The Rats and the Ruling sea tcv-2

by Robert V. S. Redick

  But Pazel was afraid — he was cold and dizzy and scared to death. Neeps' skin was pale; he looked as if the wind were trying to melt him down to bone. Up and up they went, like a pair of deranged hermits scaling a cliff in the Tsordons, going to meet the gods. At ninety feet Pazel looked down and saw Thasha pointing up at them, arguing with the captain. Then he saw Alyash grin and gesture at the stern as the largest wave yet passed like a moving hill under the vessel. A sixty-footer, thought Pazel, and vomited into the storm.

  When they reached the topgallant yard the array of snapping ropes and heaving wheelblocks was a perfect mystery. Neeps groped to Pazel's side and shouted in his ear. Pazel could not make out a word.

  Out along the yard, feet on the clew line, arms over the huge wooden beam. They flailed from rope to rope, hauling at each to see where it led. But the wind's strength so completely outmatched their own that they could barely move the thick hemp lines.

  Half a mile between the ships. The Jistrolloq was firing selectively now. She would not have to wait long for point-blank accuracy.

  Was Rose committing suicide? The Jistrolloq was as good a target as she would ever be, until she began to pass and rake them with her own huge array of cannon. Pazel knew for a fact that a dozen guns could fire from the Chathrand 's stern — thrice as many as could be wielded from the enemy's sleek bow. Yet still no guns fired from the Chathrand save the beleaguered nine on the starboard quarter. He's risking everything to lure them closer. What in the Nine Pits for?

  Keep breathing. Think of something else. Strategy, tactics. What had Rose been going on about in his cabin? Motives, that was it. What had driven Kuminzat to take his vessel even this little distance onto the Ruling Sea? What did he want?

  Revenge, of course, for his daughter and the Babqri Father. But Rose had clearly believed that something else was at stake for the man. Hope of glory? Love of country? Proof of Arqual's deception?

  The mast shuddered. A ball from the White Reaper had punched a hole in the spanker mainsail.

  What proof would the Sizzies have, though, if they sank the Chathrand out here in the Nelluroq? And if killing them was glorious, wasn't it ten times more so to expose a plot that could destroy the Mzithrin Empire?

  They must have wanted to take us alive. Some of us, at least. But thanks to Diadrelu's warning we made it out of the Black Shoulders without a scratch. And now their settling for slaughter.

  A quarter-mile. The Jistrolloq was pitching wildly now, and her mainsails fell limp for three or four seconds at the bottom of each trough, the wind cut off by the waves towering above her. She was slowing, she had to be: but not enough for the Chathrand to pull ahead.

  There was a scream of fire. A blazing thing like a comet streaked from the Jistrolloq and exploded against the Great Ship's foremast. Dragon's egg! men were howling. Everyone had heard of the weapons, but Pazel had never met a soul who had lived to describe them first-hand. Now he saw why. Deck and mast were suddenly engulfed in a dripping blue flame; and hideous to behold, so were the men, leaping from the ropes, tearing at their oilskins in a frenzy. In blind agony the fire-drenched figures scattered on the deck, as luckier men hauled desperately at the pumps and hoses.

  For once the rain was their ally: the fire did not spread, not even on the tar-coated rigging. But the men at the blast's epicentre had lost control of their sails. The huge forecourse swung disastrously to leeward, tearing at the standing rigging, and the Chathrand heeled in the same direction, her bow diving and her stern lifting like a bucking mule. Pazel locked his elbow around a brace as his feet were torn from the clew line, and for a moment his body lifted away from the spar like a scrap of canvas. When the ship righted he crashed down painfully against the timber. He glanced over his shoulder, and a prayer of joy welled up inside him: Neeps was still there.

  The Chathrand was yawing, rolling, and it would be minutes yet before the fore-topmen came to grips with the chaos of the sail. Pazel looked down and saw six men at the wheel, Rose among them, fighting to keep the ship from turning sidelong to the waves. And now the Jistrolloq was racing towards them, chaser-cannon firing one after another, and teams on her forecastle running out the hull-smashing carronades.

  Another terrible crash, and the roof of the wheelhouse was blown to pieces. At nearly the same instant the mizzenmast tilted leeward with a groan: a wooden ballista-spear, dragging a kite's tail of iron barbs, had ripped through her starboard shrouds.

  Pazel looked at Neeps and made a jerking motion: The hell with this. It's over. Neeps understood, and nodded. His lips formed one word: Thasha.

  Pazel caught his meaning instantly. Go to her, Neeps was telling him, while there's time to say goodbye.

  They were creeping back towards the mast when something inside the Chathrand roared. Pazel looked down and saw black smoke boiling up and over the quarterdeck, and around both sides of the hull. They had run out the stern cannon at last.

  The Jistrolloq's bow plating was tempered steel, but four square openings pierced it: one for each of the chaser-guns harrying her enemy. It was those four cannon, Pazel saw now, that Rose had targeted, and with devastating results. Two of the guns were utterly destroyed, splintered like bottle-stems before his eyes. The other two were blown backwards through their ports and out of sight. The Jistrolloq herself was all but unblemished, but she would not get another shot at the Chathrand until she drew up alongside.

  Except for those two grim carronades on the forecastle. Such weapons were absurdly inaccurate, being roughly shaped like whiskey barrels, but they threw shot so enormous that one hit at short range could stave in a hull, dropping a ship to the sea floor in minutes. Even now the Mzithrinis were taking aim: Rose's strategy had left them wide open. Pazel thought of the gun-teams on the Chathrand, reloading as fast as humanly possible. It would not be fast enough.

  Then, somehow, fire leaped again from the Great Ship. It was a different sort of smoke plume, ragged spokes instead of a single billowing cloud. And Pazel remembered: the grapeshot guns in Rose's cabin. They too were best at point-blank range, for they riddled a wide space with iron pellets: useless for damaging a ship, but deadly against flesh. Pazel could see the proof of that: Mzithrinis dead or squirming in their blood or crouching in fear behind the carronades. One of the guns, already loosed for firing, disgorged its knee-high iron shot onto the forecastle. The ball raced aft, catching a man by the heel and crushing him instantly; then it changed directions with the pitch of the ship and smashed through the starboard rail. Pazel could only watch, sickened and stunned. All that with one cannon's grapeshot.

  Another of the four guns boomed, killing an officer as he stood to rally the surviving carronade gunners. A third erupted when relief gunners tried to swarm up the ladder onto the forecastle. Pazel realised with a sense of awe that the team in Rose's cabin would be able to reload the first of the four guns before the last had fired, and that such a relay could go on indefinitely. The Jistrolloq had given up her forecastle, and Chathrand 's twelve stern cannon would soon be ready to fire again.

  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 backwards 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 towards 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 skywards 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 saviours: 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 spectre of a whale beneath the surface, only to reach some absolute decision, and dive.

  30

  From the new journal of G. Starling Fiffengurt, Quartermaster

  Sunday, 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) amp; the Grey Lady took no immediately fatal damage in the engagement, amp; 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 amp; the undeniable cunning of Captain Nilus Rose.

  But never was I less inclined to celebrate. Sixteen men lost overboard amp; twenty more laid out dead in our surgical annexe, among them Coxilrane 'Firecracker' Frix, busybody, coward amp; 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, amp; threw rocks at us over the King's Canal. Frix always looked apologetic amp; out of place, a skinny dog trotting along at their heels, needing to be noticed amp; 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, amp; 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 amp; 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, amp; fighting to get her friends brought down off that lethal spar even when the captain threatened to pitch her over the stern. Elkstem amp; 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 amp; Co. their dinner amp; she walked up bold as brass amp; 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 amp; 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 amp; 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 Rapopalni, with my uncle amp; 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 amp; 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 amp; 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 amp; it stabs me through the heart to know how they'd condemn me. Last night they entered my dreams, bitter amp; scornful amp; hurrying off with hostile glances, amp; '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 (amp; 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 amp; my kinfolk, amp; 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 amp; for ever.

  Tuesday, 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, amp; 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 amp; shaped one into a new foremast. Waves at 40 ft. amp; 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.