THE QUESTERS, PART XII
With our prisoner-oarsmen at the sweeps, and the barge's captain chained up below decks, we slipped past the Towers that dominate the southern end of Mahaten. The great copper Lady of the Old Empire appeared on our flank. Alexander was at the barge's tiller, judging our heading by squinting back-and-forth between that ancient statue and the lowering sun.
I could still taste Betty on my lips. I hoped she wouldn't get into too much trouble because of me.
Faye gave me a hand as I strapped myself back into my multi-armed armor. I'd taken it off before I talked to Betty. The situation had been odd enough without having to answer the sort of questions that the armor would bring.
"For pity's sake, Jonah," Faye grumbled as she helped me with a stiff shoulder buckle. "You say your uncle built this? It's more like some kind of Iron-Men gear."
"Uncle Otto was a strange man, but he was a genius," I told her.
The armor's arms activated. One reached down and affectionately curled itself around one of Faye's calves. Then it gave her a gentle squeeze before letting go.
"Sorry," I apologized to Faye. "The arm on the lower left quadrant can get a little forward. It likes women."
Faye raised an eyebrow at me. She was in her Folk form, the only trace of her Green nature being her short-cropped green hair. Otherwise she was wearing her increasingly tattered dress and a pair of worn sandals.
"Are you telling me that your mechanical arms think for themselves?" she asked skeptically.
I shrugged absently as I checked the cartridges in the web-shooters on my wrists. "Not quite, but almost. They do seem to have their own urges and interests. The upper right arm really likes to fight."
The lower left arm reached up and plucked suggestively at the shoulder of Faye's dress. Faye shoved it away. "Watch it buddy!" she growled.
"Stop that!" I sternly said to the misbehaving arm. The arm reluctantly withdrew, although it did gently trail a path down the length of Faye's back.
"We've talked about this!" I told it irritably. "You can't just go around touching women you happen to like! And Faye is married to my uncle!"
Faye tugged at the collar of my armor, testing how well it was secured. That rocked me back-and-forth. Then she let me go and looked up at the sun.
"Why do I just know it will be after sundown when we get to your sinking ship?" she asked in exasperation.
I shrugged helplessly. "What choice do we have? The vessel probably won't even come to the surface during daylight."
"Ever fought a vampire?" Faye asked me.
"No."
"I have," Rose said. She had just finished hammering iron nails into several sharp wooden stakes. Then, using her Wilder powers, she levitated one of the stakes. Concentrating, she brought up the rest of the stakes. Rotating and spinning, they flickered around her body. However, I could tell she didn't have the kind of control with them that she normally had with her steel blades.
"It'll just have to do," Rose muttered to herself.
"Any tips?" I asked.
Rose nodded. "Don't look a vampire in the eye - some of them have mesmeric abilities. And every now and then you run into a vampire who has the ability to turn to mist, although that usually only shows up in the older vamps. And if you can't get a good shot at putting a stake into a vampire's chest, go for the head instead. Decapitation isn't easy, but at least try to blind them. They have other senses, but they're still dependent on sight. Oh, and they regenerate like Blood. Don't assume a down vampire isn't still a problem. Either stake it or take off its head."
"Taking off heads is always good advice," Smit said distractedly from off to one side. He was using a claw to whittle a stake for Bent.
Then Smit's eyes seemed to go blank. "The head of the rattlesnake," he said distantly. "They're all snakes and we have to kill the snakes. And snakes taste good. Like chicken. But snakes don't read books."
Then Smit blinked back to whatever passed for normalcy. He flipped the stake around and handed it to Beck butt first.
"Stay behind me," Smit warned her. Beck nodded grimly as she hefted the stake. She didn't look too confident in her new weapon.
From the tiller, Alexander was now watching Smit. They were on a constant claw's edge around each other. If we couldn't keep them separated and busy, they'd eventually try to kill each other. I really wasn't sure what it was Alexander saw in Smit that he didn't like, but the First Spider whispered to me whenever they were too close to each other. And "too close" was actually a respectably long distance.
I tested the draw on my short-swords. They came out easily enough. Then I rotated them in my hands before resheathing them.
"You're good with those things," Alexander told me. "But I just can't see the point to claws that aren't a part of you."
I shrugged. That was an old, old, point of discussion between Blood and non-Blood.
Meanwhile, Rahne was looking at Smit. "Why would a snake read a book?" she asked. It took me a moment to remember that Smit had said something about that.
There was something in Rahne's eyes. Something deeply engaged yet still distant. She was seeing things the rest of us - even other Blood - couldn't see. That's what Seekers do and it's eerie to be around them when it happens.
Smit blinked in surprise. "Book?" he said.
"You said something about snakes not reading books," Rahne told him intently.
Some say that the mad are poised between our world and the world beyond. Strange insights can flow between those worlds, and those who aren't fully inside either world can pick up on those insights.
Suddenly, I knew what Rahne was after. She was still seeking signs. Actually, she'd probably never stopped. Given what Rahne was, I didn't think she could stop.
"I don't know," Smit said slowly. "I don't remember saying that."
Then Rahne looked at me. "You've studied magic?" she asked.
I wasn't sure where Rahne was going. "Not formally," I replied. "A few years back, I took a text off of a dead wizard's body and I've dabbled with it. I guess you could say that I'm a self-taught amateur. Don't depend on me for something big or complex."
Rahne nodded but she still seemed distracted.
By the time the sunset, we had cleared most of the harbor and nothing but the open ocean was dimly visible ahead of us. The first stars were visible and I could see the glow of the moon coming up from just below the horizon.
The sea was unusually calm. Perhaps we owed Lady Ororo a word of thanks.
Alexander - still at the tiller - met my eyes. He wasn't happy, and I could see his point. We didn't really have a location where we were heading. Instead, we were just following a course to nowhere.
The oarsmen were becoming restive, but Smit was walking among them, keeping them under control.
"A barge this far out in the open sea is dangerous," Alexander told me. "At some point, we might need to make an example of an oarsmen if we want to keep going."
He didn't look particularly enthused with that thought.
"We'll do what we have to do," I told Alexander. He grunted in response. He saw the need, but... well, as I said, he didn't like it. Alexander was a killer, but not a wanton one.
I returned his grunt. Then I planted my four quadrant-arms into the deck around me, their spiked tips digging into the wood. After that, I elevated myself a good five yards into the air. The barge didn't have anything like a crow's nest, but that would do.
Everyone was staring at me. That was a trick I didn't do too often. I wasn't sure how well the arms could take that kind of stress.
"Anything?" Alexander yelled.
I peered into the darkness, wishing I had a Blood's vision.
"No," I said. I didn't bother to yell since Alexander would have no problem hearing me.
"Yes," Rose contradicted.
I looked at her. She was serenely hovering in the air beside me. Her arms were folded over her dark-purple hauberk.
"There's a mass of metal under the water," she said to me. Then she made a sharp gesture with her head, pointing with her chin. Thanks to the darkness, I could only barely make that out.
"About a half-mile that way," Rose said. Then she added, "Alexander really nailed the course."
"Damn right," I heard Alexander call up to us in a grumpy but satisfied tone.
Rose was still facing in the direction she'd indicated, but her eyes were closed. She was tracking the underwater vessel with senses only a few people in the world truly understood.
"It's rising - coming to the surface," she added.
Rahne raised her voice. "Let's be there when it surfaces!"
"Gimme a direction!" Alexander called back.
"Twenty degrees off port!" Rose replied. Alexander yelled a command for an oar pivot while he strained at the tiller. One side of our oars went still and rose out of the water, while the oars on the other flank other side continued to beat the water.
The barge began making a relatively sharp turn.
"There..." Rose whispered next to me. "There it is."
By then I could see a disturbance in the water. The suddenly choppy water was catching the diffuse light of the not-quite risen moon. The tall protrusion near the fore of the mastless ship was suddenly visible, bulging out of the sea.
From below, I could hear Alexander yell to the oarsman. "All right, you've got a choice! There are vampires on board that damned thing! You can run, fight, or be eaten! Just don't get in our way!"
There was a muttered, rumbling, chorus of curses from the oarsmen.
Then, with a splashing roar, the hull of the mastless ship fully broached the surface. Sea-water cascading away from its hull, and the barge rocked in the turbulent wash of displaced water as our oarsmen fought to keep us from being pushed back.
Rahne had a lit lantern in her hands. With an impressive heave, she pitched it against protrusion on top of the mastless ship. It shattered and streaks of burning oil began drizzling downward. Rahne knew that some of us didn't have the senses of the Blood and she was making matters easier for us by providing a light source.
I nodded at Rose. Concentrating, she plucked up Rahne and Faye and began carrying them over to the rising ship.
Still suspended on my elongated arms, I simply stepped off the barge and onto the prow of the mastless ship. The steel tips of my arm-claws skittered across the hull's rust-pocked surface before finding purchase, but eventually they dug into a set of gratings that were obviously intended to give the crew footing when they were outside of their strange craft. Alexander and Smit vaulted across the gap between the barge and the mastless ship. They both ended half-in and half-out of the sea, but used handholds to drag themselves the rest of the way up. Faye and Rahne helped them.
Beck was waving her arms and yelling something that I couldn't make out. The barge bumped into the mastless ship as I reached across to the barge with two of my quadrant arms, scooped her up, and dragged her along with us.
"Trouble!" Rose yelled. She was hovering above us and pointing to hull-hatch that was beginning to open.
Rose concentrated and tore the hatch completely off of its mounts. Then, with an idle wave of her hand, she sent it spinning away into the night sky.
The vampire now revealed at the top of the hatchway looked completely shocked just before my eager right-upper arm-spike slammed into the center of his face. His skull split open and he began twisting and twitching grotesquely as I dragged him out of the hatchway.
Alexander and Smit, their personal difficulties forgotten for the moment, tore and ripped at the now exposed vampire. Eventually, the vampire's splintered head bounced loose in a spray of dark and rotten blood. Standing nearby, Rahne almost absently kicked it into the sea.
By then Faye was full Green. With a mighty howl, she crashed her way down the torn-open hatchway. Alexander and Smit, as eager as hunting hounds, were right behind her.
"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest!" I heard Faye bellow from inside the ship. "Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!"
Really, I wasn't sure what that meant, but I'd heard Faye say earlier that her father had taught her at least some of that chant.
I hoped that the spirit of Faye's father knew that his little girl was thinking of him.