Wildtrack

by Bernard Cornwell

  I stepped down into Sycorax's cockpit and unpegged the tiller.

  "Nick! Nick!" Angela's voice held a new urgency and I saw, in Wildtrack's aft cockpit, a moving splash of orange. At first I thought it was a seat cushion, or some other flotsam, then I saw it was a man in oilskins. Alive. It had to be Bannister, and he was alive, unless the sea just stirred a corpse.

  I scrambled down to the cabin sole. I threatened the engine with death if it did not start and cursed that I had no self-starter. I staggered as the boat pitched, swung the handle, and to my amazement the cold engine banged straight into life. I bolted the companionway steps back over the motor compartment and climbed to the cockpit. Wildtrack had vanished in a wave valley, but as I kicked the motor into gear I saw her bows sluggishly rise on a wind-fretted ridge.

  I turned head to wind, arrowing into the seas, and let the engine push us. Our sails banged like guns. Angela was staring, her mouth open. I did not want to know what she was thinking, or what hopes, hers or mine, might be on the verge of tragedy.

  The wind slewed viciously, heeling and thrusting us. We pitched on a crest and the motor raced like a banshee before the stern sank underwater again. But as we were on the wavecrest I saw that the orange figure in Wildtrack 's stern was alive, for he waved, then fell back. He was either hurt or so tired that he could hardly shift himself.

  "It's going to be bloody hard to fetch him off!" I shouted at Angela.

  She hardly needed me to explain the difficulties. Going alongside a flooded boat in a high sea and in a shifting wind would be a piece of seamanship that needed a Jimmy Nicholls or a lifeboat's coxswain. Worse, if Anthony Bannister was injured, he would not be able to help himself which meant that one of us would have to board Wildtrack to give him aid. It would have to be me, and I did not want to do it, but it was one of those moments when it was really best not to think too deeply about the advantages of prudence over Goddamned bloody stupidity. "You're going to have to steer the boat!" I called to Angela. "You'll have to lay us alongside, then sheer off once I'm aboard Wildtrack, understand? I don't want that hulk stoving us in!"

  She nodded. She was staring at the figure in the hull-down Wildtrack. His hood was up and his collar buttoned across his mouth.

  "When I've got him," I went on, "you're going to have to come alongside again!" Christ alone knew how. She'd become a good sailor, but this manoeuvre was like asking a passenger to land a jumbo.

  I left her on the tiller while I tied all the fenders I'd taken from Bannister's boathouse on to Sycorax's guardrail stanchions. I hung the fenders more in hope than with any expectation that they would save my boat. Wildtrack and Sycorax would be pitching as they met and I feared I would crash my bows down on her deck or, worse, rip off my rudder and propellor with the force of the collision. I was scared of Wildtrack . She was a floating battering ram that could disable us or even crush in our bilges.

  I let the mainsail fall and roughly lashed gaff and sail to the boom which I then secured to the gallows. I did not want Angela distracted by hammering sails as she tried to manoeuvre the boat. I stowed the staysail and mizzen, but left the storm jib sheeted taut to stiffen Sycorax and to give some leverage to the bows at the moment when Angela needed to sheer away. I took the tiller. "Are you hooked on?"

  She showed me her lifeline. I accelerated. We were close enough to Wildtrack now to share the same valleys of sea. I wanted to circle the crippled boat and approach from the lee so that the wind would be pushing Sycorax away from that treacherous hull once I was aboard her. In choosing that course I risked Wildtrack's trailing ropes tangling in Sycorax 's propellor, and I told a worried Angela that, once I was aboard, she was to put the motor in neutral and let the storm jib carry her clear of the warps. "Let the sheet run a bit, OK?"

  It was clearly not OK. "Should I go across to him?" Angela shouted.

  I'd thought of that, but I knew she did not have the physical strength to lift a helpless man. And Bannister was helpless. He was hardly moving except to follow our progress with his orange-hooded face. There was also another reason for me to go; if anything went wrong then Angela would be left on the safer of the two boats. I explained that I would clear the trailing ropes once I was aboard Wildtrack so that she need not worry about fouling the propellor on her second approach. "But if you can't get us off," I shouted, "then stay close if you can! If you can't, good luck! Go west! You'll find trawlers on the Grand Banks. And don't forget to feed Vicky!"

  She gave me a frightened look. I grinned, trying to reassure her, then gunned the engine to spin Sycorax up into Wildtrack's lee. I noticed that Wildtrack's flooded hull gave us some small shelter. "Take the tiller! Remember, tiller hard over and motor into neutral as soon as I'm on her!"

  Angela took the tiller and I staggered forward to Sycorax's starboard shrouds. I unclipped my lifeline from the jackstay and coiled it into a pocket. I put my good left foot over the guardrail and held on for grim life as we rolled our gunwale under. We were six feet from the swamped boat, five feet, closing to three, two, and I put my right foot over the rail and was about to leap across the churning gap into Wildtrack's flooded central cockpit when the sea heaved between the boats and Sycorax slewed away. I clung to the shroud with my left hand as the green water churned up my boots. "Closer!" I shouted, though I doubt if Angela heard me. She turned the tiller too far and we came surging back towards the other boat. The lurching movement had driven us far up Wildtrack 's hull; almost to her bows. In another second it would be too late to jump.

  Then the sea heaved the hulls together and I heard the crashing grind of wood on fibreglass. I jumped.

  I pushed off with my left leg, which meant I landed on my right, and, for the first time in weeks, my knee buckled. I must have cried aloud, though I could hear nothing but the turmoil of water and wind. The leg was numb, it crumpled, and I sprawled heavily on Wildtrack's slippery foredeck. Pain speared out from my back. I heard Sycorax 's engine falter as Angela rammed the lever into neutral and I had a terrifying glimpse of Sycorax's bowsprit arcing above my head, then a new terror swamped me as a sea broke over Wildtrack's foredeck and swept me towards the side. I grabbed a guardrail stanchion with my right hand and held on as the water shattered about me. The rush of cold sea slewed me around, but my left boot found a purchase on Wildtrack's forehatch and somehow I held fast in the bubbling and seething thunder of the sea. I couldn't think, except, over and over again, to repeat a refrain in my head: "You must be fucking mad, you must be fucking mad", and I suddenly remembered those were the very words I'd screamed aloud as I'd charged uphill with an SLR in my hands. I'd been scared witless then, and I was scared now. The sea began to stream off Wildtrack's deck and I lifted my head to see blood spewing into the flooded scuppers. It seemed to come from my left hand, but I could not see how bad the cut was. I tried to move my right leg, but there was no feeling there. I watched Sycorax sheering off, plunging her bowsprit into the wavecrests.

  Wildtrack's hulk lurched up, freeing me from the water and letting me pull myself down the scuppers. I saw that I had slashed my left hand on a stub of metal shroud that had been sheared clean and astonishingly bright with bolt-cutters. The cut was across the fleshy base of my thumb and, though it was pulsing blood, there was nothing I could do about it now. I was cursing my leg as I pulled myself forward. My oilskins snagged on an empty jib-sheet track and, in my fear and rage, I ripped the jacket savagely to free myself before the next wave hammered over the rolling hulk.

  I slithered over the coaming into the flooded central cockpit. I was soaked through, but adrenalin was warming me. The wind was lashing spray across the boat, but there was some small shelter in the cockpit, though it was frightening to be so low and unprotected in the water. The great swells loomed steep above me, their sides like crinkling slopes of bottle glass up which the swamped boat rose sluggishly but never quite made the tops so that the waves would break over her and, for an instant, she would be awash. The truth was that Wildtrack was sinking, and I
was suddenly gripped with a terrible fear that she would go down before Angela could bring Sycorax back. I looked around for a lifebelt or raft, but when the crew had abandoned Wildtrack they had taken all such equipment. Yet, even if she did succeed in coming back, I did not know how I would transfer myself, let alone Bannister. My leg was useless. I sat half underwater and clawed fingers into my thigh and knee in an attempt to feel something.

  I tried to stand, fell again, and pulled myself to the cockpit's edge. The leg would have to look after itself while I dragged trailing ropes from the water and jammed them into cave lockers. As I pulled the last line aboard, a swell rolled the boat's stern up and the water in the cockpit surged forward. I saw the horror then.

  I wasn't ready for it, and I puked.

  The door to the rear cabin was open and the body floated forward with the ship's sluggish motion. It floated out of the door until its shoulders stuck. When I first saw the corpse I was stowing the last treacherous rope and summoning the courage to cross the rear coachroof to where Bannister sheltered, but suddenly I knew it was not Bannister who waited for me in Wildtrack's stern.

  It was not Bannister, because I was looking at Bannister now, and he at me. Or rather his dead eyes were gaping at me from the companionway that spilt yet more water into the cockpit. He was wearing a lifejacket that should have kept his head above water, but his throat had been cut almost to the spine so that his head lolled back and his fish-white eyes were alternately above and under the rush of seawater. There was no blood. All the blood had been pumped and washed out of him. He must have been dead for hours for he was nothing but a bleached and bloodless thing that floated in the mass of cabin flotsam. The throat had been cut clean by a blade, then washed cleaner by the salt water. The sight of that wound made me vomit.

  Wildtrack's bows rose and the body mercifully washed back out of sight. I scrambled aft and, using my arms, dragged myself onto the coachroof and hung on to the handrails as another sea bubbled and spilt around me. It was then that the man in the stern cockpit turned his hooded gaze on me.

  It was Mulder.

  Wildtrack shuddered under me as the sea poured off her topsides. I scrabbled towards Mulder and fell into the small after cockpit. "Can you stand?"

  He shook his head, then pointed to his left leg that was bent unnaturally. He shouted something, and I had to cup my hand to my ear to show him I could not hear his words. He pulled open the flap that had covered his mouth. "Fucking fell." He shouted it bitterly, as though fate had been peculiarly unkind to him. "My leg's broken!"

  That made two one-legged men in a doomed boat. "Where's the rest of the crew?" I was trying to stand, holding on to the rail beside the aft cabin door. I was searching for Sycorax and saw her, hull down, two hundred yards off, and still going away from me. I saw the storm jib's sheet had come loose and the sail was flogging itself into shreds, then a heave of green water hid her from me. I tried to put my weight on my right leg and felt it shivering with the strain. "Where's your crew?" I shouted.

  "Taken off!" Mulder shouted back. "They're safe."

  So another boat had stood by and rescued the crew? Mulder had clearly stayed on board to try and salvage the damaged ship and had then been marooned when the gale blew up. I wondered where the rescuing boat was, and why it had not steered for the flares. "Is that who you were signalling?" I asked. "The rescue ship?"

  "Get me the fuck off here, Sandman! She's sinking!"

  "I should bloody leave you, Fanny." I ducked as we reared up the side of a green cliff and as the tons of water smashed across us. "Why did you cut his throat?" I shouted the question again as we heaved up from the cold waves.

  "Accident." He shouted the word vehemently.

  He looked so damned smug in his expensive foul-weather gear and lifejacket. I hated him then, and tried to kick him, but my damned leg folded so that I fell awkwardly in the cockpit. I fell over his broken leg and I heard Mulder's odd falsetto scream. I rolled off him and pulled myself into a sitting position. "Why did you cut his throat?" I shouted again.

  He just stared his hatred at me, so I lifted my left leg to kick his broken bone and the threat made him babble in a desperate attempt to avoid the pain. "Because I couldn't push him overboard!"

  "Did you kill his wife?"

  He stared at me as if I was mad. "Get me off here! The boat's sinking!"

  "Did you kill his wife?"

  "No!"

  "You are a bastard, Fanny." I managed to kneel upright and unshackle his lifeline from a D-ring. He watched me, not sure whether I intended to push him overboard or save his life. I grabbed a braidline rope out of the tangle of wreckage in the cockpit and pulled forty or fifty feet free before the line jammed. "Knife!" I shouted over the sound of wind and sea. "Give me your knife!"

  He handed me a sheath knife which I supposed had been the murder weapon. I used the heavy blade to slash off the length of braidline, then clung to the handrail as another sea hissed about us.

  I tied a small bowline, then shackled the line of Mulder's safety harness to the bowline's loop. The other end of the rope went round my waist. Once Angela returned I would scramble on board Sycorax, then haul Mulder to safety. I explained that to him. "It's going to hurt you," I added, "but if you want to drown, then cut yourself loose." I tossed the knife back to him, then pulled myself to the lee rail.

  I stood there, clinging for dear life to the guardrail stanchion, and willed my right leg to take my weight. I searched the broken sea for a glimpse of Sycorax. Wildtrack rolled slow as we were washed by a wavecrest, then we dropped again and I thought, just as I lurched with the downwards roll, that I saw a mast's tip beyond a saw-edged crest. I waited, I prayed, and a moment later, as once more we heaved slowly upwards, I saw Sycorax 's stern with its bright flash of the frayed Red Ensign. I knew Angela must be struggling to turn the old boat. She was already a quarter-mile off and I hoped to God she did not lose sight of us. I looked for a boathook, or oar, or anything that I could jam upright as a signal for her, but anything of use had long been swept overboard.

  I crouched back into the small shelter of the aft cockpit. "You're going to have to wait, Fanny."

  "Who's sailing your boat?"

  "A friend," I said.

  Mulder shrugged. He looked worn down to his last reserves; greyfaced, red-rimmed eyes, and with pain creasing his cheeks. "They lost us in the night," he said.

  "Who lost you?"

  "Kassouli. Who do you think?"

  Who else? I should have known that Yassir Kassouli would be here at the kill. I clung to the handrail as a sea thundered and crashed over the coaming. I thought for a second that the waterlogged hull was sinking, dragged down by the weight of her engine and ballast, but somehow the sleek hull came up again. I found a length of rope that I wrapped as a crude bandage around my cut hand.

  "If Kassouli finds you here," Mulder said, "he'll bloody sink you, Sandman."

  "He's deserted you, Fanny. He's left you here to die." Down in the wave troughs the wind's noise was lessened, though I still had to shout if Mulder was to hear my words. "He's left you, Fanny, but I'm going to save your miserable life. I'm taking you to where I can stand up in a courtroom and tell them about Bannister and his cut throat."

  The South African stared at me with loathing, then shook his head. "Kassouli won't desert me."

  "He already has." I flinched from another tumble of water, then pulled myself upright to search the southern horizon. Sycorax had turned, but she was still far off and I prayed that Angela was not having trouble with the engine. There were no other boats in sight.

  A gasp of pain made me turn. Mulder, the knife in his hand, had tried to lunge towards me, but a combination of his broken leg and the obstruction of his inflated lifejacket had stopped the murderous thrust. It seemed he really did believe that Kassouli would return for him, and that it was better to risk waiting for that salvation than to be turned over to justice. In that hope he had lunged at me, and now I kicked at the knife in
his hand to stop him trying again.

  My kick missed, and once again the effort toppled me. My bandaged left hand slipped off the handrail so that I fell forward towards Mulder. I tried to regain my balance, but only managed to drop my right knee on to the thigh of Mulder's broken leg.

  He screamed, and the sound was whipped away by the wind and searing foam. Wildtrack heaved up as I collapsed. Mulder was still moaning with the pain, but the strength of the man was extraordinary. He wrapped his left arm round my neck, and I knew he was reversing the knife in his right hand and that any second the blade would be in my ribs. Water sloshed up about us.

  I rammed my head forward, smashing the bridge of his nose with my forehead, then I screamed myself from the pain that clawed at my back as I twisted away from him. I glimpsed the knife against a background of water and I reached for it with both hands and my right caught his wrist as my left was slashed by the blade. I jerked his knife hand towards me, then sank my teeth into the ball of his thumb and bit down until I could taste his blood in the back of my throat.

  His hand tried to jerk away, but I clung to him. He hit me with his free hand, then tried to loop his lifeline about my neck. I was kicking with my left foot; not in any attempt to hurt him, but rather to gain a purchase in the flooded cockpit. The lifeline rope was around my eyes and he hauled it back, making me let go with my teeth. Then my left foot rammed against the coaming and I used all my strength to force myself up, dripping and bleeding. I let go of his knife hand and drove my bunched fists down, falling with all my weight on them, down on to the broken bone in his shin.

  I hit him like a piledriver, and the force of my blow was made worse by an upward lurch of the boat. I fancied I felt the broken bone grate as I hit him.

  He screamed and twitched, the knife forgotten. I plucked it from his nerveless fingers. I could never have disarmed him if he had not been so weakened, but now, because of his leg, and because he was half dead with exposure and thirst, he could not fight properly. I saw blood on his face, then the sea washed it away and I was scrambling desperately backwards, the knife in my hand, and I jammed myself in the corner of the cockpit by the wheel and held my breath to let the pain ebb away.