The War of the Four Isles

by Andrew McGahan

  They seemed so dry, so inviting, so safe. Ah, but it was a treacherous innocence . . .

  He looked away for a moment, and movement caught his eye on the main deck. It was Cassandra. The laundress was prowling about anxiously as if searching for someone; indeed, she was searching for him, for as soon as she sighted Dow there on the foredeck, she gave a nod of relief, and came up.

  ‘Thank the deeps,’ she said, ‘you’re still on board. I was worried.’

  ‘Why? Where else would I be?’

  ‘I thought you might have done something reckless.’ And when he only stared blankly, she added, ‘You know . . . with her so close.’

  Dow thought it again as he had many times before: Cassandra was no fool.

  But he shook his head. ‘Not close enough – even I know that.’ And yet his eyes were on the horizon once more, searching across the sand.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dow. I truly am.’ She was silent a moment, solemn, but Dow could sense a suppressed urgency in her too, barely kept in check. And yet when she spoke again, her tone was gentle. ‘You know, you’ve never really described her to me, your Nell. All you’ve ever said is that she has scars on her face.’

  Scars, yes – Dow thought – but they were the least of it. And yet, when he tried to picture Nell’s face, he couldn’t seem to get it right. He could summon only an impression of sharpness . . . so different, he noted with a sideways glance, from Cassandra’s rounder features. He shrugged. ‘There’s no need to worry – you’ll never meet her now.’

  Something like pain swam in the laundress’s eyes, but the urgency remained. ‘The cruelty of it is,’ she said, ‘we’d done the hard part, getting so near to Banishment. The rescue itself would have been almost easy in comparison. By all our reports, Banishment is guarded only from the Millpond side. On the Banks side, a rescue party could merely stroll up the beach. Colonel Oliver even has some rough maps. It all would have worked.’

  Dow clenched a fist. ‘It still could work, if the captain would only wait a day more, two at the most, when the water returns.’

  ‘He won’t, Dow. And no one will stand with you against him, not on that score. You mustn’t hope for it. Not even your friend Johannes, nor any of the crew, for all that they esteem you. This ship very nearly died yesterday, and may die yet. If a chance comes to flee from here, no one will hesitate.’

  He heard the truth of this, but even so, shook his head. ‘I can’t just let go of it like that.’ Which was the deeper truth. ‘If I can’t get to Banishment, if I can’t get to Nell, then what am I supposed to do? What’s my place in this war? What use am I if . . .’ – if I’m not with her? Our fortunes are combined. I’ve always known it. No one else will do. Not you, Cassandra. I’m sorry, but not you.

  He didn’t say the final part, of course, but Cassandra bent her head as if she had heard every word. Yet when she raised it again, her gaze was determined. ‘But you must let it go, Dow. Let her go. If there was any chance of you finding her, then I would say hold on to your hope. But there isn’t. I wasn’t to tell you this, I was sworn to secrecy, but the truth is, we don’t think your Nell is even—’

  She faltered at the brink, but Dow felt his heart skip. ‘You don’t think she’s what?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t think she’s at Banishment?’ And when Cassandra only stared at him in distress, the full horror came. ‘You don’t think she’s still alive?’

  ‘I . . . we aren’t sure.’

  Without even realising it, Dow had gripped Cassandra by her upper arms and was shaking her. ‘What do you know? Tell me!’

  ‘I will, but let me go!’ she objected, breaking free. She rubbed an arm a moment, gathering herself, then looked at him squarely. ‘My superiors weren’t completely honest when you met them in Black Sands: they’d already received news about the capture of the Heretics long before we arrived at the Atoll. They’d even received a report smuggled out of Banishment itself. Remember, we have spies everywhere, even in the Kingdoms. And that report made particular mention of Nell.’

  Dow frowned ominously. He remembered that Constance Reed had made a passing reference to earlier reports – but the Mistress Superior had said nothing whatever about Nell. ‘And?’

  ‘She was shot during her capture – you already knew that – and badly injured. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst came after they took her to Banishment. It seems she was singled out for especially harsh treatment.’

  ‘But I thought—’

  ‘I know. Prisoners on Banishment are not normally treated cruelly, exile is considered punishment enough. But she was the figurehead of the whole Heretic faction. And there are powerful folk among the Ship Kings who have special reason to wish her ill. You’ve spoken of them yourself. This Diego of the Diamond and his family . . .’

  Dow had hold of Cassandra’s arms again. ‘What did they do to her? Torture her?’

  She swallowed. ‘The report spoke of a special cell saved just for her, a terrible place dug into the rocks by the shore on the southern side of the isle. It’s below sea level, so that water leaks through the walls, rising and falling with the tides, over and over. It doesn’t flood completely, apparently, there is always a small pocket of air in which a prisoner may breathe if they can keep swimming to reach it. But few last long; they are quickly driven to madness and exhaustion by the ordeal. And anyway, Nell was already injured before she was put in there.’

  Dow felt as if a roaring wind was in his head. ‘She died there? Your report states this for a fact? One of your spies saw her body?’

  Cassandra winced, so tight was Dow’s grip. ‘No. No one saw her body. But she couldn’t still be alive, Dow – not after all these months. You must accept it.’ Tears brimmed in her eyes. ‘I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to take away your hope. But you had to know.’

  Dow let her go at last. There were implications here that at another time he might have pursued – for why would they have sent him on this voyage to Banishment if they thought Nell was already dead? It made no sense. But all he said, furious, was, ‘I don’t care what you and your mistresses think. It means nothing, if no one has seen her body.’

  ‘Dow, you can’t delude yourself.’

  But he had turned from her now, gazing north again over the sand. A cold gale had blown through him, demolishing all the reasoning and logic that had prevented him taking action before this. All he could think of now was a dark cell, with freezing water rising inch by inch, and a slight figure, wretched and ill, struggling to keep her head above the surface, gasping, dying. And he could be there – to pull her from the water – by tomorrow, if he dared . . .

  ‘Dow!’

  He glanced almost indifferently at Cassandra. She had been speaking, but he hadn’t heard a word, his mind already far away over the sand.

  ‘Promise me you understand, Dow! Hate me if you want, but promise me you won’t do anything stupid – or I swear I’ll tell the captain, and have him lock you in the brig until we leave!’

  And amid his new resolve, Dow had sense enough to know that she might do exactly that. He forced himself to look at her fully. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Not while the tide is out, anyway. You don’t have to worry until the water comes back.’

  Doubt remained in her eyes. ‘Come back to the Great Cabin with me then.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll stay out here, if you don’t mind.’ His kept his tone bitter and cool – he could not let it seem that he was giving in too easily. ‘I know you’re trying help, but just go away, please. You don’t have to watch over me like a child.’

  It was enough apparently. She said, ‘I’ll wait up for a while, if you change your mind.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She hesitated, then added, ‘Dow – if you see Colonel Oliver anywhere about the ship tonight, don’t talk to him. Stay out of his way.’

  The strangeness of this request caught his attention despite everything else. ‘Why? What has Oliver got to do with anything?’

  Sh
e frowned. ‘He’s not quite stable, I think. Ever since we grounded, he’s become obsessed with security, and convinced that the Ship Kings will catch us unaware out here. He’s angry and on a knife edge, and he doesn’t like you – I don’t know why. So please, keep out of his way if you see him, alright?’

  Dow shrugged the distraction away. He had no idea what she was talking about, but it didn’t matter. ‘Fine, whatever you want.’

  ‘Good.’ Cassandra gave a last smile – wretched somehow – then she was gone, hurrying away down the stairs to the main deck.

  Dow lingered only until she had disappeared through the stern castle doorway, then he moved. Slipping quickly among the shadows, he crossed to the main hatchway and descended, passing down through the boat and gun decks until he came to the carpenter’s workshop. Here he secured a small crowbar and a hacksaw: sufficient, hopefully, to break through the bars of a cell. Then he visited the commissary, where he collected several bottles of water, and bread and hard tack enough to keep two people fed on a thirty mile march.

  Two people; himself and Nell.

  He didn’t care anymore about the Heretic Kings, or intend to rescue anyone else, no matter what he might find at Banishment. His only intent was to locate Nell, and escape with her back to the ship. And if the tides should come and trap them out there on the sand, at least they would be together again, and whatever their final fate, it would be a shared one.

  His supplies gathered together in a sack, Dow made his way back up through the decks. No one apprehended him; everyone was asleep. But just as he approached the last stairs, a shadow was cast by the lamplight above; someone was descending from the main deck. Dow ducked aside from native caution, even as the lower half of the person came into view, dressed in the distinctive uniform and boots of an army – rather than navy – officer.

  It was Colonel Oliver.

  Alarm gripped Dow, even though he couldn’t say why. Despite Cassandra’s warning, he could think of no reason that the colonel should be a threat to him personally. And yet he felt threatened, there was no doubt. He crouched down in the mass of shadows beneath the stairs, where some sodden blankets had been hung to dry.

  Oliver himself paused at the foot of the stairs, seemingly unaware of Dow, but looking about, fore and aft, with a slow deliberation that told Dow he was hunting for something – or someone. His eyes were black pools in the below-decks gloom, but the set of his mouth was taut and grim. A hand stroked an object on his belt – why, it was a knife. Dow had never really noticed it before, but it came to him now that it had always been there, bone-handled and held in a long leather sheath. The colonel’s hand rested only lightly upon the hilt, as if by mere habit – but the sense of menace in the air became acute.

  Dow held his breath. Then Oliver gave a nod to himself, and moved off sternwards. Dow watched, not daring to rise, until the colonel passed through a bulkhead and vanished.

  What by all the oceans was that about? There was no time to wonder. Dow moved quickly again; up onto the main deck, keeping low, and then over the side and down one of the ladders to the sand.

  He glanced up. The sky was still clear in patches, and taking his bearings from the stars, he set off north-west towards Banishment.

  *

  His nerves failed him almost straight away.

  At first his only concern was to hurry beyond the range of the ship’s lamps, in case the lookouts in the crow’s nest, on watch for the tide, happened to glance down and raise a cry. But when he was well out into the darkness, and paused to look back to the Snout, a terrible loneliness struck him, so inviting and warm did the grounded ship appear.

  True, Dow had never quite fallen for the Snout in the same way that he had fallen for the Chloe – even though he’d served far longer now on the Twin Islands vessel than he had on the Ship Kings craft. The Snout, for all that he was fond of it and respected its sturdiness, was simply too square and functional to stir the blood, whereas the Chloe had been a creature of such grace and speed.

  But as he stared back at the Snout now, lit softly by its lamps and tilted with raised bow on its sandbank, it represented the only safety to be found in all these empty miles, and so was an achingly tempting sight. Why, he could slip back on board in a few instants and no one would even know he’d been gone. In contrast, at his back lay only the night and a long march into the unknown, with his likely reward being the cold fate of drowning . . .

  It was only by telling himself that he would not lose sight of the ship for many miles, and so could turn back if disaster threatened, that Dow forced himself to turn around and move on. Even then, his disquiet grew with every step away from safety, his ears pricked for any sound that might signify the tide sneaking back across the sand, his eyes scanning the moonlit wastes for any gleam of water where it hadn’t gleamed moments before. Never had he felt that he was so cold-bloodedly exposing himself to obvious danger.

  But his feet carried him on nevertheless, and steadily the ship fell away behind. In fact, he made better progress than he had any reason to hope. Although the Banks were relatively flat to the north, they were littered still with mudflats and winding channels that could trap him – and yet for that first hour he struck few such obstacles; the sand was mostly firm under his shoes, and any water he encountered was shallow and easily crossed.

  Still, he glanced back continually, needing to know the ship was there, and that, if the tide came creeping, he could run to it; at a sprint he could cover the distance he’d walked in a fraction of the time. It was still not too late. He hadn’t come more than three miles yet . . .

  On the other hand, that meant he was three miles closer to his goal, three miles closer to Nell. (And she was alive, she must be, he would not allow himself to think otherwise.) At this pace, he would reach Banishment by noon the following day. The vision of it made him quicken his step, even though his legs – unused to extended walking – were already complaining.

  Above him the waning moon was nearing its apex, and all about stretched an emptiness unlike any other he’d known, either upon land or sea, for this was neither. It was, more than anything, a temporary wilderness, laid bare by the vagaries of the great currents that flowed to either hand. That fleetingness lent the sand and glinting water a certain beauty, Dow decided, but it was a terrible beauty, stark, and edged with a sense of doom.

  Two hours passed, to judge by the slow wheeling of the stars, and then three, and Dow was slowing somewhat, his initial burst of energy giving way to fatigue. It was also becoming harder to believe that the Snout was really within reach, should the water come stealing back. The ship was only a meagre dot of light far behind now, visible only because it was perched so high on its bank.

  Maybe it had only ever been a fool’s hope anyway, because for all Dow knew the water might rush back, not creep, and he’d be drowned regardless. Still, it had been a comfort. But it was the middle hours before dawn now, the low point always of the human spirit, and the truth was he was far out upon the sand, alone, and without refuge.

  He trudged on anyway, his mind blank for a time, until he noted something far off to his right, and somewhat ahead. The moon was sinking westwards now, but off to the east its beams glinted on something hard and upraised.

  Of course, the finger of stone that was Little Banishment – right where it was supposed to be. Indeed, when it came to be directly to his east, Dow would know he had covered some fifteen miles, and that he was halfway to his goal. Heartened, he pushed on, splashing easily across a great lake of trapped water no deeper than an inch, glancing east every now and then to monitor the slow march of the lonely rock southwards along the horizon. He would be level with it, he decided, by dawn. Dawn, and halfway.

  But then came the first delay. Beyond the shallow lake, he traversed a low bar of pale sand, then crossed onto a darker expanse, and suddenly his feet were beginning to sink. Mud. He had strayed onto a mudflat. He paused to stare about, but could see no end to the flat on the left or right, no
way around it, and so had little choice but to press on. At least there was paler ground not a great distance ahead. That would be hard sand, hopefully.

  The mud clutched at his feet, and a sour stench rose around him, stale sea water and the rotting smell of dead things. It was ankle deep at first, but then he was sinking up to his shins, and finally almost to his knees; it was difficult to wrench his feet free to take the next step. He removed his shoes before he lost them in the quagmire and strung them around his neck, then laboured on, the awareness growing in him that should his feet become stuck there was no one to help him. Here he would remain, either to drown when the sea returned, or to die of thirst slowly if the sea stayed away.

  He fell several times in his struggle, and was soon caked all over with the thick mud. It was in his hair, his ears, his mouth; he had to spit the foul-tasting stuff out just to breathe. After a mere hundred yards of this it felt that all hope of making it to Banishment had faded to a fantasy. He could never persist through miles and miles of mud like this. He would be spent if he had to cross even a half mile of it. He should turn back now, before it was utterly too late. But he floundered on a few more steps, to find to his relief some firmer footing, and from there it was only another few minutes of wrenching and battling before the mud was only at his ankles once more, and the hard sand beckoned ahead.

  What he needed now was some water to wash the mud off, and sure enough, barely a hundred yards further on, a wide channel beckoned darkly under the stars. He waded in gratefully, scooping up handfuls to clean himself as best he could. But now came another hindrance. This stretch of water was deeper than any other he’d come across, rising past his shins, then his knees; then it was waist-high. It felt pleasant at first, cooling him after his exertions and enabling him to wash off more mud, but soon he began to shiver, for the water was surprisingly cold.