The Ocean of the Dead: Ship Kings 4 Page 11

  Dow shut his eyes tight, and covered his mouth and nose with a hand, holding his breath, though he knew it would be useless. In his personal blackness, the Miasma felt like the lightest powder on his face, the footsteps of a hundred tiny spiders – or perhaps he was only imagining it. Was there a whispering in the air now, like soft rain? He heard moans of fear about him, but muffled through mouths that were closed, like his.

  He waited, hunched over. Still he had not breathed the stuff in, still his mind was his own, but his lungs were burning . . .

  Do it, he told himself. Just get it over with.

  He parted his fingers a little and took an experimental breath. He had half expected to choke on the spores, that it would be like swallowing dust, or poison. But other than a faintly bitter tang, there was no sensation in his throat. He took another breath, and then opened his eyes.

  The world was a translucent, underwater green, lit by no sun, but by the glow of the Miasma itself. The Chloe appeared quite unharmed, the timbers and rigging preternaturally vivid in their outlines, but the further reaches of the ship were lost to view, as if Dow was gazing into the deeps of the ocean. And the figures that moved about the decks were like the shadows of great fish, slow and alien, creatures from another realm.

  Someone was screaming nearby, and it was Nell. She had fallen to her knees and was bent to the deck, hands clutched to her temples. ‘My head!’ she was crying. ‘It’s ripping open! Help me! Stop it!’

  Dow made no move towards her. He was himself, he was sure. His mind was still his own. But her distress meant nothing to him. He was aware of a growing tumult from further afield, voices wailing and screaming, above and below him, everywhere. But that meant nothing either. It was all faraway, all someone else’s problem.

  Still his mind was clear. Perhaps he was immune to the Miasma, perhaps he alone would not descend into the darkness.

  Then Nell reared up, her face before his, and he saw that all her scars had split open and were gushing blood as she screamed.

  Then he was screaming too.

  And after that, nothing.

  5. AFTER THE CLOUD

  Time was an ache in Dow’s bones. It stretched back into darkness, hours uncounted and uncountable, and its passing forward was marked only by the pain in him nagging stronger and stronger, until—

  He opened his eyes.

  He was in a dim, dank-smelling space. The ceiling was close overhead, even though he was lying flat, and his lower half was soaked; indeed, his legs seemed to be submerged in water. Where in all the ship was he? He had been on the high deck only moments ago, when . . .

  His memory strained. When what?

  He shifted aching limbs. His throat was dry and raw, and there was a clutch in his stomach that for a time he could not identify. It was hunger.

  He blinked at the shadows, gleams of light filtering down through gratings in the ceiling, and slowly the space resolved into something he recognised. He was in the bilge! He was sprawled against the ship’s inner hull, in the very bowels of the vessel, his legs sunk in foul waste water.

  What was he doing down here?

  With a groan, he rolled and sat up a little, his head almost grazing the beams above. Dizziness assailed him, then faded. Images of a great green wall of mist rose in his memory, and a sense of helpless frustration.

  The Miasma. The Miasma had caught them. And then . . . his memory strained further, but nothing came, only dancing shadows.

  Dow shifted again, and in moving his right hand he discovered that an axe lay near it. He picked it up. An axe? What was he doing with an axe? It was a carpenter’s tool by the look, short-handled. The steel head was stained with something. It was a black substance, splashed on thickly, and sticky still, like . . . like half-dried blood. And what was this? His shirt was stained black too. The stuff was everywhere.

  He glanced up in horror, and only then discovered the corpse. There at his feet, face down in the bilge water, was the body of a man. Unmoving. Dead. A wound gaped evilly in his neck, nearly cleaving it through.

  Dow gazed dumbly at the wound, then at the axe in his hand, then at the blood all over himself.

  Had he . . .?

  No, it was impossible.

  And yet, if he had not done this, then who had? Desperately, Dow peered into the further corners of the compartment, but in the gloom he seemed to be quite alone with the dead man.

  The dead man. Who was he?

  Dow dropped the axe as if it was burning, then clambered through the water to the body, and with a heave rolled it over. It would be terrible no matter who it was, but what if it was someone he knew well, one of his old companions, one of his friends? Please, not that!

  Black slime covered the man’s face, and Dow had to wipe it away, his hands trembling, to reveal the features.

  He stared a fraught moment, then gave a sigh, hating himself for his relief even as he did so. It wasn’t one of his friends. It was a man he knew only by sight – amid the thirteen hundred of his crew there were many such – a former Ship Kings sailor who had joined the fleet at Stone Port. But what was his name? Dow knew it, he was sure, but couldn’t seem to remember . . .

  Then the relief was gone, and the truth came crushing. He had killed this man. Murdered him. A lost soul who had joined the expedition in hope of the New World, who had trusted Dow to lead the way there. And for his trust he had been rewarded with an axe in his neck.

  But why?

  Dow looked about the bilge once more. He had no memory at all from the moment the green cloud had swept towards the ship. The Miasma madness had taken him, that was plain. But why had it called him down here?

  He spied it then. Not far off, a great rent had been hacked into the inner hull, a mass of deep gouges in the timbers. Axe blows. As if someone had been trying to cut a hole through the keel. As if someone – it came to Dow as a slow chill – had tried to sink the ship.

  He turned to the corpse again. Yes, that must have been how it was. This man, in his Miasma delusion, must have attempted to pierce the hull – and Dow must have caught him in the act, wrestled the axe from his grip, and then been forced to kill him. An awful thing, surely, but not murder, not murder, rather self-defence, on behalf of the Chloe and everyone on board.

  Respite cooled like sweat on Dow’s skin. Yes, that explained everything. He could almost remember it now as a fact. He had done the right thing, the only thing he could. There was no cause for reproach.

  He became aware of sounds from above. They had been there all along, perhaps, unheeded, but now they were growing louder, closer. People were moving in the hold overhead, and calling out. It was a search party. Of course! In the aftermath of the Miasma there must be much confusion on board, and individuals missing.

  Dow floundered from the water. ‘Here! I’m down here!’

  There came a bustle above, then a hatch was hurled open and a figure dropped down into the compartment. It was young Nicky Ostman. ‘Dow! Thank the deeps, you’re alive! Are you well? Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Dow replied shakily, and squinting, for the lamplight streaming through the open hatch felt painfully bright. ‘The Miasma . . . is it—’

  ‘It’s gone,’ confirmed Nicky. ‘And the madness it brought has gone too.’ Then his smile faded. He was looking beyond Dow to the corpse, which now lay face up in the water. ‘Samuels there – he’s dead?’

  Dow glanced back. The wound in the corpse’s neck glistened wide and awful in the new light. Samuels, that was the man’s name. Dow felt an obscure embarrassment that Nicky had known it when he had not.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and then the words came in a rush. ‘But I had to do it. I caught him trying to sink the ship. We fought, and then . . .’

  ‘You remember it?’ Nicky asked, surprised.

  ‘Well, no . . . but see, the hole there . . .’

  Nicky was studying Dow strangely. And it came to Dow then, belated and terrible – what if he had been the one attacking the hull, and
the dead man had been the one trying to stop it? After all, if one man could be driven by the Miasma to sink the ship, then why not any other? And without memory, without witnesses, how could anyone ever claim to tell which was which?

  Dow realised he was staring at the axe where it lay. He forced himself to look away from it, but could not meet Nicky’s gaze.

  ‘We’ve discovered many such victims through the ship,’ the young man said with grave care. ‘Thirty at least are dead, and others injured. But no one remembers anything of the hours of madness, so who did what to whom cannot be guessed. In any case, everyone is agreed that no blame can be assigned to anyone. It is the Miasma that caused the killing, not us.’

  Dow swayed dizzily. No blame? No, he rejected such exoneration. He did not need it. He refused to believe he was the murderer here. He could not have sought to sink his own ship, even in the throes of madness. He was the captain. It had to have been the other man.

  But – thirty dead? So many? And abruptly he was clutching at Nicky. ‘Nell! Is Nell all right? I saw . . . I saw her skin . . . she was bleeding . . .’

  ‘Fear not!’ Nicky was calm. ‘Nell is alive and well! She is without injury. Her skin . . . is as it ever was.’

  Dow sagged. He was so sure. Blood had been gushing from her scars. Ah, but that must have been the Miasma poison beginning to take over his mind. Yes, it was his last memory. And only blankness followed it.

  ‘And your May?’ he asked, recalling dimly that Nicky had his own loved ones to worry about. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s as well as anyone, yes.’

  Dow nodded, and swayed again. He felt so thick, so dazed. He was aware once more of his hunger, and of thirst burning in his throat. ‘How long have I been down here?’ he asked. ‘How long were we all out?’

  ‘It is near to eight hours since I woke on the high deck,’ said Nicky, ‘and I was one of the first. Those below decks were slower to regain their wits. You are the last, I think – and no surprise is it, considering you were way down here. Folk will be relieved that you live. When we couldn’t find you, it was feared you were lost over the side.

  ‘But as to how long we were prisoners within the Miasma, who can be sure? Overnight at the least, for it was afternoon when the cloud caught us, yet when I awoke it was mid-morning. But I suspect it may have been longer than one day; maybe two days, or even three, for all report great hunger and thirst upon waking. Which reminds me, I have water here!’

  Nicky produced a flask and handed it over. Dow drank, his thoughts whirling. Two days, maybe three days. And no one remembered a single moment of it? Incredible! Still, he had heard worse tales of Miasmas. Hundreds dead, entire vessels lost. Perhaps they had almost been lucky. He wiped his mouth, feeling better. ‘What of the ship? Are we damaged at all?’

  Nicky hesitated. ‘The Chloe has taken no great hurt.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But the Snout . . .’

  ‘The Snout? What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘As you’ll recall, it was vulnerable when the Miasma struck, a hole open at the bow. The breach was tilted clear of the sea, yes, but somehow, during the Miasma’s reign, the balance shifted, plunging the hole beneath. Now, alas, the ship is taking on great amounts of water.’

  ‘But it’s afloat yet, surely, and being secured?’

  ‘Aye, it is afloat. For the moment . . .’

  For the moment! Alarm swept the last of the poisoned lethargy from Dow’s limbs. He couldn’t loiter here, he was needed. ‘I have to get topside,’ he said, and pushing past Nicky he reeled to the hatch.

  ‘But Dow – Samuels here . . .’

  ‘You look after him,’ Dow answered, and hauled himself up.

  In the hold, the rest of the search party were waiting, their faces pale and anxious. But they only fell back before Dow’s wild appearance, soaked and filthy and bloodstained. He stumbled to the stairs. It was unfair to leave Nicky with the corpse, he knew, but if the Snout was in trouble, then one dead man did not matter compared to the threat to an entire ship!

  Up he climbed. Evidence of the Miasma’s chaos was everywhere. Fittings were smashed, doors had been wrenched from their frames, torn clothes and hammocks were strewn all about. In one place, the stairs themselves were charred where a fire had been lit and only by some miracle had not taken hold. In another corner was a great hideous splash of gore, not yet cleaned up; but too much blood, surely, for the victim to have survived.

  Where was everyone? The ship seemed deserted. Finally Dow burst onto the main deck, and found the answer. The crew were all here, reeking of sweat and blood in the Doldrums heat. A din and hue came from somewhere nearby, but uncannily, the crowd on the main deck was silent, everyone only staring solemnly to the west. Dow pushed through, and so came to the rail, and looked, and saw.

  It was the Snout, no more than a hundred yards away across the water, half in silhouette against the lowering sun. Dow had expected that it would be bad. The ship was taking on water, Nicky had warned. But it was worse than that, Dow saw, even in his first glance. Far worse.

  The Snout was sinking.

  It was bow down in the flat sea, angled severely, the foredeck completely submerged. Only the main and the high decks remained undrowned as yet, the latter raised up and the ship’s rudder lifted clear, hanging uselessly. Water jetting from hoses told of the pumps still labouring below, fighting against the incoming flood, but they could never win, not with so much of the ship already gone under; they could only delay the inevitable.

  The vessel was lost.

  Indeed, it was even now in the process of being abandoned. Boats were in the water, and from the main deck, men and women by the dozen were climbing into the waiting craft, all manner of gear piled on their shoulders: sea chests and kegs and sacks of food. Jake and Boiler were visible there, shouting orders, and in one of the boats, overseeing the loading, was Fidel.

  Disbelief had paralysed Dow – but now shame bit deeper. His three commanders were fighting to save all that could be saved from this ruin, while he had slumbered unconscious in the bilge. It wasn’t right. He was their captain. He should lead in this crisis.

  He gazed down to the Chloe’s waterline, where boats were busy unloading human cargo, refugees who clambered wretchedly up the boarding ladders; grey-faced, eyes unseeing. Yes! He must climb down to a boat this instant and cross to the Snout. Maybe, even at this late hour, he could find some way to—

  A shout came from the rigging, and a moan from the crowd around him. Dow looked up, and all his visions of salvation fell to ash.

  A huge gout of dirty water was vomiting up from the Snout’s centre hatch. The whole ship shuddered, as if from some internal pain. The sunken bow dipped further, rose again, then fell deeper still, sending a wave flushing up the main deck towards the stern. The evacuation became a rout. Those still on board rushed for the boats, or leapt pell-mell into the sea. A long, awful shriek came from somewhere deep within the vessel, then the sound of heavy crashing.

  Dow could only stare. This could not be happening. Not to the Snout. The ship had survived so much in the time he had known it. The skirmishes of the early days of the war; the crossing of the Wilderness through hurricane and heat; the assault of the great Serpent; the mazes of the Banks; the Battle of the Headlands. Square and un-pretty, but ever loyal, the Snout had endured it all. It couldn’t end now, it couldn’t sink.

  But it was sinking. Dow saw Jake and Boiler, the last two on the main deck, dive into the sea. And all about, the scattered boats were pulling hard away, to escape the drag of the ship as it went down.

  The Snout stood deserted of all living crew, perhaps for the first time since its launch, long ago in the docks of Black Sands. The high deck, tilted ever more steeply, seemed to accuse the watchers with its emptiness, the wheel spinning blindly. Another great wrenching noise came from within, then first the main mast, followed closely by the mizzen, crashed down amid the snapping of ropes and spars to heap up against the fo
remast.

  More memories rushed at Dow. The deep hold of the Snout, where Nell had come so close to dying. The Great Cabin, where he had spent all those slow, hot days of the Southern Reach, studying with Cassandra, before her betrayal. His own little cabin, low in the stern castle, the humble home of a junior officer, that he had later shared for several blissful months with Nell, their first true times together. Lost. It was all going to be lost.

  Another hushed moan went up from the crowd on the Chloe. The dying ship was all but vertical now. And there for a long moment it paused, as if even in death the Snout was determined to protect its crew, to give them time to swim away. Then at last, with a sigh of regret, and with a great bubbling, it slid smoothly beneath the surface. A rush of discoloured water and flotsam surged up in its wake, and the Snout was gone.

  Dow blinked at the empty sea, too shocked even for tears. All around him voices wailed and wept, but he remained silent. In the water, boats were coming alongside the Chloe, and swimmers were everywhere stroking for the ship, now the only vessel afloat in all the expanse of the Barrier. Alone, utterly alone.

  Despair overwhelmed Dow a moment. How could the expedition ever make the southern half of the world now? It couldn’t, not with so many people lost, so many supplies lost. Not without the Snout. It couldn’t . . .

  Then, with immense effort, he roused himself. Despair, failure, that was for later. For now, there were survivors to be rescued. Fidel and Jake and Boiler were in the water. He was the captain. He had to act.

  He reached down to a woman climbing on the ladder. ‘Lend a hand here!’ he cried to those around him. ‘Get these people up, and send the boats back out! We have to get everyone out of the water before dark!’

  And with that he hauled the woman up and over the rail, then lent down, hand outstretched, for the next refugee.