The Scar - China Mieville [203]
The city’s five warships steered westward a handful of miles, presenting themselves like a curving wall between Armada and the approaching force.
Around and between them steamed Armada’s smaller ironclads, squat vessels swathed in grey gunmetal, windowless, bristling with stubby cannons. They were joined by those of the city’s pirate vessels that had been in dock. Their crews set their teeth and tried not to contemplate their suicidal bravery—they were armed and armored to defeat merchant vessels, not naval gunners. Few of them, they realized, would come home.
There was no division between the ridings. Crews loyal to every ruler tacked and stoked and armed themselves, side by side.
The lookouts in the Arrogance sent down more messages as they saw the Crobuzoner ships more clearly. Uther Doul read them out to the Lovers.
“They must be here for their fucking rig,” he said quietly, so that only the two of them could hear. “Whatever it’s about, they outgun us. We’ve got more vessels, but half of ours are just wooden freebooters. They’ve seven warships, and many more scouts than us. They must have sent nearly half their fleet.”
Tanner Sack and the menfish of Bask; Bastard John; cray; the shadowy submersibles. Armada’s underwater troops waited, suspended, the great chains moving slowly away from them. Armada was moving on, the avanc now slowed to a crawl so that the troops could regain the city, after the fight.
Nearby, a small group of cray huddled in tight communion on one of their submerged rafts. Witch-conveners, summoning their beasts.
When Tanner had faced the dinichthys, he had hurled himself unthinkingly into the water. He had not had time then to contemplate his fear. But it was almost another hour before the warships from his old home would arrive to destroy his new one. The purpose and intelligence that directed their propellers was much more terrifying than the imbecilic malice in the bonefish’s eyes.
The minutes were very slow. Tanner thought about Shekel, at home where Tanner had ordered him to stay. Waiting with Angevine: both being armed, no doubt, by the yeomanry left behind. But he ain’t yet sixteen, thought Tanner desperately. He wanted very much to be back there with them, with Shekel and his lady. Tanner hefted his huge harpoon and thought about the fighting that was coming, and he pissed suddenly in his fear. His urine warmed him briefly, then dissipated with the current.
Everywhere, throughout Armada and across all the free-floating ships preparing to defend it, there were weapons.
The city’s armories and arsenals were unlocked, and the military technologies of thousands of years and hundreds of cultures were brought out and wiped clean: cannons, harpoons, and flintlocks; swords and crossbows and longbows and rivebows; and more esoteric weapons: stingboxes, baan, yarritusks.
Across the city, dirigibles of all sizes were rising slowly above the rooftops and rigging, like sections of architecture broken free. Over the horizon to the west, smoke could be seen from the Crobuzoner engines.
There was a huge scrum on the deck of the Grand Easterly as all the lieutenants, officers, captains, and rulers of all the ridings jostled to hear Uther Doul, the soldier, give them orders. Bellis stood motionless nearby, ignored by everyone around her, and listened.
“Their gunboats outnumber ours,” he said tersely, “but look around.” He pointed out at the morass of steamers and tugs that had until recently spent their days pulling Armada across the ocean, and that now circled it in aimless freedom. “Tell the crews manning those vessels to turn them by gods into gunboats.
“Word’s been sent to the Brucolac and his cadre: they’ll be informed as soon as they wake. Send some fast boats or airships to the edge of Dry Fall, to wait for them.
“We don’t know the Crobuzoners’ strength underwater,” Doul continued. “Submariners, you’ll have to judge when to attack. But they’ll have no airships. The