Slow Turns The World (8 page)

“Brings bad luck?”

“Indeed.  Kalor was told this when we saw you upon the berg.  He sought to bring himself good fortune and the crew like any man who brings that cargo aboard, so they did his bidding without calling upon the Captain.  Now it has turned ill and a reckoning must be made.”

“A reckoning?”

“Those who live upon the sea have their own ways, as I have learnt; as you will now learn, for you belong to the ship.  I am called Trabbir; come with me now and eat.  Tell me how you came upon the ice and then rest.  Rest, before your new life begins.  You belong to the ship.”

Trabbir led down a steep stair into the midst of the ship.  The air was dank with the smell of sweat and grease, the compartment dimly lit by flickering oil lamps.  There, in the crew’s quarters, between the swaying hammocks and sleeping litters, they sat together at a long table suspended from gently creaking ropes.  All the while there was a rumble and grinding of the turning paddle driven by some unseen power.  They ate greedily and with mouths half full told the story of how they came upon the sea.  Then Torrin asked a question of Trabbir.

“Have you served long upon the ship?”

“I have belonged to the ship for most of my life since I was full-grown, but I was of Nejital.”

Torrin looked at Valhad, who shrugged and shook his head.

“We do not know of that tribe,” he said.

“You do not know of Nejital?”  Trabbir laughed at them.  “Where does your tribe live, the dark side of the world?”

“No,” said Torrin, “but on the edge of darkness, in the sunset lands.”

“Then let me tell you,” said Trabbir, “that Nejital is not a tribe but an empire with many great cities; V'rena, Iranthrir, Hityil, Dh'lass…  I grew up in V'rena, which now lies on the dark side of the world.  When V'rena passed to darkness, as it must while the world still turns, our people crossed the sea in many ships, from one side of the world to the other, from sunset to dawn, to Iranthrir.  You could not guess how great and fair that city was, every gilded tower glinting under the newly risen sun.”  He grew silent for a moment, his dark brown eyes lost in some sad memory, then sighed, shook his head, and continued.  

 “We lived there but ten seasons, for then it was carried into the burning lands where the sun shines down from high, where no man can live, and so we sailed east to Hityil which was coming from the heat into the cooler margin of the world.   But, there are often disputes when families come from one city to the next and find others in their houses; disputes that run from one generation to another.   That is how I came to kill another man, why I was sold into slavery, and came upon this ship, like many that belong to her.”

They slept long after eating and then were taken up to the stern of the ship.  The deck rose in tiers to a broad high platform where the ship's wheel was mounted, and also, suspended in
gimballed
frames, was a compass and an hourglass.   The Captain's skin was as wrinkled as old leather, his white beard long, but his body looked lean and strong, as if salt and spray had dried his skin and bleached his hair, rather than the passing of his time.  He stood taking a bearing upon the angle of the sun with a finely made instrument of gleaming metal.  Then he turned and spoke to another sailor who was studying a chart laid out before him.

“What says the compass?”

“Still true north north west, Captain.”

“Then we are here, as we should be.” The Captain turned and pointed to a spot on the chart.

“And our course?” asked the sailor.

“As we are, and then around the Point of Gradala.  Then due east.”

“East?  Into the darkness?”

“If that is where our good Lord would go, and pay for, so it shall be.”

The Captain looked at Torrin and Valhad.

“So these are the two who should be in the belly of the serpent?   Luck shines upon you, and luck will always find a home with us.  Your lives belong to the ship, serve her well and she shall serve you.”

“Sir,” said Torrin, “we shall repay the debt we owe you, but our lives are our own.  We would leave the ship when land is met and find our way back to our tribe.”

“You will repay the debt first,” said the Captain,  “and debts come no greater.  The crew of this ship come from many ports, most as slaves or prisoners saved from dungeons without hope, or the executioner’s blade.  Every man pays his debt to the ship.  Most come in manacles and by good service earn small rewards; first to walk without chains and then to go ashore when land is met.   Serve well and hard and there will be payment for you and even freedom may come.  If you will not take these terms there is another way; see there…”

They followed the Captain’s pointed finger and saw a crewman scrubbing the lower deck, chains manacled to his ankles.

“The ship gives life and hope when all else has gone, but some will not see this.  Some bring bad fortune and bad fortune is best given to the sea; a reckoning must sometimes be made.   So how will you serve us?  Do I need to have you chained?”

Torrin did not answer but Valhad spoke.

“It is as you say, sir; our lives belong to the ship.  We shall serve until the ship releases us.”

“Captain!”

As they turned to see who had called, two men joined them on the upper deck; a scowling Kalor with his master.  
Torrin recognised him at once; the man who had denied the Vasagi their rightful path, who had also saved them from Kalor’s blade.  
Once again he stood in simple clothes, finely made, bearing the emblem of triangle and circle upon his breast.  He had a lean shaven face, cold blue eyes, and long greying hair that hung behind him, woven in a single plait.

“Captain,” he said, “are we making good speed?”

“The best that we can.”

“We must reach our destination within two moons.”

“I cannot promise that.  The wind still blows against us and now brings cloud from the south.  Soon the sun will be hidden and then we cannot know our place upon the sea.  Gradala is twenty turns away and must be passed widely for many ships have foundered there.   We should take a longer course westwards.  That will delay us by five turns.”

“I would remind you, Captain, that any payment for this voyage assumes we keep to the agreed schedule.”

“The weather and the sea have no bargain with us.    And your servant here has not helped by bringing bad luck upon us.”

“We have no need of luck, Captain, because we do God's work.”

“Your God is a long way from home.”

“Keep the bargain, Captain, and keep your payment.  Fail and it shall be reduced.”

The Lord and his servant strode away. The Captain looked silently after them, shaking his head, and passed a quiet order to the nearest sailor.

“Stay on the fastest course.”

Life upon the ship was governed by the turn; it was the turn of the hourglass that swayed upon its gimballed cradle on the upper deck.  The passing of sand from the upper to lower chamber was equal to the time a man might sleep.  It divided time of rest from time of work, and also the crew into two watches.   As one turn followed another Torrin and Valhad began to learn the way of the ship and became instructed in its art.  At first, while their full strength recovered, they mainly swept and scrubbed the dark timbers of the deck.  Then the time came when they were taken down to the source of the constant rumbling in the depths of the ship; there was a great compartment across the full width of the hull, several decks in height, where set between the walls were three great treadmills filled with toiling shapes.  

So here was the power that turned the great paddle and drove the ship; the long gasping toil of thirty men in this dimly lit chamber.   Toothed wheels fashioned from metal turned and clattered while timber strained and creaked.  Sometimes the men sang and every tune beat the rhythm of their labour.  One man would sing out the verses, stories of places and people far away, names unknown to the Vasagi, and then the chorus would bellow out from every mouth.  A few songs were sad, but most were bawdy and the men would laugh as they sang and toiled.

A tolling bell marked the turn, but the work did not cease until the next watch assembled in the chamber.  Men would leave the treadmill from one end as the next shift entered from the other and the turning of the great wooden drums would not slow for even a second.   They would file away to the crew’s quarters and gather around the table.  All ate hungrily, upon dried meats and fruit, and swigged their ration of ale.  Many tales were told of distant lands; of lost love or perils on the sea.  Torrin listened quietly to the stories, fascinated by how great a place the world was and how little he knew of it.   

Most of the crew, though they were hardened by their lives upon the ship, did not seem to be evil men and any crimes that had condemned them to the sea were often petty, sometimes political.  They respected any man who worked hard and had the skill to tie a knot or set a sail.  Not all were slaves; some had worked always upon the sea, learning the craft of their father's fathers, while others had served well and long enough to be made free and given payment for their service.  Trabbir had earned his freedom, serving long and well.

“When this voyage is done,” he told Torrin, “the Captain will give a portion of his payment to those of us who have done good service.  And he will be paid very well, be sure of that.  Then I shall finally leave this ship and buy my own boat.  I will be my own captain, at last.”

One member of the crew, Yalu, had been bought from slavery at a port on the journey but did not welcome his chance for a new life; he worked grudgingly and only when eyes were upon him.  Yalu pilfered small items from the crew's chests then cursed and spat if accused of the crime.  He still wore slave's manacles around his ankles, dragging the chains behind him as he scrubbed the decks, sneering and bitter.  

“Such a man,” said Trabbir, “may have a shorter life on the sea than he expects.”

He would not explain further when Torrin asked what this meant.

While his master seldom appeared on deck, Kalor was a brooding presence and would pace wherever his listless feet took him.  Many of the crew gave him a hard stare, or spat from the ship's side as he passed, for they had not forgiven the failure to behead the serpent with a single cut.   The men of the sea were very superstitious, always aware that their fate lay in the hands of fortune, in the quirks of wind and tide.   Kalor cursed them back, and gripped his sword hilt, before striding away to some other part of the ship.

 Sometimes, before he settled down to sleep, Torrin would go upon the deck and stare back across the boundless sea knowing the Vasagi were there, somewhere distant, walking on their endless journey, and Varna too, cradling and suckling their child.  Every moment, every pitch of the ship, every turn of the treadmill, took him further from them.  More than once he thought he saw, for a brief moment, in the foaming wake of the ship, a flash of silver scales and a moving bulk that followed and watched.

After ten turns the wind changed and brought a mixed blessing for the sails would now bear the vessel faster than the paddle wheel and so the labour on the treadmills ceased.  Torrin and Valhad had their first turn upon the rigging; the crew around them climbing like squirrels and gleefully mocking their caution.  Torrin had never liked high places and had always let others climb the rianna for eggs or honey.  He would have preferred the highest boughs of those trees to the awful rocking motion of the masts.  High above the pitching deck they were shown how the sails unfurled and the way of ropes, knots, splices and pulleys.  But then the wind swept cloud across the sun and brought an anxious frown to the Captain who stood upon the deck below.  Torrin gazed down from the rigging and spoke to Trabbir who worked beside him.

“What troubles the Captain?”

“The Cape of Gradala draws closer and cloud hides the sun.  The angle of the sun must be measured, its height above the horizon, to gives our position on the chart.   Gradala is a graveyard; many ships have foundered there, carried as we are upon the southwest wind without the sun to give a reckoning.  We should change course and take a longer safer way but…”

“The Lord has promised our Captain a greater payment to be swift?”

“Ah yes, His Lordship from the north,” sneered Trabbir, “he does God's work; so that should keep us all safe at Gradala.”

“This Lord and his servant Kalor,” said Torrin, “they do not remember my face, for I am as nothing to them, but we have met before.”

He related to Trabbir the passage across the mountain, the Asgal with their leather, mail and weapons, their meeting with Kalor and the Lord, and what they found when they returned there.  

“In what you’ve told me,” said Trabbir, “is much that I have guessed already.  His Lordship bought the passage of the ship ten moons ago.  We were at Hirege, the city of the sea in northern waters where the ship was built and home to many of the crew who are free men, where wives and children wait for their return.   We loaded his cargo; many sealed cases, and then sailed far south under His Lordship’s direction, beyond any seas that we knew, south and west, to where the sun was nearly set.  We did not know these waters, but His Lordship had many charts of the coast and channels.  We anchored in a bay and waited while he and Kalor put ashore.  After more than a moon they returned, but not alone; about twenty others came with them bearing cargo upon carts and pack animals.  Many more sealed boxes were put within the hold, then all came aboard the ship; there were a few of the Lord's own people from the far north, and they commanded the others who were men of southern tribes, perhaps the Asgal you spoke of, the few who did not stay behind to argue and kill each other.  All wore mail, carried weapons and bore the sign of triangle and circle.   We sailed on eastwards for a few turns and put them ashore with some of the cargo stowed at Hirege.  The long day of the world comes to an end in these lands.   The work upon the mountain that you witnessed had to finish and it was time for the bounty to be collected and taken north.  I think the others were sent eastwards to find new wealth and new tribes to do the work; others who will be tempted with pretty suits and shiny weapons; who will enslave their neighbours.”