Chapter 2 - Scene 5

Sall had caught the lead line of a long, wide fishing net curtained across the stern, tied up now while noone was working it, but tied poorly so it hung loose. It was held low by leaden weights the size of Sall’s fist. By these it was able to sweep through the seas and scrape schools of fish from the water as the ship sailed along. His fingers dug into the netting as he climbed, bracing his boots against the bulkhead. Despite being so fine, dragnets like these were made strong and it supported him with ease. He scaled the stern of the ship, coming level with the ship’s name, BITTER END, stencilled large and red across it.

He heard some of the crew talking on the other side of the wood. By the loud, jovial tone to their voices nobody was concerned about the activity down below. They had more simple concerns this evening.

'Bird's been up there, I'd say, about three days now. Sullivan tried taking a shot at it. You know how he shoots, though.'

Sall paused, pressing closer and turning his ear to hear better. 'Twenty,' one said. Another called his bet.

'One, two, three. Sounds like they lost him.’

‘Must’ve barricaded himself somewhere, he’s got fuck else to do.’

The first voice said, 'I just hope for our sakes it's not carryin monger polyps.’

'It's an osprey, Kessler. They don't got it. It's probably lost.'

An osprey. Sall smiled. Surely that bird wasn’t still tracking him. He had only given it a few silvery little baitfish.

There was another thundering crash above, and more shouting. The captain brawled with his brother. ‘You are no brother to me!’ the barking voice. ‘We were meant to do this together!’

It was loud enough to quiet the pirates gambling on the other side of the hull.

After a moment there was a grunt. 'I'll raise.' Chips slapped down on the table hard enough that Sall could almost hear his bet.

There was a lull, enough time for someone to make a considered fold.

Someone burped. ‘These are bad omens, I reckon. Yep. Ever since we crossed the Doubleyous.’

The next voice was so quiet and low Sall almost missed it. ‘Deadweight keeps turning up out of nowhere, like the devil himself’s haunting us.’

There was a chorus of dark murmurs.

‘Aye, errant ospreys are one thing, but Deadweight…’

There was silence enough for Sall to hear cards slap on the table. These were a superstitious bunch, but Sall had known no other type of seafarer.

A creak came from below. Someone grumbled. A gruff voice sounded up at him from the gunport. 'You up there, navy dog?'

Sall looked down. A big bushy head was leaned out and peering up at him, a fat arm folding through the port, levelling a gun at him. ‘There you are. Eat this!’ he said, pulling the trigger. The hammer ticked over. Sall shut his eyes. Shot cracked out loud across the night.

The shot missed. He peeked down. Yellow lanternlight spilled through a hole in the wood.

‘Holy hell!' One of the gamblers.

‘Who fired that? Put a hole in the bloody hull!'

The gruff voice cackled. 'I see you up there! Why don’t you come down from there on your own, now?'

Sall didn't answer. He continued climbing.

The gruff voice shouted again through the night and the gamblers quietened, listening. ‘Pool on you's up near a hundred dubloons, matey! Odds are you’ll die before dawn, but I’ve got money you’ll see through the flogging Granger’ll give you once I hand you over!'

Sall abandoned all sense of stealth and hurried up the net as fast as he could.

His boots kicked the bulkhead. One of the gamblers’ voices exploded in surprise. 'He’s climbing up the stern! Fucking mental!’ A shot lanced through the wood near Sall’s head, blasting hole the size of a coin. Sall scrambled higher.

‘I see him! He’s right there!’

'What the fuck do you think you're doin, Kessler?' It sounded like someone shoved him. ‘Don’t shoot holes in the fucking ship!’

Sall looked down, seeing the bearded man reloading, laughing. ‘You’re mine, dog!’ his voice boomed.

A voice from inside shouted to communicate with the bearded man below. ‘Gareth, mate, is that you?' Sall braced his boots against the hull, wound his fists deeper into the netting and pushed himself almost upright. He half-walked, half-climbed, scaling the ship faster towards the gunwale.

‘Aye! Joe?’

‘Aye! Don’t shoot bloody holes in the ship, Gareth! You can fucking fix em, I won’t do it!’

‘Fuck off!’ Gareth said. ‘I’ve been hangin to put a slug in this cunt since we fished him out of the water!’ Sall heard a hammer click over and pushed off the wall, using the netting to swing away from the shot. It went into the air. The pirate below called Sall a piss-blooded cur and a dogshit blaggard.

The ship’s carpenter called out that he would see Gareth nailed to the mast if he did it again, but Gareth didn’t hear him. Another shot rang out, this one cracking wood near his boot.

Kessler roared. ‘Bad omens, mates!’ His voice projected loud. ‘Bad omens, I say!’

‘Shut it, Kessler!’ The carpenter’s voice, and the sound of a boot thumping flesh. ‘Come on, we’ll get him above!’ Below, the bearded pirate grumbled something that was lost to the air. When Sall looked next he was gone.

He had to hurry. He had only moments to spare.

Sall looked up. He stopped climbing. He recognised the man hanging over the ledge. Granger Strommken, curled hair unkempt, dressed in a black oilskin. His nose was bloody and dripping, his expression furious, surprised. Drops from a busted nostril fell past Sall, landed in the water below. Granger was distracted, caught mid-brawl.

At recognising Sall his eyes flashed but didn’t linger on him for long. He turned away, levelling a sabre at someone Sall couldn’t see. Deadweight. The captain of the Bitter End shouted at his brother. ‘Belay your madness and begone!’

A wordless, bestial howl bellowed from the open decks above, booming out over the chaotic muster across the Bitter End’s decks. It was a dark howl, sending fear down the spine of all who heard it. Granger braced. Sall froze. He felt it in his bones. His heart went cold.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Heavy running footsteps thundered above, growing louder. The pirate captain made a frustrated grunt and he kicked at the charging figure. The tall, looming figure, dressed in a thick, hooded cloak, caught the boot in his chest. It made a resounding thump. The hooded figure fell away. At the impact Granger overbalanced backwards and fell into the rail. The pirate captain looked down at Sall. His eyes were wild, reflecting moonlight that was diffused through a cloud over his shoulder. They shone as the sea below, a pearly onyx.

‘Fuck it,’ he said, and raised the sabre, dragging the blade across the dragnet’s line, severing one of its fixes.

Sall swung with the net, becoming tangled in its folds, scrabbling to escape it. He caught himself steady and looked up. If Granger severed the other Sall would plunge into the sea.

Deadweight’s voice was a dark growl, distracting Granger. ‘It boils my blood, brother, the blood we share. You were given your choice.’

‘Sirius,’ Granger said. ‘I don’t want this!’ He leaped forward, raising his sabre. The pirate captain disappeared from Sall’s view. Sall climbed up the netting as quick as he could.

Metal clashed against metal. ‘You made your choice! You chose! I chose! We chose, brother!’ Their blades slid against each other’s and they clashed again. Sall went hand over hand up the net.

Granger’s voice burst out loud and angry. ‘That was no choice! Now, begone from my ship, you are no longer any brother of mine!’ Physical sounds, boots scraping and stomping, exerted gasps, sabres meeting in fierce blows. ‘You are no longer even a man! How am I to reason with you?’

Someone thumped hard into the rail. Timber cracked. Sall stopped again. The blackly cloaked figure was knocked into it. Nearby torchlight illuminated him. The heavy cloak couldn’t hide the misshapen breadth of his shoulders, how the line of them was broken. The fabric was dirty, stained with mucky greens and browns, threadbare and torn, like Deadweight wore garb taken off a corpse. He shrugged off the rail and leaped back into the fight.

Sall’s boots scraped against the hull. He scrabbled up the last of the net, finally grabbing the solid base of the gunwale. He wound it into the crook of his elbow and relaxed his weight. He exhaled.

He peeked over the edge. Captain Granger fought his brother across the poopdeck. Granger had the advantage. He had Deadweight at the tip of his sabre and drove him to starboard. The point was levelled at his brother’s neck. Deadweight’s own sabre lay on the deck, lost to him.

Deadweight’s chin was high. As he stepped backwards he went through lanternlight and Sall saw the bottom of his face, barely a glance of it, seeing something that looked like a gnarled beard. In the distraction Sall climbed and hauled himself up the rail.

Granger drove Deadweight back to the starboard side. He pushed him into the rail, sending his brother leaning back as far as he could without falling over. They stared silently at each other. Neither moved.

The point of the sabre lowered and Granger sighed. Deadweight relaxed. ‘Brother…’ Deadweight began, but Granger’s chest swelled and again he kicked out, booting Deadweight back over the rail. Deadweight howled again, this time in surprise and shock. He tumbled backwards.

The howl was silenced by a splash.

Granger went to the rail and looked down into the waves. ‘Damn,’ he said, panting. He took a deep breath.

Sall pulled himself to the top of the rail. He stood on the gunwale. Granger turned to face him, sheathing his sabre. ‘There’s the scurvy dog who’s been causing such a fuss on my ship. Come on, fighter, stand in the weather with me.’ He put his hands on his hips, shifting his oilskin so a pistol showed at his belt.

Sall stepped over the rail. He looked at Deadweight’s sabre, there a few metres to his left. It gleamed dully. He couldn’t get to it before Granger drew. He stepped out into the open. Granger took long steps in a circle, keeping distance between them.

The sky spread out above. Free, open sky. Clouds parked silver across the moon. The Bitter End’s three masts struck up into a starscape carefully blocked by arrangements of canvas and rigging tacked into a wind that came from the southeast, Sall reckoned, staring at Granger Strommken.

Sall made a fist. His knuckles cracked. ‘You’ve got something that belongs to me.’

‘Bold, aren’t you?’

Sall thought maybe. Pirates filled the decks below. The main deck was the longest, bookended at the bow by the forecastle and at the stern by the quarter deck, and above that the helm on the poopdeck, from where Granger returned Sall’s hard stare.

Sall recognised a few of the pirates below. Campion, Markham, the woman who had tried to hang him, and some others. They were wary. The ladders creaked with pirates still coming up them, getting in the way of the working shift still trying to keep the ship travelling.

Granger’s voice stopped them. It was tired, but still commanding. ‘All hands, halt activity! I want calm on deck!’

The working shift was glad for the break. They were stoic and sober with the prolonged effort of hauling sail, working mostly in darkness and soaked through by spray from the sea and a grey fog creeping from the bow. They paid less attention to the pirates crowding them than they did their aching muscles.

Granger coughed and spat blood. The gob struck a plank.

Sall studied the skies, spotting shadowed linesmen up in the rigging, lurking up there like crows. They stopped to watch him.

There was no mistaking Granger and Sall’s mutual exhaustion. They were both covered in cuts and bruises and were panting.

Rifles and pistols came pointing at Sall. Hammers cocked.

‘Where’s my gold, Granger?’ Sall said.

Granger looked down with a dark smile. ‘He dares,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing that belongs to you.’

Sall took a step forward. Guns flinched to retrain on him, pirates behind them clearing their throats. ‘What do you want from me?’ Sall said.

Granger shrugged. ‘I need a fighter. You’re going to fight for me. We’re going to Well’s Rest, boyo.’

Sall grit his teeth. He had been trying to keep back his suspicions. Well’s Rest, the jungle township there at the furthest edge of the Obotema. One of a few struggling outposts founded since the changing of the tides. It served as a trade outpost between the civilisations to the east and the distant peoples in the west that had been cut off. It was a lawless refuge of pirates and mercenaries and swarms of displaced people made transient by the drowning of their ancestral lands a generation before.

No legitimate governments had made it there yet, largely due to the efforts of the gambling unions who found free reign all over these seas. In Well’s Rest only gold was valued, its colour won in blood. Men died in the fight pits of Well’s Rest fighting animals, slaves, each other, and from the rumours Sall had heard, worse still.

Those who had spoken of worse spoke also of curses that had come from the disaster that had rent the world, curses that inhabited the bodies of men, warping both their minds and bodies. They said men were going rabid, turning into monsters worse than their darkest nightmares. Few believed them in the cities, where the only news to come from the Obotema was second-or-third hand, if it was news at all. Newspapers only wanted the most salacious stories. Sall had no intention of finding the truth to any rumour.

Sall faltered. ‘I won’t fight for you. I’ll die first.’

Granger nodded. ‘That may be necessary.’

‘Your men tried to kill me in that cell. I wouldn’t last the night in there. I did what I had to do.’

Granger looked at him for a long moment. ‘I don’t suppose any of those boys still have enough breath in them to be punished now, do they?’ He put a hand on his belt, careful of any sudden movement.

Sall shrugged. ‘I don’t see your punta anywhere,’ he said.

Granger nodded. ‘Aye, he hides when he’s in trouble.’

‘I won’t go down easy,’ Sall said. ‘Tell your men to lower their guns.’

Granger blinked. ‘I’d not give you a hair off my arse. You don’t make demands from me. I can find another fighter if you refuse to fight.’

Sall was unsure. He doubted Granger’s threat. ‘I refuse.’

A flicker of movement high in the clouds caught Sall’s eye. A white-brown shape, circling.

Granger waved Sall away with a ringed hand. ‘I’ve had just about enough of tonight.’ He called Sall’s bluff. ‘Someone kill him.’

Beak and feather flashed through the rigging and swooped low over the ship. A rifleman balked from his shot as the bird tore down, buffeting him with her wings and pecking his face. The rifleman yelped, the shot snapping into the sky. It squawked and flapped off him, twisting in the air towards the helm. Sall dove to port as Granger fumbled with his pistol and flinched at the bird careening overhead.

It flapped its wings, buffeting at the air. With a mad screech it pirouetted around Sall and flung itself at Granger, plunging its claws into his scalp, screeching and pecking and tearing. Granger backed away. He flailed his arms and batted at the bird.

‘Good girl!’ Sall said, as the bird launched off Granger’s forehead. The pirate captain clutched his face, bloody streaks showing along its length, and fell reeling down the poopdeck steps. Pirates swept forward to catch him. Sall wanted to feed that bird a sturgeon, a marlin, a school of fat sardines. Sall dodged away as the bird swept into the air.

Nobody could get a shot at him. He saw the osprey dance off a bank of fog a hundred yards off their starboard and slip into the sky. Sall paused at the rail and peered closer, despite knowing the pirates were moving on him.

There was a broad, dark shape there in the mist running headlong into their course. The bird swerved high to avoid it, disappearing into the night.

The Bitter End was not alone out here.