They plunged again into a wave. The wall of water hit him from behind, and he was suddenly flying free with it, no deck, no rigging, nothing, only the water that offered a yielding resistance to his scrabbling hands. He might already be overboard and not even know it. He opened his mouth to scream and sucked in salt water instead. In the next instant the water slammed him against the port railing. He caught at it and held, despite the water's best efforts to carry him over the side. Right next to him a slave was not so lucky. He struck the railing, teetered and then went over the side.
The water ran off through the scuppers. On the deck, men thrashed like landed fish, choking and spitting seawater. The moment he could, Wintrow was back on his feet and struggling aft. Like an insect, he thought, in a puddle, struggling mindlessly only because live things always tried to stay alive. Most of the others who remained on the deck were clearly not sailors by the way they flung themselves at railings and ropes and grasped tight. They seemed just as shocked by the next dousing wave. A manacle key must have been found, for some were entirely free of chains, while others still wore their fetters as familiarly as their shirts. More faces peered up fearfully from the open hatches, shouting advice and questions to the groups on deck. As each mammoth wave passed, they ducked back to avoid the dousing, but seemed to take no care for how much water flooded down into the ship. Bodies of both slaves and crew washed back and forth in the waist with the wallowing of the ship. He stared at them incredulously. Had they fought for their freedom only to die by drowning? Had they killed all the crew for nothing?
He suddenly heard Sa'Adar's voice raised. “There he is, there's our lad. Boy, Wintrow, come here! They've barricaded themselves in there. Any way to smoke the rats out?” He mastered a band of triumphant map-faces outside the door to the officers' quarters in the stern-castle. Despite the storm and the tossing ship, they were still intent on their killing.
“This storm will take us down if I don't get to the wheel!” he shouted at them. He drew his voice from deep within him and tried to sound commanding, like a man. “Stop the killing, or the sea will finish it for all of us! Let the crew come out and man the ship as best they can, I beg you! We're taking on water with every wave!” He caught at the side of the aftercastle ladder as another wave hit. In horror he watched it pour down the open hatches like beer filling a mug. “Shut those hatches down tight!” he bellowed at them. “And put some men on the pumps, or everyone sick or hiding below is going to drown even before the rest of us!” He looked aloft. “We need to take in those sails, give the wind less to push on!”
“I'm not going up there,” one slave declared loudly. “I didn't get out of chains just to kill myself another way!”
“Then you'll die when we all go under!” Wintrow shouted back at him. His voice broke on the words, going up into a boy's shrill timbre. Some of the slaves were making a faint-hearted attempt to shut the hatches, but no one was willing to let loose their secure holds to do so.
“Rocks!” screamed Vivacia. “Rocks! Wintrow, the helm, the helm!”
“Let the crew out. Promise them their lives if they'll save yours!” he roared at Sa'Adar. Then he scrabbled swiftly up the ladder.
Comfrey had died at the wheel, struck from behind. Whoever had killed him had left him as he fell, half tangled in the spokes. Only the weight of his fallen body had kept the rudder from slapping back and forth with every sea. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” Wintrow babbled apologetically as he pulled the lanky body free of its last post. He stepped up to the wheel and seized it, stopping its random turning with a wrench. He drew the deepest breath his lungs would hold. “TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” he bellowed, and prayed his voice would carry the length of the ship through the storm.
“HARD PORT!” Vivacia's cry came back to him. Her voice came not only through the wind but seemed to vibrate into him through his hands. The spokes of the ship's wheel, he realized, were of wizardwood. He set his hands to it more fully. Not sure whether he sinned or not, he reached not for Sa but for oneness with the ship. He abandoned his fear of losing himself in her.
“Steady,” he whispered to her, and felt an almost frantic leaping of connection. With it came her fear, but also her courage. He shared her awareness of the storm and the current. Her wizardwood body became his greater self.
The wheel had been built with the assumption that a grown and well-muscled man would hold it. He had watched the ship steered, and taken a turn or two in milder weather, but never in a blow like this, and never without a man at his shoulder instructing him and catching at the wheel if it looked like it would overpower him. Wintrow put the full weight of his slight body to turning it. He felt every point he gained as a small victory but wondered if the ship could answer the rudder in time. It seemed to him that they hit the next wave more squarely, cutting through it rather than being nudged aside by it. He squinted through the driving rain, but could see nothing but blackness. They could have been out in the middle of the Wild Sea with emptiness all around them. It suddenly struck him as ridiculous; he and the ship were alone in their struggle to save them all. Everyone else on board was too intent on killing one another.
“You have to help me,” he said quietly, forming aloud the words he knew she would sense. “You have to be your own lookout, for both waves and rocks. Reach for me with what you know.”
In the waist he could hear men shouting to one another. Some of the voices were muffled and he guessed that the slaves negotiated with the captive crew. From the fury in the voices, he doubted if they would agree in time to save the ship. Forget about them, he counseled himself. “It's you and I, my lady,” he said quietly to her. “You and I alone. Let's try to stay alive.” He gripped the wheel tight in his hands.
He did not know if he felt her answer him or if his own determination lent him new strength. He stood, blinded by both water and darkness, and defied them both. He did not hear Vivacia call out to him again but he seemed to catch a feel for the ship. The sails overhead worked against him, but he could do nothing about them. A different sort of rain suddenly began to fall, just as insistent but lighter somehow. Yet even as the storm abated and the first graying of dawn tinged the sky, the wheel seemed to grow stiffer and heavier under his hands. “The current has us!” Vivacia's low cry carried back to him. “There are rocks ahead! I know this channel from long ago! We should not have come this way. I cannot stay clear of them by myself!”
He heard the clank of chain and then the fall of a heavy body to the deck. He spared a glance for a group of men making their way towards him. Several manacled and fettered man were shoved along in their midst. As they reached Wintrow, someone gave the front man a harder push. He went to his knees on the wet deck. Sa'Adar's voice boomed out. “He says he'll steer and steer true if we let him live.” In a quieter voice he added, “He says we cannot get past those rocks without him. He alone knows this channel.”
As the man struggled to his feet, Wintrow finally recognized Torg. He could make out little of his features in the dark. His shirt was torn away from his back; the pale rags of it fluttered in the wind. “You,” Torg said. The low laugh he gave was disbelieving. “You did this to us? You?” He shook his head. “I don't believe it. You had the treachery, but not the guts. You stand there and hold the wheel like the ship is yours, but I don't believe you took her.” Despite his chains and the snarling map-faces surrounding him, he spat to one side. “You didn't have the balls to take her when she was offered to you on a silver platter.” The furious words poured from him like a pent-up flood. “Oh, yes, I knew all about your father's deal with you. I heard what he said that day. Your father was going to give you the mate's position on her when you turned fifteen. Never mind that I worked like a dog for him for the past seven years. Never mind old Torg. Give the captaincy to Gantry and the mate's position to a pink-cheeked boy. And you'd lord it over me.”