The World Above the Sky (4 page)

The little red-ochred men had never seen a berserker Norse or Scot in the full throes of battle madness. They split to the left and the right. Sir Athol turned and made for the boat where his men, ankle-deep in round stones, scrambled for a foothold.

The Skrelings outflanked the Vikings and Celts and took to the water. Infuriated little bears on land, they became sleek otters and ravening sharks in the sea. Two of Athol's men disappeared below the water. It bloomed red with their blood. Sir Athol was about to suffer their cut-tendon, slit-throat fate.

Speeding through salt blood and water, Garathia flung herself with knee-wrenching fury against Sir Athol's submerged attacker. Gunn tumbled into the curragh, rose to his knees. His broadsword slipped from his grip, fell to rest on the stones below. He propped his axe on the gunwale, urged his men to the oars.

Eugainia felt Sir Athol Gunn's sudden panic. She followed his line of vision. A new sound rumbled in Garathia's ears. Orca! Garathia listened intently. Cod, like most fish, are sensitive to motion but deaf to sound. The killer whales know mammals' underwater hearing is acute. They're chatty creatures when hunting cod, Garathia warned. They hunt seal and walrus, the great ice bear and men in lethal silence.

The black-and-white sea wolves went suddenly, eerily, quiet. Garathia knew they smelled blood. She peered above the surface, sculled quietly. Three sets of slick, towering black fins—two old Orca bulls and a young cow—carved a steady course toward them. Three or four others, she couldn't be certain of the number, followed. Garathia slipped below the surface. Six, maybe seven in all. Coming fast. She turned and sped out to sea.

On
Reclamation
, Eugainia, caught between life and death—her death and the life of her child—moaned.

In the ocean, she and her Selkie mother knew hope lay in greater depths. A black shadow loomed above. Eugainia recoiled instinctively as Garathia veered. Both were relieved when oar blades cut the surface. Garathia cut a wake at the curragh's bow. Sir Athol missed the Selkie's leap but heard her splash. He caught the second leap and smiled. The seal flipped mid-air, landed with a full-belly-smack, drawing the Orca's attention to herself, away from the fragile craft.

Garathia and Eugainia angled off to the east. Two dorsal fins followed. The Orca cow held her line, slicing toward the curragh.

Sir Athol estimated the distance to
Reclamation
. Too far.

He looked back to the shore. Skrelings struggled through the bloodied water. Most made it; some did not. Four voracious juvenile Orcas, who had trailed the main pack, hurled their slick bulks up the slope, clamped jaws on the legs and torsos of terrified Skrelings who flailed for a foothold in the treacherous stones. The twisting whales slid down the slope, back into the sea, their human prey writhing in blood-and-sea-slicked jaws. The Skrelings' screams careened across the surface before being drowned in water reddened by their own blood, and the blood of the men they'd slaughtered. The Skrelings' anguish flooded Athol's blood. He pulled deep on his oar, roaring his fear, wringing strength from aching arms, terror tearing muscle roped into knots on his back.

The Orca cow rose, jaws open, the frail curragh within reach. Sir Athol raised his double-headed axe. He released his last jolt of power. The Orca sank, the axe embedded in her head, where snout slopes up to join the glistening skull.

The Orca bulls circled back, toward
Reclamation
.

Directly below the galley's port bow, Henry and Morgase witnessed the day's second miracle; Garathia rolled to her back, exposing her belly. For a moment she floated, motionless and vulnerable. Then, a shudder...

Still grasping the rail, Eugainia's spirit departed her mother's Selkie body, rose high above
Reclamation
. Her spectral image reformed then floated briefly, her blonde hair flowing away from her head as though awash in the sea. Her wavering sapphire garments shed light as glass sheds beaded water. Soft rain fell from a cloudless sky on the upturned faces of her people.

Eugainia's body shuddered. A sharp intake of breath. Her fixed stare softened.

“Thanks be to Almighty God,” Prince Henry said. “You're back among us.”

Gunn and his men clambered up
Constante
's side-sticks. An Orca bull clamped its jaws on the bow of the abandoned curragh; a second seized the stern. With a single twist they ripped the craft in two. They dove and rose in a double arc over the wreckage, wolves pissing victory on the corpse of a rival.

Eugainia was seized by her second contraction. Her breath became rapid and shallow. Her heart began to race.

Morgase tightened her grip.

“Come, my dear. It's time to bring forth the Holy Child.”

Morgase's attempt to lead Eugainia to the aft-castle failed utterly. Eugainia would not permit herself to be moved from the rail.

A seal shot through the surface not five metres distant. Its graceful arc ended in two rows of ivory teeth. The Orca cow, Sir Athol's axe protruding from her snout, rolled to her back, her squirming prey clamped in her jaws. Predator and prey slid from sight.

Eugainia slumped, unconscious, too soon to witness the flash of light rise from the bloodied surface and shoot high into the sky where it faded from sight. Garathia's spirit sped home to the stars.

Henry carried Eugainia to the aft-castle, set her gently on the bed. Morgase drew the curtains against the chill of a rising wind.

The mirrored sky blazed vermilion, then orange, then a deep lustrous gold. The sun flared crimson then slipped below the surface of the sea.

• • •

The wind in the gulf was kind enough at first. A slate-grey mass of cloud rolled in from the north masking the moon and stars. Henry could make no sense of the luminous haze rising through darkness from the surface of the sea. Mist became rain, resolved back to mist and then ceased. The wind remained light and held its quarter. The twelve ships of the fleet rode a moderate swell.

Dawn flushed the sky a sickly green. The unseen force behind rising wind seemed befuddled at first, then enraged. Winds driven directly down clashed with squalls hurled out of the north. Crosswinds erupted, confounding surface currents. Waves rose and broke mast-high from four points of the compass. The Viking ships with their gaping hulls were swept high into the air. Men at the portals flailed the wind with useless oars. The wave's crest and voyagers' hopes were blown to scudding foam.

The downward rush on the backside of the wave seemed endless. It seemed to Henry a great hole was torn in the bottom of the sea. A vast depression formed on the surface of the gulf. The longboats sank from sight as though they'd never existed. Seeds and sets, bolts of wool and canvas circled the walls of a deepening vortex. Lives fragile as froth dissolved in God's preposterous fury. The fat caravels—flightless ducks in a towering sinkhole—spun down in the widening eddy. Men, women and children, cattle, sheep and goats whirled silently to deep and quiet graves. They would plant no crops, build no shelter, know no issue.

Henry's last sight of
Speranza
gave no reason to hope. She rolled beneath the surge, sank from view then bobbed inverted to the surface, her rudder ripped from its housing. There were no masts. No house, fore or aft. All that remained was the stripped-down hull and naked deck.
Speranza
foundered again, resurfaced and hove out of sight, her fate at the mercy of wind and tide.

Constante
did not reappear. Her last tortuous rise and the torque of the twist as she fell split her open like an axed barrel. Nicolo's still-living flesh and bones, until that moment securely sealed in the vessel he helped his brother Carlo perfect, spilled from the ship with all her provisions. He joined the host of lost Arcadians, their arms and legs spread wide, as if in flight. They wafted wide-eyed and lifeless down to the bottom of the sea.

Reclamation
was wrung like a rag. Her seams strained as she corkscrewed end for end up then down one mountain of water after the next. Seasoned cross-members, her bones, dug deep within seeking strength, found their pith still green and aching with life. Henry's pride rose with
Reclamation
to another crest where she hovered. Down the far side of the mountain she plunged in a sickening, elliptic arc to the belly of the following trough. She groaned up another, hove to her keel, then plunged to what Henry felt must be the very depths of hell. Joints strained. Caulking sprung free. Frigid jets of cold saltwater stung raw flesh. Livestock bleated and bawled. No human voice was raised in fear. Or in prayer.

Dim light from the one surviving lantern gave form to Henry's fears. Stowed supplies securely lashed had broken free. Sacks of oats, flour, dried peas and barley had tumbled and split. Barrels rolled, collided, their contents burst from sprung hoops and split staves. Honey, vinegar, sweet water, and the gallons of precious olive oil amassed from lands bordering the great Mediterranean Sea sloshed forward and back. Buckets filled with gastric spew, and worse, slopped over crusted rims or spilled entirely, their contents mixed with the spilt provisions.
Reclamation
groaned, twisted, plunged, was raised again, fell, then settled. Henry braced for the next sickening rise.

It did not come. God's wrath had fallen upon them without warning: without decrease it ceased. There was no jubilant shout, no prayer of thanksgiving. Deliverance smelled of vomit and tasted of fear.

Henry assessed the carnage and slop, the foul mockery of soup sloshing back and forth hip-deep in the hull. Hell surely exists, he thought. And hell is likely very much like this. He looked forward. His heart softened. Heaven might be very like the vision sheltered in the secure if ill-formed grotto tucked in the upper reaches of the bow. Eugainia was lost in fretful sleep. Sir Athol Gunn, with all his great strength, secured the pallet on which she lay, held tight to the breast of her guardian. Morgase sang quietly, stroking her Lady's temple. Henry caught Morgase's eye: she couldn't reassure. Henry waded to his Lady through the thickening sludge.

“Instead of increasing in strength and frequency, her contractions weaken,” Morgase told Henry. “If she isn't delivered of this child soon, the Sacred Cauldron of the Five Trees will putrefy,” Morgase continued. “Both Our Lady and the Holy Child will die.”

Athol Gunn footed a ladder and opened the hatch. Sunlight pierced the hold. Sweet air flooded in.

“Both fore- and aft-castles have sustained severe damage, but are in tact,” he reported. “The aft-mast stands. The main mast has been snapped in two.”

The news below decks was better than that from above. Amid the ruined provisions, rasped skin and broken bone, Henry saw that none of his Knights of the New Temple had perished.
Reclamation
's entire company, including her most precious cargo were shaken but alive. Their strength had been tested, Henry thought. They had been judged and found worthy. The smithies, wheelwrights, ship's carpenters, glaziers, masons—all the unmarried, childless artisans chosen for their skill and, more importantly, their monklike loyalty to both Henry and Eugainia—had survived to build Her New Arcadia.

In her delirium, Eugainia walked a forest path, her skin indistinguishable from the scented air. She turned at the sound of the voice, a man's voice calling her name. No man stood behind her. Where her feet had fallen, moss expired and decayed. No birds sang. Leaves fell green to the ground where they shrivelled and died. Eugainia turned and ran. The ground fell from beneath her. She willed her shadow to rise. She tumbled end for end into a fiery pit from which, she knew, there was no hope of escape. A devil's child, scorched and twisted, caught her eye and beckoned.

“I'd rather die than follow you,” she whispered.

Morgase bent close.

“Eugainia?”

Reclamation
keeled to starboard as the tide fell and nested in the mud. Sunlight bounced from the surface of the slop, shot up at an angle, brightening the makeshift grotto in the peak of the bow. Eugainia woke to the feel of light on her face. Fresh air filled her nostrils.

“Take me from this stinking hole,” she begged.

Morgase ordered her pallet carried toward the hatch.

Henry joined Sir Athol on the listing deck. The wide, pleasant bay in which the ship had come to ground was still. The morning sun sat well established halfway to the zenith. In the near distance, a plume of smoke rose from the highest elevation in a range of moderate hills. The smoke, curious though it was, rising as it did from the earth with no visible flame, didn't hold Henry's interest for long. Neither he nor his kinsman Sir Athol Gunn could fathom what drew near.

From the wide mouth of a bay a hundred canoes, each carrying two adults, many with several children, approached at speed. The flotilla swept around and past
Reclamation
. On board the ravaged ship, not a hand reached for sword or lance, axe or bow. Even burley Athol Gunn's arms hung loose. A feeling akin to joy tugged at the corners of his battered spirit. There was no need for alarm. The revellers in the sleek canoes laughed and chatted among themselves, shouting what Henry assumed to be good-natured jibes aimed at laggard and braggart alike.

Was this a dream? If so, it came as a welcome relief from the nightmare they'd survived. The travellers' smiles were friendly and open. Blue black hair glistened in the sun. White teeth flashed as they directed the briefest of smiles up to the dishevelled creatures lining the sides of the enormous, stinking apparition that had appeared overnight in the Bay of the Smoking Mountain, also known to The People, the Europeans would come to learn, as Claw of Spirit Bird Bay.

The travellers seemed to Henry to be drawn across the surface as if by a magnet, so inevitable was their motion, so silent their paddles in the calm waters of the bay. Their bark-and-hide canoes rode low, laden with sleeping robes of luxurious fur, tightly woven baskets, perfectly square birchbark boxes and intricately decorated clay pots, many open to the air, all empty. Their destination was a low stretch of land on the northwest horizon. From their great good cheer, Henry assumed the green and red shores in the near distance must be a pleasant place indeed.

Canoes continued to stream past
Reclamation
. The ship posed no apparent threat, roused only passing curiosity. Perhaps this was a longhouse experimenting with Whale form. Perhaps the reverse. Such things were well known to L'nuk, The People, in story and in legend. In the Six Worlds, nothing remained static. At any given moment, the spirit of one object might transfer itself into the being of another. Its journey or destination was no one's business but that of the questing entity. The great wooden creature towering above them with its personlike spirits who smelled like the dead would make its purpose known in time.

Morgase steadied Her Lady at the rail. Eugainia's battered spirit rose to the flood of joy streaming round the battered vessel.

A young man, his brown skin artfully tattooed in vivid reds, yellows and blues, paddled with even, powerful strokes. The woman behind him, lithe and strong, not young, not old, held her own, matching him stroke for stroke. Unlike the others, theirs was a wary curiosity. They glanced up frequently, their expressions neutral.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk found Eugainia. And she him. She pulled herself up to her full height, lifted her hand in greeting. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk wavered in his dig, thrust and lift motion, not fully registering what stood above and before him. He fell one then two then three strokes out of rhythm.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and Eugainia couldn't look away, one from the other. He saw an exhausted young woman, pale, worn, pregnant, her blonde hair a tangled mat, her fair skin ashen grey. He felt what the morning sun, low on the horizon behind Eugainia, wished him to feel. He felt a golden arc around her. It came not from the sun, but from within.

Eugainia felt rather than observed Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. A wave of uncertainty washed up the length of her body. She felt she was being held upright, not by Morgase, whose stout arm circled her waist, but by this strange young man's lustrous eyes. For the first time since fleeing Scotland, Eugainia felt safe.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk wrested his regard from Eugainia. He found his rhythm.

Keswalqw knelt behind Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk in the canoe's stern. Keswalqw's open face rested simply in kind repose. Her doeskin dress clothed a tight and supple body. Her black hair shone, shot through with blue and gold reflected from the sky. Keswalqw's glance slipped from Eugainia to Henry, where it lingered.

Henry inclined his head in a greeting. Keswalqw returned the nod, then looked away.

Athol Gunn made no sense to Keswalqw. Was this a bear or a man? She couldn't catch his individual scent, such was the stink from the vessel. Nor—with sun above and behind him—could she make “the meeting of the eyes” to assess his spirit. Perhaps his was bear clan. Perhaps he was a moose-clan man.

Keswalqw returned Morgase's smile. Morgase experienced a tremor of recognition. I'm in the presence of someone ancient, Morgase thought. More ancient even than me.

The canoe slipped away. In that briefest of moments, as the sleek craft slid silently past the battered galley, five persons' fates were sealed.

“I looked at her but saw a tree, a pine tree, in silhouette, on a hill, in a landscape I don't recall but long to know,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk said quietly to Keswalqw.

“I saw a tall, slender larch in spring, tufted with rosy plumelets, in the full beauty of her youth,” Keswalqw replied. “Though at present she is ragged and unwell.”

A light southeasterly carried a call-and-response chant—the call spoken, the response sung—back to the Arcadians. Soon the flotilla was indistinguishable from the low red shores across the strait into which the wide bay opened.

Reclamation
groaned as she sank deeper in the mud. She settled in spreading silence.

A curragh was lowered at
Reclamation
's port rail. When their Lady was secure, the oars manned, Morgase, Henry and Sir Athol set out for shore. Athol noticed a single canoe break from the distant fleet, swing northwest and make for shore. He caught Henry's attention. Henry nodded.

From the deck on the seaward side of the stranded vessel, a great roll of canvas, two corners secured to the rail by clamps, was thrown over the side. Men in waiting curraghs unrolled the tarpaulin over the surface, allowing it to sink as their distance from
Reclamation
increased. The canvas made a natural swimming pool.

Whoops of laughter distracted Morgase. She turned back to
Reclamation
. Stripped to their filthy skins, the men hurled their foul clothes and then themselves from the ship into their makeshift saltwater tub.