The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  “Not sorry,” it said. “They will live.” Then it made a sound, a repeated yarking, bobbing its head up and down. Joron thought it was going to vomit for a moment before realising it was laughing.

  “You don’t think we will?”

  “Who knows? You know? Meas know? No one knows.”

  “All this,” said Joron, “to save us from ourselves, and yet we do not even want to be saved.”

  The gullaime stopped moving, became utterly still, and Joron thought he heard the echoes of the windspire song carried on the wind.

  “Sea sither knows you protect it, Joron Twiner. Sea sither knows much.”

  “Can you speak to it?”

  “Speak?” It did it again: Yark, yark yark. “Not speak. Not talk. We are small, quick. It is big, slow.”

  “Can you make the keyshan understand? Tell it to hide from Hag’s Hunter? To join us later?”

  “You hide from insect?”

  “No.”

  “Hide from a million insect?”

  “Yes.”

  “This” – it tapped the smashed rail of Tide Child – “make you a million insect. But sea sither not understand that.”

  “Can you make it understand?”

  The gullaime fixed him with its painted mask.

  “Gullaime think fast. Like you. It is slow.” And then it turned on the spot and vanished into the underdeck.

  “I think that was a no,” said Dinyl from where he was tying rope across a break in the rail so none fell overboard.

  “Ey,” said Joron. And in his mind he heard the song of the windspire.

  They sailed for three days before they sighted the arakeesian. Three hard days where the weather changed and Aelerin was forced to chart a stormfoul course, the wind never in the right place and the courser hearing no hint in the windsong that it would change. So Tide Child tacked seaward and tacked landward, chasing the wakewyrm through a series of zigzags, and each time they came about Coxward would disappear into the bilges of the ship, knee deep in stinking water, listening to the bone and hearing the creaks and sighs and cracks of the ship as surely as any other heard the words of the lover they clung to in the darkness in hope of warmth. Each time the ship turned he came up to the slate, soaked and filthy, his face more drawn, his sores looking rawer, and he could give Meas no good news.

  But still they flew on.

  The weather became colder and wetter. Rain became a constant, sometimes thin – little more than a wetness in the air – at other times a deluge, rain so thick you could not see your hand before your face. There were not enough stinker coats or cold-weather clothes on board so when the watches above deck came below clothes had to be exchanged, leaving those below shivering together in little groups, or huddling under thin blankets in their hammocks. All was misery. Gone from the islands they passed were the cheery colours of the warm months; no bright purple gion or pink varisk grew this far north. Instead the islands were covered in grey, low, densely growing plants that shuddered in the wind, making it appear as if the islands moved gently from side to side.

  It felt both unreal and unsettling.

  However, the crew held up well. Whereas Meas, Joron and Dinyl knew how little the chances of the battered and broken Tide Child were against Hag’s Hunter, the crew seemed oblivious. Their victory over the Gaunt Islanders had sealed Meas’s reputation with them. They did not see any way they could lose with Lucky Meas on the rump, they talked away the size of Hag’s Hunter and callled him slow as a seaslug. Said Lucky Meas would run rings around her sither.

  Joron wished he could share their confidence

  But he could not.

  There were small pleasures. The gullaime had taken to walking on deck, often accompanied by a squawking and swearing Black Orris, and though neither of them was of any help they shared an intense curiosity in the workings of the ship. The crew, who had first been scared, then awed, by the windtalker, had accepted and finally welcomed its presence. It became quite normal for Joron to pass the gullaime, mask fixed on some deckchilder as they explained some arcane part of the ship’s working or routines. Twice Joron asked Meas if they should not use the gullaime to gain speed and stop the constant tacking. The first time Meas patiently explained they would need everything the gullaime had to stand a chance against Hag’s Hunter. The second time he was, less patiently, informed that he had no place questioning her on the deck of her ship.

  His friendship with Dinyl continued, though their conversations always ended up at the same place. The end. The coming battle with Hag’s Hunter, and Dinyl refused to humour Joron’s doubts; he would talk only of the duty of a fleet officer. So when they spent time together, they read books on navigation or studied maps of the Scattered Archipelago, because there was nothing else to be said and no comfort to be had.

  So it went on for Joron, day after miserable grey day.

  The day they saw the red wings of the arakeesian was a particularly taxing one for Joron. It was good to see the beast – he felt a strange kinship for it, a fondness – even though if they did manage to protect it from Hag’s Hunter – and he was sceptical they could – it would be only to kill it later. He felt it deserved more, should be more than simply a pawn in Archipelago politics. It had a majesty about it that nothing he had ever seen before possessed – more power and beauty than even a five-ribber under full wing.

  But as Dinyl so often said, Joron had a duty. And Meas had a duty and a dream, a dream of a land without war, and Joron did not imagine for one moment that she would sell that out for some romantic notion of an animal’s nobility.

  As Joron thought of the wakewyrm, Tide Child tacked, the great boom swinging over the deck and the ship creaking alarmingly as his keel complained, changing their course to catch the wind but losing ground on the arakeesian, which vanished from his line of sight as if it had never been.

  “And soon we, or another, will undo you, and your kind will be gone from the world for ever,” he said to himself and to the grey water before him.

  “Where do you think it came from, D’keeper?”

  Joron turned, annoyed at himself at being heard musing on things he should keep to himself. But it was only Mevans, idly tidying a coil of rope.

  “Outside the storms, I imagine, Hatkeep.”

  “How do we know there are not more of them out there? It’s a lot bigger than the skull on Tide Child’s beak.”

  “It is,” he said, staring out into the grey, looking for the creature.

  “Only, by my reckoning, I think that makes it older. Cos it’s bigger, see.”

  Joron nodded.

  “If it is the last, it must be tremendously lonely, Mevans, do you think?”

  “Ey,” he said, “if it is.” He finished tidying his rope and walked away, leaving Joron at the rail.

  The next day they caught up to the arakeesian proper, and the wind moved around behind Tide Child so the constant, wearying tacking finally stopped. The convoy of animal and humans followed the deep-water channel towards where they would pass through Skearith’s Spine on their journey back to the Hundred Isles.

  Joron’s dreams, which for days had been of his father’s death, constantly replaying that moment when the boneship Mother’s Wish had ground his father to mulch between his hull and their little flukeboat, changed that night. He dreamed once more of being something vast and eternal, gliding through the depths of the sea surrounded by water and strange, sad songs, and in those moments he found a calm entirely lacking from his waking hours.

  They flew on through days grey with clouds, grey with damp air, grey within his mind.

  In the third week they turned for Skearith’s Spine and Namwen’s Pass.

  A fog blanketed them as they entered the pass, clouds falling from the great plates of black rock on either side to sit upon the ocean, masking Tide Child’s course as completely as time masked the future. Joron moved from job to job wrapped in freezing opaque air, the familiar sounds of the ship around him muffled and ghostly. In
the evening he stood upon the rump with Dinyl peering forward, wary of reefs, listening to Seakeep Fogle as she cast the weight with a steady rhythm.

  “Cast!” the shout. Then a splash, the sound held close to the beak by the enfolding mist. Fogle’s voice counting out the seconds as the rope ran through her hand until it hit bottom – or not. Namwen’s Pass was deep in the centre and shallow at the sides, but Meas had ordered them to avoid the deep channel as that was where wakewyrm swam, and she did not know how it would react if they ran into it. So they had to make their way carefully through the shallows. They could not afford the damaged Tide Child to even nudge the sea floor, so they edged forward with all but the topwings furled, listening to the calls from the front. “No bottom, no measure. No bottom, no measure. Fifty lengths and sand and shale. Forty lengths and sand and shale.” And as Fogle called out the depths, Dinyl directed Barlay at the steering oar.

  Meas trusted them to do this. She was up in the topspines, hoping for a break in the cloud. Hoping not to see Hag’s Hunter.

  “Were I his shipwife,” she had said to Joron earlier, “I would sit at the exit to Namwen’s Pass and wait for us. Our only real advantage is manoeuvrability and speed, and in our state we don’t have as much of either as I would like, though they cannot know that. But if they can catch us leaving the pass we have nowhere to go but through them. My sither could simply sit and pepper us with wingshot.” There was no emotion on Meas’s face at the thought of fighting her sibling. “They have enough weight to finish us in two or three rounds.”

  “So we are finished?”

  “I do not think so. My sither has many admirable qualities but patience is not one of them. It caused more than a little friction between us. I think it more likely she will patrol and rely on the watchtowers putting up a signal when we come through. We are tied to the arakeesian, so if Hag’s Hunter has maps of the old migration routes she does not have to worry about losing us.”

  So they edged forward, and Meas watched for the ship that could end them. Fogle called out the depths, and Dinyl called out directions, and Barlay steered the ship, and Joron shivered and itched inside his stinker coat. When he had looked, the skin at the tops of his arms was red and raw, another little misery to add to the many that went with life on a fleet ship.

  This was not the life his father had told him stories of: the dashing work of the fleet, a life of honour and good cheer.

  He heard boots on slate and a moment later Meas appeared from the mist, hair and hat dewed by damp air.

  “What news, Shipwife?”

  “Fair news and foul, Deckkeeper.”

  “Well,” said Dinyl, “best furnish us with fair, the better to stand the foul.”

  “It was ever thus,” said Meas as she came to stand by the two men. “Well, fair is that my thoughts on Kyrie’s personality were correct. She had no patience for sitting and waiting, so I am sure she now patrols the northern oceans.”

  “This is good, is it not?” said Dinyl.

  Meas made a clicking sound, twisting up one side of her face as if to say, “All is not as it seems.”

  “In a way, it is, ey, but I fear Hag’s Hunter is near. I had hoped this mist would let us pass undetected but we are seen. The landward watchtower sends up a plume of smoke that was not there three turns ago, so we must presume Hag’s Hunter is close enough to see the signal.”

  “If it can see the smoke for this mist,” said Joron.

  “The fog lies low. It is clear above the mainwing, and Hunter is taller than us.” She shrugged. “It will see the smoke.”

  “Are the towers likely to fire on us?” said Joron.

  Dinyl smiled, as did Meas, though with little humour.

  “‘Tower’ is a rather generous description of them,” said Meas. “If the arakeesians truly returned, maybe there would be towers here again, but for now they are little more than huts. We need not fear much more than them spitting on us.”

  Black Orris landed on Meas’s shoulder.

  “Hag’s arse,” said Black Orris.

  And at that that moment they broke from Namwen’s Pass, the mist chose to stay hugging the land and Tide Child emerged from the vapour like a ghost, dragging curls of thick air with him only to shed them as the wind picked up. Free of the mist, the air was crystal, cold and cutting and clear, the sky as blue as the best dyes, the visibility good for tenths in every direction.

  “Pleasant,” said Meas, taking out her nearglass and raising it to her eye, “but not the weather I would have wished for. These are poor conditions for hiding.” Before them the arakeesian ploughed on, the great red wings on its back raised. It brought its beak from the water, letting out its call, something painfully loud but also joyous, as if it celebrated seeing Skearith’s Eye. Within the sound Joron heard so many beautiful and complex melodies that it moved him to tears, and he turned from those around him to wipe the moisture from his eye.

  “Well,” said Dinyl, “if anyone within a hunth of this passage was in doubt we are here, that doubt is dispelled now.”

  They flew on for four days without sign of another ship, and had they not been running towards a battle Joron believed they could not win, it would have been pleasant. Had Tide Child not creaked and groaned through damage, or been tied to the path of the arakeesian he was sure they would have flown like never before. They had perfect winds, flat seas. Far to the north the dark line of the Northstorm, occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning, rumbled and grumbled, but it made no move to loose its anger on them.

  “Ship rising to the east!”

  The call came on the fifth day, and Meas was up the spine as quick as Black Orris could take to the air. When she returned she was grim-faced and serious.

  “It is the Hunter, coming towards us with all wings set.” She glanced over the side at the arakeesian. “If only it did not choose to swim in such a leisurely fashion.” Then she looked to the Northstorm, so very far away. “Call the courser for me, Joron.”

  Joron sent the call on to Solemn Muffaz who passed it to the underdeck.

  Aelerin appeared and made their way to the rump.

  “Ey, Shipwife?”

  “The Northstorm,” said Meas. “What chance its anger will be raised? What songs do you hear it sing? Will we get storms and rough seas any time soon?” Aelerin took a moment, then their cowl shook as they shook the head hidden beneath it.

  “It grumbles and moans, but its ire is not raised yet. Another two weeks and we would be into storm season, but this weather we have now will continue, Shipwife. I am sad to bring you foul news.”

  “It is not your fault,” said Meas, “and to be truthful, I am not sure how Tide Child would manage were we to be chased through a storm. Hag’s Hunter could barrel though with his weight, our damage may well steal any speed I would hope to win.”

  “If only we had something they wanted,” said Dinyl. “We could lead them away.”

  For a moment Dinyl must have thought Joron was about to strike him, so singular was his focus on him. Then Joron smiled.

  “Women of the Sea, Dinyl! We do have something they want.”

  “We do?” said Dinyl.

  “Ey. If we presume Hunter is waiting for the arakeesian, then it will need the weapons to hunt it, the hiylbolts. And remember Tide Child was searched before we left?”

  “That seems a lifetime ago,” said Dinyl.

  “They must have been looking for the bolts. That means Hunter must take us or it cannot hunt.”

  A smile spread across Dinyl’s face, then he looked beyond Joron to where Meas stood, and the smile fell away.

  Joron turned. “Do you not agree, Shipwife?”

  She shrugged.

  “A decent thought, Deckholder,” she said. “One I have had myself.”

  “You do not think they searched us for the hiylbolts?”

  “Oh, no doubt they did,” she said. “But remember, Karrad told us he tracked them down from old papers but found none where the papers said? In
the end he found a forgotten store in a forgotten and ruined room?”

  “I remember,” said Joron.

  “Do you also remember what my sither said on Bernshulme docks?”

  “She crowed over her new command – I remember that.”

  “It seems we both go a-hunting . . . Let us see who brings home the prize.’ That is what she said. I thought she spoke of Gaunt Islands ships at the time. But now she is here, waiting for us.”

  “You think she spoke of the keyshan?” said Dinyl.

  “Ey, I do,” said Meas. “And I think the reason Karrad did not find his bolts where he expected was because my mother already had them.”

  “You cannot know . . .” began Joron.

  Meas raised a hand.

  “My mother is a very clever woman. If she had really needed what was in our hold she would simply have had us stopped and searched at the harbour mouth when she knew it far more likely all our cargo would be aboard.”

  “Why let us go?” said Dinyl.

  “To bring the keyshan safely here, where Hunter waited?” said Joron.

  Meas nodded.

  “Then we are lost,” said Dinyl. “We have no bait with which to lead Hunter away, and we stand little chance in a fight.”

  “No,” said Joron. “That is not the case.” Meas turned to him, raising an eyebrow. “You said your sither was impatient and impulsive?” Meas nodded. “Well, we do have something she wants, Shipwife, we have you. She was all too keen to tell you she was better than you at the dock. Surely she will want to prove that at sea.”

  Meas stared at him. The ship creaked and groaned and complained.

  “Barlay!” shouted Meas. “Steer us three points to landward off the keyshan’s course.” Then she walked to the mainspine and shouted up into the tops, “Watch Hunter as if it brought you food and you were starving. I would know if it changes course to pursue us.”

  “Ey, Shipwife,” floated down from above.

  “Gullaime!” shouted Meas. The creature sidled over from where it had been inspecting the broken gallowbow.