Call of the Bone Ships

by Rj Barker

  “Farys!” Water breaking over them. Wind grabbing at them as he scrambled for the rear of their boat over women and men grunting and fighting the oars. “Steer for the beak!” Screaming it through wet air. Picking up speed. The wind changing, coming from the front. The merchanter growing bigger, bigger. “Get ready, Gavith!” Skearith’s Eye, if they smashed into it they were done.

  The wind screamed.

  The grapple whirled.

  Speed picked up.

  “Row hard my girls and boys! Slow us or we’ll be food for longthresh!” He didn’t need to shout, his little crew knew the danger, strained at the oars while the cold sea tried to smash them against the bigger ship. The grapple spun in Gavith’s hands then flew through the air. “Turn, Farys! Turn!” he yelled, and the flukeboat was rushing on, the side of the merchanter growing in his vision as it raised up on a wave.

  Not enough time.

  Too fast.

  Sure to die.

  But the rising wave slowed their boat, just a little, and they flashed past the beak of the merchanter; a brutal, blunt and stubby prow. Gavith watched the rope fly. Joron saw the boy’s face light up, knew it for a hit.

  “I got him! I got him!” He held up the looped cord of the grapple in victory.

  Joron dove forward, fist lashing out to knock the boy flat as they sped past the merchanter and the cord the boy had been holding was stretched taut as the thick rope tied to it was pulled from its coil. The boy’s face a picture, looking hurt, insulted by his deckkeeper’s attack until one of the deckchilder, pulling hard on an oar, shouted at him.

  “D’keeper saved your arm, boy! You didn’t let go, the rope would have had it off.” Gavith’s eyes widened, then he looked from the deckchild to Joron and nodded, started to get up but Joron knelt by him.

  “Wait,” he said, watching the rapidly shrinking coil of rope. “Wait.” The deckchilder rowed hard. The wind howled and the waves swelled and the rain beat upon them. “Row my girls and boys. Row.” The rope spooling out. “Row hard.” More rope, hissing as it passed. The merchanter looming behind them as it rose up on a wave, and though it lacked the keyshanskull front of their own warship, it was just as threatening, just as hard and unyielding. The spool of rope ran out. “Brace!” shouted Joron, and the crew threw themselves forward over their oars. The flukeboat jerked to a halt and the rope was ripped from the sea in a curtain of water as it came tight, throwing the braced crew of the boat hard against the woman or man or hull in front of them. A great groan coming up from the small vessel as its varisk skeleton was tested. Then Joron was up, despite his chest throbbing from where he had been cast against the side of the hull.

  “Row! Row or that great brownbone will be on us. Row for your lives!”

  Then the real work, and the real danger, began. It was as if they sought to drag a huge and angry keyshan from its slumber. When they wished to go to landward it pulled to seaward, when they wished to go to seaward it pulled to landward. Communication between the two flukeboats and the bigger ship was impossible with the whipping wind and driving rain. Occasionally he would see the merchanter’s shipwife on the beak of the ship, plainly shouting something, but what they said was heard only by the Northstorm, which stole words and hoarded the secrets of storm-wracked deckchilder.

  They fought on, pulling on the oars, muscle set against storm winds, against the sea, against the weight of the ship, and with nothing to fight the tired ache of their arms but their will. With the howling wind and scudding clouds no landmarks could be made out. All Joron had was that sixth sense that a life on the waves had given him – a mixture of a million intangibles: the cut of the waves, the direction of the wind and rain, even the smell and the taste of the water on his tongue. He felt it, felt the way to go, felt Tide Child out in the storm, not as a real thing, not something he could touch. But he knew where he had left the ship, knew the speed of the ship and the strength of the wind and the likelihood and length of drift in the howling gale. But he doubted, even as he screamed through the freezing rain for them to row, shouted directions at Farys on the tiller. Worried the rope would rip their boat in two if he misjudged the pull of the huge ship. Worried he misread Tide Child, that he sent them heading heedlessly out into the ocean.

  And then there was relief as he felt a dot of warmth in the storm, a pulsing tiny dot of heat he had come to associate with the gullaime. Sometimes he felt it out there, sometimes not. But it provided him a point of reference. He knew if not for that he would have doubted more, worried more about his mental calculations, his instinct; but with the dot out there he knew he was right.

  Little solace.

  Rather not have it, rather get it right himself and know he had done it. Rather do that again and again and again until the doubt was worn away like rock by the tides.

  But if wishes were wings gullaime would fly. This was his world and he must live in it, could not change it any more than he could rid himself of the slowly growing sores on his shoulders and legs.

  Then, as if she could tell the deckchilder were finding the end of their strength, that the ropes were chewing through the soaked varisk of the flukeboats, that tiredness was beginning to mask his ability to react to the movement of the waves, Meas came.

  “Ship rising!”

  The black ship, Tide Child, Meas Gilbryn on the prow and her grey hair, black with rain, streaming in the wind.

  “Throw me the ropes!”

  No storm could hold her words, no wind could steal them nor woman or man deny them.

  For she was Lucky Meas.

  She was the greatest shipwife who ever lived, and she would be a legend.

  2

  Ill Found the Flotsam

  They flew the ship for three days. The gullaime never moved from its favoured place to bring the wind, crouched before the mainspine, and it never looked up or spoke as it concentrated on finding the most favourable currents of the air and bringing them to Tide Child. When Joron passed close to it he thought he could hear its song in his bones.

  They towed the merchanter, named Maiden’s Bounty, a full five ship-lengths behind them – for Meas would not trust an unknown shipwife any closer to her precious boneship.

  “Too easy for the brownbone to wreck us, Joron.”

  Five ship-lengths gave them room enough to cut the bigger ship free if it did anything foolish, or if the gullaime could not calm the storm around them. But the ship did not do anything foolish and the gullaime did calm the storm. They moved in a bubble of relative quiet – not comfort or safety, never that, but the gullaime took the worst of the bite from the waves and the wind. Occasionally, Joron would imagine he felt heat cross the deck of the ship, a great wave of it – but, like all aboard, he was tired from long watches and short sleeps. They were leaden, the women and men aboard Tide Child; muscle memory powered the ship through those grey days and howling nights.

  On the night of the fourth day, Menday – though none had time to mend – the winds subsided and the Northstorm’s anger ebbed a little. When Skearith’s Eye rose that morran it rose bright and cold, the light crystal sharp and clear, the sea no longer staccato-rhythmed into jumbled ranges of knife-edged mountains, became rolling hills of oily looking water. The gullaime vanished from the centre of the ship and Meas stood on the rump, her hair once more dyed through with her rank’s reds and blues underneath the two-tailed hat of the shipwife.

  “We’ll go over there today, Deckkeeper,” she said, pointing at the rising and falling beak of Maiden’s Bounty. In the light the merchanter looked more damaged, more bedraggled than it had in the teeth of the storm. The hardened varisk that made up the hull had rips in it and he could see keyshan bone, the skeleton – literal and figurative – of the ship below. The spines were gone, just two broken stumps to mark where they had been. On the deck, crazily cracked with the flexing of the ship, the crew milled about. Joron picked out the shipwife, stood on a barely raised rump next to her oarturner. She was a stout woman, with hair cropped short,
and she leaned on a crutch, the badge of some old injury. It must be injury, not birth, for few, if any, Berncast made shipwife of even a brownbone merchanter. Only the families of the Bern, the women who birthed healthy children and rose through the Hundred Isles aristocracy, or the Kept, their chosen concubines and warriors, became officers. Joron watched the shipwife of Maiden’s Bounty, thought it curious that she displayed little interest in the ship towing her.

  Meas went to the rear rail. “Shipwife of the Maiden’s Bounty!” she shouted. “Ready yourself to receive my wingfluke. We will assess your damage and do what we can to help.”

  The sea rose and fell and fell and rose while the other shipwife walked down her web-cracked deck and Joron went to join Meas at the rear of Tide Child.

  “I thank you for dragging us away from the island, Shipwife,” was shouted back from Maiden’s Bounty. “But we are well supplied. If you will allow us, we will loose your ropes now and be on our way.”

  Meas leaned in close to Joron and whispered to him.

  “Be ready to untruss our rearmost gallowbows,” she said. And he in turn passed the order on to the deckmother, Solemn Muffaz, who brought up the two bowcrews and had them stand near enough the great weapons of the warship to ready them should they so need it.

  “Shipwife,” Meas shouted once that was done, “I am afraid I must insist. Should you be found wrecked for want of a spar I could never forgive myself.”

  They watched the crew of the other ship: a smaller woman joined the shipwife and the two spoke, heads almost touching. Black Orris fluttered down from the rigging to land on Meas’ shoulder. “Hag’s arse!” it croaked and Meas reached up and fondled the black feathers of his throat.

  “Shipwife,” came the cry from Maiden’s Bounty. “Of course you may come across. I did not mean to give the impression that we were ungrateful. I will prepare my crew to receive you.” Meas gave the other shipwife a wave and turned to Joron.

  “Something is off here, Twiner.”

  “What?”

  “I do not know, but smell the air.” He did, took a great sniff of the sea air and behind the freshness brought by the north wind there was another smell, a stink like a ship left too long in harbour, when the rubbish gathered around it and the bilges swelled with sewage.

  “Are its bones rotting, do you think?” he said.

  “Something is definitely rotten, Deckkeeper. We’ll take Coughlin and our seaguard across with us, I think. And you shall bring that fancy sword I gave you.”

  “Will they not suspect we are up to something?”

  “Possibly,” she said, “but I do not care. A fleet shipwife should have a guard with her, so it will not be too strange. It is not only the smell of the ship that bothers me, Twiner, it is the placing of it. Such ships are meant for traversing between islands, they are not strong enough to fly the true ocean alone, so for it to be so far out is odd in itself.”

  “Smugglers?”

  “It would be my first thought.”

  “There is a decent prize to be had for taking a smuggler’s ship.”

  “Well, I doubt that ship is worth much, but it may have a valuable cargo. Keyshanbone is likely.”

  “It will give our crew a good amount of money to send home if it is.”

  “Ey, even Cwell may smile, eh?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Well, she would be right not to smile. If it’s keyshanbone we will have to take this ship somewhere safe and contact Kept Indyl Karrad back in Bernshulme. He can have it shipped to Safeharbour for our own fleet. We will not see any money from it; the crew will have to be content with serving a higher purpose.”

  “Arse!” The call came from Black Orris as the night-black corpsebird flapped its wings for balance on Meas’s shoulder.

  “I suspect many will agree, Black Orris,” said Meas. “But this is my ship and those who crew it follow my rule, happy or sad, rain or shine.” She turned away. “Well, Deckkeeper, is my boat ready or not?”

  “I will see to it, Shipwife,” he said.

  Within a turn of the sand they were making their way to the merchanter, across freezing choppy water in the windfluke, the great slab sides of the Maiden’s Bounty growing with every stroke of the oars. At the rails of the bigger ship stood crew – not many, mostly women with a few men scattered among them. They leaned over the railing watching Meas, who watched them back from the beak of her small boat. Ten of the Tide Child’s deckchilder rowed them, and squeezed in among them were Coughlin, his second Berhof – an enormous though affable man who Coughlin had raised from in among his seaguard. Coughlin had chosen well there, thought Joron, Berhof was well-liked by all aboard Tide Child, even though he had never really found his sea legs, a thing that would have brought ridicule had Berhof not been so popular. With them were eight of the seaguard, hunched around their small circular shields. It always seemed such a strange thing to Joron, a man raised on the sea by his father, that there could be those in the Hundred Isles who had never stood on the deck of the ship. There were few women and men more miserable on the waves than Coughlin’s seaguard – though Coughlin himself had almost managed to come to terms with the ocean, even enjoyed it on occasion.

  The crew of Maiden’s Bounty threw down a rope ladder and as Farys tied the flukeboat to the bigger ship Meas ascended, followed by her crew and then Coughlin, Berhof and the seaguard. Joron came last, fighting the ladder as it twisted and bucked beneath his booted feet.

  On the deck of the merchanter crew stood about, appearing aimless and innocent though Joron noticed that each and every one of them held, if not a weapon, at least something that could be used as such.

  “Welcome,” said the merchanter’s shipwife. Up close he could see she had been imposing once, but had gone to seed now. “Shipwife Meas, the greatest of us, eh?” She spat on the deck. “Well, we owe you our thanks, it is true. I will feed you for it if you come to my cabin.”

  The wind, which had until that moment been blowing on Joron’s back and over the ship, dropped for a moment and the smell – that almost unbearable, clinging stench he had caught a hint of on Tide Child – came close to overwhelming him. He felt the world spin, the deck move beneath his feet in an unfamiliar way, just like stepping onto land for the first time after weeks afloat. Meas’s hand closed round his arm.

  “Breathe deep, it will pass.”

  “Heh,” the Maiden’s shipwife coughed, “boy can’t take a little stink, eh? And he’s your deckkeeper? Always say it’s a mistake to put a man in charge, ey, Caffis?” She glanced over her shoulder at a slender woman behind her.

  “Ey, Shipwife Golzin. Men don’t have the tits for command.”

  Meas’s hand tightened further around his arm. “Breathe deep, Deckkeeper,” she said again, then turned. “It is an uncommon stink aboard this ship, right enough, Shipwife.”

  “You get used to it,” said Shipwife Golzin. “But if you cannot eat, I will understand. And if you are here to help then maybe we need enough material to get a mainspine up and to patch the hull. We can manage ourselves after that.”

  “You said you were well supplied,” said Meas.

  Golzin shrugged in return. “Well, it seems I were misled by my purseholder, corrupt lot that they are.”

  Meas nodded, as if in agreement. “What is it, Shipwife Golzin? The stink?”

  Golzin shrugged again. “It is simply an old ship, Shipwife Meas.”

  “Brave to bring an old ship this far out into the ocean,” said Meas.

  “I do this route a lot,” said the shipwife, and she turned away from Meas. “I know these seas.”

  “Apart from that island, ey?”

  Golzin turned. “Ey,” she said. Something crossed her face – confusion? Anger? “That island wasn’t on the charts, wasn’t there last time we passed. I am sure of it.”

  “Moving islands?” said Meas. “I will have to warn my courser of this development.”

  Golzin shook her head. “Mock if you wish, I tell the trut
h. Now, do you want to eat or not?”

  “No,” said Meas, “what I really wish is to see your cargo.”

  Golzin leaned on her crutch.

  “You cannot do that, I am afraid.”

  “I am a shipwife of the fleet. I can—”

  “You are a disgraced woman, on a ship of the dead.” Golzin laughed, quiet but real, and her amusement sparkled in her eyes like light from Skearith’s Eye on the water. “I fought a fleet ship of fifteen years as deckholder, until I had a leg broken by a spar.” She tapped her left leg. “This ship is my reward and my word is law upon it, Meas Gilbryn. I need not listen or bow to what a woman like you says.”

  Meas did not flinch at words loosed to wound. “You are a merchant shipwife, and I am a fleet shipwife. Ship of the dead or no you must still bow to my commands.” This said with the pleasant air of two Kept discussing the latest fashion in shoes, though her next words bit. “And you will listen and bow if I command it. Do you understand?”

  Golzin reached inside her stinker coat – never a piece of clothing more aptly named to be worn on this ship – and took out a small scroll of birdleather.

  “I will not, nor will I let you below, Unlucky Meas, and I do it on the word of your own mother. Here, read.”

  Meas took the scroll and unrolled it. On the back was an imprint of children bowed under the weight of the Hundred Isles throne. Meas scanned the words and passed the scroll to Joron.

  On pain of death, and by Command of Thirteenbern Gilbryn, this ship is to be given safe passage and left to itself. None are to interfere or interrupt. All assistance needed must be given to this crew.