Paul Kearney - Ships from the West

'More sail!' he shouted to the master. 'If they escape then your life is forfeit, master mariner.'

The crew raced up the shrouds and began piling on every scrap of canvas the barquentine possessed. Staysails and jibs were flashed out and the Revenant began to accelerate through the water at something approaching her previous rate. The xebec still had not sent up a new mizzen course, and they were gaining again. Murad ignored the arquebus balls that whined and snicked about him, and helped the depleted chaser crews run out their guns once more. They fired on the rise and this time the shots smashed square into the Seahare's stern, sending timbers flying through the air and tossing one of the arquebusiers into the sea. Murad laughed again, and called for more men to come forward.

Another party of Zantu joined him by the chasers. Aboard the Seahare a party of men were busy on the quarterdeck and the odd ball came hissing overhead from their arquebusiers. Barely fifty yards separated the two ships now. Murad could see Hawkwood clearly; he was manning the ship's wheel himself, watching the barquentine as it came up hand over fist. That dark boy was helping him, and to one side of them was Isolla herself. She was aiming an arquebus. Murad, startled, saw the smoke spurt from its muzzle, and something thumped the side of his head. He went down and the homunculus squawked harshly. Labouring back to his feet he realised he was deaf on one side, and when he put up a hand it came away wet. Isolla had shot off half his ear.

Furious, he opened his mouth, but at that moment the Seahare made a sharp turn to port, going directly before the wind. As she turned her guns went off in measured sequence, and the Revenant was raked again, the cannonballs passing the full length of the ship.

Her sails shivered, then banged taut, and she fell away before the wind. Looking aft, Murad saw that the ship's wheel had been splintered into pieces and the master lay dead beside it along with the helmsman. The decks were slimy and slick with blood and everywhere fragments of jagged wood and scraps of flesh lay piled amid sliced cables and shattered blocks. Murad dashed aft to the companionway and shouted at the Zantu who staggered there, dazed and bewildered. 'Get below to the tiller and steer her from there! You others, get back to your guns and commence firing!'

He climbed to the quarterdeck, slipping in blood and curs shy;ing, his hand held to the ragged meat where his ear had been. The two vessels were sailing directly before the wind now, on parallel courses less than a cable's length apart. They were pointed at the long inlet which housed the Torunnan port of Rone; Hawkwood was making a run for shore.

Both ships began firing again, broadside to broadside. The

Revenant had heavier guns and more of them, but the Sealwre's were better served, and more accurate. She was slower in the water, though, and her pumps were sending thick jets of water out to port. Murad must have holed her below the waterline.

The lean nobleman's spirits rose. His crew had taken severe casualties, but there were still enough of them to board the enemy. He shouted down the hatch to the tiller deck below: 'Hard a starboard!'

The Revenant made the turn sluggishly, but managed two points into the wind until her beakhead pointed square at the xebec's larboard forechains. The gap closed frighteningly quickly, and before Murad could even shout a warning the ships had collided with a massive jolt that knocked everyone aboard them both from their feet. The Revenant's bowsprit splintered with a sickening crash and tore loose to rake down the xebec's side, only to be halted again by the mainchains. There it stuck in a fearsome snarl of broken wood and cordage and iron trapping, and the two ships continued before the wind hopelessly entangled, both out of command.

Murad recovered his wits and his feet quickly, and drew his rapier. 'Boarders away!' he shrieked, and ran down the length of his ship to where the wreckage of the bow joined her to the enemy xebec. Two dozen unarmoured Zantu gunners follow shy;ed him clutching boarding axes and cutlasses and roaring like beasts. They crossed the perilous bridge of wrecked spars with the sea foaming below them and charged down on to the waist of the xebec. The Seahare was low in the water now; they had indeed breached her hull with their gunfire, and she was sinking under them.

Three or four gunshots met the invaders, and one of Murad's followers was blown off the side to plunge into the sea. Then Hawkwood was there – Haivkivood, at last - with a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other, and the two were glaring naked hate at one another while all about them their ship's companies engaged in a savage hand-to-hand fight in the waist and along the gangways of the Seahare.

Hawkwood's pistol misfired, a flash in the pan and no more. Murad laughed and closed with him, darting in the flicker of the rapier whilst his homunculus went for the mariner's eyes.

The pair were in the midst of a murderous mob of fighting men, but they might have been alone in the world for all the notice they took. Hawkwood drew his dirk and stabbed at the flapping homunculus even while clashing Murad's blade aside. The little creature screamed and fastened itself on the back of his neck, biting, reaching round for his eyes with its needle claws, flapping its wings. Murad lunged forward, still laughing, and the tip of the rapier pierced the mariner's thigh a full three inches. He twisted the blade as he withdrew and Hawkwood fell to one knee. The homunculus had clawed out one of his eyes, but he dropped the dirk and seized the little beast in his fist. He clenched his fingers about it and popped its tiny ribs, then threw it dying at Murad.

Murad batted it aside. It was not a familiar, merely a messenger, and thus no loss to him. He sprang forward again, a great joy rising in him, and drew back his sword for the kill.

But he was buffeted by the melee which raged about them, and thrown off-balance. Cursing, he reached forward again but something struck him in the side, a blunt blow that knocked the breath out of him. He hissed in pain. A woman stood over Hawkwood – it was Isolla. Her face was scarred by fire but he knew her at once, though she wore a seaman's jacket over her skirts. Her face was white and resolute, fearless. She fired the arquebus at point-blank range.

And missed. In the push and shove of the scrum the barrel was knocked aside. The muzzle blast scorched Murad's hair and half blinded him. He grabbed the barrel with his free hand and stabbed at her with his rapier. His blade caught her below the collar bone and sank deep, deep through her heart. She crumpled and slid off the bloody steel to lie on top of Hawkwood. Murad grinned and raised the rapier to finish the job.

But there was a sudden, savage blow to the side of his neck. It numbed his left arm and made him stumble in astonishment and pain. His lemon yellow eyes flickered as the Dweomer which bound his burned limbs together faltered. He turned, and the rapier slipped from his nerveless fingers.

Bleyn stood there, his own stepson. And in his hand Hawkwood's dirk, bloody to the hilt. The boy's face was livid and glaring, though his cheeks were running with tears. Murad reached out his good hand towards him, utterly baffled. 'What - ?' he began.

But Bleyn darted forward and punched the dirk into his chest. It stuck there, grating through his breastbone, and Murad sank to his knees.

'How . . . ?'

Hawkwood was staring at him, his remaining eye glittering, Isolla's body cradled in his arms. The inhuman light in Murad's own eyes winked out, and for a few seconds his old dark gaze met Hawkwood's maimed stare in startled dis shy;belief. 'I didn't know-'