by Paul Kearney
“All hands!” Hawkwood roared above the screaming wind. “All hands on deck!”
The order was echoed down in the waist by Billerand, thigh-deep in coursing water. They had the sail in a bundle and were dragging it below-decks. A forgotten keg rolled back and forth in the scuppers, crashing off the upper-deck guns. Hawkwood fought his way over to the hatch in the quarterdeck that opened on the tiller-deck below.
“Tiller there! How does she handle?”
The men were choked with the water that was rushing aft, struggling to contain the manic wrenchings of the tiller.
“She’s a point off, sir! We need more hands here.”
“You shall have them. Rig relieving tackles as soon as you are able, and bring her round to larboard three points. We have to get her before the wind.”
“Aye, sir!”
Men were pouring out of the companionways, looking for orders.
“All hands to reduce sail!” Hawkwood shouted. “Take in those topsails, lads. Billerand, I want four more men on the tiller. Velasca, send a party below-decks to make sure the guns are bowsed up tight. I don’t want any of them coming loose.”
The crew splintered into fragments, each intent on his duty. Soon the rigging was black with men climbing the shrouds to the topmasts. Hawkwood squinted through the rain and the flying spray, trying to make out how much strain the topmasts were taking. He would put the ship before the wind and scud along under bare poles. It would mean they would lose leagues of their westering and be blown to the south-west, off their latitude, but that could not be helped.
A tearing rip, as violent as the crack of a gun. The foretopsail had split from top to bottom. A moment later the two halves were blasted out of their bolt-holes and were flying in rags from the yard. Hawkwood cursed.
A man who was nothing but a screaming dark blur plunged from the rigging and vanished into the heaving turmoil of the sea.
“Man overboard!” someone yelled, uselessly. There was no way they could heave-to to pick someone up, not in this wind. For the men on the yards, a foot put wrong would mean instant death.
The men eased themselves out on the topsail yards, leaning over to grasp fistful after fistful of the madly billowing canvas. The masts themselves were describing great arcs as the ship plunged and came up again, one moment flattening the sailor’s bellies against the wood of the yards, the next threatening to fling them clear of the ship and into the murderous, cliff-like waves.
The wind picked up further. It became a scream in the rigging and the spray hitting Hawkwood’s face seemed as solid as sand. The ship’s head came round slowly as the men on the tiller brought her to larboard, trying to put the wind behind them. Hawkwood shouted down into the waist:
“You there! Mateo, get aft and make sure the deadlights are shipped in the great cabins.”
“Aye, sir.” The boy disappeared.
They would have to shutter the stern windows or else a following sea might burst through them, flooding the aft portion of the ship. Hawkwood railed at himself. So many things he had left undone. He had not expected the onset of the storm to be so sudden.
The waves around seemed almost as high as the mastheads, sliding mountains of water determined to swamp the carrack as though she were a rowing boat. The pitching of the ship staggered even Hawkwood’s sea-legs, and he had to grasp the quarterdeck rail to steady himself. They had the topsails in now, and men were inching back down the shrouds a few feet at a time, clinging to the rough hemp with all the strength they possessed.
“Lifelines, Billerand!” Hawkwood shouted. “Get them rigged fore and aft.”
The burly first mate went to and fro in the waist, shouting in men’s ears. The noise of the wind was such that it was hard to make himself heard.
She was still coming round. This was the most dangerous part. For a few minutes the carrack would be broadside on to the wind and if a wave hit her then she might well capsize and take them all to the bottom.
Hawkwood wiped the spray out of his eyes and saw what he had dreaded—a glassy cliff of water roaring directly at the ship’s side. He leaned down to the tiller-deck hatch.
“Hard a-port!” he screamed.
The men below threw their weight on the length of the tiller, fighting the seas that swirled around the ship’s rudder. Too slowly. The wave was going to hit.
“Sweet Ramusio, his blessed Saints,” Hawkwood breathed in the instant before the great wave struck the ship broadside-on.
The Osprey was still turning to port when the enormous shock ran clear through the hull. Hawkwood saw the wave break on the starboard side and then keep going, engulfing the entire waist with water, swirling up to the quarterdeck rail where he stood. One of the ship’s boats was battered loose and went over the side, a man clinging to it and screaming soundlessly in that chaos of wind and water. He saw Billerand swept clear across the deck and smashed into the larboard rail like a leaf caught in a gale. Other men clung to the guns with the water foaming about their heads, their legs swept out behind them. But even as Hawkwood watched the wave caught one of the guns and tore it loose from the side, sending the ton of metal careering across the waist, devastation in its wake. The gun went over the larboard side, shattering the rail and tearing a hole in the ship’s upper hull. Even above the roaring torrent of the water, Hawkwood thought he could hear the rending timbers shriek, as though the carrack were crying out in her maimed agony.
They were almost swamped. Hawkwood could feel the sluggishness of the carrack, as though she were doubly ballasted with water. The deck began to cant under his feet like the sloping roof of a house.
There was a tearing crack from above. An instant later the main topmast went by the board, the entire mast with its spars and yards and cordage coming crashing down on the larboard side. Blocks and tackle and fragments of shattered wood were hurled down round Hawkwood’s ears. Something thudded into the side of his head and knocked him off his feet. He slid along the sloping deck and ended up in the lee scuppers, entangled with rope. The falling mast had crashed through the sterncastle and was hanging over the side, dragging the carrack further over. He was dimly aware that he could hear horses screaming somewhere down in the belly of the ship, a wailing like a multitude in pain. He shook his head, blood pouring down across his eyes and temples, and reached for one of the axes which were stowed on the decks. He began to swing at the mass of broken wood and tangled cordage that was threatening to pull the ship over on to her side.
“Axemen here!” he shrieked. “Get this thing cut away or it’ll take us all with it!”
Men were labouring up out of the foaming chaos of the waist with boarding axes in their hands. He saw Velasca there, but no sign of Billerand.
They began chopping at the fallen topmast like men possessed. The carrack rose on the breast of another gargantuan swell of water, tilting ever further. She would capsize with the next wave.
The topmast shifted as they hacked at it. Then there was a cracking and wrenching of wood, audible above the wind and the roaring waves and the sharp concussions of the biting axes. The mass of wreckage moved, tilted, and then slithered over the ship’s side into the sea, taking a fiferail with it.
The carrack, freed of the unbalancing weight, began to right herself. The deck became momentarily horizontal again. Then it began to slant once more, but from fore to aft this time. She had turned. The ship was before the wind. Hawkwood looked aft over the taffrail and saw the next wave, like a looming mountain, rear up over the stern as if it meant to crush them out of existence. But the ship rose higher and higher as the bulk of water slid under the hull, lifting the carrack into the air. Then they were descending again—thank God for the high sterncastle to prevent them being pooped—and the ship was behaving like a rational thing once more, riding the huge waves like a child’s toy.
“Velasca!” Hawkwood called, wiping blood out of his eyes. “See to the foremast backstays. I think the topmast destroyed one. We don’t want the foremast going as wel
l.” He glanced around. “Where’s Billerand?”
“Took him below,” one of the men said. “Had his shoulder broke.”
“All right, then. Velasca, you are acting first mate. Phipio, second mate.” Hawkwood looked at the battered wreckage, the shattered rails, the stump of the mainmast like an amputated limb. “The ship is badly hurt, lads. She’ll swim, but only with our help. Phipio, get a party down below to check for leaks, and have men working on the pumps as soon as you can. Velasca, I want all other hands sending up extra stays. We can’t get the topmasts down, not in this, so we’ll have to try and strengthen the masts. This is no passing squall. We’re in for a long run.”
The crowd of men split up. Hawkwood left them to their work for the moment—Velasca was a competent seaman—clambered down the broken remnants of the ladders to the waist and entered the companionway to the aft part of the ship.
The heaving of the carrack threw him against one bulkhead and then another, and there was water swirling in the companionway, washing around his calves. He made his way to the tiller-house where six men were battling to bring the tiller under control as it fought their grip in the monstrous battering of the waves.
“What’s our course, lads?” he shouted. Even here the wind was deafening, and there was also the creaking and groaning of the carrack’s hull. The ship was moaning like a thing in pain, and there was the horse still neighing madly somewhere below and people wailing on the gundeck. But that was not his problem now.
“Sou’-sou’-west, sir, directly before the wind,” one of the struggling helmsmen answered.
“Very well, keep her thus. I’ll try and have you relieved at the turn of the watch, but you may be in for a long spell.”
Masudi, the senior helmsman and an ex-corsair, gave a grin that was as brilliant as chalk in his dark face.
“Don’t you worry about us, sir. You keep the old girl swimming and we’ll keep her on course.”
Hawkwood grinned back, suddenly cheered, then bent over the binnacle. The compass was housed in a glass case, and to one side within it a small oil lamp burned so the helmsmen might see the compass needle at all times of the day or night. It was one of Hawkwood’s own inventions, and he had been inordinately proud of it. As he bent over the yellow-lit glass his blood fell upon it, becoming shining ruby like wine with candlelight behind it. He wiped the glass clean irritably. Sou’-sou’-west all right, and with this storm his dead-reckoning was shot to pieces. They were going to be far off course when this thing blew itself out, and if they wanted to get back on their old latitude they would have to beat for weeks into the teeth of the wind: an agonizing, snail’s-pace labour.
He swore viciously and fluently under his breath, and then straightened. How was the Grace of God faring? Had Haukal been caught as unprepared as he? The caravel was a sound, weatherly little vessel, but he knew for a fact that it had never before encountered seas as high as these.
He waved to the helmsmen and left the tiller-house, lurching with the dip and rise of the ship. He slid down a ladder and then kept going forward until he was through into the gundeck. There he halted, looking up the long length of the ship.
The place was a shambles. The sailors had lashed the guns tight so they were crouched up against the gunports like great, chained beasts, and in between them a mass of humanity cowered and writhed in a foot of water that came surging up and down the deck with every dip of the carrack’s bow. Hawkwood saw bodies floating face-down in the water, the pathetic rag-tag possessions of the passengers drifting and abandoned. There was a collective wailing of women while men cursed. The lanterns had been put out, which was just as well. The deck resembled the dark, fevered nightmare of a visionary hermit, a picture of some subterranean hell.
Someone staggered over to him and took his arm.
“Well, Captain, are we sinking yet?”
There was no panic in the voice, perhaps even a kind of irony. In the almost dark Hawkwood thought he could make out a roughly broken nose, short-cropped hair, the square carriage of a soldier.
“Are you Bardolin, the girl Griella’s guardian?”
“Aye.”
“Well, we’ve no fear of sinking, though it was touch and go for a moment or two there. This storm may last some time so you had best get the passengers to make themselves as comfortable as they can.”
The man Bardolin glanced back down the heaving length of the gundeck.
“How many hours do you think it will last?”
“Hours? More than that, it’ll be. We’re in for a blow of some days, if I’m any judge. I’ll try and get the ship’s cook to serve out some food as soon as we have things more settled. It’ll be cold, mind. There will be no galley fires lit whilst the storm lasts.”
He could see the dismay, instantly mastered, on the older man’s face.
“Do you need any help?” Bardolin asked.
Hawkwood smiled. “No, this is a job for mariners alone. You see to your own people. Calm them down and make them more comfortable. As I say, this storm will last a while.”
“Have you seen Griella? Is she all right?” Bardolin demanded.
“She’ll be with Lord Murad, I expect.”
As soon as he had said the words Hawkwood wished he had not. Bardolin’s face had become like stone, his eyes two shards of winking glass.
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll see what I can do here.”
“One more thing.” Hawkwood laid a hand on Bardolin’s arm as he turned away. “The weather-worker, Pernicus. We may need him in the days to come. How is he?”
“Prostrate with fear and seasickness, but otherwise he is hale.”
“Good. Look after him for me.”
“Our ship’s chaplain will not be happy at the thought of a Dweomer-propelled vessel.”
“You let me worry about the Raven,” Hawkwood growled and, slapping Bardolin on the arm, he left the gundeck with real relief.
Deeper he went, into the bowels of the ship. The Osprey was a roomy vessel, despite her lower than usual sterncastle. Below the gundeck was the main hold, and below that again the bilge. The hold itself was divided up into large compartments. One for the cable tiers, where the anchor cables were coiled down, one for the water and provisions, a small cubbyhole that was the powder store and then the newly created compartment that housed the damned horses and other livestock.
There was water everywhere, dripping from the deckhead above, sloshing around his feet, trickling down the sides of the hull. Hawkwood found himself a ship’s lantern and fought it alight after a few aggravating minutes of fumbling in the dark with damp tinder. Then he made his way deeper below.
Here it was possible to hear more clearly the sound of the hull itself. The wood of the carrack’s timbers was creaking and groaning with every pitch of her beakhead, and the sound of the wind was muted. The horses had gone silent, which was a blessing of sorts. Hawkwood wondered if any of them had survived.
He found a working party of mariners sent down by Velasca to secure the cargo. There was four feet of water in the hold, and the men were labouring waist-deep among the jumbled casks and sacks and boxes, lashing down anything that had come loose in the carrack’s wild battle with the monster waves.
“How much water is she making?” Hawkwood asked their leader, a master’s mate named Mihal, Gabrionese like himself.
“Maybe a foot with every two turns of the glass, sir. Most of it came down from above with those green seas we shipped, but her timbers are strained, too, and there’s some coming in at the seams.”
“Show me.”
Mihal took him to the side of the hull, and there Hawkwood could see the timbers of the ship’s side quivering and twisting. Every time the carrack moved with the waves, the timbers opened a little and more water forced itself in.
“We’re not holed anywhere?”
“Not so far as I can see, sir. I’ve had men in the cable tiers and in the stockpens aft—a bloody mess down there, by the by. No, she’s just taking the st
rain, is all, but I hope Velasca has strong men on the pumps.”
“Report to him when you’ve finished here, Mihal. The pump crews and the helmsmen will need relieving soon.”
“Aye, sir.”
Hawkwood moved on, wading through the cold water. He struggled aft against the movement of the ship and passed through the bulkhead hatch that separated the hold from the stockpens nearer the stern.
Lanterns here, the terrified bleating of a few sheep, straw and dung turning the water into a kind of soup. Animal corpses were bobbing and drifting. Hawkwood approached the group of men who were working there in leather gambesons—soldiers, then, not members of his crew.
“Who’s that?” a voice snapped.
“The Captain. Is that you, Sequero?”
“Hawkwood. Yes, it’s me.”
Hawkwood saw the pale ovals of faces in the lantern light, the shining flanks of a horse.
“How bad is it?”
Sequero splashed towards him. “What kind of ship’s master are you, Hawkwood? No one was told to secure the horses, and then the ship went on its damned side. They never had a chance. Why could you not have warned my people?”
Sequero was standing before him, filthy and dripping. Something had laid open his forehead so that a flap of skin glistened there, but the blood had slowed to an ooze. The ensign’s eyes were bright with fury.
“We had no time,” Hawkwood said hotly. “As it was we almost lost the ship, and I’ve lost some of my men putting her to rights. We had no time to worry about your damned horses.”
He thought for a second that Sequero was going to fly at him and tensed into a crouch, but then the ensign sagged, obviously worn out.
“I am no sailor. I cannot say whether you are in the right of it or not. Will the ship survive?”
“Probably. How many did you lose?”
“One of the stallions and another mare. They broke their legs when the ship went to one side.”
“What about the other livestock?”
Sequero shrugged. It was not his concern.