The sailors hauled Hothor toward the companionway as another volley of arrows clattered across the deck. Donnel raised his shield over them and ordered, "Move!" The wounded commodore disappeared below.
Arthur turned his attention back to the sea.
"We need to board their ships, Arthur," Donnel said as he took his shield and stood beside him. "Take the fight to them."
Arthur heard the sense in it, at the very least, it was a sound strategy. Their crescent had bought them time, but the pirates were pressing harder with every passing moment. The enemy ships crowded the channel, black hulls pushing through smoke and floating wreckage, while more galleys came on behind them.
Yet Arthur had no intention of surrendering the advantage he had built.
He glanced down the deck. Robert Baratheon stood amid the fighting. For a moment, Arthur forgot the battle around him. Robert Baratheon stood amidst the fighting like a storm given flesh. His great hammer rose and fell with brutal certainty, smashing shields, breaking bones. Each blow sent the pirates splattered across the deck.
Arthur watched as the King's hammer caught a pirate in the chest; the man's breastplate buckled inward with a sickening crack, and a spray of pink froth erupted from his mouth as his ribs were driven into his lungs.
"COME ON!" Robert roared and at that moment the king looked as Arthur had imagined him in the old tales of the Trident.
Arthur watched as his king waded deeper into the melee, white cloaks of the Kingsguard moving around him. Ser Barristan kept close, sword flashing whenever a pirate came too near. Ser Arys fought beside him focusing on the king's rear, while Ser Mandon moved by the side as his blade found gaps in enemy leather and mail.
They all protected him, while Robert was merely laughing and chasing the fight. That was what troubled Arthur most. The king was enjoying himself too much.
The old fury was there in his eyes, the same one that had carried him across the Trident and through enemy armies alone. Robert fought as though battle were the only place in the world where he truly felt himself. And boarding the enemy ships now would be like handing a maiden to Robert on a silver plate. Arthur did not wish for that to happen. He could not afford to lose the king to a lucky crossbow bolt from a pirate scum.
Donnel stepped closer. "Arthur."
"I heard you." He replied frustratedly.
"We must take some of their galleys. Once the men see us aboard, they'll lose their nerve." Donnel urged.
Arthur shook his head. "No," he said. "We cannot."
Donnel frowned. "If we sit here we'll be swarmed."
Donnel had the truth of it. If they sit there soon they will be surrounded by enemies. The enemies outnumbered them three to one, and most of their warriors were bred for war at sea.
"There's no way to keep the king out of danger if we board," Arthur replied sharply. "We're already outnumbered by their soldier and once we're on their decks we'll be fighting the oarsmen as well. Two hundred of them to a galley, and all desperate to live. That is a fight we lose."
Donnel looked toward the nearest enemy vessel. "Even as we stand their soldiers will be just as desperate to get aboard and kill us all."
As if to prove Donnel's points a hooked grapnel flew through the air and caught upon the Mermaid's Tears' rail. One of Arthur's mariners moved ahead of the shields and quickly hacked at the rope with an axe almost getting an arrow to his neck in the process. The line parted, and the hook vanished into the sea.
Donnel swore beneath his breath. "If we keep waiting, they'll eventually find a way through this wall of yours."
"We cannot put the king aboard an enemy ship." Arthur replied angrily.
Donnel glanced toward Robert and finally understood Arthur's hesitance, he frowned and asked, "Gods be good! Then what do we do?"
Arthur lifted his gaze toward the northern sky. The carracks had been facing south since the battle began, their sterns sheltered by the broken line of reef behind them. The rocks had saved them once already. They might yet save them again.
The storm they had fled earlier had not vanished. It had merely passed them by. A vast wall of dark clouds moved slowly across the horizon, drifting westward beneath a pale strip of sunlight. Its edges were silver where the sun touched them, but the heart of the storm remained black.
Arthur drew out his far-eye and raised it to his brow. He studied the horizon carefully. Beyond the fighting ships and drifting smoke he watched the water beneath the storm. The water beyond the fighting ships was moving differently. Long ripples ran across its surface, steady and broad, that rolled southward.
Arthur lowered the far-eye and tried to feel the wind on his face. The air against his face felt warmer. He frowned. When had that happened?
The change was small. A man who was not watching for it would scarcely have noticed. But Arthur had spent enough years at sea to know the wind was a thing worth listening to. Ships lived or died by it. Men could curse it, pray against it, or fight it, but none could command it.
He turned his face into the breeze again. The sharp bite of the earlier gale was gone. This wind was softer. Steadier. And turning.
Behind him, steel rang against steel. A man screamed as an axe found his shoulder. Someone shouted for more arrows. Another pirate galley crashed against the side of a carrack, and the men upon both decks vanished beneath a cloud of splinters and smoke.
"Hold the line!"
"More men to the larboard rail!"
"Get that bloody hook off!"
Arthur scarcely heard them but then Donnel shouted at his ears, "What the bloody hells are you looking at?!"
"The sky." Arthur replied.
Donnel glanced upward. "I can see that," He muttered angrily, "Are you hoping the Seven's angels will come down and fight for us?"
Arthur ignored Donnel's words as his thoughts had already gone elsewhere. He felt a slow grin pull at the corner of his mouth. The storm was returning. Not upon them perhaps, but close enough. Close enough to bring its wind.
"Aye, not just hoping but praying. To the Seven, to their angels, and to the old gods of the north," Arthur replied smiling, "Even to those forgotten older gods of these lands who ruled winds and waves alike."
Donnel looked at him dumbfounded as if to have lost his words. Before he could say anything Arthur turned sharply toward the nearest mast. "Raise the sails!"
The command seemed to hang there for a heartbeat beneath the clash of steel and the cries of wounded men. The sailors all stared at him as though their captain had gone mad.
The first mate looked at Arthur and said, "My lord, there is no way forward, and more than that we're bloody anchored."
Donnel blinked in disbelief. "What are you saying, Arthur?!"
Arthur looked at Donnel and coldly said. "Do it!"
Donnel studied him for another moment and then nodded. He replied, "As you command, milord."
Arthur smiled and then turned around and ordered the first mate. "Stay at the helm. Raise the sails, but keep the anchor down. Do not in any circumstances raise the anchor until I command, even if it seems the ship might break in half."
The first mate stood nearby, still dumbfounded. He was a lean man with a salt-stiff beard, and his hands were still wrapped around the haft of a boarding axe. A brave sailor for certainty, the Manderly fleet had no place for cravens. But even brave men hesitated when the hour called for madness.
The man's brow furrowed. "My lord, wi—"
"I shall not repeat myself." Arthur replied, "Do you understand me, sailor?!"
The first mate swallowed. "Aye, aye, milord." He turned and bellowed across the deck. "All hands to the lines! Loose the bloody sails!"
The confused men sprang into motion. The riggers scrambled up the shrouds, boots finding purchase upon wet ropes and crossbeams. Above them, the great yards creaked as sailors worked the canvas loose. One sheet spilled downward, then another, the heavy cloth unfurling until it hung slack above the deck.
There was scarcely enough wind to make it stir. Arthur still watched the sky behind carefully.
"More canvas!" the first mate shouted. "Get the topsails loose!"
The sailors hauled at the ropes. The canvas dropped into place. All around them, the battle continued.
"Hold the line!" King Robert shouted to the soldiers at the front.
Arthur turned toward the signal mast. "You there, raise the crimson flag and relay the order across the carracks."
The sailor seized the banner. "Aye, milord!"
He hauled upon the halyard. The crimson cloth climbed the mast of the Mermaid's Tears, rising through the rigging until it reached the top. For several breaths it hung limp. Then a faint breeze caught it. The banner snapped. Arthur smiled, thinking, The storm comes as a blessing at last.
Across the crescent, signalmen saw the crimson flag. One by one, the other carracks answered as the same color started to fly above their own masts. Orders were shouted and the sailors across the ships clambered through the rigging, loosing knots and hauling the canvas down into place. Soon the entire line of great ships stood with their sails raised, though their anchors still held them fast against the sea.
The men did not understand. Arthur could see it in the looks exchanged between the ships. Sailors glanced at the slack canvas, then at the anchors still holding them fast, as if they could not decide whether their lord had lost his wits. Raising sail in the midst of a boarding fight, while anchored with scarcely a breeze to fill it, seemed nothing short than a bout of madness. And perhaps it was.
But Arthur had little use for sane choices when those other choices ended in countless deaths of his own. He had to find a way to win and the wind was coming. He had gone with his gut. That was enough.
Arthur left the helm once the sails were set and and forced his way back down onto the blood-slick deck.
The battle had not slackened. If anything, it had grown worse. Pirates were still clambering over the rails in twos and threes. Grappling hooks bit into the oak. Ladders slapped against the hull. Men came scrambling up with swords, axes and hooked knives, driven onward by the press of those behind them. Those in front had nowhere to go but forward.
A Manderly spearman drove one man back over the rail. Another pirate immediately took his place. Arthur saw the next coming for him. The man was lean, bearded, and bareheaded, with a curved sword raised above his shoulder. His boots slipped on the blood-slick boards, but his momentum carried him onward as he swung.
Arthur stepped inside the man's stroke. The curved sword passed over his shoulder, close enough for him to feel the wind of it. Nightfall came up beneath the man's guard and cut him low across the belly. The man folded with a wet, rattling gasp, as his belly opened like a burst sausage, and he clutched fruitlessly at the hot, steaming coils of his own guts as they cascaded over his hands.
Arthur kicked him over the rails and arrived at the frontline and stood behind the shields.
For all the fury of the pirate assault, their line still held. His Mariners had been drilled for this. They did not chase the enemy when a pirate fell back, nor did they leave gaps to pursue a wounded man. Shields overlapped. Spearpoints and swords worked through the spaces between them. When a man tired, another stepped forward to take his place. It was a simple drill. These simple drills kept men alive.
"Keep your footing men!" Manderly sergeants shouted across the line. "DO NOT GIVE WAY!"
The lordly retinues had been slower to learn it. Most of them were accustomed to fighting beneath banners on solid ground, where a man could step backward without falling into the sea. Yet the deck was broad enough here, and the ships were held fast. With the hulls no longer pitching beneath their feet, the knights and men-at-arms seemed to fight as they would upon a field.
"OAK AND IRON!" Robert started the chant as he fought with the soldiers.
Donnel continued, "GUARD ME WELL!"
"OR ELSE I'M DEAD AND DOOMED TO HELL!" The men shouted in unison.
The words rolled along the deck. Men laughed as they shouted them, some from courage, others because laughter was easier than thinking about the men dying around them.
Robert swung his hammer into a pirate's shield. The wood burst beneath the iron head, and the man behind it staggered backward.
"OAK AND IRON!" the king roared again. The answer came louder this time.
Arthur watched the line as the chant passed from mouth to mouth. A soldier who fought alone was one man. A soldier who fought with fifty others was part of a wall.
Ser Barristan Selmy stepped into the press beside him as the shields opened. "We have been rotating the front every few moments, just as you ordered," the old knight called as he cut down another boarder with a swift, economical stroke to the neck. His sword opened the pirate's throat. Blood sprayed across the rail.
Barristan continued his voice carrying a hint of surprise, "They are holding well enough."
Arthur glanced toward the old knight. Barristan's white cloak was no longer white. Blood had darkened the wool where it clung to his armor, and rain had made the red spread farther across the cloth.
"You say that as though I could ever be wrong, ser," Arthur said with a laugh.
Barristan laughed, "I admit, I had my doubts."
"You wound me, lord commander," Arthur replied laughing. "You expected my wall to break!"
Barristan parried a sword thrust and struck him across the face with the pommel. The man's nose broke with a wet crunch. Before he could recover, a nearby spear went through his eyes.
"Men are not stones, my lord. They falter and they fall." Barristan added grimly, but then added, "Yet you have made sure they do not tire."
Arthur nodded toward him. "Aye, tis' an old Ghiscari tactic," he said.
The line shifted again as the front stepped behind and a young pirate lunged at him before the words had scarcely left his mouth. Arthur caught the blade on Nightfall and turned it aside. The boy was scarcely more than that, a youth with salt in his hair and fear showing plainly in his eyes.
Arthur drove Nightfall through his throat. The boy made a small pitiful choking sound as tears dropped from his eyes. He took out the sword and looked down only long enough to make certain he was dead then fell behind the shield again along with Ser Barristan.
"The old empire understood something most never did," Arthur said, "A tired soldier dies faster than a fresh one, regardless of his courage."
Barristan's mouth tightened into something that might have been a weary smile. "Men who prefer shields to swords often lose their courage to fight without one."
"Perhaps." Arthur replied, "Yet if they hold their shields well enough, they need not lose their lives."
Barristan nodded, "True enough, so long as they hold the line, we will find victory here."
A faint smile touched Arthur's lips. "Aye we will, as my father used to say, 'Victory brings courage even to the greenest of soldiers, win them a battle and they shall fight like lions in the next."
Barristan looked sad for a moment and before he could reply a heavy shadow fell beside Arthur. King Robert Baratheon stood there with his warhammer resting against one shoulder. His chest rose and fell beneath his breastplate. Rain dripped from his beard, though there was more blood than rain upon him now. His armor of white steel looked as though he had indeed been dragged through a butcher's yard.
"Why are we raising the sail, Arthur?" the king demanded. He glanced upward. The great canvas hung above them, stirring now and again with the uncertain breath of the turning wind.
"Don't tell me we are fleeing from some pirates." Robert shifted the hammer upon his shoulder. "I'm going to bash your skull in if you say that."
Arthur could not help the smirk that touched his mouth. "Worry not, my liege," he said. "The day I flee from some pirates will also be the day I would gladly take your warhammer to my face."
Robert stared at him for half a heartbeat. Then his face broke into a wide grin. "Good lad. That's the sort of answer I expect from my commander. But remember," he added, "if your clever sails do turn out to be some merchant's trick, I'll still test that promise."
Arthur bowed his head slightly. "I'd expect nothing less, Your Grace."
Robert barked another laugh and clapped Arthur upon the shoulder hard enough to make him take half a step forward. "I wager many a lady would blame me for breaking that pretty head of yours."
Barristan smiled at that while Arys Oakheart laughed boomingly and said, "Aye, your Grace," the young knight said, "I doubt there is a lady in Westeros who would not curse you for the attempt."
Robert laughed louder and then lifted his hammer high and turned toward the fighting men along the deck. "FIGHT ON!" he roared. "YOU SONS OF BITCHES!"
Robert bellowed. "Make your fathers proud of the day he squirted you into your mother's bellies!"
Laughter and cheers broke along the line. For a little while, the sound of battle seemed almost swallowed by it. Robert Baratheon had that gift. A man might be soaked through, bleeding from three places and half dead on his feet, yet give him one of the king's crude jests and he would find enough strength to laugh. The soldiers beat their shields with sword pommels and spear hafts. Their chanting rolled from deck to deck, gathering strength as more men took it up. Then the pirates came again, and laughter gave way to steel.
Yet Arthur's attention drifted upward between strikes. A faint tug ran through the rigging overhead. The sails had begun to stir. At first it was little more than a restless flutter along the canvas. Then the cloth filled slightly, its broad belly swelling as the wind found it.
The carrack answered with a low groan from somewhere deep within her timbers as the pressure built. Though the anchors held them fast, the ships began to strain against their chains. Their hulls shifted a few inches before the iron bit once more and checked them.
Another gust touched his face. Stronger this time. The sails snapped overhead. The deck shuddered beneath his boots.
"Make way!" Arthur shouted. He pushed his way toward the prow, boots slipping on the wet boards as the fighting raged behind him.
Arthur reached the prow and seized the rail. The wind had begun to tug harder at the sails now, the great canvas sheets snapping and filling in uneven breaths. There was no mistaking it now. The storm was close.
From the prow Arthur saw two pirate galleys had wedged themselves directly before the Mermaid's Tears, their grappling hooks already biting at the rail as men scrambled forward to board across the narrow gap. A third galley pressed against the side inside the gap. Its oars had been snapped against the carrack's hull, leaving broken shafts jutting from the water. The crew kept throwing ladders upward like desperate climbers scaling a wall.
Arthur ignored the pirates for a moment and glanced back instead. The anchor chain stretched tight as a bowstring, humming faintly under the strain. The sails above billowed larger with each passing gust, the wind pushing harder now as the storm crept closer The ship shuddered where it strained against its own iron.
Donnel's voice rose from the deck behind him. "WHAT ARE YOUR ORDERS, SER?!"
For a heartbeat, Arthur gave no answer. He stood at the rail with one hand clenched around the wet oak, watching the sails above. They swelled, emptied, and swelled again as the returning wind came in uneven gusts. Beneath his boots the Mermaid's Tears trembled against her anchor. Every plank and beam seemed to know what was coming before the men did.
Timing would decide it. Too early, and the carrack would have no strength behind her. She would creep forward into the press ahead uselessly. Too late, and the wind might come hard enough to tear the canvas or it might even break the ship's masts entire.
Another gust came. The great sails snapped open. The anchor chain groaned. Arthur felt the strain run through the deck. Now. His eyes sharpened.
"HOLD YOUR GROUND, MEN!" he shouted. "AND RAISE ANCHOR!"
"To the capstan!" cried the first mate.
The order flew down the deck. Sailors sprang from their posts. Men seized the long wooden bars and set their shoulders to them. The capstan began to turn beneath their hands, hauling at the bars with desperate strength. The anchor chain rattled and rose from the sea as men leaned their weight into the labor.
"Pull, you bastards!" one of the sailors shouted.
The men bent lower.
"PULL!"
The instant the anchor broke free, the Mermaid's Tears answered the wind. The wind struck the full spread of sails like a hammer blow. Her sails bellied full above the masts with a sharp crack of canvas, and the great carrack lurched forward so suddenly that men stumbled where they stood even after holding their grounds.
Arthur steered the ship with one hand. Behind him, the capstan crew scattered clear as the last length of chain came racing over the side. "Hold your ground!" he shouted.
The pirates ahead had scarcely begun to understand what was happening and before they could react. The carrack's towering hull bore down upon the two galleys blocking her path, the long keel driving straight between them like the blade of a giant axe of an executioner looking for the neck of the condemned.
The sound was a cacophony of wood shrieking against wood as hull met hull. The first galley shattered beneath the impact, its timbers splitting apart with a thunderous crack. The prow crushed through it. Men screamed as the pirate vessel split open along its spine. Oars, trapped in the crush, snapped back into the ship's guts, pulping the chests of the rowers and sending splinters of wood through eyes and throats like jagged daggers.
The second galley tried to turn aside, a frantic, crab-like scuttle. Its captain had seen what happened to the first and ordered his oarsmen to turn aside. But Arthur's carracks mass was too great, its claws too deep. The prow of Mermaid's tears crushed through the galley. Her hull split open along the waist, and the sea rushed in. Crates and barrels spilled across the broken deck.
Arthur glimpsed at the broken ships as they kept spilling their treasures into the sea, chests of stolen coin, barrels of sour ale, and the flailing, terror-stricken bodies of reavers. Some men leapt clear and reached the sea only to be shot by arrows while others were caught beneath falling spars as the galley's mast came down.
Rigging followed, ropes snapping taut across the deck and dragging men from their feet. The mast struck with a crash that Arthur heard even above the wind. The Mermaid's Tears burst through the wreckage, her hull painting the churning surf in a slurry of brine and fresh, steaming entrails.
Arthur steered the helm as the carrack drove on beneath a hardening wind, her hull grinding over broken oars and floating timber. For the first time since the battle had begun, Arthur allowed himself a breath.
"The timing was perfect," he murmured, pleased with himself.
The crimson signal still flew from the mast of the Mermaid's Tears, snapping and cracking above the smoke. Behind them, the great crescent of the Manderly fleet broke open. One by one the other carracks answered the wind. Anchors came up. Great sails bellied outward. The ships that had stood like a wall through the worst of the fighting suddenly came alive.
The heavy ships sprang forward smashing through the pirate line like wolves carving through a herd through a herd of panicked sheep. The Pirate galleys splintered under their keels or were shoved violently aside as the formation drove south.
Pirate captains shouted and beat their drums, trying to turn their galleys clear, but there was little room in the narrow strait. Ships fouled one another. Oars tangled. One galley attempted to back water only to be struck by the vessel behind her.
"ARCHERS!" Arthur shouted. "FIRE AT WILL!"
The marcher longbowmen stepped to the rail and once more their yew bows bent. Arrows went up in dark flights, some plain, others burning at the heads. The wind carried them farther now. Flaming shafts swept over the broken pirate formation and came down among the sails.
A fire caught on one galley. Then another. Pitch left from the earlier bombardment did the rest. Flames crawled along rails and ran up rigging and the sailcloth burned. Men hacked at ropes with knives and axes, desperate to cast burning canvas into the sea.
From the center his own galleys finally surged forward. They had been idle throughout this battle holding their grounds in the shallow water. Now they could charge freely against the trapped enemy.
The caravels followed, quicker still, darting between larger ships and firing as they passed through the gap Arthur had carved open like hunting hounds, loosing bolts and arrows at any pirate ship still afloat. Wherever a pirate galley tried to turn, another of Arthur's vessels seemed to appear at her flank.
For a few moments the whole strait became movement. Ships under sail. Ships under oar. Burning wrecks drifting wherever the wind and tide pleased. Arthur stood upon the deck of the Mermaid's Tears and watched the enemy formation unravel. It was not yet a rout as half the enemy still remained inside the channel. He knew better than to mistake a momentary gain for victory.
"Keep the line moving!" Arthur shouted. "Do not let them reform!"
The order ran down the deck. But suddenly cheers erupted across the deck. At first it was only a few voices but more and more began to add by the passing moment.
Arthur frowned and looked toward the far end of the strait where the men were pointing towards. The remaining pirate vessels in the channel had begun to bunch together. That was strange. No captain willingly crowded his ships in such waters unless something forced him to it.
Arthur stepped closer to the rail. Smoke drifted across the water. Beyond it came sails. For a moment they were only pale shapes against the horizon. Then the wind shifted, carrying the smoke aside. Only then did he finally see the familiar banners snapping above them and find the cause.
A grin touched his mouth. "Finally," Arthur said.
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