Chapter 11
Rowing. The pain had become either bearable or so familiar that it couldn’t keep his attention.
Ten days after Gunner cored the apple in Gavin’s mouth with a musket ball, the drummers rattled an odd tattoo in response to some order the slaves couldn’t hear. Gavin looked over at his oarmates. He didn’t expect anything from the man next to him, Orholam. The nickname was for his number—Seven—but Gavin had slowly realized the Angari slaves had a darker sense of humor in their naming. Seven radiated kindness, but he almost never said anything, and when he did, it was rarely helpful. That these very qualities were why he’d been named Orholam was a sentiment so profane and disrespectful that the Highest Luxiat and head of Orholam’s worship on earth had laughed for a good ten minutes when he finally understood.
He’d almost recovered from his laughter when Fukkelot had cursed at him, and he finally understood that name, too, sending him into fresh gales of laughter.
The foreman, Strap, had eventually used her own much more obvious namesake to shut him up.
Rowing. The pain could be catalogued, but even the catalogue was tedious. His fellows were more interesting than the chafing, the blisters, the cramps, the knots.
Fukkelot was more helpful than Orholam, and more verbal. Gavin had heard of sailors swearing constantly, but that was usually a figure of speech. Fukkelot wasn’t right in the head somehow, swearing a stream of curses without willing it, day and night.
Now he grinned at Gavin. “Battle,” he said. He grunted. His jaw and neck twitched repeatedly. “They let us know so we use our strength when we need to.” Then he went back to whispering curses, as if it were a relief.
“Do they unchain us?” Gavin asked, rowing, rowing. “You know, in case we sink?” He was joking. Mostly.
“Win or die,” Strap shouted.
“Row to hell!” the slaves shouted in response.
“Scratch the back of Shadow Jack!” she shouted.
“Row to hell!”
“Row right back!” she shouted.
They pulled faster, in tempo with the drums.
“Pull!” she shouted in time with their pulling.
“To hell and back!”
“Pull!”
In less than a minute, they were flying across the waves. The foreman ducked upstairs. She came back. “We’ve closed to a league. Wind’s bad. Twenty minutes, if they never stop running.” She chortled. “Three, Four, Five, if you don’t get that oar fully stowed before the crunch this time, it’s five stripes each.”
“You gotta give us enough warning,” Three complained.
Gavin expected him to get the strap for that, but the foreman was in a good mood.
“Kind of ship is she?” Three asked.
“Abornean galley.”
Murmurs. Bad news. “How loaded?” someone asked.
“Sitting high.”
Curses. If their captain were competent, the chase would all come down to which slaves were in better condition—or could be motivated more. The motivation came by whip, mostly. Sitting high in the water meant it would be faster than usual and that it didn’t have a full cargo to plunder if they did catch her. It was the worst of all worlds for a crew.
“Little fishies, you ready to swim?” Strap shouted out.
“Straight to hell, straight back again!” they shouted, but there was clearly less excitement in their tone.
“Pull!” she shouted. At some signal, the drummers increased the tempo.
Gavin strained against his oar. At each sweep, the rowers stood up as they pulled, sat on the backsweep and did it again. This Angari ship had added a wrinkle that one of the men who’d been a galley slave on a Ruthgari ship before said was unheard of on the Cerulean Sea—a footboard at an incline that allowed the slaves to more easily put the full strength of their legs into the sweep. Made it easier, he said. Made them faster, Gavin thought.
“They’re runners!” Strap shouted gleefully. “Let’s see if they can race us, boys!”
They maintained their speed.
Two minutes later, she came down again. “We’re gaining on ’em. No way they can lose us!”
A small cheer ran through the slaves.
“Uh, uh, two, uh measures of, uh, strong wine for the first, uh, six benches tonight!” Fukkelot said. He cursed twelve times, loudly, as if he’d been holding back the tide simply to get a full sentence out. “Or death!” He laughed.
Only for the first six benches—so the men farther back would have a reason to behave well and hope they got promoted. It was just one among many Angari traditions Gunner had kept after taking the ship and its crew. They had all sorts of ways to motivate their slaves. Gavin wondered if the Angari were more decent, more clever, or just slave-poor.
Karris, I labor among madmen and murderers.
Not so different from back home, then? she asked in his mind’s eye.
How he loved her.
Karris, could you spell me for a bit on the oar?
Wish I could, love.
He saw her face twist with pity, and it cut through him. What was he now? Dirty, sweaty, stinking, bearded, hair shorn short, serving slavers. He blinked it away. Focused on his oar.
Strap said, “Leonus, water. Don’t need anyone passing out in the stretch.”
Leonus was a twisted-back, perpetually sneering sailor with the dark black skin of an Ilytian, though he had nothing of their accent. He shaved his wiry hair at the sides of his head and let it grow in a knotted crown above. He thought the slaves hated him for his deformity, and he took it out on them at every opportunity, giving them plenty of real reasons to hate him. He moved among them with a cup on a long handle. The task actually took considerable dexterity—giving water to a man who’s constantly standing, sitting, moving moving moving, with a long oar and numerous arms intermittently in the way. Leonus took every advantage when he thought the foreman wasn’t looking to swing the cup into slaves’ faces, smashing lips and breaking teeth from time to time. They were so desperate for water, though, that they took it rather than turn away. Leonus was the kind of scum that enjoyed that most of all.
Back in Gavin’s past life, one of the biggest burdens of leadership had been finding and removing such men from every command. Any short-term results they got from the fear their men held them in was ultimately spoiled by how they ruined morale and stopped men from taking initiative.
Gavin heard the crack of a whip, and heard Leonus cry out behind him. Strap shouted, “Don’t fuck with them, Leonus! You keep my boys from rowing, and I’ll wipe your ass with hull barnacles. You hear me?”
Even Orholam grinned at that, though when Leonus made it to their bench, each slave kept his face carefully composed. Strap was as wide as the sea, foul as a latrine, and had more tattoos than any four other sailors combined, and Leonus rightly feared her. The malformed man gave them each water quietly, hatefully.
At their increased pace, the slaves sweated freely, and the always hot, always humid cabin got hotter and wetter. One slave cried out with a muscle cramp in his leg and went down. His oarmates struggled to maintain the pace without him.
In an instant, Strap was on top of him, beating him mercilessly with the whip. After six or eight strokes, she unlocked the slave’s manacles and bodily hurled the man back down the aisle. Number Two was hustled into place.
The foreman looked pleased that they hadn’t slowed their pace. She walked up and down the aisle, checking the men for signs of exhaustion, then walked to the back. Gavin heard the slave’s cries and the snapping of leather, the thudding of fists and feet on flesh. It was insanity to beat a man for what he couldn’t control—and for a few long strokes of the oars, Gavin wondered why the otherwise sensible woman would do it.
Ah, preventative brutality. Beat the man who can’t help his cramp so that others don’t fake a cramp to get a rest.
Unjust, but probably effective. Gavin wasn’t sure if he admired or hated Strap more for it.
The door to the main deck two flights up cracked open, letting midday light down the sweat-slick stairs. The foreman went up the steps, and Leonus took her place at the bottom to repeat any orders she might shout.
“One hundred paces! Ain’t turning!” the foreman shouted.
“One hundred paces!” Leonus shouted. “Drummers, places!”
No one had explained what Gavin was supposed to do, or what happened in what order, but another drummer joined the first, pounding a big, hollow-sounding drum to add to the first. He beat at exactly the same tempo, though, standing in front of the slaves on the port side.
“Uh, fuck fuck fuck fuck, listen to our drummer, not theirs,” Fukkelot said. “Last—” He dissolved into curses and grunts for a while, getting more and more frustrated that he couldn’t speak clearly. Finally, he managed, “Last second, we stow the oars. After uh, uh, uh, a sprint, though.”
“Turning to port, seventy paces!” the foreman shouted.
A muffled report resounded from the long tom mounted on the prow of the Bitter Cob and shook the deck like a punch in the chest. Shouting abovedecks. Pounding feet. A musket fired above, followed by Gunner’s shout. He wouldn’t want anyone on deck shooting out at that range. He wouldn’t trust anyone but himself to hit a target that far away.
Gavin gritted his teeth, his legs quivering, arms burning, sweat dripping into his eyes. The slaves were barely touching their butts to the wood benches at this pace.
A high, loud crack sounded from some musket that Gavin couldn’t place, but that sounded very different than—oh, that could only be Gunner’s musket.
The Bitter Cob veered to starboard. Gavin figured they must be trying to cut directly behind the other ship, to keep them from getting a broadside. It would only work if their own ship were significantly faster.
“Starboard side, battle speed!” Strap shouted.
“Starboard side, battle speed!” Leonus shouted.
The drummer on the starboard side picked up his pace, beating triple beats in the space of two beats on the port side. It made the Bitter Cob cut to port, while losing almost no speed.
“Battle speed, all!” Strap shouted.
“Battle speed, all!” Leonus shouted.
They sprinted across the waves, throwing their whole weight into every stroke. There were no chants now. The men had no breath to spare. The heat was unbearable. Gavin heard the slapping of a whip, but his world was constricted to the pain in his shoulders and lungs and legs and back and calves and arms—
“On my mark, stow portside oars!” the foreman shouted. Before Leonus could even finish repeating the order, the foreman shouted, “Mark!”
The drummers pounded three great wallops, and stopped abruptly.
The slaves heaved their oars down, lifting the blades out of the water, and then pulled them into the hold, hand over hand, pulling them all the way inside so they wouldn’t be snapped off in a collision.
For one moment, as the drums fell silent, as the slaves gasped for breath, as the men above braced for impact, there was no sound but the peaceful hissing of the waves.
Then hell broke loose.