The Night of the Swarm by Robert V.S. Redick

Author:Robert V.S. Redick [V.S. Redick, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780575097803
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2012-10-24T21:00:00+00:00

19

Forgotten Prisoners

1 Fuinar 942

289th day from Etherhorde

Captain Rose looked at the body of the man he had killed.

Darius Plapp was hanging by a rope strung over the main yard. There was a fair swell this morning: the body swung like a pendulum, and the cloud of flies about him kept getting left behind.

‘Fetch a boathook, Mr Uskins,’ Rose said to the first mate, who was loitering behind him.

‘Oppo, sir. Justice is done.’

As he fell, Darius Plapp had jammed his fingers into the noose. The deed ran contrary to Rose’s frank advice to the man. It had delayed his death, of course, but only prolonged his suffering thereby. The hands were still there, tucked under the rope, as though Plapp were trying to button his collar. His mouth was wide open, as it had been during his final week of life, tirelessly proclaiming his innocence in the death of Kruno Burnscove.

The hapless fool. As though his fate had hinged on the question of innocence or guilt. All that had mattered here was prejudice, the story the crew could bring itself to believe. That, and the swift elimination of any possible rival to Rose himself. As rivals, the ganglords had neutralised each other. Alone, either one could have grown into a threat.

Uskins returned with the boathook, and Rose fished the hanged man near. Then he drew his sword with his free hand and raised it high. ‘Thus do we bury murderers and rebels,’ he shouted to the tense little crowd. ‘No prayers, no ceremony for a man who wished evil on us all.’

The rope parted at the first swing, and one more Etherhorder departed the Chathrand, far from home.

‘Have this line down from the yardarm, Uskins.’

‘I shall do it with my own hands, sir,’ said the first mate.

Rose turned and looked at him squarely, for the first time in a week. Uskins stood contrite, calm, well-groomed. He had not looked so well since Sorrophran, before his conflict with Pazel Pathkendle brought about his first disgrace.

Rose detested Uskins, counterfeit seaman and transparent bootlicker that he was. But what to make of this picture of health? Chadfallow could not explain it, though he literally followed Uskins about with a notebook, hoping for some clue, any clue, to help him fight the plague. Since their escape from the Behemoth nine men and two women had succumbed.

Eleven tol-chenni lunatics, eleven reasons for panic and revolt. The brig was half full of gibbering ape-men, and every time a messenger approached, the captain feared that someone else had succumbed.

Uskins might just hold the key to their survival; therefore Uskins would be tolerated.

‘Stay out of the rigging,’ he said, turning his back on the man. ‘Just have the mucking thing removed. Tell Fiffengurt to meet me portside. And send a boy with my telescope.’

Rose crossed the ship to the portside rail. When the telescope came he studied the island again. Dark, lush, horsehead-shaped. Some highlands, some sand, and plenty of fresh water giving life to those trees. More than

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