The Sea Watch (63 page)

Laszlo was shouting at him. Laszlo had been shouting at him for some time. ‘We have to go!’ the Fly’s shrill voice insisted, and Stenwold came to himself and realized the man was right.
We are not meant to be here
, he swore,
in so many ways.

They ducked through another cramped sequence of crawlspaces, with Laszlo forever having to come back for them, two wheezing academics twice his size. The sound of fighting was all about them, frequently the very walls booming and shaking to melee on the far side. The last narrow space that Laszlo urged them through was awash with water whose level was definitely rising.
Mandir’s people must have pumps, must be sealing off breaches, but the Echinoi aren’t taking no for an answer.

He groaned and hauled himself out of the crawlspace with Tseitus almost jabbing at his heels. Laszlo hovered above them and, looking up at him, Stenwold almost missed noticing the shadow of movement.

‘Duck!’ Stenwold cried out, and Laszlo’s Fly-kinden reflexes took it from there, hurling him up so fast that he bounced from the ceiling, as a spear whistled past him. Stenwold was granted a moment’s grace to regain his feet as the Fly’s aerobatics caught their attackers by surprise. It was another Kerebroi man, surely Claeon’s second assassin, and he had done better in terms of hired help. There was a couple of the tall, thin Dart-kinden there, with spears at the ready, and a single hulking Onychoi in full armour, foot-long claws curving from his gauntlets.

Stenwold loosed his little snapbow at the big man immediately.
Let’s see how Rosander’s kin stand up to Low-lander engineering
, was his only thought.

He detected the impact as a puff of dust rose from the mail, but the man barely staggered. Whatever accreated substance his shell was built from, Lowlander engineering was clearly not equal to it. Stenwold scrambled back fast as the two spearmen rushed him.

Tseitus got one of them: he sprang somewhat arthritically out from their entry hole, but Claeon’s people had been warned to expect two landsmen, not three. The Ant’s home-made sword pierced the lanky sea-kinden under the ribs, a flare of Ant strength driving it up to the hilt. The Ant’s expression was gaunt with disbelief at where his life was taking him.

Stenwold was already rushing in, the second spearman briefly distracted, but Tseitus was abruptly disarmed by his own success as the body of his victim took his sword hilt from his hand. The Kerebroi, Claeon’s man, kept shouting furious orders.

Stenwold got in past the spearhead before it could turn on him, and caught hold of the shaft with one hand, guessing that he would be stronger than the slender Dart-kinden. For a moment they fought over it, Stenwold hauling with all his weight and the other man twisting almost bonelessly, prying to loosen his grip. Laszlo darted overhead, but his attention was elsewhere. Stenwold heard the sound of grating armour and a shadow fell over him. In sudden fright he pushed where he had been pulling, releasing the spear and sending the Dart-kinden stumbling away. The Onychoi warrior was right there, gauntlet raised, but it was Tseitus who crouched before him. The Ant had just managed to free his sword, and now he swung it with all his might into the enormous armoured chest.

The force of the impact sent the weapon spinning from Tseitus’s hand, leaving the artificer yelling with pain and clutching at his wrist. Even as Stenwold lunged forward, the gauntleted fist descended, punching down between the Ant’s neck and shoulder with a snapping of bone, the impact driving Tseitus instantly to the floor. Laszlo buzzed helplessly about the Onychoi’s helm, ignored and impotent.

Stenwold yelled something wordless, and the spear-butt struck him across the face and knocked him from his feet. He looked up, head spinning, to see the sharp end levelled down towards him. The lean, hollow-cheeked face of his enemy was without pity.

Laszlo passed by again, and the spear tip flicked up to follow him, nearly catching him despite all his agility. He flitted between the spearman and the Onychoi, weaving midway between claw and lance point. His mouth full of blood, Stenwold was half sitting up, still reeling from the blow.

Someone else was standing over him a moment later, a hand extended towards the spearman for all the world like a Wasp-kinden loosing a sting at point-blank range. Stenwold saw it then, the barb-tipped ribbon that flicked from Phylles’s palm to puncture the man’s skin. It was a pinprick, merely, but the effect was almost instant – the Dart-kinden began staggering and spasming, spear dropping from his hands virtually into Stenwold’s own.

Another figure dashed past:
Fel
? But it was Fel in a kind of half-armour comprised of breast and back, shoulders and bracers, and a swept-back crested helm. He looked as lean as whipcord before the bulk of the Onychoi, but once he took his stance, armed only with a pair of narrow daggers and his Art-toughened fists, the huge warrior stepped back.

The spear felt smooth-hafted and alien in his hands, as Stenwold hunched his way over to Tseitus, dragging the man’s body up from the swirling water. There was no hope. That single blow had descended hard enough to smash his whole body out of shape. The bluish-white face was strangely composed, the eyes staring with icy clarity at nothing at all.

There sounded two harsh cracks, and Stenwold looked up to see the Greatclaw Onychoi staggering backwards, first one heavy step and then the next. There were now crazed lines jagging their way across the breadth of his breastplate. Meanwhile, Fel was moving fast, shifting from foot to foot in a random, jerky pattern, swaying back from one swinging blow and ducking close in under another. He struck again, a blur that Stenwold barely saw. The hard shell of Fel’s knuckles shattered the huge man’s shoulder-guard, and stove in the chest armour entirely. Stenwold saw the folded spines flick forwards, turning the fists from bludgeons into punch-daggers.

Beyond the lurching Onychoi he saw the orchestrator of all this: Claeon’s hired killer. The slender Kerebroi brandished a curved sword, but was backing away, realizing the cause was lost. Stenwold snarled, feeling an unaccustomed rush of rage within him, such as he thought he had left behind in his younger days. A moment later he was charging the man, the unfamiliar spear levelled. He heard the voices of Laszlo and Wys cry out his name, but he was having none of it.
Vengeance
, his blood howled. Vengeance for a distant, hostile academic who had never liked him much even back on land, but Tseitus had been a Master of the College and a hero of the Vekken siege, and that deserved some token act of homage.

Stenwold had never even tried to use a spear before.

He dodged past the Onychoi, narrowly avoiding being brained by one gauntleted fist. Fel did something complicated with daggers and his spiked fists, and a spray of fine blood dusted Stenwold as he rushed by. The expression on the Kerebroi’s face was loathing, but also fear, for here was the landsman, the venomous outlander, and who knew what he was capable of ?

Still, he had wits enough to sidestep the spear, and its narrow head rammed the wall, shattering to pieces, only a needle of sharp bone after all. The Kerebroi brought his sword down, the stroke faltering as though even making contact with this land-kinden would carry some kind of contagious death. Stenwold took it on the spear’s shaft, which bowed under the impact but held, and then he just pushed hard, ramming the man backwards, putting all his considerable weight behind a shove that propelled the Kerebroi into the piecemeal wall.

The wall gave way. It was just a partition between one internal space and the next. No doubt its builders had never anticipated it being used as a weapon. The wall gave way, and the Kerebroi fell backwards onto a surging sea of spines.

Stenwold had a moment to witness the man’s realization of his fate before a dozen quills had impaled him, some keen enough to come jutting out from his front. Then the push was coming from the other way and Stenwold cast himself aside desperately, as the Echinoi beast lurched through in a rippling tide of spikes waving like pike-heads. It filled the breadth of their narrow room, and there were Echinoi warriors following, lipless mouths snarling to bare needle teeth at them, weapons raised. Stenwold watched Phylles, who must have been almost within reach of him a moment before, scrabble to a halt and draw back swiftly. She was on the far side of the beast. They all were. He saw Laszlo gather himself as if to brave the journey across, but the monster’s spines were almost scraping the ceiling, leaving no safe gap even for a Fly-kinden. ‘Stay back!’ Stenwold shouted to him. ‘I’ll find a way round.’

Then he ran. The Echinoi had spotted him, and he ran, stepping high through the swelling tide. He had no hope, just then, no hope at all. He wished only that Laszlo might go with Wys, and might find a way back to his family.

The Echinoi feet, behind him, were erratic but swift.

Stenwold turned the next corner and found himself facing a battle. There was at least a score of Mandir’s warriors in furious close conflict with a mob of Echinoi, both sides hacking at each other with single-minded loathing. He splashed and stumbled across behind them, utterly unnoticed, but there were more of the invaders hot on his trail. He had a moment to consider who his enemies were: those who would enslave him or those who would probably just kill and eat him. In the end, the closer kinship won out.

‘Behind you!’ he yelled at them, as his pursuers closed.

Two or three of the Greatclaw had just finished tensioning their bows, and at Stenwold’s warning they turned, craning past their shoulder-guards to spot the new enemy. The explosive retort of their weapons could be heard even over the melee, a pair of Echinoi hurled from their feet on the instant, one to lie still with half its head missing, the other to twitch and hiss, while its thorned hands plucked at the bolt sunk squarely in its chest. Of the remainder, all but one turned their attention from Stenwold to face this new challenge, descending on the armoured sea-kinden as savagely as beasts but utterly silent.

That one pursuer would be enough, though. Stenwold gripped the broken spearshaft, torn between fight and flight, as the single Echinoi made a slow approach, heedless of its brethren’s success or failure. Eyes that were black and featureless examined Stenwold, and perhaps the creature noted that he was different, not its kind’s usual prey. Perhaps not, but its rough-skinned visage held no expressions that Stenwold could put a name to. It hefted its bronze sword, elegantly wrought into a forward curve, and went for him.

Since its failure against the Onychoi armour he had almost forgotten the little snapbow, but Totho had made the weapon with two barrels, and one might still be loaded. He brought it up even as the Echinoi closed and dragged on the trigger.

There was a muted click, no charge in the air-battery, even if a bolt was in place. Then that sinuous blade was descending on him. He caught the blow on his makeshift staff, but its impact splintered the spear-shaft almost in two, In desperation he lashed the crooked rod across the Echinoi’s face, snapping the weapon entirely but barely making the sea-kinden flinch. The creature swung at him again, overcompensating still in the thin air, and he saved himself by lurching backwards, tripping in the surging waters and tumbling from his feet. The scythe-like edge of the enemy blade passed inches from him as he toppled back. He still held two feet of haft, and he lunged with it as though it was a good Lowlander shortsword, but the jagged point only skidded off the Echinoi’s coppery cuirass, and then just as uselessly from its rugged skin. The sword flashed down again.

Something the colour of bone put itself in the way and the Echinoi’s blade skittered from a shield of yellowing shell. An armoured form was stepping over Stenwold in one solid stride, shoving the shield in the Echinoi’s face and pushing it back. Nemoctes – it was Nemoctes, come from nowhere. He held a weapon like a hook-billed pick in his hand and, as he fended off the Echinoi’s next strike he drove the point into his enemy above the neckline of its armour with a grunt of effort. Keeping its sword away with his shield’s edge, Nemoctes changed grip on his weapon’s haft, ducked low and then put all his strength into wrenching it upwards. Even over the general row of battle, Stenwold heard the splintering of bone as the deep-buried point dragged its way free through the top of the Echinoi’s ribs. Then Nemoctes had cast the injured creature away, taking its last weak swing against his greaves.

‘Get up,’ he snapped at Stenwold. His dark face was grim, splashed with blood.

‘I have to get to Laszlo,’ the Beetle told him, clambering to his feet out of the water, for what seemed the hundredth time. ‘Laszlo . . . Wys . . .’

‘You have to get
out
,’ Nemoctes interrupted him. ‘Anything else is a luxury.’ The armoured sea-kinden strode ahead through the water, away from the melee, not even glancing back to see if Stenwold followed.

He followed. He had no other choice.

If I could have got out with Laszlo and Wys
, he thought bitterly,
Laszlo said she’d take us straight to the surface, to Collegium. But where will Nemoctes take me?

Ahead he saw movement, and fumbled to raise his piece of broken spear. There was no enemy, though, but a rolling tide of water, coursing waist-high towards him. Nemoctes just forged on into it, taking the brunt of the water with his shoulder, with Stenwold standing in his shadow, clinging to the man’s arm to keep his feet. Everywhere abruptly seemed to be filling up fast, meaning the Echinoi must have cut a fresh gash in the brittle skin of the Hot Stations.