“It was our own fault,” Nym claimed. “We didn’t keep the discipline you need to for life on a float this big. There were too many squabbles over duties and responsibilities. Too many tasks went undone. We’re not religious like you Determinists. We were just too selfish to care about one another.”
The hog farm had been poorly tended—a dangerous failing. They had let the poisons from the animals leach into the ground, killing enough of the native life to weaken the glue that bound the float together.
When a storm hit about a watch-year ago, the float had cracked in two. The hogs and many of the float’s inhabitants were on the other half, which had broken into three smaller pontoons. “We lost the livestock—and more souls than we could afford,” Nym said.
The shattered community that was left behind had all it could do to survive. If they’d been closer to the big anchorages or if they hadn’t lost their only sailboat, they might have been able to get help. But the tragedy had struck somewhere in the heart of the Einstein Gyre, far from civilization.
They had stripped the float of its ready sources of food—phibs and crusties and much of the edible plants. They’d even eaten their dogs, and were losing the struggle to keep themselves alive on the few crops they could coax from thin gardens.
And then Ajax—Big Red—had arrived.
“He said that where he came from they talked to the gods. Not the one God of your church,” Nym said. “The gods of Homer—Ares, Apollo, and Athena. He got the younger men excited. Told them that he’d been sent by the gods to save the people of Kronos.”
He also taught them to turn some of the floats’ inedible plants into a mash that they could ferment and distill. Then he led them in long sessions of mad intoxication with promises of food and glory for those who joined him as warriors to prey on nearby floats.
“We figured that folks would just as likely help us as not,” said Nym. “But we didn’t dare say so. Those that did aren’t around anymore.”
Telly felt cold sympathy. A lot of people weren’t around anymore, thanks to Ajax.
Telly still felt vaguely unsatisfied.
They’d found their explanation, but it didn’t explain anything. A drunken renegade and a float full of starving misfits—that was all there had been to it. Nothing romantic or malevolent beyond the ravings of a single man.
But he wanted to know more about the man who had caused so much pain and suffering—about the man he had killed.
So when they began searching the village for the rational where Ajax lived, Telly was quick to volunteer. They followed Nym’s directions and headed aft. Before long, they came upon a high-walled stockade enclosing an area about a quarter the size of Telly’s rational back home.
The fence ran off to either side of a large hut sitting in the middle of a thick stand of conifers. As they drew closer, Telly saw that the place was marked with gruesome trophies—strings of human teeth, the skulls of pigs painted in bright colors, charred warclubs and broken spears. It set the skin on his back aprickle.
No one in the war party said a word, but the man in the lead held up a hand, and everyone stopped. They stood there in silence for a long time. Telly wondered if they all felt the same sense of haunting presence that he did—the feeling that Ajax and his warriors were still somewhere about.
When it was clear that no one was hiding in the dark corners of the woods, they continued on into the building.
The place was a mess, plain and simple. Baskets of sugar and dried meat and rotting vegetables littered the floors and piled in the corners. Heaps of charcoal sat before a metal stove, which Telly suspected had been stolen from one of their earlier victims. And weapons lay tossed helter skelter in every room.
In the rear of the hut, they found plastic jugs filled with foul-smelling liquids. Some were clear and bitter, others were dark and sour. They surrounded a collection of pipes, tubes, barrels, and bottles, all scarred by charcoal fires and dripping potions.
Telly touched a finger to the clear liquid and tasted it. The flavor was dozens of times worse than the smell, and the stuff made his throat clamp shut.
The yard was overgrown with ferns and included a small copse of mast trees in one corner. The war party converged on the trees where their leader sounded the rally cry.
Telly was one of the last to arrive, and when he reached the center of the trees he was horrified by what he found.
A thick beam had been lashed between two trees, with pegs protruding from its length and from the boles of the trees themselves. Hanging from the pegs on the trees were cruel pieces of wood and metal with handles at one end, and hooks and points and barbs at the other.
And hanging from the main beam were the bloody remains of what had once been a human being. He looked like he’d taken a long time to die and was glad when death finally took him.
At first Telly avoided looking into the man’s face, reluctant to give the hanging meat the form of humanity. But when he did finally look into the lifeless eyes of the corpse, he recoiled in shock.
It was Mark Wayland.
They held the trial for the twenty-seven surviving followers of Ajax at the beginning of the next noonwatch. It was the night-cycle of the side-day, and the proceedings were held by torchlight. The flames of the torches made shadows dance eerily across the ground.
The court consisted of the seven members of the Schenker Float Council. Henry Adorno presided. Duncan Blake stood as prosecutor. Pastor Kline spoke for the defense.
It took no more than half an hour.
Blake presented the events leading up to the invasion, which the council secretary recorded in a leatherbound log with pages of precious paper. He summarized the battle, then listed the terrible cost of the invasion. So many kilos of sugar, grain, pork, charcoal, and salt despoiled by the looters. So many dozen huts destroyed or damaged by firebombs. Fifty-three men, women, and children killed, and more than two hundred injured by the fighting.
“By their deeds shall ye know them,” Blake said. “The Law of the Sea is clear. In the name of our lost friends and family, I ask for the full penalty.”
Pastor Kline’s defense was neither long nor spirited. As with his sermons, Telly was not swayed by it in least. Kline asked for mercy, pointed to the culpability of their dead leader, and warned that men are easily led astray by false prophets.
The warriors, tied to one another with shining nylon line, sat sullenfaced and silent. As Telly watched, some tended to their wounds, while others shook with tremors caused by a combination of nerves and cold flesh.
When the testimony was over, the council members huddled closely for a few minutes to discuss their verdict. It was what everyone expected.
“You have violated the Law of the Sea, as drafted during humanity’s long struggle with itself on the waters of Okeanos,” Henry Adorno said solemnly after rising at the center of the long table. “The facts are clear. The evidence unchallenged. Your identities are known and unmistakable. Therefore, this court finds you all guilty as charged with the crime of piracy on the high seas. The penalty for your crime is death. Sentence is to be carried out upon conclusion of these proceedings.”
A murmur passed through the prisoners. Some cried out. Others simply cried. No one from Schenker Float cheered. But neither did they express any remorse for the condemned men.
A short while later, with as many of Schenker Float’s population watching as Telly had ever seen massed together, the execution was carried out.
The warriors, still bound together, watched aghast as the heavy line that bound them was lashed tight to a ballast log—a hollow tube filled with crushed pumice. A half dozen men carried the log to the edge of the Great Lagoon, where Henry Adorno stood beside the council secretary with the logbook. The prisoners were lined up along the edge of the dark water.