Paul Collins - The Spell of Undoing

Despite these earlier false alarms, word quickly spread that this time was different.

‘No doubt about it,’ said Verris. ‘It's Tolrush all right.’ He handed the spyglass to Borges who took it reluctantly but put it to his eye. After a moment, he said, ‘She'll not make much headway with those sails. They're full of holes!’

‘Take a look at the propellers.’ Borges did so. The propellers were a blur of motion. Verris went on: ‘She's making ten knots, or I'm no sailor. So we've less than an hour till she comes alongside and tries to board us.’

‘You guessed right,’ said Borges.

‘The girl guessed right. Or saw rightly, whichever it is. Thanks to her we have a chance.’

Borges lifted his eyes upside and cursed. ‘If our people were up there we'd be travelling a darn sight faster.’

‘We might,’ Verris agreed, ‘but then we'd have no one to repel boarders. Quickly now, spread the word. Leave only a skeletal squad to the starboard. They'll swing to our leeward.’

‘Unless they keep to the heights and rappel down atop us.’

‘They'll not risk losing their propellers and rudders,’ said Verris. ‘Besides, they want us intact. There's no plunder in a crushed city.’

He was right. But Quentaris wasn't going to make it to the thick scudding clouds in which they might have escaped. Being larger and heavier, Quentaris couldn't hope to outmanoeuvre the Tolrushians. Nor offer a decent fight. Because of the siege, Tolrush would have had its entire populace inside the city walls when it was wrenched through the rift vortex – it would thus outnumber Quentaris by quite a margin. Worse, Tolrush had been a military city-state for over a century, its people groomed for war from when they were toddlers.

Quentaris lost its lead within half an hour.

Battle stations sounded, and all hands scrambled on deck or squirmed up the rigging. Citizens grabbed whatever they could: broomsticks, clubs, pots and pans, anything that could be used as a weapon. Magicians assembled on the walls along with Verris’ marines and what sailors could be spared from upside.

And then they waited.

Above them, every inch of canvas strained against the wind. Rigging whipped and jiggled, and the masts, with their cross-spars outstretched like arms, creaked under the load. To port and starboard, thick black smoke belched from the array of funnels atop the great engine-houses; and projecting from the sides, the enormous propellers were spinning as fast as they could. Even so, the marauding city rumbled closer by the second.

Ten minutes later, the predator city came alongside, moving into Quentaris’ wind shadow. Immediately, they dropped sails, and Quentaris shuddered as the two land masses ground into one another, prow to prow. On each side, magicians cushioned the impact with spells that exhausted them almost at once. Despite this, masts shook and rigging twanged. Two sailors dropped to their deaths as the jolt unseated them.

Then came grappling irons, looping through the air, snagging onto battlement and rigging. Within minutes, hundreds of Tolrushians had leapt across to Quentaris.

‘All hands, repel boarders!’ Verris screamed.

The fighting was fierce, mainly concentrated a long the portside perimeter wall and in the rigging above. Verris was not fool enough to pull all the defences from other key spots though. Tolrushians were known for their devious tactics: they might just take it into their heads to send a lifeboat, charmed to float, under Quentaris and up onto the other side. This meant that fully a fifth of his forces were doing nothing, but it couldn't be helped.

Nor did he have much time for regrets. Within moments of the two cities joining battle, he was in the thick of it. A mid-sized mountain troll leapt at him wielding a great battleaxe. Verris ducked beneath the arcing blade and thrust his sword up into the troll. The troll gasped, staggered back, and flipped over the parapet, dropping out of sight.

Then two Tolrushians came at him, trading blow for blow, trying to pierce his defensive swordplay. He parried, thrust, feinted, and parried again. One of the Tolrushians made a misstep, overbalanced, and Verris cut him down then turned all of his attention to the remaining foe.

A moment later the other Tolrushian was down too.

Up and down the battlements, the fighting ebbed and flowed. There were screams, cries and hoarse gurgling shrieks, some fading slowly as Quentarans and Tolrushians fell overboard, plummeting thousands of feet to their deaths.

The air wasn't just full of cries and grunts, it was also full of arrows. Verris saw one man with an arrow in his thigh, another in his shoulder, and a shield with six more sprouting from it. The magicians did their best to take care of aerial missiles, scorching some into flame in mid-flight, or else diverting them so that they fell harmlessly to the ground.

The frenzied fighting went on for another hour.

Verris rallied his men, ordered them to weak spots, and made sure the wounded were pulled from the thick of the battle and taken to the healers at the hospital. More than once he praised good fortune that some of Quentaris’ best fighters like Hulk Duelph and Commander Storm had been in a War Cabinet meeting with the Archon at the time of the Upheaval. Their very presence inspired many a Quentaran that day.

‘Keep at them!’ yelled Verris. ‘We have them on the run!’

This was something of an exaggeration, but Verris had seen what few others had spotted so far: that the two cities were drifting closer and closer to the cloud bank. Just a little further…

At the first clammy embrace of cloud he put his fingers to his lips and blew a shrill whistle.

Immediately, a horn sounded.

Everywhere his men disengaged from the enemy and set about hacking at the grappling lines that bound the two cities together. Sails creaked as they tacked to take full advantage of the wind. Spars cracked and cordage thrummed as the land masses pulled slowly apart. Bodies fell screaming into the chasm between the rumbling monoliths.

The Tolrushians were taken by surprise.

As the last grappling lines were cut, Quentaris yawed two points to starboard. Everyone braced themselves as the city righted then surged forward. There were brief cheers, but the fighting hadn't stopped. There were still a couple of hundred Tolrushians on board, and the clash of cutlasses, battleaxes and pikes, and the screams of the wounded and dying, continued for some time before dwindling completely.

A conch sounded. Every lantern in the city was extinguished; every fire doused.

Except for the creaking of sail and mast, and the wind in the rigging, there was no other sound, unless counting the far-off muffled shouts of enraged Tolrushians as the floating city searched through the pea-soup fog for Quentaris.

Verris turned to find Borges standing beside him. He had a bloodied bandage strapped across his forehead. ‘Accursed cloud,’ said Borges grumpily. ‘Just when I was reaching my stride. Why, I could have sent a dozen more Tolrushians to meet their ancestors!’

‘Sheathe your sword, friend,’ said Verris. ‘For now, we are safe. So let us find out the damage. There will be little enough time to mend things if Tolrush runs us to ground.’

Running blind, Quentaris drifted deeper and deeper into thick cloud. A chill clamminess invaded every corner of the city, and sounds took on an odd quality, as though the whole city was underwater. Captain Bellgard ordered the all-clear sound and a thunderous cheer went up from soldier and citizen alike. Quentaris was safe. For now. Even the Archon stood on his balcony and waved languidly to any citizens interested enough to look up.

‘A narrow escape,’ Verris said to Borges the day after the battle as he sat in the new and hastily appropriated Marine Guildhouse, not far from the Square of the People. ‘For which we're in debt to that young girl for discovering Tolrush.’ He signalled two of his men, Baldrear and Cafferty. ‘Find the youngling, if she's still alive.’