Paul Kearney: The Mark of Ran

“So I understand.”

“You don’t understand. No single privateer has ever bested a man-of-war in even fight-never. And with a new ship and untried crew.”

Rol managed a smile. “You look like a bloodied cat who’s kept hold of the cream.”

“They mauled us, yes, but by God-” He thumped the quarterdeck rail in a gesture that Rol was coming to see as a habit. “Wait until Artimion hears about this. It was like something out of a goddamned song.”

“Deck there!” a lookout cried. “There’s people on the launch to larboard, waving and such. I believe they’re friendly.”

“Heave-to,” Rol said. He straightened and wiped his mouth. Many of the crew were still staring at him, but what he had first mistaken for fear now looked more like awe. He shook his buzzing head. “Heave-to, I say, and set down a cutter.”

“They’re all in splinters,” Gallico told him.

Rol sighed. “Gallico, close with the bloody boat and get them on board, will you?”

The halftroll grinned. “Aye aye, sir.”

It was Miriam in the launch, along with a dozen others who were slack-jawed with exhaustion, having pulled into the wind for some twenty-five miles. Artimion lay in the boat, his bloody head resting in her lap.

“The fleet is gone,” she said, having gulped cloudy water out of a scuttle-butt. There was a black bar of gunpowder darkening her face from the corner of her mouth down her chin. Her eyes were red-rimmed as cherries.

“Jan Timian ran for it, but the others piled in yardarm to yardarm. The brigs were sunk, and the transports scattered. I think a couple went aground in the surf. But they beat us up something terrible. Albatross and Swallow were dismasted and had to put about before the wind. They’re running south, trying to get new masts up or something. Prosper sank under us. We got the launch over the side and Artimion into it. I do not know if he will live. Where Skua is I do not know. There was too much smoke, too much confusion. But we beat them. The Ka is safe.”

In the hesitant outbreak of cheering that followed she seemed to look about herself for the first time. “Are you listening to me?” And then: “What happened to you?” Her voice was near breaking.

“We also had some trouble, Miriam,” Gallico said gently, and bending he lifted Artimion’s body from the deck and into his massive arms.

“Does he live yet?” Miriam asked. A harshness throbbed behind her words. She looked close to breaking down.

Gallico closed his huge paw about Artimion’s throat. “There is life beating here. We must get him below.”

He and Miriam disappeared down the companionway. The rest of Miriam’s companions were sitting all about the waist, heads bowed. The Revenants had fallen silent. Even the passengers did not speak.

“It’s a lot to take in, I suppose,” Creed said.

“Get them back to work, Elias,” Rol said sharply. “The ship will not fix herself.” He looked up and down the crowded decks, and his heart lurched at the devastation there. His beautiful ship. Well, she would be rebuilt. But first he must get her back to Ganesh Ka.

She will carry you far, your Revenant.

Gallico and Miriam were bending over Artimion’s body in the light of the stern-cabin windows. They had laid him in Rol’s cot and were peeling off layer upon layer of filthy bandages.

“How is he?” Rol asked.

“Shot through the lung,” Miriam snapped. “Plus a splinter scalped the side of his head.”

Artimion’s dark face had taken on a livid hue, and white bone gleamed at his temple. Rol touched his own head, remembering the blow there, but his flesh was unmarked. The wound in his thigh had disappeared also.

“Gallico?”

“I’ve stopped up the hole-there was air coming out of it-and I’ll sew his scalp back down. The rest is up to him.”

“The Blood is in him,” Miriam said. “He’ll not go easy.”

Artimion opened his eyes, and Miriam stifled a cry. The black man stared at them one by one, his gaze resting last on Rol’s face.

“I thought so. Miriam, are we-”

“The day is won.” She took his hand and clenched her white fingers about it. “The Bionari are sunk or scattered.”

The eyes closed again. The tense, glistening face relaxed somewhat, though it tightened again in pain as the breath left his wounded lung. “Oh, thank the gods.” Then Artimion smiled. He met Gallico’s bright eyes once more. “I thought you would get into the middle of things somehow.”

“Of course.”

Artimion stared at the deck-head. He looked puzzled. “This is not the Prosper. What ship is this?”

“The Revenant, ” Rol said quietly. “My ship.”

“Cortishane. So you took her out after all.”

“I took her out. She came in useful, as it happens.”

“She sank a man-of-war,” Gallico said quietly. But Artimion’s eyes had already closed.

The three of them left him sleeping and came on deck again, glad of the clean air and spray after the powder-reek, the charnel-house atmosphere below.

“He will live,” Miriam said fervently. “He must. Without him, Ganesh Ka is finished.”

“The Bionari will not stop looking,” Rol said quietly. “They have an idea now of where we are.”

Miriam regarded him coldly. “We?”

Gallico was running a paw up and down the quarterdeck rail. “We’ve put our blood into this ship. She’s truly ours now.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Rol said. He was very tired.

“The refitting will take three or four weeks at least.”

“So I figure.”

“We are the only ship the Ka can count on now, Rol. All the rest are sunk or fled.”

“We’re not so far from sunk ourselves, brother,” But Rol’s attempt at jocularity fell flat.

Gallico looked square at him. “We must go home now. We must gather up our people.”

Rol did not look at the halftroll, but surveyed the multitude that populated the ruined deck of his ship. Men, women, children, squatting amid the gore and the wreckage. Miriam, glaring at him with a fine-boned face full of mistrust and doubt. Elias Creed, the sun catching the white in his beard. So many faces, and all of them looking his way.

“I suppose we must,” he said.