The Ocean of the Dead: Ship Kings 4 Page 33

  To his own surprise, this bit the most deeply of all. He had not grasped that in vowing to lead a free civilisation, his own freedom would be the first thing he must forfeit. He studied now the great shore spread before him in the night, so ready to be peopled, and recognised the awful truth: as perfect as White Island might be, he did not want to spend the rest of his days here.

  He turned back to the windblown sky, and to the ocean extending off into the darkness, waves streaming, and the old longing in him awoke yet again, as unsated – indeed, beyond sating – as it had ever been, even after all his years spent now on ships.

  The sea. The sea was still where he belonged. Not the sea of the Doldrums, stagnant and slimed in its torpor, but the sea of wind and wave. And now there was fully half a world of ocean waiting to be explored. Deeps and abysses, shallows and reefs, other islands beyond this one just discovered, and in the furthest south, a second Unquiet Ice, and a second pole, a southern pole – but most of all, the sea itself, and the sky, and the wind.

  What else had Dow ever wanted, from the moment he had spied his first ship as a child? And yet he was chained here now, and instead of a mariner he must become – what? A ruler of some sort? A chieftain?

  A king?

  He could not say, for there had been no discussion as yet, not even among the Chloe’s officers, as to how this New World should be governed, whether by monarch, or council of elders, or elected officials. Dow only knew that having set this exodus and migration in motion, it was his duty to see it through, to lead in building up the New as much as he had led in fleeing the Old.

  And yet, even if he resigned himself to this and resolved to surrender the sea forever, still it was no answer, for how could any of it be borne when all the while, far behind, Nell languished in her purgatory, eternally paying, slow day by slow day, the price of their passage?

  *

  The night passed away to a bright dawn, and the time was come.

  Sail was raised, and on winds that had grown light the Chloe slipped cautiously landwards. Sounders with weighted ropes were placed at the bow, alert for rocks or reefs, but the sea floor remained sandy under clear water, rising gently towards the shore. As they came within the arms of the greater bay, the chop and swell of the ocean faded, and soon they were gliding across a smooth, translucent surface towards the inner harbour.

  There, the low headland curved out, enfolding the mouth of the river and creating a wide scoop of protected anchorage where an entire fleet might ride at ease, backed by a beach. The Chloe drew closer, rounding the headland, and still the sea held deep and clean. On the high deck, Dow and Boiler took turns to study the shore, and the land behind it, through the telescope.

  ‘Do you see, Dow,’ said Boiler, squinting into the glass, ‘on those hills some miles back, in the grasslands, there are flocks of things grazing that look like wild goats, or some kind of sheep perhaps. Hundreds of the things. Our first order of business when we land must be to send a hunting party up there with muskets – and by tonight we’ll be feasting on fresh meat!’

  Dow nodded. The New World seemed intent on displaying its riches even before they set foot upon it. The forests that lined the shore in places would no doubt produce edible fruits and smaller game like wild fowls and turkeys, and there would be fish too, in river and sea. In time, yes, the settlers would cultivate proper farms and grow crops – precious bags of seed had been saved from the moulds of the Doldrums, and even from the hunger of the crew, for that very purpose. But even before such crops could be harvested, there seemed little fear that the settlement would starve.

  The Chloe was now only a few hundred yards from the beach. ‘Close enough, I think,’ announced Prudence Weather, in command at the wheel. She called aloft, ‘Ease all sail, and drop anchor!’

  Sailors in the rigging hurried to obey, and in the forecastle the anchor chain rattled in preparation – but before the anchor itself could crash into the sea, Dow heard another, softer splash from near the bow.

  A horrid suspicion struck him. He dashed to the rail and leaned far out to look forward. Yes – there. Someone had dived into the water and was now swimming madly for the shore, arms and legs thrashing.

  It was Diego.

  Dow let fly a curse. The guard on the former prince had obviously been too lax, or perhaps forgotten altogether in the excitement of landing. And now Diego, having nursed his secret hopes all this time, was making his final bid. Meaning Dow would have to stop him.

  For a stubborn moment, however, Dow toyed with refusal, weary of forever being bound by the riddles of foresight. To the deeps with the Great Prophecy! Even if Diego did set foot on the beach here before anyone else, did that really mean that everyone would magically turn from Dow, whom they had followed loyally for so long, and blindly take Diego for their leader? That was nonsense, surely.

  So why bother with him? Why care?

  Except, Dow knew he must care. Somehow, in the years ahead, if Diego won out here today, then fate would ensure that it was he, and not Dow, who became the dominant figure in the New World.

  And that must not be.

  ‘Get a boat in the water quick,’ he snapped to Boiler. ‘We have to catch him before he makes the shore.’

  Boiler gave Dow a puzzled look. ‘But what does it matter? There’s nowhere he can go, nothing he can do . . .’

  ‘Don’t argue – just launch the damn boat!’

  Boiler blinked, then set off to see to it. Dow, fuming, stared again to the swimmer labouring in the water. The brief lifting of spirits that he had felt with the fair morning had now curdled. Damn Diego to the depths forever. Dow did not even want the prize, but now he would have to race for it anyway. He and everyone else had not endured so much upheaval, just so that Diego could ruin the New World as he had helped to ruin the Old.

  Boiler wasted no time, and the boat – standing ready in any case – was launched within a minute. Dow climbed down to the craft just as it shoved off from the Chloe’s hull. Boiler came with him, and Nicky was at the tiller, in charge of a keen crew of rowers. Diego was not even halfway to the shore by then, and tiring quickly, and in fact it was only a minute more, after some swift strokes of the oars, before they had caught him up. The swimmer did his best to avoid capture, diving under the boat and striking out doggedly at a new angle. But fully a hundred yards yet from the beach he was caught at last, and hauled on board by the rowers, spluttering and furious.

  ‘It’s not for you, Diego,’ Dow told him coldly.

  Diego glared back. ‘But it is for you, I suppose?’

  Dow shrugged. He only wished that it wasn’t! But again, Diego’s attempt only proved how little choice he had . . .

  ‘Do we go on and land?’ Boiler asked.

  Dow looked back to the Chloe. It would be wiser to return Diego first, and lock him safely away. But on an irritated impulse, he nodded. ‘Go on. Run us ashore.’ Yes, let Diego witness the moment at firsthand, and know that he had failed! Still, as a last caution, he added to two of the rowers in the stern, ‘You two, keep a tight hold of the prince here, and don’t let him go.’

  The other rowers bent their backs again, and the boat moved forward. They were just fifty yards out now. Studying the shore, Dow could only note, despite his grim mood, the idealness of the site. There was grassland by the river, and rolling hills lifting behind, and along the inner flank of the headland a long, level shelf of stone dropped straight into deep water, a ready-made wharf at which a ship even the size of Chloe could safely dock.

  Yes, they would survive here, and thrive, and multiply.

  And Dow could not escape it.

  The shore was nigh. The rowers lifted their oars, and the boat sailed over the last shallows towards the sandy strip of beach. Nicky had given the tiller to Boiler and had now gone forward with a rope in hand, ready to secure the craft on landing. Dow – feeling a world of weight and reluctance in his bones – rose to his feet.

  The fatal step must now be taken.


  But suddenly there was a commotion behind him, and a shout. A hand clutched his shoulder and hauled him back. Then someone was climbing over him, limbs flailing wildly. It was Diego, broken free yet again, imbued with superhuman strength at this very last chance.

  Dow felt the keel of the boat grate upon the sand. No, by all the oceans, this could not be permitted!

  He threw out an arm and by luck caught the very tail of Diego’s shirt, even as the former prince strained to leap from the boat. Dow yanked him back among the seats and held him there, wrestling, ignoring the maddened figure’s curses and blows.

  ‘Give it up!’ cried Dow. ‘It’s over!’

  ‘Let me go! It’s my right! It was foretold!’

  Dow’s only answer was to heave Diego around and pin him against the stern, aided by several of the rowers who had joined in belatedly.

  Diego struggled madly a moment more – then suddenly froze, staring aghast over Dow’s shoulder. He let out a shriek of despair. ‘No!’

  Dow turned, and gazed in shock of his own.

  As the craft had run up on the sand, and as Dow and Diego fought in the stern, young Nicky had leapt from the bow, rope in hand, and was now walking up out of the water, pulling the boat behind.

  ‘You fool!’ Diego was screaming at Dow. ‘Look what you’ve done! Look! It’s him! It’s neither one of us – it’s him!’

  Dow stared a moment longer in utter disbelief. Nicky? Nicky? Knowing nothing at all of the Great Prophecy, or of the significance of his act – he had been the first to set foot upon the New World’s shore?

  Nicky himself now glanced back at them as he heaved the boat onto the sand. His expression turned to one of surprise when he caught the looks on Dow and Diego’s faces. ‘What?’ he asked.

  Dow let go of Diego, sank back in one of the seats, staring in wonder still. Nicky? Nicky? Not the great Dow Amber at all, but Nicky?

  And suddenly he was laughing.

  Oh . . . oh, what a fool he had been!

  All along, this had been coming, and he hadn’t seen it. So many times fortune had tricked and baffled him, and still he hadn’t been ready.

  Diego was staring at him in disgust, Boiler in puzzlement, the others in confusion, but the laughter wouldn’t stop. Dow had to lie back against the seat. Oh, this was wonderful. This was better than any joke. This was salvation. This was a lifetime of weight lifting away from him and flying off into the blue sky. For the great wheel of fate had spun with one final click, coming to rest at last in perfect place, completing the grand design in full.

  And in that same instant it had cast Dow aside.

  To freedom.

  16. THE MARINER

  Three months later, on a dark and windy pre-dawn morning, Dow stood on the very same beach, in company with Boiler and Jake.

  Together the three of them considered the boat that was waiting there to be run into the sea. It was the Maelstrom. But had Nathaniel Shear returned from the dead to gaze upon his old craft, there was little he would have recognised, other than the spiral pattern painted on its bow. Carpenters from the Chloe – in what time they could spare from the building of the new town – had cut the modest craft in two and inserted a new section, lengthening it by half again, and making it wider in the beam. They had also added a taller mast, decked over the stern quarter, and raised a low cabin in the bow, so that the former fishing boat had become in effect a tiny and yet seaworthy ship.

  In this reborn craft, Dow intended to set sail at the rising of the sun. It was to be a secret departure known only to Jake and Boiler, for he hadn’t the heart to explain himself to all the others, or to endure their goodbyes. The excuse he had given for the rebuilding of the Maelstrom was that it would be used for coastal exploration, voyages of only a few weeks. But in fact its small holds were stuffed now with enough salted meats and preserved fruits to sustain a lone mariner for a year and more at sea.

  Or two people for half that time.

  ‘It’s a sound little vessel,’ said Jake, his shoulders hunched against the wind. Dark clouds were hurrying above, and it was almost cold. ‘But are you sure it can take you where you want to go? I tell you again – we should have fitted it with one of the engines from the attack boats.’

  ‘No,’ said Dow, sure of this. ‘Sooner or later I’d run out of oil, and then all I’d have would be the dead weight of the iron. No, I’ll row my way through the worst of it, once I sail beyond the wind. The Maelstrom is light enough still for one man at the oars, as long as he has no need of speed. And I have supplies enough to go slowly. Also, if I succeed, I won’t have to row back out alone, will I – there’ll be a second set of hands.’

  Boiler was shaking his head. He had disapproved of this from the beginning. ‘How can you succeed? Even should you be able to reach the inner Barrier alone, and even if Nell still lives, and even if you can find her in all the wilderness of weed and slime, the Sunken are not likely to give her up. They’ll only take and kill you, and your rescue will come to naught.’

  Dow smiled at his old friend. ‘She lives, I know it, and I’ll find her. But I don’t call this a rescue. Indeed, by the time I come to her I expect fully to be a prisoner of the Sunken, and that it’s Nell who will have to rescue me, and argue for my life. But she will have spent many months among the creatures by then. She’ll have studied their ways, and will know how to save us.’

  Boiler sighed. ‘Well, may the deeps grant that it be so – and that then you can both escape the Barrier again to return to us.’

  ‘We’ll return,’ said Dow. ‘If we’re allowed.’

  Jake gave him a sharp look at the word allowed. But the harpooner did not know – for Dow had never told anyone – of Uyal’s last and strangest prophecy. Dow had forgotten it himself, until he had begun to plan this voyage. Yet Uyal had foretold, in those last moments on the island, that should Dow ever sail away from the New World once he had found it, then fortune would never permit him to set foot on that shore again.

  But so it must be, if he was to be with Nell once more.

  And he was free now, after all, to do so.

  Dow took a breath, and cast a long glance around in the grey light at the little town that was a-building upon the shores of the harbour. His town. Johannes Cove they had named the inlet that formed the anchorage; and the stream that flowed into it was now known as the Harp River, in memory of Agatha; while the wider reach from which the harbour opened had been christened Fidel Bay. Lost friends all. But as for the town itself – Dow had argued otherwise, yet had been unable to prevent the others from naming it in his own honour.

  So Port Amber it had become.

  In truth, it was no more yet than a muddy camp of tents and log huts. At most, three hundred people lived there or close by. The other six hundred survivors of the voyage had scattered further afield, to carve out farms on the plains, or to hunt in the hills, or to fish from villages along the coast. But at least one building of decent size was taking shape, and Dow’s gaze lingered on it fondly. It was a Barrel House, or something akin to it: a place where many could gather in fellowship at night around a bright fire, and shut out the great dark of the wilderness. And where government too, in whatever form it might take, could begin to sit, as soon it must.

  Yes, Dow assured himself, his inspection complete, the settlement might be young, but its foundations were well laid, and it would endure.

  Not that it was any concern of his anymore.

  It all fell to Nicky now.

  Dow had to smile. That Nicky should be the one – even after all this time, it was a marvellous joke still.

  Oh, the young man was not yet, of course, the colony’s acknowledged leader, or anything like it. It took more than a leap from a boat to make that happen. No, authority since the landing had rested, not unexpectedly, with Dow himself, and with a council that consisted of Boiler, Jake and Benedicta. But now Dow was leaving, which left the council short a member, and offered him the chance to give fate’s design a small nudge
forward.

  He turned to Boiler and Jake. ‘There’s one last thing I’ll ask. Fill my place on the council with Nicky.’

  The two men looked somewhat surprised. And why would they not? Dow had told them nothing of that prophecy either. ‘Nicky?’ Boiler asked. ‘Are you sure? He’s very young, and rather silent in manner.’

  Dow nodded. ‘Trust me. He’s eighteen now, older than I was when this all began, and can speak well enough, when he needs to.’

  Jake was studying Dow thoughtfully. ‘We can’t remain a self-appointed council forever, you know. Before much longer we’ll have to hold elections, and let anyone stand in them who chooses to.’

  ‘I know. But give Nicky a few months in the job before you go to a vote. After that, I’m sure he’ll be chosen in his own right anyway.’

  It was a vision Dow could see clearly, prophet though he was not – Nicky’s rise to ascendance here in this new land. Boiler and Jake would be old men before the colony came to full fruition, but not Nicky, who was young enough to grow as the settlement itself grew; they would reach their prime together. Moreover, Nicky was not a mariner at heart. He was someone who had sailed only from necessity, and who would be at peace on land – as Dow could never be – through the decades to come.

  Not that Nicky himself knew any of this. Dow had been careful to keep all prophecies hidden from him, too. Indeed, Nicky’s only worldly concern at the moment was his baby daughter, to whom May had just given birth, only a day gone by. The child was the sixth born to the colony, and Dow had delayed his departure to be sure the delivery came without trouble.