Prince of Outcasts (14 page)

Crewmen fled wailing up the lines to the mastheads, clinging in struggling clumps that dipped further and further towards the surface as the ship bent. Then it rolled on its side. But before they could strike the sea the beast came out again like a projectile launched from the deeps, its jaws closing on the mass of struggling humanity and disappearing with a cataclysmic impact that sent water higher than fountains, incongruously
beautiful as the bright sunlight turned the drops to a thousand sparkling jewels. Some of them were ruby-red.

“Saltwater crocodile,” Deor said, his voice oddly flat with awe. “We heard of them,
lm liczba mnoga
they say in Bali. In Darwin . . . There they call them
salties
.”

“We saw their hides and bones,” Thora said. “They said they could grow to twenty feet long or more. But by Almighty Thor! That's
forty
feet if it's an inch, it must weigh . . . tons. Njord, stand by us!”

Feldman's voice came through his speaking trumpet; the
Tarshish Queen
heeled until it was running at ninety degrees to its previous course, but it slowed as sail was reefed. John's head whipped around to look at the quarterdeck as he heard
that
order; so did Radavindraban's. Feldman's voice had an edge of strain in it, but only an edge.

“We can't outrun that thing, not with the wind this light, shipmates. If it comes at us all we can do is try to fight it. Stand ready all!”

The second Korean ship loosed a broadside at the ripple of water streaking towards it, and spray exploded upward again as the creature writhed. Then it dove, into the crimsoned water that rose in pink froth. Silence fell for an instant, save for the shrieks of the men swimming. The waiting fins were closing in from every direction. The Korean apparently thought this was a good time to leave and paid off to the north, the booms of its sails swinging as it went into a reach across the wind.

Then it lurched, bow dipping down and stern rising. The monstrous paddle-like tail rose up and smashed sideways into the warship's rudder, and the metal-bound wood splintered and cracked and pieces of it fell away while the bulk of it sagged, useless. Instantly the ship started to slow and fall off before the wind again without the leverage that held its bow pointing up, the sails slatting and thuttering.

“Broadside catapult-captains, fire on the Korean's stern as you bear!” Feldman's voice cracked out. “Reload will be with solid bolt!”

There was an eightfold chorus of
TUNG-WHACK
, earsplitting loud, and then another two even louder as the eighteen-pounder chasers at bow and stern cut loose. The firebolts arced out over the three hundred
yards, seeming to slow as they approached the target. Three missed, ending in puffs of steam as they struck the surface and the warheads ignited their thermite filling. Seven struck the Korean, from the waterline alongside the broken rudder to the quarterdeck, and two disappeared through the sterncastle windows.

Instantly white-hot bursts of incandescence lit, and then the yellow flame and black smoke of burning wood. Captain Feldman had gotten the less useful firebolt . . .

Less useful against an insane aquatic behemoth!
Some distant rational part of John's brain gibbered.

. . . out of the catapults, replaced it with solid bolts that
might
retain sufficient force through several feet of water, and made sure the Korean wouldn't be a problem if they survived the monster. It was an impressive display of quick thought under pressure, or perhaps of lunatic optimism.

Nobody on the Korean warship seemed to be paying attention to damage control, either. Firebolts had to be cut out and quenched in the crucial moments after impact, before it was too late.

The
Queen
's crews didn't even pause to cheer as they flung themselves into the rhythm of reloading, though the Nihonjin managed a breathless
Tennō Heika Banzai
!

Extra sailors leapt to grab on to the pump-handles that powered the hydraulic jacks and bent the throwing arms back against the massive coil springs. The
chunk
of the mechanisms locking was overridden by the metallic clatter of the four-foot bolts of forged, finned steel being slapped into the troughs.

“Here it comes!” Radavindraban shouted. “Boarding party to me, pikes, pikes!”

A score of crewmen, those whose battle station was repelling boarders or swarming onto another vessel, ran along the deck to the First Mate's side. He snatched one of the half-pikes from the rack beside him, not trying to take enough time to fit the bottom section into the metal sleeve; that left him with seven foot of Montivallan mountain ash and a
foot of heavy double-edged steel blade. He poised it, leaning over and ready to thrust downward.

John could see from his face that he was just as terrified as he'd been at the first glimpse of the massive creature, and realized the First Mate wasn't the sort of man who lost himself in the heat of battle and the rush of adrenaline in the blood so that reflex took over and spared mind and heart. He was doing this cold, purely as an act of disciplined will, and even at that moment the prince dipped his head in a little gesture of acknowledgment, fixing it in his memory as the image of an act of chosen, deliberate courage. If John lived to make the song, unlikely as that seemed at the moment, at least Radavindraban's name would survive. Perhaps someday his kin might hear it and know he had died with honor.

A long ripple in the water, across the swell. Something was breaking the surface and leaving a narrow frothing wake; the broken stub of a catapult bolt lodged in that mass of hide armor and bone and gristle. It didn't seem to be slowing the creature down.

“You will be aiming at that wake, catapult fellows!” Radavindraban called, his voice high but tightly contained with the liquid singsong accent much stronger. “As you bear,
fire
!”

The catapults went off one after another, in a close-spaced ripple but not all at once. It was a testament to the
Queen
's picked crew that each catapult-captain waited until his best shot despite what was bearing down on them. At this close range—less than a hundred yards now, down to twenty before the bow-chaser loosed last of all—the bolts were only flashes, flattened streaks through the air. Each pitched into the water
close
to the onrushing streak with its black core, but it was impossible to see of any hit.

Then they were out of time. The
Tarshish Queen
slammed backward in the water and John would have fallen if he hadn't grabbed a line; several did fall, skidding on their backs across the deck. The king crocodile burst out of the water again, throwing a storm-surge of water at them that battered and stung. The Korean catapult bolt stood out of one shoulder, and another from the
Queen
had sunk half its length in the monster's
flank, but the pain had put it in a fimbul-cold rage. The pink gape of the mouth came at them, shreds of flesh hanging from the great curved daggers of its teeth. It bellowed as it came, a huge guttural sound in a wind that stank like old wet death.

Radavindraban shouted:
“Adi kollu!”

And lunged, aiming the knife-edged steel at the hinge of the thing's jaw. The head of the beast alone looked longer than the half-pike, and gaped impossibly broad. The spear seemed no bigger than a twig, but it flexed without breaking in Radavindraban's grip as the crocodile tossed its head and threw him high into the air. At the top of the arc the steel slid free of the joint in a spray of blood-drops red against the white frothing water. Radavindraban struck the surface and disappeared; so did the crocodile. An instant later the ship shuddered again, more faintly this time, as something massive brushed against the keel.

“Plenty of slack, and be ready on the winch!” John shouted to the Bosun, who seemed to be one of the few not transfixed and frozen.

That was what he was shouting aloud; some distant portion of him was silently screaming
nononononono!
Several of his companions were shouting at him too as they realized what he was about to do, but there was no time to stop him.

He vaulted to the rail, grabbed the shark-fishing line just behind the heavy steel hook—more steel wire was wound around the wrist-thick cable for a yard above—and hit the water in a creditable dive, given his burdens.

Salt stung his eyes, and the light upper waters faded quickly to a darker blue; John was conscious of two more bodies hitting the water seconds after his, but he had no time to spare for more than the hope neither of them was Evrouin, since the man couldn't swim well at all. He spotted Radavindraban's limp form sinking rapidly, still clutching the half-pike in a death grip; the brightness of the steel was really what caught his eye. He dove, kicking powerfully in the stroke his parents had taught him, and caught the sailor around the waist. Deor and Thora were suddenly with him; they helped him slip the hook through a loop on the
man's belt and tug strongly on the cable to signal the deck-crew to spin the windlass.

Something brought him around as they did, something that made him ignore the burning in his lungs. He could see the hull of the Queen above them, slowly passing. And from beneath it a shape, sculling its tail sideways and back like an oar, driving at them like an arrow. Despite the growing absolute need for air the three of them hung motionless for an instant, until they realized in the same moment and all together that the creature was going for the moving target, for Radavindraban's limp body shooting upward with the speed the high-geared winch made possible.

John kicked out strongly. Thora was beside him, her knife in her teeth. What she thought
that
was going to accomplish only her Gods knew, but if the crocodile had gulped her whole she'd probably have stabbed it on the way down. Deor was an eel-swift form on his other side. They reached the side of the ship just in time to seize ropes and see the crocodile rise half its impossible length out of the sea with its jaws agape beneath the dangling form of First Mate Radavindraban.

They slammed shut, and just as they did the half-pike fell from his hands. Fell with malignant precision into the beast's maw, and jaws that could crush teak drove it through its own lower mandible. The beast bellowed again, even louder, and on a different note.

It was about time they had a stroke of luck.

A dozen crewmen were thrusting their long pikes at the white, softer skin of its throat and chest, and Fayard gave a crisp order and his men volleyed. Ruan was shooting his longbow in a steady ripple, bodkin-heads designed to punch through steel armor, and the Japanese leaned recklessly over the rail to thrust with their
naginatas
, screaming their warcry:

“Banzai! Banzai!”

Another bellow and the monster crashed backward into the water . . . and vanished, diving deep, even as the wave of its passage thumped the three of them heavily against the sheet-metal covering of the ship's hull.

John clung; his mind felt like an eye that had stared too long at the
sun. But he
had
seen what he had seen: a metal armband around the thing's forelimb. And graven on it a sigil, a three-armed thing like writhing, curving tentacles, in yellow gold on the black surface of the band.

Thora's hand slapped on his bare shoulder, painful enough to jar him back to the world of common day.

“On deck before the sharks arrive, lover,” she said; he was aware of himself enough to recognize the look in her eyes, and be warmed by it. “You're either very brave or very crazy.”

“Or both,” Deor added with a slightly crazed grin. “Well, you're a maker of songs, so it's probably both.”

Many hands pulling made climbing back on deck easy enough. John slumped down, letting Evrouin pour a slug of rum down his throat and begin to rub at him with a towel, perhaps a little harder than necessary to express an anger he couldn't put in words. Several experts were pressing the liquid from Radavindraban's lungs and breathing into his mouth with his nose pinched shut. He coughed seawater, retched more and began to revive.

Everyone else kept their eyes on the water around them; the first Korean warship had vanished, and the second was a smear of smoke several miles away. Azure silence broken by the creak of wood and cordage reigned, until Feldman's voice came sharp, giving the helm directions and setting the deck crew to the ropes and rigging. The motion of the ship picked up as more sail sheeted home and caught at what wind there was; he was vaguely aware of Ruan scolding Deor, and of Thora sitting quietly by his feet with her arms around her knees looking at him and smiling.

John came fully out of his shivering stupor when he saw Feldman's seaboots standing beside him. He looked up at the bearded face; the Captain had his thumbs hooked in his belt again.

“That was . . . interesting,” the merchant skipper said. “Thank you for saving Mr. Radavindraban; he's the best First Mate I've ever had. We're going to need him on the repairs, too.”

“Where are we headed?” John asked.

“The closest dry land we can find. The leak's much worse; that
thing
rammed us as hard as a ship could have done. I appreciate irony as much as the next man, but just sinking and getting eaten by ordinary common sharks after all that would be . . . excessive.”

John managed a small chuckle, then sank back again and closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth. He felt bone-chilled as he hadn't since a memorable bear-hunt in County Dawson by the Peace River February last. And a weariness as deep as a day spent fighting in armor might have brought. He waved aside the flask of rum.

Still and all, I'd rather be here than back home in Orrey's shoes, explaining to Mother why I'm not there.

Behind his eyelids, the yellow sigil turned.

I should mention it,
he thought as thought slipped
away.