The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice (38 page)

And yet …

Dow lifted his gaze to Vincente. The captain was not crushed by the weight of such responsibility. It
told
on him, yes; the strain and sleeplessness of his position showed in every weary line of his face. But command had honed and refined him too. Vincente
knew
himself, of that Dow had always been sure. And he was free. After all, command, despite its burdens, meant freedom
from
the command of others. And the freedom, if not to defy fate, then at least to confront it clear-eyed and on one's own terms.

Dow took the pen.

Only – what mark could he make?

Vincente said, ‘Understand, Mr Amber. With these declarations, you become, for all intents and purposes, one of my own people. A Ship King. These papers are in fact akin to adoption papers. You can no longer be merely Dow Amber. You must choose a new name for yourself, a name such as my own folk employ. Vincente of the Shinbone, for instance, is my name, for my family takes its title from a famous rocky spire – the Shinbone – that rises from our ancestral lands, to the east of Haven Diaz. Likewise, you must consider a name for yourself that my people will recognise. Do you see?'

Dow saw. A shiver went through him, a fore-echo of fame, and he knew what the name had to be; what it was
fated
to be. He dipped the pen, and where Vincente was pointing, a space at the bottom of a page, he drew a swirling pattern, a single line, spiralling around itself.

Vincente's eyes widened. ‘Dow of the Maelstrom. So be it. For better or worse, you are one of us now.'

The captain stood, and Dow too, but before either could speak again, there came a shout from high above outside – a cry from the crow's nest, ‘Sail ho!' – and a sudden drum of feet on the deck overhead.

Vincente stared up. ‘A ship? What ship would there be, this far north?' He took his coat from the wall and shrugged it over his shoulders. ‘Come along, Mr Amber, we'll see what's afoot.'

Dow followed him out into the passage. Vincente turned towards the Captain's Walk, but Dow's attention was drawn by movement at the other end of the hall. It was Diego. He had just come through the doors of the Great Cabin and was hurrying to the top of the stairway that led down. He caught sight of Dow and paused abruptly on the first step.

Dow hesitated too, struck by the lieutenant's expression. He'd never seen a look of such indecision and fear written so clearly on someone's face. Then another cry came from above, ‘Two sails! Three!' And Diego, with a choked moan, went stumbling away down the stairs.

An urgent unease clutched Dow. Why would an officer run
away
from the high deck at such a call?

But there was no time. He turned and dashed after Vincente, out onto the landing and then up the stairs to the high deck. Commander Fidel was there, and most of the other officers too, senior and junior, and all eyes were turned to the southern horizon. Three sets of sails – no, four now – were just rising above the rim of the sea.

Four ships. A fleet, no less.

‘They're a long way out for a patrol,' Vincente commented to Fidel.

The first officer nodded. ‘A welcoming committee perhaps? The Sea Lord will no doubt be anxious for news.'

‘Maybe – but why send out ships that will return with that news no faster than we will ourselves?'

Fidel shrugged. ‘As we know, Ibanez, in his concern for his son, has not been entirely logical of late.' Then he added in a lower voice, ‘And is your business with Dow here complete?'

Vincente glanced at Dow. ‘It is – signed and sealed. I'll announce it to the assembled officers at dinner tonight.'

Fidel nodded. ‘Congratulations, Mr Amber.'

Dow gave a distracted nod in return. He was studying the four distant ships, unable to say why the sight of them filled him with such trepidation – and why he could not forget the look on Diego's face, as he fled below decks. What could be the link between the two?

Vincente was surveying the
Chloe
. ‘Below there,' he boomed in command, ‘get that laundry pulled in! You think this is any state in which to greet our comrades? We look a terrible sight!'

There was laughter from below – a holiday mood seemed to have seized the ship – but men hurried to tidy up. The
Chloe
would not return from the Unquiet Ice draped in mouldy sheets!

The new ships, with the wind behind them, came swiftly up from the south. They could soon be identified as two battleships and two frigates, flying the pennants of the Sea Lord's home fleet.

Fidel, gazing through a telescope, said, ‘You don't suppose that Ibanez himself has come?'

Vincente looked startled. ‘No reigning Sea Lord has left the
Twelfth Kingdom
in generations.'

‘But if he is desperate for news … it would explain why this fleet is here, where no fleet should be.'

Vincente nodded sadly. ‘It would indeed. Not that he'll want to hear the news we carry, if it is indeed he.'

They waited and watched. The ships – white-sailed and brave in the bright afternoon – were arranged in line, one behind the other; a stirring sight. And yet still the doubt gnawed in Dow's stomach. The sail-master's words of the morning rose unbidden in his mind –
it's the brightest
day that brings sharks to the surface.
But these weren't sharks. They were ships. Come as friends.

At last the fleet drew close. It seemed that the four vessels meant to pass down the
Chloe's
right side.

Vincente asked his first officer, ‘Do you recognise them, Fidel? What captains are we greeting?'

Fidel was frowning into his telescope. ‘I'm not sure. It's hard to make out a name, bow on – no wait, they're turning a little. I can see. The leading battleship is – but I don't understand. It's the
Adroit
…'

‘The
Adroit
? But that's not—'

Vincente broke off, staring, for at the same moment a strange flicker passed along the hull of each of the ships. It was an instant before Dow, watching from beside the captain, understood what it meant. Gun ports. The flicker was gun ports being thrown open – fifty on each flank of the battleships, and thirty on each flank of the frigates. Black metal gleamed as cannon rolled out.

‘A trap!' cried Fidel. ‘They're ships of Castille and Valdez!'

Vincente whirled to the helmsmen. ‘Come about, hard left!' Then his voice roared loud, ‘All hands to battle stations! Run out the guns!' And it was only a despairing note to the command that reminded Dow – what guns? Two of the
Chloe's
gun decks stood empty, and even the third had its ports sealed firmly shut against the arctic weather they'd so recently left behind.

Men hastened to obey nonetheless, and tumult sounded below, but it was already too late. The four ships, the foremost now merely a hundred yards off, had swung themselves broadside to their victim. The
Chloe
was itself only just beginning to turn, its flank fully exposed, when a ripple of smoke – oddly silent – ran along the gun barrels of the leading battleship.

Dow ducked low. The sound of the broadside reached the
Chloe
simultaneously with the flying shot; a crackling series of detonations from across the water, matched by a horrific ripping and tearing all across the
Chloe,
mixed with the cries and screams of injured men.

Dow raised his head. Figures were dashing here and there upon the high deck, but he could see no damage immediately about him; it was all further forward. He looked to the enemy fleet again, in time to see the guns of the second ship firing. The awful ripping sound came once more, and then new screams, and towards the bow sails were falling in vast tangles.

Time had slowed. Officers yelled orders to the helmsmen, but the ship seemed to be yawing, out of control. A great cloud of smoke now covered the ocean about the attacking fleet, and all Dow saw of the third broadside was a rapid sequence of red pinpoints flaring through the haze – and this time it was the stern half of the
Chloe
that caught the barrage.

Timber exploded, and the high deck was swept with a hail of flying wood and metal. There were horrible shrieks nearby. It seemed impossible to Dow that he had not been shredded where he crouched, but when he opened his eyes again he was still whole and unhurt. He stared about, frozen in fear. Bodies, and parts of bodies, littered the deck. He must flee. He must
hide
.

Then he caught sight of Vincente. The captain was at the wheel, alone there, for the helmsmen both lay sprawled across the bloody timbers. He was shouting commands – though Dow couldn't hear the words, he seemed to have gone deaf – and struggling to steer the ship. But even in calm conditions the wheel was heavy work for one man – in stormy seas it often took six or even eight to control it – and now it seemed to be stuck fast. The rudder or the mechanism must have been damaged.

An officer ran to the captain to help. It was Samson! Blood was flowing from the young lieutenant's scalp, but he hadn't noticed. Dow swore at himself. If Vincente – and Samson too – were unafraid to stand upright amid the shot, then so must he be. He rose to half height and took several steps toward the wheel. Then the fourth broadside caught the
Chloe
square on.

The wheel blew up.

Wooden splinters flew, and Vincente and Samson went reeling across the deck. Dow felt a hot blade sear his left shoulder, and a violent push of air, then he was flat on his back, staring witlessly up at a sky that remained innocently blue above all the smoke.

How long he lay there he wasn't sure. His arm was wet and warm, though he didn't feel any pain. Were the broadsides continuing? He could hear no sound at all, but there came shudders and vibrations from the ship, as if volley after volley was sweeping the decks.

After what seemed an age he turned his head in response to some shadow on the edge of his vision, and saw, extraordinarily close off the stern quarter, the upper rigging of one of the enemy battleships. He could even see the enemy marines stationed on their musket decks – the same platforms that Dow had found so difficult to climb over during his test for basic seamanship, a hundred years ago. They were firing away steadily with their muskets. Dow realised that they were aiming, one and all, at the high deck on which he lay – only not directly at him, but at some point beyond him.

The captain, he grasped dimly, they were firing at the captain.

Outrage warmed in Dow. It didn't seem fair. The
Chloe
was already dead in the water; they didn't need to keep attacking. He would have shouted angrily at them, but smoke had hidden the battleship once more. Dow rolled over – there, five yards away across the ravaged deck, lay Vincente, unmoving, his face to the sky. Dow began to crawl towards him.

Was the battle over? There did seem to be a lull of some kind – the broadsides at least had ended – and in the new quiet Dow's hearing began to return. Moans sounded from down on the main deck, and the flap of loose canvas. The
Chloe
was adrift. Had their own guns even managed to fire? Dow didn't think so. They'd stood no chance from the start.

He reached the captain's side.

Vincente's eyes were open, but seemed unseeing. The deck all about him was pitted with holes from the marine's musket fire – and two of the balls at least had found their target, for blood welled from wounds in the captain's right shoulder and on his left hip. But that wasn't the worst, for sticking up from Vincente's chest was a great splinter of wood the size and shape of a dagger. It was one of the spoke-handles from the shattered wheel, hurled free by the shot and buried deep – as far as Dow could see – right next to the captain's heart.

‘Excellency,' Dow croaked.

Vincente stirred a little, his eyes focussing from far away. ‘S
ir,
Mr Amber,' he whispered. ‘Officers address each other as
sir.'
But then he was coughing up blood and could speak no more.

Dow stared around wildly. Was there no one to help? The high deck looked deserted apart from the dead and the dying. Forward, over the rail, the three masts were a hopeless tangle of brokens spars and snagged lines and torn sails. Smoke drifted everywhere.

Then a cry could be heard from across the water. ‘You there! The
Chloe.
Raise the white flag, or we'll resume firing!'

Dow stared about again. Who was left with the authority to answer? He could see no officer still standing.

Vincente sounded as if he was laughing through the blood in his mouth. ‘What a fool I am,' he breathed, his gaze wandering. ‘I should have expected this. They couldn't risk it, of course. For all they knew, we might have been bearing Nadal back with us. We had to be stopped.'

‘Sir, they want us to surrender.'

‘Yes. Yes. Tell Fidel he must …'

But there was no need. To Dow's relief he heard the first officer's voice shouting from the main deck. ‘Stand down all. Raise the white pennant. Hurry, damn you, there's nothing more to be done!'