The Rats and the Ruling sea tcv-2

by Robert V. S. Redick

  He darted forward with startling speed. Thasha jumped feet-first through the opening, felt the man's blunt fingers graze her cheek, and then she was gone, flying down the pole with the cool slick grease flowing through her fingers and spattering her face, laughing as the decks flew by — main, upper gun, lower gun'How do I blary stop?'

  Even as she cried out, she understood: the grease turned to thick tallow, her hands began to rasp, and beneath her the boys shouted Squeeze! Use your legs! and she did so, and stopped almost elegantly a foot above the berth deck.

  '… see those men in the gun compartments?' Pazel was saying. 'What are they up to? What's Uskins doing with them?'

  'Not a clue,' said Neeps, cleaning his hands on a rag hung for that purpose beside the gunner's pole. 'And there's no time to find out. Come on, we have to take the ladderway from here.'

  There were no crowds at this level, and they descended the ladderway at a run. In the main compartment of the orlop deck, however, they met a troop of some dozen tarboys preparing to ascend. They were carrying cannonballs, plungers, and buckets of gunpowder.

  'Saroo!' Pazel cried as the tarboy struggled past. 'What in Rin's privy are you doing?'

  'Gun duty,' Saroo called over his shoulder. 'Just for show, mate. Rose don't like the looks of that whaler, somehow. Wants 'em to see we're armed.'

  Thasha watched the tarboys lumber up the stairwell. The explanation did not satisfy her, but Neeps was tugging impatiently at her sleeve. 'I didn't mean tomorrow, Thasha.'

  They ran diagonally across large and shadowy compartment and into the starboard passage. There they met Hercol, pacing nervously in the shadows. 'We are too late,' he said. 'She has gone.'

  'Who's gone?' Pazel demanded.

  'Diadrelu,' said Neeps in a furious whisper. 'Oh, hang it all! She warned me she couldn't stay!'

  He led them on, past the starboard sail locker and the midshipmen's cabinettes. Stepping through a bulkhead door, they came suddenly into a passage strewn with crockery, much of it broken, and a number of dirty spoons.

  'Teggatz sent me down here to collect the steerage dishes,' said Neeps. 'I had a perfect stack in my hands and was making for the ladderway when something pricked my foot.'

  'You mean you stepped on a nail,' said Pazel.

  'Hardly, mate.' Neeps glanced up and down the hallway, then knelt and began to probe the dusty boards with his fingertips. After a moment he seemed to find what he was looking for, and struck a board with the heel of his hand. There was no click, no creak of a hinge. But where the blow landed a tiny trapdoor sprang open. Within they could see only darkness.

  'Pitfire, Neeps,' whispered Thasha. 'You've found an ixchel door.'

  'I didn't exactly find it, to tell you the truth,' said Neeps. 'She caught my attention with the tip of her sword. Oh blast it, if only you hadn't been so hard to find! Dri had something terribly important to tell us.'

  'Close the door, Neeps,' said Hercol.

  'Just a minute,' said Thasha, startling them. She knelt and put her hand through the trapdoor. It led onto a narrow rectangular tunnel between the upper and lower floorboards. In one direction the way was blocked by a joist, but in the other the tunnel was open. Twisting, Thasha crammed her arm farther inside.

  'Be careful!' said Pazel.

  Thasha gave him an exasperated glance. 'How?'

  But even as she spoke her fingers met with a tiny scrap of paper, wedged into a crack in the floor. With great care she pinched it between two fingers, plucked it free and extracted her arm from the tunnel. Between her fingers lay a sheet of parchment no larger than a postage stamp.

  She raised the little sheet before her eyes. 'There's writing,' she said. 'Can you read it, Pazel?'

  The writing was finer than the veins on a fern. Pazel brought her hand close to his eye. 'It's in Ix,' he said. "Destroy this note. Close door. Return at five bells exactly. D.T. ap I." Those are her initials, all right.'

  Hercol peered at the note in amazement. 'Never in my life have I heard of ixchel deliberately leaving proof of their presence for a human to find,' he said.

  'She must be in danger,' said Thasha.

  'Or in great fear,' said Hercol. 'In any case it will be five bells in some thirty minutes. Let us scatter: the less we are seen together, the less we have to explain. But return to this spot promptly, I beg you. We must not make her wait again.'

  'Right,' said Pazel. 'Let's see what's brewing with that whaler.'

  He and Neeps set off for the topdeck like a pair of racing hounds, and Hercol departed forward, leaving Thasha quite alone. She swore. It had seemed the perfect moment to catch Pazel alone, drag him to some empty corner and straighten him out about Fulbreech. Blast the fool! Time was short, life slipped away. Wasn't it obvious that every hour they spent fighting was a gift to their enemies?

  She sighed: if they were really to scatter she would have to walk the length of the orlop deck, to the No. 5 ladderway in the stern.

  The passage led her back to the main compartment, where to her consternation Dr Chadfallow and Fulbreech himself were the first persons she saw. They were making for the surgery; Chadfallow was describing the proper placement of tourniquets above a severed limb. He barely glanced at Thasha, but Fulbreech gave her another of his dashing smiles. This time Thasha found it unsettling. Did some teasing knowledge reside in that face? Or was it simply the most handsome she had ever seen?

  She stormed across the compartment, barely conscious of where her feet were taking her. Men and boys, fibs and violence, games played with ships, hearts, weapons, worlds. To the Pits with all of them. To the Pits with you, Pazel, if you think I'm some rock for you to lean on one day, and piss against the next.

  'Help me!'

  Thasha drew her knife in a flash. The voice seemed that of a young woman's. It had come from the passage ahead. 'Who's there?' she shouted, dashing forwards.

  Two sailors in an adjoining hall came at a run, brandishing sail-cutting shears. But they had heard no voice save Thasha's, and looked at her dumbfounded when she claimed to have heard another girl crying for help. Thasha could scarcely blame them. She knew quite well that she was the only female anywhere near her age on the Great Ship.

  'That's live animals, up ahead, mistress,' said one of the men, pointing with his sheers. 'Like as not you heard one of Mr Latzlo's birds. Them golden parrots chatter up a storm, come feeding time.'

  Thasha believed she could tell the difference between a woman's voice and that of a bird, but rather than argue she simply hurried on her way. The passage darkened. She had no lamp, of course, and the orlop deck was submerged and windowless. The light-shafts were all but useless at this early hour; until high noon they produced little more than a twilight glow. But the ladderway ahead should have been easy enough to spot. Where had it gone?

  Far off to her left a familiar voice was chattering. It was Mr Druffle, the freebooter. He was terribly excited about something, but the walls between them prevented Thasha from catching a word. Then, just ahead of her, came a soft, bovine grunt.

  She had reached the live animal compartment. Thasha had visited this place before, and hated it. Groping forwards, breath held against the reek, she saw the black rumps of cows in their stalls, the gleam of padlocks on Mr Latzlo's crates of exotics. She heard the sudden beat of caged wings, the furious snorts of the Red River hog bashing tusks against its wooden cage, the whimpers and squeals of countless smaller creatures. The planks were sticky underfoot. The thirty feet or so seemed endless.

  As she stepped through the raised lip of the door at the compartment's end, something very shocking happened. The ship rolled. Instinctively, Thasha reached for the wall. Of course the Chathrand was always rolling gently, but this was different: a huge slow heaving, worse by far than the stormiest moments since the voyage began. The wind had exploded too: even here in the depths of the ship she could hear it, a monstrous moaning. Tree of Heaven, shelter me, she thought, involuntarily quoting a Lorg School prayer. How could the sea ch
ange so quickly? A moment later the ship rolled again.

  'Mr Druffle?' she called aloud. Her voice sounded small and weak. The enormous motions of the ship continued.

  Then the girl cried out again: farther ahead, and fainter. 'Don't touch me! Stay away!'

  At once Thasha broke into a run. She was certain now: whatever else was happening, that voice belonged to a girl her age, and it was sharp with terror. Someone was trying to do her harm.

  But now Thasha was truly lost. The passage stirred no memory in her whatsoever. It elbowed left where she expected a right. Doors she had never noticed stood closed, some bolted, others locked. The moan of a high wind reached her ears. Strangest of all, the air grew colder with every compartment she entered. It was more than the night chill that lingered in the Chathrand 's depths: this was a biting cold, like stepping into winter darkness from the warmth of one's home.

  'Vadul-lar! Corl habeth loden!'

  The shouts came from her left: big men, shouting encouragement to one another. A moment later Thasha caught sight of their lamps. There were a great many of them, broad-shouldered men with stern faces, running parallel to Thasha down another corridor. But what on earth was the language they were speaking?

  She sprinted ahead of them, losing her balance as the great swells heaved the Chathrand left and right, smashing heedless against the walls. Her training had taken over, her mind was awhirl. I'm in darkness, they can't see me, they have axes, they are chasing a girl.

  The mass of men had dropped fifty or sixty feet behind her when suddenly the girl appeared dashing across a wide-open chamber: a round-faced, dark-skinned girl of Thasha's height, dressed in clothes four sizes too large for her, the cuffs hacked off at wrists and ankles. On her heels were two of the strange men who had somehow outdistanced their companions. Still screaming for help, the girl weaved and darted, putting crates and stanchions between her and the men. But her exhaustion was glaringly plain: in another minute they would have her.

  Thasha flew at them, an attack plan crystalizing in her mind without the benefit of conscious thought. As she crossed the chamber one of the men caught a fistful of the girl's dark hair and wrenched her head back. So it was that Thasha saw her face even as she reached them, and shouted her name instead of a battle cry:

  'Marila!'

  The first man snapped to face her, and his own turning magnified the force of her fist. Even without such an advantage Thasha could land blows that would be the envy of many a fighting man: she felt teeth give way to her knuckles, and checked the weak jerk of his axe-hand with her elbow, and thought no more of him as he fell.

  The other man fared better. He was broad-shouldered and strong. Astonished as he was, he had the presence of mind to haul the screaming girl to his chest, a move that kept Thasha from striking him instantly. She feinted; he lurched to block her, thrusting with his axe, both of them staggering with the roll of the ship. Then Marila wrenched her head around and sank her teeth into the soft flesh of his forearm. The man howled and flung her forwards. Thasha leaped at him, twisting to let Marila fall past her. She had resolved to have his axe, nothing else mattered. The man was drawing back for a killing swipe when she closed on him.

  Thasha was no master fighter — that was the attainment of decades, not years — but she knew as they connected again that her opponent was not trained at all. Her left hand rose to meet the axe. Her eyes never left it. And his eyes followed hers, unthinking, so that he never saw the knife that ripped across his belly, parting shirt and flesh in a foot-long gash. Thasha spun beneath his still-upraised arm, twisting the forgotten axe out of his hand. As the man doubled over she clubbed him down with the weapon's heel. He crumpled, beaten but still conscious, holding his gut and screaming for aid.

  Now Thasha leaped to Marila's side, her mind surfacing from its trancelike concentration — but only just. Marila, aboard. The others are coming. Why is it so cold?

  For it was freezing now: her breath plumed white before her eyes. And wasn't that a skin of frost upon a barrel-top?

  'Thasha,' gasped Marila, looking up at her in terror. 'Am I dead?'

  'What are you talking about? Get up, hurry!'

  'Where will you take me? Can you help me?'

  'I'm trying, Marila. Get up!'

  But it was clear that Marila wanted something more than protection from the men. Whatever that something was had to wait, however. Thasha pulled her to her feet, turned, groped for the lantern the first man had dropped-and watched oil gush from its broken side as she lifted it. Oil suddenly blinding as the flame jumped from the mantle to the leak, and then spread with a terrifying whump across the racing slick on the deck.

  'No! ' cried Thasha.

  The oil forked and slithered, and the flame moved with it. Suddenly the whole pack of men burst into the chamber. They stopped dead at the sight before them: two girls ringed in flames, above two wounded men. Then they all began shouting the same word:

  'Surl! Surl! Surl!'

  Thasha didn't have to ask what surl meant. She pulled Marila away as they attacked the blaze, stumbling into the darkness of the passage behind.

  'Are you bleeding?' she demanded.

  'No,' said the Tholjassan girl. 'Thasha, who are they?'

  'I don't know. Stowaways, thieves. The Turachs will slaughter them. Blast it, dropped my knife-'

  'Thasha, you're not — I heard them shouting that you were-'

  'Dead? Not quite, Marila. Hurry up, now, before they find a way around.'

  'That man will bleed to death, won't he?'

  Thasha's breath caught in her throat. She hauled Marila by the arm. 'No more questions. Not until we're out of this blary mess. Rin's teeth, that's ice on the deck!'

  They stumbled on, feeling their way through a Chathrand both familiar and intensely strange. The very air had a different smell, and the wood itself felt smoother, less cracked and pitted with age. Thasha had a vague hope that they were still making for the stern, where they could not possibly fail to come across a ladderway. But in darkness the ship felt larger than ever, and in truth she had no idea where they were.

  Suddenly she caught the scent of animals again. Impossible! But there it was, dead ahead: the dim shape of the compartment door, the screeching birds, the cattle. Somehow she had turned about completely and run back to the bow.

  They dashed through the straw-littered compartment. Instantly the air warmed, and the far-off howl of the wind died away. Thasha pulled Marila to a halt. She touched a beam: the chill was gone. And now she realised that the violent rolling of the ship had ended too. Thasha cast a wild eye back over her shoulder. What in the Nine Pits is happening?

  Marila gazed at her, perfectly expressionless and still. Then she threw her arms around Thasha and hugged her, shaking from head to foot. Thasha patted her back. The girl smelled rather worse than the cows.

  They walked on in silence. Daylight streamed down from the tonnage hatch. As they passed the surgery Thasha heard Chadfallow lecturing Fulbreech on the miracle of blood coagulants.

  'There's Thasha now,' said an approving voice, farther ahead. 'Right on time.'

  It was Hercol. The Tholjassan stood with the tarboys at the spot where Neeps had opened the ixchel door. But when the boys caught sight of Marila they ran forwards, muffling shouts of astonishment.

  'You mad cat!' said a delighted Neeps. 'I thought we'd seen the last of you in Ormael! Where's your little brother? What on earth are you doing here?'

  'Stowing away,' said Marila, in the flat tone she used so often.

  'But what on earth for?' Neeps pressed.

  Marila hesitated, looking at him. 'I didn't want to go home,' she said at last.

  The boys looked at her awkwardly. 'Home must be blary rotten,' said Pazel.

  Marila shrugged. 'There's always work in Etherhorde.'

  It was never easy to read emotion on Marila's face, but when they told her that the ship was not bound for Etherhorde the corners of her mouth drooped visibly. And when they told
her they were bound for the Ruling Sea her mouth fell open and her breath caught in her throat. She looked at them each in turn.

  'You're crazy,' she said. 'We're all going to die.'

  No one was prepared to argue the point. Then Thasha shook herself, as if trying to cast off a sudden drowsiness. 'The fire,' she said.

  'Fire, fire?' cried the others.

  Only Marila looked at her with comprehension. 'The fire! The men with axes! Where did they go?'

  She and Thasha struggled to make themselves understood. Everything that had happened in the darkness — the freezing cold, the violent pitching of the ship, the quick, bloody battle — had very nearly disappeared from their minds. Only when Marila had said the word die had the memory rushed back, whole, like a dream recovered by them both. Now Marila was terrified. She had crept out of the sack where she'd been hiding because of the cold, she explained. But the ship she had found herself in was almost unrecognisable.

  'I didn't know the men, or their clothes, or the language they spoke. They were horrible, like pirates or Volpeks.'

  'They're gone,' said Thasha, looking restlessly up and down the passage. 'Can't you tell, Marila? They're not hiding. They're… somewhere else entirely. And the fire's gone too, and the storm.'

  'It wasn't a dream,' said Marila firmly. "One of them tore out my hair. It still hurts.'

  Thasha winced: a man had torn Marila's hair, and Thasa had slashed his belly open. If one was real, surely so was the other? She crossed her arms over her own belly, revolted.

  Pazel noticed her distress. 'What's the matter with you?'

  Thasha shook her head. 'Nothing. Dropped my knife, I think.' She groped at her belt as if making sure. The others were looking at her closely. She had not mentioned what she had done with that knife, and didn't much want to. 'I think I'm going to be sick,' she said.

  'I am sick,' said Marila. 'And thirsty. I drank the last of my water yesterday.'

  'Thasha,' said Hercol, 'take Marila to the stateroom and see to her needs, and your own. One of you boys put your coat over her head and shoulders. Let her pass for one of you if she can.'