The Pillars of Hercules (43 page)

The
Xerxes
was tacking back and forth, and two more shots from the aerial platform had flown wide. But the price of becoming more difficult to hit was that the Carthaginian squadron was overhauling them, their masts growing closer. And the Carthaginians were letting the balloon-tether play out still further, with the result that the range was getting ever less. Eurydice kept making furious calculations with the astrolabe, calling out course-corrections down to Barsine. Lugorix turned to Matthias.

“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” he said under his breath.

“I think so,” said Matthias.

“Think again,” snapped Eurydice, whose hearing was apparently sharp enough to have registered this exchange over the noise of the waves and explosions and engines. She screamed something down to Barsine. There was a clanking and a rumbling and then suddenly to Lugorix’s astonishment the entire rear platform of the
Xerxes
slid away—and as it did so, a fearsome looking machine swivelled out of the space within. Most of it consisted of a rather large tube—in fact, it looked a lot like the one hanging from the Carthaginian balloon. Eurydice turned to Lugorix.

“Here’s how this works,” she said. “This is called a
gun
. Making you the
gunner
.” Then, to Matthias—“you’re the loader.” They stared at her. “And by the way, guns don’t kill people, people do, so I suggest you
move your asses and start firing
.” She gave them a few more instructions—just enough to get them both in serious trouble, thought Lugorix. Within two minutes he was sitting in a smallish chair sprouting out of the side of a complicated apparatus on the rear of that barrel, staring through a built-in farseeker at the Carthagnian platform while Matthias sweated and sought to keep his balance on the pitching deck as he slotted a heavy and curved piece of ammunition into the maw of the barrel. Eurydice stood on the foredeck, mostly busy with the navigation, but occasionally yelling out instructions or insults down to the men below. Matthias locked the ammo into place; Lugorix was doing his best to line up the balloon in the crosshairs of the farseeker, but the rise and fall of the waves made that a little tough. He waited, trying to time his moment. Another projectile from that balloon lanced toward them, crashed into the water close enough to drench him with spray.

“What the hell are you waiting for?” screeched Eurydice.

You to shut up
, thought Lugorix. He pulled what she’d told him was the trigger; there was a hissing noise—and then a flash accompanied by an almighty bang. It took a few moments for the light that had momentarily blinded Lugorix to die, revealing the trail of the projectile streaking away into the sky, shearing in toward the balloon. Straight toward it—

And missing.

“Shit,” said Eurydice.

“Well what did you expect,” said Matthias, “it’s not like we’re exactly experienced at this—”

“So fire again!”
she shrieked.

Lugorix and Matthias set about doing exactly that. But Lugorix couldn’t help but notice that the sails on those Carthaginian ships were now becoming visible. There were eight of them, including one that looked to be particularly large. Matthias reloaded, and Lugorix lined up the nearest ship.

“Not the ship,” snarled Eurydice, “the balloon—” But Lugorix had already fired. The projectile arced through the sky, hurtled down, missed the ship.

Which promptly exploded anyway.

“Bullseye,” said Eumenes. The pieces of the shattered Carthaginian ship fluttered down into the water like leaves falling from a tree. Even as he watched, a second ship detonated. He lowered the farseeker.

“Feed ’em two more barrels,” he hollered through the hatch to the crew below. Next moment, the ship shook as two more of the metal-fish were released into the water, humming away, closing in on their targets. The Carthaginians were now clearly visible against the horizon, and were only just waking up to the menace that he and his three ironclad ships posed. From the looks of it, they’d been under fire from Barsine and her ship, but that gang couldn’t shoot straight. The real question was what the balloon—or, more precisely, the gun suspended beneath it—was going to do. By now they must be almost on top of the Persians. The Carthaginian ships began to return fire on Eumenes’ squadron—balls of iron and ballistae-bolts hissed through the air toward the slit through which the Greek was staring. There was a resounding clang as something hit the hull.

“What is that?” asked Kalyana.

“Our armor doing it’s job,” replied Eumenes.

“No,” said the Indian.
“That.”

He was pointing through another slit, off to the northwest. Eumenes stared—had to shake his head to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. It looked like a gigantic fountain, shooting water hundreds of feet into the air.

“No idea,” said Eumenes. And then—to the crew below—“Can we get someone who knows something about the fucking ocean up here?”

One of the sailors climbed up. From the look of his features, he was probably Italian—presumably another mercenary, hired to crew a ship that must have been blowing his mind every day he was aboard it. He squinted—took a look at the column of water off in the distance.

“Waterspouts,” he said. Then, when they had no reaction: “Like a tornado, but on the water.”

“So we want to stay clear of it,” said Kalyana.

“Not it,” said the sailor. “
Them
.”

At first, Eumenes thought the guy just didn’t know how to speak Greek. But he took another look—and sure enough, there were several of them now. It wasn’t clear whether the others had been behind the first, or whether they were just sprouting out of the ocean in rapid succession.

“Shit,” said Kalyana.

The geyser towered above Ptolemy, its outer edges crashing down upon his ship like a waterfall gone mad. It had appeared as if from nowhere; for a few moments, he thought he was screwed—that he was about to be swallowed up by the monstrosity. But his crew was nothing if not resourceful—they quickly realized that the wind from the waterspout was practically at gale-force; a few adjustments to the enormous sails, and suddenly the vessel was veering round and to the south of the waterspout, skittering like a water-strider back onto its southwest course. As he emerged from the waterspout’s thunderous spray, he could see the Carthaginian ships a short distance ahead.

Along with that damn balloon.

Not for much longer,
he thought.

“
Will you fucking
hit it?”
yelled Eurydice.

Lugorix shook his head in frustration and anger. This was one damned thing after the next. Two Carthaginian ships were gone, but that balloon was getting ever closer. It was now at too steep an angle overhead, beyond the elevation of the gun-barrel. But if Lugorix and Matthias couldn’t hit the balloon, it was operating under no such constraints. The
Xerxes
had endured three misses in quick succession, each one nearer than before, despite the evasive action Barsine was putting the vessel through. As he watched, a fourth projectile plunged in toward them, looking the whole way down like it was going to nail them, but at the last moment detonating to port.

“Can we surrender?” asked Matthias.

“I don’t think that’s an option,” said Lugorix.

Eurydice scowled, still not wanting to admit defeat. “Both of you get ready to—”

She never finished that sentence. From the northeast, a jet of fire shot through the air, looking for all the world like a fiery gob of spit—and then landing like one too, impacting on the platform that dangled from the balloon’s basket. There wasn’t even an explosion—the thing just sort of
melted;
what was left of it dripped down toward the ocean. Lugorix could hear the screaming of the flaming human torches who had crewed it all the way down. They impacted less than twenty meters from the
Xerxes,
the fires winking out. Now bereft of tether, the balloon soared off ahead of them, caught in a western wind, picking up speed the whole while.

“Damn,” muttered Lugorix.

“Shut up and keep shooting!” yelled Eurydice.

But in truth he and Matthias had never stopped. They’d managed to hit one of the Carthaginian ships—it was burning nicely—but were feeling all too exposed as the rest of them started to come within range. Though the Carthaginians now had more to worry about than just the
Xerxes
—not only had the as-yet-unseen ship to the northeast taken out the platform of the balloon, but it (or maybe still other ships) had managed to destroy three more of the Carthaginian vessels with some still-unseen weapon.

“Torpedoes,” said Eurydice. “One of my father’s inventions.”

“What?”

“Whatever’s back there is using torpedoes—uh, they’re projectiles that move through the water. Think of them as metal, um… fish. Really fast fish, stuffed with black powder. That’s why we’re not seeing any shots.”

“What the hell
are
we seeing then?” yelled Matthias—he slammed another round of ammunition into place, gestured at the massive foaming pillars that had just risen off to each side.

“I think they’re waterspouts,” yelled Eurydice.

Lugorix fired—the round roared off, streaked through the air and smashed across the deck of a Carthaginian ship, sweeping soldiers off its deck like they were ninepins and then crashing through the mast, which promptly fell into the sea like a tree downed by a wine-crazed woodsman. But the Carthaginians were doing their best to return the favor: ballistae and catapult bolts shot across the water, and one hit the
Xerxes,
bouncing off the forward deck and just missing Lugorix. Eurydice ducked down behind the rail as the ship lurched to the right and suddenly listed sharply to one side. For a moment Lugorix thought they’d been holed below the waterline. He looked down at the ocean.

Which was sloping away from him.

His eyes rebelled against what he was seeing. It was like the
Xerxes
was at the top of a hill made of water. He was staring down into an endless froth of sea that stretched down into abyss. He heard Matthias screaming above the din.

The same word. Over and over again.

Charybdis.

Eumenes was using that word too—alternating it with various curses. “What does that mean?” said Kalyana, his brow furrowing.

“The whirlpool that almost killed Odysseus,” yelled Eumenes. Kalyana looked at him blankly, but Eumenes wasn’t interested in explaining the finer points of Greek culture to the sage. What he was interested in, really, was not dying. Which right now was proving to be a bit of a chore.

The Carthaginian ships must have had advance warning thanks to that balloon; most of them were busy maneuvering round the whirlpool’s edges even as the balloon climbed crazily out of control—into a waterspout, where it was shredded instantly, pieces of it flying across the sky. On the far side of the whirlpool—due west—he could see a strange looking ship that he assumed was the Persian vessel. It looked a lot like his own ironclads, though it was smaller and had a gun mounted on the back. Two figures were clinging to that gun and it was going to be touch-and-go whether the ship they were riding made it past the vortex.

But right now Eumenes had more pressing problems. The first of his three ships had already plowed too far into the slope of ocean, was getting swept away, running deeper even as he watched its crew leaping off, abandoning ship to no avail. They were well and truly screwed. And Eumenes knew he would be too if he didn’t move right now—

“Full power,”
he heard himself screaming.

But his captain was already on it. The ship’s boiler was thumping so hard it seemed like it was about to explode. The rudder was making a noise like it was about to give up the ghost. For long and terrible moments, Eumenes’ two boats struggled against the deadly undertow. But then suddenly they were past it, surging forward with renewed power. Far ahead of him, Eumenes could see the Persian ship had escaped as well, several Carthaginian ships in hot pursuit, steam pouring from stacks as they throttled after their prey.

But he could also see another ship veering past the whirlpool’s far side. One that didn’t look like any of the rest.

“That’s not Carthaginian,” said Kalyana.

“You got that right,” muttered Eumenes.

“What the hell is it?” muttered Lugorix.

“It’s called a catamaran,” said Eurydice in a tone that said
don’t ask me why because this really isn’t a good time
. It was enormous, consisting of two ten-decker warships with a two-deck structure laid across the top connecting them. It had turned aside from the northern edge of the whirlpool at the last moment, was now moving on the Carthaginian rear, each of its sails almost as large as any one of those boats, sails that billowed out as the wind intensified. Nor was the catamaran the only vessel in pursuit of the pursuers. Two ironclads had emerged from the vortex’s southern extremity, were riding low in the water as they vectored in toward the Carthaginian ships. Waterspouts kept raging to both left and right. Ahead of the
Xerxes
the sky was dark, lit only by the occasional flash of lightning. Rain began to spray across the ship’s deck. And just as Matthias and Lugorix began to draw a bead on the closest Carthaginian ship, the prow of the
Xerxes
dipped, and the ship suddenly began sliding down another slope in the water—
another whirlpool,
thought Lugorix. He couldn’t even see the other side of this one—it was just one long sheet of whitewater, surging down into the dark lightning-filled clouds that now filled the entire western horizon. It was all he could do to hang on.

“Will someone tell me why we’re steering straight into it?”
yelled Matthias.

“It’s no whirlpool,” said Eurydice. “And we’ve no choice.” Lugorix noticed she had taken a rope and was… by Taranis, she was
strapping herself to the fucking rail
as the ship picked up speed—and then she drew a knife, sliced off what was left of that rope and tossed it to him.