The Night of the Swarm

14

Wednesday, 20 Halar 942.

The wolves have finally pounced.

As I write this, I feel how lucky we are to be alive. Whether luck and life will still be with us much longer is uncertain. For now all credit goes to Captain Rose. People change; ships grow faster, arms more diabolical. But nothing beats a seasoned skipper, no matter his moods or eccentricities.

Five bells. Lunch still heavy in my stomach. A shout from the crow’s nest: Ship dead astern! I happened to be right there at the wheel with Elkstem, and we rushed to the spankermast speaking-tube to hear the man properly.

‘She was hid by the island, it’s not my fault!’ he shouted. That told us next to nothing: there were islands all about us, great and small, settled and unsettled (though with each day north we saw fewer signs of habitation), sandy and stony, lush and bone-dry. We’d been winding among them for a week.

‘A monster of a boat!’ the lookout was shouting. ‘Ugly, huge! She’s five times our measure if she’s a yard.’

‘Five times our blary length?’ cried the sailmaster. ‘Gather your wits, man, that’s impossible! Distance! Heading!’

‘Maybe longer, Mr Elkstem! I can’t be sure; she’s forty miles astern. And Rin slay me if she don’t have a halo of fire above her. Devil-fire, I mean! Something foul beyond foul.’

‘What heading is she on, damn you?’ I bellowed.

‘East, Mr Fiffengurt, or east-by-southeast. They’re under full sail, sir, and-’

Silence. We both screamed at the poor lad, and then he answered shrilly: ‘Correction, correction! Vessel tacking northwards! They’ve spied us, they’ve spied us!’

Not just spied, but fingered us for dinner, it appeared. I blew the whistle; the lieutenants started bellowing like hounds. In seconds we were preparing for war.

From the hatches men were spilling like ants, the dlomu answering the call as quickly as the humans, if not more so. Mr Leef finally brought me a telescope. I raised it, but shut my eyes before I looked. Don’t show the lads any fear; they’re watching, I thought.

The vessel was a horror. It was a Plazic invention to be sure, one of the foul things sustained by the magic the dlomu had drawn from the bones of the lizard-creatures called eguar. Prince Olik had told us a little, and the dlomic sailors a little more. Eguar-magic was the power behind the Bali Adro throne, and its doom. It had made her armies invincible — but their commanders depraved and self-destroying. It is a frightful state of affairs, and one that reminds me uncomfortably of dear old Arqual.

We’d seen monster-vessels before, in the terrible armada that passed so close to us just after we reached the Southern main. But this was something else altogether. Impossibly large and shapeless, it was like a giant, shabby fortress or cluster of warehouses that had somehow gone to sea. How did it move? There were sails, but they were preposterous: ribbed things that jutted out like the fins of a spiny rockfish. It should have been dead in the water, but the blue gap between it and the island was growing. It was under way.

Captain Rose bounded up the Silver Stair. Without a glance at me he climbed the quarterdeck ladder, and kept going to the mizzen yard, where he trained his own scope on the vessel. He held still a long time (what’s a long time when your heart’s in your throat?) as Elkstem and I gazed up at him. When he turned to us, his look was sober and direct.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you are distinguished seamen: use your skills. This foe we cannot fight. We must elude it until nightfall or we shall lose the Chathrand.’

The captain’s rages are frightful, but his compliments simply terrify: he saves them for the worst of moments. In such times a mysterious calm descends on him; it is deeply unsettling to observe. He hung there, face unreadable within that red beard, one elbow hitched around a backstay. He examined the skies: blue above us, thick clouds to windward. Islands on all sides, of course. Rose looked over each of them in turn.

His eyes narrowed suddenly. He pointed at a dark, mountainous island, some forty miles off the starboard bow. ‘That one. What is it called?’

Elkstem, who knew Prince Olik’s map better than I, told him that it was Phyreis, one of the last charted islands in the Wilderness. ‘And a big one, Captain. Half the size of Bramian, maybe,’ he said.

‘It appears to sharpen to a point.’

‘The chart attests to it, sir: a long southwest headland.’

Rose nodded. ‘Listen well, then. We must be fifteen miles off that point at nightfall. That will be at seven bells plus twenty minutes. Until then we are to stay as far as possible ahead of the enemy, without ever allowing him to cut us off from Phyreis. Is that perfectly clear?’

‘By nightfall-’ I began.

‘Fiffengurt.’ He cut me off, suddenly wrathful. ‘You have just disgraced your very uniform. Did I say by nightfall? No, Quartermaster: my command was at nightfall. Earlier is unacceptable, later equally so. If these orders are beyond your comprehension I will appoint someone fit to carry them out.’

‘Oppo, sir,’ I said hastily. ‘At nightfall, fifteen miles off the point.’

Rose nodded, his eyes still on me. ‘The precise course I leave to your combined discretion. The canvas likewise. That is all.’

And that was all. Rose sent word that he required Tarsel the blacksmith and six carpenters to join him on the upper gun deck, and lumbered off towards the No. 3 hatch, shouting at his ghosts: ‘Clear out, stand aside. Don’t touch me, you stinking shade! I know what a barometer is. Damn you all, stop talking and let me think!’

Elkstem and I put the men to spreading all the canvas we could think of; the winds were that sluggish. I even sent a team down to the orlop, digging for the moonrakers that hadn’t been touched since Arunis calmed the winds off the Straits of Simja. Then we dived into our assignment: plotting, calculating, fighting over the maths. It is no easy job to ensure that one arrives at a distant spot neither early nor late, above all when one must seem to be fleeing. And to make matters worse, we were fleeing. There was the open question of just how fast that unnatural behemoth could move. One thing was clear, though: far more than wind propelled it over the seas.

The Chathrand, however, remains a beauty of a sailing ship. Despite the torpid day she was making thirteen knots by the time we ran out the studding sails. I was proud of her: she’d weathered a great deal and come through. But the Behemoth was still gaining. As it crept nearer I studied it again. A monstrosity. Great furnaces along her length, belching fire and soot. Black towers and catapults and cannon in unimaginable numbers, giving the whole thing the look of a sick, spiny animal. Hundreds, maybe a few thousand, crowded onto her topdeck. What possible use for so many?

‘Traitor!’

I ducked with a curse. It was Ott’s falcon, Niriviel. The bird screamed low over my head, shrieking, and alighted on the roof of the wheelhouse. It was the fourth time this week.

‘Bird!’ I sputtered. ‘I swear on the Blessed Tree, if you ever come at me like that again-’

‘My master orders me to announce my mission!’ it shrilled. ‘I go on reconnaissance. My master requires you to inform me of the distance between the ships.’

‘The distance? About thirty miles, currently, but see here-’

‘I hate you. You’re a mutineer, a friend of Pathkendle and the Isiq girl. Why aren’t you in chains?’

On the deck below, Darius Plapp looked up and grinned. The ganglord was working the mizzen halyards, along with twenty of his lackeys. The dispirited Burnscovers were far forward at the jiggermast. I had separated the gangs after a warning from Sergeant Haddismal that they were itching for a fight.

‘Captain Rose finds me more useful here than in the brig,’ I told the falcon. ‘Now listen, bird, stay well above that ship, we don’t know what sort of weapons they-’

‘Some enemies sail over the horizon, coveting our land and gold,’ cried the falcon, ‘but worse are the sons of Arqual whom the Emperor has showered with love, and who do not love him in return.’

‘Showered with love! Oh flap off, you blary simpleton!’

Niriviel stepped from the roof, beat his wings, and shot away southwards. The bird’s abuses make me livid, but I can’t manage to hate him for long. The poor beast was lost for a month after the Red Storm, and Ott seemed almost human in the way he nursed him back to strength — feeding him bite after bite of raw, fresh chicken, along with ample fibs about the greatness of Arqual and the vileness of her enemies. I think often of Hercol’s assessment: ‘Niriviel is a child soldier: trained in fanaticism, more a believer than those who taught him to believe.’ In other words, a simpleton. But a useful one: he might well come back with knowledge that would save the ship.

‘Why in Pitfire are we still tackin’ north?’ grunted Darius Plapp. ‘This is blary suicide. We should be runnin’ downwind.’

‘If we need tactical advice we’ll inform you, Plapp,’ I said.

‘Oppo, Mr Fiffengurt, sir.’

I could have had him sent to the brig for that sneering tone, but instead I pretended not to notice. Lately I am tempted to indulge the ganglords (the one who walks free, and the other who controls his little kingdom from the brig) so long as they don’t set the lads on one another like so many dogs.

Once again there is peace between them: a seething, hate-heavy peace. Rose too has taken certain steps to foster it, despite making a savage example of Kruno Burnscove. A month ago, when the Burnscove Boys turned in that deathsmoke-addicted Plapp, I’d expected the poor wretch to be hanged. Rose had promised no less, and Rin knows he’s bloody-minded enough. But instead he shackled the man to the rail near the left-handed stinkpots.¹¹ Four times a day, a Turach lit a deathsmoke cigar and left it burning in a steel bowl some five yards away. It was clearly torture. He could catch whiffs of the drug when the wind allowed: just enough to whet the knife of his craving. His howls were like those of a man awake during the amputation of his legs. What’s more, every last hand saw the wretch when they came to void their bladders: saw how he pulled at the shackles until his wrists bled, thrashed against the deck until his face was one black bruise. It may even have scared a few lads away from the drug. Whether this one will survive the ordeal I cannot guess.

We went on tacking north. Clouds rolled in, their grey bellies heavy with rain, although for now it refused to fall. The wind freshened as well: soon we were at fifteen knots. Elkstem and I watched the Behemoth, and after a bit we exchanged a smile. The gap between us was no longer shrinking: indeed it was, ever so slightly, growing. The Behemoth was falling behind.

‘Give me an honest wind over magecraft any day of the week,’ said Elkstem. In a voice meant just for me, he added: ‘Tree of Heaven, Graff, I thought we were dead.’

Marila, bless her, brought tea and biscuits to the quarterdeck. Her own belly is showing now, a little fruit bowl tucked under her shirt. In her arms was Felthrup, squirming with impatience to move: it was his first venture beyond the stateroom since the attempt on his life. As soon as his feet touched the boards, he raced the length of the quarterdeck and back again, then dashed excitedly about our heels.

‘Prince Olik spoke the truth!’ he squeaked. ‘That ship is a mutant thing, a mishmash held together by spells alone! The Plazic forces are in decline. The power they seized has devoured them like termites from within, and turned them senseless and savage. But not for long! Olik said they were melting, those Plazic weapons, and that Bali Adro cannot make any more.’

‘Not without the bones of them croco-demons, is it?’ said Elkstem.

‘Very good, Mr Elkstem! Not without the bones of the eguar — and they have no more, for they have plundered the last of the eguar grave-pits. They are drunkards, taking the last sips from the bottle of power, and reeling already from withdrawal.’

‘Godsforsaken rat on the quarterdeck,’ muttered Darius Plapp.

‘I believe you, Ratty,’ I said, ‘but it’s no real comfort at the moment. Their last sips of power may blary well kill us.’

‘Do you really think so?’

As if the Behemoth wished greatly to convince one little rat, something massive boomed on her deck. I snapped my scope up, hoping that one of those furnaces had exploded and torn her apart. No luck: it was rather the opening of a tremendous metal door. At first I couldn’t see what lay beyond that door. But after several minutes I made out what looked like a bowsprit, and then a battery of guns. Something was detaching itself from the Behemoth and gliding out upon the waves.

‘Graff,’ Elkstem murmured to me, gazing through his more powerful scope. ‘Do you know what that is? A sailing vessel, that’s what. I mean a regular ship like our own. And blast me if she ain’t got four masts!’

‘You must be wrong,’ I said. ‘The monster can’t be that big.’

But it was not long before I saw for myself that it was true. My hands went icy. ‘That colossus,’ I said, ‘is a naval base. A moveable naval base. We’re being pursued by a mucking shipyard.’

‘It’s the daughter ship that worries me,’ said Elkstem.

The daughter ship, the four-master, was narrow and sleek. She might have been a pretty vessel once, but now her lines were ruined by great sheets of armour welded to her hull. All the same she would be faster than the Behemoth.

Her crew began spreading canvas. Elkstem growled. ‘They’re clever bastards. That four-master will catch us, sooner or later, unless the wind decides to double. We could outfight her, maybe — but so what? All she needs to do is nip our heels, hobble us with a few shots to the rigging. Once we’re slowed, the monster can catch up and finish us.’

‘I tell you we should run downwind,’ said Darius Plapp.

‘They would only do the same, Mr Plapp,’ cried Felthrup, through the rungs of the quarterdeck.

‘The blary rodent gimp wants to be a sailor, now,’ muttered Plapp.

‘Wrong again,’ said Felthrup, ‘and may I say that against that particular desire you, sir, provide a fine inoculation?’

Plapp scowled. ‘I ain’t never provided you with nothin’,’ he said.

‘Mr Fiffengurt,’ said Marila, who had taken my telescope, ‘what if they don’t catch us by nightfall?’

‘Why, then our chances improve,’ I said, ‘so long as we keep the lights out on the Chathrand. They could very well lose us in the dark. Of course we won’t know until morning. We could even wake up and find ’em right on top of us.’

Marila started. ‘Something’s happening on the big ship,’ she said. ‘They’re moving something closer to the rail.’

Before I could take back the telescope there came a new explosion. From the deck of the Behemoth, a thing of flame was blasting skyward on a rooster-tail of orange sparks. A rocket, or a burning cannon-shot. Its banshee howl caught up with us, but the shot itself was not approaching, only climbing higher and higher. Suddenly it burst. Five lesser fireballs spread from the core like the spokes of a wheel: beautiful, terrible.

‘Maybe they’re trying to be friendly?’ said a lad at the mizzen.

Then, in unison, the fireballs swerved, came together again, and began to scream across the water in our direction.

Terror gripped us all. I bolted from the wheelhouse, shouting: ‘Fire stations! Third and fourth watch to the pumps! Hoses to the topdeck! Run, lads, run to save the ship!’

Marila had scooped up Felthrup and was racing for the ladderway. The fireballs had twenty miles to cover, and from the look of it they would do so in the next three minutes. But what sort of projectile could change course in mid-air?

‘Drop the mains, drop the topsails!’ Elkstem was shouting. And that of course should have been my first command: those ten giant canvasses made for a target twice the size of the hull, and they would burn far more easily too. Someone (Rose?) at the bow had given the same order; already the sails were slinking down the masts.

By the grace of Rin we got the big sails down, and even furled the jibs and topgallants. All in about two minutes flat. I was by now down on deck and heading for the mainmast. I saw the first fire-team near the Holy Stair, wrestling with a hose that was already gushing salt water. But there were none close to me. I leaned over the tonnage hatch, screaming: ‘Where’s your team, Tanner, you boil-arsed dog?’ When I turned, the men on deck were staring skyward. I whirled. A fireball was plummeting straight for us.

‘Cover! Take cover!’

Everyone ran. I threw myself behind the No. 4 hatch coam. But I had to look — my ship was about to be massacred! — so at the last second I raised my eyes.

What I saw was a nightmare from the Pits. The fireball was no shot, no chunk of phosphorous or glob of burning tar. It was a creature: vaguely wasp-like, its great segmented body blazing like a torch, and it struck the deck and splattered flame in all directions like a dog shaking water from its fur.

I dropped, horrified. My hair caught fire but I snuffed it quick. A blizzard of sparks blew past me; without the hatch I’d have been roasted on the spot. When I looked up and down the length of the ship I thought our doom had come, for all I saw was fire. Get up, I thought, move and fight while you can! There were screams from fifty men, a gigantic howling and thumping from the creature itself. I don’t know how I made myself stand and face the thing, but I did.

Heat struck me like a blow. The creature had smashed halfway through the deck and was lodged there, dying. It had made a suicide plunge, and when it struck its body had burst open like a melon. As it writhed and heaved, flame gushed from it like blood. Where was the rain? Where was our mucking skipper? I looked the ship up and down, and thought we were finished. Right in front of me a man caught fire: who he was I could not tell. He was running, screaming, and the flames wrapped him like a flag.

Then a mighty spray of water hit the man, knocking him clean off his feet. Rose and five Turachs were there behind me with a fire hose. They had wrestled it up the No. 4 and were blasting the poor wretch with all the force sixty men at the chain pumps could deliver. Thank Rin, it worked: he was doused, and two mates seized him and bore him away. Then Rose turned the spray around to the creature. It screamed and twitched and vomited fire, but it could not flee the blast. Very soon it was sputtering out.

Fire was still everywhere, though. At least four of the five creatures had exploded in like fashion. One had torn through the standing rigging, causing the entire mizzenmast to sway. The battle-nets were burning, the port skiff was burning, halyards were burning on the deck in coils. Beside me, Jervik Lank threw a younger tarboy into the life-saving spray, and I swear I heard the hiss as his burning clothes were extinguished. At the forecastle, Lady Oggosk opened her door, shrieked aghast and slammed it again.

Suddenly Rose exploded: ‘Mizzenmast! Belay hauling! Belay! Damnation! BELAY!’

The men aloft could not hear him. Rose left the Turachs and ran straight through the fire, then swung out onto the mainmast shrouds, over the water, waving his hat and screaming for all he was worth. I saw the danger: high on the mizzenmast, the brave lads were trying to save their mainsail by lifting it clear of the smouldering deck. But a line was fouled in the sail — a burning line. They couldn’t see it for the smoke, but they were about to spread the fire to the upper sails.

Captain Rose got their attention at last, and you may be sure they BELAYED. I looked around me, and by Rin, there was hope. All the creatures had been snuffed, the hoses were still blasting, and save for the mizzenmast the rigging was remarkably intact.

‘Two of them mucking animals burned up ’fore they could reach us,’ said Jervik Lank, popping up beside me again. ‘And when their fire died they just fell into the sea.’

So we were at the edge of their range. That answered one question: maybe they preferred to take us alive, but failing that they didn’t want us to escape. They’d waited as long as they dared to hurl those obscene fire-insects at us, then let loose before we could slip away.

The hose-teams went on blasting, and it began to look as though we’d won a round. The Chathrand had lost her jib sail, one minor lifeboat, some rigging about her stern. It was an unholy mess, and work for the carpenters for a fortnight. But the daughter-ship was still miles off, and the day was ending, and they hadn’t sunk us yet. Best of all there was no sign of another volley like the first.

‘Captain Rose, you’ve done it — Aya Rin! Captain!’

His left arm was on fire. ‘Nothing, pah!’ he said, calmly stripping off his coat. But the Turachs were taking no chances. They still had hold of that writhing dragon of a fire hose, and with a cry they swung around and aimed it at their burning captain — and blew him right off the shrouds and into the sea.

A fall like that (backwards, sixty or seventy feet) is a brutal thing for a young and strapping lad. Our captain is ox-strong, but also ox-heavy and far from young. We ran screaming to the rail, tearing life preservers from their hooks. I feared the marines had just written the last line in the tale of Captain Nilus Rotheby Rose.

It would have been so, surely, but for the hero that stepped forward. A dlomic sailor, barefoot already, tore off his shirt and leaped to the shrouds, just where Rose had been standing. He balanced there a moment, a jet black figure searching the waves. Then he saw what he was looking for, let go and dived.

It was a breathtaking sight: he sliced the waves like a black dagger thrown point down. Rose was unconscious, and already sinking, but the man surfaced beneath him and got his head above the waves, and swam easily enough (considering the great bearded bulk on his shoulder) to the nearest preserver, and held on there until we tossed him a sling.

Rose did not move as we hauled him up. Chadfallow and Rain were waiting — and so, on the other side of the hauling team, was Sandor Ott.

‘That’s a corpse you’re lifting,’ said the spymaster. ‘Fiffengurt, are we fifteen miles off that headland, as he requested?’

‘Nearly,’ I replied, not looking at him.

‘What was his plan?’ Ott persisted. ‘What was he building, with the blacksmith and the carpenters?’

No one knew, so no one answered. ‘Night Gods!’ Ott shouted. ‘The sun is going down, gentlemen! He must have told one of you how he meant to escape?’

‘Shut up, shut up ’til we revive him!’ said Dr Rain.

‘The man is dead, imbecile,’ said Ott.

We bent the captain over the rail. Water — quarts it seemed — gushed from his mouth. We laid him out, grey and cold upon the deck.

‘He is not breathing,’ said Chadfallow. ‘Rain, stand by to compress his heart. You know the procedure, I trust?’

Dr Rain blinked at him. ‘The procedure? Yes, of course! The procedure. He’s rather large, though.’

Chadfallow knitted his eyebrows, but there was no time for talk. He tilted the captain’s bushy head, pinched his nose, and sealed his lips to Rose’s own. He blew; Rose’s chest lifted like a balloon. Again the doctor breathed, and again. The crowd grew. Men were praying, quite a few upon their knees. Without Rose there would be panic; without Rose we’d be at the utter mercy of an assassin. Chadfallow delivered a tenth breath, then glanced up at Rain.

‘Now.’

The old fellow turned, took aim, and fell on his bottom in the centre of Rose’s chest. He began to bounce, vigorously.

‘Onesie! Twosie! Threesie — erch!’

Sandor Ott shoved him aside. He knelt over Rose’s chest and started pressing down with both hands. ‘Just twice!’ said Chadfallow, and at once started breathing again. We waited. The captain lay limp. The dlomu who had rescued him was hauled over the rail in turn. ‘Press harder this time, Ott,’ said Chadfallow, and the process went on.

I heard an old woman mumbling beside me: Lady Oggosk. She too was praying softly, leaning on her stick, tears caught in the wrinkles of her ancient face.

Ott and Chadfallow worked on. From above came an eerie sound: the beat of wings. Niriviel had just alighted on the fighting top.

The rain began at last. Then Sandor Ott ceased his efforts and stepped away. ‘It is over,’ he said. ‘Rose served his part well enough. And your skills are needed elsewhere, Doctor.’

Chadfallow ignored him, delivered the compressions himself. No one spoke save Ott and Niriviel, discussing what the bird had seen of the Behemoth’s weaponry. ‘A glass cube?’ said Ott, sounding almost delighted. ‘How intriguing. But are you certain it had no entrance, no doors?’

The rain strengthened. The light sank low. Finally, ashen, Chadfallow sat up. He licked a finger and held it to Rose’s parted lips. Then he shook his head. ‘Now it is over,’ he said.

Lady Oggosk shrieked.

From the look of agony she wore, I thought her heart had burst. Nothing of the kind: she raised her stick high and swung it like a club, narrowly missing the doctor’s chin. ‘Backstabbers! Parasites!’ she cried. ‘You’ve sucked his blood every day he’s been on this ship!’ We retreated. Oggosk swung her stick over and over, as though fighting wolves in the night. ‘I dare you! I dare you to stand there and watch him die!’

‘Duchess,’ said Chadfallow, ‘he has passed on. If I had any remedy-’

‘Silence, bastard, or I’ll kill you!’ She threw her stick away, dropped on her knees by Rose’s head. ‘I will drive you from the ship! Chamber by chamber, deck by deck! I’ll uproot you, tear you out with these hands, watch you blow away like dust!’ She curled her old fingers in Rose’s beard. ‘Are you listening? After all this time do you doubt my word?’

It was too sad. I knew she cared for the skipper, but this was beyond anything. It wasn’t just her heart that was broken but her mind.

Then Rose bolted upright.

He gave a horrendous, moaning gasp. His mouth was open and his eyes were bugging from his head. We stood transfixed. There were no cries of joy, only staggered silence. Lady Oggosk had raised the dead.

But wasn’t there something changed in Rose? Not just his pallor, which was still that of the drowned. No, it was something less tangible, but undeniably there. Like the charge in a cat’s fur: you could feel it, even before the spark that made you jump.

‘Captain,’ I whispered, ‘d’ye hear me?’

‘CLEAR THE DECK!’

The cry was in his old, storm-shattering voice. All at once he was scrambling to his feet, bellowing the command again as he did so, waving and gesticulating.

There were quite a few gawkers to be sure. ‘You heard the captain!’ I cried. ‘Clear out, there, give him some breathing room! Topmen, back to your-’

Rose leaped on me, smacked his hand over my mouth. ‘I SAID CLEAR THE DECK! ABANDON MASTS, ABANDON RIGGING! ALL HANDS BELOWDECKS! THE LAST MAN BELOW GETS HIS BUTTOCKS WHIPPED TO BLARY RIBBONS!’ He released me and waved his arms. ‘Officers! See them below in ninety seconds or I’ll have your hides! Run!’

There was of course no room for argument. We carried out his orders as though we had not just seen him lying dead at our feet. Even as we did so, a cry of dismay rang out: the men aloft had spotted something heading our way. ‘Down, down!’ we screamed, and down they came like troops of monkeys, some of them from three hundred feet above the deck. What had they seen, though? I heard ‘shiny’ and ‘spinning’ on a few lips, but nothing I could make sense of.

I ran as far the forecastle house and back again, and in that time all but a few dozen sailors had made it safely to the deck. But there was trouble at the hatches. The previous attack had brought men to the topdeck in their hundreds — perhaps twice as many as could be sensibly used to fight the fires — and now they’d been joined by two hundred more from the rigging. Many were wounded; some were in stretchers. Add to this the hoses, buckets, fire brooms, fallen cables, scorched canvas and other debris in and around the hatches and it made for awful bottlenecks. Rose was nearby again, howling and kicking men down the ladderways. Somehow, in a solid shoving mass, they went. But it was not fast enough for Rose. He drew his sword and jabbed the descending men with the point, between the shoulders. A few more seconds and the last men were squeezing down.

‘Back from the hatches! Stand clear!’ Rose whirled around and looked at the sky once more. ‘Great flaming Gods!’ he howled. ‘Fiffengurt, you mucking fool!’

I caught a glimpse of the missile — a cube of glass the size of a house, plummeting from above. Then Rose slammed into me like a stampeding rhino, and he bore me backwards into the tonnage hatch.

There was battle-netting over it, of course, but the nets were scorched, and we narrowly missed a hole that would have meant the death of us both. The captain seized me in a bear hug and rolled, three or four times, and when we stopped he was above me, and the dark mass of the longboat on its sling loomed over us like an umbrella. And then came the blast.

It was not as loud as I expected and no conflagration followed. Instead I heard a sound like fine furious hail, and the sky around the longboat filled with glass. The cube had exploded in mid-air, showering the Chathrand in a million needle-thin slivers of death. Screams erupted from the ladderways: not everyone had made it safely below.

‘Gods, what a weapon!’ Ott’s voiced echoed up through the tonnage shaft. I turned my head: there he was, one deck below, displaying a handful of sharp, shattered crystals. ‘It could kill an entire ship’s company, and leave the vessel perfectly sound!’ he cried, delighted.

‘Captain,’ I said, ‘you saved my life.’

Rose looked at me somewhat hatefully, as if I’d accused him of a crime. Then he heaved himself over so that we lay side by side. ‘Bedour spoke the truth,’ he said. ‘Captain Bedour. He’d seen it used, that weapon. He knew what was coming at us out of the sky.’ Rose stared up at the belly of the longboat. ‘I was dead, Fiffengurt. The ghosts were thick over the water, clawing at me, biting.’ He raised a hand to his face, remembering. ‘They were trying to tear my soul away from this flesh. Your time’s come, they said. You’re one of us now. Let go. Give in.’

‘You were lifeless on the deck,’ I said. ‘We did everything we could to revive you. Chadfallow finally gave up.’

‘Yes,’ said Rose, ‘but I didn’t. They were going to have to rip me away. And they were getting down to it too. Oggosk’s threats scared them off at first. They need this ship to carry them to their final rest, and don’t fancy being cast to the winds. But the eldest ghosts are so tired of being trapped aboard Chathrand that they have ceased to care. They kept at me, even on the deck. My grip on this flesh was breaking. In the end it was the bird that saved me.’

‘The b-b-?’

‘Ott’s falcon. It spoke of that cube, and Bedour overheard. He recognised the cube, somehow, and knew it would be the end of the Chathrand.¹² And there was only one man aboard who could do something about it. That was when they understood that they had no choice. The ghosts shocked my heart back into service, so that I could save this ship.’

His eyes drifted skyward. ‘You see, Fiffengurt? Everyone, even the dead, ultimately depend on Nilus Rose.’ Then he looked at me and barked: ‘Off your back, Quartermaster! Did some other commander grant you a holiday? Get the men to their blary stations! We shall tack west, a close reach around that island! Now, Fiffengurt. I want immediate headway, is that clear?’

He was alive, all right. And in the next few minutes, as the light failed, he showed us what he’d been building those many hours. It was a barge made of barrels, with a sturdy platform atop it, and a steel tripod mounted on the latter. Dangling from the tripod was a big emergency signal lantern: one of our spares. Coiled beneath it, in a kind of metal chimney, was a long braid of tobacco leaves. The end of the braid was tucked into the lamp’s ignition chamber.

‘A tobacco fuse,’ said Sandor Ott, inspecting the contraption with a smile. ‘Very good, Captain. How long do you imagine it will burn?’

‘Longer than my patience with your insolent questions.’ He picked up a fine hand-drill and set about boring a tiny hole near the top of one of the barrels. This action he repeated on every second barrel, until he had worked his way completely around the barge. Then he lifted an oil canister and soaked the lamp’s wick, but poured none at all into the tank beneath it.

Ott looked at me; his eyes said, Your skipper’s a madman. The lamp would light, sure enough, but with an empty tank it would not shine for more than a minute.

I had a prior worry, though. ‘Captain, you do realise that it’s only just gotten dark?’

‘Since I am neither blind nor witless, yes, I do.’

‘Oppo, Captain. What I mean is, they may have been able to see us, when we made our turn for westward.’

‘May have? Your imprecision wears on me today, Fiffengurt. They did see us; the point is not open to question. Tanner! Get this barge above, along with the deadweights. Fiffengurt, see that no one comes anywhere near us with a source of light — douse every light on the topdeck, in fact. And close the gunports. And see that the gallery windows stay dark. And bring me four cables, six fathoms long apiece. Use the fallen rigging, there is more than enough.’

We all scrambled. Tanner’s men hoisted the barge by cargo-crane to the topdeck, which was by now quite dark. The Chathrand was on her new heading already, drawing away west of the island’s rocky point. Behind us, the Behemoth glowed like a weird, pale gaslamp, and the daughter-ship had gained another several miles. At this rate it would catch us by morning.

Rose stood by his invention for some fifteen minutes in silence, as we dragged the four lines he wanted into position, and secured them to Mr Tarsel’s 200-pound deadweights. Then Rose ordered the barge lifted a few feet in the air. On her underside we found four iron rings, and to these we tied the other ends of the cables. Then Rose struck a match and eased it into the metal chimney. The odour of sweet tobacco wafted over us.

‘Get her afloat,’ he said.

We raised the barge and swung it over the rail. Deadweights dangling, the whole assemblage descended into the lightless sea. When it was safely afloat Rose gave the order to cut it loose.

‘Now, Officers,’ he said, looking at us all, ‘hard about, and brace up fore and aft. We are going east around that headland. As we did off Talturi: silent and invisible. Go to.’

It was vintage Rose. The turn was sharp but not perilous, and the wind from the south was as friendly to our new course as it had been to our old. The men stepped lively, too: they knew Rose was trying to bluff death once again, somehow, even if they couldn’t guess the particulars.

The daughter-ship, in no fear of us apparently, still had her running lights ablaze. She had not turned to intercept us, but was coming on straight at the point. For nearly two hours she kept that course, as we made east under the cover of those blessed clouds. Once the Behemoth fired another round of living fireballs, and we braced ourselves for the worst. Two went east, three west, but they all burned out well before they neared us, and no one was the wiser of our position, I’m sure.

Suddenly, miles behind us to the east, a light flared up bright and fitful. It was the signal-lamp, of course, and it sputtered and winked and died in thirty seconds, just as Rose had intended. And not three minutes later his gamble paid off: the daughter-ship broke westwards round the point.

What could I do but smile? The ruse was brilliant. We’d had to break left or right around sprawling Phyreis, and had waited to choose until the darkness was almost upon us. But under that barrage of hellish weapons we’d seemed to panic, turning west before the light was truly gone. A feint? Well maybe. The daughter-ship had taken no chances and kept straight on, hoping for some sign, some giveaway. And that’s what Rose’s decoy had provided. It would seem an accident: a carelessly opened gunport, a lamp carried above deck by some foolish lad and quickly smothered. And the beauty of it was that they would never spot the barge and learn that they’d been tricked, for all this while the sea had been trickling in through the holes Rose had drilled in the barrels. Soon the weight of lamp and tripod would sink the barge like a stone. They’d sail west all night, trying to catch up with a ship that wasn’t there.

‘You’re a prodigy, Nilus,’ said Lady Oggosk, clinging with both scrawny hands to his arm. ‘And to think how they scorned you back in Arqual: a low-born smuggler with the arrogance of a king. But there were some who meant that as a compliment, you know.’

Friday, 22 Halar.

Left Phyreis behind this morning. No pursuit, no sails. For two days we’ve been alone on the seas. Five men and one dlomu dead of their burns. And I escaped with no more than a hair-scorching, and a little spot behind my left ear that crackles at the touch.

Winds steady and growing, as though the South were anxious to be rid of us. One or two charted isles left ahead of us, then what I must assume is barbarous territory all the way to the edge of the Ruling Sea.

Rescued that fool Druffle from a suicidal binge. I smelled only rum on him, but his behaviour suggests some fouler liquor: grebel, maybe. He thought I was his father, and he begged, weeping, for some bread and honey — ‘island honey,’ he is on about it again.

But Mr Uskins continues to improve. He is consigned to quarters now rather than sickbay, for there are no spare beds in the latter. He is shy, and eats alone, and perhaps suffers from some difficulty swallowing, for his hand is often at his neck.

Saturday, 23 Halar.

No pursuit. We are rid of both vessels, it would appear. Lest we enjoy the briefest lessening of our dread, however, a terrible vision came tonight. I was far below and did not see it, but those who did can speak of nothing else. They say it was a cloud that moved. That it raced over us with the speed of birds on the wings but paused over our quarterdeck, and even lowered a little, and that it was black as pitch, and though it boiled and writhed it was thicker than any mist, seeming almost like a black growth or tumour, half as big as the Chathrand. Off it flew northwards, and vanished into the thunderheads that broke above us shortly thereafter. Felthrup saw it and has since been impossible to calm: he declares it is the Swarm of Night. Rose saw it too — from the height of the mizzen topgallants, where he’d pulled himself for a last scan of the seas behind us. After the cloud had passed he stayed there, motionless, and when I climbed up to consult him I found his eyes distracted and his face deathly pale.

‘My life has been all wrong,’ he said.

Sunday, 24 Halar.

Star of Rin, grant me courage. The nightmare we have all feared is upon us. Two men have gone mad. I am not speaking of an attack of nerves or a delusion. They have lost speech, reason, everything. They scream and run in panic; they bite and claw and fling their limbs about like monkeys. One is young Midshipman Bravun, of Besq; the other a passenger from Uturphe.

I have ordered the dlomu not to breathe the word tol-chenni, but in truth the precaution comes too late. The lads all know about the mind-plague. They are afraid as never before.

Chadfallow too is mortified, and hiding his fear behind an exhaustive medical inquiry. The two men were not acquainted, did not frequent the same parts of the ship, did not even eat on the same deck. Both, however, were Plapps: the midshipman had been recruited to the gang just days ago, I’m told.

There has already been some trouble on this score: Plapps are whispering that the outbreak was engineered somehow by Kruno Burnscove, maimed and imprisoned though he be. At five bells this morning a Burnscove lad was found in the bottom of the hold — gagged and tied up in his hammock and dangling by his feet. He was positioned over the bilge well, at a height that required him to arch his back and neck to keep his head out of the bilge. He’d done just that through the night, and was found at dawn just as the last of his strength was giving out. Luckily, Rose is the sort of captain who expects to wake up to a statistical report on his vessel, written out and slipped under his door by the officer of the day. Such reports naturally include the depth of water in the well.

If nothing else, Chadfallow’s investigation should help to stamp out such noxious stupidity. The Burnscove Boys did not inflict the mind-plague on the Plapps. We know from Prince Olik that the disease is not transmissible from person to person, that it struck Bali Adro like a snowfall — meaning slowly, uniformly, everywhere at once.

Mr Uskins’ symptoms were of course very similar to those of the new victims — and Uskins recovered in a fortnight. That recovery bewilders us all. Prince Olik claimed, and our dlomic crew confirms, that no one ever recovers from the plague. ‘Once you burn down a house, it’s gone,’ says Commander Spoon-Ears. ‘That’s how it was with human minds. You can’t repair something that no longer exists.’

So what happened to Uskins? Spoon-Ears can’t tell me, and neither can Chadfallow. Least of all can Uskins himself account for his recovery. ‘I was a long time afflicted, but the illness passed,’ he says. ‘I was warned that madness would come, and that it would be a fate worse than death. But I was spared. I am a new and happy man. Please forgive me for what I did to the tarboys.’

What he did to the tarboys! That’s a subject I can’t bear to explore with Uskins, yet, though perhaps the lads themselves can enlighten me. If he means that he was cruel to them, I know it already. If he means something more, I may just turn him over to the Turach they call the Bloody Son. Either that, or find someone (Chadfallow, Sandor Ott, old onesie-twosie Rain) to attempt a little corrective surgery. I have crossed half the world without murdering Uskins, but Rin knows I’m still prepared.

Of course that is in awful taste. One should not make a joke of murder, not on this ship at any rate. When I told the captain about the Burnscove Boy who had nearly drowned, I expected a detonation: something on the order of what had happened the day he assaulted Burnscove himself. To my surprise Rose’s reaction was quite the opposite. He listened in perfect stillness, then walked slowly to his desk, where he sat down and played with a pencil. Finally, almost sorrowfully, he told me to start naming members of the Plapp gang — just off the top of my head. I didn’t know them all, I told him.

‘Never mind,’ said Rose heavily. ‘Name all that you can.’

I complied. The names rolled off my tongue, and he sat there with eyes closed, so still that I began to wonder if he was asleep. I must have named thirty or forty when his eyes suddenly snapped open. ‘Him,’ he said. ‘Bring him to me at once.’

‘Skipper, with my utmost respect-’

‘Bring him,’ said Rose quietly. Then he looked up at me, his face strained and sad. ‘Or send the Turachs for him, if you prefer.’

Of course I went myself. The man I’d named was a tall, skinny, red-nosed Etherhorder who’d been with us from the start. He was also a personal favourite of Darius Plapp. He delivered the ganglord’s messages, brought food to his bedside and for aught I know tasted it for poison. I found him seated next to Plapp on the berth deck, grinning and whispering in his ear. He came along with a shrug, snickering at me behind my back.

‘Did you know, sir, there’s men call you Old Fool Fiffengurt, and Rat-Fancier Fiffengurt, and nastier things? Much as we try to keep ’em in line, of course.’

I did not even glance back at him. This was an old game, insulting officers with a veneer of respect. The lad was playing it crudely. On another day I’d have put him in the stocks.

‘Personally,’ he said, ‘I don’t hold with makin’ sport of a man’s life back in Arqual — do you, sir? I mean, say a dry old geezer falls in love with a brewer’s lass and wants to give up the sailing life-’

I stopped dead.

‘No one should laugh at ’im. Good luck to the geezer! Maybe he will keep her satisfied, keep her cute little eyes from roaming. There’s odder things in this world — not many, but some.’

It went on like this all the way to the captain’s door. I thought the man’s nastiness would make what was to come a little easier, but it did not. When we arrived, Rose was on his knees, unfolding a dusty oilskin over the polished floor.

‘Come here,’ he said immediately. ‘Not you, Fiffengurt.’

The man stepped uncertainly onto the tarp. ‘Shall I help you up, Captain?’ he said. There was no hint of a snicker any more.

Rose raised his busy head and stared at the man. ‘You are close to Darius Plapp?’ he asked.

‘Mr Plapp’s been very good to me, sir, yes indeed! I try to do what’s expected of me — that is, always assumin’ it don’t get in the way of orders — of my duties, I mean, sir, my duties.’

Rose climbed laboriously to his feet. ‘Do not be alarmed,’ he said. ‘I am going to feel your muscles.’

‘What for, sir?’ asked the Plapp, as Rose squeezed his arms experimentally.

‘To be certain I do not need a blade,’ said Rose. He walked back to his deck and picked up a coiled leather cord. Turning, he held it out, as though for the man’s inspection.

The man shot me a beseeching glance. ‘What’s this all about, Captain?’

‘Order,’ said Rose, and struck him hard in the stomach. The man bent double, and Rose whipped the cord around his neck. It was over quickly. The steward and I wrapped the oilskin around the body and carried it below.

Darius Plapp went berserk, and had to be restrained by his own thugs, lest he hurt himself. Kruno Burnscove too was shocked at Rose’s escalation. He issued a startling order from the brig: not one of his men was to gloat, or laugh, or be anything short of professional seamen, until further notice. Rose himself carried on as if nothing had changed.

Druffle is correct: the gangs dare not touch him while their leaders are aboard. Besides, since the day we faced the Behemoth, there is a new air of mystery and fear about the captain. Fifty men saw him laid out on the topdeck, pronounced dead by Chadfallow, grey and motionless for a quarter-hour. And fifty men had seen him bolt to his feet and resume command. Even Sandor Ott has been put in his place, they are saying, because Nilus Rose simply cannot be killed.

Monday, 25 Halar.

Maybe not. But if he is immortal, Rose is alone in that distinction. The whole ship is rising; there is talk of a gang war. Kruno Burnscove has been stabbed to death in his cell.