by Paul Kearney
Rol ran his hands up and down the hulk’s side, feeling the heavy grain under his palms. The scar on his hand tingled oddly, and he felt a momentary thrill, but his face did not change. “What do you think she would gauge?”
“She’s bigger than most privateer craft. Three hundred tons, I’d say.”
“Let’s look below.”
“Rol, she’s been gutted time and time again. What’s left is probably rotten and worm-bored.”
“Indulge me, Gallico.”
The companion ladders were long gone so they dropped through the gaping main-hatch and made their way aft, Creed groping in the darkness behind them and cursing under his breath. “We’re not all cat-sighted wonders.”
“There’s light ahead,” Rol told him. “They made a clean sweep of the orlop anyway; that’s the stern windows.”
They came up against the stern locker and looked over the heavy mantels of the windows. Turning back, Rol saw the noble sweep of the ship’s shape loom out before him in the dark. All the interior compartments had long been stripped away and he could clearly see the graceful lines of her construction, and the massiveness of her ribs.
“How was she rigged?”
“Eh? Oh, ship-rigged, I think. A lateen on the mizzen. Blast you, rat.” The halftroll kicked out at an overfriendly rodent.
Rol nodded, eyes shining. “Gentlemen, we have found our ship.”
“You’re jesting,” Gallico said in disbelief.
“Have you seen her scantlings, or looked at her knees? You couldn’t push a knife blade into them, they’re so solid. She’s been stripped, yes, but what remains is sound—I’d bet a king’s ransom on it. Let’s check out the hold.”
They trooped to the orlop hatch and peered into the blackness below. There was water there, rats swimming through it.
“See? She’s got a fathom in her if it’s an inch,” Gallico said.
“We’ll rig pumps and get it out.” Rol stamped his boot on the deck timbers. “I’ll bet you anything you like it’s nothing more than her normal workings—there’s no real leak in her, or her decks would have been awash long ago. A dispatch-runner, you say? But she’s built like a man-of-war.”
“She’s old, sixty or seventy years at least. They built heavier vessels in those days, and the Kassic teak forests are long gone.”
“Those sakers in the magazine—anyone have a claim on them?”
“They’re too heavy for any vessel of the Ka. Artimion was thinking of rigging them up on the clifftop as a shore battery, but it would be a hell of a job getting them up there.”
“This ship could bear them,” Rol said, smiling. “Damn it, Gallico, this is the one.”
The halftroll rubbed his chin. “The work involved would be fantastic.”
“Have you more pressing employment?”
“What about a crew?” Creed asked. “A vessel like this, with twelve of those guns, would need . . . say sevenscore men, if she’s to be run man-of-war fashion.”
“Less than that,” Rol said. “We’d only man one broadside at a time. No, I’d undertake to sail her with a company of a hundred, if they were the right seamen.”
“A hundred men,” Gallico said thoughtfully. “Well, there are mariners aplenty here in the Ka, but you will need gunners, carpenters, blacksmiths—a shipwright if there are any major defects in her hull.”
“Then we’ll find them. Today. Gallico, you know every ragamuffin about this place. You are going to be our recruiting sergeant. I want artisans first, carpenters as you say, but plenty of willing backs for the donkey work too. Anyone who works on her will be eligible to be picked as crew.”
“You’re liable to annoy the other captains, if you go poaching experienced men off the wharves.”
“Too bad.”
They came at first out of curiosity, and because it was Gallico. Many of the more experienced sailors took one look at the hulk and turned away again, shaking their heads and laughing, but enough were unemployed and bored and sufficiently intrigued to remain, and form work parties under Rol’s direction. He poached supplies and equipment from the wharves—few men would argue with Gallico when he breezed in with a dozen others at his back and demanded pitch, oakum, leather-hosed pumps, coils of cable, sailcloth, adzes and saws and hammers and ten-inch spikes. A cornucopia of naval stores built up on the dock about the hulk and within three days there were thirty people working on her—but they were common sailors and curious landsmen, no more. Many were handy with a saw or a handspike, but Rol needed specialists, and a forge.
They drained the dry dock first, so it lived up to its name, and had an unpleasant time propping up the hulk’s sides so she would not tip over in the evil-smelling ooze the departing water revealed. Her rudder was gone, and she settled on her keel with a rending groan that had Rol’s heart in his mouth as he waited for her to hog, or, worse, break her back entirely. But the Kassic teak held firm and a series of custom-hewn baulks wedged her tightly in the dock on all sides so that she stood upright as a model ship yet to be inserted in its bottle.
It took them eleven hours, watch on watch, to pump out the hold, and in the bilge they found the skeleton of a tall man with his armor rusting about his bones. This rattled many of the more superstitious of the workers, until Rol had the thing set up on a stake at the dockside, the empty sockets of its skull staring at them as they worked around the hull. The skeleton became a mascot of sorts, and created a sort of grim camaraderie among those who labored there.
The hull timbers were remarkably sound. Whatever was in the water of the docks, it discouraged teredo, the wood-boring worm that was the death of ships. Creed raided the wood stores of the city for deck planking and fittings and at the same time had experienced men out in the hills looking for the largest and straightest tree trunks they could find, for no mast in the stores was big enough to fit the butts of the hulk.
Miriam visited the dockside on the fourth day with two of her militiamen beside her. She looked over the swarm of men and women working on the hulk with a raised eyebrow, and asked where she might find Cortishane.
Rol was belowdecks aft, drawing rusted spikes from the transom timbers whilst about him Creed and several others were levering the salt-rotted rudder gudgeons loose. The hulk was iron-sick, for not enough copper had been used in her construction and parts of her hung together more through luck and stubbornness than anything else. He edged out of the tight space about the transom, wiping his rust-orange hands and frowning, to find Miriam squatting on her heels behind him, her musket slung shining on her back.
“Artimion wants a word.”
“I’m busy.”
She blinked. “You’ve been appropriating a lot of things that are not yours, Cortishane. The least you might do is answer to the man for your actions.”
“I thought we held everything in common in this place,” Rol told her with a feral grin. She backed a foot, then steadied. “You have a monster’s eyes.”
“Yes. It broke my mother’s heart. Where is he?”
“On the dock.” And as Creed rose to join Rol she said: “Cortishane alone.”
“It’s all right, Elias,” Rol said, and he followed Miriam up on deck, straightening with a groan and knuckling the base of his spine.
Artimion nodded curtly in welcome. “You have found a project, it seems.”
“It’s coming along. I’m still short of a few things, though. People mostly.”
“What exactly are you hoping to achieve, Cortishane?”
“I’m bringing a ship back to life. A good ship, better than any you have tied up at the wharves.”
Artimion’s eyes flashed coldly. “You take a lot upon yourself. Less than a week in the city and you are setting yourself up as some kind of captain.”
“I thought that was the general idea.”
“How long have you had at sea?”
“Long enough.” Rol met Artimion glare for glare.
“And you have commanded a man-of-war, have you?”
<
br /> “I’ve smelt powder, if that’s what you mean. And I’ve fired great guns before.”
“That’s hardly the same.”
“It’ll have to do.”
Artimion looked about at the gaggle of workers on the dockside who were listening, some covertly, some openly. “Walk with me,” he said.
They ambled away from the dockside toward the busy wharves beyond and the blinding white arches of the sea gates. Men nodded at Artimion as he passed, without speaking. Rol saw respect in their eyes but not a great deal of affection; a far cry from their reception of Gallico, who was universally loved.
Artimion seemed to have read his mind. “Without the support of Gallico you would not have had a single pair of hands at work on that hulk.”
“I know. I’ve always been lucky in my friends.”
“I do not wish to be your enemy.”
“There’s no reason why you should be.”
Artimion smiled. “You put two dogs in the same kennel and one is always going to try to piss higher than the other. You are strutting about Ganesh Ka like some form of royalty, and it sways the weaker minds among us. Were you delicately brought up?”
Rol laughed heartily. “I have been educated in the finer things in life, it’s true.”
“Do not try to jump too high too fast, Cortishane.”
“All I’m trying to do,” Rol said quietly, “is rebuild a good ship.”
“And that you cannot do without my goodwill.”
Rol stopped, and they stared at each other. Again, that momentary contest of wills in the contact of their eyes. Again it was put off, postponed. But it would not be so forever.
“All right, so I’ve been like a bull at a gate about it,” Rol conceded. “But if I know anything, it’s that your little fiefdom here has rough weather ahead of it. The Bionari are sniffing up and down the coast, and have been for months from what I hear. They will find this place eventually.”
“They’ve been looking for it for nigh on a quarter of a century to no avail. Why should they chance across it now?”
“Because you’ve thrown in your lot along with the rebels. You are part of their politics now, and they cannot ignore that.”
“We have always been part of their politics. It was Bar Hethrun himself founded this place, before leaving for his death at the hands of betrayers. And now the woman who purports to be his daughter wants you delivered to her—so you are not above politics either, it seems.”
Rol stared in surprise at Artimion, and finally managed a strangled laugh. “By Ran’s beard, you have no idea.”
“What brought you to the coast of Ganesh?”
“The wind, what else?”
Artimion stared at Rol thoughtfully. “There is a shadow hanging over you, Cortishane. I have heard it said that when one with the Mark of Ran upon him comes to Ganesh Ka it shall be the harbinger of doom for our city. An old sailor’s tale, no more, but even old tales may have the lick of truth about them. I think it best you do not stay here.”
“Are you going to throw me out?”
“I owe you for saving Gallico’s life, if nothing else. No, I will let you stay until you have your hulk made seaworthy in some fashion or other, and then I would have you leave us. You are bad luck.”
“Maybe I am,” Rol said soberly. “But you’ll help me get this ship to sea?”
“I will. You may have the labor of any carpenter or blacksmith you desire, and the run of the storehouses—so long as it does not interfere with the provisioning of our regular vessels.”
“I suppose you cannot say fairer than that.” Rol held out a hand and Artimion shook it, unsmiling.
He was as good as his word. Two good ship’s carpenters, Jon Lorriby and Kier Eiserne, were released to work on Rol’s hulk, and with the news that Artimion himself had blessed its rebuilding, more veteran mariners came trickling to the dry dock to offer their services, for Ganesh Ka had experienced sailors by the hundred, and not enough ships to employ them all. Rol set Gallico and Creed to weeding out the chaff from the real professionals and within a fortnight he had sixty good, thorough-paced seamen on his muster-list and a portable forge had been set up on the dockside to turn out ringbolts, chain, and new rudder-pintles and gudgeons. The carpenters built oak carriages for the sakers, and these were trundled up to the magazine, and the guns bolted upon them. Then the whole contraption was trundled back down again, the wooden wheels squealing with the protest of new wood. But the most delicate business was the getting in of the lower masts. These were massive pylons of heavy timber, the best the Ganesh highlands could provide, the mainmast almost a yard across at its base. Sheerlegs were set up on the dockside and it took eighty men all told to haul on the tackles that lifted these massive yards into place. One false move and the masts would have dropped through the hulk’s bottom like spears, and it took a sweating, cursing, shouting three days to get them in. Once they and the bowsprit were in place, however, she began to look like a ship again. Another two days saw the shrouds, forestays, and backstays in place, and the sluice gates of the dry dock were opened. The ship’s company (for such they had become) stood in a crowd and cheered as the hulk’s keel lifted from the stone and the baulks that supported her hull were knocked away one by one by Gallico, half drowned in foam and rushing water. She was afloat; she was alive again. A ship of black wood, long and graceful as a thoroughbred, and larger than any other in Ganesh Ka. A Man of War.
“Have you thought what you might call her?” Elias asked Rol as they stood in the midst of that cheering throng and watched Gallico haul himself up the ship’s side, his grotesque face all agrin.
“I have.” Rol looked back at the skeletal warrior in his stained armor who had watched over their labors. “We brought her back from the dead with the dead’s blessing, so it’s only fitting that she should be named the Revenant.”
Seven weeks after Rol had first clapped eyes on her, the Revenant was near ready for sea. Her topmasts were in, a new ship’s wheel had been rigged up to her rudder, and two small cutters were made fast to the booms across her waist. They warped her out of the flooded dry dock to the wharves of the ship-cavern, and over a thousand people gathered there to see her topgallantmasts hauled up and lowered into place with tackles to the crosstrees. She had glass in her stern windows, a good bower and two kedge anchors, and a full load of ballast: piles of rock from some of the more ruinous galleries in the tunnels of Ganesh Ka. Rol, Gallico, and Creed had begged, borrowed, and in not a few cases stolen whatever they needed to fit her out, but they were still critically short on essentials. Sailcloth for one; they had enough for a full sail-plan, but not much in the way of reserves, and what stuff had been bent to the yards was a trifle worn for Rol’s liking. Cordage, also, was in short supply, and there was a lot of twice-laid stuff in the rigging which a full-hearted gale would play havoc with. But the worst deficiency was in gunpowder. Here Artimion’s indulgence had failed. They were allotted six small barrels, no more; enough for one moderate engagement.
“We need a shakedown cruise,” Gallico said, “a week or two at sea, preferably with a bit of a blow to see how the men shape up. And gunnery practice. They’ve all fired ship-guns before, but the gun-teams are new to one another and to the ship—and those sakers are nine feet long and weigh a ton and a half apiece, heavier metal than most will be used to, unless they’ve had a spell on a man-of-war.”
“We’re still thirty men short of complement,” Rol told him. “We could barely man a broadside and sail the ship at the same time.”
“Who said anything about broadsides? Ran’s teeth, Rol, we’re not looking for a fight—we just prowl up the coast a way and take her due east into the Reach, deepwater sailing. We’ve enough food and water on board for a fortnight at least.”
“If we run into a blow, it’ll go hard with us; the running rigging is a hand-me-down cat’s cradle, and I could piss through some of the topgallantsails.”
The halftroll grinned. “Creed is right—you a
re an old woman.”
They were seated in the captain’s cabin, a beautiful space of white-painted, curving wood with the noise of the wharves rattling in the open stern windows. Several of these had cracked glass, which had been sized to the frames with a liberal amount of putty. One good following sea would burst them through and have the stern cabin flooded. They would have to ship deadlights in anything but the mildest wind.
A cot and a lantern, both hanging by ropes from the deck-head, swayed minutely with the restless movement of the water beneath the keel, for the tide in the bay beyond the cavern was on the ebb, flowing back out to sea. Rol and Gallico felt that small motion through their feet and smiled at each other. There was living water under them again.
“It’s been a long time since I had a deck move below me,” Gallico said.
Rol was about to agree when Creed swung open the cabin door. “Something’s going on along the wharves. Looks like Artimion’s making some kind of speech, and the ships’ companies have all been mustered.”
They went on deck, where their own crew were gathered in a body forward. Rol hailed his carpenter. “Kier, what’s afoot?”
“Bad news, skipper. The Bionari are here.”
Twenty-one
MEN OF WAR
THEY WERE STILL GATHERING BY THE HUNDRED ON THE wharves. Artimion had piled up a couple of crates and was standing atop them. About his feet stood Miriam and a few of her musketeers. All work had ceased, and the yards of the ships in dock were black with sailors, listening.
“They’re troopships, no more, and their escort is only a pair of brigs,” Artimion was saying, his baritone echoing in the eerie silence of the ship-cavern. “But if they manage to land Bionese regulars onshore, then we are lost. We must meet and destroy them at sea.”
“Two Bionese men-of-war? Swallow and Albatross and Prosper cannot take them alone,” someone shouted, and there was a general murmur.
