Robin Hobb - Ship of Magic

As the man struggled to his feet, Wintrow finally recognized Torg. He could make out little of his features in the dark. His shirt was torn away from his back; the pale rags of it fluttered in the wind. “You,” Torg said. The low laugh he gave was disbelieving. “You did this to us? You?” He shook his head. “I don't believe it. You had the treachery, but not the guts. You stand there and hold the wheel like the ship is yours, but I don't believe you took her.” Despite his chains and the snarling map-faces surrounding him, he spat to one side. “You didn't have the balls to take her when she was offered to you on a silver platter.” The furious words poured from him like a pent-up flood. “Oh, yes, I knew all about your father's deal with you. I heard what he said that day. Your father was going to give you the mate's position on her when you turned fifteen. Never mind that I worked like a dog for him for the past seven years. Never mind old Torg. Give the captaincy to Gantry and the mate's position to a pink-cheeked boy. And you'd lord it over me.”

He laughed. “Well, Gantry's dead, they tell us. And your father's not much better off.” He crossed his arms on his chest. “You see that island off our starboard side? That's Crooked Island. You should have taken the ship on the other side of it. There's rocks and current ahead. So if you want a man at the helm of this tub, maybe you'd better talk nice to Torg. Maybe you'd better offer him something a bit more than his own life to get your sorry asses out of this fix.” He smiled a toadish smile, confident suddenly that they needed him, that he could turn the whole situation to his profit. “Maybe you'd better talk nice and fast, for the rocks are just ahead.” The men behind him, new hands taken on in Jamaillia, cast fearful glances ahead through the darkness. “What should we do?” Sa'Adar asked him. “Can we trust him?” The situation was laughable, it was so horrifying. They were asking him. They were putting the whole ship's survival in his hands. He glanced up at the lightening sky. Aloft were two slaves, struggling vainly to take in sail. Sa have mercy on them all. He tightened his grip on the wheel and looked at Torg's smug face. Was Torg capable of putting the ship on the rocks for the sake of vengeance? Could any man take revenge that far, to throw his own life away with it? The tattoo on Wintrow's face itched. “No,” Wintrow said at last. “I don't trust him. And I'd kill him before I gave him the helm of my ship.” A map-face shrugged callously. “The useless die.”

“Wait,” Wintrow cried, but it was too late. In a movement as smooth as a longshoreman pitching bales, the map-face hefted the bulky sailor over his head, and then flung him over the stern with a force that sent the map-face to his knees as well. Torg was gone, as swiftly and simply as that. He hadn't even had time to scream. On his single word not to trust the man, Torg had died. The other sailors had fallen to their knees, crying out and begging him to spare them.

A terrible disgust welled up in him. It was not for the begging men. “Get those chains off them and send them aloft,” he barked at Sa'Adar. “Reef the sails as best you can, and cry back to me if you see rocks.” It was a stupid order, a useless order. Three men could not sail a ship this size. As Sa'Adar was unlocking their fetters, he heard himself ask, “Where's my father? Is he alive?”

They looked at him blankly, one and all. None of them knew, he realized. He supposed his father had forbidden the crew to speak of him among themselves. “Where's Captain Haven?” he demanded.

“He's down below with his head and ribs busted up,” one of the deckhands volunteered.

Wintrow weighed it up and decided in favor of his ship. He pointed at Sa'Adar. “I need the ship's captain up here. And gently. He's no good to us if he's unconscious.” And the useless die, he thought to himself as the priest dispatched men to fetch the captain. An overseer's threat to a slave became a credo to live by. To save the crew, he'd have to show the freed slaves their usefulness. “Unchain those two,” he ordered. “Get every live sailor who can move aloft.”

A map face shrugged. “There's only these two now.”

Only two left alive. And his father. Sa forgive him. He looked at the man who had thrown Torg overboard. “You. You threw a sailor overboard, one we might have used. You take his place now. Get aloft, to the lookout's post. Cry down to me what you see.” He glared around at the others standing around them. It suddenly infuriated him that they would stand about idly. “The rest of you make sure the hatches are down tight now. Get on the pumps, too. I can feel she's too heavy in the water. Sa only knows how much water we took on.” His voice was quieter but just as hard as he added, “Clear the deck of bodies. And get those collapsed tents tidied away.”

The first man's eyes went from Wintrow up to the tiny platform at the top of the main mast. “Up there? I can't go up there.”

The current was like a living thing now, the tide speeding through the narrow channel like a mill race. Wintrow fought the wheel. “Get moving if you want to live,” he barked. “There's no time for your fear. The ship is the only thing that matters now. Save her if you want to save yourselves.”

“That's the only time you've ever sounded like a son to me.”

Blood had darkened down the side of Kyle Haven's face. He moved with his body at a twist, trying not to jar the ribs that poked and grated inside him. He was paler than the gray sky overhead. He looked at his son holding the ship's wheel, at the scarred map-faces that lumbered hastily off to do his bidding, at the debris of the insurrection and shook his head slowly. “This is what it took for you to find your manhood?”

“It was never lost,” he said flatly. “You simply couldn't recognize it, because I wasn't you. I wasn't big and strong and harsh. I was me.”

“You never stepped up to the mark. You never cared about what I could give you.” Kyle shook his head. “You and this ship. Spoiled children, both of you.”

Wintrow gripped the wheel tightly. “We don't have time for this. The Vivacia can't steer herself. She's helping me, but I want your eyes, too. I want your knowledge.” He could not keep the bitterness from his voice. “Advise me, father.”

“He's truly your father?” Sa'Adar asked in consternation. “He enslaved his own son?”

Neither man answered him. Both peered ahead, into the storm. After a moment, the priest retreated to the stern of the ship, leaving them almost alone.

“What are you going to do with her?” his father demanded suddenly. “Even if you get safely through this channel, you haven't enough good men to sail her. These are treacherous waters, even for an experienced crew.” He snorted. “You're going to lose her before you even had her.”

“All I can do is the best I can,” Wintrow said quietly. “I didn't choose this. But I believe Sa will provide.”

“Sa!” Kyle shook his head in disgust. Then, “Keep her to the center of the channel. No, a couple more points to port. There. Hold her steady. Where's Torg? You should put him aloft to cry out what he sees.”

Wintrow considered it an instant, combining his father's opinion with what he felt through Vivacia. Then he made the correction. “Torg's dead,” he said after the brief silence. “He was put over the side. Because a slave considered him useless.” He gestured with his chin to a man who clung, frozen, halfway up the mast. “He was supposed to take the lookout post.”

An aghast silence followed his words. When his father spoke, his voice was strained.

“All of this…” his father said in a low voice, pitched only for Wintrow's ears. “All of this, just so you could take the ship now, instead of a few years from now?”