The Southwind Saga (Book 3): Flood Tide

by Kovacs, Jase

  "Quick," I say. "We need to get the splinters out—"

  Abella shoves me out of the way and crouches next to Abigail. She runs her fingers quickly over Abigail’s abdomen and down her sides. "Abi, does it hurt anywhere else?"

  Abigail moans but she shakes her head. "No, no, my arm only."

  "Okay. I have to triage. You understand of course?"

  "Of course. But I can help."

  "Even if I get these shards out, you will be a liability. You can do nothing."

  "What do you mean?" I say. I feel like I am floating away, and I force myself down to confront Abella. "What do you mean, triage?"

  "Abigail isn't dying. Others are. She can wait."

  No, I want to scream. No, you must help her, you must make her well. But before I can there is a shout behind me and Kev's still form is passed aboard with great confusion and difficulty. The rattle in the back of his throat is like a bucket of cold water that clears my mind. I swallow my protests and say, "What can I do?"

  "Get my instruments ready. I will need my suture kit first. Look for bandages and thread and needles."

  I place the bags down on the deck next to Abigail but the boat heaves and they slide towards the rail. I snatch the bags back up before they disappear overboard. Abella says, "Enzo, we need towels. Get my table out here. And get the sand."

  Apo leans heavily against the rail and blood pools at his feet and runs away to the cockpit drains. He nods dully as Abella wraps a long crepe bandage around his abdomen. "The bullet is deep. I have to stop the bleeding first – then we can get it out later."

  "Please, take me back to my place when I die. I need to —"

  "You're not going to die, Apo. The bullet is in your meat. It won't kill you—" She stops as her fingers brush something protruding from the small of his back. "Enzo, I need my table!"

  Enzo appears back in the saloon. He passes me a large plastic tub filled with fine beach sand. "It soaks the blood."

  I scatter the deck with fistfuls of sand. Gary is right behind Enzo, holding a long board. A rogue wave sends him staggering into me. I fall back, fire filling my stomach and stars clouding my sight. I watch from a great distance as Gary lays the board down on the sand and extends metal legs which he then slots into matching holes in the deck.

  Kenzie comes aboard, oozing blood from dozens of small holes peppering his chest and neck. He smiles dully as if he was viewing the world through a haze of strong painkillers. But I know this must be something else; we haven't had strong drugs in many years. Canoes jockey for position and fall afoul of each other while they unload the wounded.

  Abigail pulls herself upright. Her face is white with shock, and she stops every few seconds as waves of pain pass through her. Each lurch of the yacht knocks her bad arm around, and she screams once or twice. She gathers herself and asks, "Zac, can you take his pulse?"

  I feel around Kev's neck. I don't need to be a doctor to see that he is dying. "I can't find it."

  "Abella, we need to give Kev an emergency craniotomy or he'll die," says Abigail.

  Abella has Apo on the table on his side. His eyes are closed, and his face is a mask of pain, that he bears in silence with great fortitude.

  "In this sea?" asks Abella. "With the boat moving like this? I'll scramble his brain like eggs."

  "We have to do something," insists Abigail.

  Abella doesn't answer, and I push down my own pain to go to help her. She has Apo's shirt up and my breath catches when I see thick ropes of his entrails bulging behind a deep gash in the small of his back.

  "What can I do?"

  "I thought the bullet was lodged in his hip. But it ricocheted off the bone and opened him like a zipper. I can't see any perforations though."

  "What can I do?"

  "Hold him together." She forces a loop of intestine back into the exit wound, and I press the flap of skin down where she shows me. "It's going to be okay, Apo. You're a tough guy," she says as she sutures up the long wound with heavy, rushed stitches. "You're lucky it missed your kidney."

  She is putting the last stitch in when another canoe arrives. I am helping Abella tie off so I don't see her. But my heart lifts and then plunges when I hear Matty shout, "Make space – Larry’s hit, femoral artery!"

  "What?" Abella snips and turns away. "How is he still alive—" She breaks off as he is passed aboard. The skin of his right leg is white, except around his joints where it is blotched with black. A tourniquet cuts deep into the flesh below his groin.

  Matty comes up right behind him. I have seen her in many terrible states. When she returned from the Black Harvest, she was trapped in a delirium of sunburn and exposure, her eyes swollen shut, and her skin flaking from her brow and cheeks. I have seen her beaten, her eyes pits of night, exhausted beyond all human reckoning. She has a myriad of scratches and minor wounds about her and a long thin slash on her brow that is gummed by a thick ugly scab. But there is something about her now that is more alarming than any of that.

  She looks empty; as if her soul had been plucked out and cast into the wind. I remember her standing before the painting — my god, it was only last night, it seems a lifetime ago — and praying to a malevolent god, and I fear she suffered a mortal wound beyond the reach of any physician.

  Abella crouches with Auntie over Larry. Auntie reaches for the tourniquet, and Abella slaps her hand away. "There is nothing we can do."

  "What are you talking about?" demands Matty. "He's not dead. You can fix him."

  "Nothing we can do here." Abella shakes her head very slowly. She looks so sad and so tired. "The bullet is pressed against his femoral artery. If I try and remove it here, in this rough sea, I'll likely sever the artery. It will retract up his leg, and he will be lost."

  "Then we need to get to calm – somewhere sheltered – so you can—"

  "Enzo, how long will it take to get back to Madau?" asks Abella.

  "If the wind holds? Twelve, fourteen hours?"

  "Removing the tourniquet after that long will kill him."

  "What?! How?" demands Matty. I rise to a half crouch. Her unhinged look alarms me, and I prepare to hold her back.

  "His leg is dying, Matty. It is filling with poisons. If we don't get the tourniquet off soon – within two hours – they will flood his body when we do remove it. He will die of toxic shock."

  "There must be something we can do!" shouts Matty. "You must do something."

  Abella rises. "I am! I have a three people just as badly wounded as Larry. Another half dozen needing treatment! That is what I can do! I can save them."

  "No, I don't accept that. What do we need?"

  "I need land on which to operate. Steady, unmoving land."

  Matty turns around and points at the fires of Dalbarade. "Then we go back! We'll land again. I can hold them off, I can—" Her voice drops into a choking sob as she recognizes the futility of her suggestion. "We have to do something."

  "You want land?" asks Enzo. "East island is twelve miles away."

  "Has you ever been there?" Matty asks. "I haven't. It looked like cliffs and rock when we passed. There's no way we can approach at night."

  "But yes, of course. But in the lee, downwind of the atoll, it will be sheltered. I can be there in less than two hours."

  "It will be close," says Abella. "But it's his best hope."

  "Well then what are we waiting for?" demands Matty. "Enzo, I'll get aboard Excelsior and follow at best speed—"

  "You're going nowhere until I look at that scalp," says Abella in a tone so harsh that it brings Matty up as if she had been struck.

  A fiery light rises from Dalbarade. The island is some three miles behind us, and for a second I think it is another eruption or blast from their gun. But the ball of light rises higher and higher before bursting into life as a star of its own.

  "What now?" groans Abella.

  "Enzo," Matty says. "Make sail. Make full sail, now, for East Island."

  A second flare rises to the west, out f
rom the sea off the volcano, answering the question of the first. It paints the waves crimson and illuminates a dozen small triangles cutting across the turbulent sea.

  Rod joins us at the rail. "What in the hell is that?"

  "It's him," says Matty.

  The flare has revealed a fleet of canoes, rounding the western headland and shaping course for us. And although the flare paints everything with fire, when it comes to the sails, the light does not lie. Even in the crisp light of noon, those sails would be as red as the blood which stains Fidelio's deck. Enzo rushes away, shouting orders to bring his yacht around before the wind.

  "We can outrun them, right?" I ask.

  "Fidelio can. Razzmatazz, and our canoes, maybe. But not Excelsior. Her main is down. She runs under a storm sail."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means her main was probably shredded in that squall and now she has a small emergency sail up. She'll be lucky to do six knots. They'll get her for sure."

  "So we abandon her. Get Roman off Excelsior. She is only a yacht."

  She shakes her head and speaks with a calm fatalism that is maddening. "The red canoes will chase. There’ll be no calm anchorage in which to operate. They will worry us like a pack of dogs, and Larry will die and Kev will die and who knows who else."

  "Well, we have to do something. What do we do, Matty? You always know what to do."

  Now she turns to me and smiles, and I see my friend is back, the crisis recalling her from whatever fields of purgatory in which she wandered. "Don't be stupid, Zac. You bloody idiot. I know what we need to do. We need to fight."

  "I count more than a dozen canoes. We have seven. Half our people are dead or injured. Those are not good odds."

  She looks to her far off adversary. The flare has dropped to the sea but, now we know they are there, we can see the sails like shark fins cutting the dark horizon. "The odds are never good, Zac. But that hasn’t stopped us before."

  ***

  Ten minutes later, we gather in Fidelio's cabin. The struggling LEDs falter like old men at the dusk of their lives. The boat's motion is more comfortable now that we are before the wind, but the angry sea still cannot be trusted. Jacka has come aboard to hear Matty's plan, his canoe under tow.

  An old chart – yellowed with age and spotted with mildew - of the southern Solomon Sea is spread out on the table. It shows the Louisiade archipelago stretching left to right across the bottom, the Trobriands to the west and Misama far to the east. Madau and Woodlark are jagged lumps to the north with a handful of atolls scattered in between like specks of dust.

  "This is the position," says Matty. She holds a pair of dividers in one hand as if they were a dagger which she was about to plunge into her enemy. She spreads them out and walks them across the chart. "In two hours we’ll be off East Island. This heavy sea works in the favour of the yachts; they are not so knocked about as the enemy's canoes. I think even Excelsior might be able to outrun them, now she is before the wind with her genoa spread wide. But our own canoes are suffering just as badly as the enemy. They're overwhelmed by this sea, overwhelmed and flooded. We can only move at the speed of our slowest vessel."

  "Unless we abandon the canoes," says Enzo. "We take their people off, and we can run faster."

  "My people put their hearts into those boats," says Jacka. "They will not want to give them up."

  "That will only gain us a knot or two," says Matty with a firm, dismissive shake of her head. "We still need to stop at East Island to operate. An extra knot will only gain us ten minutes peace on the island. Abandoning the canoes will achieve little."

  "Then what we do?" asks Enzo. "We must stop these assholes, eh?"

  "And we will." Matty gives us a tight grin. "I want to draw them out. Get them far from Dalbarade and any support. They shouldn't catch us before East Island. When they do, when they think they have us, then we will strike. Excelsior and Razzmatazz will run them down, smash as many as we can. Jacka, Enzo, you head around the north of the island, where you should be sheltered from the wind and waves. Jacka, you take your canoes into the shallows and find a channel or an anchorage and then guide Enzo in. It will have to be done quickly but don't rush it. Do it right."

  "What if they don’t engage?" I ask. "What if they go around Excelsior and Razzmatazz? And keep on after us?"

  "I doubt the Green Lord will ignore a chance to destroy us piecemeal."

  "You think he’s out there," I say. It is not a question.

  The burst of the radio static grabs our attention as sharply as a gunshot. Through the VHF we hear the rush of wind and confusion of a vessel under sail. Then a voice comes. It fills the room as a flood does a canyon. As a fire fills a building. The voice is harsh. Powerful. Instantly you form an image of the speaker; a man unused to contradiction, as certain in himself as if his opinions were carved of stone.

  "Hello, Matai."

  He lingers on her name, as if tasting the vowels. Matty steps towards the navstation. Enzo places his hand on her arm, but she shrugs him off. She is pale under the flickering lights, and the ugly black stitches across her brow pucker like the spines of a vicious insect.

  "I know you are there, my child. Answer me. Answer me now. We have much to discuss."

  "Matty, no," says Enzo. "Turn the thing off. Don't listen to him."

  "Quiet, Enzo. They're just words." Matty glances to me. "Every opportunity."

  The speaker does not wait for her reply. "Why are you running? You and your little friends. Scurrying back to your island? Hiding behind your watch tower? Foolish children. Families. Your... community. You’re nothing. Ashes. Bones. Fodder. I have your friend here. He is... full... of fire. Come along, Matai. Answer me. Answer me, Matai."

  Matty lifts the mic. I have moved with her and so I am the only one who sees her close her eyes, as if she was about to step off a cliff, just before she speaks. "I’m here."

  We can hear his smile. "I have been waiting for you. Why do you run from my embrace? By my actions you will be redeemed. All will be forgiven. You will not be denied. Our gratitude is limitless. I will lift you up to the Dark Star with my hands. You will hear the bell and read the book. Come to me, my little priest. My chosen one—"

  The boat leaps, lurches and falls. The radio screeches a mad burst of static, as if lightning struck the antenna. The port hull drops of a freak wave with a resounding crash that sets the steel rigging humming. A harsh thunderclap shakes us as the genoa collapses then snaps back into shape. Enzo swears in French, a long florid stream as lush as orchids. "I have to—" he says, fighting his need to deal with the situation with an unwillingness to leave Matty.

  "Go," says Matty, never looking away from the radio. Her knuckles are white but her hand is steady.

  "Matai, you are there. I know you are. I can hear your silence. Your quivering fear. Don't be scared, Matai. We don't come with hate, but with love. Come into our arms, Matai. Accept our embrace."

  Matty presses down on transmit and speaks clearly into the mic. "Where do you guys get these lines? Your friend the Pale King was just the same. He kept up the sweet talk, right until I cut him in two."

  "Oh, Matty." I am astonished at the regret, the pain that I feel as he speaks. Something in his tone, his choice of words elects a flood of sympathy from me. I remind myself I'm listening to a monster but still, the feelings remain. "My brother was rash and crude. I deeply regret his choices. I would never do that. I only want to gift to you a wonderful opportunity. But you must come to me, Matai. You must trust me."

  "You’ve got to be joking. After what you’ve done? After you killed my friends?"

  "Don't be crude, Matai. You are better than this. I sent you an invitation, and you came to my home with naked blades in your hands and murder on your mind. Are you surprised that my family defended themselves? I offered you love and a new life, and you spat upon my kindness. You are the monster who knocked at my door. But no matter. My forgiveness is infinite. I am your guide to the new light. But you m
ust come to me. You must leave them, Matai. They hold you back. Each is a link of a binding chain. Slip the shackles of your friends. Come to me, and I will set you free."

  "I've heard enough of your mad babble," says Matty. "You are all the same. You speak of love but you know only corruption and hate. You are a vector for the plague. Nothing more."

  "Slip your chains, Matai. Or I will break them. Your precious friends. Isaac. Blong. Piper. Roman. Enzo. The ones who hold you back. They use you Matai. They use you as their sword and their shield. It is your choice. You will come. Or I will feed them to my children. They will be meat for my table. Grist for my mill. If you make me come, there will be no escape for them. Or you can come to me, and I will set you—"

  Matty turns off radio. The room feels suddenly empty. The wind still moans through the rigging and the ugly sea slaps against our hull like blows from a paddle, but still, there is a lack in the room. An empty space, a silence behind the weather, as if we all hold our breaths.

  And then Matty says, "They're all the same."

  ***

  "I was so certain," Matty says.

  I stand next to her at the back rail, the steel cool under our palms. The air full of spray and wind. The deck behind us is covered with resting bodies. Abella has slumped against the bulkhead, utterly exhausted, her eyes dipping, and her hands twitching as she fights against sleep. Abigail sits next to her, her arm neatly bandaged, her head on Abella's shoulder. Apo lies on his slide, his eyes blank with the pain that he will not voice. By him is Jarrod, whose neck, cheek and shoulder are pocked with a hundred dark lumps. He and Kenzie had the misfortune to dive headfirst into a nest of sea urchins when he was thrown from Shiloh's deck. They both moan and twitch from the pain, holding each other's hands as the waves of agony pass through them. The spines are deeply embedded in their flesh and covered in microscopic barbs so they cannot be removed. However, Abella has some green papaya on board and she has daubed each embedded spine with the fruit's milk. Come morning, the spines will have dissolved.