The Rats and the Ruling sea tcv-2

by Robert V. S. Redick

  His rage shamed them all to silence. Fiffengurt took a deep breath. 'That's much better. Now then-'

  A terrified squeal cut him off. It was Felthrup, still in Thasha's cabin. They rushed into the chamber and saw the rat upon her bed, eyes riveted on the single porthole, which stood ajar. Collapsed on the sash was what they first took for an injured bird. But then the bird rose on shaky human legs.

  'It's Diadrelu!' cried Thasha, leaping to her side. 'She's been stabbed!'

  She lifted the ixchel woman gently from the sill. 'The coat, don't harm the coat!' Diadrelu gasped.

  'Devil take the coat!' said Felthrup. 'Where is your wound, Diadrelu?'

  'Lord Rin!' said Fiffengurt. 'That thing's a crawly!'

  Dri looked up at him, copper eyes sharp.

  'Put it down, Thasha!' cried Fiffengurt. 'They're worse than scorpions! Trust me, I know!'

  'Will he talk?' said Diadrelu quietly.

  'Will I talk?' cried Fiffengurt. 'You can bet your ship-sinking blood I'll talk!'

  'No you won't!' shouted Neeps and Thasha together.

  Fiffengurt looked from one to the other, like a man being circled by strangers in an alley. 'You don't understand,' he whispered. 'That's a crawly.'

  'We've no time for this,' husked Diadrelu.

  'It's your back that's cut, isn't it?' said Neeps, trying to peel the coat away from the bloody spot. Dri dug her nails into his thumb.

  'You're under attack,' she said.

  The warning spilled from her, even as her blood soaked Thasha's arm: the old priest on the island, Sathek's Sceptre, the Jistrolloq tearing east with a full spread of sail. The humans stood gaping. Once more Thasha was the first to reach a decision.

  'Take her, Marila.'

  Gingerly she passed Diadrelu to the Tholjassan girl. 'What are you doing, Thasha?' Felthrup asked.

  'Alerting Rose,' she said. 'It has to be me, don't you understand?'

  Without waiting for an answer, she flew from the stateroom. They heard her shouting from the passage: 'Turachs! Rose wanted me captured, right? Here I am, take me! I surrender!'

  Neeps started to run after her, but a glance at Fiffengurt's tortured expression stopped him dead.

  'Listen,' Neeps said, 'we owe our lives to this crawly. She saved me and Pazel in the Crab Fens. And she was the one who guessed the right moment to turn the Shaggat to stone.'

  'Then she's using you, Undrabust — exploiting your good nature.'

  'Oh come on,' said Neeps. 'My what?'

  Marila had put Diadrelu on the bed and was easing her out of the feather-coat. 'We'll need a doctor,' she said.

  'No!' said Diadrelu. 'I told you, the wound is not deep. Give me your knife, Mr Fiffengurt.'

  'You know who I am!'

  Diadrelu sighed. 'I also know that the Jistrolloq will make short work of this vessel, if her other officers move half as slowly as you do. Come then, do it yourself — cut this shirt from me.'

  No room for modesty in her manner: she was a soldier in need of aid. 'Do it!' shrilled Felthrup, pawing at the quartermaster's leg. Stunned, Fiffengurt drew his skipper's knife. He slid it under the bloodsoaked shirt, and cut it with a quick upward slash.

  Like any sailor worthy of the name, Fiffengurt kept his blade very sharp. The cloth parted neatly, and Diadrelu stood bare to the waist. The quartermaster blinked and dropped his eyes. He had never seen a more beautiful woman — not a woman, a crawly, damn it all. She twisted to examine herself: her back was crimson. A long diagonal gash crossed her shoulder.

  'Bruch,' she swore, 'I can't fly like this. Hear me, I beg you. We have just two swallow-suits, and my nephew is wearing the other. He and three of our people are on Sandplume. They cannot escape the isle except by relaying both suits back and forth — carrying an empty suit back to the isle after each trip, you understand? — and this must happen before the Chathrand escapes the harbour. We cannot fly more than a half-mile without rest. Someone from my clan must take this suit back to Sandplume, immediately.'

  'How can we make that happen?' said Neeps.

  'Leave it to me!' said Felthrup, jumping. 'I know where they are! And the Turachs will never catch this rat, even if they bother to try! Leave it to me!'

  And he too was gone.

  Diadrelu hissed: Marila had dipped a handkerchief in brandy and was swabbing her wound. Fiffengurt would not let himself look at her again — or just once, just to confirm a suspicion. There it was, by Rin, he hadn't dreamed it: the wolf-scar, the same shape the others carried, burned into that astonishing'They will need you aloft, Quartermaster,' said the crawly woman, looking at him over her shoulder.

  He wrenched his eyes away, blushing. 'Never could I have dreamed that I would see such a day,' he mumbled.

  The crawly woman laughed, though tears of pain streaked her face. 'Stay alive long enough and you'll see it all.'

  Thasha found the captain in the chart room, checking figures in a log-book with Elkstem, a great map of the Outer Isles spooling over the table's edges and draping to the floor. His steward blocked her way, but she shouted past him. 'Captain Rose! Captain Rose! We're under attack!'

  He looked up at her, threatening. Then he lumbered to the door, waving the steward aside.

  'How dare you,' he snarled, leaning over her.

  'It's true,' she said, meeting his wolfish eyes. 'The Jistrolloq is running straight for us, Captain, on the other side of Sandplume. She's probably less than ten miles off.'

  Rose's eyes blazed down at her. 'The Jistrolloq. You are hysterical, girl. Steward, have the guard escort-'

  'No!' said Thasha, seizing his coat. 'It's here, it's followed us! Captain, for Rin's sake-'

  'Be silent, you little fool!'

  Thasha said nothing, but a look passed between them. He had called her that before: in the Straits of Simja, when the fleshancs were storming the Chathrand, leaving dead men around them in heaps. Rose's face paled slightly, and she knew that he remembered which of them had been in the right.

  'How do you know this?' he whispered.

  'Does it matter?' she said. 'Look at me, Captain. I know.'

  Their faces were inches apart. One moment longer Rose crouched, stock-still, only his eyes whirling here and there like bats, and Thasha had the odd impression that he was listening to voices other than her own. Then he shoved her aside and charged from the room like a marauding bull.

  'BEAT TO Q UARTERS! EVERY LAST MAN TO QUARTERS! THE BLACK RAGS ARE MINUTES FROM OUR BOWS!'

  28

  The Hunt

  24 Freala 941

  For the first time in his life, Felthrup crossed a deck in broad daylight without fear of men. The only danger they posed now was trampling; rats were the last thing on their mind. After what had happened in Thasha's cabin, moreover, Felthrup felt a strange, intoxicating liberty coursing through him. When two sailors locked in an argument over battle protocol jammed the ladderway, he shrilled, 'One side, one side!' — making them leap from his path. I scared them, thought Felthrup. I might have been a bear, the way they jumped! Although in fact they could kill me with one blow. Reckless, that is the word. I am a reckless woken rat!

  But also a rat with a mission. And once he had bounded down into the gloom of the mercy deck, Felthrup realised just how perilous his mission was. The normally abandoned deck was caught up in a frenzy such as he had never seen. Hurricane lamps whirled through the half-light. Sailors were running, striking at one another, bellowing for greater speed. Every voice was raised, and still they could scarcely be heard above the thunder of feet on the boards above. Don't stop, darling Felthrup, run now or you'll never run at all.

  So Felthrup ran, straight through that frightened stampede, with men slamming and shouldering crates and hogsheads about as fast as they possibly could, securing everything that might slide or topple when the Great Ship fled. This I do for Dri. For the lady who saw me as I truly am.

  In their cargo-crate fortress the ixchel huddled, hearing the madness of the giants spread, feeling
the tremors as cargo-restraining boards were slapped down and nailed to the deck within a few yards of them. Young ixchel warriors stood armed and tensed; their elders sighed with remembered massacres; parents clutched children tight to their sides. Not one in six hundred made a sound, not even the youngest: ixchel learn not to cry in their first month of life, and never do so again except in silence.

  When they heard the rat's voice, octaves above that of the giants, they did not know what to do. It did not sound like the normal witless rat-prattle. Indeed it could not be: there was too much of truth about it. You can hear me, cousins, I know you can. Your lady is wounded; the rest remain on Sandplume. Be fearless now or lose them for ever. Send me one — no more. Just one brave soul prepared to fly.

  He struggled to shout over the humans — most bellowing orders, a few exclaiming about a woken rat, and a growing number declaring that miraculous or not, they would stomp the rodent dead if it didn't shut up.

  Thasha followed the captain up the No. 5 ladderway, squeezed by the men rushing headlong in both directions. It had taken Rose nearly a full minute to believe her, she mused, but the crew of the Chathrand had taken his word without a second thought.

  They stepped out on the topdeck and she paused, overwhelmed. She thought she knew what an active ship looked like, but past emergencies paled before this whirlwind. At every hatch the watch-captains punished their kettledrums. Sailors by the hundreds were leaping for the halyards, and between them Turachs were falling in with crossbows, longbows, and vascthas that flung discs of sharpened steel. The rigging boiled with men, laying aloft, running out the spars, freeing the clews on sail after sail. Tarboys raced down both sides of the ship, emptying sacks of sawdust for footing. The windscoops were capped, the running lights struck down, the few passengers in sight were driven below, the tonnage hatch was sealed with oilskin, and great rolls of netting were stretched between the shrouds, to guard the men on deck from falling mastwood.

  Captain Rose marched towards the waist of the ship. 'Odd mains, Mr Alyash,' he cried, with that tireless trumpet-blast voice he could keep up for hours. 'Mr Frix, cut us free. Uskins, turn out Byrd's crew to the carronades, Tanner's to portside forward, and get Drellarek's replacement to the quarterdeck as soon as his men are in hand. Mr Jonhelm, see that the galley fire's put out. Lady Oggosk, I beg you to stay indoors.'

  'Soon enough, Nilus. I want a look at her first.'

  The witch had an excited gleam in her eye. She meant the Jistrolloq, Thasha knew, but if they caught sight of her while still trapped in the cove it would be the last thing they ever saw.

  After his first explosive shout the captain had become extraordinarily calm. His voice when he raised it was deafening, but he spoke most of his orders softly to his lieutenants, who relayed them mast by mast along the ship. His face was emotionless; his eyes slid over the crew with an abstracted look. To Thasha, who had seen Rose spitting and furious over a misplaced pen, this subdued Rose was more unsettling than a thousand bellows.

  'Let us have topgallants, Mr Alyash. But stand by to clew up the moment we clear the rock.'

  Alyash looked at the cove's western headland. 'Oppo, sir. I can hear that wind. Not that it's doing us any good.'

  'Full parties to the braces nonetheless,' said Rose. 'We're going to have to swing the mains about like a lady's parasol to scrape out of here.'

  The anchor went by the board: Frix and Fegin, wielding a two-man hawser saw, cut through the tree-thick line in a few dozen strokes. Thasha felt the sudden kick as they floated free, and turned just in time to see the mainsail flash open, like a white castle wall suddenly raised in their midst. The forecourse and spanker-course followed: the odd-numbered mainsails, far enough apart not to fight one another for the meagre wind. Thasha raised her eyes even higher and saw men bending topsails. The upper canvas might catch a wind that the lower sails missed, but would all of them together give them speed enough to escape the cove in time? Between the stone cliffs the Chathrand stood nearly becalmed — even as the Jistrolloq raced towards them on the open fetch of the westerlies.

  Suddenly a vast noise erupted to port, followed by the screams of ten thousand birds. All eyes whirled towards Sandplume. From the highest point on the island, a column of scarlet fire was rising heavenwards. Taller and taller it grew, until it resembled a great burning tree, while around it the seabirds rose in one contiguous mass of flapping terror. Many of the birds collided, or wheeled out of control into the fire itself, where they blazed for an instant and were gone.

  'Silence, fore and aft,' boomed Rose over the cries of the sailors. 'Mr Coote, I want fire hoses ready at the bilge pumps.'

  Even as he spoke the tree of flame blinked, trembled and was gone. But smoke still rose from the hilltop, and Thasha saw that the flame had set the brittle underbrush alight. She winced. All those blary nests.

  Then Rose's hand closed on her shoulder. In a growl meant for her ears alone, he asked, 'What in the Nine Pits is happening, girl?'

  'I don't know anything about that flame,' she said, leaning away from him. 'But there's a man on Sandplume — a priest, maybe. He has the sceptre that belonged to the old Mzithrini Father. Sathek's Sceptre, it's called. I don't know what it's for.'

  'That's it?'

  'That's all I know, Captain.'

  Rose bent even lower, drawing her into a huddle that shut out the deck. In a throaty whisper, he asked, 'Which one of them told you?'

  Thasha dared not say a word. Did he know about the ixchel after all? Then Rose glanced surreptitiously down at their feet, and Thasha's skin went cold. There were other feet beside their own, other men, pressing close as if trying to listen in. Their boots were old and battered and darkly stained. Thasha felt the same whirling disorientation that came to her when she opened the Polylex, the same desire to turn away.

  Rose flashed her a knowing look. 'You can tell me,' he said. 'Was it Captain Mauloj, with the facial tic? Or old Levirac, with the bad teeth? Or Farsin, maybe — the one with raw meat on his breath?'

  Stiff with amazement, Thasha murmured: 'N-no, sir. It was… someone else.'

  'Doesn't matter. You keep them away from me. Say whatever you like, just order them to keep their distance. Only if Kurlstaf appears, you listen to every word he says, and share it with me instantly, do you hear?'

  'But which one is he?' Thasha pleaded.

  'Kurlstaf, Captain Kurlstaf!' said Rose, exasperated. 'The pansy with the lipstick and painted nails!' With that he released her and bellowed for Fiffengurt — only to find the quartermaster already at his elbow.

  'That flame was a signal to the Jistrolloq, Captain, or I'm a knave.'

  'Aye, Quartermaster,' said Rose. He turned forward and boomed again: 'Tactical team to the quarterdeck. Mr Alyash, have a look at the gun decks before you join us. Mr Uskins, I want a report on the doings of the sorcerer: beat on his door until he opens it. And you-' he jabbed a finger at Thasha. '-close the shutters in that private palace of yours, then return to my side.'

  I'm going mad, Thasha told herself, running for the stateroom. My mind 's coming to pieces; I've always wondered what it would feel like and now I know.

  She was seeing the dead, seeing ghosts. They had vanished when Rose released her shoulder, without her ever catching a glimpse of their faces. But before she left the topdeck she had looked back at the captain, and there they were, milling about him like flies. They did not look monstrous — or rather, they looked monstrous in the same way Rose did: hard-bitten, brutal, weathered by years at sea. One was dressed like her great-uncle, in the old regalia of the Merchant Service. Two others wore the blue sash and high collar of the old Imperium: a uniform instantly familiar from the portraits that had adorned her father's study, portraits of naval captains of the First Sea War. A fourth was dressed in brown, like the axe-wielding men who had chased her belowdecks. Yet another wore a frock coat with outlandish tails, and grimaced with muscle spasms.

  Why do they terrify us so? she couldn't help thinking. B
ut the Polylex had provided one answer. She could still hear Felthrup, reading aloud two nights before: A ghost is one thing by daylight and quite another in the dark. At nightfall would they become the faceless people she had seen in the blane-sleep? Did that sort of creature visit the captain night after night? It would be enough to drive anyone mad.

  Rose was trying studiously to ignore the spirits, as if they were beggars ready to mob him at the least encouragement. No one else knew they were there. Except for me, she thought. Why me? Was she being punished, or warned perhaps? Is my father dead, and calling me from the land of the dead, and giving me a way to see him? Is he searching for me right now? The thought was like a bone in her throat.

  And still she sensed them around her: a soft tug at her sleeve, a moving shadow that vanished as she turned, a voice murmuring on an empty stair. We have him, it seemed to say, he's lost to you forever, he's oursClenched against the voices, she stepped out of the ladderway onto the upper gun deck and collided with Pazel, who was running in the opposite direction.

  At the sight of Thasha his face lit up. He seized her arms, grinning, whirled her around — and then, just as suddenly, his eyes became guarded and evasive, and he banished the smile from his face.

  'You're — different,' he said.

  'Oh,' she laughed. 'Yes. And so are you.'

  It was her first glimpse of him since the night of the dancing. His gaze slid to the deck. 'Made it back alive, anyway,' he said.

  'So Fiffengurt told us,' she said pointedly. 'And I suppose it's good luck that we bumped into each other, since we may not be alive an hour from now.' Her anger with him was already rising to the surface. 'Excuse me, I have to close the storm-shutters.'

  'Beat you to it,' he said. 'The stateroom's secured. Neeps is just finishing up.'

  'How is Dri?'

  'Worried. The ixchel girl Felthrup sent has never flown before.'

  Thasha glanced nervously about the passage: they were still alone. 'Is it true, what Fiffengurt says?' she asked quietly. 'That you saw the scar on Rose's arm, I mean?'