The Steward's Cabin

Straining with the effort, the large woman placed the package down in front of Noah. It was shaped like a square bale of hay, wrapped in tarpaulin, and hit the deck with a dull thud.

“This showed up here yesterday, Cap’n said to hang on to it until the owner showed up. Guess that’s you neh?” She gave Noah a polite look, “Oh and my name is Lisa, I’m in charge of the armory but I also get to carry the heavy shit, as you can see.” With a wink she lifted her arm and flexed to show a truly impressive bicep bulging her shirt. Noah was not short by any means but she was still at least a few inches taller than he, and he wouldn’t bet a copper piece on himself if they had to arm wrestle. Or any-wrestle.

“Nice to meet you Lisa, I’m Noah like the captain said. And yes, I suppose this is mine, I bought it in town and had it delivered, it’s camping supplies and two weeks of siege rations, and some other odds and ends.”

“Why are you bringing rations?” The woman asked, and Noah couldn’t help but notice how a set of wide scars on the left side of her face and head meant that only one of her eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“Depending on how long it takes, I may leave the ship and camp at the Empty City. So, I’ll have a few weeks of provisions and the gear to make it hopefully not too inconvenient.”

Lisa, so confused by his response she didn’t even correct his use of ‘ship’, could only stare and say, “You’re camping at the Empty City? By yourself?” As Noah nodded in reply another woman approached. Lisa turned to the newcomer, “You hear this, Hannah?”

The first mate, her red hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, nodded. “Aye. Our steward may only be with us half way up the river. But like the captain told you Noah, you are welcome to stay the whole trip too. I’m not crazy about anyone staying alone in that creepy place, just praying that the next boat that stops will give you passage back to Anglet. Hopefully you don’t need to stick around there, and you stay on the Nawyet with us. Gods know the crew would be happier with you along the whole way!”

“But what’rya camping out there for?” Lisa was still staring in near shock.

Noah gave his most blandly reassuring smile, saying, “I am studying the ruins of the Northlands and may need more time than the boat can spare on her journey.”

His attempt at a vague non-answer failed. “Studyin’ what? A big heap of a stone city with nothing and no one in it for centuries? It was picked clean ages ago, not that there was anything valuable left behind.” Even worse, Hannah looked openly curious now too.

“Well, some people find it dull but I think it’s terrifically exciting - I study how cities are shaped by their environment and how they in turn shape the land. Like, say, how the roads work - you know in some old towns you can tell that cattle paths became roads and then buildings grew around them? So, the way cattle would move from pasture to pasture ended up determining which way the streets of a major town point?”

That seemed to do it. Lisa still looked puzzled but Hannah was clearly not hoping for a long talk about how cows walk around, and she said, “Plenty of days before we get to the Empty City. Lisa, the steward’s bunk has barely enough space to take a step in, so you can stow Noah’s package in the hold. In the meantime, I have to show our newest crew the Nawyet.”

With a nod to the other woman, Hannah drew a hand back and gestured around them as they stood on the main deck, close to the set of steps that lead down into the partially belowdecks area the captain had disappeared into. “Noah, in the Dreadful you said you aren’t a sailor but you’ve been on ships before, and obviously you didn’t fly here to Anglet like a bird, so how much do you want to know?”

“I don’t know much about ships, or boats, or anything really. I just get on them and read in my cabin until I get where I’m going, but I’d love to know everything about this craft and sailing. Everything you want to share; I want to help and definitely don’t want to be in the way.”

With a happy grin, the red-headed first mate obliged, “To start, a nawyet is what the Ice Islanders call the grey and white whales that have the huge curving horns. This particular Nawyet was built down south about 50 years ago, and she is a gaff rigged ketch on solid keel stepped wooden masts. Planked in a mix of larch and oak, fastened to heavy sawn oak frames with castle forged boat nails. Grown oak floors across the centreline, all internal ballast is pig iron, approximately 7 tons. She’s 90 feet long, with a beam of 20 and a draft of 12.”

For a moment Noah thought she was done but she was just taking a breath, and she continued, “Ketch, meaning she has these two masts I’m pointing at like you don’t know what a mast is, but for a ketch keep in mind the aftmost mast - the mizzen - is shorter than the main mast forward. The helm lies to the aft of the mizzen mast… and if it didn’t it wouldn’t be a ketch it would be a yawl.”

Noah nodded slowly, luckily remembering that ‘aft’ was the rear of the ship. So, the larger mast was the one in the front of the boat (something he could barely tell while standing on the deck and looking up with all the sails in the way) and the one more to the back just in front of the stairs going belowdecks was the mizzen. The wheel was right at the back of everything, and could only see where the boat was going because the sails that hung from the mizzenmast were high enough to see under them.

“Gaff rigged, meaning the sails are four-cornered, fore-and-aft rigged, controlled at its peak with a spar called the gaff. Now, you may be wondering, why use a ketch to sail up and down a river? Wouldn’t a sloop be better, so you’re not always having to spill dirty air on the mizzen? There is truth to that, but off-wind the ketch is able to of carry genoa, mainsail, mizzen staysail and mizzen for reaching in good conditions, or just jib and mizzen in stronger weather. And since we sail up a river, the off-wind flexibility is important.”

Greatly regretting having asked for an in-depth introduction to the boat, Noah already knew he wasn’t ever going to remember even half of the details. As the first mate said, he wasn’t there to learn to be a sailor. But while Noah was confident he’d never need to know whatever a ‘jib’ was in his life, the talk did make him curious about some things. “That reminds me, why do you sail up the river anyway? I know coming back downriver must be easy, but you have to sail upriver against the current? The trade route from the Duchy of the Lake is important, and valuable, but it seems dangerous being so remote.”

“Aye. The Radisson is a wide and deep river, so sailing up it with a boat 90 feet long is challenging but workable, but the truth is there is no way to tow a barge by horses or oxen through the empty lands. And so far from most of the human kingdoms, you have to make do with the boats you have up here. Using smaller boats and rowing upriver is possible but you’re sacrificing storage space for cargo on the return, so sailing it is. As for the Nawyet, we sail north west to the Ice Islands too, so being a good-sized ketch gives us the ability to work the seas in the winter when the river freezes up. So, that’s the brief overview of the deck, let me show you to your room before the captain talks to ya.”

When Noah walked down the four narrow steps into a tight corridor Hannah was basically pressing up to his shoulder in the confined space. “The biggest room, right here with the oak door, is the captain’s quarters. She has an office as part of it, just in front of the wheelhouse above decks. To the left there is a small room I share as first mate with the other officer, although on a boat with a crew of 14 calling us ‘officers’ is more a technicality than anything, most of the crew manages themselves and everyone does most tasks. The steward’s room, your room, is this one here on the other side of the captains’ quarters,” she pointed him a few paces down the hallway to an open door. The steward’s quarter was a closet of a room barely larger than the bed it contained, but Noah knew it was rare for anyone on a boat this size to have their own space at all.

“It’s not much but the women bunk together in the bow stacked in hammocks on top of each other. So, this is where you’ll, uh, work. And sleep. A bit of privacy, we won’t have you rutting the girls in front of everyone like on some worm-eaten scows!”

Not for the first time, Noah was shocked when he remembered what his work would entail. Quietly thinking to himself, he nodded at Hannah and placed his small bag of personal effects in the chest built into the bedframe. There was a very small desk and chair, and a tiny round porthole let in the outside light. The room was barely a pace wide a maybe one and a half paces long.

He heard a door opening and in the close quarters of the boat knew it must be the captain’s door. Sure enough Hannah stepped back and let the darker woman stand looking into the stewards room. “Hello Noah, are you ready? You have a bit of time to get settled before we cast off, but I wanted to introduce you to the crew quickly so they can hopefully focus on their jobs instead of trying to catch glimpses of you. But before that, we spoke about your position and duties. Did you think of any other rules or exceptions? It would be ideal to get that all sorted out so when the crew meets you, they already know.”

Blushing, Noah gripped his hands behind his back. Sitting in the Dreadful, having a drink with the captain, it had all seemed like a fantasy. Now he was feeling quite nervous, but he swallowed and said, “No ma’am, what we discussed is still good. I am willing to service the women as they ask, or at least attempt to, in the ways mentioned. So no, uh, ****, none of the more unusual… requests.”

“No piss and shit stuff, aye,” Hannah nodded sagely from the corridor. “No idea if any of the crew are into that, or cutting a lover with a blade as foreplay, or what have you, but it’s good to have it said up front.”

Noah wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, but the first mate, standing behind the captain now, held her chin in her hand and said, “Spirits that reminds me - I knew a woman, totally normal lass, good sailor, who only truly got wet if she had a meek boy with his cock and balls locked into a wee metal cage. Made her wild, it did, and she’d have him crawl naked on a leash after her for hours. One day she found a whore who seemed to like it too, she went mad for him! At least, he made her think he liked it as much as she did - she asked him to marry her the next time she was in port. Sold her shares in the ship to pay out the last year of his whoring contract and everything! Wonder what ever happened to them, come to think of it. His last day at the brothel, after she bought him out, she had him dressed like a little girl but with the front of the skirt pinned up so you could see his pecker in a birdcage, like she owned it. He seemed hugely embarrassed, kneeling beside her while she fed him off her plate like a pet… but even with his face beet red and his stammering and wriggling around damn it if he didn’t look like he was having the time of his life too. Maybe that’s just fate they met, ney?”

Amaruq barely suppressed a laugh at Noah’s increasingly shocked expression. He was into his 20’s, but still seemed almost like a sheltered lad and she wondered what kind of society across the great sea produced such delicate but attractive and friendly men. But pondering that was a quick way to drift into dangerous currents - thinking about how decades of brutal war shaped the continent, and how close all the peoples came to losing everything. The captain had no time for melancholy memories.

She cleared her throat and said, with a reassuring nod, “Indeed Hannah, hopefully they were a true match after all. But back to our Noah, I suspect you’ll find the tastes of the crew to be rather tame. Some will hope for a child in their belly, of course, but you say that isn’t an issue, unlike so many poor men who survived the worst of the Lizardkin War only to find the magic had made them less fertile. The crew will love how handsome you are, and a few might get soppy in the heart and fall for you, but expect mostly hard-working women who are damn happy to have a strapping man in a bunk for an hour. And maybe some soft talk and affection as well.”

The captain took a step back and motioned for him to follow. “Ok, let’s get you introduced then.”