The River of Shadows Page 11

  “Or yourselves,” said Taliktrum.

  “And meanwhile,” put in Alyash, “we look for a place called Stath Bálfyr. We have course headings from there, as you probably know. Headings for a safer, western return across the Nelluroq, behind the Mzithrini defenses, to the Shaggat’s homeland of Gurishal.”

  “Y-ess,” said Taliktrum. “From Stath Bálfyr. So I’ve been told.”

  Pazel saw the sudden alertness in every ixchel’s face, and knew its source. Diadrelu had told Hercól everything, a few hours before her death. The ixchel had deceived the deceivers. The course headings were a fiction, the old documents that contained them forgeries. Stath Bálfyr was real, but it was no starting point for a run across the Ruling Sea. It was the ixchel homeland, a country ruled by the little people, the land Talag had sworn they would return to and reclaim.

  He’s not going to tell them, Pazel realized. He’s no fool: better that they should want to find Stath Bálfyr than that he should have to drive them there with threats. Of course it may come to that in the end.

  “Sirs?” said a thin voice from the edge of the chamber.

  It was Ibjen, the dlömic boy.

  Taliktrum looked at him dubiously. “You have something to add?”

  “The armada, sirs,” said Ibjen, his voice shaking. “There was talk of it in the village. Just talk, you understand. We are simple folk—”

  “You don’t have to convince us of that,” said Taliktrum. “Speak quickly, and be done.”

  “Out here we have little to do with the Empire, sir,” said Ibjen, “and the news we do have comes by way of Masalym. When my father came out to the Sandwall, boats still made the crossing from the city every day or two, and soldiers would be billeted with the townsfolk, and speak of the Platazcra, the Infinite Conquest. But that was years ago. For a long time now we have been abandoned—that is why my mother chose to send me here.”

  “You ramble, boy.”

  Ibjen made an apologetic nod. “Sir, before your ship we had had no visitors in half a year. And the last visitor died of fever in just three days. We have no doctor, so my father and I tended him as best we could. He was not a man of Masalym. Some guessed that he came from Orbilesc, others from Calambri.”

  “These names mean nothing to us,” said Taliktrum. “If you cannot get to the point—”

  “Listen to him!” said Thasha. “He’s doing us a favor, being here.”

  “And those words blary well do mean something—one of ’em at least,” added Fiffengurt. “ORBILESC is engraved on our blary sheet anchors, though the letters are faded now. I always wondered if it referred to her home port.” He gestured at Ibjen. “You carry on, lad. I say you’re mighty brave, to step aboard this ship.”

  Ibjen did not look brave at that moment. “Orbilesc and Calambri are cities far to the west, in the heart of Bali Adro,” he said. “And it is true that the Empire’s greatest shipyards are there.” He looked at Thasha and swallowed. “My father sent me to the neighbors’ house when the stranger began to die. But last night he told me something he had never mentioned before. That the dying man had broken his silence before the end. That he’d said he came from a village on the banks of the River Sundral, near Orbilesc. He said that the whole of the city had been caught up in some huge, secret effort, for years. That Imperial warships turned away all private vessels at a distance of fifty miles, and that a strange glow hung over Orbilesc by night. Later the mountains began to shake, and boulders crashed down upon his village. The fell light grew stronger. And finally the river gushed with boiling water that killed every fish, every frog and snake and wading bird—even the trees whose roots drank from the stream. That, the man had claimed, was when he fled east.”

  Ibjen gazed beseechingly at his listeners. “My father thought it but the ravings of a dying man. Until yesterday, that is. Now he believes that Orbilesc was building ships for the Emperor. The same ships that passed in the gulf, Thashiziq. The ships of the armada.”

  There was a long pause; the men were too unsettled to speak. To Pazel’s surprise it was Big Skip who broke the silence.

  “Right,” he said. “Fleet or no fleet, we have to sail before we starve. And it can’t be north across the Nelluroq, even if we wished to—”

  “Which we do not,” said Haddismal, “until we reach Stath Bálfyr, wherever that may be. This is an Arquali ship, and Magad’s word is law, even here on the far side of Alifros.”

  “Glory to the Ametrine Throne,” said Alyash drily, “and if that ain’t motivation enough, there’s the small matter of him crucifying us, with our families, if we return to Arqual without completing the mission.”

  Pazel kept his face expressionless. Magad’s done all the punishing he’s going to do, he thought.

  “So,” said Big Skip, “turn east and we might catch up with that hellish armada; turn west and we might find the hellish place it came from. And either way we won’t get far before we’re too hungry to do our jobs. Ain’t it simple, then? We head due south—to this Masalym, thirty miles across the bay.”

  No one seconded the motion. Big Skip raised his bushy eyebrows. “It’s a city,” he insisted. “They’ll feed us, just as these good village folk gave us water. What about it, mates? Thirty miles to the butcher’s shop, says I.”

  But Bolutu shook his head. “The Masalym of my day would have been a good choice,” he said. “It was a trading city, and so used to visitors—either by sea, or out of the strange mountains of the Efaroc Peninsula at its back. Yet if Masalym today is ruled by the same power that launched those ships, then I for one would rather keep my distance from the butcher’s shop.”

  “Ha!” blurted Uskins. “The butcher’s shop!”

  His laugh was jarring, almost a scream, and nearly everyone looked at him in anger. Uskins flinched, as though expecting a blow. Whether or not his fear was justified Pazel never learned, however, for at that moment the ship’s drums erupted in pandemonium.

  “Beat to quarters! Beat to quarters!” Already the cries resounded through the ship.

  “Damnation, we’re still at anchor!” shouted Fiffengurt. “Alyash, get to the starboard battery! Sunderling, on deck! Set Fegin and his men to bracing that foremast! Go!”

  “Are we under attack?” Taliktrum shouted. “Fiffengurt, how can this be?”

  “It can’t!” snapped Fiffengurt. “There’s no way in Alifros a ship’s crept up on us! But who knows, who knows, in this mad country?” He turned wildly about. “Pathkendle! Wake the anchor-lifters! We can’t afford to leave more iron on the seafloor! Run, by the Sweet Tree, run!”

  A Hasty Departure

  22 Ilbrin 941

  Pazel sprinted from the manger. He heard Thasha shouting his name but did not look back. Foreign-born, mutinous, expelled from the service, sentenced to death—amazing how it all disappeared. In emergencies he was simply a tarboy.

  Refeg and Rer, the anchor-lifters, slept in a kind of stall behind the portside cable tiers. They almost never moved quickly. Pazel flew across the orlop with all the speed he dared, leaping the broken floor planks, flinging open doors.

  He heard their breath, deep organ wheezes, before his eyes discerned their shapes. The brothers slept side by side, curled in beds of straw, their six-foot-long arms folded against their mammoth chests. Their skin was yellow-brown and rough as rhino hide, and festooned here and there with clumps of fur, green-black, like moss on stone. They were augrongs, survivors of a race that had all but disappeared from Alifros, dwellers in an Etherhorde slum when not serving on some Arquali ship. They spent nearly all their time asleep, harboring their titanic strength, rising for just one meal a week or to perform some labor that would have required scores of men. Their language was so rich in metaphor it seemed almost the language of dreams, and Pazel was the only person aboard who spoke it.

  Left to themselves, augrongs could take a quarter hour to wake, and another quarter hour to get to their feet. Shouting, pleading, beating on cans did nothing to speed the process
, and no one in their right mind would nudge them with pole or pitchfork. But a faster method had occurred to Pazel. Bending close (but not too close) to their sleeping heads, he summoned his memory of the Augronga tongue and boomed in an inhuman voice: “Music in the forest: tomorrow calls me, I answer with my feet.”

  Two pairs of fist-sized yellow eyes snapped open. The creatures surged upright, grunting like startled elephants. Pazel smiled. It worked every time: he had recited a phrase reserved for the saddest farewells. Each augrong thought that he was hearing the other’s voice, and after countless years cut off from their people, the brothers’ deepest fear was separation.

  When they caught sight of Pazel they heaved irritated sighs. “Always the same one, the babbler, the noisy goose,” rumbled Rer, his huge eyelids drooping like batwings.

  “Noisy till he’s plucked,” said Refeg, making a halfhearted swipe at Pazel.

  Pazel jumped backward. “Emergency, emergency!” he cried, stripping the finesse from his Augronga. “Beat to quarters! Hear the drums!”

  With impressive haste (for augrongs) the brothers stumbled out of their bedding and made for the No. 3 ladderway. They knew where they were wanted: at the main capstan, where each could do the work of fifty men in the arduous job of lifting anchor. Pazel slipped around them carefully, watching those vast flat hands. The augrongs had never hurt him; in fact he thought they appreciated his occasional service as a translator. But despite his grasp of their language, their minds remained a mystery. And Pazel could never forget that they had helped Arunis extract the Nilstone from the Red Wolf. From that day forward Pazel wondered just what kind of power Arunis had gained over the creatures, and if he could count on it still. But any mention of the sorcerer brought warning growls from the augrongs.

  Pazel sprinted ahead, and in short order he was climbing the No. 3 ladderway. Five steep flights of stairs, each more crowded than the last, and the drums still sounding overhead. When he burst onto the topdeck at last he found himself in a crowd of men and tarboys, soldiers and steerage passengers, all making for the starboard rail. It was late afternoon; the sun was low and orange in the west. Pazel ran toward the bow. He could see Mr. Fiffengurt ahead, hobble-running, with an ixchel riding his shoulder.

  When Pazel caught up with Fiffengurt he found that the ixchel was Ensyl. She was a wispy, earnest young woman with eyes that darted restlessly, until they suddenly fixed on you, and drilled. Catching sight of Pazel, she leaped from Fiffengurt’s shoulder to his own, landing lightly as a bird.

  “Have you seen them?” she demanded.

  “No,” gasped Pazel, still winded from the stairs. “Who are they? I can’t see any ship.”

  “There’s no ship,” said Fiffengurt. “That’s why we were caught off-guard. Damnation, if those villagers betrayed us—”

  They reached the tonnage hatch. As he had done many times, Pazel set a foot on the rail and leaped up to catch a mainmast forestay. With one hand on the wire-taut rope he leaned out over the yawning shaft, Ensyl clinging fiercely to his shirt. Now at last he could see over the crowd.

  “But I still don’t—”

  His words died in his throat. He saw them: dlömu, hundreds strong, lining the shore road from the village to the Tower of Narybir. They were still coming, pouring through the gatehouse, leaping down from the wall, even passing over the dunes about the tower’s foot. Were they forming ranks, carrying weapons? The land was too distant for him to be sure.

  “They look like Mr. Bolutu,” said Ensyl. “Is it true what they’re saying in the clan, Pazel—that those beings rule all the South, that there’s no one else here at all?”

  Pazel leaped to the deck again. He struggled to answer her as he raced to catch up with Fiffengurt, who had almost reached the forecastle. In normal times the commander gave his orders from the quarterdeck, but Fiffengurt was showing great deference to Captain Rose, who could still communicate by shouting through the window of the forecastle house.

  Pazel went straight to that window himself. Alyash and a Besq midshipman were already standing before the dirty glass, yelling to the prisoners within. Framed between them, Captain Rose’s huge, choleric, red-bearded form glared out at the deck. “Stand aside, Pathkendle!” he bellowed, his voice rattling the glass.

  Pazel jumped back. On the captain’s right stood Sandor Ott, a short man with the most savage face the tarboy had ever beheld. The spymaster’s eyes moved ravenously, devouring information. One hand, mottled with age spots and knife-scars, the fingernails mangled decades ago by torture, lay flat upon the glass. Behind the two men the other hostages crowded, struggling for a glimpse of the deck.

  There was Neeps! The Sollochi boy lit up at the sight of Pazel, and he flashed a tarboy signal (two fingers pinched to the thumb: Standing by to assist you) with an ironic grin that Pazel found almost miraculous. I’d be going mad in there. How’s he managing to keep up his spirits?

  There was no sign of Marila, and an instant later Neeps himself was shouldered aside. As he had many times before Pazel felt the ache of guilt. He had promised to get them out of there, weeks ago, but had made no progress at all.

  The lookouts in the crosstrees were flinging down reports. “Warriors, Mr. Fiffengurt! Fish-eyes, every one, and armed to the teeth!”

  Fiffengurt snapped open his telescope. “Conveyance!” he bellowed. “Where’s their blary boat?”

  “Not a boat to be seen, sir!” came the answer from the lookouts. “Not a launch, not a dinghy! They must have walked into that town!”

  Over the shouting Pazel caught Thasha’s voice. She was there at the rail—with Fulbreech, to Pazel’s undying irritation. They stood shoulder to shoulder, heads inches apart, taking turns with her father’s telescope. Suddenly, as if he could feel Pazel’s gaze, Fulbreech glanced over his shoulder. “Come and see, Pathkendle! Make room there, Thashula—”

  He nudged Thasha over with a familiarity that almost drove Pazel mad. Thashula? It was her childhood nickname, but Pazel had thought she hated it; she’d certainly never encouraged him—

  “Well, come on, man,” said Fulbreech.

  Pazel lurched forward and took the telescope, his face shouting Fool! in a banner of scarlet.

  No question about it: the dlömu were warriors. They were tall and muscular, though slender like those in the village. All carried weapons—swords, hatchets, flails, glaives, crossbows, clubs—and a variety of other implements, from coiled rope to hammers and picks. They wore no armor, no shirts even, but many sported a kind of dark, round, tight-fitting cap. Some held standards aloft, a white bird against a field of deepest blue. A number of dlömu were inspecting the tower door.

  “How did they get there?” Thasha asked suddenly. “Do they have a camp in the woods? If so they stayed blary quiet yesterday.”

  “They could have come from the north side,” said Pazel.

  “From the Nelluroq?” said Fulbreech, incredulous. “How? We sailed for five days along that string of dunes. There’s no harbor, no other inlet—just beach after beach, pounded night and day by those lethal waves.”

  “They look blary lethal themselves,” mused Fiffengurt. “However they got there, I’m glad there’s three miles of water between us.”

  “Under three from the end of that jetty, sir,” put in Mr. Fegin.

  Pazel glanced at the long, smooth seawall jutting out into the gulf from one end of the village. A number of dlömu stood near its base. Like the others they were examining the Chathrand with the keenest interest.

  “That bunch by the gate must be the officers,” said Thasha. “Look—they’re sending messengers up and down the ranks. And they’re pointing telescopes at us as well.”

  “Then they know this is a human ship,” said Ensyl. “That would explain their curiosity.”

  “It’s one explanation,” said Fiffengurt. “Mr. Brule, update the captain. Ah, listen! Your friends Refeg and Rer are on the job, Pathkendle.”

  A deep, slow click … click, like a reluctant grand
father clock: it was the turning of the capstan, as the anchors rose heavily from the seabed. They were harrow anchors, Pazel knew: far lighter than the mammoth mains; still the men would be glad of the augrongs’ help before the task was done.

  “Good thinking,” said Alyash. “They might wheel guns out of that village. Just as well we’re through with it.”

  Thasha turned to him accusingly. “Ibjen lives in that village,” she said. “His father’s waiting for him.”

  “Ibjen should’ve mentioned the army camped out in the bush,” countered Alyash.

  “Ten seconds between clicks,” said Fiffengurt, “and we’re at fourteen fathoms. Quickly, now: who’s got the calculus for me?”

  No tarboy had to ask what the calculus meant. Pazel focused instantly: Ten seconds a click. Six clicks a minute. Four cable-feet per click. Cable length twice the vertical depth. “That’s about … about—”

  “Seven minutes,” said Thasha, “before we could get under way. If we needed to.”

  “Admiral’s daughter!” said Fulbreech with an approving grin. Absently he passed the telescope to Pazel again, but his eyes remained on Thasha. “Doesn’t she amaze you, Pathkendle?”

  Pazel snatched the telescope, calculating the time it would take Fulbreech to strike the water once Pazel pushed him over the rail. Two seconds, maybe. Then a faint voice reached them from the shore.

  “Silence on deck!” shouted Fiffengurt.

  The voice came from somewhere near the village gate. Pazel squinted and saw a man bellowing into an enormous, funnel-shaped shell, which he held before his face like a voice-trumpet. Try as he might, Pazel could not catch a word.

  Then the soldiers parted, and a new figure walked out upon the quay.

  He was a massive dlömu, broad in neck and shoulder, and his walk was somehow cruel. The others did not approach him. Something about the man brought the armada itself to mind—something vile, Pazel thought. But whatever it was refused to surface in his memory. The man gestured at the crier, and the latter screamed into the shell-device once again.