made his way through the sailors and marines and priests on the weatherdeck and headed for the forward hatchway. On his way he passed a squad of Acolytes training naked in the sunshine, serious young men and women much the same age as himself, with a handful of older veterans amongst them. They were taking turns sparring with each other, or limbering their muscles while they waited their turn.
‘Watch it,’ one of them snapped as he backed into Ché.
For an instant, Ché wanted to grab his arm and break it.
‘Eat shit,’ he snapped back at him without breaking step.
Before Ché descended the steps he noticed Sasheen eyeing him from her vantage above. She raised a flask of wine in a toast, and he bobbed his head at her, and quickly descended.
Blackness smothered Ash for every day and night he lay down there in the bilge of the ship, this fat rolling transport where he’d stowed himself aboard as the fleet had left Q’os harbour. Blackness, and a closeness of air so foul it was hardly fit to inhale, and a battering of noise never-ending: the ballast of sand and loose gravel shifting against the hull; the creaks and bangs of the hull; the splashes of the rats in the darkness – all of it conspired to unhinge him.
Ash had found a space above the slosh of the water on which to lie, a projection of wood near the aft of the bilge, a few feet in width, where he had wedged himself next to his sword. He lived like one of the rats down there, and although he couldn’t see the rising and setting of the sun, he knew when it was dawn by the pounding of feet overhead as the shifts were changed, and when it was night by the raucous sounds of laughter and songs.
Like a shy scavenger he stole out in the dead of night to find water and what scraps of food he could to sustain himself, creeping silently through the black spaces of the ship while most of the crew were asleep. Upon his return from these ventures he would sit on his narrow ledge and eat, and what was left he would feed to the small colony of rats that lived down there with him, muttering to them quietly in the darkness. Soon, they stopped trying to eat him in his sleep. Some even began to climb onto his body and huddle there for warmth.
His usual headaches subsided, perhaps due to the lack of any sunlight, which was fortunate, for he’d almost run out of his precious dulce leaves. Constantly he shivered from the dampness, though, and knew it was getting into his chest. His breathing was becoming tight and restricted. He feared he would develop pneumonia.
Ash thought of dying down here in this black hole, and imagined his corpse floating from one side to the other in the rancid bilge water, the rats making good use of him until he was nothing but bones settling loosely upon the ballast. He tried at times to dry his clothes – the leather leggings lined with cotton, the sleeveless tunic – by wringing them out then spreading them against the curve of the hull, but, like his boots, they refused to dry. One night, he took a risk and was lucky enough to steal a heavy oiled cloak from one of the sleeping crew above. He wrapped his naked body in it and hoped it would do.
Occasionally, Ash found himself wondering where the fleet was headed. He recalled seeing a map in the Storm Chamber when he and Aléas had finally breached it, something denoting movements of fleets. He hadn’t looked at it properly, though, and try as he might he failed to picture any details now.
Mostly, he just wondered how soon the fleet would reach land. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand it down here in this bilge that had become his private misery.
Ash was sixty-two years of age, long past the life expectancy of a RÅshun still working in the field. The years had certainly taken their toll on him; his body felt stretched thin and taut these days. His joints ached from arthritis, and his muscles tended to complain whenever he moved too swiftly or demanded too much of them. It took longer for him to heal; even now, the minor knife wound in his leg from the vendetta was still festering, so that daily he had to squeeze the