Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'Be careful!' said Pazel.

Thasha gave him an exasperated glance. 'How?'

But even as she spoke her fingers met with a tiny scrap of paper, wedged into a crack in the floor. With great care she pinched it between two fingers, plucked it free and extracted her arm from the tunnel. Between her fingers lay a sheet of parchment no larger than a postage stamp.

She raised the little sheet before her eyes. 'There's writing,' she said. 'Can you read it, Pazel?'

The writing was finer than the veins on a fern. Pazel brought her hand close to his eye. 'It's in Ix,' he said. "Destroy this note. Close door. Return at five bells exactly. D.T. ap I." Those are her initials, all right.'

Hercol peered at the note in amazement. 'Never in my life have I heard of ixchel deliberately leaving proof of their presence for a human to find,' he said.

'She must be in danger,' said Thasha.

'Or in great fear,' said Hercol. 'In any case it will be five bells in some thirty minutes. Let us scatter: the less we are seen together, the less we have to explain. But return to this spot promptly, I beg you. We must not make her wait again.'

'Right,' said Pazel. 'Let's see what's brewing with that whaler.'

He and Neeps set off for the topdeck like a pair of racing hounds, and Hercol departed forward, leaving Thasha quite alone. She swore. It had seemed the perfect moment to catch Pazel alone, drag him to some empty corner and straighten him out about Fulbreech. Blast the fool! Time was short, life slipped away. Wasn't it obvious that every hour they spent fighting was a gift to their enemies?

She sighed: if they were really to scatter she would have to walk the length of the orlop deck, to the No. 5 ladderway in the stern.

The passage led her back to the main compartment, where to her consternation Dr Chadfallow and Fulbreech himself were the first persons she saw. They were making for the surgery; Chadfallow was describing the proper placement of tourniquets above a severed limb. He barely glanced at Thasha, but Fulbreech gave her another of his dashing smiles. This time Thasha found it unsettling. Did some teasing knowledge reside in that face? Or was it simply the most handsome she had ever seen?

She stormed across the compartment, barely conscious of where her feet were taking her. Men and boys, fibs and violence, games played with ships, hearts, weapons, worlds. To the Pits with all of them. To the Pits with you, Pazel, if you think I'm some rock for you to lean on one day, and piss against the next.

'Help me!'

Thasha drew her knife in a flash. The voice seemed that of a young woman's. It had come from the passage ahead. 'Who's there?' she shouted, dashing forwards.

Two sailors in an adjoining hall came at a run, brandishing sail-cutting shears. But they had heard no voice save Thasha's, and looked at her dumbfounded when she claimed to have heard another girl crying for help. Thasha could scarcely blame them. She knew quite well that she was the only female anywhere near her age on the Great Ship.

'That's live animals, up ahead, mistress,' said one of the men, pointing with his sheers. 'Like as not you heard one of Mr Latzlo's birds. Them golden parrots chatter up a storm, come feeding time.'

Thasha believed she could tell the difference between a woman's voice and that of a bird, but rather than argue she simply hurried on her way. The passage darkened. She had no lamp, of course, and the orlop deck was submerged and windowless. The light-shafts were all but useless at this early hour; until high noon they produced little more than a twilight glow. But the ladderway ahead should have been easy enough to spot. Where had it gone?

Far off to her left a familiar voice was chattering. It was Mr Druffle, the freebooter. He was terribly excited about something, but the walls between them prevented Thasha from catching a word. Then, just ahead of her, came a soft, bovine grunt.

She had reached the live animal compartment. Thasha had visited this place before, and hated it. Groping forwards, breath held against the reek, she saw the black rumps of cows in their stalls, the gleam of padlocks on Mr Latzlo's crates of exotics. She heard the sudden beat of caged wings, the furious snorts of the Red River hog bashing tusks against its wooden cage, the whimpers and squeals of countless smaller creatures. The planks were sticky underfoot. The thirty feet or so seemed endless.

As she stepped through the raised lip of the door at the compartment's end, something very shocking happened. The ship rolled. Instinctively, Thasha reached for the wall. Of course the Chathrand was always rolling gently, but this was different: a huge slow heaving, worse by far than the stormiest moments since the voyage began. The wind had exploded too: even here in the depths of the ship she could hear it, a monstrous moaning. Tree of Heaven, shelter me, she thought, involuntarily quoting a Lorg School prayer. How could the sea change so quickly? A moment later the ship rolled again.

'Mr Druffle?' she called aloud. Her voice sounded small and weak. The enormous motions of the ship continued.

Then the girl cried out again: farther ahead, and fainter. 'Don't touch me! Stay away!'

At once Thasha broke into a run. She was certain now: whatever else was happening, that voice belonged to a girl her age, and it was sharp with terror. Someone was trying to do her harm.

But now Thasha was truly lost. The passage stirred no memory in her whatsoever. It elbowed left where she expected a right. Doors she had never noticed stood closed, some bolted, others locked. The moan of a high wind reached her ears. Strangest of all, the air grew colder with every compartment she entered. It was more than the night chill that lingered in the Chathrand 's depths: this was a biting cold, like stepping into winter darkness from the warmth of one's home.

'Vadul-lar! Corl habeth loden!'

The shouts came from her left: big men, shouting encouragement to one another. A moment later Thasha caught sight of their lamps. There were a great many of them, broad-shouldered men with stern faces, running parallel to Thasha down another corridor. But what on earth was the language they were speaking?

She sprinted ahead of them, losing her balance as the great swells heaved the Chathrand left and right, smashing heedless against the walls. Her training had taken over, her mind was awhirl. I'm in darkness, they can't see me, they have axes, they are chasing a girl.

The mass of men had dropped fifty or sixty feet behind her when suddenly the girl appeared dashing across a wide-open chamber: a round-faced, dark-skinned girl of Thasha's height, dressed in clothes four sizes too large for her, the cuffs hacked off at wrists and ankles. On her heels were two of the strange men who had somehow outdistanced their companions. Still screaming for help, the girl weaved and darted, putting crates and stanchions between her and the men. But her exhaustion was glaringly plain: in another minute they would have her.

Thasha flew at them, an attack plan crystalizing in her mind without the benefit of conscious thought. As she crossed the chamber one of the men caught a fistful of the girl's dark hair and wrenched her head back. So it was that Thasha saw her face even as she reached them, and shouted her name instead of a battle cry:

'Marila!'

The first man snapped to face her, and his own turning magnified the force of her fist. Even without such an advantage Thasha could land blows that would be the envy of many a fighting man: she felt teeth give way to her knuckles, and checked the weak jerk of his axe-hand with her elbow, and thought no more of him as he fell.

The other man fared better. He was broad-shouldered and strong. Astonished as he was, he had the presence of mind to haul the screaming girl to his chest, a move that kept Thasha from striking him instantly. She feinted; he lurched to block her, thrusting with his axe, both of them staggering with the roll of the ship. Then Marila wrenched her head around and sank her teeth into the soft flesh of his forearm. The man howled and flung her forwards. Thasha leaped at him, twisting to let Marila fall past her. She had resolved to have his axe, nothing else mattered. The man was drawing back for a killing swipe when she closed on him.