by Richard Nell
When it was over, the pilot panted and looked up at the moonlit sky. Darkness dripped down his jaw like blackened blood, and Chang stood with the others in silence, too horrified and confused to speak. For a moment Chang thought it might be best to take his knife and plunge it into the man's heart.
"You can't kill me," the giant breathed, as if he'd read Chang's mind. "There's more, much more. They will escape if I die."
Eka nodded and clenched his jaw, putting his knife away. "They, Savage? Is this why we're on this ship," he said, his voice tight. "To keep…this, away from the continent?"
"No." Ruka spit darkness as he shook his head. "I didn't know. It must have been…I killed a…spirit, near your monastery. A boy that was not a boy, worshiped as a god. The flesh perished, the spirit remained."
Chang cleaned the filth off his knife with an angry tug, having no idea what they were talking about. He'd have thought them mad were it not for a dead shadow at his feet, and he glanced at Zaya, feeling his anger build now that the danger seemed passed.
"I didn't agree to this," he felt his voice rising with every word. "You didn't say we'd be trapped with a monster. On the sea! With nowhere to go!"
"Then we'd best find land." The giant stood, his face still grotesquely stained with the black blood of the creature. He lifted the corpse and staggered to the rail as if to throw it overboard, but it crumbled to dust and vanished in his hands.
The captain watched with hard eyes, then frowned, turning them on Chang.
"You didn't agree to anything, pirate. I scooped you from a hellhole where you'd have been executed if you were lucky, left to starve if you weren't. So let me make the situation clear: you and your men serve me, or you die. That is the bargain."
With that he turned towards his cabin, then called over his shoulder. "And get those trembling fools up here. I want that deck cleaned before morning."
Chang's arm burned both with the monster's blood, and the need to kill the bastard. But he had not survived the unfairness of his life by being stupid, so he saluted as a good marine would to his worthy captain, and turned towards the hold.
Before the dawn, Chang sat with his brothers below drinking rum.
"We could tie 'em up," said Basko. "Kill the captain, tie the monster, then sail all the way back to the continent."
"Aye," said the Pitman and most of the others. Though the Steerman rolled his eyes.
"Don't need to bloody tie 'em up. We just dump 'em in the sea, and let him drown."
"I bet it's a clever lie anyway," said an Oarman. "Course he says we can't kill him. That's what I'd say! We should just cut his throat and toss 'em in the sea, like the Steerman says."
A few eyes turned to Chang, who sat silent at the table drinking.
"Ain't right," said the Boatswain. "He's a demon. A godless monster. He'll be the death of us if we don't do something, Chief."
Chang snorted and drank his rum.
"What the hell do you know of it," he said as he stood, casting his gaze over the crew. He held up his arms, which had burned red from the creature's blood, though he'd doused them a hundred times in sea water. "That thing came from a shadow. It came from him!" he pointed up the stairs. "Who will be the man to cut his throat? Aye? You Basko? You?" He shook his head and sat. "I watched that man hold a demon with his bare hands. He bit out its damn throat and spit its blood in the sea. Blood that almost burned my flesh from my bones, and yet where is he? Sitting up there. Alive. So sit down, and don't be fools."
"True," said Old Mata, eyes on a port hole, staring out into the dark.
The men quieted after that.
"We wait," said Chang nice and slow. "We do our jobs, we survive the sea. When we get our chance, when I say, we take it. Not before. Now go to your bunks."
The men had been sullen, but they'd gone. When he was alone, Chang walked the deck and stood in the cool breeze to burn off the rum.
"Why me," he said to the cursed gods and the evil spirits, which before tonight he had believed in but not as much as he believed in foul weather and squalls. Now it seemed evil spirits truly lived in men and emerged from shadows, and the world reformed before Chang's eyes.
"You were very brave," said Zaya's voice behind him, and though he knew it was her his hand went for his knife before he could blink.
"I'm sorry." She half-turned away. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"No trouble, Macha." He let her see the man instead of the pirate. "Come and join me. The night is fine."
She came and stood beside him, but neither spoke for a time.
"The captain…," she said with caution, though he didn't know why. "He said you were in prison. To be executed? For what crimes?"
Chang snorted, feeling the man try to run, try to hide. "My life is a crime, Macha. I was born beneath the tattered banner of a toppled king. And so I was a boy with no family and no home. I was a slave, until one day other kings who were not mine said I was a pirate. I suppose I am."
He felt bitterness he had long buried enter his words, but couldn't stop it. She didn't seem to know what to say, and Chang regretted speaking so honestly. Better, as ever, to joke and speak of the now. Women did not want to hear of a young man's terror—that he had been forced to steal and kill and lie or else he would have been used and slaughtered, another bloated corpse beneath the waves.
"You sent your men below, but you stayed," she said after a time.
"They are my men." Chang shrugged.
"But why did you stay?"
"Curiosity, maybe. Who knows such things."
They said no more for awhile, and Chang felt a rare compulsion to silence.
"I overheard you. You and your men," Zaya said, and the skin on Chang's neck prickled. "You mustn't try. You can't kill him. Ruka, I mean. He has killed kings, Chang, and stopped armies. He's a legend, a man of the book. I'm a storyteller, and I know this is not how his story ends."
Chang snorted and shook his head, hating the pirate thoughts that told him to kill her and dump her for the waves. "I wouldn't try, Macha. I know you're right. Somehow, yes I know. Anyway, I think I like him. I prefer to kill men I dislike."
She nodded, and for the first time Chang realized her hand was stiff in her shirt, perhaps holding a knife. "And the captain, what about him?"
"Oh, the captain I could kill. Several times, and sleep soundly. With a happy smile."
He turned to see Zaya matched his look, and they both grinned.
"I prefer you like this," she said.
"Like what, Macha?"
"Honest, maybe. Less sure. You should get some sleep. Perhaps tomorrow we'll have to kill another shadow."
Chang bowed his head in the island way. "You are a strange woman, Macha. But enjoy this Chang while he lasts, for each dawn I am renewed. Tomorrow, I will be twice as sure, and half as honest."
She smiled and showed her teeth, the sight as beautiful as any sea-stretched dawn. "I thought you pirates didn't use names."
"As in so many things, I am different. Roa need not find me, beautiful girl, he and I have an understanding. He always knows where I am."
"As you say," the girl's brow quirked before she turned. "Goodnight, Chiefy, or Lucky, or whoever you really are."
A slave, he thought but did not say, a wounded reed in the wind, trying only not to break.
"Goodnight, Macha." He returned the smile.
She went to her cabin, and Chang to his bunk. He lay amongst his brothers and flinched at the raw skin still burned by the shadow's blood, and failed to sleep. He doused even the hint of a life of memories better left buried, holding to the sounds of the water and the sway of the ship. "One more day," he whispered to Roa, who owned his body and soul, and would one day collect. And though he had told Zaya the dawn would renew him, when he closed his eyes, as ever, he was never entirely sure.
Chapter 7
Chang woke before the sun with a drop of rum. He felt his way to the mess, where he found both oarsmen eating salted eggs in silence, eye
s downcast and despondent.
"And a bloody good morning to you, too," he said loudly.
"Morning, chief," they muttered and blinked but didn't rouse.
"Where's the Boatswain? And why isn't the sail raised? I sense a breeze."
They said nothing and for now Chang let it go.
"Well go and bloody get them," he kicked one of the men's chairs, then hauled himself up to the deck and examined the masts for cracks. There was still black stains from the fight with the shadow on the deck, but worse, it was damn near empty. There should have been five men working but Chang saw only two. He winced to cover the anger but soon saw Ruka fiddling with one of his contraptions in the sun and understood. The pilot's eyes were tired but otherwise he seemed for all the world as if he hadn't been spewing monsters the night before. Chang saw only one thing to do.
"Morning, Pilot. How are we feeling today?"
The giant looked up and seemed to search for insult, then shrugged.
"Today the captain says we fish." He raised his contraption as if this were related, and Chang nodded happily.
"A fine plan. I'll have the men fetch nets and take turns."
"Only the nets," Ruka said as he stood. "We will trawl. The winches should do the rest."
Again Chang smiled as if he understood. "As you say, pilot."
Ruka grunted, and Chang walked back down to the hold, whistling as he took two steps at a time. At the bottom, he looked up to find nearly the entirety of the crew waiting in a cluster. He stopped whistling and met the eyes one by one.
"We been talking, Chiefy." Basko started, which meant this was serious. "We ain't going to sail with that monster. Ain't right. We got a captain who sails into storms. We got a woman aboard, and a beauty at that, who don't know our ways and tempts Roa, brother, you know it. It's a doomed voyage, Lucky, we all know."
Chang raised his brow, tilting his head with a hand to his chin. He said nothing and waited until the men were awkward, meeting every eye. "Doomed, you say?" He frowned. "We all know, aye? I'll tell you what I know. This ship weathered that storm better than anything any of us ever seen. It wasn't close, boys. Who'd say otherwise?"
The Steerman spit and several of the others shook their heads. "See how the chief talks? I told you," said the Pitman. "Harbris."
"It's hubris," Chang corrected, and the man stared.
"It's mad talk is what it is. And not a word about the beast. We're bloody doomed."
"You think I don't know about the creature?" Chang snapped. "Who was it who stayed and fought with nought but a knife? Eh boys?"
The men looked to the planks like scolded children and Chang knew he'd have them for now. He sighed and shook his head, putting a hand on Basko's broad shoulder.
"We'll trick Roa as we've always done. We'll learn this ship. We'll watch this monster and see what he does. We'll smile and follow the captain's orders. And when the time is right, as I keep saying." He jabbed his finger in the Steerman's face. "When the time is right, lads, and not a moment sooner, then we'll do what needs to be done. Ka?"
"Ka," the men muttered in disgruntled spurts, and Chang took a breath.
"Well then. If the bloody mutiny is delayed. The Captain wants fish, and the monster thinks he'll do the work, so there's that. Now get to your damn posts."
* * *
Zaya listened to the men discuss their betrayal, then returned to her cabin. She sat at the single table looking out the window crack at the Godtongue fiddling with some tool she didn't understand. She had no conception of what to do.
Surely, the shaman and his ally recognized their peril? Their confidence against ten angry pirates seemed at the least misplaced. But then, it was the Godtongue…perhaps the gods themselves would whisper of the men's treachery when and if it arrived. Zaya had no idea.
She had slept in fits and starts all night after the shadow emerged, lost in nightmares of its claws and eyes, and the howling of the shaman. What had the day before made her feel unquestionably safe aboard this ship, had now become the greatest source of danger. All her life, like most of the others her age, she had thought of this great man, this mighty prophet of the gods, as nothing but a hero of the book.
Her father had never encouraged such talk. Instead he had listened and warned in gentle tones and in different ways throughout her life, that with great light came contrast; that beyond the reach of light there was always, always darkness. For the first time Zaya understood.
Still, it was the prophet. The great shaman who had given her people a dream of paradise, and lifted them from their frozen tundra, taking them across the sea. The heroes of the book of Galdra were not pious priests or gentle things, but warriors and killers. They fought mighty beasts and paid the price for the good of all, losing their hands, their lives, or even their souls. It's what made them heroes in the first place. Zaya's task as skald was not to judge them, but to understand, to record. The thought gave her strength. She had been brought here by the gods, of that she had no doubt. So she must do her part to help the man, and perhaps, the crew. Surely that was her task. With a breath she stepped into the morning light.
"Good morning, shaman." She smiled for him and walked without fear, feeling the eyes of half the crew on her back. The shaman looked at his tool and at the sea, but bowed his head in greeting.
"Good morning, Zaya."
As she heard his voice, and looked on the furtive movements from a man who always seemed so purposeful, she realized—he was ashamed.
That she had not thought of this made her feel a fool. Sometimes she forgot he had once been an outcast—rejected for his deformities by his kin, living in the wilds, a rebel and outlaw long before he was known. She felt pity, then, more than fear. She turned and faced the crew who yet watched her, knowing this must not be ignored. Men's strength could sometimes make them brittle. She knew someone must break the tension built of fear and strangeness.
"The night was long for all of us," she called. "Tonight, I say we feast." She gestured to the crew. "I've been listening to your songs for weeks, gentlemen!" She looked at Chang and smiled. "Tonight I'll sing the songs of your valor, and teach you how a real singer sounds."
A few men at least grinned, and even the shaman smiled politely. Captain Eka looked on from his perch, his face as ever a neutral mask of nothing. It was a start.
"It's too high," one of the pirates growled, stepping away from the shaman's device. To Zaya it looked like several hooks on ropes with a wooden block that held some other device, and at first she couldn't understand the benefit, especially with so many able-bodied men to hold the nets. But the shaman insisted, and soon attached the vast netting to his hooks, and began hoisting them up or down into the water, letting them dangle out from the ship in huge amounts as the ship continued with a bit of sail.
"The breeds of fish I expect this far to sea will feed near the surface," the shaman answered calmly. "They will feed in the day. The elevation is correct."
"How he talks," said the red-faced sailor, an eye cast to the others. "Where'd you learn to speak, eh? From some island princess?"
The others smiled or snorted but none of them laughed. They had been required to help more than the shaman let on, extending the netting around the hull and ensuring nothing was caught or torn. Zaya stood with her rope pile working on knots.
Such comments had been swelling all day, from small complaints to what seemed to Zaya now outright mockery, the point cruelty not jest. The shaman tolerated it, and said nothing. Zaya could hardly believe as she watched. Amongst her people, words mattered a great deal. Honor mattered. A man who tolerated such things rarely kept respect. But even more astounding was that men would even hint at insulting the shaman, who had been seen as a holy man, a great warrior. It was almost intolerable, but not her place to interfere.
The men kept on extending the netting, the captain guiding the ship with the wind at the helm. Chang was with them but uncharacteristically silent. He watched on, taking his turns with the nets, s
topping occasionally to grunt mild approval over Zaya's knots.
Morning turned to afternoon, and as the shaman told the sailors it was time to check the nets, a loud pop sounded from the device. Before Zaya could do more than look, Ruka had leapt across the deck, seized the closest sailor, and pulled him aside as the wooden box snapped from it's place on the deck. The apparatus flew off the ship, straight through where the man had been standing.
The crew watched in stunned silence as the netting drifted away, though much was still held by the crew.
"Too much weight," Ruka said as he stood, brow vaguely furrowed. "We must have…caught something large. Or perhaps it's a raised bit of land…"
"Or it's a stupid fucking contraption," said the same red-faced sailor, rising up and stepping away from the shaman as if from a snake, his face pale.
"Just get the damn netting," Eka yelled from his perch. "And lower the sails."
Chang and a few of the sailors left shirts and pants on the deck, with a glance back at Zaya, who looked away. The men made filthy jokes Zaya was glad not to hear or fully understand, then they dove into the sea.
The others did what they could from the deck, reeling in armfuls of slippery rope at a speed that beggared belief. Zaya did her best not to watch the strong, shining arms and backs. Amongst her own people, men and women rarely interacted except in families and formal occasions. They were modest, and covered most of their skin because of this and the cold. Every day she wore her overdress that felt too hot and already she longed to strip down to something else but couldn't bring herself to do it. On top of the discomfort of the heat, being surrounded by these working men gave her feelings she'd rather not have. She focused on her hated rope, trying to pull it in the same manner as the sailors. They'd returned much of the netting now and the few sailors were clambering back up as Zaya heard the yell.
"Get out of the water! Now!"
