Beldur’s vessel had been a slave ship before circumstances forced the captain to become a corsair for the Pasha in Tripoli, so the upper shelf of the cargo hold where I hid was poorly insulated and leaky — human cargo has a higher tolerance for unwholesome humidity than spices and wine casks. And things trickled down, of course, so there was always one or two feet of black, stinking water pooled at the very bottom of the hold. Now, as the ship moved in the ominous silence of the morning, I heard its splash. It unnerved me, that small, dark pond. It seemed almost pregnant.
I climbed down from the old slaves’ compartment, dropping into the hold proper. I landed close to the pond, my unshod feet slipping on the slimy planks. From there I moved among the crates, peeking inside them to see assorted pieces of iron, silver, and bronze, exquisite pottery, jars of scented oil sealed with wax — one of them cracked, exhaling an enticing perfume — and a few smaller boxes containing jewels and gold. For a moment, the silence of the ship felt welcome — if everybody else was dead, everything here would be mine. The thought produced a taut smile, but the pleasure did not last. In my heart I knew that until I found myself free of the ship and whatever had befallen her, I was no better off than before, with but torn breeches and an ancient cutlass to my name.
I climbed the stairs out of the hold, quietly as I could, and took a deep breath. Maybe I should wait longer? A full day, perhaps two, before I risked exposing myself? Old Beldur knew me from long ago, and if he still lived, I was sure I would be even less welcome on his ship than a random stowaway. But the silence, insistent, stubborn, was too much to bear…
I opened the trapdoor, slowly at first, but what I saw made me throw caution to the four winds, and I jumped up onto the deck.
It was empty. And clean. I don’t know if the word “clean” conveys the whole truth. No, it obviously doesn’t. There wasn’t anything above the deck, on the deck, even lodged between the planks — no smirch of blood or oil caught in the wood. Nothing. The rough, dull planks had become polished, and ground as smooth as the lens of a spyglass. I could see a shadowy reflection of myself slither on the deck’s surface as I moved upon the strangely flattened, glazed boards. There was no one in sight, and no barrels nor baskets nor any of the other countless objects that clutter a working vessel, nor any part of the ship itself much above the height of a man — incredibly, the ropes, the sails, and even the masts themselves were all gone, leaving only short, planed stumps where they had stood. What bits of metal remained, like some cleats, were smoothed and sanded so finely that it was painful to look at them in broad daylight.
I went to the aftcastle, for unlike the masts, it remained. The cabin’s door was missing from its hinges and nowhere to be seen, and there was nothing inside the quarters. No maps. Not the captain’s table. Not even the captain’s bunk. The bulkheads had become wooden mirrors, weirdly reflecting and distorting my image, just like the deck. I recalled words quoted by some Christian I’d met years before —“things dimly seen, as in a glass, darkly”— and shuddered. The distortion made the image ripple and crimp. For a moment it seemed that there was someone else behind me. I turned quickly, but there was nobody.
Leaving the cabin, I finally directed my attention to the other ship — a massive, shadowy presence that loomed by our side. I recognized the design and the pennons. It was a vessel of the Knights Hospitaller of Malta, probably on its way to Spain. Grappling hooks kept both ships tied to one another. This explained the heeling, a movement that was getting more noticeable at every minute, despite the empty, becalmed sea.
The hooks and chains keeping the vessels moored together were highly polished, shining like sterling silver. There was not a soul in sight, but the Maltese ship still had its masts, sails, and ropes. Perhaps there were people there, too, despite the silence — always the silence, broken only by the creaking of the wood and the rustling of something I thought was the wind — but the air wasn’t moving.
Whatever force had cleansed the corsair’s deck had also removed the ropes and nets the pirates must have used to board the Maltese vessel, so I had no choice but to cross over by dangling from the thickest of the taut chains and pulling myself along, hand over hand. It was a nauseating experience, every link of the chain a burnished mirror that disfigured my reflection and lanced my eyes with shards of sunlight as I tried to keep my gaze off the dizzying drop to the sea below.
Having sails and masts, the other ship also had shadow and shade on its deck. It was only when I hauled myself over the rail and found myself cooling under a flapping sail that I noticed how the intense morning sun had stung me during my investigation of Beldur’s ship. It had been my first exposure after too many dark days in the slaves’ hold.
I also realized how thirsty I was. And hungry. These sudden, mundane concerns got the better of me, and I started scouting the vessel in search of food and fresh water, ignoring much of everything else: I hardly took notice of the corpses sprawled across the deck, the blood caked on every surface. Whatever strange event had cleansed Beldur’s ship hadn’t worked on this vessel of the Christian Knights of Saint John.
Stepping into the dim coolness of the aftcastle’s cabin, I discovered a jug of wine and a large bowl of grapes and pomegranates, most of them still fresh. The officers of the Order had lived well, I surmised, peering out the door at their hacked bodies… bodies that begin to stir as I drooled pomegranate juice and redder wine. As I gawped in the doorway, two of the mutilated corpses, for dead men they surely were, began to rise and move… shambling… walking… away.
The unholy scene left me numb. It was as if an icy fist had closed over my entire body. For a moment I felt an absurd, trite relief that the pair of dead knights hadn’t come after me but instead moved away down the deck. Not for a moment did I doubt that they were dead. My stomach had clamped. I couldn’t eat any more, pomegranate seeds spilling from my slack mouth. There were more corpses on the deck, but as I watched them closely, they didn’t move.
Should I race for the chains and try to climb back to Beldur’s ship before I was seen? What if the dead men changed course and saw me? Or others began to move? Should I hide? Where? Questions flew like arrows through my mind, but my only palpable physical reaction was to draw my cutlass from my rope belt, gripping it so hard my knuckles went as white as the dead men’s flesh. When I heard a woman scream, I jumped.
At the far end of the deck, the revived knights, in their shredded black cassocks and ripped chain mail, were looming over a slight figure I hadn’t seen before… and as I watched the pair descend upon her, I heard the unmistakable wet thud of steel cleaving flesh.
Intent as they were on their quarry, the knights did not hear me approach. The tip of my cutlass slid into the back of the closest knight’s neck, gliding through a rip in his mail. There was no spurt of blood, but the head fell forward, now attached to the body by nothing more than leather-like skin and a strip of tendon. He collapsed.
I had a quick glimpse of the woman, white-skinned, bloodied, splayed on the deck, and then the other knight was right on top of me.
There was a grayish-green tint to his skin, and he moved with unnerving precision and silence. He held a longsword and knew how to make good work of it. My situation was dire: you cannot safely parry a longsword with a cutlass, so I ducked once, stepping back, and ducked again as he pressed his attack, the sword whipping over my head. As he raised the heavy weapon for another swing, I darted under his raised arm, driving the cutlass into his midsection with all my might.
My blade scraped along the edge of his mail instead of pushing through, and he did not even grunt… but the force knocked him backward, and I jumped right in. He tried to bring the sword down on me, but he was still off balance and I got hold of his wrist. Pulling myself forward, I pressed the cutlass into his face and used my full weight to punch the steel through his cheek. The skull broke and split like a rotten pomegranate. For an instant, I thought that the battle was surely mine — but then darkness shot out of the ruined face.