CHAPTER 38

The Fourth Adventure of Haldon Lac

It may have been an exaggeration to say Haldon Lac was stationed aboard the biggest warship he’d ever seen, but he was never one to shy away from a little hyperbole. The Fury of the Queen was immense—once, she’d been the pride of the Royal Navy, her three gun decks brimming with cannons, her four towering masts flying stiff white sails, her full complement of well-trained redcoats thirsty for battle.

Well, he admitted, not redcoats. They still wore the uniforms. But they were not members of the Oxscinian Royal Navy anymore. He didn’t know if there was an Oxscinian Royal Navy anymore, or if it was just the Alliance now.

The Resistance needed a last line of defense between the battle on Blackfire Bay and the capital, where the civilians were huddled in shelters, so many of the biggest ships, including the Fury, dropped anchor at the mouth of Braska’s harbor, forming a chain of floating fortresses that would protect Rokuine shores.

If all went well and the rest of the Resistance battled back the Alliance, she wouldn’t even see combat.

But all did not go well.

The morning of the last battle, Lac and Hobs climbed the mainmast to the fighting top, where they and the other topmen watched Captain Reed’s storm spread across the western horizon, flickering with lightning. They cheered when the Resistance vessels sailed out, multicolored flags flying, to meet the blue beasts of the Alliance beyond the entrance to Blackfire Bay.

But as the hours wore on, the Alliance pushed them back. The Resistance defenders were forced to retreat.

The Fury of the Queen could not move from the harbor entrance without risking the safety of the city, so Lac and Hobs could do little but watch as the enemy attacked the islands on the north side of the bay, capturing forts and watchtowers, commandeering gun turrets and firing back on the Resistance.

Flaming ships floundered in the waves, trailing thick clouds of smoke that obscured patches of the midsummer sky. Even with Sefia’s magical reinforcements, the Resistance ships were still tar and timber. Under enough cannon fire, they still broke. They still burned.

Haldon Lac’s topmen were nervous. He could feel their fear spiking as they watched sailors who had been thrown into the sea swim for floating bits of debris. But he didn’t know how to help them. He didn’t even know how to help himself.

“There were six sister sand witches,” he muttered, “and six sandwiches: two tuna sandwiches cut in two, a sandy sandwich which slipped from the hands of the sixth sand witch, and a tuna sandwich which Witch One had bit into. Witch Two wished for—”

“What are you mumbling about?” one of the topmen asked, gripping the stock of her gun.

“It’s a riddle,” Lac said.

“I’ve been working on it for months,” Hobs added proudly.

Speeding out of the harbor, unarmed rescue boats sailed into the confusion, running over the corpses of enemies and allies alike. But they were at the mercy of the battle. Doctors went down under stray gunfire. Cannonballs went wide of the Resistance fighters, sinking the small rescue ships instead.

“Well, keep going,” said another of the topmen. “What’s the rest of the riddle?”

Hobs beamed. “Okay, so, Witch Two wished for a tuna sandwich which Witch One had skipped while sampling sandwiches”—he continued rattling off his riddle while the other topmen huddled around, needing a distraction—“and would willingly switch sandwiches with any sand witch that wasn’t Witch One. The sixth witch switched with Witch Four, which for Witch Four was a sinister sandwich switch, so Witch Four granted Witch Two’s wish and switched her sandwich with her sister sand witch—”

Out on the water, there was a great crack as an Alliance warship crashed into a rescue vessel, smashing the smaller boat into pieces. Lac thought he saw bodies crushed beneath the enemy’s enormous blue hull.

“Don’t stop,” said one of the topmen.

Lac turned back to them, swallowing. “Which sand witch ate which sandwich?” he asked.

The topmen conferred.

“Witch One ate Witch Two’s sandwich, so . . .”

“Which one had a tuna sandwich again?”

“No, Witch One had half a tuna sandwich, but Witch Two . . .”

On Blackfire Bay, the whitecaps turned red.

The Alliance kept gaining. The Resistance kept retreating.

From the entrance to the harbor, Haldon Lac could no longer see the Red Hare, the White Navy ship on which Ed—the king—was sailing, or the Current, lost somewhere in the chaos. But he kept catching glimpses of the Barbaro and the Amalthea, which seemed to be everywhere, firing their great guns, taking down everyone from outlaws to rebel redcoats.

On the western cliff above the city, Sefia and Archer’s watchtower was still flying message flags. The Alliance didn’t seem to have attacked the fortifications of the main island yet. Lac hoped it would stay that way.

It was midday when the Alliance drew into range of the Fury’s cannons. They were a blue serpent with black spines, one massive warship following another in a long, sinuous line.

Were any of them Royal Navy vessels? Under their new coats of paint, it was hard to tell.

On the fighting top, the topmen had agreed Witch Two had ended up with the sandy sandwich, but they hadn’t decided which other witches had eaten which sandwiches.

And they wouldn’t, now that the Alliance had come for them.

Below, the rebel redcoats worked the great guns, raining iron down upon the enemy. Blossoms of flame erupted from the mouths of the cannons. Black smoke drifted into the fighting tops.

One after another, the Resistance line took out the invaders. They cracked hulls. They demolished masts. They wounded officers and soldiers.

But the Alliance was relentless, sailing in from the northwest, firing broadsides, and sailing back out again. Red and orange lights flowered in the smoke as the decks of the Fury were shot to pieces. From above, Lac could see his fellow redcoats falling. Dying. One of the other midshipmen, posted on the main deck, went down with a spar of timber through the neck.

Closer and closer came the blue beasts of the Alliance . . . until at last they were in range of Lac, Hobs, and their topmen.

They fired across the water, taking out soldiers in the enemy fighting tops.

Were they Oxscinians beneath those blue uniforms? Former comrades? Friends?

But they couldn’t stop the Alliance. There were simply too many of them.

One enemy ship, smaller than the Fury, sailed in from the northwest, but instead of firing a broadside and retreating again, it charged in toward the Resistance line.

“They’re trying to board!” the captain of the Fury cried, his voice carrying up to the fighting tops.

Below, the gun crews let off one last broadside. A cannonball struck the Alliance mast. Another took out a piece of their stern. But the enemy was still coming.

Gesturing to his topmen, Lac ordered them to prepare for boarding. They grabbed chests of grenades or climbed out onto the yardarms, preparing to drop powder kegs on the enemy boarders.

Hobs touched Lac’s elbow. “You scared, Lac?”

Lac gulped. “Yes.”

Of death, capture, and drowning. Of being impaled by shrapnel. Of falling. Of fighting his own. Of his friends not making it to sundown.

“Me too.”

On the gun decks, the crews loaded their cannons with scrap shot, and as the Alliance ship drew up alongside them, the Fury let loose her last volley of fire. Lead barbs, nails, and other sharp bits of metal went flying from the cannons, studding the enemy hull. Blue-uniformed soldiers went down with hundreds of tiny wounds.

But they didn’t stop coming.

There was a great crunch as the bow of the blue ship crashed into the Fury. From the yardarms, the topmen lit powder kegs and sent them plummeting onto the enemy decks, where they exploded, burning boarders wielding revolvers and axes.

Lac and Hobs began hurling grenades as the Alliance soldiers leapt from their ship onto the Fury of the Queen. Some didn’t make it. One man misjudged the distance, striking the redcoats’ rail with his chin.

As the enemy swarmed the Fury’s decks, the rebel redcoats detonated powder chests strapped to their bulwarks, sending up bursts of fire. The leading Alliance soldiers were blown back, but they were replaced by others, leaping through the flames, firing their sidearms as they landed among the resisters.

It was a bloody business. Soldiers on both sides were slashed and stabbed, their faces blown off, their guts spilled. Below, the decks turned crimson.

In the fighting top, Lac threw himself onto his belly and began firing his rifle. Bang. Bang. Bang. Beside him, Hobs and the other topmen did the same.

But soon he heard the useless clicking of the hammer. “I’m out of ammunition!”

“I’ve got it!” Hobs got to his knees. But before he could move toward the case of bullets, his whole body jerked back.

Blood spattered Lac’s face as he turned to see Hobs, clutching his shoulder, fall from the fighting top.

“Hobs!”

He kept seeing Fox making the leap across the deck of the Fire-Eater. The nauseating drop. He kept seeing Fox going limp in his hands.

Not Hobs too.

Bullets struck the fighting top as Lac crawled to the edge of the platform, searching for his friend.

Hobs was dangling twenty feet below him, tangled in the rigging. Looking up, he gave a wide grin.

Fox had grinned too, right before she was shot.

And Hobs was an easy target, hanging over the melee below. Gunshots shredded the ropes around him. On the main deck, the enemy set fire to the rigging.

At the stern, a blue-uniformed soldier seized one of the chase guns and turned it on the fighting top. A fist-size ball of iron slammed into the platform, scattering the redcoats.

Ignoring the height, Lac scrambled off the platform and after Hobs, who was struggling with the ropes now, the flames climbing swiftly toward him. Lac had almost made it to him when the rigging frayed.

Midshipman Haldon Lac felt his stomach rise into his throat as he and Hobs were dropped onto the decks.

A sharp pain lanced through Lac’s ankle as he landed. An Alliance soldier raced toward him, boarding ax raised to strike.

Lac fumbled for his sidearm.

He was too slow. He was too clumsy. He’d never get his gun out in time.

But he had Hobs. As the enemy reached them, Hobs shot him in the chest.

The boarder collapsed on top of Lac, who yelped. He tried to squeeze out from under the body, but the decks were hot and slippery. It was so loud! There was a dead man on his chest! People all around him were fighting and shouting and dying.

Cradling his wounded shoulder, Hobs helped push the soldier’s body off of Lac and, leaning on each other, they got up again, shooting, slashing.

They cut. They stabbed and punched and dodged, always coming back together in the battle, driving off the Alliance soldiers that came at them, swinging.

Dimly, Haldon Lac wondered if all that practice with Archer had made them better fighters. Certainly, they weren’t doing too poorly, injured as they were.

But they were being driven toward the rail. The enemy was overwhelming the Fury.

Lac ran out of bullets first. He struck someone with the butt of his pistol as he heard the click click of Hobs’s empty sidearm.

They were pinned against the gunwale with nothing but their swords. There was nowhere left to retreat to.

Blue-uniformed soldiers closed in around them, raising their weapons.

Smoke and flame shot from the barrels of the Alliance guns.

“Hobs!” Lac flung himself at his friend, taking them both over the edge of the ship as the bullets passed through the air.

As the three gun decks flashed past them, Lac wrapped his arms around Hobs, who hugged him back, and they plunged into the cold water together.