When the wave receded, Gavin was yanked into the air, his fist still stuck into the wood. Kip lunged, but missed him.
“Leave him!” Ironfist shouted. “You see anyone, you light ’em up!”
Kip could see then that Gavin was drafting still, heedless of his body hanging by one arm.
I don’t think I even could hold myself up by one arm.
Gavin was doing it and drafting—and drafting something horrendously complicated, if it was taking him this much time. Then he was done. When the skimmer rose on the next wave, Gavin touched down on the deck as gracefully as a dancer.
“Two minutes,” he said. “We need to keep the drafters busy.”
And so they circled again, Commander Ironfist giving hand signals to the three remaining sea chariots. They concentrated on hurling luxin and exhausted their grenadoes, some of them successfully tossing them into the huge holes Kip’s explosions had created. Somewhere in the fighting, one of the teams had successfully cut all the rigging to the foremast, and another had set fire to the lateen sails, but the mainsail and mainmast were still whole.
The great ship seemed invincible.
Gavin swooped in and destroyed the capsized sea chariot, and then after perhaps thirty seconds they circled wider, out more than a hundred paces. With so many of the big guns silenced for the moment, it was close enough to still be a threat, but far enough away to be safer from all but the luckiest musket shot.
The Prism and one beefy female Blackguard were the only ones who had the strength and the endurance remaining to continue bombarding the Gargantua with magic. Everyone had gone through all their grenadoes. The archers had used up most of their arrows, and the four ships Kip had seen earlier—two small galleons and two caravels—were bearing down on them.
Gavin gave a quiet oath. “If it doesn’t happen in the next—”
A deep whoomping explosion drowned out his words. It seemed to shake the sea itself in its bed.
Kip shot a look at Gavin. His father looked oddly bereaved. “Their powder room was below the waterline. Makes it a lot harder for a stray shell to hit it, but… poor bastards.”
When the smoke began to clear, Kip saw that both sides of the hull had been blown out right in the middle of the ship. With wood creaking and snapping, the mainmast plunged off to one side like a man jumping overboard, throwing men from both of its crow’s nests and slashing through the weakened deck at the ship’s waist.
Some few men were leaping from the decks, and fire was everywhere. Smaller explosions sounded like popping corn. Then the waist collapsed and the ship folded in on itself. The front half of the great ship went down almost instantly, far faster than Kip would have believed something made entirely of wood should sink. The stern rolled over on its side, open decks gaping like open wounds, swallowing the seas in great burbling gulps.
Deck by burning deck, the great ship plunged into the sea, hissing and spitting and vomiting up flotsam and broken men.
Before it even slipped under the waves, Ironfist asked, “Mop up the swimmers?”
Gavin looked toward the coming ships.
Mop up? Commander Ironfist meant, Should we kill the men who survived?
“You see any wights make it out?” Gavin asked.
“Didn’t see any. Doesn’t mean there weren’t some,” Ironfist said.
“I didn’t see any either,” the Blackguard they’d pulled out of the waves earlier said.
Kip watched the last of the Gargantua slip beneath the waves. There was a lot of junk afloat in the waves, but not many men. Gavin had said there were seven hundred men on board.
Orholam have mercy.
Because your Prism won’t.
“No,” Gavin said. “I’d rather be a mystery and a wild tale. We don’t have it in us to sink four more. Let’s go home.”
They headed out two leagues to regroup, and the sea chariots came alongside and with difficulty in the heaving waves, they reformed the big skimmer. They’d lost seven Blackguards. Another had taken a ball in the elbow. She would be crippled. The rest had minor injuries: burns and little cuts and pulled muscles from maneuvering their chariots too sharply. One had a musket-ball burn in a streak along his neck that was going to leave a scar. He looked perversely pleased about it. A breath more to the left and it would have cut his carotid. Cruxer was wide-eyed, blinking a lot, but unhurt.
“Breaker,” Cruxer said, “did you do what I think you did back there?” He looked at the Blackguards. “Am I the only one who saw him blow up half the ship?”
“I saw,” one said. Others nodded, though not all of them.
“We saw,” Ironfist said. “Well done, Breaker.”