The Merchant of Dreams (Night's Masque, #2)(37)

"Wasn't that the bell for first watch?" Mal went on. "Perhaps we should wait until the crew have changed places before we get in their way."

After a moment Ned took the hint. Hansford and his accomplices were in the third watch, and would be going to their hammocks soon.

"All right," he said. "But we only have one sword between us. How will we manage?"

"I don't trust you yet with edged steel," Mal said with a smile. "I've no wish to die of a festering cut before we reach Venice. There's bound to be something on board we can use as wasters."

He got to his feet and went in search of the ship's carpenter. Half an hour later he returned with two short poles, similar in size and weight to cudgels.

"I'm afraid you'll get a few bruised knuckles, since there's no cross-guard," he told Ned, tossing one of the poles across the table.

Ned caught it easily.

"I've had worse," he replied with a grin.

They practised every morning on deck after that, starting about an hour after breakfast and stopping only when the sun got too high in the sky. Their route had taken them south of Spain, within sight of the North African coast, before heading northeastwards into the heart of the Mediterranean, and the weather was now as hot as a summer's afternoon in England, though it was only the middle of March.

Mal was right about the rapped knuckles, Ned thought ruefully as he braced himself for another attack. He had always wondered if the fancy hilt of Mal's rapier was just for decoration, but he was beginning to appreciate how its graceful curves might deflect a blow away from its wielder's fingers. He was not as badly outmatched as he had feared, though; Mal was still unsteady on the pitching deck, and had been impressed by the ease with which Ned had mastered his footwork.

"Good," Mal said, after another repeat of their usual drill. "Now, I'm going to come at you and I want you to defend yourself. Don't try to hit me back; you're not going to kill a man in a fight if you get killed first."

Ned tried to relax into the stance he had been taught: right foot forward, waster level with the ground and pointing inwards towards his opponent, left hand raised close to his body to stop a backhand blow. Mal kept his weapon low, his eyes never leaving Ned's, challenging him to guess where the next attack would come from.

Mal's cudgel moved in a blur, but somehow Ned blocked it, his arm seeming to move of its own accord.

"Very good. Again."

Each time the blow came in at a different angle. Sometimes Ned parried; often he did not. At least these bruises were well-earned.

At last Mal called a halt.

"I think that's enough for one day," he said, tossing his cudgel to Ned.

Ned caught the weapon and sagged against the rail. Both their shirts were soaked with sweat and sticking to their backs, but Mal was otherwise as fresh as when they'd begun. Ned watched in mingled admiration, envy and lust as his former lover strode, slightly unsteadily, across the deck to their cabin.

"Fancy a trial o' the ratlines?"

Ned looked around sharply, fearing to see Hansford, but it was just one of the younger sailors, a man of about his own age with spiky blond hair and a powder-burn cutting a swathe through his scrubby beard. He stood on the rail, holding onto the rigging, as if it were the most natural place in the world.

"The what?"

The sailor indicated the rigging: a set of seven or eight stout cables, joined by horizontal lengths of rope to make a crude ladder. They were hitched somewhere on the outside of the ship and converged on a tiny platform high above them. It made Ned dizzy just to look at it. He swallowed hard.

"A jest only," the man said, leaping down onto the deck. "Captain Raleigh won't thank us if one of his passengers is tossed into the sea."

"Are you saying I can't do it?"

"Well…"

"You're on."

He put the cudgels down and went back to the rail. The ratlines were just within arm's reach, out beyond the safety of the deck, and he quickly scrambled up, standing on the rail with his hands clenched on the cross-ropes. The ship rolled gently beneath him. Best get this over with.

He swung his feet out towards the ratlines, trying not to think of the fact he was now hanging over the side of the ship. His feet caught, and he clung to the lines for a moment, muttering prayers he thought he'd forgotten. Taking a deep breath he began to climb.

It wasn't so bad once you got going. There was a rhythm to the ship's movement, and the cross-ropes were spaced close enough together to be an easy reach for all but the smallest cabin boy. If it weren't for the prospect of having to do this kind of thing in a gale, he could almost see himself taking up a sailor's life.

He managed to get a third of the way up before he made the mistake of looking down. And saw nothing but sea below him.

It was some moments before he opened his eyes again and realised he was clinging to the tarred rope so tightly his hands had started to bleed. To calm his nerves he forced himself to breathe deeply and focus on the horizon. There. A ship, smaller than the Falcon, with triangular sails on its foremast, coming towards them.

Coming towards them.
"Sail ahoy!" cried the lookout. "Corsairs!"
Ned's stomach turned over. The crew whiled away their rare moments of leisure by swapping tales of the corsairs' cruelty and the various horrible fates awaiting those taken captive. Most able-bodied men ended up in North Africa, labouring in quarries or worse still chained to a bench on a galley, with no choice but to eat, sleep, piss and shit where they sat. Either way they would be worked to death in the space of a couple of years.