Chapter 278: Short-Handed, Overstaffed

James hauled the torch back from the drop and stepped into the middle of the pyramid, a quarterdeck five strides wide with a witch kneeling at its heart.

Four walls, five bastards to hold them. He watched each side carefully, ready for the one that was about to run hot.

Pikes scraped behind them, the bracket torch on the right guttered, crescent blades whirred on the left, and the stairs roared loudest of all.

"Right then, you braw wee platform. Some bucket line of problems, and I’m the bucket."

A pike head rose over the far edge, a stride from his boots.

Nub held the far wall on one knee, cutlass in his right fist, his left hand clamped around a pike shaft trapped beneath his arm. Pikemen in rusted corselets rushed at him, vines pushing through their morions, drawing their shafts back in staggered rhythm so that one thrust came for his chest while another swept across the edge and the third was just behind.

He turned the first point aside and caught the sweep on his cutlass, but before he could answer the next pike was driving in, forcing him to keep shifting his weight as the three undead fought in a constant rhythm of thrust and scything sweep.

James pinned the nearest shaft beneath his boot and [Verdict] severed the vine at the wrist, the hand falling open as the pike slipped free. He turned the chance into a cut at the nape, the blade slashing through vine, flesh, and bone until the head came loose and the body sagged down the pyramid.

The green fingers on Nub’s clamping hand chose that moment to uncurl, their buds split into pale flowers as they hauled him toward a vine from a corpse’s ribs. He clapped the hand to his mouth and bit down until they quit.

"Nuh-uh, nuh-uh, none o’ that! Behave, ye turncoat lil’ fingers!"

"Gnaw away, lad, gnaw away!"

James caught the other two shafts on the forte of [Verdict], knocking them aside as they came for him.

"I’ll mind the other end of the fight!"

The pike came in again, and [Verdict] swept across the shaft to carry the point aside before the blade followed through, severing the vine-wrapped wrist and sending the hand tumbling loose with the weapon. Then his boot kicked the corpse square in the chest and kicked it backward down the steps together with the others.

From the right, Pike howled, and the bracket torch hissed out.

James crossed back in four strides, then dropped over the right wall beside Pike. Flibustiers swarmed the steps with axes, while the sailor limped among them, swollen-handed and gash-cheeked, turning a misfired pistol end for end.

Each axe rose over a head and hung there for an age before coming down, and he slipped beneath the first raised arm, [Verdict] cutting through the vine buried in the armpit and dropping the limb limp as the axe fell uselessly from its grip, then turned the same stroke into the neck and hacked the head free.

Three axes rose in staggered order, one hanging overhead while another came crashing down, keeping him moving between each blow until two dropped together.

He caught the second one too late.

Its edge skidded across the black wool in a shower of sparks, but the force behind it still drove into him hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.

Pike jabbed the pistol at a flibustier’s knee, and the charge that had sulked in the barrel finally cooked off, the shot tearing through the joint and folding the leg beneath him as the muzzle flash engulfed him, blackening his face and hair with powder smoke.

He squealed through the smoke. "Gawd’s teeth! Why’s it allus me, why’s it allus ME? The whole bleedin’ battle the thing sulks in its barrel, an’ now, NOW, it picks its moment an’ goes off in me bleedin’ face! Me eyebrows, Cap’n! Me lovely eyebrows!"

James stepped through the gap the ruined knee had opened, brought [Verdict] across the neck and hacked through the vine and flesh until the head came free.

"Aye, there’s a patient wee pistol for you, lad!"

Across the summit, Dunk’s voice had stopped. James crossed again, and the cord on Zephy’s wrist whined up a note.

Dunk held the left wall bareheaded, blood dripping down his neck.

Buccaneers in hog-hide jerkins climbed towards him with half-moon blades mounted on poles, one sweeping low for the hamstring as the other came down high for the neck, the two weapons working from separate steps so that whenever one sweep passed beneath him, the other was already descending to catch him above.

"Low an’ high, low an’ high, an’ a one, an’ a two, an’... bugger it, that’s both at once, ye sods!"

James dropped beside him and evaded the low sweep with a hop, catching the next blade on the forte of [Verdict] and knocking it wide before stepping inside the pole’s reach, where the vine at the elbow parted beneath his cut and the following stroke bit through the neck, severing it cleanly from the shoulders.

"Och, years down in the cold clay, and they’ve still the drills by heart."

The head that had stolen Dunk’s last hat came bounding up the steeps on its own vine tail, the hat still clamped in its jaws as it snapped at their heels and added a third rhythm to the attack. Then, his boot sent it spinning across the stone and the blade came down through the vine, severing the tail and leaving the head to roll away with the hat still between its teeth.

Dunk fished the hat from the jaws and clapped it on, sap-sodden, green running down his neck.

"Gimme that, ye slobberin’ bastard, that’s me hat! Betsy stitched that band with her hands, an’ she’ll flay me alive an’ wear me for a bonnet if I lose it twice! TWICE, d’ye hear?"

Mary’s voice rose up the stairwell, every number dropped like silver, with the wet chop of a blade between each figure. "Eleven. Twelve. And I’m runnin’ short o’ feckin’ stairs, Captain, so if ye’ve a notion in that head of yers, now’d be a grand time to share it."

Below the summit, the torchlight along the steps sank under the undead.

James walked to the stairs, where the chant stopped and started again in a faster cadence, and took the upper steps in three long strides. It ran steep as a companionway, three abreast between serpent balustrades, with the undead filling it wall to wall below.

He wedged the corner torch into the coils at his hip, and the corpses recoiled from its cold flame like cattle from a lantern before he planted himself between Mary and Bonnet.

Mary held the left in a ruin of sleeve, her pistol empty, forearm black with sap, Bonnet held the right in his shirtsleeves, the reforged blade slick to the guard.

French infantry climbed with rusted muskets and socket bayonets, drawing the butts back in warning before the front rank lunged slow and straight for the chest, the rank behind thrusting over their shoulders for the head, after which the muskets swung around in heavy butt strikes.

James caught the lunge on the forte and swept the bayonet aside, stepping in along the musket to cut through the vine-bound wrist before [Verdict] carried on into the nape, shearing through flesh and bone as the head came free, yet the corpse completed its drill regardless, its musket butt swinging around to smash into its own dangling forearm.

Mary counted heads under her breath, dryly.

"Thirteen. Fourteen. They come in dozens, so they do, like me mother’s cousins at a wake."

"Messieurs! Messieurs, de grace, vos pieds, je vous en supplie! Mais quelle honte!"¹

Bonnet cried in his perfumed Bridgetown French, beating a bayonet aside. "La garde de France, jadis la fierté du Roi-Soleil, avance comme une vache en deuil! Une vache, messieurs, en DEUIL!"¹

"Ah, ye’re wastin’ yer breath an’ yer good French, ye great perfumed eejit."

"Then, I shall simply ENUNCIATE!"

The reforged blade slipped beneath the gorget and bit cleanly through the neck in one stroke, sending the head bouncing down the steps while he watched it tumble past.

"Oh! Oh, I say! Did you observe that, my dear fellow? Why, I do believe I’m getting rather good at this!"

"I did, an’ if ye breathe a word o’ it again, I’ll be after puttin’ yer own head down them steps for company!"

Three more clambered over the bodies piled from the first exchange, stepping through the blood and torn vines as others reached out for the serpent coils on either flank.

The ranks advanced in staggered rhythm, each lunge arriving as another recovered and a musket butt swung in behind the next thrust, leaving each of them only enough time to ward one line before the other was already coming in.

Mary caught a lunge on the forte and drove it aside, her return cut parting the vine-wrapped wrist, while Bonnet beat one thrust away, riposted into the opening, then remised as another musket came over the first.

On the left, a climber reached through the serpent coils for Mary’s knee, forcing him to step across and cut through the joint, leaving his own middle exposed to the next bayonet.

The next lunge drove straight down the opening and struck [Discretion] with a shriek of steel and a spray of sparks, the force knocking him a step down the stairs while the jolt travelled through the blade into his raw forearm, burning where his hand clenched the grip.

Then every lunge stopped.

The bayonets hung where the parries had left them, and the dead lifted their heads together toward the summit.

James turned his own, [Verdict] still up.

The coil at his hip lit with jade-green fire, racing down both balustrades from above. His wedged torch burned cold white and blue, like the sibyl’s lamp.

The cry came then, the one the hush had swallowed, thin and huge and from beyond, as though a door a thousand years thick had been wrenched open an inch.

Cornmeal crosses burned through the flags above and Zephy’s cord whined higher than any string should reach. At the pyramid’s foot, the carved water band heaved up in a green swell and slopped the swarm off its feet.

The hush tore like canvas.

Every leaf on the island shrieked at once, and green ropes poured from the plaza floor toward the stairs. The dead at the front went rigid, the vines in them drew taut, and the whole host was hauled back down like a net dragged in with its catch.

They were bundled together, limbs knitting, ribs fitted into a chest wide as a longboat, hog-hide jerkins stitched over it for skin, pike shafts for a spine, half-moon blades for fingers, boarding axes for knuckles, bayonets bristling from its shoulders, and a head built of skulls.

It stood there, a golem built of men, and its crown of skulls rose past the stairs and kept climbing.

"Och, jinx. I’m needin’ a much bigger bucket."