‘Wind’s from the land! Dawn ho! Dawn is coming!’
The very call seemed to strike through the mist, severing its tangled streamers, flattening its billows. Through it, somewhere out in the still-hidden distance, I saw the first faint trace of light. It fell upon the faces of the men about me, and revealed them as the weirdest crew of cutthroats I could have imagined. Faces lined, faces scarred, faces that could have been carved from ancient wood, or simply formed in it by the vagaries of age; fierce, feral faces such as few men bear in this modern age, faces of every race I knew and some I didn’t. Not all were men. There were several women, every bit as hard-faced and dressed much the same way – though there was little uniformity among them. And at that hail, without waiting for the bellowed order that followed, they snatched up every scrap of gear that littered the wharf and staggered, grotesquely laden, to the gangplank. Somebody coughed beside me, and I turned to find a hard-eyed little brute of a man bobbing nervously and touching his knuckles to his mahogany forehead. ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, master, but cap’n’s compliments and may I kindly be seein’ you aboard now?’
‘Yes, of course –’ I began, but he’d already snatched up the flight holdall that was all my luggage, seized my elbow and more or less dragged me to the gangplank. It was only three planks wide, without rails or anything at the sides, but I had no trouble till I was almost at the end. Some eager soul stepped on too vigorously and almost bounced me over; but a long hand shot out from the deck, caught my arm and more or less lifted me in.
‘Losing your sea legs already, Master Stephen?’ asked a husky, sardonic burr.
‘Mall!’ I laughed. ‘You’re coming along?’
She turned at a shout from the stern, but stayed to clap me on the back. ‘A shame to leave the hunt half done, and me with the smell of Wolf just in my nostril! Aye, I’m shipped as quartermaster – and that’s me called to the helm now!’
‘Told you I’d get you the best, Steve,’ grinned Jyp, appearing as she vanished. ‘Scrappers all, and she a match for the whole pack of ’em.’
‘Nobody I’d want more at my side in a roughhouse,’ I agreed. ‘Except you, maybe.’
‘Me?’ Jyp shook his head ruefully. ‘That’s rightly kind of you, Steve, but you little know. Her – well, there’s not a swordsman or woman to match her in all the great Ports, nor any other kind of fighter from Cadiz to old Constantinople. Hasn’t been, since before my time.’
‘Before – she doesn’t look so old! Younger than you, if anything.’
‘Must be a heap of folk she’s younger than, but I don’t see so many. She’s been around, Steve –’
A sudden commotion stopped him. Down the gangplank, complaining loudly, the old man called Le Stryge came limping. Two figures ragged as himself supported him on either arm. One was Fynn, vulpine as ever, and the other, to my surprise, was a young girl, skinny, pale and bare-legged beneath a ragged black dress, but by no means unattractive. Her dark hair straggled damply over her high cheekbones; they made her green eyes look immense, and gave her smile that hungry quality that refugees have in news pictures. I would have expected a tough crew like this to be wolf-whistling her, if nothing else, but instead they gave back, positively scuttled out of the way. Many of them made the jabbing-horns sign with their fingers, or whistled and spat. Fynn looked around with a horrible leer, and they stopped at once. Le Stryge halted at the gangway’s end.
‘Master Pilot! Three to come aboard!’ He bowed. ‘My humble self, Fynn whom you know, and may I present to you Peg Powler. A useful associate, I have no doubt.’
‘No doubt!’ muttered Jyp, and gestured towards the bow. ‘You’ve the starboard foc’sle cabin. Best you get there and stay for now, you’re upsetting the lads!’
The Stryge bowed. ‘Anything to oblige, Master Pilot! Come, children!’
The strange trio hobbled off, and the bustle on the deck parted to let them pass. I was about to ask Jyp about the girl, but he checked me, caught my arm. ‘There, Steve! Can’t you feel it? Tide’s changing. It’s slack now.’
I glanced over the side. The greyish light was growing, but I could make out nothing but the mist heaving sluggishly below the gunports. ‘I can’t feel a thing. Are we sinking down any further?’
Jyp’s laughter came easily, but there was something in it, something new that set my hair bristling as easily as the freshening breeze. ‘Not the tides of water, Steve, slow and dragging! When our tide turns, when the channels are clear, and there’s no danger of grounding – why then, Steve, we can sail east of the sun itself!’
Even as he spoke, the light changed, and quite suddenly the cold greyness was shot through; the high mastheads sprang into being, tipped with radiant light.
‘Cast off, bows!’ thundered Pierce astern. ‘Loose heads’ls there! Hands aloft to loose tops’ls!’
The rigging thrummed like a giant guitar under a rush of climbing feet, and over our heads a great fall of parchment-coloured canvas dropped with a crash, thrashed an instant then filled with a boom and bellied taut.
‘Hard a’starboard the wheel! Hands to heads’l sheets! Haul, you bitches’ brood! Haul!’
As the blossoming sails caught the wind they pulled the bows around, out from the wharfside.
‘Cast off astern!’ roared Pierce. ‘Sheet home! Hands to braces!’
I caught the rail as the ship surged suddenly beneath me, heeled slightly and leaped forward, urgent as a living thing.
Over the world’s edge the sun climbed, and its low light played out across the sunken mist that stretched out to meet and merge with the dawning clouds, and turned it to waves of surging gold. The harbour wall slid by, the smells of tar and fish faded in the cold pure wind. I heard the water gurgling beneath us, but it seemed scarcely to exist as that limitless tide of light struck through it, turning all to misty translucency, water and air alike. Looking up I saw the topsails catch the air and fill – or was it the radiance that filled them, so strong, so fresh I seemed to breath it in and be borne aloft myself, a shimmering gust of fire?
Ahead of us the clouds opened. I no longer saw the sun, as if it had sunk beneath our bows; but its light shone up before us, setting a stark and shadowed solidity on the clouds, and edging them with gold. Coastlines took shape there, fringed with bright beaches, peninsulas, promontories, islands darkly mountainous and tree-crowned. Vast and all-enveloping, the archipelago lay spread out beyond our bowsprit, and the azure channels opened to receive us. Our bows dipped, lifted, skipped and lifted again, higher and higher, while the mist broke across them and scattered to either side in tall plumes of slow-falling spray, and over us great seabirds wheeled and cried. In Jyp’s voice I heard the same wild exultation, limitless as the horizonless blue beyond.
‘Over the dawn! Over the airs of the earth! We’re under way!’
Chapter Six
As a small boy I’d lain on the lawn, looking up at the clouds passing over our rooftop, imagining they were standing still and that I and the roof were surging upward among them. Now it was happening.
The channel opened before us as we scudded out, wider and wider, a blazing expanse of blue it hurt the eye to look at. Purest, infinite azure above us and below, the depthless blueness of an ideal sea, a perfect sky – if any horizon separated them, it was beyond my dazzled sight. And under the low sun’s long rays the blue turned swiftly to burning gold, seamed with streaks of shimmering white; thin streamers of sunset cloud or wind-driven wavecaps, either or both, both at once – how could I tell? I was beyond caring, beyond thought. I stood rapt. It was in light we rode, light that filled our sails and rippled beneath our timbers, light we breathed, light that filled our veins and quickened our pulses. And outspread before us in hilly swathes of cloud lay the islands of the sunset archipelago.