The Ocean of the Dead: Ship Kings 4

by Andrew McGahan

  Despite the efforts of the doctors, infection took root in his wounds, and by the morning after the battle he was descending into fever. Aside from the initial visit to sick bay, where, with a few swift cuts the ruin of his left eye was removed, he spent most of this time in his cabin, rolling in torment on the bed he and Nell had shared for over a year, but never would again.

  Nightmares stalked him endlessly: nightmares of drowning; nightmares of Nell drowning, plucked from his outstretched hands by slimy things in the deep; nightmares of blindness; nightmares of being bound helpless upon an island under a sun that never set; nightmares where he was a child again in Yellow Bank, enclosed in his family’s little cottage with his mother and father and siblings, except a monster stalked outside and hammered against the walls, and would soon get in . . .

  Infection battled within him all the while, but at last his inner defences began to prevail, and as he emerged from delirium for short periods he became aware of the comings and goings in the cabin. Boiler was there sometimes, and the doctors, but often it was Nicky, his young plain face a comforting sight to which Dow could cling when the nightmares dragged him back down. And it was Nicky who was in attendance when at last Dow woke to find the fever banished – his throat ragged with thirst, his limbs feeling scorched and battered, his head wrapped in bandages, but his mind his own again.

  He lay silent for a time, relishing the simple fact of being free of the evil dreams. Nicky, watching from a chair at the foot of the bed, had observed his awakening, but only waited patiently, not speaking.

  ‘How long has it been?’ Dow asked finally.

  ‘Eight days,’ Nicky answered.

  Dow raised a hand to the wad of padding that had been placed over his left eye. He had hoped for a moment, upon waking, that it had only been a figment of the nightmares . . . but it felt like . . .

  Nicky was nodding. ‘The eye is gone.’

  Dow heaved a resigned sigh. So this diminished, depthless vision was all that was left to him now. Well, it was fitting enough. Half his entire world had been taken from him, so why not half his sight?

  ‘The Chloe endures, however,’ Nicky continued. ‘The damage from the battle has largely been made good, and we have been rowing by light and dark since that night. We progress well: eight or nine miles a day. The sea around us is still beset with weed, but the floating islands are more thinly spread now, and block our path less. And the Sunken have not harassed us.’

  Dow blinked slowly. Eight days. Nell was eight days away from him now, sixty, seventy miles behind. Impossible, impossible that it could be so . . .

  At last he asked, ‘How many of us are left?’

  Nicky nodded sombrely. ‘It is a grim tally. The New World took hundreds down with it when it foundered, and the Sunken killed many more in the fighting, on both ships. In all, over six hundred souls were lost that night, leaving just over twelve hundred survivors, gathered now on the Chloe. Too few, but also too many, for our supplies remain perilously short. No food was salvaged from the New World, and some of our own stores were burned in the fire. Also, water will need to be rationed again, as we dare not take any from the floating isles, lest the truce you spoke of with the Sunken be broken.’

  Dow rubbed a hand against his bruised brow, the old weight of responsibility returning, hateful and heavy. To think that he must now rise from this bed to again confront the heat and the misery and the long slow torture of the rowing. There was not the strength for it in him anymore. It all felt pointless. And he had so few to help him now, only Boiler, and . . .

  ‘Jake,’ he said. ‘Is Jake still alive?’

  Nicky gave a hesitant nod. ‘He lives, but it is not yet known for how long. The surgeons have been forced to remove his right arm. But his gravest wound is to his chest, which was laid open by the Sunken.’

  ‘And Fidel? He’s really dead?’

  ‘Aye.’ For the first time Nicky’s voice caught. ‘And a strange thing was his end. He was determined that there should be an attempt to communicate with the Sunken. So when the creatures invaded the ship, and others fled before them, Fidel stood his ground boldly, weapon-less, but holding out in offering a glass jar of water. I beheld this with my own eyes. I think he meant to say to the Sunken that we begged apology for having stolen their water from the floating islands. And truly, one of the creatures did pause before him, and seemed to consider the jar. I thought for a moment that Fidel might win through . . . but then the thing only swept the offering aside, and tore out his throat.’

  Dow let his single eye fall shut. He might have known that Fidel would die in such a fashion, striving as ever for reason and rationality in a world that respected both all too little. ‘Has he been buried?’

  ‘He has. We knew you would be unhappy to miss the ceremony, but we could not delay. Not in this heat. He was consigned to the deep a week ago.’

  Dow nodded. It was all wrong, that Fidel should be cast into this hateful sea, to sink amid his own murderers. But what choice was there?

  ‘Boiler now stands as captain over the expedition, until you are well again,’ Nicky went on. ‘We worried that there might be trouble from Diego’s folk – some three hundred in all were saved – but so far they have obeyed Boiler’s commands without demur. I don’t mean Diego himself. His sanity is suspect, and he remains in the brig, under guard of his own men. Leadership of those from the New World has passed to an old woman by the name of Benedicta. I’m told she was formerly of high rank, a duchess, but foreswore the title to come in search of new lands. She is a daunting woman, but sensible.

  ‘And yet for all that, everyone has been waiting for word of your recovery. There is much unhappiness on board, and despair of our mission, and Boiler Swan, respected though he is, is not the great Dow Amber.’

  Dow groaned, his eye still closed to shut out the world. The great Dow Amber – and who was he? How was he fit to lead anyone? He had been unable even to save those closest to him. Nell was left behind, abandoned. Fidel was dead, Jake wounded mortally. Indeed, under Dow’s leadership the expedition had done little more than stumble from disaster to catastrophe. The only reason it had even progressed as far as this was no thanks to him, it was Diego who had forced it onwards. And now, after so much failure, and half blind, Dow was meant to take charge of the ruin and somehow redeem it?

  ‘You should not rise too soon,’ Nicky noted. ‘But what should I tell the crew? How soon do you think you can resume command?’

  Dow shook his head, weariness welling up in him. Resume command? No . . . he couldn’t do it. Yes, he had promised Nell that he would, but now, after his week of fever, and the loss of his eye, and of so much else, that promise felt empty. He couldn’t go on deck and face so many lost souls, and tell them that he still had hope, that there was still purpose to all this.

  ‘Dow?’ pressed Nicky. ‘What shall I say?’

  Dow ignored him. He was too tired. He wanted only to be left alone, to go to sleep again . . .

  ‘Dow! By all the deeps – rouse yourself!’

  Dow blinked his eye open in surprise.

  Nicky had risen, his usually amiable face set sternly. ‘You are not well, I know. And you have lost your Nell, and many of your oldest friends. But you do not have the luxury of withdrawing into grief and weariness. A thousand others still live on this ship, and need you. There is no time for self-pity.’

  Dow frowned. Self pity? There were a very few, maybe, with the right to speak to him in such a manner. But who was Nicky to do it?

  ‘I am your friend,’ the young man said, as if in answer to Dow’s thought. ‘Indeed, there is no one more so. I’ve followed you loyally for five years now, ever since we met on this very ship, when Vincente was its captain and my uncle Johannes worked in the smithy below. I journeyed with you and Nell to the fiery cauldron at the heart of the Ice, and saved the two of you from death at the finish. I was imprisoned with you on the Twelfth Kingdom and escaped with you when the great ship burned. I stayed with you
through the war that followed, serving on your own attack boat, and captaining it myself when you could not. I voyaged with you across the Wilderness, and pulled you from the very mouth of a whale, and with you charged upon the Great Serpent. I sailed with you over the Banks, and survived mutiny and murder there, and then afterwards I journeyed across half of New Island with you to hear the news of your dead family. I fought alongside you in the Battle of the Headlands, and with you fled to Stone Port in defeat and despair, where together we buried Johannes in the sea, as close to a father as I’ve ever known. We are brothers in suffering, you and I, Dow Amber. So if anyone has a claim to talk to you this way, it is me.’

  Dow found his anger evaporating, replaced by a shamed amazement. It was true, Nicky had always been there, unnoticed much of the time, unobtrusive, usually silent, giving way to superiors like Johannes or Jake or Fidel . . . but always there. Of all Dow’s friends, only Boiler had known Dow longer, but even Boiler had not shared the years of war on the Snout . . .

  But still an invalid’s peevishness lingered in Dow. ‘Are you so sure that the rest of them want me back? Most might prefer someone else, if not Boiler. They’ve already mutinied against me once, don’t forget.’

  ‘Of course they mutinied,’ Nicky answered with impatience. ‘Nor should it have been any surprise to you. It wasn’t to me. I knew the day would come even back in Stone Port, when everyone first agreed to sail with you. After all, to most of them you were little more than a name, a myth, a fantastic hope in a world where all else was in ruin. It was inevitable that you would turn out to be less than they thought, and that the New World was not going to be reached merely because you promised it might be. So when the truth became plain, and the difficulty of the voyage obvious, of course they mutinied.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean they won’t follow you now. I have followed you all these years, knowing full well that you are no hero, but only flesh and blood; having seen you fail as often as you succeeded; having seen you afraid as often as you were brave; having seen you foolish as often as you were wise. And if I and others like me have found you worth following despite all that, then it is not up to you to decide you don’t want to lead anymore, just because you have been beaten and bereft.’

  Dow could think of no response. In the deepest part of his uncertainty, he wanted to ask why Nicky thought he was worth following. What was the vital quality Nicky could see in him that Dow could not?

  But the young man wasn’t done. ‘Also, I speak now not for myself alone, but for those who depend upon me. We have told no one else yet, but it will soon be plain in any case. May is with child. And I will not let you abandon my family, Dow, even as it comes into being!’

  Dow blinked in shock. Nicky and May were to be parents? But they were so young, both only seventeen! And to risk birth on such a doubtful voyage, amid so much hunger and disease and death! Were they mad?

  And yet . . .

  What would it be like? The shared creation of new life? Dow had to marvel for a pained moment. If Nell had not been lost, would the two of them have ever . . .? She had said it was not a choice for them. But if there had been time, if they had been granted the years they should have been granted . . .

  He squeezed his one eye shut, forced back the tear, and looked at Nicky. ‘Very well. As soon as I have some strength, I’ll be captain again. A few days, no more. Tell Boiler to keep on with the rowing in the meantime.’

  Nicky stared hard at him as if not quite convinced, but Dow managed to return the stare evenly, and at last the young man relented. ‘Good. Then I’ll go and see about getting you some food.’

  Dow nodded, but when Nicky was gone, he sank back into the pillow, the emptiness opening within him again. Oh, he would be true to his word. He would appear on the high deck, and play the role of captain if they wanted, as ably as he could – but a role was all it would be. His heart would not be in it, nor in anything that might happen now, good or bad, failure or success, the birth of a child, the sighting against all hope of land.

  For Dow had left his heart behind, he had watched it float away into the darkness. And even the New World itself could not replace it.

  *

  Three days later it was a wan, thin and unsteady Dow who climbed the stairs from the Great Cabin to the high deck. His bandages had been removed, revealing the deep bruises on the left side of his face, fading now, and the half-healed gashes in his cheek. He had missed having his throat ripped open by only a few inches. The empty eye socket, still weeping blood, was packed with wadding, but it was covered, as it would always be from now on, by a simple leather patch held in place by a thin headband.

  It was no great discomfort, the eye patch, and the pain in the socket had dwindled to a dull ache. But his halved vision left Dow feeling that the left side of his body was somehow detached and absent; his balance was all out, and while ascending the stairs it felt to him that the ship was rolling, even though there in the Doldrums that could not be happening.

  And they were still deep in the Doldrums, as his first one-eyed glimpse from the high deck confirmed all too well. The same gloom hung thick over the same unmoving sea, the same islands floated amid the same weeds, and the heat was as stifling as ever.

  But at least the Chloe was in motion. Out ahead of the ship, boats laboured at the ends of their lines, oars dipping. There were six craft, and for a moment Dow was puzzled. ‘I thought there were only four left, after the fire,’ he said to Boiler, who had accompanied him.

  ‘So there were. But the carpenters have been busy, and just this morning we launched a fifth. As for the sixth – do you not recognise it? It’s your own Maelstrom. I know it is your private craft, but needs must, and so I ordered it deployed, with mast removed and benches added.’

  Dow nodded mutely. Of course it was the right thing to do. At another time he might have regretted seeing the Maelstrom maimed so, but really, what did it matter? It was a boat, and they needed boats.

  He asked, ‘How far have we come, since . . .’

  ‘Since the battle? Perhaps a hundred miles now in all, and every day we fare a little better, as the islands thin out. We no longer have Fidel to reckon for us, it’s true, but I have urged the other navigators to be over-cautious in their count, and I think we can be sure enough. A hundred miles in eleven days.’

  Dow mourned briefly. Yes, they were going to miss Fidel, and for more than just navigation.

  But very well, say that the ship really had come a hundred miles since the attack. Where had they been placed before then? Perhaps a similar distance to the south of the equator – which put them now maybe two hundred miles south of the dividing line in total.

  That left them with some eight hundred miles of the inner Barrier still to cross – assuming the lower half of the world mirrored the northern half – and then another thousand miles of outer Doldrums, before they truly attained the open sea of reliable wind and wave. Eighteen hundred miles. At ten miles a day under tow, and maybe twice that in the outer Doldrums, they faced a journey of four or five months yet at minimum: all on an overcrowded vessel with too little food and water, and with no sure landing place waiting at the other end.

  Dow felt the hopelessness rise in him again like gall. Why, even if no other evil befell them, the expedition teetered on the brink of extinction. Perhaps, indeed, they had already tipped over that edge.

  ‘Everyone is waiting,’ Boiler reminded him.

  Dow came back to himself. An assembly had been summoned on the main deck, so that he could show himself before the crew, and speak. And whatever he thought of their chances privately, his duty now as commander, he knew, was to inspire confidence and hope.

  He nodded to Boiler, and moved carefully – still untrusting of his legs – to the forward rail to look out across the body of the ship.

  Maybe half a thousand people stared back from the Chloe’s main and fore decks, all of them silent. Dow saw many faces he knew, but also many he did not: the latter, no doubt, castaways fro
m the New World. But whether they belonged to friends or strangers, all the faces bore the same expression: drawn, strained to breaking point, searching. Not pleased at his arrival, nor displeased, only needing to see, probing for the core of him, their captain.

  And what was he to say?

  Boiler broke the silence. ‘Here he is, lads and lasses! A little worse for wear, and no prettier, but alive and well! Sorely though we’ve been trialled, Dow Amber remains with us, and fate remains on our side.’

  Fate? It was a word Dow no longer recognised, implying as it did that there was an order to the world. There was no order, not that he could see. Still, Boiler had at least given him a place to start.

  Dow raised a hand in greeting to the crowd. ‘Many of you will think that luck has abandoned us, no matter what Boiler says. But consider. The Sunken have ceased their attacks, and soon we’ll be clear of their territory. And despite the price we’ve paid, we still have a seaworthy ship, and boats enough to tow it, and the greater part of our journey already lies behind us. All of that is a miracle, considering the odds we faced when setting out; so believe it, fortune favours us still.’

  So far, so good. But the faces below, alert for the faintest hint of a false note, only stared on, unconvinced. Dow could not blame them. His assertions might be true enough, but conviction was needed also.

  What to say next?

  ‘You summon fortune to your defence, Dow Amber,’ called a voice from below, as Dow paused. ‘But you have ignored it wilfully before now.’

  It was Magliore, of course. And why, Dow wondered, couldn’t he have been lost in the assaults, instead of the better folk that were gone?

  ‘Would these trials have visited us,’ the poet continued, squinting up at Dow, ‘if we’d had a properly declared scapegoat on this ship? No! And what do you intend now, when Uyal of the New World is lost, and Nell too? Who will stand as scapegoat in their places?’

  And at the mention of Nell, finally a true feeling rose in Dow, and the words came. ‘We have no need any longer of a scapegoat,’ he declared, not only to Magliore, but to everyone. ‘We need no protection against disaster. For that disaster has come already, as we battled the Sunken for our lives. In that hour, Ignella of the Cave decided the issue in our favour. She was not lost, or taken by ill chance; she sacrificed herself knowingly to buy our freedom. A scapegoat can do no more, and though she is gone, we sail under the ongoing protection of her act. She has paid the way. Uyal with her. All we have to do now is cover the remaining distance to the southern ocean. All we have to do is be patient, and row. So row we will. Until it’s done.’