Shadow Road: Book 1 of the Shadows Rising Trilogy

31. More Than One Kind of Storm

32nd of Uirra

With a sickening lurch, the cabin began tilting again, rising to the prow as the Stryka climbed yet another monstrous swell. I planted both feet on the wall, grabbed at the edges of Penweather's berth box with white-knuckled fingers, and held on like a burr, waiting for the even more sickening plunge into the trough that would follow.

One. Two. And there it was. The wave crested, there was a single, breathless moment of inertia, then the Stryka's ends seesawed with a groan of timbers and steel girders, and down we went, the hull crashing into the water again.

Bile surged up my throat, and the need to scrabble out of that tiny, suffocating space was nearly overwhelming. Only the sound of loose items clattering about in the Bridge kept me from opening the door. Maps, probably, sextants and marking wax, but there was also the ominous tinkle and crunch of broken glass.

There wasn't any way of knowing what, exactly, was flying around out there. The only thing I had to worry about in my cabin was Penweather's ink pot, which I had forgotten to stow in his writing desk before the worst of the storm hit. I watched it make another swift appearance, sliding out from under the berth box and skittering wildly over the floor as the Stryka began climbing again.

The warship's engines screamed like a savage animal below decks, pushed to the limit. Boots thumped repeatedly overhead as the Captain fought to keep the bow true to the top of the oncoming peak. Then, again, we hung suspended in time and space for one heart-stopping split-second before the world tilted, and the ink pot raced straight back beneath the berth box.

That one hadn't been quite so terrifying. Neither was the one that came after.

When the inkpot finally began coming to a stop only halfway to the other wall of the cabin, I let out my breath and uncurled my aching fingers, slightly convinced that the worst was over.

I had just pushed myself up to sit on the edge of the bunk when my door swung open.

Arramy stood there in the doorway like a great, hulking sea spirit, soaking wet and dripping water all over the floor. His jaw tightened as he took in the ink splatters on the walls and the fact that I was alive and sitting up, then he turned around and stumped back out into the Bridge, where he began straightening things with military precision.

The mess wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined. All of the heavier furniture was bolted down. Only a few smaller items had been jostled free of their places or spilled onto the floor.

I stood up on shaky legs and joined him, bending to gather a few map tubes that had fallen out of their cubicles. Then I righted the map table stools. The shattered glass was trickier. It was everywhere and seemed to have been some sort of jar or beaker, the shards curved and thin. I was sweeping it up with the hand broom when Commander Kyro came in, looking just as soggy and disheveled as Arramy, his woolen hat clinging to his head, his beard clotted with bits of snow and ice.

"We've got a problem, sir," he grated out, voice rough from shouting against the wind. His expression was grim, and he didn't so much as hesitate when he saw me, his attention locked on the Captain. "There was damage below. One of the fuel drums came loose and broke. Ruined a bin of dry goods..."

Arramy was already out the door, Kyro hard on his heels, both of them striding swiftly across the quarterdeck. Snatches of Kyro's continuing report came back to me on the winter wind: "... gotten into the water tanks somehow. Three of the filtration devices are broken. Bilge pump looks to be shot all to blazes... One spark is all it'll take..."

Wide-eyed, I moved to close the door after them, my heart in my throat as I peered out into a storm-scudded dawn. The gale out there might have died down, but a storm of another sort was already on us. There hadn't been any water, fuel, or food to spare.