Chapter 16: Wind and Wave

They swarmed up onto the beach and the dock, killing and ripping before the workers on the docks even understood what they faced. Someone shouted to close the gate, but Ryphonia belayed the order: hundreds of sailors and laborers were still outside the castle, and they would die like rats if trapped against the walls. She ordered the alarm raised for a full withdrawal behind the gate.

“Signal every ship to set sail for deeper water!” she yelled to the flag-bearers on the highest tower.

Eilo wetted his glaive with banisher’s wine and sprinted through the open gate. The cavalry officers, already mounted, beat him to the docks; a dozen lobster men went down under their wooden lances or their horses’ trampling hooves. The quickest of Nowan de Valc’s horrors, the crab-women, were already heading for the gate. Two of them spotted the banisher as he ran.

They were about eight feet tall, with two claws that rose out of their humanlike hips. Their red-black upper bodies were lean and hideous, but distinctly feminine, with matted black hair, waist-long and still damp from the sea. Their spears were iron, but the banisher was more afraid of their claws and their sharp, trampling legs.

He forced himself not to slow down as he charged the first woman. His glaive swept out horizontally and chopped through two legs. The crab woman lunged with her spear even as she toppled; Eilo parried with a flick of his glaive and the iron spike missed his face by inches. The force of the impact numbed his hands and he took three quick steps back, just as the other crab-woman rushed sideways toward him, her claw snapping.

The banisher kept retreating, forcing the crab woman to chase him. Then he reversed his momentum when both of her claws went wide, jumped onto one of her legs, and drove the glaive through her heart.

They went down in a tangle of limbs, but the monster was finished, and the other crab woman stumbled on her missing legs. She closed in with her spear, but Eilo slipped around behind the dead crab woman and cut away two more legs, then hacked the woman’s head off.

The claws kept snipping mindlessly, but they were both dead. So that meant two down...maybe another thirty to go. Plus twice that many lobster men and maybe a score of spiny deep sea caterpillar things.

But Eilo’s attack had given the dock workers a direction to flee in. They swarmed past him, heedless of the mindlessly snapping claws, and ran for the gate. Only one cavalry officer still lived, and he had lost his wooden spear. He drew the handgonne from his waist and fired it uselessly at a crab woman. Three lobster men rushed Eilo, but they only had their short claws, and the banisher had lots of room to work. He extended his glaive to its full length and swept it back and forth in great scything arcs, slowly retreating as more lobster men tried to surround him. Five lay dead or dying by the time Eilo risked a glance back.

The workers and surviving cavalry officers retreat inside. Archers and pikemen stood at the gate; Lady Ryphonia stood overhead, ordering them to hold their shots.

Eilo collapsed his glaive and ran laterally.

“Shoot!” Ryphonia cried.

Quarrels of polished wood hit the lobster men. They weren’t the razor-sharp ivory bolts of hexguards, but the lobster men had soft, fleshy torsos, and the crossbows made gruesome work of the front line. Ryphonia was shouting something, probably “Get inside, idiot!” as the last stragglers made their way under the gate. In the bay, all six of the duchess’s ships were heading for open water—only one of the galeasses had been completely swarmed by crab women. Its deck was slick with blood, and one of the women was climbing up the mast. The banisher didn’t think that one would make it.

Ballistas twanged; a shot hit one of the spiky caterpillar things. But it was iron-tipped and had little effect on the monster.

“Eilo! Dammit, boy!” That was Lord Halday, atop the wall beside Rynne. “Get inside!”

The banisher was halfway up the ramp when he saw Skaithness. Her strength not yet expended, the armored woman had battered at least two lobster men into unconsciousness, and ripped a crab woman in half at the waist. She had saved a group of dock workers, and was waving to him...from a little rowboat.

A boat!

The banisher looked for Ryphonia at the gate and caught her eye. Then he pointed with his glaive toward the armored woman.

“Close the gate!” Ryphonia called.

A final volley of bolts and arrows killed a few more lobster men. They swarmed for the gate, but it crashed down. Nowan’s monsters kept coming, but even if they could climb as well as those slugs, Eilo doubted they would make it inside.

He was the one in danger now. One of the spiked caterpillars charged him, all bristling brown thorns. It tried to roll over him, and when Eilo ducked behind a dead crab woman, it rolled over her and kept coming. The banisher smashed it with his glaive, cutting off most of the front end, then circled to one side and chopped it in half with three vicious blows. Then he fled for the boat, dodging lobster men, and jumped aboard.

It was a small launch used to ferry people from Commodore Jancel’s carrack to the dock and back. It didn’t have a sail, but there was room for three banks of rowers. Skaithness’s crew consisted of a carpenter, a barber, and two washerwomen. She made polite introductions.

They rowed for open water while Eilo watched for crab women. One paralleled them from shore, but she couldn’t reach them. In a few minutes of hard rowing, they had almost caught up with the rest of the fleet—all except the one galeass that crab women had completely overrun.

On the far horizon: galleys and other vessels that outnumbered Lady Ryphonia’s little fleet at least three to one. Nowan de Valc’s fortress-ship followed them, twice the height of the largest carrack. Eilo remembered stories of when the moon was still alive. Had it looked like that at moonrise, all green and hazy on the horizon?

“How did they get here so fast?” Skaithness wondered aloud.

The air and water around the enemy fleet looked strange. The clouds were low and twisted, like ribbons. Eilo had never seen clouds like that before, even as he and Skaithness had stumbled through the fog on the Cape of Lost Stars.

“Did you explain the plan?” Eilo asked Skaithness.

“Yes, and I also tried to forestall their reasonable objections,” the armored woman said.

The two remaining galeasses in Ryphonia’s fleet rowed cautiously toward their numerically superior foe. The carracks, with their nimble sails, would turn the tide in this fight. As Eilo understood the plan, the big, quick carracks would smash the enemy galleys with cannon and bombard fire, sailing circles around the slower rowed vessels. Even if that didn’t sink them, the galeasses would then be able to close in and ram the smaller galleys. Even if they closed without ramming, one galeass had almost twice as many marines as one galley: in a fight between two ships, Commodore Jancel’s ships would win. Even if the galleasses got overwhelmed and the enemy fleet got through, it would then have to survive bombardment from both the castle and any remaining carracks.

The allied carracks accelerated under a strong, steady wind, then split apart to rake the galleys with cannon fire before any large enemy warships got into range.

“Well,” the banisher said, “we can’t bob along here waiting to watch the fireworks. Skaithness, show Nowan de Valc what you have.”

“Do you think it will work?” Skaithness asked, taking out the crooked key. But just seconds after Skaithness held it up, everyone in the rowboat could feel the attention of the green ship. The Mollusk Knight’s presence washed over them like rancid oil. The green ship turned to face them, like a galley preparing to ram.

“Row!” Eilo shouted.

They all bent to the oars. The huge green ship raced out ahead of the enemy galleys, pulled by dragons beneath the waves. Seeing the enemy line break apart, Commodore Jancel’s carrack flew like an arrow across the sea, with the other two describing wider arcs. Eilo watched the enemy flagship, waiting for the floating squids to rise up and pursue them, but they didn’t appear. Maybe the ship itself was faster.

Then a great pulse went up through the water and air, a ripple of power like something the banisher had only rarely experienced before, when dealing with the oldest spirits of elemental fury. The air rippled, and the clouds overhead twisted and tumbled. Then the clouds seemed to fall out of the sky, toward Nowan de Valc’s ship. They vanished with a hiss, like smoke sucked up by bellows, and the morning sky shone blue and empty.

Then the wind died.

It stopped so suddenly that Eilo lurched in the boat. He straightened his morion and looked around

Nowan de Valc had stolen the wind.

The carracks slowed to a pitiful halt. Eilo could see men frantically working lines and rigging, but there was nothing they could do. There was no wind at all.

The enemy galleys rowed, closing in on the helpless carracks.

“Keep rowing,” the banisher said, putting all his strength into the oars.

“But they just—” one of the washerwomen started to say.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Eilo said. “We’re the only ones who might be able to get away. We don’t need the wind.”

“Neither does he,” the barber said.

Nowan de Valc’s titan ship surged across the glasslike sea, toward them.

They could only row away as enemy galleys rammed the carracks. Soon they reached the southern part of the island, all jagged rocks and churning sea-cliffs. The banisher could see the narrow stretch of beach where they could abandon the boat and head inland. It looked much narrower than from the castle. With luck, Nowan de Valc’s green ship would be out of position and the enemy galleys would attack the castle immediately, without waiting for the sorcerer’s help. With a great deal of luck, Nowan would order the green ship to chase them right onto the rocks, where the green ship would rip itself open.

Eilo didn’t feel lucky, but he kept rowing. Fear gave him strength, especially as the huge green shell loomed around the gold-white cliff like a hungry moon. The water in front of the ship churned as the sea dragons pursued them.

The wind had died, but the surf still churned around the island. Their little rowboat almost dashed itself against the rocks twice, and the second near-miss shattered Skaithness’s oar and sent the barber flying away into the water. He disappeared instantly in the white foam.

Then they slammed into the beach, scraping across jagged metal. The force of the impact hulled their boat, and they all stumbled out onto the beach. Skaithness had brought cutlasses, and started handing them out.

“No,” the banisher told the two washerwomen and the carpenter. “Your work here is done. Run for the castle, and hope there aren’t any lobster-men left outside.”

They ran up the slope and soon disappeared, leaving Skaithness and the banisher alone on the coppery shore. The armored woman, Eilo realized, had not moved at all for at least a minute. She was as still as when she slept.

“Skaithness!” the banisher said as the water around the rocks foamed and crashed, and as a wall of green shell seemed to blot out the southern horizon.

“Yes?”

“Can you still move?”

“Slowly, but yes,” she said. “Mostly, I’m petrified with fear. I confess that I don’t exactly know what to do in a situation like this, Eilo.”

The castle’s big cannons opened fire somewhere to the north.

“I guess we see if this works,” the banisher said. Despite his own fear, he was smiling, as the green ship was moving toward the beach so fast that he didn’t think it could stop now if it wanted to. Skaithness sharpened each of her cutlasses on her bracers.

Then suddenly a huge, serpentine form leaped out of the water, as huge and supple as a breaching whale. But it was not a whale—Commodore Jancel had spoken accurately in describing it as a dragon of the sea. The serpentine, dog-headed monster climbed up onto one of the huge rocks, front claws digging into the stone, scaly body slithering and lashing behind. Then it leaped, landing on another rock, this one closer and half made of copper. Behind it trailed the sort of huge chain great coastal cities used to bar their bays in times of war. The other sea-dragon appeared a moment later, also leaping one rocky island at a time toward the shore. They would be almost within reach of Eilo and Skaithness soon, but before then, the green hull of Nowan de Valc’s ship would crash into the rocks.

Then Eilo saw the floating squids. They popped up into the cloudless sky like corks from the sides of the green ship. But these were not the exact same creatures the banisher had seen before. They were bigger, and semitransparent, like jellyfish, and they remained connected to the ship by long, thick lines.

Then the dragons crashed onto the beach, and the ship rose up, and up, on stalk-like legs of green shell, like those of the caterpillar things that had just swarmed the dock. The ship swayed, and seemed ready to fall, but then the jellyfish swelled and opened up fin-like skirts, holding the ship up in the cloudless sky.

The colossal green warship loomed over them on six stalk-like legs, held aloft by six huge jellyfish.

“I’m growing to hate sorcery,” the banisher said.

*