Stormcall #2
"I can make them hear me."
Teren's head turned. "Then tell them to stop behaving like idiots." Marin answered before he did. "He can give them information." Teren stared at her.
"Is this a legal distinction?"
"Currently a survival distinction."
A wave struck the packet broadside. Three people fell against the rail.
Oliver stepped to Lark's bow. He drew breath.
The first attempt came out too ordinary.
Wind ripped the words away before they crossed thirty yards.
He tasted salt. Rain hit his teeth. Somewhere beneath the sound of the storm, the Strait held an older quiet.
Oliver found it.
"PACKET CREW."
His voice crossed the water. It did not become louder in his own ears. It became present somewhere else. Enough heads turned on the packet almost together to tell him the voice had crossed. A thrill went through him that had nothing to do with Hunger.
There you are. The joy was immediate and shamefully bright. Sea beneath him. Weather trying to tear the world into pieces. Marin braced against the mast with rain running down her face. A difficult thing asking to be done.
Oliver grinned into the gale.
"YOUR AFT TOW RING IS STILL CLEAR. IF YOU WANT LARK'S LINE, GET EVERYONE OFF THAT QUARTER AND GIVE YOUR DECKHAND ROOM."
The words carried. Movement spread through the packet. Some passengers obeyed at once. Two did not. An older man clung to the aft rail, shouting back toward someone inside. A woman beside him refused to move until a child emerged from the cabin. The deckhand waved frantically for them to clear.
Oliver did not tell them again. He changed the information.
"THE NEXT HEAVY SET IS COMING FROM YOUR PORT QUARTER. HOLD WHAT YOU HAVE OR MOVE INLAND OF THE MAST. YOUR CHOICE."
The older man looked toward the cabin. Then stayed where he was and tied himself to the rail. Teren glanced at Oliver. "He's going to get killed."
"Maybe."
"You could make him move?"
Oliver felt the question in Marin's attention.
"I don't know," he said. "I'm not finding out on him."
Teren swore at the universe and ordered the towline made ready.
Ordinary work took over. Lark's deck crew carried a heaving line forward.
The first throw fell short. The second struck the packet's rail and washed away before anyone caught it.
A third sailor clipped himself to the bow and prepared another coil.
Oliver watched the sea rather than possibility. Wave rhythm. Hull drift. The packet slewed each time its ruined paddle housing caught the break. The next set would push its stern toward them.
"Don't throw yet," he said.
The sailor looked at Teren. Teren looked at the water. "Why?"
"We're about to get closer without asking."
The wave came. Lark climbed. Packet rolled. The distance collapsed by almost half.
"Now."
The sailor threw. The line crossed. A packet crewman caught it around one arm and nearly went overboard. Another seized his belt. They hauled the heavier tow across. A cheer started and died when the packet's damaged paddle box broke free.
Wood and iron entered the sea together. The wreckage swung on one remaining brace like a door. It struck Lark's bow. The cutter lurched sideways. Oliver's safety line snapped taut. His ribs lit with pain. Marin disappeared from his immediate sight.
He hated the half second before finding her. She was on one knee beside the mast, clipped in, right hand locked around Kelm's belt while Kelm hung half over the lee rail. The captain's boots found the deck. Marin shoved him upright.
"Still clinically annoyed?" Oliver called.
She looked at him as though murder had become medicinal.
"Later."
Promising indeed. The towline came under strain before Teren wanted it. Lark's stern swung toward the breaking shoal.
"Ease! EASE IT!"
The aft crew tried. The line had crossed itself around the bollard.
Marin was already moving. She reached the knot first and stopped before putting her injured left hand into it.
Oliver saw the decision. She caught a marlinspike from the deck rack with her right, drove it under the loaded turn and shouted for slack.
There was none. Kelm joined her. "Cut it?"
"Not yet."
"We lose the stern if it loads another ten seconds."
"Then give me eight."
Oliver laughed despite himself. Marin looked up. "You taught me that."
"I regret everything."
"No, you don't."
She was correct in several indecently attractive ways. The packet yawed. The trapped turn tightened. Oliver saw the knife in Kelm's hand and the easiest answer in the back of his mind. One excluded continuation and the line could simply fail to jam.
Power waited. He left it waiting. Oliver crossed the pitching deck, took the marlinspike from Marin when the angle required two hands and planted his left shoulder against the bollard housing.
His right hand could guide, not pull. Kelm hauled slack from the free end.
Marin used her boot to keep the crossing turn from reseating.
"Again," she said.
They worked it. Wood creaked. Rope screamed against iron. Oliver's ribs objected with astonishing vocabulary. The turn came free. Kelm dumped slack through the bitt. Teren brought Lark's screw around. The cutter's stern cleared the shoal by perhaps six feet.
Oliver breathed once and discovered Marin still had one hand against his back, checking rather than supporting him.
Her fingers spread between his shoulder blades.
Lightning flashed. The shadow beneath her hand did not match the angle of either lantern or sky.
It rose over Oliver's shoulders in two black arcs, almost wings if one were sentimental, almost claws if one were not.
The shape slid down his back when the light vanished.
Marin's fingers remained exactly where they were. Oliver looked over his shoulder.
"You saw that."
"Yes."
"Any professional comment?"
Her eyes dropped briefly to his mouth before returning to his face.
"Your back is still attached."
The simple touch, the storm, the knowledge of what waited under his skin and beside his shadow combined into a pulse of heat sharp enough to make him forget the cold.
Marin felt him notice. Her thumb moved once against the wet fabric between his shoulders.
Deliberate. Then she removed her hand and turned back to the line.
Later had acquired excellent prospects. A shout rose from the packet. The tow had begun to move them, but the passenger vessel was taking water faster now. The stern sat lower. Teren judged it with one glance.
"We don't tow her home. We get the people off."
Kelm nodded. "How?"
"Along the line, if the sea gives us ten minutes."
It did not look inclined to generosity. They rigged a traveler sling between the vessels.
The first passenger came across strapped into canvas, screaming every time the line dipped toward the water.
Then a child. Then two women together because one would not release the other.
Lark's crew worked the winch while packet crew loaded the sling.
Oliver stayed forward where both decks could see him.
"ONE AT A TIME WHEN THEY POINT TO YOU. IF YOU CANNOT MOVE, RAISE BOTH HANDS AND SOMEONE WILL COME TO YOU."
The voice carried through rain. A woman raised both hands immediately. A crewman reached her. The older man at the stern did not move. Oliver watched him between transfers. The man had tied himself to the rail and was still looking toward the cabin door.
"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?"
The man's answer should not have reached him. It did.
"MY WIFE!"
Oliver turned to Teren. "Someone still below." Teren's face hardened. "Packet crew said cabins clear." Oliver called across. "WHERE?"
"FORWARD CABIN! CAN'T WALK!"
The packet master appeared from behind the wheelhouse and shouted something furious at the old man.
Oliver caught only fragments. Already checked.
Empty. Confused. The old man refused to untie himself.
His refusal left Oliver with exactly the problem the storm had given him: a claim he could not verify from the safer deck.
Oliver looked at Marin. "Can you tell?"
"Not from here. I would need the deck."
Kelm heard them. "Absolutely not."
"I wasn't asking you," Marin said.
"I remain capable of answering."
The packet dropped hard into a trough. Its bow disappeared behind water and came up coughing debris. Oliver calculated the gap. Traveler sling. Towline. No bridge. No sane route. Teren was already shaking her head.
"We keep pulling people. We do not add rescuers to the packet."
Marin looked at the old man. Then at the transfer list chalked on Lark's cabin wall.
"How many aboard originally?"
"Thirty-two passengers, seven crew."
"How many transferred?"
The signalman counted. "Twenty-seven passengers. Six crew still over there."
"Five passengers remain. We can account for four on deck."
Teren's expression changed. Kelm swore. Marin did not need Perception to find the missing arithmetic.
"There is someone below."
The next wave gave them a route by nearly killing everyone. Packet and cutter rose together. The traveler line went almost level between rails for three seconds. Oliver unclipped his safety line. Marin caught his wrist.
"No."
He looked at her. Fear crossed her face. She looked at his ribs, then at the line, then at the packet.
"Your right hand cannot take your weight."
"Then I won't ask it to."
"That was not my only objection."
"I know."
Another wave approached. Marin released him.
"Come back with all the usual pieces."
Oliver smiled.
"You do say the sweetest things."
He clipped a short tether around his waist, hooked it to the traveler and went over the rail.
For ten seconds there was no metaphysics in the world.
Only rope, rain, bad shoulders, the burn of canvas through gloves and the unpleasant discovery that the Strait could throw an adult man sideways with casual contempt.
Oliver crossed hand over hand using mostly the left.
The right steadied. His boots hit the packet's rail. Two crewmen dragged him aboard.