by Brent Weeks
He’d almost recovered from his laughter when Fukkelot had cursed at him, and he finally understood that name, too, sending him into fresh gales of laughter.
The foreman, Strap, had eventually used her own much more obvious namesake to shut him up.
Rowing. The pain could be catalogued, but even the catalogue was tedious. His fellows were more interesting than the chafing, the blisters, the cramps, the knots.
Fukkelot was more helpful than Orholam, and more verbal. Gavin had heard of sailors swearing constantly, but that was usually a figure of speech. Fukkelot wasn’t right in the head somehow, swearing a stream of curses without willing it, day and night.
Now he grinned at Gavin. “Battle,” he said. He grunted. His jaw and neck twitched repeatedly. “They let us know so we use our strength when we need to.” Then he went back to whispering curses, as if it were a relief.
“Do they unchain us?” Gavin asked, rowing, rowing. “You know, in case we sink?” He was joking. Mostly.
“Win or die,” Strap shouted.
“Row to hell!” the slaves shouted in response.
“Scratch the back of Shadow Jack!” she shouted.
“Row to hell!”
“Row right back!” she shouted.
They pulled faster, in tempo with the drums.
“Pull!” she shouted in time with their pulling.
“To hell and back!”
“Pull!”
In less than a minute, they were flying across the waves. The foreman ducked upstairs. She came back. “We’ve closed to a league. Wind’s bad. Twenty minutes, if they never stop running.” She chortled. “Three, Four, Five, if you don’t get that oar fully stowed before the crunch this time, it’s five stripes each.”
“You gotta give us enough warning,” Three complained.
Gavin expected him to get the strap for that, but the foreman was in a good mood.
“Kind of ship is she?” Three asked.
“Abornean galley.”
Murmurs. Bad news. “How loaded?” someone asked.
“Sitting high.”
Curses. If their captain were competent, the chase would all come down to which slaves were in better condition—or could be motivated more. The motivation came by whip, mostly. Sitting high in the water meant it would be faster than usual and that it didn’t have a full cargo to plunder if they did catch her. It was the worst of all worlds for a crew.
“Little fishies, you ready to swim?” Strap shouted out.
“Straight to hell, straight back again!” they shouted, but there was clearly less excitement in their tone.
“Pull!” she shouted. At some signal, the drummers increased the tempo.
Gavin strained against his oar. At each sweep, the rowers stood up as they pulled, sat on the backsweep and did it again. This Angari ship had added a wrinkle that one of the men who’d been a galley slave on a Ruthgari ship before said was unheard of on the Cerulean Sea—a footboard at an incline that allowed the slaves to more easily put the full strength of their legs into the sweep. Made it easier, he said. Made them faster, Gavin thought.
“They’re runners!” Strap shouted gleefully. “Let’s see if they can race us, boys!”
They maintained their speed.
Two minutes later, she came down again. “We’re gaining on ’em. No way they can lose us!”
A small cheer ran through the slaves.
“Uh, uh, two, uh measures of, uh, strong wine for the first, uh, six benches tonight!” Fukkelot said. He cursed twelve times, loudly, as if he’d been holding back the tide simply to get a full sentence out. “Or death!” He laughed.
Only for the first six benches—so the men farther back would have a reason to behave well and hope they got promoted. It was just one among many Angari traditions Gunner had kept after taking the ship and its crew. They had all sorts of ways to motivate their slaves. Gavin wondered if the Angari were more decent, more clever, or just slave-poor.
Karris, I labor among madmen and murderers.
Not so different from back home, then? she asked in his mind’s eye.
How he loved her.
Karris, could you spell me for a bit on the oar?
Wish I could, love.
He saw her face twist with pity, and it cut through him. What was he now? Dirty, sweaty, stinking, bearded, hair shorn short, serving slavers. He blinked it away. Focused on his oar.
Strap said, “Leonus, water. Don’t need anyone passing out in the stretch.”
Leonus was a twisted-back, perpetually sneering sailor with the dark black skin of an Ilytian, though he had nothing of their accent. He shaved his wiry hair at the sides of his head and let it grow in a knotted crown above. He thought the slaves hated him for his deformity, and he took it out on them at every opportunity, giving them plenty of real reasons to hate him. He moved among them with a cup on a long handle. The task actually took considerable dexterity—giving water to a man who’s constantly standing, sitting, moving moving moving, with a long oar and numerous arms intermittently in the way. Leonus took every advantage when he thought the foreman wasn’t looking to swing the cup into slaves’ faces, smashing lips and breaking teeth from time to time. They were so desperate for water, though, that they took it rather than turn away. Leonus was the kind of scum that enjoyed that most of all.
Back in Gavin’s past life, one of the biggest burdens of leadership had been finding and removing such men from every command. Any short-term results they got from the fear their men held them in was ultimately spoiled by how they ruined morale and stopped men from taking initiative.
Gavin heard the crack of a whip, and heard Leonus cry out behind him. Strap shouted, “Don’t fuck with them, Leonus! You keep my boys from rowing, and I’ll wipe your ass with hull barnacles. You hear me?”
Even Orholam grinned at that, though when Leonus made it to their bench, each slave kept his face carefully composed. Strap was as wide as the sea, foul as a latrine, and had more tattoos than any four other sailors combined, and Leonus rightly feared her. The malformed man gave them each water quietly, hatefully.
At their increased pace, the slaves sweated freely, and the always hot, always humid cabin got hotter and wetter. One slave cried out with a muscle cramp in his leg and went down. His oarmates struggled to maintain the pace without him.
In an instant, Strap was on top of him, beating him mercilessly with the whip. After six or eight strokes, she unlocked the slave’s manacles and bodily hurled the man back down the aisle. Number Two was hustled into place.
The foreman looked pleased that they hadn’t slowed their pace. She walked up and down the aisle, checking the men for signs of exhaustion, then walked to the back. Gavin heard the slave’s cries and the snapping of leather, the thudding of fists and feet on flesh. It was insanity to beat a man for what he couldn’t control—and for a few long strokes of the oars, Gavin wondered why the otherwise sensible woman would do it.
Ah, preventative brutality. Beat the man who can’t help his cramp so that others don’t fake a cramp to get a rest.
Unjust, but probably effective. Gavin wasn’t sure if he admired or hated Strap more for it.
The door to the main deck two flights up cracked open, letting midday light down the sweat-slick stairs. The foreman went up the steps, and Leonus took her place at the bottom to repeat any orders she might shout.
“One hundred paces! Ain’t turning!” the foreman shouted.
“One hundred paces!” Leonus shouted. “Drummers, places!”
No one had explained what Gavin was supposed to do, or what happened in what order, but another drummer joined the first, pounding a big, hollow-sounding drum to add to the first. He beat at exactly the same tempo, though, standing in front of the slaves on the port side.
“Uh, fuck fuck fuck fuck, listen to our drummer, not theirs,” Fukkelot said. “Last—” He dissolved into curses and grunts for a while, getting more and more frustrated that he couldn’t speak clearly. Finally
, he managed, “Last second, we stow the oars. After uh, uh, uh, a sprint, though.”
“Turning to port, seventy paces!” the foreman shouted.
A muffled report resounded from the long tom mounted on the prow of the Bitter Cob and shook the deck like a punch in the chest. Shouting abovedecks. Pounding feet. A musket fired above, followed by Gunner’s shout. He wouldn’t want anyone on deck shooting out at that range. He wouldn’t trust anyone but himself to hit a target that far away.
Gavin gritted his teeth, his legs quivering, arms burning, sweat dripping into his eyes. The slaves were barely touching their butts to the wood benches at this pace.
A high, loud crack sounded from some musket that Gavin couldn’t place, but that sounded very different than—oh, that could only be Gunner’s musket.
The Bitter Cob veered to starboard. Gavin figured they must be trying to cut directly behind the other ship, to keep them from getting a broadside. It would only work if their own ship were significantly faster.
“Starboard side, battle speed!” Strap shouted.
“Starboard side, battle speed!” Leonus shouted.
The drummer on the starboard side picked up his pace, beating triple beats in the space of two beats on the port side. It made the Bitter Cob cut to port, while losing almost no speed.
“Battle speed, all!” Strap shouted.
“Battle speed, all!” Leonus shouted.
They sprinted across the waves, throwing their whole weight into every stroke. There were no chants now. The men had no breath to spare. The heat was unbearable. Gavin heard the slapping of a whip, but his world was constricted to the pain in his shoulders and lungs and legs and back and calves and arms—
“On my mark, stow portside oars!” the foreman shouted. Before Leonus could even finish repeating the order, the foreman shouted, “Mark!”
The drummers pounded three great wallops, and stopped abruptly.
The slaves heaved their oars down, lifting the blades out of the water, and then pulled them into the hold, hand over hand, pulling them all the way inside so they wouldn’t be snapped off in a collision.
For one moment, as the drums fell silent, as the slaves gasped for breath, as the men above braced for impact, there was no sound but the peaceful hissing of the waves.
Then hell broke loose.
Chapter 12
Kip walked shoeless on the beach for an hour before his feet blistered. He walked on blistered feet for half an hour before the blisters cracked and bled. He walked on bleeding feet for less than a minute before the obvious occurred to him.
He sat heavily on the sand and sighed. How many months had he been drafting now? The Chromeria taught that you weren’t supposed to think of drafting first to solve your problems, but they had it exactly backwards.
Magic was useful for everything. It just killed you. You should always think of it first. Then you should decide if a little dram of death was worth it.
Functionally, perhaps, the same thing. Provided you thought of it before you were bleeding to death on a beach in some distant corner of the satrapies because you were so damn dumb.
Using the green of the jungle canopy as his source, he drafted a green, flexible sole to walk on, thought about it for a minute, and then drafted entire boots of green luxin. Because his feet were already bloody, he left an open connection between his feet and the bottommost layer of the sole so that he would be able to adjust the grip of his shoes immediately. It flirted with the line of using magic in ways that became part of your own body—incarnitive. But there were no magisters here. Kip walked, adjusting his boots until he was happy with them and trying to lock that design in his mind in case he ever needed this again.
Every drafter did this, he realized. They came up with useful designs and memorized them to be used quickly again. It was just that simpletons designed shoes while savants designed skimmers. The number of designs you could make as your colors expanded had to be an exponential curve. Had Gavin Guile memorized a thousand thousand designs, or did he just understand magic so deeply that he didn’t have to memorize designs? He merely created what made sense. Like you don’t have to think how to walk up stairs that are slightly steeper than the stairs you’re used to. You just do.
It seemed the more Kip learned about magic, the more impressed he was with those who used it artfully.
Then again, he’d gone green golem once, purely on instinct.
You got potential, Kip.
And you know what potential means? he replied.
“Ain’t done nothing yet.”
It was actually kind of comforting to hear the sound of his own voice.
He kept walking. Whether under oar or sail, galleys could travel twelve to fifteen leagues a day. Most galleys only had a range of four days before they needed fresh provisions. As galleys became less prevalent—being replaced by ships with longer ranges—many of the coastal towns that lived on the galley traffic were struggling. They would die in another generation or two, but they weren’t gone yet. So at the maximum, there had to be a town within sixty leagues.
Assuming he hadn’t been dropped precisely in between two towns, Kip would obviously find one closer if he walked the right direction. But he’d been blindfolded. The nearest town could only be a league or two south, while he was heading north.
Of course, there should be little towns in between, too, like that little fishing town so close to Ruic Head where the whales had gone crazy, and the people, too.
That was, if all the towns hadn’t been abandoned by people fearful of the advancing army of color wights, in which case, he could walk until he died and—
Not helping, Kip.
He was hungry. No, don’t think about that. Anything else.
At worst, if Kip could walk eight leagues a day, he should make it to a town in seven days. At worst. He could do that. All he needed was water. He could live on his fat for plenty long enough, theoretically, though he would walk slower as he became weaker. He found himself moving imaginary abacus beads as he did the figures. Funny, that helped.
That is, it helped him with the arithmetic. A smarter person would probably shut off his brain and walk. Kip had always been about as good at shutting off his brain as he was at shutting off his mouth.
Straight pipe between the two, mother used to say.
He was assuming he could walk eight leagues a day. Here, on the clear beaches, that seemed entirely plausible, but Kip knew there were other areas of the coastline that were rocky, where cliffs bordered the sea, or jungles abutted the waves almost directly. Points protruded full leagues out into the sea. If Kip followed the coastline exactly, he would have to travel much more than the sixty leagues a ship would travel between towns. If he didn’t follow the coastline exactly, he’d risk getting lost in an unfamiliar jungle or forest.
For a few minutes, he had to concentrate on breathing, his throat constricted, his chest tight, trying to throttle him.
But he didn’t stop walking. His mind clamped down on that refusal like a bulldog’s jaw locking. He was the turtle-bear, and the turtle-bear can’t be stopped. What was the worst that could happen? He could fail? He’d failed before, plenty. He could die? He’d almost died plenty of times now. Sometimes it was scary, sometimes it was terrifying, sometimes it was exhilarating, often it was uncontrollable no matter what you did, right or wrong. You don’t stop and make death a sure thing just because going on might result in death. Kip was a fat miserable disappointment, but he wasn’t a quitter.
He grinned suddenly. A fat miserable disappointment—who had, albeit with lots of qualifiers, killed a king, saved the Prism, and killed a god. Not bad for a fatty. Hell, he’d even outsmarted Andross Guile once.
Odd that he thought of outsmarting Andross Guile as more impressive than killing a god.
The god thing felt like luck, though, or like Orholam had surveyed the field for a suitable tool to keep his Prism alive, and finding none suitable, had picked up Kip because he was closest.
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br /> Kip paused.
I treat myself pretty shitty, he thought. I’d never let anyone treat a friend of mine this way.
An hour later, he found a stream. He drank, hoping the water was good. Truth was, he didn’t have much choice. He slowly drank more, waiting to make sure it didn’t make him throw up, and then sipping more. He stood, wishing he had a waterskin.
He caught sight of his green luxin boots. Golly, if only I had some way to make a waterskin!
With a sigh, he drafted a green bag. Magic first, magic always, Kip. He scooped up a great volume of water, then bent the green until it fit comfortably across his back. Drafted straps that fit his shoulders, drafted a belt.
Magic. So useful, it’s like… magic.
“Talking to this madman is making me crazy!” Kip said.
Funny. You’ll know you’re almost finished when you forget it’s supposed to be ironic.
He decided while he was walking, he could catch up on all the practica he’d missed. Unfortunately, at his level, the Blackguard training had consisted almost purely of hand-to-hand combat, the idea being that such was the foundation for all their future training. On the ships traveling to Ruic Head, they’d been taught proper grips and basic handling of swords and how to reload muskets. The other new Blackguard inductees already knew it all. Some of them had been training with weapons for years. Some were proficient with bows and other weapons that Kip had barely even picked up. He was way, way behind.
But I can go green golem.
Fat lot of good that does me now.
He felt like the coast was swooping out to a point, but looking at the sun alone wasn’t enough to confirm his suspicions. His classmate Ben-hadad had once said that he’d learned to draft a sextant so he would never be lost. Of course, you still needed a compass, too, and while you could draft a housing and a medium on which to float a bit of philosophers’ stone, there was no such thing as lodestone luxin. Some things still had to be done the hard way.