Shadow Road Page 9

  Several of the heavy ceiling beams had been ripped out of their support brackets, bringing down a pile of decking planks. A girl was crouching beside it, horror contorting her mouth, keening sobs tearing out of her.

  A bare foot protruded from under a beam, a scrap of pink lace peeking out around the ankle. Only one person had a nightgown like that.

  Bile soured in my throat, but I took hold of a plank near the top of the pile and lifted it off. Then another, and another, until I uncovered her face. When I did, I stopped working. There wasn't much point continuing. It was already too late. Mrs. Turragan stared past me, her gaze locked forever on the brilliant blue sky beyond the hole in the ceiling, blood pooling around her mangled head.

  The girl next to me leaned forward a little. "Is she gone?"

  Her voice was distorted, but I could tell what her lips had said. I nodded, expecting the girl to start screaming again. She didn't. She sat there, still as a stone. Then she pushed herself to her feet, shuffling after me when I rose and turned to see if anyone else needed help.

  The captain was a few yards away, down on one knee next to a woman named Pellina. He had wrapped a length of cord around her right elbow and was yanking it tight enough to make her whimper. He tied it firmly, slowing the blood flowing from a ragged gash down the length of her forearm.

  Dr. Turragan was there, too, bending over a young girl with a splinter spearing all the way through her shoulder.

  He didn't know about his wife yet. I was standing there, unable to find the words to tell him, when the captain saw me standing upright, and his eyes found mine. He said something, giving me an order, but his voice was only a deep, distant, raspy buzz. I had to focus on his mouth, watching his lips as they formed the words, "take this one," and "the galley." The rest was lost in a sudden lurch of the ship as another round hit the stern.

  The captain ducked like the rest of us, but recovered more quickly, pushing himself to his feet while everyone else was still grabbing at the wall or the floor. He made for the stairs to the main deck but paused briefly in front of me, bending to bring his face level with mine. Speaking slowly, he shouted, "Take the wounded to the galley," and aimed a hand at the hallway. "Understand?"

  I was shaking so hard I could barely nod, but the captain didn't wait for more before he continued past me, running up the steps two-at-a-time to the main deck.

  Pellina was closer than anyone else. I started with her.

  16. After

  23rd of Uirra, Continued

  I had no idea how many times we were hit, or where, and I only found out how bad it was afterwards. As long as the Ang kept floating, and the captain kept fighting, and I could still move, I kept working.

  It wasn't a matter of being brave. I was simply determined to do something. To fix something. To be perfectly honest, at the bottom of everything I did was the thought that maybe, if I saved someone who would have died without me, I would deserve to live. I would make my own survival worthwhile. It was self-serving desperation that drove me.

  Dr. Turragan was the real hero. His courage was genuine, and selfless. He discovered his wife a few minutes after I did. I was helping one of the other women roll the mother of the little boy onto a stretcher so we could carry her to the galley, when the doctor stumbled over that pile of fallen decking.

  He noticed the lacey nightgown and that bare foot, and went down on his knees, pulling more of the wood off of his wife, the life draining from his eyes as he realized there was nothing he could do. He bent and rested his forehead on hers, framed her face in his hands, tenderly smoothing her hair back. Another exploding round hit then, rocking the Ang and bringing new screams from somewhere above us. Dr. Turragan lingered a moment more, then he pushed himself to his feet and went in search of those he could still save.

  We held on for what felt like an eternity, dragging ourselves up after every hit, clawing and fighting our way forward again, driven by a madman who refused to let us stop even when survival seemed impossible. We would have died if Arramy hadn't taken the Ang to Porte D'Exalle himself. That man refused to go down easy.

  As soon as that first high velocity round came screaming toward us, the captain stopped playing by the rules.

  For every shot that found its mark on the Ang's hull, the captain evaded five, while every shot he returned did an astounding amount of damage. That first round he sent back would probably have been deemed illegal by a peacetime court. It hit the Erristos' quarter deck dead center, tore through half the Erristos' command and nearly wrecked the helm. Every shot after that took something else. One of their two state-of-the-art long-rail incendiary guns was reduced to kindling by another heavy round. The heated shot set fire to their mainsails, and sent their crew scrambling to keep the ship's magazine from blowing up beneath them.

  Still, Arramy was fighting a losing battle.

  We left Lordstown with only enough crew to keep the Ang moving. He didn't have enough men to handle more than a few guns at a time while successfully keeping out of range of the Erristos, which gave the Erristos an advantage. Although she wasn't as well armored as the Ang, she was one of the Coalition Navy's newest fastships, sleek and maneuverable. She was also well-stocked with those horrible incendiary rounds, and manned by a full, battle-ready crew.

  Her captain started off by sneaking up between the Angpixen and the shore. There was a cold wind whipping out to sea from the peninsula, and she took it, turning to attack us from our port side, obviously intending to drive us farther out where no one would find the wreckage.

  Brilliant, really, if Arramy had done what any normal ship's captain would have and fled leeward ahead of her.

  But Arramy was not a normal ship's captain. In what felt very much like a fiery game of tag-the-mouse, he turned downwind just long enough to make the Erristos alter course to come after us. Then he kept turning, bringing the Ang across the wind and around to face Lordstown. The Erristos had to scramble into a tight turn of her own to keep herself parallel with us or lose the upwind attack position.

  I was in the galley at that point, holding one of the children – a little boy who clung to me, large-eyed and silent as a fawn, his face marred by streaks and splatters of scarlet – while Dr. Turragan stitched together a ragged gash in the boy's leg.

  Dr. Turragan jerked, startled, when Pierse came zipping down the access ladder from the quarterdeck right next to us, little more than a blur sliding down the handrails before he disappeared, dropping through the hole in the galley floor as swiftly as he had arrived.

  The doctor grunted and went back to suturing, only to jump again when Pierse shouted up through the ladder hatch, "I can't get the auger to feed any faster, Sir! And everything's written in Illyrian!"

  Turragan frowned but kept working when Arramy slid down the ladder the same way the Midshipman had, hands and feet on the rails instead of using the treads. There was a significantly louder thud when he hit the bottom.

  The only sounds we could hear were a few metallic clangs below us, and the sporadic 'crack-crack-crack' from the Marines' long-rifles above us. Then the Ang's engines kicked into high gear, and a tremor of suppressed power wracked the ship as the drive rod was manually disengaged.

  "Keep her running hot! Don't release that drive until I tell you to," the captain shouted over the rumble of gears and pistons.

  "Aye, Sir!" Pierse shouted back as Arramy hauled himself rapidly back up the ladder, through the hold, and out onto the quarterdeck again. There was a short spate of sniper fire from the Erristos, rounds pinging off the steel of the outer hatch cover, then peppering in a swift staccato across the wood of the decking as he made a run for the aft deck stairs.

  Everything went quiet.

  I glanced at the doctor, my heart in my throat. He met my eyes, his own unblinking.

  We both let out a breath of relief at the captain's hoarse, "On my mark!"

  The engines reached full capacity and began to whine as the pressure in the compressors reached near critical.r />
  "Hard to starboard! Hard to starboard!" Arramy yelled, and the ship tilted steeply to the right, banking so sharply that everything in the hold went skittering across the floor.

  I grabbed at the little boy with one hand and the wall beside me with the other, holding us both still as Dr. Turragan leaned against the tilt and finished tying off the last suture.

  There was no chance to regain our balance. As soon as the ship began settling into its new course, the captain yelled, "Pierse! Now!"

  The compressor's drive train chunked into place, and the Ang surged forward, driven not by wind but coal and pressurized steam.

  Above us, one of the men crowed in victory, "She's still got 'er mainsails up! She's gonna baffle!"

  That was followed by several shouts and jeers, and Raggan's stern, "Fight's nay over yet, quit celebratin' an' git that line in, Reiskelder!"

  After that last change of direction, the captain of the Erristos had apparently assumed that Arramy was going to race back to Lordstown. Instead, he veered in front of her, heading directly for the shore. With her sails still out, the Erristos had to continue straight to keep from losing the wind before she could bring her sheets in and switch to her engines. That momentary reprieve gave us a precious lead.

  It seemed that Arramy was sacrificing time and speed for the hope that we would wash up on the rocks below Stormaire when we inevitably sank. That may have been part of it, but it wasn't the whole reason. As we pulled away from the Erristos, the captain sent Arriankaredes up to the crow's nest with a flare gun.

  I watched through the hole in the deck as the Midshipman scaled the main mast, his slight figure silhouetted against washed-out grey clouds.

  When he was barely halfway up, the Erristos' sharpshooters noticed, and began trying to pick him off. He managed to keep going, swinging his way upward through the rigging, dangling a hundred feet in the air. Then he was lost to view above the topsail yardarm.

  The captain was down in the main hold again, priming one of the long guns, and he kept glancing up into the shrouds then over at the nearest timekeep, his frown deepening with every passing second that Arriankaredes was out of sight.

  At last there was a distant 'pop,' and a bright little ember shot into the late afternoon sky, bursting into a brilliant ball of orange flame that hung over the ship like our own tiny sun.

  Raggan whooped out a laugh. The captain actually cracked a smile, teeth flashing white against the grime of his soot-covered face. Then they went right back to loading heated shot into the long gun, preparing to rake the Erristos as she came parallel with us again.

  The fight wasn't over, but that flare saved our lives.

  The commander and the Stryka had left Lordstown at roughly the same time as the Angpixen, but instead of sailing southeast to clear the point of the peninsula, they went due east across the bay to the Island of Wychending to deliver the pirates to Wychend Prison, where they would await trial. They had made the drop and were on their way south along the coast to meet the captain in Porte D'Exalle when Arriankaredes reached the crow's nest and sent up the flare.

  By heading for the coast, Arramy hadn't merely been trying to get closer to land, he was gambling that the flare would clear the Stryka's horizon, and the commander would see and answer it.

  Against all odds it worked.

  At the end of the day, we had lost twenty-two of our thirty experienced sailors. Each loss tore a gap in our maneuverability, making it more and more difficult to dodge incoming rounds, no matter how hard the captain fought. The Erristos was slowly carving the Angpixen to kindling when the Stryka swung west and began closing the distance between us.

  When they arrived, there was no hesitation. The commander closed in on the Erristos, all guns blazing, drawing her away.

  At last the Angpixen was able to limp from the battle.

  17. Showdown

  23rd of Uirra, Continued

  The stillness after the shelling stopped was a tangible thing: silence so deep it became sound, relief so rich it felt heavy.

  The thunder of cannon fire still rumbled in the distance, but there were no rounds screaming through the air or ripping through the deck above our heads. For several blessed minutes there was only the gentle sway of the ship in the waves, and the acrid stink of blood, smoke and hot metal.

  Then those who had survived began picking through the splinters to find those who hadn't, and a different wailing began.

  I helped a woman named Lorren carry her younger sister to the galley, where Doctor Turragan and the Navy surgeon were doing their best to put the wounded back together.

  The captain was there, leaning wearily against the side of the access ladder, watching Turragan work on a young sailor's shattered leg, but when I came in, he looked up without lifting his head, eyes glittering silver, stark against the thick layer of grime on his face.

  At the time I wasn't paying much attention to anything other than putting one foot in front of the other. It didn't occur to me that he was looking at me, though, so I helped Lorren lower Vinna to the floor, settling her into the last free space left along the wall. Then I stood, swiped the back of my hand across a trickle of liquid crawling down my temple, and turned to go back into the main hold where several other people were still waiting to be carried in.

  It took far too long for me to hear the captain saying my fake name. Once. Twice. Finally, he bellowed, "Miss Westerby!" and at last his voice filtered through that awful, buzzing fog. My feet came to a stop on their own, my heart skipping in my chest as I found myself the subject of a particularly icy glare.

  Then he pushed away from the ladder and started toward me.

  I ran. Idiotic, I know. Where was I going to go? Overboard? There wasn't an ounce of thought involved. I simply didn't want to find out what he might do if he caught me. With that one, clear aim in mind, I darted down the narrow hallway and across the main hold, then up the set of ornate stairs that once joined the loading bay to the main deck.

  The treads and the banister had been blown to pieces, but I succeeded in scrambling up the risers that were still there. For about half a second, when I wheeled around at the top of those splintered, rickety steps and saw that Captain Arramy wasn't climbing up after me, I actually thought he wasn't chasing me after all. I even gave a silent whistle of relief.

  Then I had to cringe at my own imagination. What was I doing? As if the captain would go through that much bother when there were so many bigger things going on.

  Unfortunately, now that I was really looking at them, the broken steps were much less appealing as a way back down.

  There was too much to do, and if I stopped moving, I would start thinking.

  Thinking was dangerous. Thinking would lead to realizing how much of this was my fault.

  There was another access ladder in the forward hold, so I headed that way.

  Incidentally, I was mostly right. Captain Arramy didn't chase people. He just waited patiently for them to feel safe, or at least to think he might have lost interest. Then he popped out at them from a hatchway like a great boogeyman of a jack-in-the-box.

  That was my first thought when he came climbing out of the forward hatch in front of me: Boogeyman. Then Big, and then Angry.

  I promptly about-faced and started for the stern.

  "You!"

  I kept going.

  "Stop," the captain's raspy snarl was entirely too close behind me. Then his hands descended on my shoulders, bringing me to a halt. I let out a squeak as he spun me around to face that deadly gaze of his.

  "I said stop."

  "I haven't done anything, I swear," I choked, my stomach hollowing out.

  He stared down at me, his eyes searching mine. Finally, he asked the one question I had been dreading for days. "Who are you?"

  "Indaria," I started, but he cut me off.

  "Do not lie to me!" His grip tightened on my shoulders and I almost thought he was going to shake me. Instead he ground his teeth together, a muscle ticki
ng in his cheek. Then he asked with exaggerated precision, "What do you know?"

  "I don't understand —"

  "No," he growled. Then he changed tack. He let go of my shoulders, indicating the blood-soaked deck with a broad sweep of his hands. "There's no reason for this. I know Captain Gofree. She's up for retirement in a month. She would never risk twenty years of honorable service, not to mention her pension and her medals, to blow a ship full of women and children out of the water. So why in all the blue hells did she? I've been asking myself that question all day, and I can't think of a single damned answer that makes sense."

  He took a harsh breath, raking both hands back through his bloodied hair, making it stand on end before facing me again. "The only thing I can come up with is that she had a direct order from High Command. Which would mean High Command has issued a no-prisoner black-note on me, my crew, and this ship. They want someone or something on this ship gone." He paused, his jaw working. When he continued, his voice was hoarse. "Twenty of my men are dead. More may still die. There is a four-year-old down there grieving for his mother. I don't care what you've done, who you are, or who you're hiding from. If you know something – anything – you need to tell me."

  I didn't look at the ship. I looked at him.

  I didn't know who to trust, but I wanted to believe the doubt and fury I heard in his voice. More than anything, I wanted him to be the man he appeared to be, the man who had just fought tooth and nail to save the people who were in danger because of what I had done.

  In the end, it was simply easier to give in. I was so very tired of fighting, of trying to make the right decision with no way of knowing what the outcome might cost. I had hidden that binder. Maybe if I had handed it over to begin with, no one else would have gotten hurt.

  My resistance was crumbling away. I lowered my head, praying that I wasn't about to make an awful mistake.