The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (18 page)

He felt
Daystrider
come about and forced himself back up to his knees. Arrows bristled from the crow’s nest like a porcupine’s quills, but few of the pirates were fighting any longer. Two archers on
Bowhead
were shooting into the sea, but they weren’t likely to hit the shark. It didn’t need to surface to close its jaws around men’s legs and drag them down screaming, and it was so large a few arrows tickling its hide would probably just annoy it.

As long as they didn’t strike its eyes. Though in the dark, in water turned opaque with blood and froth, piercing a moving creature through the eye would be a stroke of great fortune—and luck didn’t seem to be on the pirates’ side any longer.
Rorqual
’s sails unfurled, but there was no wind, only a hot oppressive stillness.
Daystrider
’s oars lashed the water and she flew.

Ramming speed
. Darok braced himself against the edge of the crow’s nest. The water parted for his ship’s prow, and flames trailed behind her like bright banners. On
Rorqual
’s deck, the pirate captain raised his huge axe one-handed over his head, and by then they were so close Darok saw the man’s lips draw back from his teeth in a futile snarl.

Daystrider
rammed the galley an instant later. Wood smashed like an eggshell. Darok jolted forward, hissing in renewed pain, but the shock flung pirates off
Rorqual
’s deck into the ocean.
Daystrider
backed oars, pulling away, and the galley lurched. Water rushed into the great rent in her side.

The battle was done
.
He glanced at
Bowhead
, but that galley was pulling away too, oars thrashing. A pale shadow slid beneath a flailing man in the water, as the shark turned so its underslung mouth could be brought into play.
There are siege engines and there are slaughter engines
. The sea around the foundering
Rorqual
turned dark with blood.

Then everything was bleached in a flash of blue-white as lightning flickered through the sky. The rumble of thunder was immediate, and a raindrop hit Darok’s cheek.
Thank the Unity, that will put out the fire.
He hoped Alyster wouldn’t give chase to
Bowhead.
The galley had too much of a head start, and they needed repairs first.

More predators appeared in the sea, black streaks in storm-tossed water. One of them lifted its head from the waves and he saw a splash of white beneath its eye. Orcas. Well, none of his men were in the water, and those wolves of the sea wouldn’t attack a ship unless they were provoked.

Ignoring men and ship entirely, the four whales closed in on the shark.

Long before the battle began, Yerena lay on her bunk in the dark, hands clasped on her belly, her eyes closed. She was so accustomed to the posture and those circumstances that her body went limp almost at once. Her mind found the shark, its presence as familiar as her own flesh, and she slipped deep into its senses—past touching, beyond holding. When she locked with its consciousness, she had no need to open her eyes.

Now her eyes were black as deep pits with no end, and they were always open.

She never felt so strong as when she shared the shark’s body, but locking with it was a delicate balancing act. If she dominated it completely, she had to think how to do what came instinctively to the shark, but being a passive passenger wouldn’t help either. She had to be its equal, allowing it to do what came naturally and yet steering it where it was needed.

After the calm darkness of her room, being in the shark’s head was a shock to the senses. Despite its good eyesight, not much was visible in the night, but the water carried sound only too well. She heard vibrations transmitted through
Daystrider
’s hull, men moving about or hauling equipment. The water smelled foul, and not just from human wastes. A smaller shark—an openwater hunter with long white-tipped fins—turned and fled her periphery, emptying its bowels as if to ensure it didn’t take an ounce of unnecessary weight along. The shark ignored it, and so did she.

Because she felt them coming, heard the oars five hundred feet away.
Darok
, she thought, but it was no more than a whisper that flitted through the woman’s lips and the white death’s mind and was gone. All her training and senses focused on the fight.

It wasn’t difficult to hold the shark back when pirates spilled from
Daystrider
’s burning deck, even when she smelled hot blood and roasting flesh. The shark had fed earlier in the day, she sensed that too, and it preferred seal or porpoise in its belly anyway.

The deep water was a safe haven compared to what was happening above the waves, but the shark was curious and she let it rise just enough to get an eye to the surface.
Now
, she thought when she saw
Rorqual
pull away in preparation to ram. The fire on
Daystrider
was so bright it turned the world to daylight. The shark’s tail beat fast as a drum, picking up enough speed for its own charge.

Yerena guided it gently, then let it fly.

The shark weighed nearly five tons, more than enough to shatter the galley’s oars. It slammed back into the water, breathing again, and Yerena directed it to pick off the pirates, which it did easily and indifferently as she relaxed. Finished, with no real casualties she knew of, apart from
Daystrider
’s deck. She tasted bloody water and heard battle raging—muffled screams, the raw crunch of wood, distant roared commands.

But almost drowned out by all those was another sound, a high-pitched whine like a wire drawn against the edge of a wet glass. Something about it sent a cold finger down her spine. Then it was echoed from the opposite direction.

Not an echo, not in the sea.
Yerena gave the shark its head, rising from
lock
to
touch
immediately. The shark reacted with sheer instinct, snout going down as its tail slammed water. It dove hard, and the fastest killer’s teeth snapped shut where it had been a heartbeat earlier.

Get out of there!
Yerena screamed silently and broke the contact altogether as she threw herself out of the bunk. Her limbs were stiff as if they had contorted in position, but she struggled up and flung the door open. There were sailors outside, blood on the floorboards, a dead man. She could not have cared less.

She ran right, to another door. One of
Daystrider
’s men was on guard outside but what he saw in her face stopped his tongue. He opened the door for her and shouted, “Sir!”

“What is it?” Alyster Juell said as she hurried in.

Her mouth was so dry she could hardly speak. “Stop them. The killers. Please—stop them.”

To his credit, he didn’t ask why, only turned to the men at the arbalests. “The orcas. Fire at will.”

“Why the orcas, miss?” another man asked Yerena. She knew she had spoken to him before, but at that moment she could barely remember her own name, let alone his. “Are they—they aren’t on the pirates’ side, are they?”

She managed a nod, her heart hammering. The shark was still close, too close. What if it didn’t want to let itself be chased off? In the churning chaos of the sea, the men might hit it instead.

One arbalest
whanged
, and a moment later another one did so. “Missed,” a man said as they began to reload. The third and last loosed its trident, a bolt of steel eight feet long, and she dropped to her knees beside the weapon-port.

The sea turned to a boiling black-and-white mass of waves and killer whale.

Lightning flickered and thunder boomed like a trumpet.
Rorqual
started to capsize, stern tilting well out of the water while the heavier prow slipped beneath the waves. Even if the galley somehow managed to remain afloat, the storm would complete what
Daystrider
had begun. Yerena bowed her head until her brow rested on the solid frame of the port, and touched the shark’s consciousness.

It was far from her now, but it had been hurt, and phantom pain snaked through her own side. The killers might have given chase if not for the one which had been trident-pierced. Two black fins moved through a curtain of silvery rain to surround and support the injured whale. A third slewed to one side and dived to avoid another trident.

Before the men could shoot again, thick wood broke with a sound like a dry bone snapping and the ship lurched violently. Arbalests slid back from weapon-ports and men staggered. Yerena lost her balance and landed hard on the floor, but rolled as she did so to come upright again. She guessed the third whale had rammed them, and had done so aft, where none of the tridents could hit it. The men held their positions as they secured the arbalests, waiting for the next strike in tense silence, but nothing further happened. She could only hope the rest of the pack had retreated to safer waters.

Footsteps moved to her and she looked up to see Alyster. “Why did they attack it?” he asked. “Did the pirates make them do that?”

“No.” She pulled herself to her feet. “Another Seawatch operative did. He’s with the Tureans.”

The fires were dead and Darok didn’t feel too lively either. Rain poured over him until he was chilled to his bones, and the pain in his arm dulled to a raw, constant ache. The lightning whipped the sea into a frenzy, and although the ship faced the waves, she swayed and rolled. Even if he wanted to try climbing down from the crow’s nest with one arm, during a storm, he wasn’t sure how weakened the rigging and ratlines were from the fire.

He imagined what Admiral Balt would have to say about that.
You
are
aware, Captain, that in battle one is supposed to burn the
enemy’s
ship?
Well, too late to worry about it, and at least the Turean bastards would think twice before they tried to board his ship again.

He guessed his own losses were minimal and hoped he could say the same for Yerena. Julean would see to the injured men, but a wounded shark had to either heal on its own or be eaten. The most merciful thing he could do, if the beast was badly injured, would be harpooning it through the base of its skull to make its end a quick one.

The men opened the hatches soon after the rain put out the fire and cooled the blackened remains of the deck, but it took a long time before they secured the lines. The deck was covered with broken clay, fallen weapons and bodies, some burned beyond recognition, while most of the boards were so weakened that they wouldn’t take a man’s weight. The rain drowned out the sound of wood breaking and the master carpenter cursing, but Darok didn’t need to hear that to know it was happening.

It was well past dawn, not that any sunlight filtered through the clouds, before a boy swarmed up to the crow’s nest to tell him it was safe. “Searched the deck too, sir. No one there.”

“Good.” It wasn’t easy climbing down, and the closer he got, the worse the deck looked, though at least the canvas-wrapped masts hadn’t been harmed. The men had cleared away most of the debris by then, and Arnell’s apprentices used white paint to mark which parts of the deck were off-limits. The master carpenter looked as if he wished Darok had gone down with the pirates too, but he was hard at work.

“Captain.” Alyster was always formal in front of the crew.

“What’s the damage to the ship?” Darok said as he went to the hatchway nearest to the surgery. The Tureans had evidently managed to break through that hatch, but his men had been armed and waiting beyond both of them.

“Other than the deck? The rudder’s gone. One of those killers struck it.”

A new rudder could be jury-rigged, but they needed time and calm seas to do so. “And the butcher’s bill?”

“One dead, four wounded, one missing.”

“Missing?” Darok didn’t like the sound of that. No one could go missing on a ship unless they fell overboard. “Who?”

“Dr. Flaige.”

Darok stopped in his tracks. “What?”

“Go on to the surgery. It’s all right, Wilyerd’s taken care of the men and he’ll do a good enough job on your arm.”

It wasn’t his arm Darok was worried about, but he said nothing until after Julean’s assistant had removed the arrow, cleaned the wound and bandaged it, a process eased by a few slugs of rum. He would have liked to drink it straight, but a shipboard rule was that everyone had to eat a certain amount of orange or lime each day, and of course the oranges ran out first. So he squeezed half a lime into the glass Wilyerd gave him before he poured the rum in.

The bitter taste still came through and the damage reports were just as unpalatable, but at least they distracted him from what Wilyerd was doing to his arm. He knew his brother; Alyster wouldn’t say anything too disturbing where the men might hear.

And the surgery looked as clean and orderly as always, not exactly the kind of place Tureans had broken into so they could drag a man out. Darok guessed what had happened.

“He left the ship,” he said once they were back in his cabin. “In the confusion, with the pirates running in the same direction, who’d notice one more man? Especially if he wasn’t in uniform.”

“The idiot.” Alyster was normally easy-tempered, but when he was angry he was colder than an iceberg and more dangerous. “If they know he’s one of ours—”

“Of course they’ll know. If I found a man I didn’t recognize on this ship, I’d make damn sure he wasn’t a Turean, and they have their methods too.” Darok ran a hand wearily through his hair.