The Ocean of the Dead: Ship Kings 4

by Andrew McGahan

  Dow sat, and Fidel rose.

  ‘We can’t know with certainty how wide the Doldrums are,’ the old commander said, his learned face set earnestly. ‘We can only make educated guesses. For instance, it’s reasonable to assume that the Doldrums extend evenly to the north and south of the equator – the imaginary line that divides the north half of the world from the south. And though no man has ever visited the equator, we know from mathematical calculation where it lies, and we know also that the Doldrums begin at a latitude about two thousand miles north of it. Thus we can expect that the Barrier will extend two thousand miles south of the equator as well. In total, therefore, once we reach the Doldrums, we’ll face a crossing of some four thousand miles.

  ‘But note, we won’t need to tow the ships that whole distance. Winds do occasionally blow in the outer Doldrums. They are weak and irregular, but we’ll make use of them as long as we can, even if it means very slow progress. Speed is not the important thing, for we are well supplied with food and water; the important thing is to preserve our fuel until it’s most needed.

  ‘Now, these outer Doldrums – so it seems from the ancient records – extend for maybe a thousand miles before a ship reaches the truly windless parts of the inner Barrier. Presumably, the same applies in the south half of the world. This means that of the four thousand miles, it is only for the inner two thousand that we will need to launch the boats and resort to towing.

  ‘Nevertheless, two thousand miles is still a vast distance to tow a ship. So, have we enough whale oil to traverse such a wasteland, with sixteen boats running their engines nonstop, day after day? The answer is yes. We think. Almost. In these last few months, we’ve carried out several trials to test fuel consumption under tow – and those trials show that all being well, our oil should last for some eighteen hundred miles at the worst, and at best, perhaps the full two thousand. That’s a narrow margin for error, I know, but it’s enough to at least make the attempt feasible. And if we do fall a hundred miles or so short, then we can take to the rowboats and tow the ships by hand and oar over the last gap.’

  Faces about the cabin hardened at this last assertion, partly in concern – for a hundred miles of rowing was itself a grim thought – and yet in determination also, for a hundred miles was better than a thousand, and the New World would surely not be won by the fainthearted.

  ‘So far, so good,’ Fidel went on, turning now to a large framed chart that hung on the wall behind the table, displaying the familiar Four Isles. ‘But even if – or when – we do win through the Barrier, our problems will not be over. For then the search must begin for land. And be under no illusion, if we don’t find any, we won’t have oil enough left to return across the Doldrums, and so in the south we will perish. But even if land does exist, how are we to locate it amid all the southern seas? There may be only a few isles lost in a vast expanse of ocean, just as New Island and the Twin Isles are lonely wanderers here in the northern world. Why, when our ancestors first set sail from the Kingdoms and went exploring, it was decades before they happened upon a new shore – and in our own exploration we will have a few months at best, not decades.

  ‘Well, our chance lies in this: Great Island, off the coast of which we now sit, is different to the other northern isles. It rises not as an isolated mass from the deeps, but rather is merely the highest portion of a great chain of land and shallows that runs an immense distance across the ocean floor. Far in the north this chain begins, at Trap Island, then extends south via many reefs and shoals seldom visited, all the way down to Great Island itself. From these waters, the undersea ridge holds southward still, passing beneath the infamous Banks and then beyond again, until it merges into the Barrier Doldrums.

  ‘What we hope is that this chain of shallows does not fail, but continues on through the Barrier, and then rises again on the far side into dry land. And by this hope our course is defined for us. If not for that, we might have agonised long about where to turn south to cross the Doldrums – to the east of here, or to the west? But as luck would have it, it is best to turn south from exactly where we are now, following our undersea ridge. Then all we need do is come to the Barrier, pass through, and hold straight on until we sight a new shore.’ Fidel gave a faint smile, and sank gently back into his seat. ‘So there you have it. We have fuel enough to carry us, and a course to steer by. What could be easier?’

  The laughter that sounded about the cabin was wary, as if it was not quite right to challenge the Doldrums and their reputation even in jest. But there was a confidence too, for it was reassuring to know that they were not merely leaping off into the wilderness blindly.

  But now one of the senior New Islanders from among the crew, a stolid woman named Liza Mayhew – she had been Boiler’s deputy during their renegade days – raised a hand in question. ‘It seems we are as well prepared as might be for the absence of wind in the Doldrums, and for the search for land on the other side. But these are hardly the only two dangers that lie ahead of us. The Barrier has more weapons than becalming, at least by the stories I’ve heard. There will be terrible heat to be endured, for one. But also, what of the evil cloud that is called the Miasma? Many here have beheld the thing with their own eyes, I understand. What preparations have been made for such a menace?’

  Jake Tooth answered. ‘There are tried and true ways of dealing with heat at sea. The crossing will be uncomfortable, but discomfort alone won’t kill us. As for the Miasma; some here have indeed beheld one before, and if we sight another we shall do as we did then, and outrun it with the attack boats. It will cost fuel, but only in short bursts. Other threats there will be, but the Miasma at least we need not fear unduly.’

  Liza Mayhew nodded cautious acceptance of this, and the confidence in the room lifted a further notch.

  But now a different voice was raised from the outer circle of chairs. ‘Captain Amber,’ it came, querulous. ‘Captain, may I be heard?’

  Dow had to peer to locate the speaker. It was still unseasonally cold outside, and overcast, and only a grey light came through the windows, leaving dim the further corners of the cabin. And in one of the shadows sat a bent figure, hand raised an old man with a crutch.

  Dow’s heart sank. Magliore. The ship’s poet.

  By rights, of course, the Chloe should not have had a designated poet at all. The position was traditional only on Ship Kings vessels, and the Chloe was no longer that. But when Dow had discovered – on the fleet’s initial voyage to the Twin Isles – that there was one on board who claimed the title, he made no objection to it, if only in honour of the single other poet he had ever known: Alfons, who had died, in Dow’s service, in the northern Ice.

  But he had since regretted the impulse. Magliore was no Alfons. Alfons, despite his age and the lack of several toes and his vast store of superstition and dark sea-lore, had been an ever cheerful and helpful soul. Magliore was an altogether gloomier type. He had lost the lower part of a leg to some long-ago accident, so stalked the ship sourly on a wooden stump, crutch under one arm, his dark stare ever bitter beneath a heavy brow.

  Indeed, Dow was often puzzled as to why Magliore had joined the expedition at all. He had washed up in Stone Port after the Battle of the Headlands, another refugee among the hundreds, his vessel sunk, but he could easily have made his way back to Ship Kings territory afterwards, exactly as did many of his marooned comrades. Instead he had enlisted with Dow, seemingly inspired by the hope of the New World. And yet no one was quicker to grumble, or to spread rumours and complaints below decks. Nor had Dow specifically invited him to this conference; he had come in unnoticed among the masters and mates and other representatives of the crew.

  He would have nothing encouraging to say, Dow was sure. Still, best have it out here and now. ‘Speak,’ said Dow.

  ‘My thanks to you, sir.’ The old man propped a shoulder to his crutch, and gave the room a skewed glance. ‘Now, all I’ve heard is very well as far as it goes, and doubtless it is fine to plan about oil a
nd equators and ridges under the sea. But all of this is to speak as if the Barrier is merely a stretch of ocean to be crossed like any other. It is not. Nor by science or machine alone will we make the crossing you propose. There are darker dangers than lack of wind, or poison clouds. Have you not heard the other name by which the Doldrums are known? If so, I will say it now aloud – the Ocean of the Dead.’

  An apprehensive chill seemed to grip the room, and Dow sighed internally. He knew the name indeed, and something of its origins – and suspected too why Magliore was raising it. But he said nothing. Again, if the superstitions must be faced, then best get it done.

  The old poet was nodding as he gazed from face to face. ‘Yes, I see that many of you know it; the sailors among you, anyway, for the Ocean of the Dead is not a name that landsmen ever use, only those who follow the sea life, and they speak it only in whispers.’

  Liza Mayhew stirred indignantly. ‘Well, I make no claim to be a sailor, and indeed I have not heard the name. Enlighten me then; what does it mean, and why must it be spoken with such dread?’

  Magliore barked a mirthless laugh. ‘Consider, woman of New Island. What is the fate of those landed folk who die on dry ground? Why, they are buried in it. Or perhaps they are burned and turned into ash, which is in any case the same. There is no mystery to any of that. Ah now, but what is the fate of those who die at sea? I don’t mean those who expire on board their ships, safe and secure and attended to by their friends. I speak of those who are lost overboard and drowned, or those wrecked. Those who vanish beneath the waves and are never seen again. Where do those unfortunate souls go?’

  Liza Mayhew met the question squarely. ‘They go, presumably, to the bottom of the sea. And may the deeps grant them peace there.’

  ‘Peace?’ The poet’s expression was pained. ‘Alas, that is exactly what the deeps do not grant the drowned. Such poor souls lie un-peaceful, cold and pallid in the depths. Now, you landed folk have your own tales of such restless spirits – you call them ghosts, and say that they haunt the place of their death, be it a house, or a cave, or a battlefield. But such locales are of dry land, they are fixed and unchanging. There are no such fixed places on the eternally shifting sea. So what are the spirits of the drowned to do, those who descend gasping and terrified? They cannot haunt the open wind and waves.

  ‘No, the unrestful dead of the oceans gather instead in another place, travelling in their hundreds and even thousands over the centuries through the deeps, pale corpses swimming, to muster where there are no winds or waves, and where the ocean is as unchanging indeed as dry land. In the Doldrums is where the spirits of the drowned assemble, it is the home of their dreadful afterlife, and there their spectres walk by night upon the waters.’ He raised his dark eyes to all those in the room. ‘It is into such an abode that we now travel, and I warn you, no engine or barrel of oil will save us from the Dead.’

  A hush greeted this. For a moment even Dow did not speak. He had heard this same tale in his early years at sea, and had dismissed it, no believer in ghosts. But now he was overpowered by a sudden memory of the day that he had almost drowned himself in the mud and rising tide of the Banks. In those dying instants, as his rescuers plunged into the water to save him, he had been convinced that in fact they were demons come to carry him away through the deeps to somewhere else, somewhere—

  He blinked, banished the memory to where it belonged, the past. ‘We’re here,’ he declared severely to the poet, ‘to discuss only the real difficulties we’ll face in the Doldrums, not imaginary ones.’

  Jake Tooth nodded, glaring at Magliore. ‘Go frighten the children with your tales if you will, but spare the rest of us. The drowned do not linger, they sink to the sea floor and rot there. Your spectres are no more to be believed in than wailing ghosts that haunt old castles.’

  Magliore tossed his head to eye the harpooner. ‘Oh – and you have sailed the inner Barrier, have you, and seen for yourself?’

  ‘I’ve come a lot closer than you, old fool!’

  ‘Enough!’ said Dow.

  Silence fell again. But then Fidel cleared his throat. ‘If you’ll forgive me, Dow, it may not all be imagination. None of us here have truly sailed the Doldrums and seen what is there. Indeed, few in all history have done so, or at least few have returned to tell of it, and the records those early mariners left of their voyages are scant. Nevertheless, I have studied all there is to be studied – and I will say this. I am no more a believer in ghosts than are you. I believe that when we die, we die, and there is nothing to add, no afterlife or clinging to the world as a spectre or spirit. And yet, those early accounts of the Doldrums do indeed speak of unearthly beings deep within the Barrier, and there is no mistaking the fear with which those reports are written. Some strange truth must lie behind it.’

  Dow stared in disappointment – he hadn’t expected this from Fidel, normally so rational. But now Boiler Swan spoke up. ‘I also believe in no ghosts, but what exactly do these ancient accounts say, Fidel?’

  The old scholar was gazing into memory. ‘Little is said plainly, it is all left as hints and allusions, written in ancient dialects difficult to translate. But it seems that some ships of old made it at least as far as to cross the outer Doldrums, riding the occasional winds as we intend to do, to the fringe of the inner Barrier. There, however, they were always forced to turn back, having no way to defeat the windless realm. But before they did so, they encountered things of which the reports seem reluctant to speak, human-like but not human, shapes that walked upon the waters by night. Walked on the waters, mind, even as our poet here said. And with pale faces that stared in the darkness, like those of men long drowned.’

  Outside, a heavier cloud amid the overcast must have passed over the hidden sun, for the cabin dimmed as the commander was speaking. Around the room, the younger officers and the non-sailing folk had gone very still, but Magliore was nodding, his eyes closed.

  ‘There is even one tale,’ Fidel went on, ‘of these things coming aboard a ship by night, unseen; and of men missing in the morning. The account is only fragmentary, but the vessel in question, which had rowed itself thus far, turned back immediately, gripped by terror.’

  Magliore gave a final nod, and opened his eyes. ‘As we too will be terrorised, if you do not heed my warnings. The Ocean of the Dead is a cursed sea, not meant to be sailed, and no ship can hope to pass safely through it without fortune on its side, and without protection against the ill will of the Drowned, for they hate the living. But here we arrive at the crux of it, for what protection against ill fortune do we have in this fleet?’

  Dow straightened warily. Here it came.

  ‘None!’ Magliore declared, with a thump of his crutch. ‘For this ship, and the Snout too, sail without a scapegoat!’

  And there it was.

  All gazes turned to Nell.

  ‘Without a scapegoat!’ Magliore repeated. ‘But not for lack of a candidate.’ And now he raised a bony hand to point in accusation. ‘For there sits the most renowned scapegoat in all the world. And yet we voyage without her guardianship, for she has refused the title.’

  Nell met this with a hardening of her eyes, a stubborn look that Dow knew all too well – for this was an old problem. She had indeed refused the role of scapegoat, and not once, but many times.

  At first it had been a private matter. A year and more earlier, on the day that the spy Cassandra was executed for the slaughter of the Heretic Kings, Nell had sworn to Dow that she would never be a scapegoat again. But later, as Dow’s newly formed fleet had prepared to leave Stone Port, a group of Ship Kings sailors from the crew had come to her and begged publicly that she assume the mantle, and similar delegations had done so several times since – always to meet with the same response.

  Now she said, ‘As I have answered before, Magliore, and before that again, only Ship Kings vessels sail with scapegoats. This is not such a vessel.’ Her tone was cold, making it clear indeed that by similar logic there was no
need of a ship’s poet either. (And truly, she had been angry that Dow had not forbidden Magliore use of the name.) ‘I will not have the old ways forced on our crews, two-thirds of whom do not hail from the Kingdoms and have no belief in, or use for, such things.’

  But the poet was not to be put off. ‘They will find belief soon enough, when the Dead come. I have talked with those below decks more than have you, Ignella of the Cave. All throughout this long year of preparation many fears have been pushed to the backs of peoples’ thoughts, for the Doldrums were always far away yet. But now they lie directly ahead of us. And even if many in this room do not credit that the Drowned can walk upon the sea, many more below decks do credit it. And if you cannot reassure them that they stand guarded against such evils, then there will be trouble, I warn you.’

  Nell reddened. ‘It’s foolish nonsense!’

  But it wasn’t, Dow knew, not if the crew thought otherwise. Still, in a last defence of Nell, he said, ‘Have you considered this, Magliore: you speak of fortune, but if fortune intended us to have a scapegoat, don’t you think it would have delivered us one? But there were no scapegoats among the refugees at Stone Port, and no scapegoat has offered to join us since. Doesn’t that suggest that we are meant, by fortune itself, to have none?’

  Magliore smiled craftily. ‘Ah – or does it mean quite the opposite? While we visited the Kingdoms I went ashore several times, and in my days there I spoke with three different scapegoats, each known to be sympathetic to our cause, and I asked why they had not volunteered to accompany us. All gave the same answer – that it was not necessary, for it was known that the fleet already had a scapegoat. Indeed, each said that they felt sure they were not meant to go; that the position was already allotted, and that to challenge this fact would be to defy fate itself.’

  Silence fell again, all eyes returning to Nell, more accusing now. To defy fate itself. It was one thing to refuse the role on her own behalf – but to risk fate’s wrath against the whole expedition, that was another.