by Gene Wolfe
Noen squinted at the horizon, then at the sun. “Oeuni, how much do you know about magic?”
“Not enough to make sailors of Dinnile’s recruits.”
“We’ll do that. How long would you say it would take a good magician to raise a wind?”
“You’re serious, aren’t you, sir? I have no idea. I suppose it would depend on the size of the wind he wanted—longer for a storm to wreck a ship than for a zephyr to cool a garden.”
Noen nodded to himself. The wind had been gentle yesterday when the Zhironni sailed—a big ship wouldn’t have gone far on those light airs; and now Zhironni was probably as becalmed as they were. Worse in fact, because they were at least making two knots. A carrack would be drifting with the current. Perhaps Zhironni had no magician after all.
“Look at that! You served on one once, didn’t you, Captain?” Oeuni was pointing aft. Barely visible, the triplebanked oars of a trireme rose and fell like the wings of some enchanted bird.
“Yes,” Noen said. “They must have got under way a good deal later than we did.” That was a little consolation at least. He turned away to look at his own ship once more. Like most galleasses Windsong had only a single oar bank; but five rowers pulled each of her oars. Four rowers, or three, Noen reminded himself, when the crew was understrength.
With his telescope trained on the trireme, he tried to guess how many of its oar ports were empty. How beautiful she was! They had put up the mast, and it pointed to the heavens like a single white arrow.
But why? A trireme under oar normally shipped its mast, laying it flat in two cradles on the narrow storming deck that ran all the way from the quarterdeck to the gun deck on the forecastle. And why did it look so white? Could the captain of the trireme, still far behind him, see something he could not?
He turned to Oeuni. “You’re supposed to be keeping a weather eye out, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” Her face puzzled, she scanned the horizon.
“Try northward,” he advised her.
She squinted, shading her eyes with one hand.
“We’re in for a blow, Lieutenant. A carrack’s wind.”
And a soldier’s, as it proved, a wind that blew from dead astern and sent Windsong flying under reefed sails, pitching as if to shatter her flimsy hull each time her great bronze ram smashed into a wave.
“Pass the lard bucket, Lieutenant Dennile! The new hands will need it.”
“Tev Noen,” Oeuni asked at his ear, “what are we after?”
Surprised, he stared at her.
“I know, the Zhironni, and the rest is secret instructions. But what if you’re killed? I’ll be in command, and I won’t know what our objective is.” Her hand touched his, as if to remind him of how desirable she was.
He knew what she was offering him, and he knew he must refuse. The price of love bought with secrets would be his self-respect. He said, “I’ll try to tell you before I die, Lieutenant,” and she turned away.
Another watch, and stinging hail pelted the ship. Noen pulled the hood of his sea-cloak over his head, wondering if he should have his steward bring his helmet. They would be fighting soon anyway; he could feel it. Armor might save an officer’s life, but it endangered it as well. Many a captain, many a lieutenant, had gone to the bottom weighted with armor. Noen found that he was thinking of Oeuni drowned, helmetless, the green sealight shining on her shaven head, arms and long legs tossed in death’s parody of swimming. Oeuni whom he would never possess, drawn down to the dark by her cuirass. Ler Oeuni lost.
The lookout in the maintop shouted something that was blown away by the gale. Noen went to the quarterdeck railing. “Lookout! I can’t hear you!”
“Sail! Point to starboard!”
“Point to starboard,” Noen told the woman at the wheel, and vaulted the railing. Dinnile was still supervising the distribution of lard, seeing that each rower who needed it used it and that none took too much. Hands with infected blisters could not row; heavily greased fingers could not hold an oar, if rowing should be necessary again.
“Can they fight, Dinnile?” Noen asked as softly as the wind allowed. “Will they?”
Dinnile shrugged. “I dunno, sir.”
One of the nomads appeared at Noen’s shoulder, still rubbing his palms together. “Yes, we fight. Give us swords.”
Dinnile roared, “Stand to attention there!”
The nomad had better sea legs than most of them, and he stood as he must have seen the sailors stand, his brown rags flapping about him.
It was the first time, Noen realized, that he had looked at one of the new hands as an individual. Like all of them, this one was small and wiry—dark, though not so dark as a true Tichenese. Every line of his skull showed in his face, and Noen might have thought a candle lit there from the fire that burned in the bony sockets of those yellow eyes.
“Sir, we will fight. With our knives if we must. With our hands.”
“I think you will. Dinnile, break out the arms. Everything we’ve got.” Noen turned back to the nomad. “What’s your name?”
“Sir, Myllikesh.”
Oeuni was on the gun deck, checking Windsong’s main battery. When Noen put his telescope to his eye, she told him. “Zhironni.”
“Thank you,” Noen said, his voice expressionless. He forced himself to add, “Lieutenant.”
“You must have seen her at the docks. Fifty guns at least.”
“Mostly rail pieces.” On the pitching gun deck, it was hard to keep his telescope trained on Zhironni, but Noen glimpsed figures on her quarterdeck with their own lenses trained on him.
“And what have we got, aside from Poltergeist here?” Oeuni patted the big culverin affectionately on the muzzle. “Four basilisks and a couple of sakers. If those aren’t rail pieces, what are they?”
“And the ram,” Noen told her, shutting his telescope.
“Ram that? It will damage us more than it will them.”
To himself, Noen admitted she was probably right. Aloud he said, “Have the crew stand to quarters, Lieutenant.”
She shouted the order to the timesman aft. “Are we going to attack her straight out, sir? Shouldn’t we give them a warning shot—”
A smudge of black appeared at the carrack’s taffrail, instantly whisked away by the howling wind. The boom of the gun—a long basilisk much like the two on his own quarterdeck, Noen thought—was nearly lost.
“Waste your powder,” Oeuni told the Zhir. “You couldn’t hit Kil Island at this range.”
Noen wondered. Zhironni was a far more stable gun platform than Windsong.
Aft, the timesman had begun the long, fast roll that called every sailor and officer to fighting stations. The gun crews boiled out of the forecastle below the gun deck, some carrying baskets of the premeasured charges Oeuni liked, others shot and slow match. Just one of Poltergeist’s big iron balls was a load for any sailor—in so rough a sea, almost too much of a load.
The tompions were jerked from the muzzles of Poltergeist and the two swivel-mounted basilisks, powder and shot rammed home. (Privately Noen regretted the loss of the old system, in which the powder was poured down the gun bores from a scoop; then at least a captain could note its condition.)
The gun captains had kindled their slow matches at the galley firebox; they spun their glowing tips to keep them alight in the wind-blown spray.
Zhironni’s sternchaser spoke again, a bit more loudly this time. An instant later the port forestay parted with a snap. The bosun and his mate hurried forward to repair it.
“They’re rigging boarding nets, sir,” Oeuni reported.
“So I see,” Noen told her. “We won’t be going over the side anyway. Bosun! You’ve seen a xebec?”
Surprised, the bosun turned, touching his forehead. “Aye, sir.”
“You know how they slope the foremast forward to give the foresail more room? I want Windsong’s foremast to look like that. Tighten those forestays and slack off the backstays until the masthead’s raked
as far forward as our ram. And I want ratlines from the deck to the masthead.”
Dinnile was at the aft gundeck railing, touching his forehead. “Oars, sir?”
“No. Just have them ready to board—old hands first.” It was not necessary to tell Dinnile to lead them. He would anyway—probably would, Noen reflected, even if he were ordered not to. “Oeuni, see how that gallery overhangs at her stern? I’m going to bring us in under it. Disable the rudder as we’re coming in.”
As Noen spoke, one of the many-paned windows of the carrack’s stern cabin swung wide. The black muzzle of a gun emerged from it like the head of a snake as the other window opened.
“You can fire when ready.”
As Noen reached the lower deck, the port basilisk went off with a crash. The foremast was lurching toward the beakhead, and Dinnile had his boarding party mustered forward of the mainmast. Looking at him, Noen realized the burly mate must be as frightened as he was, but like himself would rather die than show it. “Good luck, Beddil,” he called. Then, “A place ashore!” It was something one said; the “place” was the grave, which could never be mentioned directly.
“A place ashore,” Dinnile responded cheerfully.
The port corner of the quarterdeck exploded in a cloud of splinters. “Steersman!” Noen yelled. “Port a point. We’re coming in the back door.”
The steersman’s “aye, aye” was strangely muted; when Noen reached the quarterdeck, he saw that a splinter had laid her cheek open, baring white molars in a misplaced grin. One of the starboard sternchaser crew was ripping up her shirt to staunch the bleeding.
The sternchasers would be no use in this fight. He sent the rest of their crews to join the boarding party.
The two sakers had already been shifted to the port rail. They would not be able to fire without damaging Windsong’s rigging until they were very close, he thought, but they might get a chance then.
Oeuni’s hail came faintly from the gun deck. “She’s luffing!”
Noen nodded to himself. Zhironni would try to turn in order to present her broadside to her attacker. But imposing though they were, carracks were notoriously unhandy, and now the wind made every plank in her towering freeboard work against her.
Dead ahead, a leviathan rose from the sea, golden-scaled, with eyes like pale moons and teeth like the blades of cutlasses. Poltergeist fired with a roar that shook the ship, and the giant fell backwards in a welter of blood. Noen braced himself for the shock when the ram struck its body, but there was none; it had sunk too quickly, or perhaps disappeared.
Somehow the culverin’s roar had reminded him that he had not yet wound the wheellock of his pistol. He got out the key and did so. A pistol with a tight lock was always dangerous, and if the lock were wound too soon, the spring might break or lose its strength. But shapes like horned Kil were clawing at Windsong’s racing sides with crimson hands, and it seemed to him that the time to wind it had come.
“Magic,” a crewman at one of the sakers wailed.
“Illusions,” Noen told him, shouting against the whistling wind. “He hasn’t had time for something new.”
Poltergeist and the gun-deck basilisks went off together; Zhironni’s rudder flew to bits, and ragged holes gaped in her transom. An unlucky roundshot cut through the boarding party, leaving a dozen hands writhing on the reeling deck. They were close now, so close Noen could see the dark faces of the gun crews through the sterncastle windows. He fired at one, not with much hope of hitting him, but because it was bad tactics to permit your enemy to fire without being fired upon.
Zhironni’s stern loomed above them. Noen felt they were hurtling toward a cliff, and it was no magical illusion, but the effect of the carrack’s sheer size. The sakers banged like hammer blows, scouring Zhironni’s sterncastle windows with harquebus balls and scrap metal. Noen shoved his pistol back into his belt and grabbed the quarterdeck railing.
The ram struck with a shock that nearly knocked him off his feet. Only weakly braced by its angled backstays, the foremast snapped, fell against the carrack’s stern, slipped, miraculously caught on the gilded moulding. As Dinnile’s boarding party swarmed up the ratlines, a Zhir with a petronel appeared at the taffrail. Noen fired the remaining barrel of his pistol at him, shouted for the sakers’ crews to follow, and leaped to the maindeck.
The ratlines were slack and thus hard to climb, lying almost against Zhironni’s stern gilding. Shattered window casements hung in shreds of iron, glass, and lead. A dead man slumped over the breech of one of the sternchasers. Noen hesitated, hardly daring to believe his eyes, put one foot on the gun muzzle, then the other. Half falling, he caught the window frame and swung into Zhironni’s stern cabin.
Outside, it had seemed impossible; but it was there. A circular, inlaid table was bolted to the floor in the center of the cabin; on it a small jade rabbit slid restlessly with the rolling of the ship, confined by the table rim. Only when he reached for it did Noen see the delicate girl who sat in shadow beside the cabin door.
“It is mine,” she said. “But it could be ours.”
The rabbit felt as cool as any river-washed stone.
“There are many isles—” She had risen and was coming toward him; her fingers toyed with a white rose. “—even in this little Sea of Luck. And there is the ocean beyond. We might master an isle and rule there together.” Her face had a delicate beauty that made Oeuni and every other woman Noen had ever seen seem like a man. No, a beast.
The cabin door flew open, kicked by a nomad with a knife in one hand and a cutlass in the other. Noen said, “This woman is a prisoner, Myllikesh. Take her to our ship and put her in the wardroom. See that’s she’s well treated.”
The nomad pointed to the rabbit with his cutlass. “Sir, move away your hand.”
Noen picked up the rabbit.
“Sir, I do not desire that I kill you. But you must give that to me.”
“You knew what it was,” Noen said. “That was why so many of you signed on. You heard it had left Liavek by ship, and you knew our ships would be sent after it.”
Myllikesh took a step nearer. “We told your stupid Guards of this ship, so your ships would be sent. Sir, I can kill you most easily before your sword is out. Put the rabbit down.”
Noen did.
The girl said softly, “Do you know its secret, brave man of the wastes? Tell me.”
Myllikesh turned to her, eyes flashing. “Yes, we know! Long ago our fathers were driven from S’Rian, but we remembered. Friends told us it was found, and we came!”
“Tell me. Now you will be a king.” Her great eyes were fixed on Myllikesh; Noen was surprised at the pain that gave him.
“I am a king! Now I shall rule a rich land.” The nomad laughed. “Rushing streams for us. Fruiting trees and fields of wheat! A great mage made this so S’Rians might have such a land, though the city was lost. But it was left behind, lost too. You must throw it down. That only! Then even rocks and sand will blossom.”
The white rose flashed forward and vanished in the nomad’s chest, then reappeared a red rose. He gasped and dropped his cutlass.
Noen hit the girl in the face with the twin barrels of his empty pistol. She staggered backwards; when she struck the canting cabin wall, she was an old man who grasped a scarlet dagger.
Myllikesh was half out the cabin window, one hand pressed to his wound, the other clutching the rabbit. Noen caught him by the neck and wrist, and the rabbit fell from his hand, tumbled down Zhironni’s towering stern, dropped between Zhironni and Windsong’s bow, and splashed into the sea.
When it touched the water, it seemed to bounce—the upward bound of a hunted hare who tried to sight its pursuers. It struck the water again running, jumping and skipping from wave to wave, racing across the restless sea as if the sea were an upland meadow.
Behind it, seals lifted sleek heads and a thousand dolphins bowed. The sea itself grew dark with the tiny creatures on which the smallest fish graze, and the great whales; fish surg
ed in silver shoals, swirling and leaping everywhere after the rabbit for as far as Noen’s eyes could follow it, until the sound of their swimming entered Zhironni’s timbers and filled the cabin like the humming of bees.
“Wasted,” Myllikesh whispered.
Noen thought of Syb and Su, of the unpainted fishing cottages on Minnow Island and the wretched shacks on Eel Island. “No,” he said. “Not wasted.”
But the rattle of the last breath was in the nomad’s throat.
From Windsong’s taffrail, Zhironni seemed a seaworthy ship. Her mainsail, maintop, and mizzen were all drawing, and though she listed a bit and the twin streams of water spurting from the lee side showed where Dinnile had prisoners at work on the pumps, Noen decided Zhironni might well limp back to Liavek even if they met with squalls. A captain’s share of prize money was a full quarter. That would not come to twenty thousand levars, he thought, but it might come close. Even damaged as she was, the big carrack should be worth sixty thousand at least.
“Rekkue!” he called to the midshipman of the watch. “Make signal: ‘reduce sail for night.’”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Tivlo! Reef the mainsail. We don’t want to lose her in the dark.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
The big triangular mainsail dripped. It was a great advantage of the lateen rig, Noen reflected, that the crew did not have to go aloft to take in sail or let it out. Some of the hands Tivlo was directing had been Myllikesh’s nomads; some were former slaves from Zhironni.
Rekkue told him, “Zhironni acknowledges, sir.”
Noen nodded. “I’m going below to write my report. In my absence, you’re officer of the watch. You’re to call me if anything happens. Anything, understand? Call me at the end of the watch and I’ll relieve you so you can get some sleep.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Rekkue touched her forehead.
She would be an officer soon, Noen thought. She was fit for one already. As he went down the steps to the lower deck, he decided to announce her acting promotion to third mate in the morning, if everything went well that night. He ducked automatically as he entered his cabin, pulled out his chair and seated himself before his little writing desk.