Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

A brief silence fell. Thasha saw Rose's jaw tighten, and his gaze turn inward. He folded the knife, looked down at the blank paper before him, and suddenly began to sketch.

'Time to change tack,' he said, without looking up.

But everyone else did, and there were shouts and gasps, for they were little more than two ship's lengths from the western cliff. Fiffengurt, Uskins and Alyash flew to the rail, commands exploding from their lips. Elkstem rushed back to his mates at the wheel, and together they wrenched it to starboard, while five hundred backs strained on the deck below. The yards pivoted, the Chathrand heeled over, a frothy wake boiled along the starboard bow, and they cleared the point with ten yards to spare.

From the main-top a voice shouted, 'We're free, we're free!' And like a slap of reprimand the full west wind struck the foremast and carried both topgallants away.

'Clew up! Save the rest!' screamed Alyash. They were out of the cove, and the wind was four times the strength of a moment ago: too strong for the highest canvas, though the topsails could take it with ease, and the mains looked flaccid yet. Alyash cringed like a man tied and waiting for the whip: Rose had warned him about those topgallants. But the captain merely spun around and gave Elkstem the new heading, and told Chadfallow he might return to his surgery.

The next turn was effortless, for the wind shouldered them about. In seconds they were running east, skimming across the mouth of the cove that had nearly become their graveyard. Thasha looked down at the throng of sailors, snatching a moment's rest, and was not surprised to see Neeps joining the line-up on a starboard brace. Nobody's turning down his help today, she thought.

Then the lookout began to howl: 'Sail! Dead astern three miles! It's the enemy, Captain, I can see the red stars!'

A general groan, shouted down at once by the officers. Rose leaped from the stool and barrelled aft around the wheelhouse, extending his telescope as he went. Thasha chased after him. There was the Jistrolloq, tilted over like a white gravestone, slicing a neat white wake as she ran.

'Her topgallants are holding, blast her,' said Elkstem. 'By the Tree, she's a formidable ship. And closer to two miles than three.'

Rose lifted a hand for silence. A moment later he lowered the scope.

'She will have four knots on us,' he said, in a voice not meant to carry.

Thasha did not want to believe it. 'Four? That would let them catch us in — what? Less than an hour?'

'Thirty-seven minutes,' said Rose. 'Mr Elkstem, at my command we shall be making a very sharp tack to the south. A very visible tack. But give no orders before my mark, do you hear? Don't even look at the men.'

Elkstem was clearly mystified, but Rose's face ruled out any questioning. 'Oppo, sir, she'll corner handsomely,' he said.

'You wanted to see me, Captain?' said a voice from behind them.

It was Pazel. He was looking at Rose, and quite determinedly not at Thasha.

Rose's eye did not leave the telescope. 'Aye, Pathkendle, but only to keep these grackle-mouths quiet. They have you mixed up with your father, and seem to think I need Captain Gregory's advice.'

' "They," sir?'

Rose only frowned, and Thasha, ignoring Pazel's awkwardness, took his arm and tugged him aside. 'He's seeing ghosts,' she whispered. 'But he's not crazy, they're real. I can see them too. They're the old captains of the Chathrand.'

Pazel was certainly looking at her now. ' You're seeing these things?'

'Well, not this minute. Rose can scatter them, I think, but they keep coming back. Like flies. Right now I can hear them, and feel them. And this isn't the first time it's happened.'

'Are you talking about what happened the day you found Marila?'

Thasha shook her head. 'That was different. Those were real people, flesh and blood. But for weeks now I've been feeling… strange. As if people were surrounding me, when there was no one there at all. I think it was them, Pazel. I think they've been watching me.'

Pazel stared at her, aghast, but was he concerned for her safety or her sanity? She was on the point of asking him directly when Rose gave a startled grunt.

'The priest did not die,' he said, 'but the fire has driven him from the hilltop. He's watching us right now. He'll be blind to his own ship's whereabouts, though, unless that thing in his hand lets him see through solid rock. Ehiji, what's this? He's got friends! Sfvantskors, by the gods, sfvantskors coming out of the bush!'

Thasha could just make them out: three tall figures in black, rushing across the smouldering slope to join a fourth, bald-headed, with a long golden object in his hand. Even as she looked another sfvantskor emerged running from the trees.

'That new one has a longbow,' said Rose. 'And damned if he isn't — firing! Aloft! Take cover aloft!'

Scarcely had the words left his lips when they heard a wail, sharp and ethereal, and then a man's scream from the rigging. Thasha looked up and saw Kiprin Pondrakeri, the muscular Simjan recruit, face down in the battle netting with an arrow in his chest. The strange wail continued for a moment, then lowered and died.

The next thing she knew Pazel had leaped on her and borne her down onto the deck. The air was suddenly full of the wailing noises, and from the spankermast came another cry of agony. Thasha struggled out of Pazel's grasp and got to her hands and knees. But even as she did so a boot kicked her flat again.

Sandor Ott had delivered the kick as he dashed to the rail with a great bow of his own. He fired in a blur, once twice thrice, and then he lowered the bow and took a breath.

'Done,' he said. 'That one will shoot no more, and the rest are running for cover. You can stand up now, lass.'

As Thasha and Pazel rose, Ott reached up and seized the dripping end of the arrow embedded in Pondrakeri's chest. He pulled, and the netting sagged, but the shaft would not let go of the corpse.

'Singing arrows,' he said admiringly. 'We still don't know how they work — must be expensive, however; they fire 'em all in the first few volleys. Marvellous way to demoralise an enemy.'

He released the arrow, having not glanced once at the dead man, and set off smiling for the topdeck.

'He's enjoying this,' said Thasha. 'I think he lives for fighting and killing, the beast.'

'He doesn't enjoy it,' said Pazel. 'He's… addicted. It's not the same thing.'

Thasha gave him a sceptical look. 'How do you know so much? Did you and Sandor have a heart-to-heart chat on Bramian?'

Pazel watched the spymaster swing down the ladder. 'Sort of,' he said.

A pool of blood was forming under the dead man. Thasha looked up and saw the other victim, a mizzen topman, dangling upside-down from the rigging some seventy feet overhead.

'We're making twelve knots by the log, sir,' cried a lieutenant.

'Send for a bucket, Mr Truel,' said Rose. 'And you, Pathkendle: find a mate and get these cadavers below.'

Pazel gazed wordlessly up at the bodies. The topman was swinging perilously. Blood streamed from the arrow in his throat to his fingertips, where the wind licked it away.

Thasha took a deep breath. 'I'll help you,' she said.

Pazel looked intensely relieved. He could not, after all, order anyone to help him. 'Let me fetch a rope. I'll be right back — thank you, Thasha.'

When he returned he brought Neeps as well as a rope. The small boy was fidgeting with irritation; he and Pazel scarcely looked at one another. But he had come nonetheless. The three scaled the shrouds, and Neeps continued up to the main spankermast yard while Thasha and Pazel stepped gingerly onto the netting. It was a long crawl to where Pondrakeri dangled. They had almost reached him when Thasha saw Rose's hand sweep down like a signal flag.