52

Thunderclouds filled the far horizon. The light was a sullen grey, as if malign angels flew between the setting sun and the swollen sea, casting shadows over everything below. Tycho would vomit, but had nothing to throw up.

So, he hunched in his oil-silk doublet on a dirt-filled bag and hoped the rotten canvas of a makeshift awning would protect him while he waited for orders.

Everyone was waiting for orders.

The Seahorse was a small galley. One captain, the owner’s son, one drummer, one slave master and fourteen rows of slaves. Tycho wasn’t sure what she carried. Nothing heavy from the way she tossed on the swell.

The wind was rising. Ominously cool.

In other circumstances he might have welcomed it and been refreshed. But he learnt what it brought when Adif, the Mamluk next to him, began to count the gaps between lightning and thunder. The strikes were close and coming closer.

A wall of rain headed for them, hiding the distant lines between sea, land and sky. Behind them, night had arrived already, constellations visible and the ocean dark and flat where it met the night’s edge.

“We must go north.”

“Sir, that’s impossible.”

The galley owner’s son stamped his foot. He was young, rich and afraid. If his father had been there to control him it might have been different. The boy wanted to be on land. In storms, orders said head for the nearest port.

But it was the storm that stood between them and the Dalmatian coast, with its cliffs, endless small islands and rocky shoals. Italy’s own coast was a day in the other direction given wind and luck, much longer if luck was bad and the wind against them.

Captain Malo had offered two alternatives.

Hack down the mast and ride out the storm or run before it. That had been before he took another look at the wall of rain and declared he now lacked enough time for the first. So he suggested the second.

Fat-bellied, old and tired, the Greek was resigned to lugging his ship up and down sea lanes that faster vessels used daily. The Seahorse had been modern once. Now she was a patchwork of replaced planks. Her caulking needed redoing and she required new tree nails, those thin lengths of dowel holding her sides in place. Most days it a miracle she still floated.

He’d like to keep it that way.

Ruined galleys were found after every storm. So were dead slaves. Chained to their oars and floating or washed up on beaches among driftwood and splintered planks from the ships they’d served.

Running from the Dalmatian coast meant trying to outrun the storm, and widening the violent and nasty seas between the Seahorse and those cliffs. The odds weren’t great. But they were better than trying for port.

“Find land,” the boy said. “That’s an order.”

“I’m captain.”

“Not much longer if you don’t do as I say.” The boy’s words carried over a lull in the wind. “We return to port now.”

Beside Tycho, the Mamluk hawked on the deck and spat words in his own language. Tycho didn’t need a translator to know it was a curse.

“That’s bad?”

“He’s going to get us killed, snow djin.”

Adif had taken to calling him that on the first day. After Tycho unhooked his makeshift awning as night fell, and let the doublet drop from his shoulders to reveal snow-white skin.

“If they unchain us, grab an oar and kick for land.”

“Water will kill me.”

The Mamluk hissed and then nodded. Cross with himself for expecting anything else. “Then I wish you a quick death.”

Tycho and Adif sat either side of an aisle on the last bench of all. Ahead of them sat the other slaves. Immediately behind, an open-fronted shelter of canvas over wooden hoops was were Captain Malo and the owner’s son slept.

Like everyone else on the ship, they shat over the side.

The difference was they did so at will. Adif and Tycho were restricted to pissing themselves where they sat, and shitting each morning, when their hands were briefly unchained. Not all of the slaves could wait that long.

“Arnaud, make him.”

The slave master was midway in age between the boy and the captain. His face once handsome but his eyes hard and his temper brutal.

“You heard the boss,” he said.

“He’s not the boss,” Captain Malo said. “I am.”

The whip cracked and Tycho heard the captain stagger back, hissing in pain and outrage. “Return to harbour,” the slave master ordered.

“If we try, we’ll die.”

“What’s your plan then?” the boy demanded.

“Outrun it,” Captain Malo said. “While we can. If we can.” He spat, angrily. “Which I now doubt. We could head south, maybe. See if we can edge past it. But in the dark…”

“The storm’s too big,” said Tycho, without thinking.

“Who asked you?”

He heard a whip crack a split second after pain ripped across his shoulders, tearing oiled silk and skin. And then Arnaud was on the raised walkway that ran along the aisle. His boot scraping down the side of Tycho’s cheek.

A slave on the row ahead turned round to see what was happening and took the rest of the slave master’s anger.

“Enough,” Captain Malo snapped.

The slave master raised his whip, and gasped as Adif suddenly slammed his unchained hand into Arnaud’s knee. An awkward blow, but it struck lucky, dropping the man to his knees. When he came upright he was holding a knife.

“This is where you die.”

There was a dignity to Adif’s face as he braced himself to face the blade. And Tycho suddenly understood that the man had forced the quarrel, seeking a quick death instead of drowning. “Good choice,” he said.

“Wait.”

Anger fought obedience as Arnaud hesitated at the boy’s order.

“We’ve had nothing but shit since we took that thing on board.” The owner’s son meant Tycho. “Kill him after that one.”

The slave master was readying his blade, Adif still waited, refusing to show fear. Captain Malo’s face said he knew it ended here.

“Die well,” Adif said.

“No,” said Tycho. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Gripping silver-topped spike that nailed him to his oar, he screamed as he ripped it out, feeling flesh sizzle. And then standing, he blocked Arnaud’s dagger with his forearm, and jammed the nail under the man’s chin. Slamming it into his skull with a slap of his burning hand.

The slave master tumbled sideways.

As the slave opposite grabbed the owner’s son by one ankle, Captain Malo elbowed the boy hard in the throat, ordered the slave to let go, and flung the boy overboard to drown. “Idiot,” he said.

“Right,” shouted Tycho. “Turn her to the storm.”

“Reckon you’re a sailor now?” Captain Malo snarled.

“I intend to live,” Tycho said, surprising himself when he realised it was true. “At least, I don’t intend to die drowning. Tried it once. Never again.”

“He’s a djinn. Listen to him.”

“Well,” Captain Malo said, “he’s sure as shit not human. My lord Atilo warned me of that.”

Tycho felt his guts knot. He’d hoped Atilo felt some affection. Something behind the coldness in his face as he’d hammered the silver-topped spike in place himself.

“Turn her. Then lose the oars.”

“What?”

“Lose them.”

“We can stow them,” Captain Malo protested. Iron rests either side let the oars be lifted when the galley was under sail.

“It won’t be enough.”

The sea terrified Tycho. The thought of being swallowed was unbearable. He’d died, and still survived the canal in Venice. What if he sank, died and lived now? Water took his strength. Only the earth bag beneath him kept him sane. He’d be trapped in a watery half-life forever.

“You want to die?” he shouted. The silver-topped spike still jutted from Arnaud’s skull, but Tycho had the man’s dagger.

Captain Malo shook his head. “I’ll get the key.”

“No time.”

Oars were removed in harbour to stop slaves rowing away when the crew were ashore. At sea, oars were chained in place. “Turn into the storm,” Tycho ordered.

“Do it,” Captain Malo shouted.

Slaves churned oars in the gravid waves. Those on one side rowing forward. Those on the other rowing back, until the Seahorse turned into the wind just as the rain arrived in a rushing wall.

“Hold her steady…”

Grabbed Adif’s oar chain, Tycho snapped it and pushed the oar through the galley’s side. He managed to clear two thirds the Seahorse’s length before a huge wave struck, breaking over them. It hit straight on, half lifting the galley, but catching the still-chained oars of those at the front.

The Seahorse screamed, wooden ribs twisting and dowels shrieking as they were dragged from their holes. Oak splintered and split. The noise as she fought the sea for the right to stay in one piece was unbearable.

It was a battle between shipwrights now dead and the sea, who wanted their handiwork to join them. Mixed in with the rage of the ship, the howl of the wind and the drumming of the rain were the screams of slaves nursing broken limbs or shouting prayers.

No god would lower his hand to pluck them from the storm. Endless promises might be made. Debts racked up. They meant nothing. The only thing that could save the Seahorse was blind luck and the skill of those long dead.

“I’ll take it,” Tycho said.

Captain Malo glanced from the tiller to the strange youth in front of him.

Rain glued Tycho’s braids to his skull. His ghostlike flesh glowed every time lightning flickered. His eyes… Tycho could see from the captain’s face that something about his eyes terrified the man.

He hadn’t time to work out what.

Stepping forward, Tycho grabbed the rudder bar.

Fighting it, he kept the Seahorse into the wind. Muscles locked, sinews popping. It was touch and go if the tiller or his wrists broke first. He felt sicker than ever, numb with shock as a wall of water the height of San Marco raced towards him. And then the second wave struck.