The World Above the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

wind seemed befuddled at first, then enraged. Winds driven directly down clashed with squalls hurled out of the north. Crosswinds erupted, confounding surface currents. Waves rose and broke mast-high from four points of the compass. The Viking ships with their gaping hulls were swept high into the air. Men at the portals flailed the wind with useless oars. The wave’s crest and voyagers’ hopes were blown to scudding foam.
    The downward rush on the backside of the wave seemed endless. It seemed to Henry a great hole was torn in the bottom of the sea. A vast depression formed on the surface of the gulf. The longboats sank from sight as though they’d never existed. Seeds and sets, bolts of wool and canvas circled the walls of a deepening vortex. Lives fragile as froth dissolved in God’s preposterous fury. The fat caravels—flightless ducks in a towering sinkhole—spun down in the widening eddy. Men, women and children, cattle, sheep and goats whirled silently to deep and quiet graves. They would plant no crops, build no shelter, know no issue.
    Henry’s last sight of Speranza gave no reason to hope. She rolled beneath the surge, sank from view then bobbed inverted to the surface, her rudder ripped from its housing. There were no masts. No house, fore or aft. All that remained was the stripped-down hull and naked deck. Speranza foundered again, resurfaced and hove out of sight, her fate at the mercy of wind and tide.
    Constante did not reappear. Her last tortuous rise and the torque of the twist as she fell split her open like an axed barrel. Nicolo’s still-living flesh and bones, until that moment securely sealed in the vessel he helped his brother Carlo perfect, spilled from the ship with all her provisions. He joined the host of lost Arcadians, their arms and legs spread wide, as if in flight. They wafted wide-eyed and lifeless down to the bottom of the sea.
    Reclamation was wrung like a rag. Her seams strained as she corkscrewed end for end up then down one mountain of water after the next. Seasoned cross-members, her bones, dug deep within seeking strength, found their pith still green and aching with life. Henry’s pride rose with Reclamation to another crest where she hovered. Down the far side of the mountain she plunged in a sickening, elliptic arc to the belly of the following trough. She groaned up another, hove to her keel, then plunged to what Henry felt must be the very depths of hell. Joints strained. Caulking sprung free. Frigid jets of cold saltwater stung raw flesh. Livestock bleated and bawled. No human voice was raised in fear. Or in prayer.
    Dim light from the one surviving lantern gave form to Henry’s fears. Stowed supplies securely lashed had broken free. Sacks of oats, flour, dried peas and barley had tumbled and split. Barrels rolled, collided, their contents burst from sprung hoops and split staves. Honey, vinegar, sweet water, and the gallons of precious olive oil amassed from lands bordering the great Mediterranean Sea sloshed forward and back. Buckets filled with gastric spew, and worse, slopped over crusted rims or spilled entirely, their contents mixed with the spilt provisions. Reclamation groaned, twisted, plunged, was raised again, fell, then settled. Henry braced for the next sickening rise.
    It did not come. God’s wrath had fallen upon them without warning: without decrease it ceased. There was no jubilant shout, no prayer of thanksgiving. Deliverance smelled of vomit and tasted of fear.
    Henry assessed the carnage and slop, the foul mockery of soup sloshing back and forth hip-deep in the hull. Hell surely exists, he thought. And hell is likely very much like this. He looked forward. His heart softened. Heaven might be very like the vision sheltered in the secure if ill-formed grotto tucked in the upper reaches of the bow. Eugainia was lost in fretful sleep. Sir Athol Gunn, with all his great strength, secured the pallet on which she lay, held