The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  They ate pinstew, named for the bones of the dried fish that was its main ingredient. The fish was heated over peat in a gelatinous gravy made from boiled bird bones and root vegetables, served with a piece of hard black bread as big as strong man’s fist and a cup of anhir watered with the juice of the vin fruit.

  Once they had eaten and the tables were stowed away, the decks were cleared as if for action. The bonewrights busied themselves in the underdeck, removing the many screens that cut it up into compartments to give some privacy to the underdeck officers; hammocks were rolled up and tied against the inner sides of the hull to provide some protection from flying bone shards; and as all of this went on the sense of excitement aboard Tide Child grew and grew. Grown deckchilder capered and laughed like children; friendships that had soured were remade, and by the time Meas called them together on the maindeck the ship was fairly alive with anticipation. The only sour note came from Coughlin and the rest of Cahanny’s men, who sat apart from the crew and, though invited, chose to have nothing to do with the exercising of the bows.

  Meas had brought Tide Child to a stop by the time they were ready to loose, her wingwrights running up and down the rigging until only the topwings remained unfurled to keep the ship stable. She had sent Coxward out in the smaller fluke-boat, towing his target out to twenty lengths away where it sat, a crude castle of old spars and torn sails bobbing on the gentle blue waves of a kind sea. Meas watched Coxward and his mates through her nearglass.

  “Well,” she said into the air, “we should untruss the landward bows. You should not need me to tell you that. Bowsells, what are you lazing about for?”

  They set to, Knot, Lift and String. Six bolts had been stacked by each bow, and as his team untrussed the gallowbow to Joron’s orders they found that their hands had begun to move automatically. They had begun to know their places, to feel the way the bow worked. And more, that this bow, number one on the maindeck, was theirs.

  “We should name it,” said Joron as Barlay cinched the cord tight.

  “Name it?” said Dinyl. “It is a tool.”

  “The Hag loves a name,” said Barlay, “it is true enough.”

  “What do you call a bow?” said Farys.

  “Hostir,” said Barlay. “It were my father’s name. When he were angry his hand’d be like a gallowbow shot to the arse.”

  “Hostir then,” said Joron. “Seems as good a name as any.”

  “Poisonous Hostir,” said Barlay.

  “Why ‘poisonous’, Barlay?” asked Farys.

  Barlay looked at the girl and grinned.

  “Everything is better with poison.”

  Joron realised then that he did not know what crime Barlay had committed to end up on the black ships. Although he rather suspected, from the look on her face when she said her father’s name, that the man no longer walked the land.

  “Listen up, my crew,” shouted Meas. “Coxward will free the target soon. There are four commands for a gallowbow to loose. The first is ‘Spin!’ When I call that the spinners take a handle each and spin like the Hag herself commanded it. When they hear the retainer hooks snap to they stop and move to the sides of the bow. Then the command ‘Load!’ will come. It is not hard to work out what is required of that. The next command is ‘Aim!’ At this the bowsell lines up the bow for the triggerboy at the aiming point. The triggerboy’s field of vision is small, and the bowsell will be listening for what I want to hit. You’ll need someone experienced to actually trigger the bow as it’s the sort of thing you learn through feel more than anything. But today we’ll take turns so everyone knows what it is like. The last command is ‘Loose!’’’

  A spontaneous roar went up at the thought of the great gallowbows giving voice to their deep-throated thruuum of destruction, but Meas quietened the teams. “Now ‘Loose’ does not mean you should pull that cord straight away, my fine girls and boys, so don’t get too excited. It only means you are free to loose when you feel you have a good chance of hitting your target. So don’t fly off like a Kept with his firstbern; we wouldn’t want to let our target down, now would we?” She accompanied her words with a leer and the crew grinned at each other. “Topboy!” she shouted up into the rigging. “Give Bonemaster Coxward the signal!”

  Joron could not see but he knew a flag must have been waved as the line between the target and the flukeboat detached, and oars, like the legs of a water-skimming insect, sprouted from the flukeboat. It began to row away from the target, seeming to head away from Tide Child, but Joron knew it would come round in a huge circle, to avoid any bolts that might fly less than true.

  Meas made them wait, made them watch as Coxward slowly moved away and the target drifted. She knew the thought of every woman and man on the deck, that the target would float away and their fun would end, but Meas knew better. She knew the sea and she knew how to handle a crew: how to make them want and to wish for the voice of the bows, and when it seemed they could bear it no more she gave the command.

  “Stand to your bows. Dip your hands and honour the Hag.”

  And they did, Barlay dipping her fingers in the small paint pot at the base of her bow and splattering red on the base of the bow before grabbing the seaward winding handle; Dinyl doing the same before taking the landward; Farys between them, red-stained fingers on the trigger cord, squinting down the length of the gallowbow. Joron squeezed past Farys, dipped his fingers for the Hag and then took position behind them, leaning forward with his hands on his thighs. He stood this way as he had noticed the other bowsells standing so, but found when he did that he had a similar view of the bow to Farys, who sighted along its length. But he could also see the working of the bow and the sea beyond, where Farys’s view was restricted to the aiming pin at the end of the bow shaft.

  “Spin!” shouted Meas, and Barlay and Dinyl set to winding, the mechanism pulling back the cord and the tension in the great bow arms growing and growing until the bone quivered with the expectation of violence and Joron heard the click of the retaining hooks engaging.

  “Load!” shouted Meas, and Barlay bobbed down, grabbed one of the bolts from the deck and slotted it into the long groove of the bowshaft. All along the deck the same action was repeated, and Joron felt the tension in his back and arms as he waited for the next command.

  “Aim!” Joron shuffled forward, staring along the shaft of the bow. On the edge of his vision he could see the target. He signalled to swing the bow landward, raising his arm rather than speaking. Barlay pulled and Dinyl pushed until the ugly pyramid of spars and wings floated in front of the weapon.

  “Ready, my crew, stay steady, my crew,” shouted Meas. “Launch only when she comes to bear. Loose!” Further down the deck Joron heard the moan of a bow as the triggerboy let fly far too early. The bolt flew from Tide Child, skimming over the water until it hit the sea, splashed once, twice, three times and vanished under the waves some distance to the landward of the target. A low murmer of disappointment went up from those watching.

  “Steady, Farys, steady,” said Joron under his breath. The girl was nodding but not really heeding Joron’s words; all her concentration was on the target. To Joron it seemed like the target was drifting out of range but he said nothing. Trust, he must trust in his crew. Then Farys jerked her arm back, pulling on the trigger cord and the whole gallowbow juddered as it expended its energy, the bone arms snapping forward. The bolt leaped from the bow, sailing through the air. Joron found himself holding his breath as he watched it, willing it towards the target. A moment later the third bow loosed, the sound of it fighting the roar of triumph from his crew as Farys’s bolt punched through the wings of the target.

  “Good shot, Farys,” shouted Meas. The other bolt fell only just short and Meas congratulated that team too. Then the crews swapped over, and it was this all afternoon, working the bows so each crew shot two bolts at least, and from them Meas picked her main bowteams. She was about to signal a last round of firing when a shout came from above.

  “K
eelcatch to seaward!”

  Meas was straight up on the rail, staring out over the waves past the target, now little more than a shattered mass of spars.

  “What is a keelcatch, D’keeper?” said Farys.

  “That,” said Joron, pointing out to where a thing was rising, looking like a mass of varisk vines waving in the air as if they strove to pluck Skearith’s Eye from the sky. “They foul the keels of ships, then thrash about until the ship’s spine breaks. Odd to see them here though; they are beasts of the far south and deep waters.”

  “They hunt ships,” said Dinyl.

  “No,” said Joron. “They have no interest in ships. They hunt other creatures by lying in wait. If they’re spotted early they are no danger, but if a ship gets too near it is no less doomed.”

  “I did not know you were a naturalist,” said Dinyl, and smiled brightly.

  “I was a fisher. My father told me a lot of things. You do not live long in a small boat unless you know what may kill you.”

  Dinyl shrugged, staring out at the sea and the creature, which looked like a vast, wild, angry carpet.

  “Is there anything in the sea that does not want to kill us, Joron?”

  Joron smiled at the deckholder.

  “Give the topboy an extra ration for that spot,” shouted Meas. “Truss the birds and get us under way. Deckholder, the deckkeeper has a rank and I would thank you to use it when you address him. Deckkeeper, we’ll have two turns of the glass rest, a cup of water and then we practise with straightsword, curnow and spear.” She nodded to Joron and left the deck.

  The bows were trussed and tied, and the wings of Tide Child unfurled, cracking in the wind as the ship headed for the Southstorm and a rendezvous with a creature from legend.

  On the next day the winds were not as kind. Salt spray crashed over Tide Child’s beak to soak the crew, but the weather was not cold enough for stinker coats, and to Joron this was nothing – simply the way of the sea. He was more bothered by the ache in his arms from practising with the curnow, wyrmpike and shield the previous day. When the crew had finished their drills he had done extra hours in Meas’s cabin with a finely made curved sword. He barely noticed that his clothes were damp or that his world heaved to and fro and up and down as the ship crashed forward through the waves. For Meas it was the same, and for many of the crew it was simply a thing they took in their stride.

  “Look out for black ships,” shouted Meas, “for they are out there somewhere and eager to meet with us.” To this she added, “Deckholder Dinyl, I shall not again remind you and those others who wish to vomit to do it with the wind, for it will make the ship much easier to clean when you have to do so later.”

  To some degree Joron felt for Dinyl. Though he was Karrad’s man he was not a bad soul, and did his best to attend to his work despite being green-faced with the Hag’s curse. When not vomiting over the side, he staggered about his duties like an animated corpse. Joron felt less pity for Coughlin and the others put aboard by Cahanny – those he was glad to see prostrate with sickness. But like most who flew the sea he had endured the curse himself once or twice, knew the misery it brought and had sympathy for those suffering, though he also knew it passed, eventually. There was no pity at all in Meas, not least because she was similarly afflicted, which shocked him. The greatest shipwife to ever fly the sea suffered the Hag’s curse.

  However, she had no intention of letting it beat her. And if she would not be beaten then she would suffer no weakness in those below her on the slate.

  And this was how they proceeded to the south until the shout was heard from the topboys:

  “Ship rising to seaward, Shipwife!”

  “Deckkeeper,” said Meas, “get up the mainspine and tell me what you see.”

  Then Joron was climbing the ropes, his hair catching in the wind and blowing around his face as he climbed up and up the spine, carefully, oh so carefully. Oh, and there was something glorious about being so high up in the rigging, despite the danger. He’d scaled the rigging of his father’s boat many times but that was nothing compared to the height reached climbing the spine of a fleet ship. From here he could see the subtle curve of the water on the horizon. On Tide Child’s seaward side, blue pennants streaming with the wind, he saw the ships he was looking for. A pair of black ships, two-ribbers, smaller ships with two spines compared to Tide Child’s three. They did not carry great gallowbows, as they could not support the weight or cope with the recoil of such weapons, but they mounted four to six smaller gallowbows a side, which could be just as dangerous used correctly. Two-ribbers were fast ships, designed for hit and run attacks and to create interference while bigger ships, like Tide Child, slightly slower, slightly heavier, brought their greater weight of shot to bear.

  “What do you see up there?”

  Joron looked down. The the crew were little more than dots on the slate, and the deck looked no bigger than the sole of his boot. It appeared to move as the spine he clung to swayed. This ship, those people – such small things in the vastness of the ocean. Joron felt like he barely existed. That, if he were to fall, to have the slate smash the bones of his body and flesh of his muscles to pulp, it would make no difference to the world. Then he heard the low, familiar song of the wind, the song that had always been with him, and the moment passed. Above him the topboy looked down, waiting for Joron to speak, unsure and unsettled by her deckkeeper’s hesitance, not knowing whether she should reply to the shipwife instead.

  “A pair of two-ribbers, Shipwife,” shouted Joron. “Travelling line astern of one another to the south of us.” He squinted into the light of Skearith’s Eye. “They are changing course, Shipwife. They must have seen us and are set to intercept.”

  “Very well, Twiner. Come down.”

  He made his careful way down. Harder down than up, checking for footholds and always aware how far he could fall. His hands developed a reluctance to let go of the ropes; his feet became unhappy about shifting along the spars. When his feet finally touched slate, Meas was there, and Joron had to place his hands behind his back to hide the shaking. “We are expecting friends, Deckkeeper,” she said, “but it does no harm to be prepared. Have the crew be ready.”

  “Clear for action!” shouted Joron, and from the underdeck the crew came scurrying.

  Mevens held a drum and began to beat it, and standing by him was sad-faced Solemn Muffaz, the deckmother, bellowing out Joron’s order again and again:

  “Clear the ship! Clear the ship for action!”

  And all was movement.

  From below came the hammering of the bonewrights taking down the screens. Women and men hurried up and down the rigging, setting the wings, brought bolts and shot for the great gallowbows from the underdeck. Nets were cast across the rails of the ship to catch debris from bowstrikes and to stop crew going overboard should the ship’s manoeuvres take them by surprise. Sand was strewn across the slate of the deck to give extra grip for busy feet, and buckets of sand were placed at intervals along the deck in case of fire, for the only way to put out bonefire once boneglue caught was to smother it entirely.

  Joron found himself on the slightly raised deck at the beak of the ship. Beneath him beakwyrms churned the water through ceaseless jaws, and the sight of their ugly, fierce bodies cheered him.

  “Seven now, Shipwife,” he shouted. “We are getting faster.”

  “Pull well now, my childer!” Joron turned to see Dinyl overseeing a group of deckchilder dragging a screen of tightly woven varisk soaked with seawater, over the main hatch that allowed access to the hold. In the spines above, only the main-wings remained to catch the wind. Farys scuttled across the deck, a cage holding squawking kivellys in each hand and though all looked like chaos, women and men running hither and thither, Lucky Meas watched the sand slip through the glass and the action on her ship with a half-smile on her face. This seeming chaos, much rehearsed over the last week at sea, was chaos with purpose, and that purpose was hers. She turned and walked to the rai
l, lifting her nearglass to her eye and looking out over the water.

  “To your bows, my crew,” she shouted. “Keep the underdeck hatches shut for now and the bows may sleep. I do not think we will need to loose them, but it does us no favours to be unprepared. Coughlin!” she shouted. Cahanny’s man, his face still tinged with the green of the Hag’s curse, stumbled over from his place on the rail. “Arm your men just in case.” Coughlin glowered at her, but the Hag’s curse had broken his will for the moment, and he turned away and had his men gather their weapons.

  So it was that Meas started giving orders for the final sails to be furled and Joron began to wonder if the black ship was almost up to the standard of a fleet vessel. Oh, the drills were not as quick, not as accurate and not as fierce, not yet. Joron did not really doubt it for a second. But still he felt a thrill of pride that he had been part of this change that had come across the slate of the deck, this transformation from slovenly to shipshape, and he pulled his one-tailed hat a little tighter on his head.

  The ship slowly coasted to a stop on a sea now glassy and still, as if tired now it had brought Tide Child to meet his new consorts. The two-ribbers stopped fifty shiplengths across from them, calm water lapping at their ebon sides. Meas oversaw Tide Child’s final tying-down and the dropping of the seastay. This dragged in the water and stopped the ship drifting.

  She surveyed her crew and then nodded to herself.

  “Mevans, put together a crew to row the flukeboat over to the larger of the two ships.”

  “Ey, Shipwife.”

  “Joron, you will accompany me. Dinyl, you remain in charge of Tide Child. I ask nothing more than you keep him still.” Then she stepped nearer the man and whispered something, pointing down the deck at Cahanny’s men, and Joron guessed she told Dinyl to make use of them if he must to keep command, for she still did not truly know this crew.

  It had not escaped her any more than it had escaped Joron’s notice that Cwell – pinch-faced, resentful, mean-spirited, Cwell – had become close friends with Hasrin, who had once been a deckkeeper herself, and Sprackin, who still bridled at being replaced as purseholder by Mevans. It often felt to Joron that, wherever he went on the ship, one of those three watched him, waiting for something, although he did not know what.