“And how was it?”
“Eventful,” Tusk smiled.
Luka had often begged Tusk to record a narrative of his exploits, for his life had contained so much more than any one man should have been capable of. His stories, his secrets, the strange facts of his enterprises, were priceless gems and should have been bound up in a book like the ones in the Marquis of Aguilas’ library, for future generations to learn from. But Tusk was always tight-lipped, and desired no glory from posterity. “My stories will die with me,” he’d once told Luka, “except those that are remembered by the likes of you and told on to others.”
“Around the Horn,” Luka murmured. “By Manann, Jeremiah, I’m proud of you.”
Jeremiah Tusk grinned and embraced Silvaro warmly. “Ah, but it’s good to see you. You too, Casaudor, you old rogue. Is he still beating you regularly?”
“When the mood is on him,” Casaudor smiled, and accepted an embrace himself.
“And worthy Ymgrawl. Still standing, I see.”
“Just as thee are, sir,” Ymgrawl chuckled, and clasped his hands around Tusk’s left hand as it was offered.
“I was concerned we would not meet anyone,” Tusk said. “Gods, but the sea is dead and empty. I go away, and when I come back, the waters are void.”
“It is the Butcher Ship, Jeremiah,” Luka said.
“We’ve heard tell of that,” said Manuel Honduro, Tusk’s mixed race master mate. “At the ports we’ve come to, along the tip of Araby.”
“It is a devil,” Casaudor said. “It preys on all. It is a daemon-thing.”
“It is also the Kymera,” Luka said.
There was a long pause in which nothing stirred except the wind and the creaking, pitching deck. “Henri’s ship?” Tusk asked.
“The same. Cursed and cursed, and cursed again,” Luka said.
Tusk shook his head sadly. The crewmen all around him spat or touched iron, or made warding signs.
“I knew the Safire the moment I saw her,” Tusk said, pointing with his spiral cane at the sloop off the starboard. “Pretty little thing as she is. But where’s the Rumour?”
“It’s a long story,” Luka said.
“Come below and tell it,” said Jeremiah Tusk.
Luka and Tusk went below to the master’s cabin, leaving Casaudor and Ymgrawl on deck, swapping news with the Lightning Tree’s company. Luka had forgotten how much he loved his visits to Tusk’s private cabin. It was cramped and untidy, piled high with curios and relics of his travels: books, pieces of bone, artefacts, weapons, tribal masks and shields, stuffed animals, mounted heads, musical instruments and an endless list of wonders. Luka imagined that the inside of Tusk’s head looked something like this.
“Get us both a drink from there,” Tusk said, limping in and indicating a wall dresser with his bone claw. “There’s rum, porter, some of that damn Kislevite laughing water that makes you gasp. Oh, try that there. In the flask wrapped in bamboo. There, man, in front of you.”
Luka dutifully poured the clear liquid into two small thimble glasses from Tusk’s drinking case.
“What is it?” he called dubiously, sniffing it.
“It’s called sarkey, and they drink it in the islands of Niipon.”
“You got as far as Niipon?” Luka asked incredulously.
“No, man. I got as far as a trading port where merchants from Cathay were selling it. It’s a fine brew. I’m quite partial to it, though that’s my last bottle. The Niiponese, I’m told, drink it by the cup, like tea.”
“What’s… tee?” Luka asked. Tusk just laughed and sat himself down at the long oak table. He shoved aside plates and pewter bowls and a ragged cluster of charts and waggoners.
Luka brought the drinks over. They raised their glasses and sipped.
“It’s good,” Luka said.
“Very fine. Oh, now, you must try this.” Tusk rummaged in the piles of bric-a-brac he had just shoved aside, and produced a bowl filled with what looked like jerky.
“Salt meat?” Luka said.
“We cured it ourselves. It’s fine crackling.”
Luke tried a piece and agreed it was. “What is it?”
“River horse,” Tusk said, chewing on a piece himself. “Great brown beasts, they are, fat as hogs, and savage when roused. We caught ourselves a good deal of game on our voyage. Needs must. We were down on provisions, so we developed a taste for things. Snake is good. Alligator too. But others, pah! In the south, my friend, there is a horse that is striped black and white—”
“Surely you jest?”
“No, and it is as cantankerous as a mule. Never, ever eat one. Even cured, it tastes like tree bark. I’d sooner eat rat.”
“Or snake.”
“Or snake indeed.”
“This river horse… What manner of beast was it?”
Tusk shrugged, and reached over to pull out a heavy black ledger. He flipped open the handwritten pages, pages full of curious drawings and odd designs. “The river horse. There, see?”
“It’s an ugly thing. What name did you give it?”
“It’s river horse…” Tusk replied, as if that had been a trick question. “The locals taught us how to hunt it. They were a manner of man with very black skins, like coal.”
“Ebonians?”
“No, blacker yet. And dressed not in any cloth or modesty, but they knew the land and the means of it well. They were fine hunters. DeGrutti sketched the beasts we found. These are his recordings here. See, he gave the river horse a pompous name in the old tongue. Hippo, which is horse, and potamous, of the river.”
“That’s an idiot name. No one will ever remember that. I’ll call them river horses, I think, as you do.” Luka turned the pages of the ledger, marvelling at the pictures. “My, DeGrutti is a man of fine penmanship. These beasts are astonishing. This thing! Its neck’s so impossibly long.”
“Yes, that. We called it a long-neck.”
“Makes sense,” Luka noted, flipping on through the pages. “How is DeGrutti?”
Nicholas DeGrutti was a scholar of natural physic from Tilea who had joined Tusk’s crew a dozen years before to study the wonders of nature that might be revealed by the Lightning Tree’s voyages. He had become Tusk’s best friend and confidant, though he was no pirate, and Luka had enjoyed listening to the man tell his tales.
“Nico?” Tusk said sadly. “He’s dead. The river horse killed him.”
“Oh,” said Luka, and put his half-eaten piece of jerky back in the bowl.
“Not that particular river horse,” Tusk laughed.
“Even so,” Luka said. “My appetite seems to have fled.”
“So tell me your news,” Tusk said.
Luka began his tale, speaking of his capture and his return, his deal with the Prince of Luccini, his feud with Guido and, of course, the Butcher Ship. Their glasses were empty by the time he had finished. Tusk gestured for Luka to refill them.
“So Guido cheated you again? I’m not surprised. My only wonder is that you’ve not killed him already.”
“That is the purpose of this voyage,” Luka said. “Whatever Guido has done to me in the past, nothing can match his crime against the Rumour.”
“But how will you close and finish against a barque of that dimension with only the pretty little Safire?”
“How did you know the Demiurge was a great barque?” Luka asked.
Tusk smiled. “Because I met it yesterday. In open waters. It was heading east at a terrible pace. I went to it, hoping for news, but it liked not the look of me, for it shot out across my bows with a full side. I left it alone. I have no interest in hunting anymore.”
“But it was the Demiurge.”
Tusk nodded. “Half a day ahead of you, Luka. But even if you catch it, I don’t know how you propose to beat it. It has you outgunned four to one.”
“Five to one, actually. I simply trusted the sea to show me a way when the time came.” Luka looked at Tusk.
Tusk understood the look and sh
ook his head. “Oh no. No, no, no. Luka, don’t ask this of me. I’m too old and—”
“There is the matter of three times,” Luka said.
“I thought it was twice,” said Tusk.
Luka shook his head. “No, three times. At Sartosa, during the bar fight. The man with the adze. Secondly, off the coast of Luccini that summer, the revenue men. One had a concealed pistol. Thirdly, when we tangled with those corsairs off the point of the Back Gulf. Three times, Jeremiah.”
Tusk shook his head. “Three, is it? Damn. I should never have stopped to greet you.”
“What’s the matter?” Luka chuckled. “The fire gone from your blood?”
Tusk’s response stopped him in his tracks. “Yes, Luka, it has. The fire has gone. As you meet me today, I’m sailing to my cross.”
“No… no, surely not?”
Tusk nodded. “I’m old, Luka. Too old, as it goes. This last voyage is my final trip. I’m done with the sea. I’m sailing to my cross and that’s the end of it.”
Luka sat back, deflated, miserable. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “Jeremiah, I thought you and the Lightning Tree would carry on until the end of time.”
“This is the end of time,” Jeremiah said softly. “Of my time. I’m old, Luka. My bones are heavy and my limbs are slow. I’m dying, my friend. I just want to find my cross, pay off my valiant men, and lay my head upon a soft pillow.”
Luka rose to his feet. “I will honour that, of course. Jeremiah, this news makes me sad to my heart. The sea will miss you. I’ll make to my sloop and be out of your way.”
“The Safire is a lovely ship,” Tusk said. “But she’ll never take that barque.”
“I’ll trust the sea to show me a way.”
“Luka?”
“Yes, Jeremiah?”
“Is it really three times?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jeremiah Tusk rose to his feet. “Then I suppose my cross can wait a little while longer.”
XXV
“It’s just a chisel,” Belissi whispered.
“But its end is sharp,” Sesto replied, taking the tool and hiding it under his cape. “It’ll make a hole in his chest as well as anything.”
Belissi wasn’t listening. He was gazing out at the choppy waters, watching for something Sesto didn’t want to imagine.
It was the third day of the flight. By Curcozo’s estimation, they were crossing the mid-waters of the Tilean Sea already. The days were still white and sunless, the wind still boisterous. The sea raged, heaving and galloping. Full-sheeted, the Demiurge pressed on for Luccini.
Holding the chisel against his hip with one hand, Sesto began to walk back down the deck towards the poop, fighting the roll of the ship. He had made up his mind. He was going to kill Guido Lightfinger. The chisel would stab through the man’s breast well enough. Of course Curcozo, Alberto Long, Vinegar Bruno and Handsome Onofre would then cut him to ribbons for his action, but what of it? He’d die well, vindicated.
Sesto could see them on the poop deck now, Guido shouting orders into the blow. He’d have to get close. Close in, like ships at close quarters. Then a single, sudden stab…
“Sail! Sail!” the lookout bellowed from above.
The crew turned to look sternwards.
Gods, and there she was. Coming on like a dart across the turbulent sea. The Safire, her lateen bulging fit to tear. Fast, fast, faster than the lumbering barque Demiurge.
Luka was coming. Just as Sesto had predicted, Luka was coming to end this affair.
Sesto’s jubilation suddenly ebbed. Guido was calling up his gunners, and there was a series of audible claps as the gun hatches lifted along the lower decks and the guns ran out. The Safire was so small, so slight, how in Manann’s name did Luka hope to turn this fight?
Sesto clambered up onto the poop, in time to hear Guido give the order to come about.
Guido looked over at Sesto. “Think he’s come to save you?” Guido snarled. “Think again, my prince! He has no hope! Come about! Come about again! Turn to make him!”
Curcozo was relaying orders. Kazuriband heaved on the wheel hard, with the help of the lee helmsman.
“If my half-brother bastard wishes to make this a fight, then I’ll take it right to him!” Guido bellowed. “If he has the temerity, I have the wit and the power! The Demiurge will blow him out of the sea!”
There was a distant crump and bang. Smoke fogged the prow of the Safire. Her forward chasers had fired.
Sesto heard the cannonballs whiz overhead, cast long. He ran back down to the mainhead and pulled Belissi upright.
“We have to find some cover!” he said.
“Is she here? Is mother mine here?”
“No, for the gods’ sake! No, she isn’t! But Luka is. We have to find cover!”
The Safire fired again with its bow cannons. This time, the whistling balls punched through the mizzen yards and left acres of canvas loose and snapping in the wind.
“Turn!” Guido yelled. “Turn and gun them!”
The Demiurge slowly came about, until it was side-on to the chasing sloop.
At Guido’s orders, it fired a broadside.
The entire ship juddered at the release. Smoke washed back over the deck in torrents. Sesto dragged Belissi down and covered his head.
The Safire came on still. If it had been wounded, it showed no sign. It fired its long-cased bow chasers again, and this time the side rail of the poop deck exploded, killing four of the ratings nearby.
The Demiurge fired another broadside at its attacker. After the thump and the roar, after the jolt of the deck, Sesto was able to see the Safire again as the smoke cleared.
It was damaged. The lateen jibs had gone, exploded off the long bowsprit. Canvas, loose, ripped back across the foredecks, unmanaged and rogue. The Safire began to lag. Its foreguns flashed again. Plumes of water burst from the sea short of the Demiurge’s flanks.
Guido’s crew cheered.
Above the shouting, Sesto heard a call. Up in the rigging, a man was singing out, his warning drowned by the cheering.
“Sail! Sail again!” the man was yelling. “To starboard!”
Sesto turned to look. A vast emerald brig was turning against them, running with the wind. As it came side on, a mile away, it fired its guns.
A crackle of flame, a spit of soot. Then the hell arrived. The starboard side of the Demiurge was bombarded with cannon fire. The rails shattered, the hull splintered. Sheets ripped wide and men died.
The Lightning Tree swung in closer and fired again.
Struggling to stay upright in the heavy swell, Luka Silvaro stared ahead. In the grey light of the day, through the rain, he watched as the Demiurge and the Lightning Tree closed with each other, gun ports spitting. Jeremiah’s ship, expertly steered, had the better of the clash. Its side guns, three decks deep, belched tongues of flame. Water spouted up from the sea. Pieces of wood scattered into the air from breaking rails. The Demiurge faltered, stricken.
Another salvo, and Guido’s ship began to limp.
“Get us up close!” Luka bawled.
They were side-on to the Demiurge now, and the Safire’s guns were doing dreadful harm to the barque’s hull. Black smoke lifted up into the air and was carried away by the headwind.
“Closer!”
“We cannot!” Silke yelled. “Not in this sea!”
“Damn the sea! Get me in to blade-length!”
As the Lightning Tree pounded its starboard side with chain shot, the Demiurge shuddered as the Safire came up against its port. Guido’s men tried desperately to lower booms and fenders to stave the sloop off, but the ships ground together. Despite the fierce chop, grapples were thrown across, and tie-ropes, and the ships mashed against one another.
Luka Silvaro prepared to lead the boarding charge.
Getting aboard a ship riding in such heavy seas was task enough, but doing so in the face of fierce resistance was quite another thing. Guido’s men stood at the port side pa
vis of the Demiurge with poles, billhooks and hot oil. A row of caliver men crackled drizzles of shot down from the Demiurge’s rigging, and several of Silke’s crew fell before they’d even left the Safire.
The Demiurge was a massive brute of a ship, and close up it towered above the Safire, which was barely a third of its height. But, Luka reminded himself, it had been a massive ship last time they’d taken it too. Its very size was its weakness. It made a plenty big target.
Silke’s own caliver men, along with archers and ratings with swivel guns, opened fire with a rippling salvo that sounded like canvas tearing. The shots sent Guido’s men in behind their pavis boards. On the Safire’s rolling deck, much lower down, Casaudor and some of the men-at-arms started heaving lit grenades up at the barque’s side. Some blasts blew out sections of the pavis, and dead or dying men tumbled down between the two mashing ships. But Casaudor had another target in mind. He lobbed his next smoking bomb up through the nearest gun-hatch, ten feet above him.
The grenade exploded inside the barque and blew the hatch faring off. A moment later, a much greater blast tore out. The flames of the bomb had touched off the powder in the gun bay. An entire section of the massive oak hull, around the gunport, blew outwards in a blizzard of fire and splinters. With it came the huge culverin itself, propelled by the blast, its carriage burning. It flew out into the air, as if it had taken flight, and crashed down onto the Safire’s mid-deck with huge force, rolling and coming to rest, smouldering. Some of Silke’s men ran forward with pails to douse it.
A great, gaping rent now showed in the side of the Demiurge at gun deck height.
“To it. To it!” Luka yelled, as the men-at-arms ran forward, through the clotting smoke, and hurled grapples and lines. There was no longer any need to brave the solid pavis and the defenders at the rail above. A much better access point had been created.
The Safire’s men-at-arms, with Luka at their head, swung across the gap and clambered in through the grossly-damaged section. The air was black with smoke and soot, and the dim gun deck was littered with debris, some of it human meat. The deck gang above fired down at the crossing party, and dropped some dead with their shots, but Silke’s calivers replied, smacking their bullets into the targette boards.