Swords & Steam Short Stories

by S. T. Joshi

  The next morning Edward and Louisa were married, with every prospect of a life of perpetual bliss, enhanced by a recollection of the peril which attended its commencement.

  The Crime of a Windcatcher

  B.C. Matthews

  The sharp crack of the cat o’ nine against Jackson’s bare flesh made Midshipman Bourne stifle a wince, his eyes watering against the tears that threatened to spill. But no one aboard the frigate H.M.S. Novelty would dare to look away, not with their Captain’s bloodshot eyes constantly searching the crowd of faces for any hint of sympathy.

  Jackson moaned, bare to the waist, his thick ropy muscles taught as he strained against the cables binding him to the mainmast. The whip lashes stood out on his back as if some ragged-edged claw had raked its vicious talons through his flesh. Shuddering, Bourne watched as the ropes pulled away blood and flesh. Once the knotted ropes were blooded, it became heavier, more vicious, and the sharp crack became a meaty thwap.

  Captain Ramsay’s rough voice matched his wind-tanned craggy face, as he read from the Articles of War, “If any shall strike of his superior officers, every such person being convicted of any such offense shall suffer death.” Those wild bloodshot eyes scanned the crew and settled on Bourne for just a moment, and the young midshipman fought not to readjust his stance beneath the weight. “Traitorous dogs shall suffer the pain of Hell, and I shall bring it to them like the right-hand of the Almighty Himself.”

  Bourne’s fellow midshipmen, all younger than him by several years, shuddered and stared at the deck.

  But Bourne could feel it. The pull, the tension and crackle that threaded just beneath the surface of his skin, like the sensation of a storm brewing. Others on deck fidgeted.

  The mains’ls above flapped wildly in the calm of the natural wind. But this was no natural wind.

  The cat o’ nine struck Jackson again and the tops’ls shuddered in the opposite direction of the true wind buffeting across the full sails.

  “Even if that person be,” said the Captain, teeth clenched, “a Master Windcatcher.” The strange source of wind made eddies against their feet, hot and dry, though the sky churned cold and grey. “If that treacherous wretch so much as moves my hair a finger’s width with his Devil’s gift, by God, I’ll have him flogged to the bottom of the sea.”

  The twelfth strike landed between the Windcatcher’s shoulder blades and Jackson let out a throat-shredding scream. Blood stained the deck, and the large master’s mate who held the whip flicked the blood from his hands, his eyes haunted.

  On Sunday, they would begin again. Another dozen lashes. And again. And again.

  Bourne quivered, squeezing his hat so hard beneath his arm that he crushed it.

  It had been almost three months of this.

  “Mr. Bourne,” called the Captain, his eyes glinting. “And Mr. Westerly, take the scum below and look to his wounds.”

  The ship’s surgeon was a thin wisp of a man with overly large brown eyes behind dirty spectacles, and an overall weak pallor, which did not improve as he hefted the Windcatcher on his shoulder. Bourne moved quickly to support the wounded man. Jackson’s heavily muscled frame almost felled them both, but Bourne’s hair stood on end as a pulse of wind held up the man from collapsing.

  How the Windcatcher had enough strength to use his innate gift, Bourne didn’t know. But he did know how dangerous it was for him to use it in the Captain’s presence.

  “Don’t,” Bourne whispered desperately.

  The unnatural force holding the man partially aloft died as the Windcatcher’s eyes rolled into the back of his head.

  * * *

  “It used to be a Windcatcher brought luck,” said Jackson with a wan version of his accustomed wry smile. “Looks like my luck has turned, eh?”

  Bourne had heard the stories of Windcatchers bravely snapping the enemy’s mainmasts in twain by calling on the winds until their bodies expired, but the midshipman kept his hands busy dabbing at the man’s ragged back, while Westerly poured their dwindling supply of salt into the wounds. The Captain had threatened that if suppuration managed to kill him, that Westerly would answer for it in Hell, and so every time the salt was rubbed into fresh wounds.

  “But he’s always hated me,” Jackson whispered, teeth clenched as the salt burned. “Thinks my gift is from the Devil. But what true ship o’ our good King goes without a Windcatcher?” Tears formed in the man’s eyes, and the robust fellow tried vainly to keep them at bay. His hand shot out and grasped at Bourne’s hand, clenching with astonishing strength. “I didn’t try to kill Cap’n Ramsay, I swear to you, sir. I would never use my God-given gift to try to strangle a’ man with the force o’ wind. God, you must believe me.”

  Tears spilled down the Windcatcher’s face, but Bourne’s tongue sat limply in his mouth. “You mustn’t speak, Jackson. Save your strength.”

  “For what?” Jackson’s grip dug harder into the bones of Bourne’s wrist. “To wait for Sunday only to be cast in Hell again?”

  Bourne tried not to tremble. “I – I can’t halt the flogging, Jackson.”

  But he could with one simple sentence. Bourne’s stomach turned at his cowardice.

  Ramsay’s bony fingers were holding him under the water, drowning him. And Bourne fought back, desperate to breathe, able to see only the Captain’s vile smile through his watery grave. “I knew you had the Devil in you, boy,” the Captain growled. “You tried to hide it, but tainted souls show through ’n’ through.”

  The nightmare from three months past still struck at him in his waking hours. The one to which the winds had reacted, even in sleep, coming to his aid as they had always done. The one which had stranded him in this guilty Hell.

  “Captains are lords o’ their ships,” said the surgeon, and Westerly peered around them. “Our souls are theirs. Your fate is in Ramsay’s hands, son.”

  Even if Captain Ramsay was a vicious madman.

  Jackson’s hands clenched at Bourne’s wrist until Bourne could no longer feel his fingertips. The Windcatcher’s glassy eyes were dark, no more than obsidian pits. “No true Windcatcher would kill a man with his gift, Mr. Bourne, for the wind exacts its own price for murder. There’s no man I hate enough to suffer the torture when the wind decides to turn on you for your crime.”

  That heavy weight that had been crushing his chest into painful embers only increased. It felt like a pulse of pressure was forcing him to nod. Only it wasn’t from Jackson.

  The knowledge that that man’s fate was still firmly in his hands crushed until Bourne couldn’t take breath.

  * * *

  No one on deck dared to peer in the Captain’s direction as the storm began brewing. They needed to treble reef the mains’ls but Ramsay’s wild glare kept even the first lieutenant from daring to order such a simple and necessary act. Bourne could feel the storm brewing along his skin, beneath his fingertips, sitting behind his eyes. His head pounded as the sea spray soaked him even beneath his oilcoat; one deckhand fell as a wave nearly took the man over the side in a spray of icy foam.

  Madness.

  A Windcatcher could keep the storm from tearing them apart.

  Captain Ramsay’s eye rested on him, a bitterly smug half-smile on his craggy face. “Mr. Bourne!”

  “Sir?” Bourne bellowed over the stinging wind, quickly leaping up to the quarterdeck.

  “You know that today is Sunday?” Water sluiced steadily off of the sides of the Captain’s athwartships-style hat.

  “Aye, sir,” Bourne said. When in doubt the safest utterance on any ship was ‘aye sir.’

  “Gather the traitor and let’s run that bastard through the gauntlet,” the Captain growled, his craggy cheeks flush, his eyes fever bright.

  Bourne attempted not to gape at such an order, and he stuttered nonsensically before he blurted, “But sir, with the storm …the men cannot leave their p
osts to …to …”

  To attend to the gauntlet: instead of the master’s mate flogging Jackson, a line of men forty deep would lash him as the Windcatcher walked through the middle.

  The Captain raised a fuzzy grey brow. “Is that sympathy for the bedeviled wretch I hear, Mr. Bourne?”

  He could hear the sound of one of the sails ripping, and several men shouted, pointing. Several scurried up the rigging quick as rats, but paused halfway up. Uncertain. Their Captain had made it clear no action was to be made without his explicit instruction. The tension within him mounted. Why wasn’t the Captain ordering the sails reefed? Good bleeding God, would Ramsay willingly sink them?

  “No, sir. Of course not, sir,” Bourne said. “It’s only that we need to treble reef –”

  “Are you telling me how to run my own ship, Mr. Bourne? Do you think you’re so clever, boy? You do, don’t you.” The Captain’s cheeks grew flushed even in the icy wind. “You know nothing. These storm winds were made by a Windcatcher. To test me. Even though he clapped his hellish invisible fingers around my throat to kill me in the dead of night, does he think he can so easily frighten me with a mere windstorm?”

  Bourne was certain the Captain expected no response. “Sir, if you please, Westerly and I will bring the prisoner, but certainly some of the men must still attend to the storm.”

  “No,” the Captain growled.

  “But, sir –”

  Those vicious eyes narrowed. “Your protestations stink of disobedience to your lawful superior.”

  Bourne lowered his chin, casting his eye to his boots. But within his blood boiled in hatred, and the tingling sensation in his fingers increased like lightning darting beneath his skin. His hair began to stand on end as if charged. The feeling of wanting to push against that invisible barrier swelled within him, his mind focusing on saving the largest sails first, needing to redirect the wild winds –

  And he bit down on his tongue so hard that it drew blood, daring to lift his eye to regard his Captain.

  Ramsay’s bloodshot eyes were boring into him, mouth twisted in expectation.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Bourne said stiffly. “I will bring Jackson promptly.”

  The midshipman spun on heel and fled across the storm-tossed deck, feeling sick to his stomach, but not in seasickness. As he darted down below, he could hear the banshee whistling through the planks, could hear the pumps going full in the bilge, desperate to keep the Novelty from taking on too much water. But he heard another sound as he approached where Jackson was being kept.

  The singing voice was fair, but rough in pain:

  Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies

  Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain

  For we’re under orders

  For to sail to old England,

  And we may ne’er see you fair ladies again.

  Jackson had frequently crowed such an anthem while on deck, and when off duty the jovial man had sung it playfully with his fiddle as accompaniment, teaching Bourne all of the hearty words to ‘Spanish Ladies’.

  But this had the sound of one desperately trying to focus on something other than the howling winds, or his own constant pain. The lyrics continued, spoken now rather than sung, more like a chant. Slowly, Westerly’s frog-like croak added to the verses, belting out louder than was normal for the pinch-face fellow.

  When Bourne came within sight, both men trailed off on: with the wind at the sou’west.

  Westerly’s mouth was agape, his pupils mere pinpricks behind his spectacles. “Dear God, not now certainly?”

  “O’ course, now,” muttered Jackson, sweat at his brow. “He wants to see me fight the need.” And then the Windcatcher hoarsely sang another song, one Bourne had only heard his father sing when coming back with the day’s catch, “For the winds they will tell, and the blood it’ll boil. We soar on wings of reverent joy, and the wind it’ll dance to our tune –”

  “No,” Bourne said sharply, even though no one would hear. “No Windcatcher songs.”

  That had been the last song his father had sung before he lost his mind and soul to the winds, no more than an empty flesh vessel unable to do more than breathe. His father’s last words had been: Don’t touch the winds, boy. Don’t ever use your talent, for it’ll one day take you.

  Jackson clenched his teeth as Westerly fought to help the man to his feet. “You don’t understand the desire, boy, to lose yourself in the wind itself. Not to fight it or be its master. But to join it and never know anything else. I’m close to losing myself …Will it be like Heaven?”

  When Bourne clasped Jackson’s upper arm the flesh was too warm, and he peered at the man’s back, seeing one of the many runnels in the rent flesh filled with yellowing pus.

  That’s why Westerly was singing so loudly. The surgeon was drunk.

  How far would the suppuration spread until it took the Windcatcher’s life? Bourne’s stomach churned, his grip on the man unsteady as he hauled the Windcatcher above deck; as the winds howled, hot tears traveled down Bourne’s cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Jackson. Please forgive me.”

  “Not your fault, sir.” The Windcatcher gave a fair approximation of his old smile.

  He had to reveal the truth, to vent his guilt and receive forgiveness, however small, from the man he had unknowingly condemned. “Jackson, I –”

  Now above deck, the Captain shouted, “To the gauntlet!”

  The men were already aligned, holding spare bits of rope; not a one met Jackson’s eye.

  “Mr. Bourne!” barked the Captain. “Lead him forward! You get to offer the final blows.”

  Bourne swallowed, throat tight. He could speak now, could save Jackson from a crime he didn’t commit. But the words were dammed behind his teeth, and only a half-sob came out. He stood in front of Jackson, facing the man – staring into his face while each sailor struck a blow upon his bare back. He could hear the mizzenmast creaking as if it would tear itself from the ship itself to fly free. Bourne fought to keep his mind from the hands of wind roaring against the sails, but the tingling beneath his skin became a roaring fire; as Jackson peered around him as one struck dumb, the man stumbled and Bourne had to catch him.

  Bourne could stand it no longer. He would halt the wind. He would proclaim who the true traitor was who had unwittingly used his gift to steal the very breath from his Captain’s lungs.

  “Don’t,” the Windcatcher said in Bourne’s ear.

  Bourne held up the sagging fellow, but Jackson clasped his arms around him, holding him close. “Don’t touch the storm, or it’ll take you. Don’t say a word, not a whisper. Now, put me back on my feet.”

  Bourne hefted the man, shaking his head in denial. He had to speak or the crushing weight would consume him until there was nothing left. Someone placed the cat o’ nine into his trembling fingers, and like one dazed, he stared down at the wicked device, at the dried blood on its ends turning to liquid once more as the rain spilled over it.

  “Strike now!” the Captain’s monstrous voice crowed.

  He didn’t have the strength to lift the cat o’ nine even a fraction. It slipped from his fingertips and fell to the deck.

  Jackson lifted his arms as if in benediction.

  The Captain pointed, looming from the quarterdeck, lord of his domain. “Strike him, Mr. Bourne, or I’ll consider it a dereliction of your duty!”

  The powerful force seemed to burst from Jackson’s mouth in a scream, halting the spray of the sea in midair as the Novelty plunged into the next trough. Several men around him fell from the percussive punch of air, but the winds around the billowing sails ceased. Jackson’s primal roar strengthened, and for a moment the black-grey skies parted. Blood streamed from the Windcatcher’s nose, from the corners of his enraptured eyes.

  When the storm winds around the ship failed to pound against the overtaxed masts, the Novelt
y seemed to sigh in relief.

  The midshipman held the Windcatcher up, but Bourne knew the man’s mind was gone. Wind-lost.

  Ramsay descended from on high, standing amongst the silent crew, his expression as stormy as the black clouds above. “A man who tried to murder his superior cannot flee judgment so easily.” Still staring into Bourne’s eyes, never turning, he said, “Mr. Westerly.”

  The surgeon was wobbling on his feet, trying hard to appear remorseless. But the quivering fellow failed. “S-Sir?”

  Ramsay’s bony, gnarled finger pointed to the cat o’ nine stranded on deck. “Since everyone here is so tired of flogging the bastard, I want you to install the tails o’ the cat upon the man’s very head. Sew them in good and tight. Then when necessary on Sunday, the cretin can flog himself.”

  Such a fierce surge turned Bourne’s blood into molten liquid, that he had to reign in everything in order not to murder his Captain then and there.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Westerly croaked.

  And the surgeon lifted the blood soaked tails, while Ramsay’s thin lips lifted in a tight-lipped smile.

  * * *

  Jackson stumbled on deck as one already dead. His flesh was pale as a cadaver, his eyes sunken into hollow sockets, bruised and blood encrusted. Where once a thick mane of curls had sat beneath a jaunty hat, his shaved pate showed where the cat o’ nine’s ropes had been sewn into the flesh of his scalp. The ropes trailed from him like long, knotted strands of hair, almost down to his back. Gangrenous pus leaked from the seams, and a trail of blackened, necrotic flesh surrounded each sewn hole where the ropes protruded.

  Bourne was ordered to be his keeper now, but he could do nothing other than to make sure the man didn’t jump into the churning seas to end it.

  At every third bell, Bourne was required to nudge the tormented soul without rest until Jackson expired. Exhausted, Bourne stumbled from lack of sleep and placed his hand on the Windcatcher’s bare shoulder. Those feverish eyes glazed over as Jackson looked at him, and the man smiled that vacant smile. With a half-sob, the doomed Windcatcher threw his head violently back, and the ropes embedded in his scalp whipped around to strike his ragged back. His voice cracked as he crowed out, “Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish Ladies! Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!”