Chapter Eighteen

Ryan and Donfil both jerked awake at the grating sound of bolts being kicked open. The hatch was lifted, and they were blinded by a flood of bright sunshine.

Callused hands reached down and tugged them out of the rope locker. First the Apache, then Ryan Cawdor, were heaved into the sunlight, onto the scrubbed white planks of the deck.

Ryan stretched, drawing in deep breaths of the bitingly fresh air, feeling it clear away the last shreds of the knockout drug. There was a boisterous wind blowing, and he could see the gray-green waves as they rolled under the bow of the ship. There were men all around, but Ryan ignored them, looking beyond their heads, over the bulwarks, scanning the horizon slowly, checking out the vessel.

Donfil was doing the same, straining on the tips of his toes, using his extra foot of height, both of them reaching the same conclusion.

There wasn't even a blur of land to be seen anywhere. The sea stretched in all directions, marred only by an occasional white horse of tossed spray. From the angle of the sun, it was toward the evening side of the afternoon, the shadows spreading out from their bare feet.

Ryan's guess was that they must have sailed before the dawn, slipping their moorings and sliding, ghostlike, through the misty harbor of Claggartville.

"Seen enough?"

The speaker was one of the men who'd been sitting near the door of the Rising Flukes the previous evening. He held a short, knotted length of rope in his right hand, and he was swinging it against his left palm, eliciting a solid thwacking sound.

"Yeah," Ryan said.

"Thou didst take the life from Jonas Clegg, didst thou not?"

"Yeah," Ryan repeated, sizing up the quality of the opposition. It looked as if most of the crew had gathered to haul them out of their prison. There were more than twenty men there, with a fair mix of sizes, ages and races. The one thing they all had in common was they were tough, weathered men.

Ryan wouldn't really have expected any different. He guessed that a whaling ship, especially with Pyra Quadde as skipper, was probably about as hard as a war wag.

"Jonas had sailed many leagues with us."

"Way I heard it, he's still sailing. Around the harbor. Less he's sunk into the mud by now."

"Think that's funny?"

"No." Ryan shook his head. "I don't think a chilling's ever funny."

Donfil was staring up at the mast, watching its slow, pitching roll. His face was completely blank, almost as if he'd put himself into a kind of trance. Ryan had seen Krysty do something similar.

A short man with a white scar that tugged at the corner of his mouth poked Ryan in the back with the end of a belaying pin. "Know what thou'rt here for, outlander?"

"To give Pyra Quadde a chance of revenge."

It wasn't the reply that the sailor had expected, and his voice showed it, "Oh, yeah. That's right. But it's Captain Quadde, or ma'am, or you'll get chilled quicker than yesterday."

"Very dim, it be. Very dim," another man said in a tiny chattering voice. He was well over six feet in height, but his head seemed only the size of a large apple, so out of proportion was it. "The body'll rot, but the soul rolls along. Like the fifth wheel upon a wagon, shipmates."

"Ignore him," said the man with the rope's end in his fist. "Jehu has but one oar in the water, if thou takest my meaning."

There was a sudden silence, broken only by the tapping of a cane on the deck. Ryan could hear the far-off crying of gulls that trailed in the wake of the whaling ship. The whole vessel creaked as timber chafed against timber, spars moving, cords and cables tugging. The wind was whistling gently through the rigging of the Salvation.

Ryan wondered whether these might be the last sounds he would ever hear.

"Get 'bout thy guttin' business." The harsh croaking voice was memorably that of Pyra Quadde, invisible behind the row of men.

"What if they try on..."

"Thou hast fewer brains than Jehu! Why I made thee second mate after Clegg turned in his seaboots I swear I'll never know. Get the men moving, Mr. Walsh."

"Aye, ma'am," he said, turning and jostling the crew to move them off the deck, and out of the captain's way. Ryan noticed that none of the men showed any desire to hang around. In moments the planks were bare of other life. Only Donfil remained, still smiling at the limitless ocean, and Ryan.

And Pyra Quadde.

"Well, well, well. See how the wheel spins and the ship turns to the helm. Not so proud now, Ryan Cawdor?" She waited, but he said nothing. She laughed, showing her hideous, carved-bone teeth. "Well, aren't ye a fine pair? A ragged couple, and no mistake. I never asked for the harpooneer, thou knowest."

"Just me, huh?"

"Triple strike, cully. Just thee. And now I've got thee."

"An evil woman is a swollen boil in the armpit of the Almighty," Donfil said, finally unfixing his eyes from the horizon and staring intently at the captain of the whaler.

"What's that thou... Best keep thine oilskin closed, or there might be a squall to take thee away. If thou dost not take my meaning, I suggest thou talkest less. Thou canst return to port a rich man, Donfil More. Think on that."

"What lay would you give me? A tenth?"

She laughed, turning away a moment, trying to ease the hatred from her eyes before she faced the Apache again. "A tenth, thou sayest? Not even the finest ironsman sailing from old Nantucket ever got such a lay."

"No ironsman from old Nantucket ever struck the mark ten casts from ten, Captain."

"Thou speakest truth there, my lofty harpooneer. Ten from ten I heard said. If thou works and earns thy biscuits and ale, then I'll give thee..." she pondered a moment, head on one side, looking like a gut-shot walrus "...one-fifteenth lay, Donfil More."

"It's not..."

Pyra Quadde rapped her cane on the deck angrily. "Don't push thy luck, Indian! I'm not just giving thee thy flensing fifteenth lay!"

Donfil turned to Ryan, puzzled. "What does she mean by..." he began.

Ryan grinned. "She means that you also get to live, brother. That's what she means."

The woman nodded slowly. "Ryan Cawdor is not the fool he seems, Indian. He marks well what I say. Thou shouldst do the same."

"What lay do I get, Captain?" Ryan asked, tugging mockingly at his forelock of curling black hair.

Once more the stick lifted and the ferrule touched him on the throat, pressing him two steps backward, until he felt the raised rail against his spine. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the surging waves hissing by just below him. The cold metal pushed harder, and he knew that his life could be snuffed out like a candle if Pyra Quadde chose that moment. The gamble was that she wouldn't.

Not yet.

She laughed in his face, and he could taste the sourness of her breath. The point of the cane moved from his throat, traced a line down his sternum, over the flat wall of muscle across his stomach. It brushed lightly across his groin, making him shrink back, which drew a delighted chuckle from the woman.

"All men fear for their cocks. Perhaps that might be my revenge, Ryan Cawdor — have thee gelded with a flensing knife. Cock and balls over the side for the gulls. Hot tar to check thy bleeding, then keep thee around for a servant."

"You know I'd kill you."

She nodded. "I know that, outlander. Course I know that. Is't not true that any man on board the Salvationwould open me from gob to gut? Yet, I live. Why?"

"Fear," Donfil said from behind her.

"And greed," Ryan added.

"I'm the best, yes, the best. Every year I bring wealth to the town. And those fawning bastards fall over at my shadow and kiss my ass. But they'd all see me dead. I can find the whales. Scent 'em across the miles. Hunt and kill them. Every year. Ye'll see it. The Indian could even live and become rich. But to throw an iron at an old door on a cobbled quay..." She laughed again, banging her stick on the deck. The man at the wheel looked over his shoulder as though he feared something coming up behind them.