And it was always a delight to see.
The wet brush caught quick from the oil and flame, and sent off a horrible amount of smoke that worked as a screen to keep them hid from the Devil’s Nine.
But getting them out of this wallow relied on whether Seldom had had a fix on him and his companions before mucking up the visibility.
Gunshots rang out. Cannons. Nine in hot succession, hard enough to make his molars ache.
The Devil’s Nine was aiming to blast the Swift out of the sky.
But the Swift was already on the fly. The cannon shots rocketed through empty air as the Swift gunned it west, much faster than the other ship. She dove hard, and headed straight for Hink.
The Swift was running at speed, her trawling lines and nets lowering for them to catch, her nose aimed straight toward the mountain behind them.
“She won’t pull up in time!” Hink yelled, getting on his feet. “Run for her, or she’ll miss the lift! Run!”
He didn’t have to yell twice. Miss Dupuis, Theobald, and Wright were already running straight into the flame and smoke toward the ship, weapons holstered but not out of reach. Cedar was pounding dirt for the ship too.
And so was Hink. The heat from flames licked at his clothes and the smoke skinned the inside of his lungs. Every step sent a sharp flash of pain through his leg, but he kept on. The net dipped down, as low as the trawling arm could reach.
The Swift’s fans roared, flattening the smoke into heated whips.
Miss Dupuis jumped for the netting, caught and started climbing. Miss Wright leaped after her, found good footing and started up. Mr. Theobald was only seconds behind them.
Cedar bent down. Hink lost sight of him for a second in the smoke. When he came into view again, he had Wil across his shoulders. The wolf seemed to be unconscious. Had he been hit?
Cedar reached up, leaped too high for a man with over a hundred pounds of animal on his shoulder. And then he paused and held one hand down for Hink.
Hink jumped for it. Grabbed rope with left hand and both boots, right hand gripped by Cedar Hunt, who didn’t even grunt from the impact, even though he was still supporting the wolf, and holding on to the net with only one hand.
“You clear?” Cedar yelled.
“I got it!” Hink yelled. Cedar let go of Hink’s hand.
The trawling arms were lifting, which meant the nets were billowing out beneath them, and the speed of the wind at this angle holding them all tight to the ropes.
Hink didn’t try climbing. Once the nets reached horizontal, he knew he could mostly crawl his way in.
Bullets cracked through the smoke and fire, and another set of cannon blasts broke the mountain into echoes. Hink held on, waiting for the nets to go horizontal, smoke digging tears out of his eyes.
Then the Swift shook like a wet dog. She’d been hit. Hink could feel the pain of it in his chest as clearly as if he had been shot. So clearly that he looked down at his shirt to make sure he hadn’t taken a bullet.
He was whole, but the Swift was not. The Devil’s Nine must have doused the fire Seldom had started in her. And now her cannons were about to blast the Swift into brittle bits.
A voice yelled out over the noise of fans and winds. “Cage!” the voice boomed. Not one of his crew, and not coming from the Swift. No, that voice was coming from somewhere below them.
Hink looked down.
He hadn’t expected an angel. He didn’t get one. Nope, all he got was a demon.
The Devil’s Nine hovered beneath them, every damn gun, cannon, and harpoon on that ship aimed their way.
“Marshal Cage. Come aboard, or we’ll fire.”
They wanted him.
They didn’t want his ship. They didn’t want his crew or Cedar Hunt and his brother. They didn’t want Rose. And if they gunned the Swift out of the sky they’d all die.
He had to buy them time. He had to buy Rose a chance at seeing the skies again with her own wings.
“Take care of her,” he whispered to the Swift.
“Marshal Cage!” the amplified voice from below yelled out again. “Surrender!”
Hink didn’t intend to surrender. Not his ship. Not his crew and passengers. Not Rose.
He twisted his head and looked down at the Devil’s Nine. He’d hit her nets if he dropped now.
“Captain!” Cedar yelled.
Hink looked up at him. “Get them the hell out of here!”
Then he pushed off of the net and spread wide so he could catch at the Devil’s ropes and rigging.
He hit her envelope with all the grace of a drunk knocked sprawling to a barroom floor. Instinct curled his hands, arms, legs around anything he could catch hold to.
A long, sickening slide made him wish he’d taken up a god to pray to, and then he stopped, the ropes pulling taut.
He was still on the Devil’s Nine, though he’d slid down the envelope so that he was dangling by both arms off the side. No graceful way out of this. He figured he had about a minute and a half before the captain tipped the Nine and he spilled brains all over the hills.
Of all the places he’d thought he would breathe his last, it certainly wasn’t on these damn rocks or on somebody else’s damn ship.
Hot, sharp pain cut through his arm, bad enough that he was sure the bone had broken.
But the Swift shot into the sky, barely clearing the mountain range, pulling up with a beautiful scream. He couldn’t make out anyone on board, but he was glad they’d had the sense in their skulls to get his ship out of danger while they had the chance.
The ropes tugged. And four men came scrambling over the netting like spiders over webs. Fast. On hands and feet. Hungry for the kill.
Death or capture? Hink held on. So long as there was a chance of breathing left to him, he intended to take it.
The men caught up to him at once. One of them pressed a cloth over his face, while the two others caught his arms. The last one punched a fist in his bleeding leg.
Hink yelled, but never heard the end of it, what with the passing out he was intent upon.
He came in and out of consciousness as he was harnessed, carried, lowered, then dropped to a solid surface. Just glimpses of moments in which he should have been fighting, or planning an escape, and instead couldn’t do much more than take in a lungful of air before going black again.
But when someone slapped him around and stuck smelling salts up his nose, he came right on up out of his terrifying slumber.
Swinging a punch.
But his arms were tied up over his head. His feet were spread wide and tied up too. Mouth gagged. Chest strapped down. Trussed like a pig, but on his feet, which wasn’t much good, as the pain of being unable to take the weight off his bad leg was enough to drench him in a hard sweat.
He was inside a ship. Not the Swift. From the smoke and the grind of the engine, he knew it was the Devil’s Nine.
Which probably meant Alabaster Saint was nearby.
What he couldn’t figure was why the Saint hadn’t already skinned and roasted him.
“Awake, Mr. Cage?” a man’s cultured voice asked. Not Alabaster. “You will be pleased to know your ship is out of range. We could have decimated her, but she is of very little interest to us.”
Hink knew that voice. But the pain, and whatever extra breaks and contusions the crew had decided to treat him to while he was unconscious, teased the memory from him.
On top of that, the pain in his chest he’d felt when the Swift got hit was still gnawing away, burning hard as if his skin were on fire. His broken arm throbbed dully.