The Southwind Saga (Book 2): Slack Water

by Jase Kovacs

  We move quickly, shepherding our confused passengers across to Aotea before any sort of resistance can form. Piper's idea of putting them under tow has some merit, but I also suspect it would harden their general confusion into open rebellion. Enzo has her, Mark, Roman, and Alfred to keep order; they should be enough. They have to be.

  The yachts bump and rock as the breeze grows. Enzo shouts, "Allez, allez," enjoying the role of bosun a little too much. Everything happens so quickly now, my crew lifting over the weak or infirm, old Weng loudly exclaiming he isn't luggage, Daisy acting as Roman's shadow as he sweeps the deck clean of jade shards, piling the green stones up near the bow. It doesn't need to be said that we should keep them, that their peculiar effect on the marys will be exploited later.

  Then we separate; Enzo lets out his jib to pull Aotea away from us. Zac and Blong drop Enzo's lines and retrieve ours. A metre separates the boats as the breeze catches Aotea's jib. Enzo shoves people aside as he races up and down the yacht, forced to do most of the line handling himself as no one board knows the names. In a matter of minutes, he has both jibs out, and Aotea is drawing ahead of us.

  When I judge they are far enough away that we won't immediately collide with them, I call Zac, bringing him forward to the mast. I wrap the main halyard around the winch and hand him the handle. "I'll raise by hand. When it gets hard, you start grinding on the winch."

  He nods, his face drawn and tired, his bruised arms a mess of yellow and purple stains. I haul on the halyard, the old, sun-faded mainsail racing up the mast and the winch clattering as the halyard spins it. I get about two-thirds up before the strain comes on, and I nod to Zac. He steps in and slots the handle into the winch as I run the line through the self-tailer and leave him painfully grinding it the rest of the way up. The breeze is already filling the main, pressing it against the spreaders, and it will be some minutes before he is finished.

  Blong sits by the bowfurling line, ready to let if off when I want to put out the genoa. The boat is slowly spinning to face the wind as the mainsail acts like a wind vane's tail.

  Aotea is already over a hundred meters away and making three knots, a good speed in this light breeze. I knew Enzo, with his lifetime of experience, would have little difficulty. I feel a pang as I watch them sail away and feel the sharp, painful suggestion of doubt. Am I doing the right thing?

  I come back to the same answer. Those people in the canoe, whoever they are, are trying to escape. They weren't paddling to us but heading in the same direction that red-sailed canoe went, the canoe that I now know was carrying the Green Lord. That alone demands that I chase them and receive an explanation.

  Poor Zac pauses his winching, his face a mask of pain as he gasps in a breath before continuing. He's doing his best, so I can't complain. I'm not a hundred percent sure why it was the right idea for him to come with me; something about him being too sympathetic to the Lost Tribers is at play, but also I want him to be part of this confrontation. It's somehow important that he witness what plays out.

  "Blong, when I tell you, let out three metres of furling line. Not all of it, though; the wind will catch it and want to pull it all out. Three metres only." He nods eagerly, ready to release the clutch. "How much is three metres?"

  "To back of boat?"

  "Good lad." I clap Zac encouragingly on the shoulder as I pass him. I rush down to the bow where I can take the genoa sheet, the heavy rope that runs from the bottom corner of the sail to the cockpit. Having Blong only let out three metres of furling line means the sail will only come about a third of the way out.

  I wait for the boat to come into the wind. Finally, Zac stops. The main is all the way up, its luff good and tight. The canoe is past us now, heading down towards the reefs that so concerned me when I came through my little homemade canoe.

  "Go now, Blong!"

  The furler line dips in its lead as Blong lets it off, and I pull on the sheet. The furler spins as the genoa unrolls — and then stops a third of the way out, as I want it to. I pull it up to the wind so the sail backs and fills the wrong way. The bow turns out of the wind, pushed down by the big sail that is now trying to pull me off my feet. Once we're about ninety degrees off the wind, I race back to the cockpit, where Zac is dropping exhausted onto the bench.

  "Let it off the rest of the way," I tell Blong as I grab the leeward sheet and wrap it around the winch. Blong undoes the clutch, and the wind catches the genoa, flinging it out with a loud pop. The sail streams away downwind and flaps loudly, the sheet whipping through the air as I pull it in, the winch spinning as I draw it in hand over hand. Then the strain comes on as the sheet goes tight. Without being ordered, Zac leans in and slots a handle into the top of the winch and starts to grind. Too slow, too painfully, so I take over, flashing him a pleased grin that he returns as I draw the sail tight.

  We're under way by the time it's trimmed to my liking. The bow cuts the calm bay, leaving a rippling V in our wake. The breeze strengthens — nothing exciting yet, but enough that we are making three knots. I get on the helm and bring us up to the wind so that the genoa luffs and then falls off a few points. The canoe is about a mile and a half away, heading south, straight into the wind. But the tempo of their oars has slowed, a greater pause between each dipping of the blades as fatigue builds.

  We're hard up against the wind, on a south–southeast course. Duncan's yacht may be a heavy tank of a steel can, but all that weight keeps her stiff, and she can point to the wind pretty well. I study the canoe. If they could keep paddling, then they could probably get away from us by pulling directly into the wind. But soon they will slow, and then we will be able to get upwind of them, tack, and head them off, or they can set their sail, and then it will be a luffing match. I can point closer to the wind that they can with their lanteen rig, meaning that they will have to cover more ground with each tack than I will if they want to keep heading south.

  "Lady, you want I should go up top? Be a lookout?"

  "Not yet, mate. I can see them fine from here. Go downstairs and get the extra ammo tin."

  "Is that the plan?" asks Zac. "Go in shooting?"

  "No. I'm going ask questions first. And if I don't like the answers, then I start shooting."

  I'm not sure if I'm expecting him to argue or what. My arguments with Katie about the necessity of killing are still fresh in my mind. But it's clear to me that they can't get word to the Green Lord. He may already know; I'm not sure if his link with Deborah was powerful enough for the knowledge of her death to have passed to the Green Lord.

  "Are you thinking this is Reuben?"

  "Yeah. Reuben or one of his cohort, heading to warn the Green Lord on Misima."

  "The Misima thing was a lie. They came from Dalbarade Island. That's assuming that the Green Lord went back to where the Lost Tribe came from."

  This surprises me; I guess Zac wasn't just lying around a prison cell waiting for us to rescue him. "That would make a bit of sense. They're heading south — Misima is southeast, Dalbarade is south."

  "I didn't even recognise the name."

  "It's a little island about fifty miles east of the D'Entrecasteaux Islands. A beautiful little lagoon. We anchored there in the Time Before." And just like that, a gut punch of feeling hits me. Mum, Dad, Katie, Jayden, my whole family and me, lying on Voodoo at anchor, talking and watching the stars. All of them gone now. An eternity ago. And then, of all things, I remember the screaming and mournful howls that greeted Blong and myself that first night we slept on dry land. A strange voice from our sea of ignorance, asking questions I cannot answer. Was its source another mystery I would have to accept? Or would one day some random encounter with another survivor serve to be the rosetta stone that will unlock the secrets of the apocalypse? "This never fucking ends." My words are for myself, but Zac hears, understands, and looks away.

  He flinches as the sun breaks the eastern horizon and spills pink fire across the bay. I rise up, stepping out of the cockpit to get a better view ahead. There is
confusion on the canoe. Their paddles are down, and they are gathering around the mast. Their sailing rig is far simpler than ours but operates on the same principles. Their boom is a long shaft of bamboo wrapped in their tarpaulin sail. They unroll it into a fat pocket that drags the canoe sideways. Then the top yard raises, lifting the large triangular sail up while they lash the boom back onto the mast. We gain about half a mile while they carry this out, but then they're under way, scooting off to the southeast at a brisk pace.

  The light is good, and we're close enough that I can tell, when I glass them with the binos, that they're all white men. It may be wishful thinking, but I think the helmsman has long white hair.

  "Okay, so maybe they're not going to Dalbarade," says Zac.

  "Not necessarily. They can't sail directly into the wind — and that rig means they can't point as close to the wind as we can. You remember tacking?"

  "When we sail upwind, turning the boat through the wind in a zigzag course?"

  "That's it. If they want to go south, they have to tack upwind. We can beat them doing that. We can lie closer to the wind, so they have to sail five or six miles to match our four. Plus our yacht is bigger, so we can go faster."

  "How does that work?"

  "Remind me to explain 'hull speed' later. For now, just take my word for it." I look out at the chop that builds as the wind blows against the ebbing tide. "This sea is going to cut up rough too; that'll help us."

  "Because we're big and heavy, we can smash through the waves that knock the canoe about?"

  I slap Zac on the shoulder, silently amused as he winces. "You're getting it, mate. We'll make a sailor out of you yet."

  "Matty," he says, pointing. The canoe's sail collapses as the topyard comes down. For a second, I think their old rigging has failed, but then I see men hanging onto the boom, hauling it out and down as they spin the sail around to the opposite side of the mast.

  "Son of a bitch, they're tacking." Seeing Zac's blank look, I explain. "These outrigger canoes, they don't have a dedicated bow and stern, like we do. Instead of tacking the bow through the wind, they shift their whole rig to reverse the canoe — the bow becomes the stern and vice versa."

  The sail on the canoe is set briskly, much faster than earlier. His crew is warming up. The boat falters as the sail fills and then is off on the opposing tack.

  "So what does that mean?" Zac asks.

  "It means he's closing with our course." When I see that illumination has failed to dawn on him, I say, "It means he's attacking."

  The canoe looks side on to us, but I can tell our courses are converging. Two, three minutes. He's right off the wind now, on the best point of sail for his canoe's lateen rig, and they fairly skip over the waves. Half a mile away now. I can see Reuben, standing tall and proud at the stern, the steering oar in his good hand, the stump of his other held across his chest in a sling. His men cluster on the lee deck, the outrigger dipping into the water as the weight comes on. Machetes and spear blades gleam in the sun that rises behind them, so they appear to be hunters riding out of a primordial nightmare. The sea ripples painfully bright with the path of the sun.

  "Have these fuckers forgotten we have guns?" I wonder aloud.

  "He's a zealot," says Zac, his voice dark, and I remember that he knows Reuben far better than I do. "He probably thinks his God will protect him."

  "Well, we’re about to find out. Maybe he thinks coming at us from out of the sun will protect him. Keep the rifles down until the last moment. Let them get as close as possible."

  Blong dumps a tin full of loose ammunition on the cockpit. He grabs one of my empty mags and holds it between his knees, loading it the way I taught him on Black Harvest. He sings quietly as he does so. Even with everything that is happening in this moment, I marvel at his resilience, at the way that being their prisoner didn't seem to affect him at all. But then, I reflect, he was under the dominion of the Pale King for years. The last two days probably were nothing more than a passing dream.

  The canoe comes on; I can see the individual expressions of the men staring at me. What happened inside them to desire my death so openly? To wear their hunger so nakedly on their faces? We never needed a disease to make us monsters. Only for the lights to go out and for hunger to come knocking at the window like a winter wind.

  I slide the M4 over to Zac, reasoning that its firepower will compensate for his lack of skill and that I'll have better results with the lever-action Marlin. Reuben can't imagine that the three of us are chasing him without guns. He must just be that arrogant — or deluded. It doesn't matter. This will decide it.

  Zac grips the M4 nervously, holding it out of sight in the cockpit. "Are you ready?" I say to him.

  "Will they turn back if I say no?" he asks, his face a tight smile.

  We share a weak chuckle, the best we can manage in these circumstances.

  The canoe is thirty metres away. Reuben leans hard on the steering oar, holding course to bear up at the last moment and bring the outrigger alongside so his men can leap straight on board. Twenty metres. Fifteen.

  "NOW!" I shout, and we come up. Zac fires too early, the rifle leaping in his hands as he blasts off rounds. I move more carefully, sighting on Reuben. As soon as the guns appear, I see surprise fill Reuben's face — he really thought this would work! Then I bring the rifle's hunting sight onto him, and I see more clearly — no, he's not surprised. He's so full of hatred that he doesn't care how many we kill if he can get the rest on board. He will gladly choke us with his dead.

  Zac snaps off single shots, and chips of wood and bamboo fly. A man screams as he clutches his belly and falls forward, going overboard in a splash. We lift on a wave, and Reuben's face drops away from my sight. I'm too close. I open my other eye, look over the sight, centre the rifle on his body, and fire.

  Reuben falls back. The instant he lets go of the steering oar, the canoe spins, falling off the wind as the oar's pressure is gone, the wind turning the canoe so it passes behind us. I work the rifle's lever action and send five more shots into the men diving for cover as they sweep past our stern.

  "Zac! Give me the M4!"

  I pass the Marlin back to Blong, who starts reloading, and Zac passes me the M4, a fresh magazine in his other hand. The gunfire fills the air with burned cordite, making my senses tingle. I eject the empty mag, slap in the fresh one, and release the working parts. With Reuben down, the rest of his men realise that standing around deck to receive semiautomatic gunfire isn't the best tactic and drop out of sight in the hull. I blaze off a magazine into the side of the canoe — 5.56 mm rounds should punch straight through the wood, but it's not exactly a broadside of cannon fire that will send the vessel to the bottom.

  My rifle clicks empty, and I pass it to Blong as I jump back to the helm. Christ, I hope Zac remembers his sailing lessons! "Stand by to tack. We'll go back and finish them off."

  Then my head explodes in stars as Excelsior runs hard up on something. Blinding pain. I've hit my forehead on the wheel. Zac was half sitting and has fallen onto Blong, who shrieks indignantly. A terrific shudder passes through the yacht as we grind against something below. I blink the pain away, shouting, "Off sheets!" A pointless command as I'm the only one who understands it. But this is a modern yacht; the main lines can be handled from the cockpit so it only takes a second for me to throw the genoa sheet and the mainsail sheet off their winches so the sails lose their shape and begin to flap madly in the wind.

  Excelsior is still hard up on something. I lean over the side and see intricate coral a metre below the surface. The tricky bastard. We couldn't see the reefs ahead of us because of the sunlight glistening on the waves. Looking away from the sun, the direction that Reuben would have been facing when he looked at us, I can see the reef as a dark band stretching half a mile away to the southwest.

  That's assuming he planned his attack to distract me and lead me onto the reef. If he did, it isn't quite working out for him. His men still cower in the bottom of their
canoe and, with no one to tend to the sail or man their steering oar, the canoe drifts downwind.

  Not that we can do anything; we're hard on the reef. The whole yacht shakes, thundering like a tin drum as the coral grinds against our hull. Thank God Excelsior is made of steel; it should be able to take this punishment in these moderate seas. Zac has picked himself up off Blong, who scrambles out of the cockpit and up the mast.

  "What are we going to do?" Zac asks.

  "If I had my damn dinghy, I'd kedge off — I'd take the anchor out, drop it off the reef, and winch the boat off with it. So instead… wait, let me think. Blong! Which way does the reef go?"

  I shield my eyes as I look up the mast; he straddles the spreaders halfway up and sweeps his hand around to the south and east. If I'd let him go up the mast when he first wanted, he probably would have seen the damn reef coming. Okay. Situation: ebbing tide is pushing us onto the reef. We were going four or five knots when we hit, and I can see we've ridden up onto the keel. Our engine is useless, and I've got no dinghy to drop the anchor out in deep water. The wind is from the south, though; we could use it to blow us off. But it will need some luck. If I stuff the manoeuvre up, then I could drive us stern first onto the reef and destroy our rudder. Think, damn you. No, it's the only option now. No other way to get off.

  The ebbing tide runs; every minute we sit here doing nothing means the water level drops another centimetre. I think about the forces at play. The wind is southerly, the reef runs northeast to southwest, and we were going south–southeast when we hit. I've got two options — use the main or the jib. If I use the main, the force will be on the stern of the boat; it will probably swing us against the reef stern first, and bad things will happen to the rudder. But if I use the jib…

  "Zac, stand by to do… whatever I tell you. BLONG! Get down off the mast."

  The sails are rippling in the breeze. Every flap is like a giant towel snapping; these sails are so old, worn thin by years of tropical sunlight, that they could split at any second. Blong drops into the cockpit. I haul in the furling line, spinning the furler to wrap the jib around it. When it's half gone, I lock off the furler and tighten up the genoa sheet, drawing the sail in so it catches the wind. Pressure comes on Excelsior's bow. She lurches, and a long, drawn-out grind shakes the whole ship from stem to stern. I look over the side and see fish darting madly as coral shatters and sand billows out in clouds. Then the bow dips, and we're going sideways — a mighty bang as we clip a coral outcrop — and then the boat is spinning around. I'm blinded as the sun swings around in front of me, and then I madly winch on the mainsheet, getting the mainsail in and working before the yacht spins around and smashes our rudder on the coral.