Meade nodded grimly. “And the House of Hidor waits for any of them fool enough to throw up ropes and board us.” He slapped the hilt of his cutlass meaningfully. Several of the other men did the same, looking desperate and mean.
“I’ll see to the harbor chain.” Hankin O’Kundrell added. “Me and a few likely lads. Once we get it down ye can take us back aboard as ye pass.”
Many of the lines were frozen in their tidy coils on deck, and it fell to Coril and Elo O’Zorc to break them loose of the ice and prepare them for sailing, while the rest of the crew saw to the sails. Having sat furled for so long, the sails were stiff and reluctant, but with hands cramped from the cold the men shook them loose, and all hands were standing by the rigging as Meade weighed anchor and the Sally’s High Touch began to move across the harbor toward the tower that controlled the anchor chains. Hankin O’Kundrell and two other men climbed down from the side of the ship on ropes and approached the building, with boarding cutlasses in their hands.
Hankin had been with the Sally’s High Touch for four years, and like all of the men on board, he practically worshiped her captain. He was eager to do his part on getting the ship free, and he was certain that once the harbor chain was down, they would be able get free of Northcraven City. Before the long months of famine Hankin had been one of the strongest men on the ship, with only perhaps Parry Meade and Elo O’Zoric before him, and even half-starved as he was, he knew he could handle any resistance he encountered in the little tower. He clambered up the rough pile of rocks that was the seawall, and they were slick with snow and very cold. The solidity of the ground felt odd to him, as it always did after a long time spent on a ship, for even sitting in the still harbor, there was always some small movement beneath his feet. His hands were stinging as he tried the door to the little tower and found it surprisingly unlocked. What he found within shocked him.
In the dim light that was coming through the tower’s narrow stone arrow-slits Hankin saw two men sitting at a small wooden table with their heads slumped onto it, but both men were dead. They were dressed in the livery of the harbor master’s men, and they had starved to death, he supposed, for there were no marks on either of them, but they were gaunt and thin. The lamp that had stood between them had long since run out of oil, and the wick was burned down to nothing. A small collection of dice and coins sat at the table, so perhaps they had both died at the same time, which Hankin found odd. Nevertheless, the great spindle that controlled the harbor chain was near at hand, and Hankin wasted no time in breaking it free of whatever ice had locked it up, and he released the little blocks that held it, allowing the weight of the anchor chain to lower itself.
Hankin and the two men who had come with him then left the little tower, and they left even the coins behind, for having served with Captain Berrol for as long as they had, they wouldn’t even steal from the dead. The Sally’s High Touch came abreast of them and slowed, and they climbed ropes back onto her decks. Hankin washed his hands carefully before touching any part of the ship, for he wanted to carry no trace of Northcraven or her plagues with him when he left. On hearing his report, Captain Berrol yelled out to the other watchtower as they left, letting them know the harbor chain was down. “Good luck to you, captain.” A voice cried out from the distance, but Hankin couldn’t see who it might have been.
Coril was back in the rigging and keeping watch, but it was as Captain Berrol had said. With the wind blowing thick swirls of snow all about, he could see no farther than a few ells in front of the vessel. He knew that D’barran Brinn, the ship’s pilot, could direct the vessel even in the blind night, so he was not worried about them losing their course or direction. They left Northcraven behind them, freezing in its long death-throes, the snow falling on it like embalmer’s powder.
Full sail was up, but Captain Berrol was taking her out with only the working jibs, letting the other sails flap meaninglessly in the wind. They made little enough noise, and that pretty much indistinguishable from other sounds in the blizzard, so Coril was not worried about the sound giving away their attempt at escape.
The wind pulled them slowly across the open water in front of the harbor, moving them much faster than the flow of the river’s current. Occasionally Coril could see the shape of a tree on the eastern shore, hazy reminders that land was near, but the line between dark water and snow-whitened shore faded and only occasionally came into view as they moved north.
After maybe two hours of moving in this way, Coril grew excited despite the bitter cold, for already they were nearly into the channel that ran between Harborville Island and the eastern shore, and with quiet commands Berrol and the mate were tightening up the mainsail and the many working sails around it. The ship began to move in earnest, and a white froth formed at her bow as she cut across the waves. His excitement quickly died when he heard the sound of the Aulig drums. He picked up a barrel of brine and prepared to douse any flaming arrows that might hit the sails or rigging.
At first the drumming was all behind them, but soon more drums began sounding from in front of the vessel, and Coril peered intently ahead, looking for any canoes amid the flurries of snow. “War canoe, dead ahead!” He shouted, seeing a dim form emerging from the blizzard. Men ran from their stations with long poles or cutlasses, and ten men formed into a ring at the bow of the ship. A single metal hook with a long rope attached landed on the deck, but Meade was there, and he cut the rope while holding onto the hook.
The sound of an impact came to Coril’s ear, and it was the sound of the Sally’s High Touch smashing into the much lighter war canoe, followed by the shouts and screams of the Auligs as they plunged into the bitterly cold waters of Northcraven Deep. “Press on!” Captain Berrol shouted at Brinn, and the Sally’s High Touch picked up even more speed, flying north through the waves on a tight tack with a strong westerly wind aslant of them. Twice more they encountered war canoes, but the Auligs seemed shocked to see them emerging from the falling and wind-driven snow, and they did not seem to know what to do about it. A single flaming arrow alighted next to the mainsail, but it came from behind them, and Coril doused it quickly. It would make a nice souvenir from his sojourn in Northcraven City.
Two hours later, riding with full sails and with the strong wind still pushing them, Coril knew that they were free. By the end of the day they were rounding the tip of the Emerald Peninsula and in the North Sea proper, and every man on deck gave a mighty cheer, even as they shoveled or pushed snow into piles and threw it over the side. Coril still kept watch, but he knew he no longer needed to. No ship but one sailed by a madman or a desperate escapee would be abroad in this storm, but keeping watch was better than slogging about on deck with a shovel, so he was glad of the duty. When darkness came Coril went below decks, slung his hammock, piled blankets about him, and slept. It was the first sleep he’d had free of dread in months.
She was the love his life, this ship. He’d seen her born in the Kancro shipyard twenty years gone, and even though then he was just a first mate, he’d known from the moment of her completion that he had to have her. Five years of watching every penny and putting every bit of extra money into clever investments, and he’d bought a half-share in her, and it had taken another five years to pay her off and make her his.
She was more faithful than any woman, and in all of the time he’d loved her and known her, she’d never cheated him of a single bit of wind or service. He knew her intimately, every line and every plank, and he cared for her with a diligence that a saint might have envied. He loved her lines and her form and her way of jumping up quick into the waves. It was out of this love that he wouldn’t suffer any but her proper full name to be said in his hearing.
He knew what she could take and he knew what would break her, and he was as careful of her as a jealous lover. Now she was making her way in the North Sea, riding a storm that might have been born in hell, thundering over deep swells and tall waves breaking across her stern while the snow tried to bury her and ice threate
ned to snap her lines or tear her sails. Still, Endam Berrol had faith in her, for although this was a storm that might have killed many another ship, it wouldn’t kill the Sally’s High Touch.
He knew his crew, too. He had hand-picked every one of the twenty men who manned his ship, and he knew their hunger and their weariness. He’d felt their despair while they watched Northcraven die, and he felt their exultation at having escaped that death. They were hungry, but Berrol had planned for this escape, rigging his hope against the bitter wind of despair, and he had planned carefully, like he did all things.
He’d had Eldrian Cane secretly baking and drying half of Parry Meade’s catches in Northcraven Harbor, and he had a barrel of dried and salted fish. Half of every bit of fresh water they’d managed to squeeze from the sails sat in a barrel in the galley, ready to be rolled out in triumph when the men grew thirsty. He’d even managed to hoard a mite of flour, although little enough was left.
For a long time he walked her deck as she battled against the storm, encouraging his men and holding onto the rails as she dove into the troughs of the enormous swells this part of the sea was known for. He didn’t think of this as the North Sea, for it was just a small part of the all-encompassing sea itself, and every bit of it flowed together into the one great sea, the other love of his life. Or perhaps it was just the house in which he and his true love danced together down the long and happy years.
When night came he retired to his quarters, and there he sat with his charts and his paper for putting figures on, and he thought of and wrote down numbers to describe tide and drift and wind and time, and through the numbers and the chart he knew where he was, within a mile, perhaps.
To another man, a land man, the night would have seemed dreadful. The ship rose and fell steeply into troughs of water to emerge in shaking triumph again and again. Thick flurries of snow obscured all vision but that within a quarter mile of the ship, and when night came on even that limited vision disappeared. The men hung covered oil lamps where they could, so that they could knock the ice from the rigging where it accumulated. There were no stars to see or to lay a course by, but Errol had his compass, a bit of iron suspended in oil under glass that never failed to point north. By the magic that was in it he guided his course surely, and the miles slipped away behind him.
In the morning, if the storm still raged, he would have to start a long southeasterly tack, and if the wind was blowing like it was now, he would have to reduce his sail to one-fourth. It was a difficult rig to put up, but nothing he hadn’t done before, if not with this crew. For now he stole the power of the wind, running full sail before it, battling his way eastward in the night. He was so engaged in his task and his figures that he scarcely noticed that he was cold.
Coril shivered as he tumbled to the floor, rolling out of his hammock like a first-day sailor and falling to his knees. It was no way to begin a day, but he’d had worse. He emerged from the crew hold to stand blinking against the snow-filled sky, bright in the light of a new day. What had roused him was cursing, which was unusual on the Sally’s High Touch, and in fact was not allowed. But he saw the cause of it and he understood why Hankin O’Kundrell was letting a few choice words slip.
The big man was dragging a frozen coil of rope across the deck, while half a dozen other men scrambled among snow-covered canvas, pulling down sails and shifting them about, to hoist them in different places or to put them in the empty hold. The captain had ordered a new rigging, something Coril had never seen before, with all the high sails down and only about half of the low sails hoisted. None of the sailors liked to do new things or different things than they were used to, and this rigging looked a very pain in the ass to assemble.
Nonetheless, even in the driving wind and snow they managed it, and as soon as the winches were tightened up D’barran turned the ship, and wind half-heeled her over with its force as they began to tack southeastward. Another man might have been thrown from his feet, but Coril was a sailor born, and he took the change in stride with a deep bend of his knees.
Although the snow was still falling, it was not so heavy as yesterday, and visibility was good. He buttoned up his sea coat and climbed the icy rigging to find an exhausted Altomin O’Rior nodding against the mast in the watch basket. “My shift, Altomin.” He said gently, so that no one would hear the man come awake or know that he’d been sleeping. Coril understood his exhaustion, for they were all exhausted, and it had been a long and fitful night.
Altomin looked guiltily at Coril, then climbed below to sling a hammock. The ship was moving along fair and square, and Coril put a hand up to shield his face from the snow that was stinging it. He braced his feet and stared forward into the bitter morning, wishing he had a hot flagon full of soup. It was not the first time he’d wished for food, and if they had all come true, Coril might have been as huge as Elo. Well, as huge as Elo had been before the famine. They were none of them what they’d been before.
For perhaps an hour he stood like this, moving his legs from time to time so as to avoid them getting stiff, and then he called down to Parry Meade, walking and scowling at the snow below him. “Ware mate. Leviathan fifteen degrees to port.”
The leviathans of the North Sea were gigantic fish that sometimes came to the surface and blew smoke and flames from the holes in their backs. Coril had heard that sometimes the leviathans would shoot flame into the rigging of passing ships, but although he’d seen many of them, he’d never actually seen the flames. Usually it was just a blast of water and air. Truthfully, it was hard to tell the difference between a leviathan and a whale, but it was tradition to call out ‘leviathan’ whether it was one or the other, and this might have just been a whale, although it wasn’t moving.
Meade came up to the watchbasket and stood beside Coril, catching up a far-glass on the way. He peered through it for a moment, seeing the distant shape in the water, rising and falling with the North Sea swells, although they might have been into Northcraven Sound by now. “That’s no leviathan, Jemms.” The mate said in his customary growl. “Tis no whale, neither. That’s a wreck.” He sighed. “We’ll likely need to take a look at her.”
Down the rigging he went, as easily as Coril might have, for Parry Meade knew this ship and could do any man’s job on her better than that man himself. After a few moments Captain Berrol emerged from his quarters and walked up to the starboard bow. “Prepare to drop anchor.” He called, then to D’barran he said, “Helmsman, give me about fifteen degrees starboard and drop all sails but the jib.”
All of the crew who were awake on this shift were needed to perform the maneuver, what with the strange rigging the Touch was running, and Coril helped pull and furl the mainsail, his hands almost refusing to unbend to the task in the bitter cold.
“That’s a warship.” The captain said to Meade, who nodded his head in agreement.
“Aye. Capsized last night, I’d say. T’was surely enough wind. She’s one of ours, too. That’s a Jagle made frigate if ever I saw one.”
As the Touch drifted closer Coril could see flotsam in the water around the ship, bits of rigging and sail, broken spars and timbers, and two or three floating bodies. Having spent the fall in Northcraven, however, the sight of the bodies did not draw much of a reaction from the crew.
“Well, there’s naught we can do for her, mate.” Captain Berrol said at last. “Helmsman, put us back down the wind, and on to Nevermind. Coril, keep a watch up there for any ship’s boats.” With the wind and waves having been what they were the night before, Coril knew there was little chance of survivors, for any ship’s boat would have surely been swamped and sunk.
As they sailed down the eastern shore of the Emerald Peninsula, visible only occasionally in the distance in the endlessly falling snow, they encountered five more capsized wrecks, and the fifth was a grand schooner, a huge ship with more than a dozen bodies floating in the water nearby. Several of the bodies wore the pale blue tabards of House Ismarins.
Although they did
not know it, the broken ships lay scattered all across the Northcraven Sound, from Atlan Bay to Damrek, for the storm had been a fury and they’d been caught unprepared. Warships are made for war, after all, and not one of them as seaworthy as a sound merchantman.
They sailed through the night, making their sure way to Nevermind’s protected harbor.
Chapter 87: Jecha in Mortentia City, Latter Leath
Jecha cradled the porcelain cup and sipped delicately, for the tea was very hot. She was cold, however, for she was old and her body didn’t stand to the cold like it used to. In the wagon the little iron stove burned brightly, but even feeding it diligently didn’t keep out this cold, driven as it was by a bitter northern wind and laden with snow. It was the first storm of winter, a mighty blizzard that even now shattered fleets and buried marching armies in its fury, although she didn’t know this.
She didn’t know this, and there were many other things she should have known but didn’t, for the bones had been dead no matter how often she bounced them across the capper’s table, and not a true throw for weeks. Still, there were things she did know, for the bones were not the only means by which she learned things.
Three big men were walking around the King’s Town, and all three asking questions they had no business knowing anything about. Or perhaps they did, but there were secrets the Entreddi kept, and these three touched upon them heavily and without wariness. Today, if all went well, she would have a chance to speak to these three big men, and find out what they knew.
One of the men, the one with the scalloped blade and the Hulmini accent, she intended to make talk whether he wished it or not, and only his death would bring him the chance to remain silent. His death was preordained, for she herself had ordained it not minutes ago. For a month and a day she had been looking for this man, and he had finally surfaced, perhaps driven by panic or frustration, and shortly the Entreddi would have him. She did not doubt this, not because she had seen it in the bones, but because she knew her people and what they could do.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 115