Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

  Despite the hangover from the drug, Ryan instantly knew he and his friends were at sea. He also knew he had been deliberately thrown facing into the sun. He got a knee beneath him and rose. He perceived the bronze gladiator figure from his capture whipping forward. Ryan raised his manacled hands, but the huge fist shot beneath and buried itself into his guts. Ryan dropped to boos and derision. It took a supreme act of will to keep from vomiting.

  Ryan forced his limbs to obey him and rose again.

  A voice from the side spoke low. “Strong bold bastard, I’ll give him that.”

  The one-eyed man shook his head and tried to blink his vision straight. The voice belonged to a red-haired, bullet-headed man built like an aged, sun-ravaged gorilla. He gave Ryan a look of grudging sympathy and lifted his chin in warning. “Best look to starboard, mate.”

  Ryan blinked and caught the next blow coming out of his right peripheral vision. He was too drug addled to do anything about it. The fist took him in the side of the neck and dropped him with white fire racing down his right arm.

  The bronze gladiator loomed over him. He wore a bandage over the knick Ryan had given his cheek and another on his ear. “Captain will speak to you now.”

  Ryan squeezed his manacled hands into fists, pushed off the deck and stood again. Mixed mutters of admiration and speculation greeted his effort. He reeled. The deck spun and he could still barely see. Ryan spit. “And just who’s the captain of this bastard tub?”

  The bronze fist hit Ryan in the guts again, and he doubled over. An uppercut ripped him erect, and a right cross crushed him to the deck, vomiting. The blond, bronze enforcer squatted over Ryan and leered as he cocked his fist. “Oh, you...”

  A voice like a rasp on slate spoke. “Mr. Manrape.”

  All chatter and cheering ceased. Ryan’s abuser shot to his feet. “Captain!”

  “Every man on this ship has the right to ask who the captain is exactly twice,” the voice continued. “Once, when he is first brought aboard and doesn’t know, and the second, the day he kills me and stands before crew.”

  The assembled men on the deck chanted in unison. “We know the code! We keep the creed!”

  Ryan rose for the third and he thought possibly the last time. The only good news was that throwing up seemed to have cleared his head a little. He took in the crowd. He estimated about a hundred were on the deck and in the rigging. That told him the ship probably kept four watches. Most were on deck now effecting repairs from the previous battle and watching the spectacle the new prisoners presented. The worst part was that Ryan couldn’t see land on the horizon. The crew was different than any Ryan had encountered before. Despite the relaxed discipline of the moment, the symmetrical arrangement of the crowd told Ryan each man or woman was standing at their station.

  The crew did not exactly wear a uniform, but nearly all wore loose white pants of identical cloth and red or white striped shirts. The uniformity of the clothing told Ryan they bought or traded for cloth in bulk and shared it among themselves. He reined in his drug hangover and found himself startled again. Hardly any of the crew was armed. The pirates and sea raiders Ryan had encountered were usually festooned with blasters and blades. Every crewmember he surveyed carried a knife or a marlinspike or both, but those were working tools.

  Ryan looked up and saw sailors up in the tops on lookout with longblasters, and several were pointed his way. There was that, and a ring of men surrounding him tapped belaying pins into their palms with practiced familiarity. Ryan heard his companions being hurled to the deck behind him. Krysty drew a lusty chorus of catcalls. Doc drew jeers and noises of disgust. The rest of the companions fell somewhere in between. They took Ryan’s lead and rose behind him. Ricky and Mildred had to hold Doc up. He wasn’t doing well. Ryan squinted up at the quarterdeck and beheld the captain.

  He was something to see.

  The man was black, his skin a lot darker than Mildred’s. His black, wavy hair was shot through with gray and pulled into a short pigtail. The man’s eyes were black from pupil to iris with almost no white showing. It gave him a gaze that disturbingly resembled a shark’s.

  The captain was a mutant.

  He was not tall, but his shoulders were impossibly broad. The captain wore a black broadcloth shirt cut to fit his frame and black trousers. A sash that had to have weighed five pounds with all the spun gold gleaming through it girded his waist. His shirt was open to his solar plexus against the heat. Twisted and raised white lines girded his throat like a choker of thorns. Ryan instinctively knew it was a hanging scar. The captain’s right hand was twice the size as was usual, locked in a curled rictus and covered with orange fur. The nails were silver, long and sharpened like claws. Ryan could tell the hand was not the captain’s own but something that had been affixed.

  The mutant grated through his damaged voice box. “I am Oracle, captain of the good ship Hand of Glory.”

  A tall man with a short beard, mustache and spectacles stood beside the captain. He was dressed nearly the same except that his blouse and trousers were blue and white, and undoubtedly he was an officer. “Glory!” the man shouted.

  “Glory!” the crew roared in response. “Glory! Glory! Glory!”

  Oracle’s flat black eyes stared eerily at the prisoner before him as the cheers died down. “What is your name?”

  “Ryan Cawdor.”

  “You have been on the waters?”

  Ryan knew he and his friends’ lives hung in the balance. Lies or subterfuge would not serve them shackled and out of sight of land. “A few times. Never for long.”

  “Are you able? Can you hand, reef and steer?”

  “No,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “But I’ve pulled on a rope, hurled a harpoon and fought in boarding actions. Steered a bit.”

  “You stand like a man accustomed to command,” Oracle observed.

  Manrape leered. “I can break him of that habit, my captain.”

  “Never commanded a ship.” Ryan kept his eyes on Oracle. “Don’t claim the ability.”

  Oracle’s eyes narrowed and his gaze went opaque. “With time and tides, Mr. Ryan. Perhaps.”

  Ryan tried to marshal his thoughts. “Captain, I—”

  The blue-clad officer beside the captain bellowed with the unmistakable timbre of long command. “You don’t address the captain directly, fish!”

  Manrape lunged in. His fist rammed into Ryan’s right thigh in a charley horse from hell. Ryan’s leg spasmed, and he dropped to one knee against his will.

  Oracle stared at Ryan like a cipher. “I do not ordinarily press men, Mr. Ryan. I prefer volunteers, but we live in extraordinary times.” Oracle turned away and walked back toward his cabin. “I leave it to you, Commander Miles.”

  The officer eyed J.B. “That fish had some very fancy blasters.”

  J.B. looked at Ryan, who grimaced against his pain. “He’s J.B., armorer.”

  “Mr. Forgiven!” Miles shouted.

  A fat man with lank black hair hanging like the curtain of a jellyfish from his bald pate waddled forward. He wore blue like Miles and bore a great brown leather book and a predark pen. “Aye, Commander!”

  “Rate Mr. J.B. temporary Gunner’s Mate until proved otherwise or signed to the book. Have Smithy ease his irons six inches apiece so he can work. If he’s useful, strike his chains tomorrow.”

  Miles gave J.B. a deadly look. “You try to sneak a blaster, a blade or a thimbleful of powder, and by the nukecaust breaking of the world you will kiss the blaster’s daughter while the whip pounds your cock and balls to paste.”

  J.B. nodded. “I’ll—”

  “Shut your filthy piehole, scum!” Miles roared.

  J.B. tensed but fell silent.

  Miles pointed at Mildred. “This one had med supplies.”

  “Mildred can sew a man,” Ryan answered. He and the companions were very careful who they let on that Mildred was a genuine physician. “She’s a healer, hoping to learn more.”

  Commander Mil
es seemed pleased. “Wake up old Bonesaw and tell him he has a new temporary saw mate until proved otherwise or signed.”

  Forgiven wrote in the ship’s book. “Aye.”

  Miles gave Mildred the evil eye. “And listen to me, bitch. You steal meds or let a man deliberately die on the table, you’ll kiss the blaster’s daughter while every man aboard takes you.”

  A woman with hair as red as Krysty’s, but six inches taller and two hundred pounds heavier, held up a huge callused hand and made a fist. “And woman!”

  The crew cheered. Miles rolled his eyes. “Sweet Marie to have firsts.”

  Forgiven entered Mildred’s name and made a check by it.

  Miles nodded in approval at Jak and Ricky. Ryan started to speak. “They’re—”

  “They’re young, light and tight, and this ship is short of top men.” Miles nodded at a mutie who looked like a six-foot, shaved gibbon with bright pink skin and golden eyes. “Mr. Movies, I want Whitey and Softboy here able in the rigging ASAP.”

  Movies put a pink knuckle to his brow and spoke in a soft voice that sounded like it was unused to human speech. “Aye, Commander Miles.”

  Manrape looked at Ricky with open lust. “What is your name?”

  Ryan gave Ricky credit for scowling at Manrape as if he were shit he had scraped off his shoe. “Ricky.”

  Manrape closed his eyes. “Ricky Softboy, young, light and tight...”

  Ricky made a Puerto Rican hand gesture that had been ancient in Doc’s time. “Mama bicho!”

  The crew laughed at Ricky’s bravado. Manrape smiled beatifically. “Oh, my soft Rickito.”

  “Manrape wants a new wife!” someone called from the rigging. The catcalls resumed.

  “Ship’s business!” Miles thundered. The increasingly horrible suggestions and bets died down. The commander ran an appreciative eye over Krysty. “And her, Mr. Ryan?”

  “She’s mine,” Ryan stated.

  Sweet Marie called out lustily. “We’ll see how long that lasts, Cyclops!”

  The crew whooped.

  “Write Red into the log and rate her lubber, powder monkey, gopher and the like, until proved otherwise or signed.”

  Forgiven scratched in the log. “Aye.”

  The commander weighed and measured Doc and found him wanting. The knockout drug, the beating and the rude awakening had left the time-trawled man staring at his shoes. “And this?”

  “Doc is—”

  “Doc?” Miles perked up. “He’s a whitecoat?”

  Ryan sought for anything that could save his friend. “No, but he’s educated. He’s—”

  A thatch-headed young man shouted happily, “He’s just a fucking old stick!”

  “Shut up, Wipe!” Miles snapped. Wipe flinched and stood at attention. Miles sighed at Forgiven. “Old Stick, rate him lubber, let him pull a rope until he proves himself ordinary seaman or breaks.” Doc seemed completely oblivious to his sentencing.

  Forgiven made a derisive noise and a note. “Aye.”

  The commander gave Ryan a smile that held not an ounce of warmth. “And you, Mr. Ryan, word is you can pull a rope, heave harpoon and lance and fight a boarding action.”

  Ryan knew what was coming. He was the leader of a group of the shanghaied aboard a ship in dire straits. He was mostly likely to be worked until broken or made an example of. “I can.”

  “Rate One-Eye lubber, until proved otherwise or signed.”

  “Aye.”

  “Mr. Manrape! I don’t want any of the new fish together in number on deck until proved otherwise or signed. Let them mess together but separate their hammocks. Clap Red, Whitey and Softboy in irons until the next watch. Put Ryan to work now.”

  Manrape sneered openly at Doc. “And this one?”

  Commander Miles laughed. “Put Old Stick to work immediately. Let Mr. Ryan have him as a comfort.”

  * * *

  RYAN WORKED LIKE a slave. The knockout drug and the beating did him no favors as he hauled on ropes to bring fresh spars and sails aloft. Small boats brought casks of water, and by the crew’s grumbling, far too little bush meat from the forest. Ryan staggered beneath their weight to bring them down into the dark depths of the hold.

  Their complaints and worry about the food situation were nearly constant. Ryan was treated like a pariah, a pressed man and probably rebellious if given any chance. No one talked to him except to scream about how he was doing his every task wrong. Crewmen laughed when he threw up or fell, but some gave him grunts or nods as he rose again and again and returned to his tasks. If there was any solace in the situation, it was that every other member of the crew was working just as hard as he was. The ship had been in a battle and barely escaped. The urgency among officers and crew to get the vessel seaworthy and under sails again was palpable.

  Doc was not doing as well.

  The knockout drug had addled him. He had been put to work picking apart torn rope and rigging for caulking material. Doc was spending more time talking to the rope scraps than picking them. Manrape stalked the decks with a knotted rope end of his own and it fell upon Doc again and again. The old man whimpered and looked to be spiraling into a genuine episode. Ryan tottered beneath two wooden kegs roped to his shoulders. The ships bell clanged the hour and the commander called out, “Miss Loral!”

  A lanky, grinning, raven-haired beauty in officer’s blue produced a pewter whistle on a chain from her ample cleavage and piped the change of watch. The crew put away its equipment and gear and began filing down the hatch. Miss Loral looked at Miles, who shook his head.

  Miss Loral shook her head at Ryan. “Not you, Ryan! Watch on watch! And you, Old Stick!”

  Ryan had already worked straight through two four-hour watches, and now it would be twelve hours without rest. He was handed hard bread at intervals, and he was given as much water as the rest of the crew, but Ryan could see his sentence written on the wall. They were going to break him and destroy Doc. The new watch filed up. Ryan hadn’t seen J.B. or Mildred, but he saw Krysty, Jak and Ricky with each change of watch and they shot him increasingly concerned looks. Jak and Ricky filed by. Jak hesitated, but Miss Loral’s voice cracked like a whip. “Into the tops, Whitey!”

  Jak was without his Colt Python and his smorgasbord of knives. He knew he would only get Ryan and himself punished if he tried anything. He frowned and moved toward the port rigging. Ricky shot Ryan a grin and tossed a piece of salted mystery meat the size of a deck of cards between two buckets by Ryan’s feet.

  Ricky shot Ryan a wink.

  Manrape appeared out of nowhere behind Ricky. He grabbed the youth by the back of the neck and lifted him off the deck with one hand, caressing his buttocks with the other. “Aiding and succoring a man sentenced to watch on watch, Ricky Softboy?”

  Ricky cursed and flailed in the titan’s grip.

  Ryan stepped forward despite the kegs strapped to his back.

  Doc’s voice thundered across the deck. “Cursed pederast!” The entire deck stared as Doc rounded on Manrape. The old man drew himself up to his full height and his eyes flashed with imminent violence. “Should you wish to compulse young Ricardo into the role of catamite, then you shall be forced to come through me!”

  Manrape dropped Ricky and turned.

  “Doc!” Ryan shouted. “No!”

  Doc produced a marlinspike with the same oil-on-glass speed he could draw his sword from his cane when properly motivated. The crew barely had time to gasp as Doc lunged for Manrape’s heart. Manrape slapped the marlinespike out of Doc’s hand as if he was swatting a fly, and his backhand tossed Doc to the deck. For a moment, silence reigned.

  Commander Miles’s familiar roar broke the silence. “What in the last megaton that boiled the seas is going on?”

  Manrape sighed happily. “Old Stick, unsigned, attempted murder of the bos’n with a marlinspike.”

  Miles glared down at Doc in terrible judgment. All fight had gone out of the old man, and he twitched and mewled on the deck. The marlins
pike lay damningly beside his hand. Miles’s eyes filled with rage. “Witnessed?”

  More than a dozen men chorused. “Aye!”

  “Clap Old Stick in irons! Take him to the captain for judgment!” Miles shook his head. He already knew the sentence. “String a rope, and prepare to pipe all hands on deck to witness the mighty hand of the Glory’s creed and code.”

  “Can’t you see he’s damaged!” Ryan shouted. “The drug you gave him stuped him!”

  Shocked silence fell across the deck. Ryan expected a second rope to be rigged beside Doc’s. It was Manrape who spoke. “Perhaps One-Eye is right, Commander. Why bother the captain? We have a cure for those who are drunk or addled on duty.”

  “We know the creed. We hold the code,” Miles intoned. “Mr. Manrape does not press his injury and begs mercy.” Miles jerked his head toward the starboard rigging. “Ship’s punishment, then! Seize Old Stick into the shrouds. See if that clears his head. Failing that, let the gulls have him as an example to those who might be likewise tempted.”

  Crewmen seized Doc and carried him over their heads to the starboard rail, laughing. Ryan took a step forward. A huge, raw, red hand slammed onto his shoulder. “Best case, you hang right up there next to him in the shrouds. Worst case, you hang alone from the yardarm.”

  Ryan tensed with frustrated rage as the crewmen lashed Doc spread-eagled in the shrouds ten feet above the deck and facing inward. “Mr. Hardstone!” Miles called.

  The big red-headed man removed his hand from Ryan’s shoulder and snapped to attention. “Aye, Commander!”

  “You have empty seats at your table. One-Eye will mess with you and your mates.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “The captain says until he is proved otherwise or signed, One-Eye is your responsibility.”

  Ryan was starting to have a very bad feeling about being proved otherwise.

  Hardstone gave Ryan a none-too-pleased look. “Aye, sir.”

  “Mr. Manrape!”

  “Aye!”

  “Let Mr. Ryan stand another watch for his insolence.”