Ironclad

by Daniel Foster

  Garret knew some of his buddies were afraid for him, but they couldn’t help him. Worse yet, his episode this morning was beginning to make him wonder if he should even be near them, for their sakes.

  It seems like everybody I get close to ends up getting hurt.

  After his incident on the deck, they plied him with questions until he couldn’t look them in the eye. All except Theo. Theo only stared at him and tried to be near him and help him with his duties for the rest of the day. Despite that, Garret hadn’t been able to meet Theo’s eye either.

  At least Twitch had drilled them hard through most of their break and into the next watch. It gave Garret something else to focus on. The operation of Nancy was relatively simple, once they had it all sorted out, but performing that operation quickly and smoothly with no mistakes was a different matter entirely.

  Again, Twitch kept saying. Again, guys. We’re going to be the best gun crew on this ship. Let’s do it again. Garret hadn’t been able to focus. He’d made a mess of their drill. First he’d run the gun the wrong direction ten full degrees before he’d realized Twitch was calling the other direction. Then he’d gotten off of his traverse pedestal at the wrong time and crashed into Pun’kin, sending a big five inch powder casing rolling across the deck looking for an ankle to break. Thank God it hadn’t been a live ammo drill.

  At least Kearsarge didn’t seem to judge. As he curled in his hammock, she sung her quiet song to him. It reverberated through every beam and rivet like a lullaby, or the steady heartbeat of a loved one beside him in bed. Garret closed his eyes and listened.

  Kearsarge’s pulse was a hundred different soft sounds, all playing together in harmony. Plates rung softly, and steel beams and stanchions creaked in their slumber. Those sounds were enfolded in the chuffing of steam pistons bigger around than wagon wheels, the lulling wash of countless tons of water across Kearsarge’s armored hull, and always, always, the sub-audible roar of the monstrous fires that glowed deep within her heart. Despite the fact that old Kearsarge was just a ship, her song comforted him none the less.

  Once, in a moment of stupid honesty, Garret had mentioned the sound of Kearsarge’s fires to Fishy. Fishy had looked at him like he had suddenly sprouted tentacles and said, “Lover Boy, you can hardly hear a fire when you’re sitting right in front of it.”

  Garret didn’t mention it again. Neither did he like being called “Lover Boy.” But he didn’t care what anybody said: he could hear the fires. Garret pulled the blanket up around his head, pressed his wedding band against his heart, and tried not to miss his wife and his son so badly.

  Pa, I’m sorry. I thought you were a bad Pa for leaving us. Now look what I’ve done.

  Garret could hear Kearsarge’s fires because he’d been a blacksmith. Fire was simple and warm and good, like Molly. He could hear the fire because it reminded him of who he was and what he loved. It was the part of Kearsarge, maybe the only part of this whole crazy world, that he understood anymore.

  Either that or maybe Chief Greely was finally starting to get into his head. Garret rolled over to look at the grizzled old man. The Chief was sitting on an ammo rack below their hammocks, gesturing with a free hand as he spun another seadog’s yarn.

  “Kearsarge was covered with ice from stem to stern. Tierra del Fuego, they called it,” he said, and drew on his pipe. He and Master Chief Mason were the only people on the ship who dared to smoke when the smoking lamp wasn’t lit.

  “Tierra del Fuego, you know what that means?” he asked. Garret’s buddies were propped up on their elbows listening, except Fishy, who was sprawled in his hammock, sleeping like it was his job.

  “Means ‘Land of Fire.’ Can you believe that? So close to the South Pole we could see it from there.”

  “What do you mean you could see it?” Curtis asked, so engrossed in the story that he looked like an overgrown five year old. “Is it like, a real pole?”

  The chief nodded sagely. “It is, sure as I’m sittin’ here.”

  “I knew it,” Curtis said, then crowed over his shoulder, “Fishy, you owe me two bits.”

  Fishy rattled a gentle snore in reply.

  “Blue and white swirls, like a candy cane,” Chief Greely added, then continued. “Uniform of the day was pea coats, overcoats, and jackets, every damn thing we had. We stood at our posts with our arms sticking out to the sides. Had so much padding on we couldn’t have worked if we wanted to. We were still froze stiff, every mother’s son of us.” He unconsciously laid a hand on the bulkhead beside him. “The old girl was wearing ice a foot thick, but she didn’t let it stop her. Didn’t even slow her down.

  “We rove ropes from the stanchions to the rails so we didn’t slide overboard. The ice hung off her guns in icicles big around as your leg. We had to keep the turrets moving every fifteen minutes so they didn’t seize. The skipper’s moustache froze over his face. He wouldn’t leave the bridge, damn fool. It froze his lips shut.”

  “How did he give the orders?” Theo asked, eyes wide.

  “Sign language,” the chief said. “Problem was, only a cook and an engineer’s mate knew it, so they had to stand on the bridge and shout the captain’s orders to the other officers and crew.”

  Twitch rolled his eyes.

  “But how’d he eat?” Pun’kin drawled curiously.

  The chief waved a hand. “We’re gettin’ off the story. So here we are, the entire Atlantic squadron, best fighting fleet the world’s ever seen, following this little Chilean junker through those frozen islands. Some places, the ice was as thick as a man is tall. We couldn’t tell where the islands ended and the water began. We had to trust that old Chilean, but he never steered us wrong.”

  The chief leaned forward and took his pipe out of his mouth. “Do you know what it sounds like, a battleship like Kearsarge breaking through ice that thick?”

  They shook their heads.

  “What’s that verse in the Good Book?” he mused. “The one about the ‘fountains of the great deep breaking open to flood the whole earth’? My Mammy used to read that verse to me when I was younger than you, and I wondered what it sounded like.” He patted one of Kearsarge’s beams. “When I listened to her ramming her way through the most god-forsaken part of the most barren sea on earth, I knew. I said to myself, ‘This is what God’s judgment is gonna sound like.’”

  Garret wilted further down into his hammock. Judgment.

  The chief put his hands on his knees and stood. “Get some sleep boys, I’ll tell you about the cannibals tomorrow.”

  “Cannibals?” Floyd asked, raising an eyebrow.

  The chief nodded as he walked away. “Ol’ Billy Gantry had to eat his own leg. After he beat Chief Watson over the head with it.”

  The lights dimmed and Chief Greely was gone.

  “He’s full of more shit than a Thanksgiving turkey,” Floyd said, rolling over.

  “Watch your mouth,” Pun’kin warned.

  “The problem with the Straits of Magellan isn’t ice,” Twitch said tiredly. “It’s tides.”

  Theo was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, thinking hard about something.

  Fishy, who everyone had thought was asleep, yawned and said, “So when we’re all asleep, do you think the Chief goes and finds a quiet corner of the ship where he’s made a nice smooth hole in the bulkhead. Pulls his pants down…”

  Chuckles went around, except Pun’kin, who didn’t get it. There were snores a few minutes later. Everyone was exhausted. Garret included.

  He rolled over and stared at the rivets in the bulkhead. Kearsarge’s rumbling, chuffing song filled the stillness in the citadel. Outside on deck, an officer yelled at somebody, but it was a world away. The sound and motions of the old ship lulled Garret, making him feel as though his hammock was a large pair of arms, cradling him closely. He closed his eyes, but sleep would not come.

  Presently, he felt someone behind him. Garret rolled over. Sweet Cheeks was standing the
re in the low electric light. Sweet Cheeks didn’t say a word, he just motioned for Garret to follow him, then walked away without waiting to see whether or not Garret was going to comply. Garret climbed down out of his hammock and followed.

  Sweet Cheeks exited the citadel and leaned on the starboard rail. Garret stepped up beside him. Kearsarge’s lights illuminated the sea around them for a few dozen yards. The foam from Kearsarge’s passage looked grey and dirty as it rolled away from her side, folding over and over into the black water beneath them.

  Sweet Cheeks wasn’t looking at the water, but out into the night. “Not long ago, I lost some friends,” he said quietly, and without preamble.

  The statement blindsided Garret, so he fumbled for a second. “They… died?”

  Sweet Cheeks nodded. “They gave their lives doing something they thought was right.”

  “I’m sorry,” Garret said, honestly. “I know what it’s like to lose somebody.”

  “We all do, Garret,” he said, smiling gently and hooking a thumb back towards the rest of their gun crew, snoring in the citadel. “One way or another, we all know what it’s like.”

  “They’ve all lost somebody?” Garret said, surprised, looking at the doorway into the citadel, from which poured the dim electric lighting.

  The salt wind blew by, cool and steady, ruffling Sweet Cheeks’ hair around his cover. He dropped his head for a moment. “I’m not saying this right.”

  Garret raised his shoulders in a small shrug. “Whatever it is, you can just say it.”

  “Garret, you’re miserable,” he said frankly. “Absolutely miserable. I don’t know why, and I’m not asking you to tell me, but if you don’t find a way to either move past it, or live with it, it’s going to destroy you from the inside out.”

  Garret leaned on the rail and stared out across the sea. He felt exposed, raw. For the briefest instant, he thought about telling Sweet Cheeks everything. He thought about telling him what had actually happened on deck that morning. He thought about telling him why he’d run from his wife and child, and why he’d joined the Navy, and why he could never go home. It was getting to be too much to carry by himself.

  Garret opened his mouth, but the only thing that came out was, “I don’t know how.”

  Sweet Cheeks clapped him on the shoulder. “You can start by realizing that we’re all in this together.”

  Sweet Cheeks shook him gently, then walked back into the citadel. Garret stared after him, perplexed. After a moment, he followed Sweet Cheeks back inside the ship.

  But that was it. When Garret stepped over the threshold into the citadel, Sweet Cheeks was back in his hammock and already asleep. Garret wasn’t sure what to do with what Sweet Cheeks had told him, but for some reason, when Garret climbed into back into his hammock, he managed to fall asleep without much difficulty.

  Chapter 10

  It would be an understatement to say that Garret did not sleep well. Sweet Cheeks’ words to him had an oddly consoling effect, but the succor stood little chance against the nightmares that followed.

  In his dream, which didn’t feel like a dream at all, he saw the coldest, most forsaken mountain range on earth. His view was up in the peaks, though he himself wasn’t there bodily. The peaks rose, jagged and lifeless, so high that they seemed to punch holes in the sky. Or perhaps there simply was no sky, for the air was grey and leaden all through the mountains, and snow fell thickly from the greyness. The mountains seemed to fill the world, yet at the same time, they seemed to have nothing to do with the world. Life and laughter and love and warmth were so far below that they were only a memory of a dream.

  The mountains were slabs, spires, and rough faces of grey and brown stone. But not even the blanket of white snow could soften their sharp edges. Garret drifted, senseless in the cold. Nothing, not even snow leopards could survive there, and yet there was something alive.

  There, tucked away in the cleft between two crags and covered with snow, stood an ancient monastery. Its walls were a dirty tan, and it had so many little tiled rooves, sloping all different ways, that it appeared to be built of a stack of small tan boxes.

  But lamps glowed in the windows.

  Garret found himself moving towards it, swooping down under the overhanging portico roof, between the old stone columns, then flying right through the huge wooden double door, though it was bolted tight shut.

  The entryway opened around Garret for a split second. It was roughly square and ringed all around with arches spanning columns. Under each archway was a passage that led deep into the monastery, and even deeper into the mountain. Garret had no idea where any of the passages would finally end.

  There were bronze lamps all around on the columns, though their long, twisted handles made them look more like torches. The stones in the floor were thick and old, worn from centuries of passage. The door behind Garret was probably six inches thick and barred with a piece of wood that looked like a railroad cross tie.

  At the far end of the room, opposite the door, was a large open hearth, in which most of a tree was burning. There were a few long tapestries around the room, but Garret didn’t get a good look at them before his vantage point dropped straight through the floor and rushed forward.

  Stone passed him on all sides, first the cut stones laid by masons, long dead, then the natural rock of the mountain itself. He emerged into a room far beneath the monastery. It was moderately sized, but cold as the mountains themselves. Though there were torches on the walls, their cloth wrappings were crumbling with age, their oil or grease long since hardened and cracked.

  There were pieces of furniture in the room, chairs and even a table, but they were so thickly buried under dust and dirt that they looked more like strangely regular extensions of the floor. The only light came from a large shaft on one side of the room. At one point it had probably been a chimney out of the hearth. Now it served only to let in a wan column of light. That, and a few snowflakes. There was a small pile of snow beneath the column of light, and every so often, a solitary snowflake managed to find its way from the grey sky all the way down to the bosom of the mountain. The room was so quiet that Garret’s wolf ears could hear them landing. Each one touching down with the smallest piff.

  Directly in front of the hearth stood the largest piece of furniture in the room. But as Garret’s eyes began to adjust, he realized that it truly was an extension of the floor, a stone altar of some sort.

  On it lay a skeleton, grasping a sword to its breast and cloaked in disintegrating tatters of red and white. This was not a random room. It was a crypt.

  That was when Garret realized that he was not alone. His skin began to crawl with the familiar feel of the Hollow Man. Though nothing in the room was moving, it felt as though there was a giant black centipede creeping up behind Garret to sever his head with its jaws. The feeling intensified until Garret could localize it. The Hollow Man was hanging in the darkest corner of the room, his cloak melding with the shadows around him. He seemed even more still than the corpse.

  Something began to change in the room. The light had not changed, not even a speck of dust had stirred, and the Hollow Man certainly hadn’t moved, but Garret knew something was changing. The feeling grew stronger until his neck hair was standing on end and his stomach was getting queasy, but he still couldn’t see anything that had…

  The snow. Two more snowflakes had found their way down the chimney, but as Garret watched them, their wandering descent began to slow. They slowed more.

  Finally, they stopped. Frozen in mid-air in the pale light. They hung there for an eternity of moment, until slowly, slowly, they began to move again. This time they were moving upward. As Garret watched, the two flakes began to retrace their path, drifting eerily upwards until they disappeared again up the chimney. By that time, two more snowflakes had detached themselves from the snow pile and began to drift upwards again. They were followed by another, then three more.

  The pace began to
increase until it was snowing upward faster than it had come down. The pile began to vanish. Then another pile, then another. Dust began to filter upwards off of the furniture, binding itself again to the stone ceiling from whence it had come. Rotten tapestries began to reintegrate on the walls, and the cloth wrapping on the torches became soft and white again. The bones on the altar began to lighten from grey to white, and the red and white tatters reassembled themselves into the soft folds of long robes. Flesh began to crawl over the bones, black and disintegrating at first, then livening to tan. Garret watched it cover the skeleton’s knuckles. Becoming tan and dry, then filling out with fluids, becoming young and strong looking again.

  Garret had no idea how long it took, or if time even applied to the situation, but eventually, the room was clean and neat. A fire blazed in the hearth, the torches were lit, and a dead body lay on the altar, a sword in his strong hands, and the last traces of proud nobility on his handsome features.

  Nine centuries had rolled back like a curtain.

  Garret didn’t know enough about other cultures to characterize the man more specifically than “Asian.”

  A monk entered from a door on the left. He was also Asian. He was an old man, bent and shrunken until his robes looked three sizes too large for him. He was carrying a bowl of some foul smelling brew. The old man stopped by the table and set the bowl down. He reached for the dead man’s face, hesitated, then took hold of the man’s upper lip and pulled it back.

  The dead man’s white teeth shown in the moonlight. All was normal except for his canines. They might have been larger than usual, but Garret couldn’t be sure, because they’d been broken out. The rest of his teeth were intact. The old man sighed, long and slow. His shoulders settled in relief. It was as if he had spent his entire life waiting for something, and it had finally happened. The old man let go of the dead man’s lip, then reached into his robes and pulled out a rolled up leather pouch. He laid it on the altar beside the dead man and unrolled it.