Dewey Lambdin - The King

Then there was Monnot again, leaping back into action and hewing a sailor down, pushing forward and leading more of his hands with him against everything.

"Vous!" he exclaimed, spotting Lewrie. "Espece de salaud!"

"Strike, Monnot! Throw down your sword! It's over!"

"Va te faire foutre!" Monnot cried, throwing himself forward.

Lewrie jerked his wrist and brought his sword into his palm, leading with a thrust that Monnot beat aside, but the speed of it made him drop back a pace. Alan stamped forward, countering a hard counterswing of Monnot's cutlass blade. They were too hemmed in by struggling bodies to do anything more than beat at each other vertically after that. Bayonets stabbed on either side, and Frenchmen were dying, going down as the sepoys loaned their strength to shove their foes backward and upward to the quarterdeck, beginning to thin them out enough for Lewrie to have more fighting room.

It was disconcerting to fight a man he knew, even slightly. He had nothing against Monnot personally, so it felt less like a duel. A stranger he could have crossed swords with gladly. But it was his life to not kill him. Monnot was monstrously strong. A bit unskilled with a more gentlemanly smallsword, perhaps, but ruthlessly competent with a cutlass, his wrist hard as an iron anvil.

Monnot fetched up against the ladder that led to the quarterdeck, last of his men still standing on the gangway, and he howled in glee as he swung his sword in the full cutlass drill. There!

An opening, as Monnot swung backhanded, fumbled backward to take a step up the ladder, still facing his foes. Lewrie leaped for him, raising his sword to block a further swing, but ramming the lion-headed pommel of his sword into Monnot's mouth!

The man stumbled onto his back, one hand grasping at the rope balustrade of the ladder, thrusting with his cutlass, a thrust which Lewrie parried off low, and then he was inside Monnot's guard with a backward slash of that superbly strong and razor-honed hanger across the man's belly and chest.

Monnot howled again, reaching upward to take Lewrie's throat in one hand, drawing his cutlass back with the other. Alan started turning purple as he reached out to take Monnot's sword-arm wrist in his hand and hold off a killing blow, drawing his hanger back behind his knee to turn it upward, and thrust the point into the Frenchman's jaws. Up through throat skin, through the tongue, into the sinuses and the brain! Monnot grunted and twisted like a piked fish, bumping down the steps of the quarterdeck ladder one at a time, dragging Alan with him with one hand yet gripping his throat in a final, inhuman spasming strength!

Sailors and soldiers dashed past them while Alan was dragged to his knees, gasping for air and watching the world go dim, until at last Monnot's heels began to drum on the deck, and his hands lost all strength. His eyes flared once more with anger, then rolled up into his head and glazed over unblinking. Alan rocked back onto his heels and gulped great lungfuls of air, massaging his throat with one hand and tugging his sword free with the other. He felt like shooting the man, just to make sure he was dead, not shamming until he'd stepped over him to ascend to the quarterdeck, then strike him from behind!

He settled for a slash across Monnot's throat as he sprang up and rushed aft, getting away from the brute as quick as he was able.

"Jesus Christ!" he muttered, once he'd gained the deck. No wonder it was light enough to see! La Malouine was on fire! After lights-out aboard any ship, it was the officers aft who could keep a lantern or two burning past nine p.m., and their gunfire must have overturned a lamp, killed a gun-captain who had dropped his smoldering slow-match onto something flammable. Smoke drifted and curled from between the deck planks. Pounded tar to waterproof the joins was running slick and hot, sticking to his shoes. One corner of the poop deck farther aft already showed gaps through which tiny flames licked. He turned to see if Telesto was safe, and saw no sign of fire. But amidships, in La Malouine's waist, there was a bright red glow under the tarred canvas that covered the midships cargo hatches and companion-way hatches. Even as he watched, the tarred canvas took fire with a sullen whoomp and disappeared in a sooty shower, and long, licking flames leaped aloft with a roar like a bellows had been applied to a forge!

"Back to the ship!" Choate was yelling, waving their men back to Telesto with his sword. "Move, lads, if you don't want to burn!"

There was no greater fear for a sailor than fire aboard ship.

Once it got a good hold on the dry timbers, the tarred ropes, greased running rigging and canvas sails, a fire was almost impossible to extinguish. In the blink of an eye, a ship could flash into a ruddy horror, roasting her crew, who would be fearful to abandon her until the last minute, for most sailors could not swim.

"Back!" Alan yelled. "Back aboard our ship, stir yourselves!"

They were lucky to make it, for the small crew that had stayed aboard Telesto were chopping and sawing at the grapnel ropes even before everyone could reach the rails to prepare themselves for the leap.

It was a panic. Sepoys crowded the rails, their eyes rolling in fear, ready to abandon their weapons in their haste to flee. Chiswick was raving back and forth, shouting at them in Hindee and pushing muskets back into their hands, arranging a party of some of his largest men to literally throw some of the Others across to Telesto's bulwarks, to be caught by seamen.

La Malouine was keening as the flames began to roar in earnest, the sound a soaked river rock makes when placed in a camp-fire. Men wounded and unable to move were screaming and gibbering in terror.

"Damnit!" Alan sighed, sheathing his sword. He picked among the bodies, searching for his own. The dead he could do nothing for, but there were surely some English wounded that simply could not be left behind to suffer.

"Oh, God, sir!" Archibald, the condom-maker, keened shrill as a frightened child as he lay on the gangway with blood soaking his leg. "Help meeeee!!!"

"I'm here, Archibald, Let's go!"

He got him to his feet, an arm around him, and half-dragged him to the rail, yelling for help. Hodge, the topman, came swarming over to them with a free line, and quickly whipped a loop in it. They got Archibald seated in it and let it swing. Even if he bashed his head in on their ship's hull, he was away. Cony returned with it as they began to search.

"Telestos!" Lewrie called, almost choking on the stink of burning cargo below decks. Singed tea leaves swirled around him like a plague of locusts. "Hoy, Telestos! Sing out and we'll save you!"

A gut-shot French seaman raised an imploring hand from the deck, terror in his eyes. They passed him by. He was not one of theirs. Hodge drew a heavy belaying pin from the railing and did the man the favor of knocking him senseless so he'd know less about his immolation.

"Don't think they's any more of our'n, Mister Lewrie!" Cony said, tugging at his sleeve.

"Lewrie, leave it!" Ayscough called from their ship. "Leave it or die over there! I can't keep station on her any longer!"

Flames were shooting up the main-mast now, furled sails bursting alight, standing and running rigging covered with tiny shoots of fire like some expensive holiday illumination.

"Good enough for me," Lewrie responded, climbing over the rails.

They threw them lines, and they swung across, suspended from gant-line blocks and yard-tackles. Lewrie thrust out his legs to take the shock of impact, but it knocked the wind out of him anyway. He dangled for a moment against the hull by the gunports until someone reached over and grabbed him by the collar to haul him up.

He landed in a heap on the larboard gangway, almost getting trampled by sail-trimmers as they heaved on the yard braces to get the ship underway. He could barely hear the shouted commands over the roar of the fire aboard La Malouine.

"Ya awright, sir?" Cony asked, helping him to his feet, and disentangling him from the gant-line block and three-part loops of line. "Christ, wot a mess!"

When he had a chance to look back at their foe, once Telesto was far enough to leeward that she wouldn't catch fire herself, he could see that the French ship was alight from taff-rail to the tip of her bow-sprit. Her upper yards were raining down in chunks like dripping embers. No matter that they were heavy, they were almost floating against the fierce, roaring up-draft of the fires. Now and again, there was a bright, blue-white flash and dull thud as a powder cartridge burst, or a loaded gun took light. Sparks would fly against a yellow-white cloud of powder, making La Malouine look even more like carnival fireworks.

Men dribbled from her, too. Men whose clothing, whose very flesh had caught fire, and swarmed staggering and blind in unspeakable agony, swathed from head to toe in greedy, gnawing flames like animated torches. They keened and howled, reeled and dropped out of sight. Or tumbled over the bulwarks of their ship to raise great splashes in the water alongside, where only a greasy smoke and a circle of foam marked their passing.

They dropped into the water beside others who floundered and thrashed in the glowing amber water, thrashing clumsily for any bit of flotsam to support them before they drowned. Pleas for help went unnoticed, cries to God went unheard, amidst all the screaming and wailing, amidst the crackle and roar of the flames.

La Malouine had had four ship's boats, all nestled on the tiers that spanned the waist between the gangways over the upper deck, and three of them now roasted like unattended steaks on a grill. The fourth was in the water, one side charred black and half sunk, reeking with smoke. Half a dozen men clung to her, and two sat on her after-most thwart, fighting the others to prevent them climbing in and swamping her. There was one large, grid-worked hatch cover in the water, and more men clung to the sides, while others who could swim splashed in its direction. Out of La Malouine's crew of roughly one-hundred-fifty men, not thirty could be discovered alive now.

"Oh, Christ, sir, look!" Cony shuddered.

Dark, triangular fins cut the glassy, illuminated red-and-amber waters. Sharks! Lewrie winced with a sudden cold chill as a fin went underwater just behind a struggling man. That man suddenly shot out of the ocean as if he'd been tossed by a bull, screaming louder than he could have thought possible from anyone's throat, setting off more panic among the survivors. Pale white fish bellies rolled with him as they seized upon his flesh, bit and shook like bulldogs to tear off huge chunks of living meat! More fins darted in from nowhere, summoned God knew how from the depths. More men thrashed and wailed as they were taken. The survivors who had been clustered around the half-sunk boat swarmed up on it in a wave, climbing over each other in their haste, as the boat rolled on its beam ends and capsized.

There was no time to put boats down. Telesto's crew lifted up their own curved, grid-work hatch-covers and tossed them in as Ayscough had her steered through the thickest pack of Frenchmen. The tail-ends of halyards, lifts and braces were slung over so that those that could might reach them and climb to safety, and life.

But it was futile. Three French sailors who could swim climbed aboard, shaking in terror. Perhaps three more made it to the floats. By the time Telesto had sailed on past, wore ship and came back into the area, there was no sign of living men around the overturned boat, and not seven altogether on all the floating hatch-covers, girded round entirely by circling fins and face-down bodies that one by one were taken under. There had to be a thousand sharks by then around La Malouine, striking at anything whether it moved or not-paddles, broken oars, charred flotsam or discarded clothing-it made no difference to them.