Falconer's Quest by T. Davis Bunn Read Free Book Online Page A

back up to Falconer. “Have you known tempests such as this?”
    “Aye, Skipper, that I have.”
    “Then I’ll thank you, sir, to take charge of the wheel.”
    “Aye, Skipper.” Falconer was already moving for the ropes. “And please have your steward see to my boy.”
    “Soap!”
    “Aye, sir!”
    “Captain’s compliments to the owner. Mr. Lawson is ordered to remain in his cabin for the duration. You keep the lad safe.” The captain shrugged himself into his coat. “Look lively, lads! Our very survival depends upon it.”

Chapter 6
    The storm now was visible to all on deck, a beast of the night that rumbled toward them on legs of fire and wind. Its roar, audible at fifty leagues and more, announced the waves coming at them like enormous fists beating against the ship’s timbers and flinging their froth as high as the topsails.
    Captain Harkness used a canvas trumpet to add volume to his shouted instructions. Sailors raced against the approaching tempest, clinging to ropes high overhead as they hurried to batten down the sails. They clutched the canvas to their chests, drawing their billowing lengths into slivers tight as new moons. Ropes were tossed back and forth in such practiced haste it would have been remarkable to witness had it not been for the monster now claiming all the horizon as its own.
    The midshipmen were ordered below—all but the eldest, a lad of seventeen who helped the sailors hammer wooden chocks around all the portals leading belowdecks. When Falconer felt a grinding through his boots, he knew the captain had ordered all the bilge pumps to be doublecrewed.
    The ship was surrounded by a ghostly illumination. One moment all was black. Then lightning danced upon the waves and the crew’s frenetic activity was thrown into garish view. Yet more lightning split the clouds high overhead into great shards of brilliance. The blasts seemed to punch the billows toward them, boiling up and forward at an impossible speed.
    Lieutenant Bivens directed the crew to fashion a sea anchor, a double loop of sail that was readied on the stern, there in case the ship lost either rudder or masts or both. The anchor would then be cast overboard to drag the ship about, keeping it from striking an oncoming wave amidships. In seas this mountainous, one wave striking the vessel sideways would be enough to flip it over and send them all to a watery grave.
    The helmsman, assigned to the ship’s wheel, shivered so hard his words were chopped into bits. “W-will w-we s-survive this?”
    In reply, Falconer unraveled the storm lashings, ropes coiled about the wheel’s stanchion. He took a double bite around the sailor’s chest and shoulders. “Can you breathe?”
    “Aye, s-sir.”
    Falconer used the second rope to tie himself into a similar cradle. “Are you right with God?”
    The sailor winced at twin lightning strikes, so close there was no space between the fire and the sound. “I-I am, sir. B-But m-my b-baby g-girl, she’s—”
    Falconer smelled the sulfurous whiff from the lightning, a scent akin to battle. He forced his voice into an iron hardness. “Focus upon the next wave, the next blast of wind, the next glimpse you have of the compass. The ship and all who sail her depend upon your doing your duty.”
    The sailor’s response was cut off by a sudden shriek of wind. The ship’s rigging hummed a frenzied warning. Then the wind subsided for a moment, allowing the ship’s crew to hear another sound, a sibilant rush, like a myriad striking snakes. The menacing hiss grew and grew and grew. Falconer watched the sheet of rain flying across the waves, illuminated by lightning on all sides.
    The full storm struck.
    All the noise and the waves and the rain became one screeching force. The whole ship was tossed into a cauldron whipped to insanity.
    Falconer reached one arm around the smaller helmsman so their bodies were melded as one. His reach was longer, so he gripped the wheel spokes just below the