Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (72 page)

And then time resumed, and Kal found herself rolling on her back, clutching her leg. A foot-long splinter of wood was lodged in her thigh muscle. It was sheer agony, and she was left reeling and wailing as everyone else followed Azul and boarded the enemy.

Lula had left Kal behind and joined the fight. There was nobody alive on the
Lotus
now except Kal. Pip, whose only task had been to hold the tiller steady, was missing at his post and the ship was drifting free. Dogwood was either unconscious or dead behind the cannon, and none of the other bodies on deck were moving. The deck was tilting astern, too: the
Black Lotus
was sinking.

Damned if this captain is going down with her ship
, Kal thought, getting painfully to her feet. Her thigh was numb, but she could stand. She didn’t dare pull the splinter out, though. She began to stagger over to check on Dogwood.

Then Jako appeared over the rail and stood in front of her. He drew his two scimitars.

Kal hissed. There were no words. Jako had been the Magician’s man from the start; he had done his best to obfuscate Kal’s investigations, and he had threatened the life of her best friend. Kal raised her cutlass. If she was destined to die fighting this man, then so be it.

Jako didn’t speak at first, either. He just flashed his Sirensbane smile: a black void of rotten teeth. He was bare-chested, and Kal could see that his hands and forearms were grey up to his elbows, and his smooth black chest had a grey stain over his heart. He was still human—just—but driven by drugs and by his master.

‘Time to claim that million pieces of eight bounty on you,
Butcher
,’ Jako joked.

Kal shook her head. ‘You won’t live long enough to spend it, even if you kill me,’ she said. ‘Look at you, Jako, you’re a sick wreck.’ Kal held up her cleaver in her free hand. ‘Luckily for you, I’m the cure.’

Jako’s reply was to just slash and sweep his blades in an intimidating display. Kal caught his eye, and perhaps she imagined it but there was regret there: he had become a monster, but there was still a tiny spark of humanity that was aware of the life he was losing hour by hour.

Would that stop him killing Kal? Probably not, but she hoped it might give him pause. She pressed her verbal attack: ‘You’re a slave to Sirensbane … the man
and
the drug!’

Jako moved in to attack. Kal tried to keep her cool—she knew that dual-wielding conferred no real advantage except to strike fear into an opponent. After all, you could only swing one weapon at a time. For a strong fighter like Jako, a large two-handed blade would have given him more power and control.

Kal stepped forward, putting her weight on her leading leg—her good leg, fortunately—and met Jako’s advance. She used her cleaver for attack, and her cutlass for defence; she also had the advantage of the sloping deck. Kal put all of her rage into the fight: her anger at Che’s death, her frustration at Jako’s duplicity, her sorrow at what the drug had done to so many people here …

She managed to drive Jako back to the capstan, but it took all her strength. And when Jako put his back to the metal cylinder to stop his backwards slide, Kal knew her advantage was lost. But then, to her surprise—and certainly to Jako’s—Pip crawled out from where he had been hiding behind the capstan. He stabbed Jako in the heel with the marlinspike Kal had given him.

Pip! The boy swore he was sixteen, but Kal reckoned he was some years younger. He had run away to sea for adventure, not violence, but his timid jab was enough to turn the battle back in Kal’s favour; Jako lost his balance and twisted away from the unexpected attack. Kal stepped in with her cleaver and delivered a crushing blow to Jako’s right shoulder.

It should have been over, but Jako shrugged off the wound like it was a mosquito bite. He dropped one scimitar, and battled on with the other. Jako’s real advantage was now clear: he was just as skilled with his left sword arm as with his right, and his drug-ravaged body refused to feel pain.

Kal was losing hope of a quick victory. Her defences dropped for an instant, and Jako’s blade sliced across her collarbone, whipping up a spray of blood. Kal felt the steel strike bone, and she was knocked backwards, tripping over a dead body. Now the tables had really turned: Kal was beneath Jako on the sloping deck. She rolled away from him, getting under the barrel of the loose cannon just in time to avoid a finishing blow. Jako’s sword clanged on the bronze bore.

Jako hopped up onto the cannon itself. He was grinning insanely. Kal was still scrabbling around on her back, but no matter where she moved to, Jako could jump on her and kill her in an instant. It was surely all over for her now.

Then the grin was wiped off Jako’s face. A sword point emerged from his belly.
Dogwood’s
sword point. When the sword was pulled back out, and Jako fell off the cannon, the Captain of the Senate Guard was revealed, still pinned to the breach of the cannon by his left hand, but triumphantly brandishing his weapon with his right.

‘Is there a bounty on that fellow?’ Dogwood asked. ‘Because if there is, it’s mine!’

Jako stood up.

Dogwood instinctively threw his shortsword, and it stuck in Jako’s back, but it didn’t stop him. Jako was a dead man walking, and Kal could only stare in horror as he slowly lurched towards her. His eyes were dead, his vile grin was dead, but his body just kept on moving.

Kal tried to get up, but her injured leg wouldn’t cooperate. She looked around for help, but there was none. The
Black Lotus
was drifting away from the action. The noise of battle from the deck of the pirate ship was getting fainter. Kal noticed that one large triple-decker warship had detached itself from the fray around the galleon and was heading in their direction. It was hardly likely, though, that it was interested in a small sinking schooner, even if it could get here on time.

Jako raised his scimitar and stabbed downwards. Kal jerked her hips to one side and the blade slid inside her belt, pinning her to the deck.

The warship was getting closer now, racing directly towards them under full sail. It wasn’t an Eldragoran ship—it must have been one of the new arrivals. Kal thought she recognised the figurehead: a king holding a sword aloft …

Jako went and picked up his other sword from where it had slid and got caught in some fallen rigging. He returned to try and kill Kal a second time.

A skeleton wearing a crown and holding a sword aloft …

Jako raised his scimitar.

The
Mort Royal
!

The Amaranthium Navy’s command ship smashed into the side of the
Black Lotus
, splitting the smaller ship in two with its narrow prow. The grinning skeletal figurehead was heading straight for Jako, and the sword in its hand went straight through his neck, plucking him off the deck and whisking him away like a prize catch.

After the sudden destruction, Kal found herself still pinned to a rapidly sinking section of the deck,

‘Don’t go anywhere, Mooney!’ a voice shouted from the circling warship. ‘Help is on its way!’

‘Ben!’ she groaned.
I couldn’t escape if I wanted to.

IV.viii

Dreadnought

Kal was hauled onto a pontoon and winched up to the main deck, while the
Mort Royal
continued on to pick up the survivors of the pirate ship battle. Kal soon found herself surrounded by sailors and soldiers in both Republic and Eldragoran uniform. Lula appeared and took Kal’s hand, while Doctor Tooth examined her leg.

‘Looks pretty bad,’ he said, fingering his bonesaw. ‘Might have to come off …’

Kal sat up and shook away everyone’s probing hands. ‘Lu, go and make sure Dogwood and Pip have been picked up. Doctor, if you really want to help, get me some rum! And where the hell is Ben?’

Benedict Godsword pushed through the crowd. He was still wearing his blue sea coat with the gold buttons, but it looked a lot more travel-worn than the last time Kal had seen it. He was also clutching a bottle. ‘Kal!’ he said. ‘I might have known I’d find you in the thick of the action!’

‘Is he dead?’ Kal asked urgently.

‘The Nubaran zombie guy? Yes, he’s dead. We removed his head to make sure. He put up quite a struggle, though!’

Kal relaxed, but only slightly. ‘What are you doing here, Ben?’ she asked, grabbing the bottle from him and taking a swig. The liquor was hot in her throat, and the warmth spread to her limbs.

‘Your friend Lula put up signal flags from the pirate’s rigging. My crew spotted them—they meant nothing to me, of course—and we headed straight over!’

‘No,’ Kal groaned. ‘I mean, what are you doing
here
? At Port Black? You must have followed us all the way from Amaranthium!’

‘Well, no, not exactly,’ Ben said. ‘I went to visit the King of Eldragoro first, on a diplomatic mission. I wanted to see if he knew anything I didn’t about what was going on down here. When I heard he had sent the Armada, I had to quickly think on my feet to negotiate a deal. Can I have my rum back?’

Kal had yanked the splinter from her thigh, and washed away the blood with rum. A gaping hole was left in the middle of her new tattoo, making it look as though the ink dragon had been violently slain. She tore a strip off her shirt and bound it tight. ‘You’re drunk enough already by the smell of it,’ Kal said to Ben. ‘What sort of
deal
?’

‘Of course I’m drunk!’ Ben said. ‘I’m in the middle of a sea battle. It’s either hide below, or get drunk and join the fun! The deal I made with the King of Eldragoro was the creation of … well, of a league of nations of sorts, to make sure that the world can never be held to ransom by people like … like …’

‘Sirensbane,’ Kal said. ‘The governor of Port Black broke bad. He’s manufacturing and smuggling drugs on a large scale, and turning zombified addicts into his own private workforce.’

‘Good work, Kal,’ Ben congratulated her. ‘I knew you’d uncover the truth. When we’re done with his ships, you can tell me all you know, and we’ll go after him.’

‘He’s a monster,’ Kal went on. ‘Possibly insane. And if you’re going to send someone after him, then it’s going to be me. You don’t even need to pay me—’ Her words were drowned out by a cacophony of cannon fire. The crew of the
Mort Royal
were all looking and pointing at something, so Ben helped Kal to her feet and they went to the side to have a look. At the centre of the battle, the action continued to revolve around the zombie galleon, like a cyclone swirling around a malevolent eye. Its cannons were inexhaustible, and it was laying waste to the allied fleet.

‘Sirensbane is aboard that ship.’ Kal said. It was obvious now: his secret manufacturing base was a floating fortress.

Ben put his arm around Kal’s shoulder. ‘Well, he won’t be for much longer. You see those ships—’ Two frigates were closing in on either side of Sirensbane’s galleon. Kal couldn’t see how they could possibly be carrying enough firepower to bother the larger ship, though. ‘The
Firehand
and the
Cassava
,’ Ben laughed. ‘Like their illustrious namesakes, they have a lot of underhand tricks prepared.’

The two frigates positioned themselves fore and aft of the galleon, avoiding its broadsides, but also seemingly giving themselves a smaller target to fire at. Kal shook her head in puzzlement as she watched. The guns on the sides of the frigates were not conventional cannon … they were more like long tubular piping …

And then they fired. Or rather,
squirted
. An oily vomit splattered the galleon’s hull and decks, and when it slopped around the waterline, it burst into a terrible and vivid red flame.

‘Dragonfire!’ Ben exclaimed gleefully. ‘We found stores of dragon oil in General Cassava’s armouries last year. She must have extracted it from dragons while out on campaign. We had to mix it with petrock and burnt lime to make up the quantities we needed, but the intensity is almost as much as the real thing. That ship will be a floating funeral pyre in less than a minute!’

Kal watched the burning galleon. ‘Would you like to wager any money on that?’

Ben frowned, and his expression turned sour at having his moment of triumph doubted. He gave Kal a disappointed look, but when he turned back to look out to sea, he swore.

The fire had burned itself out, but the galleon was still there.

Only now, its wooden shell had completely fallen away, revealing an indestructible metal hull and superstructure. The high afternoon sun glared off it, and Kal had to cover her eyes.

‘A
dreadnought
!’ Ben gasped. ‘My naval engineers have been trying to come up with one of these for years, but they assured me it was impossible!’

Amaro Azul appeared at the rail and whistled. ‘Well, that was quite a show, Senator,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do next? Send up some fireworks to really impress and delight the enemy?’

‘I need to get on board that ship,’ Kal said.

Lula had returned, too. ‘Kal!’ she protested. ‘You’re not going anywhere. Your leg—’

‘—is fine!’ Kal snapped. Her leg was
not
fine, but she could stand on it, and that was all that mattered. ‘I’m going to end this thing, Lu.’

Azul was checking his gun bandolier. He tossed a soaked pistol over the rail, repacked the other three in their holsters, and nabbed a spare off one of his marines. ‘This ship is the only vessel that can get us close enough and survive a battering by those cannon,’ he observed as he checked his kit over.

‘Get closer?!’ Ben choked. ‘This ship cost me over ten million crowns!’

They all watched as the dreadnought rotated on the spot without any sign of being under oar. The
Firehand
and the
Cassava
were instantly destroyed by two simultaneous broadsides. They turned into flaming beacons as they were consumed by their own deadly dragonfire payloads.

Ben took his rum back off Kal and downed the bottle in one gulp. ‘But then again,’ he said, ‘what’s ten million crowns anyway? I’ll just raise taxes next year!’

* * *