Some few men were leaping from the decks, and fire was everywhere. Smaller explosions sounded like popping corn. Then the waist collapsed and the ship folded in on itself. The front half of the great ship went down almost instantly, far faster than Kip would have believed something made entirely of wood should sink. The stern rolled over on its side, open decks gaping like open wounds, swallowing the seas in great burbling gulps.
Deck by burning deck, the great ship plunged into the sea, hissing and spitting and vomiting up flotsam and broken men.
Before it even slipped under the waves, Ironfist asked, “Mop up the swimmers?”
Gavin looked toward the coming ships.
Mop up? Commander Ironfist meant, Should we kill the men who survived?
“You see any wights make it out?” Gavin asked.
“Didn’t see any. Doesn’t mean there weren’t some,” Ironfist said.
“I didn’t see any either,” the Blackguard they’d pulled out of the waves earlier said.
Kip watched the last of the Gargantua slip beneath the waves. There was a lot of junk afloat in the waves, but not many men. Gavin had said there were seven hundred men on board.
Orholam have mercy.
Because your Prism won’t.
“No,” Gavin said. “I’d rather be a mystery and a wild tale. We don’t have it in us to sink four more. Let’s go home.”
They headed out two leagues to regroup, and the sea chariots came alongside and with difficulty in the heaving waves, they reformed the big skimmer. They’d lost seven Blackguards. Another had taken a ball in the elbow. She would be crippled. The rest had minor injuries: burns and little cuts and pulled muscles from maneuvering their chariots too sharply. One had a musket-ball burn in a streak along his neck that was going to leave a scar. He looked perversely pleased about it. A breath more to the left and it would have cut his carotid. Cruxer was wide-eyed, blinking a lot, but unhurt.
“Breaker,” Cruxer said, “did you do what I think you did back there?” He looked at the Blackguards. “Am I the only one who saw him blow up half the ship?”
“I saw,” one said. Others nodded, though not all of them.
“We saw,” Ironfist said. “Well done, Breaker.”
“Well done? It was fucking awesome!” Cruxer said.
The Blackguards laughed, and even Ironfist grinned and didn’t reprove Cruxer for cursing.
“Did you blow up the whole ship, too?” Cruxer asked.
“No, that was him,” Kip said. He’d been looking at his father already. Gavin was staring at him with a strange intensity that wasn’t wholly approving. Kip thought he would be proud of him, but again, there it was, that sense that under everything, Gavin was holding out on Kip. Avoiding embracing him fully.
“How’d you do it?” a Blackguard asked Gavin. Kip thought his name was Norl.
Gavin looked displeased. For a moment, Kip thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then Gavin’s eyes passed over the rest of the Blackguards. They’d lost almost half their number today.
“I made a golem of a rat, and willed it to go to the powder keg to explode,” Gavin said quietly. “It’s the kind of thing a wight would think of, so there would have been one posted in the hall to stop any such thing. I figured the explosion gave me an opening. Figured right.”
“But making golems is forbidden,” Kip said. He knew it was stupid the second he said it. It had worked. It had probably saved their lives. It had definitely won the fight.
“I’ll decide what’s forbidden,” Gavin said. But his voice wasn’t strident; it was weary. “We’ll eat here, dress the wounds we can, then head home.”
They ate silently, everyone aware of the places that were empty. They’d won. They’d killed seven hundred men or more, at the cost of seven. By any measure, it wasn’t only a victory, it was a great victory. And yet the Blackguards were silent, eating like automatons, not hungry but disciplined enough to know that their bodies needed the sustenance after a hard fight.
“You do this all the time,” Ironfist said, “don’t you?” They were sitting on the deck, munching hard biscuits and sausage.
“Sink ships?” Gavin asked. It sounded like he was making an effort to regain his levity. He was Prism; he needed to set an example. Ironfist refused to take the bait. “That ship could have sunk half our navy before we arrived in Atash, but we didn’t even know it was here. The threat’s gone, so to those idiot generals it will be like this never happened. We’ll tell the story of what we did today, and some won’t believe us. Most will believe we’re exaggerating to make ourselves look good. But even those who do believe us won’t know what we went through to do it. They won’t understand what we faced here.”
Gavin gave a little shrug.
“You do this all the time. You’ve been doing this since the war. You save people, without them even knowing. You’ve stopped wars, you’ve sunk pirates, you’ve put down wights, you’ve killed brigand companies single-handed. All without bragging or even asking for thanks. You are He Who Fights Before Us indeed,” Ironfist said. “Promachos.”
Gavin said nothing for a time. “Today we were promachoi together.”
“The Spectrum granted you that title long ago, and then they took it away. They can take your title, my lord, but they can’t take your name. We Blackguards know about secret names. We know about naming a thing what it is. You, Lord Prism, are Promachos.”
“Promachos,” the other Blackguards said quietly.
“Promachos,” Ironfist said, sealing the name. “Thank you, Promachos. For all you’ve done that I don’t know. For the prices you’ve paid that I can’t understand. For doing what others couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Thank you. And know this, the Blackguard was created with twin purposes: to watch for and to watch the Prism. You’ve always distrusted us because of the latter, as well you should. But I tell you this day that the Blackguard will never turn against you so long as I draw breath. It is an honor to serve you, Promachos, and serve we shall, blood and bone.”
“Blood and bone,” said the Blackguards.
“Blood and bone,” Ironfist said, sealing them to him.
Gavin couldn’t meet their eyes. “I’m not the man you think I am,” he said very quietly.
“Are you the man I’ve served these past ten years?” Ironfist asked.
“I am.”
“Then perhaps, my lord, you’re not the man you think you are.”
Gavin flashed a grin and seemed abruptly himself once more. “You’ve got a stubborn streak a league wide, don’t you?”
“And two leagues deep,” Commander Ironfist said. “And don’t you forget it.” He stood up and turned to the Blackguards. “All right, you laggards, ready up! Let’s go home. Tomorrow we do it again.”
Chapter 101
“Your intelligence is abysmal,” Gavin told the generals around the cabin. “Their plan—their first plan, at least—is simple. They stop our ships before we can get there. Without our troops and supplies, Ru will fall in days. You didn’t come prepared for a sea battle. We’ve got a dozen warships; they have fifty.”