CHAPTER 48
Hilemore
“Land in sight, sir. Dead ahead.”
“Thank you, Mr. Talmant. Tell the Chief to take the Blood-burner off-line and signal the Endeavour to follow suit.”
“Aye, sir.”
Hilemore went outside and trained his glass to westward, making out the misted slopes of an island cresting the horizon. If his calculations were correct this was the most easterly islet of the Sabiras chain. Navigating the channel through the islands to the Red Tides was not a task that could be performed at speed, necessitating another delay. The storm that had swept across their path three days before had been mild by the standards of the Orethic but the seas it produced were sufficiently steep to force a reduction in speed. Since then Hilemore found his mood veering between frustration at the lack of progress and a small, barely acknowledged kernel of relief he knew stemmed from the battle off the Green Cape.
Steelfine insisted on recording the engagement as a victory in the ship’s log, one the rest of the crew seemed to consider the equal of anything won by Hilemore’s grandfather. He knew differently. No admiral who loses his fleet can be counted a victor of anything. If the Superior didn’t reach Gadara’s Redoubt in time for Clay to attempt his plan, a plan Hilemore still didn’t fully understand, he might well consider it a reprieve rather than a failure. He had already studied the charts of the northern Orethic in preparation for a voyage to Sanorah, where he felt sure Free Woman Tythencroft would offer refuge to the valiant crew of the Superior.
And then what? he asked himself. Sit and wait for the White’s army to appear, however long it takes, all the time knowing yourself to be a miserable coward.
He closed his spy-glass with a hard snap and returned to the bridgehouse. “Ever sail the Red Tides, Mr. Scrimshine?” he enquired of the helmsman.
“A few times, Skipper.” The former smuggler gave a small, wary smile. “Didn’t find it the friendliest place, truth be told. Varestians love to steal but hate to be stolen from. Kind’ve hypocritical of them, if you ask me.”
“Indeed so. I’ll trust you to choose the best approach to the channel. I require a swift but safe navigation to the Red Tides. Mr. Talmant, ask Chief Bozware to join me in the hold. You have the bridge.”
“Don’t seem big enough to do much damage,” Clay said, squinting at the apple-sized object the chief placed on the work-bench.
“Got enough of a charge to kill a drake of any size,” Bozware replied, his oily brows forming a piqued frown. “Gun-cotton laced with lamp oil around a core of black powder. Made the casing deliberately brittle so’s it’ll shatter into sharp pieces when it goes off. Jagged iron’ll cut through anything if it’s travelling fast enough.”
“What are these?” Kriz asked, extending a finger to one of the blunt spikes protruding from the device’s casing.
“Contact points,” the chief said. “Got the notion from those mines the captain had us make. Sets it off the instant they touch anything. Don’t worry, missy,” he added as Kriz swiftly withdrew her finger, “won’t do nothing until you arm it.” He pointed to a metal ring in the top of the device. “Yank this out before you throw the bomb, just make sure anything you chuck it at is at least twenty yards off.”
“Excellent,” Lieutenant Sigoral said, giving the chief a nod of respectful approval. “It’s certainly preferable to trying to get a bead on a drake’s head in the midst of a battle.”
“Long as you’ve got Black in your veins,” Clay said. “Don’t relish the prospect of throwing one of these by hand.”
“We only had sufficient materials to construct forty in total,” Hilemore said, addressing himself to Clay. “How many do you think you’ll need?”
“Hard to say. I’ll take ten, I guess. You can share the rest out amongst the others.”
“Very well. We’ll relight the blood-burner upon clearing the Sabiras Islands, which means we should reach our objective shortly after first light tomorrow. I suggest you get what rest you can in the meantime.” Hilemore watched them leave, all but Jillett whose gaze lingered on the grenade, face even paler than usual.
“I’ll require you to remain in the engine room,” he told her. “Your job is to fire the blood-burner.”
“Guess you weren’t impressed, huh?” she said with a faint grin. “By my fighting skills, I mean. Can’t say I blame you.”
“You fought bravely and well. What happened at Stockcombe was not your fault.”
She moved her slim shoulders in a shrug. “They were a bunch’ve rotten bastards, y’know. The Wash Lane Bully Boys was their real name before the revolt. When I was little, my ma used to give me a fresh piece of fruit every day to take to school. An apple usually, even an orange sometimes, though it must’ve cost her plenty. And every day those Wash Lane fuckers’d corner me and steal it, till I realised what I was. Scrounged up enough scrip to buy just a smidge of Black.” Her grin broadened. “They didn’t steal from me after that.”
She reached out to the bomb, fingers playing tentatively over the contact points before picking it up. “I’ll take this one, if you don’t mind,” she said. “Just in case.”
They passed the first ship shortly after Scrimshine steered the Superior through the islands and into the Red Tides. An aged one-stack clipper steamed by a mile off the starboard bow, sails raised to augment her paddles. She sat low in the water, a crowd of close-packed people thronging her deck fore and aft. The crow’s nest related a signal that had been rapidly hauled to the top of her mainmast: Turn back. No safe harbour ahead.
Hilemore ordered the signaller to reply via the lamp, advising the clipper to make for the east Corvantine coast, but the Superior was moving too fast to catch any reply. They saw four more ships before nightfall, all heavily laden with refugees and steaming towards different points of the compass. One, a broad-beamed freighter, altered course to approach the Superior, her signal pennants displaying a request for medical assistance. Hilemore had the battle flag raised to warn them off, maintaining their speed and heading until the freighter was far to their rear.
When night fell he had the blood-burner taken off-line briefly to allow the Endeavour to draw alongside then ordered the ship to battle stations. Steelfine mustered the riflemen and had cannister stacked alongside the gun-crews. Braddon Torcreek and Preacher climbed the mast to the crow’s nest, rifles strapped across their backs. Kriz took up station with Clay and Lutharon on the fore-deck whilst Sigoral and the few remaining Corvantines from the original crew stationed themselves aft. Hilemore had Colonel Kulvetch position her Marines on the upper works, each squad supplied with full water buckets and sandbags to combat the inevitable fires.
“Got room for two more?” Loriabeth asked, appearing in the bridge hatchway with Skaggerhill at her back. Steelfine had already assigned a squad of riflemen to the captain’s guard, but additional guns couldn’t hurt.
“Of course, miss,” Hilemore told her. “You’re very welcome.”
He went outside to check on the Endeavour, finding the Voter volunteers lining her rails, crews standing ready at her cannon, a half-dozen four-pounders and two rifled six-pound pivot-guns. It was poor armament for what they were about to face but ordering Zenida to remain on station would have been pointless. Hilemore climbed up to the bridgehouse roof, taking the signal lamp and flashing out a brief message: Will proceed at full speed. Follow as best you can.
Zenida appeared at the door of the Endeavour’s wheel-house, silhouetted in the light from within as she raised her own signal lamp to respond: Try losing me, sea-brother.
Hilemore allowed himself a brief smile before handing back the signal lamp and climbing down to the bridge. “Mr. Talmant!”
“Sir!”
“Signal the engine room. Three vials to the blood-burner.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Mr. Scrimshine . . .”
“I know the way, Skipper.” Hilemore saw Scrimshine’s hands shake a little before he took a tight grip on the tiller, eyes locked on the dark sea beyond the prow. “Dead west it is.”
They heard it before they saw it. The flat crump of cannon carried through the morning mist that hung on the horizon. The sea was calm and the Superior steamed westward with the needle of the speed indicator dial pushed well past its maximum. By sunrise the Endeavour had fallen at least a mile behind causing Hilemore to entertain the faint hope the whole affair might be over before she could join the battle.
“Five miles until landfall, sir,” Talmant reported, glancing up from the map table, ruler in hand.
Hilemore swallowed a curse at the lingering mist. At her current speed the Superior would run aground before she could slow enough for a turn, and they had yet to catch sight of a target. “Switch to auxiliary power,” he said, sending Talmant rushing to the speaking-tube. “Tell the Chief to let her drift for one minute before engaging the engine. Ahead one-third.”
“Aye, sir.”
Hilemore saw flashes in the mist as they drew closer, then the first dim outlines of ships. He made out the shape of a Corvantine sloop and an armed Varestian freighter, both steaming in parallel to the as yet unseen shore, guns firing in relays along their port sides. More and more ships resolved into view as they drew closer and the sound of cannon fire became thunderous. There were so many ships steaming back and forth Hilemore at first had difficulty in making out the shore, but then he saw the imposing silhouette of the Redoubt rising above a narrow beach.
“Receiving multiple hails, sir,” Talmant said as a plethora of flags ascended the masts of the nearest ships, accompanied by the flicker of numerous signal lamps.
“Send the response in plain,” Hilemore said. “Here to assist. Blood-blessed aboard.”
Hilemore scanned the ships for their response then found his attention captured by a whispered mutter from Scrimshine, spoken in a strained reverential tone he hadn’t used since their first encounter with Last Look Jack. “Honoured ancestors accept the soul of this miserable wretch.”
The helmsman was staring through the forward window, eyes wide and wet, hands shaking again. Hilemore followed his gaze, spying what he initially took for a large dark cloud to the right of the Redoubt. Scrimshine evidently had keener eyes, however, for the cloud soon expanded to fill the sky above the shore-line, Hilemore making out the winged shapes amongst the mass.
“That’s . . .” he heard Loriabeth say in a tone eerily similar to Scrimshine’s. “That’s a whole lotta Reds.”
Hilemore’s gaze snapped to the fore-deck, seeing Clay share a brief embrace with Kriz before moving to climb up onto Lutharon’s back. “Don’t!” Hilemore shouted, rushing outside, cupping his hands around his mouth as he leaned over the walkway. “There are too many!”
Clay turned to him as Lutharon clambered up onto the prow. Hilemore saw him offer a grin of farewell before he raised his hand, drinking down the three vials it held in a few gulps before tossing them away. Hilemore’s protestations died on his lips as the drake launched itself from the ship, mighty wings raising vapour from the sea and tail whipping as he climbed into the air.