After the third failed tack Elkstem was contemplating a mutiny of his own. But at that point the giant rats began their siege. Elkstem remained at the wheel throughout the fighting, but he could not find enough men with their wits about them to brace the mains. Working two topsails alone, he and some thirty stout lads kept us from sliding any deeper into the Vortex, but they could not break free. And then the crawly sleeping-poison felled us, and we became a cork adrift.
By the time I awoke, imprisoned, matters had gone from bad to critical. It was midmorning. We were caught now in the lungs as well as the arms of the Vortex: the wind was cycloning towards the eye, six miles off. There were stormclouds; from the chamber's single window I saw a grey sheet of rain bend away from us as it descended, and twist into a miles-long whipcord that vanished into the maw. The port side of every object was taking on a scarlet glow. The Red Storm, whatever it was, looked set to overtake us as surely as the Vortex itself. Do you remember that mad dog on Mereldin, that ran in circles continually, all over the island, until one circle took him over a cliff? That was how we moved: around and around the Vortex, even as the Vortex itself drifted towards the storm. Which would claim us first? There was simply no way to know.
From the window I looked on as the crew struggled to replace the burned rigging, without dropping a mast into the Nelluroq, or being swept away themselves. In Etherhorde the shipwrights would take a month for such a job, in a calm port, with scaffolding and cranes. The men were trying to do it in mere hours, after bloody mayhem, at thirty knots and growing.
I will say this for Fiffengurt: the man has strength. Six hours I'd kept him tied and hooded. Then came the battle with the rats, the crawlies' poison — and immediately thereafter, the battle to save a ship without sails or rigging from the greatest calamity in all the seas. He marched first to Uskins, a broken-off Turach spear in his hand, and set the point against his chest.
' Your badges or your blood, Stukey. I'll give you five seconds to decide.' Uskins saw he meant it, and took the gold bars from his uniform. Fiffengurt took his hat too, lest there be any confusion, and sent him away to work the pumps.
The quartermaster himself summarily took charge, assigning a team to each mast, with orders to give a test-haul to every line that remained. 'If you don't like the feel of it, cut it down! Don't wait for my say-so! We can afford the rope, but not another bad tack! And no scrap over the sides, boys — toss it from the stern! If we foul the rudder we can all start singing Bakru's lullaby.'
The Chathrand was running smooth now — but only because the Vortex had churned the waves down to a swirling cream. The ship was settling into a glide, listing ten or fifteen degrees to port, and though I could not see the Vortex from the window, I noted how men tried not to look in that direction, and what came over their features when they did. Never did a crew attack a rig so quickly, or so well. But with every minute that passed they had to cling tighter to the ropes and rails — not against the angle of the ship, but against the surging, screaming wind. It had grown prodigiously in the last quarter-hour. Rain from farther off was cracking against the deck like drumsticks. The seal on the tonnage hatch was flapping loose. The lifeboats danced airborne in their chains.
The noise, Father. No storm you or I ever braved had a tenth the voice of that gods' monstrosity of noise. In the forecastle house, the wind blasting under the door and through a dozen cracks and crevices began to disperse the vapour; we felt stabbed in the chest, and plugged the gaps with shirts and rags and straw from the henhouse. We crowded around the little fire-pot to shield it with our bodies. Some prayed; Sandor Ott sat brooding apart; Lady Oggosk chanted the Prayer of Last Parting, which I have not heard her speak since I was a boy on Littlecatch, that time we feared you and mother had died. Chadfallow folded his hands before his face, like one preparing to accept the worst. 'Men are still bleeding out there, still dying,' he said helplessly to Marila. Then he added: 'My family is out there. Why am I always kept apart?'
When I could stand it no longer, I gulped a chestful of poison, held my breath, and stepped out through the door again, slamming it fast behind me. The wind like a mule kick, the spray like a whetted lash. I climbed the forecastle ladder, half blinded by the glow of the Red Storm, and turned at the top rung to look at the abyss.
There was no hope, none at all. I was gazing into the mouth of a demon, and the mouth was a mile wide and deep as thought. Were I not your son I should have released my breath then and there. But I would not be swept from the ship, I would perish aboard her as befits her captain. I struggled back to the forecastle house.
Faint screams above the cacophony: I raised my eyes to the window and saw two men at topgallant-height, clinging to a forestay. The rope was straining towards the Vortex, and when it snapped an instant later the men did not so much fall as fly, like two weird, ungainly birds, grey on one side and glowing red on the other.
'Well, Ott,' I said, catching the spymaster's eye, 'you can keep the bonus pay we discussed. But then a third of Magad 's treasury's going into that damned hole, along with the Nilstone and the Shaggat and the lot of us.'
'Is that all you wish to say, at the end of a life?' said Ott, smiling acidly.
I shook my head. 'One thing more. I piss on your Emperor.'
He uncrossed his legs and stood, and would have done something painful to me had I not placed my hand on the doorknob. For once I had a way to kill faster than Ott, and more democratically.
Then, to my astonishment, the door was wrenched open from the outside, and who should fly in under my hand but Neeps Undrabust. We all reeled from the burst of fresh air, and I, closest to the door, nearly collapsed with the pain. When I recovered I saw Undrabust struggling with the stowaway girl. He was trying to embrace her; she was striking and shoving him back towards the door. 'What are you doing!' she shrieked. 'Get out of here! Don't breathe! You'll be trapped like the rest of us!'
There came a thump at the door — but this time I held the knob fast. Pathkendle and Thasha Isiq were out there, shouting much the same thing as Marila. But Undrabust stood his ground, trying to calm and hold her, telling her he had nowhere else to be. 'Stop it, Marila. There's just minutes left, you hear me? Keep still. You don't have to fight any more.'
I pressed my face to the window, and saw a gruesome sight: the watery horizon was higher than the rail. We were below the rim, descending, speeding up. We had entered the demon's mouth. Pathkendle and the girl were the only figures anywhere close to the forecastle. They must have been pursuing Undrabust, guessing what he meant to do. The lad was right, of course: it no longer mattered. I watched Pathkendle draw the girl down beside him in the biting spray. They crouched with their backs to the door, holding each other, like a pair of orphans in a picture book, and the outlandish notion came to me that perhaps these four youths were the sanest of us all, for in the midst of insanity they were caring for one another, which I might assert, Father, is an aspect of the healthy mind.
Suddenly Thasha Isiq raised her head, tensing like a deer. Pathkendle was staring at her, mouthing some question. Very firmly and quickly, she freed herself from his arms. She stood. He tried to grab hold of her again, but she fended him off with great force, her eyes still looking skyward. Then like a woman in a trance she stepped forwards, oblivious to the death she was courting, and stretched her arms high above her head. The wind surged, lifting her like a doll. Pathkendle threw himself on her legs; she did not know he was there. And then the Red Storm swept over the deck.