The Bitterbynde Trilogy (16 page)

Naught saw he of the Turret with its few inhabitants—little more than a slender column with landing platforms set at each level and each direction. Naught saw he of the village of Stockton Wood or of the green fields and patterned red soil that passed below. He knew only the restless twilight of the Windship's distended belly. From time to time, aeronauts would be sent below to check that the cargo was shipshape and had not come loose from its lashings, and that was what led, inevitably, to his discovery.

Able aeronaut Sandover dragged him up the companionways past several faces screwed up in astonishment. He stumbled, blinking, onto the quarterdeck and stood transfixed, looking up at the monumental wooden trees that rose forever above his head, tapering into a dazzling sky and decorated by the cordage of sailing; fathoms of standing and running rigging; halliards, sheets, foot-ropes, ratlines, tackles, shrouds, stays and braces, buntlines, clewlines, and downhauls. Sails bellied from the yards, and the flags of the Cresny-Beaulais Line fluttered from the mastheads.

With a contrary wind, she was close-hauled. The yards were pulled in as far as possible against the shrouds, and she was sailing at some sixty degrees to the wind with the propellers halted.

“Captain, sir …” Sandover saluted the stiff-backed, lean man who stood with feet braced against the rocking deck, flanked by the bosun and the cabin boy. Captain Chauvond waved him away impatiently without taking his eyes off the tossing treetops below. There was a ship to be sailed—discomfited stowaways must bide. Chauvond spoke to the bosun from the side of his mouth.

“Wind's veering now. Prepare to tack.”

Orders were shouted: “Ready about!” Sailors in yellow uniforms rushed to their stations, threw the coiled lines off the pins, and checked that they were clear to pay out. Lee braces were flaked out on deck, free to run.

“Foremast manned and ready!”

The ship was eased off the wind to build up enough speed to help her turn through the wind's eye. The propellers sprang to life, groaning and rattling as they woke to the full force of the wind. Then, as the wheel was slowly put hard over, the 'tween mast staysails were dropped. The yards on the main- and mizzenmasts spun around as the orders were given, and now came the critical moment. Headsails clattered as they went aback. She was turning, with the jibs, staysails, and sails on the foremast aback to help push the bows around, and the decks a web of ropes. For a long moment she slowed, with the sails flapping backward.

“Mainsail haul!”

Sails on the main- and foremasts were braced around as soon as they began to fill. Then the mizzenmast was braced around, jibs and staysails sheeted home, 'tween mast staysails reset, course steadied, and the spanker eased off. Aeronauts busied themselves recoiling lines and hanging them neatly on their pins. Now the captain directed his attention to the business at hand.

“Stowaway, Cap'n, sir,” Sandover announced unnecessarily, still gripping the lad by the elbow. Captain Chauvond grimaced. He was not an unkind man, but he ran a tight ship, in complete accordance with the rules and regulations of the Sky Moot, and had no time for those who broke them.

“Shall I clap 'im in leg-irons, sir, or give 'im six of the best?”

“In truth, Mr. Sandover, I have half a mind to have you throw him overboard,” the captain said testily. “What say you to that, lad?”

The lad shook his head miserably. The cabin boy scrutinized him with intense curiosity.

“Think 'e 'as a wooden tongue, sir,” said Sandover. The captain turned away, hands clasped behind his back.

“Aye, well, we shall have to put him off at the next port of call, that's the correct procedure—hand him over to the local authorities. Until then he is to be adequately fed and put to scrubbing the decks and whatever else he can do to work for his ticket. And make sure he keeps his taltry tied on!”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

For the rest of that day and all of the next, the lad was set to polishing the brass binnacle and the fife-rail around the mainmast, scrubbing the mess deck, and scouring pots and pans in the galley, where the cook was preparing a pungent stew. The aeronauts, at first uncertain as to whether he might be some eldritch wight about to curse the ship, were too busy to take much notice of him. More widely traveled than the parochial inhabitants of the Tower, they were accustomed to strange sights and thus more tolerant. The lad pondered bleakly on what might happen to him in Gilvaris Tarv and whether he would be sent back to the House of the Stormriders. Until now his only ambition had been to leave the Tower, as if somehow simply roving out in the wide world would give him the answers he craved. He dreaded being sent back to the Tower even more than he dreaded a beating for stealing illegal passage on the Windship, but if he were allowed to remain in the city, would he not merely end up as a drudge, toiling in sunless chambers for the rest of his life, polishing aumbries, bleeding, broken? Yet at least in a city, through which strangers passed, he might meet someone who could help him find out his name.…

Topside, the ship was a bee's nest of activity—yellow-jacketed men spliced and coiled ropes, mended and trimmed sails, and ascended and descended the rigging; orders were shouted and bells were rung; canvas strained against rope and every eyelet was a slit pierced by the red needles of the sinking sun as the Windship sliced through the sky with her sails heaped up like storm clouds.

They dropped anchor on the third evening at Saddleback Pass. The sheer and purple walls of the Lofty Mountains loomed up far above the masthead on each side. Below, wooded clefts lay in deep shadow. The next part of the voyage, through the steep, uninhabited ranges, would be difficult and dangerous, but it was the last leg, and the captain expected to reach Gilvaris Tarv on the following afternoon.

The lad took his meal with the aeronauts but was unable to stomach the stew, making do with hard bread and water and small, sweet apples. They sent him to the cargo hold to sleep and closed the hatch lest he escape and walk among them like a night-fright, disturbing their dreams.

During his watch, Ared Sandover could see far away a tiny glow shining through the darkness—a Lightship that was moored, eternally, at Cold Crow Peak.

Through the night, a sound reverberated through the mountains from some indiscernible point—now near, now far—the weeping of a heartbroken woman.

From time to time, an anguished keening gathered into a long, rising wail before breaking again into wrenching sobs. Indescribable sorrow communicated itself in those wordless cries. None of the crew slept. The skin crawled on their backs. They stayed silent in their discomfiture, tense as stretched shrouds; a strange, cold heaviness weighed them down, slowing every movement, even breathing. For it was the cry of a weeper, a harbinger of doom to mortal men. Three times it echoed forth, and then in the night fell an almost unnatural silence.

Someone, soon, would die.

First light was cool and blue, like the sea. High-level cirrus wisped in curls softer than swan's down. It was the hour to call all hands to man the capstan and raise the iron anchor from its bed somewhere in the mold of the forest floor 150 feet below. White fog lay low in the deep vales, and cloud wreathed the mountains' heads. Bringing up the massive chain was a lengthy task; the shantyman's tune echoed among the hills as the great iron flukes rose in time to the tramp of the men marching around the foredeck pushing the capstan bars before them.

A light wind was breathing down their necks, and conditions were fair for climbing the rigging as the men went aloft to cast off the gaskets that lashed the sails to the yards. Soon ropes were flaked out neatly on deck, and buntlines and clewlines were ready to be eased out. The hands aloft by the mast at the upper staysails stood on the cranlines. Looking up at the yards, Sandover could see the loops of folded cloth, sails not yet set, as all around the decks aeronauts checked the layout. Orders were awaited. Not much canvas would be unfurled today—the
Tarv
must cruise slowly in this precipitous region.

Whistle blasts signaled commands along the length of the ship. Propellers spun into action, and the ship began to make headway. Gradually, as more sail area was displayed, speed increased.

The sun was not yet visible behind the peaks, and great swaths of lavender shadow fell from steaming crags into blind depths. Skillful navigation was crucial here. Uneven ground exerted unequal pressures on the sildron in the hull, which caused pitching and yawing. The steeply rising landforms forced the air currents to break up into strong turbulence; a run through this part of the country was always bumpy.

The Windship floated between giant castles of escarpments like a fragile moth, lit once or twice by stray shafts of light spearing between the eastern tors. Toward the middle of the morning, the lad's skin prickled. Fine, pale hairs on his arms stood on end, and excitement drilled through him like a silver auger. He shivered with expectancy—an unstorm was approaching.

The day-star climbed beyond the Lofty Mountains at last, and it seemed that the ship was making fair headway, when a minor solar eclipse occurred. Startled, the crew looked up to see, silhouetted against the morning sky, a brig, her two-masted rig laden with sails, floating across the fiery path of the sun.

The
Tarv's
bell clanged fiercely.

“Sail ahoy! Black sail! Black brig fifty degrees high to starboard! All hands on deck!”

“Plague and madness! Where did that evil hulk spring from?” bellowed the first mate, letting fly a stream of curses. Confusion ensued, escalated. Men raced to load the mangonels and arm themselves. A black sail meant a pirate vessel—here in the mountains they could not outrun her; nor could they outmaneuver her. The black brig was smaller, leaner, built for speed. Their only chance was to fight.

But the brig, long and sharp as a knife, had the ally of surprise. Preceded by her iron-shod ram, she had glided silently from behind a high rocky wall where she had lain in ambush, and now, from her position overhead, a deadly hail of arrows and stones came clattering onto the merchant's decks. Two or three men fell, wounded.

“Captain, sir, I suggest flaming arrows,” the bosun panted.

“And would you have burning debris rain upon us? Order the mangonels to prepare to fire.”

The bosun's shouts were drowned in the broadside that exploded from the black ship's own mangonels, expertly aimed. She was so close that her shotmen could not miss, and with a splintering roar the mainmast crashed down onto the deck, bringing the foremast with it. Sailors who had been clinging aloft were hurled overboard. Their cries tapered off into deep mountain gullies, lost in the booming echoes of destruction. The stern wing on the starboard side was smashed off and tumbled down to vanish in the abyss while bits of sildron from the propeller floated away. With one blast, the
City of Gilvaris Tarv
had been disabled.

Her decks erupted into scenes of chaos, rolling and bucketing as the ship wallowed. Broken spars and yards rolled, sliding within a tangle of ropes. Orders were shouted in a desperate attempt to salvage the situation, but Ared Sandover, hanging on to the railing to stop himself from sliding, could see the brig swinging close alongside and knew they were doomed. The long arm of one of the
Tarv's
mangonels, released from torsion, was flung up against its transom to hurl forth its heavy missile. The ship recoiled, slewing around like a dying thing, and the ball went wide of its target, slamming into the mountain wall, where it blasted a hole.

The nameless youth stood, unheeded, by the bridge, feeling the unstorm coming closer. There was no fear, only numbness; he felt detached from the scene, as though watching a play. Besides, there seemed nothing he could do; he had no training in bowmanship or working catapults or sailing. He gripped a tangle of ropes and watched the rugged horizon seesawing. In the next instant he regretted his lack of voice more than ever he had before;
oh, to be able to scream a warning!
Now his heart burst into pounding life at what he saw. Iron grappling hooks erupted over the railing, cast up from below, and thudded into wood. He flung himself down the canting slope to where able aeronaut Sandover struggled for balance.

“What? Leave hold of me!” They scuffled briefly, then the man turned his head and saw, too, the row of heads appearing up over the poop rail; the dark shapes of men swarming over, leaping down to the deck, knives glittering. More and still more came up the ropes from the longboats that had slid silently in under the hull while all attention had been diverted to the brig.

With shrill cries and bull-bellows the reivers thronged over the clipper, wielding their long, curved blades with expertise. The fighting was fierce; the merchant sailors had been trained to defend themselves and their ship, but there had been few pirate attacks on record in recent years, and they were ill prepared. Standing side on with feet braced apart and knees bent, duelists fought desperately up and down decks that soon ran slippery with blood.

A battle-hardened, scar-faced pirate advanced within a sword and arm's length of his adversary. Grinning, the cutthroat swung his scimitar from right to left in front of his chest. The aeronaut extended, trying desperately to deceive, knowing he was outmatched. Scar-face repeated his playful action several times, advancing and retreating. All at once their weapons engaged, Scar-face's scimitar deflecting the other and coming in over the top to scoop up the blade and fling it aside. A ring of metal on metal, a rainbow in the air. With a thud, the aeronaut's severed hand hit the deck, followed a moment later by his torso.

Another pirate, a stringy fellow with no teeth who had been attacking, parrying, and riposting in a rapid rhythm, suddenly rapped sharply on the boards with his forward foot. His adversary, distracted from the scimitar, let down his guard. It was only for a fraction of an instant, but that was all the time necessary for the point of Toothless's cutlass to slash the aeronaut's forearm, slicing through the sinews. The sword fell from the impotent hand, and with a swift forward thrust Toothless skewered him to the heart.