The Iron Ship (65 page)

Shouting came from the invisible prow, loud and frightened. Other voices relayed it, more than those given the task.

“The king! The Drowned King!”

“Fuck it, Heffi, you spoke too soon. Ardovani, come with me.”

“I will join you momentarily, goodfellow,” he said, and headed for the steps at the back of the wheelhouse that led below.

Trassan rushed from the wheelhouse, pushing past the sailor at the door. A commotion was breaking out on deck.

Heffi followed Trassan out into the fog, stopping at the railing to the balcony round the wheelhouse while Trassan took the stairs to the main deck three at a time.

“Where the hells do you think you’re going? Wait for the damned emissary!”

“What if there isn’t one? Get Bannord, Iapetus and my brother up here!”

“Trassan!” yelled Heffi. “Let us handle this!”

Trassan ignored him.

The ship’s bells rang, calling everyone to arms. Bannord was already on deck, the ship’s twenty marines behind him, all armed to the teeth. They each carried a fusil, a pistol and a heavy falchion. They wore jerkins of thick anguillon leather, and half-sets of plate—spalders, vambraces, open faced helmets and a light breastplate.

“He’s showed up then?” said Bannord, falling in next to Trassan. His men jogged behind them.

“Looks like it.”

“What are your plans?” Bannord grinned. Trassan got the impression Bannord was enjoying himself.

“Spread out, keep a look out. Don’t fire until I say.”

“Sounds good to me.” Bannord slowed. “Fan out! Firing positions!” Trassan had allowed Bannord to choose his own men, and he seemed to know his work. They needed little direction. They took their positions, rested their fusils and aimed out across the water. The third and second mates went about the ship followed by two sailors carrying sword chests, distributing weapons among the ratings.

The crew was experienced, and prepared quickly. The activity of their preparation had been a welcome break to the eerie silence of the sea fog, but it ceased and the quiet enveloped the
Prince Alfra
again.

They reached the prow. Trassan slipped over, slamming painfully onto the slick wood. He limped hurriedly to the front of the ship. Freezing water droplets coated his skin and clothes.

The lookout had a ironlock pistol in his hand. “Goodfellow,” he said. “Below.”

Twenty yards out, the sea fizzed and heaved, a spout bubbling ten feet ten feet high. Waves slapped against the ship’s hull. Trassan looked down to see bodies in the water, dozens of them. Their flesh was the bloated, fish-white of the drowned. Dead eyes stared back at him. Pallid hands pawed at the sides of the ship.

“My congratulations, goodfellow,” the sailor said. “If this were a floatstone ship, they’d be up over the side and among us already.”

“Aye,” said Bannord. “That’ll buy us a bit of time.”

“You’re not optimistic.”

“A realist, my friend. The Drowned King is a slippery fucker. No pun intended,” said Bannord.

The water burst outward. A giant emerged from the ocean, water streaming from its face. A crown of broken wooden spars and shattered floatstone crowned him. A hundred drowned bodies made up the face, packed together so that their slimy flesh formed one mass, but individual limbs, heads and gleaming bone could be discerned. Long, rank kelp made hair and bearded his lips and chin. Up and up the giant rose, revealing shoulders comprised of many dead men. His chest was a pair of whale carcasses, furred white with rotting blubber, hagfish hanging from their ragged skin so they resembled exposed, diseased lungs. The hull of a wooden Ocerzerkiyan corsair made up part of its belly. Its arms were huge, biceps comprised of dead seamen, pulling as if still at the oars as they flexed, tendons were anguillons, muscles tight knots of fish skeletons. Hands unfurled, each finger the corpse of a drowned man.

The giant ceased to rise when it was half clear of the water, its legs and lower belly still hidden by the sea. Water poured from cracks in its composite flesh, fish and juvenile anguillons slipping back into the sea. Putrid air wafted over the deck, the briny sweet stench of waterlogged meat.

Aarin joined his brother and Bannord, Iapetus timid behind him. Ardovani came a moment later, carrying a magister’s weapon, a large gun of copper and brass, set with diamond down the length of the barrel, yet lacking a hole in its muzzle.

“Go and tell Heffi to get the engines ready,” said Trassan to a rating. The man fled astern, grateful to be free of the horror unfolding at the prow.

“The King of the Drowned,” said Aarin. “Every unghosted ever lost at sea, made one.”

This hideous patchwork of a thousand stolen lives towered over the
Prince Alfra
. The eyes, when they opened, only they proved to be the king’s own.

Eyelids made of stolen arms parted. A cold, green light shone from within. Four corpses made his lips. These flexed, parting to show a mouth full of stacked skulls arranged to resemble teeth.

“You trespass in the realm of the drowned,” said the king. A foetid wind blew his words over the ship. “You break the treaty between the Undersea Kingdom and the Kingdom of the Isles.”

“Not so!” shouted Trassan, fighting to keep the tremor of fear from his voice. “I have here a right of passage signed by Prince Alfra of Karsa himself.”

He held it up in a shaking hand. In the swell below, more dead pressed themselves against the ship, beating ineffectually against its unbreakable hull.

“And you, priest of the dead, your kind is forbidden crossing of our domain.”

“I have the sigil of the Dead God,” said Aarin. “I invoke my right to cross to the Final Isle.” The iron medallion flashed in his palm, with the other he scattered silver into the water. “My offering.”

The Drowned King reached out a vile hand. The dead men of his fingers unfurled, reaching for the paper with their own rotting digits. The one serving as the king’s forefinger snatched the paper, and lifted it to empty eye sockets. The corpse dropped the document, and was withdrawn into a fist. The arm lifted back.

“Permission is not granted. We were not consulted.”

“The paper is in order,” said Trassan.

“We were not consulted. The agreement is void. By ancient treaty, the priest’s badge and silver buys his passage, your paper does not buy yours. You cannot pass. Your ship is ours. Your lives are ours.” The water surged before the king, bearing moaning dead halfway up the side of the
Prince Alfra
before sucking them away.

“Stand ready!” shouted Bannord.

“Heffi!” called Trassan. “Get us out of here.”

The Drowned King surveyed the ship. “Time marches on. The art of the living increases. Your ship is mighty, your weapons grow deadlier. But our armies are legion.”

“You cannot stop me,” said Trassan. “Let us pass.”

“Wrong. We will not allow it.”

The king drew back his arm, and swung it at the deck. The gestalt limb smashed through rigging and shattered spars. Sailors screamed as they were hit by falling wreckage.

“He cannot hurt the hull,” said Trassan.

“I do not think that is his intention,” said Aarin.

Like a fishing boat’s net opening, the arm split, sending corpses skidding all across the deck.

“Holy mother fucking hordes of lost gods!” said Bannord. “Open fire!”

His men wasted no time, the sailors were only slightly behind. Guns banged and glimmer bullets hissed in the fog.

“Brother!” cried Aarin. The king aimed a second fist at the prow. The arm broke over the railings. Dead men rained into the sea at either side, but well over a dozen sprawled about the foredeck, knocking Trassan and Iapetus to the planking. The dead haltingly got to their feet, teeth gnashing. Rusty swords and knives were plucked from belts by decayed fingers.

One of the Drowned King’s subjects rose over Trassan. Aarin unflinchingly clapped his hand to the thing’s head, whispering words only meant to be spoken at the ghosting. A feeble shade warbled its way upwards, and the corpse collapsed.

“I can’t do that for all of them!” shouted Aarin over the report of gunfire.

“What do I do?” yelled Trassan.

“Put father’s fencing lessons to practice! Draw your bloody sword, you fool!”

Trassan snapped out of his shock and did as Aarin said.

Battle raged all across the ship. Ladders of corpses hung over the side of the boat, allowing those dead in the water to clamber upwards. With a booming hoot of the whistle, the engines engaged, paddlewheels slicing soft bodies into soup. The ship leapt forward, but they were already close to being overrun. The Drowned King laughed at their attempts to flee and toppled forward, his great head and shoulders bursting apart amidships, reinforcing the rotting boarding party as the ship pulled away.

Ardovani’s weapon made a deafening noise. A wide beam of golden energy burst from the end of the gun, scything down a half dozen of the unliving. Bannord hacked the head from a drowned sailor wrestling with Iapetus and hauled the slime-covered mage to his feet.

Trassan hacked and shoved at the unliving. Together with Bannord and Aarin’s efforts, they created a small circle in the unliving. Weapons rang, guns fired, sailors and marines cursed and swore, but the dead were eerily silent.

“Do something!” screamed Trassan at Iapetus.

“I... I... can’t,” said the mage.

Aarin grabbed another dead man, laying him to rest with a hurried whisper. “Now is not the time for a crisis of confidence!”

“I...”

Ardovani let off another shot with his weapon, cooking rotting meat. He shouldered it and grabbed Iapetus.

“You don’t have to do it.” Ardovani glanced at Aarin.

“I... I suppose not,” said Iapetus.

“Help the Guider! Now then!” said Ardovani. “Keep them back from the mage!”

The circle pressed smaller and smaller. Bannord’s gun barked one last time and he threw it down, pulling out his sword. He swore as he cleaved at the dead, the steel sticking. With a boot to the chest of his opponent, he tugged it free.

“It is like hacking at clay!”

Trassan stabbed again and again at a dead man, but his sabre had little effect until he shoved the corpse back and gained space to split its skull.

Iapetus stood totally still, his eyes closed.

“What the hells is he doing?” he shouted.

“Working!” called Ardovani. He fired again, but the gun was wrestled from his arms. Trassan looked down in horror; the sundered limbs of the dead were flopping across the deck, scrabbling for his feet.

All of a sudden, Aarin’s voice became deafeningly loud. His whispered guiding amplified a hundredfold, cutting through battle and fog alike. A silver ring of magical energy emanated from him, boiling the fog off in burst of multi-coloured steam. Where it struck the dead, they dropped instantly to the deck.

With a terrific howl, the trapped spirits of two hundred drowned men went skyward. Trassan felt his own soul lift, desperate to be free. A dark sky roared into being over him, alive with green lightning and seething faces. With energy born of terrible panic, he fought to keep hold of his flesh, and the vision vanished. Not all the living were so lucky, their ghosts racing into the afterlife with the Drowned King’s slaves.

The bodies fell as one, leaving the crew reeling. They clutched at their chests and heads, some weeping at the glimpse of the afterlife each and every one had experienced.

Trassan leaned against the foremast, bile in his mouth. He spat. Aarin had collapsed on the deck. Ardovani attended to him. Bannord was gathering his men, checking their wounds. Sailors stood in disbelief. Ishmalani knelt in the mulch of flesh and blood, kissed the icons about their necks, and pressed their heads to the deck in thanks heedless of the filth.

The
Prince Alfra
steamed ahead at full speed, exhaust from the stacks sending the chill mist awhirl. The fog ahead thinned. The sun appeared, wan but growing brighter.

A furious cry pierced the fogbank, but the ship was swifter than the king’s wrath, and presently the sounds of more natural seas returned.

Vols Iapetus sat on the deck, his suit besmirched with unspeakable filth.

“I didn’t know I had it in me,” he said, and fainted dead away.

CHAPTER FIFTY

The Darkling Triumphant

I
T HAD BEEN
a long winter, and Guis was glad it was over. He arrived back in Karsa two weeks after his brother had departed. He could have been there, he supposed, but had made his excuses, unwilling to face a difficult farewell, his mother, or anything else to do with his family.

For many days the sky had been clean and blue, free for a time of pollution from the foundries, and his mood had improved. The sunlight had a lucid quality lacking at other times of the year. Bright and clear, it sparkled upon windows and water droplets, fragmented into discreet rainbows. After so long in the dark, Guis’s eyes were refreshed. He saw the sunshine as a newborn might, or a prisoner long kept from the day; as a glorious thing, notable in itself. Soon enough he would come to forget its miraculousness, the light of the sun would diminish in glory to mere illumination. At best it would warm him, at worst it would irritate eyes tired by late nights and endless penwork. But for now it brought prickles of joy to his face. He rolled up his sleeves to feel it more, disdainful of the disapproving expressions of others. With great disregard for convention he hooked his finger into his coat collar and swung it over his shoulder.

“Let the others sweat and suffer, eh Tyn?”

“Yes master,” said Tyn grouchily. Its long nose quivered as it sniffed the air. Their reflections warped and danced alongside them as they walked along a row of grand shop windows.

“You can’t fool me, Tyn,” said Guis. “This weather raises your spirits as much as it does mine.”

“I think of the forest, and I lament, master,” it said.

“Yes, well. Let’s enjoy the rising sap and budding leaves here, eh? Let me buy you something. There’s a seller there with apples.

“Last year’s,” sniffed Tyn. “Wrinkly.” But he did not spurn his when Guis bought one for each of them. The stallholder looked at Tyn warily.