This Forsaken Earth

An Extract from volume #2 of 'The Sea Beggars'

'It is said,' Gallico declared, 'that no man has yet sailed south of the tropic of Mas Morgun, which girdles the world eleven degrees south of Khasos. '

'It's said the gods made the world round to confound the ambitions of men,' Creed retorted. But then how does one stand on the underside of a spinning sphere?'

'How else is it that we see topsails on the horizon before the ship becomes hull-up?' Gallico asked reasonably. 'Because the earth curves under our feet. And it's the weightiness of the stars which keeps everything on the surface of this globe from floating off into the aether. The stars we steer by are nails driven through the warp and weft of heaven to hold our world in place, hammered in by God to fix us within space and the unwinding clock of the universe.'

'I have heard of the tropic line' Rol broke in, speaking for the first time that evening. 'I've heard a dozen old men up and down the length of the Westerease and the Reach talk of it - usually after their bellies have been filled with beer. Who fixed it in place Gallico? Not your God I think. And no man has sailed so far south and come back to boast of it.'

'The Ancients mapped out the world in millennia of exploration long before Man was born,' the halftroll said confidently. 'They had every grain of sand numbered and gave the leaf of every tree a name. They counted the hairs on each man's head, and knew when a sparrow fell to earth.'

'They had the wits of God then,' Rol sneered.

'Yes' Gallico said quietly, 'they did.'

'How do you know all this Gallico?' Creed asked.

'He makes it up,' Rol scoffed, punching the halftroll's granite bicep playfully. His eyes were cold though.

'I used to read,' Gallico admitted. 'In the days before I fell in with bad company.'

They fell silent. All about them in the fire-stitched darkness that bad company was cavorting and singing and snarling and laughing, as men will when drunk. The beach was a long grey blade with the bright moon-kindled silver of the sea before it and the darkness of the forest behind. Their campfires seemed an intrusion, a presumption in this tranquil wilderness. Strangely enough, only the black silhouette of the Revenant, at anchor a cable from the shore, seemed at one with the black and silver serenity of the night.

'How many were on that transport, you think?' Elias Creed asked no-one in particular.

'A battalion maybe' Gallico rumbled. 'Five hundred men.'

'And on the warship?'

'Heavy crews, these Bionari cruisers. Some two hundred.'

'Seven hundred men. Gods above us.'

'What's your point, Elias?' Rol asked irritably.

'Just this; we're not mere privateers anymore. This is not piracy – it is warfare.'

'It's been a rough week,' Rol consoled him. 'Have a drink. As soon as we've refitted we'll strike out east, or north or south. Anywhere that takes us away from this goddamned continent and its wars.'

The others said nothing. They knew his words were empty.

A boat put off from the side of the Revenant, sculled by half a dozen of the harbour-watch. The crew ran it up the beach in a flash of spray and trudged through the sand exchanging banter with the men at the campfires as they came. They stopped before Rol, the firelight making uplit masks of their faces. 'Well, Kier, how goes it?' Rol asked, and handed his carpenter a round-bottomed bottle.

The cadaverous little man took a long swallow and passed it to his neighbour.

'The leak is plugged for now skipper; a couple of planks started. There's not much else I can do with it lessen we haul her down or get her back in dock. The stern will take another mort of work too; your cabin windows are gone, frames and all, and the stern-lanterns too.'

'The rudder?'

'It took a glancing shot, nothing much.'

Rol nodded. 'So she'll float then?'

'Oh aye, we're seaworthy, or near as damn it. She don't look so pretty, but by God she can take punishment.'

'I saw nine-pound balls bounce off her sides at a thousand yards, like they was peas' John Imbro, the Gunner, volunteered.

'Powder, John?'

'We took some six barrels out of the Bionese, skipper; enough for a dozen broadsides.'

'We have teeth again' Gallico said with relish.

'That we do, 'Co. And there's those nine-pounders we salvaged before we burnt her. They'll come in right handy back at the Ka.'

'Who'd you leave on board, John?' Rol asked.

'Gill Whistram and Harry Dade. They're upright and sober; I checked myself.'

'Good work. Go and get something to eat. There's fresh game doing the rounds, though what beast it is I don't know.'

'Right now skipper, all I want is a rock to lay my head on; me and Kier both. There's a lot more to be done tomorrow.' Rol nodded, and the Carpenter, the Gunner and their mates left the firelight and staggered out into the darkness.

Gallico raised his savage head. In the moonlight it seemed sculpted out of stone, a gargoyled physiognomy. 'Wind's backing at last,' he said, his nostrils sniffing wide. 'Be due north by morning, you see if it's not. And then we'll have a long and weary time of it beating back to Ganesh Ka.'

Ganesh Ka, the Hidden City. For Rol and Elias it had once been a fable, nothing more. A City of Pirates, its location unknown to the wider world - a tall tale for mariners all about the Twelve Seas. Now they knew it for what it was: a vast and ancient ruin, in which squatted a host of the outlawed and the dispossessed. Murderers, thieves, escaped slaves, or men who simply found the world too small for them; they congregated there on the strength of a legend.

'Not much of a trip' Rol said. 'All blood and thunder, and damn all to show for it but a pock-marked ship and half a dozen dead shipmates.'

'Seven hundred less Bionari in the world' Gallico retorted. 'There's treasure for you.'

'You can't put a corpse in your pocket, or eat one either.'

'I know some who've tried,' and Gallico grinned horribly, making them all laugh.

Rol drank from another bottle; they lay all about the beach like flotsam.

'Osprey and Skua are back in fighting trim this long while. It's not like the Ka is undefended. What say you Gallico to a far-foreign cruise? Why not get this wind on our quarter and make for the Gut, and the Outer Reach? There's fat Mercanter ships there that would make us rich men in a month. We could try and find that tropic-line of yours, and cut it with our keel.'

'Skua and Osprey don't carry such heavy metal as we' Elias Creed said quietly. 'Rol, you know we're the only ship the Ka has which can take on men of war.'

Cortishane stood up, fist clenched on the neck of his bottle. He strode away from the fire and as he did a light began to shine in his eyes, cold as the edge of a sword.

'I know, I know. Where would I be, Elias, without you beside me to play mother hen?'

He made his way through the scattered clumps of mariners who were sprawled on the beach about their fires. Here and there he exchanged a word, a wave, a smile. The men respected their Captain, esteemed him even. But he knew there was something in his eyes which prevented them from making that full, human connection.

And why not? Rol wondered. After all, I am not human.

He joined Giffon and his improbable infirmary. The company's wounded had been made comfortable with what slim facilities the ship possessed. For those in unbearable pain this meant stupefying amounts of hard liquor. Kier Eiserne had run up a crude table for Giffon's heftier work and this now stood in the sand with the raw wood of its top dark as mahogany, stained deep with blood. Giffon sat on it wiping his eyes with a filthy rag. At his side was a smeared bundle of tools more suited to carpentry than surgery.

'Giffon. How do they go?'

Giffon was a young, round-faced man with sandy hair and a snub nose. He looked to be in his early teens, until one looked into his eyes, and saw the memories there.

'Al-Hamn and Borovian will do well, I think. The stumps were clean, and I sewed flesh over the bone. Gran Tomasson died this evening.'

'Damn. He was a good man, as good a gun-captain as I've ever seen.'

'Half his ribs were gone. I'm amazed he lasted this long. As it is, all those who are still alive now will remain alive, if they can steer clear of fever.'

Rol gestured to the dark stains of the table. 'You were cutting again tonight?'

'I didn't like the smell of Morten's leg, so I re-sectioned it again.'

Rol studied his youthful would-be surgeon closely. Giffon was exhausted. He had been looking after the wounded virtually single-handed for a week. Rol had set seamen to lift and carry for him, and at times they had needed a half dozen men to hold down some unfortunate when the pain of the saw was too much. But the bulk of the burden was Giffon's. There was something indomitable about him. Had he the requisite knowledge, this boy might be a real healer. He had that touch. But he was no more than a butcher's apprentice who had fled a harsh master and been picked up by slavers on the coast of Borhol. The usual abuse followed, but somehow Giffon had escaped and made his way to the Ka. No-one knew how, and the memories in those eyes stopped folk from asking. Like Elias Creed, he had buried his pain so deep there was no longer any way to go delving for it.

'It's hard, for those of us who live and die in ships' Rol said gently. 'The blade, the shot, the surgeon's saw – '

'And the deep dark of the sea' Giffon said. 'I know. We can put ships back together that are all but sunk, but when a man has a leg splintered all we can do is take it off, and hope.'

Rol offered the boy his bottle. 'Get drunk, Giffon. That's an order.'

Giffon's face twisted into a smile. 'Can't stand the taste of the stuff, skipper. I'd sell someone's soul for a pint of cold buttermilk though.'

'There's wild goats in the hills. Grab a hold of one for long enough and we'll get Gallico to tug on its teats for you.'

Giffon laughed, a short bark, no more. 'I'll sleep I think. Skipper?'

'Yes?'

'Are we going back in now? Back to the Ka I mean. There's men here who ought to rest in beds ashore.'

Rol sighed. 'Yes, Giffon. We're going home.'

The word was still echoing in his head as he left the lights of the beach behind him and struck out into the woods, the taste of the evening's rotgut sour in his mouth. The ground rose under the canopy of the trees, bare bones of stone thrusting up through the thin soil. Wild olive, juniper, pine and cypress, and here and there a poplar, straight as a sentinel. As soon as the firelight had been left behind the night brightened in his sight, becoming clear as day. Part of it was the moonlight; part of it was the nature of the blood that beat through his heart.

He made his sure-footed way up one bald outcrop, and straightening there he found the vast, eldritch expanse of the Inner Reach spread out below him, the Revenant as tiny as a child's forgotten toy, the campfires mere golden buttons. If he looked east, there was nothing but open sea for two hundred and fifty leagues. Behind him, the bulk of the Goloron Mountains loomed up in long blunted ridges of shadow to claw at the stars.

And what stars. They swirled in sky-spanning horsetails and banners and speckled sweeps of sprinkled silver, here and there the brighter glimmer of something larger. The Mariner. Gabriel's Fist. Quintillian, the star his grandfather had once told him pointed to their home.

The only real home Rol had ever known was now a burnt-out shell on Dennifrey. His grandfather had died there with a crossbow bolt in his guts, murdered by a mob as his wife had been before him. Because of what ran in his blood.

You are not human he had told his grandson. Almost his last words. Well, thank you grandfather. For raising me in ignorance, for telling me nothing of my heritage or history, until it was too late. You old bastard, long-winded in telling everything but the truth. And now here I am nursemaiding a city full of derelicts, doing the decent thing, keeping the wolf from the door. But what if I am the wolf?

The stars glittered down, everything below them a matter of cold irrelevance. Ganesh Ka had started to become home, for him. He did not like that, but had no say in the process. You cannot choose the things you care for, he thought. If only you could.

He closed his eyes, a panoply of memories parading again before that tireless inner eye. And as always the last of them was the white, set face of a beautiful woman, her hair as dark as the wing of a raven. Rowen, the woman he had loved as a boy. His sister, now fighting to make herself a Queen. The scalloped scar on the palm of his left hand tingled and he scratched it absently.