The navigator (26 page)

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It still took all of Wesley's skill to keep Boat on course since it was now short four of its ten oars, but at least, he said, he didn't have to fight Boat as well as the sea. However, his face was pinched with fatigue by the time dawn came. If it could be called a dawn. For despite the fact that the sun didn't really set this far north, the sky was completely hidden by heavy black clouds, and the waves were so high that even if there had been a horizon, you wouldn't have been able to see it. In the end, the Sub-Commandant persuaded Wesley to step down and let Mervyn take the wheel. The Sub-Commandant had insisted that they all stay in the wheelhouse, so Wesley lay down on the floor and wrapped himself in a blanket. Cati was able to do no more than doze on the hard floor.

"At least there's no sign of the planes," said Dr. Diamond.

"The wind will have blown them miles away," the Sub-Commandant said. Suddenly, there was a shout from the corner. The Sub-Commandant whirled round. Chancellor, who had been sleeping, was sitting bolt upright, his eyes staring.

"The Mortmain!" he shouted. "Where is the Mortmain?" The Sub-Commandant was beside him in an instant, placing a gentle arm on his shoulder.

"It's all right," he said. "It's all right. The Mortmain is safe."

"The Planemen will have it!" Chancellor shouted. "The Planemen must have it or send it to the bottom of the sea!"

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"The Planemen are gone," the Sub-Commandant said gently but insistently.

Chancellor blinked, then slumped back against the wall. "I was dreaming," he said weakly. "I thought the Planemen had taken the Mortmain."

"The Mortmain is safe and the Planemen are gone. The wind took them in the night."

"Maybe not," Dr. Diamond said quietly. They followed his pointing finger. Just a few hundred meters off the bow, the three Planemen rose into the air from behind a wave. Their leather jerkins were so coated in ice that it seemed as if they were wearing frozen armor. There were signs of damage to the planes--a bent vane, a ragged tailpiece, and long icicles hanging from their undercarriage--but they were intact. And Dr. Diamond could see that they were hunting now.

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Pieta urged Owen across the tree bridge, but her urging was gentle this time. He was numb and exhausted, and the back of his legs felt on fire. She made him sit on a large rock, giving him some flat cakes that she took from a small bag slung over her shoulder. He realized that he couldn't remember the last time he had eaten. As he ate, she knelt beside him and rubbed snow into the burning welts on the back of his legs.

"There was no time," she said, looking up into Owen's face. He knew she was right. While he was hesitating, paralyzed by his fear of falling in the water, the Q-car would have been on them. Pieta finished tending to his legs. Her touch was gende. She took a cloth from her bag, tore it into strips, and wrapped it round his legs.

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The snow was still falling sparsely, but Pieta looked around her, as if smelling the air. She seemed worried.

"There is a lot more snow coming," she said. "We should move, try to find trees we can shelter under. We can't use the Harsh Road. They will wonder what happened to Johnston. Maybe they will come looking for him."

They set off, Pieta leading the way, Owen walking as best he could in her footsteps. They walked all morning and into the afternoon, but there was no sign of trees. Pieta stole worried looks at Owen. The boy had taken far too much physical and mental punishment, and now he stumbled along as though in a dream. As she began to recognize the sort of place they were in, her worry grew. There were icy pools everywhere, small clumps of scrubby birch and elder. The ground beneath their feet was frozen and Pieta believed they had found themselves in the middle of a bogland--a great icy fen where there would be little proper shelter.

As the afternoon wore on, the snowflakes became smaller, turning hard and sleety so that they stung Owen's face. At the same time, the wind from the north became stronger, stirring up the surface of the snow and flinging it in their faces. They pressed on, not because they had any aim or destination but simply because Pieta knew that if Owen stopped and lay down, he might never find the will to get up again.

They had been walking on smooth ground for some time--smooth ground without shelter, it was true, but at

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least it was easier to walk on. Then, as it began to get dark, Pieta suddenly realized why the ground was so smooth and shelterless. Kneeling quickly and scooping away the snow, she revealed hard, black ice. They were walking on the surface of a lake, frozen and bleak. Behind her Owen swayed and almost fell. She put her arm round him. He mumbled something and leaned against her shoulder. Night was coming and the temperature was plummeting. There was one last desperate hope. Something Pieta had once learned about another level of Re-sisters. Something proud and bitter and dark of thought. And these marshes and fens and boggy lakes were the stronghold of this resistance.

Stumbling now with tiredness, for she had run day and night after the Q-Car, Pieta pushed Owen forward into the storm and the growing night. On and on they went, beyond any limit she had ever known, and when Owen fell, she picked him up and put him over her shoulders and carried him. Until at last a small mound of earth reared in front of them, ringed in ancient whitethorn bushes. Pieta pushed through them, the sharp thorns tearing at her clothes and skin, and fell exhausted. With one last effort, she took the whip from her pocket and sent a searing flame up the trunk of one of the trees.

She waited, but nothing happened. She noticed that the falling snow had covered Owen and brushed it away from his face. "The debt of my children is repaid now," she said. "There is nothing else I can do."

The boy's eyes were closed and he did not answer.

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Pieta staggered to her feet. Her hands and legs were frozen and useless. She made to move forward, but her legs gave way and she fell onto her knees. As she did so something hard and merciless wrapped itself round her neck, choking off her breath. Frantically, she tried to twist and throw off her attacker, but it was no use. As she struggled, she was aware of a ghostly shape, bent over her.

Suddenly the pressure eased slightly. Then Pieta heard a female voice, harsh and gravelly and full of dark authority.

"You said to the boy the debt of your children you have repaid. You burned my tree. Now you have to start paying him for your own life, for you would surely be dead now if he was not here."

The pressure round Pieta's neck grew again and she felt her sight grow dim, her limbs grow weak, and she pitched forward into the snow and knew no more.

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All day they tried to hold off the planes, but without the extra speed it was useless. The Planem en had realized that they could hold their craft steady for long enough to fire on Boat, whereas Uel and Mervyn had only the wildly pitching deck from which to fire. The planes swooped and dipped around the boat, firing carefully and steadily. They were too far away for any one shot to do massive damage, but at the same time, each shot did a little harm. Bits of the railing were carried away. The deck was scorched and cracked in places. The hull had been hit several times. In the midafternoon, one of the bolts of magno plunged through the wheelhouse glass, exploding shards around the crew and burning a half-meter hole in the back wall. Wesley risked an expedition across
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the deck and down into the bilge. He reported that they must have sprung a plank, for there was water in the hold.

Uel and Mervyn did their best, but too often their shots arced wildly off into the dark sky. Then another shot from the Planemen hit the deck beside Uel. He rolled onto his side, white-faced, with a jagged wound in his right hand. Cati bandaged it as best she could, but he couldn't operate the crossbow anymore. The Planemen grew in confidence, sweeping in at wave height and firing across the deck, and this time their fire was doing real damage. On one sweep the forecastle was set alight, and Dr. Diamond and the Sub-Commandant had to brave the open deck again and again with buckets before they had it under control.

The water was still pouring into the bilges, and Cati could feel that the weight of it was slowing Boat again, and still they were tossed around by the huge waves. Cati marveled at the ability of the little craft to take so much punishment, but she knew that it could not go on. She remembered what Chancellor had said about the Mortmain being sent to the bottom of the sea. Why had he said that? The scene in the wheelhouse was chaotic now. Dr. Diamond and the Sub-Commandant ran from place to place putting out fires, but still the woodsmoke stung her eyes. Sleety spray came through the broken window every time they crested a wave. The injured Uel crouched miserably in a corner, clutching his hand. The Planemen were like angry birds as they swooped over Boat.

"We'll try to make it to nighttime," Wesley said through gritted teeth. "They might let up then."

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But what will happen after that? Cati thought. They'll simply come back at dawn. Just then, she looked to her left and saw that the little girl was standing there, staring out across the waves, seeming completely unperturbed by what was going on around her.

Cati followed her gaze. She thought she could see something, a shape perhaps, something that seemed to blend with the gray and stormy sea. Probably something belonging to the Harsh coming to finish us off, she thought miserably. Maybe it was the little girl who had undone the stopcock. Cati looked at her again, but she kept her calm gaze fixed on the sea.

The Planemen withdrew and took up position behind Boat. They seemed to be talking among themselves, taking a rest before a final attack, Cati thought. Wesley's attention was taken up with Boat now, but suddenly he straightened and peered out into the storm.

"What is it?" the Sub-Commandant asked.

"Damned if I know," said Wesley, "but I'd say it's with them lot of Planemen behind us."

As it got closer, they saw that it was a ship of some kind. Cati could see that the Planemen were aware of it too. After a while one of them rose in the air and flew off toward it.

The ship was much closer now, moving at tremendous speed. It was big, so big that it barely rose and fell on the waves, and even when it was still a mile away, the great prow reared above them.

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"A freighter of some kind," Dr. Diamond said. But as it near ed, they could see that there was something strange about it. For a start, it was red with rust and hadn't seen paint for many years. Whole sections of its huge metal plates were missing. The giant mast lay broken across the deck. There seemed to be tangles of broken equipment and overturned oil drums lying everywhere. So much of the huge ship's superstructure was missing that you could see right through it in places. Great gouts of oily black smoke billowed from its funnel as it bore down upon them at speed.

"What is it?" asked Cati.

"I think I know," Wesley said, and there was a strange expression on his face. "I think I know."

"It is the Grim Captain," the Sub-Commandant said quietly.

"The Grim Captain is just a story," said Chancellor shortly, but Cati thought that if there was such a thing as a Grim Captain, then this was the grim kind of ship he would command.

The Planeman who had gone to investigate rejoined the others. He spoke to them quickly and then without warning they swooped on Boat, this time in a furious attack, no longer caring for their own safety. Mervyn landed hits on them, and one of the planes trailed fire, but their own bolts of magno were landing everywhere on Boat. They felt the deck vibrate beneath their feet.

"We can't stay afloat much longer!" Wesley shouted.

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A great wave crashed over the deck and extinguished the flames that licked at it, but as it did so half a dozen other fires sprang up. Mervyn fired desperately and the damaged plane was hit again. It shot across the bow of Boat and landed in the sea with a great hiss. One of the remaining planes slewed in the air to avoid the stricken plane and struck the mast with a clang. It hung there, tangled with the mast, its pilot struggling to free himself. The remaining plane swooped in and the trapped Plane-man grabbed its undercarriage. As he was hoisted aloft, Mervyn's last shots seared the air around them. But it was too late. The overloaded plane climbed high into the air, hovered for a moment, and then turned slowly back the way it had come.

Their work was done. The deck was full of holes and flames were starting to lick up through them. Boat was listing badly to one side and barely moving. And the ship was almost on them. The massive bow bore down on their frail craft. Cati was sure that it must plow over them until, with its engines shrieking in protest, water boiling at its stern, the ship shuddered to a halt alongside.

In the lee of the ship the storm seemed almost to have disappeared. A wall of rusty and scarred steel reared up above them, and Boat banged gently against its side. As Cati stared, a rope ladder suddenly tumbled down from the freighter. The ladder had been mended and knotted all over; some of the rungs seemed rotted and others had snapped.

"It could be a trap," cautioned Chancellor.