by Richard Nell
The strength of the call alone shocked Zaya back to reality. Ruka ran to the rails shouting, grabbing one of the climbing men and tossing him up like a child. Zaya abandoned her rope to move closer.
There were only two men left in the water, swimming with hard strokes towards the ship, their clusters of netting released. Behind them, a slender triangle, like a dark sail, jut from the water.
"They won't make it," the giant whispered, then ran towards his cabin.
The dark sail rose higher, until the huge body of some monstrous creature shimmered beneath the waves.
"Swim!" the men were calling. "It's nearly on you! Move your arses!"
Both Chang and his man swam with incredible speed, but next to the creature hardly moved. Zaya felt her hands clutching the rail. She knew her people hunted whales and that there were some that killed men, but she had never seen one. Her own helplessness trapped on the sea, in this creature's element, filled her with the same terror she'd known trapped in a storm. She could only imagine what the men in the water felt.
"Pirate!" Ruka's voice carried across the deck as he emerged. He threw a jagged spear point first, and—amazingly—the captain stretched out a hand and seized the shaft harmlessly from the air. Two more in his other hand, Ruka reached the rail and raised one back to throw.
As if pulled, Zaya ran forward and grabbed the other. Ruka met her eyes, then looked to the sea.
"Wait until the last moment," he commanded. "Aim just before the head. It will swim to the spear."
Zaya's heart pounded and she tried to get a feel for the weapon. It was solid iron, perfectly smooth, the weighting incredible. She had trained with spears all her life but never held such a thing.
"Soon." The shaman's arm drew back. "Don't throw with me. Wait. Be sure."
Then he growled and released, the javelin sailing true, sinking instantly into the water then sticking as red stained the blue. The captain threw his own a moment later. Zaya stepped back, lurched to the rail, and roared as she followed.
Both struck. The beast turned and thrashed beneath the water, diving away from the attack. Chang and the other man swam the last few strokes to the deck and safety, pulling themselves up with ropes to collapse panting at the other men's feet. The crew erupted in cheers, lifting them and laughing as if it had all been a game.
"A fine throw." The big man named Basko bowed to Zaya with hands together, and many of the others nodded or called their agreement.
"True," said the toothless old man with a grin.
A few thanked the captain in similar words, and Chang rose up with a stretch as if he'd never been worried. He was almost naked, and the water dripped down his body as he extended his limbs. Zaya forced herself to look away.
The sound of metal clattering and a man's grunts interrupted, and the crew soon realized Ruka had bound his own spear with a chain. He staggered with the weight, warring with the creature perhaps as he pulled across the deck and wrapped the chain around a mast. The crew watched him, then the sea, until more red stained the water, and finally the beast rose to the surface, pulling uselessly against the ship's weight.
"There is your feast."
The shaman released a long breath, then walked alone to his cabin, closing the door without another word. No one, including Zaya, thought to thank him.
Chapter 8
Chang took great pleasure dragging his would be killer from the sea.
"Look at that big bastard," he yelled, arms straining at the chain as the other men heaved and whooped. Between the nine of them, they just managed to lift it over the rail, where it flopped dead across the deck.
"A right monster," said the Pitman with a whistle. Then the Steerman, who butchered animals as well as he butchered men, went to his work. He chopped the fins, then opened the creature with a clean circle cut around its head, and a line down its back. The crew helped peel back layers of flesh as he sliced down the flanks, and revealed the feast.
Sea-shark wasn't much good to eat, but a good pirate had to be practical.
With Basko at his side, Chang took his time inspecting the harpoons lodged in the creature's flanks. One was stuck angled just below the animal's fin; the next was directly lodged in the back, close to the spout. But the third—which was really the first—was deep and buried into the bastard's soul, narrowly scraping the heart.
Both men glanced at the giant's cabin, then met each other's eyes. "Good throw," said Basko. Chang winced and nodded in reply.
That the pilot had just saved his life was not lost on him. A man like Chang, a man who started with nothing, remembered those who helped him, because few ever did. He stood and wiped moisture from his hands.
"See they clean up their mess. And you can make a small fire on the top deck for cooking, but you watch it. Don't let those drunken bastards burn my ship."
"Aye, chiefy."
Chang went below to his bunk, ensuring he was alone before he closed his eyes and clenched his hands, forcing out the terror as if he squeezed it from his veins. He took short, ragged breaths before he calmed, banishing the memories of youth—of being dangled over the sea with sharks circling, sport for pirates as a slave.
The giant had saved him. He found the thought lodged deep in his brain already, seeping out to reform the picture of the world. The giant had saved him when his brothers were unable. That was the truth. Though Eka was the captain, it was also clear that the giant's will was what brought them here—his purpose that had freed Chang and his men from that rotting prison, where they'd been destined for the rope, or worse.
All his life Chang had remembered his friends, and his enemies. Never had they been the same man.
When the shaking stopped Chang opened his eyes and took long, calming breaths.
"It will pass," he whispered, until it did. "It will pass."
When his strength returned he stood in the dark belly of the impossible ship, and put a hand to the strongest hull he'd ever seen. The giant built this ship. He knew that, too. When he'd first met the man, he had looked into the monstrous eyes and seen a thing that knew what it was to be a low-born slave. Once nothing, then a famous man loathed by many. Chang could relate.
Then when the netting broke, Ruka had saved the Steerman's life. He had saved Chang and Basko in the sea, and not as a master protecting his property, but a bastard son who saved his brothers without a thought.
"Gods curse him." Chang said, then laughed. He felt his mood returning, bolstered by the sway of the sea and the sound of the wind. So it was decided, like it or not. The giant was one of theirs. And so Chang would earn his trust and bring him close and see him through the waves. And maybe even back again.
As he considered the dangerous man or creature, and the alternative of being only his enemy, Chang had to admit—the feeling was relief. It soon passed, and Chang hummed a sailor's song. A good pirate had to be flexible.
"Smells good, doesn't it, Macha?"
Zaya took a breath and cracked open her door. Chang had apparently washed his clothes and shaved. He stood outside Zaya's cabin with some kind of stringed instrument and a bottle of rum, pretending to breathe in the fumes of cooking meat.
"It smells like fish," Zaya answered, opening the cabin door fully. Chang grinned and withdrew, his gaze sweeping her overdress, lingering on her now untied hair, which had grown long enough to spread down most of her back.
"Your beauty is like the dawn."
As ever the man's manner made her uncomfortable. Tonight, however, she would tolerate such things—she would play and sing for the men as her father would have done, and raise their spirits. They needed it, and so did she.
"Thank you." She smiled politely and stepped onto the deck, almost groaning in the heat. The heavy fabric of her overdress already made her sweat, and she prayed the evening would be cool when the sun fell.
"What shall we play?" Chang leaned closer, as if they conspired. "Do you know any sailing songs? Or songs from the isles?"
Zaya shook her head
.
"No trouble. Do you prefer ballads, or jigs?"
She stared because she had no idea what he was talking about, and Chang frowned as he scratched his chin with the back of one hand.
"What would you suggest we do?"
"We needn't do anything." She nodded her head in respect. "We eat. Then I will play and sing for the men."
Chang made a scoffing sound in his throat, then blinked when Zaya met his eyes.
"Macha is serious. Oh sweet, sweet Macha. If only your wisdom matched your beauty. As you wish. But when the time comes, I will be ready. You need only summon me with your siren's call, I will come to your aid, without a word of satisfaction."
"That's very decent of you," Zaya rolled her eyes to hide her grin, then stepped carefully towards the roasting bits of whale-shark.
The sailors stood around a metal bowl that held the fire, scampering like rabbits if they noticed an ash or spark get too high. Zaya took a seat on one of the long benches brought from the hold, then took a bowl of the shark meat from a cook with a thankful nod. She stared without a shred of appetite. It looked like a bowl of black fat, and reeked like fish. She was prepared to fight the impulse to gag, but realized the color was some kind of sauce, and forced herself to spoon a piece of the rubbery meal. The taste, at least, was better than the scent.
All around her the sailors shoved fatty meat into their mouths with abandon, chewing like children and slavering over their rum cups, the prying eyes of their captain and pilot far away on the upper deck.
When their stomachs were full, and the sun had dipped into the far horizon, Zaya took up her lyre, and began to play.
She started with the song of Zisa, which was slow and beautiful and fit the quiet evening and the tiny fire. She lost herself in the swaying of the waves and the rising and falling of the song, until she opened her eyes knowing it had been perfect.
The men were mostly silent. Some, Zaya realized, had gone off to other parts of the deck, to play dice or sleep.
"Do you…know any sailor songs?" The big brute named Basko leaned beside her with hopeful eyes, his breath reeking like rotten meat and rum. Most of the others that remained seemed rather bored, looking off into the sea.
Zaya nodded, knowing the answer to this question was always 'yes'. She wracked her mind for a sea song, but could only remember the tale of Nertha, a half god, half man, who had tried to swim to the spine of the world, but had gotten lost and froze in the ice.
It was fast, at least, and full of glory before the fall. In the land of ash the men who heard it would stomp their feet or their cups as they roared approval, and perhaps even the women might clap along.
She played and sang the words in her own tongue because she didn't have the skill to translate and play, and still the sailors mostly just stared. By the end, Basko stepped away with a hopeless look without even a word of thanks. Zaya felt her face reddening. Her father was the greatest skald in the Ascom. He had taught her well, and she had played many times for matrons and warriors in the halls of several chiefs to raucous approval. That she was skilled was not in question.
"Give us a song, Lucky!" One of the more drunken sailors spilled a bit of his rum on the deck as he staggered away.
Zaya forced herself to look at Chang. He stood as if disinterested along the cabins, a most annoying twinkle in his eye. He shook his head and swore he was too tired, too drunk, too shaken from the shark that nearly claimed his life, until the men were begging as they laughed, as if it were a ritual. All the while Chang held Zaya's eyes, outlasting the men and Zaya's increasing discomfort, until at last she nodded. He took up his instrument with a dramatic sigh.
"You belly-aching bastards. Well, alright. If our lady of the sea will have me." He wiggled his brow to another roar from the men, then stepped beside her and whispered. "Just follow along. You'll soon know what to do."
He strummed a very simple sound with his equally simple instrument, then called in a strong voice.
"Oh the work was hard, and the pay was low."
Men spilled rum and whale meat as they rose to sing.
"Leave her, Lucky, leave her!"
"Oh the seas are rough, and the kings yet come."
"Then it's time for us to leave her!"
Zaya felt the weight of their voices in her chest. Unlike as they worked in the day, their voices came together in harmony. Hair stood on her arms and neck at the sound, as it had only rarely when she sang with her father. She closed her eyes and listened to the verse repeat again and again, the words changing but the refrain repeating. Finally, she joined in.
"Oh the rats are gone over we the crew."
"Leave her, Lucky, leave her!"
"Oh the seas are rough, and the kings yet come."
Oh it's time for us to leave her!"
She sang for verse after verse, matching her higher pitch to the others. After ten or more it became like a prayer, the men drunk but still drinking, embracing as they sang. Some moved about the deck, hopping from foot to foot.
Chang seized Zaya's hands and forced her to leave her lyre and dance while he sang. When he paused to take a swig of rum, he handed it to her, and she drank deep as the men cheered. From the corner of her eye she saw the captain and even Ruka watching with grins on their faces.
"Oh the seas are rough, and the kings yet come."
"Oh it's time for us to leave her!"
Zaya danced as sweat poured down her body. She was taller than most of the men, so she hunched to stand at their level. As the night wore on the songs changed but retained their simple words and verses, higher and higher in pace. Zaya drank, and sang, and later seized Chang's knife from a scabbard and cut the hated sleeves from her dress as he laughed.
"What did I tell you, Macha?" he cried, "We'll make a sailor of you yet!"
When she finally collapsed on the bench, most of the men fell to the deck with their bottles or comrades, their laughter sweeping the ship. She lay there upon the creaking wood that still reeked of fish, staring up at the swirl of foreign stars with the sound of the waves, her hand still holding Chang's.
Such things were not done in the land of ash. She shouldn't have allowed him to touch her, and all her life she had been taught a chiefless man was unworthy of such an honor. These men were 'pirates', contemptible at best, bandits and outlaws at worst.
But here in their company, breathing hard from the song and dance, she knew she felt more free than she had in her entire life. And if that's what it was to be a sailor, she thought, she only hoped Chang was right.
* * *
"You're a very good singer," Zaya whispered later, standing at the rail. Chang hunched nearby, lighting a plant he called tobacco in the tiny remnants of the fire. Most of the crew had gone to their bunks or passed out elsewhere, and Chang stepped beside her at a comfortable distance. He smoked and looked out at the waves, his eyes far away.
"Tell me of your homeland, Macha. Are all the women as beautiful as you?"
Zaya shook her head and watched the black sea. "If I say yes, will it make me less special?"
"Never." Chang blinked and seemed to return slightly from wherever he'd gone.
"I lived in the capital of my people's lands," Zaya said, picturing New Orhus in her mind. "Though it's on the coast it would be considered very cold by you islanders. My mother was a priestess, an important woman, though to me just mother." She shrugged. "In the winter she scooped cups of snow from our yard and mixed it with sugary sap bought in the square. My father was a famous man, and well respected. He told me and my siblings stories every night by hearth light. We were very happy."
She blinked and found Chang smiling, though perhaps more with his mouth than his eyes.
"And yet you left this happy place for the sea," he said, breathing in a mouthful of smoke. He offered it, and Zaya shook her head.
"I got older. All my life I wanted only to live the great tales my father told. I did not choose my childhood."
Zaya caught the judgment or
maybe resentment before Chang buried it away.
"No," he said quietly. "None of us do."
She wasn't sure she wanted to ask. Low-born men of the Ascom could live lives of such misery it was hard for her to understand, and harder still to hear the details. No doubt the same was true in the isles and the continent. Chang took a long breath and his smile returned.
"All that matters is what we do now, Macha. I have chosen my family. I would die for them, and they for me. That is enough."
"Yes," she agreed. "What we do now is what matters."
Chang lifted a bottle of rum to his lips, and offered this too. After a moment of hesitation, Zaya took it.
"And yes, I am a very good singer." Chang said with a smile. "I was born a slave, Macha. Do you know this word?" She nodded, understanding it well enough though her people had none. "My master's ship was attacked by pirates. They killed everyone, but in my fear I sang, and they decided to keep me. That was many years and ships ago."
"A slave. A pirate. Yet here you are." Zaya smiled. "A beautiful woman at your side."
Chang laughed, the sound as melodic as his singing.
"True. And a jailor as my captain, and a monster as my pilot, sailing into the great, wide sea."
"Is it truly endless?" Zaya decided to let the monster comment pass.
"So they say." Chang shrugged. "The islanders call it the Peaceful Ocean." He smiled. "The name is a joke, for it's as peaceful as the grave. My own people have another name."
Zaya realized he was saying he wasn't from the isles, but let that pass too.
"The sailor's graveyard," Chang's eyes lit as he smoked. "Roa's toy. The dead, dark sea."
Zaya leaned on the rail and said nothing for a time, sipping again from the sweet, but potent island drink.
"My people once believed our North sea was endless," she said. "We were hidden from the world because all agreed it was so. Yet here we are."
"True." Chang smiled. "Though I suspect a few ships were lost before the discovery."
Zaya nodded, having heard the stories. She handed the bottle back and Chang made an obvious attempt to touch her hand in the exchange. She didn't stop him, and met his eyes. "Do you know how we found your islands? What brought my people here?"