‘Do we help?’ Kataria asked, looking from the chains to Lenk. ‘I mean, aren’t you a monkey?’
‘Monkeys lack a sense of business etiquette,’ Lenk replied. ‘Argaol isn’t the one who pays us.’ His eyes drifted down, along with his frown, to the dull iron fingers peeking over the edge of the Riptide’s hull. ‘Besides, no amount of screaming is going to smash that thing loose.’
Her eyes followed his, and so did her lips, at the sight of the massive metal claw. A ‘mother claw’, some sailors had shrieked upon seeing it: a massive bridge of links, each the size of a housecat, ending in six massive talons that clung to its victim ship like an overconfident drunkard.
‘Were slander but one key upon a ring of victory, good Captain, I dare suggest you’d not be in such delicate circumstance, ’ the Linkmaster’s helmsman called from across the gap. ‘Alas, a lack of manners more frequently begets sharp devices embedded in kidneys. If I might be so brash as to suggest surrender as a means of keeping your internal organs free of metallic intrusion?’
The mother claw had since lived up to its title, resisting any attempt to dislodge it. What swords could be cobbled together had been broken upon it. The sailors that might have been able to dislodge it when the Cragsmen attacked were also the first to be cut down or grievously wounded. All attempts to tear away from its embrace had proved useless.
Not that it seems to stop Argaol from trying, Lenk noted.
‘You might,’ the captain roared to his rival, ‘but only if I might suggest shoving said suggestion square up your-’
The vulgarity was lost in the wooden groan of the Riptide as Argaol pulled the wheel sharply, sending his ship cutting through salt like a scythe. The mother chain wailed in metal panic, going taut and pulling the Linkmaster back alongside its prey. A collective roar of surprise went up from the crew as they were sent sprawling. Lenk’s own was a muffled grunt, as Kataria’s modest weight was hurled against him.
His breath was struck from him and his senses with it. When they returned to him, he was conscious of many things at once: the sticky deck beneath him, the calls of angry gulls above him and the groan of sailors clambering to their feet.
And her.
His breath seeped into his nostrils slowly, carrying with it a new scent that overwhelmed the stench of decay. He tasted her sweat on his tongue, smelled blood that wept from the few scratches on her torso, and felt the warmth of her slick flesh pressed against him, seeping through his stained tunic and into his skin like a contagion.
He opened his eyes and found hers boring into his. He saw his own slack jaw reflected in their green depths, unable to look away.
‘Hardly worthy of praise, Captain,’ the Linkmaster’s helmsman called out, drawing their attentions. ‘Might one suggest even the faintest caress of Lady Reason would e’er do your plight well?’
‘So. .’ Kataria said, screwing up her face in befuddlement, ‘do they all talk like that?’
‘Cragsmen are lunatics,’ he muttered in reply. ‘Their mothers drink ink when they’re still in the womb, so every one of them comes out tattooed and out of his skull.’
‘What? Really?’
‘Khetashe, I don’t know,’ he grunted, shoving her off and clambering to his feet. ‘The point is that, in a few moments when they finally decide to board again, they’re going to run us over, cut us open and shove our intestines up our noses!’ He glanced her over. ‘Well, I mean, they’ll kill me, at least. You, they said they’d like to-’
‘Yeah,’ she snarled, ‘I heard them. But that’s only if they board.’
‘And what makes you think they’re not going to?’ He flailed in the general direction of the mother chain. ‘So long as that thing is there, they can just come over and visit whenever the fancy takes them!’
‘So we get rid of it!’
‘How? Nothing can move it!’
‘Gariath could move it.’