I awoke from a confusion of feverish dreams to a cacophony of singing, fiddling, and stomping, and the first thing I realized was that I was still alive.
…I suppose that’s good, I mused, staring upward into the darkness. With effort, I heaved an arm over my forehead. The hammock swayed and a sour smell made me wrinkle my nose. Was that me? I had a bad feeling that it was.
A deep snore sawed through the noise abovedeck. The shipmaster, audible through the taut sailcloth walls that divided our cabins.
Night, most likely. I felt vaguely proud of my deductive powers, then blinked. And yet … my deductive powers weren’t apparently sharp enough to explain why Captain Tancrède was permitting such a clamor on his deck. Were we being raided? Did raids usually involve music? I hadn’t experienced a raid yet, but I rather thought they involved more yelling, and not … lyrics about an old man?
It’s possible, I reluctantly admitted to myself, that this is another fever dream.
Feeling not unlike a dead horse myself, and becoming increasingly certain that I smelled like one, as well, I struggled upright in my swinging canvas bed. My linen shirt clung to my back, sticky with old perspiration. I shoved greasy strands of hair away from my face and took a silent inventory. I was weak and well-wrung, but clear of head and settled of stomach and bowel.
And very, very full of bladder.
Some things, once acknowledged, can no longer be ignored. I gingerly swung out of the hammock, grasping the ropes to steady myself, and called a candle’s worth of balelight to float over my shoulder. Its pale, sickly white glow filled the cramped, eight-foot-square space that had been allocated to me when I’d signed on as the Imperial Military Ship Chaser’s new sentinel.
It didn’t seem entirely wholesome to pull on fresh white trousers and a button-down shirt over skin still rancid and sticky with sweat, but I couldn’t abide my sweat-soaked garments any longer. I yanked them off and fished out fresh garments, then pulled on my dark blue warrant officer’s coat and utilitarian black shoes. The ensemble lacked all color and elegance, but it didn’t require a servant’s assistance to put on, either; since taking this post, I’d become positively self-sufficient in that regard.
Still, by the time I’d finished tying my hair back into a queue, my hands were shaking. I sat on my sea chest a moment to catch my breath.
What am I doing here? I asked myself, not for the first time, and then promptly replied: I was getting ready to pee.
Right. Bodily necessities trump existential angst.
It seemed pointless to try moving quietly through the wardroom, given the singing and stamping overhead, but I did my best, the balelight floating over my shoulder to light the way. The flimsy wooden doors on either side of the wardroom were all closed. I slipped past the long table and scattered chairs and ducked into the narrow officers’ head.
Feeling infinitely better after taking care of that pressing need, I returned to my larboard cabin and wrinkled my nose. The air inside was stuffy and foul, my sheets damp and dirty. I winced. Better let them air out a moment. Not for the first time, I regretted not packing any liquor in my sea chest.
The ship didn’t seem to be moving. Were we in dock? Might that explain the music? Deciding I’d rather not linger at the site of my own stench, I pulled myself up the ship’s steep stairs — the ‘ladder,’ as the navy insisted on calling it — keeping my hands clenched tightly around the thick rope that served as a handrail. Dark spots danced in front of my eyes as I reached the quarterdeck. I leaned over, bracing my hands on my thighs, and caught my breath. To think, my peers had once considered me an athletic sort. Illness was humbling.
The warm night air smelled sweet and clean, compared to the musky fug below. Up here, I could more clearly make out the song’s lyrics:
“One month a rotten life we’ve led.
While you lay on yer feather bed.
Oh! Poor old man!”
I straightened and looked around. My balelight had slipped back across the Line in my exhaustion, but the ship’s stern lanterns and a nearly full moon illuminated the deck well enough. We were not, in fact, in dock, although the ship’s sails were limp and the ocean around us still.
Behind me, the helm looked half-asleep as she leaned against the motionless great wheel. In front of me, the Chaser’s youngest cadet, a boy of about fourteen with sunburned skin and pale blond hair, stood beside the rail, watching the singers in the forecastle.
“Good evening, Sentinel Saint-Cloud,” he said, as soon as I met his eyes. He inclined his head in a polite nod. “It’s good to see you up and about.”
“Good evening, sir,” I replied, momentarily unable to recall his name. I would never have forgotten a name back in Cislunar, but I still wasn’t at my best. He was Captain Tancrède’s nephew; that much I recalled. “It seems my fever’s broken. Should I … do you want me to report for duty?”
The singing continued:
“But now th’ month is up, ol’ shirk.
So get ye up an’ back to work.
Oh! Poor old man!”
“I’m sure the captain won’t expect you on deck until morning watch,” the cadet replied, studying me. “And Mister Clyve will need to testify to your good health first.”
“Thank you, sir.” I pulled a silk handkerchief from my jacket pocket and dabbed at my damp forehead, finally turning my gaze to the sailors dancing and singing on deck. “Might you be so kind as to explain the purpose of this … celebration? …Where is the officer of the watch?”
The young cadet half-turned.
“The hands are flogging the dead horse. Lieutenant Peck is below, taking a cup of tea, while I have the deck.”
“I see.” I gazed at the dancers, looking in vain for a horse. “Pray, what does it mean, ‘to flog a dead horse’? Does it … does it have something to do with our being becalmed here in the horse latitudes?”
The young cadet couldn’t quite hide the fleeting smile that crossed his otherwise stern face.
“That’s a clever supposition, Sentinel,” he said, as formally as ever, “but the terms are purely coincidental. Some of our hands took an advance on their wages so they could pay off their debts. Tonight they’re done ‘working for free,’ as they’d have it, so they’re enjoying a little celebration. Flogging the dead horse isn’t an Imperial Navy tradition, but a number of our hands have worked merchant ships, and they’d feel cheated if they weren’t allowed the observance. Captain Tancrède is willing to turn a deaf ear as long as the celebration doesn’t get out of hand.”
The singers continued their strange song:
“Get up, ye swine, an’ look for graft.
While we lays on an’ yanks ye aft.
Oh! Poor old man!”
“I see. Thank you.” It was rather like ignoring the servants’ festivities belowstairs, I surmised. I supposed it made sense to let sailors blow off some steam while the ship drifted in mid-ocean without a hint of a breeze. “Might I inconvenience you with another question?”
“Of course, Sentinel.”
“How long have we been becalmed?”
A worried expression darkened the young man’s face and he looked away, as if to hide it.
“For several days. The winds died shortly after you came down with fever, and we’ve been all but motionless since. I don’t suppose you can conjure a wind to speed us along, can you?”
“There is such a thing as balewind,” I said, “but I fear that with my current lack of experience, I’d be as apt to sink us as fill our sails.” I looked up at the confusing criss-cross of masts and lines overhead. “However, I can study the matter, in case it should become necessary.”
The dancers swung around, capering into a circle of lantern light. One of the women wore a costume pieced together from motley rags, and now at last I saw that she held a bare horse’s skull in both hands. Pale bone gleamed as the skull tilted and swooped.
I flinched and the cadet — Tobin Cutter, that was his name! — cocked his head at my reaction.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t be out here in the night air, Sentinel. Would you like me to awaken the doctor?”
“No, no, thank you, Cadet Cutter. I’m quite well, I assure you.” My gaze remained on the bobbing skull. How astonishing, the rush of memories such a simple object could muster.
This skull was different from the one that had terrified me as a child. This skull was battered and worn and missing its lower jaw, whereas the skull of the Bone Horse had been lovingly polished and wrapped with ribbons. And instead of being danced around the deck of a ship rocking gently in warm southern climes, the Bone Horse had pranced through the narrow streets of Cislunar on the longest night of winter, rolling bulging eyes and snapping hinged jaws.
“How did the crew obtain a horse’s skull?” I asked, a bit faintly. “We must be far from any shore.”
“An’ yanks ye aft t’ th’ cabin door.
An’ hopes we’ll never see ye more.
Oh! Poor old man!”
“Carried in someone’s sea chest, I daresay,” Cutter replied. “The experienced hands anticipate certain celebrations and like to be prepared.”
“I see.” His answer was mundane enough, but I still felt a cold prickle run down my back as the ‘dead horse’ bobbed and wove about the deck. I shifted my gaze to discern the Line, seeking irregularities, but nothing seemed out of order. The barrier was intact, the planes soundly separated.
It’s just a dance, I chided myself. It had been just a dance in Cislunar, too, although I’d found it a more frightening one … especially after my little brother had gotten his hands on a papier-mâché horse mask and started leaping out at me from empty doorways. The memory brought a surge of grief that made me close my eyes. It had become one of those family jokes, his teasing a seasonal tradition and my annoyance at it a performance to make the family laugh.
A cheer arose from the forecastle. I opened my eyes in time to see the skull and motley rags stripped off the dancer, leaving her in plain sailor’s slops. The costume was carried to the side of the ship and with a shout, the sailors heaved the whole bundle into the ocean.
I leaned out over the bulwark, one hand steadying myself on the shroud as I tracked the pale object plunging toward the water. The skull vanished below the surface, then bobbed back up, a ghostly shape in the moonlight. It rotated in the water until one empty eye socket stared upward at me and then sank again, vanishing into the dark depths. A pale flicker like submerged lightning lit the water for a split-second, and I gasped, discerning again. Nothing. I spun and raked my gaze over the ship’s deck.
Nothing. Nobody glowed with a hint of bale, and I couldn’t find any breach or break in the Line. The crew was laughing and clapping, and nothing seemed amiss.
“Trick of the light,” I muttered to myself, uneasily. Or a fish’s scales catching the moonlight, or perhaps some mysterious oceanic phosphorescence. The ocean was a strange place, and I was almost certainly the only sentinel for hundreds of miles around.
Nothing to raise an alarm over, I decided. I was just jumpy. I used to pride myself on my imperturbability, but that had been before my life had been blown apart.
The sailors gave a few more cheers and hallos, but the music was over and the instruments quickly spirited below, disappearing along with a number of sailors who were, no doubt, supposed to be sleeping.
“Is there anything you require, Sentinel?” Cutter asked. “Are you hungry?”
“No, no, thank you, Cadet.” I cast one last look at the dark, empty expanse of water around us. “I appreciate your patience with my questions.”
“My pleasure,” Cutter said. “If you’ll excuse me….”
“Of course. Good night, sir.” I slowly made my way back down below deck, only to spot Lieutenant Peck striding toward the main hatchway, his tea break apparently over now that the festivities had concluded. He gave a stiff nod as I stepped to one side.
“Good evening, Sentinel. I’m pleased to find you in better health.”
“Thank you, sir.” I wasn’t certain whether his chilly tone indicated the distance between a lieutenant and a wardroom officer, an indication of his feelings about sentinels, or something more personal. To be fair, I was the most inexperienced member of the crew by far, and I hadn’t been on the ship very long before falling ill. I couldn’t really fault him if he were harbouring doubts about my competence. Still, it rankled.
In my defense, my fever had almost surely been caused by the ship’s abysmal food and sanitation, as well as a grave shortage of sleep. According to the Navy, I was an “idler,” which meant I was allowed to sleep until two bells into the morning watch — or the abominable hour of 5 a.m., as we called it at home. However, since I hadn’t yet learned how to sleep through the changing of the watch or the early-morning scrubbing of the deck, my privileged status had done me little good with regard to actually getting any rest at night.
With a sense that I’d been obscurely chastised, I re-entered my cabin and sank into its only chair. The ever-present miasma of old food and unwashed bodies that haunted the lower decks was newly oppressive after a few minutes of fresh air. I pushed back a few loose curls of hair and then lowered my hand, gazing at it. My fingers were trembling. Was it from taking exercise in my weakened state or from seeing that damned horse skull?
I’ll buy some whiskey at the next port, I decided. For medicinal purposes.
Finding comfort in the thought, I climbed back onto my fetid sheets and fell into an exhausted sleep. In my dreams, I was trying to find a way out of the labyrinthine lower decks of the ship, but with every turn I came face-to-face with the Bone Horse, its polished bone skull glowing like bale. And no matter how fast I ran to escape it, I could hear its long, skeletal limbs creaking and groaning just a few steps behind me.
At some point that night, I woke up long enough to realize the creaking and groaning I was hearing was the sound of the ship’s timbers. The wind had returned, and the Chaser was in motion once again.