by Anna Thayer
Yours? The strange voice in his mind jeered. Fool! Take back your childish words.
Eamon steadied his gaze and matched Spencing’s unflinchingly. “These cadets were explicitly under my command,” he said, “and it is my duty to see that they perform theirs to a standard that will glorify the Master. If they have not done so then the fault is with my command. I will take the lashes.”
Gasps stole the breath of every man, cadet, ensign, and sailor. A quick smile worked across Spencing’s face.
“Then we shall relieve you of your shirt, Mr Goodman,” he said, so kindly that it could not be kind.
“No.” Eamon shook his head. “I will do it myself.”
The pins glinted at his throat as he unfastened his jacket. Grahaven, Stonebrake, and Whitbread stood not far from him, looking so pale that they might faint. Grahaven’s grey face stared at him with awe and horror. The boy drew breath to protest; Eamon silenced the cadet with a steady gaze. At the back of the lines he saw Aeryn, wet and trembling, still held fast in the hands of the men who had recovered her from the water. She had been completely sidelined by Spencing’s theatrics. In a way he was glad of it, but he did not want her to watch him being flogged.
“Gentlemen,” he said, as he tugged off his jacket and began with his shirt. “Let us secure the prisoner below deck. She has proven herself cunning and I would not put it beyond her to attempt a further escape.” Aeryn stared at him, caught between horror and amazement. He did not meet her gaze. Instead he turned and barked out his orders before anyone, even Spencing, could stop him.
“Ilwaine, Barns, Meadhew: take the prisoner below and stand guard until you are relieved. Do not take your eyes from her.”
The ensigns saluted and took Aeryn from the hands of their dripping fellows. As they began hauling her below he saw her face one more time: stupefied.
It was then that Eamon realized that he was doing something out of the ordinary – could it be called heroic? He hadn’t expected it to be so sudden or to come with such clear conscience.
It is blind idiocy, quivered the voice in his mind. It glorifies none.
But Aeryn’s look was on the faces all around him and only grew as the bar was brought out onto the deck. It stood, solitary and solemn, where it was set and prepared by the sailors’ practised hands.
Eamon folded his shirt. With compulsive neatness that was perhaps intended to steady his mind, he laid it on the deck with his jacket. Then he stepped up to the bar. He tried to regulate his breathing as he was bound, spread-eagled, between the wooden beams. Spencing took it upon himself to check that the bonds were sufficiently tight. As he came past Eamon’s face the lieutenant leaned close: “An enjoyable way to spend the afternoon, wouldn’t you agree, Mr Goodman?” He looked delighted.
“None better, Mr Spencing.”
He did not see them bring the cat but he heard the tails jingling as it was given to Captain Farlewe. Swift bindings were run about Eamon’s lower back to protect his insides from glancing blows. Spencing stepped forward to act as a counter.
Some foreboding of pain at last reached Eamon’s thought. He closed his eyes, gratefully accepted the gag which was stuffed into his mouth, and braced himself for the strikes.
“Lieutenant Eamon Goodman will take thirty lashes for failure in his command,” Spencing announced. “We shall commence: one.”
A sharp hiss went through the air like a dozen arrows and struck him with astounding, flesh-tearing force. Eamon nearly choked on the gag as pain rocketed through him. He bit down hard.
“Two.”
The lash came away from Eamon’s back, leaving a raw, burning pain. Before the second blow hit him there were tears on his face and his back already ran with blood. Soon he could not feel even that.
The lash came back with viperous ferocity.
“Three.”
Chest heaving, Eamon tightened his grip on the ropes at his hands.
“Four. Five. Six.”
He bit down harder and harder on the gag. Blood dripped from his mouth.
“Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.”
Each was worse than the last.
“Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.”
This is payment for your ridiculous folly, Eben’s son.
“Fourteen. Fifteen.”
Tortured noises began bubbling out of him. He could not see for tears and all the sense in his limbs grew dull and blurred, indistinct except for the blistering lacerations that burned his skin like fire.
“Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.”
His tongue seemed bloated with blood and swollen with insensate pain; his whole body roared out the agony that raged through him.
“Twenty. Twenty-one.”
He clenched his rolling eyes shut. He had simply to hold on, to hold fast…
“Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four.”
He heard, and felt, to the count of twenty-seven before he knew no more.
“Easy, lad, easy.”
They seemed the first words that he had heard in years; they burned in his ears. He could not be sure how much time had passed.
He was laid on his front on a padded workbench in a darkened, narrow room. Strong hands moved about on his back. As sense and sight returned to him he became aware of his shirt and jacket across a nearby trunk and of various sharp-toothed, long-pronged instruments strewn across a shelf crammed with bottles and vials. For a wonderful moment the clothes on the chair let him believe that he was at home, in his own small, fish-scented room, looking after some odd things of Ladomer’s while he was away on one of his many missions.
The hands soon disabused him of his notion. Something that was, if the pain was anything to go by, alcohol was applied to a slash that spanned his back. He screamed.
“What’s the point of waking me up only to kill me?” he demanded, groggily and unkindly, as soon as his throat permitted it.
The ship’s doctor chuckled. “I can’t be held responsible for your waking, lad. You managed that yourself! And impressive it is, too, all considered.”
“What time is it?”
“Nearly night. The very cream of the day!”
Eamon ignored the incongruity. As he overcame the pain from the alcohol dose he became aware of the motion of the ship and the beating of a steady drum to keep time. They were on the move once more towards Dunthruik… How close were they now?
“Your prisoner is safe, in case you’re wondering,” the doctor continued. Eamon heard the man pouring something into a bowl and dipping a cloth into it. He suspected that it was more alcohol, destined for his back; he tried not to grow too tense. “You’ll be all right too, by the way. That is to say,” the jolly doctor added, “there’s a couple of pieces of you missing, but they’ll more or less grow back, and you’ll get some pretty scars into the bargain. Always a winner with the ladies.”
“Thank you,” Eamon replied. He tried to keep quiet during the next fiery application of alcohol, failed miserably, and then lay still, panting, for a few minutes.
“Will it always hurt like this?” he gasped.
“A little rest and you’ll be right as the River. Oh, but do avoid heavy lifting and excessive weapons drills for a while. Don’t want to reopen these nice, clean wounds once they’re healing.”
The doctor stepped away and began wiping his bloodied hands down on an apron before taking up a swathe of bandage.
“I can go?” Eamon asked, surprised.
“It’s no excuse from duty, a flogging, you know,” the doctor chided. “You’ll be straight back to it in the morning.”
“Oh.”
Eamon allowed the doctor to wrap a strip of fabric about his torso. The man took Eamon’s shirt and slipped it gently over his shoulders. The cloth snagged at his torn flesh and Eamon grimaced as the doctor settled the garment on him. He then endured the weight of his jacket.
The doctor took his hand and clasped it firmly.
“I’m right glad to be bandaging you, Mr Goodman.”
E
amon took his meaning. “Thank you, doctor.” He smiled – and then stopped because it hurt too much.
A few minutes later he left the doctor’s tiny, bottle-crammed cabin. He limped a little, and keeping his back straight or turning his head was difficult. Pulling the door closed behind him he turned to make his way to his own bunk to rest.
The corridor beyond the doctor’s cabin lay quiet. Eamon steadied himself on a timber as the holk swayed to one side. The silence all about him was broken only by a voice above: Spencing, calling orders to some of the cadets on deck. The lieutenant’s voice carried the crack of the lash.
Eamon staggered along the passage. It was as he went that he suddenly caught sight of three shapes in the deepening gloom.
Cadets Grahaven, Stonebrake, and Whitbread sat pressed up against the hull wall in sleep, their weary heads nodding as the holk rolled up and down. Their faces were turned towards the doctor’s door.
Eamon stopped for a moment. Then he passed on unseen. He followed the passage towards his own cabin and, quite unexpectedly, found himself going past it.
He stepped into the narrow hold. The two cadets on duty formally saluted him as he paused in the doorway. He offered them a smile before looking at Aeryn. She lay, pale but beautiful in her defiance, curled up in the cloaks and sacks that were the walls of her world. He saw that her escape had garnered her an extra chain on each limb.
She grew restless again. He ached to wake her from whatever nightmare she endured.
His hand throbbed. Wearily, like an old man bent with an age of toil, he turned and left the hold.
CHAPTER VI
He woke feeling as though he had lain in fire, and for a while he wondered why. Then his memory returned – as did the pulsing pain across his shoulders.
He dressed quickly and made his way onto the deck. There Ilwaine greeted him before offering him some breakfast. He had saved it specially, and quite against Spencing’s wishes. Eamon thanked him and wondered, as he munched the almost fresh bread, at the man’s apparent change of heart.
“Don’t rush, sir,” Ilwaine told him. “Nobody is expecting you at the exercises today.”
Eamon raised a curious eyebrow. “Is that so, ensign?”
Ilwaine smiled. “A few of us spoke to the captain, and he spoke with Lieutenant Spencing – we were all agreed, sir.”
Eamon blinked, trying to imagine the meeting between lieutenant and captain; the thought was singularly delightful.
“Thank you, ensign.”
“Sir.” With a salute Ilwaine left, a distinct smile on his face.
As he went through the day Eamon thought that some showed a little more respect, even if it was grudging, towards him than they had before. It was unexpected but not in the least unpleasant. His uniform was at last bringing him what he deserved.
He corrected himself. He had not even been wearing his uniform when they flogged him. He had been moved to act by something he hadn’t understood; the Master had had nothing to do with it. Perhaps it was that, more than anything, which brought a smile to his face. The strange voice and the pain in his palm – whatever they were – did not hold him. He was still his own master.
Later that day he crossed paths with Spencing. The lieutenant scowled.
“I suppose you’re feeling very clever, Mr Goodman,” he muttered. Evidently he had noted the change his actions had unintentionally wrought upon the crew.
Eamon laughed, inclined to indulge even Spencing. “Only a little tired, Mr Spencing,” he answered. “But we must lead by example.”
Spencing turned on his heels with a huff, yelling spurious commands at cadets.
During the day Eamon noted that his hand had begun to throb dully, but he put it from his mind. At mid-morning he went to see the doctor, who happily changed the bandages – and reapplied whatever stringent alcohol he used – to Eamon’s scars and wounds while soliloquizing on an infinite number of comforting nothings. No subject seemed beyond his scope: the weather, history, politics, the exotic habits and temperaments of the east, or the varying kinds of women in the merchant states. Part of the diatribe was doubtless to draw Eamon’s attention away from the pain in his back, which burned at each application of alcohol as though liquid fire were being poured upon it. The doctor chuckled as Eamon tried to stop himself from flinching.
“You’re a brave man, Mr Goodman. In fact,” he added, “you’re a good man!” The doctor laughed as though it were possible that he was the first man to make this joke, then applied rather too much alcohol. “My apologies, lieutenant,” he said. “You’ll heal well. Don’t worry about the scars too much,” he continued. “Some of them are scabbing over nicely already, but I’m afraid you will have fine streaks on your back ’til the day you die – and may that be long from now! You’re already too old to fully recover from a whipping like the one you took, my lad.”
Late that afternoon the forests that had surrounded them for the last day or so thinned and broke sporadically into grassy plains before the plains were swallowed again by the forest and woodland. Far to the north and the north-east the dim shape of distant mountains marred the horizon. The River was growing broader still and a road had appeared by its north bank, frequented by horses and carts whose curious old men stared at the ship as though it might carry smugglers or secret wealth. Smoke rose from hamlet chimneys and, where the River rolled like a silver ribbon towards its mouth, Eamon sometimes saw a mass. At first it was indistinguishable, sheltered by mists or woods or distance, but in the balmy autumn light his eyes picked out what looked like towers and huge black walls. The sun was before them, and as the light changed, Eamon imagined that the rays caught gilded rooftops or pennants and banners snapping gaily in the wind. It was said that they would reach Dunthruik sometime the following day.
This left much of the crew thoughtful. The captain announced that he had taken the liberty of letting the cook bring salted meats and some Ravensill wines on board when they had stopped that morning so that their final meal together could be an enjoyable one. It surprised Eamon, for it was certainly not something that the Gauntlet would have done or probably even condoned – indeed, Spencing protested the notion – but neither sailors, ensigns, nor cadets shared their irate officer’s opinion on the subject. Eamon’s flogging seemed to have elevated him above Spencing, and so it was Eamon’s view on the matter that was sought. He thought the meal a fine idea and gave permission for it, noting that Spencing watched him vengefully. But the lieutenant did not oppose him. Eamon wondered whether Spencing meant to cause him trouble in Dunthruik.
Where the bar and the cat had been the previous day the captain ordered the setting up of a series of misfit tables. The holk was not really a place for a sit-down banquet but they would do their best.
Anchorage found, the tables were set and the smell of cooking wafted in the rigging. Eamon’s stomach rumbled appreciatively.
Eamon had been asked not to help with the meal’s preparations and the captain asked whether he would join him at his table when the meal began. Eamon accepted, partially to spite Spencing. He was very much looking forward to not sharing a room with the arrogant prig when they arrived at their harbour the next day. A cautionary voice reminded him that in all likelihood they would be stationed together in Dunthruik, possibly in the same group, but he tried not to think of that. If he performed well, after all, he could be transferred elsewhere, and there would be others to whom he could report the scheming man.
As the preparations continued Eamon discreetly inquired of the captain whether a portion of the doctor’s culinary masterpiece might be taken to the prisoner. The captain’s nod spoke enough. Eamon hoped that Aeryn would be able to eat at least some of it.
As he stood surveying the logistical nightmare that half a dozen teenage cadets were able to make of setting up some simple tables, he felt Mathaiah Grahaven watching him. When he looked up to meet the by now familiar gaze he found it lowered in shame.
Stretching his sore shoulders with a wi
nce, Eamon walked across to the young man. The cadet shuffled uncomfortably.
“Is everything all right, Mr Grahaven?” Eamon asked, and found that he spoke to the boy as a friend. He smiled sadly, knowing that their paths would part the next day.
“No sir… I mean, yes, sir.” The boy faltered. “You shouldn’t have done it, sir!” he burst out angrily.
Eamon laughed. “It was my duty,” he answered. “And even a Gauntlet cadet is deserving of kindness,” he added.
Grahaven looked aghast. Then, recognizing the irony and seeing the smile on Eamon’s face, he laughed. Soon both of them were laughing so hard that it hurt the lashes on Eamon’s back.
When at last they managed to contain themselves, the cadet gestured to the hazy silhouette that showed on the most distant horizon.
“Is that Dunthruik, sir?”
Eamon looked at the shadowed shape. It was not growing any closer now because the holk had harboured in a sheltered northern bend of the River. The main sway ran past them, swelling and churning around the deep rocks in its bed. Eamon realized that he preferred the water to the impending city.
“That’s Dunthruik.”
“I wish I was going there, not back to Edesfield,” Grahaven sighed, and drummed his fingers on the side. “Maybe in a few years I will. How long did you train, sir, to get this posting?”
Eamon didn’t answer. His heart was suddenly heavier, perhaps heavier still because he had found how precious the boy’s kindness was. He saw how it would be in but a few months: Mathaiah Grahaven would kneel before Belaal, put his hand to the awful sceptre, writhe with pain that only he could feel, and then languish in the uncertainty of what had happened to him.
The pain in Eamon’s hand grew acute and he felt a battle of wills in his own head. He saw the brave and noble officer that the cadet would become: head and shoulders above all other men, feared and obeyed, Hand to the Master himself, stalking the halls of the palace and leaving swathes of wretched obeisance in his wake.
His vision clearing, Eamon turned back to Cadet Grahaven. He looked at the kind face, already imbued with nobility. But it was not the nobility that Dunthruik desired. Grahaven was kind and true – like Telo.
