On the Oceans of Eternity Page 26

  Kurlelo-Alston, what boats do we have with the frigates still sound? Six-oared or be:ter."

  "Eight, ma'am," Swindapa said instantly. "Three more under repair and ready within a few hours."

  "Good… all right. Those boats to the Merrimac. Ship's doctor from the Chamberlain, medical supplies, stretchers, cordage. Portable pumps, four of 'em. She'll need hands… besides the boat crews, fifteen hands and a middie, ensign, or lieutenant from each-good riggers, sailmakers. And ship's carpenters with their mates and kit from, hmmm-mmm, Lincoln and Sheridan."

  "Yes, ma'am." Swindapa repeated the order and leaned out, grabbed a backstay, and slid the hundred feet to the quarterdeck with her feet braced against the hard ribbing of the hemp cable to control her speed.

  "A tow. Commodore?" Jenkins asked quietly.

  Marian Alston looked beyond the laboring hulk of the Merrimac. Close, far too close, the great swells surged and roared against sheer rock, throwing foam mast high. Even across several miles of sea she could hear the sound, and through the binoculars see the grinding snarl where the huge mass of water pushed eastward by the long storm met the immovable object of the Cantabrian Mountains, where the Pyrenees slid down into the Atlantic. There was clear water beyond that last finger of granite reaching out to sea…

  … and the Merrimac wasn't going to make it, not under that miserable jury-rig; if she was doing two knots, it was a miracle. The swell and drift eastward would cut her off long before; she was making a yard eastward for every one she made south. Close, but no cigar. Anything that hitched on would be dragged to leeward as well by fourteen hundred tons of dead-in-the-water inertia.

  "No, Commander Jenkins. I'm going to save that cargo if I can, but I'm not going to lose any more people for it. Rig for a tow, by all means, ready when and if we can get her far enough out. I'm going over to supervise recovery operations myself."

  The deck had already been busy, repairs still going forward on the rigging; now it was doubly so, with lashings being untied and davits swung out. More than a few of the crew exchanged glances; launching a boat in seas this rough was gambling with a dunking at the very least, or possibly with injury and death if something went wrong halfway down. There was a scramble of orders and bosun's whistles, and deck crews formed on the lines. Jenkins murmured to his sailing master, and the voice rang out:

  "Clew up!"

  "Heave… hoi" The rhythmic chorus rang out, and the square sails spilled wind as the lines hauled them up like a theater curtain. The ship slowed almost instantly, swaying more toward the upright. Also rolling more, but you couldn't have everything.

  The bosun's mate in charge of the boats wasn't hesitating. "Boat crew of the day to the commodore's barge! Falls tenders! Trapping line tenders!"

  The commands ran on smoothly. Swindapa came up beside her. "Anything else?" she said softly, trying not to disrupt Alston's train of thought.

  "Yes," she replied. "Have Captain Jenkins and… who's got the most left in the way of large spars?"

  "Of the frigates, Sheridan," Swindapa said. The stores-ships were too far out to be useful just now. "Full set-didn't lose anything."

  She wouldn't, with Tom Hitler as her skipper, Alston thought. He'd been sailing master of the Eagle and taught Alston herself most of what she knew of handling big square-riggers. Aloud:

  "… and the Sheridan make a bundle of some spare spars-main and foresail-and get ready to put them overside rigged for tow." Luckily the spars were buoyant, being varnished white pine.

  Fatigue and anxiety had vanished. She had a job to do; it might well be an impossible one, but all she could do was make the best possible decisions. Focus left her coldly alert, impersonal, and intensely alive.

  The bosun's mate had the line team ready, and he scrambled up on the davits to give it a final visual check. A sailor brought her a life jacket; she strapped in absently, eyes still narrowed and gazing at the Merrimac. Swindapa came up beside her, and they both settled their billed Coast Guard caps more firmly on their heads-as usual, a few wispy strands of fine blond hair were floating free from their braid, like streamers to windward since they were both facing the port rail. Alston blinked, felt a fleeting, familiar moment of absurdly intense tenderness, a desire to smooth the strands back. Their eyes met, and spoke later without word or expression.

  "Denniston, lay into the boat," the bosun's mate barked. A sailor climbed into it, undoing more lashings, running a final check, then gave a thumbs-up. "Cast off the gripe… cast off the preventers…" A clank as the sailor in the boat tripped the pelican hooks. "Boat crew lay into the boat!"

  This time ten sailors climbed into the boat-technically the commodore's barge-in careful pairs. Two picked up oars and made ready to fend the boat off from the side of the ship; the rest of them and Denniston the coxswain grabbed the manropes that dangled from above, taking as much of their weight as possible off the tackle that held the boat.

  Denniston looked over to the bosun's mate. "Ready in the boat."

  The bosun's mate turned. "Ready on deck, ma'am," he said to the OOD, and received a nod. Then he went on: "On the falls!" The teams on deck took up the lines that ran to both ends of the boat, ready to control the descent. The bosun's mate took position near the rail, hands outstretched to either side. "Ready forward and aft?"

  "Ready aye ready!"

  "Lower away together!" A clink, and the boat sank with smooth speed. "Lively aft-easy forward-easy forward, handsomely there, God-damn you-

  The Chamberlain heeled a little more and the swell rose to meet her. The boat touched, skipped, began to throw a bow wave of its own.

  "Let fall!" the bosun's mate said, stepping back; the coxswain in the boat was in charge now. From below came her call:

  "Unhook aft-passengers to the line!"

  Alston came to with an inward start. There was something hypnotically soothing about a well-executed maneuver like this, and the Chamberlains were a well worked-up lot; the flagship naturally stayed in full commission more than the other Guard frigates, spent less time shuttling cargo to new or remote bases, and hence less time cut back to a sailing rather than a full fighting crew. A hand was holding the line for her, and as she came up she could see one of the boat's crew below doing the same. She leaned out, took a bight of the line around her right forearm, gripped it lower between crossed feet, and slid down at just short of rope-burn speed. Two of the sailors caught her and she stepped forward to a place in the bows of the boat, grabbing a thwart.

  Seen from the surface the swell was like the surge of a giant's muscle beneath them, infinite power enclosed in a silk-smooth skin, dangerous and beautiful. The bitter kiss of foam blew onto her face, and she could feel the living heave of the ocean through the thin inch of oak that made up the cutter's planks.

  Swindapa came down the line next, then the rest of the hands being sent across, while the tools and cordage and sailcloth came down on whiplines.

  "Let go forward!" Denniston said.

  The coxswain was a short woman, thickset and muscular, with cropped black hair and bright green eyes, in her early twenties. Alban, from an eastern tribe, but she'd taken an Immigration Office name. Some of the Sun People tribes had sent in fairly bitter complaints about girls running off for this reason or that-being married to suitors they didn't like was the most common-and their fathers having to repay the bridewealth and swallow public shame.

  If they don't like it, they can change their God-damned customs.

  "Fend off," the coxswain said. Oars pushed the longboat away from the heaving wooden cliff of the Chamberlain's side; other boats were being lowered even as they moved. "Out oars and stroke… stroke… stroke…"

  That was awkward in the crowded barge; it was even more so when they stopped to raise the mast, step, and brace it. That gave her something to do; she shifted over to the windward rail, along with everyone else except the coxswain at the tiller, sitting on it to fight the heel and make the boat stiffer as it raced across the wind toward the stric
ken Merrimac.

  Under the urgent focus on the task ahead ran the sheer exuberant satisfaction of the cutter's racing speed, the sea hissing past six inches away-less when they crested one of the huge waves and white water burst around them. She fought down an urge to whoop and grin as the bow went up… up… up; then the great jerk of acceleration on the crest as the sail caught the full force of the stiff wind and cracked taut. And the long roller-coaster swoop down the skin of the gray-blue swell, with goose-wings of spray flying higher than her head from the boat's bows and the curving wake racing aft.

  For a moment she was a skinny black girl in faded cutoffs and a T-shirt again, dancing with excitement in a little dinghy as it tossed in a yachtsman's wake off Prince Island.

  Swindapa did whoop, and the coxswain gave an exultant tribal screech, half-standing at the crest to get another sight of the Merrimac's sails, leaning expertly into the tiller and calling directions to the hands at the lines. Soon enough they could see the mountain peaks ahead to the southeast, and then the stumpy tops of the ship's mutilated masts.

  "Ready to let go!" Denniston called. The hull came up be-side them, looming a dozen feet overhead. There were plenty of ropes overside, and a few of the Merrimac's hands waving and calling. "Ready to fend… let go the sail!"

  The cutter turned up alongside the ship, and the sail rattled down. Alston moved to take one of the ropes and secure the bows with a running bowline knot. "Denniston, I'm going to rig for tow," she said crisply. "When I do, tail on to the line and haul away; I want her head about five points up and as much way as you can."

  "Yes, ma'am." A hesitation. "Ma'am, we're not going to tow this bitch free-not even with all the boats."

  "I'm aware of that, Petty Officer Denniston," Alston said. "Every bit helps, though."

  "Ma'am. Aye, aye, ma'am!"

  She nodded, gripped the rope, braced her feet against the slick heaving planks of the ship's side, and swarmed up hand over hand. The others followed, and the gear; she was looking about, taking in the details. Not much was recognizable of the trim, neat new ship she'd boarded in Westhaven. Hmmm. Wheel's still functional.

  "Where's Captain Clammp?" she said, striding over to a young man she recognized as one of his officers. "I need a report on the status of the ship."

  Red-rimmed eyes blinked at her from behind thick spectacles. "Thank God you're here, ma'am," the young man said. His face worked for an instant, as if he was about to burst into tears, then stiffened. "Ma'am, Captain Clammp was injured when the foremast gave way-knocked down-when the wind shifted. He's been unconscious ever since. We… ah, we lost five hands, including Lieutenant Stendins." Which had left this teenager in command, probably on his first voyage out of home waters. "Several more were injured. We…" he made a helpless gesture toward the chaos of the ship.

  Marian Alston put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "Son, you kept the ship afloat through as bad a blow as I've seen," she said. "Now help's on the way. I need to know everything."

  While he told her, Swindapa was directing the unloading of the boats arriving from the frigates. The Merrimacs staggered away from the pumps, and fresh hands began plunging the levers up and down; a tow cable with an empty hogshead on the end for a buoy went overside and the boats made fast, strung out and began to pull the Merrimac's prows to the west of south. Captain Clammp came by, bandaged like a mummy and lashed to a stretcher, to go overside into boats and be rowed out to the warships.

  "You've done a fine job," Marian said to young Clammp. "Now rest."

  He staggered off. The new hands at the pumps were swinging the levers vigorously, and there was a perceptible increase in the jets of water going overside. One of them started a chanty, and the others took it up:

  "They say life has its ups and downs;

  That really now, is quite profound!

  I'd like to push the captsan 'round,

  But it's pump her mates, before we drown!"

  More men and women came running to gather around her as she made a high beckoning gesture with the fingers of both hands; the motion of the ship changed beneath her feet as the added thrust of sixty or seventy strong backs swinging ashwood oars came on to the towline. She looked around at the circle of faces; a couple of ensigns, a lieutenant, and half a dozen experienced petty officers and chiefs-ship's carpenters, rigging specialists.

  "Pump me mates Pump her dry;

  Down to hell, up to the sky-

  Bend your backs and break your bones

  We're just a thousand miles from home!"

  "All right, people, we need to lighten this ship and get some sail on her," Alston said briskly. "Guns overside. Get the auxiliary pumps started; once you've made some headway in the hold, start her fresh water overside as well-stores, this clutter on deck, everything that can be heaved to the rail except her main cargo." Most of which was far too bulky and heavy to move anyway. "Chips?"

  The Lincoln's master carpenter jerked a thumb westward to where two more boats were towing bundles of white pine spars, seventy feet long and a foot and a half thick in the middle.

  "With those spars, ma'am, we can do jury masts on the main and fore-scarf and wold 'em. That'll give you something. It'll take a while."

  "Sometimes when I am in me bed

  And thinkin' of the day ahead;

  I wish that I could wake up dead-

  But pumpin's all I get instead!"

  "Get it done in the next fifty minutes or there's no point," she said over the sound of the chanty. "I want the rigging ready to go up and the sails, too." She pointed ahead, to where the breakers made a white line to their south and east. "The swell, tide, and wind are all shoving us toward that. We need to bring her head around five points, and get some real way on her- five knots, more would be better-and the wind's not favorable." Not dead in their teeth, but coming in over the starboard quarter.

  She tapped a fist into a pink palm. "We need what's on board to win this war; to keep it, we have to save this ship, so that's exactly what we're going to do, people. Let's do it; let's go."

  They gave a short, sharp cheer and scattered to their work at a run. Alston watched them go, fighting down a ferocious impatience. Who knew what devilments Isketerol might be up to, might get up to in the future, if they gave him time?

  Swindapa came up and handed her a piece of hardtack. She looked down at the hard gray-brown crackerlike rectangle, puzzled for an instant, then ahead at the cliffs they'd be passing- hopefully passing, and not running into-in an hour or two.

  "If Jack Aubrey could get close enough to those rocks to hit 'em with a ship's biscuit, why not me?" she said, matching Swindapa's grin for a brief instant. It was good to remember that there was more to the world than their present trouble.

  The chanty went on, pounding to the rumble and splash of the pumps:

  "Yes how I wish that I could die,

  The swine who built this tub to find;

  I'd drag him back from where he fries,

  To pump until the bitch is dry!"

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  October, 10 A.E.-Hattusas, Kingdom of Hani-land

  October, 10 A.E.-Troy

  November, 10 A.E.-Northeastern Carpathian foothills

  September, 10 A.E.-O'Rourke's Ford, east of Troy

  October, 10 A.E.-On the coast of northwestern Iberia

  September, 10 A.E.-O'Rourke's Ford, east of Troy

  October, 10 A.E.-Achaean encampment, near Troy

  I like this game," Raupasha said. "But it will be long before I fight to a draw even with your son, much less you, my sister."

  Doreen Arnstein looked down at the chessboard, shivering a little in a way that had nothing to do with the cold that was sending fingers through the thick robe wrapped about her. She was playing her son David and Raupasha simultaneously, with a time limit on her moves. That made it a challenge, enough to keep her mind off Ian; the news from Troy wasn't good. In fact, it was desperately bad, and only desperation would have driven Ken to orde
r the last-chance maneuver that was taking place this night.

  David had made his move, and went back to the little three-inch reflector she had mounted on this flat rooftop. Originally she'd put that up as a sort of homage to her beginnings; she'd been a student astronomer at the time of the Event, interning at the little observatory on Nantucket run by the Margaret Milson Association. Tonight her son wasn't studying the stars; in between moves, he had the telescope trained to the southwest.

  The Arnsteins had been given a royal villa outside the walls of Hattusas; the Islander military had set up around it, sinking wells and installing rudimentary sanitation and getting doctors and their equipment ready. That had been the first priority, even before starting to shuttle in troops and weapons; then they could move westward toward Troy and the Aegean Sea.

  Now the campfires and lanterns twinkled about the building in orderly rows, and a long rectangle off to the west marked the Emancipator's landing ground. The chill of autumn fought with the warmth from wood burning in two bronze baskets, and there were fewer bugs splatting themselves there, or against the kerosene lantern on the table beside them. A kettle of sassafras tea kept warm near one brazier; mugs and a platter of cookies stood beside the chessboard.

  Doreen fought to keep her attention on the chessmen; there was something reassuring about the feel of the pre-Event plastic, like an old teddy bear. It was a reminder of a world where your husband wasn't threatened by sadistic surgeon-torturers, or mad ex-Coast-Guard warlords, or barbarians with bronze axes…

  No, just by cancer, muggers, drive-by shootings, and LA drivers, she thought. Plus if it hadn't been for the Event, you'd never have met Ian, not really-never even have considered marrying him, at least. No David then, or Miriam. I'm going to call her Miriam, by God, and Ion's going to be there to help with the diapers!

  "You shouldn't done that," she said to her son. "Look-I'm in a position where you're going to lose this castle, to save your King. In fact…"

  The boy came over and scowled, knotting his brow in thought. Doreen felt her heart turn over; he looked so much like his father when he did that. He was tall for his age, with hands and feet that promised something like his father's inches, but his face and build were more like hers. The Middle Eastern sun had burned him brown over the summer and brought out a few russet highlights in his dark curly hair. The scowl turned into a shrug as he reached out and tipped over his King.