Oglethorpe blinked at the men standing over him.
They were Commonwealth.
“General?” A youth with a shock of nearly orange hair sticking out from under his cap knelt next to him.
“We've taken the artillery line?”
“Yes, sir, we have. The wing ships rifted it a little farther down, so we managed to cut through and come about.”
“Thank God.”
He sat up and turned back to Tomochichi. “Did you hear that, chief?”
But the chief of the Yamacraw was listening beyond the world, not in it. His days, as he might say, were all broken. Oglethorpe kissed the old man on the head and reached to close the open lids. He had to switch hands to do it.
“You're hurt, sir,” one of the rangers said.
“Yes, my hand …” He looked again at the bloody stumps of the digits, wondering exactly when he had lost them.
He examined the rest of his body. The shot that had come through Tomochichi had been stopped by his cuirass, though his back throbbed like the devil. To his surprise, he also found that something had left a neat hole through the meaty part of his thigh, but fortunately missed the bone.
“We're sending you back to the surgeon, sir,” the ranger said. “We'll carry on, never you fear.”
“I shan't fear, for I shall be there to see it. Is there one horse left amongst us?”
“Sir—”
“We'll find you one, General.”
Sterne raised the weapon he held. Franklin's heart did a flip flop when he saw it.
“You don't even know what you have there,” he said.
“I'll take my chances,” Sterne replied. “Did you invent it?”
“Indeed I did.”
“Well, consider this a compliment, then. I trust your abilities enough to be certain that whatever this is, it will kill you quite dead.”
“It won't,” Franklin said, drawing his sword. “It might hurt you though.”
Sterne laughed. “Well played, Mr. Franklin.” And he pulled the trigger.
Franklin had always wondered what the depneumifier would do to a warlock. He finally got a chance to see.
What happened was Sterne's eyes went wide, and he dropped the weapon. The malakus above him flashed a bluish green color; and Sterne screamed, a quite unholy sound, and clapped his hands to his ears. Franklin leapt forward, sword extended. After all, there had to be differences in the natural articulator of a warlock and the devised ones the devil gun was designed to work on.
There were; even through his pain, Sterne was not yet licked. His blade was out and parrying before Franklin got there. Franklin couldn't really fence—he had only played at it a bit with Robert and wore the sword more for show than for anything else. If he really had to tangle with the man, he was done. But Sterne was clearly in pain, and this was his only chance. The others were counting on him.
So instead of backing up and trading blows, Franklin continued to rush forward so that their blades locked at the guards, and brought his good left fist up into Sterne's jaw with every ounce of strength he owned.
If felt like he'd broken his hand. The warlock's teeth clicked together, and he nearly fell; but he still shoved Franklin back with superhuman strength. Franklin teetered a foot from the edge of the deck, desperately trying to set his stance, as Sterne lunged deep and long, straight for Franklin's heart. Without even thinking, Franklin stuck his own arm out straight.
And stared. His blade was buried four inches in the war-lock's breast. In his heart. Better yet, Franklin himself had not been pierced—the warlock had pulled his own weapon back to parry the counterattack, at the last instant and too late.
Sterne stared, too. “How stupid …” he began. “Why would anyone make such a stupid counterattack?” He looked up at Franklin, down at the sword still clutched in his hand, picked up the point to run Franklin through in turn.
Franklin let go of the hilt and sidestepped. The warlock fell, body jerking weirdly.
“I don't know how to fence, sir,” Franklin replied.
“Ah,” Sterne replied, and died.
Don Pedro had regained his feet, and by the look of him, his vision.
“Well done, Señor,” he said. “The ‘parry of two widows.’ Only a madman would use it and hope to live. Wonderful.”
“Th-thank you,” Franklin stuttered.
“Shall I run him through again, to be certain?”
Sterne wasn't moving at all, now.
“Yes,” Franklin replied.
Don Pedro nodded and stepped up to do so, when suddenly the ship bucked like a wild horse, and the deck slipped from beneath their feet.
Oglethorpe reckoned he had lost more than half his troops, but breaking the artillery had put a fire in them the like of which he had never seen in fighting men. They fought like devils; and many of their opponents, perhaps sensing that they had wakened something terrible, fell back.
He reserved his feeling of triumph, however, as they closed the distance. Too many important questions were unanswered. Were the ships still there? Had Franklin and the rest done their job? Or would they arrive to discover it was all for nothing?
Of course, it wasn't—whatever happened, by God, they had stung this enemy. But somewhere, by his accounting, there ought to be a few more thousands of them.
He had a crawling feeling he knew where.
Franklin caught hold of the raised edge as the barge convulsed again.
“Their charges are starting to break through!” he shouted. “Red Shoes and Montchevreuil must be failing. Don, help me!”
He scrambled toward the opening and down it. As he had suspected, two heavy casks had been shoved over the cabin hatch. Franklin ignored that for the moment, hunting in a different corner and coming out with a keg full of small spheres, each with a single knob.
“Free that lower hatch,” he shouted to Don Pedro, as he gathered them up.
A moment later they were peeping at Crecy behind the ends of her guns. Ignoring her, Franklin leapt down to the floor, just as the boat kicked so hard it nearly flipped over. Franklin slammed into the bulkhead, and for a moment his vision constricted to a narrow tunnel, darkness eating at consciousness.
Crecy's face appeared in the tunnel. He held up one of the spheres, which he had somehow managed to hang on to.
“Twist the knob,” he grunted. “Drop it through the bottom hatch.” He climbed shakily to his feet as she did so.
“Keep passing those down, Don Pedro,” Franklin shouted. He took the next one and went to the hatch.
A hundred yards below them, a starfish of fire opened its arms.
“The bomb attacked the sphere,” Crecy observed.
“Aye. Each has a small, weak aegis. They attract the charges.”
“Brilliant.”
“I need you to feed these out slowly. I have other things to see to.”
“Done.”
“Hurry,” Adrienne said, her voice coming as from very far away.
“The ships are preparing to rise. And something else …” Then she sank back into her trance.
Cursing again, Franklin clambered back up into the hold.
Red Shoes stared down through Taboka, the hole in the top of the world where the Sun rested at midday. Above him the faraway stars burned with strange light; below, the Earth festered with squirming, crawling things, and from that living pestilence grew a single, perfect tree whose branches rose through and past them, reaching beyond even the stars.
Around him, his shadowchildren died as fast as he could make them, and he grew angrier and angrier.
It was time, it was time. Time to tear the roof from the world.
He wasn't strong enough to do it alone. But with this woman, this woman and her strange hand, this woman who was mother to the tree itself, he might manage it.
If he had time, which he didn't, and respite from the constant attacks, which he didn't.
And then like a lanthorn suddenly uncovered, he did. The spirits fell away, repelled by a strange new emanation.
Here was his chance.
We must shape a shadowchild together, he told her. A special one. I need your help and your knowledge.
The answer was sluggish, and for a long moment he feared he had already lost her. Very well, she said. We will do it.
Inwardly, he smiled his snake smile. Soon.
“There,” Franklin said, “that's done. We can hold ‘em like this for a time. And I've managed a shield which ought to keep the malakim away from us, too. So now we can breathe a bit.”
“A few of us are still doing that, I guess.”
Franklin looked around and saw what he meant. Red Shoes and Montchevreuil were still in their trances or whatever, and Euler and Vasilisa were bandaging Tug. The big fellow looked pale, but his eyes were still full of life. Robert's more minor wound was already bound.
“How goes it, Tug?” he asked.
“I've had worse,” the former pirate grunted. “Could do with some rum, though.”
“We owe you quite a debt. If you hadn't flushed out Sterne when you did, things would be considerably worse, I think.”
“’Tweren't my design. I just wanted t’ drop a few grenados—but y'r welcome.”
“If you feel up to it, you can still do that. I don't know that it will do much good, but …”
“Hah. Let me at ‘em.”
“As for me, I need to report to Nairne now—see what I can find out about everything else, and report that the ships are held down for the nonce.”
He gazed down through the lower windows. There were the ships; and there, like ants clustered to defend their queen, what appeared to be battalions of men. He studied the scene for a few more moments, then went to the opticon.
It took Nairne a few moments to appear.
“Mr. Franklin,” he said, his voice scratchy and metallic, not at all like the governor's real voice. The image, too, left much to be desired. Something Ben would have to improve. “So glad to see you are still alive.”
“That I am, Governor, and we've managed to hold ‘em on the ground for a time. Any news of the army?”
“They've made good headway, but with terrible losses. Those Swedenborg airships you modified did help, and they enable us to see how the battle goes; but we have no way of getting word to the commanders, though I've sent some couriers. What do you see there?”
“A pretty strong welcoming party, I would say. We're going to dance around a bit above them and do what damage we can with grenados, but I wouldn't count on that being much.”
Nairne shrugged. “We shall see what happens,” he said, not sounding particularly optimistic. His face scrunched around some question inside him for a moment, something he clearly was not sure he ought to voice.
“I … I had word from Mr. Voltaire, Franklin. He was with us on the walls, but he's gone out after the advance.”
“Why?”
“It seems—ah, it seems your wife put on French uniform and rode with them on the charge.”
“Lenka? Is she—”
“There is no way to know. They've lost heavily—more than half of them gone, it looks like. In all of that, there's no way of knowing if she's still alive. I just thought you ought to know.”
Franklin was numb to his fingertips. “Damn. God rot it all.”
“Franklin …” Robert, a few feet away, began.
“No! Damn it, why—” He whirled on the Apalachee Don Pedro. “This is your fault, you overblown gamecock! Who in God's name told you—”
Robert slapped him hard. Franklin stared, unbelieving, at his friend for a heartbeat, then swung a roundhouse at the too-handsome jaw. Robert ducked and punched him someplace in the stomach where all his air was kept. His lungs sucked tight, and he sat down hard.
“Keep your head, Ben,” Robert snapped, “or I'll fair keep it f ‘r you. This is no time f ‘r a tantrum. Don Pedro has saved our lives and fought our battles, and Lenka has a mind of her own. If anyone here is to blame for where she is right now, you know who it is, so just you keep calm.” He reached out a hand to help Franklin up.
Franklin waved it off. “Don't touch me,” he said. “Just don't.”
“Very well.”
“So what do I do? Tell me that? Everyone seems so damned sure they know what I ought to have been doing, why don't you tell what I do now, in advance?”
“It's too late for that. We're up here and she's down there, and there ain't a damn thing you can do until the battle is won.”
“Robin—”
“So we make sure we win,” Robert said heatedly. “It's all we can do.”
“Damn it. God rot it.” He sat on one of the bolted-down stools and put his face in his hands, and he realized, finally, that whether the world ended today or not, his own might already have.