Chapter Twenty
By the time the first of the searats' powderkegs hit the high dunes, exploding in a geyser of smoke, flame and sand, most of the battle-ready squirrels, otters and shrews were already well north of that position, on their way to engage the rat fighters who were on shore.
Matowick hit the ground with the first explosion, even though it was a good way behind him. After what they'd endured in the initial bombardment earlier that afternoon, the woodlanders were understandably skittish about this fearsome new weapon. The Gawtrybe captain kept his belly pressed to the sand and paws over his ears until the fourth blast, then raised himself, glancing backward as he swiped the clinging grains from his tunic.
The pattern of this salvo was far more uneven than the earlier one had been. Two of the four kegs looked to have hit on the shoreward side of the protective dunes, where they couldn't have caused harm to anybeast. And none seemed to have landed far enough inland to cause the fleeing wounded any trouble, which relieved Matowick no end. Of course, so much of the territory directly south of him was now obscured by expanding clouds of dust and smoke that it was impossible to be absolutely certain of any of this.
A junior otter who'd been marching with Matowick looked backward as well. "Looks like that might've caught some o' our rearguard," the waterbeast observed ruefully.
"Maybe," Matowick said. "But they'll hafta look to themselves, I'm afraid. We've got to engage those rats as soon as we can - it might be a rough fight, but that's the one place we can be fairly sure we'll be safe from those exploding kegs."
They got underway once more, but hadn't gone very far when a new round of explosions came from behind them. This time Matowick forced himself to keep going, although he stayed to a low crouch and kept his paws firmly over his ears. He was beginning to wonder whether his hearing would ever return to normal again.
A short way on, he began to encounter some of the forward Gawtrybe sent ahead earlier. They were still some distance from the searat positions, he was sure, but probably close enough that the captain aboard the ship would not dare to use his imprecise, catapult-fired weapons for fear of hitting his own forces ... if he was even aware that the woodlanders were this far north, which Matowick hoped he'd been able to keep a secret.
Whether or not that was the case, they could proceed no further without a meeting of the commanders. Klystra came winging out of the sky, and soon the falcon was giving his latest surveillance report to Matowick, Saybrook and Lieutenant Tardo, acting commander of the shrews. The bird sketched his observations in the sand with a talon so that the ground creatures could formulate an attack strategy.
When Klystra was finished, Saybrook studied the crude diagram and wrinkled his snout in perplexion. "What? That ain't no proper defensive line!"
"No, it's not." Matowick grinned hungrily. "They're dug in just enough to hold us off and turn us back if we tried to come up this way. They only came ashore to try and make us go south, and then they'd chase after us to get us bottled up on that narrow beach. They're thinking that their current position is just temporary. They're not expecting us to make our stand here - and they certainly aren't prepared to defend against an all-out offensive!"
Matowick looked into the faces of his fellow officers. "Gentlebeasts - it's payback time!"
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The red squirrels and the dark otters rubbed as much sand into their fur as they could for camouflage, then set out to encircle their searat enemy. The lighter-colored shrews blended against the sand well enough naturally that they didn't need such measures to disguise themselves.
All three species were mixed together among the attackers, so that the Gawtrybe archers and otter slingers could provide covering fire for the shorter shrews, who were more inclined to rush in with shortswords flashing, even though their own ranks included a number of archers and slingers as well. For that matter, many of Saybrook's otters were hankering to get their paws around searat necks and wet their javelins in the seavermins' blood in close combat, out of frustration for their defeat out under the Sharktail. Seldom had there been a more bloodthirsty or retribution-minded group of woodlanders. And their contained battle lust was about to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting rats.
At the last minute, some of the searat lookouts noticed small knots of the woodland warriors creeping stealthily among the dunes to either side of their encampment, but by then it was too late. Even as the alarm was raised, the storm of Urthblood's fighters broke over them in all its battle-hardened fury.
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"Somethin's ... somethin's not right," Rindosh muttered to himself as he scanned the shore through his long glass.
The second salvo had just concluded, and a pall of dust and smoke hung over the tortured beach. Despite the limited visibility, the searat captain had fully expected to see a scattered stream of shellshocked woodlanders fleeing south to escape the hellacious bombardment, with others perhaps running down to the safety of the waterline as the otters had done previously. But there was no sign of the enemy anywhere they should have been.
Could it be that this second bombardment had caught them so completely by surprise that they'd been largely trapped and annihilated? Rindosh dared not hope. Hidden behind the dunes as they'd been, it was hard to get any exact measure of their remaining strength, state or position. All he'd had were scant glimpses of their movements from behind the rises, enough to convince him they must have all been in that region of the coastland. Either they'd been a lot worse off than they'd let on, or else ...
"I'm goin' topside," he announced to everyrat around him, and promptly scaled the rigging, spyglass tucked in his sash. When he reached the crow's nest, he shouldered aside the lookout there and scanned the beaches anew from his elevated vantage.
No trace of the woodlanders where he expected them to be - not south of the target area, and not down by their neglected logboats. Perhaps all the able-bodied squirrels, shrews and otters had, at the first sign of the renewed bombardment, joined the injured in their exodus up into the foothills. Not what Rindosh wanted, nor what he had expected of the brave warriors who had so brazenly dared him to attack with their open displays of challenge. Maybe he'd underestimated the demoralizing effect his stormpowder and the Butcher Buoy would have on them. But with the curtain of dust cutting off his vision, it was impossible to see what was going on higher up inland.
Rindosh swung his long glass north to give a cursory glance to his shore party there ... and stiffened in shock. In the magnified field of his telescope, he saw squirrel and rat archers trading shafts, otters clashing with his fighters at close quarters with swinging slings and stabbing javelins, and shrews slashing and hacking their way through the encampment. The woodlanders appeared to nearly equal the searats in number, and although the battle had clearly only just begun, creatures of both sides had already fallen.
The searat captain made it back down to the deck in record time. "Bodor! They're attackin' our shore party in full force!" he roared, seeking out his first mate. "Get two more landing teams assembled 'n' off at once. They've chosen their time, an' now we can wipe 'em out! They've committed all their remainin' strength t' this offensive - they ain't runnin' anymore! Now we've got 'em where we can finish 'em off!"
"But, Cap'n! By th' time our reinforcements reach shore, won't th' battle be over, one way or th' other?"
"It will if y' jus' stand there jabberin'!" Rindosh snarled. "Them's battle-hardened fightin' beasts, on both sides. They'll clash fer hours if need be, 'til one side or th' other's overcome. What we gotta do now is make sure it's not our mateys who end up on th' losin' side - so get those landin' boats away!"
"Aye, sir! Right away, Cap'n sir!"
While the other crewrats hastened to carry out his bidding, Rindosh leaned against the port railing, contemplating the situation. He should have expected such a brash move from the same warriors who'd attacked and destroyed the lumber mill and the Scorpiontail. Of course they wouldn't run away, not if there was a chance to fight. These were Urthblood's fanatical soldiers, and they would die fighting.
Which was just what Rindosh had in mind.
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When the battle started, Matowick and his fellow Gawtrybe stayed toward the outside of the fighting, keeping the rat archers occupied with an exchange of arrows that was fast and furious. This allowed the shrews and otters who craved paw to paw combat to wade in and grapple with their searat foes on a more intimate level. Most of the otters were able to strike down one or two rats apiece before getting bogged down in more prolonged duels, and this helped to even out the number of combatants on each side.
Before long, however, the clashing beasts melded into a confused melee in which it was difficult to pick out friend from foe. The Gawtrybe were left no choice but to abandon their sniping and charge into the battle themselves. Some used their longbows as a combination of club and spear, expertly wielding the carved wood staves to ward off blade swings and spear thrusts, cracking skulls and jabbing bellies with the hardened bows. Others cast aside their traditional weaponry in favor of the blades they'd brought along from Salamandastron, brandishing their swords and long knives with a savage fury and squirrel quickness that few of the searats could match.
But the searats were not easily overcome. Most were strong and skilled fighters, and if the woodlanders wanted retribution over the stormpowder barrage and the Butcher Buoy's treatment of the otters, then the searats felt the same way about the attack on their lumber base, and the destruction of the Scorpiontail. And both factions also shared a sense of desperation; Urthblood's forces had committed all the able-bodied troops left to them to this engagement, while the nearest searat reinforcements were out on the Sharktail and would take some time to arrive, even if they were dispatched at once. This was the final stand for the woodlanders, while the rats knew all too well that they were fighting for their very lives. As such, both sides gave it everything they had, and then some.
It was not quite a stalemate, and hardly a standstill. The searats had been attacked from three sides at once, and any attempt to retreat north would only result in the woodlanders pursuing them and cutting them down. Creatures were dying, but not at the same rate as in the opening moments of the engagement. Trained warriors had found each other and paired off in a confusion of individual beast-to-beast duels. It was almost as if an equilibrium of sorts had been achieved there on the gray beach under the somber winter afternoon sky, the opposing adversaries locked in a furious, adrenaline-charged struggle that would last until their final reserves of strength ran dry.
Or until the balance was tipped one way or the other.
Saybrook and Matowick found themselves back-to-back in the thick of the battle, each squared off against a burly swordsrat on either side. The otter spared a glance up from his opponent to look seaward for a heartbeat, and he didn't like what he saw.
"Don't look now, Matt, but they're sendin' more o' these wavescum our way!"
Both rats had noticed the pair of approaching, heavily-crewed landing boats as well, and grinned evilly. Their relief was on the way, and the woodlanders would have little hope of survival once the reinforcements joined the fray. But Matowick hardly let the news discourage him. On the contrary, he scowled at his rat opponent with a rictus of bloodcurdling determination.
"Then we'll just hafta kill all these ugly rotfaces before their friends arrive, eh, Saybrook?"
"Aye aye t' that, Matty matey!"
And so Saybrook, with a double-fisted grip on his trusty javelin, and Matowick, wielding a blade in each clenched paw, lit into their foerats with a renewed sense of purpose, striving to defeat these enemies before the next wave set foot upon the shore.
The balance of this battle was indeed about to be tipped dramatically ... but in a way that none of the beasts grappling on the beach could scarcely have imagined.
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The landing boats were halfway to shore. Rindosh had returned to the crow's nest, from where he could follow the progress of the battle in the dunes, and would have a clear view of the reinforcements joining the fight. It was a sight to which he looked forward with great anticipation.
With all his concentration focused upon the shore, his world reduced to the circular field of vision seen through his long glass, it was hardly surprising that he failed to notice the growing cloud in the sky bearing down on the Sharktail from the direction of Salamandastron.
Down on deck, however, many eyes had picked up on this sight. With the dunes hiding most of the distant fighting ashore and not much else of interest to peer at, the waiting deckrats naturally cast their gazes about from land to sea to sky and back again ... and thus it was that they became the first to spot their approaching doom.
"Hey, get a load o' that crazy flock o' seagulls!" Gumbs the boson elbowed First Mate Bodor in the ribs. "Never seen so many of 'em flyin' t'gether like that b'fore ... "
Bodor followed the boson's gaze, although the birds weren't hard to miss, and they were getting closer by the moment. "Are y' shore that's what they are?"
"What else could they be? No other birds that fly over th' sea in that number ... " Gumbs squinted at the nearing flock. "But ... what's that glintin' I sees?"
"Huh? Whatcha mean, Gumbsy?"
"Looks like there's a glittering or sparkle to 'em ... like th' sun's bouncin' off sumpthin' shiny ... "
"Don't be daft! Th' sun ain't shinin' - it's as cloudy a day as ever there was!"
"Yeah, well, look fer yerself, if y' don't berlieve me!"
Bodor squinted hard at the living cloud. "Y' know, you ... you may be ... I think ye're right, Gumbsy. Now what in sea 'n' scurvy could them feathersacks be carryin' that'd do that? 'Specially on a day that's got no sun?"
Gumbs rubbed his paws together, licking his chops. "Well, who cares? I ain't tasted roast seagull since we was halfway through this voyage, an' here come enuff meat on th' wing t' keep us all fed inta next season! Get some o' yer bowrats ready, Bodor matey! This'll be like shootin' fish in a barrel!"
"Can't. We sent all our archers ashore, 'member?" Bodor scowled skyward, and not just at the idea of a missed opportunity to fatten their bellies and their larders. "Them gulls definitely ain't actin' like any I seen before. An' they're makin' straight fer us, by th' look of it." He craned his head back and cupped his paws to his mouth. "'ey, Cap'n!" he shouted up to the crow's nest. "Check it out, to th' south!"
Rindosh didn't need Bodor's alarm; by this time the young lookout rat squeezed into the mast-top observation platform with him had also noticed the approaching flock, and had called it to his captain's attention, even though it meant intruding on Rindosh's almost trancelike study of the events on shore.
The searat captain lowered his long glass and followed the young lookout's pointing claw, blinking to adjust his vision from one-eyed magnified sight to normal. In a matter of heartbeats he assessed the large group of birds, their formation, their altitude and speed and heading, and the mysterious loads clutched under them in their webbed talons. Everything about this unlikely tableau screamed at him: Wrong! This is very wrong! But on a conscious level, he could not begin to imagine what it meant.
"An attack?" he muttered to himself. But if so, what kind of attack? What was the shape of this danger? Seagulls had never before attacked any searat vessel in large, organized numbers. There was no precedent, and hence, no procedure to follow, and no way to know what to even expect.
As he watched, the gulls began to climb, arcing upward in a flight path that would carry them directly over the Sharktail, but at a height that would prevent archers from sniping at them. Of course, none of the searat archers were aboard the pirate dreadnought presently, but these gulls had no way of knowing that. It never occurred to Rindosh that the birds might have some other reason for putting themselves so high above his ship.
In fact, it had barely occurred to him that he held in his claws a device which might shed some light on the matter. Remembering the long glass, Rindosh raised the eyepiece to his eye and trained the telescope on the birds.
When he brought it into proper focus, Rindosh almost dropped the long glass. It wasn't just the obviously-manufactured glass vessels of fluid that the gulls carried slung under their flapping forms, as startling as those were. No, it was the fact that they followed the lead of a giant golden eagle who flew at their forefront.
One of Urthblood's birds ...
Rindosh knew something terrible was about to happen - he just didn't have a clue what it would be.
And then they were over the Sharktail, and the glass globes rained from the sky, smashing against the upper masts and yards and booms, soaking the sails and rigging with their contents. A few of the spheres bounced off the ropes and canvas to shatter against the deck below or be harmlessly deflected into the waters to port or starboard, but most found their target.
The young lookout sniffed. "It's ... it's oil, Cap'n, ain't it?"
The worst possible thing.
Rindosh let the long glass fall from his claws as he vaulted over the side of the crow's nest like a squirrel, landed on the oil-soaked rigging where he nearly lost his grip, and propelled himself downward like a big furry spider, making the fastest descent in the history of searats.
Two more objects fell from the sky - not glass globes, but lit lamps filled with oil of their own. Both smashed open against the hardwood spars, and within moments sheets of flame were rippling their way across the majestic sails, transforming them into blazing monuments of destruction against the gray winter sea and sky.
The lookout never had a chance. Abandoned by his captain without so much as a word of warning, the young rat found himself engulfed in flames, his fur and clothes burning savagely. He knew his only chance would be to jump into the sea, so he blindly climbed up onto the edge of the flaming crow's nest and launched himself toward the port side of the Sharktail, seeking to make a high dive into the water.
Unfortunately, the pirate dreadnought was an immense vessel ... and a wide one. Not even the lookout's best terror-fueled effort was enough to carry him past the edge of the deck.
The flaming rat hit the planks mere paces from Rindosh, who had only just set his feet on the momentary safety of the main deck. The searat captain blew out a sigh of relief at the near miss, then his heart caught in his throat.
The ill-fated lookout rat had landed among the powder casks left over from the latest salvo ... and his body was still on fire. Even as Rindosh watched, the flames spread to several of the kegs.
"Powder fire!" he screamed, turning to run. "Powder - "
One of the casks blew, and Rindosh found himself flying through the air aftward. This rough treatment was the only thing that spared him from immediate death, because once one keg went, they all did.
Two of the catapults and their sliding platforms were completely destroyed in the ensuing chain-reaction explosion, and the other two hopelessly damaged. Railing and deck were ripped away, the nearby yards and booms smashed into toothpicks, and the rigging left loosely flailing like angry smoking rope serpents. Rats by the dozen were hurled into the water, some still alive but most not.
In spite of this horrendous calamity, the Sharktail might still have survived; most of the explosion damage was confined to the top deck, and did not threaten the integrity of the ship. But there was more of the stormpowder stored belowdecks - much more. If these fires were not extinguished ...
Gumbs was shaking Rindosh by the collar to bring him back to his senses. The captain slapped his boson's paws away from him. "Where's Bodor?"
"Blown over th' side, Cap'n. Think 'ee's dead, sir."
Rindosh struggled to his feet, suffering from a heady dose of his own medicine; his ears were ringing as badly as Matowick's had at any time that day, and his back, legs and tail had been painfully singed by the very explosion that had thrown him clear of the worst of the destruction. The sails and masts directly overhead blazed out of control. Across the deck on the starboard side, another glass globe shattered, spraying several rats. Oddly, there was smoke but no flame, and the rats who'd been doused fell to the deck clutching at themselves and shrieking in agony, their fur steaming. Rindosh didn't stop to puzzle over this now.
"What'll we do now, Cap'n?" Gumbs demanded in panic. "Abandon ship?"
"Not yet." Rindosh glanced aft. Because fire was such a danger to any ship bearing the stormpowder, such dreadnoughts had had fire fighting equipment installed. Seawater could be paw-pumped through linen hoses and brass nozzles to extinguish any fire that broke out on deck. The Sharktail had two such pump-hose stations, one fore and one aft. The searat captain could not see the condition of the forward pump or whether it had occurred to anyrat to use it, but the aft station stood undamaged before him. It would be a long shot, but no captain would willingly let his ship go down if there was anything that could be done to save it.
Rindosh grabbed Gumbs by the arm and dragged the boson toward the aft deck. "C'mon! There may still be a chance!"