Gresham's sword was out, the boat axe in the other hand. He turned as if to head for the grappling iron, and his two guards instinctively turned with him. With extraordinary agility Gresham swung round the other way, and in the brief moment that one of the men exposed his chest Gresham plunged his sword directly under his ribcage, twisting and turning the blade as he did so and ripping it back out with a savage downward heave. The man screamed, more in anger and fear than in pain — and dropped his sabre to clutch at the gaping wound through which blood was now pouring. The other man backed off, fear in his eyes. Gresham had turned in a moment, impossibly, the blade a mere flicker. There was no time for finesse. Dick had seen bald pate coming towards him, and was almost crying now. His first attacker chose not to wait for bald pate, and suddenly leapt forward, smashing Dick's blade aside and raising both hands to bring his heavy edge down on Dick's skull. An expression of surprise came over his eyes, and he looked down to see a sword blade protruding from his chest. Gresham had pirouetted round in one seamless movement and lunged forward again. As the man gaped and blood began to dribble from round his mouth, Gresham put his foot firmly in the man's back and pushed with all his strength. With a sad, sucking, sighing noise the blade pulled out of the man's body, as he was hurled forward onto Dick, who screamed and half scrabbled out of the way of the descending body. Dick's face was a mass of blood now. Not his blood. The blood of the man who had so nearly killed him. Gresham faced up to bald pate, who suddenly halted his onward rush. Gresham saw something in the man's eyes, and started to turn.
The man behind him, one of the two who had been told not to kill him, was about to make a last brave effort and disobey orders. Scarface. He had a scar down one side of his face, a scar which had closed off his left eye. Whether the eye was still there or not, God only knew. Scarface had seen Gresham's skill, knew there would be no prisoners from this fight, knew it was kill or be killed. He was experienced enough, whoever he was, to see that this was his one chance, even if he had only one eye left to see it.
Gresham had lunged at one man, then turned and skewered the other man, but it had taken time to kick the body off his blade. He had then turned a third time to face the bald-headed man. Reacting to three opponents was miraculous. Reacting to four was simply impossible. For a brief moment Gresham was unbalanced, exposed. Scarface wielded his crude blade like a scythe aimed at Gresham's neck. Gresham turned his head to see it heading inexorably for him. Even as he brought his own aching sword arm up he knew he would be a fraction too late, even as he tried to spring back away from the gleaming steel. He had killed two men, and parried a third. The fourth would kill him. He greeted the prospect with something approaching relief.
There was a clang that could have come from Titan's armoury, and the swinging blade hung in mid-air, stopped. Mannion and his opponent had been exchanging blows of vast force with monotonous regularity, almost taking turns, when for no apparent reason one of Mannion's massive strikes did not stop at his enemy's sword, but seemed to carve down straight through it, snapping the defending blade as if it was glass and carrying on to split the man's skull, grey brain matter and blood spurting out like a newly constructed fountain in a noble's garden. Mannion had not waited to see the man's body drop to the ground, but had turned just in time to cover the four paces to Gresham and stop his attacker's blow. Gresham, half on his knees, looked for a brief moment into Mannion's eyes, a moment in which both men said all they needed to say to each other, and thrust up at his exposed attacker. The shock of Mannion's block had sent a stinging blow up the blade and hilt. The cheaper the weapon, the more likely it was to let its user feel every hit in nerve-tingling detail. Slightly off balance, Gresham would have compensated for his awkward position, half kneeling and half falling, had his foot not slipped on a patch of blood and skidded out from under him. The sword thrust he had intended to go up and under the ribcage of his assailant instead went low, the superb steel slicing straight into the man's genitals. The scream was as if someone had rubbed razors across the man's eyes, a screech of pure agony. Almost pityingly, Mannion brought his heavy blade down on the man's head, mercifully cutting short the inhuman noise.
'Bet that hurt,' he said, turning to face the bald-headed man, who was looking nervously from Gresham to Mannion and back again, unsure as to who was his opponent. Gresham leapt to his feet, a throbbing, burning pain in his head, and the man's eyes swivelled to him. Mannion leapt forward and enacted an exact replica of the blow that had just been intended to kill Gresham, a scything, sweeping cut of sheer brute force. There was no one to help bald pate, and the blow half severed the man's neck. Perhaps he wanted to scream but all that emerged from his mouth was a frothy, red, bubbling gurgle.
Jack had been aiming blows at his opponent, swinging them at head height, forcing the man to raise his arms, tiring him even faster. Suddenly and without warning he swung low, breaking the man's knee with the force of his blow. His enemy sank to the deck, gargling, face up, pleading. Jack centred his blade, and pushed it hard into the man's neck. Dick had scrambled out from under the body of the man Gresham had killed, and was standing wild-eyed on the deck, looking for someone to kill. Edward was still dancing around his man, who suddenly looked up and saw that he was alone on the deck, five blood-stained men facing him. He stepped back, dropped his blade, put up his hands palms outwards to his attackers. There was no mercy in their eyes. Before any of them could move, he jumped onto the guard rail, dropping his hands. The Anna gave a sudden lurch, and the two hulls started to pull apart, opening a three-foot gap between the two vessels. The man began to slip, paddling his arms ludicrously to try and keep his balance. He fell between the two hulls just as the wind and the waves forced them together with a grinding crash, mellowed by the sound of something soft being crushed, like eggshells being trodden on.
There was screaming from the other boat. The small bearded man was shouting at the three seamen left on board his vessel, pointing with a sword to one of the two small cannon on his deck. He was yelling at the men to fire the guns, but they were huddled under the forecastle, clearly scared out of their wits and mutinous.