DANTAR
It took an hour to put out the smouldering spots in the rigging of the Invincible. All the while, the marines were down on the deck, snuffing fires started by burning tar dripping from the ropes. Dantar and Marko were ordered to stay aloft, to douse any new fires that broke out amid the sails.
‘So it’s true what the old sailors say about war,’ said Dantar, as they sat on a yardarm, looking back over the fleet.
‘What’s that?’ asked Marko.
‘That it’s months of being bored, followed by a few moments of total terror.’
‘Not always. A sea battle against other humans can last for hours.’
‘Is that worse than a dragon, Marko?’
‘Oh aye. It’s all blood, bodies, fires, screams, swords clanging and arrows whizzing past – except for this one.’
Marko pulled his tunic down to show a scar on his shoulder. Dantar put a hand over his eyes and took a deep breath.
‘I was lucky, I fell overboard and drifted away,’
Marko continued.
‘You call that lucky?’
‘Oh aye. Everyone was on deck, fighting enemy boarders. Nobody was left below to douse smokers, and a fire started in the oil store. The ship exploded like the Intrepid.’
From below came three toots from a whistle.
‘There’s the order to climb down,’ said Marko.
‘The riggers and carpenters can repair the mess up here.’
Dantar looked up at the mainmast. The last ten feet were missing.
‘Marko, what happened to the crow’s nest?’
‘Same thing that happened to the lookout in the crow’s nest.’
Dantar had begun the voyage with no useful skills. His father insisted that his two children come with him on the Invincible, but the captain insisted that the warship would carry nobody who did not work or fight, so Dantar was made a cabin boy.
The trip had got off to a good start when his sister had been seasick for the first three days, yet Dantar had got his sea legs straight away. He had learned that cabin boys did much more than clean cabins, carry meals to the officers, wash their plates, and fire a crossbow occasionally.
Dantar also had to catch rats, stoke the kitchen fires, boil water, wash the officers’ clothes, go on watch, scrub the deck, and splice rope.
For a boy brought up in the royal palace as the son of the emperor’s battle warlock, it was an exciting new world, rather than hard, tedious work. The other children of nobles would not survive long without servants to look after them and their parents to pay for everything, but Dantar now had a trade and felt as if he could run away from his sheltered life back in the capital, Haldan, and live a new life.
It was also his job to stop the ship catching fire. Sparks sometimes escaped the cooking hearths, so he had to patrol the galley for smokers, a brass bound pail sloshing by his side.
‘You’ve got the most important job on the ship,’ had been what old Gyan, the earth-magic wizard, had said when Dantar came aboard.
‘Truly?’ Dantar had gasped. ‘Then why don’t they give it to someone important?’
‘The penalty’s death for not doing it properly.
The Invincible’s made of wood and has barrels of lamp oil aboard for the flame-throwers and fire pots. We take smoker patrol very seriously.’
The threat of death did add some glamour to the job, but today it was hard, sweaty work. A huge number of smoking fragments had fallen after the dragon’s breath blazed through the upper rigging. Soon Dantar’s trouser legs were drenched, and his hands were red-raw from tossing the pail over the side on a rope, then hauling it up full of seawater. Eventually the midshipman determined that the smokers were all doused, and Dantar was sent down to the galley.
Being short and thin, Dantar could get into narrow spaces where stray sparks might smoulder, grow, and flare up into a deadly blaze. Being fast helped Dantar dodge the cook’s fists. Cook hated everybody, from the admiral right down to the cabin boys. He was a good cook, but not even he could make salt pork, baked biscuit and flatbread taste any better than pretty bad. Everyone complained about the food, so his temper was worst at mealtimes. He took it out on the closest person to hand – Dantar.
Retaliation was not a good idea. A month earlier, Dantar had switched the salt and the sugar, so that the officers got mugs of salty tea. The cook accused Dantar. Dantar accused the cook. There was no proof that either of them had done it, so the marshal-at-arms sentenced the cook to five lashes and Dantar to a caning.
Dantar had slept on his stomach for a week afterwards, but it earned him a reputation for being tough. He had managed not to cry, although he had screamed a lot.
Cook was in a particularly bad mood after having to do smoker patrol by himself while Dantar was busy in the rigging. Dantar watched as he prepared the tray with the tea for the officers. After a suspicious glance at Dantar, Cook took a pinch of sugar from the jar and tasted it.
‘Wipe that grin off your face, daft bilge rat!’
Dantar made his face go blank, and ducked under Cook’s backhand. He made for the door while Cook decided whether or not to chase him. Chasing Dantar would have meant being late with the tea, which was a bad idea. The officers were sure to be edgy after the one-sided battle with the dragon.
‘Oi there, boy, are ye blind?’ Cook shouted, then flipped a burning coal from the hearth. It landed near a barrel of olive oil. ‘If that blows, it’ll sink the whole bleedin’ ship.’
That was true. Olive oil burned well enough to be used in flamethrowers.
‘I’ll tell the marshal you dropped that coal there,’ said Dantar.
‘It’s your word against mine again. We’d both get hanged.’
If we live long enough to face the marshal’s court, thought Dantar, recalling what happened to the Intrepid. Thinking quickly, he dipped the douse cloth in his pail, balled it up and threw it. It passed between the cook’s legs and hit the glowing coal squarely. Unable to lure Dantar close enough to smack, Cook picked up the tea tray and stamped off.
‘Smoker!’ someone shouted from the oil store.
Dantar dashed down the passageway and into the storeroom as a sailor hurried out with a load of fire pots on his shoulder. He saw a tendril of smoke where a cluster of speaking tubes came through the wall. This was part of a network of pipes that connected important parts of the ship, allowing the captain to give orders without leaving the quarterdeck.
Someone very stupid had been smoking in the storeroom. The idiot had knocked his pipe out against a leather and beeswax tube, and the embers had burned right through it. Dantar dabbed out the embers with his douse cloth. A broken speaking tube during a battle could get the ship sunk, he thought. I’m on the ship and I can’t swim.
Dantar hurried out to the rigging lockers, and returned with a canvas patch and a pot of tar. He was about to wrap the hole in the tube when he heard muffled voices coming from it. Only senior officers used the speaking tubes, so even hearing an indistinct voice from one made him feel important.
I’m Dantar of the House of Barronfeld, master spy, he thought. No secret is safe from me.
He glanced over his shoulder, making sure he was alone, then pressed his ear to the hole.
‘. . . sure he can be trusted?’
‘. . . not your concern!’ snapped a vaguely familiar but muffled voice, one clearly used to command. ‘Just be ready . . .’
The conversation continued in tight whispers, but Dantar was not able to make out very much.
‘. . . give the traitor his reward . . .’ said the commanding voice.
Suddenly it was no longer a fantasy game. There was a real traitor. Who? Which side was the traitor on?
Which side am I meant to be on? Dantar wondered.
Heavy footsteps thudded along the passageway outside. Dantar jerked up, quickly wound the patch onto the tube and slopped some tar on top as Cook stuck his mastiff-shaped head in the doorway.
‘Get a move on, boy! You’re supposed to be on smoker patrol.’
‘A smoker burned through this pipe –’
‘Then call the carpenter to fix it! Your job is to douse the smokers, that’s all.’
For the rest of his shift Dantar could think of nothing but the voices in the tube. Who had been speaking? Who was the traitor? Was the traitor trying to sink the ship? How long did it take to learn to swim?