“Ship rising!” came from the tops and Joron returned the call.
“Say again, Topboy!”
“Three ships rising to landward!”
Words like icewater, shocking a crew become drowsy with the ponderous motion of the waves.
“Deckmaster! Deckholder!” shouted Meas as she grabbed a rope and started up the rigging. “Clear the ship for action! They may be a way off but it will do us good to blow the dust from these slatelayers!” Then she was lost among the black wings of Tide Child’s spines.
“You heard her!” Joron shouted. “Ring the bells, bang the drum! Get these slatelayers running!”
Solemn Muffaz nodded to Gavith, who ran to the bell on the rail at the fore of the rump of the ship.
“Clear the ship!” shouted Solemn Muffaz. “Clear the ship for action or feel the cord against your backs, you sluggard slatelayers. You sunfish-slow lot.”
And like kwiln on a beach, disturbed by a sankrey’s shadow, they moved. Running hither and thither. Joron had seen this same action at the start of the journey, when none knew what they must do. But Tide Child was a different ship now. What he saw was not the chaos it seemed. Women and men knew their places on the ship, knew their jobs, knew what had to be done. Coxward and his bonewrights could be heard below collapsing the underdeck officers’ cabins. Gavith ran below to drag the hagshand’s chest of saws and knives down into the lowdeck in the bilges where the hagbower was, and where those cut or broken in action would be further cut and broken in hope of life. Dinyl would be watching as Farys, bowsell of the underdeck, had her crews secure the hammocks against the hull, check the bowpeeks, make sure they could be opened, and ensure that the bows, each lovingly named and carved, could be trussed and untrussed as easy as each woman and man could put on their clothes on waking.
Joron walked to the rump rail to look out over the ocean behind Tide Child, the sheer size of the rolling wave they climbed tilting the ship crazily, making him feel like a skeer, staring down as the crew of Cruel Water behind them worked their ship in a similar frenzy. No doubt Snarltooth, climbing the wave behind, did the same, and he hoped Meas was wrong about Brekir. Joron had seen the shadow of distrust on his shipwife’s face. He turned from the rail to see Meas jump the last few lengths of the spine to the deck. She looked around at the bustle on the deck and said nothing – as good as any word of approval – then came over to Joron.
“Three ships, just as was reported to Arrin. A four-ribber, though I think it is a newer one, so smaller than Tide Child, and a pair of two-ribbers in escort.”
“And corpselights?”
“They all fly them, but the two-ribbers are on their lastlights and the four-ribber also, but for one light which is on second light.”
“So their condition may not be as good as was reported, and we may have an advantage in size.”
“Yes,” said Meas. “We are matched at least, I reckon. And if they are surprised by our tactics we will get in a full side of shot, do plenty of damage with our first loosing, and put those lights out. That will hurt their morale.”
“We will take shot coming at them. From at least two of the ships.”
“We will,” said Meas, and she held herself straighter. A stray gust of wind picked up the tails of her hat and blew them about, twisting them around one another and just as quickly untwisting them. “We will have to bear it. It is my plan and we are built stronger than Cruel Water and Snarltooth, so it is rightly our burden.” She looked out to sea, over the bustling deck of her ship. “Have a team with ropes ready to fix any broken rigging. And bring up twisters and wingshot for the gallowbows. First pass we’ll do our best to take down their wings and spines. A ship can’t fight without wings to fly it with.”
“And if they do the same to us?” Dinyl came to stand by them.
“We shall come in at an angle to them; it is a hard thing to judge, hitting a spine, even harder from an angle. Then we will be loosing straight along the decks of the ships to either side of us and, trust me, to be loosed into from behind does fearful damage. Whatever pain is doled out to us on the way in will be paid back tenfold.” Dinyl nodded his head. “But, you should know, Deckholder, it is not done to invite the Hag’s misfortune before a battle. So I’d thank you to throw some paint at the base of a spine and clear the air.”
“Of course, Shipwife,” he said, then walked to the pot at the base of the rumpspine, dipped his hand in and splattered blue paint on the bottom of the spine. “For the Hag, may we not see her soon,” he whispered.
“How long till we intercept them, Shipwife?” said Joron.
She shrugged and looked up into the wings as they cracked and shuddered in the wind.
“Steer us four points on the for’ard shadow, Barlay,” she said, then turned to Joron as the ship heeled over and the great boom came across the deck to collect wind from a different angle. “If the wind holds and they decide to come to the bow? A couple of hours. If it doesn’t or they choose to run, then more.”
“Do you think they have seen us?”
She nodded. “Ey. The course they fly. I suspect they have run parallel to us for a while, just over the horizon where we could not see.”
“That sounds like they knew we were coming, Shipwife.”
“The smoke from the towers at Keyshanhulme Sound will have warned them,” said Meas. “But now, at this time and place, whether they knew or not makes little difference. They will be very sure we are coming soon enough.”
“Shall I bring up the gullaime?” Once again Joron looked up into the wings, the whistling mass of ropes, cloth and spars that swayed above.
“No, this wind suits us,” she said. “We shall come in as though we intend to go side on side and then turn sharply, as I said. I do not think the speed advantage the gullaime could give us is worth risking it falling to an unlucky shot. We will bring it up as we turn to engage, have it guide in the wingbolts, and if we can crack one of Wavebreaker’s spines then the battle is half won.”
Tide Child’s crew then had an hour of quiet with little to do but fret, and many a deckchild spattered paint at the base of the mainspine. By the time the three ships of the enemy were in plain sight of all, little black showed through the patterns of red and blue paint left in hope of the Hag’s protection.
“Wavebreaker’s a big one,” Joron heard Karring say to Old Briaret.
“Ey, big enough, but not as big as us.”
“He ’as corpselights too.”
“Ey, but we have Lucky Meas, ain’t it. So I reckon they is already part with the Hag.”
Joron smiled and walked on along the deck.
His shoes no longer hurt his feet.
It was strange to him that they sailed so serenely, that the weather was so undramatic and clear, that there was no sense of panic in the crew around him when inside he was screaming as he watched the enemy ships get larger and larger.
There is my death, he thought. There is surely my death.
He could make out the gallowbows on the three white ships, see they were all strung and ready, see the corpselights dancing around the spines, see the purple wings flap and change shape, inflate and deflate as small course corrections emptied and then filled them with wind. On the Wavebreaker he watched a woman or man – he could not tell from this distance, but someone much like him – staring out across the sea at Tide Child. Soon I will try to kill you, he thought, and you me, but if we met in an inn maybe we would be friends. His familiarity with the shipwives of Cruel Water and Snarltooth had robbed him of any belief the Gaunt Islanders were the monsters of childhood tales – it seemed odd that he had ever believed such a thing.