The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice (2 page)

Into such a time was born Dow Amber, the New Island boy of lowly station who – against all custom and precedent – came to set sail upon the open sea at the invitation of the Ship Kings, taken aboard the battleship
Chloe
by order of its commander, Captain Vincente of the Shinbone.

Young Dow had already gained no small fame by then for his riding of the maelstrom, but even greater deeds awaited him. Indeed, upon only his second voyage, Dow – and the scapegoat girl, Ignella of the Cave, with him – would lay bare a mystery of the sea that had baffled even the bravest of the Ship Kings explorers in their Golden Age, and which had defied discovery through the half a thousand years that had passed since.

It is with that renowned voyage that this volume – the second in the chronicles of Dow Amber – is chiefly concerned. Of Dow's
first
voyage there is little to report. It was, after all, a mere two month crossing between New Island and Great Island; and although seafaring is ever hazardous, this was a well traversed route, and rarely a troubled one.

Nonetheless, one episode from that first voyage has passed into legend, and the tale of it must now be told, for it was afterwards seen by many to be a forewarning of the momentous events that were to follow.

The incident occurred as the crossing was nearing its end, and the
Chloe
was drawing close to home waters.

It was the day the albatross came …

1. A SUMMONS TO THE ICE

Hiss. Bubble. Thump.

Even after seven weeks it was still a peculiar sound to Dow's ear – the mutter of the sea against the
Chloe's
hull, heard from the dry darkness within, deep below the waterline.

Partly it was the swish of water running along the ship's side, muted by the intervening inches of wood and nicre, but partly too it was a strange rattling that didn't sound like water at all, but more like solid things knocking against the hull. It was to such a knocking that Dow now woke; a phantom fist seemed to be rapping against the planking by his head, a creature in the dark water beyond, hammering urgently to be let in … Dow opened his eyes to the dim light of the lower decks. A foot from his face was the curve of the inner hull; a moment later it was two feet away as his hammock swung on its moorings. He stared at the planking, but the rapping was gone, if it had ever really been there. The only sound now was the whisper of flowing water, and with it the ever present background cacophony that was the
Chloe
under sail – the creaking of countless timbers and joists, and, more distantly, the clatters and shouts (and snores) of six hundred men going about their work or slumbering through their off watches.

Six hundred men, that was, and one girl.

Dow drifted for a moment. Had he been dreaming about her again? It was strange. He saw so little of her, for the
Chloe
was a huge ship, and they inhabited very different parts of it, and yet he often woke to an awareness of her presence, as if he could sense her through the intervening decks and bulkheads. She would be somewhere above him even now, in the officers' quarters …

Then Dow remembered.

Today was the day.

Sleep, and thoughts of Nell, vanished. Dow sat up, staring blearily about at the recesses of the smithy. He was alone. Johannes and Nicky were already up and gone, their hammocks stowed away.

How late was it?

Slipping from his own hammock, Dow stood barefoot on the fireproof tiles. He found he had to brace himself against the slope of the deck, and studied the hanging chains above the forge, watching them swing slowly as the floor came level again, then tilted the other way.

His apprehension grew. The
Chloe
was rolling – rolling severely, in deep, sluggish pitches, first to one side, then to the other. Dow had not, in his brief time at sea, felt anything quite like it. And if the rolling was this bad, so far down in the ship, then topside, in the rigging …

‘Breakfast,' declared a voice.

The leather curtain in the doorway was thrown back and Johannes, the ship's blacksmith, came ducking in. He was a fierce looking specimen at first glance, solid as a barrel and with the muscled arms of his trade, always bared to display the vivid tattoos and scars that covered them. But his gentle, open face gave away his true nature, which was an amiable one. Following behind, as always, was Nicky, his apprentice, a silent stolid lad of twelve. Between them they were carrying three mugs of beer and three bowls of porridge, brought back from the galley, several decks above.

They looked disappointed to discover that Dow was already up. ‘We left you to sleep in,' accused the blacksmith.

Dow stared at the food. He had no appetite at all. And what did they mean by not waking him, today of all days? ‘What hour is it?' he demanded.

‘Seven and a half bells gone.'

Dow blinked in consternation. At eight bells – in only half an hour – he was to report to Commander Fidel, there to be examined for the rank of Able Seaman, Third Class. It was the most basic of any sailor's qualifications, and for a month Dow had been readying himself for the test.

Johannes set the porridge down carefully on the workbench as the ship heeled again. He shook his head knowingly at Dow. ‘Relax, lad. Eat something. You've got plenty of time yet.'

But Dow had even less desire for food now. He began hunting about for his clothes, staggering as the ship rolled ponderously back the other way. ‘What's happening up there? Has the weather turned?'

‘No – there's a swell out of the north, is all. You strike such seas now and then at this time of year.' Johannes sipped musingly at his beer. ‘Still,
I'd
not like to be going aloft today, I'll say that.'

Dow glanced up worriedly. The blacksmith's expression was perfectly in earnest – except, that was, for the teasing gleam in his eye.

‘See,' Johannes grinned, ‘this is why we let you sleep late. If you'd been up an hour earlier, it'd just be another hour for you to fret. You'll be fine. You're a green hand, true enough, but old Fidel will treat you fairly, and your instincts are good; I've seen it.' The blacksmith's ready smile became almost puzzled. ‘In fact, they're better than they have any right to be. If I didn't know different, I'd say you were born to the sea life by blood.'

Dow glanced up again at that, for although he'd come to know Johannes and Nicky well in the last seven weeks, he'd told them nothing of how or why he'd left his home in the highlands to seek for a mariner's life, nor had he dared speak a word of his famous ancestor, Admiral Honous Tombs, scourge of the Ship Kings fleets during the great war.

But Johannes had a mouthful of porridge now, and only added, ‘Sit. Eat!' And Dow, relieved, did as he was told.

He'd made his home there in the
Chloe's
smithy for most of the voyage. For the first few days out from New Island he'd been quartered in the officers' sick bay, having been installed there when he first came aboard. But on the fourth night at sea, Johannes had introduced himself and invited Dow to sling a hammock alongside him and his apprentice down below – and Dow had accepted. The smithy was less refined accommodation than the sick bay, being a dark and soot-stained dungeon set on the ship's very lowest deck, but Dow had guessed he would be happier there, and so it had proved.

For one thing, due to the forge, it was the warmest spot on the
Chloe
– no small consideration on a late autumn crossing. But it was the company that mattered most to Dow, for of the six hundred men (and one girl) aboard the
Chloe
, Johannes and Nicky were the only other outsiders. The blacksmith and his apprentice were not Ship Kings. Instead they hailed from Red Island, one of the faraway Twin Isles of the southern seas.

This had come as some surprise to Dow, for he'd thought he was the sole stranger on board. But Johannes had cheerfully explained that on every Ship Kings vessel the blacksmith was always a Red Islander. No other folk possessed such skill in the working of metals. Indeed, it was a fixed condition of Red Island's tribute, as a subject land, that they supply as many smiths and apprentices as the Ship Kings fleets required.

Of course, Johannes and Nicky were foreign in their own way – Dow had never seen tattoos before, for instance – but they were somehow not so foreign as the Ship Kings. And for their part, Johannes and Nicky had adopted Dow as family and made it their business to see that he settled into life aboard the
Chloe
as quickly as he might. It had been Johannes who'd suggested that instead of merely moping about the ship for two months Dow should apply to Captain Vincente for permission to begin seaman's training – as unlikely as it had seemed that such permission would be granted.

And yet it
had
been granted.

His breakfast quickly done – no more than a single spoonful of porridge and a few mouthfuls of beer, despite all Johannes's entreaties – Dow could sit still no longer. He grabbed his timberman's jacket from its hook, accepted a last few words of encouragement from the blacksmith, and ducked through the fire curtain to begin the long climb to the main deck.

Near darkness greeted him in the passage beyond. It might be day topside, but down here it was forever night, broken only by the few dim lamps that hung from the beams, swinging slowly back and forth. The smithy lay towards the stern end of the Second Lower deck, so named because it was the second deck below the waterline. There were no decks lower than that, only the lightless cavern of the ship's hold, a vast space packed close with the
Chloe's
heaviest gear and ballast, and haunted by the eternal groan of wood, the slosh of bilge water, and the squeak and scurry of unseen rats.

Dow certainly had no business there now. He made his way forward to the main stairway, passing by great wooden bins piled high with sacks of flour and beans and rice, and further along carefully stacked and lashed barrels that contained salted meats and fish – for the Second Lower was a deck used mainly for stowage. He encountered no one else; the only other people who lived this deep down were the carpenter and his apprentices, and their workshop was all the way off in the bow.

The main stairway was amidships, and climbed as steeply as a ladder. When Dow was only a few steps up, the
Chloe
tilted especially sharply and he had to clutch at the rail. There was no arguing it, this was by far the worst rolling he'd experienced. It was not that he was worried the ship would tilt enough to capsize – Johannes had seemed quite unconcerned in that regard.

Yes, but up in the rigging …

Dow steeled himself and climbed on. He was ascending now through the First Lower deck – home, amid more storage bins, to the general sick bay and the brig (the latter all too familiar from Dow's disastrous first visit to the ship) as well as the
Chloe's
two magazines; great iron-bound rooms behind whose locked doors lay the battleship's supply of gunpowder. But the deck was still below the waterline, and so mostly dark and uninhabited. It was only as Dow continued up the ladder that he finally left the
Chloe's
underworld behind and rose into the sounds and smells of its living heart – the gun decks.