He paid the innkeep and went to meet his ship. The tide had come in: they’d brought the Glasswater into the harbour, moored up on the quay as far as possible from the collapsing bulk of the whale, now a ruined mass like the skeleton of a burnt building. The water and the air churned with gulls and fish come to glut themselves.
The dark-bearded sailor was standing on the quay beside the walkway – plank, wasn’t it? – onto the ship. ‘Astonishing, don’t you think?’ he said conversationally, watching Tobias’s eyes on the butchery.
‘It’s … impressive, I’ll grant you.’
The sailor grinned. ‘But lucrative. Whale’s our return cargo, tasty delicacies for the rich folk of Morr Town. Cost what we brought and more besides, and weighs less. Stinks worse, though. You’ll be Tobias, then?’
Tobias nodded.
‘Yartek.’ The man nodded in turn. ‘Set? We sail as soon as the tide turns. Get away from this.’
He had the soft, feathery Pernish of the Whites. Tobias could almost imagine him reciting poetry alongside Prince Fucking Bastard and Corruption and Ruin. Mustn’t tar a whole kingdom with assumptions though. Just because their ruling family were all sick in the head. The ship looked clean and well-kept, probably fast from her shape and large sail, funny smell hanging about her from the cargo but the last sea journey he’d made had been far worse. Felt almost hopeful as they sailed out into the light and the water, leaving the dead and betrayed and backstabbed behind.
Paying through the nose for passage turned out to mean almost getting his throat cut the first night. Two of them, big men with short ragged beards like Yartek’s. One clamped his hand over Tobias’s mouth, the other stuck a knife blade over his windpipe. Tobias, awake and half expecting it, slapped his arms up and got the knife wielder in the chest. Clearly could tar a whole kingdom. His assailant jerked and whacked his head on the ceiling of the tiny cubbyhole thing serving as Tobias’s berth. What did they take him for, an idiot?
The thump and Tobias’s enraged roar must have woken half the ship. Which could be either very good or very, very bad. Tobias followed up by punching knifeman hard in the face before sliding hurriedly out of the bunk. Extremely fortuitously, he landed on knifeman’s bare foot. Handclamper seemed to be trying to retreat in a hurry. In the light of a rancid lantern, it appeared to be Yartek. Tobias contemplated going after him too, but settled on punching knifeman in the face again. There was a satisfying crunch of nose. A warm, sticky feeling on Tobias’s hand.
Two other sailors appeared, drawn by the noise.
‘What the fuck?’ someone started shouting. Knifeman was reeling around, clutching his face. Tobias kicked him between the legs, whereupon he collapsed in a heap. Weak as piss, these boys. Weak as bloody piss.
‘Tried to fucking knife me,’ he explained to no one and everyone. ‘Yartek and this guy.’
The crew looked down at their fallen comrade, rolling around on the floor clutching his manhood, blood running out of his nose.
‘Didn’t do it very well,’ the shorter one said.
‘No.’ Tobias tried to look heroically shocked and wounded. ‘They didn’t.’
‘Excitement over then,’ the short sailor said. ‘Back to bed, lads. Including you, Leg. Try not to get too much blood on the deck.’
Gods, this lot made Skie look overemotional. Tobias lay awake in his cubbyhole fingering his sword and listening to the sounds of the ship moving around him.
A strange piping sound woke him from a fitful dream about shadowy creatures with toothless, bulbous mouths. Morning roll-call, he realized after a moment. The night crew giving way to the day. Crawled groggily out of his bunk, strapped his sword back onto his belt then scrambled out onto the deck. It was early morning, grey and cold, rot-coloured clouds massing ominously on the horizon before them. That feel in the air of held calm before a storm. Pressure, like he’d last felt staring into Marith’s ruined burned-out eyes. Mercenaries were almost as good weather readers as sailors, for similar although perhaps slightly less urgent reasons. Tobias shivered. He’d rather have had his throat cut quietly than drown.
Thinking of which, there was Yartek, eyeing him nervously, a bruise on his cheek. I don’t even remember hitting him, Tobias thought. Oh, no, wait, I think he whacked his head on something running away. He waved cheerfully. Yartek looked hastily away and then back at him with a humiliated face.
‘Leg’ was about, too, his nose a glorious mass of black, blue and crimson looking rather like embroidery on a woman’s dress. He and Yartek seemed to be avoiding each other. Tobias sauntered over to him.
‘Make a habit of trying to kill your passengers, do you?’
‘Piss off and fuck yourself.’ The comic sound of the voice through the broken nose was most pleasing.
‘Try it again, I’ll kill you.’ Tobias touched the hilt of his sword.
Leg jerked his head at the clouds. ‘To be honest, if she’s as bad as she looks, in a few hours’ time you’ll be wishing I’d managed it.’
Tobias looked at the clouds again, and at the sheer bare cliffs of the Immish coastline looming away on their left. We’ve been at sea less than a full day. Overnight, basically. And we’re possibly about to die within sight of land. Like a pitched battle against impossible and overwhelming odds, only without the ever-appealing option of desertion. Curse Marith-damned-Altrersyr for the thousand-and-first time.
The storm hit sometime after midday. Not that it was possible to judge midday, the sky being so dark by then that it might as well have been twilight. Sesere-whateveritis, thought Tobias. Night comes. We survive. It had always struck him as a particularly low-aspiration credo, as beliefs went.
The waves were getting bigger and bigger. The wind was rising, cracking in the sails, hurting the eyes. No rain, but you could see it moving in, a dark curtain in front of them, the sound of it beating on the sea loud as a living thing. Sailors scrambled around the deck and rigging, shouting. Tobias and the two other passengers watched them from the pitiful lack of shelter provided by the bunk huts on the deck. The only other place to go was down below into the hold, which would be worse, an utter surrender of control to the elements. I could have been killed by a dragon, Tobias thought. I will not die already underwater in a coffin stinking of rotted whale fat.
‘Get out of the bloody way!’ Yartek screamed at them, running past with a coil of rope. He seemed to be instrumental in doing something to the sail, so Tobias felt some relief he hadn’t had it in him to draw his sword last night.
‘One day out,’ the woman beside him, Raeta, he thought her name was, muttered. ‘Captain should just have turned back at first light.’
‘Can’t just turn back,’ the third and richest-looking passenger said darkly. ‘If merchant ships turned back every time the weather got up, nothing would ever sail.’
Acceptable added cost of trade goods. Until it was your fucking ship.