Chapter Twenty-Eight

The ship was hit hard by the chem squall, suffering damage to both foremast and mizzenmast, as well as to much of her canvas and rigging. Planks had been started around the bow where she'd plowed into the butting rollers, and fifteen feet of rail had been torn away. It was a grudging tribute to Pyra Quadde that the ship didn't founder, or carry upon the rocks of the bleak shore.

As it was, it took all of her skill, culminating in her bludgeoning the helmsman to the deck with her belaying pin and taking the wheel herself, battling the head of the ship around, toward open water. None of the crew stayed below; they huddled together behind the tryworks, while the waves broke over them.

Ryan had made his plans. Though he thought death was nearly inevitable, he would never lie back and give in to the dark-masked creature with the glittering scythe. He had found some rope and decided to bind himself to any drifting wood, when the vessel eventually shuddered upon the headland that loomed over them.

The noise of the waves on the shore was deafening, the banshee wail often thousand drowned sailors.

Captain Quadde laid out a trailing anchor to keep the bow of the ship turned toward the wind, running under bare spars.

Chem storms obey no natural order. They can come howling from a clear sky; they can vanish as swiftly as a traitor's smile.

A scant hour after five men had gulped their last desperate breaths, the waves flattened and the clouds scudded away to the northeast. For a few brief minutes the day brightened, the sun managing to break through. But its light was sullen, like fouled brass, and it gave little warmth to the soaked seamen.

In less than an hour, the fog appeared.

Pyra Quadde hadn't had time to get a thorough damage report from the first mate. The sea anchor still trailed out, line limp, across the expanse of painted ocean. Tatters of canvas hung from the spars, and the splintered wood of damaged bulwarks was unmoved. Whatever happened, the Salvationwasn't in any fit shape to hunt whales for several hours.

And by then it would be night.

"Mist off the shore, Captain!" shouted mad Jehu, who was the lookout. "Land's vanished clear away. Coming out from east and west, like the horns of a bull, Captain."

She waved a hand to acknowledge the weather warning, calling back to ask if he could see any sign of the whales.

"Gone to the bosom of the deep, where they be hunted by bold Olaf, Sammy, Diego and George. Eyes rotted, finger bones holding the oars, they pitch and toss in the canyons of the deepest waters. Irons fast in the spirit whales. Their lay a seat in paradise, Captain!"

"Shut thy noise, madman!"

"They smell land where there be none. Taste blood where there be none. See light where there be none. Breathe in the good air... where there be... where there be none!"

"No more, thou double-crazy stupe bastard, or I'll puddle thy brains on the deck."

"Shall I not tell thee of the ship I spy a'sailing by on Chrissimus Day in the morning? Shall I not tell thee, ma'am?"

"Rot thy blabbering lips, Jehu! I know of that sainted imbecile Delano and his endless quest for his fucking brothers. Less of the Delano! Let them sail the seas for eternity and a day for all I care."

Only a few miles away from the Salvation, J.B. Dix perched uncomfortably in the crosstrees of the Phoenix, binoculars steadied on the distant whaler, noting the obvious signs of storm damage to her masts, spars and sails. Noting, too, the fog that was creeping silently across the water from the visible shore.

"Drop anchor. What's the deep here?"

Johnny Flynn took the loop of line, marked at intervals with knots of colored canvas and cord, to mark off the readings. He steadied himself on the protruding cathead, just to starboard of the bowsprit, and swung the lead in a humming circle, dropping it forty yards ahead of the stationary ship. He called out the readings as the line slipped through his fingers. "No bottom at ten fathoms, ma'am! None at twenty. And five. Thirty and five. No bottom at forty fathoms."

"Haul in the sea anchor, Mr. Ogg. Work her in and keep Flynn on the lead. Drop anchor when it reaches twenty fathoms. In this triple-shit fog we must take care not to run her aground. The Seven Virgins guard one of the bays near here. They'd tear the keel out of the ship before a lookout could see his hand in front of his face."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

"Is Walsh dried out? Then I want him on his duty. No skulkers on this ship."

Cyrus Ogg knuckled his forehead and walked off, passing Ryan.

"Let's go below," Donfil suggested.

"Storm not put your mind off the idea of becoming an ironsman, brother?" Ryan grinned.

"No. We float safe. It was only her madness that drowned those poor dogs. There is a risk, but there is always a risk, brother. For them it was a good day to die."

"Not for you?"

"Who knows?"

Flynn joined them on the deck, near the top of the companionway that led down into their quarters.

"Pyra's fit to piss steam, friends. Keep well clear of her in this mood. It bodes ill for some poor devil that she..."

The voice interrupted him.

"This has been the worst of days, Outlander Cawdor. Truly the worst. I have lost time. Lost a school of whales. Lost one of my boats that will cost more jack than I can spare." She hesitated. "And five men gone to the long swimming on a single day. Now the Salvationis damaged. She will take time to put to rights." The voice continued calm, but she was inching closer to Ryan, her boots shuffling along the scrubbed deck toward him. Her eyes glittered and her tongue danced out to moisten her lips. The woman's hand tightened and loosened convulsively on the belaying pin, whitening the skin at her knuckles. Her other hand hovered by the butt of the Astra pistol.

"Permission to go below, ma'am?" Johnny Flynn asked, trying to break the woman's mood.

"Go, double-stupe. Go on, thou toothless piece of hulk meat."

"Come on, outlander," the little man urged, tugging at Ryan's wet sleeve.

"I said thou couldst go, Flynn. Notthe outlander."

"Leave it lie, Johnny," Ryan said quietly. He sensed that the woman's mood was on the far edge of sanity and wanted to avoid pushing her to the last, crumbling step.

"Aye, sailor," Quadde agreed. "This bad, bad day can yet be saved. This cursed fog that blinds us about means no hunting until the morrow. Every man has work to do, readying us for the Lantic once more. But I can rest this night. Rest and take myself some pleasure."

The last word was hissed between clenched teeth, stretched out, finally fading into a frighteningly gentle stillness.

"But..." Flynn persisted.

"Leave it," Ryan warned. "No point."

"No point," the woman repeated, slowly drawing the .44 and leveling it at Johnny Flynn's chest. "No point. Thou dost get the point, Flynn. Outlander here gets the point. I"ll get the point. And plenty more. Come here, right close, Cawdor. Hear what I plan for thee. And if thou playest thy part as a man... aye, manfully. Thou mightlive."

Ryan had lived long enough on the razor cut of violence to know what that meant. Whatever happened, Pyra Quadde was going to have him chilled. During the night. Either during or after she'd compelled him to ease her savage temper.

He moved in closer, wondering whether to chop her across the throat now and break her neck. The fog had come around them so thick that he could hardly see from one side of the deck to the other. Very faintly he could hear the sound of surf on rocks, which meant that the shore wasn't that far off.

Ryan wasn't the strongest swimmer in the Deathlands, but he reckoned he could hold his own with most men. The sea was velvet flat. The only threat was the creatures in the water. Compared with Pyra Quadde, they were probably kinder.