Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

Battle whistles shrilled down the Mischief's sloping deck. A drum rattled. Sailors and marines – those with no bones broken in the wreck, or at least no crippling injury – took up their battle-standings.

Martha went back to the Queen, and said, "They're coming," feeling foolish, since of course they were coming.

But the Queen only nodded, and said, "Infuriating, the things I have left undone…"

"Not a bad place to fight, though." Master Butter paced the poop deck. "Considerable slope, and fairly narrow… crowded with machinery. They can't climb to us up the hull, stuck this high in the air, so our backsides will be safe enough. May take arrows, of course, once they have the main deck, if they get up into the rigging…"

"If there were only one ladder coming up here…"

"Yes, dear, but there are two, and twenty feet apart. When they come up both, we won't be able to hold them." Butter stepped out a space… backing between the tall mantelets, the two scorpions. "Just here, I think."

The Queen walked up the tilted deck. "Yes. Wide enough," she said, "but not too wide."

It seemed to Martha they were only interested, not frightened as she was frightened.

The Queen said, "Shit," and the back of her left hand was bleeding. Arrows murmured past them and snapped into timber. Two thumped into rolled hammocks, and men shouted below. The Queen looked at her hand. "Nothing," she said, and flicked the blood away. "Most of the fools are shooting blind up to this deck."

Hoofbeats clattered down the ice along the ship's side. Shouts and orders along the main deck below. Deep twanging music from crossbows, heavier crashes from the Mischief's machinery still able to bear.

"So, our company's come." Master Butter rubbed his hands together. "Three can stand here, though no room for more – a space, what, ten… eleven feet across? Just over three feet for each of us to hold." He nodded. "Mantelets forward on both sides to funnel them onto our blades, while – let's hope – catching their shafts… And these scorpions, beside and behind us, each a mess of gears and cable, timbers and steel." He smiled at Martha. "Could it be better, my student?"

"Better not to be here," Martha said. An arrow hummed high over her head.

"Sensible Martha," the Queen said. "But really, this place is so high, so good, we might hold it a glass-hour."

Martha saw many Kipchaks out on the ice… riding, circling in like hearth smoke swirling to an opened door.

"Would that we could," Master Butter said, and was difficult to hear over rising noise. Shouts, and the ship's crashing war-machinery. "Martha, you will fight at the Queen's right side; I'll be on her left. Keep two things in mind. It's cold, and will grow colder, so consider your grip on your ax – might want to thong the handle to your wrist. And, remember you have a dagger as well. I don't want to see that knife sleeping in its sheath."

"Yes, sir."

"Orders for me, also, Edward?"

"No, my dear. You need no one to tell you how to fight. But knot that scarf tighter; don't leave the ends loose for someone to seize."

Men bayed like hounds along the Mischief's slanted hull, and Martha looked over the poop-deck rail and saw gray-furred Kipchaks in the boarder nettings down at the bow. They'd climbed to that lowest place… were slashing at the netting with short, curved swords. As she watched, ranks of marines turned from the ship's rails, and their crossbow bolts – fired almost together – emptied the nets of nearly all those men, as if with magic.

But then the nets were full again – being sliced apart by more horsemen, by many more, climbing up shouting.

It seemed to Martha like a dream – so odd and wild and unexpected – unreal as a dream, so she might simply fly away into the air and dream of something else.

"If," the Queen said, "if I'm down, disarmed, and it seems I'll be taken – "

"Kill you?" Butter smiled. "I won't do it – and Martha won't do it. So, Queen, don't go down, don't fumble. I've understood Trappers were dire fighters, and I expect to see a sample of it."

"You had better hope, Edward," the Queen said, knotting her scarf tight around her throat, "with this fucking impudence of yours, you had better hope these savages kill us."

"I rely on it, sweetheart," Master Butter said, and seemed to Martha happier than she'd ever seen him.

The marines fired another volley – and again almost cleared the nets. Martha could hear a ripple of smack-smack-smack as the bolts struck. It had grown very cold; she saw her breath frosting in the air. Her hands were cold; her left hand was shaking. She put it on her dagger's hilt and held on hard.

"Soon, now," Master Butter said. "And there'll be blood freezing on this decking, ladies. So mind your footing; let's have no comic pratfalls."

Martha'd never heard 'pratfalls,' but she knew what he meant.

The marines fired another volley – but arrows had been killing them, and their fewer bolts didn't sweep the netting clear. It hung in tangles along both sides of the Mischief's bow, and Kipchaks were coming through it, howling war cries.

Someone called an order, the marines drew short swords all together, and that same person – it wasn't Captain Neal – called another order. Then the marines marched down to the bow as if there was no hurry, and struck the tribesmen all together. Martha heard the musical sounds she and Master Butter made, practicing with steel – but this was much louder and many more, and there were screams.

Sailors shouted and went running down with axes and pikes, following the marines. The whole forward part of the ship seemed to Martha to become like the river's wind-waves and whirlpools, but made of fighting men, with the marines in ranks like sand-bars in the current, flooded with furred fighters. There was terrible noise over the ringing steel, as if animals were killing children.

Martha turned away to look at anything else, and saw herds of horses wandering out on the ice, with only a few Kipchaks to keep them. Their riders had come to the Mischief.

"Gauntlets and helms," Master Butter said. He sounded just as he had at their lessons. "Draw, and guard." He drew his long sword from its sheath. A heavy sword, Martha saw – only a few inches of its top edge sharpened.

The Queen, standing between them, settled her helmet, pulled on her mail gauntlets. "Rachel," she said, as if her daughter were with them, " – how will you do?" Then, driving the point of one assag into the deck to rest within reach, she spun the shaft of the other in her right hand for a comfortable grip, and drew her Trapper knife with her left. Ready, she stood relaxed – so at ease, it seemed to Martha she looked younger.

Martha pulled her gauntlets from her belt, let her ax hang from its thong as she tugged them on, then fitted her helmet. She could feel her heart thumping… thumping.

"And what are you to remember, Martha?"

"My knife, sir."

"That's right," said Master Butter. There was a change in the noise below them; it had come closer, risen up the slanting main deck.

"What I will remember," the Queen said, "while I remember, are my dear friends beside me."

Martha stepped forward and could see, over the poop's rail, more Kipchaks swarming, fighting with sailors up the sloping deck. She saw no marines still standing.

The horsemen, smaller, stockier than the sailors, yelped to each other as they came. They reached the helm's wheel, just below and out of sight from where she stood.

Martha heard sounds that drove her back to her place beside the Queen. She drew her dagger so as not to forget it, held it low at her left side… It still startled her, after such fearful waiting, when one of the Kipchaks – an older man with a gray mustache, his round wind-burned face framed in a dark fur hood – stepped up off the port-side ladder, and started toward them. He looked serious, but not angry, and was holding a short, curved sword running bright drops of blood.