Ironfist saw him, too, and put a blue spike in his skull. The man tumbled into the sea.
“They’re organizing into musket teams,” Ironfist said. And the effect was almost immediate. The men on the decks must have started putting the best marksmen in front, while those farther back reloaded and gave them fresh muskets, because both the rate and the accuracy of fire increased.
A sea chariot driver just behind them crumpled, turning the pipes wildly to one side. Her chariot flipped, flinging her archer into the sea.
“Guard overboard!” Kip cried.
Ironfist’s and Gavin’s reaction was immediate. Catching a peak, they shot hard to starboard. The skimmer flipped completely backward before they hit the next wave.
All of them were nearly torn off the skimmer from the sudden change in direction, but neither Gavin nor Ironfist slowed. Kip thought he was going to tear the post behind him right off, but it held. Both men pulled grenadoes from their bandoliers and tossed them in high arcs. Then another.
“Sub-red on any muskets you see, Kip!” Gavin shouted.
They sped toward the swimming young man.
“I got the reeds,” Gavin said. He took them both and headed straight for the Blackguard. Kip thought he was going too close, but as he popped over the last wave, Gavin turned slightly and they splashed barely a hand’s breadth from the Blackguard. Ironfist reached down and between Ironfist’s strength and the Blackguard’s, the man popped out of the water in barely a second.
Kip hadn’t seen what effect the grenadoes had on the deck, but the musket fire had slowed. Then he saw one of the swivel guns on a lower deck being turned toward them.
The other Blackguards on their sea chariots had rallied around them, and they were spraying red luxin everywhere, the yellows casting flashbombs to dazzle and distract, but the sheer number of them congregating in one sector was enough to encourage the cannoneers to turn the big guns.
The screams of the furious and the shouts of anger and the moans of the injured and the cries of urgent orders and the crackling of fireballs and the snapping of distant muskets and booms of cannons and the whistle of the big mortars and the snap of sails and the wash of the waves and hissing of the wind and the moans of the dying and the shrieks of the wights faded, grew distant, hushed. Kip could hear only the deep, slow whoosh of his own heartbeat, ludicrously slow, and around and beneath that a sighing, like the beach when the tide goes out. For a moment, he had a wild notion that he was hearing the sunlight hit the waves.
He saw one of the Blackguard archers drawing an arrow back. The string touched her lips and the arrow leapt out at the very moment a musket ball tore her jaw off.
Whoosh. The world looked beyond real. Kip realized he was seeing the whole spectrum at once. He could see dozens of guns. The skimmer was directly broadside to the Gargantua. And he could see the glow of men, the glow of matches and slow fuses. He could see the gleam of metal on the powder barrels through the open gunports, could see straight through the smoke.
He swept a hand out and fanned superviolet strands like spiderwebs out to every gun and barrel he could see. The superviolet was so fast and light, it hit its targets almost the instant he chose them. Then he swept his hand back, releasing little bursts of firecrystals so hot they burned his hand even as he shot them out at unbelievable speed.
Satisfaction swept through him even before the next big whoosh of his heartbeat rolled through his ears.
Struck by the firecrystals, every loaded musket and cannon on the starboard side of the Gargantua went off at once. Cannons that were in the middle of being loaded went off, muskets that men were standing over with ramrod in hand went off. Loaded muskets being handed up to marksmen went off. Some of the cannons hadn’t been charged yet, and Kip felt vexed. Others, though, had been fully loaded but not yet pushed back into place, and they blew holes out of the sides of the gun decks.
The entire ship was rocked to the side from the simultaneous concussive force.
Not bad.
And then, on three different gun decks, powder barrels exploded. Flames and smoke and wood and cannons and men and parts of men blasted fresh holes in every deck.
The roar ripped over the Blackguards and Kip blinked. Time was back. He was back.
Men were screaming. Terrible, terrible screams. He could see men on fire, skin blackened and sloughing off, running to jump into the sea. Fires leapt out of all three gun decks.
The skimmer shuddered and Gavin and Ironfist threw their will into getting back up to speed.
“Four ships coming in, half a league,” Kip said. He felt empty, stunned.
“Under the beakhead,” Gavin said.
“Not so sure that’s a good—” Ironfist said.
“Under the beak! The wights will be up on deck any second. We’ve got one chance at this!”
Ironfist acquiesced instantly and they sped in front of the ship, hardly any muskets barking now. They came under the front of the still-moving ship, and Ironfist took the reeds, maneuvering them so that the ship didn’t plow right over them. The wooden beakhead loomed just above their heads, close enough that when the waves lifted them, it almost smashed Kip’s head. Gavin wrapped one fist in fire and punched into the hull overhead.
When the wave receded, Gavin was yanked into the air, his fist still stuck into the wood. Kip lunged, but missed him.
“Leave him!” Ironfist shouted. “You see anyone, you light ’em up!”
Kip could see then that Gavin was drafting still, heedless of his body hanging by one arm.
I don’t think I even could hold myself up by one arm.
Gavin was doing it and drafting—and drafting something horrendously complicated, if it was taking him this much time. Then he was done. When the skimmer rose on the next wave, Gavin touched down on the deck as gracefully as a dancer.
“Two minutes,” he said. “We need to keep the drafters busy.”
And so they circled again, Commander Ironfist giving hand signals to the three remaining sea chariots. They concentrated on hurling luxin and exhausted their grenadoes, some of them successfully tossing them into the huge holes Kip’s explosions had created. Somewhere in the fighting, one of the teams had successfully cut all the rigging to the foremast, and another had set fire to the lateen sails, but the mainsail and mainmast were still whole.
The great ship seemed invincible.
Gavin swooped in and destroyed the capsized sea chariot, and then after perhaps thirty seconds they circled wider, out more than a hundred paces. With so many of the big guns silenced for the moment, it was close enough to still be a threat, but far enough away to be safer from all but the luckiest musket shot.
The Prism and one beefy female Blackguard were the only ones who had the strength and the endurance remaining to continue bombarding the Gargantua with magic. Everyone had gone through all their grenadoes. The archers had used up most of their arrows, and the four ships Kip had seen earlier—two small galleons and two caravels—were bearing down on them.
Gavin gave a quiet oath. “If it doesn’t happen in the next—”
A deep whoomping explosion drowned out his words. It seemed to shake the sea itself in its bed.
Kip shot a look at Gavin. His father looked oddly bereaved. “Their powder room was below the waterline. Makes it a lot harder for a stray shell to hit it, but… poor bastards.”
When the smoke began to clear, Kip saw that both sides of the hull had been blown out right in the middle of the ship. With wood creaking and snapping, the mainmast plunged off to one side like a man jumping overboard, throwing men from both of its crow’s nests and slashing through the weakened deck at the ship’s waist.