Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

  “Nubskull.” The black man nodded. “We’re sailors, able.”

  It dawned on Ryan that Nubskull was not referring to Smyke when he said “we.” “Permission to come aboard. Mr. Forgiven, enter Smyke and Nubskull as able seamen until signed or proved otherwise. Smyke to be promoted to bos’n when he is proved to it and signed. Mr. Manrape, clap Dorian in irons. No harm or abuse to come to him until the captain says otherwise. Inform the captain and have the dinghy brought aboard.

  Ryan turned from the chorus of ayes to Koa. “You, sir, plot us a course for the Cape.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Cape of Storms

  The cape tried to tear Glory limb from limb. With the wind, the rain and the ocean spray, the world abovedeck was a whirling maelstrom of freezing water. The only thing more violent was the ocean below her keel. They had given up trying the channels off Tierra del Fuego the moment they had raised them. They had no pilot and would have been smashed on the rocks almost instantly. Commander Miles had ordered them to head for open ocean. Some crew members prayed for rocks. The waves they rode atop and the wells between they fell into were the most horrifying things Ryan had ever encountered. There was almost no difference between day and night, and he was glad to not see most of what was around them. Commander Miles could not keep his footing, injured as he was. Miss Loral had taken command on deck, and Ryan had gone up into the rigging. He almost liked it better. The sea had washed six crewmen overboard already. The rigging was a tightrope act in a nukecaust-worthy storm, but his job was simple. He knew the stirrup rope beneath his feet and the spar he laid his body across. He could do it with his eye closed. The weight of wet sail was a very old and familiar adversary, and the men next to him on the terrible perch knew their jobs as well or better than him.

  Except for Koa.

  Ryan thought a man would have coughed up his esophagus after seventy-two hours of screaming, but Koa still screamed and screamed and hauled sail.

  The watch bell chimed dimly beneath the roar of the wind and waves. Nubskull shot up the shrouds to take Ryan’s place. They had just enough men to run two good shifts up in the rigging. For men who had never seen a mountain and rarely a tree, the Mapuche were utterly fearless up in the rigging. What they lacked was experience, and the Cape was no place to acquire it. Three had fallen to their doom. Mildred’s med was full of broken bones, strains and spectacular contusions. The only blessing at all was that the wind was so horrendous the Glory wasn’t carrying much sail, but what she had up had to be constantly shifted tack upon tack. Ryan clapped Nubskull on the shoulder and gratefully gave up his spot on the stirrup. He descended to the pitching, wave-flooded deck and went into the close murk below mostly by feel.

  All fires had been doused, including the galley’s. The only illumination was the Glory’s small selection of battery-operated or crank generator lights. Most of those had been prioritized for the med. Ryan shrugged out of his dripping sealskins and oiled canvas and changed into Falkland woolens and a permanently bloodstained gaucho cape.

  Filthy bodies in close proximity provided most of the warmth. Ryan sensed genuine heat and moved toward it. Ryan’s messmates sat on sea chests drinking with one hand and holding hammocks as the deck pitched with the other. It was useless to try to rig tables with the ship pitching this hard. Technically Ryan had acted as an officer, indeed, a commander, but he had not been invited to dine with Miles and Loral. Ryan’s uniform lay in his sea chest and his duties were all able seaman in the rigging until further notice. He didn’t mind. Onetongue wore the blue fleece Ryan had given him.

  “Hi, Ryan!” The tongue-shorn mutie shoved a wooden stoop into his messmate’s hands. “Have th’um hot buttered rum!”

  Ryan took the stoop and felt the heat through the wood. “Thought fires were doused.”

  Onetongue grinned happily. “Chem heater’th, Ryan! Chem heater’th! Cap’n’th orders! Hot grog for the top’th men!”

  Oracle had traded for Brazilian rum and sugar, and Falkland’s butter formed a delicious layer of fat on top. Like the lights, Oracle was using his cache of tech, in this case chemical heating units to get something hot into his crew. He wasn’t holding anything back. They either would get around the horn to warm south Lantic waters, or they would go down to the Old Place, their flesh and bones to be feasted on by those below. Ryan drank deep and celebrated another watch finished and alive.

  Hardstone limped forward, carrying the steaming mess kid. “Burgoo, boys! Get it while it’s hot!”

  Ryan drained his stoop and scooped it into the steaming oatmeal. A plastic, binary chemical heating pouch floated in the gruel. Like the rum, Skillet had loaded it with butter and sugar. He took up his issue wooden spoon and tucked in. Oracle wasn’t stilting on rations, either. Every man could eat his fill. Ryan ate three stoops’ worth and rubbed his pleasingly full belly.

  Doc strode rapidly into fo’c’sle. He was clearly upset. Over the moaning of the wind, the slamming of the waves and the groans of the Glory’s timbers, Dorian Sabbath let forth another scream. Dorian was chained in the captain’s cabin, and at Oracle’s direction Manrape was working him for every last scrap of information on his family’s ships, crew and disposition.

  Wipe scooped oatmeal into his maw and stared at Doc hungrily. “What’s Manrape doing to him, Doc? Is it hot?”

  Doc paled.

  Ryan threw a short elbow into Wipe’s jaw and knocked him off his sea chest. Technically Ryan had been an officer, but a seaman striking another without being struck first could be punishable by death. Wipe howled and rubbed his chin. “You saw! You saw!”

  Hardstone ate oatmeal. “You fell and hit your face, Wipe.”

  “You all saw!”

  Hardstone, Koa and Atlast all stared down at Wipe and spoke as one. “You fell.”

  Onetongue tilted back his head and shoved out a tongue that could mate with a sea cucumber and belched. “A, B, THEE, D, E, F’TH, G...”

  The tension broke. Wipe clapped his hands. Doc shook his head admiringly. “A most potent eructation, good Onetongue! And you know your ABCs!”

  “You taught me, Doc!” Onetongue dished up Doc a stoop of burgoo. “You taught u’th all!”

  Ryan smiled over his gruel. “Onetongue?”

  “Ye’th, Ryan?”

  “Ask Doc to teach you to read while you’re at it, and have him teach you some math. You’re a lot smarter than you let on, and we could use another bos’n. Maybe another officer.”

  “Aw jee’th, Ryan!”

  Onetongue’s messmates made affirmative noises. Doc nodded. “All aboard respect your work ethic, your fighting ability and your knowledge of the ship. Only your shyness stops your advancement, dear shipmate. Should you wish it of me, you have but to ask.”

  “Aw, jee’th, Doc!”

  “When you signed the book you made your mark. By next watch you shall be able to write your name.”

  * * *

  RYAN CAME DOWN from the rigging. According to every calculation, they had rounded the horn. But there’d been no celebration. It had cost them ten more crewmen from lubbers to topsmen, and just as Oracle had forgone landing in Brazil, he had ordered the ship to forgo the western shore of South America and head deep into the Cific. You couldn’t tell the difference by the darkness, winds or waves. The only difference was Glory now headed northwest, so she no longer took the gale-force winds and tidal waves on the chin. It gave her far more wind to work with. Unfortunately, it meant the ship now rolled from side to side in spectacular fashion rather than seesawed, and new fits of seasickness struck even the oldest salts.

  The weather was warming. That was a blessing. Mildred had been forced to amputate nearly two-dozen fingers, toes and earlobes from frostbite. Ryan took a deep breath. He suddenly felt weak and dizzy. He put a hand on a beam to steady himself. Scurvy had hit the ship.
Mildred had rated six crewmen invalids and assigned them to their hammocks until further notice. Ryan pinched his front teeth between his thumb and forefinger and tried to wiggle them. His gums had been bleeding for three days now, but his teeth still sat tightly in his skull.

  Onetongue waved a frantic hand. “Cap’n want’th to thee you in hi’th cabin, Ryan!”

  Ryan squared himself and tore off his foul-weather gear. He wondered if he had any clothes left that weren’t filthy and crusted with salt.

  Onetongue read his mind and grinned. “For th’upper!” Ryan paused. He did have one set of clean clothes. He went to his sea chest and donned his uniform.

  “Look’th good!”

  Ryan wasn’t egotistical, but he knew he wore it well. “Thanks, Tongue.”

  “Oh, almo’tht forgot!” Onetongue handed Ryan a folded note. The last flurry of note passing on the Glory had lead to some very strange and dangerous directions. Ryan held the note up to a weakly glowing LED light. Ryan smirked in the gloom. Being universally recognized as the ship’s most useless crew member, Krysty had spent a great deal of the voyage around the Horn vomiting as she pedaled one of the two bicycle generators in the orlop to keep the lights on. The note read RYAN but not in Oracle’s block script. Ryan flipped it open.

  I LIKE RYAN. RYAN IS A GOOD SHIPMATE. I THINK HE WILL MAKE A GOOD CAPTAIN SOMEDAY.

  —YOUR FRIEND, ONETONGUE

  Ryan smiled. “You’re learning fast.”

  Onetongue blushed. “Doc helped.”

  “Doc has a good student.”

  The blubbery mutant stared abashedly at his shoes. “Aw, jee’th.”

  Ryan held out his hand. “Proud to serve with you. Proud to call you my friend.”

  Onetongue looked like he might burst into flames as they shook. “You better go!”

  Ryan took care not to let his uniform touch anything and made his way to the captain’s cabin. Hardstone stood guard outside.

  “Mr. Ryan to see the captain!”

  “Thank you, Hardstone. Send him in.” Oracle’s voice sounded much stronger than it had for awhile.

  Captain Oracle sat at his table, though he sat with the chair reversed and a very loose and bloodstained nightshirt covered his back. Doc stood in full uniform by the sideboard. He noted a number of empty bottles on it. Doc shot Ryan a concerned look. Oracle hunched over the back of his chair, but he did not appear to be drunk.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Ryan. Doc, pour Mr. Ryan an aperitif.”

  Doc proceeded to pour Ryan a small, predark, cut-crystal glass of what seemed to smell and taste like jet fuel. Ryan sipped prudently.

  Oracle stared into his drink meditatively. “I was born the seventh son of a seventh son.” Ryan kept his face neutral. He had experienced all sorts of things in the Deathlands and beyond, but he was not a superstitious man. Oracle continued his disturbing habit of knowing what Ryan was thinking. “And I was born a mutie.”

  Ryan sipped and nodded. He knew he was here to listen.

  “Do you know what my name means?” the captain asked.

  “It means you’re a doomie.”

  “Yes.” Oracle rolled his black eyes bemusedly. “That is what you call my kind in your Deathlands.”

  Ryan had encountered doomies in the Deathlands. Their powers were generally unreliable, wildly open to interpretation, almost never foresaw anything good and almost always came at a terrible price to the doomie and anyone around them. “You see things in your dreams.”

  “In dreams, sometimes waking visions, and sometimes, if I try hard enough and I concentrate on an individual, an object or an event, I can summon it. Though forcing it might be a better word, and that comes at a steep price and a steep drop in reliability.”

  Ryan gazed at Oracle shrewdly. “You weren’t originally a sailor.”

  Oracle regarded Ryan blandly. “I was a bean farmer and during the season a catcher of turtles.”

  “And you told fortunes.”

  “I was famous for it. Those with the jack and a boat would come to ask their questions. It helped our ville’s economy immensely, and it was a price I was willing to pay.”

  “And then the Sabbaths.”

  “Emmanuel Sabbath arrived on my island at the helm of the War Pig. We had never seen such a ship. Unlike you, Captain Sabbath is a superstitious man and always kept an astrologer aboard. The one before me had the barest bit of doomie in him, but what he had he channeled through a Tarot deck.”

  “Fortune cards. I’ve heard of them.”

  “When Sabbath learned of me, he came to the house of my father and paid an incredible sum in trade goods to him to put me to the test. He was extremely pleased with the results. So pleased he slaughtered my family, shoved a blaster in my face and told me either I came with him or he would raze the entire ville. I went, of course, but with all intent to give Sabbath false predictions and run him onto the rocks or escape as soon as possible. I found myself chained and swiftly broken, or reduced, as Doc would say. Unfortunately, suffering seems to have a way of focusing my abilities. Sabbath noticed that, and the suffering became continuous. My only reprieve was when I wasn’t being forced to foresee Sabbath’s victories in piracy or trade I was made to work the ship. Despite flinching like a dog at my own shadow or any raised hand, I rated able.”

  “And?” Ryan asked.

  “One night after a successful raid, Sabbath was drunk. He asked me how he would die. I already knew, and I summoned the courage to tell him.”

  Ryan knew the answer. “You were going to kill him.”

  “I told him I had foreseen he would die by my hand.”

  Ryan stared at the huge mutie ape hand attached to Oracle’s wrist.

  “Sabbath tortured me in ways that would make even Manrape shudder. Then he cut off my hand so that it could never be raised against him, and he hung me from the yardarm at dawn. The same mutie vitality that allowed me to survive tortures that would destroy a norm allowed me to survive the hanging, or perhaps it was that I had not fulfilled my destiny yet. Regardless, and unknown to Sabbath, I was still alive when he cut the rope at sunset and dropped me into the sea.”

  “You washed ashore.”

  “On a barren spit of rock. There was no water, and almost no vegetation. I was racked with thirst and terribly injured and mutilated. I found a cave and within it a gleaming metal hatch. It was not locked. Stairs led down to a great vault with open, clamshell doors. I wandered through a series of predark corridors, but the complex was stripped bare. I finally came to a strange chamber of glass.”

  It took every ounce of Ryan’s will to keep his poker face.

  “I randomly worked a lever, and then an experience wilder than any of my most fevered dreams took place.” The flat black eyes stared at Ryan intently. “I wandered out and found myself on a much larger island, lush and green. I was in the Cific. The island was inhabited, and, even missing my hand, as an able sailor I had useful skills. I regained my strength and a measure of my dignity. A sea-going junk arrived to take on water and supplies. It was no floating castle like Sabbath’s Ironman, but it had a working pair of 20 mm autocannon and wasn’t to be taken likely. They were short-handed, and able seamen are hard to come by, so despite being short-handed myself, they took me on. I swiftly became an officer as they continued to the western coast of South America. We sailed north up the coast, trading and transporting for the coastal villes.”

  “You left ship when you hit the Central.”

  “I did.”

  “You foresaw their doom.”

  “Yes, and my path still lies in the Caribbean. They liked me, and I was well supplied and armed. I survived the trek east.”

  “What about Sabbath?”

  “He and his family were building their fleet. Since long before even Doc’s time, the hand of a hanged m
an has been known as the Hand of Glory. He put my hand in his binnacle as a good luck charm.”

  “It started pointing.”

  “Yes.”

  “You control it.”

  “No.”

  Ryan frowned. “Then what moves it?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps you should ask your woman.”

  Ryan’s skin crawled.

  “It led Sabbath to many victories, including taking the ship we sail upon. He named it the Hand of Doom. At that time, I had made it back to the Caribbean. Some of the islands have tried to maintain some sense of the old civilization. Others have sunk into utter barbarity. Most lie somewhere in between. A few pride themselves on being neutral ground where trade can be freely engaged in. Any breaking of the peace incurs the wrath of all others.”

  “Trading camps.” Ryan nodded. “Barter villes. Seen a few of the like in the Deathlands.

  “I set up shop telling fortunes and amassing jack and goods to buy myself a boat of some size and a crew.”

  “Sabbath found out.”

  “As a sign of his favor, Sabbath had given his first-born son, Osbourne, a year’s tour on the Hand of Doom before it was to be made the flagship of the Sabbath fleet. Osbourne sailed into port.” Sabbath raised his prosthesis. “He came into my fortune-teller’s hut and gave me this as an insult. Some sailors believe a monkey’s paw can grant three wishes. All sailors know a monkey’s paw is cursed. I bolted it to my wrist and challenged him. We rowed out to spit of sand. I ripped his throat out.”

  “The Glory took you as captain?

  “The crew of the Hand of Doom had suffered gravely under Osbourne, and I was their salvation. I was also a living hanged man with his own Hand of Glory in his binnacle. Not to mention wearing the monkey’s paw that was crafted to curse him. That was more luck than most sailors knew what to do with. I killed my first two challengers, both of whom were Osbourne’s enforcers, and proved myself an able captain. We became the Hand of Glory.”

  “You knew my friends and I would be on that island where you set your trap.”