Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

'How does a rumour like that make it out of the Mzithrin?' asked Latzlo incautiously.

For once the whaler stopped eating. 'That's a blary fine question,' he said. 'You'd think they'd hush that sort of thing up. Not a bit of it. Everyone's talking about Gurishal, and how the crazies there are all on the lookout for their God-King. Hmph! Give it two weeks, says I. When he don't come rising up ghostly from the Ninth Pit, they'll all be talking about something else.'

'Everyone but the Nessarim,' said Rose. 'They have waited forty years, and can wait a little longer.'

'Your health, sirs!' said Magritte, oblivious. 'Gentlemen, you are blessed to inhabit a ship that does not reek of whale blood, and whose ovens produced these golden cakes, not slabs of blubber-lard. But tell me: why have you painted over your gilding? I heard tell how the Chathrand was decked out in fresh gold from bow to stern for the peace ceremonies.'

'The ceremonies lie far behind us now,' said Rose, 'and one rarely encounters a friendly ship this far from the Nelu Peren.'

'That's the gods' truth, Captain!' laughed Magritte. 'We were frightened, I'll confess here and now, when we spotted you the first time.'

Rose's hands grew sudden still. The first time. You could almost hear the glances we shot at each other. Uskins' mouth worked, as if he were trying to swallow a sponge. Mr Thyne steepled his fingers.

'You, ah, spotted us before, sir?' he said lightly. 'Days ago, was it?'

'More than a week,' Magritte told him, 'coming on dusk, it was, though, and you were much farther away — and stern-on, too, so we couldn't see your colours. But it could only have been your Chathrand, boys, great blary ship that it was.'

'You could not count our masts, then,' said Rose, 'or see our spread of sail?'

'Neither, neither, sir. But do fill us up, Captain! You've no idea the venomous grog my steward serves.'

Rose took hold of Magritte's tankard amp; poured it half full.

'I hope you will indulge my curiosity,' he rumbled. 'I have been unsure of our heading for some time.'

'I knew that,' said Magritte with a twinkle. '"The Great Ship don't mean to be heading that way," I told my men, "unless she's been seized by rogues. Look where her bow's aimed, my ducks! Not the way home to Etherhorde, is it, now?" What's your trouble, Rose? Binnacle out of true?'

'Perhaps,' said Rose.

'Well there's nothing wrong with ours,' said Magritte. 'We're making west-by-ten-south-west, and from the look of it your heading's some forty or forty-five degrees more southerly. You'll sight Bramian on that tack, sir. Just a matter of time.'

'Time is what I wish to ask you about,' said Rose. 'The day you spotted us — the first time, near dusk — was that before or after you put out boats for the Cazencians?'

Magritte blinked at him. 'It was — before,' he said slowly. 'Two days before, as I recall.'

'Then the crew of your lost boat would have known as well.'

'That we'd spotted you?' asked Magritte, his voice increasingly confused. 'Aye, Captain, all the men were aware. Sanguine's not a big ship.'

With an abruptness that turned every head, Rose sat back in his chair. Magritte started, gaping at him. Rose drew a deep breath. Then he raised his own tankard amp; drained it at a gulp. He pressed an embroidered napkin to his lips.

'Very well, Mr Uskins,' he said.

Uskins shot out of his chair like a bulldog unleashed. He bolted straight for the cabin door, shouting already: 'Mr Byrd! Mr Tanner! Your ports! Matches, matches!'

'Great gods!' cried Magritte, spilling beer on his trousers. 'What is he doing? Who are those men he's screeching for?'

'Our gun captains,' said Rose. Then he swung the tankard with the full strength of his arm, shattering it just above Magritte's left eye.

The first volley was Byrd's, ten shots from the portside forty-pounders, amp; they all but ripped the Sanguine's rudder-stem from her hull. The force of the blow drove her ruined stern away from us amp; brought her prow about, so that Tanner's men had an almost dead-on shot at her cutwater, which they promptly blew to pieces. It was evident that Rose meant to kill the ship rather than the men, but he didn't manage a clean distinction. One ball shattered against her starboard anchor, catted up snug on her bow. Iron shards screamed past our heads like bats from the Pits; a Burnscove lad took one in the throat amp; dropped dead on the forecastle. Men on Sanguine's topdeck were screaming in agony. At her stern, the ship belched whale oil from a holding tank. The oozing yellow stuff on the surface made her resemble some maimed creature herself, bleeding to death in a trap.

Uskins was on the quarterdeck, now, with a voice-trumpet in his hand. He raised it amp; bellowed at the whaler: 'Sanguine! Your vessel is destroyed! You will surrender or go down with her! Assemble on the topdeck with your hands empty and your minds resolved to obey your new sovereign commander, Nilus R — Ro-'

He gagged on the cannon-smoke, rising from beneath him. But the poor terrified sutskas5 didn't need to be told a second time. 'Cease fire! Cease fire!' they wept, rushing about with raised hands. We were five times her length, amp; Uskins had every portside gun aimed at the whaler: enough firepower to blast her into kindling thrice over.

Aboard the Chathrand men looked on in perfect horror. At the wheel, Mr Elkstem's mouth hung open like a sack. Frix stood by the mainmast, quivering amp; shaking his head. On my left, Bolutu the veterinarian stood like a statue, clutching his notebook to his chest. His face was composed; he did not even seem particularly surprised, but tears ran down his cheeks.

I myself felt as though I'd just watched my brother murder a child. Nor was I alone: there was rage, a truly dangerous look, in the eyes of some of the men about me. More honour to them, I thought. But that was recklessness: Sgt. Drellarek had clearly been apprised of the attack, amp; his men stood by with weapons drawn.

All this time Rose stood in his cabin doorway, wordless, leaning on that gnarled cane. From time to time Uskins shot him a nervous glance, rather like a dog seeking to reassure himself of his master's intentions. Rose did not give him so much as a nod.

They brought themselves across the sixty feet of sea, aboard their own whale-boats, amp; we hoisted them on our lifts. All told they were just thirty-two men: sixteen whale-hunters, including a number of deadly-looking Quezan tribals, amp; an equal number of crew. Five men, they informed us hatefully, lay dead on the Sanguine.

For a butchering crime it went very smoothly. I must hand it to Uskins: he has a flair for managing violence. He kept one hand on the speaking-tubes running down to the gun deck amp; lieutenants along the topdeck amp; Turachs on the fighting top with their arrows trained at the boats. I almost wish Rose had given him some word of approval: it might have spared us the disaster that followed.

Here is what happened. One of the Sanguine's topmen, a crooked old guttersnipe with three teeth amp; a face etched with scurvy, was standing passive as a mule while the Turachs bound his wrists. Uskins had come down from the quarterdeck, amp; was marching swiftly by, hurrying the soldiers along. The whaler had a good look at him, amp; made a pleased kind of hoot.

'Stukey!'

Uskins jumped three feet in the air. 'What's that? What's that?' he shouted.

'Stukey — tha's whad! Pidetor Stukey, ain't ye? Of course ye are! Don'd ye know me? I'm old Frunc, old Frunc from the Brillbox, Stukey! Yer pappy's mate!'

Uskins stared at the down-and-out figure before him. The Brillbox (as I learned through the gossip-gale that swept the Chathrand within the hour) is a speck of a village east of Ulsprit, nestled down beneath tall sea-cliffs that block the sun. A wet, frigid place that survives by scooping guano off the rocks — a gift from the half-million gulls amp; terns amp; razorbills who nest overhead — amp; selling the muck for fertiliser. Not the kind of settlement that had spawned many officers in the Merchant Service.