by Paul Kearney
“Good work. Go and get something to eat. There’s fresh game doing the rounds; though what beast it is, I don’t know.”
“Right now, skipper, all I want is a rock to lay my head on; me and Kier both. There’s a lot more to be done tomorrow.” Rol nodded, and the carpenter, the gunner, and their mates left the firelight and staggered out into the darkness.
Gallico raised his savage head. In the moonlight it seemed sculpted out of stone, a gargoyled physiognomy. “Wind’s backing at last,” he said, his nostrils sniffing wide. “Be due north by morning, you see if it’s not. And then we’ll have a long and weary time of it beating back to Ganesh Ka.”
Ganesh Ka, the Hidden City. For Rol and Elias it had once been a fable, nothing more. A city of pirates, its location unknown to the wider world—a tall tale for mariners all about the Twelve Seas. Now they knew it for what it was: a vast and ancient ruin, in which squatted a host of the outlawed and the dispossessed. Murderers, thieves, escaped slaves, or men who simply found the world too small for them; they congregated there on the strength of a legend.
“Not much of a trip,” Rol said. “All blood and thunder, and damn-all to show for it but a pockmarked ship and half a dozen dead shipmates.”
“Seven hundred less Bionari in the world,” Gallico retorted. “There’s treasure for you.”
“You can’t put a corpse in your pocket, or eat one either.”
“I know some who’ve tried,” and Gallico grinned horribly, making them all laugh.
Rol drank from another bottle; they lay all about the beach like flotsam.
“Osprey and Skua are back in fighting trim this long while. It’s not like the Ka is undefended. What say you, Gallico, to a far-foreign cruise? Why not get this wind on our quarter and make for the Gut, and the Outer Reach? There’s fat Mercanter ships there that would make us rich men in a month. We could try and find that Tropic-line of yours, and cut it with our keel.”
“Skua and Osprey don’t carry such heavy metal as we,” Elias Creed said quietly. “Rol, you know we’re the only ship the Ka has that can take on men-of-war.”
Cortishane stood up, fist clenched around the neck of his bottle. He strode away from the fire—and as he did, a light began to shine in his eyes, cold as the edge of a sword.
“I know, I know. Where would I be, Elias, without you beside me to play mother hen?”
He made his way through the scattered clumps of mariners who were sprawled on the beach about their fires. Here and there he exchanged a word, a wave, a smile. The men respected their captain, esteemed him even. But he knew there was something in his eyes that prevented them from making that full, human connection.
And why not? Rol wondered. After all, I am not human.
He joined Giffon and his improbable infirmary. The company’s wounded had been made comfortable with what slim facilities the ship possessed. For those in unbearable pain, this meant stupefying amounts of hard liquor. Kier Eiserne had run up a crude table for Giffon’s heftier work, and this now stood in the sand with the raw wood of its top dark as mahogany, stained deep with blood. Giffon sat on it wiping his eyes with a filthy rag. At his side was a smeared bundle of tools more suited to carpentry than surgery.
“Giffon. How do they go?”
Giffon was a young, round-faced man with sandy hair and a snub nose. He seemed to be in his early teens, until one looked into his eyes and saw the memories there.
“Al-Hamn and Boravian will do well, I think. The stumps were clean, and I sewed flesh over the bone. Gran Tomasson died this evening.”
“Damn. He was a good man, as good a gun-captain as I’ve ever seen.”
“Half his ribs were gone. I’m amazed he lasted this long. As it is, all those who are still alive now will remain alive, if they can steer clear of fever.”
Rol gestured to the dark stains of the table. “You were cutting again tonight?”
“I didn’t like the smell of Morten’s leg, so I resectioned it again.”
Rol studied his youthful would-be surgeon closely. Giffon was exhausted. He had been looking after the wounded virtually single-handed for a week. Rol had sent seamen to lift and carry for him, and at times they had needed a half-dozen men to hold down some unfortunate when the pain of the saw was too much. But the bulk of the burden was Giffon’s. There was something indomitable about him. Had he the requisite knowledge, this boy might be a real healer. He had that touch. But he was no more than a butcher’s apprentice who had fled a harsh master and been picked up by slavers on the coast of Borhol. The usual abuse had followed, but somehow Giffon had escaped and made his way to the Ka. No one knew how, and the memories in those eyes stopped folk from asking. Like Elias Creed, he had buried his pain so deep there was no longer any way to go delving for it.
“It’s hard, for those of us who live and die in ships,” Rol said gently. “The blade, the shot, the surgeon’s saw—”
“And the deep dark of the sea,” Giffon said. “I know. We can put ships back together that are all but sunk, but when a man has a leg splintered, all we can do is take it off, and hope.”
Rol offered the boy his bottle. “Get drunk, Giffon. That’s an order.”
Giffon’s face twisted into a smile. “Can’t stand the taste of the stuff, skipper. I’d sell someone’s soul for a pint of cold buttermilk, though.”
“There’s wild goats in the hills. Grab ahold of one for long enough and we’ll get Gallico to tug on its teats for you.”
Giffon laughed, a short bark, no more. “I’ll sleep, I think. Skipper?”
“Yes?”
“Are we going back in now? Back to the Ka, I mean. There’s men here who ought to rest in beds ashore.”
Rol sighed. “Yes, Giffon. We’re going home.”
The word was still echoing in his head as he left the lights of the beach behind him and struck out into the woods, the taste of the evening’s rotgut sour in his mouth. The ground rose under the canopy of the trees, bare bones of stone thrusting up through the thin soil. Wild olive, juniper, pine, and cypress, and here and there a poplar, straight as a sentinel. As soon as the firelight had been left behind the night brightened in his sight, becoming clear as day. Part of it was the moonlight; part of it was the nature of the blood that beat through his heart.
He made his sure-footed way up one bald outcrop, and straightening there he found the vast, eldritch expanse of the Inner Reach spread out below him, the Revenant as tiny as a child’s forgotten toy, the campfires mere golden buttons. If he looked east, there was nothing but open sea for two hundred and fifty leagues. Behind him, the bulk of the Goloron Mountains loomed up in long blunted ridges of shadow to claw at the stars.
And what stars. They swirled in sky-spanning horsetails and banners and speckled sweeps of sprinkled silver, here and there the brighter glimmer of something larger. The Mariner. Gabriel’s Fist. Quintillian, the star his grandfather had once told him pointed to their home.
The only real home Rol had ever known was now a burnt-out shell on Dennifrey. His grandfather had died there with a crossbow bolt in his guts, murdered by a mob as his wife had been before him. Because of what ran in his blood.
You are not human, he had told his grandson. Almost his last words. Well, thank you, Grandfather. For raising me in ignorance, for telling me nothing of my heritage or history, until it was too late. You old bastard, long-winded in telling everything but the truth. And now here I am nursemaiding a city full of derelicts, doing the decent thing, keeping the wolf from the door. But what if I am the wolf?
The stars glittered down, everything below them a matter of cold irrelevance. Ganesh Ka had started to become home for him. He did not like that, but had no say in the process. You cannot choose the things you care for, he thought. If only you could.
He closed his eyes, a panoply of memories parading again before that tireless inner eye. And as always the last of them was the white, set face of a beautiful woman, her hair as dark as the wing of a raven. Rowen, the wom
an he had loved as a boy. His sister, now fighting to make herself a queen. The scalloped scar on the palm of his left hand tingled and he scratched it absently.
They stayed five more days in the sheltered cove, working on the ship, sending out foraging and watering parties, burying the latest of their dead. Elias took a work-party into the forests and came back with a pair of mature trees trimmed down to the trunk. They floated them out to the Revenant and hauled them aboard with tackles to the yardarms, then stowed them with infinite pains on the booms among the ship’s boats. Kier Eiserne was particularly glad to have them aboard; the carpenter had always worried about their lack of spare topmasts.
They hunted game with ship’s pistols, fished over the side, and caught birds inland with nets and quicklime—anything to vary the monotonous shipboard diet of biscuit and salted goat. After the first few days, Rol kept them at watch on watch, so that most of them had four hours of work followed by four hours of rest, around the clock. This was shipboard routine and they were used to it. The only exceptions were the so-called “idlers,” men like the carpenter, the cooper, the blacksmith, the sailmaker, and their mates. These men were only expected to work daylight hours, but still put in sixteen-hour days. A thing as complex as a ship-of-war needed the continual attention of a whole host of specialists, even when she was riding at anchor.
The five days passed, and the efforts of eighty men began to put the Revenant to rights again. The heaviest work was the restowing of the stores in the hold which had been boated ashore to let the carpenter come at the leak. As it was, she would need to be careened or dry-docked to give Kier Eiserne complete peace of mind, but she was ready to face the sea nonetheless. They had been helped by the fact that the ship was not deep in stores; they were only eighty leagues from Ganesh Ka, their cruise cut short by the encounter with the Bionese troopship and her escort. Now it was time to steer north again.
Rol sat in the great cabin, staring landward through the new timber of the stern window-frames. No glass, of course, but Kier had done a beautiful job of replacing the blasted wood. The sun was coming up, and the yellow dawn-light sent the ship’s shadow pouring onto the beach. The watch had been up on deck this last glass or so, making ready to weigh anchor. He could hear the quiet dawn-murmurs of the ship’s company through the deck-head, and yawned, muscles in the sides of his face cracking. Under him, the Revenant was pitching and rolling with a cacophony of creaks and groans, like a horse eager for the off. The wind must have picked up.
A soft knock on the cabin door, and without further ado Gallico twisted his huge form through the doorway. Rol grinned at him crouching there.
“Gods in heaven, Gallico, what in the world ever made you think you’d be comfortable on board a ship?”
The halftroll raised his paws helplessly. “Can I help it if all shipwrights are midgets?”
“How’s the wind?”
“Blowing in our teeth like a cheap tart.”
“Where from?”
“Due north, where else?”
Rol swore. “We need sea-room, then. No point in beating up the coast against it—if it veers it’ll have us on the rocks. What say you to getting it on the larboard beam, making east? There’s the southerly Trades that come up out of Cavaillon this time of year, off the mountains.”
Gallico studied his captain closely. “There is that, I suppose. But they don’t take hold until halfway out in the Reach. That’s a hundred and fifty leagues of blue-water sailing, if it’s an inch.” He paused. “You have no wish to go back to the Ka anytime soon, have you, Rol?”
“I’m thinking of the ship, and her crew.”
“Is it Artimion? He’s not the man he once was.”
Rol stood up. He, too, had to stoop under the deck-beams, and did so without conscious volition. “No, it’s not Artimion. He and I have made our peace. It’s Ganesh Ka itself, Gallico.”
“What about it?”
“Just a feeling, a notion, nothing more.”
“Spit it out before we grow old.”
“Gallico, I have this feeling that Ganesh Ka is unlucky. I think it was unlucky for whoever built it all those centuries or millennia ago, and I think it is for us also.”
Gallico’s eyes blazed. “It has sheltered some of us well enough these thirty years and more.”
More softly, Rol said, “It has sheltered me, too, Gallico. Nevertheless, something in me believes it is doomed, and everyone who remains within it.”
The halftroll’s anger faded, but there was still a hot glare about his eyes. “These Bionari cruisers and troopships?”
“They have something to do with it, yes. We’ve been sending them to the bottom one after another for going on six months now, and still they keep coming. Sooner or later, one will get through. Either that, or our luck will run out, and one of them will send us to the bottom.”
The halftroll considered this. “That’s as may be, but they’ve always had traffic up and down this coast—to supply their bases south of here. Golgos has a big garrison.”
“Had. We sank most of it in the Reach last spring.”
“You think that’s where they came from?”
“Where else? And now they’re not going to stop sending troops south until they find out what happened to it.”
“They’re fighting a civil war. They’ll give it up in the end—there are bigger fish in their pot.”
“Perhaps. In the meantime, this one ship and crew cannot hold off the entire navy of a great power single-handed.”
Gallico opened his mouth, but what he said was not what had been in his eyes. “Shall we weigh anchor, then?”
“Yes. And set a course due east. Get us out in blue water, Gallico.”
“You’re the captain,” the halftroll said, and his huge frame disappeared through the doorway with startling swiftness.
Rol stared after him. I’m become like Grandfather, he thought. I can mix truth and lies and make them sound the same.
Due east they steered, the wind on the larboard bow and the yards braced round as sharp as they could haul them, a quilt of staysails keeping the courses company, and all bellied taut and drawing with creaks and groans as the wind continued to freshen into a blue-water blow. They made better than forty leagues a day for three days, and then the wind began to fail them. It backed round, became whimsical and inconstant, and both watches grew weary trying to guess its next move. Four more days of wallowing and twitching and cursing Ran under their breath for his capriciousness, and then the storm-god or his spouse grew tired of toying with them, and let go their bag of winds.
The true southerlies off Cavaillon began, no more than a zephyr at first, then growing in brashness until the air was washing through the rigging with a hiss of glee. They altered course to west-nor’west, took the wind on the quarter, and spread courses, topsails, topgallants, every stitch of canvas they could rig on the yards. They were four hundred long sea-miles from Ganesh Ka, but at this constant ten knots they would run it off in two days.
Or would have, if Ran had not decided otherwise. The splendid southerlies slackened a day later to a steady breeze, no more. Their speed came down, and soon they were cruising along sedately with the beakhead barely pitching. They resigned themselves to it, as mariners must if they are not to go mad, and the convalescing wounded, at least, were glad of the ship’s easier pace. There was less banging of stumps or twisting of broken limbs, or bumping of burnt flesh.
Thirteen days and nights had passed since the battle with the Bionari. Though Kier Eiserne made a formal and lugubrious report to his captain every morning concerning the fragile state of the Revenant’s hull, the days of sailing were uneventful. They were well found in stores, fresh and preserved, and all of the more obvious damage to the ship had been repaired, even down to the replacing of starboard number three’s gun carriage. Giffon was able to come on deck and sun his pallid, moon-shaped face more often as his charges healed, and Rol made a point of inviting him to dinner in the great cabin more
than once.
The Revenant’s captain never dined alone. Gallico and Elias Creed were permanent fixtures—Gallico seated on a specially strengthened stool—and often the gunner or the bosun or the carpenter would be invited also. The youngest of the topmen would serve the food, one standing behind each diner, and they were compensated for their servitude by drinking glass for glass with the guests and joining in the conversation whenever the whim took them. Though the ship’s company was in many ways a rigid hierarchy, it was not an oppressive one, and when dinner was over the diners would repair to the quarterdeck and join in the tale-telling and song-singing which usually sprang up in the waist with the last dogwatch.
A clear night sky, with skeins of cloud drifting ghostlike before the magnificent sweep of the stars. The moon was a wide-bladed sickle halfway back to the full, and the ship was coursing along at no more than four knots, the sails drawing without strain to the yards. Rol stood at the break of the quarterdeck and listened along with most of the crew as the bosun, Fell Amertaz, a man as hard and fearsome as any pirate in a landsman’s imagination, sang a ballad of his native Augsmark, the tears trickling unashamedly into his iron-gray beard. The ship’s company listened respectfully, for Amertaz, though given to sentimentality, was a hard-handed bastard to cross.
“It must be a fine thing,” Elias Creed said quietly, “to be able to call one place home, one land your own, even if you never go back to it.”
“Your father was an Islander, wasn’t he, Elias? From Andelys?”
“So he was. But my mother was a ship’s slave and I was born on board the Barracuda.”
Rol smiled wryly. “Once I was told that I, too, had been born aboard a ship.”
“Then we are brothers in that, Rol—men with no country to call our own.”
Rol gestured to the ranks of privateers listening intently to Amertaz’s song. “You imagine any of them think of themselves as citizens of here or there? We belong to the sea, Elias. As for our home, we stand upon it.”