The Mad Ship

Even now, the wandering priest hovered at the edge of the group. He had not offered to be helpful and Wintrow had not asked him. Most often, wandering priests were judges and negotiators rather than healers or scholars. While Wintrow had always respected the learning and even the wisdom of that order, he had never been completely comfortable with the right of any man to judge another. It did not help right now to feel that scrutiny was being applied to him. Whenever he sensed Sa’Adar gaze at him, he felt a chill knowledge that the man found him unworthy. The older priest stood, arms crossed on his chest. Two map-faces flanked him; he spoke to them quietly. Wintrow pushed aside his awareness of them; if Sa’Adar would not help, Wintrow would not be distracted by him. He rose and walked to the bow of the ship. Vivacia looked back at him anxiously.

‘I will do my best,’ she said before Wintrow could ask. ‘But keep in mind we have no blood-bond with him; he is not kin to us. Nor has he been aboard long enough for me to be familiar with him.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I will not be much help to you.’

Wintrow leaned far down to touch his palm to hers. ‘Lend your strength to me, then, and that will do much,’ he consoled her.

Their hands met, confirming and increasing the strange bond between them. He did draw strength from her. As he acknowledged that, he saw an answering smile dawn on her face. It was not an expression of happiness, not even a sign that all was now right between them, but a sign of shared determination. Whatever else might threaten them, whatever doubts they harboured about one another, they still went into this together. Wintrow lifted his face to the sea wind and offered up a prayer that Sa might guide them. He turned back to his task. As he drew a deep breath, he could feel Vivacia with him.

Kennit lay limply on the deck. Even at this distance, Wintrow could smell the brandy. Etta had sat beside Kennit, and patiently coaxed him to drink far beyond his desire. The man had a good capacity for alcohol. He was sodden but not senseless. Etta had also been the one to choose who would hold him down. To Wintrow’s surprise, three of those she had chosen were former slaves. One was even an older map-face. They looked uneasy but determined as they stood amongst the gawking onlookers. That would be the first thing Wintrow would deal with. He spoke calmly but clearly.

‘Only those who have been summoned should be here. The rest of you, disperse to give me room.’ He did not wait to see if they obeyed him. To watch them ignore his command would only be an additional humiliation for him. He was sure that if they did, Etta would intervene. He knelt down beside Kennit. It would be awkward to work with him lying flat on the deck, but Wintrow felt that whatever strength Vivacia could lend him would be worth it.

He looked over the paltry array of tools he had scavenged. They lay in a tidy row on a piece of clean canvas next to his patient. It was a motley assortment of makeshift equipment. The knives, freshly sharpened, had come from the cook’s supplies. There were two saws from the carpenter’s box. There were sail-making needles, large and coarse, and some sewing needles that belonged to Etta. Etta had provided him with neatly torn bandaging, both linen and silk. It was ridiculous that he had not been able to salvage better equipment. Almost every sailor aboard had had his own needles and tools. All the belongings of the slaughtered crewmen had disappeared. He was sure the slaves had claimed them when they took over the ship. That none of them had been surrendered to this need spoke deeply of how much the former slaves resented Kennit’s claiming of the ship. Wintrow could understand their feelings, but it did not help his predicament. As he looked down on the crude tools, he knew he was doomed to fail. This would be little better than lopping the man’s leg off with an axe.

He lifted his eyes and sought out Etta. ‘I must have better tools than these,’ he asserted quietly. ‘I dare not begin without them.’

She had been musing, her gaze and thoughts afar. ‘I wish we had the kit from aboard the Marietta,’ she replied wistfully. For that unguarded moment, she looked almost young. She reached down to twine one of Kennit’s black curls through her fingers. The sudden tenderness in her face as she looked on the drowsing man was startling.

‘I wish we had Vivacia’s medicine chest,’ Wintrow replied as solemnly. ‘It was kept in the mate’s cabin, before all this began. There was much in it that would be useful – both medicines and tools. It could have made this much easier for him. No one seems to know what became of it.’

Etta’s gaze darkened and her face hardened into a scowl. ‘No one?’ she asked coldly. ‘Someone always knows something. You just have to ask the right way.’

She stood abruptly. As she crossed the deck, she drew her knife from its hip sheath. Wintrow immediately discerned her target. Sa’Adar and his two guards had withdrawn but not left the foredeck. Too late, the wandering priest turned to acknowledge Etta’s approach. His gaze of disdain became a goggle of shock as Etta casually ran the honed edge of her blade down his chest. He stumbled back with a shout, then looked down at the front of his ragged shirt hanging open. A thin line down his hairy chest became red and widened as the blood began to seep. His two burly guards looked down at Etta’s knife held low and ready. Brig and another pirate had already closed ranks with her. For an instant, no one spoke or moved. Wintrow could almost hear Sa’Adar assessing his choices. The wound was a shallow scoring of his skin, very painful but not life threatening. She could have gutted him where he stood. So. What did she want?

He chose wronged righteousness. ‘Why?’ he demanded theatrically. He opened his arms wide to expose the slash down his chest. He half turned, so that he addressed the slaves still clustered amidships as well as Etta. ‘Why do you choose me to attack? What have I done, except come forward to offer my aid?’

‘I want the ship’s medicine chest,’ Etta responded. ‘I want it now.’

‘I don’t have it!’ Sa’Adar exclaimed angrily.

The woman moved faster than a clawing cat. Her knife licked out and a second line of blood bisected the first. Sa’Adar set his teeth and did not cry out or step back, but Wintrow saw the effort it cost him.

‘Find it,’ Etta suggested. ‘You bragged that you organized the uprising that overthrew the captain. You go among the slaves, exhorting them that you are the true leader they should follow. If that is true, you should know which of your men plundered the mate’s cabin. They took the chest. I want it. Now.’

For a breath longer, the tableau held. Did some sort of a sign, a flicker of a glance, pass between Sa’Adar and his men? Wintrow could not be certain. Sa’Adar began talking, but to Wintrow his words seemed oddly staged. ‘You could have simply asked me, you know. I am a humble man, a priest of Sa. I seek nothing for myself, only the greater good of humanity. This chest you seek…what did it look like?’ His querying eyes fell on Wintrow and his mouth stretched in a manufactured smile.

Wintrow forced himself to keep a neutral expression as he answered. ‘A wooden chest. So by so.’ Wintrow measured it in the air. ‘Locked. Vivacia’s image was burned into the top of it. Within were medicines, doctoring tools, needles, bandaging. Anyone who opened it would know instantly what it was.’

Sa’Adar turned to those gathered in the waist of the ship. ‘Did you hear, my people? Do any of you know of such a chest? If so, please bring it forth now. Not for my sake, of course, but for that of our benefactor, Captain Kennit. Let us show him we know how to be kind to those who are kind to us.’

It was so transparent, Wintrow thought Etta would cut him down where he stood. Instead, an oddly patient look came over her face. By his knee, on the deck, Kennit spoke very softly. ‘She knows she can wait. She likes to take her time killing, and do it in privacy.’

Wintrow’s eyes snapped to the pirate, but he seemed to be nearly unconscious. His lashes lay long on his cheeks; his face was slack. A loose smile twitched over his mouth. Wintrow set two fingers lightly to Kennit’s throat. His pulse still beat steady and strong there, but the man’s skin was fevered. ‘Captain Kennit?’ Wintrow asked softly.

‘Is this it?’ A woman’s voice rang out. The freed slaves parted, and she came striding forward. Wintrow stood up. She carried the medicine chest. The lid had been splintered, but he recognized its worn wood. He did not move forward but let the woman bring it to Etta instead. Let this be her battle with Sa’Adar. He had enough bad blood with the man already.

She lowered her eyes to gaze down at the opened chest when it was placed before her feet. She did not even stoop to stir the dishevelled contents. When she lifted her eyes back to Sa’Adar’s face, she gave a small snort of contempt. ‘I do not enjoy games,’ she said very softly. ‘But if I am forced to play them, I always make sure I win.’ Her stare met his. Neither looked aside. The planes of her cheeks tightened, exposing her teeth in a snarling smile. ‘Now. Take your rabble off this deck. Get belowdecks and close the hatches. I neither wish to see you, nor hear you, nor even smell you while this is going on. If you are very wise, you will never draw my attention to you again. Do you understand?’

Wintrow watched as Sa’Adar made a very serious mistake. He drew himself up to his full height, not quite the match of Etta’s. His voice was coolly amused. ‘Am I to understand that you, and not Brig, are in command here?’

It would have been a deft play, if there had been any rivalry between the two to exploit. Brig only threw his head back in a guffaw of laughter as Etta’s knife danced in to add yet another stripe to Sa’Adar’s chest. This time he cried out and staggered back a step. She had made the knife bite deeper. As the wandering priest clutched at his blood-slicked chest, she smiled darkly. ‘I think we understand that I am in command of you.’

One of the map-faces started forward, his face dark with fury. Etta’s knife moved in and out of him, and he went down, clutching at his belly. Vivacia gave a muffled cry at this new spillage of blood on her deck, an echo of the cries and gasps of the watching freed folk. Wintrow shared the deep shudder of horror that passed through the ship at this fresh violence, but he could not take his eyes away. Sa’Adar shrank back behind his other bodyguard, but that burly man was also cowering away from the woman with the knife. None of the others sprang forward to defend the priest. Instead, there was a subtle movement away from him as folk distanced themselves.

‘Be clear on this!’ Etta’s voice rang out like a hammer on an anvil. She lifted the bloody knife and swept it in an arc that encompassed the whole ship and every staring face, tattooed or not. ‘I will tolerate no one who threatens the wellbeing and comfort of Captain Kennit. If you wish to avoid my wrath, then you will do nothing to inconvenience him.’ Her voice grew softer. ‘It is very simple, really. Now clear these decks.’

This time the crowded folk on the deck disappeared like water swirling down a drain. In a matter of moments, the only people remaining above-deck were the pirate crewmen and those few slaves Etta had chosen to hold Kennit down. Her chosen ones regarded her with an odd mixture of respect and horror. Wintrow suspected they had now completely changed allegiance and would follow her anywhere. It remained to be seen how formidable an enemy she had created in Sa’Adar.

As Etta came to Wintrow, their eyes met. The demonstration with Sa’Adar had been for his benefit as well. If Kennit died under his hands, Etta’s vengeance would be furious if not swift. He drew a deep breath as she approached him, the medicine chest in her hands. He took it from her wordlessly, placed it on the deck and swiftly sorted through its contents. Some of it had been pilfered, but most of it was there. With a deep sigh of relief, he found kwazi rind preserved in brandy. The bottle was tiny. He reflected bitterly that his father had not seen fit to use it to ease his pain when his finger was amputated; then the thought intruded that if he had, Wintrow would not have it now to use on Kennit. He shrugged at the vagaries of fate and began methodically to set out his tools. He pushed aside his collection of kitchen knives, replacing them with the finer edged blades in the chest. He selected a bone saw with a carved handle like a bow. Three needles he threaded with hair from Kennit’s own head. When he lay them down on the canvas, the black hair spiralled into a lax curl. There was a leather strap with two rings on the end to cinch about the limb before he cut it.

That was all. He looked a moment longer at the row of tools. Then he glanced up at Etta. ‘I would like to offer prayers. A few moments of meditation might better prepare all of us for this.’

‘Just get on with it,’ she ordered him harshly. The line of her mouth was set flat, and the high planes of her cheeks were rigid.

‘Hold him down,’ Wintrow replied. His own voice came out as harshly. He wondered if he were as pale as she was. A spark of anger burned inside him at her disdain. He tried to rekindle it as determination.

Etta knelt by Kennit’s head but did not touch him. Two men took his good leg and pinned it to the deck. There was another man on each of his arms. Brig tried to hold Kennit’s head, but his captain twisted free of his tentative grip. He lifted his head to glare wide-eyed at Wintrow. ‘Is it now?’ he demanded, sounding both querulous and angry. ‘Is it now?’

‘It’s now,’ Wintrow told him. ‘Brace yourself.’ To Brig he said, ‘Hold his head, firmly. Put your palms on his forehead and pin him to the deck with your weight. The less he thrashes about, the better.’

Of his own accord, Kennit lay his head back and closed his eyes. Wintrow lifted the blanket that had covered his stump. In the few hours since he had last seen it, it had become worse. Swelling stretched the skin tight and shiny. His flesh had a blue-grey cast to it.

Begin now, while he had courage still. He tried not to think that his own life depended on his success. As he gingerly worked the strap under the leg stump, he refused to think of Kennit’s pain. He must focus on being swift and cutting him cleanly. His pain was irrelevant.

The last time Wintrow had seen a limb severed from a man, the room had been warm and cheery. Candles and incense burned as Sa’Parte had prepared for his task with prayer and chanting. The only prayer uttered here was Wintrow’s silent one. It flowed in and out with his breath. Sa, grant your mercy, lend me your strength. Mercy, on an in-drawn breath, strength as he breathed out. It calmed his thundering heart. His mind was suddenly clearer, his vision keener. It took him a moment to realize Vivacia was with him, more intimately than ever before. Dimly, he could sense Kennit through her. Curiously, Wintrow explored that faint bond. It seemed as if she spoke to Kennit at a great distance, counselling him to courage and strength, promising that she would be there to help. Wintrow felt a moment of jealousy. He lost his concentration.

Mercy, strength, the ship prompted him. Mercy, strength he breathed back at her. He threaded the leather strap through the rings and cinched it firmly about Kennit’s thigh.

Kennit roared out his agony. Despite the men pinning his limbs, his back arched up off the deck. He flopped like a gaffed fish. Fluids broke through the crusted scabs on his stump and spattered on the deck. The foul odour poisoned the breeze. Etta threw herself across Kennit’s chest with a cry and strove to hold him down. A moment of terrible silence fell when he ran out of breath.

‘Cut him, damn you!’ Etta shrieked at Wintrow. ‘Get it over with! Do it!’

Wintrow was frozen as he knelt, paralysed by Kennit’s agony. It inundated him like an icy wave, shocking and immersing him in its intensity. The force of the other man’s experience flooded through his tenuous link with the ship and into Wintrow. He lost his identity in it. He could only stare dumbly at the whore, wondering why she was doing this to him.

Kennit drew in a ragged breath, and expelled it as a scream. Wintrow shattered like a cold glass filled with hot water. He was no one, he was nothing, and then he was Vivacia and abruptly Wintrow again. He fell forward, his palms flattening on the deck, soaking up his identity from the wood. A Vestrit, he was a Vestrit, moreover, he was Wintrow Vestrit, the boy who should have been a priest…

With a shudder, Kennit suddenly lay senseless. In the stillness that followed, Wintrow grasped at his sense of himself, wrapped himself in it. Somewhere the prayer continued: Mercy. Strength. Mercy. Strength. It was Vivacia, setting the rhythm of his breath for him. He took control of himself. Etta was weeping and cursing at the same time. She sprawled on Kennit’s chest, both restraining and embracing him. Wintrow ignored her. ‘Hold him,’ he said tightly. He chose a knife at random. He suddenly understood what he had to do. Speed. Speed was the essence. Pain such as this could kill a man. If he was lucky, he could finish cutting before Kennit recovered consciousness.

He set the shining blade to the swollen flesh and drew it across and down. Nothing had ever prepared him for that sensation. He had helped with butchering at slaughter time at the monastery. It was not a pleasant task, but it had to be done. Then he had cut through cold meat that was still, that was solid and stiff from a day’s hanging. Kennit’s flesh was alive. Its fevered softness gave way to the keen edge of the blade and closed up behind it. Blood welled up to hide his work. He had to grasp Kennit’s leg below the spot where he cut. The flesh there was hot and his fingers sank into it far too easily. He tried to cut swiftly. The meat under the knife moved, muscles twitching and pulling back as Wintrow severed them. The blood poured forth in a constant crimson flood. In an instant, the handle of the knife was both sticky and slick. It puddled on the deck beneath Kennit’s leg, then spread to soak into Wintrow’s robe. He caught glimpses of tendon, glistening white bands that vanished as his knife divided them. It seemed forever before his blade met the bone and was defeated by it.

He flung the knife down, wiped his hands down his shirt and cried, ‘Saw!’

Someone thrust it towards him and he grabbed it. To reinsert it into the wound sickened him but he did it. He dragged it across the bone; it made a terrible sound, a wet grinding.

Kennit surged back to life, yelping like a dog. He pounded the back of his own head on the deck and his torso writhed despite the weight of those holding him down. Wintrow braced himself, expecting to be overwhelmed with the pirate’s pain but Vivacia held it back. He had no time to wonder what it cost her to take that to herself. He did not even have time to be grateful. He bore down on the saw, working swiftly and violently. Blood spattered the deck, his hands, and his chest. He tasted it. The bone gave away suddenly and before he could stop, he had sawed raggedly into flesh. He pulled the saw out of the clinging wound and threw it aside, then groped for a fresh knife. Somewhere Kennit barked, ‘Uh, uh, uh!’ It was a sound beyond screaming. A splattering noise followed.

Wintrow smelled the sourness of vomit on the sea air. ‘Don’t let him choke!’ he said abruptly, but it was not Kennit who had puked but one of the men holding him. No time for that. ‘Hold him down, damn you!’ Wintrow heard himself curse the man. With the knife in his hand he cut down, stopping just short of severing the leg completely. He turned the blade at an angle, slicing himself a flap of skin from the stump before he made the final severing cut and rolled the rotten remains of the leg aside.

He looked down, sickened, at what he had wrought. This was not a neatly sliced piece of meat like a holiday roast. This was living flesh. Freed of their attachments, the bundled muscles sagged and contracted unevenly. The bone glistened up at him like an accusing eye. Everywhere was the spreading blood. He knew with vast certainty that he had killed the man.

Do not think that, Vivacia warned him. Then, almost pleading, Do not force him to believe that. For right now, linked as we all are, he must believe what we think. He has no choice.

With blood-smeared hands, he found the small bottle that held the kwazi fruit rind. He had heard of its potency, but it seemed like a pitifully small amount to stop such vast pain. He unstoppered it. He tried to pour it sparingly, to save some against tomorrow’s pain. The pieces of preserved rind clogged in the bottleneck. He shook it, and the pale green liquid splattered forth unevenly. Where it fell on Kennit’s flesh, it brought a sudden silencing of the pain. He knew because through Vivacia he sensed it. Less than half of the extract was left in the bloody bottle when he capped it. He clenched his teeth and touched the flesh he had cut, patting the thick green liquid to spread it evenly. The cessation of pain was so sudden that it was like being stranded by a retreating wave. He had not realized how much of it was battering past Vivacia’s shield until it stopped. He sensed, too, Vivacia’s sudden relief.

He tried to remember all that he had seen Sa’Parte do when he had cut off the man’s leg. He had tied the ends of some bleeding arteries, folding them back on themselves and closing them off. Wintrow tried. He was suddenly tired and confused; he could not remember how many the healing priest had sewn. All he wanted to do was get away from this gory mess he had created. He longed to flee, curl up in a ball somewhere and deny this. He forced himself to go on. He folded the slab of skin up over the raw end of Kennit’s stump. He had to ask Etta to pull more hair from the pirate’s head and thread the fine needles for him. Kennit lay absolutely still now, his breath puffing in and out of his lips. When the men started to ease up their holds, Wintrow rebuked them.

‘Hold him fast still. If he stirs while I am stitching, he may tear all my work apart.’

The flap did not fit neatly. Wintrow did the best he could, stretching the skin where he had to. He wrapped the stump with lint and bound it with silk. As fast as he hid it, the blood seeped through, smearing from his sticky hands, oozing out to blossom through the fabric. Wintrow lost count of how many layers he wrapped it in. When he was finally finished, he wiped his hands down the front of his robe yet again and then reached for the cinch. When he loosened it, the clean bandaging almost instantly reddened. Wintrow wanted to scream in horror and frustration. How could there be that much blood in a man? How could so much of it gush out of him, and yet leave him still clinging to life’s thread? His own heart was thundering with fear as he wrapped it once again. Supporting the stump in his hands, he said dully, ‘I’m finished. We can move him now.’

Etta lifted her head from Kennit’s chest. Her face was white. Her eyes fell on the discarded leg. Heartbreak contorted her mouth for an instant. With visible effort, she smoothed her features. Her eyes were still bright with brimming tears as she huskily ordered the men, ‘Fetch his litter.’

It was an awkward trip. He had to be manoeuvred down the short ladder to the main deck. Once they had crossed it, there were the narrow corridors of the officers’ living quarters to navigate. Every time the wooden handles of the litter rapped against a wall and jostled Kennit, Etta snarled. As they moved him from his litter to the bed, his eyes opened momentarily and Kennit babbled wildly. ‘Please, please, I’ll be good, I promise. I’ll listen, and obey, I will.’ Etta scowled so blackly that every man lowered his eyes before her. Wintrow was sure the captain would never be questioned about his words. Once on his bed, Kennit closed his eyes and was as still as before. The other men left the cabin as swiftly as they could.

Wintrow lingered a moment longer. Etta scowled at him as he touched Kennit, first at wrist and then throat. His pulse was light and flighty. Wintrow leaned close to him, and tried to breathe confidence into him. He set his sticky hands on Kennit’s face with his fingertips touching the man’s temples and prayed aloud to Sa to grant the man strength and health. Etta ignored him, folding a clean cloth and slipping it deftly under Kennit’s bandaged stump.