Avatar: The Book Of The Phoenix

Black Thunder, Pt. 2

The transports had faces now.

Up close they were not a fleet. They were ramps and painted men and the sound of keels finding the bottom. Zuko stood in what was left of the front line and felt the holiday island shrinking to the width of a spear-cast. Aang at his left. Katara already pulling the surf into her hands. Suki's paint stark against the smoke. Toph barefoot in black sand that still remembered being a beach. Sokka, for once, without a joke ready.

The nearest bow threw a shadow over them.

Sokka watched it come and spoke to the sand more than to anyone.

"If this goes badly," he said, "I just want it on record. Best friends I've ever had. Even you, Toph."

Toph's head tipped. "Put it in writing when we're not about to be stepped on. We're not dying today."

Zuko's mouth twitched. "Hold that thought. Spend it later."

The first ramp slammed down.

Wet sand jumped. A horn somewhere on the water made a raw, ugly note.

Toph smiled without any humor at all. "All right. Let's see how they like the ground when it bites back."

She stamped.

The shallows under the lead ship dropped. The ramp twisted. The first Nomads came off it anyway, because that was who they were—fire already in their fists, warpaint running with spray, a roar that did not care about pits.

Zuko met them with a wall that turned the first three back and the fourth into a problem for the man behind him. Aang went through the left like a thrown blade, air cracking shields apart. Katara took the incoming tide and made it treacherous, ice under boots, a scythe of water that knocked a line of spears flat. Suki and Sokka took the gap that made and held it. Toph opened the beach in ugly mouths and closed them again.

It was not a defense that would last the afternoon.

It was a defense that made the afternoon expensive.

Out in the cove, the Iron Dragon decided Hakoda was the more interesting target.

She came off the beach the way a mountain would, if a mountain could change its mind. Guns walking. Hull swinging. The shadow of her slid off the sand and onto the Water Tribe line.

On Hakoda's deck a man found his voice late.

"Sir. She's—she's coming straight at us."

Hakoda kept his hands on the rail. The flagship filled more of the world with every breath.

"Good," he said. "I was tired of being ignored."

On the Dragon's bridge Azula watched the Water Tribe sails harden and felt, not for the first time that day, the particular anger of being left with a ship.

"Front cannons," she said. "Full speed. I want that line broken."

Khulan hesitated half a heartbeat, which was half a heartbeat too long.

"Aye, my lady."

The bow opened.

Two chambers. Then the sound—too big for a holiday cove.

The first fireballs left the ship and the air went white at the edges. A Water Tribe hull took one amidships. The mast leaned. Men went into the water with the sail.

Hakoda's jaw set until it hurt.

"Alongside," he told the helmsman. "If she wants us, she can have us close."

Waterbenders along his ships threw the sea up in walls and hooks. The next volley hit wrong and spent itself in spray.

Wood found iron. Grapples flew, missed, flew again. For a stupid, miraculous second the rail of the Iron Dragon was not a fortress. It was a place a man could put his boots.