Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (39 page)

From ‘The Edda of the Sea’ by Captain Norfumli

I
t was said that a cup of hot farksa could cure any ailment short of a missing limb. It was doubtful how true that was, but there was one thing it could cure like no other, and that was a cold morning.

The storm had broken in the early hours. The wind blew itself out and the rain had slunk away to the south. A sliver of moon had shown its face in the west; a split-bone pendant dangling in a sky thick with clouds. It played hide and seek with them until the sun chased it away.

With the sunrise came a calm, bitterly cold morning. Breath like pipe-smoke rose from the sailors and soldiers on deck, like steam from a battlefield. The deck resembled one too. The storm had wrought a warlord’s path across the
Waveblade.

‘There’s a hair in my farska,’ muttered Eyrum, darkly. He had spent most of the night making friends with the bottom of a bucket. Like Farden, he was not fond of ships and stormy seas in the slightest.

Farden sipped his steaming hot cup gingerly. He too had been at the bottom of a bucket. ‘Better keep that quiet, otherwise everybody will want one,’ he whispered.

‘You’re lucky, Siren. I got a splinter in mine,’ Roiks eyed his farska. ‘Oh, tell a lie. Sliver of parsnip.’ He fished it out with a pair of rope-stained fingers and slurped it up eagerly. The bosun looked exhausted. Deep, dark rings surrounded his eyes.

‘This ship looks a mess,’ Farden said, eyeing the tangled rigging around his boots and the ugly broken tip of the mizzenmast.

‘Give it an hour. I’ll guarantee it’ll look as though we just sailed though a meadow, not a storm.’

‘Mhm.’ Farden wasn’t so sure.

Eyrum was still trying to get the hair out of his cup. He went to sit down, but as a dark shadow fell over the deck, he immediately stood straight back up. ‘What about the ice?’ He grumbled.

Farden wore the same disturbed look as the Siren. ‘Do we have to get so close to them?’ Even though he had grown to trust the
‘Blade
and its strength, there was nothing like a tower of ice floating within spells-reach to shake that trust. Farden watched the white giant slide silently past the ship. It was huge. Its glittering tip easily matched the height of the mainmast. That alone made the mage nervous, but what secretly terrified him was that however huge the icebergs were above the water, they were easily more than twice as large underneath it. He resisted the morbid urge to look down at the cold blue of its huge, submerged roots, gnarled and deadly as they were, to see how close they came to the ship. He doubted any ship, no matter how ironclad and huge it was, could hit one and survive. That made Farden sweat beneath his cloak.

‘They’re goin’ to get much closer than that, mister mage. Have no fear,’ Roiks waved his hand absently at the northern horizon, where a veritable flotilla of giant icebergs were slowly ambling towards them. Seeing the looks on Farden and Eyrum’s faces, Roiks chuckled. ‘Relax. Nuka knows what ‘e’s doing. Used to be a whaler, he did. You always find the best whales up in the iceberg fields. Knows this patch of the sea like ‘is head knows a pillow.’

Farden ran a hand across his chin and felt the Scalussen metal grate against his stubble. It was warm from clutching the farska. ‘That’s hardly comforting,’ Farden said. ‘I haven’t seen him take a wink of sleep since I set foot on this boat.’

‘Bah. It’s no worse than the Bitches.’

Eyrum didn’t know what that meant. ‘Is it any better?’

Worryingly, Roiks shrugged. ‘Depends if the weather holds,’ he said with a grin. He tapped his nose as he walked away, off on the hunt for more farska.

Eyrum had finally retrieved the long black hair from his cup. With a grimace he flicked it over the bulwark and into the sea below. ‘Give me a dragon any day.’

Roiks should have put some coin on his words. The
Waveblade
was shipshape in less than an hour. While half the crew worked like daemons to get the deck cleared, the other half took to the mangled rigging, hacking and splicing it into something functional. Farden and Eyrum did their bit with a pair of brooms and a stomach full of hot farska trying to quell their queasiness.

Even Ilios did his bit. The gryphon vacated his little makeshift nest just long enough to test his healed wings and circle around a few icebergs. He returned with something huge and wriggling in his claws. The gryphon had caught a spotted shark in the cobalt shallows of a hollow iceberg, and had decided it would make a good reward for the crew.

The cooks came up from the galleys to see the thing. Tinbits wasn’t quite sure what to do with the wriggling, gnashing thing. The word “lunchfast” was quickly mentioned, and Gabbant finished it off with a vicious tap from his favourite belaying pin.

Of course, nobody knows how to cook a shark better than a Siren. Eyrum led some of his more able-bodied refugees in skinning and gutting the huge beast. Cauldrons were brought up from below and a cooking party was formed right there on the bow. Nuka called a morning’s rest for the crew and the soldiers, and ordered Roiks to break out a few beakers of mörd and ale for the fine job they had done.

With the help of a little fire from the mages, the stew soon began to bubble. Mouths began to salivate accordingly. Seats were made out of bundles of sailcloth and battered hatches. One of the Sirens broke out a pair of pipes and a shaky voice. He soon had the crew yelling old shanties and mismatched ballads.

It was a spontaneous morning, and somehow they are always the best sorts of mornings. Only Nuka stayed alone and quiet by his precious wheel, making sure to keep his ship safely along its wandering path between the floating mountains of ice that were now crowding around them. He half smiled, half winced as he listened to Roiks leading the crew in a bawdy song about a donkey and a princess. Some of the Siren mothers turned a little pink at the nature of its lyrics, but didn’t complain. They were amongst sailors, after all. Siren or Arka, a sailor’s vocabulary is the same.

It took an hour for the shark to cook, but barely a minute for the hungry crowd to empty the cauldrons. Mugs and cups and bowls and ladles swung in like picks to a coal-face, and soon enough everyone was tentatively sipping at their sumptuous stew. It was salty and sweet at the same time, with the sharp edge of the meaty shark and more than a few drops of the Siren
syngur
liquor.

And so the remaining hours of the morning passed by. The sun reached its zenith for the day, but did nothing to warm the air. They were firmly in the north now. There was a bitter edge to the wind, as if it were bringing them a little slice of the ice wastes with every gust. The crew, the Sirens, the soldiers, and the mages all huddled together in tight circles, not caring a damn for who or what their neighbours were. Such is the magick of hot food and company on a cold day.

Farden managed to sneak away from one of Roiks’ infamous stories to bring Nuka a serving of stew. The captain thanked him and licked his lips at the smell of the meaty, salty broth. He hesitated when he realised he had to let go of the wheel. ‘Would you, mage?’

Farden pulled a face. ‘You sure? What about the icebergs?’

Nuka tapped the wood of the wheel and Farden gripped it with both hands. The metal of his gauntlets clanked against the polished wood and its brass bindings. Nuka smiled. ‘After last night, I think you can handle a few lumps of ice,’ he said.

Farden felt his awareness of the ship’s movements grow. Through the wheel he could feel every dip of every little wave, every twitch of the wind in the half-raised sails. ‘I’m not sure
lump
is an adequate word.’

Nuka gulped down his stew, not caring for its heat. ‘Just treat them like sleeping bears. Don’t go near them.’

Farden smiled. ‘Good advice.’

Nuka was watching the men and women below. ‘The crew can’t believe their luck, I can tell. It’s not every day I let them have the morning off. Slackers,’ he chuckled. ‘But they deserve it after last night. Haven’t seen a storm like that for almost a decade now. That’s what you get for testing the Nelska cape.’

‘How far north have you gone?’

‘As far as any ship can go.’

‘I see.’

Nuka stretched. ‘But this isn’t any ship, now is it? Her iron hull will cut through the ice like a boot through a puddle.’

Farden looked a little confused. ‘
Through
… the ice?’

‘What? You thought her iron was just for war? No, mage. This ship was made to break ice.’

The mage still didn’t like what he was hearing. ‘So we’re going to sail
into
the ice.’

‘As far as we can.’

‘Sounds utterly safe.’

‘You’ll see,’ Nuka yawned. He had rings the colour of tar around his bloodshot eyes. His speech was slow and languid, but his tone was blunt; the night had worn his patience thin. Farden was about to suggest a few hours of sleep when the captain walked to the edge of the aftcastle and tapped his mug on the railing. ‘Lerel!’ he called. Lerel popped up out of the crowd and began to make her way to the wheel. Nuka turned back to the mage. ‘The problem is finding a place for the
‘Blade
to break into the ice. You could sail these waters for a hundred years and no inch of them would look the same two days in a row. You see, the ice is constantly either melting, freezing, or sliding off the land. Hence, it’s constantly moving. I know these waters better than most, but it’s the ice I don’t know.’

‘Cap’n?’ asked Lerel, as she sauntered across the deck towards them. She gave Farden a tired smile, and the mage winked back,

‘Where’re your eyes, Lerel?’ asked Nuka.

‘Here,’ she said, tossing her spyglass to Nuka. He caught it deftly and put the thinner end of it to his eye, squinting like an owl in the daylight.

‘As I thought,’ he muttered, handing the spyglass back to Lerel, who also put it to her eye.

Farden squinted into the distance. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Ice cliffs, and nothing but, for miles in either direction,’ Lerel answered.

‘I take it that’s bad?’ Farden asked.

Lerel answered this one too. ‘It could put us days behind. Here,’ she said, handing him the spyglass.

It was lighter than he expected, and sturdier too. He lifted it to his eye and squinted. He could see the ice cliffs glittering, so close he felt he could have thrown something at them. They were sheer, and enormous. Farden grit his teeth. ‘That won’t do. Not at all.’

They were interrupted by the sound of boots treading on stairs. It was Tyrfing. He looked as though he had just woken up, which in truth, he had. He looked awful. ‘What are you three looking so glum about?’

Farden ‘We need to f…’

Thump
.

It was a solid sound, like the falling of a fat acorn in the loam, except that they were the furthest from any oak or loam anyone can be, and the acorn sounded as though it were the size of a house. There was an awkward silence on the aftcastle. Farden clutched the wheel, feeling the shivers run through the ship as the vibrations died. ‘Erm, what was that?’ he asked, very quietly. Half the deck had let the noise slip by, unnoticed, deep in their own conversations. The other half looked about, confused.

‘Ice,’ suggested Lerel, putting her hand to the wheel. She accidentally brushed Farden’s gauntlet.

‘No,’ Nuka shook his head, the tiredness fading a little from his eyes. ‘Ice doesn’t sound like that,’ he said.

Thump!

Another dull echo shook the ship, and this time everybody aboard felt it. A hush came over the
Waveblade
. People either looked to their feet or got to them. A few sailors went to the bulwarks and peered into the slate-grey water below.

Farden looked worried. ‘Well, please enlighten us, Captain,’ he said, as his hands rattled with the tremors. ‘And please don’t say leviathan.’

‘You’re on the right track, mage,’ said Nuka. He had a glassy look in his eye, as if a younger man long forgotten had suddenly occupied them. He walked softly, almost gliding, to the railing and looked down at the long, dark shadows sliding under the surface of the water, effortless as dust on the wind. His hand grabbed the wooden rail like a spear. ‘Whales,’ he hissed.

‘Whale!’ came a cry from one of the sailors. A murmur ran across the hushed deck, mainly from the old whalers in the crew.

Farden left the wheel in Lerel’s hands and went to look, brandishing his spyglass. He had never seen a live whale before. A dead one, yes. Once on a beach in Albion, and once splayed out on a wharf in Krauslung’s harbour. Both times he had found them sad, solemn-looking creatures, but that was hardly surprising, given their circumstances.

These whales were smaller and faster than he had imagined. They were a midnight black for the most part, and yet had patches of white here and there. Their fins, tall like the flattened masts of ships, threatened to break the surface with every duck and swerve. They were fast. A trio of them came broadside to the ship and darted towards her, lurching with every strong flick of their wide, flat tails. Just before they struck her iron sides they dove and disappeared into the darkness of the water, rocking the ship with their waves. Farden could hear the dull thump and thwack of their passing tails.