The War of the Four Isles

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘The whales,’ interjected Nicky, in a tone that could not be ignored. ‘Look!’

  Dow looked. Jake too.

  All the whales had vanished.

  Where the pod had been, only a few curls of foam remained, and the Snout was motoring alone over an otherwise empty sea.

  ‘By all the lightless depths,’ hissed the harpooner. ‘We’re too late.’

  ‘Too late?’ said Dow.

  Jake was staring wide-eyed down into the sea. ‘Fool. The hunter. It rises!’

  The words seemed to freeze the world around Dow, so that he had time to take in everything for one last instant before the cataclysm. The sea, so empty and innocent, and yet so pregnant with dreadful promise; the Snout, perhaps two hundred yards ahead, its sails fully spread and just now flushed with the first pink glow of day; the sun in the east, splitting the horizon in the very instant of dawn . . .

  Then, as if to greet the sun, the devourer of whales rose ravening to the surface.

  It was announced by a blackening of the waves between the Sponge and the Snout, a cloud blotting out the dawn; but the sky was clear, the cloud was ascending from underneath. Then there came an awful sound; a cry similar to whale song, only a thousand times louder and more piercing, lifting from the sea. The darkened circle flattened in response, the water trembling and dancing like the surface of a taut drum. Then something huge and dark leapt from it, breaching in the sunrise – but it was no monster, it was only a whale, a young bull, perhaps the very one the Sponge had just done battle with.

  It was contorted as it leapt, as if the creature was in pain – as if, indeed, it leapt to escape the blaring shriek from the depths, which must have been agonisingly loud underwater to a whale’s sensitive ears. Perhaps – Dow had a single moment to think – the sound was meant to do exactly that: to stun and disable prey. And even as the thought came, and the whale fell back into the water, the sea around the stricken beast bulged hugely and broke apart, and two great golden caves seemed to rise around the whale, and then join together, swallowing it.

  A vast shape reared briefly. Amid the foam and spray, Dow caught only confused impressions of it; immense jaws and an elongated head, followed by a long, thick serpentine body, a rolling hump, rippling as though fashioned from armour plate. Then the leviathan was gone, leaving only tossing waves behind. But for Dow, that one glimpse was enough to confound forever the scale of living things.

  A silent heartbeat followed, as if the world was too dumbfounded for noise. The Sponge, untended by its crew, ran on blindly, riding up and over the monster’s wake – but beyond was only empty ocean. Then Jake was pointing: ‘The ship!’

  The appalling undersea cry came again, but now it was the water around the Snout that seethed white and danced. The ship itself seemed to stagger abruptly, as if it had run hard against an unseen reef. High in the rigging, a spar broke free and fell, dragging sails and shrouds with it. Human cries sounded. The Snout heeled sharply, righted, and then lurched onward.

  Off to one side of the ship, perhaps to inspect the result of its attack, the monster now rose amid a wash of foam. At first only its golden back was visible, for it swam flat just beneath the surface, as a snake glides in water. But then it gathered itself, and with ponderous gravity lifted its foremost part high – shedding cascades of ocean as it came – until its head reared as tall as the Snout’s mainmast.

  It did so with a calmness and invulnerability more terrible than any fury, and when upright, it merely gazed down at the ship as though awaiting reply.

  Of all Dow’s emotions in that moment, surprise was the greatest, for in his dreams of the abyss he had imagined its inhabitants to be dire monstrosities, pale, and dripping slime and mud as they coiled blindly in the dark. But the leviathan before him shone golden in the full light of the sun, its armour dazzling and unsullied. Nor was it blind; it had great wise eyes that stared unblinkingly down at the ship, its expression almost admonishing, as if to upbraid the Snout for so rudely interfering with its meal.

  It was the most beautiful thing Dow had ever seen. He could have stared at it wonderingly, all danger and fear forgotten, for an age.

  The harpooner broke the spell. ‘We can’t just sit here. It’ll sink the damn ship!’

  Dow shook off his wonder. Jake was right. Beautiful or not, the monster spelled their doom.

  ‘How can we hope to stop it?’ demanded Nicky, extending his harpoon to demonstrate how useless it would be against such a titan.

  Inspiration struck. ‘We can use our mines,’ said Dow, pointing at the barrel-shapes lashed to the bow. ‘They might not be enough to kill it, but they should at least give it second thoughts about us.’

  Jake Tooth nodded fiercely. ‘Quick then. While it’s still on the surface.’

  ‘Arm the fuses,’ Dow commanded. ‘Attack speed! May, steer straight for it!’

  But even as the boat leapt forward in response, an explosive roar came from the Snout – it was a broadside from the ship’s guns, fired point-blank. A blurred suggestion of shot swarmed about the monster’s golden flanks. But if the intent of the broadside had been to drive the great serpent off, it failed. The monster gave no sign that it was hit or injured, it only stared a few moments more, then, with majestic dignity, lowered its full length into the water – and ran again at the ship.

  ‘Fools!’ cursed Jake.

  They watched helplessly. A great bow wave swept towards the Snout, and then the ship staggered awfully for a second time, struck from beneath, more spars and sails tumbling down from the shock.

  Dow clenched a useless fist. The Snout could surely not survive any more such collisions – and the monster had not yet even deployed its jaws against the ship, or sought to squeeze it in its coils. They were lost if the attack could not be interrupted.

  ‘There,’ cried Jake.

  Beyond the Snout the sea bulged up again, and the shining leviathan heaved itself into the air once more, water thundering from its sides. It turned as it rose to stare back at its victim – but quite without hostility. Indeed, Dow sensed that for all its fearsomeness the beast was merely curious as yet, trying not so much to harm the ship as to ascertain what it might be.

  But it made no difference.

  ‘Ram it dead on!’ he called to May, and then to Nicky, ‘Set the fuses for impact!’ Nicky stared at him in amazement, but Dow added, ‘Do it! That thing won’t give us the chance to detach and pull back. Everyone, stand by to abandon ship on my command!’

  They raced towards the towering monster; at sea level, the great girth of its armoured body was as wide as a cliff, surf breaking against it. The Sponge reached full ramming speed. Dow shouldered May aside and took the wheel. ‘Now,’ he cried to the others. ‘Jump.’ And when they hesitated, ‘Jump damn you!’ And finally, one by one, they leapt, flying.

  Dow himself held on only for a few moments longer, spinning the wheel one last half turn to centre the bow on its target. Then, at the final possible instant, he leapt, hitting the water and diving deep, as deep as he could go, before the mines—

  WHUMP.

  Golden-red light lit the undersea around him, and the water itself seemed to squeeze his body painfully, throwing him upwards. He surfaced amid the wrack and flaming ruin of his boat, and craned his neck eagerly to see what damage they had done.

  But the monster was a thing born to the unimaginable pressures of the abyss, its hide enriched to diamond hardness. His heart sinking as he spat salt water, Dow saw that the serpent’s golden scales showed no more evidence of the explosion than a few scuffs of soot. Nevertheless, the creature did now turn away from the ship. In stately indifference, sending waves crashing over Dow and plunging him underwater again, it began to submerge once more. When Dow at last regained the surface, it was gone.

  Cries drifted over the ocean; from the ship, and from the water, where Dow’s crew were spread out along the Sponge’s wake. A fragment of decking – the boat’s only wooden element – floated by and he clambere
d on top of it, gasping for breath. Had they stung the thing at least? Maybe it would decide they weren’t worth the trouble, and return to its pursuit of the whales . . .

  He was aware abruptly that silence had fallen over the sea. Glancing at the ship, only a furlong off, he saw that hundreds of faces were lined at the rails – and every face was staring at him, or at something behind him.

  The hair rising on his soaked skin, Dow turned on his makeshift raft. An island was building itself there before him, but gently, so that it created barely a ripple as the water ran off it; a huge golden mound ascending: the monster’s head, side on. Terrible jaws emerged, teeth visible through lips not quite closed, each longer than Dow was tall. Then a great eye appeared, jet and red-rimmed, as large as a boulder, and glinting as if made indeed of polished black marble; an orb that could withstand ten miles of pressure and not implode upon itself.

  Dow dared not breathe. The swirling waves wafted his raft a yard closer to the thing, and the great eye rolled slightly to keep him in view.

  What did such a creature need eyes for anyway? What was there to see in the abyss? Did pale polyps and strange translucent fish glow with their own illumination down there? But even if that was so, surely the leviathan should be dazzled by full daylight? And yet shadows moved within the black orb, an outsized iris focussing intently.

  It saw him, Dow knew.

  It was like a weight bearing down, the regard of that immense gaze. It was aware of him, mere mote of living tissue though he was against the monster’s enormity; the great eye staring deep into his own. What vast thoughts moved behind such scrutiny? What did it make of him? Did it see a fellow being at all, or no more than an insect to be crushed? In his terror and wonder, Dow found himself remembering the Ice Albatross, and the way the bird’s inhuman eye had likewise studied him. Only this was an intellect even older, and even more unfathomable.

  ‘Go away,’ Dow whispered.

  The black orb shifted again, seemed to Dow to look beyond him to the ship; then something in the monster’s demeanour changed. With a slow summoning of strength it rose up once more, rearing above Dow like the end of all worlds. For a time it gazed down inscrutably from on high. Did it mean – Dow wondered, too awestruck to even think of escape – to crash down upon his raft and kill him? Did it intend to finish off the ship? Or was there something else it was trying to convey?

  He would never know. A flash of movement drew his glance; it was the second attack boat – he had forgotten the Trivet’s very existence! – careering at full steam for the serpent’s flank. Lieutenant Franklin was alone at the wheel, and at the last – or was it too late? – he dived for the water, just as his boat drove home.

  Dow threw up an arm to shield his eyes.

  WHUMP.

  A surge of water lifted his raft. Even as he capsized, Dow just had time to note despairingly that this second explosion was billowing away in smoke, having done no more harm to the monster’s hide than the first. And yet from high above a roar of complaint battered the air, an expression not of pain, but of gigantic impatience and exasperation.

  Then he was underwater with the raft pressing down on him. By the time he climbed atop it once more, spluttering, the sea was empty.

  Nor – in the hour that it took to launch the other boats, locate the scattered crews, and get them back to the Snout – did the beast return.

  It had withdrawn, it seemed, in monstrous pique, to the pleasures of its abyss.

  *

  Not that all danger had passed.

  Dow came back on board to discover uproar and panic on the Snout; below decks, water was pouring in through a dozen great cracks in the hull, where the monster’s armour had scored the planking. If not for the mechanical pumps, the ship may well have sunk already. Man-powered pumps could never have kept pace with such a flood; as it was, even the oil-driven devices, labouring heroically, could only just match the incoming flow.

  The ship, listing perilously, its rigging a hopeless tangle, hung on the precipice. The slightest nudge would have sent it over the edge; a passing squall, a sudden swell. But in belated blessing the weather stayed calm, and inch by inch the crew caulked and sealed the gaping cracks; and slowly, hour by hour, through all that day and night, the Snout crippled and unmoving upon the sea, the flooding slowed and the pumps prevailed.

  With that crisis abating, the crew turned to the rigging. By the end of the second day the fallen spars had been rehung, and by the following dawn the masts were re-rigged and ready to bear sail. Relief began to spread among the sweating men and women; the ship was not going to sink, and it was not helpless before the wind. In time, if they were granted it, the Snout could even be made whole. They had been extraordinarily lucky, in truth, to pay so mild a price for the encounter.

  Save, that was, for one irrecoverable cost. Eleven of the crew were dead. Ten had been killed on the ship as the beast rammed it to and fro – and one other had died out upon the sea: Lieutenant Franklin, who had not, after all, survived the explosion of the Trivet.

  It was this last fatality that affected Dow the most. Did he owe Franklin a debt? Had the lieutenant saved his life? Or had the great serpent meant Dow no harm anyway? Worse, maybe he was to blame for Franklin’s death. If the monster had not risen one final time to commune with Dow, then Franklin might still be alive . . .

  ‘No,’ Cassandra insisted, when Dow confided something of this to her. ‘That’s not fair. You didn’t summon the beast. No one did.’

  It was the second night after the attack, and Dow was taking his first proper rest in all that time, a moment to bolt down some food and a few swallows of rum, as overhead the crew were raising the spars. Cassandra had joined him there, even though she had plenty to do herself, tending the wounded down in sick bay.

  She went on. ‘And that’s not what the crew are saying below decks, either.’

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘They’re saying that when the captain didn’t know what to do, it was you and Jake who took things in hand; but that in the final extremity, with the ship at the monster’s mercy, it was you alone who drove it off. They all saw the way it looked at you. It was as if you merely spoke to it, and it went away.’

  Dow shook his head wearily. He had spoken to it, but he knew the beast had not heard him. ‘It was the mines. They didn’t hurt it, but I think they annoyed it. Franklin is the one to thank.’

  But Cassandra shook her head in return. ‘No one is forgetting him, but you don’t understand how the crew sees you – how much they admire you. More than ever, after this. They always did admire you anyway, they’ve heard all the stories – but now they’re witnessing it for themselves. Yes, they’re scared, but they’re proud, too; to be part of the legend. What stories they’ll be able to tell their grandchildren! A great sea serpent rises, Dow Amber fearlessly goes out to meet it – and they saw it all.’

  ‘I wasn’t out there fearlessly,’ Dow retorted uncomfortably. ‘I was only out there because I was tricked into going by Jake and Agatha.’

  ‘Tricked?’

  ‘You saw how it happened.’

  ‘It was odd, the way Agatha insisted you go. But why would they trick you?’

  And so Dow told her about his suspicions regarding Jake, and the encounter in the whale’s mouth – even though it sounded foolish now.

  Cassandra was shocked. ‘You really think he did it deliberately? Pushed you?’

  ‘I don’t know. It could have been just an accident. But have you ever seen him stumble?’

  She shook her head thoughtfully. ‘I’ll admit Jake and Agatha are closed books to me; I’ve never felt welcomed on board by them, but I took that merely for me being an outsider and not a sailor. I would never have suspected them of any treacherous designs. But I shall watch them more closely from now on . . .’

  *

  In all, it was nearly four days before the Snout was fit to get underway again. But even as the work progressed, Dow become increasingly anxious
that Captain Fletcher would not be satisfied with the repairs – that the captain might decide the ship was no longer seaworthy enough, rebuilt or not, to complete the voyage to Banishment.

  They were barely halfway across the Wilderness, after all; who knew what rigours lay ahead for a patched-together vessel? The temptation for the captain – never an advocate of the voyage anyway – to turn for home would be great.

  Expecting that at some point a meeting of the officers would be called to discuss the matter, Dow carefully prepared his arguments as to why they should push on regardless, why they must see things through.

  But no such meeting took place.

  The closest to it seemingly was a debate Dow happened across on the high deck on the third afternoon after the attack. It was between the captain, Colonel Oliver and Cassandra. The three were bent with heads together, considering the eastern and western horizons, and pointing purposefully to each. Cassandra appeared to be pressing passionately for one cause, while Colonel Oliver spoke in cold disagreement against her, Captain Fletcher looking on unhappily in between.

  But Dow was not close enough to hear anything, and when they noticed him, they fell silent and went below. All he knew of their final decision was that there were two apparent results of it.

  The first was that Cassandra, who had been so energised in the days since the disaster, was that night plunged into an uncommunicative gloom.

  The second was that the next morning, when the Snout carefully raised sail and set off in a mild wind upon a gentle sea, the course ordered by the captain was west, onwards to Banishment.

  8. THE BANKS

  Seven weeks later, as winter faded towards spring, the Snout sighted land for the first time in close to four months, and knew that its long crossing of the Outer Ocean was all but complete.

  In truth, it was barely land at all, merely an exposed shoal with a few shreds of greenery clinging to its highest rocky shelf – but it was marked on the maps. Wayward Reef. For a ship voyaging west, it lay remote and lonely on the far edge of the Wilderness, but in fact it stood only a fortnight’s sail south-east of Great Island, and only a week from the southern limit of the Banks.