About a week and a half after that, during the morning watch, the Chaser spotted and identified the Steadfast rounding Accara Point. Despite my quiet conversations with Nje keeping me up late at night, I still hadn’t mastered the art of sleeping through the cacophony of deck-cleaning. Thus I was already pulling on a shirt when the sail was spotted. I grabbed my warrant officer’s jacket, then hesitated, looking down at the sea chest.
“If we’re going into battle, the cabins will be cleared,” I murmured. Then, to be sure I was understood, I said in Chevachèchen: “Be very quiet, Nje. Quiet. Battle.”
The shirts over the skull shifted. I closed the sea chest, hesitated, and then left it latched but unlocked, hurrying into the wardroom before the transient could make any attempt at conversation.
Two hours later, I was gulping down a cup of lukewarm tea and biting into a cold, boiled plantain that was masquerading as breakfast. The Chaser had been steadily drawing closer to the fleeing Steadfast all morning, so it was no surprise when the bosun finally bellowed “all hands” and the marines’ drum roll began. I handed my cup and saucer to the nearest sailor, choked down the rest of the plantain, and hurried to my station on the poop deck as crewmembers swarmed around me, each running to their own assigned spots.
I’d been assured by the rest of the wardroom that it was unlikely we’d meet another sentinel; the Damme Boy had been a mutiny ship, they’d said, a special case. I hoped that was true as I braced myself, discerning the enemy ship for any sign of bale or breach. I saw nothing, but that didn’t mean anything yet.
After everyone had assumed their places, the drumming stopped and the ship fell as silent as was possible. Tension filled the air as the Chaser drew closer to its target. Captain Tancrède stood on the quarterdeck with several of his officers and Mister Caraby, their soft voices all but inaudible as they murmured to each other.
It seemed to me to take forever before the Chaser manuevered into place and our cannons roared in a rolling broadside. Thunder filled the air, accompanied by the pungent scent of gunpowder. A cloud of smoke was torn away by the breeze and I still didn’t see the glow of bale anywhere aboard the Steadfast. Taking that as a good sign, I removed the balewall protecting the powder room and shifted my calls to better protect our cannon and sails.
The Steadfast completed its turn, protecting its stern and bringing its own guns to bear. Round shot whistled over our heads, some of the heavy iron balls piercing rigging and one striking the starboard bulwark and sending up curses from the marines. The balewall I’d set to protect them held, however, deflecting the shot safely to one side. I shifted the walls’ positions as the two ships continued their slow maritime dance around each other.
The Chaser fired again. Our twelve-pound shot tore into the pirate’s rigging and shattered its mizzenmast. Return fire from the Steadfast became ragged as the pirates lost their self-discipline, but they’d found their range, and now their cannon were returning the damage. A marine standing five feet away from me burst into a red pulp as a cannonball took off his head. I gagged at the spray of blood and bone, and instead of the screams filling the Chaser I heard the screams of the injured and dying in the Vigilance’s Orderhouse. Booming cannons became exploding bombs, and I groaned aloud, fighting off the memories. Around me, officers bellowed orders over the roar of the cannons and the sharp cracking of the marines’ guns.
Ragged fire or not, the Steadfast was hammering us; it carried bigger cannon than had the Damme Boy. I could barely see the pirate ship through the billowing clouds of smoke. Shot tore through our ship’s rigging and I snapped a balewall into place, anchoring it on the fore-top and running it across to the mizzen-top. The wall would, I hoped, serve as a makeshift shield to shelter the marines as spars and sails collapsed.
“Stand clear!” I shouted, my voice lost in the clamor of battle. I looked for a boy to run a message up to the marines, warning them to move out of the way so that I could release the wall, but all around me was smoke and butchery.
“The Shrike!” A cry went up, and I spun, my foot slipping in blood. I couldn’t see anything through the smoke, but I heard another round of cannon being fired. Something splintered and alarmed cries rose from Chaser’s stern.
This was madness. Wiping my face with a hand covered in the slain marine’s gore, I tried to figure out what to do next. The Chaser was pitching erratically, and hands cried out for assistance. Captain Tancrède bellowed orders and sailors rushed to the other side of the ship. I saw a lick of flames and hastily removed one of the starboard sheltering balewalls, dropping bale over the flames to smother the blaze. Should I cover the powder room again?
A loud cracking above me interrupted that line of thought as the mizzen topgallant mast was torn away. Something heavy struck me on the shoulder, spinning me around and knocking me to all fours. Loose rigging swept back and forth over the deck and I crouched lower, wincing as pain ran through my arm. My calls slipped away — two starboard balewalls; one balewall across the tops; and one balewall smothering the fire. Swearing, I scrambled out of the way of the swinging rigging and crouched on the deck a moment longer, panting and replacing my calls with an effort.
As I pulled myself back to my feet, Cadet Cutter burst through the smoke to stand beside me, holding a boarding axe in one hand. Gunpowder and blood smeared his thin, boyish face.
“The captain’s compliments and would you please stop the Shrike?” Cutter rattled out in one breath, just as the broken mast groaned and tumbled over the ship’s side. The young cadet sprang forward as the ship lurched, furiously chopping away the lines that still secured the fallen mast to the Chaser.
I stumbled to the ship’s rail, searching for the xebec. My right arm was in too much pain to lift, so I let it hang uselessly at my side. There — I turned to the middie.
“Does the captain mean me to set it —”
A ball struck the rail a few feet away from us and Cutter tumbled into the ocean without even a cry.
“No!” I shouted in horror, leaning over the shattered rail and searching the waters. All I could see was a heaving mass of wood and rope. Panicked, I clutched the splintered railing with my one good hand. No! I couldn’t lose him! But there was nothing I could do, unless —
“Nje!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Nje!”
For three heartbeats all I could do was search the water for my young friend, and then shouts and cursing arose from the Chasers as a skull-headed balesteed burst up through up the hatch from below. The apparition glowed in the billowing smoke as it capered and tossed its skeletal head. I held out my good hand and the steed launched itself in my direction, dissolving into a cloud of blood-warm, scum-colored bale that folded itself around me like a shroud. I screamed as Nje plunged pale tendrils into my bloody shoulder wound, but more bale wrapped around my legs and held me upright. A familiar tentacle wound around my throat while others entered my ears. Another jolt of pain ran through me and I turned my head to see Nje’s thin, inhuman phalanges draw a long wooden splinter from my shoulder wound and drop it on the bloody deck. The horse’s skull floated in a corona of bale an inch over my head like some sort of horrid crown.
What do you want, Saint-Cloud? Nje asked in Chevachèchen, its inhuman voice buzzing directly in my ears.
“You said you could help me make more calls,” I gasped in Empyrian. Then, as I struggled to remember the words in Chevachèchen, I felt my calls plucked away from me: one, two, three, four. I jerked my head back in panic and discerned. The balewalls were still there. Nje had taken them over.
Leaving the transient to it, I leaned over the rail again, searching the debris and the water for the cadet.
“Cutter! Where are you? Cutter!”
There — I spotted a small, pale shape clutching one of the broken spars just as Shrike fired another volley. Warmth enveloped me, bale covering my body in oozing armor with the consistency of gelid slime.
“Nje, I need —” I didn’t know the words, and there was no time. I turned my eyes to the Shrike and called balefire across the Line, sweeping it over the other ship’s cannon. I hoped that was what the captain had wanted. Ripping explosions echoed across the water and several sailors cheered, but my eyes were already back on Cutter. I called a slanting balewall, more of a ramp, anchored from the poop deck to the spar the boy was grasping.
“Climb!” I shouted, gesturing. Cutter looked up, white-faced, and his eyes widened as he spotted me. I waved again and pointed at the ramp. “Climb back to the ship, dammit! Hurry!”
The cadet stared another moment, then scrambled forward. I spun away and took stock of the battle around me.
A fiery wind that reeked of rot and sewage swept over the deck of the Chaser, spending sparks everywhere. I flinched as powder kegs blew up and sailors screamed. Old memories wracked me and my focus trembled.
“Nje!” I pled. Cutter’s bale-ramp was lifted from me and I hastened to shield the Chaser’s powder room from the fire, then used my other three balewalls to smother the conflagrations on deck.
My colleagues in the wardroom had been wrong. The Shrike must have a sentinel, too — it was the only explanation for that blast of fiery balewind. I glanced over my shoulder, discerning, and spotted the glow of a balewall shielding the Shrike’s powder room.
Cannon fired in a ragged series. With a loud shredding sound, the sails above me ripped, torn apart by shot and strain as lines snapped loose. I shifted one of the balewalls from the deck upward to protect the crew. Splinters and shrapnel burst around me, deflected by the bale in which Nje had encased my body. My shoulder had stopped hurting, and I realized I was moving my right arm freely, as though it had never been wounded.
Then the whole ship shuddered and a horrific grating sound shivered the Chaser’s wooden timbers. I ran to the rail and realized we’d struck something beneath the surface that had torn a gaping hole in the side of our hull.
Officers shouted more orders and the crew ran frantically across the ship, giving me a wide, panicked berth. I climbed the bulwark and leaned as far over as I could to inspect the damage. It didn’t matter that the Steadfast and Shrike were still firing — the hole in the hull was clearly the most important danger.
“Nje, help me,” I hissed, dropping all of my calls. I used my flagging energy to draw more bale across the Line, enough to seal the puncture in the hull. Nje bound me to the ship with glowing tendrils, steadying me as I strained to see and cover every inch of the damage.
Focused on keeping the water out of the ship, I had no idea how much time had passed before one of the sixteen-year-old cadets, Cornelli, straddled the bulwark, her face chalky and her eyes avoiding me as she relayed directions from the ship’s carpenter in a shaking voice. I extended the bale as directed, even though I couldn’t see most of what I was doing below the water.
“It’s covered, Sentinel,” Cornelli squeaked at last. “Can you hold it a while longer?”
I turned and she visibly flinched.
“As long as necessary,” I promised, hoping I was right. I thought I’d be fine as long as Nje didn’t suddenly abandon me and all the calls it was maintaining. “Is Cutter — is Cadet Cutter all right?”
“Yes, Sentinel,” she said, nervously. “He’s aboard and intact.”
“Good.” I felt muscles I didn’t know had been tense loosen with relief. “That’s very good. Thank you.”
I waited until Cornelli climbed back down to the deck before I followed suit. The guns had stopped thundering. I turned and saw the Shrike and the Steadfast limping away, not as badly damaged as the Chaser but apparently unwilling to try a boarding maneuver, despite our damaged state. I wondered if the Shrike’s sentinel was still alive, and if so, why they hadn’t tried to finish off the Chaser from afar. A sufficiently large burst of balefire might have done it, while I’d been preoccupied with the hull.
“Saint-Cloud!” Captain Tancrède, his face darkened with powder smoke and streaks of blood, strode up and gave me a piercing look. I drew myself up and saluted, feeling Nje loosen the bale armor, rearranging it in accord with whatever sort of alien aesthetic it possessed.
“Are you capable of maintaining your calls while we make repairs?” the captain demanded.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do so.” His scathing gaze raked me from head to toe. “I will have a word with you about the rest of this macabre exhibition after we have seen to the safety of the ship.”
He turned and strode off before I could reply. I looked up and realized Nje was still suspending the horse’s skull over my head with an array of bale tendrils that surrounded my head like a corona. Embarrassed, I found a spot out of the way of the crew and settled down to wait and maintain my calls.
Very good, Mazarin Saint-Cloud, Nje whispered in my ears in Empyrian. The horse skull came down to rest awkwardly on my left shoulder, bound in place with bale. Then it switched to Chevachèchen. I am *** *** *** *** you *** ***.
“Well, whatever that means, you’re probably the only one who thinks anything about this is good,” I said with resignation, watching as the crew shot me fearful looks whenever they passed by.