Paul Kearney: This Forsaken Earth

The cutter was paddled out of the ship-cavern, into the harbor with its mighty encircling arms of stone. Rol looked up to see the stars overhead, a sliver of moon. The tide was still just on the ebb, and it took their keel, slid them quietly along with the plash of the oars. The water around them was thick with small-craft of all sizes and rigs, and ahead the yards of the three ships stood stark against the paler stone. The noise died away. No one spoke in the boat.

Paul Kearney

This Forsaken Earth

Twenty-one

A rat-tag flotilla, they anchored together around the Revenant and transferred their wretched cargoes to the larger vessels. Rol came aboard to find Gallico standing on the starboard gangway, his face a desolation.

“Is this all?” he asked. “You must go back for more.”

The Revenants rigged tackles to the yardarms and began hauling the weaker occupants of the boats aboard like sacks of grain. “There’s no going back,” Rol said. “We barely made it away afloat.”

“I’ll go back. Let me take the cutters in again, Rol. We have space for more.”

“No. Gallico, that place is not Ganesh Ka anymore. It belongs to a maddened mob. You take the boats back in and they’ll sink them under you.”

“Now, listen-”

“That’s an order, Gallico. As soon as the boats are back on the booms we weigh anchor. It’s over.”

Gallico glared at him with something like hatred in his shining eyes.

“Where’s Miriam, Artimion?”

“I don’t know. The Bionese have landed up the coast. They’re on the march as we speak, whole regiments. We have to get away.”

Gallico’s great fist came up and grasped the front of Rol’s tunic. Gaunt though he was, the strength in the halftroll’s arm was startling.

“He’s right, Gallico.” This was Elias Creed, climbing aboard with his mouth still bloody. “We can do no more. We’ve saved all we can.”

Gallico released Rol. “The wind has backed to east-nor’east,” he said formally. “The tide will be on the flood in two turns of the glass.”

“Then we must put out to sea as soon as we can, and claw off this coast.”

“What course shall I set?” Gallico asked.

“Due south, reefed courses and jib.”

“You’re the captain,” Gallico snapped. And he walked away.

“Let him go,” Elias said, as Rol tried to follow. “It’s not you. He knows. He just has to get over it.”

The small boats surrounding them were already sculling down the coast in an ungainly gaggle, their oars striking up white water from the darkened surface of the sea. TheAstraros, theSkua, and theOsprey were making sail. Rol hailed the nearest: Thef Gaudo on the xebec.

“Due south, Thef-pass it on to the brigs!”

“Due south, aye aye-glad you made it, skipper.”

“Elias, throw lines to the smaller boats. We’ll tow them if they can’t keep up.”

Aveh and Esmer had joined them at the gangway, looking landward. “I see lights,” the carpenter said.

They were springing up all over the shoreline, disembodied in the dark, some larger than others.

“They’re burning the place,” Esmer said, astonished. “Is it the Bionese? Have they arrived already?”

They watched, transfixed, as the fires spread. Not in one single wave, but in dozens of discrete glows, licking out of the stone windows that peppered the seaward sides of the towers and the cliffs. It looked almost as though the Hidden City were finally coming to life, lighting up for some unknown celebration, unafraid of watching eyes at last.

“We’re burning it,” Rol answered him. “We’re doing it to ourselves, room by room.”

The looming towers were outlines above a saffron blaze now, a bloom of fire. As they watched, there was an incredible mushrooming ball of flame that rose up hundreds of feet, and a second later the air shook with the deep thunder of the explosion. They all ducked instinctively. The ship’s company, the refugees on board, all paused to stare, aghast.

“That was the powder-arsenal,” Rol said.

“Artimion has lost control,” said Creed.

Between them, Aveh the carpenter looked at the vast fireball now rising up to blot out the stars, and merely nodded to himself, as though it confirmed some knowledge he already possessed. Then he hid his eyes with one hand and bowed his head until it rested on the good wood of the ship’s side.

Rol and Creed went to the quarterdeck. Gallico was fixed there like a standing stone, and the tears on his face gleamed bright in the light from his eyes.

“There was no going back,” Rol said quietly, looking up at the halftroll, this monster he loved as a brother.

“I know,” Gallico said.

Rol raised his voice. “Weigh anchor. Morcam, course due south. Lookouts to fore and main. Elias, get those people below.”

The crew of theRevenant went about their business, and in the white-tipped sea around them the other ships and boats and desperate souls of their little fleet watched the Black Ship unfurl her sails and take wing for the south. On her quarterdeck a tall, gaunt man stood among his friends, and stared at the palm of his hand.