The Ocean of the Dead: Ship Kings 4 Read online

  Jake’s stare was dubious. ‘And that’s the truth? That’s what that thing in the chair promised you?’

  Dow met the stare calmly. ‘It is.’

  Jake held his gaze, eyes narrowing, as if to indicate that he knew enough of prophecy himself by now to know it was never that simple. But at length he only sighed, and said, ‘We’ll pass it on, then.’

  Dow nodded, and returned his gaze to the New World. He had lied, of course, or omitted too much of the truth. But he could not bring himself to say more of the Great Prophecy, not yet. His officers, his crew, his ship . . . they were too fragile, too near dissolution.

  He watched as Nell walked with Uyal.

  Why was she with the creature? In a way, it bothered Dow more than if she had been accompanied by Diego. Diego was a known danger, his intentions obvious. But Uyal? Who could say what Uyal’s intentions were, or what dark purpose the scapegoat’s prophecies served?

  Dow ground his teeth. Against foresight he was defenceless. If he had thought stealing Nell back would make any difference, he would have sent Jake on an attack this very night. But the problem was not Nell’s captivity on the New World – the problem was what she had foreseen to be waiting for her in the gloom of the Barrier.

  I’ll be left . . . he’ll have to choose . . . and I’ll be left behind!

  Ah – and who was the he in this?

  Dow himself? Surely.

  But it was impossible. How could he ever choose to leave Nell behind? Sooner would he cut off his arm, or pluck out an eye . . .

  On the New World, Nell and the wheeled chair had vanished through a door in the stern castle. Dow straightened, looked about. Jake and Boiler were gone. He had not even noticed their departure.

  He sighed. They were dissatisfied and he could not reassure them. None of them had any choice anyway: not Jake and Boiler, not Fidel, nor anyone else in the crew. In the morning they must launch the attack boats and begin towing, whatever their own thoughts.

  Two thousand miles, Dow reminded himself sternly. That was the present danger, to the exclusion of all other nebulous fears. Two thousand brutal miles, at a slow mechanical crawl, through this insufferable heat and across this black, unshifting sea – a dead ocean even if it wasn’t Magliore’s Ocean of the Dead.

  Except . . .

  A troubling memory came to Dow. Uyal, in bidding him farewell, had also used Magliore’s term. The Ocean of the Dead will claim us then, the scapegoat had said. And Uyal was not one to use such a name, or to invoke such legends, lightly. Could there be some truth to it, then? Could the unrestful drowned really haunt the sea ahead, and wait to waylay the living?

  No . . . that was impossible too.

  Night was come, and darkness. Dow turned away from the rail and descended to his cabin, groping in the gloom there for a match to light a candle. After he had done so, he saw Nell’s cameo lying on the desk. He had retrieved it from his sea chest after returning from the New World, intending to throw it away, to throw it into the sea, but something had stopped him.

  Now he took it up, grappling with the same temptation. This small piece of jewellery had betrayed them, led Uyal and Diego exactly to the Chloe’s location in all the emptiness of the ocean. Nell had been right. It should never have been kept, it was perhaps even dangerous to them still. Dow weighed it in his hand, imagining the act of hurling it over the railing.

  But he couldn’t do it. For he could also imagine the cameo as it then sank away into the depths, Nell’s face staring out all the while as the blackness grew deeper and deeper, and the pressure insurmountable.

  And what might be waiting for her, down there?

  It was another premonition of disaster, as strong as any hint from Uyal or any of Nell’s nightly terrors. Dow thrust the cameo into a drawer, blew out the candle, and went out again into the fathomless night.

  *

  In the red haze of dawn the boats were launched. Six craft were sent out from the Chloe, and eight from the larger New World. Each ship held a further two boats in reserve, to serve as replacements, for the craft in the water would need to be hoisted out periodically for maintenance.

  Everyone knew the calculations by now, the crucial numbers by which their fate hung. They had two thousand miles to cross. Fidel’s earlier trials had shown that with six boats towing it, the Chloe could cover fifty miles in a day. His original plan had thus called for forty days of steaming to reach the other side, and they had gathered enough oil – just – for those forty days. Now, however, as the Chloe had used some of their oil already, they had only enough for thirty-nine days. And as for the New World, according to Diego’s officers it carried a greater supply of fuel, but with more boats in service, and a heavier ship to tow, it would probably not better those same thirty-nine days.

  Even at best, therefore, the fleet would fall short of the full distance, fifty miles at least, perhaps many more, if the clinging water slowed them down. Those miles would have to be crossed by the power of oar alone – an exercise, as Dow had already reflected, that would be torment, and all the worse for every mile extra. So it was that the decks of both ships were crowded with anxious onlookers as the attack boats were lowered and the lines paid out, the same questions uppermost in all minds. Would the boats function as hoped? Would their propellers bite effectively in this stringy, resistant sea? Could the ships really make fifty miles a day? Would they move at all?

  The boats ranged out, tow lines rising dripping from the ocean. On command, the engines were brought to full revolutions and the ropes drew tight. Weirdly, the whirling propellers raised no froth in the heavy water, they produced only a black quiver on the surface – but at length, with a dip at their bows, both the Chloe and the New World slid gently forward.

  No cheer was raised; the crowds on both ships only watched on silently as the boats and their burdens came slowly to full speed. In truth, this was no more than a leisured walking pace, two miles an hour maybe, but if held unfailingly, hour upon hour, day upon day, it was a pace that could carry a ship full around the world. And yet it felt, in those first minutes, hopelessly inadequate against the vastness of the Barrier.

  Uneasy glances strayed to the sky and the sea. Never before had ships like these, driven by fire and iron, come to challenge the impassable Doldrums. Would their daring now invoke some reply?

  But the Barrier seemed to regard the fleet’s efforts with indifference. The leaden roof of haze remained fixed; the flawed-glass water revealed no wake or ripple as the ships moved through it; the heat still lay smothering upon the decks, the fleet’s passage too slow to raise a breeze. And even though the engines of the boats throbbed as they laboured, beyond that throb the great quiet of the Doldrums weighed as heavily as ever. This ocean had never known any sound before, and did not deign to acknowledge it now.

  Creeping and ponderous, the ships passed on into the gloom and faded slowly to nothingness, leaving behind them no trace that they had ever been, only stillness again, and silence, and heat.

  The crossing was begun.

  *

  Through all that first day the boats strained dutifully at the ends of their tethers. After four hours, one by one each craft was recalled for refuelling, and from eight hours on they were brought in two at a time, replaced by the reserve craft, to be hoisted on board so that the protective layer of whale grease on their hulls, dissolved by the nicre-rich water, could be reapplied.

  All as planned. But as evening approached, the fleet – to judge by the unchanging prospect of empty ocean and dull haze – might not have moved at all.

  On into the starless night they went. Lamps were lit on the leading boats, but their dim flames illuminated little in the thick airs, accentuating only the darkness that loomed all about. And behind came the ships, lamps strung in their rigging and upon masts that served no other purpose now in a world that would never know wind. The graceful Chloe and the majestic New World reduced to hulking barges, fit only to be hauled along . . .

  Dawn fo
und them upon a sea identical to that of the dawn before, and under the same dismal roof. But it was time now to tally up their first full day and night under tow. Every hour since they had begun, from the sterns of each ship a rope marked with knots along its length and attached to a sea anchor had been dropped into the sea, to measure their speed. It was an imperfect technique, for anchors drifted, and ropes tangled, but in the starless Doldrums there was no other way to reckon position.

  The result was this. On the New World, Diego’s navigators calculated that they had travelled forty-seven miles, from dawn through to dawn. On the Chloe, Fidel reckoned it to be forty-three miles.

  ‘It’s no great difference, surely,’ said Dow to Fidel, for the old scholar seemed somewhat disturbed by the varying results.

  ‘Maybe,’ replied Fidel. ‘I would hardly expect that we would agree exactly. But in truth I was calculating as optimistically as I might – I don’t know how Diego’s men could have reckoned even higher than me. And either way, we are short of the fifty miles we wanted.’

  Dow nodded. It was a poor start. But there was nothing to be done except push on, and hope it grew no worse.

  Several such days passed. The fleet progressed without pause, at least if progress was measured by the pounding of the engines, and by the consumption of whale oil, and by the movement of the knotted rope. But there was nothing in the wider world by which to gauge their motion. The sea was featureless, the horizon nonexistent, and the Doldrums canopy so dense now that even at full noon the sun was no more than a generalised red glow in the haze, forming no orb and casting no shadow.

  But there was no let-up in the heat; indeed the air had now developed a crackling, scorched feel, as if the last few shreds of moisture had been wrung from it, leaving it desiccated. Fidel blamed the sterility of the sea. Behind them, he said, among the seaweed and slimes, a small amount of humidity had been created by the living matter on the surface. But here, in this lifeless, empty ocean, even that tiny trace of moisture was absent.

  It made the heat more cruel, cracking lips and inducing dry coughs in throats. No amount of water could satisfy anyone’s thirst anymore, and in any case the water was rationed, so everyone felt parched all the time. On the boats, the four-hour shifts were hellish, for the iron craft captured and magnified the heat of the sea and sky in combination, in addition to the hot fumes of the labouring engines. And on the ships, the families packed below decks crowded at the open gun ports and struggled for breath. Soon the doctors were reporting a surge of visitors to sick bay, the old and the infirm, and also the very young, children carried by their mothers, all with flushed, dry skin and staring eyes and confused wits: the symptoms of heat stroke.

  But on the fleet crept. Four days, then five. On the sixth morning Fidel again consulted with Dow about the reckoning of their progress. Fidel had tallied their passage during the previous day as being only thirty-eight miles – but Diego’s navigators had it at forty-six.

  ‘Day by day it’s the same,’ the old scholar said, shaking his head, ‘always they count too high. Already there is a difference of over thirty miles between where I say we are, and where they say we are.’

  ‘How can it be so great?’ Dow asked, understanding the seriousness of this, for if their navigation was out by thirty miles after five days, then in forty days it would be out by hundreds. And that could be fatal.

  Fidel shrugged in frustration. ‘I’ve talked with them, and I think they have not allowed sufficiently for the unusual drag of the sea anchor in this congealed water. Also, there are various expansive effects of heat that must be compensated for in such calculations, which I think they’ve underestimated. All bad enough. But mostly I fear that their mistakes are willing ones.’

  ‘Willing?’

  ‘Just so. I have noticed something in my discussions with the officers of the New World. They are to a man convinced of their purpose, sure that they are destined to reach the southern seas. They are followers inspired by Diego’s boldness and even more by the blessing of Uyal, whom they regard as a seer of immense power. They do not think they can fail. Not when Uyal seems to guarantee success. Hence, they are all too ready to make the best interpretations they can of the navigational figures. Or to put it another way, fearing no mistake in their reckoning, they reckon recklessly, doing so to please their prince with encouraging news, and to encourage themselves.’

  ‘And there’s no way to settle it? To prove they’re wrong?’

  ‘No. Without stars, without the moon, without even the sun anymore, there is no objective framework for proof. All is estimates and guesswork. But believe me, Dow, they guess worse than I do.’

  Dow believed him. As if things weren’t desperate enough without being misled by wilful navigators! But if Fidel’s own protests to the New World had achieved nothing, there was little Dow could do about it.

  On they crawled, and in such a silent, sterile, brooding world, the sameness of every day seemed to wind the tension on board ever tighter, like a clock spring. Seven days, eight, and still nothing changed – and yet the foreboding in everyone grew. Dow even missed the slimes and insects of the seas they had left behind. Better bites and stench than this quiet that threatened like thunder, and this barren water that gave life to nothing.

  On the tenth morning Fidel totalled their progress in the previous twenty-four hours at only thirty miles, far short of what was needed. Even worse, Jake Tooth – in charge of the oil supply – reported that their fuel consumption was growing slightly higher each day, as the boats’ engines strained against ever greater resistance in the water. Dow sent all this information across to the New World but received no response from Diego. He then requested a meeting in person, and was refused. The prince had no interest in unpleasant news, it seemed.

  Of Nell, Dow continued to receive only distant glimpses on those occasions when she appeared topside, often in the disturbing company of Uyal. From Fidel and others who were permitted to visit the New World during the daily exchanges, and who had seen her at closer quarters, he at least learned that she appeared unharmed. But no one had been allowed to speak with her, so he had no true knowledge of how she fared. In the meantime he was lonely. His cabin was silent and depressing without her, and his nights were restless in their half-empty bed, his worries – unable to be shared – doubled.

  In all this drear sterile sea there seemed to be only one saving grace: it was impossible to imagine that even the spirits of the Dead made habitation in such blankness. For all Magliore’s warnings, or the enigmatic references in Fidel’s burned books, or even Uyal’s dark hints, there was no sign that any unearthly ghosts roamed the inner Barrier. Instead, there was only an utter absence of activity or impetus, a state where motion itself was foreign and unwelcome – and resisted.

  And into this world the ships pressed ever more slowly. On the fourteenth dawn under tow, Fidel grimly pronounced that in the full day and night previous, they had moved but twenty-five miles.

  Diego’s men called it forty-three.

  *

  But on the fifteenth day, just when the prospect of continuing on like this, under the ever-unchanging canopy, and over the ever-unchanging ocean, was becoming unbearable – at last something happened.

  The sterile sea gave birth to life once again.

  At first, revealed in the red dawn light, it was only a few strands of seaweed floating languidly in the water. But those strands increased as the fleet pushed south, and by noon the ships were creeping through a thriving field, as thick as any they had known in the outer Doldrums.

  At first this was a great relief, signalling not only progress, but also that life was possible in the inner Barrier after all. But as watchers on the ships stared down at the water, it was soon recognised that this was no ordinary seaweed. True, there were many varieties in the oceans of the world, and few sailors had beheld them all. But this was different: the green matter that surrounded the ships now was not merely an unfamiliar species of weed or algae, it was
not in fact weed or algae at all.

  Indeed, the floating things may not even have been plants, for their stalks, which rose up sinewy from the deep, had a skin-like, fleshy appearance, and they pulsated subtly, as if blood pumped within. And the fronds which sprouted from the stalks were uncannily reminiscent of limbs rather than of leaves or blossoms. Some seemed to move, grasping slowly at the hulls of the ships; some were even faintly akin to human hands and fingers.

  Fascinated, Fidel ordered samples retrieved, and when the sailors assigned the task returned, gingerly carrying several buckets of the stuff, their expressions were nauseated. They reported that the stalks had been difficult to pull up, twisting like snakes in their hands, and pulling in return, and when at last the sailors had cut the stalks with knives, a dark fluid had leaked from the wounds, very much as an animal might bleed.

  Fidel, unmoved by such squeamishness, retired with the samples to his laboratory, but all he could report several hours later was that the strange weeds were of no known species or origin and quite defied his attempt even to classify them definitively as either plant or animal.

  Meanwhile, the fleet’s pace – already not swift – slowed dramatically. Not only was it harder for the boats to drag the ships through the massed matter, the stuff also tangled in their propellers. Ever and again, one boat or another was disabled, and had to be called in and hoisted up so that its fouled shaft could be cleared.

  On the third day amid these new fields, swimming creatures began to appear in the water. They were not fish, or if they were, then they were of no known breed, for these were things that paddled through the sea as land animals might; bizarre organisms with jointed limbs and clutching fingers, some of them lizard-like, but others more like great pale spiders the size of dinner plates, scuttling on long legs across the ocean’s surface – but spiders with wide, round eyes that gazed up at the passing ships in fearless curiosity.