The Farthest Shore (Eden Series Book 3) (18 page)

He woke early when a deckhand came to tell him Captain Terlow needed to see him at once. Something about the man’s face told Vinsen the worst had happened. Pausing only to take his uniform coat from where he’d hung it on the latch outside, he followed the man to the stateroom, where there was no sign of Phane—or anyone else, for that matter. A faint unpleasant smell lingered in the air.

The candles were out, and in the blue of the early morning, the stateroom looked more shadowed. Terlow came in from outside moments later and told him of Phane’s escape.

“Killed three of the men too,” he said. “I don’t know how he got the better of two guards who were ordered never to take their eyes off him, but it doesn’t matter.”

“You should have hanged him.” Vinsen knew there was no point in if-onlys, but he had been well aware that Phane was dangerous. The Tureans would never have sent a single unarmed man aboard a foreign ship unless that man was more than capable of escaping and murdering anyone in his way, and yet Vinsen hadn’t been able to stop it happening. Even now, Terlow looked at him as though he was just as much of an unpredictable savage as the Tureans.

“He was an unarmed man,” he said. “At our mercy.”

“He’s a pirate who infiltrated this ship to find out about
Checkmate
—”

“Perhaps we could discuss the ethics of this at a better time, Captain Solarcis. For the moment, my only concern is that we’re becalmed and there is a kraken in the water.”

Vinsen let his breath out, wondering for the first time if Terlow needed his help. Nothing to be done about the becalming, since
Enlightenment
couldn’t be rowed. Obviously Dagran ships didn’t need to be designed to ram other vessels. And with a kraken in the water, the sailors weren’t likely to want to get into boats to tow the ship, which would be backbreaking work and not exactly a long-term solution either.

“The cannons are ready to fire, aren’t they?” he said.

“I’ve sent orders for the cannon crews to make ready, but the kraken hasn’t shown itself.”

“Wait.” Now that he was no longer fuming—at least not openly—he saw the problem. “The kraken has to be at the surface somewhere with Phane.”

“Precisely. I have six men watching from the deck and two more in the crow’s nests.”

Only three options
, Vinsen thought. Either the kraken had left in the night, swimming off with Phane, which was too good to be true. Or it was waiting beyond the horizon, beyond the limits of sight of spyglasses and crow’s nests. Doubtful. Or it was below the surface, which meant Phane had to have drowned.

“This doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Terlow had evidently been following the same line of thought. “Can they breathe water?”

“The Tureans? Not that I know of. Though I find people will always surprise you with what they’re capable of doing.”

“Quite so,” Terlow said dryly. “Well, there’s nothing we can do here, so would you care to accompany me up to the deck?” Without waiting for an answer, he bent and opened a small cabinet beneath the sideboard, as gingerly as if he expected Phane to leap out from it. He straightened up with Vinsen’s sword in his hands and held it out.

Before Vinsen could take it, the door opened and Peter Corojal stepped in. “Sir,” he said tensely, “there’s something the matter.”

“What is it?”

“Some of the men look like they were drinking all night.” Peter’s mouth twisted. “The ones who can stand straight are puking their guts up and a few say they can’t see clearly—they have double vision. No sign that they were at the grog and they swear they didn’t touch it, but half of them are either in their hammocks or bent over the rail.”

Terlow’s brows came together. “Is it a sickness?”

“The doctor says they haven’t a fever but he’s not sure what it is, unless it’s something they all drank.”

Terlow’s eyes went to the covered jug of water on his table, and Vinsen was grateful he hadn’t had time for a mouthful of anything before hurrying up to the stateroom. He took the sword from Terlow and buckled the belt.

“Any moment now,” he said. “Let’s go topside.”

Enlightenment
’s deck looked bare enough that Vinsen thought it was a good thing they were becalmed; they could never have sailed a ship like her with such a skeleton crew, especially since every able-bodied man was assigned to either the cannons or the watch. Terlow had taken the time to wash and shave that morning, which made Vinsen feel grubby in comparison, but he also seemed to have aged a few years since leaving the stateroom. Lines etched themselves on either side of his mouth.

“It must have been the water,” he said, “because the food and grog are locked away. We’ll have to find a way to distill seawater.”

If any of us live that long.
Vinsen kept a hand on the hilt of his sword and looked around warily. A small dark shape bobbing on the waves to port caught his eye, but when he pointed it out, Terlow shook his head.

“The bastard stole a boat,” he said. “Looks like he abandoned it.” The boat was upside down fifty feet from the ship, but Vinsen could see why no one was in a hurry to retrieve it.

Word came up from below that a cabin boy called Alan had just died in the infirmary—apparently he’d suffered the worst reaction to the water. Vinsen had been starting to feel hungry, but that news killed his appetite. He paced around the deck, glancing quickly over the gunwales every now and then. The cannon crews stood to port and starboard, buckets of water, ceramic firepots and long spills around them. A red pennant had been run up higher than all the other flags and it stirred slightly.

Wait, that’s moving…

He felt the breeze at once, light cool fingers ruffling through his hair. The sails twitched and lifted. All over the deck heads went up, and he saw the relief on the crew’s faces. They didn’t have water, but at least they had—

A mass of coils so red they looked bloody erupted from the sea. The ship lurched to starboard with both the wash of water and the physical impact as the kraken struck it. Men reeled, losing their balance and falling against the masts or the gunwale. Half of the kraken’s arms wrapped around what gave it the most accessible hold on the ship—the jutting muzzle of the port cannon. It clung on and its weight dragged the ship in that direction. The deck tilted left at an angle.

Vinsen staggered and would have gone down if not for a clewline in his way. The deck sloped towards the crawling nest of thick coils now, and anything that wasn’t tied or bolted down rolled in that direction. Tin pails bounced, and the firepots tumbled, bright coals scattering. Some hissed as they struck the kraken’s arms, but that only seemed to make it angry. The arms which weren’t wrapped around the cannon flailed, grasping at anything within reach.

Abruptly two more arms reared up for dozens of feet above the men’s heads, endless in their length, round suckers lining their lower surfaces. For an instant during which his heart stopped beating, Vinsen thought the kraken was growing more arms, sprouting them off effortlessly to deal with any new threats. Then he realized those were the kraken’s two hunting limbs, each ending in a claw.

When they hurtled down, they ripped a trysail in half and shattered a crow’s nest. A scream ended as the lookout struck the deck. More shrieks came from the cannon crew who hadn’t been crushed by the kraken’s coils because they had been seized instead. Vinsen held the clewline with one hand and slashed at any coil that flailed too close to him.

Other men were doing the same, hacking at the kraken’s arms with axes, but the wounds made the coils thrash wildly, and their weight alone was enough to fling men aside as though they weighed nothing. A blue slick spattered from the gashes, making the deck even more slippery. Peter Corojal lost his footing and slid within reach of the kraken before Terlow could grab his hand. One of the arms curled around him in the next moment and lifted him, struggling, over the side.

The ship’s heavy keel counterbalanced her, preventing her center of gravity from shifting too fast, but as more and more of the kraken’s limbs rose to wrap around the gunwale, the ballast in the hold would start to slide as well, towards the kraken. Vinsen glanced around desperately. The port cannon, almost buried beneath the cluster of red coils, was in no position to fire. The other cannon would have had to be turned around to aim at the kraken, but its crew, staying out of reach, sawed at the ropes which held a cask to the gunwale.

Rolling down the deck, the cask rumbled as if it contained boulders. Vinsen hoped it would explode with Dagran alchemy and turn the kraken to so much fishmeal. Instead the cask hit one of the kraken’s arms, flattened it and split open, disgorging large leaden spheres. The wounded limb jerked in obvious pain, but the weight of the lead tipped the deck further. The ship was listing so far that her masts bent out over the rising waves at a shallow angle.

Except the second lookout, in a crow’s nest that was tilting out over the kraken, lifted a crossbow. Vinsen knew the man would never have a chance to reload, but one bolt in the monster’s brain would be enough.

At the last moment, a huge eye swiveled up at him. The kraken reacted fast. Its whips flashed through the air, and they struck the crow’s nest together from either side as the crossbow whanged. Vinsen never saw if the bolt had struck home.

The crow’s nest imploded. Splinters flew into the air. Claws punched through the man’s body and the crossbow fell into the sea—but so did the kraken, its arms uncoiling rapidly, sliding away like a mass of glistening red tripe. The ship rocked violently as it was released. The clewline broke and Vinsen’s shoulder slammed into a mast, but he was too relieved to feel pain.

Terlow was on his feet at once, swaying as the ship still did, but back in control. “Gun crew at the ready!” he shouted, and men ran to the port cannon. “Haul the sails!” There weren’t nearly enough surviving and able crew for that, so Vinsen sheathed his sword and started forward to do what he could.

The sun was behind the man who clambered up from the outer side of the gunwale, pulling himself over the starboard rail behind Terlow, so all Vinsen saw was a soaked Dagran uniform. He thought one of the deckhands fallen overboard had managed to climb back up, and then the sun gleamed on the bare steel in the man’s hand.

Vinsen shouted and ran forward. Terlow spun around, and Ralcilos Phane drove a knife into his belly.

Chapter Eight

The Battle to the Strong

As Terlow collapsed, Ralcilos yanked the Dagran’s longsword free of its scabbard and brought it up to deflect the first strike. Around him the rest of his crew scrambled over the gunwale. Steel clashed on steel and stones whirred through the air, but all of Ralcilos’s concentration was bent on the hated white coat before him, the flash of a blade and the knowledge that he couldn’t afford to kill this man—not yet, anyway.

He blocked and parried, then gave way and retreated in the hopes that the Denalait captain would outreach himself. The deck around them both was slippery with blood. Ralcilos didn’t dare look down because the Denalait was faster than he had expected, but he could feel it. The air was thick with shouts and smoke.
Now
, he thought.

Half-turning, he grasped the hilt of the longsword with both hands and threw all his strength behind the parry. The force of the impact numbed his fingers instantly, but it also knocked the Denalait’s sword to one side. Ralcilos lunged forward and slammed the Denalait bodily to the deck.

His hands were deadweights but he was prepared for that. The Denalait had the breath knocked out of him by the fall, and before he could recover, Ralcilos backhanded him across the face. Then he did it again, so hard it made him wince. Blood ran from the Denalait’s nose, and he wasn’t moving any longer.

Ralcilos scrambled up and took in the state of the battle. There had only been ten of them—well, twelve if he counted Kaig and that engineer who had whined about not being trained in combat—but they had all been prepared for battle. Half of them had helms made of shells, and all wore some kind of armor—the beaten bronze of Scorpitale, the bark-and-coral weave of Gullcastle, the bone plates of the Deep Sound. It reminded him of Surran Zolis, who had led the flotilla before Jash Morender and who had gone into battle wearing armor made of the teeth of hundreds of sharks. It was said he could leave his enemies in bloody shreds by embracing them.

That was why Tureans had no uniforms, because his people weren’t uniform themselves. They were as different and diverse in their customs as the shells along the shore, and it was only to face the common enemy that they came together and held fast.

They were holding very fast now, he thought with satisfaction. The deck was splattered with blood, but little or none of it seemed to be Turean. A few of the deckhands had scrambled into the rigging, and an officer had even gained the fighting platform on the mainmast, but two of Ralcilos’s crew had stayed safely behind him while they used their slings and leadstones. The officer staggered as a projectile caught him a glancing blow on the head, and the next one smashed into his shoulder, spinning him around. He fell fifty feet to the deck.

Ralcilos had ordered two more of his crew to secure the hatch, which served as a bottleneck and might be the only way to contain the Dagrans below. They had tipped a skin of oil beneath and tossed a firepot after it, and although the men below wouldn’t take long to put out the flames, it bought him a little more time.

In
Nautilex
, he had described the sailing master and given orders to take him alive. The man had his back to the mainmast and held off both Kaig and Cuyven with a plain wooden stick, its end coiled with filthy ropes. The makeshift weapon should have been kindling, but the sailing master was fast and the stick gave him a much longer reach. It slammed into Cuyven’s knuckles, snapping bones, and his sword hit the deck. The sailing master knocked it out of reach and parried Kaig’s strike.

“Stop!” Ralcilos strode across the deck. “Surrender and no one else needs to die.”

Weariness and disgust filled the sailing master’s face as he seemed to realize why he hadn’t been murdered with the rest, but he said nothing. Hefting the stick, he waited.

Ralcilos stopped when he was well out of reach. Kaig kept the man at bay, but Cuyven had retreated, holding his broken hand. No chance of bribing this one; he had to try something different.

“An unusual weapon,” he said. Now that he was closer, he saw the stick more clearly—smooth-shafted and made of some hard wood, yet scratched and stained from use, obviously a tool snatched up in desperation.

“A ramrod,” the sailing master said.

Ralcilos had no idea what that was, and with no more plans or tricks in mind either, he fell back on the simple truth. “I am almost four thousand miles from the Archipelago,” he said, and for the first time he thought of how much he had sacrificed and risked, how he had grown up on war galleys and had spent nearly two months living beneath tons of water, knowing that if
Nautilex
’s hull collapsed he would drown instantly. For the first time he let himself see how narrow was the edge he existed on, and he allowed it all to show in his face.

“So when I accepted my orders, I understood that failure didn’t mean crawling home in defeat,” he said. “It meant never seeing my home again. It meant dying in foreign waters. And if that comes to pass, I won’t die alone. Surrender and sail us to
Checkmate
and you’ll all live, because what I want is the Denalait ship—nothing more and nothing less. Keep fighting and I will tear this ship apart. With your cannons or with my kraken, I’ll send us all to the bottom of the ocean. What’s your choice?”

After the sailing master surrendered, Ralcilos ordered him to go below and inform the crew of the change in command. He also told his troops—loudly—to run up signal flags to their galley, because obviously a dozen Tureans were just the vanguard of their forces. Then he took charge of his Denalait prisoner, kicking him in the ribs for good measure before tying him to the rail.

None of his own command had been killed, thank the gods, but Cuyven wasn’t the only injured one. As for Ralcilos, he was drenched in sweat and the wound in his belly hurt. They were by no means out of the depths, too, since the Dagrans might well take back the ship if they attacked. Ralcilos’s single advantage had been catching them by surprise after the deck had been half-cleared for him already by sickness and the kraken.

And the kraken wasn’t what he considered reliable—an animal linked to a Denalait child. He wanted to leave someone in
Nautilex
to make certain she would be obedient, but he couldn’t spare a single man.

Kaig went to the stern, where Ralcilos guessed the kraken would be at the surface, waiting in case they had failed to take the ship and needed a quick escape. The rest of them collected fallen weapons, then cut a cannon loose and dragged it to point at the hatch. Ralcilos didn’t know the first thing about firing those, but there was no need to give away his ignorance.

A figure emerged from the hatch, but it was the sailing master, climbing out alone. Ralcilos had bargained on the man giving up when he realized both the captain and the first officer had died unpleasantly, and to his relief, the rest of the crew began to climb out one by one as well. He ordered them to the stern, so they would be between the cannon and the kraken rising from the water behind them—though Kaig’s expression said something was wrong there—and they dropped their weapons in a heap by the mainmast. Some of them looked about to retch when they saw the corpses on the deck, or perhaps it was the ill effects of the water, but they all had the same look of fear and hate combined.

They outnumbered his troops three to one, and that was before the sailing master informed him in a voice as much contemptuous as defeated that there were at least a dozen more men too sick to leave their beds. Ralcilos nodded. The stern was crowded now, and beyond it the kraken’s arms spread out across the water like the red roots of a great tree.

He sent four of his crew to search the ship and make the hold ready for his prisoners. He cared nothing for them, but they were his only hold over the sailing master. It took a long time for his crew to return, and he kept glancing at the hourglass which swayed in a wrought-iron cage, but their work was finally done. Then he sent the sailing master down alone, to see for himself that the Dagrans would be in a prison stocked with enough food to keep them alive for weeks.

There was no untainted water in the casks, of course, but all the grog and rum on board the ship had gone down to the hold. Once the prisoners had been secured and a Turean guard placed on the hold, Ralcilos went to the captain’s stateroom, found a bottle of the best brandy and took it to the hold. The Dagrans might try using it to start a fire, but they were likely to suffocate themselves before doing enough damage to the ship.

“Ian Garlou,” he said loudly. None of the crew seemed willing to identify one of their own to him, but dread settled on the face of the man in question as he began to push his way through the crowd. Ralcilos placed the bottle on the lowest step, turning it so they could all see what it was.

“With many thanks for your help,” he said.

Then he went back up and had the hatch closed again. Ian Garlou had been the only one of his guards who had shown open distaste for what he called “filthy pirates”, and Ralcilos wanted to make sure he was rewarded appropriately for that.

On deck, Liggar and the sailing master were carrying the corpses to the infirmary one by one. Ralcilos would have preferred to strip them naked and dump them over the side—because his troops would have received the same treatment if the tide had turned the other way—but the sailing master had asked for the bodies to receive the honors they were due. Ralcilos bit back the reply he would have liked to make. He wasn’t sure of foreign customs—dishonoring the dead might turn defeated men into suicidal berserkers—so he had to pick his battles.

The Denalait captain had come around by then, but Ralcilos ignored him and went straight to the stern. His troops had hauled down the warning flags and now took axes to the rails and figurehead, doing just enough damage to make it clear there had been trouble. Sailing that ship with such a skeleton crew would be a nightmare, but what other choice did he have?

As a result, he wasn’t in the best of moods when he saw Kaig within
Nautilex
’s hatch, looking up at him. “What is it?”

“You’d better come down here.”

Ralcilos wasn’t used to seeing the kraken in daylight, the huge tentacles lying as limp in the water as the rays of two stranded starfish. On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to show any fear and he still needed the beast, his ultimate shock troop. So he let himself down and climbed into the hatch. The dim interior seemed even more cramped after the days he had spent out of it, and he made his way to the control chamber, hoping he could finish quickly and leave.

“What’s wrong?” he said to Nuemy.

“One of them shot us.” Her voice was small but she didn’t seem at all intimidated otherwise. “Near his right eye. The bolt’s in there and it hurts. Can you take it out?”

Ralcilos didn’t move. At least, he didn’t consciously move, but his gut lurched at the thought of touching the mottled red skin that glistened with its coating of slime. And she wanted him to climb on to the monster’s head, straddle the huge jelly mound of an eye and yank out a bolt? If the pain disrupted her link to the kraken…

“I will,” he said, “once you do something for me.”

She looked at him with wide wary eyes and said nothing. The unease in his belly grew, but he had to continue. “Find that steamship. We have control of this vessel, but it’s just a stepping stone, a means to an end.”

There was no visible reaction, and he knew she had seen straight through his evasion. She might have been eleven, but she wasn’t a child any longer—if she had ever been one.

“He wants to go home,” she said, as flatly as if telling him the sun rose in the east.

“Without
Checkmate
, none of us are going home.” The strain of the past few days and the skirmish he had just survived would be nothing compared to what would happen if they didn’t take the steamship. “You have your orders. You’re as much a soldier in this battle as the rest of us, and I expect you to do your part. If the wind hadn’t started when it did, I’d have had the kraken tow the damned ship. And you are going to find
Checkmate
. Do you understand?”

She didn’t answer, and it occurred to him that she could simply abandon them whenever she wished, because for the first time no one would be in
Nautilex
to stop her. That put paid to the last of his self-restraint and his hand flashed out. The sharp
whack
of flesh against flesh made her head snap to one side, and nerve fibers growing into both her temples snapped like threads.

“Do you understand?” Ralcilos said again, keeping his voice calm. Beside him, Kaig tensed—obviously the fool had never raised his hand to her and they were seeing the effects of a lack of correction now—but he knew Kaig respected the chain of command enough not to interfere.

The girl turned her head back slowly. Months in
Nautilex
had left her pallid, and the mark on her cheek stood out darkly in the light of glowcoral just outside the control chamber, but at least the cool detached expression had been replaced by evident fear.

“Y-yes,” she said before Ralcilos could ask if she understood for a third time. He straightened up as best he could.

“Then get to work,” he said, and left.

Alyster’s steward opened the door to admit Kovir, who was in his sharkskins and dripping water. “Captain,” he said, “we reached
Enlightenment
. The kraken was attacking her.”

Seawatch trained its operatives not to feel emotion, much less show it, but Alyster had the impression the boy was shaken regardless. He wondered if the Turean galley had got the best of
Enlightenment
somehow. Surely not.

Kovir lifted a hand as if to wipe water from his eyes, but seemed to recall his own gloves were likely to flay his face. Alyster tossed him a napkin instead.

“Thank you, sir,” he said. “It
is
a kraken. Not a ship. An actual beast.”

“What?” Alyster said. Thankfully his steward had shut the door, but he now stood behind Kovir with eyes too big for their sockets.