Raiders' Ransom (31 page)

I run down the beach, splash through the waves to my boat. I've got to help Zeph. I try to push my boat away from the beach, but there's only me now, and it's hard work. Zeph helped me get her moored, and now he might be dead. I dig my feet into the mud, trying to get braced against the pebbles. I only need to shift her a couple of paces, just get her into deeper water. Cat bounds down the beach, leaps onto me so he doesn't get his feet wet, then scrambles on board. He looks down at me, flicking his tail.

“Mreow!” he says, swiping my face with his claws.

“What's that for?” I shout, clutching at the scratches. Cat hunches down, growling at me.

“You can't stop me this time!” I shout at him. “I ain't staying safe here if Zeph is drowning.” Cat hisses and flicks his tail.

“I'm going out there.” And I put my head down, put my back into it. Cat howls over my head, trying to take bites out of my hair.

“You should be helping me!” I shout at him, almost crying now.

I brace my shoulder, push with my feet. With a final crunch over the pebbles, the boat lifts. I jump on board, start unfurling my tattered and battered mainsail. I look up for a moment, out at the sea, and that's when I see it: a dart rising out from Medwin's flagship; fast, sleek blackness, sitting on top of a bright tail of fire. It streaks through the air, headed to the English tall ship. 'Cept it's going to miss, just by a length. Just by the distance Randall's rowboat is from the tall ship.

Lexy!

There's a ball of flame. A towering pillar of white water. A crashing boom rolling across the waves to slap me and Cat in the ears. And then I can't see anything out there, cos white spray and billowing black smoke is all there is.

Cat sets up a sad howling.

A gust of wind blows past us, and it brings a smell like cooking. Like cooking meat. There's a pattering, drops of
rain. But it ain't from the clouds, it's all that thrown-up sea, coming back down again.

I take a deep breath, and start sailing out into the bay. Cat doesn't try and stop me, like he reckons it's all right for us to go now.

The smoke starts to clear, swirling and breaking as the wind takes it. Now I can see through to Randall's ship. She's listing, her masts leaning over toward the waves. And, as gaps open through the smoke, they show a ragged hole in the tall ship's bow, breakers frothing white around it. Even as I watch, the ship leans farther. She's sinking, going so fast. All around her there's wood floating, and bright scraps of blue in the waves.

Right across the bay, under that rolling low sky, there's more roars and screams of rockets, and flashes of cannons, and gouts of fire and wood and water. English firing cannon, at the raiders, raiders firing rockets at the English.

In the distance, one of the English ships explodes into a fireball; the sails burn off the rigging like paper, flaming pieces of timber and shrieking pieces of people rain down over the waves. Nearer, cannon fire pounds into a red-painted dragonship. The warriors on board are running about, but each time a cannonball hits, another piece of deck explodes, another set of bodies fly into the air. Even from here I can see them landing broken, twisted, and screaming onto the remains of their ship.

Everywhere I look, it's the same thing. Smoke. Fire. Bodies in the water. White sails on fire. Red sails torn apart. And as the smoke finally clears around Randall's flagship, there's nothing — not a sign — of the rowboat that nearly reached her. Nor the people inside. So now that I'm out here on this burning sea, which way do I go?

To Lexy? Or Zeph?

How do I choose, when there ain't a sign of either of them?

Water. All around me. Above me. Clutching at my leathers, weighing me down. Filling my ears with roaring and sloshing. Pushing up my nose, in my eyes. Trying to get in my lungs. Which way's up? I can feel it, see it. Up there. Light. And air. My lungs are bursting, there's water creeping in my mouth. I wanna cough, but I don't. If I cough, I'm gonna drown. I push with my hands, kick with my feet. It gets brighter, lighter.

I'm out! I've got my face above water. I'm coughing now, gasping. Breathing in smoke; there's smoke everywhere. Where's it coming from? I keep on kicking with my feet, paddling with my hands. All around it's noise, roaring into my ears.
Boom! Boom!
The water's shaking with shock waves, like being inside thunder. And there's screaming, men screaming. Is this what a battle sounds like?

Waves splash over my head and into my face. I swallow salt water, and it burns down to my belly. Something cracks me on the back of my head: a piece of wood. And there's another. Bits of wood everywhere, like swimming in splinters. It must be what's left of the boat. We took a direct hit; I saw the cannonball. If I'd reached out, I coulda touched it. But it would've burned my hand off; it was glowing, red with heat, and it just chopped through the boat. Chopped through Jorin as well, through his legs. He screamed, and then he was gone. Down through the hole. Then the sea exploded out of that hole and took us away with it.

I ain't gonna think about it.

The sea lifts me up, pulls me down. When I rise up, I can see a red sail, and a lion on it. I hardly get a look before I'm back down in the waves again. All those waves between me and the ship. How can I ever reach it? Up I rise again, and there's the smoke, there's where it's coming from. Father's dragonboat. Burning.

Father! I twist about, flapping my hands, kicking my feet, trying to see around me.

“Father!” I shout. “Where are you?” But all I can hear is the waves crashing and the boom and roaring of things blowing up all over.

Something pushes against my back. I splash about until I can see. It's something red. Red leather, that's what it is. Someone's jacket floating by. Except there's blond hair poking out from the neck, hair swirling in the water. It's a man,
swimming with his face down, like he's looking for something. But he ain't swimming, coz his hands is just bobbing out the ends of his sleeves. Well, one hand. The other ain't a hand, just a blob of burned something with white bones sticking through. And his legs. His legs ain't kicking, ain't even got feet on them. He's just two trails of redness leaching out into the water.

I gotta swim. Get away from him. It. I kick with my legs, paddle with my hands, fast as I can go through the waves. Over there, that's the way I'll head. The water looks clean. No blood. I don't want to swim through his blood.

“Father! Where are you?” But he don't answer.

It's hard, this swimming. The water's so cold, the waves keep breaking over me. My leathers is getting heavier and heavier. It's like they're trying to pull me under. Something bangs against my back. I spin about, splashing, crying.

“Get away! Get away from me!”

But it ain't the dead man, it's a chunk of our rowboat. A bit of hull, curving over the water. I grab it and hang on. Which makes things a bit better; it's cold still, but it's easier than swimming. I rest, put my head against the wood. I listen to the water splashing, and the booming, and the screaming. I don't know how long for, feels like years.

“Help! Help me!”

Nearby. That's a nearby scream. I snap my head up, looking about.

“Somebody save me!” I ain't never heard him sound like that before. Frightened. I start kicking, trying to get this bit of hull to move. But the waves keep pushing me back again, and the wind's pulling the hull whatever way it wants. I don't get very far. So I move around to the other side, hand over hand, inching round what was the stern, when this boat was right way up and whole. There's a head, bobbing up and down in the water. He ain't far, twenty paces maybe.

“Roba! Over here!” I shout.

“Zeph?”

“There's a bit of the hull. You can hold on.”

“Bring it over here. Bring it to me.”

“I can't. I tried, but the waves is too strong.”

“You little runt! Get over here! I can't swim, I'm drowning!”

“Kick with your legs, paddle with your hands.”

Roba shouts a load of curses at me, but I can see him trying to swim. And he starts to get closer, his head dipping in and out of the waves, his spotty red face scowling with the effort. I get a thought how I should let him drown, but I don't want that. He's Angel Isling, Family. And suddenly that's more important than anything. Them English scum tried to kill us, but we're still alive.

When he's near enough, I hold out one hand, keeping the other as tightly gripped on the hull as I can.

“You runt!” says Roba, grabbing on to my hand so hard I think he's gonna pull us both off. But I keep hold, and after
a few more kicks of his legs he's next to me. Leaning on the wood, holding on with white-knuckle hands. Gasping, panting.

“English scags,” he says after a bit.

“Yeah,” I say. Lying English scags, that's what they all are. Randall said there was a truce, but he didn't keep to it. Every one of them English stinks.

Roba tilts his head against the wood so he can look at me. A wave splashes into his mouth, and he coughs. When he's finished, he says, “But you knew Randall was lying, didn't you? You and your little spy.”

“No! What are you talking about?”

Roba coughs again. “You make me sick. Turns out the highborn son's just a whining traitor. Are you happy now that Father's dead?”

“He ain't dead!” I twist about, looking out across the water. “Father! Father!”

“Shut up, runt!” snaps Roba. “Course he's dead. Do you see him anywhere? Do you think someone like him wouldn't be shouting or swimming if he was still alive? You killed him.”

“I didn't!”

But if I hadn't followed Lilly and Lexy back at the hall, if I'd stood up to Aileen, then this wouldn't be happening, would it?

Roba turns his head away from me, his nose touching the wet, slippery wood of the upturned hull.

“You probably think you'll get away with it. But you won't, coz I'm here.”

“Get away with what?”

“And you ain't got Ims here to defend whatever you do, neither. Did you arrange with the English to get rid of Father? What then? You get made Boss and be an English stooge? “

“No!”

“You were helping the English spy.”

“She ain't a spy; she's just a fisher.”

“Oh right. And that's why you had Father's hostage with you.”

“No. I mean, she's just a little kid.”

“Listen to yourself! Any low Family scag's got more loyalty than you!”

“No. That ain't true. None of it's true!” I twist about, start shouting again. “Father! Where are you?”

“He's dead. You killed him.”

A wave crashes over us both, and my ears fill with rushing water. When they clear and I can see again, Roba's back to staring at me.

“You must really want to be Boss. You and your English friends.”

“I ain't got any English friends …” And I stop, coz what about Lexy, what about Lilly? But I can explain them, I know I can. If I wasn't so cold; if I could think straight.

“Father's dead, and there's no way I'm gonna let a squealing little traitor be the next Boss.”

“Shut up! I don't even want to be Boss. Not now.”

“Not ever,” says Roba. Then he lets go of the hull with one hand and punches me. My head cracks about, pain flares out from my jaw.

“What? What are you doing?” Another punch. So hard it makes light flash in my eyes. Makes my ears ring.

“Get off me!”

“You get off, you English-lover! Get off this wreck you made and drown in the water like you deserve.”

Another punch. I take one hand off the hull, to try and fight him off, make a fist or something. But my head's spinning; I'm doing everything too slow. Roba grabs my hand and starts yanking it, pulling my arm out, away from the hull. He shifts his body, then my ribs crunch with pain as he kicks into me. My hand slips on the wood, only the tips of my fingers holding on.

Another kick, another yank on my arm. My fingers slip, I ain't holding on to anything. Roba laughs. He lets go of my arm, grabs hold of the hull with both his hands, and pulls his feet up. He kicks out, his boots stamping me in the face. More lights, more pain. There's a roaring sound, like waves, like voices. I've got to swim away from him, he's going to kick me to death. Except I can't swim, coz I'm so cold, and my leathers is so heavy. They're just pulling me down, dragging at my legs, at my arms. Roba's shouting at me. But I can't hear what he's saying. I start sinking. Down into the water.

Where it's quiet.