“Wodep!” he blurted.
The neat lines had vanished—he looked up at the sun and blinked astonishment—in only an hour. Instead there was a melee that stretched from here to the edge of sight, and almost to within catapult range of Preble’s walls. Galleys were burning and sinking everywhere he looked; as he watched, a Confed quinquereme went nosedown and slid under the waves, shedding what looked like a coating of black fur at this distance, and that he knew was men clinging desperately to a life that sank beneath them. A little further off an Islander capital ship fired its four cannon directly into the deck of a Confed trireme, shattering the marines clumped to board into an abattoir mass of blood and torn meat, and punching through the deck into the crowded oar benches beneath. Even as it did a Confed quinquereme ranged up along its other side, and the boarding ramps slung up by ropes crashed down to link the ships, driving their iron beaks into the lower deck of the Islander vessel. Marines launched a volley of their weighted darts, and then swarmed across like implacable warrior ants. Here, there, a confusion no eye could take in. . . .
“Where’s the ram?” Adrian was half-shouting, his eyes wild. “What has that donkey-fucking idiot done with my ship?”
* * *
“Allfather!” Demansk snapped.
The shock of impact threw him to his hands and knees on the deck, driving bits of armor into his flesh. He pulled himself upright again, watching with savage glee as the deck of the enemy vessel surged backward and the wheel beat itself to flinders on the bronze-sheathed timber of his ship’s ram. Splinters rained back, as dangerous as flying knives, but he ignored them. Then the remnants of the wheel froze, and an odd muffled screaming sound came from within the . . . Iron Monstreme, Demansk thought. The monster-chuffing breath ceased abruptly.
“Follow me!” he roared. “Whatever it is, we hurt it! Now we finish it off!”
The boarding ramp fell. The iron spike penetrated at least a little, and Demansk ran down it. The iron plates felt strange beneath his bare feet, but skin gripped—the only problem was that it was just short of painfully hot. He crouched, holding his round officer’s shield out for balance, and ran up the low curve towards the square blockhouse forward of the smoke cylinders. He could hear men following him, and one despairing scream as somebody slipped and slid into the water on his way to the bottom, and then they were crouched around the blockhouse. It was iron plates on timber, the same as the rest of the strange construction, but steam was leaking out of the slits—oddly like a bathhouse.
A hatchway on top of the blockhouse opened, and a man stumbled up and out, wavering, pawing at his crimson face. A dart landed in his gut with a wet thwack that was all too clear at this range.
“Prisoners!” Demansk shouted. “I want prisoners!”
Men clambered on to the roof of the blockhouse, and one of them gave Demansk a hand. The hatchway proved to be about the size of an ordinary door, but the space beyond was a ghostly mass of steam and vague thrashing figures.
Like an orgy in the steam room, Demansk thought, dazed. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this.
“We surrender!” a voice coughed, hoarse and rough, an Islander accent. “Let us out, for the love of the Mother!”
“Come out with your hands empty,” Demansk called down.
A man came up, showing empty palms; one side of his face was a huge blister. “Spare us, lord! Mercy!”
“Who are you?” Demansk barked. “And what is this thing?”
Even as he spoke, he realized the futility of the question. Whatever this was, it probably couldn’t be explained by a wounded man at assegai-point.
“Sharlz Thicelt,” the man said. “Water, lord?” Demansk nodded, and a man handed over a canteen. The Islander drank, gasped, coughed, drank again. “I’m skipper of the Wodep’s Fist—or was.”
He spat some of the water on the corpse of the first man who left the hatchway, and tore off his turban in a gesture of pure rage, revealing a long shaven skull. The gold hoops in his ears bounced with the vehemence of his motion as he threw the turban after the spittle. Demansk thought that if the footing had been better, he’d have run over and kicked the corpse as well.