Steel by Carrie Vaughn

Author:Carrie Vaughn
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

10

RECOVER

They had spent that week onshore in Jamaica cleaning and repairing the Diana, and now they had to do it all over again, at sea.

No one had died, which amazed Jill. For all the blood and wreckage, death seemed the obvious outcome. But she was relieved. That was a close enough brush with death for her. A dozen of the crew, including her, had been injured, three of them seriously enough that they stayed belowdecks, under Emory’s watch. Two of those had splinters and shrapnel in their legs and torsos, had lost blood, and needed rest. Jenks had bandaged the cut on his forehead—the scrap of cloth was streaked with dried blood. Emory had amputated one arm, and Saul would need time to heal.

Jill almost felt like she’d doomed him by bringing him to Emory’s attention. Surely the arm could have been set, surely such drastic treatment could have been avoided. No one else seemed to think so, and the amputation was treated as a matter of course. She kept thinking that it didn’t have to happen—back home, it never would have happened.

All the other injuries were to the Diana herself, and the crew set about healing her. The supplies they’d stolen off the slave ship proved to be useful—they had fresh sail and rope to replace the destroyed rigging. Carpenters among the crew checked the masts and shored up the damaged areas, securing timbers to weakened parts, almost like splints.

Jill was set to scrubbing the decks again, clearing away splinters and debris, throwing buckets of scrap overboard. And getting rid of more blood. She’d seen more spilled blood in the last two weeks than in the whole rest of her life.

And still, Jill and Henry practiced swordplay. She’d felt helpless during the battle, and she didn’t feel helpless with a sword in her hand. She never wanted to see another battle. But if she did—and if they were boarded next time—she wanted to be able to defend herself and not cower on deck while debris rained down around her.

Swordplay was different on the deck of a rocking ship than it was on a sandy beach. Jill learned the trick of it quickly. You always wanted to keep your knees bent and loose when you fenced; it kept you nimble, able to respond and move, advancing and retreating quickly while keeping good balance. The less you worried about where your feet were the more you could focus on the blade—yours and your opponent’s. On a rocking deck, she just had to keep even more loose and nimble, so that her legs moved under her to keep her balance while her upper body—and her sword—remained steady. Then Henry got tricky, jumping onto the shrouds, swinging from a line to the deck, fighting from the boom or even the gunwales, risking losing his balance to get her in a bad spot. Then he’d have the high ground, the position of strength—and they were fencing in three dimensions, not just the back-and-forth of competitive strip fencing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.