Call of the Bone Ships

by Rj Barker

  They ran, on and on until they burst through into the clearing before the entrance to the cave. Found a fight. Not a big one – most had been drawn away from here by the battle at the windspire. Berhof, Farys and Madorra ran for the fight while Joron hung back. He stood in the middle of the clearing, the gullaime comatose in his hands, fighting to keep his footing as the shuddering of the island increased, the rock moaning and creaking like a boneship caught in a storm. He turned, saw Cwell standing at the clearing’s edge. As the cave mouth was cleared of its few defenders her gaze slid to the dark hole in the island. Then to Joron. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, as if deep in consideration.

  “Come on,” he said, as more of Tide Child’s crew broke into the clearing. She stared at him. Held his gaze. Then shook her head and turned away, running back into the forest.

  Hag curse her. He had almost started to believe she had changed. Well the Hag could take her then, and Hag pity her if he ever found her in a fight.

  “Joron!” Meas’s voice, calling from the cave entrance, flanked by Coughlin and Berhof. He ran, passing between them among the stream of Tide Child’s deckchilder. Watching Meas as she counted heads.

  “How many made it?” he said.

  “Not as many as I would like.” She glanced over his shoulder and into the clearing and he turned. Saw enemy deckchilder emerging from the forest.

  “Go,” said Berhof. “With all this the movement of the island, I reckon I can bring down this entrance.” He nodded at the lintel of cured varisk, now splintered and fragile-looking. The island rumbled and shifted again and the lintel creaked.

  “It will crush you,” said Meas.

  “We can hold this passage you and I, Seaguard,” said Coughlin.

  Berhof smiled and moved the arm that covered his midriff, exposing a wound, and the oozing flesh beneath. Joron could smell the acid of Berhof’s stomach, the sickly-sweet smell of ruptured guts, and knew it a killing wound.

  “You go. I think I will stay.” A smile crept onto Berhof’s face. “Be glad not to get back on that Hag-cursed ship,” he said. The smile fell away, replaced by lines of pain. “It has been a good fight, Coughlin.”

  “Aye,” said Coughlin and he stepped forward, grasped Berhof by the forearm, and pulled him into an embrace. Joron heard quietly spoken words. “I will see you at the fire, my friend.” Then they turned and were running again, down the tunnel beyond, into the island, and Joron did not know if the rumble he heard from behind was Berhof bringing the entrance down on himself or the island moving once more.

  40

  In the Belly of the Beast

  The twisting tunnels they ran down were dark and shivering. It felt as if the island were a huge, living and breathing creature and they were some unwelcome parasites, threading through its intestines. Walls wet with condensation were the tubes that hemmed them in, pulsing as they passed down the gullet of the island. The stone groaned and creaked as rocks, still for ages past knowing, rubbed against one another. Every so often there would be a crack, as if from a whip, and fragments of stone would tumble from the low ceiling. Joron quailed at the thought of the mountain coming down on him, entombing him here in darkness forever.

  They broke from a tunnel into a huge cave, open onto the sea at the farthest end. Now Joron understood why they had not seen the cave when they circled the island. Its mouth, huge, yawning and obvious from this side, was covered by streamers of vegetation, masses of vines that fell from the forest above. But with the death of the forest, even just a night’s worth, the curtain had become holed. Light from Skearith’s Blind Eye, low in the sky now, shone through and illuminated a ship, sat in in a natural dock below them. The ship’s corpselights gave the scene an eerie glow, and the pristine white boneship had been tied to a hastily built pier of varisk spars. Instinct had them all duck behind a low wall, just above the height of the ship’s tallest spine. Joron looked ahead, saw the path that led to the enemy ship was steep and winding and open. “Give me?” said Madorra, and nodded at the gullaime Joron carried.

  “Are you strong enough?”

  “Madorra strong. Give me.”

  “Joron,” said Meas, and she beckoned him down to her at the front of the snake of women and men. So he passed over the barely awake gullaime to Madorra, then counted his way down the line. Twenty-three of them. All that was left of the forty who had come ashore. He wondered if they would have fared better attacking the deckchilder on the beach, but that did not matter now. That time had passed and the time to advise that course of action had been then.

  “Shipwife,” he said. She did not answer immediately, only continued to scan the deck of the white ship below them.

  “Two-ribber,” she said, “named Keyshantooth. I recognise it.”

  “It was at Safeharbour,” he said. “Its shipwife, Barnt, led them.”

  “Well,” said Meas, collapsing the nearglass and placing it back into her coat. The island shook again, even more violently, and rocks rained down from the roof of the cave. Meas glanced up at the roof of the cave, almost twice the height of a woman from where they hid. “I feel no guilt for those I have killed then, only sadness I did not get Barnt.” She gave Joron a weak smile and the ground moved, bucking and grinding and creaking, making her grab onto the rock before them. “I’d usually say, Joron, we go quiet and try and sneak up on whoever is on that ship.” A huge painful groan. A crack ran across the ceiling and a massive chunk of rock fell from it, smashed into the path further down and rolled along it, turning and twisting, its trajectory altered by sharp protrusions, gathering smaller rocks and green plants as it bounced down the steep side of the cave, landing in the water with a huge splash. The panicked few on the slate of Keyshantooth began to untie the ship, better to take it out of the cave and to the safety of open sea. Meas had watched the giant rock’s progress and when it had finished she turned to Joron. “I think speed will serve us best here.” She gave him a wolfish grin. “Strange, is it not, Joron, to feel most alive when so close to death.” Then she stood, and held her sword aloft, “My girls and boys! My glorious deckchilder! That ship was at Safeharbour, it took what was ours, now we will take it! To the blade, my crew! To the bloody work! Follow me!”

  And she ran.

  And they ran.

  And he ran.

  And the island trembled around them and the rocks rained down and the crew aboard Keyshantooth did all they could to free the ship of their improvised pier, but they were few and the sight of Meas and her bloodthirsty crew had put the fear of the Hag into them. As Joron fought the shaking path for his footing, he felt that Barnt must have left the worst of his crew here. For no arrows were loosed, no defences made. Only panicked attempts to cut the ship free continued. The time it took them to run down the steeply winding path should have been enough to free the ship but those left aboard did not manage it. Then Meas’s crew were leaping the small gap between the varisk pier and the ship, feet landing on the deck, and the first thing Meas shouted, as she pulled a crossbow from her sash and sent a bolt down the deck into the body of a man, was, “No quarter! Give no quarter! Give no mercy!”

  And there was a peculiar madness to them then. For this ship had been involved in the destruction of Safeharbour, and maybe those aboard knew something of the women and men taken from there, and maybe they should have been questioned, but that seemed not to matter. The night had been long and bloody and terrifying, and the shaking, disintegrating island magnified that fear, the ever-present knowledge the roof could come down and all could die. And though Meas’s remaining deckchilder were evenly matched in numbers with Keyshantooth’s crew, there was a supernatural fury upon them that none could stand against. The killing on the slate was vicious, unrelenting – mercy was called for but not given, sword and curnows and axes rose and fell until there were no defenders left and Joron was left panting. Hands on his knees, body bent over. When he straightened up, blood ran down his face from his hairline but his fingers found no wound. Th
e blood was not his, it was splashed upon his face and one-tail hat the way deckchilder splashed paint on a deck for luck. All about him he saw similarly soaked faces – monsters, madwomen and men, sick with bloodlust, eyes wild with fear. Even Meas seemed shocked by what had happened, the thoroughness of it, the speed, the brutality.

  “Well,” she said at last, “what are you standing about for? The place is not safe. Get the wings unfurled before the island shakes itself to pieces.” She strode across to where Madorra had lain the gullaime upon the cold and bloodied slate of the Keyshantooth. “Can it bring us wind?”

  “No,” said Madorra, “still broken,” and Joron thought it odd, that Madorra did not call it lazy or bad now. “But more gullaime below,” said Madorra. “Feel them.”

  “Get them up here,” said Meas. “And hope to the Hag they are not spent.” She turned to Joron and smiled at him, a crooked thing. “Maybe we sang too well, ey, Joron?” The island shook again, hard enough to jolt the ship they stood on and even Meas, steady and sturdy and sea-like as any woman or man who had ever lived, almost fell. “Bring up those gullaime,” she shouted.

  Joron ran, followed by Madorra, into the darkness of the underdeck, to the rump of the ship and the cabin that housed the gullaime. In it he found four of them, terrified, huddling together in a makeshift nest of stinking rubbish. These were not gullaime as he thought of them now, not fierce and proud and defiant. These were fleet gullaime, beaten and scared, blind and featherless.

  “Come,” said Joron. “We need the wind.” But they only pushed themselves further away, huddling together in a corner at the sight of this blood soaked intruder. “If you do not come, we will all die.”

  “Confuse them,” said Madorra. “Not need kindness.” It leaped at them, screeching and yarking. Beating its wings in their faces. “Bad gullaime! Lazy gullaime! On deck. On deck. Listen to ship man. Do duty!” And it forced them past Joron, huddled together into a small flock, each with a wingclaw touching the body of the one in front as they moved. He followed them, and it was almost impossible to believe these creatures were the same as the one that he had slowly befriended over the last few years. “Make wind! Make wind!” screeched Madorra as they emerged to stand upon the slate, but the little group of four gullaime only huddled down, cooing and chirruping in their own language. “Say they are windsick,” screeched Madorra, “But lazy. Bad. Should beat.” Joron stared at them, and Meas looked to him, as the one with the most experience of their kind. The island rumbled and shook and rained down rock. He took a breath. The mountain seemed to breathe also, then let out its breath in another exhalation of falling stones, splashing water and cracking and creaking of rock under stress. Joron stepped forward.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “We are the crew of the Tide Child and we have taken this ship for ourselves—”

  “No!” screeched Madorra, “only understand hurt.”

  “Quiet!” shouted Meas. “Let my deckkeeper work.”

  “If you are truly windsick,” said Joron, “then I know you cannot bring the wind. But if you can bring us wind, any wind, we will leave here and if you do not wish it you will never have to ride the slate of a boneship ever again. Meas will not force you. But you must decide quickly.” Another rumble from the stone around them, another shower of rocks, some splashing into the water, some bouncing from the decks. The roof of the cave cracked into a huge zigzag with a sound like lightning hitting gion. “Help us help you, or we will all die.”

  The smallest of the gullaime came forward from the group, staying low, subservient, but keeping its mask fixed on Joron.

  “Ship human lie.”

  “Not this one,” screeched Madorra. “Bad gullaime!”

  “Why have windshorn?” said the gullaime. “Why beater and torturer?” More rocks, a shudder. Starlight shone down from above as part of the roof of the cave abruptly shifted and moved with a rumbling groan. Joron’s heart leaped into his mouth, sure they would all be crushed. But the massive chunk of rock stopped, jammed in position against another. Joron knew it could not last long before the island moved again and they were all crushed beneath falling rock.

  “We found Madorra on this island,” said Joron. “We also have another gullaime, but we were forced by the crew of this ship to take him from the windspire and he is ill.”

  “Joron Twiner speak true.” He turned to find their gullaime limping toward him. “Joron Twiner give string and dust and feathers,” it said. “Will give to you. Bring wind.”

  A song, a quick trilling between Tide Child’s gullaime and the small and beaten gullaime before him. Then their timid speaker nodded and scurried back to the others. They raised their wings, made a circle and opened their mouths, singing out. Joron felt them as an echo of what it was to have Tide Child’s own gullaime work – not nearly as much power, but the power was there.

  “Ready!” shouted Meas. “Unfurl the wings! We’ll catch every bit of wind we can.” And the deckchilder were rushing up the spines and along the spars, letting loose the wingcloth as the wind came, not a gale, not a howling current of air. The pressure change was something Joron only felt slightly in his ears, but it was enough. As the island continued groaning and crashing and tearing itself apart around them, filling the air with choking dust, Keyshantooth started to move. Slowly at first, then gathering speed, and as it went forward it was as if the island knew it was going, and had no wish to let this ship of bone and death escape. The cave began to collapse around them as they left, so it appeared that Keyshantooth was spat out of the island in a cloud of rock dust and a wave of churning water, as if the island had vomited out the ship as it destroyed itself.

  Meas steered Keyshantooth out to sea, giving the oar over to Coughlin and taking out her nearglass, staring out to landward. “I have you,” she said to herself. “Look, Joron, it is the remnants of Shipwife Barnt’s people in their flukeboats. We cannot let them escape and take word of us living, or of what you have done here. If the island simply vanishes my mother may well believe we were all lost. To be thought dead could be to our advantage.” But Joron was not watching the boats. He only pointed back the way they had come. When he did not answer her Meas turned, and saw what Joron could not tear his eyes away from.

  Where the cave had collapsed a single stack of rock was left at the very edge of the island, towering over the sea. And on top of that rock was a figure. Meas raised her nearglass once more.

  “Cwell,” she said quietly. The figure on the stack of rock raised an arm, as if in greeting. Then it raised the other and dived from the tower. Joron felt a moment of terror, despite that he held no love for her, despite that she had run from the fight in the caves. Betrayed him. To be so desperate that she would leap into the sea from such a height, to throw her body into the water when it would find nothing but creatures of hate and teeth and stinging tentacles.

  Meas swore under her breath. Then turned her nearglass to the flukeboats flying away from them. “Hassith’s cursed spear,” she spat, “but we do not leave our own behind.” Then she strode forward, pointing at the flukeboat in the centre of the Keyshantooth’s deck. “Get that overboard and crewed. We have one of our own in the water and we are not so rich with people we can afford to lose them.”

  Then the boat was over and into the sea and a crew with it, and Keyshantooth was turning, their flukeboat rowing away and Meas was cursing and Joron could not for the life of him understand why she showed such loyalty, to Cwell of all people. But still he watched. Saw Cwell, between waves and she was small against the sea and the island breaking up behind her. No matter how much he had hated her and feared her, he found he could not wish her to die on the teeth of the fearsome creatures of the sea.

  “Longthresh,” said Meas, staring through her nearglass. She pointed. Joron held a hand above his eyes. Saw white bodies in the water making their way toward Cwell. What madness had gripped her? To run and then return? To throw herself into the sea?

  “Swim, Cwell!” He turned. Coughli
n was shouting. Another voice joined him. “Swim!” He looked back at the small body in the water, the white, sleek predators closing, the flukeboat crew rowing with all they had. And he understood why Meas wanted to save her. Why she did not pursue the enemy. Cwell was one of theirs, and she could not leave her to the sea, not when there was a chance of saving her. Then he found he was shouting too. “Come on, Cwell! Swim, Cwell!” All of them, shouting. And though it seemed impossible that the unwieldy flukeboat could outpace the longthresh, it did. Maybe the predators were confused by the violence of the collapsing island, maybe there was easier prey in the water, he did not know. But when they pulled Cwell from the water, soaking, but whole, he cheered as loud as any of them.

  When the boat came back, when Cwell was on the deck, dripping and shivering, Joron expected Meas to say something to her. To berate her for abandoning them. She did not, only watching as Cwell walked forward to stand before Joron. In one hand she held a long package, wrapped in varisk cloth. She went down on one knee before him, holding out the package. He stared at her, expecting some trick, but when she did not move, did not speak, only drip, drip, dripped water onto the slate of the deck, he had no option but to take what she offered.

  Unwrap it.

  Find inside the sword that Meas had given him.

  “This is why you went back?” he said. She nodded.

  “It is yours,” she said. “I should not have given away.”

  He dropped the sopping cloth on the deck, hooked the scabbard of the straightsword to his belt and drew the blade, watched as the pinking light of dawn shone along its length.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I truly thank you.” Cwell nodded, but did not look at him, or raise her head. It was Narza who came forward. Who put a gentle hand on Cwell’s arm and led her away toward the underdeck of the ship where there was some shelter from the freezing wind that was making Cwell shiver and shake like a dying gion about to fall. Joron watched them walk away, the sword in his hand.