Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

Marines, here and there, fired their heavy crossbows out into the air – crack-twang – to ease them from cocked tension, the bolts vanishing at an horizon of ice beneath gray sky.

"Your Majesty," Captain Dearborn called up from the wheel, "no one injured there?"

Master Butter glanced back at the scorpion-crews; their captains shook their heads. "No one hurt up here!" Butter called, and Martha heard the captain say, "Lucky."

Then, with hardly a pause, as if that 'Lucky' had called bad luck, the man high in the raven's-nest screamed, "Lead! LEAD!" The Queen stretched out over the rail to see, Master Butter holding one of her arms, Martha the other, to keep her on the ship.

"Water," the Queen said, looking forward along the hull. "A stretch of lead water."

Martha heard Captain Dearborn shout, "Way starboard! Strike those fucking sails!" And the ship leaned to the right… tilting farther and farther, its main deck foaming with crewmen like a pot of soup boiled over. Men ran like squirrels in the rigging. Others worked with knives along the belaying rail, so lines whipped free – and heavy crosstrees, their stays sliced, fell smashing, the great sails collapsed.

Awkward on the tilting deck, Martha leaned out beside the Queen. She could just see a widening crack in the river's ice – black, and spidering across the Mischief's course.

The ship ground and bucked into its steep turn, swinging hard… hard to starboard, long clouds of powdered iced streaming away from its steering blades on the wind. Master Butter shouted, "Get hold!" Behind them, one of the scorpions' great bows broke its tackle and swung free to smash the right-side rail.

The Mischief seemed to balance for a moment, like a person running the top of rough fencing. It felt strange to Martha, as if she were balancing, she and the ship together. Then the warship fell.

Water thundered up along the port side in a spray that fanned away and as high as the raven's-nest, and the Mischief splintered itself along the open edge of the ice – then struck and stopped still.

All else kept flying. The tops of the masts split loose and sailed forward. Weapons, gear, and men sailed also… flew through the crowded air like birds, and broke when they struck.

Every grip was lost. The Queen, Master Butter, and Martha were pitched together into the poop's cross-deck rail – and would have been injured, but that rolled hammocks had been packed there to shelter the helmsmen, just beneath, from arrows. Only the fat canvas, and their mail, saved them broken bones.

There were a few moments of silence, except for crashes and clatter as things came to rest. And a sort of sobbing as Mischief's great timbers twisted out of true.

"Up!" Master Butter stood, then heaved the women onto their feet.

"My assags…" The Queen bent to retrieve one spear from coils of fallen rough brown rope. Martha found her ax still gripped in her hand.

The ship rested once more on the ice. But – her back broken as she'd struck the lead, then crashed across it – she lay with her great stern tilted high in the air, like a sleeping child's bottom, her bow fallen, collapsed.

An officer was shouting orders – Neal, not the captain – and men began to stir, but many didn't.

"The pinnace!"

"Sir… Somebody help – "

"Shut up and die, Weather damn you!" Neal. "Hiram-bosun, rig the pinnace out! Cut that crap away and get her out. Her Majesty – "

"Oh, Jesus! Sir, sir, Master Cate is dead!"

"I'm not leaving here," the Queen said, then called down to the ruined deck, "I'm not leaving!"

"Ma'am," Neal called back, "you'll do as you're damn well told!"

Other officers, petty officers, were calling orders. Martha had never heard such cursing, not even from horse dealers or teamsters at Stoneville Fair.

"Edward," the Queen said to Master Butter, "go down there and tell that young fool I'm staying with them. No need to go skating away nowhere because there's been an accident!"

"My dear," Master Butter said, "those stray Kipchaks we passed – and butchered some, passing? I believe they'll now be coming to call. So yes, you are leaving – and quickly."

"How bad?" First Officer Neal had spoken quietly, well down the steep-sloping deck and through the sounds of men at desperate work, but Martha heard him. It was the only question being asked.

A person said, "Sprung and split."

" – But she'll skate!"

"No, sir," the person said. "Wouldn' make not a mile. Fall all to kindlin'."

The Queen – her second spear found under a fallen spar's fold of sail – stood, seeming to listen to other than the Mischief’s voices. Then she said, "So, no pinnace and scurrying away. – Neal!"

They heard his "Ma'am…" as he half-climbed the main deck's rise, stepping over wreckage his men labored on.

He came up the narrow port-side ladder, his left eye still plugged with blood. "Ma'am?"

"The captain?"

"Captain's dead, ma'am. Skull broken when we struck."

"And no pinnace."

"No, ma'am. Launch also smashed – I knew that, soon as I stood up."

"I see… And the chances of another ship coming?"

"Oh, another ship will come, ma'am; a lookout certainly saw us wreck." Neal paused, stared out over the ice, one-eyed, where the Fleet had gone. "But the line was sweeping east on the wind. Ships'll have to tack and tack again to get back to us."

"How long?" Master Butter said.

"Sir… ma'am, I believe a glass-hour at least."

"And probably more?"

"Yes, ma'am. Probably more." Neal glanced at the scorpions' crews. "You people get down on main deck. Your pieces won't depress at this angle to do any good at all."

"Leave 'em?" A sailor put his hand on a massive machine as if it were a family dog.

"Yes, Freddy," Neal said, "leave 'em. All of you go on down, now."

Below, an officer called, "I said, rig out more boarding net, Carson! Are you fucking deaf?… Leave that. Leave it! The man's dead."

"Company coming?" Master Butter said.

"… Why yes," Neal said, "I believe so, sir. Ma'am, you'd do better below, where the marines might hold the hatches."

"Might?" The Queen smiled at him. "No. I like it here. Now, get back to your people, Captain Neal."

Neal bowed, then turned for the ladder to follow the scorpion crews down – looking, it seemed to Martha, pleased as if the Mischief still sailed and was sound under his promotion.

"Captain Neal," the Queen called after him, "I expect this ship, though ruined, still to kill the Kingdom's enemies."

"Oh, we will do that, ma'am," Neal said, and was gone to the deck.

"… Children," the Queen said. "They're all children." She looked at Martha and Master Butter. "And my doing, that both of you are here." She reached a cold strong hand to Martha's cheek. "Another child… And you, Edward, you foolish man."

"Only an old friend, my dear – who would be no place else on earth."

… There was no longer a raven's-nest, so it was from some lower perch a sailor shouted. "The fuckers is comin'! Comin' west by west!"

Martha went to the back of the poop – edging past the mantelets, then between the scorpions – to look out from the stern, now reared so high. She saw only ice behind them at first, then darker places that seemed to move from side to side as much as forward through late afternoon's sun-shadows. She stood watching until, as if her watching made it so, those darker places became groups of riders… Soon, she could make out single horsemen among them, coming swarming like late-summer bees. Dozens. A hundred… perhaps two hundred, skirting the end of the water lead as they rode. Then, many more. Their right arms were moving oddly, and Martha saw they were whipping their horses on. She heard a war horn's mournful note.