Beneath us, the gundeck boomed with returning fire, and theEndorathilshuddered as our shot peppered her prow. With my mother tucked under one arm, I cast a quick, last glance aroundthe main. There were a scant few to help Buck on the cannons, and I wondered at the captain’s strategy.
“All hands, to the hold!” he barked as Echo and I dragged our charges through the hatch.
The decks were in chaos as the ship was pressed into battle. We’d had no chance to recover from the Dreadwall, and Mr. Broom’s gunners struggled with moving the cannons from the stern to the bulwarks. Even as we helped the ironmages deeper and down, a thundering volley took out the aft guns and sent a crewman flying with the impact.
“Fire!” shouted Broom, and I saw him leaning out a port window as our cannons answered with lead and chimeric.
“Fire!” repeated Bergy, and he lit the touch on the Molly Boom.
“Echo!” I shouted over the roar. “Chimeric! I can use it!”
He looked over his shoulder.
“To the hold, Ensign. Captain’s orders.”
The port exploded inward, and Broom was flung across the gundeck, pierced by staves of theTouchstone’s hull.
“To the hold!” Echo barked.
I threw one last look but wished I hadn’t. Bergy gathered the gunner’s body to his chest, tears streaming down his cheeks.
We stepped down midcalf into water. Dev was spinning the water backward as Ben and his swabs nailed shattered planks to the hull. Water streamed in through cracks and bubbled up from leaks below the bilgeline. A sow and a goatling bleated in distress, captive as they were in their pens, and the remaining scratchfowl shrieked in their wooden cages. Normally used for the livestock, bales of hay and bundles of straw now sopped up water near the prow, and barrels of potatoes bobbed awkwardly in the bilge.
Boots thudded down the stepladder as a dozen or more crewmembers rushed to the hold. Fahr turned.
“Echo? What’s going on?”
“We’re going ahead with theAluciatus, thenMendacium,” said the faun as he helped the two mages onto the straw.
“Forge, that’s risky.”
From the bales, my mother raised a hand, summoning me.
“Daughter,” she said. “Stay.”
I ignored her.
“Dev, I have to go up,” I said.
“We have a plan—”
“I can get chimeric from the cannonballs.”
“Honor,” called my mother. “Please!”
“Dev, whatever this plan is,” I said, “you know I can help with chimeric.”
A series of shots, this time close and in rapid succession, and theTouchstoneshuddered under the battery. Our own cannons responded, but we weren’t making a dent. We’d been out of position from the start.
“Dev, no,” said Echo.
Dev turned to the carpenter.
“You’ve got this, Ben?”
“Aye, Dev. I do.”
He nodded at me.
