Dawnshard (The Stormlight Archive, #3.5)(36)
The Lopen gained new respect for the Thaylen sailors as the ship breached the storm around Akinah.
He’d spent the last few weeks sitting with them at meals, climbing with them on the rigging, scrubbing the deck alongside them, or swapping stories as they swung in their hammocks at night. He’d even picked up a little Thaylen. He was living on a sailing ship, so he figured—sure—the best way to pass the time was to follow Huio’s example and try to become a sailor.
Lopen had heard them talk about the terrifying experience of facing down winds and rain while on the sea. You didn’t sail a storm, they’d explained. You hung on, tried to steer, and hoped to survive until the end. He’d felt the frightened tone in their voices, but Damnation, he felt something ten times worse as the Wandersail headed into the strange storm.
He’d flown about in storms, sure. He was a Windrunner. But this was different. Something primal inside him cringed as the wind made the water churn and froth. Something that trembled as the darkening sky painted the ocean with new ominous shadows. Something deep in his heart that said, “Hey, Lopen. This was a baaaaad idea, mancha.”
Rua, naturally, took it with a grin on his face, having adopted the shape of a skyeel with human features. He swam through the air around Lopen’s head as the ship began to sway like a child’s toy in the bath.
“Lopen!” Turlm called, rushing past with a rope. “You may want to get belowdecks. It’s about to get wet up here!”
“I won’t melt, hregos!” Lopen called back.
Turlm laughed and continued on. Good man, Turlm was. Had six daughters—six—back home in Thaylen City. Ate with his mouth open, but always shared his booze.
At his warning, Lopen took a solid hold on the railing. It was strange to see the ship stripped of most of its sails, like a skeleton without the flesh. But this ship, sure, was special. Fabrial pumps would supposedly keep it bailed, no matter how much water washed onto the deck. And there were stabilizers that used attractor fabrials. Those would shift weights around in the hull—crazy, that stuff was built inside the hull—and keep the ship from capsizing.
At the captain’s orders, the oars came out. They used those for fine maneuvering when trying to ram enemy ships, but here they could reposition the ship to take big waves the right way. When caught in bad weather, ships would try to “run” the storm. That meant going with the wind, only in a specific way that sounded extremely technical to Lopen. He’d nodded anyway, since the words had been quite interesting, particularly coming from the lips of mostly drunk men.
They couldn’t simply run the storm here though. They had to breach it, reach its core. So they’d follow the storm in a loop around Akinah, slowly edging inward, ever inching toward the center. And they had to keep ahead of the waves, which meant sometimes colliding with other ones in front. They’d need to “head” those waves: keep the ship going straight at them, breaking them across the bow. The oars would help keep them positioned for that.
It felt downright heroic to meet these winds with only one small stormsail maintained by a few valiant sailors. The rest were below, either at the oars or maintaining the fabrials. Lopen didn’t see how the sail wouldn’t just blow them all over the place, but they all said it would work. They’d also tied bags of oil over the side of the ship too, with punctures to leak—which they said would keep the water from spraying so much on the deck.
The captain stood firm and shouted her orders into the wind, sending them straight into the gullet of the beast. And by the Halls themselves, if the sailors didn’t take it with determination and grit.
The wind picked up further, blowing sprays of water across Lopen’s face. Huio hadn’t wanted to come up above, had said Lopen was crazy for insisting on being on deck. And yes, cold water began to seep through his unders to prickle his skin. But storms, it was an incredible view. The lightning made the water seem to spark, transparent, and huge froths of it surged into the air. A storm on land was a sight to behold, sure, but a storm on the waters . . . this was majestic. Also horrifying.
“This is amazing!” Lopen said, pulling himself along the railing so he was closer to Vlxim, the day’s helmsman. Three other men stood at the ready to help Vlxim wrestle the wheel to control the rudder. That was common on ordinary ships, but this one had some kind of mechanism to help the helmsman, and so it might not be needed.
“You haven’t seen anything!” Vlxim shouted. He was bald like Huio, which made his eyebrows look extra amusing to Lopen—particularly wet as they were. But he played a mean mouth harp. “We’ve trained to sail into highstorms on this ship if we have to! I’ve actually been through one! Waves as high as mountains, Lopen!”
“Ha!” Lopen said. “You haven’t seen anything. I was once in a place where Everstorm and highstorm met, and in that, the rock flowed like water and—sure—entire chunks broke like waves against one another. I had to run up one side, then slide down the other. Ruined my storming trousers!”
“Enough!” the captain yelled over the wind. “I don’t have time for you two to compare sizes. Vlxim, one point to port!”
The captain eyed Lopen, and he gave her a salute—because they were on her ship, and here she outranked even the people who outranked her. But he got the feeling that the captain was the kind of person who had been born an officer, coming right on out of her mom with a hat on and everything. People like that didn’t understand; bragging wasn’t about making yourself look good, but about convincing the other guy you weren’t afraid, which was completely different.