The War of the Four Isles

by Andrew McGahan

  Dow frowned a moment, then called back, ‘I thought pilots never left the Labyrinth Corridors. Or do hurricanes blow there too?’

  Emmet Bone laughed into the wind. ‘Nay, hurricanes do not come to the Corridors – but I have not spent my whole life imprisoned in those waters. In earlier days I sailed freely. Indeed, I was one of those, along with the War Master, who first defied the Ship Kings and went exploring. We were friends, Damien Tender and I, all those years ago. And we sailed upon many seas in our tiny boat, before we ever thought to investigate the Labyrinth.’

  Ah. So the pilot had sailed with the War Master, and had been friends with him! And yet now Damien Tender had dispatched his old comrade on this perilous voyage, during which Emmet Bone could well be forced to take his own life. What did that say about the War Master, and the kind of man he was?

  ‘Ho there,’ Emmet Bone called suddenly to the officers on the high deck. ‘Above, off the right bow!’

  Dow gaped into the empty sky – there was nothing there. Except . . . yes, a distortion seemed to blur the air, like the glass of a badly formed window. Something wide and blunt was grasping down from the heights.

  A tornado! One of the funnels had formed even this far away from the eye, as silent and unseen amid the gale as a serpent. It touched down in the ocean no more than a mile away, and instantly the sea was lashed into a frenzy, an explosive cloud of spray that then went whirling up in a long, sinuous tube.

  ‘This is no place to linger!’ the pilot yelled to the high deck. ‘Bear left if you value your skin, Captain!’ And yet he was almost laughing too, as he added in aside to Dow, ‘Well, what did I expect, insulting the storm about its size? The sea may be a fool, lad – but it’s an attentive fool, and won’t brook insults from the likes of us.’ And laughing so, he strode off across the canting timbers.

  The Snout turned harder away to the south, its single span of canvas stretched to ripping, and soon the tornado was slipping away behind. Likewise the great thunderhead retreated slowly over the stern, the pinnacles of cloud at first white and brilliant in the growing daylight, but then becoming vague in the mist of the hurricane spray, until at last they were lost altogether.

  It was not the end of their travails in the storm, but it marked the point from which the wind and waves began to slacken. Nevertheless it was another day and night before the crew could rest easily. The gale turned to blow from the north, pushing the Snout ever south of its westwards course, and the seas continued to roll hugely even when the wind at last fluttered and failed.

  In full, it took four days to put all effect of the hurricane behind them, and to be sailing once more upon calm seas. By then the officers and crew had taken stock of themselves and the ship, and – a few minor injuries and sprung boards aside – could be well satisfied with the result. They had faced the first real test of the Outer Ocean and had emerged from it with a vessel still seaworthy, and with no loss of life.

  Fortune, it seemed, was with them.

  *

  A week passed without incident, the slow rhythm of voyaging re-establishing itself; watch following watch, night following day, mile after mile slipping steadily away beneath the bow towards an unchanging, unbroken horizon. They were far out upon the Blue Wilderness now, but the sea seemed content to grant the Snout safe passage. No more storms rose, no more gales blew.

  Indeed, the crew’s only concern was that now there was rather too little wind, and that it blew the wrong way. The West Band winds, after the hurricane’s upheaval, had not yet reasserted themselves, and instead the breezes remained from the north. That was no fatal hindrance to a ship on a westward course, but as the days passed these breezes grew ever more wayward and fitful, and the Snout’s erstwhile sound progress slowed accordingly.

  It also grew very hot. The season was late autumn now, but as ever in the tropics that meant little, for they were far to the south, pushed there by the hurricane and held there by the north winds. Here summer was eternal, and conditions now became sweltering, as bad as and then worse than even the heat of the Southern Reach.

  As usual, Dow suffered it more than most on board. Once again his cabin became an airless prison in which he could not sleep, and on the main deck, even when an intermittent wind filled the sails, the ship still seemed trapped in its own cocoon of motionless air. And there was a smell. In part it was merely the sweat of five hundred unwashed human bodies – but there was another odour over that, a stagnant effluvium that came from the ocean itself, like rotting seaweed.

  After ten days of such torpid voyaging, their progress ever slower, a dawn came that was windless, and the Snout found itself becalmed. The crew deployed the ship’s full array of sails, but throughout the day the canvas stirred only occasionally before flapping empty again. The heat was insufferable, and even night brought little relief, although at least the burning sun was gone.

  On watch late into the evening, Dow haunted the high deck with nothing to do but stare out into the night. The sea was a plain of black tar and the sails hung like rags, the ship mired in place. From the foredeck came the snores of the off-duty crew, sprawled in the relative coolness of the dark, and from aloft the idle mutter of the on-watch sailors, sounding as drowsy as Dow himself felt.

  He leaned on the rail, gazing south. It was a moonless night, and despite the heat the sky was clear of haze, so the stars were a bright mantle across the ocean. Dow had sailed enough by now to know that on such still nights at sea, sometimes the stars were the only things that seemed to move. He stared up at them now, wondering despite his weariness at their dusty glitter, and feeling almost palpably the pace of their age-old journey across the sky.

  A slow pleasure came to him. Even on the dullest, dreariest night at sea, he marvelled, there was still this. It was an experience outside any to be had on land, the way that time could slow to match the almost imperceptible rocking of a ship, and then slow further still, to mirror that great wheel turning in the sky. It was exalting, in a quiet way. Dow could feel his mind dissolving into the sea and the night, and that an hour was passing merely between the in-drawing and release of his own breath . . .

  ‘How can you stand it?’ an impatient voice demanded, interrupting him.

  He turned in surprise. Cassandra had joined him at the rail. Her arms were folded over her chest, and she was frowning at the southern horizon as if she disapproved of the sight.

  Dow had to blink a moment to shake off the spell of the stars. ‘Stand what?’

  ‘Just staring out to sea like that. You haven’t moved for half an hour!’

  ‘We’re on a ship,’ he countered in confusion. ‘Where else is there to look?’

  ‘Nowhere, I suppose,’ the laundress conceded testily. ‘But you were lost in it.’

  He didn’t know what to say, or even what he felt, to be suddenly addressed by her after their last encounter. He noted that her hair, usually so carefully arranged, was dishevelled and hanging down, and that her freckled face shone with sweat in the lamplight. She was feeling the heat, it seemed; it certainly appeared to have put her in an ill temper. Well, he was irritated too. She was the one who’d told him to stay away, and now here she was!

  ‘You’ve been watching me for a whole half hour?’ he asked at last.

  ‘It felt like it,’ she said. ‘Here we are in this terrible place, and yet you’re gazing out there in a daydream as if everything is right with the world; as if you’re happy.’

  Dow looked again to the southern horizon, a dim line beneath the wheeling stars. Happy? Yes – he supposed he had been. But there was no way he could explain it, about the sea and the night and the ship. At least, not to Cassandra. She was no mariner. Nell . . . well, Nell was another matter. But Nell would never have to ask for an explanation. She already knew. Which was why she had sacrificed so much – her family, her very skin – to go to sea.

  He said, ‘That bothers you?’

  ‘I just don’t understand sometimes how you can be so oblivious! We’re no
t out here to look at the stars, after all. We’re in the middle of a war.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Do you?’ Cassandra peered at him intently. ‘Do you really? I wonder sometimes if you even know what war actually is. I don’t mean battle, I mean how it changes people, the things they have to do.’

  ‘What people?’ Dow asked in bemusement, for it sounded as if she was warning him.

  But she only shook her head and looked away again; he was missing her point.

  So he was. He had no idea what she was talking about. All he knew was that she had changed since their visit to the Great Atoll. He said, ‘Back in Black Sands – why didn’t you want to come with us?’

  Cassandra said nothing.

  ‘Do you think we’ll fail? Is that it?’

  ‘Fail?’ She was insulted. ‘No. And even if I did, that wouldn’t have stopped me from coming. I’m no coward!’ But with that, her impatience seemed to soften a little, and her voice lowered. ‘Also, I don’t abandon my friends. And we are . . . friends.’

  ‘Then why?’

  She took a deep and reluctant breath. ‘Have you ever considered, Dow, that I may not want to meet this Nell of yours? That I may not want to be there when you two are reunited at last . . .’

  Ah. Dow flushed, feeling an idiot. He looked away from her, out to the horizon once more. So that was it. And here he’d been blundering on blindly all the while, without even thinking . . .

  Gently, he said, ‘But you came anyway. What made you change your mind?’

  Her tone was distant. ‘The War Master. He . . . reminded me where my loyalties lie.’

  Dow turned again. ‘He didn’t force you into it, did he? Or threaten you?’

  ‘No! No, he did nothing like that at all. He’d never hurt me. We only talked.’

  ‘I’ve seen how he can talk!’

  ‘You don’t understand him. It’s not easy, doing what he has to do. He has to maintain so much belief in our cause, for all our sakes.’

  Dow subsided. ‘Well, if you’re sure.’ But in truth he’d been shocked by the protectiveness in him at the thought of her being coerced.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she promised. ‘And I’m sorry I was short with you the other day on the stairs.’

  Dow shrugged away the need for an apology. ‘What were you doing down there anyway – you and your friend, the colonel?’

  She gave a shudder. ‘He’s no friend of mine. He’s like ice, that man. But we were only doing what I said we were doing.’ Her expression grew arch. ‘Why – what did you think was going on?’

  ‘Nothing! Of course. It’s just . . . Colonel Oliver. Do you know much about him?’

  ‘Only that he’s highly regarded – he’s on the War Master’s personal staff, and before that he was leading a regiment on New Island.’

  ‘New Island!’ This was news to Dow. ‘Do you know where he was exactly? Has he been to the highlands? He might have seen my family . . .’

  ‘Your family?’ Cassandra appeared momentarily at a loss. ‘No. I mean . . . I don’t think so. And you mustn’t pester him about it. He takes security very seriously. He’d only refuse to talk to you.’

  ‘I can imagine that,’ Dow said with regret. ‘He doesn’t seem to like me much.’

  ‘He doesn’t like anyone much. If you want my advice, stay away from him.’

  ‘And from you?’

  She smiled at him sadly. ‘Just give me a little space for a while. We’ll be fine.’

  He nodded. ‘Agreed.’

  For a silent period they simply leaned against the rail, the stars wheeling. Dow could still sense a tension in her – far from their easy companionship of the past – but there was a measure of peace in the silence too. And that felt good.

  He studied the sky. Eventually, he cleared his throat and nodded to the horizon. ‘We must have strayed very far to the south. I’ve never seen that constellation before – have you?’

  She considered him a moment, as if not quite ready yet to put other matters aside, but then followed his gaze. ‘No. I’ve never seen it either.’

  The stars in question were grouped in a knot, and were just peeping above the horizon, where the blackness of the ocean met the misted glow that was the sky. There were five bright pinpoints in the constellation, one slightly dimmer than the others, in a shape that was suggestive of . . . something.

  At that same moment there sounded a heavy tread on the stairs, and Captain Fletcher emerged from the Great Cabin below, yawning hugely.

  ‘Captain Fletcher,’ called the laundress. ‘Do you know those stars rising there?’

  He glanced at Dow and Cassandra in some surprise, then joined them at the rail and peered a moment at the five stars. ‘Aye, I know them. That’s the Dagger. Only once have I beheld it before, and loath I am to behold it now. It is a constellation that belongs more truly to the lower half of the globe. The fact that we see it now bodes ill. We are much too far south, and too close to the Doldrums, where the Dagger shines bright.’

  The Dagger – yes, Dow could see it; the long axis of the stars would form the blade and the hilt, and the shorter axis the guard. But it was the mention of the southern half of the globe that caught his attention. To think, beyond the Doldrums and further still to the south, the Dagger would lie not on the horizon but high in the sky, directly overhead even. And what would it look down upon? Empty ocean? Or unexplored lands?

  ‘Indeed,’ Captain Fletcher continued, ‘it is a warning. Ancient sea lore has it that all ships should turn north immediately if ever the Dagger is sighted, for it means that the Barrier is perilously close.’

  ‘How close exactly?’ enquired Cassandra, a note of concern in her voice.

  The captain shrugged. ‘The Doldrums have no firm boundary, of course. But this much is certain: you will see the Dagger rise no higher on this voyage. Further south I will not allow us to go.’

  ‘Good,’ replied the laundress. ‘The War Master has not launched us out across the world only to wander into the wrong half of it.’

  ‘Who knows it better than I?’ responded the captain coldly, before walking away.

  *

  For several days more the wind scarcely blew, and when it did, it was always towards the south. The Snout could tack west against such breezes, but despite the captain’s assertions they could make no progress north.

  Every evening the Dagger stared at them balefully from just above the horizon, testifying to their failure. If anything, it rose slightly higher, night by night, and the old hands began to whisper that a persistent current was running against them, dragging them southwards no matter how they steered.

  It grew hotter still, a roasting heat, parched of all moisture, and the ocean assumed a sluggish aspect. The water itself was clouded and green, and the smell of it was more like decaying meat now than rotting seaweed.

  Tensions rose among the crew. Were they in fact, the whisperers asked, already caught in the outer Doldrums? Would the creeping current suck them in entirely, and did only madness and slow starvation await them now? More reasonable voices said no, that this was just an ordinary becalming that would soon pass . . . but as day mounted upon day and no wind stirred, the doubts grew.

  Then one night came a cry from the crow’s nest, waking Dow and the rest of the ship; an awful shout, edged with panic. ‘Miasma!’ the lookout was calling. ‘There, to the south, a Miasma comes!’

  Dow had never heard before such an unearthly pronouncement. He stumbled up to the high deck to find that most of the other officers had beaten him there, and were crowded at the southward rail, staring.

  Dow looked too, and felt a thrill of dread, little though he understood what he saw. Far out across the sullen sea, a mist moved upon the water.

  But it was no common mist, which would in any case have been invisible in the night. No, this was a mist that glowed with its own phosphorescence, a pale luminescent green, like that of a ship’s wake – and yet different somehow, its sheen unwholesome
and pallid, and infinitely more sinister. For the mist did not merely lie across the water in a sheet; instead it formed a narrow band, a long, twisting, serpentine shape that came winding out of the south, like a many-jointed finger grasping its way across the sea.

  ‘What is it?’ Dow whispered, not daring to speak louder, for a strange silence had fallen over the ocean, and not a breath stirred the air.

  It was the pilot, Emmet Bone, who answered him. ‘Do you not know a Miasma when you see one? Have you heard no tales?’

  Dow had indeed heard tales – but had not made the connection. He said, ‘I thought they were a thing only of the deepest Doldrums.’

  The pilot was unrelenting. ‘What do you think lies beyond that horizon, fool? We are too near. But in any case Miasmas are not confined only to the deep Doldrums – at times they can stray to the northern fringes, even as you see this one now.’

  Dow stared in disturbed fascination at the finger of glowing green. It was miles off across the black water, but even from this distance it could be seen that the tip was moving, extending in a slow rolling motion, but focussed still, as if the finger was searching and groping. How it held in such a narrow band, or what drove it forward, Dow did not know – and knew that no one else did either, for even the ancient tales did not say.

  ‘We must flee north before it approaches us, Captain,’ said the pilot.

  ‘Aye,’ echoed Fletcher, but he gave no order, only stared across the water in a seeming daze, as if mesmerised by the mist already.

  For that was the Miasma’s weapon. It bewitched men’s minds. Those that breathed its green airs became confused and witless, some laughing madly, so uncontrollably indeed that it was known for their ribs to be cracked; others dancing about their ships, singing and raving, until in their heedlessness they leapt over the side and sank; others again sitting silent and stunned, lost in inner visions of terror. But none were spared, and the affliction – so the tales went – lasted for days after the mist itself had passed; so that even when a crew recovered themselves they might find half their number missing from the ship, and the ship itself far off course, if not sinking from damage done to it by its maddened occupants. Few were the vessels that had encountered one of the evil clouds and returned to tell of it.