothing to the others, who started opening up.
Nor was that ship going to sink in time. The bane was rising behind them, and if Kip and the Mighty didn’t make it several leagues away within the next few minutes, they would all be paralyzed.
Throwing another signal flare, Kip sliced out a wide, fast circle, and each of the rest of the Mighty slotted in seamlessly, re-forming the command ship one at a time.
“Bane rising!” Kip gasped out as they finally locked in all together. He threw over the steering to Cruxer as he peered into the sea.
“Can’t dive together!” Ben-hadad said. “Too much drag.”
Cruxer steered their circle in close to the ship that they’d hit with the hullwrecker, hoping that the other ships would be reticent to fire up on their own comrades.
As they came out of that second circle, though, Winsen shouted a curse. He pointed back in toward the great dragon-ship. “Breaker!”
Kip ignored him.
“Breaker! Kip! For Orholam’s sake, man—”
Kip glanced up, trying to narrow his eyes so that he wouldn’t be blinded. He caught only a terror of skimmers streaming toward them—the White King had skimmers now?—no, they were sea chariots pulled by some kind of sea animals. Sharks? And sharks untethered and great swarms of razor wings clouding the sky.
But Kip said nothing. He jumped toward the rudder and cut so hard that all of them were nearly thrown off their feet and into the water.
Before they could even cry out in protest, the water exploded beside them in a flash of dark skin and immense presence as the black whale breached fully into the air, sharks snapping behind it, some of them launching into the air as well.
It was only the vast discipline ingrained in the Blackguard that kept them on their reeds, kept them moving. Razor wings hit the waves all around them, some exploding, some trying to slash their bodies.
The black whale came down on the stern of the ship Ben-hadad had bombed. Waves and flotsam exploded from the dying ship, a cacophony of screams and water and small explosions from the razor wings and dying men and animals.
Kip slewed the command skimmer back and forth as he nearly lost his feet, not so much in evasive moves as merely trying to regain his own balance, but when he came out of the tight arc, there seemed to be a gap—a trough of clear water.
He aimed the skimmer down into the trough and then up the other side.
The skimmer bottomed out in the trough, sliced into the following wave, then shot into the air, over crushed hull and lumber and dying men.
They didn’t clear it completely, but the garbage they landed on yielded to the skimmer’s foils and weight and speed.
Ahead of them, the black whale breached again, this time with only a single shark after it. Then it dove before it reached the second circle of ships.
It didn’t matter. The outer circle was looser, and the first ship one of them had bombed was half sunk. Kip and the Mighty shot out into the open sea and safety.
He shot flares into the open sky—a retreat, in an old Chromeria code.
The Chromeria’s fleet didn’t heed it. Not that he could see.
There was nothing he could do.
They had tried. But that didn’t make him feel like any less a coward as they fled.
“There were hundreds of drafters on that dragon-ship,” Cruxer said. “We’re good. Maybe we’re each worth ten of them, but . . .”
“Not a hundred of them, each, not at once,” Winsen said.
“I’ve shit myself before,” Big Leo said. “But I’ve never run away.”
“You didn’t run away,” Ferkudi said. “None of us did. I mean, except Breaker. He was steering. He gave the orders. So I guess he ran away, but the rest of us—”
“Ferk. Shut it,” Cruxer said.
“They’re gonna die back there, aren’t they?” Ferkudi asked. “All those Chromeria drafters and sailors and soldiers. I mean, is there any possible way they might—”
“Ferk!” Cruxer said.
They skimmed in silence, and Kip wondered if at last he was the Breaker in truth. He had broken the Mighty’s streak of victories; he had broken their foundational myth that they were invincible. In so doing had he broken the Mighty itself?
They were no longer heroes of lore, legends in the making, indomitable, unstoppable, unflappable, brave and just and right and true and forever.
Maybe they’d always just been boys who’d had some lucky fights.
Several minutes later, when the Mighty were so distant Kip didn’t think they would know the outcome of this battle one way or the other, a sound like the earth shaking reached them, and mist exploded into the distant skies.
Big Leo said, “I feel like I just got in a fight with my big brother and he grabbed my fists and started hitting me in the face with them, chanting, ‘Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself.’ ”
Then a tugging sickness hit all of them, and even this far away they lost half their speed all at once. It was the call of a master to his slaves, certain of obedience.
The bane had surfaced.
Kip couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, couldn’t witness it—and yet he knew that hundreds upon hundreds of their allies had just perished. Maybe their friends had been on those ships. He hadn’t stopped the White King. He hadn’t saved his friends.
He’d failed, and he couldn’t think of any way that he could do anything but fail again when the bane reached the Jaspers.
Chapter 68
“I’m coming to the end of things, Quentin, I can feel it,” Teia said.
“With the Order?” he asked, his voice low. He never forgot to be circumspect, even here in his own room. His room, it turned out, even had a secret exit into a seldom-used hallway. There were, Teia’d found, several old, dusty, and baggy cloaks of various colors and qualities hanging near the exit. Some White long ago had used this room probably not only for assignations but also as a staging area to go out incognito, probably to meet spies.
“No,” she said. “I mean, sort of. With them, but not only with them. I feel like—I think maybe Orholam’s letting me know that I’m going to die.”
“It has been known to happen,” he said, contemplative. “If so it’s either a mercy, to tell one to repent, or it’s a grace, to allow one to take care of unfinished business. Do you feel you have unfinished business?”
She shrugged. Funny that he didn’t think she needed to repent. “I mean, taking down the bad guys and finding my father, but not really like spiritually or whatnot.”