Episode 2:
The Thing Adrift

NEEKIN THREW ON HER SHIRT and raced to the deck.

She shouldered her way through a dozen men pressed to the port side, some of the men of the nightwatch, some clearly stirred from their dreams as she had been.

There, some distance off the port side of the Falcon's Heart, listed another sailing vessel, tilted drunkenly on its side. An inferno of flames crackled across its deck, the tendrils of fire lancing upward like the arms of a fiery colossus clawing frantically for the stars. Neekin blanched. A fire at sea was as good as a death sentence. That was why the Falcon's Heart kept her distance.

"Ahoy!" shouted a voice she recognized as the first mate, Alombo ben Fadahl. Startled by something as mundane as a human voice, Neekin looked around to see him leaning from the upper deck, his dark brown skin stained a bloody hue by the light from the distant flames. "I'm launching a dory to go closer," he told his crew. "Volunteers get a glass of rum and a half day off in the morning."

Apparently such an offer was not as tempting as he had hoped it would be, for the men milled about on the main deck, mumbling sullenly amongst themselves. Neekin stepped forward. "I'm not much of a drinker, but I'll go across." Alombo had clearly been taciturn about all that was truly behind their mission here, and she supposed this might gain her his confidence. Or at least provide her with clues to form her own conclusions. The mate looked at her, frowning, stroking his thin beard as if tempted to refuse. But then he thought better of it. It was not like he was being offered a wealth of candidates.

Eventually the dory launched with Neekin, Alombo, and three other men aboard. As the snub-nosed boat was rowed across the gently heaving water, Neekin peered at the tar black sea and felt an involuntary shudder race up her spine. The water might as well have really been tar for all that she could see beneath it. Even the light from the approaching flames licked across the surface, unable to penetrate its immortal depths, or reveal what might lurk beneath.

"We search for survivors?" she asked Alombo.

"Aye."

"And the cause?" she prodded.

He looked at her, barely illuminated by the dancing fire. "I think we can guess the cause."

"The black ship?"

"We are not the only crew hunting her, it seems."

As their little boat pulled closer, the warmth of the fire danced across their skin like an unwanted caress, the oxygen-consuming flames roaring like stampeding elephants. Neekin flinched as cinders arced through the air and sizzled upon the water around them. She began to regret her decision to volunteer. Should the dory catch fire, and the men abandon it, they might be able to swim back to the Falcon's Heart. But her muscles still ached from her ordeal of the previous day, and she doubted whether she could make the distance.

Clearly Alombo was also nursing regrets, the flames more wild and voracious than he had first surmised. He called a halt to the rowing, still short of the vessel. He rose and shouted: "Ahoy! The flaming ship! Are there survivors? Ahoy!"

It was doubtful any survivor could hear them over the roaring of the flames, Neekin knew...almost as doubtful as there being any survivors to hear at all. "By the Spirits," Neekin said. "The crew is still aboard her!"   The men looked and realized that, amind the savage, dancing flames, charred bodies could be seen, almost as though still manning their posts. "Why did they not abandon ship?" muttered Alombo.

Squinting at the scorched and burning ship, Neekin scowled, her ill-matched eyes glittering in the light. "Bring us closer," she muttered.

"Aye? What?" asked Alombo, clearly content to stay where they were.

"There's something...odd. Bring us closer."

Alombo hesitated, weighing his fear of the flames with his curiosity to learn what it was she espied. Finally, he gave a curt nod to the rowers. Both men looked at each other nervously, then, reluctantly, put their backs into it, and the little boat lurched forward again.

"Damnation!" hissed the fifth man as an ember bounced off the side of the dory. He instantly took to splashing brine upon the spot, though it had not caught. Alombo glanced nervously at him, then back at Neekin.

They were almost within touching distance now, the heat like an oven. Neekin put one foot on the side of the dory. "Anchor me," she said, holding out her arm. Alombo took her arm, realizing she was going to lean out whether he did or not. The other men instinctively leaned to the other side, as a counter balance. Neekin leaned out, straining to touch the hull of the doomed vessel. Alombo braced himself with his legs, allowing her to lean out at a 45 degree angle. She stretched for the other vessel, as though a thief desperate to claim a jewel, unselfconscious, or unaware, that leaning out at the angle, dressed as she was, afforded the men in the boat a glimpse of the mysteries beneath the skirt formed by her shirt. And even the threat of fiery death had to fight to keep their attention from that.   Suddenly Neekin fell back into Alombo's arms, and they teetered for a moment, the dory almost capsizing. "Hell, girl," Alombo cursed. "Was your recklessness worth it?"

She held up her hand, black and glistening with oil. "That ship didn't just catch fire...it was deliberately doused with oil and burned."

"Interesting," he said, unconsciously still holding her warm body pressed to his. Nor did she object.

Suddenly there was a deafening crack, reminiscent of the death scream of an iceberg. Alombo released her and shouted, "Back! Row back! She's going down!" The rowers bent forward, and the little boat veritably leaped across the black rolling sea as brine geysered up mid-ship on the burning vessel. The ship screamed its futile defiance as charred wood could no longer keep back the hungry ocean. It cracked in the middle and the two sides shuddered violently, and it began to settle down into the midnight sea, the flames licking and lashing to the last, until the ocean claimed it all.

The inhabitants of the little dory stared in silence, aware of how close they had come to being dragged down with it in its slipstream.

Then Neekin spoke. "I'll tell you something more -- the markings marked her as a Manoori vessel."

"The land of sorcerers?"

"Aye."

                                 *     *     *

Neekin slept not well in what remained of the night. What was a Manoori vessel doing so far from its own dark and mysterious lands? Was it, too, hunting the black ship? And had it found it? Tall, gangly and black skinned, the Manoori were not gods, she knew that well enough -- only men. And men could die. Still, she wondered at the power of the black ship if it could best a boat of Manoori sailors.  

And why had it been torched?

She rose early, her muscles still sore from the ordeals of the last few days, but feeling much recovered. And she knew the best thing for them was to keep them limber and moving.

On deck, the sun broiled low in the East, and though the Xarolouth Ocean looked not quite as forbidding as it had in the depths of night, it was still a remarkably dark and opaque expanse -- a no man's land of brine. Still, the air was sharp and tangy, the breeze cool, the sun warm, making for an ideal combination. Whatever the future held, now, life was agreeable.

Then she squinted her eyes, peering out at the horizon. She leaped nimbly upon the gunwale, startling one of the sailors nearby who was wrapping up some loose cords. He eyed her suspiciously, wondering if she were about to leap overboard. Instead, she hopped back to the deck and raced over to the bottom of the mast at the top of which was crow's nest.

"Ahoy!" she shouted. "What's that to the south and west?"

The tiny figure above her stared at her blankly. "Eh? What?"

"To the south and west -- what is it?"

He stared at her stubbornly, as if tempted to ignore the hysterics of the comely wench they had dragged from the sea. Then, his curiosity getting the best of him, he glanced in the direction Neekin had said. He started to look away, then stopped and peered more intently. "A boat!" he shouted. "A boat, ho!"   "What's this?" Alombo strode on deck, stripped to the waist, sunlight gleaming off his dusky brown skin that fit snugly around his coiled muscles.

Neekin allowed herself a momentary, lingering glance, then said, "A boat."

"The black ship?" he said, now a frenzy of action as he leapt to the base of the mast.

"Nay!" shouted the look out. "Too small! A dingy, no more!"

Neekin and Alombo exchanged glances. "Survivors from the ship last night?" she asked.

                                 *     *     *

The voluminous shadow of the Falcon's Heart rolled over the small boat as it lurched and slid aimlessly from crest to heaving crest. The shouts of sailors' voices, the creaking of lines pulled taught by wind-stretched sheets, the thud of waves against the big ship's mighty hull, all of these should have alerted anyone in the little boat to their presence. Yet nothing stirred.

Alombo and Neekin leaned over the rail of the Falcon's Heart and peered into the waist of the little boat. Save for a tarp or old sail spread across the floor, the boat was empty.

"No one made it," breathed Alombo. "Damn, but I had hoped to learn whatever information they might have to tell." He stopped as a soft hand was laid upon the taught muscles of his arm.

"There's something on that boat," Neekin hissed. "The tarp -- it's moving."

Alombo frowned, doubting her words. He stared again for a moment. He was about to tell her her mind was playing tricks on her, when something shifted beneath the fabric.

"Ahoy, the boat!" Neekin shouted. "We are friends! We mean you no harm!"

Whatever was beneath the fabric went abruptly still again.

Neekin drew the palm of her hand across her mouth, feeling inexplicably ill at ease. She looked at Alombo. There was a tightness to his mouth that suggested he felt the same. "There," he muttered. "Again it moved -- slithered almost."

Neekin cleared her throat. "Something's on that boat," she said again beneath her breath...