Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga) (41 page)

Unwilling to risk a bite from the overseer’s lash, Connor hurried
back to his seat. Though the fishermen were now all free men, Captain Darden’s discipline at sea had not changed. A large man who went by the moniker of Plow paced up and down the deck, with an intimidating flail in one hand and a bullwhip in the other. Connor eyed Plow warily, and went back to his gibbing.

“Know why he’s called Plow?” Tad asked.

Connor cast a watchful glance over his shoulder to make sure the overseer was out of hearing range. “No, why?”

Tad guffawed. “Because he’s as big as the ox that pulls one, and dumb as two.”

The man on Tad’s other side elbowed him. “Enough. You’ll scare the new guy.” The speaker was an older man named Ev with gray-flecked hair and beard, whose short, muscular body made Connor guess he might have been a sailor before ill luck sent him to Velant.

“Truth is, since the prison closed, ain’t no one got a taste of that bullwhip, though it makes a mighty fine crack in the air. Most of us pick up the pace when we hear it, havin’ had a lick of it in the past,” Ev added. “No one who’s carrying his share gets the flail, either, not on Darden’s ship. Can’t say on the others.”

Plow edged closer. Connor and the others bent to gibbing until Plow had shifted his attention elsewhere. The ship had changed course, and when Connor dared a glance seaward, he saw that the new ship was closer than it had been before.

Their own buss had picked up speed, and after the last haul, the nets had remained on board. In the half-light, Connor could see several of the other fishing boats converging around the larger ship, which made no move to elude them. The strange ship had a ghostly look to it, silhouetted against the horizon’s faint light. The distance had closed enough for Connor to get a
good look, yet he glimpsed no one aboard its decks, and no movement in the rigging save for the ragged canvas of its sails. He repressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the miserable weather or the seawater that sloshed around his ankles on the deck.

“Unknown ship, show your colors.” Captain Darden’s voice boomed through a speaking trumpet. By now, the herring buss’s fishermen had idled at their tasks and stood for a better look. Even Plow strained to see what was going on. Darden’s challenge echoed across the water. Aboard the ghost ship, nothing stirred. As their fishing boat drew closer, Connor glimpsed the name on the larger ship’s prow,
Nomad
.

“
Nomad
, fly your colors and show your crew, or you will be boarded.”

Aboard the herring boat, no one spoke. It was ridiculous, Connor thought, for a fishing boat to threaten a much larger ship. The
Nomad
appeared to be a merchant ship, made for hauling cargo, nearly the same size as the
Prowess
, on which Connor had sailed. No flag flew from its mast. It appeared to be adrift.

“
Nomad
, this is your final warning. Fly colors or be boarded.”

Another few moments passed with no reply. Captain Darden turned his speaking trumpet toward the crew. “I need twenty volunteers to go aboard and see what we’ve got.”

Blaine and Piran raised their hands. Connor did too, driven now by curiosity. So did half of the men on deck. Plow made his way through the men. “You, you, and you,” he said, pointing to Blaine, Piran, and Connor. “Not you,” Plow snarled at Tad. “And not you, old man,” he sneered at Ev.

Captain Darden directed their boat closer to the ghost ship. Now Connor could really see the difference in size between the two craft. The silent ship had three masts, and at least three
decks above its storage and ballast hold. Up close, it towered over the herring busses, which ringed it like insects.

“Send a few shafts into the hull,” the captain called. “Give the men something to climb.” He gestured toward the harpoons that the fishing boat carried, just in case they got lucky enough to spot a small whale.

Half a dozen fishermen took up harpoons and sent them flying into the hull of the derelict ship, linking their buss with the ship. The harpoon ropes formed two parallel lines from near the railing of the buss to the deck of the taller ship.

“Ready now, climb!”

Connor’s eyes grew wide. He had expected a rope ladder, or some other, normal means of boarding. One of the volunteers stepped up onto the fishing boat’s railing and leaped, catching the first line. With a bit of a swing, he caught the second, making his way up the side of the ship like one of the trained monkeys from the Cross-Sea Kingdoms Connor had once seen at court.

The next man was not so agile, and he fell from the third line into the sea, only to be hauled back into the fishing boat, soaked and shivering, to the catcalls and jeers of his fellow sailors.

Blaine was next, and then Piran, who came to the railing cursing loudly enough for all to hear. At last, it was Connor’s turn, and he murmured a prayer to Yadin as he took his place on the railing. Swearing under his breath, Connor jumped. He closed his hands around the rough hemp of the harpoon line and swung, grasping the next line. Refusing to look down, or to afford the audience aboard the fishing boat a backward glance, Connor fixed his gaze on the next line, and then the next, until he’d swung and jumped for the railing of the anchored ship.

His arms were shaking and his grip faltered, but two pairs of strong hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hoisted him on board, tumbling him onto the deck like a net of fish. “I just want you to know, I helped you on board even though I had a bet you wouldn’t make it,” Piran grumbled as he gave Connor a hand up.

Aboard the
Nomad
, no other signs of life stirred. The slack lines of the ruined sails slapped against the masts; there were no other sounds beyond their own shuffling on deck.

“Let’s split up and search.” As usual, it was Blaine who stepped into the breach. “The men from our boat will search the crew and officer quarters.” He looked to the dozen men who had also scrambled aboard on the starboard side of the
Nomad
. “You there, take the hold. See if there are supplies we can use.” He looked to the two groups of fishermen who had climbed in from the port side. “Your group—take the second deck. See what you find. Last group, search on deck. We’re looking for survivors, logbooks, supplies, and anything that gives us a clue about how the ship came to be here in this condition. Move sharp—we’ve still got fish to catch.”

Connor suppressed a smile and shook his head. Blaine’s fellow convicts might know little of his noble background, but they deferred to him nonetheless. On Blaine’s part, taking charge seemed to be something that came naturally, and Connor wondered if Blaine was aware of it. From what he had seen of Blaine’s determined efforts to blend into the background as “Mick,” Connor guessed not.

As they headed down the narrow steps to the first deck that housed the crew and officer quarters, Connor steeled himself to stumble over corpses. Yet no bodies littered the crowded passageways, which gave no hint of violence or disease.

“Where in Raka did they all go?” Piran asked, putting into words what Connor bet they were all thinking.

“And why did they go anywhere?” one of the other men asked from behind Connor.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Blaine muttered. “Piran and Connor, come with me. The rest of you, go in teams of two or three and make sure you open every cabin. No looting, mind you. Darden’ll see we get a share of the spoils when we get back to port.”

Blaine led them into the largest cabin at the bow of the ship. It was obviously the captain’s quarters, though as a merchant vessel it was modest compared to what Connor had heard about on warships. Its furnishings, though sparse, befit a captain. A large desk, perfect for ledgers and bills of lading, sat in the center of the room. A smaller dining table and two campaign chairs sat near the mullioned glass panes at the stern. Between two support posts swung an empty rope hammock with a pillow and woolen blanket. Near the foot of the hammock was a brass-bound trunk.

Blaine began to rummage through the drawers of the main desk, while Piran began to work at the trunk’s lock with the knife. At a loss for what else to do, Connor made a slow circle of the rest of the room. He opened a door, and found the captain’s formal uniform hanging neatly inside, as well as a pair of polished high black boots and a heavy cloak.

Connor’s boots crunched on glass and he looked down. A small oval frame lay on the floor, as if it had been knocked from one of the railed ledges in the wall. He bent to retrieve it, and found a small oil painting of a comely young woman and a small child. He smiled, remembering Garnoc and Millicent, imagining that the mysteriously departed captain of the
Nomad
had wanted to keep his loved ones near him during his long voyages.

“Looks like the ship’s seen some rough seas since the crew vanished,” Connor observed. Though the order in the captain’s closets and drawers attested to a normally tidy nature, now that Connor looked around the room, the floor was littered with objects that looked to have fallen from the desk or table, or been tossed from the niches in the bulkhead. Glassware and dishes were tumbled against a corner of the room. As Connor completed his careful inspection, he found little else of note, save for a large tin of hard biscuits, obviously the captain’s own stash, which was almost full.

Blaine had lowered himself into the captain’s chair, and sat at the desk with a leather-bound journal in front of him. “According to this, the
Nomad
set sail from Aquesta in the Lesser Kingdoms just after the defeat in Donderath. The captain refers to the ‘Great Fire’ and talks about the night the magic died. His family was killed in the fire, which apparently leveled quite a bit of the countryside.”

Blaine paused, and his finger slipped down along the lines of cramped, neat writing. “Apparently he intended to dock at Castle Reach, but found the city no better off. He says here that they set sail for the Cross-Sea Kingdoms on the Far Shores, but that doesn’t make any sense.” He looked from Piran and Connor. “How in Esthrane’s name would the ship have ended up here if he meant to reach the Far Shores?”

Piran shrugged. “I’ve heard there’s a powerful current that goes from the open ocean off of Donderath north toward Edgeland. We don’t know how long the ship’s been adrift. If the current took it, and there was no one at the wheel, the ship might have just been swept here like driftwood.”

Blaine flipped through several pages of the captain’s log,
then frowned and skipped ahead, only to flip back. “There are only two weeks’ worth of entries. Whatever went wrong must have happened not long after they set out.” He flipped to the end of the journal.

“Second of Tormun, sixth hour by the stars. I fear the stress of knowing that our homeland is in ruins hangs heavy on my crew and passengers. Despite the efforts of the guards, fights have become a constant and tempers are short. It cannot help matters that our supplies are inferior. Several of the barrels of grain looted from a warehouse near the docks after the Great Fire were badly spoiled, but we had no choice except to mill the damaged grain and make the best of it. Afterward, whether because of the bad grain or the rough seas, quite a few of the passengers took sick.”

Blaine turned the page. “Listen to this.
Fourth of Tormun, tenth hour. I fear we are cursed. The winds fight us, and the sea has been violent, so that we have made hardly any progress these last few days. Belowdecks, many are sick, some so much so that they imagine visions and terrors that are not real, and must be confined or bound. Our food supplies are indeed poor quality. Some of the men report a strange burning in their hands and feet, and a few have taken fits, writhing and foaming at the mouth. Yadin save us, but I fear for this ship.
”

Blaine let out a long breath as he flipped to the last entry. “
Surely we have angered the gods. The passengers and my crew flee from terrors only they can see. Many have jumped or thrown men overboard, while others have killed themselves or those around them in their panic. Only the first mate, the navigator, and I appear to be spared from the madness, but what can three do against three hundred? I was accosted by one of the crew, a man quite out of his wits, who came at me so violently with a belaying pin that I expected to die, and might have except that a fit took him and sent him scrabbling on the deck like a beast with a broken
back. I have made every offering in my knowledge to appease Yadin, but it is not enough. Charrot save us; we are bound for the Sea of Souls.
”

Blaine closed the journal. “That’s the last entry.”

Pounding on the door made them all jump. “McFadden, you’ve got to see this,” a man said, poking his head into the room. Blaine and the others followed the man down into the hold.

“We’ve found no bodies,” the man explained. “Rager told me that a ship like this should have a dinghy or two, and they’re gone, so some of them might have thought they’d row for land, but I can’t imagine why. Especially when we found all this,” he said, and opened the door to the ship’s galley.

“They had dried meat and cheese enough to last for weeks, along with plenty of salted fish and grog. Barrels of wheat, too, which should have kept them, even though some of it went a bit funny.”

“Something about the wheat looked funny?” Piran echoed with a strange look on his face.

“Aye,” their guide explained. “It smells off, and some of the grains are dark.”

“Show me,” Piran said with sudden fierceness.

Baffled, Blaine and Connor exchanged questioning glances. They followed the fisherman into a storage room filled with sacks of grain. Piran fell to his knees beside one of the sacks and stabbed it with his knife, letting the grain pour out into his cupped hands. Connor was close enough to see that about half of the kernels were a dark brown, instead of their normal light gold.

Piran let out a string of curses that were potent even for him. He looked up at Blaine and Connor with a pained expression. “Bad grain,” he said. “Ergot. I saw this once on campaign.
Something turns the humours of the grain poisonous. All the things in the captain’s journal—the fits, madness, visions—the poison in the grain does that.” He shook his head. “Poor blokes never knew what hit them. If they didn’t die from the fits, they likely pitched over the side.”