Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  Lince ran to the sea doors and looked into the hold, and there he saw a ghost reaching through the murk. He plunged in, clasping Nil by the belt and kicking up to the Green Deck. He hauled him from the water and threw him over his shoulder, pounding his back until Nil retched the sea out of his lungs.

  “Nilly!” Lince shouted as he slung him off his shoulder onto the deck. “We did it, lad!”

  Nil coughed, nodding at his first mate as he rolled over and retched.

  “Good lad!” Lince slapped him on the back.

  Floating upside-down on their wake, the Gyre’s tube-feet grasped the harpoon that pierced it. Seabirds dove to tear scraps from the monster’s underside as sharks appeared, ripping into its flesh as the millstones dragged the beast under the sea.

  One last orange arm thrust from the water, and a grimy gull swooped down to tear at a tube-foot only to be sucked in and pierced by its needle, the Gyre’s last victim as it sank to the bottom of the sea.

  Nil climbed out of the sea doors with Lince, to everyone’s astonishment.

  “You made it, Captain!” Tobbs said.

  “Yes, Tobbs,” Nil cleared his throat. “What happened to your eyebrows?”

  “Oh, it’s an experiment, sir.”

  Nil grimaced. “I trust you’ve recorded the day’s events.”

  “Yes, Captain… but…”

  “Not again?” Lince growled.

  “I thought we were finished, for sure this time!”

  “Tobbs tossed the buoy!” Ed cried.

  Everyone cheered, for it seemed like a good luck ritual now.

  “I guess you’ll be staying up late again, eh, lad?” Lince said.

  “Yes, sir!” Tobbs answered. “As I mentioned, I have a perfect memory! I can picture every page, every ink spill…”

  “’Ever thought of making a copy?” Lince suggested.

  “No, sir,” Tobbs said, shamed into deeper despair.

  “Get crackin’!” Lince snapped. “And don’t spill ink this time!”

  The young naturalist ran across the deck.

  Nil coughed. “You bastard.”

  “I just saved your life.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  When the Gyre struck the sea floor, the Sea Mare was miles away. Except for a star-shaped mass of gnawed flesh, nothing remained of the orange hand that for seven years gripped the southern waters in terror.

  “What in Hala?” bellowed the crimson king, raking his eyes across his dubious subjects as they concealed smiles. “Not Deevex!” he cried. He bent over the pool in rage, ignoring the Wyndernes and focusing all of his hope on the next defense.

  Chapter 24

  Healing Wounds

  Rawley rigged the jibs to port and sent them aloft to help hoist the Sea Mare’s wounds from the sea. She pitched favorably, all her canvas catching the southerly as she made due east toward the setting sun.

  With her decks tilted and her hold flooded, the odd wave still breached her port waist. Lince organized bailing lines out of both sea doors beside Nil’s mechanical ones. Four men on the Green Deck filled buckets and passed them to four on the main.

  Rawley seemed at home as he pogoed expertly over the slanting mid-deck on his pivoting wooden shoe.

  As fires were lit under hanging tar pots, Rawley ordered Bat and Bultin aloft to carry the new stayline that the men on the fo’c’sle had rigged to the cathead.

  Nil supervised as Rawley himself climbed the limp shrouds after them and pulled a hatchet from the toolbox in his wooden leg. He chopped the old forestay off the mast and let Bultin and Bat loop the stays over the cleats. Then he signaled, and the men on the fo’c’sle wound the rig taut with the capstan.

  The masts stopped vibrating as the stays were made fast. “Lay the tar on thick,” Rawley said to the men on the shrouds.

  The men worked without any break until, at last, the statue of Trevin cooled and went dark.

  The wind whistled over the Sea Mare’s decks, filling her sails and keeling her generously as a red sun slanted through the rigging. Rawley dangled from a line over her starboard hull. His wooden leg bent at the knee had a rubber pad shaped to grip the hull. He his wooden thigh to reveal his tool chest. Swinging across the hull, Rawley quickly patched the three breaches with tacks and canvas as some sailors hung alongside him to paint the patches with hot tar.

  Bultin draped his greatcoat over Rept, the third watch leader: a hard and true man who had earned his mates’ respect. The body of Tairnol had been covered by another sailor’s coat near the aft sea doors on the main deck; he had been bashed by the Gyre and thrown onto his head. Fingers of blood reached port and starboard from under the sailors’ shrouds.

  Rawley assayed the damage to the fo’c’sle, enlisting Bat and Bultin, and, in his flush of authority, even Lince to help hoist and fit out the new bowsprit. Lince bristled. He never liked it when the ship needed repair, for this was the only time the ship’s carpenter outranked the first mate, and Rawley was taking full advantage.

  Rawley made the men cut the rigging from the broken bowsprit that lay across Rept on the mid-deck. Clearing the snarls of line, the strongest men aboard came together to lift the shattered spar, revealing the grievous wound depressed in Rept’s chest, which pooled with blood before unlucky eyes. The men took the broken bowsprit to the sterncastle, and a number joined them as they launched it overboard, reddening the wake.

  Bruthru Zee had tended to the five injured men below in his infirmary. Now the physician tended to the dead, washing them and wrapping them from head to toe in sheets of yellow cotton, as was the custom in Zee’s far-off land. Then he had a few distraught crewmates help him carry the bodies to lay them under one of the aft ladderways, where Zee lit two pieces of frankincense on golden coins and placed them on the foreheads of the dead men.

  The bailing was nearly half done when four men dropped into the hold to pass buckets to the Green Deck and then up to the main deck.

  The ship rode higher as the sun sank, and since the Gyre had gnawed off many of the spikes on her keel, she ran faster now. She was much lighter without the millstones, as well, so Nil ordered 50 extra barrels in the hold filled with seawater even as the others bailed.

  Everyone was hard-tasked as the sun sank before them. Pickle and Bombo finally got their galley in order and began a much-anticipated supper.

  Rawley went below to loosen the new bowsprit, assisted by Bultin. Up to their hams in water, the two men pulled the broken spar from its socket and floated it forward. Tobbs paused from writing to watch the tree-sized spar moving down the corner of his cabin.

  After the original bowsprit was floated away, the new bowsprit rose in its place. Its lines were fixed and sent up to the fo’c’sle, where they were strung through deadeyes rigged to the end of boomkins fixed to the capstan.

  The men on the foredeck cranked the capstan as the men below shoved, and the new bowsprit emerged as men hooked the loop of the mainstay over its sharp tip.

  A jittery Jootle managed to do his job aloft as he watched the rigging while the men loosened the new forestay. Pushing and pulling as the spar thrust forward over the knighthead, the men tightened the stays and permanently secured the masts.

  Various details repaired the foredeck and rails while others continued to mend the wounds on her starboard hull.

  Nil sent Tobbs to examine the orange tip of the Gyre’s arm that continued to wander over the fo’c’sle on its tube-feet, seemingly unaware that its body had perished. Tobbs pronounced it dead, amid much laughter as it kept on its creeping way. The naturalist endured the mockery, explaining to them that he had shaved his eyebrows for science. His lack of eyebrows, he now assumed, was the reason for all laughter directed at him now. Employing the Captain’s authority, he selected two men to help pack the specimen with salt and wrap it in linens to preserve it for scientific study.

  As Rollum headed off to the damaged fo’c’sle to help saw deck planks for the ravaged foredeck, Senthellzia found herself u
nder one of the ladderways, the only place where she felt out of the crew’s way. This time she was alone as Zee tended three injured men below. Harm fluttered down from the crow’s nest, and Senthellzia welcomed him onto the gauntlet of her right arm, but her eyes gazed at Rollum. In grief, she noticed the bodies swathed in yellow nearby, and suddenly, fearing for Rollum, she found her courage fractured.

  Pickle rushed out of the galley with his perennial frown and crazed mane. He handed Senthellzia a hot buttered scone. “An investiture for the mellifluous concord your presence superinduces,” he said, and bowed.

  She was about to respond when he left. Senthellzia shrugged and Harm pinched off a piece of the biscuit and ate it.

  The men below, led by the dogged Rawley, worked on the starboard breaches long after the sun turned in.

  Three leagues northwest lay the island of the crystal dragon.

  Three leagues east lay the red brick that was Trevin’s second creation.

  “That crazy lobster turned a coward when it saw the Gyre, Nilly,” Lince said to the captain on the bridge. “It may be spooked.”

  “I don’t like sleeping on its doorstep,” Nil said. “And I don’t like braving that island ahead in the dark, either.”

  “Aye, nor do I.”

  “Let’s bet on the night for cover and keep three sets of eyes on the dragon’s door. Make her ready to drop anchor.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Lince said. “There’s a deep reef ahead that should suit us. Commence shifting the ballast port!” Lince descended the bridge, leaving his cat clinging to the rail by Nil. Nil flinched as the feisty cat plunged down the ladder after Lince.

  The men finished bailing the hold and mopped up the last water. The sea doors fore and abaft were left open to air the decks. Lince led the men in rolling 200 great kegs of water to the port side of the hold as Nil ordered the mainsail heaved steadily starboard.

  The Sea Mare crossed a deep reef that glowed with twinkling lights below.

  Lince climbed out of the forward sea doors and announced that the ballast had been shifted.

  Nil ordered the sails furled and the anchor dropped, and when the anchor grabbed hold, the Sea Mare came to a stop, tilting on her portside.

  Nil gave the nod to an impatient Pickle, and Bombo rang the dinner bell.

  The wafting fumes of ham and cornmeal stuffing with onion-carrots, which enticed the men for an hour, drew them to the mess. To Pickle’s dismay, his masterful dinner was swallowed practically whole and, after swilling down their mug of ale, the men staggered back out to resume their labors.

  Fog wrapped around the northwest isle where the crystal dragon lived. After eluding it twice, they were comforted to have any cover as they worked through the night.

  With ballast listing them to port, they were able to remove the patches and work on the starboard hull. Rawley versed each young sailor in carpentry as he moved them along. It seemed an endless ordeal, heating, bending, clamping, dovetailing, pitching and pegging the new planks and beams and decking, and Nil urged them to complete the task by dawn. Rawley was skeptical, however, enforcing meticulous standards.

  Meanwhile, Karlok reordered the supplies in the hold that had been thrown into disarray. Stocks that needed to be dried were hauled through the sea doors and laid out under the warm wind. Those that were spoiled were thrown overboard.

  The men above had no reprieve, for Lince ordered the lines and rigging inspected. He also made them scrub the decks, a particularly harsh assignment, for, as Overly lamented, accurately for once, these were the biggest decks he had ever seen in his entire life. Lince would not have the blood of their fellows trodden upon, however, nor would he have the blood of the Gyre fouling the Sea Mare.

  Six had died fighting the Gyre. There were 62 left of the Sea Mare’s 70. Two below in Zee’s infirmary were badly injured with head wounds, and three more nursed broken bones.

  Trevin touched one of the last four fragments of the Cronus Star to the fragment he was using as a window. In this way, he “lit” the new shard as the other waned so that he could continue watching the Sea Mare a little longer.

  The crew orchestrated their industry to complete their tasks with an incremental magic that was a revelation. He watched them attack each problem’s solution with such relentless purpose and specific action that his heart was dazzled and amazed. These intrepid mortals met each obstacle set before them with the power of persistence and the precision of experience. The vast array of objects and tasks, tools and talents, techniques and disciplines that they had mastered inspired him and humbled him.

  For the first time, Trevin looked with adult eyes on mortal men. He realized now that their daily tasks required perseverance and will, knowledge and skill, and patience and courage beyond anything he had imagined crediting them with before. Their minds were undaunted by the range of nature’s promises and threats, indeed they boldly harnessed them to their purposes. What seemed at first a slavish obedience to the rules of nature was really an intimate dance, an infinitely creative manipulation respectfully leading nature without violating her own laws. Here was everything there was in Cirilen magic, he thought, and possibly more, for the character required for their cooperation to be successful involved a host of virtues equally marvelous to him. And all of this quiet magic was played out on a grander stage over a longer range with far more thought and effort and organization, making its achievements all the more noble and, indeed, miraculous.

  For the first time, while watching his fellow Ameulintians, he felt a surge of faith that was stronger than his faith in his own power.

  Drewgor sneered quietly. He was no longer amused by this show. “They scramble like ants.”

  “Industrious ants, lord,” Theosophiclar noted, aware that he was risking torture, which was no more than a meaningless waste of time to a Wynderne.

  “Bah!” Drewgor spat. “I detect a germ of admiration for these lowly insects in your voice, Theosophiclar. And I would torture you for your insolence if it wouldn’t bore me more than it would you. What transpires below will be your punishment for your ill-placed faith. For you will see that men are grist in Hala’s mill.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Theosophiclar said. The Wyndernal engineer who helped Elwyn, Selwyn, and Trevin direct their accomplishments in Hala now committed himself to discovering the identity of this pretender to their crown.

  Around ten that night, the crew of the Sea Mare finished scrubbing the decks and the repairs above were completed.

  The foredeck and new bowsprit were seamless and sturdy, and the smell of fresh pine tar and varnish wafted over the decks.

  Nil called all hands to the mid-deck, and all below put down their tools and gathered before the bridge. They shook off the sweat and sawdust and breathed the fresh air as the Second Moon shone down. Nil stood with Karlok on the bridge, Lince before the bridge clasping his hands behind his back.

  “We’ve weathered a wicked storm that no others have passed through and lived,” Nil said. And after their toils the men still had the energy to send up a hearty cheer. “Six brothers we lost to the Gyre today,” marked Nil. “And we lay to rest two now. Let us be victorious that their courage be remembered.”

  The crew acknowledged their approval, and some stifled sobs as they lowered the wrapped bodies Zee had prepared over the side, bidding farewell to their crewmates.

  “Take half an hour of free time on deck, then sleep,” Nil said. “Rawley, keep only twelve men working below, and give them a breather before too long, sir, waking others to take their place. We weigh anchor half an hour before dawn.”

  And so, the Sea Mare rested on the dragon’s doorstep as Rawley’s contingent pushed on below. Of those relieved of duty by Nil, many were so exhausted they just lay down on the deck where they were standing and groaned pathetically as Lince strutted among them.

  Rollum joined Senthellzia, and Lince spotted them slipping stealthily past the others. He grumbled to himself that shenanigans like that were the reason women
were bad luck on board a vessel, and yet, as they crossed the main deck to her quarters in the fo’c’sle, he decided to let them pass without official notice this once.

  Tobbs, meanwhile, got his first lesson in the biology of his own species as he couldn’t resist a peek through a crack in the bulkhead between his and the Lady Senthellzia’s cabin to see what all the sighs were about. Tobbs’s perfect memory preserved a series of lantern-lit portraits forever, and, if he still had eyebrows, they would have been singed off.

  Lince came upon the demolished men of watch two, who had staggered up to the foredeck before collapsing and whining on their backs. “Look at you, ya pitiful bungle-fish!” he groused, stepping around them. “A bit of work is all that was, after a couple wee skirmishes, eh?”

  “WEE SKIRMISHES?” Bultin wheezed.

  “Mister Neery-Atten,” Nil’s voice called from the bridge. “Come to the bridge, sir, if you please!”

  Lince clenched his teeth and headed toward the bridge. He climbed the ladder to the top of the cabin where Nil and Karlok stood.

  “Leave ’em be, ya hard-hearted bastard,” Karlok growled as he gave him a hand up. “Ya worked ’em into the ground already and ought to be ashamed of yourself, that’s what ya ought to be! Never seen such a low-down bottom shark as you, Lince Neery-Atten.”

  “All right, I’ll leave ’em be,” Lince grumbled. He straightened up beside Nil and Karlok in the bracing midnight wind and grabbed a knit cap out of the pocket of his greatcoat, stretching it over his bare head. When he reached his arms out to grab the rail he finally noticed his own weary muscles. “I’m not so young as I used to be.”

  Zee poked his head over the deck from the ladder. “Gentlemen, I suggest you all join me in the first mate’s cabin for some medicine. Doctor’s orders.”

  “The good doctor took the breath out of my mouth,” Karlok said.