Chapter 3 - Scene 7

Rig workers came fleeing through the scaffold ahead of a force of mongers. They reloaded and fired as they ran. Some got caught in swordfights up along the gantries, others caught by packs of the ferals, pierced through and run down. Twenty or thirty men came into the clearing around the diving bell.

‘Form up! They’re right behind us! Riflemen at the back, swords at the front. Now! Now!’ The voice came from a man in overalls and a thick protective jumpsuit. Blood splashed his uniform, a streak of it running from the base of his flat, stubbled jaw to the dark hairline above his eyebrows, painting the right side of his face. He saw Marshall. He pushed his way through the crowd and came over. Up close Sall could see the engineer was trembling, high on the heat of battle no doubt.

‘They’re through crew quarters, boss. We’re still holding up in the sheds, but this is all we’ve got left on the ground.’

A wave of ferals spilled down from a metal walkway. ‘Here they come!’

The engineer’s eyes rolled in his head but he set his jaw and turned, racing back to the lines shouting his orders. A shambling figure broke through the scaffold, wild-eyed and crazed. It took a ball of shot to the face and collapsed. Another came after, shoved its dying mate aside, and lunged at the nearest rigworker.

Its chest was ruptured by a frond of old coral, long bleached by exposure to the sun. The flesh was exposed where the growth had split and snapped its ribs by growing between them. It must have been in agony. It drove its sabre at an angle into the rigworker’s throat and crashed into him, bringing him to the ground.

Three of Marshall’s men pounced on it and drove frenzied blades into it until it stopped thrashing. It was killed, but a dozen more assailed the scaffold overhead. Some swarmed through the poles, taking shots from the riflemen, and fell sideways onto the roofs of the sheds, but for every one that went down two took its place. Gunfire ricocheted off the metal. Swordsmen shouted, throwing themselves into the fray, and Sall looked at Wilbur, seeing ferals trying to flank them around the sheds to their left.

‘Look out!’ Sall said, lining up his shot beside Wilbur’s ear. He fired, slaying the one in the lead. It fell in the channel behind it, going down with a splash.

Wilbur winced away from the sound. He stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it. ‘Cunt!’ he said, overloud.

Sall holstered the pistol and drew his sabre. He saw Florence and her fishermen joining Marshall and the other men on the ground fight the ferals around the pool. Sabres clashed, ringing out with the shouts, curses, and snarls, such that it was unable to tell who was monger and whom human.

‘We can’t stay and fight,’ Sall said, thinking. ‘We have to get to the Bitter End, or this fight is pointless.’

He grabbed Wilbur and hauled him aside, out of the way of a barrage of pistolfire from their flank. It pocked the mud at their feet. There were six or seven of them breaking into a shambling charge behind it. Sall and the others had no time. The tide was upon them now. He shoved Wilbur ahead.

‘Round up the pirates and get to that ship as quick as you can, then. Wait for me. I’ll hold them off. Go!’

Sall drew his sabre and slashed at the first feral coming at him. It darted back. Sall lunged and pinned its heart through. He wished he’d had a sword aboard the Bitter End. He could have taken the entire ship. He saw Wilbur. Wilbur had found Campion, he standing aimless and scared at the rear of the battle. ‘You said Well’s Rest?’ Sall said.

Wilbur nodded as Sall wheeled the hilt of his sabre, swishing the creature’s noxious blood off the blade.

‘I’ll meet you at that ship, don’t you dare sail off without me,’ he said, and turned away from the punta. He faced the next monger calm, alert, able to see the way it led its attacks, showing a slash with its shoulder, a change in its stance with a slide of the heel, a feint with the shift of its eyes, all behaviour he observed without focusing, by allowing the fight’s flow to dictate his own movement. Three came at him now.

The sun was over his right shoulder. He watched one back there by the shadow it cast. They thought they had him. Victory burned in their eyes, arrogance. The shadow moved.

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Sall spun the sabre in his hands, reversing it, ducking. He drove straight back, feeling the point lance the advancing monger’s flesh. Sall withdrew the blade and let the monger fall aside.

Two more rushed. Sall couldn’t move in time. He parried a lunge, but the second monger had other ideas, tackling Sall around the waist, lifting the heavier man right off his feet. The sky spun. He crashed into the mud, slid a few feet and came to a stop, his side burning from landing on it. The pain stole his breath. The monger was a few feet away, scrabbling in the mud.

Groaning, Sall drove the point of his sabre into the platform and leveraged himself up. He rolled onto his knees.

He pushed himself to his feet. The ferals regrouped. He pulled his sabre out of the wood. They lunged.

When the first monger slashed he ducked – his side flared – under the cutlass and came up behind it, driving the point up through the soft skin of its chin, through its mouth and piercing through its skull. It met resistance at the top of the skull. Sall lifted its face level with his own. The glare left the monger’s eyes and went blank. Sall withdrew his sabre and let the corpse fall.

The last feral was right behind it. It was short and stocky, but charged like a wild hog. It was once a man likely in his forties, with long, unkempt hair growing from a balding crown and a dark beard tangled with fishbones. Tubes of coral sprouted from its chin and protruded through the hairs. It came at him with a flurry of strikes that put Sall on his back foot, driving him towards the diving pool.

The feral’s eyes tracked towards it. It was herding him. Sall couldn’t let it push him much further.

Its rabid, ferocious, strikes pitted their cheap steel swords. A swing brought both blades screeching down to their hilts, bringing their faces close. He smelled the foul creature’s breath, raw fish and sick gums, its broken teeth bared in anger.

Sall was still stronger and taller. He pushed it away and whipped the point of his sabre down. The feral flailed, trying to recover. Sall stuck it in the eye.

It made a strained urk! and fell to the ground. Sall looked behind him. His heel was on the edge of the dive pool. One more step and the feral would have speared him as he fell.

Sall let out the breath he was holding. He had lost track of time. It passed in sharp focus, and felt like seconds. He scouted the battlefield made hazy from blustering smoke, peering between the scuffles. It seemed the pirates had disappeared, at least. There was little preventing them from stealing the Bitter End, and he doubted Wilbur would encourage them to wait.

There she was. ‘Florence!’ he called, spotting her with a contingent of her fishermen behind her, fighting off a group of mongers pushing them towards the far end of the mud shed.

Sall looked up, at the scaffold around the enormous crane. The walkways rattled under a drumbeat of footsteps. Feral mongers cast twisted shadows from above and hurled themselves down to tackle men to the ground and eviscerate them with short daggers. Sall grabbed at one hunched over a sailor and hauled it bodily off him. The feral yelped. Sall held it by the hair and slit its throat.

Sall crouched down and put his hand on the sailor’s shoulder. Through the shock the sailor seemed to see him as human and his breathing slowed. It was not long until he stopped breathing. Sall saw the young man’s pistol was still loaded and took it.

Sall sheathed his sabre and reloaded his own pistol. His nerves were shot. His hands trembled tipping powder across his knuckles instead of into the priming pan the first time. He dropped the ball down the barrel and hurriedly packed it.

‘Time to go, Florence!’ Sall fired into the crowd surrounding Florence and her father. It was a clean shot through the back of a monger’s skull, dropping it mid-stride. Another went down, courtesy of Marshall’s pipe wrench. Marshall’s long arms swung the pipe wrench from side to side, crushing swings that broke skulls and shattered bones. Sall dropped the pistol and unsheathed his sabre, ready to charge in, when a salvo of gunfire blasted from their right. The riflemen had reloaded. More ferals fell.

Most were busy now in single skirmishes, but the battle was far from over. A fresh wave of ferals was pushing through the rig, coming all through the tight structure, climbing over it, through it, waves of them pushing past Marshall’s defenses.

Sall went over to Marshall, rattled. It must have shown. ‘You look like you should be in a hospital bed,’ Marshall said, clapping a big hand on his shoulder all the same.

‘Bit busy,’ Sall said, ignoring the sting.

Florence came up behind him, reloading her rifle. ‘First time on the Obotema,’ she said, exchanging a glance with her father. He shrugged.

‘We’ve got a pla-’ Sall said, but Marshall interrupted him.

‘I know, I’ll give you a hand.’ They turned to leave, but Florence was stopped, looking away.

She perked her ears. ‘Wait. Do you hear that?’ They all looked up towards the massive crane suspending the diving bell. Those five pylons were all that kept the crane from smashing the entire mooring into a mess of tin and driftwood.

Three ferals came bounding through the scaffold, each with a lit, fizzing grenade in hand. Their ragged clothing caught in the smoke and embers turning in the wind from the fires. Mad gleams made their expressions bright and ferocious, as each one leapt, grenades in hand, from the iron walkways towards the pylons supporting the crane, the diving bell, and let the fuses burn out.