“Kill it!”
“It’s already dead!”
“Kill it some more!”
Sudden bloom of light as a boot cracked into the side of Gust’s misused skull, then darkness.
In the strong room, oh, in the strong room. And back, now, a timeward score of rapid steps Striding in, Korbal Broach paused to look round, took another stride and saw torn fragments of burlap littering the floor. Behind him, Briv, Briv and Briv edged in, crouched and whispering and at least one of them whimpering.
The Sech’kellyn attacked from all sides. One moment, gloom and calm, the next, explosive mayhem. Stony fists lashed out, sending Brivs flying in all directions. More fists cracked into Korbal Broach, forcing surprised grunts from the huge eunuch. He started punching back. Deathly white bodies reeled, crunched against the curving walls.
Briv, Cook’s helper, glanced over to see all six of the demons close in on the eunuch. Just as it should be, him in charge and all that. Then, spying the motionless, crumpled form of another Briv, he crawled over, grasped the sailor by the ankles, and began dragging Briv-Briv, Rope Braider-away from the colossal battle in the centre of the room.
Briv, Carpenter’s helper, was suddenly at Briv’s side, taking one of Briv’s ankles.
“Hey,” Briv, Carpenter’s helper, hissed, “Briv’s hair got torn off! Hey, this ain’t Briv-it’s Gorbo!”
“Of course it is!” snapped Briv, Cook’s helper. “Everybody knows that!”
“I didn’t!”
Cook’s helper paused. “That’s impossible-you slept with him!”
“Only once! And it was dark-and some women like it-”
“Enough of that, help me get him outa here!”
“What about the wig?”
“What about it?”
“Uh, nothing, I guess.”
Hard to tell who was winning-oh, no, easy to tell. Korbal Broach was being beaten to a pulp. Amazing he was still standing, but standing was a good thing, for as long as he stood there the demons weren’t bothering with them, and as soon as they got out past the threshold, well, they’d be saved!
Assoon as the God-thing’s head cleared the rail, Bauchelain stepped forward and swung his sword. Edge smashing into the creature’s snout. At the blow, something spat out from the mouth.
Line, hook and ear.
A giant taloned hand slashed in a lateral sweep that Bauchelain not quite succeeded in evading, and the curved claws raked slashes through his chain hauberk. Black links pattered like hail across the aft deck.
He chopped down at the limb as it passed, felt the iron bite deep into the wrist, slicing clean through at least one of the bones.
The god wailed.
Bauchelain caught but a glimpse of the other arm, slanting down directly from above, and so he brought up his sword in a blocking parry that was, alas, unsuited to the downward force of the fist’s blow, akin to a blacksmith’s anvil dropped from a tenement roof.
Blow struck.
Wood crunched, the fist pounding onto the deck, and Bauchelain was no longer on the aft deck.
He landed, amidst showering splinters of wood, in the strongroom.
A Sech-kellyn lunged at him. Instinctively he stop-thrust and watched the demon impale itself on the sword. It cried out, chest shattering like a chunk of marble beneath a mason’s spike.
That cry was heard from above. Bellowing, the god began tearing away the aft deck.
The five remaining Sech’kellyn all looked up. Childlike squeals erupted, and all at once the Sech’kellyn was scrabbling up toward the ever-expanding hole. A huge hand reached down and the homunculi climbed it as if scampering up a tree.
A cacophony of screams from just outside the strong room door. Rising, a bloodied mass of wounds, Korbal Broach shook himself, glanced once at Bauchelain, then walked out of the strongroom.
Birds mottle stared up at the looming lich. She was still trying to scream but her voice was gone, completely gone, and now she was-absurdly-making sounds virtually identical to the lich.
Briv, Briv and Gorbo tumbled into her, the relief on their faces transforming in an instant to mindless terror upon seeing the lich, still looming as dastardly monsters were wont to do.
At that precious moment, with death mimed by every spasmodic clutch of those all-too-many clawed, skeletal hands, with eyes of lifeless black inviting the blackness of lifelessness, with the princely overbite and nasal, wheezing haw-hawing of what was probably intended to be gleeful triumph-at that moment, aye, the lich looked up from its intended victims.
As Korbal Broach strode up to it, stepping right over Birds Mottle’s despair-numbed legs, and, smiling, closed his thick-fingered hands to either side of the lich’s misshapen head.
A sudden twist to one side, a sharp snap.
Then another sudden twist, to the other side, and grinding sounds.
A twist the other way again, then back again, faster and faster.
With a dry sob the lich’s body dropped away beneath the head, clattering onto the gangway in a jumble of limbs, brows, mouths and stuff.
Korbal Broach held the head before him. Still smiling, he turned about.
And looked over to Bauchelain, who appeared in the threshold and was now brushing splinters of wood from his shoulders.
“Look!” piped Korbal Broach.
Bauchelain paused. “I see.”
Tucking the mangled head under an arm, Korbal Broach walked to the steps, and up he went.
Emancipor Reese looked down on the wreck age that was the Suncurl. Oh, the damned thing still floated, and that was something. The giant reptile thing and its pallid pups were gone, back over the ruined stern, back down into the wretched waters of Laughter’s End.
Captain Sater was drunk, leg-sprawled with her back against the prow step, with Cook beside her intoning some discordant declamatory drivel the genius of which was so loftily profound that only he had the wit to comprehend it. Or at least pretend to, which in this world and all others was pretty much the same thing, amen.
He saw Korbal Broach emerge from the hold hatch, something tucked under an arm and guess what that might be-no need, oh no, but guess anyway-and followed a moment later by four sailors all watery with relief and then Bauchelain, who was not quite as solid on his legs as was usual.
To the east, the sky was paling, moments from painting the seas blood-red but too late for that, hey?
A raspy voice cackled behind him, then said, “Mother did what needed doing. We’re safe, lass, safe as can be now!”