These weren’t just fires, Dow grasped finally, these were detonations. He turned stupidly to face the harbour, convinced there must be a warship out there, bombarding the fleet. But there was nothing – and of course there was nothing, the only warships in all the world belonged to the Ship Kings, and why would they attack their own? Besides, there had been no boom of cannon firing, no whistle of shot, only those stifled thumps as the flames burst forth.
The Chloe’s crew was swarming onto the main deck now, and officers were shouting orders. Teams were being marshalled to go and help the burning ships. No one paid Dow the least attention. Glancing up to the high deck, he saw that Captain Vincente had appeared there, still shrugging on his coat as he took in the scene, his thinning hair wild on his bare head.
‘Belay those orders!’ Vincente bawled, and men and officers alike froze. ‘It’s not those ships we must save but our own! Fire will spread along the whole line unless we get the rest of the fleet clear! Prepare to cast off! Signaller, sound “make sail” to the other ships!’
Pandemonium. New orders were shouted, bells clanged out signals, and men rushed to the rigging. Dow was shoved to and fro; everywhere he stood seemed to be in someone’s way. He found a quiet place at last further along the rail, and stared back across the fleet to the three afflicted ships. They were fully ablaze now, fire already licking at their upper rigging and masts. Cries of anger and panic came thinly over the water.
Whump. Whump. Whump.
Almost in unison, explosions flared against the hulls of the next three ships in the line.
‘Sabotage!’ Captain Vincente cried.
The realisation had struck Dow, too. What he was witnessing was an attack, one of cunning and stealth. Fiery devices of some kind had been attached to the hulls of the ships, and now those devices were igniting one by one, perhaps in the order they’d been laid, starting from the far end of the fleet.
But did that mean—?
Dow leant over the rail and stared wildly down at the water. Only a short time earlier he had done the same thing and seen nothing, but it had been darker then. Now the water flickered orange from the burning ships, and the whole side of the Chloe was lit up plain. And yes – there!
It was the size of a whisky barrel, and shiny black, its outer layer seemingly one of wet leather. It sat right at the waterline, held on the surface by floats, but also fixed to the hull by metal spikes attached to ropes. Never, it felt to Dow, had he seen such a sinister-looking object.
‘Captain Vincente!’ he yelled over the tumult. Miraculously, the captain heard him, turned his way. ‘Here!’ Dow cried, pointing to the water.
For an instant the captain stared at Dow in bafflement – as if wondering what a prisoner was doing at large upon the deck – but then he was dashing for the stairs, and calling out commands. Men rushed to the railing. By the time Vincente reached the spot, two sailors had already slung themselves over the side, ropes around their waists and knives in their hands. Other men hurried to lower them to within arm’s reach of the object.
Whump. Whump.
Two more explosions battered the night air, and the harbour waters flashed again with fire. Dow spared a glance to the fleet – two more ships were aflame. He knew that he should run from the rail for safety’s sake, that the device below might detonate at any instant. But he couldn’t move.
‘Cut it!’ cried the captain. ‘Cut the lines and the floats!’
The men below needed no urging. Their knives flashed, first slicing through the ropes that held the thing to the hull, and then cutting at the bindings that fastened the floats to the barrel. Loose, the object rolled heavily in the water, and one of the sailors, with a possession Dow could scarce believe, gave it a shove with his foot, pushing it away from the ship. A moment later it was gone, slipping beneath the surface and leaving only oily ripples in its wake.
‘Heave away now,’ Vincente called. ‘Get those men up!’
The gangs heaved, and the two sailors swore as their feet struggled for purchase against the slippery lower hull. But Dow was oblivious to them, for a fire had bloomed below the water. Not an explosion, rather a pinpoint of flame. It was the barrel; some kind of fuse had ignited on it and was burning brightly now, even underwater. Dow could see the device tumbling end over end as it sank, a stream of bubbles rising from the flame. He could even see the rocky harbour bed, only a few fathoms down. The barrel was about to—
WHUMP.
The water turned silver-white before his eyes, and then seemed to bulge hugely upwards, before exploding in a gout of scalding spray.
Dow reeled backwards, felt the ship lift beneath him. Had the device been too close? Had the hull been ruptured? Had the men hanging on the side been lost? The spray cleared and the ship settled. Dow returned to the rail. The two sailors, drenched but alive, were being hauled aboard by their fellows. The waters below still churned and frothed, but the Chloe, it seemed, remained in one piece. In the rigging above, sails billowed as the preparations for launch resumed.
A vice-like hand gripped Dow’s shoulder, spun him about. It was Vincente, his face dripping wet, his eyes murderous. ‘Is this your doing, New Islander? Are your countrymen attacking us for your sake?’
‘What?’ Dow stuttered. ‘No . . .’ It hadn’t even occurred to him. New Islanders setting the explosions? It was ridiculous.
‘What were you doing here then?’
Dow rushed to explain. ‘I woke up, that was all. I thought I heard something. I saw that thing in the water. I yelled to warn you.’ But he wondered – why had he yelled? What if this was a New Island attack?
Vincente was glaring at him in frustration. ‘Aye,’ he conceded at last, ‘you did at that.’ But his hand was still clutched hard on Dow’s shoulder. ‘Even so, from now on, you stay in my sight. Marines!’
He dragged Dow behind as he climbed back to the high deck. An island of calm awaited them there, after the mayhem below; just half a dozen officers standing by, and two steersmen ready at the wheel. Two somewhat dishevelled marines had also come, in answer to Vincente’s call. The captain shoved Dow towards them with a brusque order – ‘Watch him!’ – then strode off.
The marines hauled Dow back a few yards, out of everyone’s way, but then let him loose. Rubbing at his bruised shoulder, Dow drifted to the rear railing, for from there, high on the Chloe’s stern, he had an uninterrupted view of the fleet stretched out behind. He gazed in dread and wonder. Eight ships were ablaze now, the combined roar of the fires very loud, shot through with human cries and with the boom of collapsing masts and spars. Smoke raced overhead, carried by a strengthening wind that blew directly from the north, driving the flames from those vessels already burning towards those not yet alight.
It was a terrible sight, and Dow could not see how any of the remaining fleet, the Chloe included, could hope to survive long. Townsfolk had rushed onto the wharf with buckets and blankets to help fight the flames, but the fires roared unquenched. Then, once more, Dow caught himself – was it a terrible sight? Shouldn’t he be glad that the Ship Kings vessels were being destroyed? If his fellow New Islanders were indeed behind this assault, shouldn’t he be rejoicing? And yet he couldn’t seem to force any such emotion. And anyway, why would the townsfolk be fighting the fire, if they had caused it in the first place? Nothing made sense.
Masts were moving against the backdrop of the inferno. A ship was in motion, angling out from the wharf. Yes, Dow could see it more clearly now through the smoke. It was the second of the frigates, the Severe. Its sails were set and full in the hot wind, even as flames licked at its stern.
‘Cast off all!’ came a cry behind him.
Dow turned to see that the Chloe too was ready. Men were everywhere in the rigging and the battleship’s vast array of sails were now unfurled, great sheets that filled and flared orange in the bonfire light. The Chloe shifted a little, seemed to drift, and then slid more purposefully away from the dock.
Dow looked back. Most o
f the other surviving vessels were getting underway too – the same wind that had threatened the fleet was now the salvation of it; six ships, it seemed, would escape destruction. But the other eight were barely recognisable, their shapes lost in a massed conflagration, the heat terrific even across the water. And the wharf too was now ablaze. Townspeople were still labouring with their buckets, but most were being driven back. A grim realisation grew in Dow. The warehouses would be next to catch alight. And then beyond them, inevitably, the shops and houses of Stone Port itself.
The Chloe was well out from the dock now. The first officer, Commander Fidel, was standing by the wheel, shouting orders as he sought to avoid collision in the harbour, for aside from the giant Ship Kings vessels, dozens of smaller craft had also launched out from their berths – fishing boats, barges, anything that could be saved. Dow wondered fleetingly about the Maelstrom. It was a small matter amid so much ruin, still he hated to think of it lost. But fire now hid the fishing wharf, and if the boat remained there, he couldn’t tell.
Captain Vincente was at the rail, leaning out to study the chaos. ‘Commander!’ he called. ‘Make for the sea gate!’
Fidel glanced across in concern. ‘Sir – we’re under sail and the way is narrow. Perhaps if we lowered the boats to tow us through.’
‘There’s no time, Commander. We must clear the harbour. The danger of fire has not passed. Burning debris may yet spread across the water, or flying embers catch in our sails. Not only that – if the saboteurs remain nearby, we are too easy a target in these enclosed spaces.’
Fidel nodded and turned to shout new orders. The crew, in their true element now, and recovered from their initial surprise, responded swiftly and surely, each man knowing exactly where to go and what to do there – and Dow, despite everything else that was happening, could not help but admire their skill.
In scant moments the battleship came about, smaller craft scattering before it, and now the sea gate was dead ahead. Dow remembered watching the Chloe come through that same gate upon its arrival, and thinking how tight the fit had appeared. It appeared even tighter now, viewed from the high deck.
The ship rushed forward. Dow took a last glance back to Stone Port. The entire waterfront was a wall of flame, and the warehouses beyond were also well alight. Crowds choked the streets of the town as people fled uphill from the blaze. An enormous column of smoke was streaming south on the wind, engulfing the fortress and even the governor’s high keep as it went.
‘Steady now!’ cried Commander Fidel.
Dow swung his gaze back just in time to see the Chloe’s bow cleave a path directly between the two great gateposts. Unstoppable in all its weight and speed, the battleship filled the gap entire. The gateposts slid by, only slightly taller than the high deck, and with so little space to spare that Dow – at the left railing now – could have slapped a hand against one by merely leaning out.
Then they were through.
Open water met them, the heat and noise that had been pressing at their backs suddenly replaced by the cool darkness of the channel.
‘Bring us left, Commander,’ ordered the captain calmly. ‘We’ll heave to in the Claw and wait for the fire to burn out.’
‘Aye, sir!’
The Chloe came slowly left to tack northwards into the bay. A strange quiet settled across the ship; a silence, Dow felt, that came partly from sheer shock. These were the mighty Ship Kings, lords of the world – yet they had been forced to flee in disorder from the ruin of their fleet. Such an affront could hardly be something that anyone on board had experienced before.
Only, who were the attackers? Who had dared such an outrage? And if they were truly New Islanders, Dow wondered, why had they not cared about the fate of Stone Port, doomed now to burn along with the ships?
The Chloe only sailed on in the darkness.
A figure loomed before Dow. It was Vincente. ‘You’re dismissed,’ he said to the marines. ‘The boy can’t go anywhere now.’
The marines saluted and vanished away forward.
The captain was a mere shadow, but he seemed to study Dow a moment. Then he pointed north across the bow. ‘Look, Dow Amber.’
Dow looked, staring into the black gulf that was the Claw. Far, far off to the north he discerned the same red glow in the sky he’d seen before, only fiercer now. It was reflected against an elongated cloud that hung low over the bay. But no, it wasn’t a cloud. It was smoke – a great pall of smoke lit from beneath by the burning of something vast that lay hidden below the horizon.
Vincente’s voice came hollow in the night. ‘Yonder lies Lonsmouth. If I am not mistaken, the city is aflame.’
Dow was bewildered. Lonsmouth too?
‘And it has been aflame for some time, by the look,’ the captain added. ‘The fires must have been lit earlier there than they were here.’
Dow gazed about wordlessly, from the glow in the north back to the sea wall of Stone Port, beyond which the flames licked ever higher, the roar of destruction muted now by distance but no less terrible. So this was not one attack but two, struck on the same night, even fifty miles apart across the bay.
‘Tell me, Dow Amber,’ asked Vincente, his face a pale blur as he stared out, ‘what is happening here this night? I thought at first that it must be your own New Island folk who laid the mines against our ships. But now I am in doubt. Would any New Islander risk the complete ruin of Stone Port, your finest harbour, to destroy but one of our many fleets? And even if they did, why burn Lonsmouth at the same time? Your capital and greatest city. Does that seem likely to you?’
Dow shook his head in silence.
‘Nor to me. And yet if the sabotage was not committed by New Islanders, from where else could it have come?’
Dow had no idea. He was watching the glow in the north again, remembering Lonsmouth, and all the great docks and tall buildings he had seen along the river as his barge had passed through. So many houses and so many tens of thousands of people, so densely packed together. Now all in flames.
‘There will be great suffering because of this,’ said Vincente. ‘Apart from the dead, many will be left homeless, and without clothing or food. With winter coming, starvation and disease must surely follow.’
The true awfulness of it sank home to Dow. He thought suddenly of his family, and felt an acute relief that they were far away and out of any danger in their little village. But other families weren’t.
‘This is an act of war, upon your people and mine alike,’ intoned the captain. ‘But who is the aggressor?’
There came an abrupt whoosh and roar from Stone Port. A huge belch of flame rose from the town, and rising with it were chunks of burning debris. One piece, the size of a cannon ball perhaps, came flying over the sea wall to plunge sizzling into the bay, not fifty yards from the Chloe.
‘Commander!’ Vincente called. ‘I want at least another mile between us and the port before dropping anchor.’
‘Aye, sir!’
Orders were shouted, and the ship tacked back into the wind.
‘No doubt that was one of the magazines on the Conquest going up,’ Vincente observed to Dow. In the red glow his smile looked savage. ‘A magazine is a special room in which a ship’s gunpowder is stored. The room is proofed against flame, but it cannot withstand a prolonged blaze. I’m afraid that anyone still fighting the fires nearby will have perished in the blast.’
Dow stared in ever mounting horror at the obliteration of Stone Port. It was the obliteration, in fact, of everything. For how could anything be the same after this?
Another whoosh and roar went up. A second fireball, even greater than the first, lifted above the rooftops. Dow shrank back from its heat and glare. The bay all around was lit, the entire channel from Head to Head, the waters glittering silver and fiery orange.
And outlined against the glitter, Dow saw—
‘Captain!’ he cried, pointing. ‘There!’
The glare was already dying, the expanse of the Rip fading
again to darkness. But there was time enough for Vincente to look, and to see.
It was a craft upon the water, caught in the middle of the channel by the sudden light, less than a quarter of a mile from the Chloe. But it was a craft unlike any Dow had ever seen. It was low set, and black, and would have been invisible in the darkness, had not the explosion banished the night. It was much smaller than the Chloe, but larger than any New Island craft Dow knew of – a long, slim, sharp-bowed vessel. It bore no sails nor even a mast, but there was a wheel amidships and a rail about its deck – and crowded at that rail were perhaps a dozen men. They were dressed in clothes as black as their boat, but their faces were naked and white in the dying glow, staring across the water to the battleship.
They were ordinary faces no doubt, belonging to men as mortal as any other, but these were the hidden attackers revealed, the secret saboteurs by chance unmasked, and to Dow the sight of them was utterly alien. What struck him most however was the motion of the strange craft. It was heading ocean-ward through the Rip and moving fast, cutting cleanly across the water and leaving a frothing wake behind – but not only had it no sails, it bore no oars either. Impossibly, the boat seemed to be propelled by nothing at all.
Then darkness fell again, and the thing was gone.
‘Commander, come about!’ roared Vincente. ‘Hard now, and make for the Rip! The enemy is there! Battle stations!’
He dashed off, leaving Dow alone at the rail, peering vainly into the blackness. Moments later the Chloe heeled and came sweeping around until its bow was pointed south and the wind was blowing from dead astern. The sails filled and the ship leapt forward, the crew working with a feverish new intensity; from below came a tremendous thump and rumble that could only be the guns running out. Dow stood forgotten amid it all, not knowing whether he was excited, or appalled, or both, as the Chloe threw off its lesser guise and revealed its truer self; a weapon, a bringer of death, a tool for the swift execution of the Ship Kings’ vengeance.
The Coming of the Whirlpool Page 22
