The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (45 page)

Rowan did not hear it when she reached the bottom of the companionway, nor when she entered the dark aft cabin. After a moment’s thought, she lay down in the bunk, its blankets still warm from Zenna’s body.

Tick
, came through the pillow.

She tossed off the cushion and laid her head directly on the mattress.

Tick-tick.

She had felt the sound through her hand on the bunk’s wooden edge. She laid her head directly on the wood, and pressed her ear tightly against it.

T-t-tick, tick
, and then the sound increased briefly, becoming a continual tapping, quiet and intimate, like the sound of winter sleet against the outside wall of the sleeping room in her childhood home. It faded again.

Beyond the open door, shadows shifted from a moving light. Rowan found Steffie in the passageway, shirtless, sleep-touseled, carrying a lantern. “Did you hear that?”

“It sounds like pebbles striking our hull.” Both paused to listen.

Nothing.

“Got pretty loud before, up front,” Steffie said. They went forward to the sail locker where Steffie had been sleeping. Rowan touched one of the bare ribs curving up the inside of the hull, then the wood between, then moved her hand lower, below the waterline, feeling the rhythm beneath her fingers become clearer. “Down.”

They climbed into the hold, Steffie lifting the lamp as Rowan sidled her way between the crates and barrels. Before she could reach the hull, the sound reappeared, now clearly audible, increasing: a continuous faint clatter, like hail. She stood puzzled, thinking, listening. The sound was louder toward the bow. “We’re passing through something . . .” The rough wood planking of the floor communicated it to her bare feet, as well: hundreds of tiny collisions.

“Stones, or something like,” Steffie commented.

“The sea’s too calm to throw up stones from the ocean floor,” Rowan said. With her entire body, she could feel the smoothness of the ship’s course. “And the seabed’s too far down for a current to do this.” Then: “Or it was a moment ago.” She scrambled back toward Steffie. “Up.”

Above, the eastern sky had lightened to dawn pearl. Zenna’s eyes were wide. “I’m feeling it through the tiller now.”

“Where’s the sounding line?” Rowan found it stowed in a compartment beneath the chart table. “We may have entered shallows.” She hurried to the foredeck, swung the weight, and let it fly ahead of the ship, let the line run hot through her fingers, ticking off the knots as it sank. Four, eight, twelve fathoms, and then the lead pointed straight down. “Deep water,” she called, not waiting for it to strike bottom. She pulled it in again, swung, let fly.

Steffie came up beside her. “Zenna says the ship’s getting sluggish.”

“I’m not finding shallow water here,” Rowan said, and tossed again. She felt the weight speeding downward as the line ran through her fingers— then stopped. The line fluttered loose in the breeze. “I’ve lost the weight.” She pulled in the line. Broken, at less than a fathom. She braced herself for a grounding, but none came.

The east had evolved a lemon haze, and the still-unrisen sun underlit the ragged lines of cloud overhead. The sea swells were deep and even. No shallow water would show a pattern like that.

Rowan returned to Zenna’s side. “Sluggish?”

“Just a bit.” Zenna was looking past Rowan, abstractedly; all her attention was on her hands. “Almost unnoticable . . . And I still feel those tiny stones.” She startled. “More,” she said; and an instant later the rattle rose loud enough to hear above deck.

Rowan strode to the starboard rail. “What
is
it?” Steffie was peering down along the hull. He shook his head, seeing nothing.

Rowan thought. “Get the net.”

Steffie fetched the hand net, swept it down into the waters and back on deck.

About fifty small brown cones, an inch or so in length, glittered wet in the young sunlight. Rowan bent close, prodded them with one finger.

She recalled Janus’s notation on the chart and laughed out loud. “It’s little snails!”

Zenna’s mouth twisted. “Little snails?”

“We’re sailing though a swarm of little snails.” There must have been thousands of them, to raise such a racket.

They were not any sort that Rowan had seen before. The shells seemed light, and did not spiral but grew straight out into a dull-pointed cone. Rowan picked one up. The shell had no door, and its inhabitant was cowering just within the entrance. As she watched, it experimentally extruded four veined fins, began waving them in a vain attempt to swim the air.

“Lot of fuss for little snails,” Steffie commented.

“How badly is the swarm interfering with our progress?” Rowan called to Zenna, placing the snail on Steffie’s upturned left palm. He poked at it curiously.

Zenna tested the tiller slightly, shook her head. “Not much. But I don’t like the feel of it. Here, you try it.” Rowan stepped over to her.

Steffie yelped.

Rowan turned back. He was shaking his hand. “Bugger
bit
me!”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. No!
Damn!
” He pounded the heel of his hand on the rail. “Won’t let go— ” His face was twisted in pain. He tried to pull at it with his right hand, cried out again, stopped, cursing and hissing. “It’s digging in— ”

Rowan rushed to him. “Hold still, let me see.” His hand was slick with blood. The cone seemed rooted to his flesh; she could not get a grip on it. Steffie was making wordless noises behind clenched teeth. Rowan pushed the side of the snail with her thumb; Steffie gasped and stumbled to his knees.

She pulled her sleeve over her hand and grasped, and pulled; Steffie shrieked. She squeezed hard, harder. The shell cracked. A tiny body writhed between her fingers; she crushed it.

Steffie gasped once, then relaxed, dropping to a seat on the deck, breathing through his open mouth, pale, wide-eyed.

Rowan knelt beside him and carefully extracted the creature. Within the wreckage of its body were four sharp spiraled spines, nearly an inch long, and a mouth ringed with tiny black teeth.

She considered it with disgust. “I hardly think,” she said, “that ‘Little Snails’ constitutes an adequate warning.”

A sharp whistle from Zenna. Rowan turned.

“I don’t like the look of that,” the younger steerswoman said, and pointed with her chin.

Rowan looked down. Within the net, all the cones were now upright.

She pushed at one with the toe of her boot. It was solidly attached. She picked up the net; it tore, and the snails remained, rooted to the deck.

She reversed the net and used the wood handle to crush the creatures, pounding and sweeping it along the deck, feeling each shell crack. Finished, she stooped down, finding the spiraled spines each drilled into the deck, some of the small mouths of the dying creatures still feebly grinding at the wood. She rose and exchanged a significant glance with Zenna. “Copper hull,” they said, simultaneously.

Neither magic nor mermaids protected these waters. Thousands of little snails, attaching to the hull of an unprotected ship, drilling into the wood, gnawing at it; then leaks, hull breaches, and weakened wood splintering from the pressure of the sea.

No ship entering these waters would survive; no ship would return to give warning to others. Only Janus knew how to protect his ship.

Steffie was still seated on the deck, nursing his hand, viewing the mass of crushed snails with disgust and suspicion. Rowan helped him to his feet. “Let’s go below and clean your hand.” She led him to the companionway, and followed him down toward the hold and the freshwater barrels.

With one hand still on the top rung, she stopped.

Freshwater. Barrels of it.

Crates of salt fish. Another of dried fruit. Three more barrels, of pickled pork. Bread, sacks of wheat and maize flour. Two sides of smoked beef. And water, especially water.

Weight.

A crew of three, not one; provisions for three, not one. Three times the weight Janus generally carried.

She opened her mouth, closed it. Out loud, she said, “How low are we riding?”

She hurried up again, went to the railing, looked down. “I can’t tell.”

Zenna was puzzled. “What’s wrong?”

The copper sheathing and the first foot of hull above it had both been painted black. Rowan could not tell where the copper ended: above the waterline or below.

A boat hook was stowed nearby. She grabbed it, reached down to drag it alongside the hull, meeting a multitude of small obstacles, the long wooden pole rattling in her hands.

Three long steps took her to Zenna’s side. She thrust the boat hook into Zenna’s hands, began lashing the tiller in place. “We’re riding low,” she began; but the other steerswoman needed no further explanation. Zenna lurched to the rail, leaned over, began thrusting and thrashing with the pole.

Rowan found Steffie in the hold by an open water barrel, a clean wet rag in one hand. He startled at Rowan’s arrival: she had jumped the last three feet. “Find something to throw overboard.”

“What?”

She grasped him by the arm, urgent. “We’re riding low. The top of the copper is below the water. The snails are attaching. They’ll eat through.”

He stood gape mouthed. “Oh, no.” He quickly tied the rag around his hand.

Rowan looked around, desperate. “What can we lose?” Not the freshwater. She pointed. “Can you handle those alone?”

The smoked beef. “No.”

“Then this.” A crate of salt fish. “Go.” She took another.

They flung them overboard, making splashes pitifully small. “More.” On the way back down, Rowan paused to enter the aft cabin, emerged with her sword and Zenna’s.

She passed the second sword to Steffie. “Use it to cut the beef in half.”

“Right.”

Rowan was about to follow him down but stopped: the cabin’s table, the two chairs.

She hacked and split them with her sword and feet, carried the shattered wood above and sent it over the side. Steffie reappeared, flung half a side of beef overboard.

“Here.” Zenna was at the chart table, taking the chart from its clips, stuffing it into her shirt. She banged one table leg with the boat hook, saying, “Get that,” and went back to the rail.

The table was bolted to the deck. Rowan retrieved her sword from the cabin, tearing off two locker doors to discard while she was there, returned above, set to hacking at the chart table’s legs. An axe would serve better, she thought. There was one aboard somewhere, but she could not stop to find it.

Steffie had sent all the smoked beef overboard and was now struggling with a barrel, which he had somehow got on deck. He winced from pain in his hand, but did not slack his efforts.

Shocked, Rowan spotted him. “What’s in that?” she called.

He thumped it with his good hand. “Nothing.” It went into the sea. “Used to be pork. Dumped it out on the floor.”

“Good thinking. Help me with this.” The chart table followed the barrel. “More.”

All food that had a container lost its container. Most of the loose plank floorboards of the hold were sent up, and over. Lockers and cabinets lost their doors. Rowan and Steffie wasted precious minutes determining that the brick cook-stove in the narrow galley could not be dismantled quickly. They set to work on the cupboards themselves, chopping them away from the walls; Steffie had found the axe.

Above, and overboard; and now Rowan could see two inches of cone-encrusted hull rising above the waterline. ‘

Zenna was at the taffrail. “Drop sails!” she called.

Rowan spun on her. “What? No, we should increase our speed, we need to get out of these waters— ”

“We’re going nowhere if we lose our rudder.” The rudder had been sheathed as well to the same level as the hull, no higher.

Rowan helped Zenna struggle with the lock pins. “Steffie, free the sheets.” By the time they wrestled the rudder up, the boom was swinging wide and loose, the mainsail and jib luffing. Steffie found another plank, and started using it to dislodge the visible snails from the hull.

The steerswomen considered the rudder. The snails had attacked it in a five-inch span across its width. “The ship needs to rise more.”

They hacked out the lockers in the cabin, and the bunk; and all the while, Rowan’s body and sailing instincts were warning her, over and over, that the ship was adrift, and that it mustn’t be, that it was dangerous. But there was no help for it, and the steerswoman clenched her teeth on the protest.

From above, a rattle, a thump, and the flooring perceptibly rose beneath her feet. She traded a wild glance with Steffie.

They hauled their wood above. “What was that?”

Zenna had worked her way to the bow. “I got rid of the anchor.”

Rowan quelled the shouting in the back of her mind. “Good.” She saved one shattered plank from the bunk, and used it to attack the snails on the starboard side.

Some she destroyed were immediately replaced by their fellows. “We still need to be lighter.”

“Can we lose that?” Steffie pointed: the skiff.