Ian Esslemont - Assail

Dulat, atop the very highest spar, threw his arms in the air, howling in triumph: ‘Munitions! The damned Malazans are demolishing the tower!’

Jute felt an immense weight lift from his shoulders. By the Queen’s soothing embrace … there’s hope yet. He swung his gaze to the Genabackan; but have we the time? The vessel was completely surrounded, its sides aswarm with boarders — yet from the furious action on the deck, the soldiers fought still. The foreign vessel was equally engulfed and overrun, but oddly, disturbingly, quiet.

‘Send us a touch southerly there on the channel,’ he told Lurjen, who nodded profoundly, his eyes huge.

‘Yessir.’

‘They’re reloading their arbalests!’ Dulat called.

Jute ignored that to study the wreckers closing upon them in what he now understood to be a fleet of captured launches, traders’ coasters and unsuspecting travellers’ galleys. ‘Take the range,’ he called to Letita. She nodded, now fully armoured, her iron helm with its long camail of chain link hanging past her neck, bronze cheek-guards closed. She raised her bow.

The shot fell just short of the bow of the closest vessel.

‘Target that nearest one,’ Jute ordered.

‘Ready archers!’ Letita shouted. ‘Fire!’

All forty archers loosed. Most of the flight struck true over the open galley, raising chaos among the oarsmen. ‘Fire at will,’ Jute called. ‘Pound them!’

Buen appeared on the quarterdeck and handed Jute his blade, wrapped in its belt, which he tied on. The first mate then thumped into the wood of the deck next to Lurjen the wicked cross-hilted parrying daggers the man favoured for close-in fighting. The steersman grinned and winked his thanks.

Jute turned to Ieleen. ‘Sorry, lass,’ he said. ‘It’s time you went below.’

His wife shook her head. ‘I can’t hear so good down below.’

‘Ieleen …’

‘Never mind ’bout me.’

Jute sighed his exasperation. ‘Lass …’

She just smiled. ‘Every time we have this argument. And every time you lose. Now, forget about me and mind our speed.’

Jute spun to the bow and choked. They were so close to the channel opening he could make out the individual weed-draped links of the chain swinging and dripping ahead. ‘Ease off, y’damned blind fools!’ he bellowed. ‘Back oars!’

Movement above caught his eye: Dulat hunching, one arm covering his head and the other hugging the very tip of the mainmast where he sat atop the yardarm. Oh, for the love of D’rek … ‘ Back oars! ’

Multiple punches assaulted his ears and chest. Clouds of pulverized stone and black smoke blossomed above. A rain of stone shards came arcing for the Dawn . ‘Take cover!’ he yelled and bent over Ieleen, hugging her to his chest.

The striking rock sounded like cloth ripping as it punished the decking and splashed all about. It reminded Jute of the impact of shot from arbalests during his naval engagements. Men and women of the crew grunted their pain or slumped, unconscious or dead, from dull thumping impacts. The huge links of the sea-chain rattled and bumped as they swung. Jute grunted himself as small stones and gravel pelted his back and shoulders. He cast an eye to the barrier and the length appeared to slump lower in the water.

Beneath him, Ieleen squeezed his arm in empathy. He straightened to see that Letita had not allowed her archers to let up. The foremost boat that had been heading for them now wallowed, having lost all headway, and she’d turned her attention to the next — but some six more now came closing in upon them.

‘I think this is it, dearest,’ he murmured to Ieleen.

‘You’re always saying that.’ Then her head snapped up as something captured her attention. Her brows rose and she breathed an awed, ‘Oh my.’

He followed her blind gaze; it was fixed upon the tall foreign vessel. Something strange sounded then. Or failed to sound. It was like the tolling of a massive bronze bell as tall as a house, but silent. Something came rolling from that ship. It struck sharp expanding waves in the water. It swept over all the wreckers’ vessels. Wood of oar and hull snapped and splintered as the invisible wave engulfed them.

‘Here it comes!’ Jute shouted, but heard nothing of his own voice. Indeed, at that moment it was as if he was deaf to every sound.

The Dawn rocked as if punched, pitching from side to side. Yet the concussion merely passed over them while at the same time utterly crushing the nearest wreckers’ boats as if clenching them in a giant’s fist. Ieleen, wrapped in his arms, let out a gasped breath, and he heard, faintly, ‘Now there’s a sorceress!’

Atop the mainmast Dulat threw his arms into the air. ‘Yeaw!’ he howled, or Jute thought he did, for he barely heard the man. ‘We won! We won!’

Won? Jute snorted. The spell, or ward, or whatever it was, had only bought them time. Behind this first wave of attackers far more were oaring down upon them. Even their Genabackan defenders, he noted, were assembling oars to withdraw from the wreckage of broken timbers and canted half-sunk hulls surrounding them. And something told him they shouldn’t count on their foreign ally to rescue them a second time.

He turned his attention then to the Malazans. Squinting, he could make out figures still working frantically to wind their springals and arbalests. Amazingly, the crew had kept to their duties through the sorcerous blast and the fusillades of rock and the threat of impending boarding. But then, he reflected, they must have seen much worse — should all the stories be believed.

The arbalests swung into position at stern and bow even as he watched. At some unheard command they fired in unison. He caught a momentary glimpse of the fat munitions flying up like dark eggs to disappear into the billowing smoke obscuring the tower’s heights. Fresh eruptions punished his ears and punched his chest. Cussors, he judged. They must be throwing waves of cussors at the installation. Those boys are damned serious about getting out of this trap.

A new sound grated its jagged course along Jute’s skull and spine. Through the swelling clouds of dust and smoke he thought he glimpsed the very stone of the tower, itself chiselled from the rock of the cliff-side, split away in two there at the top. A teeth-shaking thunder announced the length of bronze links, each perhaps as great around as his own waist, slithering and thumping its way down the stone side of the tower to crash into the channel. The top of the tower followed. It burst into shards as it fell then punched the water, sending up great spouts of foam and spray that reached even to the Dawn , spattering its decks.

A great roar went up from the crew and Jute slapped Lurjen’s meaty shoulder. ‘Ahead easy, master Buen!’ he called.

‘Aye!’

‘I want pole-men at the bows!’

‘Aye.’

Buen called commands, setting the rowers’ pace. Jute bent down to plant a kiss on Ieleen’s head. ‘I’m for the bows, love.’

‘Wouldn’t do to get stuck and block the channel, yes?’

‘I do believe our Malazan friends would blow us to Hood’s own cellar if we managed that.’

She laughed and waved him off. ‘I do believe they would.’

At the bows, Jute picked up a pole and leaned over the side. He felt a twinge of guilt at striking for the channel first, after the Malazan did all the work. But of the two vessels, they were unquestionably in the better position to make for the opening. Even as he watched, the Malazans were turning to follow. Further back, the foreign vessel’s bow was sweeping their way in an ungainly broad arc; to the rear, the Genabackan soldiers had turned their vessel broadside to the incoming second wave of ships and boats and was exchanging racking arrow-fire with some ten of them even as their oarsmen worked to keep them mobile.