The Veiled Throne, page 21
The three humans ducked under the water, and the last torch went out—
A tongue of fire lanced over the surface, lighting up the broken interior of the ship in a false dawn—
Underwater, Takval gestured at the other two. Toof and Radia looked at each other and followed Takval as the three swam away from the raging garinafin.
* * *
Çami Phithadapu had spent years cataloging and interpreting whale song, going so far as to develop a notation modeled on music to record samples. When the princess asked her for alternatives to the “barnacle plan,” she had proposed the idea of singing to the whales that could often be seen in the vicinity of the fleet.
“Whalers tell stories of pods of dome-headed whales attacking whaling ships in a coordinated fashion,” said Çami.
“But are these reliable reports?”
Çami shrugged. “The stories are told by drunken sailors and mates in taverns between whaling voyages. In wine and beer there is truth, but also much else.”
The idea was too experimental and uncertain to gamble the fleet’s lives on as the primary plan, but the princess had decided that it was worth looking into as an outrageous backup, a prayer to Tazu when all else failed. After all, this was the Year of the Whale on the folk calendar of Dara, and that had to mean an extraordinary amount of cetacean luck, right?
As the Lyucu flotilla scurried back to the city-ship, leaving only wreckage and the dead and dying behind, Dissolver of Sorrows’s crew was too stupefied by the carnage wreaked by the whales to celebrate. There was no time for it either. All hands were scrambling to deal with the worsening leaks throughout the ship. Their breathing was becoming labored as the air inside the ship grew increasingly foul.
Captain Gon came to the princess, his face grave. “We can’t—”
“I know,” said Théra. “Surface!”
The bellows wheezed as everyone pumped to get as much air as possible into the ballast tanks. But the ship, instead of surfacing, continued to sink slowly. Soon, the breathing tubes would be submerged, and there would be no way to halt the descent of Dissolver of Sorrows toward her watery grave.
“I’m useless,” said Captain Gon to the princess, his head hanging in shame. “The ship has taken on too much water.”
“It isn’t your fault,” said Théra. She turned to offer a wan smile to Çami. “We tried.”
Çami held up a hand, gesturing for her to stop talking. Her brows were knotted in thought. Suddenly, she ran back toward her trumpet.
“What are you doing?” Théra called after her.
“My essay for the Grand Examination!” Çami said, without turning back.
The officers looked at one another in confusion, but Théra’s eyes widened in understanding. She laughed. “Go get the bellows pumping into the bow again,” she ordered Captain Gon.
Once more, the artificial whale song of bamboo reeds and resonating trumpet filled the sea.
“Do you intend to call upon the whales for one more attack against the Lyucu boats?” asked Admiral Roso. There was a defiant smile on his face. “You truly are a worthy heir to your parents. We’ll die fighting.”
Théra shook her head. “Never speak of death if there’s even a glimmer of hope left.”
As Çami’s song continued, some of the whales in the pod turned and swam for Dissolver of Sorrows. The crew tensed, but instead of attacking the ship, the whales gently came alongside and bumped into the hull.
The ship’s descent stopped. More gentle bumps. The crew held their breath.
Slowly, Dissolver of Sorrows began to ascend.
“Whale pods often do this for injured whales or young calves,” said Çami, gasping as she took her lips away from the trumpet’s mouthpiece. “Dissolver of Sorrows is a bit big, but I’ve convinced them that we’re just a really well-fed calf.”
Çami had written her essay for the Grand Examination on the subject of midwifery being practiced among whales. It was, in fact, that very essay that had drawn Théra’s attention during the war against the Lyucu invasion, when the princess sought scholars of talent to help study the garinafins.
“We’re not out of danger yet,” warned Captain Gon. “Once the Lyucu are back on the city-ship, they may decide that if they can’t capture us, they may as well sink us.”
Çami put her lips back to the trumpet and began to sing harder than ever.
* * *
The Lyucu warriors returned to the city-ship and climbed up the rope ladders. Some went back to the stone-throwers; others hurled spears and axes at the whales diving and surfacing near the ship. There was little coordination as Thane Nacu was too shocked by the latest setback to come up with a new speech or plan to rally his fighters.
While confusion and chaos reigned throughout the city-ship, the eight surviving Dara marines fought their way to the top deck. There, they made their way to an unattended coracle. If they could lower the coracle into the water and climb down, they would have a chance to escape the city-ship.
“But the city-ship has stopped sinking—”
“There’s nothing we can do—”
“Maybe we should go back down and sabotage—”
“Where’s Takval?”
…
The debate cost them precious time. The leaderless Lyucu warriors milling about like a swarm of flies finally noticed the strangers by the gunwale. With bloodcurdling cries, they converged on the spot.
“Get into the coracle!” shouted one of the marines to her comrades. “I’ll wait behind for Prince Takval.”
“How can we live with the shame if we left now?” countered another marine. “We promised to wait for him.”
The marines knew that Takval was likely long dead, but no one would get into the coracle. In the end they raised it as a barricade and fought behind it against the Lyucu onslaught.
The marines were illiterate and none could recite an inspiring quote from one of the Ano sages; instead, they chanted, “There was never doubt in my heart” as Mata Zyndu, Hegemon of Dara and a demigod to all soldiers, was reported to have done as he made his last stand by the sea.
Blood and gore drenched their armor and faces and slicked the deck beneath their feet.
Thirty-six Lyucu warriors lay dead before the last Dara marine fell.
* * *
The matriarch surveyed the sea in satisfaction: capsized boats and drowning humans everywhere, and the remaining boats were rowing away.
She ordered her pod to rescue the ship-whale, to keep it afloat like a young calf that had not yet learned how to breathe. But the ship-whale didn’t chirp with relief. Instead, it sang even louder, and its accusing beam of light pointed at the giant ship.
The matriarch hesitated. It was one thing to capsize a few small boats, but to attack an island-ship that dwarfed the whales as much as the whales dwarfed mere remoras? Her instinct was to lead the pod away, hoping never to see this floating wooden island of death again.
The call of the ship-whale was insistent, urgent. Kill it. Kill it. Kill it.
Tiny figures were running across the island-ship, setting up engines of death. The ship-whale was wounded. It wouldn’t be able to get away.
The matriarch tried to recall lore about the crubens, the great scaled whales who ruled the seas. Wasn’t there a tale about a contest between two great crubens? About how it was important to finish what was begun? To destroy the foe when he was down?
She seemed to be in the lightless abyss again, surrounded by the tentacles of foes who insisted on death. There was no way out of the thicket but to cut through. Her blood began to boil with an ancient rage that she had not felt for many years.
She sang a long and intricate song, a timeworn epic about heroism and courage, about the need to defend the tribe, even when tribe was only a memory so dim that it felt like a myth. Her daughters, granddaughters, and even great-granddaughters, mere calves, joined the chorus.
In the distant darkness, a bull whale hunting alone heard the ancestral voices prophesying war.
* * *
Like Langiaboto arcing over the scrublands, hurled by the arm of Pékyu Tenryo, the bull whale, twice the length of the matriarch, accelerated toward the ship that loomed ahead like an island.
He circled the ship once, trying to find a weak spot. Axes, clubs, broken spars rained down around his head, glancing harmlessly off his barnacle-armored skin. The bull whale wasn’t afraid. He had survived countless encounters with whalers, and he had the scars to prove it. When harpooned, instead of running away, he had headed for the whaleboats, forcing the whalers to cut the cables attached to the harpoons, much like he might escape a particularly devious giant squid who attempted to drown him in the abyss by severing its tentacles. The harpoons had remained embedded in his body, piercings around which the flesh had healed, stronger than before, like so many war trophies.
The matriarch was asking him to fight for the tribe, to go to war, a concept that intrigued him. Never before had he thought to attack the whale ship itself instead of the whaleboats, but why not?
Stones arced from the whale ship, splashing into the sea around the bull whale in tall spumes. The bull whale was too nimble to be caught by the thrown stones, but the attack hardened his resolve. He dove.
The island-ship seemed to sense something was wrong. Sails were being rigged across the masts, and the ship was now moving ahead, trying to get away.
This was exactly what the bull whale had wanted. He doubted that even at full speed, he could ram through the thick planking of a whaler. But it was a different story when the ship itself was moving. Bull whales sometimes fought each other, and he knew, from experience, that there was much more force in an impact when both combatants were moving.
He sped ahead of the ship, turned around, and aimed straight for the bow. His thick dome-shaped head, filled with oil, accelerated through the parting waves.
* * *
From the spot where they’d found Tana, deep at the stern of the ship, Takval, Toof, and Radia climbed, ran, swam, jumped, always staying just a few steps ahead of the lumbering beast that crashed through behind them.
They emerged into the cavernous cattle-stable.
This was a vault in the middle of the city-ship that ran the whole width of the ship, making it one of the largest compartments in the vessel.
High up, near the ceiling, a series of narrow windows let in air and light. This was where Emperor Mapidéré’s expedition had kept pigs and sheep to provide a source of fresh meat for the officials and nobles, and where Pékyu-taasa Cudyu had stocked living cattle for his warriors. By now, of course, all the cattle had been slaughtered and eaten, and the open space was filled only with scattered bedding straw and the stench of dung and piss.
The three humans ran across the wide-open space until they reached a thick wall of oak that doubled as one of the structural bulkheads that divided the ship into watertight compartments. The only way forward was a small door high up near the top, accessible by a set of zigzagging catwalks and ladders. The opening led into the feed storeroom on the other side. In an emergency, the small opening could be plugged to isolate the watertight compartments from each other.
The three dashed over to the base of one of the ladders and began to climb. If they could escape into the opening through the thick bulkhead, they’d be safe for a while. It would take a very long time for Tana to find a way through—she’d have to either climb to the top deck or bash her way through a solid wall of thick oak.
The tall doors to the stable crashed open as Tana lumbered in.
It was a race now. Would the three humans climb to the small opening in time? Or would the frenzied garinafin catch them before they made it?
The whole ship lurched, as though Fithowéo had slammed his spear into the hull like a battering ram. The hull vibrated, planks buckled and squeaked and cracked under the strain, and the very cattle-stable itself seemed to deform under the pressure.
The bamboo ladders sprang away from the wall, their anchoring screws popping off. The three humans fell to the floor, stunned by the impact.
Even the pursuing garinafin was thrown to the deck.
“Did we hit a reef?” croaked Radia.
Neither Takval nor Toof replied. Water gushed out of seams in the floor. The city-ship was sinking again.
With difficulty, the three managed to struggle up and look around. All the ladders had been shaken loose from the wall by the impact, and now lay across the floor in a jumble like eating sticks at the end of a meal. The catwalks leading to the opening to the other side had been ripped off their anchor points. Some pieces dangled uselessly from the wall, only loosely attached. Others were heaped at the foot of the wall.
Tana got to her feet, screeched, and took a step forward. The weakened deck groaned under her weight.
The three ran and found the longest, still intact ladder and tried to erect it under the opening. “Radia and I will hold the ladder steady,” said Takval. “Toof, you’re the lightest. Climb up there and find a rope to bring us up. Hurry!”
As the floor quaked with every approaching step the garinafin took, Takval and Radia struggled to hold the ladder steady. Toof climbed up the rickety contraption, clinging to every rung with all his strength.
He was at the top. The opening was fifteen feet away. “I can’t reach it!” he screamed down.
“We can try to lift the ladder,” called Takval.
“It’s not enough!” cried Toof. “It’s just too far.”
“Maybe we can extend the ladder with sections—”
Another crash, and despite the best efforts of Takval and Radia, the unsteady ladder would not hold. Toof lost his grip, tried to slow his fall with desperate grabs at the rungs of the ladder, failed, and collapsed into a heap with the other two at the ladder’s foot.
They struggled to their feet, their backs against the wall.
Tana lumbered toward them, her pupil-less eye red with fury. The garinafin panted.
One more step.
* * *
Thane Nacu could not believe what he was seeing: The malignant bull whale, its eyes glinting mercilessly, was headed straight for his ship. He shouted for the naro at the wheel to turn the ship away, out of the path of this mad creature. He screamed at his warriors to stand their ground, to fight back, to chop down the mast of the ship and wield it like a spear so that the crazed whale could be destroyed.
But there was no response. When Nacu looked around, he saw that he was alone at the prow of the ship. All his naros-votan and naros and culeks had deserted him. Through the thick columns of smoke that swirled around the deck, he saw his crew huddled at the back of the ship like so many terrified children.
Nacu knew that he was doomed. Unknown weapons and magical underwater ships and frenzied whales and foes who popped out of thin air were all things he could fight against. But he was helpless when the spirit of his warriors was broken.
He would not be able to go home after all.
He laughed maniacally and hurled his axe at the massive head of the bull whale charging through the water. The axe flipped end over end, glinting in moonlight and torchlight.
It bounced off the head of the whale, a pebble bouncing off a mountain.
The whale slammed into the ship like a flesh battering ram, and broken pieces of timber exploded in every direction. One jagged piece went straight through Nacu’s neck.
* * *
The crew of Dissolver of Sorrows watched the bull whale continue his relentless assault on the Lyucu city-ship.
After each impact, he seemed stunned, and floated in the water for some time before recovering his senses. But he didn’t give up. He swam away from the ship in a long arc, turned around, and accelerated for the floating island again.
A series of jagged holes were punctured around the city-ship. Water gushed in. The city-ship stopped moving and settled lower.
Lifeboats and coracles tumbled into the sea like dumplings falling into a boiling pot. Desperate Lyucu jumped into the ocean from the burning deck, swimming for the boats.
“Signal the fleet with a lamp sent aloft by kite,” ordered Théra. “Patch up the ship as well as you can. We’ll row in and look for our comrades.”
Although Captain Gon thought there was little hope of finding Takval or the other marines, he complied.
* * *
Takval stood, a smile on his face. He took his war club off his back. To die facing one’s enemy, weapon in hand, was the greatest honor an Agon warrior could have, and especially fitting for one who would be pékyu.
Radia and Toof, however, had long lost their weapons during the escape through the ship.
“Find bamboo ladder legs and wield them like bone-spears,” advised Takval.
The two Lyucu garinafin riders ignored him.
“Come on,” cooed Radia. “Good girl. Don’t you remember your Radia? You can smell me, can’t you? We’re not here to hurt you.”
“I know you’re scared,” said Toof. “I know you want to lash out and hurt someone. But I’m not your enemy. Let’s try to get out of here. There’s still time.”
Tana’s lone eye seemed to clear for a minute, but she snorted and the cloud of pain-rage once again covered the dark orb. She only remembered that it was a human just like these who had blinded her left eye. Her head was filled with a throbbing agony that was worse than anything she had endured in her life of suffering. It was hard for her to judge how far away she was from the three figures in front of her, so she took a tentative step forward, stretched out her neck, and growled. The boards under her talons groaned. She was even heavier than normal now, having exhausted all her reserves of lift gas from breathing fire throughout the ship.
Radia and Toof closed their eyes and opened their arms. They had known Tana since they could cradle her in their arms. They didn’t want her to die feeling alone, feeling like an orphan.
