So Meas paced, and Joron felt like he was somehow letting her down and stewed in his own anger – at her for making him feel this way and at himself for caring about it.
As Skearith’s blazing Eye rose to its midpoint, chasing away what little cloud there had been and turning the sea into a hundred thousand mirrored shards, bright enough to hurt the eye, a cry went up from the top of the mainspine.
“Islands rising to landward!”
Half the crew ran to the landward side of the ship, and Joron felt it list as Meas’s voice bit through the hot air.
“Back to work! You’ll see these isles soon enough! What business is it of yours what is seen by the topboys, ey?” Meas left the rump and hoisted herself up on to the rail, one hand on a rope, the other holding her nearglass to an eye, long grey hair shot through with red and blue streaming behind her as the women and men returned to their work like guilty children. “Calferries Mount. We steer to landward of it, into the channel,” she shouted so Barlay at the oar could hear. “From here ’tis no more than eight turns of the sand or so to Corfynhulme.” She glanced back. “Deckkeeper, break out curnows and pikes from the armoury and arm every woman and man. Then a tot of anhir for all. Have the gallowbow teams ready! My crew, my crew,” she shouted, her eyes wild, “ready yourself, for today we fight,” and she punched the air with the hand holding her nearglass. She received a cheer in return, and Joron found himself wondering, If you hate battle so much, Meas, why do you look so full of joy at the thought of it?
Barlay leaned into the oar, and Joron felt the ship alter course and had an inkling of what Tide Child could be if he had a crew that worked him correctly – something light over the waves, able to dance over the sea and around his enemies. But he was not that, not yet, and might never be. How could he?
The beak of the ship came to point to landward of Calferries Mount, which rose from the sea, its grey spine ringed with green vegetation and surrounded by flocks of skeers, always crying out to the wind with their keening calls. His father had told him that they were the spirits of sailors who had been marooned and starved to death on barren rocks just like Calferries Mount.
Past Calferries, a line of islands, gradually growing in size and clothed in the familiar pinks, blues and purples of gion and varisk, rose out of the sea like broken teeth in a jaw. A wheel of birds turned above the island they headed for, marking it for miles around as a place to find food. Joron wondered if there was more food than usual, if they were too late and it was now a place of carrion strewn with the dead. Part of him, a small part he did not like but could not deny, hoped they were too late; the thought of those who wanted to kill him and having to kill in return filled him with fear like he had never known. But another part, the one raised on the tales and stories of his father, hoped they were in time, thought of how he would be a hero, flying in on a black ship to save the children of Corfynhulme. It was the sort of thing women and men sang about. Certainly the mood on the ship was a good one, and it was not just due to the barrel of anhir that had come up and was being ladled out into waiting cups.
Strangely, Joron found he had no wish to drink.
When the armoury was opened and the weapons brought out, the crew brightened further; it was as if the curnows and shields and spears and gaffhooks brought not only the ability to take life but also some sense of worth to the owner – a thing Joron did not understand. To him a blade was a tool, and the thought of the cutting and grinding made him think of his father’s strong body ripped apart by the spines of the bone-ship’s hull.
Not so for the crew; there had been haggling for favoured weapons, women and men making practice swipes at the air, hefting and weighing curnows and then swapping them, even coming close to blows over certain weapons that Joron guessed must carry some favour or story. He had thought about taking out the blade he wore at his own hip, taking some practice swings and seeing if he could discern some special quality to the weapon. But he did not. He felt it was not seemly for a deckkeeper to walk around swinging his curnow, and besides, apart from the standard fighting skills his father had taught him, which all learned, he had little experience of blades and did not think he would know a bad one from a good one. He even feared finding out too much about his sword. He had been given the curnow when he boarded the ship for the first time. “For the shipwife,” they had said, and he had been foolish and innocent enough to think they did him some honour.
He doubted they had.
“Untruss the bows,” shouted Meas, and Joron watched as Farys and Hilan, each with three deckchilder, and Cwell and Kanvey with crews of their own, started to loose the ropes that immobilised the bows and stopped them swinging free in bad weather. Freeing the great gallowbows caused the excitement to notch up another level on Tide Child, and when Cwell opened the box at the base of her bow that held the cords and kept them dry he expected a shout of joy. But instead, there was only anger from the shipwife.
“Hold there, woman! We do not string them and set them till battle is sure.” Joron wondered if Meas saw the evil look Cwell gave her for reprimanding her before the entire crew – a promise of revenge later. If she did she ignored it and turned her back, staring out over the rail.
Joron could make out Corfynhulme now, the last of this run of islands and the largest, at the head a huge stack of stone. From there the island curved away from them like a woman laying down to sleep in the cold, but unlike a woman the island had no curves, only a long straight taper lost to a riot of gion and varisk sweeping down to meet the sea. As they approached he fancied he heard the calls of the birds wheeling above. Only when they got nearer, and he could make out the small dots of those rowing flukeboats did he realise it was the screams of people, not birds, he heard.
On the rump of the ship Meas leaned forward, as if she could lend the ship a little more speed by doing so.
“Ready the bows,” she said, but she paid little attention to the action on deck, her focus on where they were heading. “And wet your hands in paint, spatter it on the spines for the Hag.”
As they came around the headland the boats of the attackers became clearer, and the wind dropped slightly in the lee of the land.
“Furl topwings,” she shouted. “We need all the wind we can catch, but I don’t want to run aground either.”
There were many more raiders than Joron had expected. There must have been thirty flukeboats, mostly small, but there were at least four double-sailed boats, brightly coloured, painted with silhouettes of the Sea Hag’s fearsome skull. The women and men who crewed the boats had stripped and painted themselves red and white to resemble meat marbled with fat, as if the skin had been flayed from their bodies.
“Hag’s breath!” shouted Meas. “I said string those bows!”
Joron turned. Farys and Hilan were doing a reasonable job of running the cord between the bow arms and the firing mechanism, but they were doing it slowly. Cwell had managed to get her cord hopelessly tangled in the mechanism of the bow and was shouting at one of the women working with her. The final bowteam under Kanvey were all looking dumbly at the cord, as if it were an entirely new thing to them.
There was a good chance it was.
“Maiden save us.” Meas ran across, took one look at Cwell’s bow and shook her head. “Tie it down and go join the fighting teams.” Cwell shot her a look of pure hatred and her crew started to secure the bow. Meas ignored them and leaped across to the next bow, taking the cord and threading it in an easy practised motion that had it in place in moments. She glanced across at Farys and Hilan, who now had their bows strung, and then looked forward. “Deckkeeper!” she shouted. “Are you just standing there like a fool? Take in more wing or we’ll run aground!”