Paul Kearney: This Forsaken Earth

The halftroll’s anger faded, but there was still a hot glare about his eyes. “These Bionari cruisers and troopships?”

“They have something to do with it, yes. We’ve been sending them to the bottom one after another for going on six months now, and still they keep coming. Sooner or later, one will get through. Either that, or our luck will run out, and one of them will sendus to the bottom.”

The halftroll considered this. “That’s as may be, but they’ve always had traffic up and down this coast-to supply their bases south of here. Golgos has a big garrison.”

“Had. We sank most of it in the Reach last spring.”

“You think that’s where they came from?”

“Where else? And now they’re not going to stop sending troops south until they find out what happened to it.”

“They’re fighting a civil war. They’ll give it up in the end-there are bigger fish in their pot.”

“Perhaps. In the meantime, this one ship and crew cannot hold off the entire navy of a great power single-handed.”

Gallico opened his mouth, but what he said was not what had been in his eyes. “Shall we weigh anchor, then?”

“Yes. And set a course due east. Get us out in blue water, Gallico.”

“You’re the captain,” the halftroll said, and his huge frame disappeared through the doorway with startling swiftness.

Rol stared after him. I’m become like Grandfather, he thought. I can mix truth and lies and make them sound the same.

Due east they steered, the wind on the larboard bow and the yards braced round as sharp as they could haul them, a quilt of staysails keeping the courses company, and all bellied taut and drawing with creaks and groans as the wind continued to freshen into a blue-water blow. They made better than forty leagues a day for three days, and then the wind began to fail them. It backed round, became whimsical and inconstant, and both watches grew weary trying to guess its next move. Four more days of wallowing and twitching and cursing Ran under their breath for his capriciousness, and then the storm-god or his spouse grew tired of toying with them, and let go their bag of winds.

The true southerlies off Cavaillon began, no more than a zephyr at first, then growing in brashness until the air was washing through the rigging with a hiss of glee. They altered course to west-nor’west, took the wind on the quarter, and spread courses, topsails, topgallants, every stitch of canvas they could rig on the yards. They were four hundred long sea-miles from Ganesh Ka, but at this constant ten knots they would run it off in two days.

Or would have, if Ran had not decided otherwise. The splendid southerlies slackened a day later to a steady breeze, no more. Their speed came down, and soon they were cruising along sedately with the beakhead barely pitching. They resigned themselves to it, as mariners must if they are not to go mad, and the convalescing wounded, at least, were glad of the ship’s easier pace. There was less banging of stumps or twisting of broken limbs, or bumping of burnt flesh.

Thirteen days and nights had passed since the battle with the Bionari. Though Kier Eiserne made a formal and lugubrious report to his captain every morning concerning the fragile state of theRevenant ’s hull, the days of sailing were uneventful. They were well found in stores, fresh and preserved, and all of the more obvious damage to the ship had been repaired, even down to the replacing of starboard number three’s gun carriage. Giffon was able to come on deck and sun his pallid, moon-shaped face more often as his charges healed, and Rol made a point of inviting him to dinner in the great cabin more than once.

TheRevenant ’s captain never dined alone. Gallico and Elias Creed were permanent fixtures-Gallico seated on a specially strengthened stool-and often the gunner or the bosun or the carpenter would be invited also. The youngest of the topmen would serve the food, one standing behind each diner, and they were compensated for their servitude by drinking glass for glass with the guests and joining in the conversation whenever the whim took them. Though the ship’s company was in many ways a rigid hierarchy, it was not an oppressive one, and when dinner was over the diners would repair to the quarterdeck and join in the tale-telling and song-singing which usually sprang up in the waist with the last dogwatch.

A clear night sky, with skeins of cloud drifting ghostlike before the magnificent sweep of the stars. The moon was a wide-bladed sickle halfway back to the full, and the ship was coursing along at no more than four knots, the sails drawing without strain to the yards. Rol stood at the break of the quarterdeck and listened along with most of the crew as the bosun, Fell Amertaz, a man as hard and fearsome as any pirate in a landsman’s imagination, sang a ballad of his native Augsmark, the tears trickling unashamedly into his iron-gray beard. The ship’s company listened respectfully, for Amertaz, though given to sentimentality, was a hard-handed bastard to cross.

“It must be a fine thing,” Elias Creed said quietly, “to be able to call one place home, one land your own, even if you never go back to it.”

“Your father was an Islander, wasn’t he, Elias? From Andelys?”

“So he was. But my mother was a ship’s slave and I was born on board theBarracuda. ”

Rol smiled wryly. “Once I was told that I, too, had been born aboard a ship.”

“Then we are brothers in that, Rol-men with no country to call our own.”

Rol gestured to the ranks of privateers listening intently to Amertaz’s song. “You imagine any of them think of themselves as citizens of here or there? We belong to the sea, Elias. As for our home, we stand upon it.”

“Some of them think of Ganesh Ka as home.”

“Ah, yes.” Rol stared up at the towering intricacies of the mainmast as it loomed above them. All those tons of timber and canvas and cordage, balanced and designed to take the wind and with it move the little world that sustained them across this vast inimical wilderness that men named the sea.

“Sometimes it doesn’t profit a man too much to know where his home lies. It’s just one more thing that can be taken away from him,” Rol said with some bitterness.

“A man must fight for something, or somewhere or someone, or else he is no more than an animal,” Creed said quietly.

“We are worse than animals,” Rol answered him. “We will fight for nothing, simply for the joy of fighting; and if our conscience pricks us afterward, some will give that joy a name, and call it patriotism. That’s where it leads you, Elias, that possession of a home to call your own.”

“A man may fight for many things,” Creed countered. “What he thinks is right or wrong-”

“And who are we to judge what is right and what is wrong, Elias Creed, convict, pirate? Killer of men. Right and wrong is a matter of opinion-or of fashion.”

“Are you trying to tell me-” Creed began with some heat.

“Do you smell that?” It was Gallico. He had joined them at the quarterdeck rail with that odd graceful speed it was so remarkable to see. He had lifted his head and was sniffing the wind.

“What is it?” Rol asked at once. They had learned long ago to trust Gallico’s nose.

“I smell shit.”

“We’ve been talking it this last glass and more.” Creed grinned.

“No. It’s coming down the wind. Human shit.”

The smile slipped off Creed’s face. “A slaver?”

“Must be. The stink can drift for miles with a good breeze.”

Rol went to the taffrail and stared over the ship’s wake, slightly phosphorescent under the sickle moon. Nothing on the horizon, not so much as a gull. The starlit night was vast and empty. Yet Gallico was seldom wrong.