Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  “Here’s a treat, Kedrun,” Alfonze nudged him with an elbow. “Looks like the Captain will let us go swimming today. Do you fancy a swim in the deep blue sea?”

  Koren looked over the side, where swells barely half a foot high were languidly rolling against the hull, with the waves almost too lazy to make any sort of splash against the old wood. As he watched, a dark shadow came out from under the ship, and he followed the dark shape as it came toward the surface, and then a fin broke the surface. He now knew the difference between the playful fin of a dolphin and the dangerous fin of a shark. This was a shark. And it wasn’t the only one. Sharks followed the ship, they always did. Whenever the cook threw scraps overboard, there were mouths in the wake of the ship to gobble up the scraps. Mouths ringed with rows of large, sharp teeth. “I would not like to swim today, thank you,” Koren looked up with a smile. He figured Alfonze had been joking, or testing him again.

  “No,” the man answered, pointing toward where the captain was standing at the rail, looking over the side. “I’m serious. Look see that spar,” he pointed aft. “We attach another spar to it, and another here, forward,” he pointed to the mizzen mast. “Then we lower a sail into the water, let it fill. We swim inside the sail, it keeps the sharks out. You’ll see.”

  Koren soon saw that Alfonze was right, as the captain ordered a ‘pool’ to be rigged. The master of the ship had studied the sky and the clouds, and judged that the ship would lay becalmed for hours, at least. With no other sails in sight, he took the opportunity to give the crew a rest and a bit of fun that would be good for morale. If the ship became stuck without wind for an extended time, the crew would be grateful for a chance to splash around in the cool water. It was as Alfonze described; the crew rigged extra spars on the east side of the ship, where the sea was partly shaded by the limply hanging sails, and lowered a large sail into the water. The sail soon filled with seawater, and formed a pool that was secure from the circling sharks.

  To Koren’s surprise, old Jofer was the first to jump in; he climbed the mainmast to the first spar, walked out, and jumped overboard with a whoop. There was a tremendous splash that came up to the rail and got Koren’s hair wet. Soon, half the crew was jumping off the ship or splashing around in the water. It was delightfully cool; just a touch too cool when Koren first got in, but then he was grateful for the soothing temperature.

  “Eh?” Alfonze asked, laying almost flat on his back in the water. “Fun, eh?”

  “Yes!” Koren laughed. “This is great, thank you!”

  “Thank the captain. Ahh, we’ll appreciate this tonight, if we’re still becalmed. Hot as it is, it will be stifling in the hold without a breeze down there.”

  “Ooh,” Koren hadn’t thought about that. When in port, the crew didn’t like to sleep in their cramped hammocks below decks, for even with the portholes open, the air in the hold was hot and stifling. “Maybe the captain will let us sleep on deck tonight?”

  “Maybe,” Alfonze agreed.

  Later, it was Koren’s turn to climb all the way up to the ‘crow’s nest’; the little platform at the top of the tallest mast. It was little more than a fabric basket atop a wood platform, with a thick rope railing around the rim. The captain wanted Koren’s young eyes to sweep the horizon. Mostly, lookouts kept watch for other sails. Sails that might be pirate ships. This day, the captain had instructed ‘Kedrun’ to keep lookout also for ripples on the surface of the water; ripples that could indicate an area where a breeze was blowing. Distant ripples were, the captain explained, often seen as a darker area of the ocean surface, where there was no cloud. If Koren was unsure, he should ask the other lookout.

  The climb was not as difficult as it usually was, for with the ship becalmed, the lines were not swaying back and forth as Koren pulled himself hand over hand. From the start, Koren had hated having to go all the way to the top of the mast, for any motion of the ship was greatly exaggerated up so high above the surface of the water. Unlike most of the crew, Koren had never suffered from seasickness more than a little, during his first week. The crew had grumbled that their new crewmate ‘Kedrun’ was very lucky. Koren suspected his seeming immunity to seasickness was part of the spell Paedris had cast on him. It also meant that Koren had been sent to the top mast only a few days after he had joined the crew. Whether the first mate had sent Koren aloft as an expression of confidence in the new shipmate, or to test Koren’s abilities, or in the hope that Koren would embarrass himself and spew all over the deck, Koren still wasn’t sure. He was sure that this day, he was grateful for the easy action of the slow rolling swells, for the motion of even the upper mast was no more than a gentle rocking.

  When Koren reached the top of the mast, with his hands no longer cramping as they did when he first became a sailor, he avoided the ‘lubber’s hole’ in the bottom of the crow’s nest. His first time, his first dozen times climbing to the crow’s nest, he had hugged tightly onto the rough wood pole of the mast and inched his way through the hole in the bottom of the crow’s nest. Other sailors had laughed at him good-naturedly, assuring him that all land-lubbers like Koren used the hole before they gained experience.

  This day, as he had done every time beyond his first fortnight aboard the ship, he climbed the lines at the side of the crow’s nest, and swung himself over the railing. “Hello, Tom,” he greeted the sailor already there.

  “Ho there, Kedrun,” Tom replied with a yawn. “Nothing to report. Ain’t seen a darn thing the whole time I’ve been up here.”

  Koren nodded. “Captain wants us to watch for ripples on the surface, see if there’s a breeze out there somewhere.”

  “Aye,” Tom nodded, “I’ve been looking. Do you know what to look for?”

  Koren shook his head.

  “That’s all right,” Tom slapped the new sailor on the shoulder. “I’ll show you. With your younger eyes,” Tom scratched his beard, which had grown itchy in the heat, “you’ll likely see it before I do. Let’s scan the horizon first.”

  Koren pulled the precious glass from inside his vest. It was a narrow tube with polished glass at both ends; sailors called such devices a ‘spyglass’ and soldiers called them ‘telescopes’. Whatever they were called, they were expensive, delicate and precious. The one Koren was using belonged to the first mate, and Koren had promised to guard the device with his life. Hooking an arm around a line for security, Koren extended the spyglass and pointed to the horizon, moving all the way around until he came back to the bow of the ship. “Nothing,” he reported.

  “Aye, that’s what I have also,” Tom agreed. “I did see some ripples; not enough to tell the Captain about, I’ll show you.” Tom pointed to the west, where a tall puffy white cloud towered in the sky. The cloud had been hanging there, dominating the sky since the Noon hour. It cast a dark shadow on the surface of the sea, and Tom pointed out that between the ship and cloud’s shadow was an area slightly darker that the surrounding water. “See how the sunlight reflects off it different?” Tom asked.

  “Yes, I do,” Koren replied excitedly. Since he had embraced his new life as a sailor, Koren was eager to learn all the skills of his new trade. In the circle of the spyglass, the light twinkling off the sea in the area Tom pointed to was more jittery; as if the light was scattered by numerous small waves rather than the larger slow-rolling swells. “Shall we tell the Captain?”

  “No,” Tom shook his head. “There’s no point getting his hopes up. That area has been popping up ripples all day. It’s cool area coming off the sides of that cloud as it builds, you see? That wind is too weak to do us any good.”

  “We’re stuck here, then?” Koren asked with disappointment. At first, being becalmed was a novelty, but now it was worrying him. Mostly because the experienced sailors all seemed to be worried about it.

  “No, I wouldn’t worry about it. This ain’t the Doldrums. I been there, this ain’t it. It’s unusual at these latitudes to be in this dead calm for more than a day. That cloud,” Tom pointed again, “
has been building since this morning, you been watching it?”

  Koen nodded. Of course he had, now that he knew such things were important to the life of a sailor.

  “Good,” Tom said. “In my experience, that has a good chance to turn into a squall before nightfall. It may give us only a short, hard blow, but it will cool things off, and wash the salt off the decks. Give us a chance to refill the casks with fresh water, too, we could use that,” he observed. The whole crew had been grumbling about how the drinking water had been tasting stale from sitting in barrels the past week.

  After that, Tom and Koren sat quietly, backs to each other. Koren lifted his glass and scanned the northern and western horizon periodically; Tom watched his half of the sea. Neither of them saw anything worth reporting. Below on the deck, a bell rang for the hour, and Tom tucked away his spyglass. “That’s my signal for relief,” Tom said with a yawn, and below, they could see another sailor beginning to climb the mast to replace Tom. “Hopefully, I can get a nice cool swim before they pull in the pool,” he pointed over the side, where sailors were still floating in the cool water. “I’m about burnt from being up here, my skin feels like sandpaper.”

  “Good luck to you,” Koren grinned. Another dip in the cool water would feel good; it was likely the pool would be stowed away by the time Koren’s turn in the crow’s nest was done. He lifted his glass to scan the horizon in Tom’s direction. “When do you think- Whoa!”

  “What?” Tom froze.

  “Sail!” Koren said in a harsh whisper.

  “What? Where?” Tom swung himself back into the crow’s nest.

  “There,” Koren tried to point to the northeast while looking through the spyglass; he found that didn’t work. Lowering the glass, he pointed and gave directions to Tom. Even without the glass, Koren could see the ship as a smudge, it was already on their side of the horizon; Koren could see the other ship’s hull as a dark line.

  “I don’t see it,” Tom said skeptically.

  “It’s just over-”

  “Ah! I see, something, oh.” Tom looked with his bare eye, then back with the spyglass. “Is that a ship? Ah, blast!” he groaned. “It is! How could I have missed it?”

  “I could barely see it at first,” Koren admitted.

  Tom snorted with disgust. “With your young eyes, you can barely see it? Kedrun, can you tell anything about that ship? I can only see a sail.”

  “It is,” Koren concentrated on the image in the spyglass, “hmm. Two masts, both rigged fore and aft.” Alfonze had explained to Koren that their ship had square-rigged sails, which were slower and more clumsy but more sturdy in the open ocean. Ships with sails rigged fore and aft were faster and could maneuver more quickly, but such ships generally could not carry heavy cargo. “That’s a schooner?”

  “It could be.”

  “They have one sail set out to starboard, the other to port. The ship is almost facing us.” Koren set the spyglass aside and looked at Tom. “It has a narrow hull.”

  Tom shook his head, knowing what they were both thinking. It was a pirate ship; narrow and light and built for speed. “We need to tell the Captain.” He leaned over the railing of the crow’s nest and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sail ho! Four points off the port bow!”

  The Captain tried looking for the other ship from the deck, but with the humidity and salt haze in the air, he couldn’t see anything. Tom climbed down to make room for the Captain as the man climbed the ratlines up to the top of the main mast. Koren was surprised to see the Captain climbing quickly, he had thought that the older man would not be so spry. Koren reminded himself that the Captain had been aboard ships since he was apprenticed at the age of twelve; the man was as at home in the rigging as Koren was on the ground. “Another sail, Sir!” Koren called out as he felt the crow’s nest sway from the Captain’s weight pulled on the lines. No lubber’s hole for the Captain, he swung up over the side and dropped lightly as a feather. “There, Sir. I just spotted the second ship, her hull is not yet over the horizon.”

  The Captain studied the two ships with his glass for long minutes, sitting silently. Then he leaned over the railing and ordered the pool to be brought back in, and sails to be furled.

  “We’re lowering sails, Captain?” Koren asked, confused. The ship’s rigging was suddenly alive with sailors, climbing the lines, walking out along the spars, and slowly rolling up the huge white sails. The utter lack of wind helped speed the process along; Koren knew what it was like to try furling sails when the sails were billowed out by a stiff wind. The canvas became like iron, and fought every attempt to control it.

  “Aye,” the Captain said, not taking his eye off his spyglass. “With us becalmed like this, the sails only make us more visible. I’m hoping that if we furl the sails, those other ships won’t see us. I can barely see them with my glass.” He looked at Koren. “Kedrun, you have excellent vision, even for one with your young eyes.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Tell me, are those ships drawing closer?”

  Koren studied the nearest ship for a long while, then shifted his gaze to the more distant ship. The second ship was now above the horizon; he could see the upper part of its hull. “Yes. Slowly. Their sails are slack, Sir.”

  “Aye,” the Captain agreed. “The current is carrying us both, and those ships are not heavily-laden as us. They’re drifting faster than we are.”

  With the sails furled, the Captain called down for the crew to be fed, several hours early. They were worried grumbling on the deck below; the crew knew the Captain was concerned that soon they might not have time for dinner. Food was brought up to the crow’s nest; the Captain wanted ‘Kedrun’ with his outstanding eyesight to remain aloft.

  Koren’s eyesight was outstanding, so good, in fact, that he did not tell the Captain everything he could see. His vision had always been remarkable; even when he was a young boy, people in his village of Crebb’s Ford had said he could see like an eagle. Now Koren was concerned that his eyesight might be too good; that his vision had been enhanced by whatever spell Paedris had cast upon him to make him fast and strong with a sword. So, he waited to tell the Captain that the two other ships were striking their sails, until the white canvas was gone. “Captain, I think they have furled their sails also.”

  “Eh?” The Captain had been resting his eyes; too much staring through the glass could make the eyes lose focus. “I see it. They’re on bare poles. And they’ve gotten closer. Still, they’re about side-on to us.” He scratched his neck around the shirt collar; white salt of seawater from his swim in the pool had dried on his skin, and was now itching. “Keep watching, I’m going to sweep the horizon.”

  Koren kept watch, and over the next quarter hour, the closest other ship swung listlessly until it was pointed toward him. He adjusted the glass and squinted, then rubbed his own neck. What was that? There was a lighter-colored blur on each side of the other ship, like the foam a ship threw aside as it sailed through the water. But surely the faint white foam could not be a wake; the other ship still had its sails furled. He glanced toward the Captain, who was studying the clouds to the west. That one cloud had now built to cover half the sky, and its top had flattened into an anvil shape that loomed toward the ship. The cloud could, the Captain had explained, bring a squall before nightfall. Not soon enough for the Captain.

  Should he tell the captain what he had seen? It was probably nothing; Koren was so inexperienced a sailor that he would be wasting the man’s time.

  Then Koren thought back to that fateful morning in Longshire, when he had noticed sheep alone in the fields, and his uncertainty had caused him to delay telling Lord Salva. A delay that might have cost lives. “Captain, could you look at this, please? I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “Eh? What?”

  Koren explained about the light color in the sea closely around the other ship, and how it was now pointed directly toward them.

  The Captain swore and pounded his fist on the railing. “Da
mn! And here we are, fat, heavily laden, and becalmed!” He leaned over the side and bellowed down to the deck “Man the sweeps!” Then he tucked his own spyglass away. “Kedrun, you do have good eyes. That there is a pirate ship, and so is the other one, is my guess. That color you saw is a wake, they’ve got their oars out, and they’re pulling straight for us. They saw us! And now we’ve a long hard pull ahead of us, if we can get away at all.” He looked up at the position of the sun, then at a cloud to the west. “Come down with me, we’ll give your eyes a rest.”

  Koren’s eyes did get a rest, they were the only part of his body that was not soon aching and weary. Not even his ears were spared, for a drum pounded rhythmically to keep the crew in time with each other, and the first mate bellowed and shouted for the crew to pull harder. The sweeps were long, clumsy oars that stuck out both side of the ship from a lower deck near the waterline. Each sweep was handled by three men, who wrestled the awkward pole until the paddle was in the water, then they hauled on the pole while straining to walk backwards. The first mate tried to balance the crew across the sweeps so equal effort was made on both sides of the ship, and the ship was not turning in a circle.

  Twenty minutes of pulling on the sweeps, then a break for five minutes. After each set on the sweeps, one man on each team was replaced with a fresh man. Koren, being so young, was the first to be replaced. He thought that he could rest his aching legs, back and shoulders but it was not to be. The first mate assigned him to carry around a bucket of drinking water, and his job was to ladle water into the mouths of the men at the end of a sweep. Others on the crew were working the pumps, with two men carrying around a hose to spray cool seawater on the overheated teams manning the sweeps.

  It went on for an hour, then two hours. Koren took his turns at the sweeps until his arms were trembling even when serving water to the sweepers; he had to use two hands on the ladle to keep from spilling more water on the deck than the men got to drink. He went below to refill the water bucket, when the first mate called him. “Kedrun! Cap’n wants you in the crow’s nest!”