The Scar - China Mieville [210]
The men before him are carved and lacerated with a palimpsest of monstrous wounds. Doul strikes, and blood and screams welter up from around him in unbelievable gouts. The New Crobuzon sailors are frozen. For a second, they watch their comrades fall in bloody death. And Uther Doul moves again.
He calls his name, he turns, he leaps and coils above them, kicking and spinning, always moving, and everywhere he faces he lashes out with the Possible Sword. He is surrounded, shrouded, hidden by nigh-swords, his grey armor half visible through a translucent wall of his own attacks. He is like a spirit, a god of revenge, a murderous bladed wind. He moves past the men who have boarded his ship and sends up a mist of their blood, leaving them dying, limbs and body parts skittering over the deck. His armor is red.
Bellis sees his face for one instant. It is ruined with a feral snarl.
The Crobuzoner men die in great numbers and fire their weapons like children.
With one stroke and countless wounds, Doul tears open a thaumaturge who is trying to slow him, and the woman’s puissance makes her blood boil as it dissipates; and he fells a huge cactus-man who raises a shield that deflects many hundreds of Doul’s attacks but cannot protect him from them all; and he murders a fire-throwing sailor whose tank of pyrotic gas splits open and bursts, igniting even as his face is cut apart. Countless cuts with every stroke.
“Gods,” Bellis whispers to herself, unhearing. “Jabber protect us . . .” She is awed.
Uther Doul lets the Possible Sword run for less than half a minute.
When he thumbs it off, and is suddenly absolutely still, and turns to the remaining Crobuzoner sailors, his face is calm. The cold, still solidity of his right arm is shocking. He looks like some monster, some gore-ghost. He breathes deeply—wet, slick, dripping with other men’s blood.
Uther Doul calls his own name, breathless, savagely triumphant.
Unseen in Bellis’ shadow, the man moves the statue down from his lips.
He is horrified. He is utterly aghast. I didn’t know, he thinks, frantic. I didn’t know it could be like that . . .
The man has watched his liberators board and has seen them slowly break through those who opposed them, winning the Grand Easterly, taking charge of the vessel, of Armada’s heart . . . And now he has seen them withered and bloodied and destroyed in seconds, at the hands of Uther Doul.
He looks out frantically at the frigates wedged between the Sorghum and the city, and he tongues the statue again and feels it spit power into him. He debates racing over the side of this superstructure, over the corpses below, and onto the New Crobuzon ships.
“It’s me!” he might call. “I’m here! I’m the reason you’re here! Let’s go, let’s run, let’s get out of here!”
He can’t take all of them, the man thinks, his courage returning as he stares at the red-drenched figure of Uther Doul below. Even with that godsdamned sword, there are too many, and the Armadan ships are being wiped out. Eventually more Crobuzoner troops will get here, and then we can leave. The man turns and looks out, to where the dreadnoughts are pounding the remnants of the Armadan fleet.
But even as he readies himself again to leave, he sees something.
The legions of tugs and steamers that have surrounded Armada like a corona, hauling it for decades, and that have now been left redundant by the avanc, are beginning to pull away from the city’s orbit and head for the Crobuzoner fleet.
They have been refitted by frantic crews over the last few hours: built up with guns; stuffed full of black powder and explosives, with harpoons and phlogistic cells and batteries and jags welded, bolted, soldered, and screwed into temporary place. None of them is a battleship: none is any match for an ironclad. But there are so many of them.
Even as they approach, a volley from the Morning Walker destroys one with a contemptuous blast. But there are many, many more behind it.
Unseen, the man’s face falters,