Here’s a corollary pertaining to warfare against a ship full of angry demons, on a mythical river inhabited by monsters, and with no better hope, even if you win, than fighting your way across the rest of Hell afterward on the off chance that you might find your way out again, at which point your angry angelic bosses or any number of other interested parties will get on with the job of ripping your soul out of your body and sending it right back to Hell again: Avoid that even more strenuously.

But there I was, standing at the Bitch’s rail, watching just such a demonic ship bearing down on us, as it had been doing for hours.

In ordinary circumstances we’d have been all right, because we had the current with us and our ship was small and fast. Slavers had to be, not because slavery was illegal in Hell (not bloody likely) but because slaves were valuable cargo that other ships were only too happy to steal. But according to Riprash, Niloch’s ship was powered by four huge steam engines, so even if we could get through Styx Lock ahead of them, they would gain on us even faster when we reached the thicker, more resistant waters of the Phlegethon.

If we ran all night, Riprash said, risking going onto a rock and only-the-Highest-knew what else, and we managed to stay ahead of Niloch, we’d probably reach the lock in the earliest hours of the morning. But after that, it would be only a matter of time before he overtook us. Riprash and his crew were busy keeping us alive until then, coaxing every bit of speed out of the old slaver’s tub, but I had nothing to do but walk back and forth on the deck nursing a growing sense of disaster.

In less fucked-up circumstances it would have been interesting to watch the crew working together to keep the Bitch running ahead of our enemies. Many of them had the apelike look of Gob, which stood them in good stead as they swung through the shrouds even more nimbly than the most experienced human sailors. Others less suited for climbing looked as though they’d be most useful when it came time to fight, especially a pair of brothers named Retch and Rawny, who had razor-sharp talons on hands and feet and were covered all over with spiny plates. Still, if the enemy caught us, even those two were going to find it hard to do much more than outlive us by a few moments. The Headless Widow was closer now, and even in the dim red light reflected from Hell’s awesome ceiling, the only glow on this stretch of the oily river, it was plain that their ship was far larger than ours and their crew far more numerous.