Chapter 70: Naval Battle for Humanity (2)
The singing held.
It held over the water, over the wood, over the howling of the stands that only got louder the longer we refused to stop. Two decks of half-naked men stamping in time inside a stone basin, and all around us tens of thousands of demons on their feet who thought it was magnificent.
Because that’s what they were seeing. Not defiance. A show.
They’d come from all over the empire for the Red Harvest, and here we were, handing them men who sang before they died. The noise coming down on us had nothing human left in it, and it went up another notch every time a verse came round again. Some were beating their palms against the stone to keep our rhythm. Others had picked up the words without understanding them, mangling them, and hearing our own lines come back out of those mouths turned my stomach.
And up there, in his box, God’s former right hand was listening.
I didn’t look at him. I didn’t dare, and I felt him anyway, like a weight set down over the whole arena.
In front of us, they’d started moving again.
They came up the deck in a tight line, tridents lowered, stepping over what was left of the man they’d eaten without so much as glancing down at him. Water ran off their scales and left a trail behind them that met the blood on the planks. Those needle-filled mouths opened and closed on that word I couldn’t have repeated.
The ship rolled gently under our feet and the planks groaned with every swell. You had to keep resetting your footing, and I only had one foot to set.
We held our nets out at arm’s length, two lines, one forward, one back.
Then the three nearest ones jumped.
All at once, tridents first, and it wasn’t a leap, it was a shot. They went off with such violence that the deck burst apart under their feet at the exact spot they’d pushed from, three craters torn open in the planking, splinters thrown up in the air behind them.
They crossed the gap between us without touching the ground once.
These aren’t fish, they’re more like amphibians?
Look at that jump, mate. Frogs. Definitely frogs.
Our front line split, me included.
Two of them went into the net in midair. We closed it before they’d even hit the deck, and the weight nearly tore my arms out of their sockets, and I had to let go with one hand to keep from being dragged forward with it. They crashed onto the planks thrashing, the mesh tightening with every movement they made, their tridents pinned crosswise against their own bodies.
The middle one went straight through.
Its trident had struck a rope dead on, cut it clean, and the mesh had opened in front of it like a door. It passed through, landed behind us, rolled over one shoulder, came back up on its feet.
At our backs. Between us and the hold.
A stunned silence went across the whole deck. One of the men on the front turned his head toward me and I saw in his eyes that he had no idea what to do.
I didn’t let that silence settle.
I screamed, loud enough to carry over the singing, the cheering and the noise.
"FRONT LINE, FALL BACK! SECOND LINE, FORWARD!"
It moved instantly.
The ones holding the first net, me among them, broke off backward, straight at the creature that had got through. The second line slid into our place in the same movement, its own net already stretched tight, and closed the front before the rest could pour into the gap.
A trident came through between two men and blew a splinter as long as a forearm out of the rail.
I kept giving orders as I backed up.
"ANYONE WITHOUT A NET! Wait for your moment, take the weapons off the ones caught in the mesh, and finish them!"
Around the front I watched them slip in behind the first line and reach for the two we’d trapped. One of them refused to let go of its weapon and three men were hauling on it at once, feet braced against the planks.
Then I had no time left to look anywhere else.
It was already getting up.
It rose slowly, in no hurry, shaking the water off its shoulders, and it looked at all three of us one after another.
There were three of us circling it and it turned toward me. Naturally.
Of course.
The man dragging his leg. The one barely standing, the one with a hand on his ribs, the weakest of the three.
"Bad choice, mate."
I muttered it low enough that nobody could have heard it, not the two men beside me, not the stands, not anyone.
I started circling it, arms out in front of me, open, waiting, dragging my leg as best I could. Every push off the left cost me half a second I couldn’t afford, and I made up for it by pivoting on the right.
The other two circled behind it, watching for the opening.
It tracked my chest with the point of its trident without ever taking its eyes off me. It didn’t blink. It had no eyelids.
And I watched it back. The shoulders. The hips. The cord of muscle standing out along the forearm. The back foot, flat, pressing a little harder into the planks.
The deck rolled under us and we both adjusted at the same moment.
There.
I saw it in its eyes. That small moment, the one I’ve seen so many times now, in a forest, in a dungeon, in a castle courtyard. The exact instant the decision has already been made and the body hasn’t moved yet.
The trident came with enough force to go through a man.
And despite the System being cut off, despite the mana being gone, despite everything that had been taken from me, my eyes read the line before the strike had even left. The shoulder coming in, the drive off the back foot, the angle of the wrist.
I shifted my body to the left, barely, and opened my right arm.
The trident went between my arm and my ribs.
I felt the three points run along my skin and the shaft knock against my forearm, and I stepped in and clamped my arm down on it, hard against my body, with all my weight.
A smile came onto my face without my deciding on it.
It pulled. The shaft didn’t move. It pulled again, both hands this time, backing up a step, and then it looked up at me and I watched the panic come into its eyes.
Got you.
"NOW!"
The two men charged in behind it.
With my free hand I caught the shaft and yanked it toward me. It came. It came without being able to do a thing about it, dragged in by its own weapon, which it refused to let go of, and its face arrived level with mine, and I got the smell coming out of that mouth.
I didn’t think.
I bit into its throat and tore.
The blood went across my face, into my mouth, over the deck, and the sound it made wasn’t the same sound as before. It wasn’t a chant, wasn’t an order, wasn’t a call. It was the noise a thing makes when you hurt it.
So I let the shaft go, opened my arm, and shoved it away with both hands as hard as I could.
It went over backward, straight into the two men coming in, and I went down on my back with the back of my skull against the planks.
Perfect.
From down there, flat, with the white sky above me, I watched it stagger back with its free hand clamped over its throat.
And its face showed neither pain nor rage.
Bewilderment.
It watched the blood running between its fingers with round, completely lost eyes, then it lifted its head toward me, mouth half open, and I could have sworn that at that precise moment it was wondering which of us two was the monster.
Then the men swallowed it up.
They went down on it and they battered it. One took its skull in both hands and slammed it into the deck, once, twice, again, until the sound changed. The others hit with whatever they had, fists, elbows, knees, heels, and these weren’t random blows, they went for the throat, the sternum, the joints, with the kind of precision you only pick up from never having had a weapon.
It went on. A great deal longer than it needed to.
It stopped struggling before they stopped hitting, and nobody stopped them.
Then they stood up, hands open, breathing hard, looking down at what they’d just done.
I got up as well and came over, and they moved aside on their own to let me through.
Nobody said anything. They simply stepped back and made room.
I bent down and picked up the trident lying beside the body.
It was heavier than I’d expected. The shaft was still warm where it had held it, the haft was some metal I didn’t recognize, and the three points were barbed inward, made not to come back out.
And when I straightened up with the weapon in my hand, I saw them looking at me.
All of them. The men on the front, the ones coming up from the hold, the ones bleeding against the rail. They weren’t looking at me as the new arrival they’d had to carry to the ship anymore, or as the man dragging his leg behind everyone else.
There was hope in those looks.
That’s what I’m supposed to be.
Not the strongest. Not the one who hits hardest. The one who gives them something to hold on to when there’s nothing left.
That’s what a hero is. That’s what the word means, and it’s taken me this long to understand it.
I turned back toward the deck.
The battle had changed shape while I was on the ground. The nets were alternating now, one line forward, one line back, in a rhythm nobody needed to call out anymore, and every time one closed there were hands ready to tear a trident free. Men who’d been unarmed a moment ago had weapons and were already using them, badly, gripping the shafts too short, but using them.
On the other ship, out in the middle of the basin, they were still holding. I saw a net go from one deck to the other and I couldn’t work out how.
And there were bodies everywhere.
Ours. A great many. On the planks, against the rail, across the mouth of the hold, and red water rolling from one side to the other with every movement of the hull.
I raised the trident above my head anyway.
As high as my arm would go.
"FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY!"