Page 30 of The Devils

A Draw Is Enough

Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi was not a man to be taken entirely by surprise.

He had seen the needle, recognised the rune, at once understood the methodology. The instant he felt the pinprick, and with it the chilly intrusion of the sorcerer’s mind, he began to mouth the first verse of Jahaziel, a reliable all-rounder. He stamped the symbols into his consciousness, arranged in the proper hexagon, and made them blaze forth with all his outrage. He fashioned from them an impenetrable rampart, then – dismissing the distraction of an unearthly howl echoing through the flooding hold from somewhere above – focused all his will upon a single point, and in the centre of that hexagon began to drill a hole.

For the needle and the rune were not like the galley’s ram: a weapon striking in one direction only. They were a breach through which an assault could be mounted, but from which canny defenders could also sally forth. They were a conduit between two minds, and through it Balthazar now reached, ready to turn the tables on this bumptious body-burglar … when he felt himself stopped.

Moving his actual physical eyes was exceedingly testing, but he forced them to roll upwards. The sorcerer was mouthing his own verses, eyes narrowed with furious concentration, finger and thumb rooted to the needle, frozen, like Balthazar, at the very moment it had punctured his skin.

To have been rendered a slave by the Mother of the Church was embarrassment enough; to be made a marionette by some sideshow trickster was a humiliation too far. Balthazar redoubled his efforts. He swept everything else away, ignoring the rushing water as it poured in around the ram, ignoring the chill up to his stomach as it lapped ever higher, ignoring the stabbing pain in his forehead. He forced his will back down the needle, through the rune, and into the sorcerer’s mind.

Balthazar was gaining the upper hand, could feel, through a prickling fuzz, the man’s finger and thumb trembling on the needle as if they were his own. A little longer. A hint … more …

Something was wrong. He was having trouble mouthing the syllables. His image of the charm was growing blurred … was he breathing, still? He was not! While Balthazar had been struggling to grip this sorcerer’s slippery brain, the sneaky bastard had outflanked him and seized control of his diaphragm!

His sight was dimming, he could not maintain the verses. The chilly presence of the phrenomancer crept into his head, like the cold into the blood of a man stranded on a glacier. He felt the needle twist and his legs were forced to bend. His back slid down the ram, his knees hit the deck, up to his shoulders in the chilly water.

Balthazar strained to lift his hands. Move his fingers, even. But he was still holding Baptiste, arms locked rigid around the soaked dead weight of her.

Pale and blurry in the shadows above him he saw the slack face of Eudoxia’s student twitch. Saw his mouth curl into a thin smile.

‘A brave effort.’ Balthazar realised it was not the phrenomancer’s voice that spoke, it was his own. ‘But a doomed one. Now, if we have cleared up the question of who controls whom, it is time to lie back and accept the sea into your lungs, so we can urggggh—’

Baptiste’s arm jerked from the water and buried a blade in the sorcerer’s throat.

The icy intrusion began to drain from Balthazar’s mind as Baptiste’s other hand caught a fistful of the sorcerer’s soaked robe. Black blood trickled from the corners of his mouth, ran from the grip of the knife as he pawed at it with fumbling fingers.

‘Prick me in the forehead?’ she hissed, twisting free of Balthazar’s rigid arms. The sorcerer’s eyes rolled up as she slid out another dagger and lifted it high, wet-beaded blade gleaming. ‘Let me return the favour .’

The blade made a pop like a log splitting as she buried it right between his eyes. Probably not the easiest place to stab a man, but Balthazar had to admit that for poetic justice it would take some beating.

Eudoxia’s apprentice slid down into the water and Balthazar felt his body suddenly released. He heaved in a breath, coughed, and heaved in another. He ripped the needle from his forehead, nearly falling, his legs a jelly.

Baptiste caught him under the arms and heaved him up against the ram. The two of them leaned against each other for a moment, both breathing hard.

‘Magic … may be the ultimate expression … of man’s triumph over nature,’ she forced through gritted teeth. ‘But sometimes you’ve just got to stab a bastard.’

‘For once,’ gasped Balthazar, ‘we are in accord. One could even say … that we make quite the effective …’

Baptiste was not listening. She had let go of him and was frowning towards the entrance. It was lost beneath the rushing waters, which now came as high as her chest, and were still rising.

‘Ah,’ said Balthazar.

‘Do you need a moment?’ asked Constans.

Jakob’s problem was that he’d had too many moments, not too few. He’d tried every trick he could think of. Tripping the duke over corpses, slipping him on their blood, distracting him with talk, then with silence, using the steepening slope of the deck, the rail, the mast, the smoke, the sun, the ballista bolt wedged into the floor. None of it had worked. None of it had even come close to working.

‘Better finish up,’ he managed to mutter. ‘Ship’s sinking.’

‘And burning.’ Constans glanced at the ash floating down around them, as if at an unseasonal snowfall that would entirely ruin his plans for the afternoon. ‘What happened to that cheeky waif Alexia? Did I see her up in the rigging somewhere?’

Jakob took the opportunity to lunge and Constans flicked it contemptuously away. ‘You really should’ve handed her over. It would’ve been easier for everyone.’

‘No doubt,’ grunted Jakob, ‘but I always find myself taking the hard way.’

The duke grinned. ‘I am the exact opposite.’

He darted forwards, made Jakob lurch back, wincing as his weight went through his bad hip, his bad knee, his bad ankles. He managed to parry the first cut on an instinct, managed to block the second with his shield, bitter edge raking the rim as Constans flitted past, already out of range of a counter, and back on his guard anyway.

Jakob hadn’t so much as touched the bastard. Too fast, too skilful, too damn young . He was every bit as good as he’d said. If anything, he’d been modest. Jakob was bleeding from a dozen little slashes, nicks, and scratches. Could feel the stickiness of blood against the grip of his sword. Trickling down his cheek. One boot squelching with it at every step. It was getting difficult to breathe, let alone fight. He hardly even had the strength to disguise the fact any longer.

‘Would you care to tell me your name,’ asked Constans, ‘before it’s all over?’

‘Do you care?’

‘Well, not a lot. But it’s the done thing in a duel, isn’t it?’ He feinted and made Jakob stumble back, shield up. ‘And I thought you might appreciate my asking. Appreciate the sense that this all … means something.’ He feinted again, and again Jakob fell for it. ‘Rather than just … Tuesday afternoon?’

Jakob had fought many duels. A lifetime of them. Enough to know when he was losing. But he told himself he didn’t have to win. Only buy time. He thought he’d heard Vigga’s howl, so anything could happen. And he trusted Sunny. With luck, she’d already got Alex to safety.

‘Oh God,’ whispered Alex.

She’d always thought she was good with heights, but this wasn’t some shuffle down a roof-ridge.

She could feel the space yawn beneath her. The plunging emptiness. The wind making the sailcloth flap, her clothes rustle, the mast creak as it leaned ever further.

She focused on the wood right in front of her, on the ropes on top that she clung to, the ropes underneath she shuffled her feet along. She kept going, dogged, till she reached out and found there was nothing to grip.

‘Good!’ she heard Sunny say. ‘You made it to the end.’ The elf was perched a few strides away on the great sloping beam that held the galley’s front sail. ‘Don’t look down.’

Alex looked down right off, of course. A dizzying drop to the channel of foaming water between the two ships. Mast dwindling away towards the distant deck. Figures there, some moving, some definitely not, and … were the sails on fire? The ratlines, too, turning into flaming nets, smoke billowing in grey clouds.

‘Oh God,’ she squeaked, then heard a blood-curdling howl down below. ‘Is that Vigga?’

‘Never mind. Stand up on the yardarm.’

‘On the what?’

‘The timber that holds the sail is called the yard, the end of the yard is called—’

‘Is this the best time for a lesson in fucking nautical terminology ?’ screamed Alex, the wind whipping the spit from her bared teeth.

‘Fine, we can go through it later.’

‘What?’

‘If you’re alive.’

‘ What? ’

‘Stand up and jump!’ Sunny held out her hand. ‘I’ll catch you!’

‘How can you catch me? You weigh a third of nothing!’

‘All right.’ Sunny took her hand back. ‘I won’t catch you.’

‘You won’t catch me?’ screeched Alex.

‘Well, make your mind up!’

The one like a lobster had made it to the crosstrees, was clambering out along the yard towards her.

‘Oh God,’ whimpered Alex. Slowly, surely, gripping with her hands, she shuffled her feet up onto the yard. She told herself it was like a roof-ridge. Long as you didn’t look down. Or back. Or anywhere. She inched her feet towards her trembling fingers. The timber creaked under her, swayed, nothing flat, nothing straight. The smoke was making her cry. That or the abject terror.

‘Just jump!’ shouted Sunny.

The flames were spreading. She took one hand from the wood, lifted it, wobbling. She wanted to look back. Made herself stare ahead, fixed on Sunny’s hand, fixed on the sloping beam. She told herself that was safety.

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’ She took the other hand away. She made herself do it. She straightened, arms out wide. She stood. Balancing.

On the end of the yard. The yardarm, or whatever.

Far, far above the sea.

She bent her knees, gathering herself, eyes fixed on where she was going. Fixed on safety. Fixed on freedom.

‘Fuuuuuuck!’ she screamed at no one, and it became a howl as mindless as Vigga’s as she jumped, the wind plucking at her clothes, her hair, plucking her voice away. She flailed wildly with every limb, as though she could swim through air. Which she could. Every bit as well as she could swim through water, anyway.

The beam rushed up at her and—

‘Ooooof …’ Breath driven out in a ragged wheeze as it punched her in the groin, then an instant later the chest, then an instant later right in the face, filling her mouth with blood and her skull with blinding light.

‘Alex!’ A hand grabbed at her shirt. She grunted, annoyed, waved them away. Wanted to sleep in. She was sliding down, though. Sliding out of bed. Everything on a tilt. Her eyelids fluttered, all bright and sparkly, and—

She dragged in a great breath. A glimpse of the reeling deck of the galley, little benches and little oars, so far below. A glimpse of the churning sea below that. Smoke billowing from their burning ship.

‘Oh Goth,’ whispered Alex, her face numb, her legs wrapped around the sloping yard like she’d hump the damn thing. Arms hugging it like she’d marry it afterwards. She’d had less considerate lovers, to be fair.

‘Oh Goth.’ Her mouth was one great throb. She tried to check whether she still had all her teeth but her tongue was too battered to tell. Her skinned hands were full of splinters and her arms were grazed to the meat and her sore chest was bruised like she’d done a bare-fist bout with Bostro, wheezing and sobbing with her salty teeth gritted and her eyes squeezed shut.

She could hear something, though, over the fumbling wind and the billowing sailcloth and her own pounding heartbeat. Crashing, and snarling, and terrified screaming.

‘Don’t look down,’ said Sunny.

The Vigga-Wolf padded between the benches of the nasty fishy ship, where the oarsmen sat.

They weren’t sitting there any more, of course. They were screaming and blubbering and scrambling over each other to get away from her. She remembered everything that walked or crawled or flew was terrified of her. This was the proper state of things. But another memory came with it. Pulling an oar of her own at a bench of her own, smiling while they rode the whale road, singing with the crew on the way to adventure. The Vigga-Wolf couldn’t sing, so whose dream was this?

She sank back on her haunches, confused.

What had she been doing?

Ah! Vengeance and good meat! And she dived among the fleeing oarsmen, ripping and biting and showering a mess of blood and bits. There were lots of them, though, and it was her tragedy that she never could kill everything however hard she tried. Most got away, scrambling over the benches and scurrying up the sides of the ship to fling themselves into the sea. The sea is bitter and vengeful but nowhere near so bitter nor so vengeful nor so furry as the Vigga-Wolf.

She was very furry. She paused to admire the clotty clumps of it on the back of her leg-arms. Arm-legs? So bristly and warm, like a lovely sticky cushion. She tried to hug herself but got all twisted and went crashing and thrashing through the benches.

‘I want a hug!’ she screamed, and a man came clanking and rattling at her. A great big man covered in metal and swinging a sword so the answer on hugs was likely a no. She slithered away, over the oars and under them, and he chopped nothing but benches.

She could hear him roaring at her from inside his metal head, could smell his mouthwatering scent floating from his metal body. He had a plume on top all feathery and purple and she bit at it but got the feathers up her nose and danced away sneezing.

He clomped after her, lifting his sword high, and she sprang on him and rammed him against the mast so hard the whole ship shook. The iron case was very knobbly, but she smashed him with one claw and the other, made him ring like a bell, dented him and punctured him and raked the mast with claw marks, too.

She ripped at him, and she ripped at the mast behind him, sparks and splinters, blood and splinters, till one of his arms dangled by a flap with blood spurting about. He fell leaking and she smashed at the mast, gouging the wood deep with her claws and distant through a mist another remembering – chopping, chopping, tock tock of the axe, breath smoking, sent into the forest to find a new mainmast, smiling as it toppled in the snow, and Olaf clapping her on the shoulder and saying, No one brings ’em down like you.

The memory made the fury boil and she’d bring this tree down too the bastard and she gripped it with her front claws and raked it with her back claws and wrapped her jaws around it, ripping and tearing and worrying with her teeth and she—

‘Vigga!’ someone roared, and there was the monk! She hadn’t dreamed him, he was a real true thing, very sweaty and ash-stained but quite stern. He stood up tall to her and bellowed, veins starting from his neck, ‘Vigga! This behaviour is unacceptable !’

The Vigga-Wolf stood frozen with her jaws around the mast, blinking at him. It was very rare for anyone to stand up to her like that and for a moment she wasn’t sure how to feel. Then she unhooked her teeth, bloody splintery slobber spattering the deck. Then she narrowed her eyes. Then she made a lovely throbbing growl deep in her throat as she slunk towards him because it struck her …

As rather …

Rude.

‘Good wolf …’ murmured Brother Diaz as he backed away, his mouth gone very, very, very dry.

Saviour, what an immensity of lie. This was not a good wolf. This was a murderous demon of a wolf. This was the worst wolf in creation. A slinking, slavering, spiked and bristled, shifting and flowing monstrosity with more teeth than a crocodile and more muscle than a bull.

It seemed now he’d made two very serious mistakes. The first when he told Vigga to let the wolf free. The second when he drew its attention.

He’d watched horrified as it left a trail of destruction through the crew, then set about destroying the mast, when he’d been amazed to notice someone clinging to the yard high above, then even more amazed to realise it was Princess Alexia. He hadn’t the slightest idea how she could’ve got up there, but as things stood she’d soon be coming down, via a long and likely lethal drop. And so, without thinking, he’d stepped forwards.

Some hope had perhaps lurked at the back of his mind that the wolf might turn back into Vigga, the way it had at the inn, when Jakob of Thorn roared the same words. But it was becoming increasingly clear that this expedition was no place for hope.

‘Good wolf …’ He hardly dared look into those orange eyes, flaming like the very pits of hell, but neither did he dare look away. He sensed that it was only by meeting them that he limited the accursed beast to stalking him rather than ripping him apart. Burning bits of rope or sail had wafted across on the wind, scattering patches of fire among the empty benches and abandoned oars, among the ruined bodies of the unlucky oarsmen.

‘Easy …’ he murmured, not sure if he was talking to his own pounding heart or the wolf-thing, its growls making the deck throb, the soles of his feet buzz, his very bladder vibrate, his boots slipping on spilled blood, squishing through spilled guts as he backed down the galley’s deck.

‘Easy …’ he wheedled, and the beast’s mouth curled into an even more bestial snarl, bloody slaver spattering the planks—

Crack! The ruined mast lurched, the beast whipped around with impossible speed, and Brother Diaz spun almost as quickly, sprinting away between the last benches, ink-stained habit flapping wildly.

He heard the outraged bellow behind, the skittering of claws on wood. He thumped up the sloping deck towards the galley’s stern, back tingling with the horrible expectation of monstrous teeth.

He sprang!

And for a moment he was free, the wind blowing cold around his undergarments.

Then the foaming sea rushed up to meet him.

‘Oh God,’ whispered Alex as another great jolt went through the spar. She clung to it with her skinned and aching legs, her skinned and aching hands. There was a pinging sound, then another, a trembling through the wood, then a creaking shiver.

‘Oh God.’ The whole mast was tipping. Tipping sideways into the void, sailcloth billowing beneath her like the train on some vast wedding dress.

‘Oh God .’ She squeezed her eyes shut as the mast ground to a teetering halt, squeezed her teeth so hard together they creaked, praying it would swing back.

Crack. Another jolt and the mast shifted again. The same way. More pings, more cracks, and it leaned further. Faster. Like a tree felled and toppling.

She gave a helpless whimper. She plastered every part of herself against the pitiless wood. She did everything short of bite it with her teeth. You can’t stop yourself falling by holding on to something that’s falling. But it was all she had.

Faster she swung, stomach reeling, the last fibres of the mast splintering down below, and faster she fell, cloth flapping, ropes lashing, and faster she plunged, towards the boiling sea, wind ripping her hair, whipping tears from her eyes, hurtling from on high and she opened her mouth to scream.

They say your life flashes before your eyes at a time like that. It didn’t for Alex.

Just as well, maybe. Doing it once had been bad enough.

The water hit her hard as a speeding wagon, chill bubbles rushing around her, and suddenly nothing mattered.

Didn’t have to move. Didn’t have to breathe. Didn’t have to lie.

She let the sea suck her down, into the silence.

Jakob lashed with his sword and missed again. Missed even more than last time. Constans was a smirking, taunting, plump ghost in the fog of smoke.

The ship was going down, timbers groaning. Jakob knew exactly how it felt. He lunged again but he was so tired now, every breath an acrid rasp. He could taste fire. Could taste blood. All so familiar. When it came to fire and blood, he was a connoisseur.

His foot slid on the bloody deck, his ankle gave, and he lurched onto one knee with an agonising twinge in his groin, still not right after stepping off that boat in Venice. Constans had already flitted around him. He tried to twist, tried to lift his shield, but he was too late.

So much of his overlong life – that little bit too late. Too late he’d learned his lessons. Too late he’d sworn his oaths.

He felt the cold sting of the point between his shoulder blades, then the crushing lance of pain through his chest. He would’ve screamed if he’d had the breath, but all that came out was a tortured wheeze, then a kind of half-cough, half-puke, then a bit more wheeze.

He knew what he’d see when he looked down. Nothing surprising. But no better for being familiar. His shirt tenting to a point. A point from which a dark stain spread. Then the gleam of metal showed. Then the fabric came apart and the tip of Constans’s blade peeked through, bright steel red with Jakob’s blood.

Stabbed in the back. They say in the end every man gets what he truly deserves.

His sword slipped from his limp fingers and clattered to the deck.

He heard light footsteps as Constans pranced around him.

‘So.’ He bounced back into view. ‘No last-minute surprises, after all?’ He lifted the embroidered sleeve of his jacket and gave it a disapproving sniff. ‘Everything’s going to stink of smoke now. I warned you this would end badly.’

Jakob gasped blood, coughed blood, dribbled blood. ‘And I …’ he mouthed, but it was hard to get the breath around the steel in his lungs.

Constans stepped towards him, leaning down. ‘What was that?’

‘… warned …’

Constans touched a beringed finger to the back of one ear and nudged it forwards. ‘Beg pardon?’

‘… you …’

‘You’ll have to speak up, my friend. You’re really just blowing bubbles at this—’

Jakob caught him around the back and dragged him into a tight embrace.

Constans gasped as his own sword’s red point scraped his chest, clutching at Jakob’s shoulders, eyes wide with disbelief.

‘ Everything ends badly ,’ hissed Jakob.

He’d fought many duels. Enough to know when he wasn’t going to win. But when you can’t die, a draw is enough.

He dropped backwards. Not hard to do. It had been taking all his effort to stay kneeling. Their own weight did the rest.

The gilded pommel of Constans’s sword struck the deck. The blade slid through Jakob till the crosspiece hit his back. The duke gave a shrill squeal as the point was driven into his chest, burst out beside his spine, and went straight through the meat of Jakob’s right forearm.

Not an honourable end to a duel, maybe, but Jakob had sworn no oaths to be honourable. He’d better sense than that.

Duke Constans stared into Jakob’s face, eyes bulging, veins popping, pink cheeks trembling, then he blew a bloody gasp and went limp.

Which left Jakob, one more time, where all men will ultimately find themselves. Alone, with the consequences of what they’ve done.

He lay there, skewered. The sword’s hilt was trapped against his back. Its blade was right through him. Constans’s dead weight was on top. He fished weakly with the arm that wasn’t pinned, but he could scarcely breathe, let alone start to free himself. The pain was utterly excruciating, of course.

Fragments of burning sailcloth fluttered down. Water was beginning to lap across the deck as the ship sank, the chill wetness of brine replacing the hot wetness of blood.

He’d been in tight corners before. He’d taken a lead role in some infamous calamities. But this was right up there. This was a real peach.

He gave a helpless little laugh.

‘Here’s a pickle,’ he whispered.

And the sea surged across the aftcastle and swept him away.