The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  There was little sense of triumph once the raiders had been beaten back. Joron did not know what he had expected – some congratulation from the people of Corfynhulme, maybe? Even help from them would have been something. It was rare that those upon the sea did not to help one another when it was needed. But, though the women and men of Corfynhulme came out in a small flotilla, they did not come to Tide Child’s assistance. Instead they took the raiders’ boats and rowed them back to shore. Joron watched them painting the raiders’ boats in their own colours, a happy riot of greens and yellows.

  The atmosphere aboard the black ship was sullen.

  To Joron’s thinking, and to most of the crew’s, they had a won a victory here.

  Not to Meas.

  She walked the slate like a most terrible insult had been offered to her person, shouting at anyone who got in her way, demanding an already tired crew work even harder to get the ship back into some sort of shape.

  Already teams were cutting away rigging and broken spars, and for the first time Joron got to examine the spines of the ship. He had thought them bone and was surprised they were not, not totally. The main rises, the thick round bottom parts, were arakeesian bone, but the higher uprights and the cross spines were made of gion stalks, dried and bound in bunches then tightly tied to give them extra strength, the whole lot painted black to match the ship. The centre part of the mainspine of the ship was similar, but of Gion trunks, also dried, bound and fitted with collars of bone, and it amazed him that he had never known these simple things about the ship, that he had never taken the time to look.

  “Will you gawp all day, Twiner,” said Meas, “or will you deliver me the Hag’s cost for this debacle?”

  “Shipwife?”

  “How many died, Deckkeeper? How many crew have I got left to try and get this wreck floating again?” There was a barely hidden fury in her.

  “I tried to—”

  “No!” She threw the word at him, and Joron felt the eyes of the entire crew turn on him, a heat, in its own way more intense than that of Skearith’s Eye. “You let us run aground. No stonethrowers at the front to warn us, none of the safeguards a ship should have. And you knew about that reef?” She was talking quietly, but still Joron was sure all aboard could hear her. “If the deckkeeper knows a thing, it is their job to make sure the shipwife also knows. This mess is on you, Twiner, and if you were not already among the dead I would see you there for it.” She turned and walked away. “Bring me someone who can swim.” She hacked out the words. “I need to know how fast the keel is in the seabed.”

  A deckchild grinned at Joron’s discomfort, and Meas snapped as she passed, “You! Why do you sit there like a fool? Get together a crew for the flukeboat and ready it for towing. There’ll be some hard muscle needed to get this hulk moving.” From there she vanished belowdeck, no doubt to sit in her cabin while others worked, he thought.

  Joron went off to carry out her orders, only to find the bodies of the fallen had already been lined up on the deck; the dead raiders had simply been thrown over the side.

  He counted twenty-two corpses in cured varisk leaves with rocks sewn in to carry them down to the Hag. Farys sat at the end of the line carefully wrapping a body. Joron felt like he should say something but had no words, so he walked away, up towards the rump of the ship, where he thought he could be alone, out of sight of the crew. But the rump had been the place of their stand and he found no peace: deckchilder were busy clearing away the barricade that had saved them. Barlay stood among them, lending her strength.

  “Do you swim, Oarturner?” Joron said, and he knew the moment the words had left his lips he sounded hesitant. She glanced at him, then took the two steps needed to be just that little too close.

  “No, Deckkeeper,” she said, “I do not, but Karring there” – she pointed at a man who looked more bone than flesh – “he swims like he was born in the water.”

  “Thank you, Oarturner,” he said. Barlay nodded, and was it his imagination or was there a little less hatred in the woman’s fleshy face? “Barlay, there is a girl, a friend of Old Briaret.”

  “Farys, aye. I know of her.”

  “Well, it seems Old Briaret and Hilan were her only friends, and now they are gone. She could sore do with a friend, I think.”

  “Do you order it?” said Barlay, her words as still as slacktide. Joron wondered what to do. He should order it – to not do so was to give away some of his authority, and Meas had warned him he spoke for her.

  But she had also told him he must navigate these waters himself.

  “No,” he said, “I do not believe a friendship can be forced.”

  Barlay stared at him then took a step back.

  “I have the rump of the ship to clear,” she said.

  “Of course,” replied Joron, feeling he had somehow failed again.

  Then Barlay glanced back him.

  “I’ll look to the girl,” she said. “But Briaret may yet survive. She’s a tough one.”

  “She lives?”

  Barlay nodded, some faint condemnation there that he did not know this?

  “Ey, she is in the hagbower with the hagshand. He says she may live.”

  He nodded, as if he knew.

  “Thank you, Oarturner.” He approached Karring. “Barlay says you can swim like you were born to the sea.”

  “Ey, D’keeper.” The man did not look at him. He wore only loose trousers and a scarf wrapped around his head which hid his hair. The skin of his body was as dark as Joron’s own.

  “From the Broom Isles, are you?”

  “Ey D’keeper.” The man still did not look at him.

  Joron wondered why but did not pursue it.

  “Well, they breed good swimmers there, I have heard. The shipwife wants to know how fast we are held. Could you look for her?”

  “Ey,” said the man, but the look of terror that crossed his face gave Joron pause.

  “You do not wish to do this?”

  “I will swim happily, fer the shipwife, D’keeper, happy as the Maiden’s lovers, but ’tis the beakwyrms, see. They hang about a ship and there’s longthresh too.” At the mention of the predators he swallowed, looked away. “With all these corpses about, see. They will be down there.”

  Joron took a step back, the thought of being under a ship, in the dark and unable to breathe while being attacked by beakwyrms or longthresh, filled him with terror. Could he send a man to do something he would never do?

  “D’keeper.”

  He turned. Another deckchild, a woman he did not know.

  “Yes?”

  “On Shellhulme we gather shells for decoration, and they fetch a good price.”

  He stared at the woman, unsure of why she told him this.

  “And?”

  “Well, D’keeper, the beakwyrms and longthresh often gather where the best diving is, see.”

  “So you have to deal with them?”

  “Aye.”

  “And how is this done on Shellhulme?”

  “We kill one, D’keeper, or wound it badly. The others fall upon it and you will have time to send down your swimmer.”

  “Well, gather some spears then,” he said, “and some deck-childer. We have a beakwyrm to kill.”

  “We may not need to go that far, D’keeper,” said another deckchild, “with all the bodies in the water. If we chop up a few away from the ship, the blood will bring the beakwyrms.”

  He turned back to the woman from Shellhulme. “Will that work?”

  “Should, I reckon. A beakwyrm don’t care what it eats as long as it eats.”

  “Like you, eh, Torfy?”

  Joron ignored the speaker and the laughter that followed. “We should bring aboard any bodies near Tide Child, and leave the ones further out floating; it would be good to damage them a little more though.”

  “Ey, the more blood the better, we will still need the spears, ey? Get ’em good and bleeding?”

  He gathered a small group and hand
ed out spears for them, and it seemed to Joron that puncturing the corpses of the raiders brought a disproportionately large amount of joy to his crew. It was not long before the beakwyrms appeared from under the ship, spinning through the water toward the blood, and following them came longthresh, sinister white shapes swimming away from the shadow of the ship.

  He turned to Karring.” Right, over the other side. Quick as you will.” As the man climbed the rail Joron stopped him, holding him by the top of his arm. “Get as much information as you can. The shipwife is not one for a job half done, but all know that, right?” He heard a chorus of “ey” from around him. “But if you see the wyrms or the thresh, forget it and come back up with what you have. The Hag has had enough of us today. Understand, Karring? I have no wish to annoy her by crowding her pyre any further.”

  The man nodded, gave him a brief grin and went over the side. Joron turned back to the group of spear throwers feeling like he had done well and saw Meas at the other end of the ship, watching him, unsmiling.

  He made his way up the ship towards her, any joy within him withering as he walked.

  “We lost twenty-two, Shipwife,” he said. “I have sent a man over the side to check the keel and see how hard fast we are.”

  “It’s too many,” she replied. “We can’t crew a ship this size with only fifty, and the boneglue is cracked right across the hull. We’ll need to work the pumps day and night if we’re to make it back to Bernshulme.”

  “We go to the capital then?”

  “Where else would we go? This ship will need work to make him seaworthy and crew to make him fly. Bernshulme has the best of both.”

  “Shipwife,” he said, wondering how she could not have realised the truth of her position, “we are a ship of the dead. Maybe in a quiet port with little work we may get some repairs, but Bernshulme? The whole fleet will stand in line before us.”

  Her eyes were as grey as a sky before rain.

  “I still have some friends, Deckkeeper.”

  “But . . .” He did not finish because her eyes would not let him. The fury that he had felt burning within her, contained by her muscular frame, was ready to leap from her. He did not want to be the one that was scalded.

  “Of course, Shipwife.”

  She nodded.

  “Joron Twiner, is there some reason you have no wish to return to Bernshulme?”

  “No, Shipwife.” And bitter words slid from his mouth: “You own me. You command the ship, and I go where you say.”

  “Good,” she said. “Good.” And then she turned away from him.

  Of course, he had very good reasons for never wanting to set foot in Bernshulme again, and he could not shake the feeling she knew exactly why. He wondered what she would do with such knowledge. What she would do with him.

  Karring returned, soaking and with a bloody rip along his arm.

  “What happened down there, Karring?”

  “Keel is caught in rocks, D’keeper. I tried to shift them and scratched myself. Is no great thing.”

  “Well, see the hagshand. I do not want to see your wound festering. How bad is the damage?”

  “Bad, D’Keeper. The keel has a crack right across it.” The man must have seen the dismay in Joron’s face. “He’ll fly, D’Keeper, he will. But if the Northstorm spies us out we won’t last a strong blow.”

  “Is there any good news?”

  “Aye, the current is turning. I reckon the tide’s as low as it gets now and it is coming in. It should lift us enough to get loose. We’ll not be trapped come higher water.”

  “Right then,” Joron said, then raised his voice. “Rig for towing! We’ll not stay stuck on these rocks any longer than we have to.” He was amazed that the crew jumped to his orders. Most amazed that Kanvey, who was a minor power among the deckchilder, was first to lead a group of about twenty into the bigger of their two flukeboats. Then his amazement turned to dismay. As the crew of the smaller boat started tying on ropes and making things secure, he saw that Kanvey’s flukeboat was rowing for the open sea. Kanvey himself raised the wing on the flukeboat, before turning to shout some obscenity at Tide Child.

  Meas ran to the side of the ship.

  “You man!” She threw her words at the retreating boat like gallowbow bolts. “Get back here now!” But Kanvey only laughed. Then he knelt, grabbed something from the bottom of the boat and stood. He held a spear. He hefted it, leaning back, altering his grip on the shaft once, twice, until he found a balance in the weapon that pleased him, and then put all his weight into a throw.

  Joron ducked. Meas did not. She did not move at all, only raised her head to watch the flight of the spear, which arced through the air. It landed with a heavy thud and stuck in the side of Tide Child just below Meas. She did not even flinch. Only remained there, like a statue, watching the fleeing boat.

  It was a ship of bleak thoughts that limped his way back to Shipshulme Island. Limped through thick mist and with little assistance from the wind to Bernshulme, the capital of the Hundred Isles, there to beg for help and succour. Bleak because of the fell mood that had fallen on Meas Gilbryn, who glowered from the rump of the deck. Bleak because Joron Twiner could see no way he could have done anything more than what he had for the ship, and yet he knew he had failed. Bleak because the ship was holed and the pumps worked day and night, so hard to work they left those pumping exhausted and so noisy to work few could sleep. Bleak because twenty and more died fighting raiders and seven more died of their wounds on the way back – and they did not even have the good grace to die quietly. The cries of the dying haunted the ship as he stole through the mist, and it became easy to believe that they truly were lost to the dead and drifted, haunted, through the Sea Hag’s watery darkness.

  The misery of those aboard should have fled when they finally arrived at Bernshulme – an end to the constant work at the pumps belowdeck and to the constant patching and mending above it. Some respite for Joron from the baleful glare of Meas Gilbryn, who seemed, as far as he could tell, to hold him responsible for all the ship’s ills.

  Of all the Hundred Isles Shipshulme was the largest, and Bernshulme the biggest harbour and the biggest town. The island shared the slowly rising crescent shape of most of the isles – a flick of pen on parchment – only on a much larger scale, and was a riot of primary colours when the varisk and gion jungles came to life. Two long causeways curved out from the island, constructed when the bones of arakeesians were taken for granted. They could still be seen, sticking out from the rocks piled around them to make barriers against the sea, which, though it only gently lapped against the moles, and showed none of its fury, could, and often did, swell and crash over them, even though those walls of bone and grey slate were almost as tall as the spines rising from Tide Child’s decks.

  The black ship’s approach was observed by armed women and men on the light towers that sprouted like jutting teeth from the end of each stone pier. Joron watched as two figures on the light tower to landward of them leaned in close to one another, evidently discussing them, and then a red flag was waved, telling them to stop.

  “Shipwife,” shouted Joron, though he felt his voice waver, still nervous of her obvious anger. “They wish us to halt.”

  Meas stomped down the slate of the deck and stared up at the woman waving the flag. Then glared at the pier and narrowed her eyes against Skearith’s Eye – just starting to touch the top of the mountain that crowned the island.

  “Ignore them. We are no danger to shipping and we are sore in need of a dock.”

  Joron was about to open his mouth, tell her that to ignore a warning flag was punishable by death, for all knew it to be so. But she grinned at him – no, she more gritted her teeth, for there was only the bleakest humour there at how a sentence of death was wasted on this crew. Bleak humour for a bleak ship.

  Tide Child came about, his spines creaking, the pumps rumbling and the whole ship wallowing as no matter how they pumped they could not keep up with the leaks. The bon
eship had spent the entire journey on the point of sinking. Joron now got his first view into the harbour since he had left here, too grief-stricken to look about him.

  Bernshulme was packed with ships: two-ribbers, threes, fours, even a five-ribber – all rising bone-white and beautiful from the slack water. From one ship a flukeboat was casting off, oars sticking out from its sides, a moment of confusion when they pointed in all directions before a shout brought them into unison, smoothly stroking the water and powering the boat forward. On the prow was a figure in a two-tail hat, bright colours across its chest. The harbour keeper no doubt. The boat made straight for Tide Child. Behind the harbour keeper stood three lackeys, all waving red flags at the black ship.

  “All stop! All stop on that ship, in the Thirteenbern’s name!” The man invoked the name of Meas’s mother as if that alone was enough to halt a ship; he had the trilling voice of the Kept, the men who served the Bern. “All stop, that black ship. You have no permission to come into Bernshulme and shall not be given it. Come further and the harbour gallowbows will be turned on you.”

  Joron glanced over at the huge bows on the ends of the moles. They were many times bigger than those on a ship and capable of ripping through even a four-ribber like Tide Child. They had already been spun up and loaded with wingshot, fires burning where the hagspit had been lit, making sure the threat of the harbour keeper’s words was not ignored. Meas leaned over the rail, looking down on the flukeboat.

  “Harbour Keeper,” she shouted, “my ship has taken fell damage defending the children of Corfynhulme from raiders.”

  “That is not the problem of Bernshulme,” returned the man. “You must—”

  “There is no other port we could reach,” Meas yelled over him, though she sounded perfectly calm and reasonable. “This ship is taking on water faster than a purseholder can drink anhir. Now, if you wish to be the man responsible for five thousand jointweight of arakeesian bone sinking to the sea floor then, by all means, I will turn this ship about and we will sink.” She paused as if calmly considering her ship’s fate. “We may sink away from the harbour mouth so it is not entirely blocked, though in truth I doubt it we will get so far.” Joron saw fear start to cloud the harbour keeper’s eyes; his duty was to keep the docks safe and in use. “But, Harbour Keeper, you say the word and we will turn Tide Child around and see how far we get before the Sea Hag claims us.” Then she leaned further over the rail and let menace enter her voice. “But call this wrong, and you may find you bring my mother’s wrath down upon you, and you will end your days wearing a black armband and on my crew while your family go bankrupt paying the loss cost of this ship.”