Following a hunter's instinct, Pyra Quadde set her course back toward land, moving northerly, hoping to pick up one of the mighty schools of whales that broached and sunned themselves off the deserted coves.
The sun shone brightly, and the last of the blubber was finally rendered in the ovens and stored in sealed barrels below the main deck. The whaleboats were cleaned, lowered and raised again, the men on the davits chanting an old whaling capstan song to lighten the chore.
Though the sun shone brilliantly, Ryan noticed that dark clouds were building up, far away ahead of them, thunderheads that rolled and bubbled, filled with venomous lightning, streaked with white splashes across the violet sky.
"Yeah," said one of the other sailors, when he mentioned it to him. "Over the land, that is. Wind rips it apart and pushes it our way. Could be bad from the height of them chem clouds."
"How come the sea's so flat?" Donfil asked.
It was true. The waves had flattened out and disappeared, and even the long ocean swell had almost gone. The ship sailed gently on, as if it were a child's toy, placed upon a painted, mirrored sea. The sails flapped idly on the yards and the helmsman spun the wheel, looking for a breath of a breeze to help them on their way.
Captain Quadde had a canvas chair brought out and placed on the quarterdeck, where she sat and watched her crew with a baleful eye. It was warm, and she'd changed out of her heavy sweaters.
Now she wore a white blouse, with torn, dirty lace at collar and cuffs. One sleeve was ripped from elbow to wrist. The material was thin, and it was possible to see that the woman wore nothing beneath it. The dark circles of her nipples pushed at the tight blouse.
Her skirt was cotton, pale blue, covered with food and drink stains down the front. It was too tight for her around the waist, and she'd tried to pin it shut. But it revealed a gap of rolling fat. Her wide belt carried the belaying pin on one side and the .44 on the other. Her legs and feet were bare, the toenails crooked and jagged.
She had a bottle of the usquebaugh at her side, as well as a chipped tankard of clouded glass. By late afternoon she was visibly, and audibly, drunk.
"No fugging whales in the whole fugging sea. She was only a fishmonger's daughter, but she knew how to lie on the fragging slab and say fill it! Fillet! Where's the pigging whales gone? Must be the outlander with his one fucking eye and all bad luck. Like whistling on deck. Brings lucking bad fuck, it does. Yeah, it does."
Around noon the lookout from the masthead had called down that he could see the top spars of another ship. Shadowing them, so he said. But he couldn't make out enough of the cut of the jib to be certain that it was still the Bartleby, searching for her missing children.
"Course it's them," Quadde shouted. "Preaching Biddy Delano! May his balls rot and his cock wither and his ass leak his brains all over his clean frogging decks."
Each change of lookout reported the same sight. Just on the edge of seeing, only the top spars visible, keeping her distance, beating in toward the stormy land at the same speed as the Salvation. Maybe just a knot or two faster.
"Don't keep telling me the same, or I'll have thee bunking 'stead of th'outlander."
So, after that, none of the crew mentioned to their captain that the whaling ship on the horizon was steadily creeping in closer. Cyrus Ogg ventured to mention to Second Mate Walsh that in his humble opinion the other vessel wasn't necessarily the Bartlebyunder Captain Delano. He certainly wasn't about to hazard his lay on whose ship it was. But the set of the mizzenmast reminded him very much of the Phoenix, Captain Deacon in command.
Dusk was beginning to ease itself across the mirrored sea. The wind had just begun to freshen again, bringing the threat of the storm clouds even closer. Now, from the crow's nest, it was possible to make out a gray smudge away to the north, beneath the dancing daggers of the lightning.
"Shore, right enough," Johnny Flynn confirmed, sitting behind the tryworks, exercising the joints of his broken finger.
"How far off?" Ryan asked.
"Good many sea miles, yet, cully," the sailor replied.
"The chem storm looks closer."
Flynn spit over the side of the ship, nodding his agreement. "Aye, outlander, it is that. Me da's da spoke of the years after the long winters and the red fires. Said they had storms then as a man would die in. Off the sea it'd rain purest acid and strip the flesh off of thy bones faster than a pack of mutie sharks. Lightning spears so thick and fast a man couldn't hope to dodge 'em. But... we still get good blows now and again. Best beat away from 'em."
The wind was freshening, growing stronger with every minute that passed. Already the sea was patterned with lacy cat's-paws, and the sails were straining at the yards.
Pyra Quadde got up from her comfortable chair and vanished below, reappearing a minute later in her more familiar garb of seaboots, sweater and longer skirt. But the gun and the belaying pin were still at her belt.
"Be all hands to reef soon enough," Flynn muttered.
But the voice, cracking with excitement from the masthead, altered that.
"They blow! Three... five... a dozen or more! A great school of right whales."
"Where away?" the captain shouted, squinting aloft, as was most of the crew.
"Port bow, ma'am. Large a school as ever I seen! There!" An outstretched arm, like a hunting dog, pointed to the whales.
"Helm over!" she yelled to the helmsman in his shelter. "Mr. Ogg! Mr. Walsh! Boats' crews at the ready. Hands to the davits! We've struck lucky at last."
Ryan was one of the men nearest to Pyra Quadde. Cyrus Ogg was standing right by him, and he walked up to his captain. His face was worried, mouth working nervously as he peered out over the bow, toward the maelstrom of spray where the whales were broaching, visible now from the deck.
In the direction of the looming menace of the storm.
"Captain," he began.
"What is it, Mr. Mate?"
"There's a bad squall yonder."
"I see it."
"We lower and hunt, then the whaleboats will be in peril."
"Aye, Mr. Ogg. What of it?" Ryan noticed her right hand was creeping down to touch the shining wood of the heavy belaying pin. But her face was solid, betraying no emotion.
"Dost thou not think it a danger, Captain?"
"Aye. Our lives are danger, Cyrus Ogg. Who knows when infinity will strike us down and pluck us to the bosom of Abraham?"
"Truly. But I think it would be safer and better to haul off for three hours or so. The whales will not move far."
"Ah, thoudost think, dost thou? It would be safer andbetter! I think not."
The mate didn't move, balanced against the increased rocking of the ship, hands at his side, licking his lips. Jehu stood next to Ryan, and he began to patter a kind of a prayer beneath his breath.
"Save him, brave him, grave him. Shut up his mouth and seal his eyes and fill his mouth with oysters and tell him lies, lies, lies."
"Thou still dost stands to argue with me, Cyrus Ogg? Dost thou?"
"The storm will take the dories under."
"That storm?" She pointed with her left hand, ahead of the ship. The mate followed her finger, staring toward the silver-slashed murk.
And Pyra Quadde hit him.
The belaying pin was more than a foot long, tapering down from the thickness of a child's wrist, and was made of ironwood. She smashed the heavy end into Ogg's mouth, knocking him clean off his feet. There was the unmistakable sound of teeth splintering. Blood poured from the crushed lips, and the man rolled over, struggling to rise, spitting out shards of crimsoned bone, shaking his head like a steer under the poleax.
Captain Quadde stood and looked down at him. "Get blood on my boots, Mr. Ogg, and thou shalt lick it off. Go forrard and obey my orders. Now!"
The last word cracked like a bullwhip. With a great effort the first mate managed to stand, eyes glazed with shock. He tugged a dark blue kerchief from his pocket and stuffed it against his smashed mouth.
At that moment Second Mate Walsh came running aft, pausing as he saw the tableau. And the spreading pool of blood.
"What's been?.." he began, words faltering and dying.
"What's thy business, mister?" the captain growled, caressing the long, blunt club. She frowned down at it, then picked away a jagged piece of one of Ogg's front teeth from the tough wood.
"I was..."
"Thou hast not come to tell me that the sea is rough and the skies dark, or some other milksop toss-water whining, hast thou?"
"No. I was..." Words failed him and he stood, miserably, head down.
"Next man crosses me takes the place of Outlander Cawdor tonight," she said, grinning wolfishly at Ryan. "Think on that. Mr. Walsh, I think thou had come to tell me thy boat should be first into the water for the chase. Didst thou not?"
"No." He was shocked at her words.
"What?" She lifted the club to her shoulder, making the man step hurriedly away from her. "Wouldst thou kiss the bottom of this ship from side to side and stern to stern, Mr. Walsh?"
"No, ma'am. I mean that I wanted to get thee to allow my whaleboat to be first to the water."
She smiled at that, her little eyes glinting with a perverse pleasure at the range of her powers over the crew. "Then thou shalt. And Outlander Cawdor's place tonight to pleasure with me is still snug and safe."
The crew was sent to reef. Flynn explained to Ryan that the greatest danger to a sailer was to get caught by such a storm on a lee coast, trapped there without enough sea room to work her way clear. The sighting of the school of whales had been less than a half mile from the rocky shore, near the heart of the raging chem squall.
"I swear it will be a close-run thing," he said. "The clouds stoop and kiss the waves. They race upon us. It was always said that Pyra Quadde would chase a right whale into the very jaws of Satan himself. Now she will prove that. And take every man of the Salvationwith her."
"Why not stop her?" Donfil suggested, blinking spray from his deep-set eyes.
Flynn grinned. "Why not place thy pagan head between the jaws of a great white and bid it to be gentle with thee?"
The lookout reported that the great school of whales had vanished in the shifting murk of the chem storm, but that news did nothing to check the woman in her wild lust to hunt and to butcher. Whatever the cost.
Groping claws of blackness stretched clear across the sky, with a few shreds of vivid cobalt-blue trapped and shrinking between them.
"Man the davits. Mr. Walsh to lower away first!" the captain yelled, her voice fading under the eldritch cry of the storm.
Ryan stood, hands on the ropes, ready to begin the launching of the whaleboat. Each wave snarled higher, white-topped. He glanced around, but his horizon was limited by the waves of the raging ocean, a gray-green, obliterating the land, hiding the tumbling whales ahead of them, hiding the masts of the ship that had been shadowing them. That ship had been completely forgotten in the thrill of the gale and the excitement of the chase to come.
Ogg — kerchief still held to his bleeding mouth — was at Ryan's side, ready to give the orders. Walsh, face pale as a winding-sheet, was already at the tiller, his crew climbing slowly and fearfully to their places.
"I fear it will mean good sailors going to a chilling," Ogg said very quietly.
The wind tore at Ryan's clothes, and the salt spray soaked him clear to the skin. The ocean boiled with the fury of the storm. Yet so great was the fear of Pyra Quadde, that not a single man raised a voice against her orders to launch the frail whaleboat into the howling inferno.
"We'll be on the lee shore in minutes at this rate," Flynn screamed, mouth inches from Ryan's ears.
Ryan had rarely seen such a ferocious chem storm. Up in the Darks there were winds that would tear through the steep valleys and rip the land away from the bedrock. Some of the hot spots in the West and Southwest of the Deathlands were the birthing places for dreadful hurricanes, whipping up nuke-fire from the missile pits, bringing the bone-sick death to anyone unlucky enough to be caught out in them. He'd been locked safe in a massive war wag and felt it rock and vibrate with the force of winds, had found its painted metal wiped clear by the shredding sands.
But he'd never faced such a storm with only a single layer of fragile wood between him and a plunging death.
"Lower!" Pyra Quadde yelled.
The Phoenix had laid off from the shore, avoiding the worst of the storm. But even on the fringes it was a terrifying experience. Jak was hanging onto the shrouds, throwing up over the side. His other hand clutched the butt of his heavy Magnum pistol.
Captain Deacon had taken the wheel himself, with Doc standing in the steering cabin with him. There were two lookouts in the crosstrees, lashed there for safety, and two extra men in the eyes of the ship, peering through the murk.
"She is crazed," the skipper said, teeth gritted. "They say she goes after the school of whales we sighted. They were within a league or less of the rocks, and she goes grinning to perdition. I fear thy friends are likely doomed, Dr. Tanner."
The old man clung to the rail around the shelter, as though his life and his reason depended upon it. His voice was cracked and low. "And the second of the angels poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man. And every living soul died in the sea."
"Book of the Revelations, Doctor. Know it right well."
"It spoke truly of the day of judgement," Doc said. "Day of sky dark and long winter. The Good Book talks about that. A mighty earthquake and the sun became as black as sackcloth of hair and the moon became blood. The stars of heaven fell to earth. The great men, the captains, the kings, the rich, the successful, the military, the powerful and the poor... all of them departed. That was a great cleansing, Captain Deacon. A great cleansing."
The whaling skipper said nothing, concentrating on holding his course, keeping sea room. Away from the eye of the storm where he knew the Salvationhad vanished.
The rope strained in the blocks as the crew lowered the first of the whaleboats to the sea. Normally each crew would lower for itself, but the water was far too rough for that. Long before they actually reached the end of the rope, the tops of the waves were snarling around the flanks of the dory.
"Faster, ye cockless scum!" Pyra Quadde yelled.
The davits squeaked as the boat was dropped in a rush. The moment it splashed down, it was swamped by a huge wave, tearing it from the mother ship, snapping the retaining ropes like thin cotton. Every man aboard was immediately tipped out into the turbulent ocean.
Walsh and one other member of the boat's crew were saved. The rest vanished utterly into the raging waves and were never seen again.
The Salvationwas less than two hundred paces from the surf pounding on the jagged boulders of the shore.