Burning the Rations

The middle deck sagged two spans above Kazuma's head, the cedar beams groaning under the dead weight of Prince Sukenari's leaden bier. As Kazuma dropped through the split floorboards behind the broken companionway, splinters of aged wood fell like dry needles into the pitch-troughs below, dusting the old embalmer's shoulders with fragrant red powder. Ahead in the lower framing, the alpha burrower writhed, its severed sensory stalks leaking pale gray jelly down its calcified flanks. Blind and deafened, the creature slammed its armored ridge against the surviving upright, sending a violent shudder through the barge's spine.

Kazuma seized a lump of sulfur-charred resin from his tool apron, thrusting it into the spilled embers from Sayano's censer before hurling the smoking wad into the lowest drainage trench. The sharp, acrid stench of burning marsh-gall billowed toward the beast's flared olfactory slits, drawing its blunt snout down into the lowest hold.

"Teruo," Kazuma rasped, the sulfur from Sayano's censer scouring his dry throat. "The chocks. Knock the wedge-pins from the tallow vats. Now."

Teruo scrambled across the canted deck planks, his sandals slick with stalker fluid. He reversed his spear, driving the heavy bronze butt into the retaining pegs of the five-hundred-pound cedar barrels. The pine-pitch inside had thickened over eleven days of dry heat, a dark, viscous mass spiced with the court's adulterated additives. With a dull crack, the first oak hoop parted. Black sludge spilled into the central drainage channel, pooling around the beast's boneless lower segments.

The alpha gave a wet, whistling gasp through its crushed breathing siphon. Drawn by the burning scent, it dragged its bulk across the shattered timber framing into the narrow lower cribbing.

From the smoke flue high above, Botan's reedy voice drifted down through the haze. "If the imperial court bought pitch that stinks this foully in a hearth, the deceased princes are fortunate they lack nostrils to endure it."

"Keep the drafts open topside," Sayano called down from the upper ladder sill, her face blackened by sulfur soot and her fingers wrapped around the censer's chain. "Do not let the smoke settle in the prince's quarters."

Kazuma ignored them both, his eyes fixed on the trench where the pitch pooled. The beast was wedging itself into the lowest bilge pocket, directly above the splintered keel breach where the mud-stalkers had first bored through. If it died there without fire, its decaying mass would rot the cedar frames within days. If it broke the second upright, the upper tiers would collapse into the mud.

"The water casks," Kazuma said, pointing his scraper at the iron-banded tubs lashed to the forward bulkhead.

Teruo halted, his bronze spear suspended above the trench. His chest heaved beneath his dirt-caked tunic. "That is the clean well-water from the lower hold. Sayano's ration. There is half a cask left for the four of us."

"The pitch alone will not flash fast enough to roast its shell," Kazuma said. He did not raise his voice. He reached out and kicked the bung-stopper from the nearest vat, letting raw marsh-naphtha dribble into the black resin pool. "We need the steam to drive the heat into the cribbing joints. Knock the staves, or the beast takes the hull down with it."

Teruo gripped his spear haft until the skin over his knuckles turned white. He stepped past the thrashing tail of the beast and swung the bronze point into the base of the water cask.

Clear well-water burst through the split staves. It rushed across the tilted cedar floorboards, catching the layer of floating pitch and driving the dark fuel straight into the trench beneath the burrower's underbelly. The beast felt the cold liquid and coiled violently, its spiked tail-ridge gouging deep furrows into the ship's keelson.

Kazuma pulled an iron strike-pot from his leather apron. He struck flint against steel, catching a yellow spark in a ball of oily tow. With a single fluid toss, he dropped the flaming wad into the drainage channel.

The naphtha caught with a hollow roar.

A wall of orange flame surged along the cedar runners, engulfing the alpha's lower flanks in a crackling sheet of fire. As the burning pitch touched the cold well-water, superheated steam exploded through the narrow hold. White vapor and thick black resin-smoke collided against the low cedar ceiling, forming a churning vortex of heat that drove into every crevice of the ship's bottom.

The alpha burrower shrieked—a shrill, bubbling whistle that rattled the copper nails in the ribs. It twisted frantically, thrashing against the cribbing as the intense heat blistered its calcified hide. The unrefined court tallow, packed with marsh-gall and copper slag, melted into a boiling liquid that soaked into the creature's breathing pores.

Kazuma pulled Teruo by the linen sleeve, dragging the younger man back onto the canted crossbeams as the floorboards began to smoke beneath their feet. They scrambled up the split framing to the middle deck landing beside Sayano, coughing into the hems of their tunics while the furnace raged below.

For twenty heartbeats, the ship shook with the burrower's death agony. Then came a wet, heavy collapse. The monster's bulk slumped into the bilge trench, its scorched cartilage folding in upon itself.

The boiling pitch did not go out. Instead, starved of fresh air in the low pocket, the thick resin began to cool against the wet cedar timbers. The melting fat of the alpha mingled with the boiled court bitumen, flowing into the shattered breach in the bottom planking. As the cold marsh mud outside pressed against the wood, the concoction congealed, hardening into a thick, blackened weld that sealed the splintered hull tighter than any peacetime caulk.

Silence returned to the hold, broken only by the hiss of dying embers and the steady drip of condensed steam from the ceiling beams.

Kazuma swung down through the scorched deck framing first. His sandals sank into a crust of hardened soot and burnt tallow. The dry-hold was ruined: the center pillar stood charred but upright, held in place by the solidified mass of pitch that now entombed the alpha's remains against the keel. The companionway was an ash-choked cavern.

Beside the forward bulkhead, the shattered staves of the water cask lay empty in the silt. A few dark drops trickled from the split oak bottom, vanishing into the dry cracks between the floorboards.

Teruo descended after him, his bronze spear lowered. The sentry knelt beside the dry tub, touching the damp wood where the last gallon of drinking water had soaked into the bilge. He did not speak. He wiped a streak of gray ash from his jaw and looked toward the upper hatchway.

Topside, the faint gray light of dawn was beginning to seep through the cedar ventilation flues.

Kazuma climbed to the main deck, stepping out into the cool morning air. The eastern sky over the holy marshes was pale as bone, casting long shadows across miles of cracked, dried silt. The ward-drum sat silent on its cedar trestle, its patched hide taut and still.

Sayano emerged behind him, her soot-stained fingers gripping the rail. She did not ask about the broken casks below. Her eyes moved from the silent drum to the dry, endless mudflats stretching to the gray horizon.

Kazuma looked down at his pitch-blackened palms. The hull was sealed, and the dead prince above remained undisturbed in his berth, but the last drop of well-water had run into the silt beneath their feet. As the south wind carried the sweet, heavy stench of roasted alpha-meat across the wasteland, distant silt mounds along the gray horizon began to bubble in the morning light.