Chapter 11 #2
Cannon fire resumed, informing Will that the Maelstrom’s elevation advantage was now lost. They had to hurry.
He found Sebastian in the horde of pirates, pleased to see Whiplash making quick work of them. Between the two, they’d probably cut through half of the Stormrunner’s crew already. But one was missing: the captain.
Sixth Sense alerted Will of an incoming attack and he ducked, a shining silver spear flying inches above his head and grazing his hair. It shattered behind him.
A glass spear? Strange choice.
Looking back, Will discovered that the spear belonged to none other than the Stormrunner’s captain, Sam Rockland.
Despite having just thrown a spear in Will’s direction, he already held another, just as flashy as the first. The pink rays of the sunset cast a mystical glow through the prism-shaped blade.
“I wondered when you’d show up,” Will said, his tone almost jovial as he drove Hellsgate through the next pirate foolhardy enough to approach him.
The onslaught paused when Sebastian used Whiplash to pull two approaching pirates toward him instead, giving Will space to focus on the more formidable foe.
Although Will was taller, Rockland had him beat for muscle.
The Stormrunner captain was huge, with shoulders like a mountain range and rippling, tattooed biceps, all visible because he’d opted against putting on a shirt this morning.
He had a harness stretched across his chest similar to the baldric Sebastian sometimes wore, decorated with a dozen knives.
“I got your back!” Sebastian called, whipping his sword in a circle and instantly crippling three more pirates. “I’ll hold ‘em off.”
Will nodded and advanced on Rockland, who hurled his crystal spear. Will evaded it, but a new one instantly appeared in Rockland’s first.
Infinite spears? Great.
“It’s been a while, William,” Rockland said. Will couldn’t tell if he was smiling or snarling.
“Not nearly long enough.”
Relying on Sixth Sense to tell him exactly when to dodge, Will waited for the itch before vanishing into a puff of smoke. Not a second later, he reappeared in front of Rockland and made to plunge his sword into the captain’s chest. Rockland met him halfway with his spear, blocking the blow.
Hellsgate shattered it, but it replaced itself again, and again, and again. Will only gained millimeters between each regeneration.
“Graven is on his way,” Rockland hissed, leaning forward. “You know he won’t rest until he has it.”
“It can’t be that urgent if he sent you first,” Will shot back, pushing in.
Rockland chuckled, a gravelly sound that made Will’s blood boil.
“You know what’s coming. Make sure you’re on the right side before it’s too late.”
“Graven is usually on the wrong side, so I think I’m good.”
Rockland drove his spear forward, his weight forcing Will back. With most of Rockland’s balance shifted onto the balls of his feet, Will vanished.
When he reappeared behind the Stormrunner’s captain, he found his maneuver successful. Rockland lurched, thrown off balance.
Will pounced before he regained his composure, slicing through the air and burying Hellsgate into Rockland’s side. The other captain roared in agony, his blood coating the steel and splattering onto Will’s face.
He relished the sensation—the heat of blood on his skin that wasn’t his own meant he was winning.
A vicious smile cracked his grim facade, and he lunged forward with even more confidence, mercilessly slashing at Rockland.
It was all Sam could do to stave off the deadly blade with his continually shattering spear.
A terribly designed relic, really.
Victory was in Will’s grasp. He could almost taste it . . . until the Stormrunner began to shift and groan under his feet. Then he remembered: Edmund mentioned another threat below deck.
The wood-paneled floors began to shift, moving to create a cavity in the center of the main deck from which the new threat emerged.
Was that . . . an automaton?
It wasn’t like Malcolm, or like the smaller ones Will had seen in Erebar and some of the other sky cities—or even like the magnificent ones in Aerion.
This one was monstrous and crude, over ten feet tall with a cylindrical body made of fortified steel and a rounded head with burning yellow eyes.
One of its two hands boasted a conglomeration of whirring knives and saw blades capable of ripping people—and ships, probably—to ribbons.
Will had to wonder if Graven had commissioned this machine in his own image.
He looked to Sebastian, trusting his friend to know what to do.
Bas nodded and, without hesitation, raced to the automaton.
Using Whiplash as a grappling hook again, he pulled himself up to the automaton’s shoulder, planting himself there before reaching into its clavicle to tear out wires and gears.
The brief moment between Will and Sebastian was long enough for Rockland to recover.
Will felt the mental itch, but reacted too late when Rockland ripped a knife from his harness and nailed it to Will’s shoulder, causing him to echo Rockland’s previous cries of agony.
Tearing out the blade would only worsen the bleeding, so Will kept it in and refocused, cursing himself to all nine hells. He couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t reacted to Sixth Sense’s warnings. His reflexes were too slow.
Much to his dismay, not sleeping appeared to have consequences.
If anything, the injury made Will feel more dangerous—more desperate to end this. The searing pain in his shoulder consolidated his senses to a singular, savage focus. He lunged at Rockland with newfound ferocity, repeatedly slashing him with Hellsgate. This ended now.
Will appeared at Rockland’s left side, then his right, making the other captain dizzy until he’d created a suitable opening. When Rockland faltered, Will tore another knife from Rockland’s harness and, in one fatal blow, sunk it into his right eye.
Rockland’s body went limp beneath his hold, but there wasn’t time to relish the victory. They were taking too long.
The Stormrunner had deployed windskiffs with some of the remaining crew, sending them to swarm the Maelstrom and wreak havoc. He could see from here that the shields on the port side were officially down. Rockland might be dead, but the Maelstrom was still on defense.
As Rockland’s body slumped to the floor, Will turned to the automaton. Sebastian was slicing at it with Whiplash, but he hadn’t yet managed to disable the thing.
The automaton turned its massive head toward Will, but didn’t attack.
It took him one terrible second to realize why.
“No!” Will launched Hellsgate across the deck, reappearing inches away from the machine.
He intended to shred it into a pile of scrap metal before it could move, but the damn thing was faster than it had any right to be.
It had already engaged its thrusters, levitating off the floor and speeding out of reach with Sebastian still on its shoulder.
It reached out, one massive hand grabbing hold of the Maelstrom’s rail while the other appendage grated the ship’s side.
Any injury to his ship was like a blow to Will’s own body, triggering a stabbing pain in his heart that almost stung worse than his throbbing shoulder.
“Will, go!” Sebastian shouted. “I’ll handle this thing. Finish off the ship!” He nearly slipped off the automaton, but Whiplash helped him stay secure. The machine swung onto the deck with unsettling mobility.
Will didn’t know much about automatons, but he did know that, apart from Malcolm, they usually operated with a specific purpose. It hadn’t bothered to attack him, which could only mean one thing: it had a different target.
There was no time to waste. Will slaughtered his way through the Stormrunner like a ghost, zipping in and out of sight and killing without mercy.
“Deathsmoke!” one of the pirates cried. “Run!”
They tried—oh, how they tried. But the only place safe from Will’s reach was over the side of the ship. He made it look easy. Hellsgate acted as a natural, lethal extension of his arm and Sixth Sense enabled him to dodge nearly every blow.
Nearly.
Determination and necessity kept him going, but fatigue was a bitch, slowing his reflexes further and blurring the edges of his vision. The knife in his shoulder had dislodged during combat, blood now seeping across his white shirt and soaking through the scarlet brocade of his coat.
One of Rockland’s lackeys managed to draw even more blood by slicing across Will’s left collarbone. The pirate met his end shortly after, but it didn’t go unnoticed. It was beyond pathetic that a grunt had landed a blow.
“Captain!” a female voice called. Will looked away from his next unlucky target to see Serena on a windskiff with Malcolm strapped to her back. “Crowe is down. We need you!”
She swerved her skiff to knock down an approaching trio of pirates and jumped off.
Will’s stomach dropped like a stone. For one thing, the brothers were hard to knock out, but for another, that either meant Crowe had abandoned his post guarding Amaya, or the automaton had made it down to the brig.
Neither outcome boded well.
He met Serena at her skiff, releasing Hellsgate and laying a hand on the handlebars.
“I need you to spike the cannons and fail the engine,” he said. “Can you stall it and get back?”
“Aye, Captain,” Serena replied with a grin. She wasn’t the slightest bit fazed that he was covered in blood. “When do I get a real challenge?”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Serena went back on her word immediately, yanking a pistol from her belt and tossing it over her shoulder to Malcolm.
“Ah-ha! I had rather hoped for this,” he said. “I’ve been practicing.”
The automaton began firing haphazardly, his aim imprecise and decidedly unpracticed as Serena bolted out of sight.
Will mounted Serena’s windskiff and revved the small engine, making a sharp pivot and rocketing back to the Maelstrom.
He hoped he wasn’t too late.