Wellspring of Chaos

XLVIII

Kharl had already washed up and trimmed his beard, and was getting ready to head to the mess for what passed for breakfast, when Bemyr’s whistle shrilled through the forecastle, announcing that breakfast was ready. Another whistle would call the in-port morning muster, where additional duties might be assigned.

“Frig…” mumbled Reisl, turning and sitting on the edge of his bunk, legs dangling as he held his head in his hands.

“Too much ale,” called Argan.

Behind them, Wylat just grinned.

Reisl slumped to his feet and began to pull out clothes from his bin, where he had tossed them the night before. He straightened abruptly. “Know I was ale-decked,” he mumbled, “but not enough to lose every copper in my wallet.”

“You had some when you came back aboard?” asked Kharl.

Reisl nodded, then turned to Hodal. “You know what happened to my coin?”

Hodal looked up at the taller man. “No. You think I’m that stupid?”

Kharl could sense that Hodal was telling the truth. The cooper glanced around the forecastle, taking in the sailors still in their bunks. Some were asleep, others pretending to be so.

“What about you, Kawelt?” asked Reisl, stepping forward toward the next bunk.

“Like to take anything you have, Reisl. Didn’t.”

Kharl could see/sense just a touch of the strange whiteness that no one else seemed to notice around the third upper bunk-the one holding Asolf. Kharl eased toward it, nodding to Reisl.

Reisl stepped toward Asolf. “Why did you empty my wallet, Asolf?”

The broad-faced sailor cocked his head. “You’re one to be making charges. You couldn’t have seen the sun if it had risen right in front of you.” He eased out of his bunk without looking at Reisl. He already wore trousers, but not deck shoes.

“I just asked if you emptied my wallet.”

“Why would I do that?”

Kharl looked at the younger man. “You don’t want to answer the question, and usually people who don’t want to answer have a reason they don’t want to.”

“Carpenter…it’s not your business.”

“Theft in the fo’c’s’le is everyone’s business,” snapped Bemyr from the hatchway. “Yes or no?”

“No,” replied Asolf.

“That’s a lie,” Kharl said without thinking.

Asolf drove right toward the cooper. Kharl stepped aside and, as he did, one-handedly flung Asolf to the deck. The deckhand lay there for a moment, then started to gather his feet under him. Kharl wondered if the sailor had a knife or a marlinespike. His own fingers tightened about the carpenter’s hammer in his belt.

“You move, and you’re off the ship in the clothes on your back,” Bemyr stated coldly.

Asolf froze.

“I think I’ll take a look in Asolf’s bin,” Bemyr said, moving forward.

“Yeah…I took all three coppers in his wallet,” Asolf said tiredly.

“I’m sure you did, and I’m sure you took more than that,” Bemyr said. “You and I are going to talk to the captain. Get up.”

Asolf slowly rose, glaring at Kharl. “Friggin’ half mage.”

“Didn’t take no mage to figure out you were hiding something,” Reisl said.

“Even I could figure it out,” added Bemyr. “Let’s go.”

After the two left the forecastle Reisl looked at Kharl. “Thanks. Always thought he was snitching coppers here and there. Never could get him.”

“You seemed to know who it was,” Kharl said.

“Knew for a while, but he’s mean.” Reisl shook his head. “You took him down so quick.”

“Just luck,” Kharl lied. He’d sensed that Asolf would attack, and he’d been ready. Since he was half a head taller, broader, stronger, and ready, the thieving sailor hadn’t had a chance.

“Take that kind of luck any day.”

“So will I,” replied Kharl with a laugh. As he left and headed for the mess, Kharl wondered why Asolf had called him a half mage. Because the sailor was touched with chaos and had realized Kharl could sense it? Or just to get Kharl distrusted by the other sailors?

Breakfast in port wasn’t bad-there was hot bread and an egg mush with scraps of meat. Kharl took his bowl and sat at one end of the narrow table, scooping up the mush with a crust of the rye bread, listening as others entered the mess.

“…the bosun and the captain threw Asolf off…caught him stealing coppers, bosun did…”

“…few morns woke up thinking I shoulda had more in my wallet…now I know…”

“…smart…only took a few…”

“Not smart enough.”

Kharl finished and left the mess.

Immediately after muster, and before reporting to the carpenter shop, Kharl made his way to the bow, on the port side, the side where he could look out northward over the Great North Bay. He leaned on the railing, thinking. He’d been lucky that most of the crew had already suspected Asolf, but he’d come close to giving himself away. He frowned. What exactly was he afraid of? That somehow he was able to sense chaos and when people told lies? Or that people would think he was a mage, when he scarcely knew anything about it?

He’d always had a feel for wood, and often Vetrad had complained when Kharl had refused certain lengths of wood, but the ones he’d refused hadn’t felt right, and he’d seldom ever found himself with bad billets in the cooperage. Idly, thinking about the wood, he looked down at the solid oak hull, angling toward the gray water of the bay.

He frowned. About ten cubits aft of where he stood, just above the waterline, on the port side, he could sense an overtone of white.

“What are you looking at?”

Kharl straightened at Hagen’s question. “Ser, I mean, captain. I think there’s something wrong with the hull, the wood, that is, down there, right at the waterline.”

“Well…you think so, and you go down on a bosun’s chair and look real close.” Hagen gestured.

Furwyl appeared.

“Bosun’s chair,” Hagen said. “Kharl’s worried about the hull down there. Like to have him take a look. Can’t leave until tomorrow anyway.”

“Those are new planks and timbers…”

“Can’t hurt to have him look.”

Kharl almost wished he’d said nothing, but he remained silent until Hodal appeared with the rope-slung chair. The two of them attached the ropes and pulleys, then swung the chair over the railing. There Kharl climbed into the chair and was lowered.

The chair stopped two or three cubits too high.

“A little lower,” Kharl called.

The chair lurched down.

“That’s good.”

Up close, Kharl could feel that the damage was worse than he’d thought, although the hull looked normal. An entire patch of hull going at least three cubits below the waterline was rotten-or something like it. He touched the wood and could feel some give.

“Well?” Furwyl called down.

“You got a whole section of hull here. I could drive a maul through it.”

Furwyl laughed. “That section’s only a year old. Come on up.”

“It’s rotten.”

“Can’t be. It’s new oak.”

Kharl took the hammer from his belt. “Watch.”

“Be glad to.”

The carpenter who’d been a cooper took one swing, and buried the hammer in the wood just above the waterline. Splinters and chunks of rotten wood flew. Kharl pulled away a fist-sized chunk, holding it in his left hand. “Pull me up. You can see for yourself.”

Furwyl’s mouth hung open.

Then the first mate and Hodal pulled up the chair, and Kharl scrambled out, handing the chunk of oak to Furwyl.

Furwyl looked at the wood, taking in the strawlike parallel tubes in the fragment. “Shipworms…frigging shipworms. That Jeran swine…paid for coppered wood…” He looked up. “Captain!”

Hagen reappeared.

“Carpenter’s right. Shipworms. Bet all those timbers we replaced in Biehl are no good.”

Hagen’s jaw tightened.

“I’m sorry, ser,” Kharl said. “I don’t claim to know ships…but I know something about wood…”

“Not your fault, man.” Hagen shook his head. “We hit a bad blow…might lose the ship.”

“Leave the chair there,” Furwyl said.

Kharl stepped aside, sliding down the railing as the two officers talked in low voices.

“…not the best place to refit and retimber…”

“…put that hammer through that like rotten cheese…”

“…any kind of storm…go down by the head…quicker ’n a lead barrel…”

Kharl looked out across the harbor, not really seeing anything. What had happened to him? He’d known wood, and once he’d touched the hull, he’d known it was weak, but he’d never before been able to see or sense something like that from ten cubits away before.