Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(83)

She was asleep, breathing gently. He let out a long breath of ease and rose from the bed. Good. Let her rest. She is in need of a long rest. He exited the cabin and eased the door shut. He needed a rest as well; everything was blurry. He looked to Lurjen, pressed his fingers to his sore eyes. ‘I’m going to find a hammock.’ He went below.

*

Three days later they encountered the first drifting vessel. It was a broad-beamed merchant caravel, dead in the water. Its sails hung limp. Jute hailed it from the Dawn’s side, but no one answered. A launch was sent across from the Resolute. It carried some ten Blue Shield mercenaries; more than enough to meet any danger. Word came back that they’d found the ship empty of all life, as if the crew had just up and abandoned it mid-voyage. Meals lay half eaten, ropes half coiled. All without signs of any violence. No corpses, no evidence of any struggle.

It made even Jute uneasy and he was the least superstitious person he knew. The crew began muttering of curses and becalmings, haunts and murder. Everyone was on edge. Buen reported to him the bizarre rumour that accused the sorceress, Lady Orosenn, of dragging them all to their doom.

He’d laughed out loud when Buen repeated it to him, yet the strange thing was that the man had actually appeared hurt, as if he’d half believed it himself.

Ieleen had been bedridden since Lady Orosenn’s intervention, and when he’d told her of the rumours she hadn’t laughed. She’d looked very worried, and murmured, ‘We have to get through here as quickly as we can.’

Every day they sighted more of the drifting, abandoned vessels. Seventeen so far. They stopped bothering to send out launches to investigate. That was until they came abreast of a two-masted galley that Jute recognized as a Genabackan vessel, a craft the pirates of the south preferred. And there, standing amidships, was a man.

Jute hailed him, waving. The man did not wave back. He stood immobile, as if staring in disbelief. Jute looked at his own crew and was unnerved to see that they, too, we’re not waving or hailing. Why in the name of Mael not?

‘Buen,’ he called, ‘lower a launch.’

The first mate stared back up at him, rubbed a hand over his jaws. ‘Why, sir?’

‘Why? How can you ask that? There’s a man on board that vessel, that’s why.’

Buen peered about among his fellow crewmen. ‘We saw no one, captain.’

‘No one? You saw no one?’ He snapped his gaze back to the vessel. The figure was gone. Had he been there at all? Had it been … a ghost?

Jute slammed a hand to the railing. No! No damned ghosts! A man. Nothing more.

‘Ship’s boat coming alongside!’ the watch announced. Jute hurried down to the side. It was the dilapidated launch from the Ragstopper. Half the oarsmen rowed while the other half bailed furiously. Cartheron sat within, his legs stretched out, his leather shoes wet in the swilling water. He hailed Jute: ‘Going to take a look. Interested?’

‘Yes I am!’ He turned to Dulat. ‘Lower the ladder.’

The rope ladder was thrown over the side and he climbed down to the launch. It took a while to settle down into the battered rowboat, as it was so low in the water he was afraid his added weight would swamp the thing. But it took him, although the freeboard was a bare hand’s breadth. The Malazan sailors, in their tattered shirts and trousers, scarves tied over their heads, looked more piratical than any pirate crew Jute had ever seen. They pushed off and started rowing.

‘Thought I saw someone,’ Cartheron said from the bow.

‘As did I. The crew claimed they didn’t, though.’

Cartheron sagely nodded his grey-bristled chin. ‘Beginning to think you see or don’t see what you want on this sea.’

Jute shook his head. All part of the curse. Tricks of the mind. Delusions became real while reality itself drifted away.

They came up beside the dead vessel, which they saw was called the Sea Strike. No one answered their hail; Jute hadn’t expected them to. Cartheron ordered one of his sailors to climb the side and the man impressed Jute mightily by clambering up the planking as agile and sure as a monkey. Shortly afterwards a rope ladder came clattering down.

The deck was empty and abandoned, just like all the others. This one was far worse for wear, however; bird-droppings covered the deck, and the lines and sails were faded and frayed. Still, like the others, there were no obvious signs of violence.

‘Hello!’ Cartheron called. No one answered. The Malazan captain went to the cabin door. ‘Let’s have a look.’

Jute had turned away, meaning to investigate the bows, when a shriek spun him round. A shrill voice, hardly recognizable as human, had screeched: ‘At last!’

Cartheron stood impaled on a sword that a man, lunging from the cabin, had thrust straight out.

The Malazan had his hands pressed to his stomach around the blade. While everyone stared, stunned, the sword’s owner shrank from them, hands raised, his face white and his eyes rolling in mad terror.

‘Ghosts!’ the man yelled, and charged the side, toppling straight over.

‘No!’ Jute yelled. He lunged, but there was no sign of the fellow. It was as if he’d simply allowed himself to sink.

A wet cough brought his attention back to Cartheron. The Malazan had yanked the blade free and fallen to his knees. Jute and the sailors blinked away their stunned confusion and went to him. Jute gathered up folds of the captain’s shirt and pressed it to the wound. ‘Make a seat,’ he shouted to the gathered crewmen. ‘We have to lower him.’