Malspire (2 page)

"Do you have anything to say Mister Ardalrion?" asked Captain Crosp. He rarely used my title and when he did, it was smeared thick with bile.

How I was meant to say anything with the strip in my mouth, I did not know and so remained silent, closing my eyes and bit harder on the leather instead. I would have asked for water, but did not want to lose the strip, knowing that the captain would have both ignored my request and continued the punishment without returning the one thing that I would be able to vent my pain and anger upon.

"No? Then let the punishment begin."

I heard the ends of the leather whip fall to the deck. I was shivering uncontrollably. Thirty lashes. I could take thirty lashes. I would bite down and keep my silence. I would not scream. There was a snigger quickly silenced by the sound of a thump. I had both pissed and shat in my breaches and knew nothing of it until some seaman had found it amusing. I was scared and now ashamed. Finally a grunt was followed by the crack of the whip caressing my back.

How to explain it? How to put into words the experience…? It was as though the world exploded into white hot shards of frozen fire and burning ice. The touch of the flail was the most exquisitely painful shock of physical violation I had ever felt and it was far beyond my wildest dreams of what to expect. The pain was not to be taken and accepted, ground down and locked away, but a physical attack on a scale that dominated my every nerve, cell and spirit. Oh how I screamed!

The leather strip had gone. I felt like my back was on fire and began to panic, but I was trapped. Again the lash fell. Again I screamed and felt tears burning in my eyes. Dear gods have mercy! This was death. I would be killed! It was not uncommon for a man to die on the rack and I knew I could not survive this punishment. Again it fell and again.

I did not count them. That would have been a luxury. They just fell upon my ruined back without mercy, without conscience - relentlessly again and again, each time proceeded by my tormentor's grunt of effort. I was a failure and now I was being punished for my sins - the greatest of all being my naive arrogance. They fell again and again and again. All I knew was that it felt like an eternity of damnation compressed into the time it takes to deliver thirty lashes. I screamed with all my breath and then continued, choking gulps of air only to scream the more.

On and on it went until finally - blessed was the unconsciousness that found me, for the assault had stopped. I tasted blood and vomit in my mouth. I groaned with the throbbing pain, but it was now a distant sensation as though I had taken a step back from reality like recoiling from a scorching pan handle. There were footsteps behind me. I opened my eyes but the world was blurred with tears and could only make out a splattering of blood on the back of my hand. My blood. Was I dying? I was hanging from my wrists but could not find the strength to right myself. In a way, I wanted to die. It was better just to die now and be done with it.

Someone stepped up close to my right ear and with a gust of stinking breath, I remember so well as though it is said to me now like another echo from the past, Captain Crosp said, "How does it feel to be the son of a duke, so powerful, and yet so impotent?" There was a pause. "Who is the lord here, Ardalrion? Eh? Who is master on this ship?"

"The captain," I croaked, all resolve gone, anger replaced by apathy. I gave up. Crosp had won.

"That's right. The captain. Who is the captain?" Crosp asked with a patronising and truculent hiss.

"You are."

"Pardon me?"

"You are, sir." The pain was coming in waves now. I could hear my own blood rushing through my head with every thunderous heartbeat. My body was screaming at me.

"I am captain of this ship, and you are an officer and you will behave like an officer, you hear?"

I nodded, defiance the last thing I could even imagine. I felt faint. The little strength I had left was fading.

"If you act like a low born bilge rat then I will treat you like a swiving rat. In future you will have the decency and respect to observe these punishments like a proper officer. Have you learnt your lesson now, Lord Ardalrion?"

"Yes, Captain," I sputtered after swallowing more vomit.

"Well done, Mister Ardalrion," said Crosp magnanimously and more loudly so the crew could hear. "Cut him down and see to those wounds," he added with a flick of his hand, then turned away.

A bucket of brine was thrown on my back and I succumbed to the beckoning darkness as the shock knocked me cold.

***

Darkness. A darkness full of murmuring voices. I knew that time was passing, tick tock, tick tock. I awoke occasionally. Firstly I was on the surgeons table, my ravaged back being seen to. It was not time to wake up yet. I slept on. Next was a dark room. It was my cabin. Feeling the rumble of the engine, I heard the thrashing of the paddlewheel. My body was tight with bandages and it was too hot. Somebody was there in the darkness. That blessed person gave me water. I slept again and dreamt of my mother, a person I have never met, but knew what she looked like from her many portraits at the castle. She would smile at me, yet look sad for not being there. At least I liked to think so. Ajator was there too. He had his mother's looks. Ajator was always there. Even when a thousand miles away, I could feel Ajator; like a beacon of light in a dark room, my brother stood guard and scared away the baying phantoms, but in the darkness was also something else. It did not show itself for it too was wary of Ajator, but it was there and my brother could not see it nor seemed to know of it. I could not see it either, but I felt it. A clock was ticking, its rhythm slowing with every swing of the pendulum. It felt like the end was coming and Ajator could not see it. The clock stopped.

Opening my eyes, it was pitch black. I felt around and realised I was in my small cabin still. Sitting up, I winced at the sharp pain. My back was tight, and wounds cracked under the movement. How long had I slept for? Reaching across from my cot to the desk, I found my silver tinderbox. Opening the box I felt for the flint and steel, then ran the flint along the steel showering blinding sparks into the box at the back of which was a section of char cloth. Blinking away the sparks, I saw a small lick of flame on the cloth. Then I took a piece of ripped paper from the tinderbox and lit this. Using the fragile flame, I managed to light a small oil lamp and snapped the tinderbox shut.

It was a simple cabin with a cot, desk and chair, chest and cupboard with hardly enough room for one man to stand in. All the furniture apart from the chair was crudely nailed to the floor. My cot was clean which surprised me. I looked down and saw my body was wrapped in white bandages. They too were clean. I was weak, but alive.

It transpired that I had been asleep for eight days and the Sea Huntress was again heading north for the Imperial Emben capital of Norlan - the ancient island city at the heart of the Emben Empire.

"We thought you was a goner, sir," said Willan, one of the cabin boys. "You had a fever and there was blood and puss everywhere."

I half sat in my cot where the boy had found me. The first thing I did was order Willan to fetch water, wine and broth which the skinny boy quickly did; an eager lad, not yet ruined by the world.

"You feeling better now, sir?"

"I'm alive," I croaked, gulping down the wine. I felt awful but relieved to have survived the flogging.

"Harl reckoned you had been left for dead. That flail was fouled. Someone's got it in for you, sir. He saw to it that you got looked after though."

"Harl?" I asked, but thinking of Crosp. The man had fouled the flail, or had someone do it! That was tantamount to attempted murder.

"Aye. Doctor Feasler came and went but he didn't do nothing. He would sniff the air, check your wrist, then go again. Harl had you cleaned and given water. I helped," Willan added enthusiastically.

I now remembered being given water. It was like tasting the cool tears of an angel. Feasler was a snivelling coward who constantly worried about contagion and rot. The man would have cabin boys touch his patients for him rather than get his own hands grubby. He was constantly sniffling or complaining about some ache or pain.

"It seems I owe you my thanks, Mister Willan."

"Nah. Nothing worse than washing me old nan, sir. Anyway, Mister Harl made me."

I remained in my cabin for another six days and was visited regularly by Willan who brought me my food and drink and emptied my bucket. The pain was awful whenever I moved, and the bandages had to be replaced every day to stop the rot. Peeling off the cloth was excruciating as it opened wounds and pulled at the tender flesh. Willan helped apply a poultice which one of the crewmen provided and swore by. All I knew was that the fatty mixture looked foul and smelt worse. After this, a new bandage was wrapped tightly round me. The captain seemed to have forgotten me as there was no visit by any officer, nor a summons by Crosp. Feasler did appear on the second day after I had awoken and checked my pulse after which he wiped his hands on a handkerchief and then hesitated before putting it back into his pocket, deciding, I suppose, it was worth the risk of infection to save on the cost of a new cloth.

"You'll live," Doctor Feasler announced, and then quickly departed. The man had obviously been holding his breath and had to retreat once he made the statement. I could well imagine the stink in the stuffy cabin. Mister Harl never appeared, but Willan had passed on my gratitude.

Eventually I returned to duty. I was still weak and could have spent another few days in my cot, but boredom was ever my worst enemy. The first thing I did was wash and shave as best I could from a bowl, then tenderly put on my uniform, my long dark waxed coat and old fashioned tricorn hat as well as the three buttoned cloak, then I made my way to the captain's cabin. It was getting late, the sun had set and the stars were out. There was a fresh easterly breeze of welcome clean air that I breathed in as deeply as I could without hurting my bandaged back. To starboard one could just make out the distant silhouette of land with the odd flare of coastal settlements. I reckoned we were off the western coast of Horat, the northern most peninsula of the Southern Lands. A few shadows stood at the helm watching the seas, but took no notice of me as I made my way to the captain's door. Knocking, I was left standing for a while.

"Enter!"

On entering the captain's cabin I found Crosp sitting at his desk surrounded by his ridiculous stuffed pets, eyes glistening in the light of a single lantern hanging from the beams above the desk and a candle on the desk itself. Crosp had been studying a small chart. He said nothing as I stood to attention before him, fixing my gaze on a point on the rear windows as always.

"The doctor told me you were recovering," Crosp then said. "Took you long enough, Ardalrion."

"I wish to report for duty, sir," I said, ignoring the captain's criticism.

"I see. I presume you have learnt your lesson?"

"I have, sir." I had learnt to watch out for Crosp. I had learnt that I needed allies. I had learnt that I would shoot Crosp point blank in the face with my pistol before taking another lashing. The man had tried to murder me, but there was no way to prove it. Not now. Crosp was the highest authority on the ship. I just had to play it safe for now.

The captain seemed disappointed. The news that I might not survive my wounds had probably raised his hopes, but now I stood before him. Of course there would have been awkward questions asked if the son of a lord admiral had died from a flogging, but I knew that Crosp was well aware of the Lord Admiral's low regard for me and Crosp probably reckoned he would get off lightly. Cynically, I thought my father probably would have promoted the swine.

Crosp looked over at a large wood and brass encased sea clock, "It would seem you are in time for the night watch. You may resume your duties, Mister Ardalrion. The night watch is yours. Check with the navigation officer." Crosp went back to studying his chart.

And so I simply walked out and took the castle. The night watch was a long stint at the helm which ran through the night from the first watch which ended at midnight to the forenoon watch which started at breakfast. I had hoped to return to this watch as it enabled me to avoid the other officers and captain most of the time. It gave me time to think and watch the stars. I loved the stars, always have, and long to see them again. I knew the stars well by now and would marvel at the spectacle on a clear night when there were no other lights about, and wonder at how crystal clear the galaxy was. The masters of astromancy wrote that the heavens where made up of a million stars, all of which were gathered into the galaxy and that the sun was but one of them. Of course the Church of Creation riled at such a notion, but it made sense to me. Tonight the moon was out and half full, riding low on the horizon.

Kravda, a portly sailor whom I remembered seeing enjoy the prospect of my flogging was at the wheel. A man was in the crow's-nest and a couple more were on the aftcastle acting as lookouts. The compass told me we were heading directly north and after checking with the navigation officer, I was pleased to discover that I had been right in thinking that we were passing the Horat peninsula to the east. Willan, the cabin boy soon appeared and brought a warm broth for me and the watch.

"My thanks, Mister Willan," I said, taking the steaming mug. "Is Mister Harl awake?"