01 - The Burning Shore (9 page)

It was weeping again: a thick yellow liquid seeped out from between the
stitches.

According to the surgeon that was a good thing. Perhaps that was why he’d
stayed locked in his own quarters since the storm had begun.

“Worthless scum,” Lorenzo decided as he lent to feel Florin’s brow. The
burning flesh beneath his hand was worryingly dry, and Lorenzo knew that it was
time to try and get some more water into him.

“What a gods forsaken place,” he grumbled as a sudden, gut-wrenching yaw sent
his knuckles cracking painfully against the wall and his boot heels squeaking
across the planking. He waited until the ship had righted herself before
crawling across the tiny room to recover the water skin.

It felt worryingly slack, almost empty. Never the less Lorenzo unhooked it
and took it back to Florin.

“Here you go, boss,” he said, pinching Florin’s stubbled chin and shaking his
head back and forth. The only response was a groan of complaint, but that was
good enough for Lorenzo.

Carefully, bracing his knees beneath the bunk, he lifted his master’s head
and put the spout to his lips.

“Drink up,” he demanded, lifting the flask higher so that the last swig of
their water spilled down, some over Florin’s face, some into his mouth.

Lorenzo squeezed the water skin and realised that it was empty.

He cursed again, and looked resentfully at the tightly sealed door of their
cabin. The skipper had promised to send water into them twice a day. He’d
promised soup too, come to think of it. But for the past few days there’d been
no sign of water, or of soup, or anything else.

For all Lorenzo knew he and Florin were the last survivors of a ghost ship.
The two of them would rot away in the squalid isolation of this tiny cabin
whilst the
Destrier
swept to her doom.

He tore his thoughts away from that disturbing idea and instead indulged
himself in a brief fantasy, a dream of impossible comfort that involved nothing
more than curling up in his bunk and waiting for the storm to pass.

A horrible squeaking groan from the ship’s innards snapped him back to
reality. He knew that he no longer had a choice. Without water Florin’s fever
would devour him, and he’d no more allow that to happen to his friend than his
friend would allow it to happen to him.

Struggling out of his jerkin and leaving it in the dryness of the cabin
Lorenzo hung the four water skins he’d managed to scrounge across his chest and
opened the cabin door.

The storm, it seemed, had been waiting for that very moment. With a deafening
roar it pushed past him in an arc of salt spray and howling wind, the force of
it scouring the inside of the cabin.

Lorenzo, head bowed down as he struggled out of the cabin onto the lifting
deck, swung the door shut behind him. The slam of wood on wood was lost in the
cacophony. The spray that lashed across the pitching deck was thicker than rain,
and the manservant found himself spitting out bitter mouthfuls of sea water as
he seized one of the ropes that lined the
Destrier
’s gunwale and pulled
himself forward.

He tried not to look over the side into the thrashing abyss that waited
below. Beneath the weight of the storm clouds the sea was black and bruised, the
mad flecks of foam that scudded across its surface a dull grey. It looked alive,
Lorenzo thought, tearing his eyes away. And hungry.

With tears streaming down his face he pulled himself along the gunwale
towards the hatch that led to the water casks below. The
Destrier,
meanwhile, lurched drunkenly from one side to the other, now filling Lorenzo’s
field of vision with the ravenous depths of the sea, now hiding everything but
for torn rigging and boiling skies.

Somehow, despite the weakness in Lorenzo’s knees and the rolling in his empty
stomach, he ignored the twin monsters of sea and sky and pulled himself forward.
By now his hands had frozen into petrified claws around the rough hemp of the
rope. Blisters grew and popped as he slid his palms down the unforgiving
surface.

“Come on then,” Lorenzo roared in tiny defiance of the elements. “Gome and
get me.”

The storm snatched at him in response. Dragging himself ever onwards, Lorenzo
laughed with a hard edge of hysteria in his voice.

By the time he’d drawn level with the hatch his hands were pink with a
burning compound of blood and seawater. Although his destination was only a
lunge away he made himself wait as the
Destrier
rolled to the left,
bringing her side down close enough to the sea’s angry surface for a sudden wave
to rear up and slap him a numbing blow across the back.

“Rot your bollocks,” he snarled defiantly and waited for the
Destrier
to right herself. The second she did so he unclenched his hands from the rope
and dived across the deck.

As soon as he left the support of the gunwale his feet slid from under him
and he fell onto his knees. But it was too late to give up now. Crawling across
a slick of polished wood and running water, sliding this way and that, he
struggled desperately onwards towards the oasis of the hatch.

He almost made it on the first attempt. Almost. But just as his fingertips
brushed against the mahogany inlay that surrounded the trapdoor, the
Destrier
reared her head, heroically breaching the crest of a wave and sending
Lorenzo slipping helplessly back down the deck.

He scratched at the wood with his nails as he shot back down the sudden slope
of the deck, back towards his cabin. With a bang he hit the wall only three feet
to the left of where he’d started out.

But before he had time to despair the
Destrier
charged, storming the
cavern that had followed the wave, and Lorenzo was sent spinning back towards
the hatch.

He hit it with a thump, his hands and teeth gripping the wood as he hugged
himself into it, fastening onto the carpentry as tightly as one of the barnacles
that slated the
Destrier
’s hull.

She reared up again, climbing the next wave, and in the second of relative
calm that followed Lorenzo reached over and grabbed at the solid wooden handles
that opened the hatch. He turned at them expectantly, already anticipating the
sweet respite that awaited him below decks.

The handles remained solid. Stubborn.

Unmoving.

Baring his teeth in desperation, Lorenzo twisted and pulled harder, but
nothing gave. The
Destrier
’s charge was broken as she dropped into a
sudden chasm with a bone-jarring thud, and Lorenzo, half stunned, tried again.

“Gods damn it!” he swore at the sudden rush of water that smacked into him,
pulling playfully at his legs.

Then he tried to turn the handles the other way.

Still nothing.

Lorenzo howled with frustration and, refusing to relinquish his precious
handholds, banged the hatch with his head.

Suddenly the handles were turning of their own accord. The hatch winked open,
and he felt hands pulling him roughly inside. He was dragged down a short ladder
as the trapdoor was once more secured into place above him.

At first Lorenzo could think of nothing but the relative silence and calm of
this welcome underworld. Even the stench of refuse and bilge-water seemed sweet
to him after the terrible, scouring freshness of the world above. And the dozen
or so men who stood hunched over him, their faces distorted into gargoyle masks
by the flickering light of their lantern, looked like angels.

Then their leader pushed his way through them, bent almost double beneath the
low ceiling, and looked down with a terrible satisfaction.

“Well, well. Look who it is,” said Jacques, as he knelt down to study his
lads’ catch. “The captain’s monkey.”

“That boot didn’t do much for your looks,” Lorenzo told him, and spat a
mouthful of blood and salt water into the bilges at Jacques’ feet.

“No matter,” the mercenary agreed smugly. “The girls always love a winner.”

“So I see,” Lorenzo looked around pointedly.

Jacques laughed and slapped his catch on the shoulder.

“You’re a real diplomat, little man,” he cackled. “But you can get stuffed.
I’m not making the same mistake twice. Your fop of a master turned out to be a
real killer, gods alone know what a runt like you would turn out to be.”

“What I am,” Lorenzo shrugged, grabbing at the ladder as the
Destrier
leapt upon another peak, “is in a hurry. The fevers got a hold of Fl… of the
captain. Seems the surgeon’s better at drinking the spirit than using it on his
patients.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Jacques frowned. “He wasn’t a bad fellow. For an
officer.”

“Isn’t such a bad fellow,” Lorenzo muttered. “But anyway, if you’ll just show
me where the water’s kept I’d better get back to him.”

“Surely,” Jacques nodded. “You’ll have to ask the sergeant first, though.
Turns out he isn’t just a pretty face either.”

“Sergeant? You mean one of the Kislevites?”

“No. Orbrant, of course. Kislevites!” he spat. “Those rotten bastards
wouldn’t piss on their own grandmothers to put them out. That captain they hide
behind won’t even let us leave our sick in the upper decks. That’s why we’re all
stuck down here.”

“You have a sickness down here too?”

“Fever, dysentery, sea weakness. Just the usual,” the mercenary shrugged.

“Maybe when the boss is better he can change that. But look, can we be quick?
I don’t like to leave him for too long.”

“Of course,” Jacques agreed and headed off into the darkness.

Lorenzo ducked his head and followed him, splashing through the wash of
filthy water that rushed throughout the
Destrier
’s lower deck. It was
dark here; the men were presumably rationing their lantern oil. It was dripping
wet. Mould grew in slick patches on the ceilings and walls of this dingy world,
and most of the men who swung like rotten fruit from hammocks that had been
strung up between the
Destrier
’s ribs were coughing or feverish. One of
them was crying out in the soft tones of a child, wailing in his delirium as one
of his comrades lent over him, mopping the dampness from his brow.

“Is the upper deck much better than this?” he asked, although he was really
speaking only to himself. Jacques, who was holding tightly to a crossbeam as the
Destrier
rolled queasily, answered him.

“It’s drier,” he said. “And that’s the thing when you’ve got a fever. There
are less vermin too.”

To demonstrate, he waved the lantern at a bundle of black-furred shapes that
were swimming past them. The rats fled before the light, although without much
urgency.

Jacques led off again and Lorenzo realised how similar this place was to the
visions of hell his village priest had tried to terrify him with as a child. The
darkness, the filth, the misery and the vermin.

And if this had been hell, the figure that they now approached would
presumably have been the presiding daemon.

Orbrant was kneeling with his back to them, the smoothly shaved cannon ball
of his head bent in prayer. He seemed not to notice the foetid bilge-water that
surged around his calves and thighs, or the creaking of the ship’s timbers.

He somehow sensed Lorenzo and Jacques approaching however, and rose smoothly
to his feet, legs slightly bowed to allow for the rolling of the ship.

“Visitor for you, sarge.”

“Thanks, Jacques. What is it Lorenzo?”

“It’s Captain d’Artaud,” Lorenzo said. “He’s got the fever.”

“Yes,” Orbrant nodded. “I’d heard. Is it bad?”

“Bad enough.”

“He’ll need water.”

“Yes.”

“Well then, let’s get moving. Jacques, bring a couple of lads and a coil of
rope to the hatch. Lorenzo, come with me to the casks.”

“Yes, sergeant,” Lorenzo said, realising too late that he’d failed to inject
even a trace of mockery into his use of the title.

Florin’s fever broke on the same day as the storm, and just as suddenly. One
night he was shaking with the icy chill of his burning blood, teeth chattering
as he mumbled to friends long gone and imagined. But the next morning, as
effortlessly and naturally as the rising sun, he opened his eyes, yawned, and
said, “How about something to eat?”

Lorenzo, who’d been dozing while the storm drew its breath, looked up
blearily. Then a wide grin split his grizzled face.

“Yes, how about something to eat?” he said and, eager to be gone before the
storm reasserted itself, he stripped off his jerkin and padded over to the cabin
door.

“Won’t be long,” he said, picking up the billycan Orbrant had given him to
keep the rations dry. Then, bracing himself, he opened the cabin door and
snatched for the safety rope that the sergeant had had rigged up.

He’d already twisted a loop of it around his wrist by the time he realised
something was wrong. It took him perhaps half a dozen heartbeats to realise what
it was.

The storm had gone.

There was no wild assault of wind and spray to greet him, no pitching deck,
no grey half-light or flickering octane.

Instead the
Destrier
rode easily across calm blue waters, the tortured
remains of her rigging sharply defined against a clear sky. The ship’s crew were
already aloft, busily repairing the damage, and above them there was nothing but
lazy cumulus clouds. Lorenzo sighed with pure animal pleasure as felt the warm
sun against his skin—the first time he’d felt it for perhaps a month.

Around him other men, smiling the same disbelieving smile, sat or strolled
around the deck. After the purgatory of the storm they looked as alike as
brothers: their skin pale, their clothes mildewed, their faces gaunt but open
with the joy of being alive.

Lorenzo unhitched his hand from the safety line and strolled across the deck
to the galley, where the cook was ladling out the contents of a great iron pot
to all comers. The smoke from the cooking fire, the first in weeks, lifted in a
high and unbroken line into the clear sky.