Paul Kearney: This Forsaken Earth

“Yes,” Gallico said quietly, “they did.”

“How do you know all this, Gallico?” Creed asked.

“He makes it up,” Rol scoffed, punching the halftroll’s granite bicep playfully. His eyes were cold, though.

“I used to read,” Gallico admitted. “In the days before I fell in with bad company.”

They fell silent. All about them in the fire-stitched darkness that bad company was cavorting and singing and snarling and laughing, as men will when drunk. The beach was a long gray blade with the bright moon-kindled silver of the sea before it and the darkness of the forest behind. Their campfires seemed an intrusion, a presumption in this tranquil wilderness. Strangely enough, only the black silhouette of theRevenant, at anchor a cable from the shore, seemed at one with the black and silver serenity of the night.

“How many were on that transport, you think?” Elias Creed asked no one in particular.

“A battalion maybe,” Gallico rumbled. “Five hundred men.”

“And on the warship?”

“Heavy crews, these Bionari cruisers. Some two hundred.”

“Seven hundred men. Gods above us.”

“What’s your point, Elias?” Rol asked irritably.

“Just this: we’re not mere privateers anymore. This is not piracy-it is warfare.”

“It’s been a rough week,” Rol consoled him. “Have a drink. As soon as we’ve refitted we’ll strike out east, or north or south. Anywhere that takes us away from this goddamned continent and its wars.”

The others said nothing. They knew his words were empty.

A boat put off from the side of theRevenant, sculled by half a dozen of the harbor watch. The crew ran it up the beach in a flash of spray and trudged through the sand, exchanging banter with the men at the campfires as they came. They stopped before Rol, the firelight making uplit masks of their faces.

“Well, Kier, how goes it?” Rol asked, and handed his carpenter a round-bottomed bottle.

The cadaverous little man took a long swallow and passed it to his neighbor.

“The leak is plugged for now, skipper; a couple of planks started. There’s not much else I can do with it, lessen we haul her down or get her back in dock. The stern will take another mort of work too; your cabin windows are gone, frames and all, and the stern-lanterns too.”

“The rudder?”

“It took a glancing shot, nothing much.”

Rol nodded. “So she’ll float, then?”

“Oh, aye, we’re seaworthy-or near as, damn it. She don’t look so pretty, but by God she can take punishment.”

“I saw nine-pound balls bounce off her sides at a thousand yards, like they was peas,” John Imbro, the gunner, volunteered.

“Powder, John?”

“We took some six barrels out of the Bionese, skipper; enough for a dozen broadsides.”

“We have teeth again,” Gallico said with relish.

“That we do, ’Co. And there’s those nine-pounders we salvaged before we burned her. They’ll come in right handy back at the Ka.”

“Who’d you leave on board, John?” Rol asked.

“Gill Whistram and Harry Dade. They’re upright and sober; I checked myself.”

“Good work. Go and get something to eat. There’s fresh game doing the rounds; though what beast it is, I don’t know.”

“Right now, skipper, all I want is a rock to lay my head on; me and Kier both. There’s a lot more to be done tomorrow.” Rol nodded, and the carpenter, the gunner, and their mates left the firelight and staggered out into the darkness.

Gallico raised his savage head. In the moonlight it seemed sculpted out of stone, a gargoyled physiognomy. “Wind’s backing at last,” he said, his nostrils sniffing wide. “Be due north by morning, you see if it’s not. And then we’ll have a long and weary time of it beating back to Ganesh Ka.”

Ganesh Ka, the Hidden City. For Rol and Elias it had once been a fable, nothing more. A city of pirates, its location unknown to the wider world-a tall tale for mariners all about the Twelve Seas. Now they knew it for what it was: a vast and ancient ruin, in which squatted a host of the outlawed and the dispossessed. Murderers, thieves, escaped slaves, or men who simply found the world too small for them; they congregated there on the strength of a legend.

“Not much of a trip,” Rol said. “All blood and thunder, and damn-all to show for it but a pockmarked ship and half a dozen dead shipmates.”

“Seven hundred less Bionari in the world,” Gallico retorted. “There’s treasure for you.”

“You can’t put a corpse in your pocket, or eat one either.”

“I know some who’ve tried,” and Gallico grinned horribly, making them all laugh.

Rol drank from another bottle; they lay all about the beach like flotsam.

“OspreyandSkua are back in fighting trim this long while. It’s not like the Ka is undefended. What say you, Gallico, to a far-foreign cruise? Why not get this wind on our quarter and make for the Gut, and the Outer Reach? There’s fat Mercanter ships there that would make us rich men in a month. We could try and find that Tropic-line of yours, and cut it with our keel.”

“Skuaand Osprey don’t carry such heavy metal as we,” Elias Creed said quietly. “Rol, you know we’re the only ship the Ka has that can take on men-of-war.”

Cortishane stood up, fist clenched around the neck of his bottle. He strode away from the fire-and as he did, a light began to shine in his eyes, cold as the edge of a sword.

“I know, I know. Where would I be, Elias, without you beside me to play mother hen?”

He made his way through the scattered clumps of mariners who were sprawled on the beach about their fires. Here and there he exchanged a word, a wave, a smile. The men respected their captain, esteemed him even. But he knew there was something in his eyes that prevented them from making that full, human connection.

And why not? Rol wondered. After all, I am not human.

He joined Giffon and his improbable infirmary. The company’s wounded had been made comfortable with what slim facilities the ship possessed. For those in unbearable pain, this meant stupefying amounts of hard liquor. Kier Eiserne had run up a crude table for Giffon’s heftier work, and this now stood in the sand with the raw wood of its top dark as mahogany, stained deep with blood. Giffon sat on it wiping his eyes with a filthy rag. At his side was a smeared bundle of tools more suited to carpentry than surgery.

“Giffon. How do they go?”

Giffon was a young, round-faced man with sandy hair and a snub nose. He seemed to be in his early teens, until one looked into his eyes and saw the memories there.

“Al-Hamn and Boravian will do well, I think. The stumps were clean, and I sewed flesh over the bone. Gran Tomasson died this evening.”

“Damn. He was a good man, as good a gun-captain as I’ve ever seen.”

“Half his ribs were gone. I’m amazed he lasted this long. As it is, all those who are still alive now will remain alive, if they can steer clear of fever.”

Rol gestured to the dark stains of the table. “You were cutting again tonight?”

“I didn’t like the smell of Morten’s leg, so I resectioned it again.”

Rol studied his youthful would-be surgeon closely. Giffon was exhausted. He had been looking after the wounded virtually single-handed for a week. Rol had sent seamen to lift and carry for him, and at times they had needed a half-dozen men to hold down some unfortunate when the pain of the saw was too much. But the bulk of the burden was Giffon’s. There was something indomitable about him. Had he the requisite knowledge, this boy might be a real healer. He had that touch. But he was no more than a butcher’s apprentice who had fled a harsh master and been picked up by slavers on the coast of Borhol. The usual abuse had followed, but somehow Giffon had escaped and made his way to the Ka. No one knew how, and the memories in those eyes stopped folk from asking. Like Elias Creed, he had buried his pain so deep there was no longer any way to go delving for it.