He’s going to sink them. He’s going to kill them all, right before my eyes.
Whether that indeed was Rose’s intention Pazel never learned, for at the height of the next swell the Chathrand’s foremast tore her stays, ripped free her starboard shrouds; and then the whole towering mass of spars and sail and rigging crashed down over the portside rail.
Dead! thought Pazel, as the Chathrand heeled terribly sidelong and cables snapped around him. The dangling, half-submerged mast would drag their bow under as surely as a hold full of seawater; it was unthinkable that they would have enough time to cut it free. The Chathrand wallowed backward down the wave; he saw the nine open gunports being wrenched shut in a panic, and a row of mailed Turachs falling like dominoes, and two sailors vanishing overboard into a cauldron of white froth. He saw Neeps struck in the chest by a flying wheelblock; they would not last another five minutes on this spar. But would the ship herself fare any better?
Even as he framed the thought, they rolled: the following sea had caught the Chathrand straight across her beam. The mast where they clung with locked limbs dived toward the sea, while beneath them the crown of the breaking wave swept right over the waist of the ship, making her quarterdeck and forecastle look for a moment like two rafts separated by eight hundred feet of white water. In that torrent men clung to ropes, rails, cleats, anything that did not move, and still many were carried away.
Pazel had a blurred impression of the White Reaper at a hundred yards, as perfectly in control as they were perfectly flailing, her bowsprit pointed like a sword at Chathrand’s tilting flank. Dauntless, her gunners were making a third charge onto the forecastle. No grapeshot would drive them off this time, and if they managed to fire those killer carronades they could hardly miss with their eyes shut.
But then the Chathrand righted. Pazel could not believe what his senses were telling him. Had the foremast gone by the board? How, how had they done it? But there was no doubt, they were righting, and as he flew skyward with even more sickening speed than before, Pazel caught a sound he had only heard once before in his life—the day Rose had destroyed the whaler in a rippling broadside.
All along the starboard hull, gunports had flown open again: not just the earlier nine, but thirty, forty perhaps; and bow to stern they belched fire and smoke, straight at the Jistrolloq, across the trough between the passing wave and the next. Then just seconds before the wave reached them the doors were yanked shut again. Once more the Great Ship rolled.
Now at last Pazel caught a glimpse of their saviors: the augrongs, Refeg and Rer. Waist deep in foam, the creatures were even now taking axes to the last of the foremast rigging, while teams of men strained at the harnesses they wore, struggling to keep them from washing into the sea. Bless their hides, thought Pazel, those brutes could part a halyard with one stroke.
This time it took far longer to rise—who could say how much water had flooded the ship, or by how many routes?—but when they did at last Pazel knew it was over. Horrible, horrible sight! The Jistrolloq had lost her own foremast to the Chathrand’s guns, and her main was torsioned hopelessly to windward. But it was not the canvas she had lost that had doomed her; it was the canvas that survived. Like the Chathrand, the Mzithrini warship had slewed round, and the great power of the surviving squaresails was now pressing down on her bow, like a torturer’s hand forcing his victim’s head underwater, deeper, and deeper still. The next wave caught her broad on the starboard quarter, a blow the smaller ship could not absorb. Over she went on her beam-ends, masts slapping the waves, so close to the Chathrand they seemed almost like bridges her men might run across to safety. As the wave passed she tried to right herself, but a hundred thousand tons of water on her sails could not be shed in an instant, and the next wave buried her completely. By then the Great Ship had veered downwind just enough to ride the wave out, and Pazel felt the monstrous sidelong lurching come to an end. He and Neeps gained the shrouds, and as he began his descent at last Pazel looked for the enemy and saw nothing, nothing at all—and then a twisted length of white sailcloth, one proud red star in the corner, moving like the specter of a whale beneath the surface, only to reach some absolute decision, and dive.
30
From the New Journal of G. Starling Fiffengurt, Quartermaster
Thursday, 26 Freala 941.
If this is what victory feels like, you may spare me the distinction for the rest of my days. We are alive (most of us) & the Gray Lady took no immediately fatal damage in the engagement, & no ship in Alifros can follow or even spot us now—yes, for all that I am thankful. And who could fail to be relieved that the storm is abating, this the 3rd night since our escape from Sandplume Cove? Two cheers for the mercy of the Nelluroq & the undeniable cunning of Captain Nilus Rose.
But never was I less inclined to celebrate. Sixteen men lost overboard & twenty more laid out dead in our surgical annex, among them Coxilrane “Firecracker” Frix, busybody, coward & a dedicated sailor to his entrails. Like me a product of Wasthog Strand, that unpaved, unloved corner of Etherhorde, pinched between the ironworks and the slaughterhouses. I used to see him with his pack of boys when we were young. They dressed like Burnscove thugs, a sort of fashion then, & threw rocks at us over the King’s Canal. Frix always looked apologetic & out of place, a skinny dog trotting along at their heels, needing to be noticed & at the same time afraid to be. Nothing much ever changed in his life, Rin rest his soul.
Courage. One might celebrate that, I suppose, & set aside the question of whether it was given wisely or in vain. Our dead gunners had courage: with waves like cliffs bearing down on them, they kicked open their gunports, blasted the Jistrolloq’s rigging to pieces, slammed the ports again in the nick of time—and suffocated on their own smoke, in a deck sealed tight as a crypt. Tanner wept for his boys, though his own lungs were burned black. I sat by him three hours tonight in Chadfallow’s surgery. Even his last wheezing breath smelled of gunpowder.
Pathkendle & Undrabust have courage: that spankermast would have been the next to fall, if the chaser-guns on the Jistrolloq had gotten off another round or two. The boys have bullwhip-scars all over their bodies, from ropes cracking in the wind. Thasha Isiq has courage, facing Rose’s lunacy concerning ghosts, & fighting to get her friends brought down off that lethal spar even when the captain threatened to pitch her over the stern. Elkstem & I exchanged a look: we were with Rose in 927, when he did pitch a girl off the stern of the Great Ship; but that is another story.
Felthrup has courage, wherever he is. The youths are beside themselves, searching for him everywhere, sniffing about the lower decks with Thasha’s dogs. All to no avail.
And tonight a woman I might once have killed without a thought told me I had courage. I refer of course to the crawly, Diadrelu. She was back in the stateroom when I brought Pathkendle & Co. their dinner & she walked up bold as brass & looked me in the eye. “Quartermaster,” says she, “I salute your wisdom and bravery.”
Now that the crisis was over it seemed even less natural to be talking to a crawly. I looked away & mumbled about how they’d picked up the pieces well. For the stateroom had been in pieces: a 24-pounder had sailed right through the big stern window, split the dining table in half, shattered the washroom door, put a whopping dent in the cast-iron tub, ricocheted back into the main cabin & blasted a stanchion to woodchips. By the grace of Rin no one was in its path; Thasha had locked her dogs in her own cabin.
I gestured at the shattered window, sealed for now with a nailed-up tarpaulin. “We have glass stowed away for repairs,” I added. “We can fix the casement, too, though it won’t hinge no more.”
The crawly held me in her bright-metal gaze. “History itself shall hinge on the choice you made,” she said.
“Don’t know that I have made it,” I grumbled, “if you’re talking about the choice not to smoke you cr—you individuals, off this ship.”
“I am talking about the choice of reason over fear,” she said, “and I’ll wager my life
that you have indeed decided, though Rin knows I should have no right to condemn you if you change your mind.”
“I don’t want blood on my hands,” I told her. “Nobody’s blood. Not yours, even, if it ain’t required.”
“You have the courage to see, Mr. Fiffengurt,” she said. “All other forms of courage spring from that well.”
I was tongue-tied with confusion. It was crawlies who sank the Adelyne off Rappopolni, with my uncle & his babe aboard, or so the few survivors claimed. After that my own dad started collecting crawly skulls to make a necklace, though he had just four by the time he died. Ma still keeps the gruesome things on his dresser, beside his service ribbons & his false teeth. Hating ixchel is a family tradition, you might say.
But in my fifty years no woman has ever spoken to me with more respect than this Diadrelu. Of course she’s not human & so not properly a woman (though I saw evidence unforgettably to the contrary when I cut that shirt away). My kin in Etherhorde—Pitfire, everyone in Etherhorde—would call me a mutineer, a fool, the dupe of a shapely ship-louse; Dad would say I should be the first to drown when the crawlies strike. These past nights I’ve pictured their faces as I lay down to sleep & it stabs me through the heart to know how they’d condemn me. Last night they entered my dreams, bitter & scornful & hurrying off with hostile glances, & “Shame, shame” was all I could get them to say.
But when I think of the noble bearing of that Lady Diadrelu, I feel suddenly more ashamed of my certainties about her people than the displeasure of my own. All my life I’ve laughed at the righteous fools who hate Mzithrinis at a personal level, who assume that whole vast land to be populated by mindless killers with bloodshot eyes. And all my life I’ve thought of “crawlies” as something worse. If I’m honest (& where shall I be honest if not with you, little whelp?) my reasons make no more sense than the next man’s reasons for hating the Sizzies: because someone long dead or far away set us on this path, and told us never to turn. I cannot forget the Adelyne. But the fact that Pazel and Thasha love this Diadrelu settles the matter: she may not be human, but she’s a person all the same.
The dream ended with a rain of ash from the heavens, falling in a thin band between me & my kinfolk, & when I saw them through the ash it was like seeing figures in a painting, or on the deck of some boat heading off to the East Reach or points beyond. People who’ve slipped away, who you can’t have back at your side under any circumstances, people gone already & forever.
Saturday, 28 Freala 941.
Palo Elkstem, our sailmaster’s nephew, succumbed to his burns this morning. He was right under the foremast when the dragon’s-egg shot exploded, & the battle netting came down upon him in flames.
These last days have been bitter. Storm raging again, so that we cannot dream of shifting either of the great timbers on the lower gun deck, although the carpenters have already cut & shaped one into a new foremast. Waves at 40 ft. & breaking on our port quarter: no danger to the ship provided the helm keeps us true, but lads who I’ve never known to be ill are heaving over the side.
Rose has called off the imprisonment of Pathkendle & Co., though he left one Turach on duty at the invisible wall, to observe who comes & goes. This presents certain difficulties for me: now that they can get their own food, what excuse do I have to visit? And if I persist, & that soldier notes it again & again, how long will it be before the captain pulls me aside & demands a report?
Tuesday, 1 Norn 941.
I start to wonder if a gale rages perpetually on the Ruling Sea. No end is in sight; if anything the wind is somewhat fiercer with each passing hour. Gloom among the sailors, a dangerous glint in the Turachs’ eyes. And this before we have even finished the fresh food we loaded at Bramian. What is to come in the months ahead I do not like to imagine.
There were at least two hints today, however—unpleasant hints, to be sure. First thing this morning came the accusation, by a Plapp’s Pier man, that three members of his gang who’d died in the battle had been stripped of their rings, knives & other valuables by the lad assigned to prepare the corpses for burial at sea. The accused man belonged to neither gang, but he took the Burnscove Boys’ oath almost as soon as he learned of the charges, saying he feared for his life without their protection. Wish I could be certain that he was wrong.
Of course it’s the worst breach imaginable of the Code to pledge oneself to anything save the ship & her captain, & Rose was in a holy fury when he heard of it. As I write the man hangs by one ankle from the main yard, slamming about like a loose wheelblock & lashed by the storm. If the Burnscovers take this as punishment for his stealing (a charge for which there is no evidence), we may yet escape a gang war.
Then at the strike of the noon bell I met Uskins near the tonnage hatch, just standing there in the rain. He caught my eye & for once there was no mockery or sneering, so I drew near & asked what ailed him. Uskins said not a word, just looked away southeast, & when I did the same I saw a purplish glaze on the underside of the farthest clouds, & a little bulge downward.
“Humph,” said I, squinting, “I can’t account for that, Pidetor, but we’ve both seen stranger things.”
“You cannot account for it,” said Uskins, “but Arunis can. He says it is the sign of the Nelluroq Vortex.”
“The Vortex! Oh, surely not. We can’t be that far east.”
“One can see its effects for thousand of miles. It alters the weather, makes its own winds. Arunis says that they bear down through its depths and vanish from this world. That one can watch a whole skyful of clouds being sucked into its maw, with thunderheads and flocks of birds, and even cloud-murths struggling in vain against its power.”
“But why in the bubbling black Pits are you talking to Arunis?” I demanded.
Uskins looked at me sharply, & his warthog nature came back to him. “I bring his meals,” he said, “as you would know if you paid less attention to those youths in the stateroom, and more to our captain’s directives.”
“I know Rose is trying to keep him away from the crew,” I said, trying to ignore the provocation. “But anyone could bring a plate to his door.”
“The captain wants him observed, Fiffengurt, not just quarantined. He chose me for my tact, and my gift for obtaining information.”
Your slime-craft & snooping, I thought. But I left him to his vigil & said no more. Arunis may be lying through his teeth, but that purple glint on the clouds’ underbellies was plain to see, & remained so through nightfall.
Tonight Dastu pressed a slip of paper into my hand. On it were these words: Find us a safe and secret compartment. When the storm ends we’re going to take some chances with trust. Pzl.
Dastu glanced back at me over his shoulder. There’s one they’ve chosen to trust already, I thought, just as they chose me back at Simja.
I am plotting against the captain. My mutiny is now a fact.
Saturday, 5 Norn 941.
Eight solid days of storm. Nothing to do but fight it, fight it ceaselessly. Nights by far the worst, for though we stab at the darkness with fog lamps the waves are ever breaking upon us before we rightly see them. We have been close to broaching more often than I can recall, & five or six times had water over the deck. Pumps have failed, oilskins parted, and a hand run along half the walls on the orlop comes up wet: the Nelluroq is oozing through the seams, pressed in by the battering waves. There was a ghastly morning when the water in the well rose ten feet in three hours: a wad of grime and rat-hair had clogged a bilge-pipe. Dawn & dusk are blurry notions, & noon is when you stand beside one mast & can see the next.
Another three men lost, & reports of fever among the unhappy folk down in steerage. Chadfallow & Fulbreech handing out pills. The tarboy Macom Drell, of Hansprit, crushed on the mercy deck by shifting cargo. The lad was found hours after his death; he could not fill his lungs to cry for aid. Also a suicide among the Turachs. One of the guards on the Shaggat simply walked up & put his hand on the Nilstone. I saw what was left of him: bone & gristle & a
sh. They say he had been staring at the thing for a week.
Friday, 11 Norn 941.
Wave height doubled & still we lack [illegible] end of our voyage & this ship’s proud history unless [illegible] flooding the [illegible] down the ladderway and broke his leg [illegible] wind screams in the rigging with the sound of tortured animals [illegible] blary hand shaking too much to wr [unfinished].
Thursday, 17 Norn 941.
Something in this universe must love the Chathrand, for she has looked her own death in the face every day for a week. Three days ago the waves reached 80 ft. Rose put her into the wind, for at that height the lower gallery windows were getting slapped on every swell & one rogue breaker could have smashed them in, flooding the deck & sending us to join the Jistrolloq in minutes flat. Once we had her about with the stormsails trimmed we were better off for a while, treading in place through the daylight hours, praying & fighting for steerage through the night.
But the day before yesterday the seas grew taller yet. Surely it has been a century or more since any man stood on the Great Ship’s forecastle & looked up at a cresting wave, but I am that man, by Rin. Yet with Elkstem at the wheel & Rose beside him, we did all right until nightfall. Then the waves grew even larger, & the dark hours were one long frenzied struggle against obliteration, tacking up the sides of mountains, piercing the frothing crest with the bowsprit, clawing over the top & falling forward with a hull-shaking thump, looking up again at once as the next mountain rushed us. The crew was simply breaking. No one talked anymore. No one wanted to eat, or dared to rest, or remembered the needs of their bodies. I had to order men to drink water, & watch that they did so: they were so frightened that only by working perpetually did they keep from shrieking or diving into the sea.
The Ruling Sea Page 51
