The bow turned to the east, and the boat heeled over as the sail ran almost parallel to the deck. The wind was against them, and they tacked hard left and right to slowly close on the palisade-like cliffs.
Ropes didn’t pull themselves, and it was hard work. But not as hard as rowing, which they had to do to stop them from going backwards, or into the rocks. They hauled themselves into the headwind, hunched over as if it would make a difference to their speed. As it was, they crawled along: individual features moved by glacially, causing the crew to mutter and curse. Some even said they should head to the Bay of Bones and be done with it.
Dalip exchanged glances with Mama across the width of the deck, and the steersman apparently thought the same.
‘Row, you dogs. You know the Bay of Bones isn’t for the likes of us.’ He spat over the side to emphasise his point.
They hauled and groaned, and finally made way around the headland. The wall of rock seemed just as impenetrable, and the wind redoubled its efforts. Dalip dug in, but it was clear that some of the other rowers were flagging, Mama included.
‘I’m not built for this,’ she said, voice quavering.
‘Ten more strokes,’ shouted the steersmen. ‘Ten is all. Come on.’
At the back of the boat, Dalip couldn’t see why, but as he ground out those last few strokes, the first hint of lower land and a shelving beach showed themselves. The boat leaned to port, and suddenly they were in clear water.
‘Ship oars. Raise the sail.’
Uncertain if he had the strength to stand, Dalip dragged his oar back in and rested for a moment, elbows on his thighs and his head almost at his knees.
‘We need sail! ’Ware the rocks!’
The rope party lurched into action, already exhausted, and managed to get half the sail unfurled. On Dalip’s side of the boat, a line had seized in the block, and half a sail clearly wasn’t going to be enough.
It was three steps away. Then two, as he barged through the middle of the men. He held the line taut and brought his machete down on the braided cord. It twanged away, and the rest of the sail fell into place. The severed line snaked and cracked, and someone else caught it.
Dalip’s guts had knotted from the effort, and at that moment, he neither knew nor cared whether they were going to avoid the submerged rocks on the port side. The boat rocked and pitched, then surged away as the steersman leaned hard into his tiller.
Mama caught him and dragged him into the clear aisle between the sea-chests.
‘We’re fine, we’re fine,’ she said. ‘You did good.’
Dalip swallowed hard against the acid fire in his throat and tried to breathe. ‘As long,’ he gasped, ‘as long as they don’t make me splice that rope back up again.’
‘I’m sure they have someone who can do that.’ She patted his arm and sat him up so he could see that they’d steered away from the rocks and were heading smoothly towards the back of the bay and the shingle beach there.
Rather than landing the ship, Simeon ordered the anchor dropped and the mast unstepped. They sat offshore while they recovered◦– water and food were passed around, and some measure of good humour mixed with relief was restored to the crew. Dalip took some time to look at the bay surrounding them: a river ran into it, a shingle beach gave way to a salt marsh, and further inland, a forest. The land rose up and became a hard-edged plateau some miles distant.
‘So the White City is over there?’
‘This river runs through it. It’s not an easy journey, nor is it short, but it’s more certain than others.’ Simeon stowed the telescope in his sea-chest. ‘Down’s magic still holds sway out this far, so be on your guard.’
Then Simeon reached past the telescope and started to assemble what Dalip thought was going to be a crude firearm. Certainly the first piece was a stock with a trigger, but the next wasn’t a barrel, but a guide, and the third a steel crosspiece.
‘A crossbow.’
‘An arbalest.’ He lifted up the winding mechanism and screwed it into place with his thumbs. ‘There are things out there you don’t want to have at with a sword.’
‘I know.’
‘Oh-oh? That story’s one for the fireside, I’ll wager.’ He hooked a bag of crossbow bolts at his waist and attached a strap on to the iron rings front and back on the arbalest. ‘Break out the boat. Volunteers for guard duty, see Dawson.’
He adjusted his hat firmly on his head, and Dalip went to find Mama.
‘Stay or go?’ he asked her.
‘You have to go,’ she said. ‘That is, you wouldn’t be happy if you stayed. Me, I’m not so sure, what with all that walking, and the clambering down to the rowing boat. That’s not what I enjoy.’
‘You have to see the White City. Just once.’
‘Dalip, I’m not cut out for adventures. For sure, I’ll stand up for myself if trouble comes my way, but I’m not going looking for it. I’ve found somewhere safe to stay for the while, and if I’m a fool for not leaving it, no better place than a Ship of Fools to be.’ She saw Dalip’s disappointment. ‘I’m not young, not like you. You need to do these things, to see what you’re made of, to prove to yourself that you’re a man and not a boy. I know what I’m made of, and some bloodthirsty pirate is not it.’
She was right. Right for her, anyway. She went to find Dawson, and Dalip joined the queue for the boat trip ashore.
It inevitably took a long time, at four passengers a journey, to decant the raiding party to dry land. Some of the crew drifted away from the beach and into the forest◦– there seemed to be no reason not to follow them, so Dalip did the same.
It was similar to the landscape they’d first washed up in. Virgin forest, patterned in light and dark, with clearings of saplings centred around one or more rotting trunks of the fallen. The birds swooped and flitted between the branches, and it was cool and still under the canopy. After the constant movement of the ship’s deck, it was strangely static.
Which might have been why it took him a while to realise that the ground was oddly stepped. Though the ubiquitous trees cared little about where they sprouted, the land itself was divided up into platforms, with their edges softened with age.
He couldn’t be the first person to notice, surely? Others who’d passed this way would have seen what he was seeing, and commented on it to someone. He dropped to his knees and parted the undergrowth with his machete, cutting the roots and digging through the leaf litter until he came to something hard. Then he laid his weapon aside and used his hands to scrape what he’d found clear of debris.
It was a pavement of regular stone blocks. Most were cracked, some were missing, but there was enough left to show how the whole would have looked. He brushed his palms against his legs and picked up the machete again, holding it loosely by his side. He took in everything that he could, imagining the pavement extending from where he knelt to the next step. Beyond that, and to each side, to another pavement.
There’d been a city here once. Not a castle, or a collection of wooden huts: a city, with everything that the name entailed. A city which had fallen, and had been clawed back into the ground by Down, except that it was so vast that it still wasn’t completely consumed. The memory of it remained, buried under the rotting leaves and broken by the soaring trees.
In the distance, a horn sounded long and low. He was being summoned back to the beach, and yet he knew it was more important to investigate the ruins and find a reason for the city’s demise. When he’d uncovered those few paving stones, they were glazed white◦– and where would do that except at the site of the original White City?