“Aye, Skipper!” Scrimshine gave one of his less-than-regulation salutes and ran to the tiller, pushing the previous helmsman aside with an urgent shove.
“Stop!”
Hilemore turned as a hand tugged at his sleeve, finding himself confronted by Kriz. “We need to stop,” she said in her clipped, street-level Mandinorian.
“You may have noticed, miss, but time is against us.” Hilemore politely disentangled himself. “Our food stocks being what they are . . .”
“Gas!” she interrupted, pointing towards the ship’s prow. Hilemore followed her finger, frowning at the haze ahead. It was thin but definitely there, a soft grey vapour drifting amongst the bergs.
Kriz said something in her own language, raising her finger to point at the distant fiery bulk of Mount Reygnar. When Hilemore blinked at her in incomprehension she gave what he assumed was a highly simplified translation. “Poison gas. The fault extends all the way to that volcano. If we sail towards it everyone on board will be dead within the hour.”
Hilemore went to the prow, training his spy-glass on Reygnar’s slopes. The eruption that had begun days ago continued unabated, huge chunks of molten rock spouted from the mountain’s gaping summit in a plentiful torrent. The lava-stream made a sluggish but irresistible progress to the sea where great billows of steam occluded what he assumed to be a rapidly growing new island. Although his education in geology had been confined to a few classes at the Protectorate Maritime Academy, he knew another side-effect of so much of the earth’s innards being released into the sea would be the production of various gases, none of which were conducive to longevity.
“Trim sails!” Hilemore ordered, sending the sailors scurrying. “Mr. Steelfine, see if you can get the anchor lowered. Boiling some oil to melt the ice on the chains might do it.”
“I’ll see to it, sir.”
“We can’t wait this out,” Kriz said, moving closer to Hilemore and speaking in a low voice. “The eruption could go on for days. As you said, we don’t have the food.”
“There is but one navigable channel through this ice,” Hilemore said, pointing to the winding course ahead. He felt a resurgence of his earlier anger, the sensation of having no good options was never a comfortable one for a captain. We sail on we die, we stay we die, he thought biting down on a sigh of frustration.
“There is a way,” Kriz said. “But I’ll need a particular substance in as much quantity as you can provide.”
“What substance?”
Kriz gave a doubtful frown, as if unsure the word she was about to speak was the right one. “Piss,” she said with a bland smile. “I need a great deal of piss.”
Scrimshine proved the most productive of the crewmen, filling two large pickle-jars to Hilemore’s one. “Reckon I can squeeze out a few drops more, Skipper,” he offered, britches still undone as he hovered splay-footed over a steaming jar. Hilemore wasn’t sure what smelled worse, the gas or the product of Scrimshine’s bladder.
“I think that’ll do for now,” he said, averting his eyes as the helmsman buttoned himself up. There were some sights even a seasoned sailor couldn’t abide.
In addition to the urine, Kriz had Steelfine roast as much coal as could be crammed into the galley stove. The scorched bricks were then pounded into a fine powder. “Two layers will provide better protection,” she explained laying out a strip of their thinnest fabric on the table. In addition to the Dreadfire’s meagre sails her hold had yielded a number of flags, all dating back to the pre-Corporate age. Hilemore assumed they were souvenirs of the long-dead Captain Bledthorne’s brief pirating career. He had thought they might be worth something to an antiquities dealer should they ever return to civilisation, but was happy to surrender any potential profit in the circumstances.
Under Kriz’s instruction the flags had all been sliced into strips six inches wide and twelve long. “Carbon absorbs most gases,” she said, spooning about a quarter-pound of the powdered coal onto the fabric. “But not all. Hopefully,” she continued, laying another strip on top of the layer of coal dust, this one having been dipped into one of the steaming buckets, “urine will filter out the rest. Stitch them together and you have a basic respirator.”
“Hopefully?” Hilemore asked, receiving a helpless shrug in response. He resisted the urge to ask more questions. There were no other choices and this had to be risked. “Let’s be about it, lads,” he said instead, sending the crew into motion. “Two masks each. Just like she showed you. Stitch them tight and be quick.”
He drew Kriz aside as the crew got to work, speaking softly. “How long will they last?”
“It depends on the thickness of the gas. If we run into a dense concentration they’ll become saturated fairly quickly.”
“At our current speed it will take at least a day to reach the mountain and another to get clear of it.”
“Then we need to sail faster.”
“We’ve barely enough sheets to keep her moving as it is.”
“Pardon me, Captain,” Clay said, appearing at Kriz’s side. “But we don’t need the wind to get this old tub moving. Just a lotta strong rope.”
They used the Dreadfire’s only boat to string the rope out in front of the prow. Hilemore, Steelfine, Clay and the elder Torcreek took on the task, the crew displaying a marked reluctance to place themselves in proximity to the monster whose spines were frequently glimpsed cutting through the surrounding waters. Hilemore knew the sailors were unlikely to disobey a direct order but thought it best not to fray their already thread-like nerves further. Steelfine, of course, appeared to have no nerves whilst Braddon assumed a mantle of steady surety, though Hilemore caught the wariness in his gaze whenever it alighted on Jack’s spines. By contrast Clay exuded only a cheerful calm as they rowed away from the ship’s hull, playing the rope out behind. It was really three ropes in one, the thickest hawsers they could find braided into a single cable thicker than a man’s arm. It had been fashioned into a loop some thirty yards long, both ends fixed to the anchor mountings on either side of the rotted figure-head on the Dreadfire’s prow.
“Reckon this is far enough,” Clay said and the boat slowed to a gentle drift as Steelfine shipped oars.
“What now?” Hilemore enquired as Clay focused his gaze on Jack. The Blue loitered only a stone’s throw away, one great eye poking above the surface to regard them either with curiosity or hunger. Hilemore couldn’t tell.
Clay’s response was soft and cryptic, his expression now one of studied concentration as he stared at Jack. “Now I get to see if I could’ve made Miss Ethelynne proud,” he murmured.
For a full minute nothing happened, Hilemore and the others looking at Clay in frigid expectation. The Blood-blessed’s brows creased and uncreased several times, his lips twitching all the while, and Hilemore knew he was witnessing direct communication between a human and a drake. Finally, the great eye blinked and disappeared below the surface, the beast’s tall spines frothing the water as it twisted its body and dived.
“Let it go, Uncle,” Clay told Braddon and they released the rope in unison. It subsided below the surface with a soft splash that soon transformed into a white explosion as Jack’s head erupted from the water barely a second later, huge jaws clamping down on the cable. The resultant swell sent their boat into a spin, Hilemore coming close to tipping over the side before Steelfine used his oars to steady the craft.