Off Armageddon Reef (100 page)

Midshipman Aplyn stood beside him, his face pale and tight with terror. Yet the boy's eyes were determined, and he clutched a seaman's cutlass in both hands, like a two-handed sword. He hovered there, as if trapped between the compulsion to fling himself forward and the desperate need to live, and Haarahld released his grip on the half-pike to grip the boy's shoulder, instead.

Aplyn jerked as if he'd just been stabbed, then whipped around to look up at his king.

“Stay with me, Master Aplyn,” Haarahld said. “We'll have work enough soon.”

Dreadnought
smashed into the tangle of grappled galleys. Gwylym Manthyr wasn't worrying about damage to his ship—not now. He refused to reduce sail until the very last moment, and wood splintered and screamed as he drove his ship squarely into
Doomwhale
's starboard side

Dreadnought
's bowsprit loomed over the galley's waist, driving forward until her jibbom shattered against
Royal Charis
' taller side. Her cutwater sliced into
Doomwhale
's hull, crushing timbers and frames. Her entire foremast, already weakened by the topgallant mast's fall and two other hits, just above deck level, toppled forward, crashing across her target in an avalanche of shattered wood, torn cordage, and canvas. The Marines and seamen in the foremast fighting top went with it, and the main topgallant mast and topmast came toppling down, as well.

Men stumbled, fell, went to their knees, as the impact slammed through both ships. Others were crushed by the falling masts. But then every one of
Dreadnought
's surviving Marines was back on his feet. They stormed forward, dodging through the broken spars and rigging, muskets firing, and crashed into the backs of Corisandian boarders still pushing towards
Royal Charis
. Gleaming bayonets thrust savagely, then withdrew, shining red, and Marine boots trampled the bodies underfoot as they drove furiously onward.

Even as the Marines charged, Merlin went bounding forward along the starboard hammock nettings, katana in one hand, wakazashi in the other. Cayleb, Ahrnahld Falkhan, and the prince's other bodyguards charged on his heels, but they were merely human, and he left them far behind.

Most of the wreckage had gone to port, and the two or three seamen who got in his way might as well have stood in the path of a charging dragon. They went flying as he slammed past them, and then he launched himself in a prodigious leap across at least twenty-five feet of trapped water, churning in the triangle between the two locked hulls.

He landed all alone on
Doomwhale
's deck amid a solid mass of Corisandians. Three of them had seen him coming and managed to turn around in time to face him…which made them the first to die.

Sergeant Gahrdaner went down with a pikehead in his thigh. He pitched forward to the maindeck, and the swords and boarding axes were waiting as he fell.

Howling Corisandians stormed up the ladder he'd held, and the remaining handful of Charisians fell back to the after rail, forming a final, desperate ring around their king. For a fleeting instant, there was a gap between them and their enemies as the Corisandians funneled up the two ladders they'd finally taken.

Haarahld had lost his helmet somewhere along the way, and the wind was cold on his sweat-soaked hair. He and Midshipman Aplyn were the only officers still on their feet, and he heard his last defenders' harsh, gasping exhaustion. He looked at their enemies, and for a moment, he considered yielding to save his men's lives. But then he saw the madness in the Corisandians' eyes. They were in the grip of the killing rage which had brought them this far; even if they realized he was trying to offer his surrender, they would probably refuse to accept it.

I ought to come up with something noble to say
. The thought flashed through his brain, and to his own amazement, he actually chuckled. Aplyn heard it and glanced up at him, and Haarahld smiled down at the white-faced boy.

“Never mind, Master Aplyn,” he said, almost gently. “I'll explain later.”

And then the Corisandians charged.

Merlin Athrawes crossed
Doomwhale
in an explosion of bodies, then vaulted up onto
Royal Charis
' deck and charged aft, killing as he came.

The Corisandians who found themselves in his path had no concept of what they faced. Very few of them had time to realize that they didn't.

He was, quite literally, a killing machine, a whirling vortex of impossibly sharp steel driven by the strength of ten mortal men. His blades cut through flesh, armor, pike shafts, and cutlasses, and no one could face him and live. Bodies and pieces of bodies flew away from him in spraying patterns of blood and severed limbs, and he went through his enemies like an avalanche, more hampered by their corpses than by their weapons.

But there were hundreds of those enemies between him and
Royal Charis
' aftercastle.

Cayleb couldn't follow Merlin's leap. No one could have, but he and his bodyguards continued their own charge along the hammock nettings. Faircaster managed to get in front of the prince somehow, and the burly Marine led the way onto
Doomwhale
. The Marines already aboard the galley recognized the prince and his bodyguards, and they redoubled their efforts, fighting to stay between him and his enemies.

They failed.

Cayleb, Faircaster, and Ahrnahld Falkhan were the point of the Charisian wedge hammering its way across
Doomwhale
to
Royal Charis
, and the sword Merlin had called “Excalibur” flashed in the crown prince's hand as it tasted blood for the first time.

The Corisandians hit the thin ring of Marines and seamen protecting Haarahld. For a few incredible moments, the defendeus held, throwing back their enemies. But then one or two of them went down, and Corisandians flooded through the gaps.

The Charisians gave ground. They had to. They broke up into small knots, fighting back to back, dying, still trying desperately to protect the king.

Haarahld braced himself against the after rail, bad knee afire with the anguish of supporting his weight, and his sword hissed. He cut down an attacking seaman, then grunted under a hammer-blow impact as a Corisandian soldier swung the spiked-beak back of a boarding ax into his chest with both hands. That awl-like spike was specifically designed to punch through armor, but it rebounded, leaving his breastplate unmarked, and the Corisandian gawked in disbelief as Haarahld's sword drove through his throat.

He fell aside, and for a moment, there was a gap in front of the king. He looked up and saw a Corisandian with a steel-bowed arbalest. Somehow, the man had actually managed to respan the weapon before he leapt up onto the aftercastle bulwark. Now he aimed directly at Haarahld.

“
Your Majesty!
”

Hektor Aplyn had seen the arbalest as well. Before Haarahld could move, the boy had flung himself in front of him, offering his own body to protect his king.

“
No!
” Haarahld shouted. He released the after rail, his left hand darted out and caught the back of Aplyn's tunic, and he whirled, yanking the midshipman back and spinning to interpose the backplate of his cuirass.

The arbalest bolt struck him squarely in the back and screamed aside, baffled by the battle steel plate. He felt its hammering impact, then gasped with pain as something else bit into his right thigh, just above the knee.

At least it's not the good leg!

The thought flashed through his mind as he turned back towards the fight. The Corisandian seaman who'd wounded him drew back his boarding pike with a snarl, shortening for another thrust, but Aplyn hurled himself past Haarahld with a sob. The slightly built boy darted in below the pike, driving his cutlass with both hands, and the Corisandian screamed as the blade opened his belly.

He collapsed, clutching at the mortal wound, and Aplyn staggered back beside the king.

They were the only two Charisians still on their feet, and Haarahld thrust desperately into the chest of a seaman coming at Aplyn from the right, even as the sobbing midshipman slashed at another Corisandian threatening the king from his left. The boy cried out as a sword cut into his left shoulder. He nearly fell, but he kept his feet, still slashing with the heavy cutlass. A sword cut bounced off Haarahld's mail sleeve, and the king slashed that seaman aside, as well, yet he felt himself weakening as blood pumped down his right leg.