The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  After the cording Meas called Joron down to the great cabin, where she sat at her desk in its familiar place upon the bright white floor. From above came the sound of women and men cleaning the slate and working on the myriad tasks of a boneship, stowing shot, rolling hammocks and putting up the tables for breakfast.

  “Joron,” she said. The courser, Aelerin, stood behind Meas, whose desk was busy with charts. Behind them, through the windows of the cabin, Tide Child’s wake stretched out to show their passage through the grey sea. Beyond it he saw Cruel Water, the size of a toy, and far behind that ship, Snarltooth, not much more than a dot. Waves like knives cut the water, catching the sun, reflecting it back. “Cruel Water has relayed a message from Snarltooth,” she said. “Ships rising on the horizon.”

  “Following us?”

  “It appears so.”

  “Boneships?”

  “Nothing so big, not yet. Snarltooth thought they may have seen something with three spines, but Shipwife Brekir relays she cannot be sure. All signs point to these being raiders, I think. A lot of flukeboats.”

  “Nothing that should bother us now the three ships are together.”

  “No,” said Meas, “but come look at my chart.” He took a step over. The chart showed a coast he did not know. On one side was the vast outline of Skearith’s Spine. He saw a name but it was upside down and his reading was not good enough to decipher it.

  “Arkannis Isle, two weeks away,” said Aelerin.

  “It is a problem and an opportunity,” said Meas.

  “How so?” Joron studied the map. The dark blue of a deep channel passed around the island and then between it and Skearith’s Spine.

  “As Kept Indyl Karrad said, raiders hold Arkannis. It is not big, and historically they have never been greedy.”

  “Greedy?”

  “There are two towers, flimsy things, one on the Spine, one on Arkannis. They have gallowbows which cover the deep-water channel. The channel is one of the quickest routes northward, and the safest, as the current assists a ship’s passage. The raiders use the towers to charge a toll.”

  “And this has been tolerated?”

  “The towers are both too high up for shot to reach them from the channel. The tower on the Spine” – she touched the map with the point of the knife she held – “is practically impossible to assault. It is reached by a series of rope ladders.”

  “The tower on the island?” said Joron. Her knife point slid across the map.

  “Again, not easy. The island is steep and heavily vegetated. As long as they do not ask too much in tolls and let fleet ships pass unmolested, it has been judged best to leave them to it.”

  “But you do not plan to leave them to it?”

  She shook her head.

  “No. The towers see a long way. They will see the arakeesian and us coming, and I cannot imagine they will let it pass. The gallowbows on the towers are huge, bigger than our great bows. They may be a real threat to the beast.”

  “So we must fight on land. Battle our way up this steep island,” he said, and he could not keep the trepidation from his voice.

  Meas nodded.

  “Yes. We will take the tower on the island and use it to destroy the tower on the Spine. Its gallowbow has the range.”

  “You make it sound simple.”

  “It is.”

  “But if the island tower’s bow can reach the spine tower, surely the reverse is true?”

  Meas grinned at him. “No plan is perfect, Deckkeeper. But this plan has at least one plus.”

  “Which is?”

  “Arkannis Isle has a windspire.”

  “So we assault the island while carrying an unconscious gullaime?”

  “It does not weigh that much, Joron. How is the creature?”

  “It does not move, does not breathe as far as I can tell. But it is not cold at least.”

  “All gullaime are cold,” said Aelerin. “They are not like us.”

  “Ours is not cold.”

  “Maybe because it is ill,” said the courser.

  “No, it has never been cold.”

  “A cold or hot gullaime does not matter,” said Meas. “What matters is getting it to the windspire and bringing those towers down, and doing it before the arakeesian comes in range.” She tapped the chart. “The arakeesian is making a speed of about ten stones and does not seem to waver too much from that. The two-ribbers can make fifteen stones easily.” She took a piece of parchment from a drawer in the desk and drew a long oval on the paper and behind it three crude ships. “This is us, behind the wakewyrm.” She touched the oval with her bone knife. “We have about fourteen days before the arakeesian reaches Arkannis. We stay together for a week, then I will have Cruel Water and Snarltooth take up station in front of the wakewyrm.” She drew two lines looping round the oval, placing them in front of it. “We will put up as many wings as Tide Child can bear with his damaged keel and make for Arkannis. If we take the direct route Aelerin has mapped out, we can arrive two days earlier than the sea dragon, which should be plenty of time for us to do what is needed.”

  “Are the two-ribbers to protect us if we fail?” said Aelerin. “I do not understand what they can do, if their weapons cannot hit the towers.”

  “They will protect the arakeesian – with their hulls, if need be.”

  “They will not last long,” said Joron.

  “No,” said Meas, “they will not. One hit from those great bows would be enough, and the raiders have no reason to covet the jointweight of the ships if they think they can take the arakeesian itself. So they are more for show, and in case the raiders are foolish enough to send out boats.”

  “They do not deserve to be sacrificed,” said Joron.

  “No, they do not, not like this. That is why we must not fail.” She glanced at Joron then turned to the courser. “Aelerin, I have already spoken to Dinyl. I will leave you and him to command Tide Child. Do not take him through the channel; take him around the island. In the week we have we will exercise the gallowbows and start sword drill. Coughlin and his men are . . .”

  “Too dangerous to leave on board while Cwell plots,” said Joron.

  “Ey, they are. They will be coming to the island with me on the flukeboats. I will leave Cwell here but take some of her clique with us, so she will be too weak to cause any mischief.” Aelerin nodded and their body seemed to relax a little under their robes. “And on the day we leave,” said Meas, “we will pass the head of the wakewyrm.” Something gleamed in her eye. “We could all die at Arkannis. Some will, and I would let them see what they fight for first, let them look it in the eye.”

  A shudder ran through Joron.

  “Are you sure that’s wise? You saw what it did to that fluke-boat.” He wrapped his arms around himself. “I have never seen such strength. It would make quick work of us.”

  Meas leaned forward over the desk, putting her head in her hands and pushing back her hair, the different-coloured strands mixing with the grey. When she took her hands away and sat back, they fell once more into the neat lines that Joron’s wiry hair forever refused to follow.

  “I have read much of arakeesians, and in all I have read, even when we had almost hunted the species to death, they only ever attacked ships when they or their fellows were attacked. So I think we will be safe, but even if we are not, I will still do it. I want to look it in the eye myself. I think it is worth risking death for, ey?”

  And Joron did not reply, because he could not disagree. The idea of seeing the beast up close, of witnessing the flesh that clothed the bones that were so much a part of his everyday life was indeed exciting. He slid a finger inside the tight collar of his shirt, pulling it away from his skin. He was suddenly hot. The room felt stifling, the walls of bone closing in on him.

  “You may go,” she said, and he was glad of it. Glad of the way the air on the deck blew away the heat, the way the wind brought with it only the clean salt scent of the sea.

  “Eight bea
kwyrms, D’keeper,” said Farys with a grin as she made her way to the mainspine and her shift in the tops.

  The first week passed quickly, too quickly for Joron. The weather remained kind and the Eaststorm smiled on them, driving the ships forward. Meas hosted the shipwives of Cruel Water and Snarltooth on board – Joron was shocked by the sudden improvement in the quality of the ship’s food at these meetings – and told them of her belief the arakeesian would not move against them. Though no ship went too close, staying well out of the way of the creature’s giant flippers: vague shapes as big as boneships beating beneath the sea, making their own currents which caused Tide Child to rock and shudder in a way unnatural to its hull, and made Bonemaster Coxward talk dark of pressures on the glue on the keel, which had never truly dried.

  But life went on. In the mornings they worked the great bows and the smaller underdeck bows, though without shot and with old cord as Meas did not wish a stray shot to hit the keyshan. In the afternoons they did weapons practice. Coughlin, though unpleasant, knew his work, schooling them in how to fight on land. This was not the free-for-all of fighting on a ship. They learned to hold a shield wall, how to work together. And in between, the ship still needed caring for. Wings were raised and wings were furled; clothing was mended; decks were scrubbed; ropes were replaced, and the steady cycle of watches continued under the bright light of Skearith’s Eye and the pale light of her Blind Eye. And though ships and boats were spotted rising on the horizon it seemed the Mother smiled on them and they were not engaged. The three black ships ate up the lengths and the hunths and the passages of the journey, and the head of the arakeesian drew slowly nearer.

  Meas made Joron do extra practice with his curnow and also work with the straightsword, which, oddly, was curved, that she used until she pronounced him “passable”. She tried to teach him what she said was the most useful curnow skill, the “quick unhook” – a method of removing his blade from his belt and swiping it up in one movement that would gut an opponent, though it seemed he could never quite get it right, more often tangling himself up or doing something that would have sliced open his own legs if the blade were real.

  One day he had spat out, “I will never master this!” He expected angry words from Meas but she simply took the practice sword from him and held it in her hand.

  “When you really need it, Deckkeeper, I am sure you will get it right.” Then she gave back the practice blade. “But more practice will not hurt you.”

  And between his work and the extra weapons practice Joron had to find time to feed and water the gullaime. It showed no sign of life, no sign of breathing, no pulse. Nor did it excrete – for which Joron was thankful – but at the same time it did not corrupt. Part of him thought that maybe this was simply the way of gullaime – they were unnatural after all – but another saw reason for hope. He discovered a way of cradling the windtalker like a babe against his chest while he dripped water and food into its beak, and, day by day, the hot sand smell of it and the brittle feel of the bones beneath its skin became less upsetting for him, more normal.

  He was not sure when he started speaking to it. He did not think it was a conscious act, but as he sat and stroked the gullaime’s throat to make it swallow he began to tell it of his life. How he had been born Berncast because his mother died giving him life, and how the curse of that weakness had kept him in the fisher villages. How his father had held on to him so tightly when he was young that he felt he would always be safe. He told the gullaime how his mother was not weak, told it the stories his father had told him of her, of how his father’s eyes shone when he spoke of her. He told it of the fisher boat, of his youth, of his father going without food so Joron could learn to read. All these things he told to the small, brittle body of the gullaime, and it never interrupted or replied or gave so much as a nod that it understood. But the talking helped Joron feel better, just as the passage of time and the ship through water helped the crew feel better, and as both man and crew learned to work together they felt more and more like fleet, like they were worthwhile.

  It was Menday when they finally caught up with the head of the arakeesian. Meas had stopped bow drill, reckoning the teams worked well enough, though they still practised with weapons and shields. As Tide Child came up on the head of the sea dragon the officers stood on the rump, lesser officers on the foredeck, the deckchilder along the rail and along the spars. All gazed at the shape beneath the water.

  How big was it?

  Hard to tell. The size of the creature was such that Joron had no real way to measure it. Was it near the surface or way down?

  What colour was it?

  The blue of the water distorted everything. Beneath the surface all was shadowed, changed. It was not the world that Joron inhabited. In the same way that he could not leap into the sky, he could not dive down into the depths – until the day his sentence was carried out and he went to greet the Hag in her black abode at the bottom of the ocean.

  He could only make out the vague shimmering movement of something beyond his experience. A great thick body perhaps narrowing to what he presumed must be a neck, then swelling again. Did something shine? The heat on his skin was almost unbearable, and it was not even noon. What he felt sure was the head narrowed and lengthened into a great beak-like mouth, but he could not guess at the size of it. The beak of the skull crowning Tide Child was not much thicker at its base than Joron’s thigh, tapering to the thickness of his forearm at the end of the ram.

  The wakewyrm was so much more.

  “I would see it face to face if I could,” said Meas quietly. “But maybe I will have to content myself with only seeing it in the deep.”

  “You could try ordering it to surface, Shipwife,” said Mevans from his place behind her.

  “I may be in control of everything on the deck, Mevans,” she said, “but we look upon the high Bern of all the ocean, and I doubt she will listen to me.”

  Joron shared her wish. If he were to die on the island – which as each day passed he became more sure of – he would like to see an arakeesian first. Though the creature, of course, cared as much for his wishes as it did for Meas’s. So he stood and stared and wished as it glided through the sea far, or near, below them.

  “It rises.” A voice from behind them – old, scratchy. They turned to find Garriya, as raggedy and worn as old rope.

  “What are you doing on the rump?” said Meas.

  “Bringing good tidings, I hope.”

  “Then do it from the deck,” snapped Meas. “That is your place. And, besides, you cannot even see the beast from where you stand.”

  “A woman feels the sea, does she not, Meas Gilbryn?”

  “Shipwife,” snapped Meas, though her admonition was not as quick or as vicious as Joron had heard her be with others who trespassed upon her territory.

  “But she does, doesn’t she? Feels it. Knows what will happen before it does – a woman.”

  “Get off my deck,” said Meas, “or I’ll have you corded.” The old woman nodded, backing away, but if she was worried about being whipped she showed no sign of it.

  “Don’t forget to feed your charge today, Joron Twiner,” said Garriya.

  “Deckkeeper.”

  “Ey, that too. Don’t forget.”

  Rage was building within Meas, and all could feel it. Garriya trespassed, called officers by their given names and not their ranks, ignored the rules of the ship. But any eruption was forestalled by a call from the rail.

  “Old Garriya has it right. The keyshan rises!” And all propriety was forgotten as everyone ran to the rails to greet a legend.

  It rose from far deeper than Joron had imagined, a great bone-white shape. Other, more familiar shapes moved above it. Long thin hissen flashed through the water like knives. Shoals of small galda fish frantically beat their tails to escape what must have seemed to them the suddenly approaching sea floor. Stinging ryulls, which wandered aimlessly on the currents, devouring whatever was unfortunate enough to
come within reach of their arms, were pushed aside. Toothreaches pulsed forward, their long, clawed arms seeming to reach out and drag them through the water.

  All these things happened and continued to happen as the arakeesian rose. And still it rose and it grew until the head, which they coursed along, roughly opposite, was almost as long as Tide Child and almost as wide.

  “Hag’s breath,” said Dinyl, “it will smash us to shards. We should steer away.”

  Somewhere in the back of his mind Joron thought, That should be my fear, but he was not scared.

  “No,” said Meas. “We watch.”

  And still it rose, until Joron could look back along the beast’s body and make out details: the bony plates along its back, rounded and covered with sharp barnacles like the ones that grew on the hulls of ships; its skin, bone-white apart from the black lines that ran from eight glowing points on the head, swelling and thickening until they disappeared behind the ship in long stripes down the body of the creature.

  And still it rose.

  And it rose.

  And it rose.

  And the ocean split above it, water rolling off it like layers of dead skin to reveal something new and beautiful and amazing. The heat of the creature burning Joron’s face, and it felt as if his skin would be flayed off, revealing the white of his skull below.

  But he did not draw back

  And neither did any other.

  As the head fully surfaced Joron realised that what he had seen as glowing spots on the keyshan’s head were eyes. Two were huge, shaped like teardrops, with two smaller ones behind them. Another two small eyes above the beak and two right on top of the head. All the keyshan’s small eyes were round, though to call them small was an injustice; they were as big and unblinking as plates.

  A huge teardrop-shaped eye seemed to consider them as ship and arakeesian cut through the water together. Then a wave of colour flowed down the creature, white to dark purple to pink to white again. This was answered by a chorus of “Ohs” from the crew of Tide Child. Then the arakeesian opened its beak, the length of it filled with teeth as long as Joron’s arm, and called, though for what it called Joron did not know. Its mate? A warning? A greeting? The noise was almost unbearable, so deep it shook the bones of the ship. Twisting through the sound were mid and high tones. It was like every instrument and song Joron had ever heard in his life played without thought to tune or timing.