chart read ‘Here there be monsters’ it had been written in deadly earnest. Blue collected and collated every chart she could buy, steal, copy or take in plunder. Her library took up a good portion of the captain’s cabin on the Lady. A sheet of vellum stretched from floor to ceiling on her starboard wall, and on that she laboriously pieced together her masterwork, her chart of the world. Blue sighed.
By her estimate it was ninety percent incomplete.
She had never sailed farther south than the night-glowing ruins of Recife; however, her initial jealousy toward her brother’s southern run around the Horn was tempered by the idea of taking the Northwest Passage in convoy with her father and sailing the Cific. “What course?”
Sabbath turned his eye to the operations on shore. The surviving ville people howled in mourning and loss. Pigs squealed as they were slaughtered. Meat roasted in huge pits for the ships’ dinner while pork side, belly and fat back were cut into bricks and salted away. Crewmen loaded the small boats with plundered lumber and cordage and fresh fruits and vegetables and topped off water casks. The choicer of the ville’s young men and women were argued over and divided up for entertainment purposes.
“Set me a straight course, north for the Rock. It will be hard sail, across open ocean, but I don’t want anything to do with any Deathlanders. We’ll be running short on supplies by then so when we get there we’ll relieve a few Newfie villes of their women and salt cod before we round into the Labrador Sea and take the Passage.”
Blue was already flipping through her charts. “Aye, Father.”
Sabbath opened his own chart book. “Dorian, you’re going to do just about opposite. Head south until you hit the southern continent and follow the coast down. I’ve never heard of anything big enough down there to match you, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try. Don’t get night creeped by a horde of war canoes or let a bunch of motorboats take a run at you. Stay out of sight of the coast as much as possible. Stop only for water and supplies.” Sabbath gave his son a stern look. “And no prizes. Stick to the mission. You don’t fight anyone unless they attack you first.”
Dorian quirked his lips in disappointment but nodded. “Aye, Father.”
“And you don’t attack Oracle, not unless he turns to fight you, or you come on him at anchor in a bay and he can’t maneuver. If it all goes glowing night shit and Oracle sinks or somehow escapes us, we’ll meet up here in August.” Sabbath tapped a point on South America’s west coast. “There’s a ville called Coquimbo, about two hundred miles north of the Valparaiso Crater. The baron there’s name is Zarro. When I first traveled the western coast I stopped there for supplies. Zarro and I came to an agreement and I helped him and his sons take a rival ville by loaning them some cannons and men to man them. You sail in to port and say your name is Sabbath, you’ll be feasted well until we arrive.”
“Aye, Father.”
“If you take Oracle before rounding the horn, head back for home with Glory in tow and we’ll see you next year.”
“Aye, Father.”
“Very good.” Sabbath snapped his book shut and turned back to the rail. He watched as a short, chubby teenaged girl was torn from her family and her homespun shift ripped from her onshore. “Mr. Kang!”
Sabbath’s seven-foot Korean second mate stepped forward. He had come with the junk as well, and after an initial period of disgruntlement, he found piracy in the Caribbean suited him quite well. He carried a cat of nine tails in a shoulder bag at all times, and every man in Sabbath’s fleet lived in horror at the prospect of feeling the lash propelled by the giant’s right arm. “Aye, Captain.”
Sabbath pointed his book at the weeping girl. “That one. Bathe her and bring her to my cabin as a belly warmer, now.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Sabbath licked his thin lips. “Ae Sook, you will assist me.”
“In all things, my captain.”
Black Sabbath strode to his cabin with his loins stirring. “We sail with the morning tide.”
* * *
RICKY CLEANED THE CAPTAIN’S blasters. Compared to the barons and warlords the youth had encountered since leaving Puerto Rico, Oracle’s personal arsenal was sparse in the extreme. Then again, Oracle’s preferred combat method seemed to be disemboweling his opponents with a mutant orangutan paw prosthesis. He had a beauty of a single-shot Thompson/Center Contender that, according to rumor, he was quite proficient with and could reload with his paw. It was chambered for .45-70. Ricky was a confirmed blaster lover, and he knew the round was ancient, pre-Deathlands American and usually used to take bison. He couldn’t imagine firing it from a fourteen-inch blaster. He aimed the oiled, tuned and gleaming blaster and yearned to shoot it. Ricky lowered the weapon as the lurking fear closed in.
He might as well stick the weapon in his mouth. The question was whether to try and shoot Manrape first.
Ricky’s weapons, and those of his companion’s, were locked away. They had been allowed to bear arms during the octopod attack, but they had been relieved of their weapons afterward. The companions would not be allowed to touch them again until they were signed to the book. Ricky had heard rumors that there were some other special weapons in the captain’s cabin that were off limits to him and to J.B. The young man jerked up as a tall shadow fell across the door. He had no bullets for any of the weapons he was cleaning, and he clawed for his ship’s knife.
Ricky sighed with relief as Doc’s rangy frame filled the doorway. The old man held a wooden case. “Doc! Don’t sneak up on someone like that!”
“Young Ricky,” Doc said gravely,. “you have a conundrum.”
Ricky stared at the weapons on his workbench and saw nothing that made sense. Doc often didn’t. “What’s a conundrum?”
“You have a problem.”
“Yeah, Doc. If getting butt-chilled by a bronze statue is a problem, I’ve got a problem.”
The subject matter was clearly to Doc’s distaste. Yet Doc seemed to be in a rare clear, cold mood. “Fight him.”
“Fight him?” Ricky began gesticulating. “Fight him how?”
“Challenge him.”
“Challenge him?” Ricky repeated. “Challenge him how? No one’s going to give me my blaster! With blades? I can’t beat him! Madre de dios, Doc! Bare hands? I haven’t been rated ordinary seamen yet, much less able. What do I challenge him for? The right to be bosun?”
“For the personal rights to your rectum.”
Ricky was shocked speechless to hear such a thing come out of Doc’s mouth.
Doc struggled to keep his voice steady. “When I was hurled into your time, I was captured by unethical men.”
Ricky had heard the stories. “Doc—”
“I was made sport of and abused. Cruelly.”
Ricky couldn’t meet Doc’s eyes. “Doc, you don’t have to—”
“Look at me!” Doc demanded. Ricky looked. He stared at the time-trawled man,
