The Princess and the Captain (31 page)

When he turned, he saw Malva and Lei appearing at the opening of the hatch. He made for them and thrust the hourglass into their hands. Over near the stern of the
Fabula
the Archont was making progress, and Malva uttered a cry when she saw him. The Archont raised his grey eyes to her, and the light of madness flared in his face. He waved his sword in the air and leaped forward.

‘Watch out!' Orpheus shouted.

Then everything happened very quickly. Orpheus blocked the Archont's way, plunging his knife deep into the man's arm. The shock made the Archont stop. At the same moment Orpheus felt a dreadful pain shoot through him.

The sword … the Archont's sword! As he leaped between Malva and the Archont to protect her, he had impaled himself on it.

In the general panic no one else noticed what had happened. Malva and Lei had fled back into the ship with the Nokros, and while the twins and Finopico were gathering up their missiles Babilas was still struggling with the toothless sailors. Driven to despair, they were becoming more and more aggressive.

Suddenly Babilas realised that he had no choice now: these men no longer deserved his pity. They were endangering the
Fabula
. At that he seized one of the sailors and with a mighty movement threw him overboard.

‘
Lambrog! Eidath!
' the others howled. Terrified, they were crawling around everywhere and groaning, leaving bloody trails on the deck.

Babilas caught them one by one.

One by one, he threw them into the sea.

When the fifth had gone overboard he went in search of the last; but the sixth had disappeared.

‘Babilas!' the twins suddenly shouted in terror. They were clinging to the Archont's legs as he struck them, while Finopico barred the opening of the hatch as best he could.

Babilas struck the Archont like a cannonball. The twins let go, only just getting out of the way in time. Destabilised by the giant's attack, the Archont fell on the deck, letting out a yell.

Somewhere Zeph had begun to bark.

Babilas seized the Archont, who struggled and howled with
rage. He made his way to the ship's side, intending to throw his adversary overboard, but the Archont managed to cling to the rail, his eyes shining with hatred. Babilas finished off the fight by punching him full in the face, and at last the Archont let go of the rail and tumbled down the side of the hull. As he fell into the water, Babilas opened his mouth and a strange, deep cry emerged from his throat.

The giant turned, breathless and dripping with sweat. He was still looking for the last sailor, the sixth, the man who had succeeded in escaping his rage. He listened. Zeph's barking had turned to growls. Babilas made his way over the deck, fists clenched, neck tensed. The growls came from the fo'c's'le. He ran that way and found what he was looking for behind a pile of barrels: the blind sailor on his knees on the planks of the deck, struggling in Zeph's jaws. The St Bernard had closed his teeth on the man's arm, preventing him from going any further.

Babilas seized the blind man by the throat. In an instant he picked him up, carried him away and flung him into the air like a package. As the man plunged into the waves a second heartrending cry rose from Babilas's throat. A rasping, hoarse, painful cry echoing on for so long that it seemed to come from the unfathomable depths of time. Finopico and the twins were transfixed.

The sailors and the Archont were trying to keep afloat in the tumultuous seas breaking against the sides of the
Fabula
. Spitting water, coughing, shouting, they scrabbled at the hull, calling for help, and their eyes searched the sky as if pleading with the Divinities to aid them. But it was not the Divinities who answered their prayers …

‘Look!' Peppe suddenly cried, pointing to the west.

The Patrols were arriving in close formation. Babilas joined
the others, ready to go on fighting, while Zeph limped to the back of the ship. Malva and Lei, having put the Nokros safely away, emerged from the hatch again.

As they all watched, the Patrols swooped down between the two ships. Lively and agile in spite of the imposing span of their mechanical wings, they brought down their claws and seized their prey. Letting out dreadful screams, the sailors were plucked from the waves and carried up into the air.

‘Not me! Not me!' begged the Archont, swimming as fast as he could to the rope ladder hanging down the side of his ship.

The Patrols, who presumably had no reason to bear him a grudge, spared him. Once they had fished the six sailors out of the sea again they rose above the
Fabula
, circled for a moment in the azure sky, and then flew away at great speed.

‘They … they're going to the Immuration,' said Hob, shivering.

A horrified silence fell over the ship again. Babilas slowly came forward, and once more gave evidence of his amazing strength by pulling the hooks of the grappling irons thrown by the Archont out of the deck, one by one. The
Fabula
was free of the Cispazian junk now, and immediately the space between them widened.

The Archont, dripping and half dead, was trying to climb back on board his vessel, groaning. Malva watched him for a moment from a distance, torn between a wish to laugh and a wish to cry. She looked down.

And only then did she see Orpheus. He was lying on the deck, his breath whistling as it left his lungs, his face pale. A puddle of blood was spreading beneath him. She was about to cry out, but Babilas did so first.

‘Orpheus!' said the giant in a grating voice. ‘Orpheus
gwisdall esdog
!'

Everyone jumped. By what miracle had Babilas recovered the power of language? Eyes wide with surprise, Lei replied to him in the strange language of Dunbraven.

‘
Nhot gwisdall esdog! Orpheus crogoil!
' She cast a desperate glance at the others. ‘Orpheus not die! I make medicine!'

She knelt down beside the Captain's inert body and carefully turned him over. The Archont's sword had left a gaping wound in the middle of his stomach.

As I write these lines, Orpheus is struggling with Death. We have put him in Lei's berth. With Finopico's assistance she has made one of those potions which have already cured me. I had sheets boiled in sea water, and Lei soaked the fabric in a sticky ointment with an unpleasant smell. She used it to put a dressing on his wound. He lost consciousness. Oh, Holy Harmony, Holy Tranquillity
…

Malva wiped her tears away, and went on:

… let him survive his injuries! If I had known the sufferings ahead when Catabea offered us her dreadful bargain I'd never have accepted her conditions
.

We're all worn out. I am worried about Lei. The sailors from Dunbraven knocked her about so badly that she has bruises on her arms and forehead. She's so busy looking after others that she forgets to care for herself. The twins are badly shaken by their confrontation with the Archont. Just now they were showing off a little as they told the tale of how they bombarded him, but I could see that they were still trembling. Finopico, usually so talkative, isn't saying anything. He's entrenched himself in his
galley, where he's reading his books about fish! I suppose it's his way of dealing with the shock. As for Babilas, it's a mystery … what with all that's happened, we've hardly had time to think about him, but one thing's certain; he's talking. The trouble is that he only speaks the language of Dunbraven now. He's forgotten Galnician, though it was his mother tongue, and has adopted the language of the sailors whom he threw into the sea. It was his fianceé's language as well … should we see this as a kind of cure?

Malva stopped writing and leaned over Zeph, who was stretched at her feet. She patted the St Bernard's warm flanks. The animal's company did her good.

‘You're a hero too,' she whispered to him. ‘I hear you bit one of those men stealing the Nokros.'

She sighed, and looked at the Killer of Time, which was now standing on the shelf in her cabin. As it fell, the hourglass had cracked. A little more and it would have broken … Malva shuddered to think that then their fate would have been irreversibly sealed.

The amount of morbic acid had already decreased a good deal. By the following evening there would be only five Stones of Life left, and just ten days to find the gates through which they could leave the Archipelago. She put her pen to paper again.

Our trials aren't over, far from it. If Orpheus lives I think we shall hold out. But if he dies? I can't imagine the rest of the voyage without him; without his vigour, his courage, his kindness and intelligence. I can't bear to lose any more of those I love. In the face of these torments, even my dream of Elgolia gives me no strength. It's all very well for me to shut my eyes when I lie on my bunk and conjure up the images of Mount Ur-Tha, the Bay of Dao-Boa and Lake Barath-Thor. But I can hardly manage to picture them now. It's as if I have lost the power to dream
.

When I saw the Archont so close to me just now, such terror came over
me that Lei had to drag me away to shelter. Later, I was alone on deck watching the sail of his ship drifting away. Babilas had lashed the tiller of the
Fabula
on course, and we were sailing west. I felt calmer. Before I came down here again, I went to look once more, but night had fallen and I saw nothing. All I want is for the Archont to be thrown into the Immuration
.

Malva felt cramp in her hand, and had to stop writing. She was nearly dead with fatigue anyway. Without even taking the trouble to fold the paper, she staggered to her bunk and let sleep overcome her.

Only Lei did not sleep that night. She sat up beside Orpheus, silent and attentive, changing his dressings every hour, making him drink a decoction of boiled plants and roots that she had collected on Jahalod's island.

At dawn she saw that he seemed more peaceful, and deduced that he was no longer suffering pain. The bleeding had stopped, the wound was clean, so Lei rubbed his face with marguerilla stalks, left the cabin and went on deck to greet the sunrise. The healers in her distant country thought that when a wounded or sick patient survived the first night it was a good sign, and you must pay your devotions to the natural world by giving thanks.

When she emerged from the hatch the deck was enveloped in an extraordinarily thick mist. She could hardly see her hand in front of her face. Lei took a few cautious steps, trying to reach the rail. It was cold. Moisture was already soaking into her clothes and making her teeth chatter.

It was useless leaning over the side of the ship; she couldn't
make anything out. The
Fabula
seemed to be wrapped in cotton wool. She would have to wait to pay her devotions to the sun.

Annoyed, Lei went back down to her cabin. Still shivering, she searched everywhere and finally found a dry blanket in a corner of her berth. She wrapped it around Orpheus. In his present state any chill could be fatal to him. Particularly since, as Lei had already noticed, the slightest draught seemed to give Orpheus a cold. Once she was reassured about her patient's condition, she wondered how to cover herself. Most of their clothes had been spoilt in the baggage at the bottom of the ship's hold. Then she saw the quartermaster's jacket that she had taken off Orpheus the night before so that she could tend his wound. The thick canvas had a slit a dozen centimetres long where the sword had slashed it, and worst of all it was still badly bloodstained. But the air was suddenly so cold! Lei no longer hesitated; she put on the jacket, which was much too big for her, turned up the sleeves, and left the cabin again. Between decks, she saw Finopico. He was searching all the chests and crates.

‘It's so cold!' he was complaining. ‘Let's get out of this cursed Archipelago as quickly as we can!'

When he saw Lei he calmed down. ‘How is Orpheus?' he asked, still searching the chests.

‘He not so ill,' said Lei. ‘Blood stop flowing. I think he live.'

‘For a Greenhorn, I must say he has guts,' Finopico remarked. ‘And for a foreigner,' he added, raising his head and smiling at Lei, ‘I must say you have guts too!'

‘Thank you!' she murmured.

‘Ah, here we are!' exclaimed Finopico, laying hands on a worsted jersey. He buried his nose in it, made a face, and then, shrugging his shoulders, put it on. Then he rubbed his arms
vigorously before saying he would make some good hot soup for everyone.

‘I don't know what in, seeing as all my pans went flying at the Archont or dropped into the sea, but I'll find something. What filthy weather!'

As Lei was about to go up on deck again, Malva opened her cabin door and called to her. ‘What's going on? I'm frozen!'

‘Mist,' replied Lei, indicating the deck outside with her chin.

Malva joined her on the steps. Her lips were blue with cold. She asked how Orpheus was, and when Lei had reassured her, Malva smiled. But suddenly she looked annoyed.

‘Is that his jacket you're wearing? Orpheus's jacket?'

‘Oh … yes,' said Lei. ‘I no find any warm thing to wear.'

Malva looked disapprovingly at her.

‘If you like, you take jacket,' added Lei, annoyed. ‘I find something else.'

‘No,' snapped Malva. ‘Keep it. I don't want that jacket. Philomena always told me it's unlucky to wear anything bloodstained.'

She turned on her heel and closed her cabin door crossly. Lei sighed, vaguely understanding why Malva was in a temper, but decided not to bother about it. Her main aim was to reassure herself that Babilas had taken the helm of the
Fabula
again. It was essential to be on their guard in this mist.

Up on deck the milky uniformity of the mist hovered heavy and silent. When she breathed in, air tasting and smelling of dead leaves seemed to trickle into her mouth and nostrils. Lei drew the jacket together over her breast and took a few steps towards the stern of the ship. She thought the deck was sloping slightly, and it struck her as odd. There was no wind, and so no reason for the ship to tilt.