The Rot's War

by Michael John Grist

  For a moment Lonnigan's eyes burned into him.

  "No more lies," Sen said. "Go make peace with your ex-wife, and set yourself free. Set her free. You'll see."

  Lonnigan clacked his claws once; a threat, though Sen was not perturbed. He'd not been lying about the spikes. They really were excellent about cracking oysters.

  Lonnigan set off down the rise, and Sen watched.

  At the entrance to the black Oriole Grub garden the big Cray paused, then pushed open the low bleachwood fence and walked amongst the plants. They swayed sideways as his shadow fell across them, seeking out the sun. He entered the shack without knocking. Sen sat on the rise and waited.

  It had been a long, strange time, since he'd first seen Lonnigan on the forecastle of the Shall-I-Row. Sleepless days and nights had gone by, and he'd rarely stayed in one time, on one ship, in one place for more than an hour or so. He'd spied on Lonnigan, and read his thoughts, and hunted down rumors until finally he'd tracked his wife and son to this place.

  The hardest thing to accept was that Lonnigan had always known. Not that they were here in Meran, but that they weren't in the Eye. He'd never truly believed that, but some part of him; the hubris, the inflated sense of his own self, wouldn't let him believe that they'd just left him. He couldn't accept that he'd mistreated them, and neglected them, and because of that, they'd at last abandoned him.

  He was Lonnigan Clay, the great pirate Cray. His armada made the oceans quake. He was not the kind of man whose wife played him for a fool.

  So he'd invented all of this.

  Sen sighed. What really mattered was what lay before him. The Darkness was always closing in, welling up through the Corpse World beneath him, but he still had today; this dusty sea air, raised voices from the shack, the coral pink sun sinking toward the green fronding waves.

  Those were good things. Other things felt more distant. His days with Freemantle in their white cell seemed mythical. His past in the Abbey spent alone was a bedtime story told to a naughty child, except for the bright spots of Alam, Daveron and of course Feyon.

  For a little while he allowed himself to think of Feyon. He imagined her shelling the aulks, whittling away at their shells while he saw to the Oriole Grubs, watered them, emptied their salt pods, weeded away tufts and patches of spine grass. Was that the kind of life that awaited them, if he somehow saved the world? Would he too grow enamored with his own legend, and neglect her.

  Would she be there, waiting for him, if he could expel the Darkness? Would he even remember her by then?

  He tried not to think about that.

  He became aware of a figure seated to his right. He didn't look. He knew who it was, and why they were there. He tried to hold on to the image of Feyon for as long as he could before it was pushed aside by other matters.

  "Are they just playthings to you, then?" Daveron asked.

  Sen bent a piece of reed grass in his fingers, watching it coil, tremble, then flick back up into place. Coil, flick, coil flick. After a few times it finally split and would bend no more.

  He turned to the little Moleman. Daveron was dressed in the red leather of a usury butcher, incongruous on that warm beach so far from Ignifer's city. Already his name was lost, though Sen knew he'd had it just a moment ago. Like leaves, these people just drifted away. Now he saw the Moleman and knew that he knew him, but it didn't affect him.

  "No," he answered. "Not playthings. More like pieces in a game. It's a grand game, friend."

  The Moleman's snout furrowed. "Friend. Would you have treated your own child the same way you did Craley?"

  Sen patted the broken reed grass into the sand about him, and watched tiny sand gophers sprout their insectile heads up from their oval burr-traps, poke at the grass with their mandibles, then push it away. He was quite sure he didn't have a child. Perhaps, one day, Feyon and he would make a baby. If the Corpse World survived. If so many things fell into place.

  "My mother did the same to me," he said. "I survived."

  "She did. And she did it to us, too. She used us all, and how many of us survived?"

  Sen snorted. That was funny. "She had no choice. Neither do I."

  "We both know that's not true. You've had a choice all along."

  Sen sighed and leaned back on the sand, enjoying the last rays of warm sunlight before the lapping bowl of the Haresdown Sea sucked it down like a big runny egg. Choice was an interesting question. He'd thought about that when he'd sat on the Gutrock before Seem's exhumed crater.

  He'd chosen Craley, then. Let the world die, he'd thought, just don't make my daughter be alone until she dies. That, abruptly, had seemed the most important thing. But choosing that had made everything else distant. He'd chosen to let them die.

  "I know. The choice to stop fighting."

  "Let it go," said the Moleman.

  "Let it go," Sen repeated. "So easy to say. In the end, it doesn't really matter."

  "Of course it does. You should know that more than anyone, after what you did to me. It matters if all you do is cause more pain."

  "Pain can be good," Sen mused, and pointed to the shack. "He needs this. It's a good pain for him."

  "Better than his madness, you think. Are you always the judge, Sen?"

  Sen almost laughed. "Show me someone better equipped to decide than I."

  "What of the Darkness? It brings relief. The decisions are at an end. You no longer would need to hurt those closest to you. You wouldn't need to lie anymore. No more betrayals."

  "And I'd be dead. You'd be dead."

  "You would be at peace."

  Sen surveyed the spreading purple welter of the sunset. "This is peace."

  "This is a lie," said the Moleman. "The Darkness is rising, Sen, and you can't run from it forever."

  "I'm not running. Nor am I a liar." He pointed toward the shack. "I've told him only the truth."

  "As you told Craley the truth? As you told the Moth Abbess the truth? You manipulate them all, as you manipulated me."

  "I hurt you," said Sen. He didn't remember it, but there was a sense there somehow. "But I don't feel it. It may not be real. What can I say?"

  "Say you'll be honest. Why are you doing this, Sen? Answer for yourself at least, if you can't answer to me."

  He wondered about that. There was Feyon, of course, and Alam. He'd like to see his mother again and ask her questions. He had some sense of his city still, bright memories of racing about it and high adventures, but was that enough to do all this? Was it for Craley, to give his 'daughter' a chance in a world that could go on?

  "I don't want to fail you," he said at last.

  "But you don't even know who I am, do you?"

  Sen turned to where the figure had been, but it was gone. The memory of it faded like the stars at dawn, and he was left looking at a rounded space in the sand.

  "No," he said, and turned back to the shack. Smoke riffled from numerous chinks in the cobbled together canopy.

  The stars came out. The constellation of Saint Ignifer moved overhead, high in the sky here in the southern hemisphere, forever seeming that he would overtake Auroch, the World Spider, and always failing.

  A series of loud bangs and barks came from the hut. By starlight Sen saw the flimsy building shake, then Lonnigan staggered out. The door slammed shut behind him, and echoes reverberated over the still beach. Insects like shellaby bugs hummed in the air, vibrating softly, casting little bergs of glowing yellow luminance.

  He looked to the Spittle-crags of the Runts. They were alight in places too, a giant strange constellation written against the night sky.

  Soon Lonnigan stood before him. There were black smudge marks coating his chest, his face, and down his powerful arms. From his claws dripped something that looked like blood.

  "It's my blood," he said, his voice heavy.

  "And your wife?"

  "I tried to tell her I loved her still." He sighed. "But that was a lie. A stupid lie. She tried to kill me."

  Sen pat
ted the sand by his side. After a while Lonnigan sat down, his shell ringing sweetly off the sand. Together they watched the stars glide slowly overhead. Occasionally comets flashed by.

  Sen spoke into the humming, sea-lapping quiet. "Memories of the Heart."

  "Hmm?"

  "The comets. My mother used to say that, when I was very small. She called them Memories of the Heart."

  "That's beautiful," Lonnigan said, then turned. "Do you speak with the Heart, Sen?"

  Sen considered. He thought about Freemantle, so very far away, locked in his cell at the command of a blind god that he'd never met. "I don't know. Perhaps."

  "And he tells you to fight. He sent you to me, to save the world?"

  "Our world. And yes, I think he sent me, in a way. I came."

  They watched as several more comets flashed briefly in the velvet black sky. There were so many more stars visible there, on that beach, than there ever had been in Ignifer's city. He could see all the constellations he'd ever learned; so many stories circling overhead that he could hardly begin to understand the sweep of them, the broad strokes.

  Craley's omnichron tapestry would organize them. The Saint had woven them together. Now the army would do the same, in a battle that joined all the defeated, all the lost heroes who looked toward the end, and charged into the Dark.

  "What do the Heart's memories say?" asked Lonnigan.

  Sen gave a slow shrug. "Nobody knows. They flash in the sky, then they're gone. Burnt out, like our lives. We use them up, Lonnigan. Do you know what I mean? We use them, and then they're gone."

  Lonnigan looked over at Sen. "Why so maudlin? I'm the one whose wife just tried to kill him. You're scarcely twenty years old, what have you got to be so miserable about?"

  Sen sighed. "I've already lost half of them. More than half. They flashed by."

  "You speak in riddles."

  Sen turned to him. "But you'll help me, won't you?"

  Lonnigan gave a dry laugh. "Fight the Rot," he enunciated, voicing each word clearly, distinctly. "Banish the Darkness. It's one for the story books."

  "It is. What else have you got, now?"

  Lonnigan shrugged, lifting his shell musically. "Nothing, I suppose. Nothing now. I'm dead to her; I suppose I was for a long time, and I can only blame myself. Too much time on the water." He sighed. "Too much arrogance. It makes a mockery of my whole life, now that she's truly gone. I thought I was doing these things for her. For Damaris."

  "But you weren't, were you?"

  Lonnigan sighed. "No. I wasn't."

  They sat for three more comet flashes, memories from the Heart briefly flaming, lighting up their small section of the sky, then fading away without a sign.

  "I wish you'd never brought me here," Lonnigan said.

  "I understand that. But you'll help me."

  "You're asking me to die for you. For a war far from my time, against an enemy who will probably win in the end anyway."

  Sen smiled. "It may. We don't know that. Nothing is written."

  Lonnigan laughed sourly. "From what you say, it seems that everything is. A hopeless cause against an enemy that has already won. If I wanted I could start a new life here too, find a new woman and raise another family."

  Sen bent another flex of bowgrass, watched its fibers take the strain, bend, crack. "But you won't. I know that." He pointed down to the shack, from which low sobbing could be heard periodically, as the tide winds shifted. "She knew it. You are for the sea, Lonnigan, like any good Cray."

  "I'm not a good Cray."

  Sen looked into his stalky eyes. This moment mattered. He could feel the big Cray changing like clay beneath his hands. Maybe this was worth it. "But you'll help me."

  Lonnigan let out a long sigh. "Aye. I'll help."

  LONNIGAN CLAY II

  Lonnigan came back to consciousness wrapped in cold and dark. From all around him came the sound of creaking timbers and dripping water, as the ocean above crushed down. The air smelled of static and gear-oil, which meant he was in the Foc'sle hold, where they'd stored the bombe. He remembered yanking hatches shut after him as he fell through the ship, and silently thanked the Shrew for insisting it be caulked to water-tightness between every deck.

  Sen had warned him what would follow. He'd said it would be hard, but he was ready for hard. Sitting there in the groaning dark, surrounded by all the evidence of his endless follies, he could feel nothing other than his failure. Mollie had tried to talk him around. He only wished he'd listened.

  Now he had to do better. He wanted to be a better Cray.

  The creaking grew louder, dragging him back to the present. The Shall-I-Row must have settled on the ocean floor by now, and the weight of water above it would be a tremendous vise, relentlessly pressing down. He had to get out, but his legs were trapped.

  "Bomsy?" he called, though he held out little hope. The sound echoed strangely, hinting at water in the hull. "Mollie?"

  There was no answer. Could any of them have survived the sinking of the ship?

  He took a deep breath, tensed his whole frame, and sucked his body back inside its Cray shell. His legs slid out from under the beam holding them down, and his shell rocked for a moment on the pitch black deck. Then he bloomed back out and stood in the darkness. "Bomsy?" he called again, "Mollie?"

  Water dripped down on his head.

  He reached up to press gently against the hatch cover, testing the tension; it had some give, which meant the ocean was not directly above him. He un-clasped the hatch and climbed up to the next deck, which should have been the Orlop crew quarters, but the heavy scent in the air was confusing; a mixed stench of pitch, piss, spent saltpeter and rot. It took him only a moment longer to understand why, as he reached up and hit a low ceiling which curved.

  Water spumed down between thin cracks in the boards overhead. This was the bilge deck.

  The ship had come to rest keel-up in the ocean.

  He started downward, climbing through the Foc'sle then into the Orlop in darkness, calling Bomsy and Mollie, though still no answer came. This would be another weight on his shell. He groped around near the hatches but felt no bodies; not one of his hundred-odd navvies who'd made it below decks.

  At the Staunch deck he hit the water line. He took a deep breath and dived, then swam down through further decks in complete darkness, guiding himself by feel. At the final hatch to the poop deck he saw a glowing yellow Castle-of-Clouds jellyfish, with a train of young shimmering along behind it. By its dim light in the motey ocean he swam through the open hatch to where the ocean floor waited.

  He looked up to survey his ship; the trebuchet mast had been torn away in the tumble, rupturing the ship open at the quarterdeck. The forecastle and sterncastle were buried in silt-clouded sand, suspending the poop deck at barely twice Lonnigan's height. Further down the oardeck doors hung open and a heap of dark shapes rested beneath it; the bodies of his navvies. More weight. There was nothing he could do for them now.

  He swam by the Castle-of-Clouds' light, following the poop deck as his ceiling until he hit the railings at the edge, where he looked up the long curving side of the Shall-I-Row to the murky blue light of the surface far overhead. A rumble came from the vessel, then there was a flow in the water as the ocean's vise finally cracked the bilge deck, beginning a cascade failure which would flatten the ship.

  With one claw in a cannon mount and the other in a tangle of rigging, Lonnigan launched himself up.

  * * *

  On the surface he bobbed in his shell, like a coracle boat. It was dusk, and weak gray light filtered through the yellow clouds distant to the west. The Sheckledown Sea seemed black around him.

  "Bomsy!" he cried at the top of his lungs. "Mollie!" No answer came. There were no other survivors bobbing on the water. He was alone, and the white bulge of Heaven's Eye was nowhere to be seen.

  He bobbed on the ocean for three days, barely moving, taking short, panting breaths, as the weight of his whole world collapsed like his shi
p. He remembered his arrogance, saying to the Shrew that he could not live a lie. But he had. He didn't know now if what he'd seen in the white space was real, but the things that Sen showed him felt true.

  His wife and son had not been taken by the Eye, as he'd believed for so long. That was a fantasy and he'd poured himself into it, the great Lonnigan Clay. A part of him had always known, yet like a scarab-sot deep in his addiction, he'd sought his way out through the bottom, and turned his rage to the Eye.

  This was the bottom, now. There was no way to be the man he'd been before. He had to chart a new path, though he wasn't sure how, so he floated, exiled and alone.

  In three days he ate nothing and drank nothing, until on the morning of the fourth day a Jalopy goose landed on his shell. He watched the flock's V-shape migrating overhead. It seemed a sign from the Heart that he should not die, so with one snip of his claws he beheaded the bird and ate it raw.

  By the fifth day he was hearing voices, and sometimes seeing his crew in the distance. Bomsy spoke to him often, paddling somewhere just behind his head, but when Lonnigan spun his coracle-shell to answer, Bomsy was gone. Still, he enjoyed the conversation, even if he mostly talked about the clouds. Some of the clouds looked like Bunnymen, said Bomsy, though others looked like Wyverns, breathing wild fire over the Sheckledown.

  Half-moon Mollie he sometimes caught glimpses of, walking over the waves with the shadowy grace inherent to her kind, but she never spoke to him or looked his way. Her rattan hairs slithered on the ocean's top, like snakes through grass. She'd paid the cost of his madness.

  Van Sant didn't appear. Lonnigan knew Van Sant was gone.

  On the sixth day it rained. Lonnigan crawled his stiff body out of the shell and swam alongside as the rain collected inside. He swam weakly for hours, hoping for enough for one good gulp. When the rain was done he dipped the shell down to his mouth and the water slid down his throat like fresh air.

  Shortly after that he swam. He left his shell floating on the surface and dived into the ocean. His eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, until several fathoms down he sighted a school of silver Finbars circling brightly. He descended and caught three easily as they swirled around him at the eye. He held them in his hinterlimbs and swam back to his shell, where he ate at his leisure.