Chapter Twenty-One
The Sharktail was not the gulls' only target.
Even as the formidable sails of red, black and green disappeared beneath rippling sheets of yellow-orange flame, part of the seagull squadron broke away from the main formation and zeroed in on the pair of tightly-packed searat landing boats. The two smaller craft were still some way from the safety of shore, and the rats aboard had no choice but to dive over the sides into the chilly winter sea or stand their ground and let the gulls do their worst. Most of the seavermin were so shocked by the conflagration on the Sharktail that they were too stupefied to take any action at all.
More glass globes rained down upon the two landing boats, and their effect was both immediate and horrible. The liquid-filled spheres smashed open against the skulls of hapless rats, or upon swords and spears raised in futile attempts to fend them off. This time, however, fully half the glass globes contained not the highly flammable oil but a solution far more terrifying. When these wax-lined glass bubbles burst, the released fluid burned the fur and flesh off of the rats who were showered with it. Many were instantly blinded and dozens fell to the bottom of the boats, writhing and screaming in torment as the reagent dissolved their sinew and bones into caustic vapors. Even those not splashed with the burning liquid were sickened by the poisonous fumes.
Quite a bit of the corrosive substance dripped down onto the floors of the landing boats, where it immediately began to eat through the wood hull planks, doing a far more thorough and effective job than any otter's awl.
And then the lit lamps fell into the midst of the panicked confusion that had broken out on each boat, and the rats who had escaped the chemical burns found themselves consumed in flames. The two craft were transformed into boats of death, and only those few who threw themselves into the water survived; every other rat aboard the landing boats perished in an impossibly brief span of time.
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"Work th' pump!" Rindosh yelled at Gumbs as the searat captain grabbed the brass nozzle from its holder and began unreeling the linen hose, then moved across the deck a few paces to where he would have a clear shot at spraying the seawater up into the burning canvas sails. His back was to the boson when Rindosh heard a strangely muted shattering sound from behind him. Gumbs gave a grunt of surprise which became a perplexed moan, and within the space of a few heartbeats turned into a claws-on-chalk shriek that made Rindosh's fur stand on end.
Rindosh turned around. Gumbs had dropped to his knees with his paws up to his face, and both the boson and the deck around him smoked and steamed furiously, even though there was not a lick of flame to be seen anywhere in the immediate vicinity. Shards from a burst glass globe littered the deck around the stricken rat, but since nothing had caught fire, Rindosh assumed that it could not be that bad.
"Gumbs, matey!" the searat captain tried to shout through the boson's strangled screams. "Time's a-wastin'! Shake off whatever's ailin' you an' get on them pumps! I need ya, Gumbs! Gumbs!"
Gumbs pitched forward face-down onto the deck, legs and tail jerking uncontrollably. Rindosh had witnessed enough violence and murder during his seasons to recognize death throes when he saw them. But this did not make sense. There had been no fire. How could Gumbs be dead?
Putting down the nozzle, Rindosh crept toward the pumping apparatus, which still smoldered and steamed. "Gumbs! What's wrong, matey? What's happened to ya?" He gave the prone boson a couple of kicks in the side, this abuse adding to the spasms convulsing Gumb's tortured form.
Rindosh became aware then that his footpaws were burning like they were on fire where his unshod feet had come into contact with smoking splotches of the spilled fluid. At first he thought he'd cut them on shards of the broken glass, but a glance down showed that it was the liquid residue itself that blistered his flesh. Wincing from the pain, he crouched and rolled Gumbs over onto his back.
The boson's face was gone. The empty eye sockets stared sightlessly up at him from a skull that had been washed clean of flesh and muscle. Even the very bone seemed to be melting; as Rindosh watched, uncomprehending, part of the snout collapsed in on itself.
Rindosh stood and backed away in horror. Nothing in his pirate's career had girded him for anything like this. If King Tratton had unleashed something terrible upon the lands with the stormpowder, it appeared that Urthblood was prepared to answer in kind with nightmarish new weapons of his own.
This train of thought made Rindosh look up from Gumbs toward the pumping station. The equipment there had taken the brunt of this vitriolic assault, and the corrosive liquid had eaten through the coil of linen hose. The firefighting apparatus was now useless.
Ignoring his burning footpaws and the acrid fumes assailing his nose and eyes, Rindosh cupped his paws to his mouth. "Abandon ship! Abandon ship!" he yelled to anyrat who could hear him. As much as it tore him up inside, he could no longer deny that the Sharktail was lost.
No sooner had he issued the evacuation order than Rindosh heard a sharp crack above him. A flaming spar, weakened by fire and by the shock of the stormpowder explosions, gave way and fell across the searat captain, pinning him to the deck under an immovable weight of fiery wood and canvas. The burning of his footclaws was now nothing compared to the flames which quickly consumed his fur and clothes as he lay helpless, trapped by the wreckage of his own sea power.
In a cruel twist of fate, Rindosh's head and chest were left clear, so that even as he burned to death he could gaze up through the tears of his pain at the sails and masts and riggings that still blazed above him. In time, the fire would reach the stormpowder stores below, and then the Sharktail would be torn apart from the inside out, but her captain would be long dead by that time. For now, however, Rindosh had a ringside seat as he watched his ship die.
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On the beach, all fighting had come to a standstill.
Those among the scuffling rats, squirrels, otters and shrews who failed to notice when the Sharktail went up in flames could not help but hear the explosions of the stormpowder casks. Within moments, every surviving searat and woodlander had disengaged from one another and stepped back to stare seaward in shocked amazement. Saybrook and Matowick's forces were too stunned to voice shouts of exultation or victory, while the searats were utterly at a loss. A hushed silence fell over the scene of their bloody battle, a stillness that belied the tumult that had reigned here moments before.
As they watched, the landing boats too went up in flames under the seagulls' incendiary assault. Many of the searats' hearts sank into their footpaws as they realized there would be no reinforcements, no rescue from these fanatical woodlanders who were determined to fight to the death. Thoughts of surrender flashed through the minds of many of the rodents, but before any could voice such ideas, the battle took yet another turn.
Altidor the eagle came hurtling in against the outer ring of combatants. The mighty raptor clutched a sharp javelin in each talon (who knew where he had gotten them from?) and impaled two rats who stood on the fringes of the frozen battle. Dozens of seagulls who'd dropped their payloads over the searat boats now joined Altidor in harassing the shorebound seavermin on all sides.
Altidor swooped over the heads of friend and foe alike, landing in the center of the combat zone where Matowick and Saybrook stood. "No survivors!" the eagle cried. "No survivors! Urthblood says Tratton must not learn of his alliance with the seagulls. There can be no witnesses. Every rat must die!"
And then, to emphasize the point, Altidor turned on the nearest rat and, deftly disarming him of his spear, drove him to the ground, deadly curved beak stabbing at eyes and throat.
All around, the battle resumed with a vengeance as woodlanders and gulls joined forces against the remaining searats.
Saybrook looked to the rat he'd previously been duelling, giving an apologetic shrug as he raised his javelin for a killing thrust. "Sorry, mate, but orders is orders ... "
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The twilight coastlands were free of rats. Not a single one had survived the battle with Urthblood's forces, once Altidor made it known that the Badger Lord wanted every one of them slain.
The only momentary pause in the slaughter came when the flames ravaging the Sharktail finally found their way to the main stormpowder magazine far belowdecks. If the earlier explosions had been enough to get the attention of everybeast on shore, this one positively rocked them on their footpaws, roaring in their ears like the loudest thunderclap any of them had ever heard. The pirate dreadnought actually lifted out of the water, the entire ship pointed prow-downward as an immense fireball obliterated the vessel's stern. When the ship splashed down again from her temporary flight, she began to sink almost at once, the rampant flames extinguished in a vast steaming sizzle as the Sharktail disappeared stern-first beneath the waves.
This latest nautical spectacle of destruction thus concluded, the woodlanders returned their attention to the cleanup of their doomed enemy.
But the job was hardly completed with the slaying of the last rat from the shore party. Scores more of the searats had had time to abandon both the Sharktail and the ill-fated landing boats before those craft were irretrievably lost. Now those crewrats and pirate fighters had to choose between striking out for shore or being swallowed by the unforgiving sea. A few drowned on the way, not being the most accomplished of swimmers, but those who reached the tideline found the waiting woodlanders no more forgiving than the cruel winter main. Some begged and pleaded for mercy on their knees, while others used their last reserves of strength to charge their foe with unsheathed cutlass or raised spear, but all were met the same - with Gawtrybe shaft, otter sling and javelin or shrew shortsword. Soon the water's edge was littered with lifeless rat corpses, staining the sand and water red.
It was a merciless massacre by Urthblood's forces, but there was not a beast among them who had not lost friends to the searats over the last few days. The fact that their badger master had ordered this total annihilation made it their duty, but few indeed among the woodland warriors harbored any qualms or reservations as they carried out Urthblood's instructions.
With the coming of night, fires were lit. Some were pyres for the disposal of the slain rats, others were bonfires by which the survivors dug a large grave for their own dead. It was a relief that they would not have to leave their fallen comrades lying out to have their bones picked over by seabirds, sand crabs and shore insects. Altidor and Klystra had seen no sign of any other searat sails on the horizon during their last surveillance flights just before nightfall, so it was deemed safe to light up the coastal plain.
Every iota of that illumination was needed for the recovery of those killed in the stormpowder bombardments. Holding torches low to the sand, the shrews and squirrels and otters scoured that pulverized stretch of beach to retrieve what they could. There were many scraps of flesh, along with disembodied paws, tails and heads, lying amongst other more-or-less intact bodies. All was collected and added to the burial pit, and although some bits and pieces were undoubtedly missed, the searchers made the most thorough job of it they could. It was some slight comfort and burden lifted from their hearts to know they'd done their best for the friends who had left this world.
The wounded fighters who'd fled to the foothills before the second bombardment had been able to see well enough the conflagration that had claimed the enemy ship, and they now dribbled back down to the dunes to rejoin what remained of their army. The worst of the injuries could finally receive proper treatment, now that there was no longer any searat artillery threatening to blast the very sand they lay upon.
Their burial duties finished and the battle behind them, Urthblood's troops collapsed onto the cold sand, some falling asleep before they'd even unrolled their bedding. Around the perimeter of their camp, the seagulls settled onto their feathered tails to sit out the winter night, some putting their heads under their wings and others content to rest their beaks on their rising and falling breasts. The only creatures who did not seek immediate rest were the more skilled healerbeasts among them, who had their paws full well into the night ministering to the war victims who needed their attention.
It had taken the unanticipated arrival of the oil-and-vitriol-bearing gulls and cost the lives of nearly half his forces, but Matowick's strategy had paid off. The slaves under Browder's care were free of pursuit, the wounded who'd been left behind at the lumber mill were safe from siege, and another searat attack dreadnought and its crew had been destroyed, further weakening Tratton. Most important of all, they had forced the searats into revealing yet another new weapon, and now Lord Urthblood knew about it. That alone would have been worth the lives of everybeast in their assault force.
But the searats had run out of lives before the woodlanders had, and now they were all slain, as Urthblood had wanted. Or so they believed ...
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The tiny crew of the Butcher Buoy had barely heard or felt the first series of explosions aboard the Sharktail, and so they did not surface to investigate, intent instead upon their underwater patrol to keep the otters from returning. When the main powder storeroom blew the stern of the giant ship clear out of the water, however, the shock wave hit the small submersible like a huge fist, rocking it back and forth like a kelp frond in storm-tossed ocean waters. Rivets burst, sending the weapons officers scrambling to patch the spraying leaks with the emergency resin they carried for just such contingencies.
Thapa, the senior of the two officers, shouted at the pilot, "Take us up! Take us up!"
The Butcher Buoy surfaced to the seaward side of the Sharktail ... or what was left of her. The iron attack sub lacked periscope and dorsal windows, so the only way its occupants could ever know what was going on above them was to surface and open the top hatch.
Thapa was not prepared for the sight which greeted him. Against the gray gloaming of approaching twilight towered the floundering, crippled and dying Sharktail, ablaze from stem to stern and from deck to topmast, although most of the sails and rigging had by this time fallen from their supports, smothering and burning any rats who'd failed to escape the doomed vessel. It was a nightmare sight to make any loyal searat cry.
"What is it?" came the demanding voices from below him. "Whaddya see? What's goin' on?"
Thapa stepped down the short ladder, dogging the hatch tight as he did so, then turned to his six companions and described to them what he'd seen. Their eyes went wide and their jaws slack as they heard the news. A couple wanted to go up and see for themselves, but Thapa overrode them with an emphatic wave of his paw.
"Nay. I dunno what those woodlanders did t' cause this, but we ain't exposin' ourselves to 'em any more'n we hafta. Th' Sharktail's 'tween us an' th' shore, so I don't think they coulda seen us come up, an' that's th' way I wanna keep it! Mayhap they've forgot about us 'n' mayhap they haven't, but I won't tempt 'em! Take us down, an' then head north! I wanna put as much distance 'tween us an' here as I can before we hafta come up fer air again!"
"But ... what about th' Sharktail, sir? We can't abandon her!"
"The Sharktail's dead!" Thapa snapped. "Naught we can do fer her, nor she for us! We gotta think of ourselves now, an' that means gettin' while th' gettin's good!"
"But, we got no food, or water!"
"Or beds!"
"Or spare clothes!"
"Or weapons, even!"
"Lissen up!" Thapa roared. "There's nothin' for us here - nothin'! Now, these woodland devils have destroyed King Tratton's timber mill an' two o' his dreadnoughts. How's His Majesty gonna find out what went on here unless he hears it from us? We'll find food 'n' water, even if we hafta sail all th' way up to th' River Moss! But more'n anything else, we gotta keep ourselves alive ... 'cos th' way things're lookin' now, we seven might be th' only survivors outta this thing!"
With a few more words of persuasion, Thapa convinced his fellow searats that his plan of action was wisest, and soon the slightly leaky Butcher Buoy was headed north, where it would not be seen by goodbeasts' eyes anytime again that season.
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Morning dawned just as gray as the previous day had been. Vagrant scattered snowflakes drifted on the offshore breezes, a reminder that winter was not yet over. The seagulls roused themselves at first light, squawking and squabbling as they flew out to sea to fish for their breakfasts. The cold, sunless weather didn't seem to bother them any more than did the loss of several of their fellow gulls in the battle with the searats. The quarrelsome birds truly seemed to live only for the moment, and the woodlanders found it almost impossible to hold meaningful conversation with them, even if it was to offer congratulations and thanks for their performance in the prior day's fighting. They might now be allies, but it was difficult to think of the temperamental gulls as true comrades in arms.
While the seabirds fished, the land creatures enjoyed a breakfast that was both somber and grateful. The squirrels, otters, shrews and slaves knew what a close thing it had been for any of them to have survived into today. If the gulls hadn't shown up when they had ...
Two more of the injured warriors had died during the night. The shrew and squirrel were hastily and respectfully laid to rest together in a new grave, and then the depleted army made ready to resume their southward march. The shrews and otters returned to their logboats, content in the knowledge that they could cruise the waters beyond the breakers without fear of further searat attacks. There were many empty seats, but as a matter of pride Lieutenant Tardo refused to consider leaving any of the logboats behind, so they sailed half-crewed.
Although the boats could clearly make better time than beasts on foot, it was unanimously decided that those on the water would slacken their pace to keep abreast of the Gawtrybe. After all they'd been through together, there was no question of separating now. Besides, they were still several days away from Salamandastron - plenty of time for new trouble to rear its head.
The empty space in the logboats allowed for several of the most seriously wounded to be laid in the vessels for transport. This spared the squirrels and slaves from having to carry them on litters, and would enable the entire troop to make better time than they would otherwise.
As they helped the stiffed-legged Perricone into one of the boats, Captain Saybrook and Lieutenant Tardo speculated on the one order of searat business that had not been conclusively resolved.
"Whatcha s'pose ever happened to that liddle iron ship that attacked yer otters?" the shrew chief wondered.
Saybrook gazed seaward as he settled the lame Gawtrybe lieutenant into her seat in the beached logboat. Even though the Sharktail had been close to shore so it could lob its explosive kegs into the upper dunes, none of her burnt carcass protruded above the wavetops, so total had her destruction been. Perhaps at low tide some of the wreck might be visible, but for the moment its watery grave was total.
"I 'magine it went down with the big 'un," Saybrook guessed. "Either it was back onboard, or else it was still under th' dreadnought, or it was alongside when she blew. Any way y' slice it, don't see how it coulda survived that calamity. No sign of it comin' ashore, an' it weren't made fer bein' out on th' open sea on its own. So, if we ain't seen it pop up yet, don't reckon we're gonna."
"Yah, ye're prob'ly right." Tardo helped Saybrook push the logboat into the surf, then hopped aboard and took up his paddle. "I'll just be happy t' get back t' Salamandastron without further hassle. An' if I never see another searat agin in my life, it'll be too soon!"
Saybrook waded in up to his waist and gave the boat a final shove. The small craft crested a forming swell and shot out into calmer waters under the sure strokes of its shrew and otter rowers.
"See you at th' mountain!" the otter captain called out with a salute, then started toward his own boat. "But I wouldn't count on not seein' anymore searats th' rest o' yer life, matey," he muttered to himself. "After what we done to 'em these last few days, I'll wager we'll be seein' lots more o' their nasty hides, this season or next!"