The Rats and the Ruling sea

29

24 Freala 941

The storm built quickly, as the new wind barrelled in from the north-east, carrying great black-hearted thunderheads and a sheet of advancing rain. By the time Pazel and Thasha reached the topdeck the topsails were all raised for the sudden turn, and the huge yards were once more being hauled into the teeth of the wind. The Black Shoulders were out of sight, and Bramian itself was a mere smudge on the western horizon, but the Jistrolloq looked frightfully close — under two miles, probably, and closing without a doubt.

Such sudden darkness. The clouds were sealing off the heavens like a sheet of tin; already the sun was banished to a bright streak in the south, drawing away much faster than they could advance. The waves were growing too: white-capped, they were cresting around the height of the upper gun deck. Pazel shuddered to imagine tiny Diadrelu in the stateroom, looking up at the grey-green water each time the Chathrand entered a trough. But neither waves nor wind had yet reached the awesome scale the Nelluroq was famed for, the kind that would swamp the enemy or force his retreat.

Thasha was shaking with emotion, though Pazel knew she was trying to hide it. He had never felt like such a heel. The things he'd said in that cabin. Oggosk had left him no choice, of course, but the fact spared him little shame. He longed with all his heart to tell her the truth, but how could he, when he needed her to hate him?

Without a word to each other they made for the quarterdeck. Rose was leaning over the rail, talking to Fiffengurt: 'Nine cannon exactly, and as soon as you may. All thirty-two pounders, all from the lower battery. Make sure they understand you.'

'Oppo, Captain, nine it is.' Fiffengurt shielded his eyes and nodded at a topdeck gun. 'And that faulty forty-eight makes ten?'

'Precisely. But before any of those the empty charge.'

'Consider it done, sir.'

Fiffengurt rushed to the hatch, shooting Pazel a furtive look of terror and anxiety. Then he was gone down the ladderway, blowing sharp notes on the whistle clamped in his teeth.

Moments later the rain caught up with them. It came with a fiercer wind, and slashed across the topdeck in rippling sheets that broke and boiled around their ankles. Everyone was running and stumbling: for deck swabs, for oilskins, for shelter.

'Batten down the Five!' boomed Uskins, seizing Pazel and thrusting him at the hatch. 'Not full-fast, but shielded, Muketch — can you manage?'

'Oppo, sir.' Pazel squatted down before the rolled oilskin and tore at its gathers. Thasha bent instinctively to help him, and for the merest instant they both froze, looking at each other. Something in Pazel's face must have told Thasha that her help was unwelcome, for she suddenly released the oilskin and dashed away through the downpour.

Neeps appeared out of the chaos, looking positively hostile as he snatched up a corner of the oilskin and helped Pazel spread it over the hatch rail. Together they stretched and tightened the canvas until it fitted tight as a drumhead, leaving a gap just wide enough for a man to squeeze up or down the stairs. 'Thanks again,' said Pazel as they finished.

'You really are a swine, you know,' said Neeps. 'Thasha's falling to pieces.'

Pazel shot him a sideways look. 'All right, mate,' he said, 'I'm going to tell you what's what.'

'Well it's about blary time.'

'But you have to swear to stay away from Oggosk. Can you do that?'

'Fire,' said Neeps.

'What?'

A cannon-blast drowned Pazel's question. The two boys hit the deck as men screamed warnings to each other. The Jistrolloq had opened up with her long guns. Pazel glanced up just in time to see the bow of the enemy ship blossom with new fire — four points this time — and then he cringed as the sound reached them, four fused explosions slamming into his chest. But none of the shots touched the Chathrand.

'That's all for show, lads,' Alyash bellowed, staggering aft against the wind. 'They couldn't strike us at this range on a quiet day.'

As the youths rose, there came a noise far louder than the Jistrolloq 's guns. It was one of their own, but something had gone wrong: the blast seemed to come from well inside the Chathrand. Pazel heard coughing and retching as smoke began to billow from the starboard quarter.

'Fiffengurt must have botched something terrible,' said Neeps.

Pazel watched the plume of black smoke vanish in the rain. 'Did he? I wonder.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Something Rose said. About firing off a gun with no ball, just a powder-charge, though why he-Down, down!'

The Jistrolloq was firing again. This time they heard the scream of the ball as it passed overhead. Pazel looked up: Thasha and Rose stood side by side on the quarterdeck. Neither one of them had taken cover.

'Damn it all!' said Neeps, also looking at Thasha. 'He may be insane, but she's not. Or wasn't, before you got to her. I think you had something you wanted to tell me?'

Pazel told him, shouting over the wind. As he listened the Sollochi boy's face grew tight with fury. 'Oggosk!' he said. 'That vulture! I'm going to shove those threats right down her scrawny old throat!'

'No you're not,' said Pazel. 'You're going to do something else for me. You're going to explain it all to Thasha.'

Neeps took a deep breath, and nodded. 'Yeah, all right.'

'And make sure she understands, Neeps: she can't so much as smile at me, even when we're alone. She should try not to think about me. Oggosk has ways of finding out.'

Neeps went straight to the task — and Pazel, fearing that Thasha would turn to him with some look he would have to respond to, stepped quickly behind the mizzenmast.

The rain was cold now, and the wind stronger yet. From below, Pazel caught the dim sound of Fiffengurt roaring Fire, and then came a series of blasts, and puffs of black smoke from the starboard gunports. On the Jistrolloq, nothing changed, and Pazel would have been amazed if it had. They were still too far apart, and it looked very much as though Chathrand was firing at a hopeless angle. What was Rose trying to prove?

More shots from the Jistrolloq; more wild and useless return fire from the Chathrand. Then Neeps returned from the quarterdeck, but his face wore no hint of satisfaction. 'You can call me a swine now, if you want,' he said. 'I–I cacked things up, Pazel. I was trying to explain that when you acted strange around her it was because you were worried about what Oggosk would think. But I was still thinking about the murth-girl, and said Klyst when I meant to say Oggosk. And when I realised what I'd done… aya, Rin-'

'What next?' said Pazel. 'Out with it.'

Neeps closed his eyes, wincing. 'I said, "He's not in love with her." '

Pazel grabbed him by the shoulders. 'You didn't. Neeps, you couldn't have-'

'I thought you'd want her to know!' Neeps shouted defensively. 'It's just that the way I said it was all wrong! I sort of blurted it out. And it shocked her a little, I guess, because she turned her back and ran off.'

Pazel sagged against the mizzenmast rail. 'She's going to think I do fancy Klyst. Which I don't. Oh Pitfire-'

His collarbone gave a warning throb.

'Oggosk!' cried Neeps. 'This is all her fault, the hag! But listen, mate, don't you worry! I'll straighten things out with Thasha. I'll explain.'

'No!' said Pazel desperately. 'Don't do any more explaining. And don't go after Oggosk either. Just… go stand still somewhere.'

Neither of them had the chance to stand still, however, for scarcely had Pazel spoken when they were dragged into another job, this time by the gunner, Mr Byrd. Two of the Chathrand 's ancient guns, crude behemoths from her early days as a warship, had stood lashed like old monuments behind the kevels since Pazel first stepped aboard. Now Byrd's men had freed the starboard gun and cranked it halfway to firing position, kicking open the gunnery door and unbolting the sliders that would let the cannon extend. Neeps and Pazel, along with eight sailors, were herded together on either side of the gun carriage. In went the powder charge, then the ram, and finally two men heaved the forty-eight-pound ball into the muzzle.

'Take hold!' shouted Byrd. 'We're going to run all-out, boys, as we slide down the next wave. Just mind you don't go overboard! Steady, now-'

Baffled, Pazel looked from sailor to sailor. Who was carrying the match?

The wave crested; Byrd cried, 'Now!' and eleven bodies threw themselves at the big gun. It flew forwards — the sliders must have been freshly greased — and with a terrible sound of breaking wood, the cannon and carriage smashed right through the gunnery door. Men cried out, ropes snapped, ringbolts were torn from the deck. The big gun toppled forward and plunged into the sea.

Pazel gaped at the ugly wound in the Chathrand 's side, thinking, Rose is going to tear off our heads.

'That'll do nicely,' said Byrd without a hint of sarcasm. 'Carry on, tarboys — my crew, below.'

The sailors vanished. Neeps could not have looked more stunned if he'd been beaten with a shoe. '"That'll do nicely?" This crew's gone raving mad. And if this is how we fight they're going to slaughter us.'

'We look like a troupe of clowns,' Pazel agreed. He turned — and four men bearing lumber nearly bowled him down. They had carpentry tools as well, and immediately set about repairing the rail. As if they were expecting the job, Pazel thought.

Then he froze. Expecting the job.

'That sly old dog,' he said, turning to look at Neeps. 'Rose is doing it all for them, don't you see? The powder-charge inside the gun deck, the hopeless shots, now this big muck-up. He's making us look like clowns on purpose. He's setting a blary trap.'

Understanding spread across Neeps' face. 'You're right. You must be! He's reeling that Admiral Kuminzat in. But what happens if he falls for it? We're not as lame as all this, but they really can outgun us two to one.'

A shout from the quarterdeck: Rose himself was beckoning them near. When they had raced up the ladder the big man bent level with their faces.

'You both climb well,' he said. 'I need you aloft the spankermast, now, and clewing up the topgallant.'

'Captain,' said Pazel, 'we've never worked your sails. We don't know the spanker rigging.'

'Exactly,' said Rose, 'you'll look like perfect imbeciles up there. Climb!'

The boys glanced at each other. Pazel's theory was apparently proved, but they took no satisfaction from it. 'We might do some harm up there,' Neeps protested.

'See that you don't,' said Rose. 'Find a line that's bent to the topsails and foul it up, that's all — not badly, just plain to see. And keep worrying it 'til nightfall, unless I call you down.'

'Or we're shot down,' said Pazel. 'You wouldn't mind that at all.'

Rose struck at him with his massive fist. But the thousand blows Hercol and Thasha had landed on him had not been in vain. Just in time he leaped backwards, and found himself in fighting-stance, almost without conscious thought. It was the same pose that had so amused Drellarek, moments before the Turach died.

But Rose was not at all amused. 'You offal-brained Ormali layabout,' he said. 'I'm the captain of this ship! What if I'm not mad, eh, and we survive this engagement? Do you know how many ways I can make you wish you'd been killed? Get up that mast!'

There was no help for it: Rose was sincere in his threats, if in little else. Once more the boys took to the shrouds, bare feet on the decrepit ratlines, hands on the sturdier ropes. This time the ascent was horrifying. The topgallants rode a hundred feet above the quarterdeck, and before he'd climbed thirty Pazel began to suffer fantasies of falling, flying, letting go. The wind was like a frigid hand trying to claw them from the ship; the rain flew at them horizontally in a ceaseless, biting spray. Over and over the ratlines snapped, letting them half-drop through the shrouds, feet kicking wildly. And now the Jistrolloq was close enough for him to see the fire leaping from her chaser-guns.

Don't clench your hands! Captain Nestef had taught him. If you squeeze the blood out of 'em they'll soon be too tired to hold on. That's one of the fifty ways fear can kill you.

But Pazel was afraid — he was cold and dizzy and scared to death. Neeps' skin was pale; he looked as if the wind were trying to melt him down to bone. Up and up they went, like a pair of deranged hermits scaling a cliff in the Tsordons, going to meet the gods. At ninety feet Pazel looked down and saw Thasha pointing up at them, arguing with the captain. Then he saw Alyash grin and gesture at the stern as the largest wave yet passed like a moving hill under the vessel. A sixty-footer, thought Pazel, and vomited into the storm.

When they reached the topgallant yard the array of snapping ropes and heaving wheelblocks was a perfect mystery. Neeps groped to Pazel's side and shouted in his ear. Pazel could not make out a word.

Out along the yard, feet on the clew line, arms over the huge wooden beam. They flailed from rope to rope, hauling at each to see where it led. But the wind's strength so completely outmatched their own that they could barely move the thick hemp lines.

Half a mile between the ships. The Jistrolloq was firing selectively now. She would not have to wait long for point-blank accuracy.

Was Rose committing suicide? The Jistrolloq was as good a target as she would ever be, until she began to pass and rake them with her own huge array of cannon. Pazel knew for a fact that a dozen guns could fire from the Chathrand 's stern — thrice as many as could be wielded from the enemy's sleek bow. Yet still no guns fired from the Chathrand save the beleaguered nine on the starboard quarter. He's risking everything to lure them closer. What in the Nine Pits for?

Keep breathing. Think of something else. Strategy, tactics. What had Rose been going on about in his cabin? Motives, that was it. What had driven Kuminzat to take his vessel even this little distance onto the Ruling Sea? What did he want?

Revenge, of course, for his daughter and the Babqri Father. But Rose had clearly believed that something else was at stake for the man. Hope of glory? Love of country? Proof of Arqual's deception?

The mast shuddered. A ball from the White Reaper had punched a hole in the spanker mainsail.

What proof would the Sizzies have, though, if they sank the Chathrand out here in the Nelluroq? And if killing them was glorious, wasn't it ten times more so to expose a plot that could destroy the Mzithrin Empire?

They must have wanted to take us alive. Some of us, at least. But thanks to Diadrelu's warning we made it out of the Black Shoulders without a scratch. And now their settling for slaughter.

A quarter-mile. The Jistrolloq was pitching wildly now, and her mainsails fell limp for three or four seconds at the bottom of each trough, the wind cut off by the waves towering above her. She was slowing, she had to be: but not enough for the Chathrand to pull ahead.

There was a scream of fire. A blazing thing like a comet streaked from the Jistrolloq and exploded against the Great Ship's foremast. Dragon's egg! men were howling. Everyone had heard of the weapons, but Pazel had never met a soul who had lived to describe them first-hand. Now he saw why. Deck and mast were suddenly engulfed in a dripping blue flame; and hideous to behold, so were the men, leaping from the ropes, tearing at their oilskins in a frenzy. In blind agony the fire-drenched figures scattered on the deck, as luckier men hauled desperately at the pumps and hoses.

For once the rain was their ally: the fire did not spread, not even on the tar-coated rigging. But the men at the blast's epicentre had lost control of their sails. The huge forecourse swung disastrously to leeward, tearing at the standing rigging, and the Chathrand heeled in the same direction, her bow diving and her stern lifting like a bucking mule. Pazel locked his elbow around a brace as his feet were torn from the clew line, and for a moment his body lifted away from the spar like a scrap of canvas. When the ship righted he crashed down painfully against the timber. He glanced over his shoulder, and a prayer of joy welled up inside him: Neeps was still there.

The Chathrand was yawing, rolling, and it would be minutes yet before the fore-topmen came to grips with the chaos of the sail. Pazel looked down and saw six men at the wheel, Rose among them, fighting to keep the ship from turning sidelong to the waves. And now the Jistrolloq was racing towards them, chaser-cannon firing one after another, and teams on her forecastle running out the hull-smashing carronades.

Another terrible crash, and the roof of the wheelhouse was blown to pieces. At nearly the same instant the mizzenmast tilted leeward with a groan: a wooden ballista-spear, dragging a kite's tail of iron barbs, had ripped through her starboard shrouds.

Pazel looked at Neeps and made a jerking motion: The hell with this. It's over. Neeps understood, and nodded. His lips formed one word: Thasha.

Pazel caught his meaning instantly. Go to her, Neeps was telling him, while there's time to say goodbye.

They were creeping back towards the mast when something inside the Chathrand roared. Pazel looked down and saw black smoke boiling up and over the quarterdeck, and around both sides of the hull. They had run out the stern cannon at last.

The Jistrolloq's bow plating was tempered steel, but four square openings pierced it: one for each of the chaser-guns harrying her enemy. It was those four cannon, Pazel saw now, that Rose had targeted, and with devastating results. Two of the guns were utterly destroyed, splintered like bottle-stems before his eyes. The other two were blown backwards through their ports and out of sight. The Jistrolloq herself was all but unblemished, but she would not get another shot at the Chathrand until she drew up alongside.

Except for those two grim carronades on the forecastle. Such weapons were absurdly inaccurate, being roughly shaped like whiskey barrels, but they threw shot so enormous that one hit at short range could stave in a hull, dropping a ship to the sea floor in minutes. Even now the Mzithrinis were taking aim: Rose's strategy had left them wide open. Pazel thought of the gun-teams on the Chathrand, reloading as fast as humanly possible. It would not be fast enough.

Then, somehow, fire leaped again from the Great Ship. It was a different sort of smoke plume, ragged spokes instead of a single billowing cloud. And Pazel remembered: the grapeshot guns in Rose's cabin. They too were best at point-blank range, for they riddled a wide space with iron pellets: useless for damaging a ship, but deadly against flesh. Pazel could see the proof of that: Mzithrinis dead or squirming in their blood or crouching in fear behind the carronades. One of the guns, already loosed for firing, disgorged its knee-high iron shot onto the forecastle. The ball raced aft, catching a man by the heel and crushing him instantly; then it changed directions with the pitch of the ship and smashed through the starboard rail. Pazel could only watch, sickened and stunned. All that with one cannon's grapeshot.

Another of the four guns boomed, killing an officer as he stood to rally the surviving carronade gunners. A third erupted when relief gunners tried to swarm up the ladder onto the forecastle. Pazel realised with a sense of awe that the team in Rose's cabin would be able to reload the first of the four guns before the last had fired, and that such a relay could go on indefinitely. The Jistrolloq had given up her forecastle, and Chathrand 's twelve stern cannon would soon be ready to fire again.

He's going to sink them. He's going to kill them all, right before my eyes.

Whether that indeed was Rose's intention Pazel never learned, for at the height of the next swell the Chathrand 's foremast tore her stays, ripped free her starboard shrouds; and then the whole towering mass of spars and sail and rigging crashed down over the portside rail.

Dead! thought Pazel, as the Chathrand heeled terribly sidelong, and cables snapped around him. The dangling, half-submerged mast would drag their bow under as surely as a hold full of seawater; it was unthinkable that they would have enough time to cut it free. The Chathrand wallowed backwards down the wave; he saw the nine open gunports being wrenched shut in a panic, and a row of mailed Turachs falling like dominoes, and two sailors vanishing overboard into a cauldron of white froth. He saw Neeps struck in the chest by a flying wheelblock; they would not last another five minutes on this spar. But would the ship herself fare any better?

Even as he framed the thought, they rolled: the following sea had caught the Chathrand straight across her beam. The mast where they clung with locked limbs dived towards the sea, while beneath them the crown of the breaking wave swept right over the waist of the ship, making her quarterdeck and forecastle look for a moment like two rafts separated by eight hundred feet of white-water. In that torrent men clung to ropes, rails, cleats, anything that did not move, and still many were carried away.

Pazel had a blurred impression of the White Reaper at a hundred yards, as perfectly in control as they were perfectly flailing, her bowsprit pointed like a sword at Chathrand 's tilting flank. Dauntless, her gunners were making a third charge onto the forecastle. No grapeshot would drive them off this time, and if they managed to fire those killer carronades they could hardly miss with their eyes shut.

But then the Chathrand righted. Pazel could not believe what his senses were telling him. Had the foremast gone by the board? How, how had they done it? But there was no doubt, they were righting, and as he flew skywards with even more sickening speed than before, Pazel caught a sound he had only heard once before in his life — the day Rose had destroyed the whaler in a rippling broadside.

All along the starboard hull, gunports had flown open again: not just the earlier nine, but thirty, forty perhaps; and bow to stern they belched fire and smoke, straight at the Jistrolloq, across the trough between the passing wave and the next. Then just seconds before the wave reached them the doors were yanked shut again. Once more the Great Ship rolled.

Now at last Pazel caught a glimpse of their saviours: the augrongs, Refeg and Rer. Waist deep in foam, the creatures were even now taking axes to the last of the foremast rigging, while teams of men strained at the harnesses they wore, struggling to keep them from washing into the sea. Bless their hides, thought Pazel, those brutes could part a halyard with one stroke.

This time it took far longer to rise — who could say how much water had flooded the ship, or by how many routes? — but when they did at last Pazel knew it was over. Horrible, horrible sight! The Jistrolloq had lost her own foremast to the Chathrand 's guns, and her main was torsioned hopelessly to windward. But it was not the canvas she had lost that had doomed her; it was the canvas that survived. Like the Chathrand, the Mzithrini warship had slewed round, and the great power of the surviving squaresails was now pressing down on her bow, like a torturer's hand forcing his victim's head underwater, deeper, and deeper still. The next wave caught her broad on the starboard quarter, a blow the smaller ship could not absorb. Over she went on her beam-ends, masts slapping the waves, so close to the Chathrand they seemed almost like bridges her men might run across to safety. As the wave passed she tried to right herself, but a hundred thousand tons of water on her sails could not be shed in an instant, and the next wave buried her completely. By then the Great Ship had veered downwind just enough to ride the wave out, and Pazel felt the monstrous sidelong lurching come to an end. He and Neeps gained the shrouds, and as he began his descent at last Pazel looked for the enemy and saw nothing, nothing at all — and then a twisted length of white sailcloth, one proud red star in the corner, moving like the spectre of a whale beneath the surface, only to reach some absolute decision, and dive.