PRAISE FOR SHIP KINGS
‘An exhilarating read. McGahan lets his adventure build gently and a detailed, evocative coming-of-age story unfolds.’
The Saturday Age
‘This beautifully crafted novel shapes up as a classic seafaring tale. In Dow, we have the makings of a classic hero.’
The Herald Sun
‘McGahan captures the mystery and romance of the sea, and draws us in with his fine portrayal of his restless lead.’
Australian Bookseller + Publisher
‘McGahan’s narrative is gripping and melancholy ... the prose evocative… utterly compelling.’
Australian Book Review
‘McGahan has produced a memorable start to his trilogy, peopled with characters who stay in the mind ...
One can only hope that it will not be long before the next episode of Dow’s life takes place.’
Magpies
‘Masterful storytelling, elegant prose and a powerful sense of place ... the kind of storytelling that stays with you long after the tale has ended.’
Viewpoint
SHIP KINGS
THE COMING OF THE WHIRLPOOL
THE VOYAGE OF THE UNQUIET ICE
To Follow:
THE WAR OF THE FOUR ISLES
THE OCEAN OF THE DEAD
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
First published in 2012
Copyright © Andrew McGahan 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
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A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of
Australia www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 9 781 74237 822 0
Cover and text design by Liz Seymour
Cover, map and internal illustrations by Ritva Voutila
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
1. A SUMMONS TO THE ICE
2. THE THOUSAND-GUN SHIP
3. THE ELEVEN KINGS
4. THE PLIGHT OF THE SEA LORD
5. OF ICE AND NICRE
6. NORTHWARD BOUND
7. IN THE LATITUDE OF STORMS AND MISTS
8. THE ISLE OF THE LOST
9. THE SCAPEGOAT’S PROPOSAL
10. THE INNER SEA
11. MANY CONFESSIONS
12. VINCENTE’S GIFT
13. DIEGO’S REVENGE
14. THE BLACKSMITH’S SECRET
15. EBB TIDE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
In the beginning – at least as Ship Kings scholars would tell the tale – there was only one inhabited land in all the world, and that was Great Island.
It was there, in the days before history began, that the first people arose; the ancestors of the Ship Kings, although they were not then called by that name. Indeed, they were not even sailors – they were an inland folk, roaming the ancient forests of Great Island’s interior. But in time those forests turned to deserts, and the people were forced to the coasts, where they first beheld the Great Ocean. And they stared in wonder, for they had not known that their vast land was ringed all about by even vaster waters.
A hunger woke in them to explore the sea, and so they built their first flimsy boats, and established their first harbours from which to launch them. These ports became cities, and the cities came to rule over great territories, and thus became kingdoms – the famed eleven kingdoms of antiquity. Yet even as the kingdoms were founded, they were at war with one another, for although the folk of Great Island were one by blood and language, they were proud and fierce too, quick to take offence, and eager for conflict.
But their deepest passion remained the sea, and even amid all their warring and dissension, their shipbuilding skills increased, their vessels grew larger, and their mariners roamed ever further from their home shores, delighting in the joys of the open ocean and of unfamiliar stars.
They wondered, too, if there were other lands to be found, but for many years such discovery eluded them; the world seemed empty of anything but water. But finally another land was indeed happened upon, some two months sail to the west; a grey isle set in cold seas. It was only half as large as Great Island, and mountainous and snow-covered in part, but it was fertile even so, and quite uninhabited. A fresh land. A new land.
And so they called it New Island.
Inspired by this success seafarers dared to sail further yet, and at length they located two more lands, Whale Island and Red Island, each small in size, but rich in its own special way. These Twin Isles – as they were also known, being set close together – lay amid the warm seas of the south, and were a further two months sail southwest from New Island. In fact, for mariners from the eleven kingdoms, the Twin Isles were fully halfway around the world. And it was in this time – the great Age of Exploration – that ships first circled the world entire and came back to where they had begun.
The circumnavigators discovered no additional lands, however. Instead they found only increasing dangers – monsters of the deep, and terrible storms, and treacherous reefs. And their paths were hemmed on either hand. Those who ventured north met waters choked with mountains of grinding ice, and those who went south were thwarted by the Barrier Doldrums, ringing the waist of the globe and hiding forever its southern half.
Ships were lost, and men died, and captains grew wary. The habitable world, it seemed, consisted of the Four Isles alone, and elsewhere lay naught but perilous wastes into which it was foolish to stray. The Ship Kings declared that all discovery was therefore done and that they were masters now of all the sea. But in truth the greater part of the ocean remained dark to them, and ships sailed only the narrow, safe waters between the Four Isles.
Nevertheless, those waters were busy, for settlement of the new lands carried on apace, with each of the eleven kingdoms establishing colonies on the new islands. The colonies prospered, and wealth flowed back to the homelands. But from that wealth new jealousies arose, and finally the eleven kingdoms fell into a cycle of wars more bitter and long-lasting than ever before – and in doing so lost control of their settlements.
For the settlers turned their backs upon the old rivalries of the kingdoms, and declared independence. They became, in turn, New Islanders and Whale Islanders and Red Islanders. And as the Ship Kings (as they now began to be called) warred on through the centuries, the three newer Isles developed their own ways and beliefs, so different to those of their forefathers that it became hard to believe they had even been akin.
But the new Isles had one great weakness; they were not martial peoples. Although they built their own fleets, and were skilled mariners in their fashion, they sailed mainly for fishing or trade, not for warfare – and warfare was an art that t
he Ship Kings had honed above all others. Thus when the eleven kingdoms of Great Island made peace between themselves at last, and united under the first Sea Lord, they knew themselves to be stronger than their colonies of old. And so the Great War was declared, and won, and lost.
But even after the war, when Great Island once again ruled over all, the Ship Kings were still slow to resume their voyages of exploration. For they had changed by then as a people, and where once they had sailed for sailing’s own sake, they now sailed only as warriors and overlords, amassing the spoils of their empire. No new era of discovery dawned, and the distant wilds of the ocean remained unvisited, save by rare wanderers who seldom returned, and whose tales were scarcely believed if they did.
Into such a time was born Dow Amber, the New Island boy of lowly station who – against all custom and precedent – came to set sail upon the open sea at the invitation of the Ship Kings, taken aboard the battleship Chloe by order of its commander, Captain Vincente of the Shinbone.
Young Dow had already gained no small fame by then for his riding of the maelstrom, but even greater deeds awaited him. Indeed, upon only his second voyage, Dow – and the scapegoat girl, Ignella of the Cave, with him – would lay bare a mystery of the sea that had baffled even the bravest of the Ship Kings explorers in their Golden Age, and which had defied discovery through the half a thousand years that had passed since.
It is with that renowned voyage that this volume – the second in the chronicles of Dow Amber – is chiefly concerned. Of Dow’s first voyage there is little to report. It was, after all, a mere two month crossing between New Island and Great Island; and although seafaring is ever hazardous, this was a well traversed route, and rarely a troubled one.
Nonetheless, one episode from that first voyage has passed into legend, and the tale of it must now be told, for it was afterwards seen by many to be a forewarning of the momentous events that were to follow.
The incident occurred as the crossing was nearing its end, and the Chloe was drawing close to home waters.
It was the day the albatross came …
1. A SUMMONS TO THE ICE
Hiss. Bubble. Thump.
Even after seven weeks it was still a peculiar sound to Dow’s ear – the mutter of the sea against the Chloe’s hull, heard from the dry darkness within, deep below the waterline.
Partly it was the swish of water running along the ship’s side, muted by the intervening inches of wood and nicre, but partly too it was a strange rattling that didn’t sound like water at all, but more like solid things knocking against the hull. It was to such a knocking that Dow now woke; a phantom fist seemed to be rapping against the planking by his head, a creature in the dark water beyond, hammering urgently to be let in … Dow opened his eyes to the dim light of the lower decks. A foot from his face was the curve of the inner hull; a moment later it was two feet away as his hammock swung on its moorings. He stared at the planking, but the rapping was gone, if it had ever really been there. The only sound now was the whisper of flowing water, and with it the ever present background cacophony that was the Chloe under sail – the creaking of countless timbers and joists, and, more distantly, the clatters and shouts (and snores) of six hundred men going about their work or slumbering through their off watches.
Six hundred men, that was, and one girl.
Dow drifted for a moment. Had he been dreaming about her again? It was strange. He saw so little of her, for the Chloe was a huge ship, and they inhabited very different parts of it, and yet he often woke to an awareness of her presence, as if he could sense her through the intervening decks and bulkheads. She would be somewhere above him even now, in the officers’ quarters …
Then Dow remembered.
Today was the day.
Sleep, and thoughts of Nell, vanished. Dow sat up, staring blearily about at the recesses of the smithy. He was alone. Johannes and Nicky were already up and gone, their hammocks stowed away.
How late was it?
Slipping from his own hammock, Dow stood barefoot on the fireproof tiles. He found he had to brace himself against the slope of the deck, and studied the hanging chains above the forge, watching them swing slowly as the floor came level again, then tilted the other way.
His apprehension grew. The Chloe was rolling – rolling severely, in deep, sluggish pitches, first to one side, then to the other. Dow had not, in his brief time at sea, felt anything quite like it. And if the rolling was this bad, so far down in the ship, then topside, in the rigging …
‘Breakfast,’ declared a voice.
The leather curtain in the doorway was thrown back and Johannes, the ship’s blacksmith, came ducking in. He was a fierce looking specimen at first glance, solid as a barrel and with the muscled arms of his trade, always bared to display the vivid tattoos and scars that covered them. But his gentle, open face gave away his true nature, which was an amiable one. Following behind, as always, was Nicky, his apprentice, a silent stolid lad of twelve. Between them they were carrying three mugs of beer and three bowls of porridge, brought back from the galley, several decks above.
They looked disappointed to discover that Dow was already up. ‘We left you to sleep in,’ accused the blacksmith.
Dow stared at the food. He had no appetite at all. And what did they mean by not waking him, today of all days? ‘What hour is it?’ he demanded.
‘Seven and a half bells gone.’
Dow blinked in consternation. At eight bells – in only half an hour – he was to report to Commander Fidel, there to be examined for the rank of Able Seaman, Third Class. It was the most basic of any sailor’s qualifications, and for a month Dow had been readying himself for the test.
Johannes set the porridge down carefully on the workbench as the ship heeled again. He shook his head knowingly at Dow. ‘Relax, lad. Eat something. You’ve got plenty of time yet.’
But Dow had even less desire for food now. He began hunting about for his clothes, staggering as the ship rolled ponderously back the other way. ‘What’s happening up there? Has the weather turned?’
‘No – there’s a swell out of the north, is all. You strike such seas now and then at this time of year.’ Johannes sipped musingly at his beer. ‘Still, I’d not like to be going aloft today, I’ll say that.’
Dow glanced up worriedly. The blacksmith’s expression was perfectly in earnest – except, that was, for the teasing gleam in his eye.
‘See,’ Johannes grinned, ‘this is why we let you sleep late. If you’d been up an hour earlier, it’d just be another hour for you to fret. You’ll be fine. You’re a green hand, true enough, but old Fidel will treat you fairly, and your instincts are good; I’ve seen it.’ The blacksmith’s ready smile became almost puzzled. ‘In fact, they’re better than they have any right to be. If I didn’t know different, I’d say you were born to the sea life by blood.’
Dow glanced up again at that, for although he’d come to know Johannes and Nicky well in the last seven weeks, he’d told them nothing of how or why he’d left his home in the highlands to seek for a mariner’s life, nor had he dared speak a word of his famous ancestor, Admiral Honous Tombs, scourge of the Ship Kings fleets during the great war.
But Johannes had a mouthful of porridge now, and only added, ‘Sit. Eat!’ And Dow, relieved, did as he was told.
He’d made his home there in the Chloe’s smithy for most of the voyage. For the first few days out from New Island he’d been quartered in the officers’ sick bay, having been installed there when he first came aboard. But on the fourth night at sea, Johannes had introduced himself and invited Dow to sling a hammock alongside him and his apprentice down below – and Dow had accepted. The smithy was less refined accommodation than the sick bay, being a dark and soot-stained dungeon set on the ship’s very lowest deck, but Dow had guessed he would be happier there, and so it had proved.
For one thing, due to the forge, it was the warmest spot on the Chloe – no small consideration on a late autumn crossing. But it wa
s the company that mattered most to Dow, for of the six hundred men (and one girl) aboard the Chloe, Johannes and Nicky were the only other outsiders. The blacksmith and his apprentice were not Ship Kings. Instead they hailed from Red Island, one of the faraway Twin Isles of the southern seas.
This had come as some surprise to Dow, for he’d thought he was the sole stranger on board. But Johannes had cheerfully explained that on every Ship Kings vessel the blacksmith was always a Red Islander. No other folk possessed such skill in the working of metals. Indeed, it was a fixed condition of Red Island’s tribute, as a subject land, that they supply as many smiths and apprentices as the Ship Kings fleets required.
Of course, Johannes and Nicky were foreign in their own way – Dow had never seen tattoos before, for instance – but they were somehow not so foreign as the Ship Kings. And for their part, Johannes and Nicky had adopted Dow as family and made it their business to see that he settled into life aboard the Chloe as quickly as he might. It had been Johannes who’d suggested that instead of merely moping about the ship for two months Dow should apply to Captain Vincente for permission to begin seaman’s training – as unlikely as it had seemed that such permission would be granted.
And yet it had been granted.
His breakfast quickly done – no more than a single spoonful of porridge and a few mouthfuls of beer, despite all Johannes’s entreaties – Dow could sit still no longer. He grabbed his timberman’s jacket from its hook, accepted a last few words of encouragement from the blacksmith, and ducked through the fire curtain to begin the long climb to the main deck.
Near darkness greeted him in the passage beyond. It might be day topside, but down here it was forever night, broken only by the few dim lamps that hung from the beams, swinging slowly back and forth. The smithy lay towards the stern end of the Second Lower deck, so named because it was the second deck below the waterline. There were no decks lower than that, only the lightless cavern of the ship’s hold, a vast space packed close with the Chloe’s heaviest gear and ballast, and haunted by the eternal groan of wood, the slosh of bilge water, and the squeak and scurry of unseen rats.
The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice Page 1