Now I knew what had been meant when I had been told that this world bore a closer relation to the world I had left as John Daker than most I had visited as the Eternal Champion.
The water hounds were as playful as otters and would follow the ship at a safe distance when it entered deeper water (though it never floated entirely free of the bottom), barking or leaping for scraps which the citizens of the hull would throw to them.
I learned very quickly that morning that the hull itself and the people aboard were not inherently sinister, though the present ruler and his Binkeepers were singularly unsavoury. They had learned to live with the filth from the chimneys and were used to the stink of the place, but they seemed cheerful and friendly enough, once they were assured that we meant them no harm and were not “marsh vermin”—a general term, we discovered, for any person who either had no home hull, or who was outlawed for a variety of crimes, or who had chosen to live on land. Some of these bands would, indeed, attack hulls when they got the chance, or kidnap individuals from the ships, but it seemed to me that not all were characteristically evil or deserved to be hunted down. We learned that it was Baron Captain Armiad who had instigated the rule that all landspeople should be killed and their corpses consigned to the bins. “As a result,” one woman told us as she stood scraping a hide, “no landspeople will trade with the
Frowning Shield
these days. We are forced to forage what we can from the anchorage or depend on what the Binkeepers strip from the marsh vermin.” She shrugged. “But that’s the new way.”
We found that a rapid way of moving about the city was to use the catwalks between the masts. We could thus save ourselves the time of negotiating the winding streets below and not get lost so easily. The masts had permanent ladders with a kind of cage guard running the length of them, so there was less chance of losing one’s grip and being flung backwards to the buildings below.
We fell in with a group of young men and women who were evidently nobles of some sort, though not very well dressed and almost as grimy as the commoners. They sought us out as we crossed the roof of a turret, trying to see towards the back of the ship and its monstrous rudders which were used for braking and for turning, frequently gouging deep into the mud. One of them was a bright-eyed young woman of about twenty, dressed in worn leather similar to von Bek’s costume. She was the first to introduce herself. “I’m Bellanda-naam-Folfag-ig-Fornster,” she said, placing her cap across her heart. “We wanted to congratulate you on your fight with Mopher Gorb and his collectors. They’ve grown too used to chasing half-starved outcasts. We hope they’ll learn a lesson from what happened yesterday, though I’m not sure his kind are capable of learning.”
She introduced her two brothers and their other friends.
“You have the air of students,” said von Bek. “Is there a college aboard?”
“There is,” she said, “and we attend it when it is open. But since our new Baron Captain took power there’s been little encouragement given to learning. He has a hearty contempt for what he says are the softer pursuits. There’s been little encouragement to artists or intellectuals over the past three years, and our hull is virtually ostracised by all. Those who could leave the
Frowning Shield
, who had skills or knowledge to offer other hulls, have already gone. We have nothing but our youth and our eagerness to learn. There’s little hope of changing berths, at least for a long time. There have been worse tyrants in the histories of the hulls, worse warmongers, worse fools, but it is not pleasant to know that you’re the laughing stock of the entire realm, that no decent person from another ship would ever wish to marry you or even be seen with you. Only at the Massing do we manage to achieve some kind of communication,
The water hounds were as playful as otters and would follow the ship at a safe distance when it entered deeper water (though it never floated entirely free of the bottom), barking or leaping for scraps which the citizens of the hull would throw to them.
I learned very quickly that morning that the hull itself and the people aboard were not inherently sinister, though the present ruler and his Binkeepers were singularly unsavoury. They had learned to live with the filth from the chimneys and were used to the stink of the place, but they seemed cheerful and friendly enough, once they were assured that we meant them no harm and were not “marsh vermin”—a general term, we discovered, for any person who either had no home hull, or who was outlawed for a variety of crimes, or who had chosen to live on land. Some of these bands would, indeed, attack hulls when they got the chance, or kidnap individuals from the ships, but it seemed to me that not all were characteristically evil or deserved to be hunted down. We learned that it was Baron Captain Armiad who had instigated the rule that all landspeople should be killed and their corpses consigned to the bins. “As a result,” one woman told us as she stood scraping a hide, “no landspeople will trade with the
Frowning Shield
these days. We are forced to forage what we can from the anchorage or depend on what the Binkeepers strip from the marsh vermin.” She shrugged. “But that’s the new way.”
We found that a rapid way of moving about the city was to use the catwalks between the masts. We could thus save ourselves the time of negotiating the winding streets below and not get lost so easily. The masts had permanent ladders with a kind of cage guard running the length of them, so there was less chance of losing one’s grip and being flung backwards to the buildings below.
We fell in with a group of young men and women who were evidently nobles of some sort, though not very well dressed and almost as grimy as the commoners. They sought us out as we crossed the roof of a turret, trying to see towards the back of the ship and its monstrous rudders which were used for braking and for turning, frequently gouging deep into the mud. One of them was a bright-eyed young woman of about twenty, dressed in worn leather similar to von Bek’s costume. She was the first to introduce herself. “I’m Bellanda-naam-Folfag-ig-Fornster,” she said, placing her cap across her heart. “We wanted to congratulate you on your fight with Mopher Gorb and his collectors. They’ve grown too used to chasing half-starved outcasts. We hope they’ll learn a lesson from what happened yesterday, though I’m not sure his kind are capable of learning.”
She introduced her two brothers and their other friends.
“You have the air of students,” said von Bek. “Is there a college aboard?”
“There is,” she said, “and we attend it when it is open. But since our new Baron Captain took power there’s been little encouragement given to learning. He has a hearty contempt for what he says are the softer pursuits. There’s been little encouragement to artists or intellectuals over the past three years, and our hull is virtually ostracised by all. Those who could leave the
Frowning Shield
, who had skills or knowledge to offer other hulls, have already gone. We have nothing but our youth and our eagerness to learn. There’s little hope of changing berths, at least for a long time. There have been worse tyrants in the histories of the hulls, worse warmongers, worse fools, but it is not pleasant to know that you’re the laughing stock of the entire realm, that no decent person from another ship would ever wish to marry you or even be seen with you. Only at the Massing do we manage to achieve some kind of communication,
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