On the quay beside the Customs House the fight had stopped. The raiders staggered back, staring out at the falling wreckage, horrified.
"What happened?" Meg asked, thinking for a moment that the raft's boiler must have gone up. But when she turned, she saw that Ben was smiling, and understood. He had mined it. Mined the ferry ramp.
Sympathy, that was it. That was what he lacked. That was the thing her father, Hal, had had, and he, Ben, did not. The thing she had looked for and not found in him, that moment before the old bam, watching him use the scythe. Simple human sympathy.
Ben clenched his palm, briefly breaking the circuit that connected him to the watchman as he took three paces back. Then, unclenching, he let out a bloodcurdling yell, and half ran, half lunged at the screens.
From the town below, she heard the echoing yell the watchman gave, the high, chilling scream of a badly wounded man, and turned to look. One of the raft-men was down, on his knees, the watchman's sword embedded to its hilt in his chest.
"Ben . . ." she whispered, feeling a shiver of pain pass through her. "What in God's name are you doing, Ben?"
But he was unaware of her. As she watched, the sky lit up again. The junks moored in the middle of the river had burst into flames and were swinging around into the path of the last of the rafts. She heard the shouts of panic, the splashes as some of the raft people threw themselves over the side, but for most of them it was too late. As the first of the junks collided with the raft, a rain of embers and burning cloth fell over it, smothering the craft in a great sheet of roaring flame.
Meg groaned, appalled.
On all sides the morphs were getting up from where they lay, crawling and limping, hobbling or simply dragging themselves toward their foes, ignoring the blows that rained down on them as they threw themselves at their attackers, struggling to subdue them.
In front of the Customs House, the young watchman had sunk to his knees, his head hacked cleanly from his shoulders. Yet even as he toppled over, another of the townsfolk took his place—a big, corpulent-looking fellow that Meg recognized instantly as the innkeeper. With a bellow, the innkeeper swung his sword about his head and brought it down savagely, an inhuman strength cleaving the astonished raft-man from temple to waist.
At that a great cry went up. Until moments before it had all been going well for the attackers, but now two of their rafts were lost, and instead of timid townsfolk, they found themselves faced by demons. Men who did not lie there, as the dead were supposed to, but stood and joined the fight once more, not heeding the frightful wounds they'd suffered.
Out on the river, the rafts were turning, heading back toward the river's mouth and the safety of the sea. They had seen with their own eyes how things were shaping. Even Tewl, who had stood there on the prow of the third raft watching, gave a small shudder and turned away. "Nog-us genys," he was heard to mutter. "Ny harth o rnlath nag'iis genys."
The unborn . . . We cannot fight the unborn . . .
"Enough!" Meg said, angry with him suddenly. "For God's sake, Ben, enough!"
But Ben could not hear her. Ben jumped and kicked and spun, fighting the air, his eyes transfixed, chained to the images on the screens.
IT was over. The captives were huddled in the space before the ruined inn, sixty or so in all, a cordon of battle-scarred sailors forming a loose circle about them. Coming this close to them, Meg shivered. The scent of them was strong, almost overpowering. A musty animal smell. Looking down at the dark, painted faces of the raft-men, the bowed heads of the Clayborn, she could remember how hard, how viciously they had fought. Just now, however, they were frightened and subdued, especially the Clay among them. The sight of the scarred and mutilated dead rising from the ground had unnerved them. As well it might. Ghosts they had been fighting. Yes, and one dark, form-shifting spirit, who had fled each time they'd tried to cut him down, only to return, renewed and twice as deadly.
And now that spirit stood before them, his human form encased in a shimmering, silver mesh. A powerful magician, who commanded the unborn and spoke their language with a skill not one of them possessed.
Ben leaned toward them, his voice soft, conciliatory now that he had won, their strange and ugly language transformed in his mouth so that it was almost beautiful. Above his head floated three of the remotes, their lens-eyes taking in each detail of this scene, each twitch and furtive gesture of his captives.
On tape, she thought. You'd have it all on tape if you could, wouldn't you, Ben? Yet the sourness she had been feeling earlier had drained from her. What she felt now was a kind of tiredness, a dreadful weariness that was in the bone itself. She had to get away. Far away from all of this.
It began to rain. Out on the river there was a loud hissing as a mist of steam rose from the smoldering junks. A low, fearful moan rose from the Clayborn, who hunched even tighter into themselves, trem-
bling, but the raft people merely looked up, as if greeting an old, familiar friend.
It was only then, as they looked up, their faces tilted to the night sky, their weather-sculpted features revealed in the lamplight for the first time, that Meg noticed. There were women among them. And not just one or two, but a number of them, maybe eight or nine in all. Meg narrowed her eyes, the shock she felt profound.
Her brother had been fighting women. Killing and maiming women. She wondered if he had known that.
And if he had?
She looked down, suddenly frightened by what she was thinking, what feeling at that moment.
There was a noise. A grunt of surprise. She looked up, and saw that Ben had moved, had gone right up to the captives and was crouched there, his hand reaching out to lift one of their chins and turn the face toward him.
"Jesus!" he said, lifting the strap and tugging the battered helmet from the warrior's head.
Long, red hair spilled out from within the helmet's crest. Green eyes looked up past him, meeting Meg's. Green eyes in a pretty, Slavic face.
Meg caught her breath. Catherine! It was Catherine! Or someone so like her as to be her twin.
Ben stood, shaking his head, then turned, looking back at Meg. "I saw her," he said, frowning, trying to piece things together. "I picked her up on one of the remotes. In the village on the big raft. But I never thought. . ."
He turned back, staring down at her, then put out his hand, as if the woman should take it. But she drew back, her fear of him mixed with a natural defiance.
"Dos, benen!" he said, ordering her. But the words were barely uttered when the sky to the south of them lit up, the old castle silhouetted briefly against the brilliance. A moment later, two loud explosions rent the air.
"The rafts," Ben said, facing the fading glow. "Virtanen has destroyed the rafts."
How do you know? she wanted to ask, but she was sure he was right.
Besides, she could hear die cruiser's engines now, could feel the faint vibration in the air.
"Over there!" Ben said urgently, pointing past her toward the steps. "In the gap . . . the ferry ramp!" And, not waiting to see whether she obeyed, he went across, lifting the rocket launcher from where he'd left it on the wall and slipping it over his shoulder.
He turned back, facing the captives. Some had stood. Others were glancing nervously at the sky, as if they knew what was to come. From the look of them, they would try to run at any moment.
"Tryga!" Ben said, his voice powerful, commanding. "Tryga amma!" Yet even as he said it, there was a shadow on the moon and the dark shape of a cruiser swept across the sky above the river, the sound of its engines reverberating in the sudden stillness.