Dow actually looked to the louvered windows, as if to see a darkening there from clouds gathering above the ship, so dour was the captain’s tone. But the strips of daylight shone as bright as ever, and the ship sailed blithely on. And anyway, what did all this have to do with him? He said, ‘Is that why you’re letting me stay on board?’
Vincente nodded sombrely. ‘This fool of a civil war – I will not survive it unscathed. I’m too closely allied to the Sea Lord. Even should I see out the fighting, I will certainly not – afterwards – be left in command of a fleet. Perhaps not even of a ship. No, when Valignano and our allies lose, as we will, I shall be forced into obscurity. But as I go, I hope to leave you behind, Dow Amber, as a gift to my own people, little though they’ll want you.’
‘A gift?’ Dow asked, not understanding at all.
‘Maybe a seed would be a better word – a tiny seed of humanity and vitality in what will become a fleet full of self-satisfaction and idleness, once Castille and Valdez rule from the Twelfth Kingdom.
‘You don’t know what I mean, of course. But part of it, Dow, is that you haven’t been raised in privilege and power, as all our own officers have been, even in my own humble kingdom. It has slowly ruined us as seafarers. Oh, we haven’t lost our skills of shipbuilding and navigation – but we’ve lost our vigour. Our enterprise. We are hidebound now, trapped by our own monstrous wealth, and terrified of losing it. We do not take risks anymore. Nadal, at least, was trying to do something new, as foolhardy as his attempt was. But he will be the last – unless we can begin to look beyond ourselves. We need someone with new ideas, with no awe of the past, and no fear of the future. Someone with nothing to lose and everything to gain. Someone like you, Mr Amber.
‘These papers – they are not simply enlisting you to my crew. They are a commission. Once signed, they will endow you with the rank of sub-lieutenant, the lowest rank of officer that exists – yet an official position nonetheless, with accompanying rights and entitlements that cannot be summarily denied you. It is an extraordinary undertaking, the like of which no one has seen in generations – a New Islander with a commission! But there are provisions, little used maybe, but in the regulations still, that a serving captain like myself, while at sea, may commission anyone that he sees fit to into the officers’ ranks, if the situation demands it. And I think the situation does.’
Dow listened to all this dumbfounded. ‘An officer?’
Vincente leaned further forward, his expression becoming urgent. ‘Listen, Dow – you and I both know you have nowhere near the education or training for such a rank. But that doesn’t matter right now. All I’m trying to do is shield you with provisions that will prevent my enemies and yours simply throwing you in prison once we return home. They will not be able to do so as easily, if you are a legally commissioned officer. And who knows, if the war does not come as quickly as I dread, you may even have time to earn the position. I will certainly help you if I can. But in all reality I’ll probably be shoved aside long before then. In which case you will be on your own.
‘Though not entirely. The rank will protect you legally, but of more protection still will be your own reputation. You will gain supporters, even among we Ship Kings, of that I am certain. I’m not the only one who thinks our fleets and officers have become stultified with privilege. Others too will see the worth of new minds and new thoughts, unencumbered by dead traditions. And, of course, you are famous. Not only are you the boy who rode the maelstrom, now you are the youth who, against all odds and even a captain’s orders, found the route to the pole! Imagine the way folk will talk of you now!’
Dow was frowning. Found the route to the pole? It was Nell who had done that – or, in fact, Captain Altona of the Bent Wing. All Dow had done was convince Alfons and his men to crew the boat.
And now Alfons was—
Vincente was watching him. ‘You’re thinking of the dead man, and blaming yourself for his death. So you should. The day that you lead men to their deaths and do not care is the day you become a monster. But command will always result in the deaths of others – the only alternative is to not command at all, which may well bring death in any case. Accept this, and if others choose to follow you, then lead them honestly and fairly, and with respect for their lives, but do not hesitate to do what you must.’
He stared at Dow a moment longer, then reached abruptly for a pen that lay on the table. He dipped it in ink and signed the papers in three different places. Then he extended the quill towards Dow.
‘To make this binding, you must sign your name. I know, of course, that you cannot. And never before has a commission gone to one who cannot read or write. Nevertheless, you must make some mark that can be identified as yours – if, that is, command is what you want.’
Dow stared at the pen. Command – was it what he wanted? He’d always thought so, from the moment he’d first laid eyes upon a ship. But he’d been a child then, and it had never occurred to him that command would mean not only control of a vessel, but also control over men’s lives, even to the point of ordering them to their deaths, or of killing them by his own mistakes.
And yet …
Dow lifted his gaze to Vincente. The captain was not crushed by the weight of such responsibility. It told on him, yes; the strain and sleeplessness of his position showed in every weary line of his face. But command had honed and refined him too. Vincente knew himself, of that Dow had always been sure. And he was free. After all, command, despite its burdens, meant freedom from the command of others. And the freedom, if not to defy fate, then at least to confront it clear-eyed and on one’s own terms.
Dow took the pen.
Only – what mark could he make?
Vincente said, ‘Understand, Mr Amber. With these declarations, you become, for all intents and purposes, one of my own people. A Ship King. These papers are in fact akin to adoption papers. You can no longer be merely Dow Amber. You must choose a new name for yourself, a name such as my own folk employ. Vincente of the Shinbone, for instance, is my name, for my family takes its title from a famous rocky spire – the Shinbone – that rises from our ancestral lands, to the east of Haven Diaz. Likewise, you must consider a name for yourself that my people will recognise. Do you see?’
Dow saw. A shiver went through him, a fore-echo of fame, and he knew what the name had to be; what it was fated to be. He dipped the pen, and where Vincente was pointing, a space at the bottom of a page, he drew a swirling pattern, a single line, spiralling around itself.
Vincente’s eyes widened. ‘Dow of the Maelstrom. So be it. For better or worse, you are one of us now.’
The captain stood, and Dow too, but before either could speak again, there came a shout from high above outside – a cry from the crow’s nest, ‘Sail ho!’ – and a sudden drum of feet on the deck overhead.
Vincente stared up. ‘A ship? What ship would there be, this far north?’ He took his coat from the wall and shrugged it over his shoulders. ‘Come along, Mr Amber, we’ll see what’s afoot.’
Dow followed him out into the passage. Vincente turned towards the Captain’s Walk, but Dow’s attention was drawn by movement at the other end of the hall. It was Diego. He had just come through the doors of the Great Cabin and was hurrying to the top of the stairway that led down. He caught sight of Dow and paused abruptly on the first step.
Dow hesitated too, struck by the lieutenant’s expression. He’d never seen a look of such indecision and fear written so clearly on someone’s face. Then another cry came from above, ‘Two sails! Three!’ And Diego, with a choked moan, went stumbling away down the stairs.
An urgent unease clutched Dow. Why would an officer run away from the high deck at such a call?
But there was no time. He turned and dashed after Vincente, out onto the landing and then up the stairs to the high deck. Commander Fidel was there, and most of the other officers too, senior and junior, and all eyes were turned to the southern horizon. Three sets of sails – no, four now –
were just rising above the rim of the sea.
Four ships. A fleet, no less.
‘They’re a long way out for a patrol,’ Vincente commented to Fidel.
The first officer nodded. ‘A welcoming committee perhaps? The Sea Lord will no doubt be anxious for news.’
‘Maybe – but why send out ships that will return with that news no faster than we will ourselves?’
Fidel shrugged. ‘As we know, Ibanez, in his concern for his son, has not been entirely logical of late.’ Then he added in a lower voice, ‘And is your business with Dow here complete?’
Vincente glanced at Dow. ‘It is – signed and sealed. I’ll announce it to the assembled officers at dinner tonight.’
Fidel nodded. ‘Congratulations, Mr Amber.’
Dow gave a distracted nod in return. He was studying the four distant ships, unable to say why the sight of them filled him with such trepidation – and why he could not forget the look on Diego’s face, as he fled below decks. What could be the link between the two?
Vincente was surveying the Chloe. ‘Below there,’ he boomed in command, ‘get that laundry pulled in! You think this is any state in which to greet our comrades? We look a terrible sight!’
There was laughter from below – a holiday mood seemed to have seized the ship – but men hurried to tidy up. The Chloe would not return from the Unquiet Ice draped in mouldy sheets!
The new ships, with the wind behind them, came swiftly up from the south. They could soon be identified as two battleships and two frigates, flying the pennants of the Sea Lord’s home fleet.
Fidel, gazing through a telescope, said, ‘You don’t suppose that Ibanez himself has come?’
Vincente looked startled. ‘No reigning Sea Lord has left the Twelfth Kingdom in generations.’
‘But if he is desperate for news … it would explain why this fleet is here, where no fleet should be.’
Vincente nodded sadly. ‘It would indeed. Not that he’ll want to hear the news we carry, if it is indeed he.’
They waited and watched. The ships – white-sailed and brave in the bright afternoon – were arranged in line, one behind the other; a stirring sight. And yet still the doubt gnawed in Dow’s stomach. The sail-master’s words of the morning rose unbidden in his mind – it’s the brightest day that brings sharks to the surface. But these weren’t sharks. They were ships. Come as friends.
At last the fleet drew close. It seemed that the four vessels meant to pass down the Chloe’s right side.
Vincente asked his first officer, ‘Do you recognise them, Fidel? What captains are we greeting?’
Fidel was frowning into his telescope. ‘I’m not sure. It’s hard to make out a name, bow on – no wait, they’re turning a little. I can see. The leading battleship is – but I don’t understand. It’s the Adroit …’
‘The Adroit? But that’s not—’
Vincente broke off, staring, for at the same moment a strange flicker passed along the hull of each of the ships. It was an instant before Dow, watching from beside the captain, understood what it meant. Gun ports. The flicker was gun ports being thrown open – fifty on each flank of the battleships, and thirty on each flank of the frigates. Black metal gleamed as cannon rolled out.
‘A trap!’ cried Fidel. ‘They’re ships of Castille and Valdez!’
Vincente whirled to the helmsmen. ‘Come about, hard left!’ Then his voice roared loud, ‘All hands to battle stations! Run out the guns!’ And it was only a despairing note to the command that reminded Dow – what guns? Two of the Chloe’s gun decks stood empty, and even the third had its ports sealed firmly shut against the arctic weather they’d so recently left behind.
Men hastened to obey nonetheless, and tumult sounded below, but it was already too late. The four ships, the foremost now merely a hundred yards off, had swung themselves broadside to their victim. The Chloe was itself only just beginning to turn, its flank fully exposed, when a ripple of smoke – oddly silent – ran along the gun barrels of the leading battleship.
Dow ducked low. The sound of the broadside reached the Chloe simultaneously with the flying shot; a crackling series of detonations from across the water, matched by a horrific ripping and tearing all across the Chloe, mixed with the cries and screams of injured men.
Dow raised his head. Figures were dashing here and there upon the high deck, but he could see no damage immediately about him; it was all further forward. He looked to the enemy fleet again, in time to see the guns of the second ship firing. The awful ripping sound came once more, and then new screams, and towards the bow sails were falling in vast tangles.
Time had slowed. Officers yelled orders to the helmsmen, but the ship seemed to be yawing, out of control. A great cloud of smoke now covered the ocean about the attacking fleet, and all Dow saw of the third broadside was a rapid sequence of red pinpoints flaring through the haze – and this time it was the stern half of the Chloe that caught the barrage.
Timber exploded, and the high deck was swept with a hail of flying wood and metal. There were horrible shrieks nearby. It seemed impossible to Dow that he had not been shredded where he crouched, but when he opened his eyes again he was still whole and unhurt. He stared about, frozen in fear. Bodies, and parts of bodies, littered the deck. He must flee. He must hide.
Then he caught sight of Vincente. The captain was at the wheel, alone there, for the helmsmen both lay sprawled across the bloody timbers. He was shouting commands – though Dow couldn’t hear the words, he seemed to have gone deaf – and struggling to steer the ship. But even in calm conditions the wheel was heavy work for one man – in stormy seas it often took six or even eight to control it – and now it seemed to be stuck fast. The rudder or the mechanism must have been damaged.
An officer ran to the captain to help. It was Samson! Blood was flowing from the young lieutenant’s scalp, but he hadn’t noticed. Dow swore at himself. If Vincente – and Samson too – were unafraid to stand upright amid the shot, then so must he be. He rose to half height and took several steps toward the wheel. Then the fourth broadside caught the Chloe square on.
The wheel blew up.
Wooden splinters flew, and Vincente and Samson went reeling across the deck. Dow felt a hot blade sear his left shoulder, and a violent push of air, then he was flat on his back, staring witlessly up at a sky that remained innocently blue above all the smoke.
How long he lay there he wasn’t sure. His arm was wet and warm, though he didn’t feel any pain. Were the broadsides continuing? He could hear no sound at all, but there came shudders and vibrations from the ship, as if volley after volley was sweeping the decks.
After what seemed an age he turned his head in response to some shadow on the edge of his vision, and saw, extraordinarily close off the stern quarter, the upper rigging of one of the enemy battleships. He could even see the enemy marines stationed on their musket decks – the same platforms that Dow had found so difficult to climb over during his test for basic seamanship, a hundred years ago. They were firing away steadily with their muskets. Dow realised that they were aiming, one and all, at the high deck on which he lay – only not directly at him, but at some point beyond him.
The captain, he grasped dimly, they were firing at the captain.
Outrage warmed in Dow. It didn’t seem fair. The Chloe was already dead in the water; they didn’t need to keep attacking. He would have shouted angrily at them, but smoke had hidden the battleship once more. Dow rolled over – there, five yards away across the ravaged deck, lay Vincente, unmoving, his face to the sky. Dow began to crawl towards him.
Was the battle over? There did seem to be a lull of some kind – the broadsides at least had ended – and in the new quiet Dow’s hearing began to return. Moans sounded from down on the main deck, and the flap of loose canvas. The Chloe was adrift. Had their own guns even managed to fire? Dow didn’t think so. They’d stood no chance from the start.
He reached the captain’s side.
Vincente�
�s eyes were open, but seemed unseeing. The deck all about him was pitted with holes from the marine’s musket fire – and two of the balls at least had found their target, for blood welled from wounds in the captain’s right shoulder and on his left hip. But that wasn’t the worst, for sticking up from Vincente’s chest was a great splinter of wood the size and shape of a dagger. It was one of the spoke-handles from the shattered wheel, hurled free by the shot and buried deep – as far as Dow could see – right next to the captain’s heart.
‘Excellency,’ Dow croaked.
Vincente stirred a little, his eyes focussing from far away. ‘Sir, Mr Amber,’ he whispered. ‘Officers address each other as sir.’ But then he was coughing up blood and could speak no more.
Dow stared around wildly. Was there no one to help? The high deck looked deserted apart from the dead and the dying. Forward, over the rail, the three masts were a hopeless tangle of brokens spars and snagged lines and torn sails. Smoke drifted everywhere.
Then a cry could be heard from across the water. ‘You there! The Chloe. Raise the white flag, or we’ll resume firing!’
Dow stared about again. Who was left with the authority to answer? He could see no officer still standing.
Vincente sounded as if he was laughing through the blood in his mouth. ‘What a fool I am,’ he breathed, his gaze wandering. ‘I should have expected this. They couldn’t risk it, of course. For all they knew, we might have been bearing Nadal back with us. We had to be stopped.’
‘Sir, they want us to surrender.’
The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice Page 26