194 - A bird of prey in the skin of a shark

All around us others were preparing also, but faster, since there was less instruction. After a fast enshachik the two flyers would run off together with the wing. To the west, wings rose, like a flock of huge birds; the rukamoy was good here, probably why this was the mustering-place. “First Wing launching,” Niku said. “We’re Third Wing of Ibresi. If we’re not ready in time, it’s all right, Fourth will just bounce over us to launch. Breicia’s the high commander. She’s already up.”

Don’t think about how many things could go wrong in an action both complicated and unfamiliar, I told myself. It’s familiar to them. The squire came back with gear for me. “Careful of the armour,” Niku said. “It’s sharkskin, if—” I felt such quick and sharp pain from the first piece I grabbed that I dropped it. She laughed. “You just found out the hard way. One way it’s smooth, the other way it’s rough enough to take skin off; someone tries to grab you, they get hurt.” She showed me the trick to handling it—you touch only the edges or straps—and helped me fasten up the breast-piece and the long bracers. I slung on the sword and axes, and put on the helmet, which was shaped and painted as the blood-crested wave. It was also sharkskin, and had eye-pieces of glass built into it. These were dives for which I would not want to close my eyes against the wind.

Everyone was pouring over themselves stuff out of jars that was the colour of aged piss; when Niku dumped it over my head I found it smelled much as I imagined that would, and flinched. “The sharks know about our battles,” she said. “Arkan ships come, you see crowds of fins circling. You may stink, but they won’t eat you if you fall in. Rub it in, omores.”

We harnessed up with the squire’s help, did our enshachik with her pulling forward on the nose, and ran with arms around each other to the west, joining a crowd of others waiting to launch in their ranks and files. People kept freezing, and staring, when they saw my pale chin and hands; now and then they’d say something astonished or protesting, which Niku seemed to allay with the same words each time. I learned later it was, “Yes, but this way I know where he is.”

“These are my command,” Niku waved a hand back at the line behind us, who all had wings the same style as hers. “My wing of axes. You’ll get to see them in action before we get to Yeola-e after all.”

“Well, I will count that a blessing,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d be fighting from a wing quite this soon.” She laughed. I still saw nothing on the western horizon. I gathered the strategy was to attack the Arkans at sea, nowhere near the islands. We got in line at the cliff-edge, then ran off and were seized and thrown skyward by the wind. This, I thought, is now familiar to me.

In the moygash, spiralling up in a tight dance with the other wings—they called to each other constantly—I finally saw the Arkans. The tight even line of scarlet sails on the horizon proved to be two lines, bright against the sparkling blue of the sea, as we rose.

“They must see us already,” I said. Many wings were already heading west. “But they are all dead, already, in effect, yes? Even if they turned about and fled; we would chase them down.”

“Yes.” She set her teeth for a moment. “The thing I hate worst… the slaves.”

“You mean rowing? Ai... All-Spirit. You kill them all, too.” That was Niah law, the only way to keep the secret in the face of aggression. I had a thought too horrible to speak: that some of them might be Yeolis. There had been some on the three ships that had come to take Haiu Menshir.

“We’ll be able to stop doing that, once we have no secret to keep,” she said. Here in the peaceful air, she could speak quietly.

“Yes.” I tightened my arm around her shoulders. “Not yet, love, but soon. I wish they’d held off.”

Now I had time to think, it suddenly all seemed unreal, like a dream. I was a bird of prey in the skin of a shark about to come down on Arkans with two weapons that could shoot six bolts as fast as I could work them, beside the chocolate woman who would marry me though she knew. Ah Mama, and Esora-e, I thought, if only you could see me. Yet perhaps it was even less real for the A-niah, doing this with one pale-skinned mud-ling, the one to whom they would give the whole thing up.

We were the lead wing of her unit, so when she turned us westwards out of the moygash, the others followed, like a flock of birds. “Any advice?” I asked her, fingering one of the a-seeshur. They were already loaded with the first six bolts each. Far below, the wind-boarders cut across the waves like a wave themselves. “I think the first few shots will be wasted,” I said.

“Not to worry. There are enough of us shooting that we should be able to clear most of the deck and rigging anyway. When we’ve made the first dive, we will rise again on the brandilmoy.”

“Brandilmoy?”

“Moygash from a burning ship. You’ll be happy to know that we paint the wings with... oh I’m getting technical here. The a-moyasef don’t burn easily, so if we catch a spark the worst we should get is a pinhole. Save the last twelve for when we board, to make sure the deck is clear for us. That’s most dangerous, if there’s an archer who draws a bead on us. I guess I don’t need to tell you to shoot him first. If there’s none aiming at you, aim for one who is aiming at someone else. We will board same time as someone else coming the other way so we’re doing a crossfire.”

Being a Yeoli, I liked that. “How do we make sure we don’t crash into them? Or the rigging of the ship?”

“My job. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“And it’s no quarter... strike to kill every time. And kill the wounded.” I didn’t know why I was asking again, except a vain imagining that if I asked again the answer would be no. “Except the commander; we want him alive, right? Else we’d be burning and sinking this one too.”

“Yes. They all die, but him.” She said it so casually. Maybe I’ll leave the killing of wounded to others, I thought, like a coward. Or else, maybe… I will find I enjoy it. I wasn’t sure which was less to my credit.

“When we’re on the deck, pull the release same time your feet touch wood. But stick with me while I get the wing out of the way of the next winger... if the boarders are too beset, the gunners sometimes drop from a height and the winger ditches in the water and climbs the side of the ship. If we all shoot well enough that shouldn’t happen.”

“Who’s in command once we’re boarded, you?

“Yes. If I’m incapacitated, it’s Baska next and Sijurai after that.”

“I’m common-ranker then? Ha... it’s been a while. Once we are fighting, we are fighting as a pair, no dressing ranks? My inclination is to go straight for whoever’s commanding them, and capture him, as you say; may we do that? Or do you have someone else assigned? Do your people have truth-drug?”

“It’s too close-quarters and fast to dress ranks, usually. We don’t have any truth-drug right now. But we can still get answers and they might have some. Yes, we’ll get him. If we get separated in the melee and you find yourself working with someone, feel free to command. They all know you’re a general...”

Well… in terms of experience, a general’s apprentice. I didn’t say that. I don’t generally like what she was setting up much, though; people can die while two people who both feel free to command give opposite commands. But this was going to be almost a free-for-all anyway, it seemed. “A-e kras,” I said, unthinking. She giggled and answered in Niah, “Foa-een,” which means ‘You’ve been heard.’

“Oddly enough, I never got training in this sort of fight,” I said.

She laughed again. “Trial by fire, then!”

“My favourite. I see the fire part is happening.” Plumes of black smoke had begun to rise from the Arkan ships, and their perfect line had gone ragged. As we drew closer I began to hear the war-cry of the A-niah, a wild high ululation that must put chills down the spines of enemies, as well as the roar of flames, the crackling and banging of wood burning, and the Arkan cursing and yelling. Closer still and I began to see how the wingers were doing it: dropping pots of fire, each of which made a spreading pool of flame that could not be stamped out wherever it landed. The A-niah were very good at not missing, I noticed, even from above arrow-range.

It was now I really felt in my heart the strategic power of the moyawa. This was victory already. They had no way of fighting back; on the flagship, I saw several solas struggling to prop a spear-thrower up on its end so it could shoot high enough, but none of the shots even came close to a winger. They didn’t even have a way of fleeing; many wings were staying high, I saw, as reserve in case they tried. I saw what Niku meant about the sharks; black fins were everywhere, tiny at this height. Next to severely burning ships, they feasted, turning the blue water red.

Done their fire-dropping runs, the wingers circled into the smoke, which lifted them back to great heights like a lefaetas, as it billowed upwards, so they were ready to dive again. To use the result of the destruction they wreaked so as to get into position to do more seemed particularly fiendish. No wonder Niku had been so confident about being able to do this to get out of Arko.

I almost felt sorry for the commander, stymied from defending, and unable even to bring aid to other ships in case sparks landed in his own sails. He settled for trying to fish Arkans out of the water. Niku was bringing us down, in a series of dives, at the same time she repeated everything she had told me. “I know your first few shots will be wasted, until you get the feel for it… in fact…” She yelled an order back to the wings behind her, and it was relayed further. About twenty-five others pulled below and ahead of us. “I usually go first; this time, no. But we will still board first.”

That let me watch how the shooting was done. The wings formed into two lines, a higher and a lower, and everyone went into a screaming dive, very steep, to get up speed. They’re going to blur by, I thought. I have to aim generally. Above the other side of the ship, another double line of wings was forming; we would shoot from one side, I thought, and they from the other.

“They’re forming shield-walls along the sides!” Niku yelled over the roar of wind. “Aim for the backs of the ones on the other side! The first wings were shooting now; I heard a twang of strings as if from a hundred archers. “No—those bowmen!” About twenty Arkans with bows had formed up atop a cabin. Other A-niah were thinking the same as Niku; a good quarter of them were suddenly down.

I wrapped my hand around the handle of the upper seeshur. “No! Both at once!” Niku yelled. So I have to aim without being able to sight along the shaft, wearing these things on my eyes, being swung around in a hanging harness, two devices I’ve never seen, let alone used, before, at once. I wrapped my other hand around the other and tried not to lose my morale.

We were low enough that they were not defenseless; an arrow hissed past us, then a barbed javelin; up ahead a wing wheeled out of the line, one of the people on it apparently hit. My heart was pounding in my ears; I forced my breathing deep and slow. “You shoot early, to get the feel,” Niku told me. “Now.” The devices shot with a satisfying twanging snap. I would be satisfied to hit the ship, I decided; I didn’t even manage that on the first three shots, just getting the feel of the trigger.

Then we were streaking in at half-mast height and she bellowed “Now, all of them!” and I had to shoot without thinking—I aimed for the row of heavy-armed marines, not the archers, leaving that to the markspeople—to be done by the time we were past the ship and ascending again on our momentum. With so many bolts flying I couldn’t know whether I’d hit a single Arkan, but she said “Good, for the first time!”

She went straight for the smoke of the nearest ship. “Deep breath and then hold it, omores!” I closed my eyes as well, and it was as if we were in a furnace; soon I was sure I’d have burns on my skin like from the sun. Realizing I need not close my eyes, I opened them, but it made no difference, as I saw nothing but grey-black. How does she know where to go? She let out fast yips every now and then, like a bird, on the one breath.

Just as my lungs were beginning to strain, we were in clear sky with carnage on the sparkling sea below us again. The breath I gasped in was full of the stench of tar and wood smoke nonetheless. It was an improvement over the shark-stuff, in truth. “Again, breathe in and hold it!” she said, tilting us sharply back into the smoke, and I understood why she’d yipped; to keep other wings coming into the column of smoke from colliding with us. In time it thinned out enough to become translucent, and then she turned us back toward the ship, now far below. “What’s keeping you, military genius?” she bellowed. “Reload!”

I managed not to drop any bolts into the sea, and we made four more shooting runs. By the last, perhaps one in every four Arkans was still standing, but they’d had the sense to seek cover, crouching between ship-sides and shields, or between masts and cabins.

I was down to twelve bolts, but did not need to tell her. “We’ll come in straight from the side and land between the stern-most two masts,” she said. “Your assignment is first to make sure we aren’t hit with anything before we get there, and second to make sure there’s no one standing where we’re going to land.”

“A-e kras.” She ran over what we’d do after that yet again, as I flicked sweat off my hands so as to keep a good grip on the a-seeshur; there was nowhere to wipe them. I saw the windboarders now, standing by, sails loose, just out of spear-thrower range. As she put us into the dive, she let out some screeching orders in the midst of our war-cry, and the windboarders all filled their sails and closed in on the ship from every side.

Look sharp, I told myself. I must do my best shooting now. We were coming in on the ship at a speed that I tried not to let stun me. They realized we were coming right at them; some fled, some stood; all who had something to shoot or throw aimed, eight or nine points I could now feel with weapon-sense, since we were in range. I shot using that as well as my eyes, got them all ducking at the very least. But then there was a flash of an arm on the ship, a flicker of movement in the air and a thud that I knew was on bone, and Niku’s war-cry cut off. Her hands went limp and slid off the chamir.

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