The River of Shadows cv-3 Page 13

  “Twenty yards,” she said. “You must shout to Fiffengurt-he’s listening for your voice, not mine. Fifteen-”

  Breaking glass. Pazel peeked under the yard. The attackers had smashed a window in the stern. The officers’ wardroom, he thought.

  “Ten yards, eight-”

  Surely the Turachs were already there. Surely someone had dispatched them.

  “Now!” hissed Ensyl.

  Pazel shouted, “Mark!” with all his strength, and heard Fiffengurt respond instantly with commands of his own. Then the creak of the wheel, the groaning of cables and counterweights-and sudden howls of agony from below. The dlomu were being crushed between rudder and sternpost. Pazel looked, wished he hadn’t, wished he could spit the images back out of his mind. Their skin was not human; it ruptured like the flesh of some dark, plump fruit. But under the surface there was no difference-the blood, the muscle, the shards of bone…

  “Pazel!”

  He wasn’t ill. He should have been. Sometimes not to be ill meant you were broken inside. Then a hand gripped his shoulder. Not Ensyl’s hand. It was Thasha; she had raced out along the spar; she was begging him to come down while he could.

  Trimming the giant sails was harder than spinning a wheel, of course: the Chathrand’s turn actually slowed her at first, and that was when the dlomu pounced. Grapples flew over the rails port and starboard, and a second team assaulted the stern, keeping well clear of the rudder. It was all very organized. Those still in the water swam very close to the hull, protected by its curve from any shots from the deck or gunports. The attackers were quiet and purposeful, as if they had done this sort of thing before.

  The sailors cut their climbing-ropes with a will, and not a single dlomu gained the topdeck by that means. But many climbed twenty or thirty feet on the ropes, and then switched to hand-hooks. Soon there were ladders of these embedded hooks ascending from the waterline, and the Chathrand resembled some great prone beast assaulted by columns of ants.

  The upper gun deck became a war zone. Dlomu flung themselves in through the gunports, which had been kept open for the cannon. The Turachs met them head-on, and killed many before they even gained their feet. Common sailors, armed with everything from cutlasses to galley knives, backed up the marines. Still a number of the dlomu managed to scatter deeper into the ship.

  The unthinkable audacity of such an attack nearly let it succeed. But the sails were trimmed, the canvas did billow and pull, and the bulk of the attacking force was still a stone’s throw behind. For all their ferocity, moreover, the exhausted dlomu who entered at the stern fared badly against the Turachs-rested, furious and armored head to foot. Haddismal fought at the vanguard of his men, laying on in the wreckage of the wardroom with a great double-bladed axe, hacking off limbs that reached through the shattered windows, hurling down chairs and candlesticks and the bodies of the slain at those still climbing.

  In the adjoining compartment, a luxury cabin, some twenty dlomu broke through the Turach ranks and sprinted up the Silver Stair. The few men who resisted them were swept away. They were one stairlength from the topdeck, and would have gained it if Hercol had not stepped into their path. Above the open hatch he stood, the black sword in his left hand and Sandor Ott’s white knife in the other, and his face was terrible to behold. Still the dlomu pressed the attack, for they could hear the Turachs storming after them from below. Hercol whirled and struck, his arms two blurs of black and white, and the dlomu began to fall. One after another they came, eyes maddened with the nearness of death, and one after another they died.

  The ports were sealed, and the battle for the upper gun deck turned in the Chathrand’s favor. But from the quarterdeck, Fiffengurt looked down and cursed. The dlomu had fastened drag lines to the ship, scores of them, and flung them backward to their swimming comrades. A hundred at least had grabbed hold already, and more were piling on.

  Then it came: a desperate warning, relayed from below by a living chain of ixchel: the attackers had uncoiled a flexible saw-blade, they cried, and were drawing it over the rudder in whiplash strokes. Left to it they would, in a matter of minutes, saw the rudder off at its base.

  Fiffengurt closed his eyes and made the sign of the Tree. Then he snatched the rigging-axe from its hook on the taffrail and climbed up among the oil drums lashed between the lamps. With a few strokes he broke their seals, and lamp oil gushed in slippery torrents down the Chathrand’s stern, sloshing over the windows, soaking Fiffengurt and the dlomu alike, spreading in a great stain among the swimmers.

  Fiffengurt looked up at the deck, his eyes full of murder and rage. “Matches, Stukey, damn you to the Pits!”

  Uskins came to life, unlidded the match-pot, churned the live coals with a stub.

  “Never mind, give it here!” bellowed Fiffengurt. Seizing the match-pot, he emptied it in a shower of sparks over the side.

  There was no explosion, no inferno of flames, no screams of agony. There was only a great whoosh, and orange light, and sudden silence from the army below. Everyone stumbled: the Chathrand had just leaped forward, a carthorse cut free of its cart. Fiffengurt toppled between the lamps, staring, and once again it was Thasha who went, unbidden, Thasha who caught him before he could fall, only to stand there swaying, transfixed herself at the sight of the great pillow of fire upon the gulf, wider than the ship and widening still, falling behind them in little streamers of flame.

  “Rin forgive me,” muttered Fiffengurt. He was blind: oil in his good eye, oil on the hand that tried to wipe it away.

  “Don’t worry,” she told him, “there’s nothing to forgive.”

  Beyond the fire, a dark mass trod water. The dlomu had known what was coming: they had dropped from the ship and the trailing lines, dived underwater, surfaced well behind the blaze.

  3. Technically true. The Book of the Old Faith contains certain apocryphal material, including the Address of the Vengeful Seraph, who states: “To defeat the foes of Eternal Truth, lesser truths may be sacrificed, and deception wielded like a knife in the dark.” The materials appear in no copies of the Book before its third century of existence, however, and it appears likely that they were added by a war-like king, precisely to justify the training of a guild of holy assassins. Like the pruning of young oaks, editorship is power over a future one will never see. -EDITOR.

  THE EDITOR RECOMMENDS OTHER READING TO THE FAINT OF HEART

  To my thus-far-loyal readers: Happiness is not nothing. One should embrace it. The world groans under the weight of serious minds bent miserably over their books, over their smithy’s bench, their ledger or their laundry or their weevil-withered crops. Happiness may vanish in an eyeblink, never to return. Why should anyone spend the length of a tea-sip on a story that does not guarantee-absolutely guarantee-the emotion’s increase?

  My purpose here is simply a warning. If you are part of that infinitesimally small (and ever smaller) band of dissidents with the wealth, time and inclination to set your hands on the printed word, I suggest you consider the arguments against the current volume. To wit: the tale is morbid, the persons depicted are clumsy when they are not evil, the world is inconvenient to visit and quite changed from what is here described, the plot at this early juncture is already complex beyond all reason, the moral cannot be stated, and the editor is intrusive.4

  The story most obviously imperils the young. But certain others should weigh the benefits of persevering; these include the old, who after all will perish soon enough; the able-bodied, whose vigor may decline if they make a habit of reading at length; the unmarried, who had best cultivate more sociable pastimes; the married, who find the freedom to read only by neglecting commitments; those whose religious views are policed by employer, priest, king, grandmother or guilt internal; the nearsighted; the nervous; the gleefully patriotic.

  But the first criticism-the sheer gray gloom of the tale-is the most damning. To that end, and conscious of my duties as a curator of this splendid archive, I have assembled a list of some seven
hundred titles surpassing The Chathrand Voyage in both brevity and good cheer. Among them:

  • Bissep, Mother K., The Good Millipede of Wilber Meadow

  • Tennyson, Virzel, Kh’iguar Mutis (“Great Scaly Things Defeated,” bilingual edition)

  • Lace, Helium, And Then They Were Married

  • Slabbe, Lord Cuprius, What I Eat

  • Ungrok, Egar, Battle for Battle’s Sake: An Adventure for Boys

  The complete list is available upon request. It is quite startling how much one has to choose from. I merely implore you to recall that life is fleeting, and that choices must be made.

  4. Do not misunderstand me: The Chathrand Voyage has merits aplenty. Why else would I dedicate this last effort of my life to its telling? Why else would the lord of this domain have granted me five (young, ambitious, “promising,” petty, cynical, rude) editorial assistants, and a meal allowance? Never mind that Holub’s Curse of the Violet King is better known. I know Mr. Holub. I wish him well and feel no envy, and incidentally he suffers miserably from ringworm.

  Carried Away

  22 Ilbrin 941

  Night fell. The pool of fire dwindled behind them. Without chart or knowledge of the gulf they fled, east by southeast, pulling gradually away from the Sandwall. Ibjen wept; he had tried a second time to throw himself overboard, and had been seized again by the Turachs. Even when eight miles separated them from the northern shore he begged to be allowed to swim.

  “Not on your life,” said Fiffengurt. “Besides, you told us you have family in the city.”

  “I do,” said Ibjen. “But my father, those soldiers-”

  “Would only grab you too, lad. You can’t help your father that way.”

  “But I thought you were avoiding Masalym! Oh, where are you taking me? Why did I come aboard?”

  Where indeed? Geography, at least, should not have changed in two centuries. Ibjen was too upset to be consulted, but Mr. Bolutu recalled from his schooldays that the city lay due south from Cape Lasung. “A wonder, they say: Masalym, the city above the falls. I should dearly love to see it.”

  “You were the one who warned us not to pay ’em a visit,” snapped Fiffengurt. “Sorry to disappoint you, but we’re taking your first piece of advice. We need food, and a calm harbor for repairs. But most of all we need to stay away from bastards like the ones we just escaped.”

  An hour later he turned the Chathrand hard to the southwest, a tack calculated to bring them in sight of land at least thirty miles west of the city. “We’ll put you ashore wherever it’s safe, Master Ibjen,” he assured the boy at last, “with a purse of gold for services rendered, and hardships endured.”

  “Enough to buy a horse?”

  “Enough for a blary brood stallion. Now go and eat, before Teggatz licks out the pots.”

  It was a chilly night; the old moon absent, the strange little sapphire moon winking low and pale in the south. Far to the east, flashes of light could be seen, and low, deep rumblings followed, like the growls of giant dogs. Traces of a storm, the men told themselves. But Pazel recalled the armada that had sailed that way, and was not sure.

  They shortened sail: even in these calm waters it would not do to come suddenly upon a lee shore, or a reef. At first light they would take in their surroundings, Fiffengurt declared: perhaps they would find another village, well away from the city, a humble settlement blessed with cove and croplands, where no army of marauders lay in wait.

  Neither Pazel nor Thasha wanted to eat. They helped out in the surgery, cleaning and binding wounds, cutting cloth into bandages, rinsing blood from the floor with buckets of salt water and doing anything else Rain or Fulbreech asked. Hercol and Bolutu joined in as well: the swordsman knew a great deal of field medicine, and Bolutu was, after all, a veterinary surgeon. All the same, it was like a battle after the battle: they ran, cursed, held the bleeding men down, stabbed sutures into their wounds. If only Dr. Chadfallow-! They did not have to say it. He would have made it all look easy. He would have made them into a platoon.

  Hours into the work, Pazel looked up from the pan of knives he was washing to see Fulbreech leaning exhausted over a surgical table, trembling; and Thasha supporting him, an arm over his shoulders, her chin against his cheek. Hercol noticed them too, and his eyes narrowed to slits. When he glanced at Pazel it seemed almost a warning.

  Later, Pazel, Thasha and Hercol visited the forecastle house. Both moons were risen now, and their conjoined light spilled through the window, illuminating huddled sleepers, stacked dishes, Ott’s watchful eyes. Pazel’s hatred struggled in the chains of his fatigue. Did the man never sleep?

  Chadfallow slept near the window, snoring through the nose Pazel had broken on Bramian. Lady Oggosk crouched by the smudge-pot, burning scraps of paper. And there in a corner lay Neeps and Marila, curled up like puppies, dead to the world. Someone might have nudged them awake, for Neeps had wanted to talk no matter the hour. But it wasn’t going to happen: Ott was already approaching, stepping over Chadfallow, demanding information. There was no defying him, not with Neeps and Marila there to punish as he liked. The damage? he asked Hercol. The course heading, the winds? And what about the Shaggat’s arm?

  You’ve failed, Pazel longed to tell him. Your Emperor’s dead, and the Shaggat’s worshippers have been waiting for two hundred years. But Hercol was right: Ott’s mind would only spin new evil from whatever knowledge it gained. The only winning move was to keep him in the dark as long as they could.

  It was two in the morning when Pazel, Thasha and Hercol returned to the stateroom. They didn’t speak. They fed the dogs their evening ration of biscuit, and ate the same themselves, with a bit of rye porridge (several days old) for dessert. Felthrup ran back and forth upon the table, studying and sniffing them, begging them to eat. Pazel glanced often at Thasha, but her look was far away.

  Hercol sat mechanically stroking Jorl’s blue head, and at last began to tell them of the horrible deeds he had done for years as a servant of the Secret Fist. Kidnappings, betrayals, false letters designed to set prince against prince, fires sparked in the temples where uncooperative monks shielded enemies of the Arquali state.

  “I told myself it was for a cause,” he declared, watching them, unblinking. “What cause? Order in Alifros, the end of war, of fiefdom against small, stupid, tyrannical fiefdom. But that was only Ott’s credo, his manic religion. ‘Arqual, Arqual, just and true.’ I was a warrior-priest of that religion, as much as any sfvantskor is of the Old Faith. Indeed I wonder sometimes if Ott did not model us on the sfvantskor, even as we fought them in the shadows. When I met your sister and the other two, Pazel, I felt at once that I was meeting kin.”

  Seeing their long faces and Felthrup’s anxious twitching, he smiled. “There are the kin we are born to, or find ourselves claimed by, as the Secret Fist claimed me. And then there are the kin we seek out, with clear minds and open hearts. You are the latter. Now go and sleep; tomorrow comes all too soon.”

  He left the chamber, to walk the deck as he did each night. Felthrup chattered on awhile, glad of their company; then he too bade them good night and crawled away to his basket. Pazel and Thasha drifted about the stateroom, wide awake, not looking at each other.

  Somehow (Pazel wondered later exactly who had moved when) they ended up side by side on the bearskin rug, staring up at the fengas chandelier that had not been lit since Uturphe, listening to the moan of the wind. For Pazel the sound raised a sudden memory. He had been sleeping at a friend’s house, very long ago when he still had friends, before his family’s disgrace. The wind had been cold, but he had been given a pair of sheepskins to sleep between, and felt that nothing could be warmer or more comfortable. In the night a small dust viper (perhaps of the same opinion) had slithered into the room and curled up behind his knee. It had bitten him when he sat up at dawn, and his calf had swollen to the size of a ham. The friend’s father had inexplicably beaten his son; the son had never spoken to Pazel again.

  Pazel real
ized he had taken her hand.

  It was warm in his own. She held on tightly, but kept her face turned away. “I read something about you,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “In… the Polylex? Something about me in the Merchant’s Polylex?”

  “ ‘Pazel Pathkendle, tarboy of Ormael, second child of Gregory and Suthinia Pathkendle.’ Isn’t that funny? Because you’re not from Ormael, and you’re not a Pathkendle, are you? Pitfire, you’re not even a tarboy anymore. The mucking author should have known better.”^ 5

  He raised her hand to his cheek. He considered telling her that he had no idea what she was talking about, but the remark seemed unnecessary.

  “It’s funny,” she said, “you’re not your father’s son. And I’m not my father’s daughter. Isn’t that strange?”

  “Terribly,” he managed to say. She was breathing fast. Her hand moved against his cheek. He wanted to make love to her and thought it was possible, thought the moment was here and would never come again, and yet he was beset by a kind of vertigo. He feared his mind-fit was coming on, but the telltale purring was nowhere to be heard. Thasha was shaking slightly-nervous laughter, he thought. He was aware of every inch of her, every least movement. It was a kind of madness. He imagined the bearskin coming to life and charging from the stateroom, racing to some deep spot in the hold and digging Arunis from his hiding place, like a honeycomb from a stump. It was like that, the way he wanted her. But his thoughts were darting everywhere, uncontrollably. He thought: Arunis is afraid of this rug. What happened, what does he fear?

  He kissed the back of her hand, felt it trembling. When she exhaled there was a low moan in her voice that went through him like lightning. They hadn’t started, but it was as if they were already done. Everything was answered. He would be with her for the rest of his life.