George Martin - Fevre Dream

“Tell me, Joshua,” Marsh said.

York’s mouth grew tight. “It was a slaughterhouse, Abner.” He let that simple statement hang in the air for a moment, before he went on. “Bodies were everywhere. Everywhere. And not intact, either. I walked through the main deck, and found corpses… among the freight and back with the engines. There were… arms, legs, other body parts. Ripped loose. Torn off. The slaves, the stokers Billy had bought, most of them were still in the manacles, dead, their throats torn out. The engineer had been hung upside down above the cylinder, and cut so.. . he must have bled down onto… as if blood could take the place of oil.” Joshua gave a small grim shake of his head. “The number of dead, Abner. You can’t imagine. And the way they were torn, the grotesque mutilations. The fog had seeped onto the boat, so I could not see the whole at once. I walked, I wandered, and these things would suddenly appear before me where, an instant before, there had been nothing but vague shadows and a drifting veil of fog. And I would look at whatever new terror the mist had yielded up to me, and move away, and take only two or three steps before the vapors dissolved yet again to reveal something even more vile.

“Finally, sick at heart and filled with a wrath that burned in me like a fever, I went up the grand staircase to the boiler deck. The saloon… it was more of the same. Bodies and pieces of bodies. So much blood had been spilled that the carpet was still wet with it, even then. Everywhere I found signs of struggle. Dozens of mirrors were shattered, three or four stateroom doors had been smashed in, tables were overturned. On one table that still stood there was a human head upon a silver platter. I have never known more horror than I did as I walked the length of that saloon, those terrible three hundred feet. Nothing moved in the darkness, in the fog. Nothing living. I moved back and forth listlessly, not knowing what to do. I stopped before the water cooler, that great silver ornamental water cooler you had placed at the forward end of the cabin. My throat was very dry. I picked up one of the silver cups and turned the handle. The water… the water came slowly, Abner. Very slowly. Even in the darkness of that saloon, I could see that it was black and viscous. Half… clotted.

“I stood with the cup in hand, looking about blindly, my nose filled with the smell… the smell, I have hardly mentioned that, the smell was terrible, it… you can imagine, I’m sure. I stood in the midst of it all watching that agonizing slow trickle from the water cooler. I felt as though I was choking. My horror, my outrage, I

… felt them rise within me. I tossed the cup across the cabin, and I screamed.

“Then the noises began. Whispers, thumpings, begging sounds, weeping, threats. Voices, Abner, living human voices. I looked about me, and grew even sicker, even more angry. At least a dozen stateroom doors had been nailed shut, their occupants imprisoned within them. Waiting, I knew, for tonight or the night after. Julian’s living larder. I began to tremble. I moved to the nearest door and started to pull loose the boards that held it shut. They pulled out with a loud creaking sound, almost a cry of agony. I was still working on that door when he said, ‘Dear Joshua, you must stop that. Dear lost Joshua, come back to us.’

“When I turned, they were there. Julian smiling at me, Sour Billy at his side, and the others, all the others, even my own people, Simon, Smith and Brown, all of them that were left… watching me. I screamed at them all, wild and incoherent. They were my people, and yet they had done this. Abner, I was filled with such loathing…

“Later, days later, I heard the whole story, learned the full depth of Julian’s madness. Perhaps it was my fault, in a sense. In saving you and Toby and Mister Framm, I brought on the death of more than a hundred innocent passengers.”

Abner Marsh snorted. “Don’t,” he said. “Whatever happened, it was Julian that had done it, and him that has to answer for it. You weren’t even there, so don’t go blamin’ yourself, you hear?”

Joshua’s gray eyes were troubled. “So I have told myself many times,” he said. “Let me finish the story. What had happened-Julian had woken that night to find us gone. He was furious. Wild. More-those words sound too feeble to convey what must have been his rage. Perhaps it was the red thirst in him that woke, after all those centuries. Moreover, it must have looked to him as if destruction were near to hand. His pilots were all gone. The steamer could not move without a pilot. And he must have known that you intended to return, to attack by day and destroy him. He could not have guessed that I would come back instead, to save them. No doubt my treachery and Valerie’s desertion filled him with fear, with uncertainty about what would come next. He had lost control. He had been bloodmaster, and yet we had acted against him. In all the history of the people of the night, it had never happened before. I think, during that terrible night, that Damon Julian thought he saw the death he both hungered for and feared.

“Sour Billy, I learned later, urged that they go ashore, split up, travel overland separately and meet again in Natchez or New Orleans or somewhere. That would have been sensible. But Julian was past sense. He had just entered the main cabin, his madness seething in his eyes, when a passenger approached him and began to complain that the steamer was far behind schedule, that she had not moved all day. ‘Ah,’ Julian said, ‘then we must move it immediately.’ He had her taken a bit farther out, so no one could get to shore. When it was done, he returned to the main cabin, where the passengers were dining, and approached the man who had complained, and killed him, in full view of all.

“Then the slaughter began. Of course, people screamed, ran, hid, locked themselves in their staterooms. But there was no place to go. And Julian used his power, used his voice and his eyes, and sent his people forth to kill. I understand the Fevre Dream had about a hundred thirty passengers aboard that night, against about twenty of my people, some driven by the thirst, some by Julian. But the thirst can be terrible at a time like that. Like a fever it can leap from one to the next, until all of them burn. And Sour Billy had the men he hired at Natchez-under-the hill assist in the fighting, too. He told them it was all part of a plan to rob and kill the passengers, and that they would share in the loot. By the time my people turned against their human helpers, it was far too late.

“It was happening even as you and I stood talking that last night, Abner. The screams, the carnage, Julian’s wild death spasm. He did not have everything his own way. The passengers fought back. I am told that virtually all my people sustained injuries, though of course they healed. Vincent Thibaut was shot through the eye, and died. Katherine was seized by two firemen and thrust into one of the furnaces. They burned her to death before Kurt and Alain intervened. So two of my people met their ends. Two of us, and well over a hundred of your kind. The survivors were penned within their own cabins.

“When it was over, Julian settled down to wait. The others were full of fear, and wanted to flee, but Julian would not permit it. He wanted to be discovered, I believe. They say he spoke of you, Abner.”

“Me?” Marsh was thunderstruck.

“He said he had promised you that the river would never forget your Fevre Dream. He laughed and said he made good on that promise.”

Abner Marsh’s anger welled up in him and came out in a furious snort. “Damn him to hell!” he said, in a strangely quiet tone.

“That,” said Joshua York, “was how it happened. But I knew none of that the night I returned to the Fevre Dream. I only knew what I saw with my eyes, what I smelled, what I could guess and imagine. And I was wild, Abner, wild. I was tearing free those boards, as I said, and then Julian was there, and suddenly I was screaming at him, screaming incoherently. I wanted vengeance. I wanted to kill him as badly as I have ever wanted to kill anyone, wanted to rip open that pale throat of his, and taste his damnable blood! My anger… ah, the words are so useless!