Four: Attack of the Gyrwights

The events of the next seventeen minutes were, as Captain Marsh noted later in his log, "muddled and costly, but not disastrous."

After a pause, during which time he seemed to contemplate the tip of his quill pen, he added: "Casualties: 13. All but one, children."

Marcus Barkle, who saw the battle at closer range, would say nothing of it later, except to curse ominously in a tongue which no one else could understand.

It began abruptly.

Just as the Mother Storm was lifting her skirts and starting to dance, one of the deck cannons fired, spewing smoke and iron shot into the void.

"Here they come, the little devils!" cried Sgt. Imple, who was the Blue Oriole's Gunnery Master. "You may fire at will!"

The Gyrwights swarmed down over the dreamclipper like a sudden infestation.

The chitinous whir of their wings made a kind of counter-melody to the thrum of the ship's rigging.

Gyrwights were no larger than a grown man's fist, but most of their hideous, sore-festered bodies were made of claws and teeth and clinging, tentacles that had a way of worming inside one's ears and nostrils.

There were various theories about gyrwights.

The nasty little wretches seemed to have no interest in actually killing anyone, or feeding, as most dream-predators were wont to do.

Instead, they seemed to delight only in knocking people overboard.

Great clots of gyrwights would form around a sailor, bum-rushing their victim to the deck-rail and hurling the poor wretch into the vapor.

All the while, they gave vent to a horrid, giggling chirp.

Some believed that gyrwights were a sort of insidious gremlin, intent on vicious pranks and nasty mischief.

Others were convinced that the verminous things worked in concert with something altogether more horrible that lurked below in the veils of the storm.

Something hungry and impatient that fed on the unlucky souls who fell.

All along the Blue Oriole's pitching deck, men blasted away with grape-shot cannons and deck gunnes and blunderbusses filled with all manner of shrapnel.

They were aided by the smear of monkey dung on their foreheads, which seemed to confuse the gyrwights.

Captain Marsh stalked among his men, shouting orders, forming up defensive ranks. Half the danger was keeping the crew from shooting one-another.

Whenever possible, the sailors gave cover to the young shroud-walkers up in the rigging.

They fired salvo after salvo just ahead of the radial jibs, hoping to clear away the thickest gyrwight swarms.

But for the most part, the children aloft were on their own.

They were too far from the deck to draw much comfort from the artillery volleys. They lacked even the protection of the Hoodanese soothsayer's rune.

In the first moments of the engagement, Marcus Barkle scrambled along the chief guy-line, discharging his pistols, disintegrating two of the creatures.

After that, he was reduced to fighting with his curved dagger in one hand and a belay pin in the other.

It was an absurdly dangerous business. He himself had nearly perfect balance.

But even the kids who were fierce and courageous enough to fight for their lives were apt to loose their footing.

"Keep a grip with one hand!" Barkle shouted, over the roar of the wind, "and scrap like a tiger with the other!"

He winced at the sight of a girl of nine or ten -- Welia was her name -- slipping and teetering and tumbling away.

Other children huddled against the spars, covering their eyes and their ears.

"Don't give up! Do like I taught you! Be quick, be sharp!"

He saw his Best Mate, a kid of twelve called Ballko, swing like an orangutan and give a brutal kick. It sent a gyrwight careening away like a ball.

"That's the spirit! Give 'em a taste of their own medicine!"

The most unfortunate of his shrouders were simply swarmed and carried away, shrieking the way only a kid in a nightmare can shriek.

Barkle gritted his teeth and mashed one of the monsters with a single blow. And then another.

The battle lasted just over a quarter-hour, but it seemed to go on forever.

In the end, of course, Captain Marsh was right. The Mother Storm suddenly gave vent to a great spume of dream.

The Blue Oriole lurched and yawed. Vast acres of canvas billowed white against the sulphurous glow of the typhoon.

She shot forward, as if pushed by a great hand. Cackling madly, the gyrwights fell away behind.

Sgt. Imple gave them one more blast, out of spite, but in a matter of moments the swarm was reduced to a dwindling smudge.

A short time later, Captain Marsh's voice came up the tube, grim as iron: "How many?"

"Twelve, sir," Barkle said. "Nearly half of them gone."

"One more lost down below," the Captain muttered. "That makes thirteen. Not a lucky number, is it, Barkle? Not lucky at all."

Next: Riding the Spume