The Southern Ocean didn’t feel cold when they hit the water. It felt like an iron wall slamming into Ren Vale’s chest bone at thirty knots.
The shock of the plunge drove the leftover air from his chest in a violent spray of bubbles. Above him, the splintered keel of The Iron Gall was sinking fast. He was dragged down by twenty tons of pig-iron ballast and the rushing flood pouring through her cut sea-cock. The hull loomed like the carcass of a drowned whale. It was surrounded by a churning cloud of soot, shattered oak ribs, and the white, eerie-glowing wake of gunfire from the cruisers overhead.
Thump-whump.
Three twelve-pounder naval shells struck the surface fifty feet above, their moving charges exploding in the swell. The underwater blast hammered Ren’s skull, ringing through his jaw and rattling his teeth in their sockets. Even twenty feet down, the pressure waves felt like flat wooden boards striking his ribs.
Ren kicked wildly, fighting toward what he instinctively thought was the surface—toward light, toward air, toward the sky.
A massive, callused hand clamped onto the nape of his lambskin apron, arresting his ascent with unbending force.
Deep-Diver Ren stared into his face.
