The Ocean of the Dead: Ship Kings 4 Read online

  Boiler shook his head. ‘Six months is not long. It depends – how far have we come already, and how far is there to go? What was your latest reckoning?’

  Fidel shrugged. ‘Little can be said for certain in this haze, but at best we’ve come maybe seven to eight hundred miles now. That puts us on the verge of the inner Barrier, which we think, you will recall, is about two thousand miles across. Then there will be a further thousand miles of outer Doldrums on the far side. In other words, we are a little less than a quarter of the way along.’

  The former innkeeper heaved a sigh. ‘Three thousand miles yet to go. Why, at the pace we have so far set, and even without further disaster, we would be at least four months more in the crossing – leaving us only two months to search for land in all the wilds of the southern ocean. It’s not enough, Fidel. It was always a gamble, but what looked a reasonable wager with full supplies now looks far more reckless. And that’s not to mention the new problems that will face us now: overcrowding, for one. We’ve already seen disease break out on the two ships when there was more space for everyone; now, in one ship, when the Doldrums fevers come again, it shall be all the worse.

  ‘So – as much as I hate to do so – I for one say that it would be wisest to turn back. To continue south is to risk all on a wishful guess. But behind us, we know we have supplies enough to return to the north. I do not mean that we should therefore abandon all hope of the New World. I only mean that if we retreat now to the Old, then we can regroup and resupply, capture another ship perhaps, to replace the Snout. Then try again.’

  Dow could see that many around the room – faces still gaunt from the previous day’s shock – were in agreement with Boiler. Reluctantly maybe, but accepting of the argument. And why not? It was a sound one.

  But Jake was shaking his head. His toothless brow was smooth under the bandaging, making his face appear wan and strangely naked, but he seemed to have regained something of his old self at last. ‘Retreat and resupply, you say? Capture another ship? How, exactly? Do you think we could resort to piracy in our state? Need I remind you, Boiler – we have cast all our cannon into the deeps! We would face only defeat and capture, and after that a death sentence. For myself, death I do not fear. But if we die in the Old World, then we die knowing that the New World can never be. I say that if we are to die anyway, then it’s preferable to die in the hope and pursuit of something better. We must go forward!’

  That was more like it, thought Dow.

  Prudence Weather, senior officer on the Chloe under Fidel, likewise nodded at Jake with approval. ‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘to retreat might not be any less hazardous than to advance. What of the white algae? Could the Chloe’s hull endure another crossing of that acid sea? No, we would need to find a way around it if we returned to the north, and that could add many hundreds of miles to the journey, exposing us to worse dangers in the meanwhile maybe. If all is equally uncertain thus, I too say push on. And we must do so soon. We can’t linger here. We remain near to the field of seaweed that gave birth to the Miasma. Who knows when it may produce another?’

  ‘It won’t be today,’ said Fidel. He had as yet voiced no opinion as to whether they should advance or retreat, but Dow could sense how troubled he was, how full of doubt, a scholar who had burned his own library. ‘The blooms are all exhausted. If they are to refill, it will take time. Some weeks, I would imagine, though my guesses are hardly to be trusted. But you are right enough that we cannot linger, for our time is limited now, whatever our course. Yet the choice remains: which way do we go?’

  Everyone looked to Dow finally. The two cases had been fairly presented. But he was the captain.

  Dow, of course, had known his decision before they had even begun. But still he hesitated a final instant. Two months, Boiler had said – that might be all that was left to them, even if they won through the Barrier to the southern oceans. It was laughably inadequate, and if they found no land then they would all die of hunger and thirst, lost at sea. Purely because Dow had willed it be so.

  Ah . . . but even with a year to search, there was no guarantee of finding land. It had always been a lottery. So what did it matter if it was two months, or one, or a single day? If it had always been in the lap of fortune, Dow’s fortune, then let it remain there.

  ‘Here is my decision,’ he said. ‘We go on.’ He paused to let the words sink in. ‘We do so for all the reasons already outlined – but not only those reasons. We go on because I say that we are fated to go on, and all of you long ago vowed that in matters of fortune, I – and Nell with me – are the ones who should decide.’ He swept the room with a look, feeling that somehow he held every gaze at once with his own, and saw into every soul. ‘This is my command. Are there any here unable to obey it?’

  Silence.

  Then Fidel coughed softly. ‘I do not think you are well, Dow. Something makes you hasten rashly in this. Nevertheless, I do not say you are wrong, or that fate has abandoned you. I will follow.’

  The silence returned. From Jake, Dow received a wink of fierce approval; from other faces, doubt, resentment, fear, confusion; from Nell, a small shake of her head, sorrowful, as if none of this even mattered.

  But not a word of dissent was spoken.

  Dow took a satisfied breath. ‘Very well, the first thing we’ll do is launch the attack boats, then—’

  He was cut short by an urgent knock on the cabin doors, which were flung open forthwith. A midshipman stood there, red-faced and flustered. ‘Sirs,’ the youth addressed the room, ‘come quick, on the main deck!’

  They stared at him. ‘Come quickly for what, you fool?’ reprimanded Jake. ‘Make a proper report, lad.’

  The young man stiffened. ‘Sorry, sir. But on the main deck – the crew – all of them are there, and they demand you come!’

  ‘Oh ho,’ grinned Jake, ‘demand, do they?’

  ‘Yes, sir. They say they know what you’re all talking about in here, and they want to be heard too.’

  Fidel looked to Dow. ‘It was only to be expected, perhaps, after a day like yesterday. You’d best go face them, and convince them of your choice. You can’t lead a thousand of them if they are unwilling.’

  ‘Unwilling be damned,’ retorted Jake. ‘They’ll follow orders.’

  ‘They aren’t soldiers,’ said Fidel. ‘And this is no warship under military regulation. Dow?’

  Dow was silent an instant longer, a sudden dread rising in his heart – was this the moment that Nell had foreseen? But no, there would be no moment. He summoned his resolve once more and nodded. ‘You’re right. Let’s face them and get it done with.’

  He rose, and the others followed. Together, they trooped from the Great Cabin out to the Captain’s Walk, overlooking the main deck.

  The sight below was daunting. Every open space was jammed to capacity with silent faces staring up. Dow had not beheld such a press of people since Nell’s Carnival of the Becalmed – but Nell’s crowd had been a happy one, whereas this crowd was . . . what?

  Dow moved to the rail, staring down at the upturned faces, trying to read their mood. Was it fear? Confusion? Shock, still? Yes, all those things. But there was an ugliness too, an impatience. Something this morning, or someone, had brought this crowd’s uncertainties to the boil.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  There was a shifting of eyes, and finally a focussing on one figure that stood at the crowd’s forefront, just below Dow. He almost gave a sigh, for he might have known who it would be. Magliore.

  The old sailor was leaning on his crutch and squinting up at Dow with a stubborn set to his grizzled jaw. ‘It’s this. You officers are all in there deciding what we should do now, go on or go back. Well, we want our say too, as we’re the ones who’ll live or die by the choice.’

  Jake Tooth leaned over the rail. ‘And you speak for all this lot, do you? A vote has been taken, and you’ve been elected chief mutineer?’

  The poet smiled back. ‘No votes have been taken, Com
mander, so there’s no need for angry words. You’re upset, I understand that – any captain would be who had his ship sink under him, his fault or not. But no vote was needed. This is no mutiny. We’ve just been talking, is all, about some things that are bothering us.’

  ‘So what is bothering you – apart from the obvious?’

  ‘The obvious? You mean the Miasma and the rest? Aye, that’s all bad enough, no doubt. But no, I wasn’t speaking of that.’ And here Magliore’s smile faded. ‘I mean the signs. The signs and portents that have been beheld this very morning. They need answering.’

  ‘What signs?’ asked Dow, genuinely puzzled.

  Fidel too was surprised. ‘I’ve seen no portents. There’s been nothing untoward in the sky; it is as drear and unchanging as ever. The sea too is without feature in this windless world. There are no signs here.’

  ‘Signs from under the sea,’ Magliore replied darkly. ‘Signs that have risen from the dead ship.’

  And suddenly Dow understood. The poet meant the flotsam that had been rising to the surface ever since the Snout had sunk: loose timbers from the decks, shattered crates from the hold, all manner of refuse that had broken free as the ship descended, and drifted up again to daylight. The ocean all about the Chloe was littered with such wreckage. Indeed, at dawn, Dow had ordered several boats out to collect anything that might prove useful.

  ‘Broken timbers floating in the sea?’ he asked. ‘What portents are there in that?’

  ‘There is this,’ said Magliore. He lifted high a small wooden keg: it was of stout and solid design, but was now ruptured and collapsed inwards. Dow recognised the type, it was a port barrel. ‘Such casks,’ said the poet, ‘are well familiar to all of us who once sailed as Ship Kings and received the daily wine ration. Few barrels are made tougher, for their contents are precious.’ A scattered laugh rose from the crowd, but the old sailor did not smile. ‘So tough are they indeed that many such casks have been salvaged whole from wrecked ships, even ships that are sunk many fathoms deep.

  ‘But behold, this barrel and others like it have risen to the surface this morning and not a one of them is whole; all have been crushed. What does this tell us? It tells us that the Snout has sunk in deep water indeed. How deep? That’s what we’ve been wondering below decks. And so we made experiments; from the gunports we lowered a sounding line a full mile long, and still we reached no bottom. Thus we know that there are no shallows below us, but an abyss; that is the message the Snout has sent us.’

  ‘Well, what of that?’ demanded Jake.

  The poet’s squint was cunning. ‘Have you forgotten, all you sirs, the assurances you gave when we set out on this voyage? We follow this particular course because supposedly – so you told us – it traces the shallows and shoals that are meant to extend all the way from the northern world into the south, and so lead us to dry land. Shallow waters all the way, you said. And yet the Snout has revealed the lie. There are no shoals or banks beneath us here, only the deep ocean – so your promise of land ahead is a false one!’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Dow rejoined. ‘It’s probably no more than a canyon among the shallows.’ But doubt clutched him. It was true, they had chosen this path for the very reasons the poet claimed, and if they were wrong, then their hope of finding land . . .

  ‘A canyon!’ scoffed Magliore. ‘How many signs must you be given that this voyage is misguided? First the sea of acid, then the deadly blooms of the Miasma, and now this warning from the Snout. Are you so blind?’

  ‘These things aren’t signs,’ Dow argued, exasperation growing. ‘They’re just the nature of the Doldrums.’

  ‘Nay, fate is trying to tell us something – tell you something, Mr Amber, to which you refuse to pay heed.’

  Fidel interjected. ‘And who are you to interpret fate in the presence of Dow and Nell here, who have known its ways far more intimately than yourself, Magliore?’

  But the old poet seemed ready for this, even to welcome it. ‘It is the role of any scapegoat to commune with fate on behalf of their ship. And seeing that Ignella of the Cave has refused the role, it must fall to another to take up the burden. And after all, I too have been maimed by ill fortune, and am thus eligible. Behold!’ And he displayed the stump of his missing leg.

  ‘You?’ scorned Jake. ‘You’d dare?’

  ‘If she will not, then yes.’ Magliore lifted his crutch to point at Nell, standing at Dow’s side. ‘And does she still refuse? I will be answered!’

  Dow turned to Nell in desperation. If it was coming to this, a choice between her taking up the hated role, or surrendering the ship to the likes of Magliore, then she must speak now, and accept.

  But her gaze only roamed across the main deck as if trapped by all she saw. ‘There’s no point,’ she breathed, too low for the crowd to hear, but shaking her head. ‘It will make no difference.’

  ‘There you see it!’ declared Magliore. ‘And in the absence of any other scapegoat, I claim the role. And I say that fate has spoken clearly to me – and that it has abandoned these two who led us to this end.’

  The air had gone out of Dow’s lungs – how could Nell say such a thing, that it did not matter? It was Jake who responded in fury. ‘Whatever Nell may choose, Dow is still your captain, so hold your tongue!’

  ‘Captain, is he?’ Magliore enquired, turning to the raptly listening crowd. ‘A captain’s first thought is always for the ships under his care, and for his crew. But where was Dow Amber when the Snout was sinking? He was hiding! He was skulking down in the bilge, next to a dead man that he himself killed; one of his own crew, a good man, a fine and loyal sailor, slain by the captain he trusted. The Miasma did strange things to us all, no doubt, but few of us did it make into murderers!’

  ‘He was trying to sink the ship!’ Dow exclaimed, blushing, knowing that in even acknowledging the accusation he was lost, but unable to help himself. ‘He was trying to breach the hull. I had to stop him.’

  ‘Oh? You remember that for a fact?’ Magliore asked gleefully. ‘When no one else retains any memories at all? How amazing. How convenient.’

  Boiler Swan now intervened. ‘And what did you do in the Miasma, poet? Do you remember? There were many other dead bodies. Do you know for certain none of them were slain by your hand?’

  For a moment Dow saw a hunted look in the poet’s eye, and guessed that Magliore indeed suspected he had done something terrible in the Miasma darkness. But the expression vanished almost instantly, replaced by a righteous air of anger. ‘It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t do – I make no claim to be captain, or to be worthy of leading this enterprise. I only know that I will heed the messages from fate that these two ignore.

  ‘Consider,’ he continued, rounding on the crowd once more, ‘we are not even a fourth of the way across the Doldrums, and look how near we have come to death. It will only become more and more terrible if we continue. You know what awaits us, perhaps only a few days’ sail ahead now – the inner Barrier, the Ocean of the Dead. If merely the outer Doldrums have treated us as harshly as this, does anyone here truly think we can survive the black core of the Barrier, where the Dead walk upon the water, and give no quarter to the living?

  ‘No, I say. We have made a grave mistake in coming here at all. We must turn back. Now, while we still can. And never return, never dare the Doldrums again. We have been foolish in our pride. The Barrier is not to be crossed by man. We have profaned against the natural order in trying, and death will be our reward if we ignore this final warning. We must go home!’

  Something like a groan rose from the crowd. There. It had been spoken, the poet’s purpose revealed: to turn the expedition back. And not merely to resupply and regather for another attempt, as Boiler had argued, but to never try again, to accept that the New World could never be.

  It took Dow only one despairing glance across the deck to see how well Magliore’s arrow had struck its target. Men and women were everywhere nodding their heads and muttering, some looking ask
ance at Dow and Nell, their eyes cold, others turning resigned gazes northwards, back the way they had come, as if there could be no other choice now, not if they wanted to live.

  And how could Dow argue against it? All he had to offer was more danger and suffering, and beyond that only the merest chance of reward, a sliver of hope, a fragile thing, so easily destroyed by clever words. And Magliore was clever. He had singled out and discredited first Nell and then Dow in turn, before raising his fearsome vision of destruction. Did the old poet actually believe what he was saying? Or was he merely afraid, and using all this talk of fate and portents simply to justify his own desire to flee the Doldrums? Either way, it hardly mattered.

  On the Walk, Fidel and Jake and Boiler and the other officers were all watching Dow anxiously now, waiting to hear his reply, his defence of his very right to the captaincy. But he could think of nothing to say. In the Great Cabin only minutes before he had announced his decision boldly, citing no authority other than his own. But the same would not work here. Across the vastness of the main deck, his voice would fade and fall and have no meaning, not if the thousand were against him.

  He was going to lose.

  The silence yawned wider, and Magliore’s eyes were already glinting with victory – but all of a sudden there came a shout from the crow’s nest, a cry so unlikely, so impossible, that the entire crowd on the main deck stared up as one, not believing their ears.

  ‘A ship!’ was the call. ‘To the east – look – a sail rises! A ship comes!’

  Dow too stared up in wonder. A ship? But that could not be. Unless the Snout had miraculously resurfaced from the deeps – and for a mad instant Dow almost allowed himself to hope – what other ship could there be? The Chloe was alone in the Doldrums.