Deadhouse Landing полностью

‘Port!’ came a yell from the lookout and she turned away to that side; sailors called amid the floating wreckage and pools of burning oil, but there was no time. The tall bronze-capped ram of an archaic trireme came darting like a loosed shaft out of the smoke and manoeuvring vessels of battle.

Reaching out with her Warren she threw all restraint aside and raked the entire deck with a storm of flames. The vessel lurched as every oarsman now writhed, oars forgotten, to leap howling into the waves.

She stood panting and saw the archers, who had been cheering her before, now eyeing her with something like dread. She pointed their gazes to the bay. Awful, yes, but this was battle – this was where she could exult in her powers, and tested them to their depths.

She raised her Warren as a gyring storm about her and whipped aside yet another effort to rake the Insufferable’s deck, sending the salvos of crossbow bolts wide into the littered waters of the bay. She then picked her way across the wreckage of a fallen mizzen lower yard, its rigging and canvas a tangled heap, to climb to the sterncastle where Mock and his flagmen were furiously sending orders ship to ship.

‘Have the Fancy and the Hound heave off,’ Mock was telling a flagger. ‘They’re bunching up.’ He stood with his legs wide, hands tucked into his belt at his back. Now that battle had been engaged he had somehow come back into his own. Gone was the unsteadiness and world-weariness – the man was now grinning behind his moustache, calm, almost eerily cheery.

‘We’re clear!’ she called to him. ‘We should disengage!’

She was certain he must have heard but he did not answer. Instead, he turned to the mid-decks, shouting, ‘Take another run at the Sapphire, would you, Marsh? She’s lining up rather obligingly ahead.’

‘Aye, aye,’ the mate answered.

The Sapphire, Tarel’s flagship. They’d been taking runs at each other all through the engagement, with no decisive blow landed as yet.

She was angry, yet couldn’t help reflecting that this was the man who two years ago had charmed her all through that first long raiding run eastward round the coast, when they’d sat down with greased Wickan traders to unload their massive takings.

‘We should disengage!’ she repeated, pressing.

He offered a wink. ‘One more run, dearest…’

She shook his arm. ‘No! We’ve lost the Intolerant, and the Intemperate is dead in the water. We’re all that’s left to guard the retreat.’ The admiral frowned. She wondered whether, fixated as he’d been upon destroying Napan vessels, he hadn’t been aware of these setbacks. She made a last appeal. ‘Think of what’s left of the fleet.’

He nodded then, smoothing a hand down his moustaches. ‘Good for you, Sail. Yes, very well.’ He turned to amidships, calling, ‘Marsh! Raise the retreat! We’re disengaging.’

Marsh halted in mid-step, blinking his confusion; then he shrugged, and, raising his chin to the highest tops’l, yelled, ‘Raise the retreat!’

‘Aye, aye,’ came a faint and distant answer.

Mock took Tattersail’s shoulders, facing her close. ‘Can you drag the Intemperate along behind us?’

She could not help but glance to the huge flaming conflagration that currently was the Intemperate. ‘But it’s afire…’

‘Exactly.’

‘Ah. Well … I’ll try.’

He squeezed her shoulders. ‘Very good.’ He turned to the mid-decks. ‘Marsh! Did I not order to disengage? Sails! Where’s our canvas?’

‘On it, cap’n.’

Mock turned back to Tattersail. ‘Sweep a hole open with the Intemperate, won’t you, dearest?’

‘They have the best Ruse mages on the seas,’ she warned.

‘Ah, but you’re not attacking their vessels, are you?’

She could not help but shake her head at that, almost smiling. ‘You canny bastard. Very well.’ She prepared herself mentally, blocking everything out; everyone now knew not to bother speaking to her. She reached out to the Intemperate, grasping hold as best she could, and held it as the Insufferable now pulled away beneath her. The mass of the great man-o-war fought her at first, but once it swung round and started moving it almost cooperated as she sent it veering towards the nearest Napan galleon now moving to intercept. The Sapphire, for its part, had decorously arced away, signal flags waving furiously as her captain sought to reorder the Napan lines.

Once it became clear that it was under threat from a blazing bonfire the size of a small town block, the captain of the pursuing galleon broke off the attack and swung clear. All Malazan vessels currently free to manoeuvre now turned away from the engagement and raised all the sail they possessed.

Straining, gasping for breath and almost fainting with the effort as her vision darkened, Tattersail sent the Intemperate wherever she could to discourage pursuit.