The Coming of the Whirlpool (23 page)

‘Cast off all!' came a cry behind him.

Dow turned to see that the
Chloe
too was ready. Men were everywhere in the rigging and the battleship's vast array of sails were now unfurled, great sheets that filled and flared orange in the bonfire light. The
Chloe
shifted a little, seemed to drift, and then slid more purposefully away from the dock.

Dow looked back. Most of the other surviving vessels were getting underway too – the same wind that had threatened the fleet was now the salvation of it; six ships, it seemed, would escape destruction. But the other eight were barely recognisable, their shapes lost in a massed conflagration, the heat terrific even across the water. And the wharf too was now ablaze. Townspeople were still labouring with their buckets, but most were being driven back. A grim realisation grew in Dow. The warehouses would be next to catch alight. And then beyond them, inevitably, the shops and houses of Stone Port itself.

The
Chloe
was well out from the dock now. The first officer, Commander Fidel, was standing by the wheel, shouting orders as he sought to avoid collision in the harbour, for aside from the giant Ship Kings vessels, dozens of smaller craft had also launched out from their berths – fishing boats, barges, anything that could be saved. Dow wondered fleetingly about the
Maelstrom.
It was a small matter amid so much ruin, still he hated to think of it lost. But fire now hid the fishing wharf, and if the boat remained there, he couldn't tell.

Captain Vincente was at the rail, leaning out to study the chaos. ‘Commander!' he called. ‘Make for the sea gate!'

Fidel glanced across in concern. ‘Sir – we're under sail and the way is narrow. Perhaps if we lowered the boats to tow us through.'

‘There's no time, Commander. We must clear the harbour. The danger of fire has not passed. Burning debris may yet spread across the water, or flying embers catch in our sails. Not only that – if the saboteurs remain nearby, we are too easy a target in these enclosed spaces.'

Fidel nodded and turned to shout new orders. The crew, in their true element now, and recovered from their initial surprise, responded swiftly and surely, each man knowing exactly where to go and what to do there – and Dow, despite everything else that was happening, could not help but admire their skill.

In scant moments the battleship came about, smaller craft scattering before it, and now the sea gate was dead ahead. Dow remembered watching the
Chloe
come through that same gate upon its arrival, and thinking how tight the fit had appeared. It appeared even tighter now, viewed from the high deck.

The ship rushed forward. Dow took a last glance back to Stone Port. The entire waterfront was a wall of flame, and the warehouses beyond were also well alight. Crowds choked the streets of the town as people fled uphill from the blaze. An enormous column of smoke was streaming south on the wind, engulfing the fortress and even the governor's high keep as it went.

‘Steady now!' cried Commander Fidel.

Dow swung his gaze back just in time to see the
Chloe
's bow cleave a path directly between the two great gateposts. Unstoppable in all its weight and speed, the battleship
filled the gap entire. The gateposts slid by, only slightly taller than the high deck, and with so little space to spare that Dow – at the left railing now – could have slapped a hand against one by merely leaning out.

Then they were through.

Open water met them, the heat and noise that had been pressing at their backs suddenly replaced by the cool darkness of the channel.

‘Bring us left, Commander,' ordered the captain calmly. ‘We'll heave to in the Claw and wait for the fire to burn out.'

‘Aye, sir!'

The
Chloe
came slowly left to tack northwards into the bay. A strange quiet settled across the ship; a silence, Dow felt, that came partly from sheer shock. These were the mighty Ship Kings, lords of the world – yet they had been forced to flee in disorder from the ruin of their fleet. Such an affront could hardly be something that anyone on board had experienced before.

Only, who were the attackers? Who had dared such an outrage? And if they were truly New Islanders, Dow wondered, why had they not cared about the fate of Stone Port, doomed now to burn along with the ships?

The
Chloe
only sailed on in the darkness.

A figure loomed before Dow. It was Vincente. ‘You're dismissed,' he said to the marines. ‘The boy can't go anywhere now.'

The marines saluted and vanished away forward.

The captain was a mere shadow, but he seemed to study Dow a moment. Then he pointed north across the bow. ‘Look, Dow Amber.'

Dow looked, staring into the black gulf that was the Claw. Far, far off to the north he discerned the same red glow in the sky he'd seen before, only fiercer now. It was reflected against an elongated cloud that hung low over the bay. But no, it wasn't a cloud. It was smoke – a great pall of smoke lit from beneath by the burning of something vast that lay hidden below the horizon.

Vincente's voice came hollow in the night. ‘Yonder lies Lonsmouth. If I am not mistaken, the city is aflame.'

Dow was bewildered. Lonsmouth too?

‘And it has been aflame for some time, by the look,' the captain added. ‘The fires must have been lit earlier there than they were here.'

Dow gazed about wordlessly, from the glow in the north back to the sea wall of Stone Port, beyond which the flames licked ever higher, the roar of destruction muted now by distance but no less terrible. So this was not one attack but two, struck on the same night, even fifty miles apart across the bay.

‘Tell me, Dow Amber,' asked Vincente, his face a pale blur as he stared out, ‘what is happening here this night? I thought at first that it must be your own New Island folk who laid the mines against our ships. But now I am in doubt. Would any New Islander risk the complete ruin of Stone Port, your finest harbour, to destroy but one of our many fleets? And even if they did, why burn Lonsmouth at the same time? Your capital and greatest city. Does that seem likely to you?'

Dow shook his head in silence.

‘Nor to me. And yet if the sabotage was not committed by New Islanders, from where else could it have come?'

Dow had no idea. He was watching the glow in the north again, remembering Lonsmouth, and all the great docks and tall buildings he had seen along the river as his barge had passed through. So many houses and so many tens of thousands of people, so densely packed together. Now all in flames.

‘There will be great suffering because of this,' said Vincente. ‘Apart from the dead, many will be left homeless, and without clothing or food. With winter coming, starvation and disease must surely follow.'

The true awfulness of it sank home to Dow. He thought suddenly of his family, and felt an acute relief that they were far away and out of any danger in their little village. But other families weren't.

‘This is an act of war, upon your people and mine alike,' intoned the captain. ‘But who is the aggressor?'

There came an abrupt whoosh and roar from Stone Port. A huge belch of flame rose from the town, and rising with it were chunks of burning debris. One piece, the size of a cannon ball perhaps, came flying over the sea wall to plunge sizzling into the bay, not fifty yards from the
Chloe.

‘Commander!' Vincente called. ‘I want at least another mile between us and the port before dropping anchor.'

‘Aye, sir!'

Orders were shouted, and the ship tacked back into the wind.

‘No doubt that was one of the magazines on the
Conquest
going up,' Vincente observed to Dow. In the red glow his smile looked savage. ‘A magazine is a special room in which a ship's gunpowder is stored. The room is proofed against flame, but it cannot withstand a prolonged blaze. I'm afraid that anyone still fighting the fires nearby will have perished in the blast.'

Dow stared in ever mounting horror at the obliteration of Stone Port. It was the obliteration, in fact, of everything. For how could anything be the same after this?

Another whoosh and roar went up. A second fireball, even greater than the first, lifted above the rooftops. Dow shrank back from its heat and glare. The bay all around was lit, the entire channel from Head to Head, the waters glittering silver and fiery orange.

And outlined against the glitter, Dow saw—

‘Captain!' he cried, pointing. ‘There!'

The glare was already dying, the expanse of the Rip fading again to darkness. But there was time enough for Vincente to look, and to see.

It was a craft upon the water, caught in the middle of the channel by the sudden light, less than a quarter of a mile from the
Chloe.
But it was a craft unlike any Dow had ever seen. It was low set, and black, and would have been invisible in the darkness, had not the explosion banished the night. It was much smaller than the
Chloe
, but larger than any New Island craft Dow knew of – a long, slim, sharp-bowed vessel. It bore no sails nor even a mast, but there was a wheel amidships and a rail about its deck – and crowded at that rail were perhaps a dozen men. They were dressed in clothes as black as their boat, but their faces were naked and white in the dying glow, staring across the water to the battleship.

They were ordinary faces no doubt, belonging to men as mortal as any other, but these were the hidden attackers revealed, the secret saboteurs by chance unmasked, and to Dow the sight of them was utterly alien. What struck him most however was the
motion
of the strange craft. It was heading ocean-ward through the Rip and moving fast, cutting cleanly across the water and leaving a frothing wake behind – but not only had it no sails, it bore no oars either. Impossibly, the boat seemed to be propelled by nothing at all.

Then darkness fell again, and the thing was gone.

‘Commander, come about!' roared Vincente. ‘Hard now, and make for the Rip! The enemy is there! Battle stations!'

He dashed off, leaving Dow alone at the rail, peering vainly into the blackness. Moments later the
Chloe
heeled and came sweeping around until its bow was pointed south and the wind was blowing from dead astern. The sails filled and the ship leapt forward, the crew working with a feverish new intensity; from below came a tremendous thump and rumble that could only be the guns running out. Dow stood forgotten amid it all, not knowing whether he was excited, or appalled, or both, as the
Chloe
threw off its lesser guise and revealed its truer self; a weapon, a bringer of death, a tool for the swift execution of the Ship Kings' vengeance.

Except, where was the enemy? The
Chloe
charged headlong into the Rip . . . and found nothing and no one there.

Back and forth the battleship prowled, a hunter deprived of prey, scouring the Rip and its approaches in an ever widening patrol. An hour passed. Eventually the
Severe
emerged from Stone Port harbour
,
and after shouted consultation across the waters, the two ships hunted together. Behind them the town burned without let, and distant Lonsmouth burned too, and the very air began to taste of fire and ash. Still the search went on, until the eastern sky paled with dawn.

Dow watched all the while from the high deck, as eager and alert as any of the crew, but at no stage in the darkness did he or anyone else spy that strange, low shape again. Vincente and his officers grew ever more grim and silent as the hunt passed unrewarded. And when daylight came, dreary with old smoke, and as the fires at last died in Stone Port, the full reach of the ocean was finally revealed. It was calm and clear to the horizon, and innocent of any craft.

C
aptain Vincente, I protest!'

‘Protest all you like, Chancellor, it will change nothing. Dow Amber will be aboard the
Chloe
when we sail.'

It was mid-morning on the second day since the fire, and the
Chloe
lay at anchor in deep water at the inner mouth of the channel, a mile from the Stone Port gate. The ship would not be there much longer – it waited now only for the proper wind and tide before it departed for the open sea.

'Upon the high deck a council was underway. Tables had been set up as three sides of a square; at the central table sat the senior officers of the
Chloe,
and to their right were seated the senior officers of the frigate
Severe.
The third table was occupied by a delegation of Ship King's dignitaries from Stone Port, sent by Governor Balba and led by his chancellor – an individual Dow remembered well, recognising the man by his oily manner as much as by the tall staff he carried.

Dow himself, the subject of the current debate, stood a few steps behind the
Chloe
's
officers, flanked by two marines.

‘Captain,' insisted the chancellor, ‘this prisoner was placed under arrest two nights ago by order of His Grace himself. Due to the boy's injuries we allowed your doctor to keep him in custody for that one night – but plainly he has recovered now, and you have no authority to withhold him.'

‘You are mistaken,' said Vincente, seated at the centre of his table, his manner entirely confident and relaxed. ‘In New Island matters I have no authority, but the question of this boy is no longer a New Island matter. This is now a naval affair; indeed, a matter of war. And in that regard, as a fleet commander answerable only to the Lords of the Fleet, I outrank any governor.'

The chancellor pursed his lips, insulted. ‘It is against our every law to take a New Islander to sea.'

‘Who knows it better than I? But so exceptional are the circumstances I will risk the breaking of the law.'

‘Circumstances? What circumstances?'

Vincente was scornful. ‘You noticed the attack of two nights past, did you not? You noticed the destruction of Stone Port and Lonsmouth? In fact, I would have thought that the governor had more pressing concerns right now, than the arrest of a single boy. But in any case, in light of the momentous events that have taken place here, it's vital that I return home to sound a warning of this new danger. Dow Amber will assist me in the delivery of that warning.'

‘Assist you? He's a New Islander! Indeed, we suspect he is in league with the very rebels who conceived the attack, which is precisely why Governor Balba demands you surrender him to me immediately.'

‘I have already told you, have I not, that the attack was no deed of the New Islanders. They themselves are its primary victims. The assault came from elsewhere. A strange craft was sighted that hails not from these waters.'

The chancellor sniffed haughtily. ‘A strange craft, you say, that somehow moved without the aid of sail or oar. And seen by no one else.'

‘Seen by myself, Chancellor, and by this boy. We two alone. And it is for that reason that I will take him before the Lords when we reach home waters, so that he can confirm a sighting so unusual.' And here the captain's voice went dangerously soft. ‘Or do you doubt what I saw, Chancellor? Do you accuse me of deception, or delusion, here on the deck of my own ship?'

The chancellor glanced about then, at the frowning officers, at the sailors at work in the rigging, and at the marines standing guard – as if realising for the first time just how outnumbered his small party was.

He inclined his head stiffly. ‘As you wish, Captain. I see I cannot prevent you. But be it on your own head.'

Vincente bowed in return. ‘As is it ever.'

And Dow, standing by, felt such a conflicting surge of emotions he was at a loss to decide how he should react. It was really going to happen. He'd known of the captain's intentions – Vincente had forewarned him the day before – but Dow had scarcely believed it would be possible, that the governor could truly be overruled. And yet now the debate was done, and Vincente had prevailed. When the
Chloe
set sail, Dow would be aboard. He was going to sea. To
sea
.

It should have been the greatest news of his life.

However
. . .

He looked beyond the high deck, southwards to the Rip. A stream of boats and barges were making their way back and forth across the channel. The craft were ferrying refugees from Stone Port, and had been doing so since the previous morning. Most of the town's population had survived the fire, but in the town itself barely a house was left standing. Thousands were homeless, and for now there was nowhere they could go – except to Stromner.

Dow had never developed any fondness for the fishing village, but even so he was dismayed by the thought of what would happen to it now. Stromner could not hope to accommodate so many refugees. It would be overrun, turned into a crowded camp, muddy and squalid and full of misery, and through which would soon stalk hunger and disease – followed no doubt by anger and bloodshed. The villagers themselves would be helpless. Even Boiler. And how strange it was that Mother Gale had been proven right yet again. She had warned that the danger had not passed for Stromner, and certainly the danger had not.

And what was Dow doing to help? Nothing. Vincente had forbidden him from leaving the
Chloe,
and he'd accepted that restriction all too readily.
He hadn't even tried to argue. And now he would simply be sailing away. In the time of New Island's direst need, Dow was going to abandon his homeland to its suffering, and make off with the Ship Kings, New Island's very enemies. It wasn't right, he knew. And it was no use telling himself that he had no choice, that he was doing so only as ordered – because he also knew how desperately he
wanted
to go.

Dow looked away from the Rip at last, and from the refugees. He felt too ashamed to watch any longer. And yet neither, he knew, would he speak up and demand, however vainly, to be left behind.

In any case, the council had moved on to other matters. The captain of the
Severe
was now embarked on a long report, having only just returned from a voyage across the Claw to Lonsmouth. There he had found enormous destruction and death, with nigh on four fifths of the city reduced to ash. In his judgement, there was little doubt that the fire was the result of sabotage in the same manner as at Stone Port. Admittedly, no one at Lonsmouth had sighted the saboteurs or their deadly devices; nevertheless, at near to midnight – three hours before the Stone Port attack had begun – multiple blazes had flared up along the docks on both banks of the river, and spread to the streets. Mines were the only explanation.

Unable to aid the homeless thousands in any way, the
Severe
had rescued the Ship Kings residents of the city – no more than three hundred folk – and ferried them to Stone Port to join their fellows. For although the town of Stone Port had been destroyed, the Stone Port fortress had survived unharmed, and with it all the houses and halls and gardens of the governor and his court.

‘Very well,' said Vincente, addressing the whole assembly upon the report's conclusion. ‘Let it be thus. The
Chloe
will sail within hours and make all haste for home, and we will sail alone.
Severe
will remain here to maintain order and to protect our folk at Stone Port. The four surviving merchantmen will stay behind also. Chancellor, the goods those ships carry will have to keep you and your people supplied until relief arrives. Go carefully. Even with fair winds, that relief will be several months in coming. Is that understood, everyone?'

The captain of the
Severe
nodded firmly, and the chancellor inclined his head in regal acquiescence. But no one, Dow noted with another pang of guilt, not even Vincente, made any suggestion of sharing the supplies on the merchantmen with the hungry crowds at Stromner and Lonsmouth, or of opening up the Ship Kings' fortress to accommodate any of the refugees.

And yet
still
Dow was thankful that Vincente was going to take him along when the
Chloe
set sail.

With that, the council broke up. The chancellor and his attendants swept off to their boats that lay tied up at the
Chloe
's
side, giving Dow dark glares as they went. The officers from the
Severe
lingered somewhat longer, and in friendlier fashion, talking with the
Chloe
's
officers, but then made for their own boats in turn. And all the while Dow and his two guards stood by, awaiting dismissal. Everyone ignored them – until Lieutenant Diego appeared. Dow had not seen him at the council, for the junior officers had not been invited, but now he strolled by, and then paused ostentatiously to peer at Dow's forehead, no longer bandaged, but which displayed an ugly cut held together by black stitches.

‘It heals well, I see,' said Diego airily. ‘I'm glad. But I must say it sounds rather clumsy of you, to trip over and hit your head – and while we were still tied up at the dock! It doesn't say much for your sea legs, New Islander. How will you fare in a true ocean swell, I wonder?'

Dow only stared back levelly, remembering the way the crystal goblet had come spinning towards him.

Diego smiled. ‘We'll know soon enough, won't we, now that the captain has seen fit to defy all sense and tradition. I suppose I should welcome you aboard.' But instead the lieutenant only leant closer, his voice low, dropping even the pretence of civility. ‘You don't fool me, New Islander. Phantom boats, indeed – I know it was your own people who were behind this attack, and that you were in league with them. And the truth will come out, if I have anything to do with it.'

Again Dow did not speak, but the accusation seemed an ominous foretaste of trouble. First the chancellor had doubted the existence of the strange boat, now one of Vincente's own officers was doing the same.

Diego stepped back. ‘And don't expect any pleasure cruise, New Islander. I doubt you'll be allowed to stay in such luxurious quarters as the sick bay for much longer. Nor will the marines want to waste their time standing watch over you all voyage.' He glanced to the guards on either side of Dow. ‘Am I right, men? The brig is the place to keep this one, is it not?'

The marines gave dutiful laughs, and at that Dow almost did break his silence; he hadn't considered such a possibility, but suddenly it seemed only too plausible. And it would be the cruellest of all jokes for fortune to play on him – to be permitted to sail at last, but to sail locked away in a lightless cell.

‘That will do, Lieutenant.'

Diego started, for Vincente had come up quietly from behind. But he quickly recovered, and even smirked faintly as he bowed. ‘Aye, sir.'

‘You're dismissed, Lieutenant.'

‘Aye, sir.' And with a salute, Diego was gone.

Vincente appraised Dow a moment. ‘A word, if I may,' he said, drawing Dow away from the marines and over to the rail. ‘For one, you need not fear that I'll confine you to the brig. Indeed, once we're safely at sea I'll dispense with your guard altogether, and you'll have free run of the ship, within reason.'

Dow's relief clashed with all his other confused emotions; he could not decide how he felt about the captain. He forced himself to remember that Vincente was a Ship King, and was taking Dow aboard his vessel not out of any kindness or friendship, but out of necessity.

They stood at the rail, each in silence for a moment, staring north across the Claw. A haze hung in the sky; it marked the smouldering ruins of Lonsmouth. But with his mind's eye Dow gazed further – he looked beyond the city to the wide lowland plains, and then beyond again, following the Long River for all its twisting length to a blue shadow that was the highlands, far, far away. He saw Yellow Bank in its deep valley, and his family's little cottage. He saw his mother and father, and his brother and sisters too, gathered by the fire. In the chaos of this upturned world, he could think of no way to get a message to them that he was leaving New Island, and that he did not know when he would return.

‘You are strangely fated, Dow Amber,' said Vincente at last, his eyes seeming to look as far afield as Dow's. ‘Against all custom and law, both ours and your own, the moment is now come; you are about to embark upon the Great Ocean, the first of your kind to do so in generations. You have wished deeply for this, I think. And no doubt there are great wonders to be seen out there. Monstrous creatures and deadly storms. Realms of ice and cold, realms of heat and torpor. Realms where pale dead things walk on the surface to haunt the living, and realms where the very water itself behaves in ways near impossible to explain.'

And Dow's sight leapt beyond his home now, and went reaching to the headland, where he had first spied the ocean, and then went swooping out across the waves, and on to a storm wracked horizon . . .