Meas had brought Tide Child to a stop by the time they were ready to loose, her wingwrights running up and down the rigging until only the topwings remained unfurled to keep the ship stable. She had sent Coxward out in the smaller fluke-boat, towing his target out to twenty lengths away where it sat, a crude castle of old spars and torn sails bobbing on the gentle blue waves of a kind sea. Meas watched Coxward and his mates through her nearglass.
“Well,” she said into the air, “we should untruss the landward bows. You should not need me to tell you that. Bowsells, what are you lazing about for?”
They set to, Knot, Lift and String. Six bolts had been stacked by each bow, and as his team untrussed the gallowbow to Joron’s orders they found that their hands had begun to move automatically. They had begun to know their places, to feel the way the bow worked. And more, that this bow, number one on the maindeck, was theirs.
“We should name it,” said Joron as Barlay cinched the cord tight.
“Name it?” said Dinyl. “It is a tool.”
“The Hag loves a name,” said Barlay, “it is true enough.”
“What do you call a bow?” said Farys.
“Hostir,” said Barlay. “It were my father’s name. When he were angry his hand’d be like a gallowbow shot to the arse.”
“Hostir then,” said Joron. “Seems as good a name as any.”
“Poisonous Hostir,” said Barlay.
“Why ‘poisonous’, Barlay?” asked Farys.
Barlay looked at the girl and grinned.
“Everything is better with poison.”
Joron realised then that he did not know what crime Barlay had committed to end up on the black ships. Although he rather suspected, from the look on her face when she said her father’s name, that the man no longer walked the land.
“Listen up, my crew,” shouted Meas. “Coxward will free the target soon. There are four commands for a gallowbow to loose. The first is ‘Spin!’ When I call that the spinners take a handle each and spin like the Hag herself commanded it. When they hear the retainer hooks snap to they stop and move to the sides of the bow. Then the command ‘Load!’ will come. It is not hard to work out what is required of that. The next command is ‘Aim!’ At this the bowsell lines up the bow for the triggerboy at the aiming point. The triggerboy’s field of vision is small, and the bowsell will be listening for what I want to hit. You’ll need someone experienced to actually trigger the bow as it’s the sort of thing you learn through feel more than anything. But today we’ll take turns so everyone knows what it is like. The last command is ‘Loose!’’’
A spontaneous roar went up at the thought of the great gallowbows giving voice to their deep-throated thruuum of destruction, but Meas quietened the teams. “Now ‘Loose’ does not mean you should pull that cord straight away, my fine girls and boys, so don’t get too excited. It only means you are free to loose when you feel you have a good chance of hitting your target. So don’t fly off like a Kept with his firstbern; we wouldn’t want to let our target down, now would we?” She accompanied her words with a leer and the crew grinned at each other. “Topboy!” she shouted up into the rigging. “Give Bonemaster Coxward the signal!”
Joron could not see but he knew a flag must have been waved as the line between the target and the flukeboat detached, and oars, like the legs of a water-skimming insect, sprouted from the flukeboat. It began to row away from the target, seeming to head away from Tide Child, but Joron knew it would come round in a huge circle, to avoid any bolts that might fly less than true.
Meas made them wait, made them watch as Coxward slowly moved away and the target drifted. She knew the thought of every woman and man on the deck, that the target would float away and their fun would end, but Meas knew better. She knew the sea and she knew how to handle a crew: how to make them want and to wish for the voice of the bows, and when it seemed they could bear it no more she gave the command.
“Stand to your bows. Dip your hands and honour the Hag.”
And they did, Barlay dipping her fingers in the small paint pot at the base of her bow and splattering red on the base of the bow before grabbing the seaward winding handle; Dinyl doing the same before taking the landward; Farys between them, red-stained fingers on the trigger cord, squinting down the length of the gallowbow. Joron squeezed past Farys, dipped his fingers for the Hag and then took position behind them, leaning forward with his hands on his thighs. He stood this way as he had noticed the other bowsells standing so, but found when he did that he had a similar view of the bow to Farys, who sighted along its length. But he could also see the working of the bow and the sea beyond, where Farys’s view was restricted to the aiming pin at the end of the bow shaft.
“Spin!” shouted Meas, and Barlay and Dinyl set to winding, the mechanism pulling back the cord and the tension in the great bow arms growing and growing until the bone quivered with the expectation of violence and Joron heard the click of the retaining hooks engaging.
“Load!” shouted Meas, and Barlay bobbed down, grabbed one of the bolts from the deck and slotted it into the long groove of the bowshaft. All along the deck the same action was repeated, and Joron felt the tension in his back and arms as he waited for the next command.
“Aim!” Joron shuffled forward, staring along the shaft of the bow. On the edge of his vision he could see the target. He signalled to swing the bow landward, raising his arm rather than speaking. Barlay pulled and Dinyl pushed until the ugly pyramid of spars and wings floated in front of the weapon.
“Ready, my crew, stay steady, my crew,” shouted Meas. “Launch only when she comes to bear. Loose!” Further down the deck Joron heard the moan of a bow as the triggerboy let fly far too early. The bolt flew from Tide Child, skimming over the water until it hit the sea, splashed once, twice, three times and vanished under the waves some distance to the landward of the target. A low murmer of disappointment went up from those watching.
“Steady, Farys, steady,” said Joron under his breath. The girl was nodding but not really heeding Joron’s words; all her concentration was on the target. To Joron it seemed like the target was drifting out of range but he said nothing. Trust, he must trust in his crew. Then Farys jerked her arm back, pulling on the trigger cord and the whole gallowbow juddered as it expended its energy, the bone arms snapping forward. The bolt leaped from the bow, sailing through the air. Joron found himself holding his breath as he watched it, willing it towards the target. A moment later the third bow loosed, the sound of it fighting the roar of triumph from his crew as Farys’s bolt punched through the wings of the target.
“Good shot, Farys,” shouted Meas. The other bolt fell only just short and Meas congratulated that team too. Then the crews swapped over, and it was this all afternoon, working the bows so each crew shot two bolts at least, and from them Meas picked her main bowteams. She was about to signal a last round of firing when a shout came from above.
“Keelcatch to seaward!”
Meas was straight up on the rail, staring out over the waves past the target, now little more than a shattered mass of spars.
“What is a keelcatch, D’keeper?” said Farys.
“That,” said Joron, pointing out to where a thing was rising, looking like a mass of varisk vines waving in the air as if they strove to pluck Skearith’s Eye from the sky. “They foul the keels of ships, then thrash about until the ship’s spine breaks. Odd to see them here though; they are beasts of the far south and deep waters.”