Page 29 of The Devils

You Did It Now

Brother Diaz spun around at an almighty crash to see a bloody mess of broken shell had plummeted into the smouldering heap of straw from high above, one barnacle-crusted claw twitching.

‘Holy—’ he gasped as something else fell on top with a tinkling of glass.

He recoiled as burning oil shot out, spraying the deck with fiery puddles. He stumbled back, trying to slap away a flaming patch on the crotch of his habit, and blundered into Vigga.

‘Fire!’ he gasped.

‘Weapon,’ she growled, waving her empty hand towards him.

‘What?’

She snapped her fingers as figures began to form beyond her, at once shrouded in murk and lit by flickering flames. The whole episode was feeling more and more like hell with every moment. ‘Weapon!’ she snarled.

Brother Diaz cast about the wreckage on the tipping deck, clawed a fallen hatchet from a dead sailor’s hand, and slapped it into Vigga’s. She flung it at a soldier as he came from the smoke, catching him in the shoulder and spinning him like a child’s top.

‘Weapon!’

Brother Diaz fumbled up a fallen sword and tossed it, she snatched it from the air and bent it in half around a man’s head. He managed a few steps before he fell in the fire, which was spreading rapidly up the rigging nearby.

‘Weapon!’

Brother Diaz threw her a fallen shield and she swung it, knocked a mace flying from a man’s hand, smashed his knee sideways with the rim, smashed his teeth out with it as he fell, then flung the splintered wreckage away.

‘Weapon!’

Brother Diaz groaned as he dragged up a huge axe with a pick on the back, wedging the haft into Vigga’s hand as an armoured figure lumbered from the smoke.

Vigga shoved Brother Diaz clear so hard he sat down, a sword flashing past and hacking into the deck where he’d been standing. Vigga rolled away, came up quick as a snake, chopped at the soldier’s side and made him totter, chopped at his leg and made him stumble, ducked under a wild sword swing then reared up, spinning the axe so the head was backwards, and buried the pick-end in the top of the man’s helmet with a metallic thud.

‘Saviour protect us,’ breathed Brother Diaz, scrambling clear as the man crashed onto the deck beside him, blood spreading from his ruined helmet in a widening pool.

‘Weapon,’ growled Vigga, snapping her fingers again. ‘Weapon!’

Alex dragged herself up, frayed rope scraping her arms, weathered wood digging at her chest, spraying spit as she groaned through her clenched teeth, and finally tumbled onto her back, gasping for air.

Blue sky above, and clouds moving, and a little frayed flag snapping at the very top of the mast.

‘Alex,’ came Sunny’s voice.

‘I’ll just lie here,’ she whispered. ‘Here’s fine.’

‘Here’s not fine.’ Sunny caught Alex’s elbow and hauled her up to sitting. ‘Not fine at all .’

So this was a crosstrees. One of those things you’ve heard of, sounded vaguely interesting, but you’d never, ever want to actually visit. Like England.

A couple of weather-worn planks clinging to the top of the mast and a tangle of ropes. That was all it was. God, it was windy. Dragging at Alex’s hair, tugging at her clothes, chilling the sweat on her face. She could hear the mast creaking. Feel the mast swaying. It was at quite the angle now. She hooked one arm around it and clung on tight, stomach rolling.

‘We have to move,’ said Sunny.

‘Move?’ Alex would’ve laughed if she hadn’t been so terrified. ‘Where?’ Wasn’t like they could go up again. There was no up. Not unless they both sprouted wings. Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t even have been the most surprising thing to happen that afternoon.

‘Along the top yard.’ Sunny nodded sideways. ‘Then across to the galley.’

So matter of fact, she said it. Like directions to the inn. Down the street and second on the right.

‘Along the top yard ?’ breathed Alex, staring at the cross-beam the topsail hung from. A narrow spar, netted with ropes, stretching away to end in empty air maybe ten strides off. At that moment it looked like ten miles.

‘Across … to the galley ?’ Her voice faded to a reedy croak on the last word. With their ship leaning over, the very end of the yard was close to the sloping spar that held the great front sail of the galley. How close exactly was hard to say. But the empty air between the two was undeniable.

Very empty, and very, very high.

‘You’re fucking mad ,’ muttered Alex.

Sunny shrugged. ‘And I’m probably the least mad out of us.’ She looked so calm, crouching there with her white hair flicking in the wind. Like she was crouching by a campfire. ‘If you’ve got a better idea, I’m … all ears .’

Alex stared at her for a moment, then forced through her gritted teeth, along with a quantity of spit, ‘Was that a joke ?’

Sunny looked pleased. ‘Yes! All ears. I’m an elf. We have big ears and skinny bodies, so—’

‘I fucking get it !’ screeched Alex.

‘I thought it was a good one.’ Sunny looked slightly crestfallen. ‘People are so weird. You want to go first or second?’

‘Neither!’ shrieked Alex. She was crying again, and she had snot leaking from one nostril, but she didn’t dare peel her aching hands from the mast to wipe it. ‘Fucking neither.’

Sunny raised her pale brows as she peered downwards. ‘So … crab-men, then?’

Baptiste lunged and Balthazar floundered back, one blade whipping past his ear.

Had this sorcerer been half the knife-fighter Baptiste was, Balthazar would already have been carved like a sabbath joint. Fortunately, he was not, and Baptiste with characteristic obstinacy was clearly making some effort to resist his control, the lashes of her blades stiff and wild at once. Stiff, and wild, but still highly deadly. Balthazar gasped as he slopped clear of another thrust, the knife thudding into a crate beside him. Baptiste abandoned it, buried in the splintered timber, and instantly drew another. He deemed it unlikely she would run out of daggers before she managed to stick one of them into some vital part of him. Honestly, he regarded none of his parts as expendable.

He was reduced, as so often of late, to humiliating retreat, clutching at any object he found floating and flinging it at her – scraps of planking, a coil of soaked rope, a cabbage – in the faint hope of jarring that cursed needle loose. Baptiste knocked this junk mechanically away, apart from the cabbage, which she sliced neatly in half, a demonstration of the extreme keenness of her weapons that did his confidence no favours whatsoever.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ snarled Baptiste and her puppeteer, together. She lunged, a blade hissing past Balthazar’s hand and leaving a distinct stinging sensation across his fingers. His back hit the curving wall of the hold as she raised both daggers to stab at him and he had no choice but to throw himself forwards, her wrists slapping into his wet palms.

They struggled, his eyes wide as he tried to focus on the waggling points of both knives at once. He squealed as one nicked his shoulder, squawked as the other pricked his neck, then groaned as Baptiste dragged him in a floundering circle and flung him into the ram, his head cracking against its metal cap.

She was long and lean and shockingly strong. It was like grappling with a great eel. That he , Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi, should be wrestling over a pair of daggers while up to his waist in salt water in the hold of a sinking ship with a possessed jack of all trades, and losing . He had always harboured a ready contempt for the physical, of course, but as he wheezed with effort, every muscle trembling, he began to wonder whether taking occasional exercise might have been a sensible use of his time down the years. Baptiste bent him back, both blades aimed at his face, both his fists around her slippery wrists, a patch of daylight illuminating the side of her oddly immobile face.

The water lapped first at his shoulders, then at his neck, then at his ears as, with a terrible inevitability, he was driven downwards. He twisted his face sideways, struggling to put an extra inch or two between his skin and those gleaming points – and saw the corpse of the cabin boy bobbing in the water.

He clenched his teeth as he stretched his will towards it, running quickly through the verses in his mind, squeezing the fluids into motion. That was never straightforward with a drowned corpse, especially for a magician in the process of being drowned himself, there was far too much fluid around altogether, and more flooding into the hold with every moment, but he flatly refused to die in such a humiliating manner!

The cabin boy jerked up with a look of profound shock. His eyes bulged from the pressure and one popped out and dangled about on the front of his pale face. He reeled around, arms flailing, bounced off Baptiste, clutched stiffly for the needle with both hands, caught her ear and tried to pull that off instead, only succeeded in twisting her head slightly, needle and rune still very much attached.

Her expression did not change as she wrenched one arm free of Balthazar and stabbed the cabin boy’s corpse cleanly through the one eye still in his head. He toppled back, clutching uselessly at nothing with some vestigial desire of the unstabbed half of his brain.

‘Quiet now,’ said Baptiste, working her knee against Balthazar’s chest and forcing him down into the water, forcing her remaining dagger down towards him. A long, thin dagger, point glinting in a shaft of sunlight. He strained his free hand towards it, taking a choking mouthful of salt water as the sea lapped over his face, missed entirely and, far more by accident than planning, plucked the needle from Baptiste’s forehead.

She dropped like a scarecrow with its stick pulled out, and he caught her as he came up, spluttering for air, hardly able to see for the wet hair stuck across his face.

‘Baptiste?’ he gasped, for some reason wishing he knew her first name. Removing the needle without preparation was a risk. There was no way of knowing how long it would take her to return. Or even if she would return. ‘Are you—’

Which was when he felt a stabbing pain in the middle of his own forehead, where the little bead of blood was even now forming on hers.

Their blades clashed, Jakob lunged with his shield and missed, stumbled against the rail, pain lancing through his knee, saw the glint as Constans’s sword whipped at him, barely got his up in time to steer it wide, flinched as it hacked splinters from the rail beside him, chopped clumsily back but hit only smoke.

Eudoxia of Troy’s third son was already dancing away.

Not the best start. But Jakob had fought a lot of duels. A lifetime of them.

He remembered the first time he fought Heinrich Gross, on that bridge over the Rhine. Nobody thought he’d win that one. But he had. Even if, in the long run, it turned out badly for all concerned. You can’t always pick a winner from the opening moves.

He covered, knowing his own shortcomings and using every advantage he could winkle out, sticking to the highest corner of the sloping deck, conserving his strength, shield up and knees bent. That cost him, in pain. But an awful lot less than being stabbed would’ve.

‘That shield isn’t terribly sporting,’ grumbled Constans. ‘Care to set it aside?’

Jakob eyed him over the rim. ‘If you wanted sport you didn’t have to send your fish-people first.’ And he planted his boot on one of their heads, blood welling from the great gash he’d left in it.

Constans grinned. ‘Fair point.’ He danced forwards, which Jakob was ready for, then whipped sideways, which Jakob wasn’t. He only just got his shield over, sparks flying from its rim and sending him stumbling back. By the time he countered, Constans had found a comfortable range again, and only had to lean back an inch and smile as Jakob’s point whisked harmlessly past.

‘A brave effort,’ he murmured, ‘but a doomed one.’ He darted in and Jakob shuffled back, staving lightning jabs away with his shield, smoke scraping at his lungs with every breath. The fire was spreading, the rigging in flames above, maybe one of the sails, too, ash floating down. Constans didn’t seem worried, though. Always smiling, his sword held so loose it looked as if it might slip from his plump fingers, but always ready to flick up as deftly as a painter’s brush.

A fancy and ridiculous sword, but also, plainly, a very good one. As Constans was a fancy and ridiculous swordsman, but also, even more plainly, a very good one. The duke grinned wider, as if he guessed exactly what Jakob was thinking.

‘I never enjoyed swordsmanship, but despite making very little effort, I’ve always been truly superb at it. My fencing masters were consistently astonished. Marcian tried twice as hard and was half as good. It always infuriated him. Even more than most things. My uncle used to say I had a God-given talent. I’ve really never found anyone who could match me.’

‘Maybe I’ll surprise you,’ growled Jakob, starting to severely doubt it.

‘I almost hope so.’ Constans circled, feeling out Jakob’s considerable weaknesses. ‘I do hate a tale with a predictable ending.’

He pounced again, quick, so quick, Jakob parried, thrust, sure he had the centre, but Constans had already sidestepped, catching Jakob across the sword arm. He willed his ankle not to give as he spun about, sinking behind his shield again, fending off a flurry of jabs that pecked splinters from the wood. He could feel the sticky warmth of blood inside his sleeve, the throb of the new wound starting to come on. Constans watched, sword’s point utterly still, utterly ready, the only evidence of his efforts a slight pinking of his plump cheeks.

Jakob had fought many duels. A lifetime of them.

Enough to know when he wasn’t going to win.

‘Here,’ said Vigga, offering Brother Diaz her hand.

‘Am I … alive?’ He could feel wetness down the front of his habit, scrabbled at it in a desperate effort to locate the fatal wound, then realised the inkwell had shattered in his satchel and soaked him from the waist down in black dye.

‘So far.’ Vigga hauled him from the tangle of bodies. They saw at the same time the hand she’d used was slathered with gore. ‘Oh.’ She wiped it awkwardly on the front of her leather vest, but that was slathered with gore as well. ‘Ah. Bit messy …’ Whoever would’ve thought, a few months ago, when he was diligently reviewing the monastery’s accounts, that slathered with gore would be a phrase he routinely employed?

He blinked at the corpses. The one with the sword bent around his head and the one with his guts unwound across the deck and the big one with the front of his helmet smashed right in. ‘You saved me,’ he gasped.

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’ Vigga narrowed her eyes as she peered into the smoke. ‘Where did our princess get—’ She flinched, then gave a low growl. ‘Ah, Loki’s tits .’ Brother Diaz realised there was an arrow stuck through the meat of her tattooed shoulder, the bloody head pointing right at him.

‘You’re shot!’ he squeaked.

‘You think?’ she snarled, backing towards him. There were figures ahead of her, in the smoke. ‘That way.’ She jerked her head at the steps up to the forecastle. ‘Go.’

She backed off, and behind her, he backed off. It was becoming something of a habit. Up the sloping deck they crept, towards the prow. Her right arm hung limp, blood dripping from her dangling fingers and spotting the planks.

‘How many are there?’ he whispered.

‘Enough,’ she hissed, reaching up to grip the arrow-shaft and snapping off the flights with a grunt. ‘Pull it out.’

He licked his lips. Whoever would’ve thought, a few months ago, when the definition of a harrowing task had been reorganising one of the high shelves in the library, that he would be called on to pull arrows out of werewolves?

‘Our Saviour …’ he gripped her shoulder with one trembling hand, ‘light of the world …’ and gripped the shaft just below the head with the other. ‘Deliver us from—’

‘Arrows,’ Vigga snarled as he wrenched it out, dissolving into a throbbing growl deep in her throat. He tried to grip the wound, but blood squelched around his hands, between his inky fingers, running down his wrists and into his habit.

‘It’s bleeding!’

‘You think?’ Her voice sounded strange. Sweet Saint Beatrix, were her teeth even more pronounced than usual? ‘I’m safe,’ she whispered, breathing hard. ‘I’m clean.’ An odd choice of words from someone covered in gore. ‘I’ve got … the wolf muzzled.’ She stumbled and fell to one knee.

‘God help us …’ squeaked Brother Diaz, half-squatting beside her, half-hiding behind her, plucking weakly at her bloody shoulder. The wind wafted the smoke away for a moment and he glimpsed soldiers crossing the deck. More clambering down from the galley. He’d no idea where the others were. If they were still alive, even. ‘I think …’ He could hardly believe he was going to say the words, then an arrow flitted down and stuck wobbling into the deck beside him, and he blurted them in a rush. ‘We might need the wolf!’

Vigga’s eye twitched towards him. ‘The wolf’s a traitor. A devil. Once it’s loose—’

‘But can you fight all those?’ He nodded towards the shapes rising from the murk, flinched as another arrow stuck into the deck on their other side. ‘With one arm?’

‘’Course I can,’ she said, swaying slightly.

‘Can you win ?’

‘Eh …’ She dropped forwards onto her hands, blood soaking through her vest, running down one tattooed arm in streaks.

‘Sometimes …’ There was no escaping Cardinal Zizka’s conclusion. ‘A devil is what you need.’

Vigga’s breath came crackly. Her eyelids flickered. ‘Then you … had better hide .’ With all the blood, smoke, and tattoos it was hard to be sure, but he’d a sense dark hair was starting to sprout from her shoulders.

‘Sweet Saint Beatrix,’ whispered Brother Diaz. What had he done? He started to back away, tearing off the ink-soaked wreckage of his satchel and flinging it into the sea, but he was running out of deck in every sense, creeping towards the triangle of planking as it narrowed to the bowsprit.

He teetered onto it, crouching at the stricken ship’s very prow, trying not to think about the drop to the sea on both sides. He snatched a glance back, saw the figures closing in on Vigga, weapons levelled.

Her head jerked sideways, one shoulder hunched, swelled. There was a sickening crunch as a spasm twisted her back into an impossible shape.

‘ Sweet Saint Beatrix,’ whimpered Brother Diaz, tearing his eyes from the unholy transformation and clambering down below the bowsprit, out of sight. He clung tight to the weatherworn figurehead. He pressed his face into the flaking gilt on her woody bosom. Not for the first time, he wished he was with Mother.

And oh, how lovely to be back!

The Vigga-Wolf let her tongue flop out and lie heavy on the woody salty planks where smoke and blood and the rumour of violence tickled at her nose-holes.

There were many questions rattling in her mind. What had she been doing? Why was her foreleg sore? Why was she on a boat and why was the deck so slantwise? But the Vigga-Wolf’s mind was not very big, there was barely room for one question at a time, and the one that bubbled to the top and squished all the rest was the one that always did.

Where was the good meat?

Then another.

Who were these fuzzy fuckers pointing toothpicks at her?

Smoke drew a coy little veil across the deck so they couldn’t get a proper look at each other. So they couldn’t tell her shape, pressed to the deck as she was with her claws gouging the wood, wriggling back and forth with shoulders low and haunches high, itching to spring, all quivery with anticipation.

And then an ever-so-playful breeze snatched the smoke away and they were all of a sudden introduced. Three men with spears and helmets on all prettily trimmed with gold and full to the eyebrows with meat.

She was very pleased to see them, her smile of welcome so hugely wide and slobbery. But they were not equally happy to make her acquaintance.

‘Oh God,’ said one.

People often said that when they met the Vigga-Wolf, which was a puzzle because she doubted she and God looked much alike. So she pounced on the man and clawed him and shook him so his insides came out in a red slither.

One of the others stabbed at her with his spear and she tiptoed over it, then when he stabbed again, she slithered under it, but after a few stabs she got bored of being where the spear wasn’t so plucked it from his hand and ripped his chest open with her jaws and snuffled and licked at the slop inside but it was unsatisfactory.

The last one tossed his spear away and ran but only got a step before the Vigga-Wolf was on him, quick as regrets, catching him by the neck and jerking him about so furiously his head flew off and bounced across the deck. She was starting to snuffle the bits from his throat-hole when she had a thought.

She’d had a monk, hadn’t she? A monk of her very own.

And she spun around but couldn’t see him and it came to her perhaps they’d killed him and that cooked her to the extremes of quivering fury ’cause if anyone was going to kill anyone it’d fucking well be her. The rage pulled her head right back and twisted her spine like a corkscrew and tore a ripping howl from her so loud it scoured her on the inside and blew a great mist of blood from her gaping jaws.

Vengeance, now, filled up her whole mind and boiled over.

She whipped and skittered across the slippery deck, gouging a couple of soldiers on the way and leaving them slit and screaming, and she bunched up and sprang, first onto the ram, then the platform above, and slunk over the top and onto the other ship. The big, bad, fishy-smelling ship.

Are ships alive? Do ships dream? Do ships hold meat? She would find out. She would break it open.

She would gnaw upon it till she found the good meat.

Wherever it was hid.