The Blinding Knife (86 page)

The great ship seemed invincible.

Gavin swooped in and destroyed the capsized sea chariot, and then after perhaps thirty seconds they circled wider, out more than a hundred paces. With so many of the big guns silenced for the moment, it was close enough to still be a threat, but far enough away to be safer from all but the luckiest musket shot.

The Prism and one beefy female Blackguard were the only ones who had the strength and the endurance remaining to continue bombarding the
Gargantua
with magic. Everyone had gone through all their grenadoes. The archers had used up most of their arrows, and the four ships Kip had seen earlier—two small galleons and two caravels—were bearing down on them.

Gavin gave a quiet oath. “If it doesn’t happen in the next—”

A deep whoomping explosion drowned out his words. It seemed to shake the sea itself in its bed.

Kip shot a look at Gavin. His father looked oddly bereaved. “Their powder room was below the waterline. Makes it a lot harder for a stray shell to hit it, but… poor bastards.”

When the smoke began to clear, Kip saw that both sides of the hull had been blown out right in the middle of the ship. With wood creaking and snapping, the mainmast plunged off to one side like a man jumping overboard, throwing men from both of its crow’s nests and slashing through the weakened deck at the ship’s waist.

Some few men were leaping from the decks, and fire was everywhere. Smaller explosions sounded like popping corn. Then the waist collapsed and the ship folded in on itself. The front half of the great ship went down almost instantly, far faster than Kip would have believed something made entirely of wood should sink. The stern rolled over on its side, open decks gaping like open wounds, swallowing the seas in great burbling gulps.

Deck by burning deck, the great ship plunged into the sea, hissing and spitting and vomiting up flotsam and broken men.

Before it even slipped under the waves, Ironfist asked, “Mop up the swimmers?”

Gavin looked toward the coming ships.

Mop up? Commander Ironfist meant, Should we kill the men who survived?

“You see any wights make it out?” Gavin asked.

“Didn’t see any. Doesn’t mean there weren’t some,” Ironfist said.

“I didn’t see any either,” the Blackguard they’d pulled out of the waves earlier said.

Kip watched the last of the
Gargantua
slip beneath the waves. There was a lot of junk afloat in the waves, but not many men. Gavin had said there were seven hundred men on board.

Orholam have mercy.

Because your Prism won’t.

“No,” Gavin said. “I’d rather be a mystery and a wild tale. We don’t have it in us to sink four more. Let’s go home.”

They headed out two leagues to regroup, and the sea chariots came alongside and with difficulty in the heaving waves, they reformed the big skimmer. They’d lost seven Blackguards. Another had taken a ball in the elbow. She would be crippled. The rest had minor injuries: burns and little cuts and pulled muscles from maneuvering their chariots too sharply. One had a musket-ball burn in a streak along his neck that was going to leave a scar. He looked perversely pleased about it. A breath more to the left and it would have cut his carotid. Cruxer was wide-eyed, blinking a lot, but unhurt.

“Breaker,” Cruxer said, “did you do what I think you did back there?” He looked at the Blackguards. “Am I the only one who saw him blow up half the ship?”

“I saw,” one said. Others nodded, though not all of them.

“We saw,” Ironfist said. “Well done, Breaker.”

“Well done? It was fucking awesome!” Cruxer said.

The Blackguards laughed, and even Ironfist grinned and didn’t reprove Cruxer for cursing.

“Did you blow up the whole ship, too?” Cruxer asked.

“No, that was him,” Kip said. He’d been looking at his father already. Gavin was staring at him with a strange intensity that wasn’t wholly approving. Kip thought he would be proud of him, but again, there it was, that sense that under everything, Gavin was holding out on Kip. Avoiding embracing him fully.

“How’d you do it?” a Blackguard asked Gavin. Kip thought his name was Norl.

Gavin looked displeased. For a moment, Kip thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then Gavin’s eyes passed over the rest of the Blackguards. They’d lost almost half their number today.

“I made a golem of a rat, and willed it to go to the powder keg to
explode,” Gavin said quietly. “It’s the kind of thing a wight would think of, so there would have been one posted in the hall to stop any such thing. I figured the explosion gave me an opening. Figured right.”

“But making golems is forbidden,” Kip said. He knew it was stupid the second he said it. It had worked. It had probably saved their lives. It had definitely won the fight.

“I’ll decide what’s forbidden,” Gavin said. But his voice wasn’t strident; it was weary. “We’ll eat here, dress the wounds we can, then head home.”

They ate silently, everyone aware of the places that were empty. They’d won. They’d killed seven hundred men or more, at the cost of seven. By any measure, it wasn’t only a victory, it was a great victory. And yet the Blackguards were silent, eating like automatons, not hungry but disciplined enough to know that their bodies needed the sustenance after a hard fight.

“You do this all the time,” Ironfist said, “don’t you?” They were sitting on the deck, munching hard biscuits and sausage.

“Sink ships?” Gavin asked. It sounded like he was making an effort to regain his levity. He was Prism; he needed to set an example. Ironfist refused to take the bait. “That ship could have sunk half our navy before we arrived in Atash, but we didn’t even know it was here. The threat’s gone, so to those idiot generals it will be like this never happened. We’ll tell the story of what we did today, and some won’t believe us. Most will believe we’re exaggerating to make ourselves look good. But even those who do believe us won’t know what we went through to do it. They won’t understand what we faced here.”

Gavin gave a little shrug.

“You do this all the time. You’ve been doing this since the war. You save people, without them even knowing. You’ve stopped wars, you’ve sunk pirates, you’ve put down wights, you’ve killed brigand companies single-handed. All without bragging or even asking for thanks. You are He Who Fights Before Us indeed,” Ironfist said. “Promachos.”

Gavin said nothing for a time. “Today we were
promachoi
together.”

“The Spectrum granted you that title long ago, and then they took it away. They can take your title, my lord, but they can’t take your name. We Blackguards know about secret names. We know about naming a thing what it is. You, Lord Prism, are Promachos.”

“Promachos,” the other Blackguards said quietly.

“Promachos,” Ironfist said, sealing the name. “Thank you, Promachos. For all you’ve done that I don’t know. For the prices you’ve paid that I can’t understand. For doing what others couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Thank you. And know this, the Blackguard was created with twin purposes: to watch for and to watch the Prism. You’ve always distrusted us because of the latter, as well you should. But I tell you this day that the Blackguard will never turn against you so long as I draw breath. It is an honor to serve
you
,
Promachos
, and serve we shall, blood and bone.”

“Blood and bone,” said the Blackguards.

“Blood and bone,” Ironfist said, sealing them to him.

Gavin couldn’t meet their eyes. “I’m not the man you think I am,” he said very quietly.

“Are you the man I’ve served these past ten years?” Ironfist asked.

“I am.”

“Then perhaps, my lord, you’re not the man
you
think you are.”

Gavin flashed a grin and seemed abruptly himself once more. “You’ve got a stubborn streak a league wide, don’t you?”

“And two leagues deep,” Commander Ironfist said. “And don’t you forget it.” He stood up and turned to the Blackguards. “All right, you laggards, ready up! Let’s go home. Tomorrow we do it again.”

“Your intelligence is abysmal,” Gavin told the generals around the cabin. “Their plan—their first plan, at least—is simple. They stop our ships before we can get there. Without our troops and supplies, Ru will fall in days. You didn’t come prepared for a sea battle. We’ve got a dozen warships; they have fifty.”

“You’ve invented some new means of travel,” Andross Guile said. He was the reason this room was bathed in blue light. “That’s how you’re scouting. Tell us about this.”

Gavin ignored him and left to get some rest before the battle. He woke before dawn, and started laughing quietly. He dressed in the darkness and bound his hair back. A knock jostled the door in its loose hinges.

“Commander,” Gavin said. They walked out onto the deck together where the Blackguards were checking their gear, some quietly joking, some doing the morning ka, whatever it took to soothe the pre-battle nerves. They’d taken down the biggest ship in the Color Prince’s navy yesterday, but they were professionals; they knew they weren’t invincible. A musket ball didn’t care if it had been fired by a man on a great ship or an idiot in a dory. Anyone could die, anytime.

Kip was standing with them, looking like he was wound tight enough to thrum.

“I’m not going with you today,” Gavin told Ironfist. He didn’t bother lowering his voice. Let the Blackguards overhear. He was asking them to risk their lives. “I’ve other work to do that may give us some slim chance for victory. Probably not, but it’s worth trying.”

“Can I send anyone with you?” Ironfist asked.

“Not for this. I won’t be in danger, though. Not physical danger anyway.”

“Kip?” Ironfist asked.

Gavin turned and looked at the boy, who was eavesdropping and making a small attempt at pretending not to be. “Kip, you can’t come with me. Not for this. You can make up your own mind about whether you want to go with the Blackguards to sink ships.”

“I’ll fight, sir.”

Yes, you will.

“High Lord Prism?” a thick Blackguard asked. He was an orange/yellow bichrome named Little Piper. Gavin nodded for him to continue. “Will you look at a design we’ve put together?”

Gavin followed them over to a pile of munitions. Someone had designed great disks, bigger than a shield, with a grenado’s trigger mechanism. Gavin didn’t understand.

Little Piper pushed a tiny woman forward. “It’s Nerra’s design,” Little Piper said.

She wasn’t even one of the Blackguards who’d gone with them yesterday. She had to clear her throat twice before she was able to speak. “From hearing the stories, I figure the best advantage we have is that
we can close quickly.” She showed how the disk had teeth and red luxin on the bottom. “The driver brings the sea chariot right next to the ship, and the archer slaps this onto the hull.”

Gavin took a breath. It was brilliant in its simplicity. But the design wasn’t right. The disk could be hardened at the back so that most of the explosive force went into the hull. And there was no way you’d want such a short fuse on an explosive this powerful. And it needed shrapnel. And the red on the back side needed to be covered with a thin layer of yellow that could be stripped off just prior to placement so the red didn’t lose its stickiness and so the disks could be stacked. Then the sea chariots would need to be—He was getting ahead of himself.

He started calling out for the items he needed, and the Blackguards delivered them promptly. Then Gavin made two different designs, one lighter and one heavier. He hefted both. The heavier one packed more explosive power, but power was no good if you couldn’t get it where it was needed. He handed them around.

“The heavier,” the Blackguards agreed.

Gavin gave them instructions then and they made a line, the Blackguards copying the backplate and filling the reservoir half full with nails and musket balls and forming the hooks. Gavin made the fuses and the yellow and red luxin mixture to fill the reservoir. A couple of reds applied the right amount of sticky red luxin to the backs, another drafter put a tiny layer of lubricative orange on top of that, and Gavin covered it with a thin plate of yellow.

“Hullwrecker,” Gavin said, barely pausing as he checked that the fuses on every one were drafted correctly. Then he climbed down the rope ladder to the sea chariots and drafted a place for the hullwreckers to be stacked, and an extra support to keep whichever Blackguard placed the explosive from tumbling off the back of his own chariot. He’d replaced the sea chariots that had been destroyed yesterday, and even drafted extras. Today, fifty Blackguards would be able to head out at once.

“Well done, Nerra,” Gavin said. She looked embarrassed. “You’ve saved a lot of lives today.”

“But my lord, you made it a hundred times better.”

“So I saved lives, too,” Gavin said. “We’re a team, right?” He smiled at her and she blushed.

Gavin moved to get onto his own sea chariot. It was slightly
modified from the earlier versions. Another experiment. He was always experimenting. A young Blackguard was standing there to hold the boat steady when Gavin pulled it loose of the rest. It was Gavin Greyling.

It felt like a sledge hit the center of Gavin’s chest. He met the eyes of the young man who’d lied to save his life. “I’ll try to be worthy of it,” Gavin said quietly.