Free Ships from the West by Paul Kearney Page A

series of thunderous broadsides and blew huge jagged holes in the superstructure of the
Pontifidad,
the massive timbers that formed the skeleton and ribs of the ship tossed like twigs into the air along with fragments of burning men. The ship groaned like a maimed beast and there was a great tearing crack as the mizzen gave way and toppled over, tearing free the shrouds and stays and crashing into ruin down the ship’s larboard side. The vessel began to list.
    Hawkwood had been blasted clear of the burning poop by the powder explosions. They had rendered him deaf, and thus the scene aboard was a surreal, soundless nightmare; a dream which seemed to be happening to someone else. He picked himself up out of a tangle of broken timber and piled cordage. All around him, men were fighting the fire with pitiful chains of buckets, or slashing and shooting at the swooping shadows overhead, or dragging their wounded comrades clear of the flames. There was utter confusion, but it had not yet bled into panic. That was something.
    The King. Where was he?
    Rovero, one side of his face a burnt bubbled ruin, had grabbed his arm and was shouting something, but Hawkwood could not make it out. He ducked as another one of the winged monstrosities dived low, and felt the wrench as Rovero was lifted free of the deck. He seized the admiral’s hand, but toppled backwards as it came free. Rovero’s decapitated torso tumbled like a rag across the deck. Hawkwood stared in horror.
    Men were lifted struggling into the air and dropped with torn throats. A sergeant of marines was grappling fifteen feet off the deck, digging his fingers into his attacker’s eyes while the bald wings flapped furiously about him. Sailors caught the hanging tails of their tormentors and dragged them down whilst their comrades hacked them to pieces. But there were hundreds of the beasts. They fastened like flies on the dead and the living alike, wreaking carnage with no thought of their own preservation.
    Hawkwood experienced no fear, just a dazed series of decisions in his mind. He grabbed a steel marlin spike from a fife-rail and stabbed with all his strength one of the winged creatures that was perched on the shattered deck, feeding off a shrieking marine. The beast reared backwards on top of him, the wings beating in a paroxysm of agony. He crawled out from under and knelt upon it, pinning the wings. A human face spat up at him, but the eyes were yellow as a cat’s and its fangs were as long as his fingers. Disgust and rage overmastered him. He punched the face with his raw fists until his knuckles cracked and broke, and the beast’s glaring eyes were burst from their sockets.
    A silent explosion staggered him - he felt the blast of hot air scorching his skin. He lurched to his feet. Some sounds were coming back, all overlaid with a shrill hissing that filled his head. The ship’s wheel was on fire, and the binnacle. The chain of buckets had disappeared. There was no sign of King Abeleyn and his bodyguards - no order left now on board. Men were fighting their own private battles for survival and wielding anything that came to hand to beat off the enemy. No time to reload arquebuses; the marines were swinging them like clubs. Over the formless storm in his ears Hawkwood heard some shouting in despair, and saw them pointing. He turned.
    Crawling over the ship’s rails were hordes of the beetle-like warriors which had gone down in the caravel. Their pincers made short work of the boarding netting and their spiked feet propelled them over the side with preternatural speed. Hawkwood peered over the ship’s rail and saw that a mass of smallcraft was clustered there, and grapnels were being tossed aboard by the score. The
Pontifidad
gave a lurch to starboard which sent him sliding across the packed deck. A squirming mass of humanity went with him, men sliding off their feet and rolling in the remains of their shipmates. One sailor was pitched from the main hatch square on