The Bone Ships

by R J Barker

  “Unfortunate, but it cannot be helped,” said Meas. “Do they have gullaime?”

  “I only saw them from a distance but the four-ribber, I think it is the Wavebreaker, was going against the wind so it, at least, must have gullaime aboard.”

  “Hopefully it wears them out and they will be windsick by the time we arrive,” said Brekir.

  “No,” said Arrin. “This island here” – he touched a point on the map right in the middle of the circlular course the ships were sailing – “has a windspire. Probably why they are happy to use the gullaime so carelessly.”

  “Blasted hearts,” said Meas. “Aelerin,” she said, “if we come through the sound and head immediately north, can we outrun the Gaunt Islander ships?” Aelerin leaned over the chart, and Joron thought he could hear the courser’s gentle voice as they worked the complicated mathematics of wind and current through in their head.

  “No, Shipwife. I do not think that is the song the winds sing me,” said the courser. “The deep-water channel twists, and we will often have the storm against us, so it will slow us if we must follow the arakeesian. The Gaunt Islander ships can cut between the islands and use their gullaime and the prevailing winds to catch us.”

  “Why not just leave the keyshan?” said Oswire. “Run ahead and wait for where it rejoins. We have seen what it can do to a boat; I do not think a boneship would fare any better.”

  Meas nodded slowly, more to herself than any other, but Joron knew she was thinking of the poisoned bolts in the hold. If Indyl Karrad had found some, there was no guaranteeing that the Gaunt Islanders did not have them too. It was unlikely, Joron was sure of that, but also not a chance he thought Meas could take.

  “What if they have—” he began, and Meas’s head came up, her eyes locked with his, and he realised that she must not have shared everything with her fellow shipwives. He had been about to give up more than she wished. “—more ships somewhere?” he said.

  Meas’s glare turned to a nod.

  “My deckkeeper is right. No, we cannot let them near the keyshan.”

  “So,” said Brekir, “we stay with the arakeesian and get ready to fight a running battle. It will not go well as they have the advantage in first lighted ships and gullaime. They can wear us down from a distance – all they must do is match us shot for shot. And if they know the keyshan routes, they can lay in wait to ambush us where they wish.”

  “They will do that too,” said Arrin. “I knew Wavebreaker’s shipwife – she was a friend, once.”

  Meas leaned forward and put a hand on Arrin’s arm.

  “It is hard to fight your own. Especially when you were close once.”

  Arrin nodded.

  “We waste our time and our lives,” said Oswire. “The beast is stronger than any ships.”

  “I think the decision is made, Deckkeeper,” said Arrin. The look on his face was one of acceptance. “What we do, it is for a higher cause, ey?”

  “It is.” Meas leaned back in her chair. “Mevans, could you ask the gullaime to come through. Ask it politely.”

  “You bring a windtalker into the shipwife’s cabin?” said Oswire. “That is not the way things are—”

  “We find new ways, Deckkeeper,” said Meas. She stressed Oswire’s rank, and something burned in the Gaunt Islander’s eyes that Joron did not much like.

  The gullaime, when it appeared, came in slow and hesitantly, pausing part way through each step with its foot raised, then it made a snapping motion with its beak as if catching something from the air, before finally rounding the table much more quickly, so it stood by Joron.

  “Joron Twiner,” it croaked. Joron noticed that all those around the table, Meas and Aelerin excepted, had moved slightly further away from him and the windtalker.

  “Gullaime,” said Meas, “thank you for coming to us.” The gullaime made a clicking sound in response. Meas drew the circular course of the Gaunt Islanders’ ships on the map. “Conventional tactics tell us when confronted by an equal force to hang back and fight a war of attrition or avoid combat completely.”

  “Avoiding is best,” said Brekir.

  “Arrin,” said Meas, “you said you knew the shipwife of the Wavebreaker. Is she good?”

  “Yes,” said Arrin. “Not spectacular, but competent.”

  “Were I her,” said Meas, “I would stay at range and try to slow us while sending off one of my two-ribbers to gather every flukeboat possible. Then they could ambush us with as much force as they could muster, the boneships covering the flukeboats so they can board us.”

  “That would work,” said Arrin. “There are troops at the towers, and on several of the islands around there are villages and towns that will send women and men if called.”

  “Then we must attack the boneships as soon as we leave the sound.”

  “It will be carnage,” said Brekir. “We have been at sea for months; they will be fresh to the fight and fully crewed. They will likely destroy us if we go broadside to broadside.”

  “Then we will not do that.”

  “What do you mean, Meas?” said Arrin.

  “They will travel with the two-ribbers line astern behind the big ship. We will do the same. When they see us approach they will think we mean to go broadside to broadside.”

  “That is how ships such as ours fight,” said Brekir, “filthy as the work is. Side on side until one ship can no longer shoot back or burns.”

  “But we will not fight that way,” said Meas. “Gullaime.” The windtalker’s head snapped round. “Can you give us enough wind for all three ships? I want to fly between the rump of the four-ribber and the beak of the first two-ribber.”

  “Can do that,” said the gullaime.

  “No windtalker is that strong,” said Oswire.

  “Kindly,” said Meas, “do not tell me what my crew are, or are not, capable of. If the gullaime says it can do this, then it can.”

  Oswire glared at her, and an uncomfortable silence fell like drizzle in the cabin.

  “We will still be under their bolts, though,” said Arrin. “And to go head on like that, every shot they loose will rake the entire length of our ships, it will be carnage, Meas, truly. Think about this. We generally spend half a fight trying to manoeuvre into position to loose down the length of an enemy ship. You speak of offering them this advantage for free.”

  Meas ignored him.

  “Gullaime, on Arkannis Isle you deflected an incoming bolt from the other tower. Can you do that again?”

  The gullaime made a noise like a door slowly opening.

  “Yes and no. Yes and no.”

  “You can or you can’t, beast,” said Oswire.

  It was as if a fire was lit behind Meas’s eyes. “You will be quiet on my ship!” she shouted. “You are a deckkeeper, so know your place. You will respect my rank, my knowledge and my rules and stay silent when I speak to my crew.” Oswire opened her mouth as if to reply but a look from Arrin had her think better of it. “Gullaime, please explain what you mean by ‘Yes and no’.’’

  “So near. Less time. Wingbolts bigger, easier. Big arrows less easy, cannot stop.”

  Meas nodded.

  “Very well.” She placed her knife on the table. “If I could borrow your knives, please?” Bone knives were passed to Meas so she had six, and she placed them on the table in two parallel lines. “This is them.” She ran her finger down one line of ships. “This is us.” She pointed to the other line. “We start as if we fight in the traditional manner, broadsides on. We will stay just out of range, then we will perform a sharp turn.” She moved the knives representing her ships so they now made the stem of a T intersecting the other line behind the first ship. “The gullaime will provide all speed and what cover it can for us. Tide Child has the most gallowbows so we will do everything we can to take down Wavebreaker and the first two-ribber. We are the biggest ship so we will soak up as much shot as possible. Maybe it will tire out their bowteams.” She bared her teeth in a humourless smile.r />
  “You will pay a high price,” said Brekir.

  “Someone must.” She glanced up at Brekir and Joron found himself thinking, You do not trust her, do you, Meas? Then Meas returned to the knives. “Arrin, you will follow Tide Child, and hopefully take fewer bolts for our work. The real danger to you is from their last ship.” She took the knife that represented the last Gaunt Islands ship. “When we attack, Wavebreaker the next two-ribber will slow. If the shipwife of the last ship has anything about them they will come around their fellows to bring their broadside to bear.”

  “By bringing up the rear,” said Brekir, “when you and Cruel Water break though, I could find myself trapped by that third ship and surrounded.”

  “I will bring Tide Child about as quickly as possible, Brekir,” said Meas. “Gullaime, can you protect Snarltooth?”

  “Not and give wind to steer big ship,” croaked the wind-talker. “Too far. Must choose.” It pointed at the third ship. “Hard. Hard to see.”

  “You are blind, bird,” said Oswire.

  Meas let that slide.

  “Blind, not blind. Feel the bolt in the air. Hard when air disturbed by many wings. Hard.”

  “You are right, Brekir,” said Meas. “Whoever brings up the rear will be hard pressed if we cannot do significant damage to Wavebreaker and his consort,” she said quietly.

  “I will do it then,” said Arrin.

  Brekir stood. “No, Arrin. You flew with the arakeesian, were ready to put bolts in it to drive it down, knowing it would be the death of you. Now it is my turn.”

  “But I knew Meas would come through at Arkannis, Brekir.”

  “No, you hoped she would. Snarltooth will bring up the rear, and I will hope Meas comes through also.” She turned to the gullaime. “Windtalker, my ship and my crew will thank you for whatever help you can provide, but if it is our day to meet the Hag, then so be it.” By her Mozzan nodded, his smile undimmed.

  “Will help,” said the gullaime, “but . . .”

  “But?” said Meas.

  “Feather,” it said, and pointed with its wingclaw at Meas’s head.

  She reached up, touched one of the black feathers braided into her hair.

  “That is your price?” said Meas.

  “Not price,” said the Gullaime softly. “Will help. But . . .” It snapped at the air, a gentle movement, as if it searched for the right words in the air of the great cabin. “Gullaime like feather.”

  Meas continued to stare at the windtalker, then nodded. She picked up the knife she had used to represent Tide Child from the table and cut away the end of one of her braids with the feather attached.

  “For you,” she said, and held it out.

  “Part of you, for me?”

  “You are part of this ship, Gullaime,” she said, “so you are part of me also.”

  The windtalker nodded its head and extended its long neck, the feathers growing on its head refracting the light in rainbows across the curve of its skull, then it opened its beak and very gently took the braid and the feather as if they were great treasure and tucked them inside its robe.

  “Right.” said Meas. “We should get ready. We will make full speed for Keyshanhulme Sound.”

  Meas and Joron escorted their guests back up to the slate of the maindeck, and it was clear to the crew of Tide Child that something had been decided. The crew had grown together and could read the mood of their officers. Meas stood by the rail as Brekir, Mozzan, Oswire and Arrin climbed down to their flukeboats. As Arrin walked past her he paused, leaned in and said something. Joron saw Meas nod. When Arrin’s flukeboat was gone Meas ordered Tide Child’s wings to be spread and then came to stand by Joron.

  “The parchment Arrin delivered – there was a coded message from Indyl Karrad.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He reminded me of my duty. That I must kill the arakeesian. And he also said that Hag’s Hunter, with my sither as shipwife, patrols the north. They are looking for the wakewyrm.”

  “So they know?”

  “It seems so.” She crumpled up the note and threw into the sea.

  To the north, Skearith’s Eye dipped below the horizon, and it was as if it bled into the sky, spreading a violent pink across the clouds, edging them with fiery yellow and molten silver. A sea mist was coming in, and it spread Skearith’s colours further through the sky, made the air still, smothering the sounds of the ship. Heavy air, they called it.

  “It is like we spread our wings to fly into a furnace,” said Joron.

  “Ey,” she said. “Fire in the sky, water beneath us. Smiths use fire and water to set their weapons.”

  “What did Arrin say to you before he left, Shipwife?”

  “He apologised for Oswire’s behaviour in my cabin. Asked me to make allowances for her interruptions. Said she is new to the black ships and from an old family. It is hard for her.”

  “It is going to be hard for us all,” said Joron as Skearith’s Eye continued to blaze glorious colour across the horizon.

  “It is,” said Meas. “So let us fly fast, let tonight’s fire and water set this weapon, for when we meet Hag’s Hunter, Twiner – and we shall – we will need to be sharp and we will need to be keen.” A smile moved across Meas’s face like a bird caught by the wind: there one moment before suddenly falling away. The expression that replaced that fleeting smile Joron could not read. Then she walked back up to the rump to take her customary place by the spine.

  Joron gazed after her and he realised what her expression had been in that moment she thought of Hag’s Hunter and her sister waiting in the north.

  It had been a look of satisfaction.

  They called the Northstorm the warstorm because those who lived on land thought it brought nothing but anger and death. The women and men of the sea knew different. The Northstorm was like war because it was unpredictable: it could be calm for weeks on end. It would lull you into a false sense of security before loosing its fury. And like war, the storm’s fury, when unleashed, was terrible and deadly.

  But, the Northstorm could be surprisingly gentle, and it was with gentle winds and shallow waves that the Northstorm flew Tide Child, Cruel Water and Snarltooth towards war, towards killing, towards wreckage and death. And whether it would be their own or another’s they did not know. But one of the Maiden’s greatest gifts, or greatest tricks, was to gift women and men the belief in the moment, of their own immortality. Without that belief then the likelihood of pain, the possibility that the next day they would sit at the Sea Hag’s bonefire, well, who would ever go to war then? But each and every deckchild had the ability and the instinct to believe, quite wholeheartedly, that the worst would not happen to them.

  Or so Joron thought, and he cursed them for it. Cursed their songs which grief still left him unable to sing, cursed the jaunty way they walked the decks as if action were something to be longed for. Cursed the way they talked of how they’d “show the Gaunt Islanders a thing or two” and cursed himself for not being able to see anything but his own coming demise.

  Joron had the late watch that night, wrapped in a thick stinker coat and watching Skearith’s Bones as they made their slow progression across the sky. He could find no peace. Every time he closed his eyes he heard the song of the windspire and saw the wingshot hit the tower. One moment women and men stood there, the next they were gone. Never mind that they had been the enemy. A single step forward and he would have joined those who had died at the tower. As surely as the bones in the night would change so these thoughts dogged him.

  Tomorrow we will fight.

  Tomorrow I may die.

  Sleep had eluded him for days, but when it did come, it was not the coming action that he dreamed of, it was of being under the water, and not of drowning, not of fear. In his dreams he became something terrible, something sure of its terribleness, he had imagined that such a feeling would bring him peace but it did not because he knew this surety was misplaced. As he sheared through the water, glorying
in his vast displacement, in the way that all creatures ran before him, he was haunted by the knowledge that he was not invulnerable, that there was a threat he did not know or understand but was no less real for that. And this dream, in the way of all dreams, faded into something nebulous and barely remembered by the time Joron slid from his hammock to take up his watches. All he had left of it was a creeping sense that he had missed something important but did not know what it was.

  He stood on the deck of Tide Child as Skearith’s Eye rose and the black basalt of Skearith’s Spine gave up its secrets to the coming light: wheeling birds, vines and plants grimly clinging to the rock, tiny beaches where the midtide creatures came ashore to lay their eggs. While the spine revealed itself, Tide Child hid his identity. A Gaunt Islander flag flew at the topspine in its savage glory, circles of silver and black.

  “You think the flag will fool them?” said Dinyl as he approached.

  Joron wished he would keep his voice down a little.

  “If you spoke a little louder, Dinyl, I think the whole crew would hear you questioning the shipwife’s orders.”

  Dinyl scratched his head, pushing fingers up under his no-tail hat to pull them through greasy brown hair.

  “I only ask a question, is all.”

  “And it is a question you should not ask of Twiner.” They turned to find Meas striding up the deck. “You should ask it of me and ask it in the privacy of the great cabin.” Where Joron was tired and Dinyl looked resentful, Meas looked like she had slept the sleep of the just and been visited by the peace of the Mother. “But on this occasion it is a question I do not mind you asking and do not mind the crew hearing my answer.”

  Around them heads were raised – not obviously; nobody pausing in the myriad small or large or easy or complex tasks that kept a boneship running. But heads were angled, hair was tucked behind ears, hammers were put aside for quieter tools so that the shipwife’s words could be heard.