Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide (30 page)

Onetongue gobbled forth about half a tot of blood. “I’m th’orry, Ryan! I’m th’o th’orry!” The mutant wept in agony. “But it hurt’th tho bad!”

The crews in the dinghies shouted as the whaleboat stopped.

Ryan fought his own pain and exhaustion. Onetongue was one of the strongest and least complaining crewmen the
Glory
could boast. This was bad. “Open your mouth.”

“I’m th’orry, Ryan—”

“Open your mouth!” Ryan ordered.

Onetongue opened his mouth. Ryan flinched. Mildred had said that when the scurvy got bad old scars would break open. Onetongue’s name had once been Twotongue. The last captain, who could not be mentioned, had cut one of them out. The left side of Onetongue’s soft palate was an open wound where the scar tissue had broken open. “You need to get to the med now. Have Mildred disinfect that and stitch it.”

Onetongue wept and shook his head at Ryan. “But you’re bleeding too!”

Ryan ran a finger along the scar on his cheek. It came away bloody. “It’s an old wound. It’s nothing.”

“No, Ryan!” Even now Onetongue was thinking about someone besides himself. “It’th coming out of your eye!”

Ryan started. He raised a hand to his eye patch and lifted it up a hair. A thin rivulet of blood and fluid trickled against his hand. Ryan stared at it. He’d felt the discomfort but had chalked it up to the sting of sweat, exhaustion and illness. The scars in his closed, empty eye were breaking open.

Manrape laid down his oar. His physique sagged like a suit of armor whose interior straps had all loosened. “We’re dying.” The titan’s chin fell to his chest and tears spilled out of his eyes.

Wipe sobbed like it was the end of the world.

Ryan knew it was. He could not begin to recall the odds he had fought and won in the Deathlands. But this was no baron and his army of sec men. This was no chem storm that could be sheltered from, no horde of muties that could be outfought. This was the open sea. Vast beyond imagining. Implacable. Without mercy. There was no recourse other than to hurl human flesh and will against it, and the flesh and will of the
Glory
’s crew failed before it.

Ryan felt the heat and itch of the preinfection in his empty eye socket that would lead to his brain, as well as the avalanching breakdown of every cell in his body from the scurvy. He gazed up at the horrible brass-colored sun and the endless, metallic sea on all horizons. He was done. He couldn’t save the ship. He couldn’t save his people.

He couldn’t save Krysty.

It was not the first time Ryan had felt it, but it had been a very long time since despair had wrapped its terrible hands around his heart. Hardstone rocked and cradled his lame leg. It was swelling. Sweet Marie wept openly. Atlast held his head in his hands. Doc spoke with a strange calmness. “Dear Onetongue, exchange places with me.”

Onetongue crawled to the tiller and moaned as Doc crawled over him to take his place at the bench. The crew stared at Doc as if he were insane. The old man cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, we are heroes. We are the first ship in living memory, since the breaking of the world, that has rounded the Horn in winter under sail. We are titans. Gods. Compared to us, Jason and his Argonauts punted upon the Thames on a summer idyll.”

No one on the whaleboat knew what that meant. But every man knew what Doc was saying and knew he was right.

Doc’s voice rose. “If we die this day, I have no shame. Serving upon the good ship
Glory,
with this crew, has been my greatest pride! I tell you now I have penned the tale of our odyssey in the ship’s log and sealed it. What we have done shall be known. The journey of the
Glory
shall be legend. We shall be legend! All good sailors shall speak of us—her crew—in awed whispers as immortals. This I swear!” Doc laid his torn hands to oar. “But in this time between, in this little time that remains to us with beating hearts and will, I pray, shipmates, row a little more.”

Ryan took up the rum.

They had no remedy for the scurvy, and Oracle had ordered straight liquor issued as a last, desperate painkiller. Ryan pulled up his eye patch and tilted the jug over his empty eye. “Fire...” The word “blast” never left his mouth. Ryan bellowed like a gored ox as 150 proof cane liquor scalded his eye socket.

He shuddered, knowing it was a remedial solution at best. His hands shook as he put his eye patch down. His knuckles were white as he took a swig and grabbed his oar. “Row.”

Onetongue took the jug and made one of the worst sounds Ryan had ever heard a grown man make as he swigged firewater into his wounded mouth, swirled it around and spit it out. The mutant took up his oar. The jug passed from hand to hand, and everyone took up their oars and rowed. They rowed with purpose with their eyes on the horizon. Doc had lit the fire. When they dropped it, would be because their bodies had broken, not their wills.

Koa suddenly shouted. “Ship oars!”

Ryan wondered where this authority was supposed to have come from, but the tone of Koa’s voice was clear that he was onto something. “Ship oars!”

Koa leaned out over the oarlock and reached into the water. “Present for you, brah.”

Ryan stared at the coconut in Koa’s hand. The three dimples stared back at him like a face. Koa smiled and found the soft one of the three with his thumb. He stabbed it with his marlinspike and shook it. “One sip.”

Ryan took the coconut and sipped. It took every ounce of will not to drain it as every cell in his body cried out to drown the nutritional famine.

Wipe clapped his hands. “There’s hundreds of them!”

Ryan handed the coconut to Onetongue. The mutant sagged as coconut juice and oil coated his mouth. Ryan looked out on the water and saw scores of small brown spheres floating in the water. Koa took a sip and held it out to Hardstone disdainfully. “Not from my islands.”

“You can tell?” Ryan asked.

Koa looked at Ryan like he was stupe. “Maybe Tahitian. I’ve never been this far south or east on the Cific.” The Hawaiian dipped his hand into the water and wiggled his fingers contemplatively. “But the current might be right, and the wind.”

“There’s no wind, Koa.”

“You’re wrong, brah.”

Ryan lifted his chin. He felt the faintest of breezes evaporating the sweat and blood on his face. “You’re way-finding.”

“Yup.”

“Doc,” Ryan ordered, “slip the cable to the ship. We gather every coconut we can. Manrape, use the speaking horn and tell the dinghies to do the same. Koa, I am recommending you to Commander Miles as acting navigator until proved otherwise.”

Koa nodded. “About time.”

* * *

Tahiti

T
HE
G
LORY
LIMPED
into harbor. She’d arrived to find the predark capital of Papeete a half moon of obsidian blast crater falling into the ocean. What remained of her once-famous black sand beaches was fused black glass that gleamed and rippled in the sunlight as Ryan’s rad counter crept upward. They sailed around the coast and found another bay. They’d been spotted from shore, and about half a hundred war canoes lay arrayed before them, blocking the entrance. Koa stood at the Jacob’s ladder in his full Hawaiian regalia. Everyone aboard wore their cleaned, best clothing, and all the officers and specialists were in uniform.

The coconuts had been a temporary stay of execution, but the crew was still in bad shape. Ryan scanned the opposition with his longeyes. Most of the warriors were bare-chested, bore clubs and spears and were covered with tattoos. A few had single-shot blasters that looked homemade. Behind the canoe line a pair of working motor launches sat with machine blasters mounted. Like a queen surrounded by soldier ants, a massive double canoe bearing a platform formed the middle of the Tahitian line. About a dozen men in massive feathered headdresses stood in a semicircle bearing predark blasters. Standing in prominence was a regal and magnificently bare-breasted woman. She was scanning the
Glory
’s cannons through binoculars.

“The Tahitians of hundreds of years ago were known to have queens and female chieftains,” Doc said.

Miss Loral nodded. Commander Miles bullet wounds had reopened, and he was in the med in nearly as bad a shape as the captain. “Thank you, Doc. Mr. Koa?”

Koa bellowed out across the water in Hawaiian. The Tahitians glared uncomprehendingly as a unit. One very large individual bellowed back something and pointed at Koa while pantomiming an unmistakable act of oral outrage with a war club. Laughter rippled across the canoes.

“I don’t think they speak Hawaiian,” Manrape concluded.

Koa folded his arms in disgust. “They don’t speak any civilized language.”

Miss Loral quirked an eyebrow. “Didn’t Tahitians speak French before skydark?”

Atlast spit off the side. “Last French-talker we had was that Haitian cook, Marcel. Right, Skillet?”

The Jamaican grunted sadly. “Damn fine madeleines. Never could replicate them.”

“Miss Loral,” Ryan asked. “With permission?”

“Indeed, Mr. Ryan. Do something.”

Ryan nodded at Doc.

Doc considered. “Something like, greetings and we come in peace?”

“That should do.”

Doc drew his sword from his swordstick and strode to the Jacob’s ladder. His blade gleamed like a sliver of quicksilver as he saluted the Tahitian horde. The bravado captured their attention. Doc called out in French, “Greetings, valiant warriors of Tahiti. We come in peace and friendship.” The old man flourished his sword and his hat and gave a sweeping bow.

The effect on the Tahitians was immediate. They grinned and began to applaud. The woman on the platform seemed pleased. One of her warriors handed her a brass speaking trumpet. Her voice came back across the water in clear but accented English. “I fear you bring your war with the Sabbaths to my harbor!”

Ryan muttered low. “Keep going, Doc,” Ryan muttered. “Be diplomatic.”

“I fear we do, my queen! We ask not sanctuary or alliance. All we ask is fresh water to slake our thirst and fresh fruit and greenery to fight the scurvy that plagues us. We seek rope, cordage and timber for our poor, battered ship that so bravely rounded the Horn in the terrible face of the westerly winter. We ask not for charity. We have trade goods from the other side of the world and will barter fairly for all. Give us this sun above, the moon tonight and the sun tomorrow, and we shall take our battle with the Sabbath fleet out onto the high sea and away from your fair shores.”

Miss Loral stared, then said, “You’re good.”

The smile of the woman on the royal barge lit up the bay. “I have never heard French spoken so beautifully except in old vids. Not to mention your English! Withstanding the laws of hospitality and the wrath of the Sabbaths, I would feast you in my hall just to listen to you speak in any language!”

Doc bowed low.

“Bring your ship into harbor and pick your shore party, Silver Tongue. You shall be feasted! Should we come to agreement, tomorrow we shall trade. My name is Queen Tahiata.” The distance was long, but the woman clearly smirked. “And ask Prince Koa to forgive our insult! His name is known here, and while it was a generation ago and not the people of Molokai, the last time Tahitians and Hawaiians met it was not friendly.”

Ryan turned to look at the Hawaiian. “So you really are the Prince of Molokai?”

Koa lifted his chin imperiously. “I never denied it.”

* * *

R
YAN GORGED ON
fish and fruit. His body couldn’t get enough of the sweet pineapples and watermelon. After spending weeks against the Westerlies on salted ox and guanaco, Ryan cleaned his trencher board of parrotfish, barracuda, sea urchin, river prawns and raw red tuna marinated in coconut and lime. Suckling pigs, lobsters and breadfruit roasted in an underground pit outside. Rumor was they were almost ready. The
Glory
crew held their own. Strawmaker played to standing ovations. Manrape outwrestled every Tahitian warrior sent before him to the cries of the crowd. Palm wine and manioc beer flowed.

Ryan had a better feeling about this feast than the last.

Male and female dancers swayed and turned to the sound of the log drums. Everyone, including Ryan, wore flowers in their hair and garlands of welcome around their necks. The ville perched on a hillside on top of what had once been a small Tahitian town. The location was strategic. Mountains and winds in the opposite direction shielded her people from Papeete and its radioactive horror. Rumor was that horrors occasionally crossed the mountains or swam down the coast, looking for prey. Every home was a miniature fortress of dressed volcanic rock built to withstand gale-force winds and attacks of the
déformé,
human or otherwise. Tahiata’s hall had once been a church that might have been built in Doc’s time. She sat with Ryan and Doc at her right and left hand, respectively. She was a beautiful, charming woman, and though she spoke French with Doc she kept flicking glances Ryan’s way. He could have sworn her breasts pointed at him with an aggressive, bronze will of their own. He was glad Krysty was still on the ship while they brokered a deal with the Tahitians.

Mr. Squid was a huge hit. She’d spent nearly the entire journey around the horn in her barrel. Apparently octopods could get seasick. During that time, her arm had grown back. Once they’d reached The Doldrums she had emerged and began taking on more and more of the ship’s labors as the crew had fallen ill. It turned out she spoke French. She sat in what suspiciously looked like a cauldron. Women, children and even veteran Tahitian warriors giggled, screamed and clapped their hands whenever the octopod spoke or moved or tucked a crustacean beneath her mantle and began crunching.

Tahiata watched the proceedings benevolently. “I have made a decision, Mr. Ryan.”

“What’s that, Great Tahiata?”

“I shall let you and your ship stay in harbor for as long as you wish. You and your crew shall be treated as guests. You shall be well feasted, and we will allow time for your sick to heal and to make repairs on your ship. For rope, timber and canvas we shall trade fair.”