The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice (43 page)

Johannes and Nicky were released first. The normally stoic blacksmith seemed unaccountably excited, even beyond the fact of being so suddenly freed. ‘Sea Lord,' he demanded eagerly, ‘did I hear you describe the fleet that attacks now as a
strange
fleet?'

Ibanez considered him. ‘You did. It consists of ships unlike any I have seen before. They are certainly not of the design of our own shipyards. And they have launched curious weapons.'

Johannes's eyes blazed. ‘It's begun at last,' he said to his apprentice. Then he turned to Dow. ‘We must get off this ship.'

Dow nodded, not understanding the blacksmith's fervour, but agreeing with the fact – they could not stay on the
Twelfth Kingdom.
The marines meanwhile had opened the door on the other side of Dow's cell – and to Dow's unsurprise Nell stepped silently forth. The dress in which she had been displayed was gone – perhaps its true owner had wanted it back – replaced by her usual gear. But anger still radiated from her.

‘We have to go,' Dow said.

‘Go where?' she asked coldly. ‘And how? Or will you swim all the way to your home, New Islander?'

It was not a question he'd expected, logical though it was. Why was she angry at
him
? He wasn't the one who'd humiliated her and thrown her into a cell – he'd secured her release! But there was no gratitude in her, let alone anything more. Dow found it impossible just then to believe the kiss between them had ever happened.

But Johannes said, ‘If we can get clear of this monstrosity and make our way to the attacking fleet, we'll be picked up, I promise.' Everyone, the Sea Lord included, stared at him in amazement, but the blacksmith addressed only Dow. ‘Trust me! I don't have time to explain it all – only come with me and you'll see soon enough.'

Dow turned to the Sea Lord. ‘Sir, is there some way off your ship other than the main hatchways?' Hatchways, Dow had not forgotten, which opened directly off the gun decks – currently firing.

Ibanez nodded. ‘There is a private dock in the stern.

My personal launch is kept there – although it has been held under lock and key, I'm told, since the coup. But smaller boats are stowed there as well.'

‘Can one of your men show us the way?'

Ibanez nodded, then commanded two of the waiting marines. ‘Take them there – and give them any aid you can.'

‘Sea Lord,' said Johannes, his round face troubled and yet resolute, ‘this is not a warning I should give, but I owe you this much debt at least for freeing Nicky and me. If this attack is what I think it is, then the
Twelfth Kingdom
may not survive. You should flee.'

Ibanez laughed. ‘Not survive? This ship may be captured – who knows it better than I – but destroyed? Never.'

Nell suddenly spoke. ‘My Lord, what of Axay?'

Ibanez stared at her, his laughter gone.

‘Does Axay yet live?' Nell pressed softly.

The Sea Lord shook his head, tears brightening in his eyes. ‘On the night of my overthrow …' He faltered, then recovered himself. ‘The usurpers, you see, required some means to bend me to their will. They knew they could not injure me in person, for I must be able afterwards to appear before the Lords with no sign of violence upon me. Nor do I have any family they could threaten. Nadal is gone; my wife is long passed away. That left only Axay, who I have known and loved since I was a child. They … they wheeled in the chair, and tore off the curtain … and Axay could not … they tortured …'

He couldn't go on. But Nell, pale with suppressed fury, was insistent. ‘So Axay died that same night?'

‘No,' whispered the Sea Lord. ‘They did not even mean to kill, I think, only to inflict pain, so that I would be forced to witness it. And Axay indeed still lived when I surrendered, and signed the papers they wanted me to sign. But Axay was not as other folk are, and they did not understand the damage they'd done. My scapegoat lingered another month in agony, but then …'

Nell took a steadying breath, as if to push the outrage away, for – as Dow understood suddenly – her concern was not Axay's death in itself. ‘And no new scapegoat has been appointed since?'

‘None so far. All Great Island is being scoured in search of one who's afflictions might be the equal of Axay's – but no one yet has been found. In my heart, I believe there is no such a one. The line is broken.'

‘Then beware, Lord,' said Nell, ‘and do not dismiss the blacksmith's warning lightly, or trust too much in the strength of the
Twelfth Kingdom
– for without a scapegoat, this is now a ship that is unprotected from defeat, or from any other disaster fate may have in store for it.'

Johannes added, ‘And this is an attack unlike any other.'

Ibanez stood in startled reverie for a time, then slowly drew himself up. ‘If that is so, Twin Islander, then it's all the more reason I should stay. A shadow of a Sea Lord I may be now, but I am the true Sea Lord, the last of my dynasty, and this is my ship. I will not abandon it.'

Nell stirred, a deep reluctance in her eyes. ‘My Lord, perhaps if
I
served, just for a time …'

Reading the impulse in her, Dow shook his head. ‘No. You can't do it. You can't stay here.'

Ibanez smiled gently. ‘He's right, child. You are not Axay nor of Axay's ilk – though it is a noble offer. But in any case, Valdez and Castille would never tolerate you as scapegoat here, even as a temporary measure. They would destroy you. Your fate lies elsewhere. So go, save yourself if you can. In fact, I command it.' He nodded again to his marines. ‘Take them. Now.'

And so they went – Dow and Johannes and Nicky, with Nell following behind – led by the two marines. Dow's last sight of the Sea Lord was a glance back as they passed beneath the raised grill. The old man was bent sadly to inspect the dead man at his feet – one of three slain prison guards that lay in the passage – while his own guards waited patiently. Then Dow and the others rounded a corner, and their race to escape began.

The marines led them quickly and surely, first up two flights of stairs, and then along many dim passageways, lit only by lamps. The sounds of the battle grew louder. They were still below the level of the gun decks, but they began to encounter sailors dashing this way and that, and also some bearing wounded men to the ship's surgeons. No one took any notice of Dow and the others. The air was one of disorder and alarm.

On they ran, down corridor after corridor, past dormitories and storerooms and kitchens, and sick bays where men screamed and where surgeons raised bloody hacksaws. And now smoke could be smelled in the passageways, and the acrid scent of gunpowder.

At last the marines led them up another flight of stairs, and they emerged to the open spaces of the lowest of the great gun decks, squarely amidships. It was dark even here, so Dow knew finally that it must be night outside. And
now
the cannon fire was deafening, booming from both left and right, but in the gloom and haze Dow could still not see the cannon themselves, let alone the ocean beyond, or the state of the fighting.

Powder boys and gunners and junior officers darted about through the smoke, toting shot and powder, or calling hoarse orders, but in all the chaos none of them hindered Dow's party. They hurried towards the stern once more, angling sideways as well, until at last the deck's rear bulkhead loomed through the haze. A hatchway opened there, and a stairway led downwards again into darkness. ‘The dock lies below,' yelled the first marine.

But Dow and the others slowed, for the smoke here thinned a little, and now the cannon along this one side of the deck were visible, a seemingly endless row of them extending away forward to vanish again in the murk. Gun crews were busy loading and firing in constant thunder, the sound and stench terrific. But between the last gun emplacement and the stern bulkhead, there was an opening in the hull, a window that gave direct view to the ocean. Irresistibly drawn, despite the protests of the marines, Dow, and Johannes and Nicky behind him, went to the window and looked out upon the battle.

The hour was nearing dawn. A blue-black sky hung over the field, dark with clouds, and made even darker by the flare and flash of the conflict beneath. Smoke rolled across the Millpond in great billows, and moving in stately hostility amid the smoke, their sails fully set in the slow airs, were the ships of the opposing fleets.

Many were already burning, or wrecked and adrift, and the fleets themselves were intermingled and disordered by battle. But despite the confusion, Dow saw even in his first glance that this was indeed no civil engagement of Ship Kings against Ship Kings. The vessels
defending
the
Twelfth
Kingdom
were all too familiar to him – some twenty or thirty of them, flying the flags of Valdez and Castille – but the attacking warships, which numbered no fewer, were unlike any he had ever seen.

At Dow's side, Johannes was fairly hopping with excitement, and Nicky, who rarely even smiled, was grinning madly. ‘Do you see?' cried the blacksmith. ‘Do you see, Dow Amber? The moment has come at last. We strike, and we strike hard!'

Dow stared. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Those ships come from my homeland, Red Island and Whale. They are Twin Islanders out there!'

In disbelief, Dow looked to the ships, then back to Johannes. ‘Twin Islanders? But how—?'

Laughing, Johannes shook his head. ‘The tale is a long one – too long for now. Suffice to say that we have for many years been building a fleet in secret. For decades. To challenge the rule of the Ship Kings. The attack on Stone Port was a first test. But now real battle is joined.'

Dow didn't know what to say; this was a revelation that raised so many questions and objections in him it was impossible to start with just one. Nor was there time. Inquiries and explanations must wait for later. For now, the battle itself demanded all his attention.

He stared again over the field. A first it seemed to him that for all Johanne's jubilation, the Twin Island ships were in fact no match for the Ship Kings vessels. They were as large, if not larger, than their opponents, but they possessed only one gun deck apiece, and they were slow – great, fat bellied craft that moved in cumbersome deliberation, with squat masts and thick rigging and blunt bows. The Ship Kings craft, swifter and lighter, were sailing circles about them, like hunting dogs herding helpless beasts.

And yet the longer he watched, the more Dow realised that the Twin Islanders were holding their own.

The Ship Kings might blaze at will at the massive hulls of the Twin Island vessels, but their broadsides seemed to do little damage. Nor could the Ship Kings sweep the Twin Islander decks with lethal fire, for the Twin Island crews were shielded all around by high gunwales. And so stout were the masts and sails of the Twin Island vessels, that even barrages of Ship Kings grapeshot were causing less havoc there than they might.

These new ships, Dow finally understood, weren't built for attack at all. They were built for defence. Their purpose was to hold their positions and withstand whatever might be thrown at them for long enough to enable their true weapons to be launched – and those weapons, many already in the water
,
were stunningly recognisable to Dow.

Boats. Long, low boats that slid over the sea without aid of sail or oar. Boats that moved, as if by magic, all on their own. Dow and Vincente had glimpsed just one such craft on the night of the burning of Stone Port. But here were thirty at least, just in this single span of the battle.

It was like seeing a ghost – many ghosts – revealed in full daylight. Even as Dow watched, another was being lowered from one of the Twin Island ships, just as a cutter might be launched – except that it was larger than a cutter, and sharper in the bow, like a sea-borne dagger. It hit the water with a splash and within moments was pulling away, a white wake frothing behind it.

They were attack craft of some kind. They bore no cannon or muskets on their open decks – but their intent was clearly offensive. And so swiftly did they advance, and so lithely did they steer, there was nothing the Ship Kings warships could do to interfere with them.

And one question, at least, Dow had to ask, whether there was time or not. ‘How do they move?' he demanded of Johannes. ‘What propels them?'

The blacksmith laughed again. ‘Oil, my friend. Refined whale oil – that most precious of oils, collected jealously through the years – burnt in mechanisms of iron. I cannot hope to explain it – not to one so ignorant of metal work as are you. But watch now. In the Stone Port attack these boats were used merely as swift transports to ferry the mines to the harbour's mouth – it was swimmers who attached them to the ships. But here the boats will perform their truer tasks. Note the iron rams on their bows. And see – there one goes!'

Johannes was pointing out across the water. One of the boats had locked on to a battleship as its target, and was making a run directly for the ship's midriff. In reply, the Ship Kings craft was letting loose a continuous cannonade, but the shots were sailing high. The gunners, seemingly, could not lower their aim fast enough.