Darkness had settled on the water as the Trophy Chase turned for home. There were no Firefish. None had been seen all day. The extra league had changed precisely nothing. The wind was now out of the south, so the shortest distance out of the Achawuk territory was to the southeast, their current heading. Dead ahead, if they did not change course once they left the territory, was the Kingdom of Drammun. But Scat did not fear the Drammune nearly so much as he did the Achawuk.
“Sorry about the Fish, Cap’n,” John Hand said to Scat Wilkins as they stood on the quarterdeck, looking out over the black water.
“A lot of bluster,” Scat replied sullenly. No Firefish, no Achawuk, nothing but a tired crew ready to head home.
“What’ll you do with the boy?” Hand asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?” That didn’t sound like Scatter Wilkins.
Scat shook his head. “Nothing for now.” He glanced at Hand, saw the disbelief, looked back over the waters. “I promised Talon she could have him. And so she’ll have him.”
“Ah.” Hand’s smile was a sad one. “He’d have been better off staying dead.”
The ship sailed on, past many small islands that Scat continued to keep as far away as possible. The lookout was alert, vigilant as usual, but had seen no signs of life all day. Now darkness and cloud cover lessened their visibility considerably. Gradually, Scat had needed to decrease speed in order to navigate the islands, which tended to pop up at frighteningly close range. But they were just about clear of the territory, and all aboard knew that the Achawuk attacked with fire. The day’s work was done, and done without a fight. By morning, they’d be in charted waters again, where the most dangerous threat to any and all was the Trophy Chase herself.
The crew looked forward to it.
A league away from the Chase, on the opposite side of a small island, three hundred canoes paddled silently through the waves toward the beach. Each canoe carried four warriors. Each warrior carried a spear. Each spear had a sharp, toothlike head on one end and a large loop of leather or crude twine on the other. Every sun-bronzed face was painted midnight blue, forest green, or deep crimson.
The birch-bark canoes never touched the beach. Before a prow could run aground on the sand, the warriors within it had stowed their paddles and splashed lightly into the surf, heaving the boat onto their shoulders without losing any speed, seamlessly portaging their canoes across the beach inland.
This nameless island was heavily wooded, but less than two hundred yards across. Twelve hundred warriors left their canoes in the underbrush and passed through the thick, tangled growth like floodwaters, emerging in a silent human wave on the other side. From that beach could be seen the lanterns of the intruder, the great ship, as it approached. Without hesitation, without a word or a gesture, they waded lightly into the waves. They had effectively passed through the island unchecked, the woods filtering out their boats and pouring armed warriors into the sea. With spears slung across their backs by means of the loops, twelve hundred warriors swam out to sea, out to meet their prey.
Only three remained behind. Gray-headed and regal, these watched from the beach. One, in crimson paint, standing between the other two, wore the tattered waistcoat that had belonged to the captain of the Macomb.
The dark shapes bobbed silently in the dark water. They spread out in a long, thin line, perhaps a hundred feet wide and a thousand feet long. They judged the speed of the ship perfectly. Once it reached them, it would run through their ranks for a great distance, unable to stop or turn quickly enough to avoid meeting virtually every one of them. The warriors waited as the great ship approached.
The two lookouts positioned high above the mainmast were scanning the seas for canoes. For torches. For Firefish. For other ships. Other islands. For anything familiar. But dark, bobbing shapes, the very colors of the ocean at night, were far outside their experience, and almost impossible to see even if they had been told what to look for. With the sun gone and night fallen, the Achawuk were invisible, black spots on a black background. But they were there, and they were waiting.
Scat Wilkins was still on the quarterdeck, and the starboard watch was in the rigging. Officially, all hands were on deck, at battle stations. But with the gravest danger now past, Scat had decided the need for precision outweighed the need for vigilance, and had sent half of the port watch, including Packer Throme and Delaney, up the ratlines to curry favor with the wind. He had less than half the ship’s sails unfurled in a steady wind. Gusts were few now, but Scat wanted to adjust his canvas instantly, taking advantage of every breeze. He wished he could run faster, but among islands at night it simply was not wise. There was no need to risk it now.
Packer worked the mizzen. He had gained a little confidence in his footwork, enough so that even in the dim light from the lanterns and torches on the deck below him he could concentrate on the work rather than the danger. Delaney noticed it, and left him to it with the words, “I’ll work the main.”
Packer was glad to be off the deck, away from the Captain, relieved not to have faced instant punishment, and now, even thankful they had found nothing and were leaving these waters. He was learning more with every command from the deck, every shift of the wind. The triangular mizzen at the stern of the ship, he noted, mirrored the foresail at the bow. Hauling the mizzen sheets in careful concert with the fore, and especially with the spritsail in front of it, would turn this ship instantly—almost pivoting it in the middle. Packer felt a deep urge to be part of a few quick maneuvers, to help the Chase through her paces.
Then came the knocking, sounds like sticks hitting hollow trees, or hammers striking empty wooden barrels…many hammers, all at once. The sailors in the rigging stopped their work and looked to the deck below, but saw nothing. Crewmen stood frozen on deck, eyeing one another, afraid of what the sounds might mean.
But Scat knew. The memory rose instantly in his mind—Achawuk spears striking the sides of the Macomb, warriors climbing them like ladders.
“Stand and fight, men!” Scat bellowed. “The enemy is upon us!” He pulled his pistol and ran to the lee railing, cursing, baffled as to how they could have evaded his watchmen. There, below him in the dark, were the Achawuk. They climbed their own spears up the side of the Trophy Chase, grim and determined. Their faces were darkened, their expressions darker. The nearest one was ten feet below the railing, his spear raised, about to be driven into the hull. Scat put a musket ball through his forehead. The warrior fell but was immediately replaced by another. Those around the warrior showed no emotion, no reaction. They simply filled ranks.
Sailors flew across the decks and down the ratlines, gathering at every rail. Shocked into action, following their captain’s lead as well as his orders, they unleashed a volley of musket and pistol fire, dropping about forty more warriors, splashing them back into the dark sea. Through the pungent powder and choking smoke the sailors watched as these forty were instantly replaced by sixty.
Packer stayed in the rigging. He moved as quickly as he could out the footline to the end of the mizzen yard. Hanging out over the ocean, he pulled his pistol from his belt. From this vantage point on the port side of the ship, he could see the warriors like barnacles, thick on the hull—and like seaweed, thick on the black water ahead of the Chase. If the first volley had felled any, he couldn’t tell by looking. There were hundreds, hundreds of them, just as Delaney had promised, and the first of them were almost aboard. It would soon be swords against spears. Packer aimed and fired. He was unsure what, if anything, he had hit. Or what difference one musket ball could possibly make.
The sight was mesmerizing. What on earth drove these warriors to attack like this, he couldn’t help but wonder. He could see even from here, in the yellow lamplight of the decks, faces of stone, actions measured and controlled. It was all business to them.
“Reload! Reload!” The sailors were already reloading their weapons when Scat screamed the order. They had at best half a minute to prepare another volley, Scat figured, and then the Achawuk would be over the rails in force. “Pull the cannon back!” he ordered. “Fire when they come over the rail!” The command was odd, and Scat got blank looks instead of action. He stepped to the nearest cannon, ordered those manning it, “You three! Pull it back to here, now!” He pointed at a spot on the deck ten feet behind the cannon’s base plate. The men obeyed, lugging the heavy iron weaponry to the appointed spot. “You got grapeshot, men! Fire when you can take out half a dozen at once!” The sailor with the torch held it near the touchhole, a small vent in the breech of the cannon where the charge could be ignited. The other cannoneers looked, understood, and began pulling their weapons back.
Scat didn’t reload his own pistol. He ran to the quarterdeck, pulling out his sword and his dagger. John Hand stood there with a loaded musket in his hands, prepared to aim at the first warriors over the rail. “Where the red blazes did they come from?” Scat asked him.
Captain Hand had been working on the same question. “No canoes and no fire. They just swam out to us.”
“Hang them in hell for ignorant savages,” Scat said through gritted teeth. But John Hand smiled wryly; the Achawuk had outwitted them. He knew there was deep respect in Scat’s dark heart.
Scat squinted out, looking over the waters. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see them. More than a thousand, no doubt. Like lily pads covering a marsh. Even the speed of the Chase was no help now. He had sailed her into the midst of the enemy, and the enemy would be aboard before he could sail her out again.
Nothing to do but fight, and Scat knew how to do that. He pulled his sword and waved it over his head. “Come on up, ye monsters! Try the Trophy Chase! We’ll send you back to the devil to learn some manners!”
The sailors heard the Captain’s oath, and the fear in them caught fire. Scat Wilkins possessed that rare military gift, the ability to ignite men to fight without fear. Back to the devil to learn some manners! The words crossed the boundaries between laughter and tears, life and death, right and wrong, heaven and hell. Every man who heard them was filled with a dark glee, and a deep love for their Captain. A fight it would be, then—and if so, Scat was the man to follow.
A cry arose from the ship, deep and powerful and unvarnished, as each man let loose from within him the anger and excitement and fear that would carry him to kill, or to die, or most likely, both. It was the roar of the great cat. It sent a shiver down Packer’s spine more powerful than any he had felt before. He knew its energy, but he did not join in.
The sailors’ second volley felled more warriors than did the first. But the result was the same. The slain warriors were replaced immediately by others, ranks closing quickly with little effect on the whole.
The first Achawuk to reach the railings were unarmed, having left their spears in the ship’s hull. This surprised the crewmen, stopped some of them with their swords raised. Here they were, face-to-face with the dreaded warriors they had heard so much about, eye-to-eye with painted, savage, legendary killers, who were tall and strong and muscular and fearless. And who had no weapons.
“Fire the cannon!” Scat screamed.
The first cannon boomed, a blinding flash, loosing its grapeshot as five warriors disappeared, limbs and torsos folding backward like paper dolls in a hurricane. Then the other cannon followed suit, twelve in rapid succession, some simultaneous, each cutting down four or five or six of the enemy at once, blasting away huge chunks of the Chase’s railings at the same time. The sweet, acrid smoke was so thick, the flashes in the darkness so bright, that no one on deck could see for a moment, and no one could hear for the ear-ringing aftereffects of the cannonade. And then the breeze took away the blue fog, gently clearing it from the deck, revealing more Achawuk yet, pouring up from the darkness, up over the rails. Still the warriors had no weapons. But each warrior who topped the railing alive reached for the nearest sailor, throttling him barehanded.
Scat saw his men pause, saw their uneasiness about attacking weaponless men, and knew the danger. Every alarm within him sounded; his men could not pause, not even for an instant. He cursed the brilliance of the Achawuk silently and ran to the gunwale himself, bringing his sword across the neck of the first Achawuk warrior he could reach. “Fight, every mother’s son of you! The Chase is boarded!”
Another guttural cry rose from the sailors as now they waded into their attackers. Every crewman knew there would be no pause again until he lay down among the dead in defeat, or stood over the dead in victory.
But the crewmen found that killing even an unarmed Achawuk was not an easy task. These were strong men bent on destruction, their spirits unwilling to depart their accustomed dwellings without considerable application of force. It took several blows to fell one of them, and they kept fighting, killing armed sailors by strangling them, or by throwing them over the rails to the human piranha below. The effect on the sailors was profound: If the Achawuk were this hard to kill defenseless, imagine them armed with spears.
And very quickly, no imagination was necessary. Their ladder complete, they came each with a spear. Hundreds of hardwood shafts that blocked sword blows, and sharp white spearheads that penetrated flesh.
John Hand didn’t leave the quarterdeck. He had fired his pistol once and his musket twice, and was reloading the musket for a third shot. His swordplay was suspect, he knew, and he didn’t have the stamina of Scat or of the younger men on deck. He figured this was the best application of his limited fighting skills. But he could only shake his head as the Achawuk continued to pour onto the lamp-lit decks, rising from the darkness…and curse Scat’s greed and Packer’s information.
Wooden shafts and razor-sharp spearheads clashed and clanked against the sailors’ swords, but the grim silence of the warriors as they fought cast an eerie pall over the battle. The great cat’s roar was silenced now. The only constant sounds were blows and counterblows, grunts, cries of pain, bodies thudding to wooden decks. The Achawuk men fought and died soundlessly.
John Hand pulled the ramrod from his musket barrel. At least the Camadan was safe, he told himself. That was his first duty. Likely his last as well. He scanned the deck again, looking for the most strategic need. He saw Lund Lander swinging a blade near the shot rack at the port railing, saw a warrior moving in behind him, spear poised. Hand leveled his musket and fired, dropping the warrior to the deck. He reloaded.
The Toymaker didn’t notice, didn’t pause. He had dispatched half a dozen warriors already, and had fallen into his own rhythm. But he was tiring. They were all tiring. Lund knew that the best-trained man could sustain this level of exertion for six or seven minutes at the most. And they had been at it for at least three already. Good men were falling all around him; the decks were growing slippery with blood, making it harder to stand and fight. Each new Achawuk warrior over the rail was fresh and strong. The sailors were better armed, and were better fighters, but they simply couldn’t keep up the pace necessary to deal with the numbers.
The numbers. That was the problem. Lund’s brain couldn’t help but do the tally. They had seventy men, not counting Deeter, who was hiding somewhere below decks. Each sailor fighting for six minutes on average…averaging two warriors killed per minute, as Lund had done…adding up to eight-hundred-forty warriors killed, at the very most. And as sailors died, the curve grew steeper and steeper for those left fighting. Lund, like Scat, had estimated there were over a thousand of them; he had never heard of the Achawuk attacking with less. The numbers told him this was a losing battle. Numbers never lied.
Scat Wilkins calculated nothing. His face was set like a flint, his teeth were clenched, his eyes unseeing. In one hand was his sword, in the other his dagger. He stood still, dispatching foe after foe, dealing out death with the cold precision and lightning speed of a pit boss dealing blackjack. He was considerably better at the art of killing a man quickly than was Lund, better than anyone now aboard, with Jonas Deal running a distant second.
Scat could kill with such efficiency not just because his destructive skills were honed to a razor’s edge, not just because he knew the exact placement of a knife or a sword that would inflict the most lethal wounds with the least energy, but because his skills were plied in the service of only one purpose, more emotion than thought, more lust than emotion. Put into words, which are invariably too precise for such a root and carnal drive, it might come out, Die, you sons of Lucifer! Die!
If Lund had made his calculations by Scatter Wilkins’ tallies, if the average swordsman aboard the Chase could have destroyed six, or seven, or eight enemies per minute as Scat did, the crew could have fended off three times a thousand warriors inside six minutes. But they could not.
Packer stared down at the carnage, desolate. His momentary spark of energy had been drained before he could descend the ratlines, and now the carnage below him was gruesome beyond anything he had ever imagined. In minutes, the Achawuk would overwhelm the resistance on deck. He could see that. They were still thick on the hull, still thick in the water for a hundred yards ahead. They had actually slowed the ship, creating a force of drag that was never figured into her design. And now they were thick on the deck as well, closing in and overwhelming pockets of sailors standing back to back, fighting for their lives. Those pockets were being squeezed down, then snuffed out like candles. Packer knew that his duty was to climb down into that horde, to kill and die with his shipmates. He was the only one left in the rigging. The thought occurred to him that he was being a coward, but it didn’t stick. It didn’t matter. Whatever he did now couldn’t possibly matter. The outcome was not in doubt.
Still Packer watched. Scat Wilkins was cornered near the stairway to the quarterdeck. To his left was Jonas Deal, to his right was Mutter Cabe. They were holding off all comers, and a significant cluster of corpses surrounded them. Scat seemed to move faster and with more purpose than anyone else. He moved like a dervish, a killing machine. But even these three couldn’t last; there were simply too many Achawuk.
Packer’s heart felt like it was made of wood. He could feel his hands loosening their grip on the ratlines, but he seemed detached from that fact. What did it matter? He would die like those below would die. And if he survived, he would have to live as a survivor of this horror. What kind of life would that be? He felt as though he’d been sucked down into a whirlpool, as though the inevitable end of all he’d done, all his effort, his dreams, his mission, was this. It was not where he wanted to go, but where he must go, where he could not help but go. He had let the boulder loose, and it would smash what it would smash. It had been the destiny he couldn’t see and couldn’t escape, the deep darkness at the heart of it all, giving the lie to all his dreams.
But that was a selfish view, wasn’t it? Delaney had chastised him for thinking it was all and only about Packer. No, it was bigger than Packer. This was not just his destiny. Death and destruction were the destiny of every man below, every sailor, every Achawuk warrior. None of them evaded it, and all of them played their part.
And then it struck him that this was in fact the destiny of men, across the entire world. Across history. He felt suddenly that he was looking at the world in miniature, a history told in wars and conflict and blood, playing out now on this one small stage. Here was the world’s history, and its future. All dreams of glory—not just his, but all dreams—ultimately led here. Hoard gold? Change the world? Make a name for yourself? Gain honor, save your nation, your people, avenge your God? Every insatiable, noble, and heroic drive leads but one place, and this is it: Men killing other men with every ounce of strength they have.
It all leads nowhere else, it could lead nowhere else, because every mother’s son on earth is a mutineer, every last soul is Adam in the garden, or Packer in the hold, raising a sword rather than submitting to God. Unwilling to die, we are therefore doomed to kill. And doomed to die killing. No one is spared this fate.
Why did Scat and his men kill? Because they were attacked. Why were they attacked? Because they had invaded the Achawuk territory. Why had they done that? Because they wanted gold.
The Achawuk were no different, no worse, no better. Why did they kill? Certainly there was some glorious reason. They had been invaded. It was pride, it was glory, it was honor, it was religion, it was something. They could no more turn the other cheek than Scat’s pirates could. They wouldn’t sacrifice themselves; no one would. Everyone had to stand and fight. That was the human way.
Packer had chosen not to die back in the hold. So now he would die on deck. He could have died turning the other cheek…when it would have mattered to God, when it would have been a righteous act, solitary and humble, where God alone would know and Packer’s reward would have been eternal. But Packer chose to raise his sword. And now he would die where men would see and God would hide His face, he would die a brother in arms, as millions of men had died before him, and millions would die after, killing other men in a fight over a dream, a right, a principle, a lust, a passion, a truth, a hope.
Packer felt small, and infinitely unworthy, before a great and holy God who looked down on them all, who looked deep into Packer’s heart and saw all the evil, all the sin of the whole world. And yet, Packer marveled, that same God, knowing all the ways of man, which from the beginning have been the same since Cain killed Abel, that same God sacrificed Himself. There was, after all, one Man who could do it. The thought gave Packer a shred of hope.
There was one Man who could turn the other cheek, who would “resist not evil,” who could and would lay down His life rather than pick up His sword. That Man had come down from the rigging of heaven and joined the bloody fray on deck, but He hadn’t fought. He became one of the ragged lot of cutthroats, but He didn’t bloody His hands. He didn’t defend Himself, or His land, or His dreams, or His country, or His gold, or His honor, or even His God. He allowed Himself, and all the things most valuable to men on earth, to be sacrificed. And to what end? So that people could learn a different way, could learn to lay down their swords, rejecting the ways of earth and taking up the ways of heaven.
Packer felt thankfulness well up within him. He looked up to heaven and asked God why, why He would care at all for such a horde of villains. The answer that came back was clear. It was not a question of men’s worthiness, but of God’s very being. The God Who is Love could do no other.
Humbled further, Packer found grace to ask God for mercy, not just for himself, but for his fellow mutineers as well. “Do not wipe us off the face of the earth,” he pled. “Let us live, so that we can understand some shred of that love, and have a glimpse of the way it works in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Packer began the descent down the ratlines, sword at his hip. He did not know what he would do when he got to the deck, but he did not plan to draw his sword. Christ had descended to the melee, God as man, armed with a power He chose not to use. Packer knew he was not worthy of the comparison, but he was honored to walk in those footsteps anyway. He could die this way. He was following the path of his God at last.
Packer was a few feet from the deck when his eyes met those of an Achawuk warrior coming up over the port rail. Is this the man who will kill me? The warrior had his spear in his hand. He looked up at Packer without anger or pity or remorse, but with a very distinct purpose. Packer wanted to ask him why, why he killed, why he died. But the warrior’s spear came up, its bone-white tip aimed at Packer. Packer put his hand to his sword reflexively, but he didn’t draw it.
He put his foot on the rail. As he did, the great ship rocked. For a brief moment, Packer thought he had caused it, that his weight had jarred the ship. But the canvas overhead had popped at the same time; a great gust of wind had caught the mizzen and had then sustained its energy long enough to heel the ship to port. Packer had to grip the ratline tightly to keep from being thrown down into the water. The warrior in front of him had no line to hold; he lost his footing on the slippery deck and toppled back over the railing, into the ocean.
Packer looked after him: A great number of the Achawuk climbing up the hull, those nearest the waterline, were submerged. As the wind died away and the ship righted itself, he could see that many of the warriors had been swept away. Others grabbed the vacant spears and began climbing.
The wind and the sea had created a break in their lines. The sight gave Packer a small spark of hope that the sailors on deck would at least have a moment’s rest from their fighting. But the Achawuk closed the lines quickly, and once again the hull was a single mass of climbing warriors.
As Packer stood on the rail and watched, another gust hit the sails, and more Achawuk were submerged below him. He saw several of them slip, giving the advantage to their adversaries. And then, suddenly, Packer knew.
Like cellar doors ripped away above him, sunlight shone into his soul. Packer could do nothing to change this outcome; he could do nothing but die. But God could do anything. If God would grant them wind…He looked up into the dark sky, asking God if He would grant them more gusts of wind. Patchy clouds scudded across the moon.
Energy arced through him like lightning. He looked around, saw Delaney’s blade flicking red through the air. “Delaney!” he called, hands and feet already moving back up the ratlines. “Delaney!” The sailor looked up. “Full sail! Full sail! The wind!”
Delaney was puzzled. He glanced around him, and to his surprise few Achawuk were near at the moment. He looked back up at Packer.
Packer stopped, locked onto Delaney. “I need you!” he yelled. And then he grinned. “The wind!”
Delaney didn’t understand the plan, but he understood the hope. He understood the man. He found himself climbing up the rigging before he could think it through.
“Full sail!” Packer yelled, reaching the mizzen yard. He raced along the footlines, hacking every tie-rope he passed, unfurling the mizzen sail completely.
John Hand heard Packer’s call. He glanced up at Packer and Delaney as they scrambled around the ratlines, sails dropping in great unruly swaths behind them. It was a curious sight. But he ignored it. He looked back to the deck, saw Mutter Cabe waving his sword in the air, two warriors in front of him. Hand squeezed the trigger; a loud crack and a sharp plume of fire and smoke evened the odds. He looked back up as he reloaded.
Delaney was much faster in the rigging than Packer, and had unfurled the main and then moved above it, to the maintopgallant. Just then another gust hit, this time jarring the great cat significantly, poking it with a much bigger stick. More Achawuk slipped on deck. Full sail, Hand thought. He forced himself to pay attention to the wind and sea again, to the ship’s heading and the cut of the sails. Then it dawned. Yes, yes! “Hard to port!” he cried out, only then realizing no one was manning the wheel.
Delaney had by now figured out what Packer had in mind, and when he heard John Hand’s command he quickly understood what the two measures would mean combined, if only the wind picked up. He redoubled his efforts.
John Hand pulled the ramrod from his rifle, took aim at a warrior who was pulling his spear from a fallen crewman, a man the Captain recognized as Cane Dewar. Hand cursed softly, and apologized silently to Cane as he squeezed off his shot. Three seconds earlier and he’d have saved him; now he avenged him.
Hand turned his back to the fray and crossed to the wheel, kicking out the lock timber that held it steady. With great effort he spun the wheel counter-clockwise, trying to get the Chase heading east-southeast, at right angles to the wind. Adjusting the sheets was not an option; he was adjusting the course instead so that the sails would fill to their maximum. It wouldn’t be precise, but it would have to do.
“Trim the main, I’ll get the fore!” Delaney yelled to Packer as he descended toward the deck at the front of the Chase. “She’ll pivot like she’s caught in a maelstrom!”
Packer didn’t say a word, but descended as quickly as he could. When he reached the quarterdeck, he quickly untied the main sheets and pulled the yardarm about so that the sail’s angle was ninety degrees to the wind, then retied them. Delaney was doing the same on the forecastle deck with the foresail.
No sooner had Delaney tied off his sheet than another gust hit. It was no greater than the previous two, but because all the sails were now unfurled and angled more precisely, they now snapped with great drama. And the Trophy Chase, solid and tight as she was, the great cat that leapt with every small variation of sail, now exploded with fury. She rocked as though hit broadside by a dozen cannons, as though run aground sideways. At the same time, she turned hard. And Delaney was right; it felt more like a spin than a turn, the foresail and the mizzen working like the points of a pinwheel.
On deck, these efforts had exactly the desired effect. Every Achawuk engaged in combat lost his footing, and nearly every one of them fell, unaccustomed as they were to great ships such as this. And almost every sailor kept his balance, even on the slippery decks, fully accustomed as each man was to the Trophy Chase and her nimble ways. By the time the gust blew itself out, the ship’s deck was angled at almost thirty-five degrees.
As the ship gathered way, she gradually righted herself to a less drastic heel and smoothed into about twelve knots of speed. By this time, the standing sailors were eagerly dispatching the fallen warriors. Moments later, the crew looked at one another, in wonder. Where was the enemy? The jolt had momentarily stopped the Achawuk who still climbed the spears on the hull, and had tumbled not a few of them back into the sea.
On the starboard side, the ship’s hull had suddenly doubled in height, with the lowest spears well out of reach of those warriors left in the water. And the turning of the ship frustrated those trying to get new spears into the freshly exposed wood. On the port side, the warriors suddenly found themselves submerged, with a wooden hull above them and hundreds of spears, plus dozens of other warriors, blocking their path upward toward the air.
On deck, the crewmen panted hard and looked at one another. It was miraculous. The enemy had fallen. Chests heaving, blood and sweat dripping from them, they looked above them into the sails. They were unfurled. It was an awesome sight. Ghosts, white spirits, they seemed, billowing above them in the lantern glow with no mortal explanation.
At that moment, another gust hit the ship broadside, and the great cat rolled even more dramatically, listing now as though she would go down, with the deck pitched well past a thirty-five degree angle. And this time, the gust was followed by a sustained, powerful wind.
More warriors were rocked off the spears and into the sea. Others, who had managed to hold on, came up over the starboard rail, which was now high above the port rail. But then they tumbled down across the blood-slick deck. But most of the sailors kept their balance yet, even while sliding down the deck to the port rail. They hacked at the warriors as they went, or as they piled into other Achawuk now coming up from the water. But even these were not prepared to fight; they came up spluttering, hanging onto the port railing for dear life rather than climbing over it.
Then the sound came. It started low, with a few inarticulate grunts that were somewhere between deep laughs and vengeful growls. But it quickly grew. The tide had turned. The sailors felt it in their bones. Victory would be theirs. How could it be otherwise? Growls turned to whoops, and a few crewmen sang out in pure exultation. The sea, the wind, the sails, the deck, the Trophy Chase herself, all their most powerful, their most beloved allies had come to their aid. Allies summoned by God knew who, perhaps by God Himself, and welcomed down to their souls. And these reserve troops were now literally throwing their enemies down at their feet. The sound grew until the entire crew was cheering, shouting, howling, and singing at once, from their hearts and from their guts. It was a sound of pure joy of body and of spirit, pure internal, animal fire. The cat roared, the roar of a lion in victory. It continued to roar as it dispatched the last of its enemies. The crewmen’s strength was renewed. They would not be defeated on this night.
John Hand turned to Packer Throme, saw eyes brilliant with intensity. “It broke their ranks, Captain,” Packer explained breathlessly, and needlessly. “Coming up the hull.”
Hand nodded. “Aye, that it did, and drowned ’em like rats on the other side.” He clapped a hand on Packer’s shoulder. He turned to the decks and bellowed, “Haul those sheets to starboard, anyone with an arm and a leg left! Let’s sail!” A dozen men who suddenly had no enemy left to fight obeyed, and the Chase leapt away from the remaining Achawuk, leaving them to drift away in the ship’s wake.
Scat Wilkins did not hear the command. His mind had been working on a level deeper and more visceral than those around him, further from consciousness, more focused, like a great athlete in a long race with the finish line in sight. He had heard the cheers, but couldn’t expend the energy to wonder about them. He knew the deck had pitched, and he had used this to full advantage. But he didn’t hear, or didn’t comprehend, the orders coming from the quarterdeck above him. His focus was unaltered. He waded through the bodies, looking for any sign of life among the Achawuk and removing it. Finally, there was nothing left to fight. There were no enemy left to kill. He breathed heavily through clenched teeth as he looked around him, his eyes still wild, hands and arms drenched in blood to the elbows, boots wet to the knee, face, beard, and clothing bespattered.
Lund Lander had heard Captain Hand’s message clearly and understood it immediately. The Toymaker stood dumbfounded, confronted with an amazing fact. There were no more Achawuk. The remaining number was zero. He peered over the rail. Spears stuck out of the hull like the quills of a porcupine. But they were empty. Achawuk floated away in the dark water behind them. They can’t reach us anymore, he thought. He could hear a few thumps, as a few hardy Achawuk still attempted what was now a hopeless task. But most were now safely behind, thanks to the turning of the ship.
Lund’s spirits soared. They were done. He didn’t know how or why. They never should have escaped. The numbers never should have worked. But they did work. Something had changed the balance—in favor of the Chase and her men.
John Hand called out commands as he spun the wheel, angling for all the wind he could muster. The renewed strength of the crewmen turned from fighting for their lives back to the precision of sailing. They were already out of reach of those warriors left in the water. Now they would fly from these lands, at a speed no Achawuk would match.
It was over. The Chase and her crew had fought the Achawuk, and the Chase and her crew had won.
Finally, Scat’s battle-scarred and blood-soaked brain understood that it was finished. He stood panting hard, blood and spittle flying from his mouth and nostrils with every breath, fire in his eyes. He looked around at his men, expecting to see the admiration, the worship, that was due him. Certainly no one had done more to win this battle, no one had killed more Achawuk than he. He had lived up to his legend once more, had once again proven worthy of his name. His enemies lay scattered at his feet. Instead, he saw all eyes on the quarterdeck—and the smiles, and the looks, the awe, were all aimed elsewhere.
Captain John Hand reached out and shook Packer’s hand. “Well done, Packer Throme.” He turned to men gathered on the decks. “He unfurled the sails!”
“Packer!” Delaney called out, rushing up the stairs to the quarterdeck, sword high.
“Packer!” the others echoed, many of them speaking the boy’s name for the first time. Their bloody swords saluted him.
“Well, say something, stowaway,” John Hand said with a great grin across his face.
“God bless the stowaway!” another sailor yelled, and they all cheered again. It was an odd cheer, though, from this group, full of light and thankfulness, as though they knew it was a miracle. Packer was amazed by it.
It had all started so quickly, and ended so quickly. He had been prepared to die, he had gone face to face with an Achawuk, unarmed, and God had chosen that he not die. Why? Certainly not out of merit. And now he was being cheered for it. God had blown wind into these sails and saved them all. They quieted, and waited again. Packer spoke up, thoughtful and obviously humbled. “God sent the wind. I just…helped it make a difference.”
“God bless the difference!” someone yelled, and the others laughed.
“Packer!” Delaney cried again.
“Packer!” they roared again in unison. And then they began swiping their swords together, clanging them in celebration high above their heads.
Scat watched this scene with a growing sense of outrage, his chest still heaving. “Why are they cheering the boy?” he growled.
Jonas Deal shrugged. Mutter Cabe, standing on the other side of Scat, grew dark. “Not a drop of blood on him, Captain,” Mutter said softly.
Scat’s guts knotted up. Cabe was right. The stowaway hadn’t even fought! Scat looked down at the Achawuk bodies that lay at his feet. He saw the blood that covered him, his hands, his arms. Deal and Cabe were spattered, soaked.
So why in thunder were they cheering Packer Throme?
There was blood in the water.
The recognition was instant, and the scent was overwhelming. As the beast followed, the scent grew stronger still. And within seconds the enormous, ancient predator was swimming at full speed, its mouth open, its whole being on fire with the craving for soft, fresh meat.
It was quickly joined by another.
And then another.