The cannonfire should have destroyed any ship, but the Kymera seemed unmarked. The Fuega cut loose a third and a fourth time. Now the bay was fogging with white powder-vapour, and the Rumour was running into it.

  ‘That’s right,’ Luka murmured. ‘Give it to the bastardo, Hernan.’

  The Fuega fired two more salvoes as it closed, its launches rowing in behind it.

  The Rumour and the Safire had come around through the inshore waters, circling the Butcher Ship at its starboard.

  The thunder storm broke in, covering the Golfo Naranja in churning, sooty clouds and spears of lightning.

  The Fuega fired yet again, another full side.

  At last, the Butcher Ship woke up. Venting mist, it ran forwards, sheets swelling, ignoring any pull of anchor or direction of wind. Its sails, crimson red, were suddenly – impossibly – full and bulging with wind.

  There was a terrible, overlapping series of cracks as the Kymera fired its first broadside, gunning at the Fuega.

  Struck hard, the Fuega lurched away. Luka saw a mast fall and rigging strip away.

  Then there was a flash. A burst of light brighter than any lightning. The Fuega vanished in a cone of fire. Luka heard a whistling shriek as an entire mast flew overhead and impaled itself, tip-down, into the headland three miles behind him.

  The Kymera’s opening shots had hit the Fuega’s handling chamber and magazine, touching off with a calamitous blast. The mighty Estalian galleon, and Captain Hernan, and all his crew, had been annihilated in a blast of shocking force that lit up the entire bay. The Rumour and the Safire fought to control their courses in the shock waves that followed such a catastrophic demise.

  And then they were on their own.

  The Butcher Ship was closing on the Rumour. It seemed to radiate foul red light, not only from its heavy iron lanterns, but from the bloodstained hull and crimson sheets. The Reivers could taste the pestilential evil in the air. The Butcher cut through the chopping water, somehow unencumbered by the swell or the storm, as if the lashing rain and lightning suited it as sailing weather, just as a bright, fresh day would suit an ordinary vessel. Silvaro could almost believe that the storm was no coincidence. The gale, the thunder and the pitch-black sky attended the Butcher Ship like consorts.

  They could see figures upon the deck, silhouettes backlit by the ruddy fog. They were grim and still, blades in their hands, as if waiting for the moment to strike.

  ‘Hold the line!’ Roque yelled, sensing that fear was beginning to spoil the firm wall of pavis and pike. A pulse was beating in his head, and he felt sick to his gut. His shoulder itched.

  ‘She’s trying to come around on our port!’ Luka cried. ‘Steer wide! Steer wide! By the gods, it’s like she knows which side we’re vulnerable!’

  Tende raised his eyebrows. ‘Either side of us is vulnerable to that devil,’ he spat.

  ‘Have a care!’ Casaudor roared.

  The Kymera had begun to fire on the Rumour. There was a fierce, rolling crackle of guns, and cannonballs whistled at them. Some splashed the rough water beside them, others shrieked overhead, punching through the luff of the mainsail.

  The Kymera fired again. Every man on the Rumour’s deck dropped, for this time the enemy had range. The ship quivered as if stricken, as blasts tore into hull and rail. Wood splintered, thrown high into the air, and men died. One shot hit the gilded breastwork of the Rumour’s stern, two more shredded through the quarter deck.

  But the damage had only just begun. Alarmed, Luka saw that these were not regular shots they had taken. Fire sprang up at each site of impact, foul red flames that did not belong on earth. It was as if the fell sorcery of the Kymera had spread like an infection into the Rumour’s wounds.

  ‘Douse it! Douse it there!’ Benuto yelled, but no amount of water could quell the creeping red flames.

  Another salvo tore in at them, doing miserable harm and killing over a dozen more men. One shot, from a small saker, hit the rail near Silvaro, bounced off, and rolled across the deck, misfired. Silvaro stared at it. The black iron ball, the size of a grapefruit, was still smoking. Its surface was studded with metal spikes, like the head of a mace. It was a foul thing, an evil star thrown out of heaven.

  ‘Get that off my deck!’ Luka cried, and Saybee hooked it up with a marlinespike to sling it over the rail. Instantly, the lee-helmsman cried out in utter disbelief. Spikes were sprouting out of the black iron sphere, like squat fingers or tendrils, and it clung to the end of his marlinespike as if intending to crawl down it like some ghastly beetle.

  Saybee flung the thing, marlinespike and all, over the side.

  That was enough. ‘Give ’em hell!’ Luka yelled.

  Down in the hot darkness of the gun deck, Sheerglas heard the order and signalled with his linstock.

  The Rumour returned fire. With satisfaction, Luka saw the heavy shots blast into the Kymera, though they seemed to deliver far less damage than he had expected. He suddenly had the dreadful notion that the Butcher Ship might be proofed against mortal damage by some charm or ensorcelment.

  ‘Fire again! Again! At will!’ Luka shouted, and the Rumour’s batteries answered him. The Safire, which had been shadowing the Rumour’s turn, now pulled clear and began an assault of her own. The guns of both Reiver ships blazed at the crimson monster.

  The Kymera showed no sign of being troubled in the least. It came on through the storm, now clearly bent on grappling with the Rumour. The vile red fires on board the Rumour were spreading with terrible fury, and despite all efforts to beat them out or drench them, they could not be quenched.

  XXXI

  Sesto reappeared on deck, carrying the golden box. He was sweating and dirty from smoke, having tried to assist the beating out of the fires below.

  Luka grabbed the box, opened it, and took out the Bite of Daagon. At once, the red flames eating at the Rumour’s structure sputtered and went out, leaving just smouldering, black charring behind.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Luka smiled. ‘A charm against a charm.’

  Sheerglas fired the guns again, and now, where they struck the Kymera’s red hull, there were blasts and savage splintering. They had at last bloodied the Butcher Ship’s nose.

  ‘Again!’ Luka roared. ‘Put canister and faggot shot into their rigging!’

  The blessed canister shot scorched out and caused wild flurries of white fire to cascade along the Kymera’s deck. Rigging tore and twanged away, and some of the shadowy figures fell. But up until the moment they fell, none had yet moved.

  A volley of faggot shot went off next. These shots were metal cylinders cunningly fashioned to come apart in whizzing geometric sections. They struck the Kymera with devastating effect.

  The Reivers began to cheer. ‘Hold the line! Hold it fast!’ Roque yelled at his men-at-arms. His left shoulder was aching miserably now, and his throat was parched. He took a swig of water, but it did little to soothe the terrible dryness.

  The Butcher Ship began to turn, and fired its guns once more. The Rumour took more hits, but more went wide and struck the Safire for the first time. Silke’s craft was not warded by the Bite of Daagon like the Rumour, and crackling red fire took hold of her bows.

  Luka handed the Bite to Sesto. ‘Hold that up and keep it high,’ he ordered. ‘It’s the only luck we’ve got in this fight.’

  The Kymera had closed with them enough for the swivel guns and calivers to start their fusillade. Roque gave the order, and the muskets and long guns started to bark and fizz.

  ‘Gods, but the Safire’s really in trouble,’ Casaudor growled. Silvaro turned to look, and saw that the baleful red fire had spread savagely along the Safire’s starboard side. Two of Silke’s men, ablaze from head to foot, threw themselves over the sloop’s side, but the sea did not put out the flames. Swirling pink light remained visible beneath the waves as the bodies sank, still burning.

  Silke was at the wheel of the Safire, and seemed hell-bent on bringing her around at the Kymera, despite the inferno sweeping across his deck. The few operational guns the Safire had left blasted at the Butcher Ship in defiance.

  ‘Can we not help her?’ Sesto asked, appalled by what he was seeing.

  ‘How?’ Silvaro replied. ‘We’re locked into this with the Kymera now. We can’t break off to go to Silke’s aid. And even if we could, what could we hope to do?’

  ‘Then they must abandon her before they all burn alive,’ Sesto cried. Tende, Saybee and Benuto all shuddered at the words. The dimensions of a pirate’s life were determined by water, but fire was, ironically, his nemesis. The greatest fear of any pirate was to burn alive.

  Silke must have already given that order. Crewmen were leaping off the Safire’s stern into the sea. Two boats had been dropped, and some of the floundering bodies were managing to struggle into them. The Safire continued to power forward, fire leaping up at the masts and rigging, consuming the wide lateen sail like paper. They could still see Silke, alone on the burning poop, standing firm at the wheel, his long, expensive robe on fire.

  ‘Sweet gods,’ Silvaro said. ‘Silke, what are you doing?’

  The doomed Safire, struggling, it seemed, not to die too soon, swept on across the Rumour’s bow. It looked nothing more than a fire-ship, entirely ablaze above the waterline, the raging flames lifting sparks and ash into the air in a huge stream behind it like the glittering train of a noblewoman’s gown. Silvaro now understood Silke’s last, valiant act as a Reiver.

  The Safire smashed into the Kymera’s port bow, fracturing wood and exploding boards. It locked against the Butcher Ship’s side for a moment, burning furiously, and then crumpled away, its back broken. There was a fierce gush of steam and sucking water, and it went down, stern first. The broken bow-end rose up out of the waves like the beak of a whale, and then slithered away rapidly as if it was rolling backwards down a launch ramp. A veil of steam and smoke rose up out of the whirling vortex of whitewater, and there came the sound of timbers cracking and decks compressing. Still burning from the unquenchable eldritch flame, the Safire, like its crewmen before it, sank away, still visible under the water as a ruddy, pulsating glow that slowly, slowly disappeared into the deep.

  Sesto was astonished. Silke had always seemed one of the more slippery, less reliable men in the company, with affections as much for Guido as for Luka. But he had gone to his end in such a display of tenacious courage and loyalty to the company that Sesto suddenly wished he had known the man better. All pirates wear disguises and mask their true selves, for better or for ill. Sailing with the Reivers had taught Sesto that at least. But Silke’s crafty, distanced exterior had clearly concealed a most excellent and intrepid heart.

  In truth though, and this was galling to see, Silke’s sacrifice had won little or no advantage. Though blackened and torn, the Kymera’s bows were still sound. It had withstood the ramming action.

  As if exhilarated by the overthrow of a second adversary, the Butcher Ship renewed its attack on the Rumour, doubling its fury. Its guns howled and boomed across the storm-driven spray, and piteous injury was taken by the brigantine. Though warded against the infection of the red flame, the Rumour was still vulnerable to the force of the whizzing cannon balls. Gunwales exploded in blizzards of fine wood-shards. Men exploded in mists of gore. Chunks of the main wale burst like the skin of a fruit. Three metres of the jib boom tore off at the jack staff. Shrouds and tackle stripped away from the mainmast like spiderweb in a typhoon. There was a terrible cracking and rending of hull timbers.

  Two of the Kymera’s shots had impacted just above the waist and ripped into the gun deck. By some lucky chance, no powder was touched, but two positions – the second culverin and the third cannon – were obliterated. The terrible impacts destroyed the weapons, shattering solid wood carriages and fracturing the iron of muzzles. The gun-teams manning each weapon were either struck dead by the concussion of the hits, or slaughtered in the welter of fragments and shrapnel that immediately followed. Two powder boys died too, and men in adjacent teams were wounded. Smoke, thick and hot, filled the gun deck.

  Sheerglas got to his feet. He had been knocked down by the blast. He winced, and looked down to see a splinter of gun carriage wood, the length of a man’s forearm, impaled through his belly. Sheerglas grimaced and slowly dragged it out of him. No blood came with it. It had missed his heart by a finger length.

  ‘Better luck next time, Henri,’ he growled, and tossed the splinter away.

  ‘On your feet! On your feet!’ he started to yell. ‘Resume firing! Fire at will, as ready! Move, you dogs, or I’ll sup upon you! Come on, now!’

  The pale gun-teams scrambled to their master’s bidding.

  ‘Clear this tangle away!’ Sheerglas demanded, indicating the wreckage and the broken bodies. ‘You men on the port! Do it! Bring two cannon across in rapid fashion! No, three! There’s hole enough for three now!’

  The gunners hurried forward, shovelling the debris clear and showing no care for the mutilated bodies they swept aside. If there was time for service later, so be it. Hauling on the drag ropes, they heaved three of the port-side weapons over and lashed them in place, their muzzles running out through the scar in the Rumour’s side where two gun ports had previously stood.

  ‘Charge them!’ Sheerglas yelled, as the other guns started to boom and roar again. He felt weak, giddy.

  ‘To me, boy!’ he called to the nearest powder monkey, a lad of fourteen years. Knowing what was expected, the boy hurried over and turned his head to the left. Sheerglas leaned over and bit deep, taking his measure from the youth’s neck.

  ‘Good lad,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘Now back to your duties quick smart.’

  Sheerglas felt better at once, lifted, vitalised. ‘Quicker with the rods, you bastards! Quicker and quicker still! Let’s pound this monster down to devil Manann’s locker!’

  The thunder of the Rumour’s guns renewed, and Luka was glad. But still the Kymera was punishing them fiercely. Simple logic dictated that they would eventually lose this frenzied brawl. The Butcher Ship was bigger, and outgunned them.

  ‘We have to close!’ Roque yelled, running up onto the poop. ‘Let us bring this down to sword and pistol and try it that way, for this cannon fight can only end in our deaths!’

  Roque seemed almost wild in his countenance. His shirt was ripped open, and where every other man on the Rumour was sweating like a hog, his skin was dry and tight. Sesto could see that he was agitated. There were marks upon his exposed left shoulder, around the fresh scar there. Splinter wounds, most would believe. But Sesto realised they were the marks of feverish scratching.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

  ‘Yes!’ Roque snapped at him. ‘This is not the time for–’

  ‘I think it is,’ Sesto said.

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ Roque turned back to Luka. ‘For damnation’s sake, let’s close now, while I still have men left in the pavis line to put aboard!’

  ‘If we come in, we’ll be right at their mercy for the last few yards,’ Luka said.

  ‘We’re at their mercy now!’ Roque cried.

  ‘You know how this works, Roque. The closer we bring ourselves, the more they will strike us, and the harder. Attempting to close and board under this assault could finish us.’

  ‘I think we’re finished anyway,’ Casaudor said quietly. ‘Let’s do as Roque says and come in. We’ve nothing left to lose.’

  A fresh noise came in, across the rush of the storm and the fury of the bombardment: the crump of distant guns. Plumes of water burst up from the roiling sea around the Butcher Ship.

  Silvaro and the others ran to the port-side rail and gazed out into the rain and the tempest darkness. Red flashes again, another round of guns, out in the distance, in the outer limits of the bay.

  And then they saw her.

  Full sheeted, coming in at them like a monster of the deep, square-rigged and glorious under the ink-black sky.

  The Lightning Tree.

  ‘The old rogue has not forgotten us after all,’ Silvaro murmured. ‘Gods bless him for his loyalty.’

  Regal and splendid, and every bit a match for the Kymera in size and guns, the Lightning Tree bore down, firing as she came. She left an immense, fuming wake of white gunsmoke trailing off behind her on the wind.

  ‘Now we close!’ Luka cried. ‘Now we damn well close!’

  Tende hauled on the wheel, Saybee adding his muscle to the effort. Roque leapt down off the poop and ordered his men-at-arms up to ready. The shields clattered together, and the pikes ran out through them. The caliver men began firing at the Kymera’s port side as it rushed close in.

  The Lightning Tree ran around the sterns of the two ships in such a wide turn her sails were momentarily taken aback. She gybed hard, and bit into the wind again, riding up along the Butcher Ship’s starboard quarter and unleashing firepower from her yawning gun ports.

  Vento’s men threw out fenders as the Rumour came in against the crimson monster’s port beam. The calivers and swivel guns set off a fizzling tumult as the two ships came together, and bowmen in the ratlines stuck the enemy deck with arrows and bolts.

  In the misty, glowing redness of the Kymera’s decks, the Reivers could see the figures of its crew, silent and unnaturally still, waiting for the assault.

  The ships thumped and scraped together with a violent judder. The Reivers hurled out lines and hooks, catching at the rail and gunwales and hauling the vessels tight against one another. Musket and caliver fire rang out from the Kymera’s sheets, and men in Roque’s line dropped or lurched backwards. Some of the shots had actually punched through the targettes and raised shields.