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None of the Charlotte Bailey's crew were right nearby, and Davies took hold of his own sword with his left hand and then flexed his free right hand; Shandy saw the pirate's eyes narrow as he did it, and he remembered that Davies had apparently burned that hand in the jungle.
"Is your hand - " he began, then yelled, "Look out yourself!" and hopped past Davies to knock away an in-thrusting blade and split the jellyfish face of the figure wielding it. "Is your hand workable?"
"It's got no choice," said Davies tightly, gripping his sword again and looking around the littered deck. "Listen, we've got to make sure Friend loses this fight; try to - "
From behind Shandy came a screeching of overstressed wood, followed by loud cracking and snapping, and looking aft he saw that Friend had stretched his hand down, and though Friend was hovering a dozen yards above the deck and his pudgy hand scarcely extended down past his belt, most of the overdeck and bulkhead had been torn away from the cabin; the ripped up planks and beams hung in midair for a moment, then were dropped carelessly into the waist, and Shandy heard screams through the clattering and thudding, and he knew that some of the men from the Jenny had been under the dumped lumber.
Then Friend raised his cupped hand, and up into the sunlight from the now roofless cabin floated Beth Hurwood, struggling against something invisible that held her arms pinned to her sides.
Chapter Eighteen
Oh my God, thought Shandy in sudden panic, he's using her as a diversion; he's probably already raped her, and now he's going to set her on fire or something just to distract Hurwood.
Shandy started toward her across the blood-slippery deck, and he didn't even notice that one of the dead men between himself and the unroofed cabin had focused its attention on him and was ; now crouched, holding its green cutlass low and ready.
Davies saw it, though. "Goddammit, Jack," he burst out wearily, sprinting forward to get to the necrotic sailor before Shandy did.
Venner, his shirt torn and his red hair made even redder by a long scalp wound, and his habitual ingratiating grin replaced by a snarl of desperate effort, took in the situation at a glance - and he deliberately stepped in Davies' way and drove his burly shoulder into the older man's chest.
Half-winded by the impact, Davies reeled but nevertheless forced himself onward after casting back at Venner one quick glance full of anger and promise.
Shandy had had to duck around a knot of gasping, clanging combat, but now he was running straight toward the ascending figure of Beth Hurwood - and toward the patient, still-unnoticed dead mariner.
Davies had no time for a deceptive attack; he ran the last few
steps to the undead sailor and simply swung his sword at the thing's neck.
The blade struck deep, but with his bad hand and lack of breath Davies hadn't been able to put enough force behind the blow to cut the head entirely off, and the dead eyes rolled toward him - and before he could pull his sword free, the thing's corroded cutlass was driven horrifyingly far up into his abdomen.
Suddenly ashen, Davies hitchingly breathed a curse, then tightened his burned hand around the grip of his sword, and with a convulsive heave that was as much a violent shudder of disgust as it was an attacking move, shoved his blade across the gray neck with his last strength, sawing the head free.
The two dead bodies tumbled away across the deck.
Shandy hadn't even noticed the encounter. Near Beth now, he dropped his sword and strained every muscle and tendon in a high jump for her, but his upstretched fingers brushed against an invisible resistance a foot short of her - though for a moment her downward staring eyes met his imploringly, and her lips formed words he couldn't hear.
Then he fell, rebounding painfully from the splintered cabin bulkhead to sprawl breathless on the sun-hot deck and wait, completely exhausted now, for a green blade or two to nail him to the planks.
But suddenly all the lich combatants were paler, translucent against the bright sky. The weight of the dead man's forearms on his chest all but disappeared.
At the same moment Shandy became aware that he was lying on the well-remembered quarterdeck of the Vociferous Carmichael, staring at armored planks he remembered having bolted in place himself - and he guessed that Friend was too busy defending himself against Hurwood to maintain the spell that had provided him with a crew.
"I could kill her," Friend said, relaxing his frown of concentration and baring bloody teeth in a smile.
It was Hurwood who wavered now, and Friend pointed his free hand at the older sorceror - and a ball of fire, white-bright even in the cloudless noon, rushed through yielding rigging straight at Hurwood.
The one-armed man parried it with a flailing gesture and it rebounded down into the Jenny where it was greeted with alarmed yells; but Hurwood fell a couple of feet and then caught himself jokingly, and he whimpered and reached out his hand toward his daughter, on the other side of the waist, who was slowly rising toward his adversary. There was no fire at all now flickering around Friend, who, grinning and swollen with triumph, looked like some grotesque, beribboned hot-air balloon.
The young magician inhaled deeply, leaned back and stretched his arms out to either side.
Then in spite of the strong breeze the air was foul with the smell of an empty iron skillet on a fire, and the ship was the squat, multi-decked Charlotte Bailey again, and the English and Spanish sailors were not only substantial again but alive-looking - ruddy cheeks, tanned arms, brightly flashing eyes - and Friend was actually glowing in the sky, brightly, like a man-shaped sun ...
Leo Friend knew he was close to understanding it all now; he was on the very threshold of godhood - and without any external help, without drawing on anything but his own resources! He could see now that that was how it had to be. You did it for yourself or it didn't happen; and to overpower Benjamin Hurwood he would have to do it, and do it right now.
But to be God - which of course meant to have been God all along - he had to justify every event in his past, define every action in terms that made it consistent with godhood ... there could no longer be any incidents that were too uncomfortable to remember. With superhuman rapidity he held up for mental review year after year of remembered behavior - the torturing of pets, the malice toward playmates, the poisoned candy left near schoolyards and workhouses - and he was able to face, and incorporate into divinity, every bit of it, and he could feel himself growing incalculably more powerful as he bloomed closer and closer to the perfect self-satisfaction that would bring omnipotence ...
And finally, with Hurwood virtually vanquished, there was only one incident of Friend's life that needed to be sanctified out of plain squalid reality ... but it was the most harrowing and traumatic experience he'd ever undergone, and even just facing it, even just making himself remember it, was supremely difficult ... but now, as he hung in midair over his ship, facing his all-but-shattered enemy and watching his all-but-won prize rising up from the broken cabin beneath him, he forced himself to relive it.
He was fifteen years old, standing beside the bookcase in his cluttered, smelly bedroom ... no, in his elegant panelled bedchamber, aromatic with the jasmine breeze wafting in through the open casements and the breath of fine leather bindings ... it had always been this way, there had never been the shabby, polluted room ... and his mother opened the door and came in. Only for a moment was she a fat, gray-haired old drudge in a black bag dress - then she-was a tall, handsome woman in a patterned silk robe that was open down the front ... Seven years earlier he had discovered magic, and he had pursued it diligently since, and knew a lot now, and he wanted to share the wealth in his mind with the only person who had ever appreciated that mind ...
