Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

All along the starboard hull, gunports had flown open again: not just the earlier nine, but thirty, forty perhaps; and bow to stern they belched fire and smoke, straight at the Jistrolloq, across the trough between the passing wave and the next. Then just seconds before the wave reached them the doors were yanked shut again. Once more the Great Ship rolled.

Now at last Pazel caught a glimpse of their saviours: the augrongs, Refeg and Rer. Waist deep in foam, the creatures were even now taking axes to the last of the foremast rigging, while teams of men strained at the harnesses they wore, struggling to keep them from washing into the sea. Bless their hides, thought Pazel, those brutes could part a halyard with one stroke.

This time it took far longer to rise — who could say how much water had flooded the ship, or by how many routes? — but when they did at last Pazel knew it was over. Horrible, horrible sight! The Jistrolloq had lost her own foremast to the Chathrand 's guns, and her main was torsioned hopelessly to windward. But it was not the canvas she had lost that had doomed her; it was the canvas that survived. Like the Chathrand, the Mzithrini warship had slewed round, and the great power of the surviving squaresails was now pressing down on her bow, like a torturer's hand forcing his victim's head underwater, deeper, and deeper still. The next wave caught her broad on the starboard quarter, a blow the smaller ship could not absorb. Over she went on her beam-ends, masts slapping the waves, so close to the Chathrand they seemed almost like bridges her men might run across to safety. As the wave passed she tried to right herself, but a hundred thousand tons of water on her sails could not be shed in an instant, and the next wave buried her completely. By then the Great Ship had veered downwind just enough to ride the wave out, and Pazel felt the monstrous sidelong lurching come to an end. He and Neeps gained the shrouds, and as he began his descent at last Pazel looked for the enemy and saw nothing, nothing at all — and then a twisted length of white sailcloth, one proud red star in the corner, moving like the spectre of a whale beneath the surface, only to reach some absolute decision, and dive.

Sunday, 26 Freala 941. If this is what victory feels like, you may spare me the distinction for the rest of my days. We are alive (most of us) amp; the Grey Lady took no immediately fatal damage in the engagement, amp; no ship in Alifros can follow or even spot us now — yes, for all that I am thankful. And who could fail to be relieved that the storm is abating, this the 3rd night since our escape from Sandplume Cove? Two cheers for the mercy of the Nelluroq amp; the undeniable cunning of Captain Nilus Rose.

But never was I less inclined to celebrate. Sixteen men lost overboard amp; twenty more laid out dead in our surgical annexe, among them Coxilrane 'Firecracker' Frix, busybody, coward amp; a dedicated sailor to his entrails. Like me a product of Wasthog Strand, that unpaved, unloved corner of Etherhorde, pinched between the ironworks and the slaughterhouses. I used to see him with his pack of boys when we were young. They dressed like Burnscove thugs, a sort of fashion then, amp; threw rocks at us over the King's Canal. Frix always looked apologetic amp; out of place, a skinny dog trotting along at their heels, needing to be noticed amp; at the same time afraid to be. Nothing much ever changed in his life, Rin rest his soul.

Courage. One might celebrate that, I suppose, amp; set aside the question of whether it was given wisely or in vain. Our dead gunners had courage: with waves like cliffs bearing down on them, they kicked open their gunports, blasted the Jistrolloq's rigging to pieces, slammed the ports again in the nick of time — and suffocated on their own smoke, in a deck sealed tight as a crypt. Tanner wept for his boys, though his own lungs were burned black. I sat by him three hours tonight in Chadfallow's surgery. Even his last wheezing breath smelled of gunpowder.

Pathkendle amp; Undrabust have courage: that spankermast would have been the next to fall, if the chaser-guns on the Jistrolloq had gotten off another round or two. The boys have bullwhip-scars all over their bodies, from ropes cracking in the wind. Thasha Isiq has courage, facing Rose's lunacy concerning ghosts, amp; fighting to get her friends brought down off that lethal spar even when the captain threatened to pitch her over the stern. Elkstem amp; I exchanged a look: we were with Rose in 927, when he did pitch a girl off the stern of the Great Ship; but that is another story.

Felthrup has courage, wherever he is. The youths are beside themselves, searching for him everywhere, sniffing about the lower decks with Thasha's dogs. All to no avail.

And tonight a woman I might once have killed without a thought told me I had courage. I refer of course to the crawly, Diadrelu. She was back in the stateroom when I brought Pathkendle amp; Co. their dinner amp; she walked up bold as brass amp; looked me in the eye. 'Quartermaster, ' says she, 'I salute your wisdom and bravery.'

Now that the crisis was over it seemed even less natural to be talking to a crawly. I looked away amp; mumbled about how they'd picked up the pieces well. For the stateroom had been in pieces: a 24-pounder had sailed right through the big stern window, split the dining table in half, shattered the washroom door, put a whopping dent in the cast-iron tub, ricocheted back into the main cabin amp; blasted a stanchion to woodchips. By the grace of Rin no one was in its path; Thasha had locked her dogs in her own cabin.

I gestured at the shattered window, sealed for now with a nailed-up tarpaulin. 'We have glass stowed away for repairs,' I added. 'We can fix the casement, too, though it won't hinge no more.'

The crawly held me in her bright-metal gaze. 'History itself shall hinge on the choice you made,' she said.

'Don't know that I have made it,' I grumbled, 'if you're talking about the choice not to smoke you cr-you individuals, off this ship.'

'I am talking about the choice of reason over fear,' she said, 'and I'll wager my life that you have indeed decided, though Rin knows I should have no right to condemn you if you change your mind.'

'I don't want blood on my hands,' I told her. 'Nobody's blood. Not yours, even, if it ain't required.'

'You have the courage to see, Mr Fiffengurt,' she said. 'All other forms of courage spring from that well.'

I was tongue-tied with confusion. It was crawlies who sank the Adelyne off Rapopalni, with my uncle amp; his babe aboard, or so the few survivors claimed. After that my own dad started collecting crawly skulls to make a necklace, though he had just four by the time he died. Ma still keeps the gruesome things on his dresser, beside his service ribbons amp; his false teeth. Hating ixchel is a family tradition, you might say.

But in my fifty years no woman has ever spoken to me with more respect than this Diadrelu. Of course she's not human amp; so not properly a woman (though I saw evidence unforgettably to the contrary when I cut that shirt away). My kin in Etherhorde — Pitfire, everyone in Etherhorde — would call me a mutineer, a fool, the dupe of a shapely ship-louse; Dad would say I should be the first to drown when the crawlies strike. These past nights I've pictured their faces as I lay down to sleep amp; it stabs me through the heart to know how they'd condemn me. Last night they entered my dreams, bitter amp; scornful amp; hurrying off with hostile glances, amp; 'Shame, shame' was all I could get them to say.

But when I think of the noble bearing of that Lady Diadrelu, I feel suddenly more ashamed of my certainties about her people than the displeasure of my own. All my life I've laughed at the righteous fools who hate Mzithrinis at a personal level, who assume that whole vast land to be populated by mindless killers with bloodshot eyes. And all my life I've thought of 'crawlies' as something worse. If I'm honest (amp; where shall I be honest if not with you, little whelp?) my reasons make no more sense than the next man's reasons for hating the Sizzies: because someone long dead or far away set us on this path, and told us never to turn. I cannot forget the Adelyne. But the fact that Pazel and Thasha love this Diadrelu settles the matter: she may not be human, but she's a person all the same.