"This Forsaken Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kearney Paul)

SIMPLICITY ITSELF

Imagine five hundred great trees, embedded in the good earth of the world and watching some two centuries go by, in happiness and woe. War and peace, winter and summer, they are nothing but some thickening of the rings. And let us say these trees-a moderate wood-were cut down by men, and put aside for twenty-odd years, set on stilts to allow the air of another quarter-century to come at them. And after that, they were hewn, and sliced and steamed and nailed into something else. Something to last beyond the lives of the craftsmen who had wielded plane and adze and axe on their enduring flesh.

A man might say they were more than the sum of their parts.

The Revenant was a ship-rigged man-of-war of some three hundred tons-a vessel constructed to bear guns and the men who served them. Built out of black Kassic teak, she was broad in the beam, but with a fine, narrow entry that spoke of speed, and despite the fact that she was getting old now, even in the lives of ships, her timbers were still hard as iron, sound right through.

She had been afloat for the better part of eight decades. A thing of purity, of severe beauty, she had been built solely for the waging of war.

Such was the measure of her conception.

On her gun-deck were a dozen twelve-pound sakers, each nine feet long and a ton and a half in weight, whilst on her quarterdeck four two-pound swivel-guns protruded from her larboard and starboard bulwarks. To bear this mass of metal, she had been built with a pronounced tumblehome, which is to say that her hull widened as it approached the waterline, and in her hold there was room to provision her crew for a year or more.

That crew consisted of ninety-seven men, or things approximating men. Of those, over forty served the guns, some thirty the sails, and the rest were officers, warrant officers, and artisans of many trades. TheRevenant ’s needs were manifold. On board were carpenters, sailmakers, smiths, coopers, and a brace of ship’s cooks. Some of this assorted company knew elements of navigation, others could point and load a great gun, and yet more could fashion brand-new masts and spars out of raw wood. The ship’s company was a self-sufficient community in which every man had a place and a task to take his hand. A community that looked to one man alone for orders, and a direction in which to point this floating battery, this beautiful seaborne engine of destruction.

Elias Creed, second mate. A sturdily built man of medium height with a head and beard as brindled as that of a badger. One eyebrow was cloven by a skinned line, and more scars marked his wrists and ankles, the legacy of eleven years in the penal quarries of Keutta. A quiet man with dark, thoughtful eyes, his life had been spent as either pirate or convict. He stood now by the taffrail of the ship with an axe in his hand, ready to bring it down upon a taut cable, waiting for a word from his captain.

Peor Gallico, first mate. Nine feet tall, olive-green and long-fanged, the halftroll stood by his captain on the quarterdeck, fiddling with an earring. His legs were short, his immensely powerful torso long in compensation, the arms reaching to his knees and culminating in knotted fists as wide as shovels. In the deep-hollowed sockets below his bald forehead two jade-green eyes burned, the pupils lozenge-shaped, and when his tongue licked about the tusks protruding from his lips, it was black as that of a snake. Despite this, there was humor written across the halftroll’s face, a willingness to be pleased with the world. Humanity, compassion-etched across the face of a monster.

And finally the lord of this little wooden world, dwarfed by his towering first mate, and yet a tall man in his own right. Captain Rol Cortishane, a broad-shouldered, fair-haired fellow whose eyes were as cold as a northern sea in midwinter. There was something in his chiseled, wind-burnt face more unsettling than anything in the fearsome countenance of the halftroll. Those eyes had known murder, and would know it again.

They closed now, as if the vivid afternoon sun was too much for them, and the face aged for a moment, becoming that of an older, careworn man. A leadsman was at work in the forechains, calling out the depth of the water beneath theRevenant ’s keel with increasing urgency. It was a beautiful day, a stiff inshore breeze hastening the ship landward with steady ease.

Rol opened his eyes. Blinding bright, the sun bounced off the waves as they came jostling toward him. He blinked to ease their bitter light from his head and squeeze away the dregs of his thoughts. I sleep awake, he thought. More and more, I dream in daylight. What is it now, eight years? Enough. It must be enough.

Memory is the mind’s assassin. It will lie quiet for months, years, then sidle up quietly on a sunny day to plunge its knife deep. And no armor is proof against it.

Memory is the enemy of happiness.

He bared his teeth in the effort to wipe his mind free from the smear of his past, and the quartermaster at the wheel spoke to him with outright nervousness.

“Three fathoms, sir. They called three fathoms.”

“I heard the goddamned call, Morcam. Hold your course.”

TheRevenant cruised on implacably, the sea a hissing shimmer of sound as her beakhead cut through it. The Inner Reach, one of the ancient oceans of the world, deep and blue and wicked and entirely beautiful.

There was blood on Rol Cortishane’s face. It had stiffened into a mask, and it soaked his clothes, made black scimitars under his nails. Looking along the crimson sheen of the deck, he saw a severed hand lying there forgotten, browning in the sun. Momentarily, the violence of the morning came back, bright and unbelievable. As he shifted, easing his shoulders out from under the memory, his boot-soles came off the soaked deck-planking with little sucking rips of sound that made his stomach turn. His face never changed. Far astern, a pack of gulls shrieked greedily as they feasted on the corpses.

“Two fathoms and a half!” shouted the leadsman in the starboard forechains.

“We’ll scrape the arse out of her if we’re not careful,” Gallico said, his voice a deep burr.

Rol glanced aft, to where a tense group of seamen was standing with axes, ready to send the kedge plunging from the quarter and bring them to an undignified halt. Elias Creed stood amongst them, blood matting his brindled hair, and he nodded gravely as he caught Rol’s eye.

“We’ll rein her in quick enough, if it comes to that,” Rol said. And he managed something like a smile for Gallico.

Forward of them, the men stood in the waist and upon the fo’c’sle like things frozen, listening for the yell of the leadsman or his mate as they swung out the tallow-bottomed lead and felt for the bottom, which was running under the keel of the ship at a good five knots. Shoal water-treacherous sandbank-riddled bad ground with the rocks they called the Assassins somewhere in its midst. And the tide was ebbing.

“Bring up the prisoners,” Rol ordered.

The master-at-arms darted below. There were muffled shouts and oaths from belowdecks, a cry of pain.

“On deck there!” the lookout bellowed from the foretop. “There she lies, anchored behind the headland dead ahead!”

“Two fathom,” the leadsman called. Twelve feet of water under their keel.

“All hands to take in sail,” Rol said. “Gallico, prepare to back topsails.”

“About bloody time.”

They staggered as the ship touched ground under them, the keel grating on rock with a groan that reverberated through the very soles of their feet.

“Let go the kedge!” Rol shouted, and at once Elias and his party hacked through the cable suspending the anchor aft. The iron kedge fell from the taffrail and plunged into the clear water below with a spout of foam. Seconds later the ship slowed.

“Back topsails!” Gallico called, and the topmen braced the yards right round so that the wind was pressing on the forward face of the sail, pushing theRevenant backward. The ship came to a full stop. Again, that awful grinding under their feet as the keel touched submerged rock. The ship’s company seemed to flinch at the sensation, like a man pricked with a needle.

“Set a spring to the kedge,” Rol said calmly. “Bring us broadside-on to that ship.”

“Deck there!” The lookout again. “She’s unfurled Bionese colors.”

“As if we needed to be told,” Gallico growled, the green gleam of his eyes sharpening with malice. “Think she’ll come out?”

“Probably. In any case, I intend to persuade her.”

“Prisoners, sir,” Quirion, the master-at-arms, said. He and his mates were shoving half a dozen bloodied men in the livery of Bionese marines toward the starboard gangway.

One of them held his head higher than the rest, and he had a ragged frill of lace at his throat. “What are you going to do with us?” he shouted up at the quarterdeck. “That’s one of our vessels out there, a man-of-war. If you harm us it’ll-”

“It’ll do nothing,” Elias Creed snapped at him, joining Rol and Gallico at the quarterdeck rail. “Except meet you in hell.”

“Clear for action,” Rol said quietly.

His command was a thing of habit. TheRevenant was largely prepared for battle. The port-lids were open, tompions out, and the sakers still warm, but inboard. Now the gun-crews began hauling their massive charges up to the bulwark with a deafening thunder of groaning wood and squealing blocks. The ship tilted under their feet as her equilibrium shifted.

“Unfurl the Black Flag.”

It snapped out from the maintopgallant backstay, a long, shot-torn streamer of sable without device. No quarter asked or given, it said. Few had the gall to fly such a flag in this day and age.

“Now lash the prisoners to the muzzles of the guns,” Rol said, still in the same quiet tone.

Quirion and his mates looked blank. “Skipper?”

“You heard me, Quirion.”

There was a short pause before discipline kicked in, but despite that, it took the prisoners a few moments to understand. They did not begin to struggle until they were lowered over the ship’s side by their bound wrists. Then they began to squeal and wriggle. The saker-crews reached through the gunports and attached lengths of cordage to the writhing men’s waists, then pulled them taut so that the round muzzle of every twelve-pounder was snug against the spine of a kicking, screaming human being.

“Deck there!” the lookout called, high above the squalor of the sights below. “She’s clearing for action, eight guns a side. They look like nine-pounders to me.”

Gallico ripped his gaze away from the pinioned men who now lined the side of the ship. “We’re in range,” he said.

“All the better. Gun-crews! Wait for my command, and then fire from number one, a rippling broadside.”

There was a moment of quiet when even the babbling of the prisoners died away. Rol caught the eye of a youngster tied to number four, in the waist on the starboard side. The saker bent his spine like a bow and there were tears and snot streaming down his face. He was fifteen years old if he was a day. All about his eyes there was a line of white.

“Fire!”

The six guns of the starboard broadside thundered out one after another; and as they did, a heavy white smoke spumed up, to be blown away to leeward. In the smoke were darker things, spat out of the muzzles of the sakers, and something like a fine warm spray drifted about the decks of theRevenant. Rol wiped his sticky face and peered landward to see the fall of shot. He saw splinters explode up out of the hull of the enemy man-of-war-good practice, at this range-and the ball from number six smashed plumb into the mizzen-top, bringing a clatter of rigging and timber down onto the enemy ship’s quarterdeck.

“Fire as they bear!” he shouted. “Fire at will!”

The severed limbs of the unfortunate prisoners were cut loose and the gun-crews began to work their pieces in earnest. When the recoil threw the sakers back from the bulwarks they sponged out the barrels to stop any burning remnants within from setting off the next charge prematurely, then rammed home cloth cartridges of black powder, followed by iron twelve-pound balls, and topped off with wads of cloth which would tamp down the explosion and make it more intense. The guns were hauled back up to the ship’s side again and a spike was stabbed through each touch-hole to pierce the cartridge within the barrel. The touch-holes were then filled with loose small-grain powder. The gun was elevated and traversed with wooden wedges and iron crowbars according to the grunted word and gestures of the gun-captain, and when it bore on its target he slapped the touch-hole with a length of burning match. The powder there ignited, in turn setting off the cartridge in the base of the barrel. The explosion, confined by the heavy bronze, propelled the cannonball, wad and all, out of the saker’s muzzle with incredible force-the fall of shot could be followed, a dark blur, no more, if one had quick eyes-and then the process began again. The Revenants were a veteran crew, and could get off three aimed broadsides in six minutes.

The enemy ship was firing back now. Some of her nine-pound balls fell wide, showering the side of the ship with spray. Others passed through the rigging with a low howl, slicing ropes, punching round holes in the sails. One struck the hull somewhere amidships, but with that caliber and at this range theRevenant ’s timbers shrugged off the impact as a bull might twitch his hide under the bite of a gnat.

Six broadsides, with every shot aimed low into the hull of the enemy. Over four hundred pounds of iron hurled across a thousand yards of sea.

“She’s slipped her anchor-she’s making along the coast,” one of the quartermasters shouted.

“Damn her. Keep firing,” Rol spat.

The wind veered in a burgeoning wave of hot air off the land and theRevenant began to swing on her spring-cabled anchor. One moment her broadside was pointed squarely at the enemy vessel, and the next she had yawed under the press of air and was presenting her vulnerable stern, the soft spot of every ship.

“Gallico, get a party to haul on that goddamned spring! Bring us back round!”

“She’s taken the wind,” the lookout shouted, hoarse as a crow, “she’s coming out. Deck there-”

A full broadside lashed up the length of the ship, dismembering men, smashing blocks and tackle to matchwood, slicing rigging, sending wicked chunks of wood flying, as deadly as iron. The carriage of the starboard number-three gun was blown to pieces, her crew scattered in a bloody mess as far aft as the ship’s bell. The party working on the cable to the spring was shattered. Rol saw a forearm travel the length of the ship and disappear over the fo’c’sle. The wind of one ball jerked him aside as it missed him by a hair.

“A fair return,” Gallico said, knuckling blood from his face and leaving it streaked bright as paint. “Come now, pull on this bloody cable-am I to do it all myself?” About him, his crew gathered to haul on the three-inch tarred rope once more, like men drunk or stunned.

Blood poured out of the scuppers of the enemy ship, a red foam in her wake as she picked up speed, the offshore breeze now on her larboard beam. Her staysails were unfurled, as the courses would hardly draw with this wind-they were having trouble with the mizzen. TheRevenant ’s guns must have shattered the yard.

A huge shadow fell over theRevenant, a choking fog that was the powder-smoke of the man-of-war’s broadside, drifting on the wind like a curse. Rol could taste it acrid on his tongue. His eyes smarted.

Kier Eiserne, the ship’s carpenter, hauled himself up the companionway and sketched a greeting in the air with one fist, his words drowned out by the thunder of theRevenant ’s return broadside, largely impotent-the ebbing tide was working against Gallico and his two dozen straining at the spring. They were coming round, but slowly. The tide rushing out of the bay was pushing the ship clockwise, with the spring-anchor at her stern the pivot upon which she turned.

The powder-cloud passed over, and they were in brilliant sunshine again.

“…below the waterline, but we’ve plugs in place,” Kier was saying. “I need men for the pumps.” His wedge-shaped face twitched with worry for the ship’s bowels.

“What’s she making?” Rol demanded.

“Three foot in the well and gaining maybe a foot a glass. It’s not the shot-holes-she must have been pierced when she touched the rocks.”

“Can you get at the leak?”

“I need more men, to shift the water-casks. It’s somewhere under the main hold.”

“Damn the water-casks. Pump them out, or break them up if you have to, but get that leak, Kier. I’ll give you more men when I can.”

“Aye, sir.”

Creed appeared at Rol’s side. “That son of a bitch is changing course. He’s going to come round east of the Assassins. He’s coming out.”

Rol considered. There was a momentary lull in the tremendous hammering of broadsides as both crews concentrated on the maneuvering of their vessels. He lifted his head-how blue the sky was-and felt the wind. It was still veering. Northeast, and soon to be east-nor’east. Once it came round the tail-end of the Assassins, the enemy ship would have it on the stern-and she would be upwind of the pinionedRevenant. She would have the weather-gage. Rol swore quietly.

“Slip that blasted cable, Elias, but buoy the anchor. We may come back for it.”

“Aye, sir.” Obviously relieved, Elias ran aft and began shouting at Gallico and the men hauling there.

The rope was cut. They would need a power of ship’s stores to make up for today’s profligacy-if they made it through today. The end of the cable had been attached to a longline and buoyed with a pair of pigs’ bladders, which now bobbed astern in some derision. TheRevenant took the wind at once. It was on the larboard quarter. “Gallico!” Rol called. “Mizzen-course and jibs. Elias, reload and run out the guns but hold your fire. Morcam, pass the word for the gunner.”

Once again the beauty of the day struck him. The white spangle of the sunlight on the sea, the honey-colored stone of the Oronthir coast, now full astern. The sand-martins carving gleeful arcs out of the air.

Beneath Rol’s feet, theRevenant came round at last, her fragile stern hidden from the enemy guns. Now, let’s see your nine-pounders break these scantlings, Rol thought with a jet of hatred.

The gunner, John Imbro. A burly native of far-off Vryheyd, he had a full yellow beard and a pink-bald scalp. When drunk he would declare himself born with a head upside down. His face shone with sweat as if greased, except for the matt-black smudges in the sockets of his eyes.

“John, how are we for shot and powder?”

“Enough for another four broadsides, sir-”

“What? Ran’s arse-”

“The leak below got into the powder store and has soaked all but two barrels of best white long-grain. It’ll be a week’s work ashore to dry out the rest.”

“There’s nothing else? What about the fine stuff?”

“Oh, it’s still snug and dry-but it’ll only be of use in swivels and sidearms. Cram it into a twelve-pounder and you may as well fart at yonder bastards.”

“Do what you can, John.”

The gunner stumped away unhappily.

Rol studied the enemy man-of-war. Some eight hundred yards away, it was now off the larboard quarter, upwind and running out its guns. They were slow to reload-theRevenant ’s earlier broadsides must have thinned out the crew. Rol turned to the quartermasters at the wheel. “South-southeast, as sharp as you can.”

The wheel spun, creaking, and the ship’s beakhead made the turn to larboard as another broadside thundered out of the enemy vessel. One second, two, and then the nine-pound balls were whistling about their ears, chopping blocks out of the rigging, ripping through the courses. A loudclang as one clipped the bow anchor and whipped across the fo’c’sle. Someone screamed forward, a hoot more of outrage than of pain.

“Hold your fire!” Rol bellowed at the gun-crews in the waist. Four broadsides. What to do with them?

“We could make a run for it. No shame in that-it’s been a bloody morning.” This was Gallico, at Rol’s side once more.

“No; that’s to leave the job half done. And who’s to say we mauled him badly enough to stop him following? No-we must fight it out, Gallico.”

“We’ll board, then.”

Rol caught his first mate’s eye, though he had to crane his neck to do so. He smiled bleakly. “That’s the way of it. Best get the arms chests into the waist. All the pistols we have. And one more crew to help with the swivels.” He paused. “What about our people?”

“Six dead, or will be before the day is out,” the halftroll said tersely. “Another thirteen taken below.”

“We must get ourselves a surgeon, one of these days.”

“Aye. Giffon can take off a leg quick enough, but he’s all thumbs when it comes to the fine work.”

The two ships were on parallel courses now, their bows pointed toward the open sea. The wind had veered round to east-nor’east and was still freshening, as it did this time of year, pushed out to the ocean by warm masses of clouds forming inland. Rol estimated they were making a good six knots, though he was not going to check for sure; the ship’s company was busy enough. Under Gallico, Creed, and Fell Amertaz, the bosun, they worked to splice and knot the loose-flying rigging, scatter the deck with more sand, replace the match-coils that had burned out, and bring up the last of the powder-cartridges from the powder-room, where Imbro and his mates were scooping and weighing the deadly stuff into the cloth bags which would be thrust down the gaping maws of the guns.

Four broadsides.

“He’s packing on more sail, skipper,” Morcam said from the wheel. Rol looked back over the shattered taffrail. Sure enough, their enemy was unfurling topsails, topgallants, even weather studding-sails. They would prove awkward if he had to fire his windward broadside.

“He’s a bloody-minded bastard, I’ll give him that.”

“They’re getting rid of their dead,” said one of the swivel-gunners. The men on the quarterdeck went silent, watching. Rol counted twenty-six splashes in the pink wake of the enemy. “Morcam,” he said. “Jig your steering. Put a few nicks in her wake, like we’re having trouble with the rudder.”

Morcam grinned. “Aye, sir.”

“Gallico!”

“What now, damn it?”

“Make like a winged duck. Spill a little wind. Lose us a few knots. Elias, get the boarders out of sight in the waist. Four broadsides when I give the word, and then we board her in the smoke.” Elias nodded.

They ran on, less swiftly now. The topmen were loosening the braces, letting the yards jink and swing in the wind. The sails cracked and boomed as the air behind them spilled round their slack leeches and clews.

Rol felt Fleam stir at his hip; she knew what was coming. He set his palm on the pommel of the scimitar and felt the trembling eagerness that ran right through the blade. As always, something of that bloodlust communicated itself to him, a momentary, dizzying mote of pleasure.

“She’s coming up hand over fist, skipper,” Morcam said. “Seems she has the same idea as us.”

“Bionese,” Gallico said, and spat over the bulwark.

The enemy had cleared away his chasers and now they were firing deliberately, first the larboard, then the starboard. He had altered course two, three points, and was barely two cables away. Rol could see the crowd of Bionese marines packed together on his fo’c’sle, armor winking in the sun. Bionari men-of-war carried large contingents of marines when they were not going far foreign; they trusted their soldiers more than their sailors.

“Morcam, when I give the word, hard a larboard. Gallico, at the same time, back topsails. Elias, wait for my command.” The air seemed to crackle in the confines of the ship, a tenseness that showed in the whites of men’s eyes. Rol breathed in deeply, watching his enemy, taking in the wind, the swell, the swaying statues arrayed about the remaining guns, the sweat glimmering in the pleats of their backbones. He saw fragments of timber and wreckage drift by the side of theRevenant and realized they had retraced their steps all the way out to the scene of the first battle of the morning. A troop-transport, shot to pieces even as its passengers came sculling in the ship’s boats for theRevenant in a desperate attempt to take her hand-to-hand. A few bodies still littered the swells of the Inner Reach, though most had sunk like stones. What kind of vainglorious fool would wear steel armor aboard ship?

A second lot of vainglorious fools was almost upon them.

“Hard a larboard,” he said to Morcam. A nod was enough for Gallico. The deck tilted inboard under their feet as the ship came round. They could hear the rudder groan and the tiller-ropes creak as they fought the pressure of the water beneath them. The enemy warship’s beakhead was now pointed directly at their side. Gallico’s topmen backed topsails and the wind took the ship back so dramatically that many of the crew were staggered. The yards complained and flexed, but nothing gave.

“Gun-crews-fire!” Rol shouted.

The five remaining sakers of the broadside bellowed out in one terrific roar, the knees of the ship groaning at the tons of iron blasted backward, only to be brought up short by the deep twang of the breeching.

“Reload, reload, reload,” Rol was repeating childishly. He peered through the powder-smoke and saw the enemy ship bearing down on them like an appalled giant. She had begun to yaw, but then had fallen off. Her fo’c’sle was a slaughterhouse, scarlet remnants of her marines hanging from the very yards and smeared all over the forecourse.

The Revenants got in one more broadside at pistol-shot. Rol saw the Bionese ship’s foremast stagger, then it came down over her chasers. One of her knightheads had been blasted clean away. She had slowed, but was still coming on.

“Gallico, weather gangway!” Rol shouted, drawing Fleam for the second time that day and leaping down from the quarterdeck into the mad fury of the gun-crews in the waist.

“Give her two more, lads-then join Gallico and me on the gangway. Point them low, into the hull. Rake the bastards!”

A hoarse cheer-or rather, a collective growl-went up. Rol clapped Elias Creed on the shoulder, missed, and ended up slapping his face. Laughing, he ran up to the gangway, where he found his first mate and a dozen others who were firing pistols at the enemy bows, then ducking down to reload them with an absurdly childish air of mischief.

“Hold on now,” Gallico said.

The Bionese ship struck amidship, and theRevenant shuddered at the impact. But it was not a wicked blow, more like a man whose shoulder has been jostled in the street. They were a taller, weightier ship than the enemy, and theRevenant ’s tumblehome created a gap between the shot-splintered bows of the Bionese and her own bulwarks.

Two more broadsides, the swivels barking their two-pound loads of grapeshot and shrapnel-anything their gunners could find to cram into them. The snapping rattle of pistols fired gleefully at anything that moved. The enemy maintop-mast came down, and then the mizzen-they must have been almost shot through earlier in the fight.

The sakers stopped firing. Their crews boiled up out of the waist onto the gangway, yelling, eyes red as cherries, faces smoke-black. Some seventy Revenants paused on the larboard gangway of their ship and stared down at the enemy man-ofwar, treading on one another’s toes and wincing at the jab of neighbors’ cutlasses.

“Revenants! Follow me!” Rol shrieked, holding Fleam as upright as a banner. With a roar, the crowd of men scrambled over the side of their ship and down to the bows of the pitching enemy vessel. Gallico made fast a grapnel in the gammoning of her broken bowsprit. Men panted and shouted and gouged bloody slivers out of their hands as they climbed over the wrecked headrails, through gaping holes with fringes of sharp wood that tore the shirts from their backs. They swarmed over the fo’c’sle of the Bionese vessel like a plague, wide, bloodshot eyes starting out of their heads.

Nothing moved in all that tangled mass of wreckage and shredded cordage and shattered spars. All along the decks, flesh, wood, and iron had been beaten into one unholy, pulped mess from which trickled streams of blood that brightened the brown stains venting from the scuppers. The enemy vessel was a dead thing, which even the wind could no longer stir to life. The Revenants stared around themselves in heavy wonder, as if uncertain as to who could have brought such a thing to pass. A silence fell, broken only by the weary creak and groan of seaborne wood, the death rattle of a tall fighting ship. There was a moment almost of reverence.

“This,” Rol said, “is victory.”

Two