“Silus!” It was Katya, swimming through the dead towards him. “Thank the gods, you’re alright.”
He hugged her so hard that he almost dragged her under.
“Where’s Zac?” he said.
“With the others. Come on.”
She led him to a rowboat, its oars missing and its hull blackened by fire. Within were huddled their companions, starting with each fresh explosion, staring into the fog with fearful expressions. Illiun had survived the assault of the dragons, although of his people only Hannah, Shalim and Rosalind had survived.
“I’m presuming,” Silus said as he scrambled into the boat, followed by his wife, “that this isn’t what you intended, Kelos?”
“No.”
There was a peal of thunder and the water erupted ten yards off to starboard, lifting the boat on a swell that threatened to capsize them.
“Well then, do something!” Silus shouted.
“I can’t,” Kelos said. “The only reason I managed to perform the sorcery in the first place is because I had the blood of a dragon. Here, I don’t have enough power to do it again.”
With a roar, a line of fire arced over their heads, before silence descended. A break in the fog briefly showed them the dull copper disk of the sun and, just beginning to move before it, the azure glow of Kerberos. To port and starboard, shadows loomed, rearing up like cliffs. But cliffs don’t move, and when two vast galleons hove into view, their flanks bearing down on them, panic began to break out in the small vessel.
“Row!” Ignacio shouted.
“With what?” Katya said. “We don’t have any oars.”
Gun ports opened alongside each ship, and they were close enough now that Silus could see the spark of fuses being lit.
He dived overboard, quickly filling his lungs with water, drawing the very essence of the ocean into himself. Positioning himself directly beneath the rowboat, Silus closed his eyes. He focused on the flow of blood through his veins and the movement of the water around him, and opened up a channel; a strong current taking him in its grasp, the water blood-warm and echoing with the beat of his heart. Silus raised his arms and the rowboat was borne aloft on the back of a wave that quickly curled down the narrow channel between the two great ships, just as the sliver of sky above them began to disappear.
The boat sped out onto open water, the power of the wave quickly diminishing. Behind them, the ships’ cannons fired, the galleons erupting in flame, blown to matchsticks in an act of mutual destruction.
“I don’t think that those were Final Faith ships,” Dunsany said. “Just what the hell is going on here?”
“It seems,” Silus said, pulling himself back into the boat, “that Kelos has landed us in the middle of war.”
Ahead of them, the water was crowded with ships. Vessels of all sizes jostled against each other as bodies flung themselves from deck to deck, swords flashing as boarders were repelled and corpses pitched into the churning waters below. Cannon fire punctuated the roar of hand-to-hand combat, ships sinking swiftly as they were holed below the waterline, only for others to just as quickly take their place. Silus had never witnessed naval battle before, but he had always imagined it would be more graceful than this; neatly regimented fleets dancing around each other as they exchanged fire, each side taking their turn as though playing some civilised game of strategy. This was as bloody and chaotic as any land war; perhaps more so, for out on the open water there was nowhere one could retreat to. Once battle was joined, it was all or nothing.
In the confusion, it was difficult to tell who was fighting whom. The combatants appeared to be human, though one side was unnaturally tall — lithe, pale figures who moved with a graceful sure-footedness — while the other was stockier and shorter. It was these latter who appeared to have the upper hand. What they lacked in martial skills and finesse, their ships more than made up for with payloads of heavy munitions. Their cannon balls were barely slowed by the hulls of the enemy vessels, but punched straight through ship after ship before finally falling into the sea. On some of their ships were mounted vast crossbows, their projectiles, when fired, skewering men horribly, their points opening up as they punched into flesh so that the victims could be reeled quickly in and brutally dispatched. Seeing this, Silus couldn’t help but be reminded of the stories he’d heard concerning the whalers of the Sarcrean islands.
A stain was spreading from the waters of the battle, lapping up against the rowboat in oily red waves. Two men were swimming towards them, shouting for help as they floundered. Ignacio rose and held out his hand. One of the men grasped it, babbling his thanks as he tried to gain purchase on the slippery boards, only for Ignacio to lean in close and open up his throat with a dagger. The other man, seeing the fate of his comrade, began to back-paddle, but he was tiring swiftly and the second time his head bobbed beneath the surface, it failed to re-emerge.
“You… you… Ignacio, how could you?” Katya said, her voice quavering. “Zac saw that.”
“And he’s seen worse,” Ignacio said. “Katya, we don’t exactly have a lot of room to move around on this useless dinghy. If we take on any more people, we’ll sink. Someone has to think of these practicalities.”
“Kelos, why did you even bring Ignacio and his new friends with us?” Katya said, exasperated.
“Trust me, Katya, it was as much an accident as me landing us in the middle of a war!”
Ignacio looked back at the handful of Swords who had made it through the time rift with them, but his comrades had nothing to say. They looked just as stunned as everybody else; their righteous ire quashed by everything they had seen.
“That man you just killed,” Kelos said. “Was it just me, or didn’t he look a bit like a… well… an elf?”
“And those short chaps with the deadly cannons…?” Dunsany said.
“Gods, I’ve sent us back to Twilight alright, but we’re in completely the wrong era. This must be the last great war between the elves and the dwarves. I’ve read of the fierce naval battles they engaged in. The dwarves came to naval combat late, but they quickly took to it.”
The boat began to pitch wildly as something beneath them pushed its way to the surface.
For a moment Silus thought that it was a deep-water leviathan, come to find the source of the detritus that was raining down into its territory. But as dark water rolled from the back of the huge barrel-like body, it revealed not flesh, but wood.
“What in the name of Kerberos is that?” Silus said.
The craft was three times the length of the rowboat. From its tail rose a steel fin that swung back and forth with a squeal of metal bearings as the vessel turned to face the conflict. The nose of the craft was a bubble of thick glass that magnified the squat, shirtless man sitting within, sweating profusely as he yanked at levers and twirled the small brass wheels housed between his feet.
“Is that…?” Silus said.
“A dwarf? Yes,” Kelos replied.
The dwarf — looking up briefly from his controls — seemed equally as surprised to see them, but then the vessel was past, the corkscrew propeller at its rear kicking up a crimson spray. It came to a halt about five yards from the battle and a hatch opened up in its back. Steam wafted from the opening as the dwarf climbed onto the roof of his ship, pulling a golden robe around himself. He faced the battle and threw up his arms. As he did so, a dozen ships disappeared, sucked swiftly under by the whirlpools that now raged at the heart of the conflict. The dwarf gestured again and lightning lanced down from the cloudless sky. The stench of cooking flesh drifted towards them, as those who still floundered in the raging waters were cooked in an instant.
“That’s nothing,” said Kelos. “I could do that, with enough practice.”
The dwarf gestured again and the gold thread of his robe unravelled, spinning itself around him in a shimmering cocoon.