The Scar - China Mieville [28]
“Surrender!” shouted the voice beside her window. “Surrender and this finishes now!”
“Dispatch that bastard!” the captain shouted to his crew.
Five or six sailors ran past Bellis’ window, swords and pistols drawn. There was a moment of silence, then a thud and a faint crackling.
“Oh Jabber . . .” The cry was hysterical, but it broke off suddenly in a retching exhalation. There was a blossoming of screams.
Two of the men stumbled back into Bellis’ view, and she cried out aghast. They collapsed to the deck in great gouts of blood, and died quickly. Their clothes and bodies were savaged with an incredible number of wounds, as if they had been outnumbered by hundreds of enemies. There was not a six-inch space on any of them that was not scored with some deep gash. Their heads were shredded flesh and bone.
Bellis was transfixed. She trembled, her hands at her mouth. There was something deeply unnatural about those wounds. They seemed to shiver between states, deep rends that were suddenly insubstantial and dreamlike. But the blood that pooled below them was quite real, and the men were really dead.
The captain was staring in shock. Bellis heard a thousand overlapping whispers of air. There were two blubbering screams, and wet drumbeats as bodies fell.
The last of the sailors ran past Bellis, back the way he had come, howling in terror. A hurled flintlock smacked solidly into the back of his head. He fell to his knees.
“You godsforsaken swine!” Captain Myzovic was screaming. His voice sounded outraged and deeply afraid. “You demon-loving bastard!”
Paying him no attention, a grey-clad man walked slowly into Bellis’ field of vision. He was not tall. He moved with studied poise, carrying his heavily muscled body as if he were a much more slender man. He wore leather armor, a dark charcoal outfit studded with pockets, belts, and holsters. It was streaked and streaked with blood. Bellis could not see his face.
He walked toward the fallen man, holding a straight sword stained completely red and dribbling thickly.
“Surrender,” he said quietly to the man before him, who looked up in terror and sobbed, fumbled idiotically for his knife.
The grey-clad man spun instantly in the air, his arms and legs bent. He twirled as if he were dancing and stamped out quickly, the bottom of his foot slamming into the fallen man’s face and smashing him back. The sailor sprawled, bleeding, unconscious or dead. As the man in grey landed he was instantly still. It was as if he had not moved.
“Surrender,” he shouted, very loud, and the men of the Terpsichoria faltered.
They were losing the fight.
Bodies lay like litter, and dying men screamed for help. Most of the dead wore the blue of the New Crobuzon Merchant Navy. Every second more pirates emerged from the submersible and the armored tugs. They surrounded the Terpsichoria’s men, corralled them on the main deck.
“Surrender,” shouted the man again, his accent unfamiliar. “Throw down your weapons and we’ll end this. Raise your hands against us and we’ll cull you until you hear sense.”
“Gods fuck and blast it . . .” shouted Captain Myzovic, but the pirate commander interrupted him.
“How many of your men would you kill, Captain?” he said, projecting his voice like an actor. “Order them to drop their weapons now, and they need not feel like traitors. Otherwise you order them to die.” He drew out a thick pad of felt from his pocket and began to wipe his blade. “Decide, Captain.”
The deck was silent. There was only the faint sound of engines from the aeronauts.
Myzovic and Cumbershum huddled in conversation for a second, and then the captain looked out at his bewildered, frightened men and threw up his hands.
“Drop your weapons,” he shouted. There was a pause before his men obeyed. Muskets and pistols and short swords smacked dully against the deck. “You have the advantage, sir,” he yelled.
“Stay where you are, Captain,” shouted the man in grey. “I’ll come to you.” He spoke quickly