The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  Near the edge of the forest, where the smell of the regular fires used to keep the area clear around the tower was strong, Joron heard a voice.

  At first it was faint, little more than another noise among the thousands of the forest, filtered as it was through bird calls and the buzzing of insects and the hiss of wind and the creak of growing gion and varisk stalks. Then he began to pick out the name “Meas” being repeated time and again like a mantra. Even nearer the tower, and he could make out the tone, mocking; a man was mocking Meas, and something about the voice was familiar.

  “. . . the great Meas Gilbryn, the feted shipwife! Lucky Meas! Not so lucky now, are you?” Who was that? “You break your crew on my tower like a wave breaks on the rocks. Come, all of you, you owe her nothing. Cut off her head and bring it to me, and I will let you into my tower. I will let you share in my coming riches!”

  So the raiders who held the tower had seen the keyshan. They knew what approached, and it was more imperative than ever the tower be taken.

  “Farys”, said Joron, “get up that gion. See if you can spot the arakeesian and its escorts, or any sign of the shipwife.”

  “Ey, D’keeper.” She scurried up the gion, feet finding purchase on its thick rubbery stalk.

  While she climbed, Joron quietly made his way to the edge of the clearing, where already the violent pink of varisk roots was edging out into the blackened scrub before the tower. He pushed aside a fan-shaped gion leaf and stared at the tower. Not big, not really. A three-storey square tower of mud brick, it would have fallen quickly to a good-sized gallowbow, Joron was sure. But he may as well have wished for Skearith to come howling from the sky and lay an egg on top of the tower. To a force without a gallowbow, the tower was well-nigh impregnable, and the proof of that was lying on the burned ground: two bodies, pierced with arrows and twisted in death.

  The man on top of the tower talked on. Joron squinted, trying to make him out. Occasionally he would catch a glimpse of his head as it moved along the battlements.

  “Bring me her head, oh girls and boys. Now we’re not on the ship, we are are a free troop. We make our own rules, and I welcome girls just as much as boys now. I’ll turn no one down and . . .”

  Kanvey. It was Kanvey atop the tower.

  Kanvey, who had run rather than fight at Tide Child’s ill-fated first battle. How he had come to this place Joron had no idea, but he suspected the violent hand of the Hag at work, offering vengeance to the aggrieved. But who did the Hag offer blood to? Meas, for Kanvey’s betrayal, or Kanvey, to finish what he had not managed at Corfynhulme with his spear?

  “D’keeper.” He turned to find Farys at his shoulder.

  “Ey, Farys. What did you see?”

  “I see the keyshan coming up the channel, cannot be more than forty turns away.”

  “That is little time to take a tower.”

  “Also I see Snarltooth and Cruel Water, but they do not front the beast.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Snarltooth lags behind and Cruel Water sails by the keyshan’s neck.”

  “That is not how to stop gallowbow bolts.”

  “Was my thinking too, D’keeper. Are we betrayed?”

  “I do not know. Did you see any sign of the shipwife?”

  “Not of her, no, but the man on the tower is Kanvey.” At the mention of his name Joron was sure he heard “Traitor!” whispered somewhere behind him.

  “Ey. I recognised the voice.”

  “Good he’s here,” said Old Briaret. “Be a pleasure to force my blade into his body. He’s stuck something of himself in others enough times without their say.”

  “I am sure you’ll get a chance,” said Joron. “You have more, Farys?”

  “Ey.” She pointed to seaward, towards a huge gion which rose above all the rest, giant heart-shaped purple leaves sprouting off to each side. At the very top one had broken off. “That is a better place to see the tower and clearing.”

  “We make our way there then,” he said. “Come.”

  From where they squatted hidden in the forest, they circled the tower, keeping to the cover of the vegetation, and all the time Kanvey continued to harangue Meas. To offer her crew wild prizes and riches in exchange for her death.

  “I wish he would shut up,” said Old Briaret. “Never met a man in my life I wanted to shut up more than Kanvey, and it don’t seem he’s changed any.”

  Anzir held up her hand and they stopped. For a moment there was only the noise of Kanvey shouting and the wind through the forest. Joron caught a whiff of sea on the breeze and realised how much he missed that scent; the earthy smell of the forest was no comfort to him like the salt tang of the sea.

  Narza appeared.

  One moment she was not there and then she was. She did not look at them, keeping her face hidden beneath her black hair. In her hands she held her bone knives, carved and yellowed. Then she stood aside and waved them forward into a small clearing that had been neatly walled with woven thickets of thorns.

  “Joron,” said Meas. She sat in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by Coughlin, her seaguard and the crew she had brought with her. There was a new cut on her cheek sewn together with black thread. The feathers in her hair were askew. “I am glad you are here. We do not have much time to take the tower. Where is the gullaime?”

  “We left it at the windspire,” he said. Had he done the wrong thing? Hurriedly he added, “It showed no sign of waking when we got it there, and I thought it best to come straight to you. None would hurt a gullaime.”

  “You were right to come,” said Meas. She looked tired. “I will not lie. I had hoped you would bring the windtalker and it would help us take the tower. But clearly that is not to be.”

  “So what now?”

  “We must take it another way.”

  Joron nodded.

  “Farys here,” he said, “has seen the arakeesian approaching. Says it is forty turns or less away.”

  “Then we do not have much time to finish this.”

  “She also says that our escorts do not escort.”

  “Oh?” said Meas. Suddenly all her attention was on him. Joron felt his cheeks burn and the world seemed a little quieter.

  “Snarltooth hangs back, while Cruel Water flies near the head of the beast.”

  Meas nodded.

  “So he decided to do it himself,” she said quietly.

  “Do what?”

  “Shipwife Arrin and I spoke of what we should do if the towers were not destroyed. It was decided a ship would loose its bolts at the arakeesian, see if it could make the beast dive.”

  “It will destroy whichever ship does that,” said Joron, unable to hide his shock. “We saw its power when the flukeboats attacked it.”

  “Ey,” said Meas sadly. “I bade him command Brekir do it. Her ship being out of view that night bothered me, Joron. Still does.”

  “You think she lied?”

  “A broken spar, Joron, is not reason to fall so far behind. Though it could simply have been poor shipwifery. However, it seems either Arrin does not trust her to do it, or he did not think it right for him to order another to their death.”

  “I did not think a Gau—” He was about to say “Gaunt Islander”, give the whole thing away, but Meas interrupted.

  “Sometimes you do not think at all, Joron,” she barked, and he remembered the secrets he held. “Arrin knows what we are about and thinks it worth dying for. But I would rather he lived.” She touched the cut on her face, winced. “Coughlin here has another plan.” She pointed over her shoulder at the warrior. “Tell him, Coughlin.” The man came forward, and Joron could not help thinking he seemed less resentful of Meas. He had fought with her twice now, and Joron was learning how such things could tie people together.

  “Deckkeeper,” he said stiffly. “That tower is built to withstand a siege.”

  “I can see that,” said Joron.

  “Aye, well, you cannot withstand a siege without water. I vis
ited the old tower here, and there was a well, fed from caves beneath it.”

  “Coughlin says,” said Meas, “that islands like this, made of the white stone, are riddled with caves. So we believe there may be a way in. That the caves will allow access to the tower’s well.”

  “Believe or know?” said Joron. “They could have walled up access to the well when they rebuilt the tower.”

  Coughlin stared at the floor.

  “They could.”

  “There will be a heavy price to pay if we assault the walls, Joron,” said Meas, “and what Coughlin says makes sense. You only fortify a place if you think you can hold it, and to hold a place you need drinking water.”

  “So Coughlin will try and find these caves?”

  The big man shook his head.

  “They are generally not big, these caves. Too tight a squeeze for me.”

  “That and I want him up here,” said Meas. “You are slim, Joron.” A coldness within him. He knew what her next words would be. “You will lead the attack through the caves. Take Farys – she is small. Take Old Briaret too and also Namd, Karring and Narza.” She raised her voice as she said each name and they came to join him.

  “Six of us to take a tower; it is not many.” And he was no great warrior.

  “They will not expect an attack from below. Six will be enough.” She glanced at the tower. “I will give you ten turns, and then we must attack anyway if we are to stand a chance of stopping them loosing on the wakewyrm. And an assault will keep their attention on us – give you a better chance.”

  “And if there is no way in for us, six will not be missed from your attack.”

  “In essence,” said Meas. Then she leaned forward, and spoke quietly, putting a hand on his arm. “You will have five crew loyal to Tide Child’s second in command with you, Joron. Someone who knows our purpose must always command the ship, do you understand?” Then she drew back again and pointed at the tower. “You need only open and hold the front gate long enough for us to get in, that is all.” She smiled at him. “Narza will take you down the cliffs. Coughlin has shown her the way. Let her take the lead. She has done this type of work before and has an instinct for it. A good commander uses what knowledge they have available.”

  Joron nodded.

  “Very well,” he said. And as he started to move away Meas held out her arm, clasped his hand tightly in the deckwive’s grip. “Good luck, Joron Twiner.”

  “And to you, Shipwife.” He turned. “Narza,” he said, “I am not a fool to ignore my shipwife’s advice. You shall lead.”

  Narza nodded then led them into the forest and through the gion. It was not far to where the cliff fell dramatically away, and Joron could stare down at the white birds circling as the sea crashed against the rocks below. Narza pointed at a steep, narrow path leading down the cliff.

  “We go down there,” said Joron, managing not to make it sound like the question it was.

  Narza nodded again and led them on, walking along the path like she was out for a morning stroll on deck. Farys followed her, similarly nonchalant, and behind her came old Briaret, Namd and Karring, all deckchilder well used to heights and similarly unconcerned. For Joron it was different. The varisk spars of a ship he could depend on, but this path? It was little more than one foot’s width wide and in places had crumbled away. Every time a foot fell on the path a little mud and white stone fell. Joron found himself wishing he was not last in the line. Every footfall eroded the path that little bit more. Each time Joron placed his boot down he expected the path to vanish beneath, to cast him into the yawing chasm below, smash his body on the rocks. For the marrow of his broken bones to become food for the wheeling seabirds that cried sadly as they flew in circles below.

  “D’keeper?” He blinked twice. Namd was staring at him. The man was heavily bearded to hide the fact he had a cleft palate. Joron had noticed he rarely spoke.

  “You seemed lost, D’keeper.”

  “Just thinking about how to approach this, Namd, that is all.”

  The man nodded, seemed satisfied, and Joron continued to inch his way along the path. Further down it widened slightly, doubling back under itself, and when Joron looked up he saw that all that held it in place was a tangle of roots. He felt a greying of his cheeks at that, and decided not to think of what supported the path below his feet; instead he whispered a prayer to the Mother to keep him safe. At the front Narza was cutting back bright vegetation, scannng the the cliff face, shaking her head and moving on. Eventually she found something and cut away more vegetation, then swore, sucking her finger where a thorn had caught it. Her head vanished into the wall of the cliff and when it came out her dark hair was greyed with the webs of insects. She pointed with her bone knife and beckoned Joron. He inched his way past the others and saw that the hole she had found was not much bigger than his own head.

  “We go in there?”

  Narza shook her head, then pointed at her ear. Joron leaned in close to the hole, wary of whatever had made the webs that were caught in Narza’s hair; in his experience there was little in the Hundred Isles that did not bite or sting. But when he placed his head inside the hole there was only a blessed coolness and a darkness so complete that it was easy to believe the world outside had stopped existing.

  Then he became aware of the smell of water, but not seawater. Still water, earthy water – water that made his nose feel uncomfortable, made him want to recoil as if this was not a place he should go.

  But he did not recoil.

  He listened.

  The first sound was the sea, the slow beat of the sea on the rocks, the back and forth of waves gradually eating away the base of the cliff. Then, barely perceptibly, he thought he heard the song of the windspire. A lament in a language he had no vocabulary for, meaning passed to him as a feeling. Above that he heard the murmur of voices, here and gone, and with those voices came a breath of wind. He turned his head, feeling the breeze on his cheek: a coldness on the seaward side of his face, louder voices, a coldness on the landward side, quieter voices. The breeze moved in time with the sea. He removed his head from the hole, squinting at the sudden brightness.

  “Voices,” he said. “They come and go with the waves so these caves are open to the sea somewhere.” He examined the hole. Some of the the scree around it was loose, but they could not make the hole a lot bigger without bringing the hillside down around them. Still, he thought he could get through.

  “Won’t fit in there,” said Old Briaret, holding out her hand in front of her ample chest. “The Maiden may have made me barren but she were more than generous in other ways.”

  Joron dithered. Leave Old Briaret, whose strength they may need, or see if they could find a larger hole?

  A wave against the rock.

  A rock against the wave.

  “We go on, Narza, fifty steps, and if we do not find a better way in then we will have to return here and leave Old Briaret behind.” The dark woman nodded and went on, studying the cliff wall as she did.

  The path narrowed again, making them all press themselves against the cliff face, then as they rounded a corner it widened once more. Joron was so busy concentrating on where he placed his feet, it took him a moment to realise everyone but Narza had stopped and was staring out across the sea.

  Joron could not help but join them.

  The sky was blue, blue as dreams and as unreachable. Thin lines of cloud scudded across it. Below was the ocean, green and grey and cut with lines of white. To their landward side the sky and sea were divided by the black towers of Skearith’s Spine, reaching up to impossible heights, their tops crested with snow and it looked like clouds nested there, resting before journeying across the Archipelago. Through the centre of this vista ran Arkannis Channel, and in the centre of the channel swam the arakeesian.

  Vast.

  Able to compare it to the pair of two-ribbers, Joron got his first true idea of the creature’s scale. It took his breath away. It was like an island had come a
live. The huge red wingfins on its back were raised, catching the wind and pushing the beast on inexorably. He tried to calculate how long they had before it came within range of the towers’ gallowbows but could not. Not long enough, he knew that. The creature’s branched horns stuck out of the water, marking its head. As if sensing his gaze, the arakeesian blew a plume of water out of the hole between its horns, and it reached up for the sky before vanishing into a cloud of droplets to be whisked away by the wind. The beast’s flippers were held against its huge curving sides, and the long tail swept lazily up and down through the sea. From this distance Cruel Water looked about the size of Joron’s hand, and Snarltooth, which sailed at the rear of the arakeesian, looked no bigger than his littlest finger.

  “It is difficult, D’keeper,” said Farys, “to understand how something so huge can even be alive.”

  “Ey, Farys, you are right. But it is and we must keep it so.”

  “It is a good thing we do, I think, D’keeper,” she said and then bowed her head as if worried she had said too much and hurried off after Narza.

  “It is,” said Joron quietly with one last look at the beast. “I believe it is.”

  When he reached Narza she had found another hole and was busily pulling away vines. This was larger and would allow even Old Briaret to squeeze through.

  “This looks good,” said Joron. “Narza, you lead.”

  Narza nodded and produced a wanelight from her belt with a little container of oil. She filled the light and then lit it with a sparker. Joron wished he had thought ahead and brought his own light but Narza was prepared for forgetful deckkeepers and produced three more. Then they squirmed and squeezed into the darkness.

  To enter the cave was to enter another world, one as alien to Joron as being underwater. So dark. Sound no longer behaved as it should. The voices Joron had heard were louder here, but he could not tell from which direction they came. The glistening walls of the cave threw sound around, turned it into a mush that hissed in his ears. The cave enclosed him, pushed him inside himself and at the same time pushed him physically down, forcing Joron and his small crew to continue on all fours. He did not hold a wanelight, and the meagre glow from those in front was as often as not blocked out by Old Briaret or Karring, and in those moments it was easy to believe he was utterly alone, the only sounds those of clothes scraping against rock. The only sensation the feel of loose shingle and slippery mud as it squeezed between his fingers. Everything here was alien to him, from the darkness to the way the decreasing space eventually forced him to move like a creature without arms and legs, wriggling along on his stomach. Progress was slow, and he felt the weight of the rock above, crushing him. Panic fluttered in his breast. To be stuck here was to die. To die alone in the dark.