Guild Wars: Sea of Sorrows (9 page)

They were cheering far too loudly to hear Cobiah. Only Sethus remained below the broken mast, chopping desperately at stays and ropes to separate the sinking canvas from the galleon’s rigging. He looked up at Cobiah, white faced. “Hold on, Cobiah! Don’t let go of the mast!” Seconds were passing, but they felt like hours. The sailors never even saw the wave until it was too late.

It rolled across the ocean’s surface as fast as flickering lightning, closing the distance in breaths. The wall of water was curved at the top, snarling with white foam, sweeping aside everything in its path. The ocean dropped beneath them as the tsunami pulled close, and the
Indomitable
groaned and settled in the water. Cheers
turned into shouts of fear as the sailors finally saw the wave. Cobiah’s stomach whirled, sickened by the motion of the great galleon in the ragged swell of water. The tsunami bore the ship aloft in slow motion, pitching her inexorably forward. For one horrible breath of time, the
Indomitable
stood on her stern, nearly perpendicular to the ocean floor.

From his perspective at the top of the mast’s rigging, Cobiah felt the graceful rise and tilt, the sway of rope and the twist of the galleon in the current of the wave. It felt as though he were riding some kind of wind beast, lifted into the air on graceful, weightless wings.

The wave crested with maddening slowness. If there were screams on the deck below, they were muffled by the sound of rushing water, and Cobiah couldn’t hear them. If the sailors prayed to the Six Gods, their cries were lost in the crash of the crest against wood. Everything seemed overwhelmingly bright, and loud, and terrifying. Cobiah was pitched higher and higher still as the galleon rolled, until for just a moment, he saw over the peak of the massive wave. There, in the center of the darkest, deepest ocean in the world, at the very heart of the Sea of Sorrows, Cobiah saw something that should not have existed.

He saw land, where there was nothing but ocean.

Dark, tattered wings, as if something long dead was rising from the grave.

Ancient cathedrals of coral-crusted stone. Torn flesh and ice-white bone against a storm-laden sky. Corpses, crawling from the waterlogged earth like maggots; bodies by the thousands, roiling like waves themselves over sodden ground.

As Cobiah stared in shock, the wave fully crested. The
Indomitable
teetered in the curl of blizzard-white water,
then pitched violently downward, rolling onto her back with a horrible crashing yaw. Foam shattered timbers and masts beneath the massive weight of the wave. With a low, deathly groan, the mighty galleon rolled over beneath a thousand tons of sea.

The
Indomitable
was lost.

A sailor’s life’s filled with toil and strife

The sea’s both boon and bane, O

We’re Kryta bound on a northern tide

Through the lightning and the rain

We’ll sail through all these stormy nights

’Til we’re safe at home again, O.

—“Weather the Storm”

I
can’t think. I should think of something. What? What was I doing? Something important. I need to think. How do I make my mind focus?

“Draw the bilge-rat up!”

A lurch rolled through Cobiah’s stomach, and he felt himself purge its contents. The effort didn’t stop the motion that rocked him back and forth, and he tightened his hands on the sheets wrapped about his body, unsure if he was clinging to them or struggling to push them away. Where was he? What had happened? Opening his eyes brought a painful flash of white-hot light. Cobiah whimpered in distress. Wherever he was, he wasn’t dead.

“Lookit
’
im puke!” a too close voice roared. “This little mouse is still fighting to live!”

“Cut its throat, like any other gaping fish,” snarled another with a ringing laugh, “then throw it back into the sea.” There were shouts of agreement all around.

Hesitantly, Cobiah forced his eyes to focus, making himself ignore the pain that wracked every muscle and bone of his body. He lay on the deck of an unfamiliar ship, fouled in the knots of rigging still attached to a chunk of the
Indomitable
’s foremast. Someone was using a sharp knife to cut the ropes. With a groan, Cobiah tried to roll over but found himself too tightly tangled in the cords that held him to the thick spar of wood.

Memories twisted confusedly in Cobiah’s mind. Tosh, laughing and grabbing for the rag doll. The officers standing on the forecastle. The shine of a polished glow on brass arms. The billowing of white sails. Sethus grinning like a monkey as he swung from spar to spar. A dark land beyond the edge of the storm . . .

“Keep it alive—for now,” another voice grated, and there was a
thump-thump-thump
echoing closer across the boards of the deck. Cobiah tried to focus his eyes on the motion, hoping to see a familiar face, or at least the recognizable colors of a Krytan officer’s coat.

Instead, the face that leaned close to study him wasn’t human at all.

The horrible features were feline, the skin covered with thick white patterned fur. A black nose sniffed distastefully, and the mouth parted to show a row of long, sharp teeth in the jaws of a predator. The creature moved with eerie grace, its paw-like hands sure on the ropes, tremendous claws sliding out of their sheaths to slice through the bonds tangled all around Cobiah. Cobiah stared in horror as two ears cocked forward curiously at the base of the long skull, and two more swept back with disgust. Long black horns, and braids wrapped in leather
thongs and straps of sharkskin, lay amid the heavy mane that rippled down the curve of the beast’s thick neck.
Claws . . . horns . . . four ears . . .
Cobiah struggled with an uncertain, quickly rising sense of alarm.
That thing called me a mouse!

“You’re sure it’s worth bothering with, Engineer?” Cobiah could barely believe he was hearing understandable words from the monster’s fanged muzzle. “Seems like we’re just searching for drake eggs in the forest here. Complete waste of time.” The white-furred brute leaned closer, his eye glinting with feral cruelty as it looked Cobiah up and down.

“I’m certain, Centurion. It coughed up enough water to flood a small village, but give it a little rest, and you’ll see.” The first voice had more humor, less threat. Hoping to see a friendly face, Cobiah placed it amid the blurry shapes, marking a big, rust-colored beast standing a short distance behind the other.

Fighting down the bile that rose in his throat, Cobiah refocused his attention on the tawny yellow eyes that glared into his own, struck by the cruel intelligence he saw there. The beast noticed and grunted, poking Cobiah with a sharp black claw. A speck of blood rose where the needle-sharp point scratched the flesh of his cheek, and Cobiah flinched away. Suddenly, he realized what they were, and his stomach revolted again—this time, in fear.

These were
charr
.

“Fine.” The word curled out of the charr centurion’s lips, as much a curse as a confirmation. “Your responsibility, then. Take the mouse below, but keep it on a leash. When your pet’s done puking, you can put it to work in the engine room singing you pretty songs and worshipping anything that stands still.” There was a cacophony of howls at the jibe, the mocking, terrible laughter of
hyenas closing in for the kill. The awful sound swelled and filled Cobiah’s mind as blackness claimed him once more.

—

Cobiah wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. He could feel the rhythmic rise and fall of the sea surrounding him, but this was not the ship he knew. The bed was far too large, a thin shelf hanging from the wall rather than a hammock cradled between two poles. Glancing around to get his bearings, Cobiah recognized that he was in a berth, surrounded by similar sleeping shelves, each with a thin mattress and a worn wool cover. This was definitely a ship, but it wasn’t like anything he’d ever been on before. He could feel that she was a sizable craft, but not as large as the
Indomitable
. Maybe a small galleon or a brig? Cobiah could see the ribs of the hull holding up the curved wall. They weren’t made of wood but of iron, and forged U-shaped brackets solidified the ship’s frame. The beams were heavier, the doors wider, and the beds far more solid than those on a human ship. Curious, Cobiah sat up in bed, surveying the room more carefully. There had to be other crew quarters. The number of beds here would barely man a sloop, much less a large ship like a galleon.

On a shelf at the foot of the bed lay his clothing—relatively clean and folded—as well as the pilot’s astrolabe and the small rag doll he’d had tied to his belt. Although his knife sheath was there, it was empty, and only one of his boots had made it out of the sea. Cobiah tugged the clothing on over his head and felt the ache of sore muscles stretching through his frame. Rope burns marked his chest, legs, and arms where he had been tangled. He considered the boot but decided not to wear it—two bare
feet would be better for keeping his footing on board a pitching ship.

Cautiously, Cobiah touched his fingers to his wounds. They’d been treated with some kind of strange-smelling greenish goop that had dried upon his skin. Suspiciously, he scraped a bit of it away with his fingernail. It smelled of fish oil and pungent herb.

Heavy, booted footfalls stomped down the stairwell outside the sleeping area. Cobiah scrambled back. The charr were coming! Cobiah glanced around in panic. The arched doorway was the only way out of the room. He was trapped. Quickly, he looked around for a weapon, a board, or anything to fight with, but the biggest thing in the room was a pillow. Left with no choice, he grabbed it and spun to face the door.

Out of the dark passage came a charr. He was a bulky fellow, wide shouldered, standing more than a head taller than the slender human youth. The monster’s thick fur was the color of rust, touched here and there with scalloped, leopardlike spots of darker brown and black on his arms and legs. He had a paler muzzle, more of a rusty white, and the lighter shade spread across his chest and down the insides of his arms. Massive ram’s horns spread out on either side of his head, and four slender ears flicked back and forth below them. Cobiah recognized the creature—this was the charr that had rescued him from the sea. The one they’d called “Engineer.”

The monster moved like water over glass, each padding stride cushioned by catlike paws. Before he entered the room, he paused, sniffing at the air, black lips curling back from curved, meat-ripping teeth. “Huh.” The charr tilted his head, four ears flicking forward and back. “Awake already, are we, mouse?” Growling faintly to himself, the beast took another step into the doorway
and his golden eyes searched the semidarkness until he found Cobiah. For a long moment the two stared at one another. The charr’s dark eyes flicked from Cobiah’s hastily raised pillow to the tray that he carried in his clawed hands. At last, the beast broke the silence, saying wryly, “I know the grub’s not good, but I don’t consider soup to be a killing offense.”

Cobiah couldn’t help it. The stress of his ordeal, coupled with the entirely ridiculous situation, overcame him. He started snickering. The charr, seemingly amused by his own joke, quickly joined in; the chuckling became guffaws, and those soon turned into howls of laughter. Sitting down on the bed, the burly charr put the tray on the floor between them and wiped tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. Cobiah lowered the pillow and gathered enough breath to ask, “You’re not going to kill me?”

“Kill you?” answered the charr. “If I was going to kill you, I wouldn’t have hauled you up onto the deck in the first place, you moon-headed idiot.” Despite his reassuring words, the charr’s muzzle seemed perpetually drawn into a snarl, and the claws on his paws were as sharp as daggers. The charr sniffed the air again, and his long auburn tail twitched on the bunk. “Smells like your wound’s healing, too. No infection. Would I go to that kind of trouble just to cut you open again for jollies?”

“I don’t know. You’re a charr.” Cobiah struggled with his fear. “You did save me, but I don’t know why. You had to have a reason.” Still, he slowly lowered the pillow, the rich, warm smell of the soup nearly overcoming him.

“I’m the one who saw you floating out there, spar and all. Been out there since the wave hit, I’d wager, and that was three days before we found you. We saw no sign of your ship or your crew.” The rust-colored charr watched Cobiah out of the corners of his eyes. “Lost, I’d imagine?”

Cobiah managed a nod. “Last thing I remember, the
Indomitable
turned on her side in the water. The wave . . . swallowed her whole.” He gulped, the adrenaline beginning to run cold in his veins. He shook off the feeling and faced the charr. “What happens now?”

“Now you put down the pillow, human, and you work a charr ship.”

“I . . . what?” Stunned, Cobiah sank down to a seat on the floorboards, leaning back against the shelf-bed with the pillow limp in his hand. “Work? With charr? What, until you eat me?”