Deathlands - Dectra Chain Part 17

"Outlander Cawdor," she repeated, "I have an order for thee."

"I'm listening, ma'am," he eventually managed to say, though his tongue was reluctant to free itself from the roof of his mouth.

"Good, good, cully. First mate here, Mr. Ogg, has been telling me of a step across the line. A man doing that which he should not do. And not doing that which he should do."

"And there is no health in us!" Jehu yelled. "Amen. Ah, women. Ah, there she blows. Hallelujah and praise the blessed Pyra Quadde!"

n.o.body moved or spoke. Ryan could feel a trickle of sweat down the small of his back, though he was stone cold.

"Where is Kenny Hill?" the captain asked in a voice as cold as a flooded grave.

Everyone turned and looked along the lines. Ryan and Donfil didn't bother. Since they didn't know who Kenny Hill was or what he looked like, they wouldn't know if he was there or not.

"He is not here," she continued. "Mr. Ogg tells me that the sniveling coward hides in the fo'c'sle. Scared to take his place and work with us. A man might die so that Hill can live. I will not have this."

Ryan sensed a murmuring of approval among the crew, and having been aloft in a storm he realized how one man's desertion could cause the death of another among the singing spars and rigging.

"Bring him here, Outlander Cawdor," she ordered, the half smile back in place.

Ryan sensed both her power and her evil. She had deliberately tried to frighten him, and she had succeeded, knowing he would imagine that the warrant for death was his own. His hatred for her grew even stronger at that moment.

"Quickly, man, or it'll be the worse for thee."

"Aye, ma'am."

He walked quickly to the companionway leading to their living quarters, already finding it easy to balance automatically against the rolling of the vessel. The second mate, Walsh, called after him. "Take a knife, outlander. Kenny Hill's quick with a blade."

Ryan ignored him, ducking, boots clattering on the worn threads. The whole ship, though it was trim and clean, was extremely old, and exuded a sense of frailty.

Ryan guessed that parts of it certainly dated from well before the long winters.

Behind him, Ryan heard the splintering voice of Captain Quadde. "Thou hast just two minutes, outlander. Then I come down and ye're both done."

The low-ceilinged forecastle was cluttered with bedding and discarded clothes. A single oil lamp turned on gimbals in the middle of the room, and at first glance Ryan couldn't see anyone.

"Hill?"

No answer. Ryan took his feet off the bottom step and looked more carefully. If the sailor had really taken refuge down here, then there weren't many places for him to be hiding.

"Don't f.u.c.k me around, Hill. She'll use this to chill us both."

"Don't wanna die."

"n.o.body does." Now that he'd heard the voice, he'd also spotted where the man

was lurking-in the corner behind one of the tables. Ryan wasn't sure, but he

thought he detected the gold gleam of light off the steel of a knife.

"She'll kill me. I was frightened. Been aloft too many times too many storms.

Wanted to jump ship this time, but she wouldn't let me. Had me down there, chained, all the time in Claggartville. Help me. Thou art an outlander. She won't kill thee."

"No. I'm her friend, Hill. She said to tell you not to worry. Come up and she'll tell

you herself."

"Liar!" Ryan heard the haunted tone of someone who knew the words were lies, but desperately wanted to think that they weren't.

"Double-truth."

"No."

Time was pa.s.sing. Ryan could hear it, with the beating of the pulse in his own

skull. "I'm telling you the truth. On my brother's life." Such as it had been. "Trust me, Hill. What do you have to lose? What? Nothing."

"I'll slit thy throat if thou liest to me, outlander. I swear I will."

"I got no blade." He held his arms spread out sideways, fingers wide.

Ryan's eyes were accustomed to the poor light, and he walked across the forecastle, reaching out with his right hand in a gesture that was transparently

friendly. He stooped toward the crouched figure of Kenny Hill.

"Thou wilt not betray me, outlander? Not to that woman?"

"My word on it. Come on."

The sailor held a narrow-bladed dagger in his right hand, and he reached out trustingly with his other hand to grasp Ryan's fingers.

Immediately Ryan pulled him up, with a great burst of convulsive strength. Fending off the knife with his other hand, he dropped his face and b.u.t.ted Hill across the bridge of the nose.

There was the satisfyingly soft, rotten-apple sound of bone breaking. As Hill cried out, Ryan jerked his knee hard into the man's groin.

The knife tinkled to the floor and the sailor slumped after it, retching and barely conscious. He started to weep.

"Get up, you cowardly little b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Ryan snarled, heaving him to his feet, lifting him across his own shoulders. He carried him up the swaying ladder, ignoring the crack as Hill's head struck the ceiling. Blood was gushing from the broken nose, puddling on the steps. As he emerged onto the deck, Pyra Quadde was near the hatch.

"Thou hast a minute left and... Oh!" she shouted. The warning died in her throat as Ryan appeared with Hill slung over his back.

There was a smattering of talk from the crew, and Ryan thought he even heard someone start to clap. But it might have been mad Jehu.

"Dump the offal there and get in line, Outlander Cawdor," she Ordered. Ryan genuinely couldn't tell whether the woman was pleased to see him alive or not.

He joined Donfil and Johnny. The Apache looked quizzically at him. "Got no choice," Ryan whispered.

Quadde had the semiconscious man stripped by a couple of the other hands, and bound to the foot of the mainmast. Ryan noticed that there was a couple of iron ringbolts set into the decking, in just the right positions to shackle a man's ankles, forcing his legs spread wide. Hill's arms were tied behind him, then a length of rope was wound clear around the mast and knotted. Another cord was pulled tight around his neck, keeping him upright, preventing him from wriggling free. Captain Quadde stood near the sailors who were tying Hill, but she didn't seem to give them any other orders. It was as though they knew how to tie the prisoner, because they'd done it often enough before. A cold thought.

The light was fading fast now, even though the skies had cleared. The Salvation was b.u.t.ting her way into the Lantic wastes, a white bone of foam under her stem.

The captain leaned over the helpless man, who was now recovering consciousness. She stood between his spread feet, swaying to the motion of the ship. The metal tip of her cane was behind her, mere inches from Hill's genitals.

"This puking pus-dog has been caught for deserting his post in poor weather!" she shouted. "His punishment is to be kept here, tied and bare, for all of the night and all of the next day. He is to have no food and only one pan of water at noon tomorrow. Any man speaks to him or goes near him shares his punishment. Hear that well."

"Doesn't seem that fireblasted harsh," Ryan whispered to Johnny.

"What thou hearest and what happens ain't always the same, matey," the sailor replied. Ryan crooked an eyebrow at him, but he wouldn't explain further.

"Don't let her do it, friends!" Hill shouted, shaking his head to clear his mouth of his own blood. "You know what she'll do."

"Gag him," Quadde ordered, not even looking at the man behind her.

"You know!" Hill screamed, voice ragged with stark terror. "Don't let her do-" His words disappeared under a hank of cotton waste that was rammed into his mouth and knotted in place.

"Now, to your quarters. Watch on deck only. Eat well. Tot of rum to every hand, Mr. Ogg. Carry on, men."

She didn't move from where she stood, ignoring the mumbling prisoner at her heels. The men filed dutifully away, down the companionway into the shelter of the forecastle. The cooks trotted off to begin the meal, in their cramped galley by the steerage companionway. Ryan was last off the deck, and he hesitated a moment, glancing behind him at the woman's silhouette.

But she had turned away from him, her stout walking stick lifted to her shoulders. Even as he stared, she brought the metal tip down with a vengeful force. Ryan couldn't see where she struck Hill, but he heard only the wet sound of iron on flesh as he descended.

It didn't take any imagination to know where the vicious blow had been aimed.

The rest of the men gathered around Ryan, slapping him on the back for his bravery in going after the armed man. None of them seemed to worry about Kenny Hill's fate, and Ryan shared their lack of concern. Best coward was a chilled one, in his view. Hill might get a beating, but it wasn't as though Pyra Quadde was planning to butcher him.

THE FOOD WAS TERRIBLE. The stew was mainly gristle and splinters and bone, floating in a sc.u.mmy pool of grease. Mealy carrots and a handful of overcooked beans completed the main course. It was followed by a rusting tin of sweet red jelly that didn't taste like any fruit that Ryan had ever eaten. The whole thing was accompanied with weeviled biscuits and washed down with watery beer.

"Why's the meal so terrible?" Ryan asked Johnny.

"Once we get to the hunting, then the captain allows good meat and all from the locked freezer. Reckons it makes us all the more eager to get out the dories and cast the irons. The better the catch, then the better the tucker we get."

Ryan and Donfil were spared being on deck duty for the night watch. Sailing in untroubled waters, there was normally no more than one man at the wheel and another in the crow's nest, swaying at the top of the mainmast.

Shortly after they'd finished the supper, the crew began to bed down for the night. One man played a mouth harp for a few minutes, a slow, mournful ballad that Ryan thought he vaguely recognized. One or two were patching clothes, bent over their work in the poor light.

Ryan and Donfil clambered into their adjoining bunks. Johnny Flynn was across the port side of the forecastle, just opposite, and he waved a cheery hand to Ryan, making sure it was the hand without the broken finger.

Surrounded by snoring strangers, Ryan eventually managed to get to sleep.

PRESSURE ON HIS BLADDER woke him. There was no light, but his body clock told him it was around one in the morning. The steady movement of the ship was now familiar to him. He swung his legs from his bunk, feeling the rough wood cold against his feet as he padded across to where he could make out the ghostly shape of the stairs to the hatch. Moving with no more sound than a snake's breath, Ryan picked his way up, easing the hatch silently open. He emerged into the darkness of the main deck, just forward of the foremast.

It had been explained to him and to Donfil that the bodily functions were normally performed over the side of the ship. Taking care to pick the leeward side.

Someone else moving on the deck made him check his movements, crouch behind the windla.s.s that drew up the anchor. He glanced up, able to see the bottom of the crow's nest on the mainmast. Whatever happened on the deck immediately below the lookout would be totally invisible from there. And the movement was near the base of the mast, in the lake of shifting shadows, near the place where Kenny Hill was bound naked for his punishment.

Ryan began to catfoot nearer.

He could see the pale shape of Hill, then something moving in front of it. His first guess was that one of the crew was risking the captain's anger by bringing food or drink to the helpless man. But the punishment seemed mild for the crime, despite the odd feeling in the forecastle. A feeling that Ryan hadn't quite been able to pin down. A strange resignation that Hill no longer existed.

The wind had eased and it was a mild, gentle night. Above the movements of the sails, Ryan could hear someone singing. Not the gagged Hill. Not the man at the wheel, since he was snugly under cover.

'"The first time ever I...'"

A woman's voice. Now he could see the stocky shape, kneeling near the man, doing something in the shadows that Ryan couldn't see.

"'... rose, in your eyes..."'

Pyra Quadde stood up, and Ryan saw the flash of white flesh as she lifted her skirt, tucking it into her belt.

Then, like a great vampire bat settling on its victim, she lowered herself, booted legs astride, onto Kenny Hill.

Rising and falling, faster. Ryan heard the distinctive sound of a hard hand slapping a face. Repeated two more times.

The song changed to a children's rhyme that he recalled from his own youth in the Shens.

"When they were up they were up, and when they were down they were down..."

The voice becoming harsher, the breath panting in the woman's throat.

Sickened to his stomach, Ryan turned away and left the woman to her perverted pleasures, realizing now that Hill's punishment was indeed more harsh than he'd suspected. He went back to his bunk, but found sleep difficult to reach.

Ryan was woken by Donfil's hand, gripping his shoulder. He blinked his eye open, seeing the lean face close to his.

"What?"

"On deck."

"What is?"

The Apache backed away, keeping his head bowed to avoid cracking his skull on the low timbers of the celling,.