"Master Ten-from-Ten, thy pagan friend."
"What about him?"
"Do his people butcher the double-crazies? Do they, huh?"
"No, they treat them well."
"So it is on the Salvation. Sailed on her for eleven years, has Jehu. Not many on board this trip can say that. Too many chilled by... the dark sea eagle, if thou dost take my meaning?" He nudged Ryan in the ribs to make his words more clear.
"I get you, Jehu. There's nobody so sane as the crazie who isn't."
"Near through the ribs, Captain!" called one of the men with the long flensing tools.
"All hands cease work and stand by. Listen well, lads, for a word from Jacob!"
Everyone obeyed Captain Quadde's order immediately, glad of the chance for a brief break in the spine-cracking labor.
"Two more trips and mad Jehu will have the lays to buy a fine chandler's store near the quay. And be a man of leisure and pleasure and treasure."
"Still haven't said if that poor bastard could be alive."
"Been stories of it happening. They comes out much changed, so they says. With their mind set to wandering and their skin all..."
"Hold thy noise, thou pinheaded loon!" the captain yelled.
"Aye, Captain. I'll hold my tongue so thrtth ogn-luur..." Jehu gripped himself literally by the end of his tongue so that his words became instant garbled gibberish.
The ship fell silent.
Ryan was joined at the rail by the rest of the crew, peering down at the ruined carcass. The head remained untouched, but much of the meat of the sides and back and belly had already been hewed from the pale bones. Each of the flensers had a safety rope tied around his waist, to help him keep his balance on the slick flesh.
"I hear something!" called one of the men, from down below, standing with head on one side, as though that might somehow help his hearing.
Then they all heard it, soaring above the banshee wailing of the gulls, silencing them and sending them wheeling away to the north like etched shadows on the blue sky.
The sound was muffled, but distinct. A human voice crying for help.
"Quickly, my lads." Cyrus Ogg broke the spell of stillness that fell upon every man on the ship.
The two hands standing deepest in the bloody wreckage began to cut and slice with a renewed vigor, opening up more of the noisome stomach of the whale.
"Watch ye do not fucking cut him apart with the lances!" Walsh yelled.
"Something's moving!" shouted one of the men, clambering clumsily away from where a glistening expanse of pale yellow intestine could be seen rippling like a polecat trapped inside a silken bag.
Ryan watched with the others, seeing that the swallowed seaman still lived and fought to tear himself free of the sack of guts that held him a squealing, mewling prisoner.
Like the birth of some mutie lizard, the stomach wall tore open.
And Jacob Lusk emerged... What had once been Jacob Lusk.
Now it was as white as Jak Lauren's hair, bleached by the powerful acids in the stomach of the whale, acids that had already eaten away the shirt and pants from the seaman's body, and left his skin wrinkled and partly raw. The face seemed worst afflicted as Jacob Lusk turned it toward where he sensed the sun still shone.
He could only sense it, for his eyes had been seared from their sockets, leaving raw, weeping holes in the scoured bone. The lips had been eaten away, and the tongue and soft flesh of the inside of the mouth, so that all that came out was a gargling scream of horror.
"Virgin save us!"
There was a collective indrawing of sighing breath from every person there.
The creature stood, balanced, waving its peeled arms, fingers spread and oozing blood, crying out in its terrible choked voice. It was like seeing some dreadful embryo born, full grown, yet not properly complete.
"Fireblast!" Ryan called to the flensers on the carcass. "Chill the poor bastard. Cut him down, someone. Chill him!"
The cry was picked up by Jehu and by Donfil, by Johnny Flynn and a dozen more, until every man of the Salvationwas calling out for Jacob to be set free from his misery.
Only Pyra Quadde said nothing, watching the nightmare scene from the rail of the quarterdeck.
But Jacob Lusk was quicker.
Some tattered shreds of consciousness remained in the dark skull, and he flung his arms together above his head with a damp, clinging, slapping sound. Without another cry he dived neatly off the dead whale into the welcoming waters of the Lantic.
They watched his whitened body as it sank into the gray-green deeps. It seemed to go down forever, until the rippling waves finally wiped the image clear away.
Ryan lifted his eyes to the horizon, seeing the first triangular fins of the hunting sharks that had taken over possession and lordship of so many of the oceans of the world.
Pyra Quadde had also seen them.
"No use watching him sink. Take him an hour or more to reach the mud around these deeps. Sharks coming after the blubber. After ourblubber. Set to, cullies. Set to!"
Ryan shook his head. More gut-wrenching labor before they could rest. It crossed his mind at that moment to wonder where Krysty might be and what she might be doing.
"No sun dreams, Outlander Deadman," Cyrus Ogg said at his elbow. "Unless thou dost want to face some punishment from our captain."
"No, thanks," Ryan replied, readying himself to pull on the hooked cords.
Then he heard the shout from the lookout in the crow's nest, high above the blood-slick deck. "Sail ho! Sail on the larboard beam! A ship!"
Chapter Twenty-Five
Darkness had once again come upon Claggartville. J.B., Krysty, Jak, Doc and Lori had been model prisoners, causing no trouble for the sec men who'd captured them. It seemed as if the outlanders were clearly resigned to their fate, eating the food provided and only leaving the narrow room when one of them wanted to go down the wooden stairs to the row of white-painted earth privies in the rear yard. And when they did that there was always a pair of armed men to take them and bring them back.
Within the group, the only note of discord had been struck by Lori Quint.
The tall blond teenager had started to become restive halfway through the first morning of their captivity, moaning on the bed, blaming Doc for having gotten her into such a threatening situation.
"Let's do what they wants us to do," she kept repeating. "Don't mind work. Just hate being stuffed up in this fuck-place."
Lori knew well enough how much Doc hated to hear her using obscenities, and he rose to the bait she offered.
"Please try to remain calm, my dainty pearl of the far Orient. Every cloud has a silver lining of threads amongst the gold." He hesitated a moment, passing a weary hand over his brow. "I fear that I have made some error in the recollection of the old saying, my most lovely angel of..."
Lori pulled a sulky face at him. "Shut up, you silly old crumbly! That's what you is."
"Are," he corrected automatically, his eyes showing his hurt.
"You are, are, are!" she yelled. "Old and no use for anything."
Krysty had stopped the fight, walking past Doc and staring at Lori. "Just one more word, girl, and I'll slap your eyes sideways. Shut up."
Lori had done as she was told, shutting up to the extent that she hardly spoke a word to any of them for the next two days. She slept alone and only picked at the food offered.
The girl was so withdrawn that J.B. took Krysty and Jak to one side on the last day in the ville.
"Think she'll whistle on us?" he asked, the afternoon sunlight bouncing off the polished lenses of his round, wire-rimmed glasses. His fedora was pushed to the back of his head, and he looked more worried than usual.