“We’re trying to get close enough this time to attempt a proper boarding,” Ajani informed me.
High above us, Tanis was calling out the other ship’s every move and the placement of their fighters. In that, we had an advantage—up until the moment one of the Amazona girls decided to put a stop to it and threw a dagger at our lookout. I saw the blade spinning through the air and gasped in anger. The sun glinting off the blade meant that it was real—not wooden—and therefore expressly against the rules of engagement.
Fortunately, Tanis saw it coming.
Unfortunately, she ducked out of the way as if she wasn’t perched almost thirty feet above the deck. I heard her scream as she pitched backward and into thin air.
“Tanis!” I shouted. She screamed again as one of the rigging ropes tangled around her leg tightened in a loop around her ankle and jerked her to an abrupt halt about ten feet above the deck. She hung there upside down like a carcass in a butcher’s shop, howling in pain.
A roar of excitement went up from the queen’s barge. Our ship had closed broadside with the Amazona vessel and run out the boarding planks.
“Ajani, go!” I barked. “Help Elka and the others—I’ll get Tanis.”
“Get her how? She’s too far up!”
“I’m going to have to cut her down,” I said. “Before that rope cuts off her foot. Go!”
I ran back to the ship’s single mast rising up from the center of the deck. The throwing knife lay only a few feet away, and I picked it up. The blade was sharp, and I snarled at the thought of whoever had thrown it. But at least I could use it to my advantage now. The only other weapons I carried were wooden. Shoving the knife into my belt, I reached for the rope ladder that led up to the yardarm and started to climb.
Just below the yardarm, in the lee of the billowing sail, I stopped to catch my breath and looked down to see that our boarding attempt had been successful this time. The Amazona ship deck was filled, shoulder to shoulder, with pairs of combatants. The two vessels were grappled together with hooks, and even the skeleton crew of galley slaves who sailed the boat for us had abandoned their posts, joining with the gladiatrices in gleefully bashing away at their counterparts as part of the whole ridiculous pantomime.
The deck of the Achillea ship beneath me was deserted.
Except for Leander, who had an axe and was busily hewing away at the ship mast as if it was a mighty oak tree in the forests of home that needed felling for the great fire.
“What in Hades are you doing, you lunatic?” I shouted from where I was perched on top of that very same mast.
A silly question. It was obvious what he was doing. But for a moment, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Kitchen slave that he was, I’d seen Leander day after day in the little yard by the stables, chopping firewood for the cooks to feed the small army of gladiatrices that lived at the Ludus. His sun-browned arms were taut with long muscles, and he was very good at chopping.
I just didn’t know why he was chopping down our mast.
The mast shuddered with each bite of the blade, and the deck was littered with splintered chunks of wood. All ships, I knew, carried axes on deck in case a mast was damaged in a storm and had to be cut loose—so I knew how Leander had come by the thing—but that certainly wasn’t the case here.
Another roar went up from Cleopatra’s barge and gave me my answer. A group of partygoers stood at the rail, madly urging Leander on with each stroke of the axe, frantically trading wagers. Someone, I suspected, had paid Leander to even the odds in favor of the Amazona side.
I could hardly believe he thought a few coins were worth the hell I would unleash when I got my hands on him. But in that moment, there was nothing for me to do but hope the mast would withstand Leander’s woodsmanship long enough for me to rescue Tanis.
I edged out over the yardarm, placing my feet in the sailors’ footropes as carefully as haste would allow. Below me, I could see Tanis’s face had turned almost purple. So had her left foot, where the rope bit into her flesh. After what seemed an eternity, I reached the rope where the line was caught in the rigging and frantically sawed through the tough hairy fibers. Sweat ran in streams down my face and back, into my eyes, and between my fingers, making the knife hilt slick.
The mast was beginning to sway perilously.
I paused for a moment to draw my wooden blades from their scabbards and lob them at Leander’s head. The second one glanced off his ear, and he yelped and dropped the axe. It spun across the deck and he scrambled after it, yelling curses at me. Another chorus of shouts—half cheering, half jeers—sounded from the barge crowd as I turned back to working feverishly on the rope.
“Tanis!” I shouted. “Be ready!”
She twisted and writhed, staring up at me with fear in her eyes. The distance she would fall wouldn’t kill her. Unless she landed on her head or broke her neck . . . I shoved the thought from my mind. If I didn’t cut her loose—and soon—the falling mast would probably kill her anyway.
The last rope strand finally parted, and I watched her throw her arms up around her head, curling inward as she fell. I winced as she hit the planking with a hard thud, but she rolled and was up on her hands and knees a moment later. She’d be fine.
Now I was the one in trouble. Down below, I could see some of the fighting had spilled back over onto our ship. But in the din of battle, all of my friends were far too occupied to notice my predicament.
The entire rigging was becoming dangerously unstable with each hewing stroke. Leander was nothing if not industrious, but thankfully the axe he wielded was a dull old thing, and that alone gave me the opportunity to do something incredibly stupid. The sail beneath me shivered, and the yardarm tipped drunkenly. I didn’t have time to shimmy back to the ladder and climb down, and if I fell when the mast toppled, I would most likely hit the deck and break every bone in my body. My options were limited.
The yardarm wobbled and one end swung out over the open water . . .
As fast as I could, I unbuckled one side of my breastplate and threw it to the deck, narrowly missing Leander again and making him back off. Then I heaved myself up into a crouch on top of the yardarm. The wood beam was straight and about as wide as the yoke pole on a chariot, if a little longer . . .
The single act that had made me famous in the ring was a chariot maneuver called the Morrigan’s Flight—running the length of the yoke pole between two racing ponies, balancing, and running back . . .
I could do this.
The rigging shuddered and began to drift-fall toward the other ship.
I heard the panicked screams of the girls below as they watched it go.