Breaking the Formation

How long could five heavy dreadnoughts maintain a tight crescent before their bronze ramming spars tangled in the solar draft? Roopinen wanted that formation broken before the first grapple line bit into the star-canoe's reed decking. He stood crouched on the port gunwale, marsh-oak quarterstaff resting across his collarbones, measuring the closing distance between the star-canoe and the lead enemy prow.

Behind him, Vilhelmiina hauled on the steering tiller with both hands, her heavy sun-flail securely locked into the deck's forward retaining ring. The bronze housing groaned as she forced the light vessel into an ascending bank, skimming the upper lip of the dead thermal.

"He sounded a war-horn," Annikki said. Her voice trembled with cold rage, both hands locked around the dark bronze haft of her halberd. The heavy weapon hummed, its crescent blade glowing with agitated heart-fire that scorched the air around her vambraces. "A formal challenge was accepted. Blood was drawn. The rite demands withdrawal or surrender, not a fleet collapse."

"The dead do not pay clan debts, Lady Annikki," Roopinen called down, shifting his weight as the star-canoe crested a thermal ridge. "And commanders who hide behind five dreadnoughts rarely care about the jianghu code. Look at their upper spars. They are rigging heat-throwers, not duel mats."

Bronze grappling anchors whistled through the crimson gale. Three heavy irons bit into the star-canoe's port bulwark, their barbed flukes chewing deep into woven sun-reed. Braided hemp ropes pulled taut, singing under the strain as the lead dreadnought began hauling the smaller craft into its crushing flank.

Annikki stepped toward the port rail, halberd raised in a classic high-guard stance suited for formal deck combat. "I will meet their vanguard on the gangway."

"There is no gangway!" Roopinen caught her by the shoulder of her lamellar harness, yanking her back just as a volley of bronze crossbow bolts splintered the deck where her boots had rested a heartbeat earlier. "They are not offering you an honorable duel. They want to pin us against their hull and cook us with liquid sun-fire."

Markkalt sprang forward from the bow, rapier flashing in an intricate flurry that severed two of the hemp lines in a shower of sparks. "A vulgar crowd disrupts the song! Five bloated hulls where none belong!"

"Markkalt, shut up and hold the lower deck," Roopinen said. He tapped Annikki's halberd shaft with the butt of his staff. "You want to punish them for breaking the code? Stop waiting for an invitation. Follow me up the spar, or die with your ancestral manual tucked neatly under your arm."

Roopinen did not wait for her consent. He kicked off the gunwale, his body coiling and extending in one fluid motion as he caught the mainmast shroud-line with his boots. Running up the vertical cordage against the rushing gale, he reached the upper rigging of the star-canoe in three strides, planting himself lightly atop the mainmast yardarm.

A beat later, the spar shuddered. Annikki landed beside him, her long braided hair whipping in the draft. Her expression was hard, stripped of its initial shock.

"Where do we strike?" she asked.

"The boarding party on their starboard outrigger," Roopinen said, pointing with his staff across the sixty-foot gap to the closing warship. "They are setting a sun-pitch siphon. If they light that spar, our stern burns before Vilhelmiina can bring us around."

Four Vanguard skirmishers stood clustered on the dreadnought's projecting crane, aligning a bronze siphon toward the star-canoe's deck.

Roopinen hooked his knees over the yardarm, dropped upside down into the howling vacuum of the thermal, and kicked hard against the stay-line. The rebound launched him across the void.

The rushing solar wind roared in his ears as he soared between the two vessels. He leveled his marsh-oak staff, channeling a brief burst of radiant qi through the wood to harden its grain. As he descended toward the dreadnought's crane, the lead skirmisher turned, raising an iron buckler.

Roopinen struck the buckler rim with the bottom ferrule of his staff, pivoting his entire weight around the point of contact. The kinetic shock drove the soldier backward into the siphon's bronze tripod. Roopinen swept the other end of the staff in a low arc, catching the second soldier behind the knees and tumbling him over the outrigger beam into the open abyss.

Before the remaining two skirmishers could ready their weapons, Annikki arrived.

She descended not with acrobatic lightness, but with the crushing momentum of her Sovereign Serpent training. Her halberd blade cleaved downward in an arc of white-hot heat, striking the crane's bronze hinge. The metal shrieked and sheared through in a spray of molten slag. The heavy siphon, stripped of its mount, slipped sideways and plunged into the draft below.

One skirmisher lunged with a chilled spear, aiming for her throat, while the fourth scrambled to draw a dagger. Annikki did not adopt a formal defensive posture. Instead, she stepped inside the spear thrust, caught the soldier's wrist in her gauntlet, and drove the butt-spike of her halberd into his chest plate. As he slammed against the dreadnought's rail, she pivoted and snapped her bronze greave into the dagger-wielder's sternum, sending him pitching backward into the dark thermal.

"Messy," Roopinen noted, vaulting onto the dreadnought's upper yardarm. "My old sifu would dock your marks for footwork, but the results speak for themselves."

"They broke the accord," Annikki replied, her breathing measured as she dropped into a low cooling stance to vent the heat shimmering along her weapon's shaft. "They forfeit the dignity of a matched duel."

"Now you sound like a vagabond," Roopinen said.

Below them, the broader battle turned sharper. Markkalt was parrying boarding hooks along the starboard rail, his rapier singing in continuous circles while Vilhelmiina kept the star-canoe moving in evasive arcs. But from the central dreadnought, a heavy bronze catapult arm snapped forward with a deafening crack.

A sphere of condensed solar fire arced across the void, slamming into the star-canoe's port outrigger.

The woven reeds ignited instantly, sending a plume of bright orange smoke billowing across the deck. The vessel lurched, its port-side lift dropping as the burning outrigger dragged in the solar current.

"Vilhelmiina!" Roopinen shouted across the gap, sliding down the dreadnought's rigging stay.

"The outrigger is dead weight!" Vilhelmiina's voice boomed over the roar of the flames. She planted her iron boots against the deck and hauled the tiller over with brute force. "The dreadnoughts are pinching the escape lane. We cannot loop back into the thermal stream!"

Roopinen leapt from the dreadnought's rail, catching the trailing stay of the star-canoe with his staff and swinging back onto the burning deck. Annikki followed a second later, her boots thudding onto the scorched boards.

Roopinen wiped soot from his brow, his eyes tracking the colossal bronze structure looming directly ahead through the smoke. The First Sun-Gate stood vast and impassable, its twin pylon rings framed by reflecting-shields. But nestled between the central hinges sat the massive bronze steering rudder of the gate itself, a gear-driven assembly thirty paces wide, glowing with dormant runic channels.

"Look at the gate rudder," Roopinen said, planting his staff firmly against the smoldering deck. "The dreadnoughts are bottlenecking because they cannot pass through until the gate's central lock disengages. The passage is blocked, but the rudder platform has a clear vector."

Markkalt flicked an ember from his singed sleeve and flourished his blade toward the colossal bronze wheel. "A fiery road toward the iron crown! We take the helm and bring it down!"

"No more fencing on the perimeter," Roopinen said, his grip tightening on his staff as he met Vilhelmiina's steady, unyielding gaze. "We steer the burning ship straight into the gate's rudder housing and take the controls."

Vilhelmiina nodded once, locking the tiller into the assault notch. "Hold the deck. We are going in."