The Black Coast

by Mike Brooks

  Then there were the Alaban tribes themselves, as varied as the trees in the forest. Jeya’s môther had been a tribesperson and hér fàther an Adranian, although hè’d been born in the islands and so had been Alaban by any standards that mattered, including the one that said hè could never be a slave. There were tens of hundreds of people like Jeya across Kiburu ce Alaba, shé was sure; people whose parents had melted together to create something new. Even one of the Hierarchs apparently had Morlithian blood in them.

  This all meant there were plenty of people in the streets with money in their pockets on this festival day, so Jeya still had a chance of getting enough together to sleep under Ngaiyu’s roof tonight without dipping into hér meagre stash of coins.

  Shé ignored the usual markets with their displays of fruit, vegetables, and fish, and instead tried hér luck around the stalls set up especially for the Festival of the Crossing; the puppet shows, sweetmeat vendors, sellers of sticky pastries, and fortune tellers. The richer revellers wouldn’t be buying basic foodstuffs: they had servants for that. The regular markets offered slim pickings, and the marks there knew the dangers of pickpockets and cutpurses. No, the wealthy of Grand Mahewa would be paying over the odds for a honeyed scorpion on a skewer, or chortling as puppets performed plays peppered with innuendo.

  That didn’t mean Jeya’s task was easy. Not all rich people were careless with their money, even if they weren’t used to looking after it in public. Shé lurked around a puppet show that was performing a farce and surreptitiously studied the crowd, looking for the right sort of clothes. Shé considered a tall person with a nasal laugh and the tight-twisted, bell-and-bead-decked hair of an Adranian, but decided at the last moment that they looked a little too alert, and the war-sickle at their belt a little too sharp.

  A youth near them, though, looked more engrossed in the play. Jeya sidled closer, nudging people aside as though angling to get a better view of the garishly painted wooden box where the puppets squawked and tittered. Another crude joke rang out and the crowd laughed, and Jeya took the opportunity to approach right up behind the youth, slightly to their right.

  Their cheeks were smooth, they were a little taller than hér, and their dark hair was pulled back in a tail under a conical straw hat that dripped with rainwater. Their maijhi and karung were dyed a deep indigo, with delicate green hem-stitching, a sure sign of wealth. Shé watched their cheeks crease and dimple as they laughed at slapstick violence. They were thoroughly engrossed: good.

  Shé waited for the part shé knew was coming, the call-and-answer routine where Kangkang the violent puppet was held to account for hìs actions by Nyoi of the Watch. It kept the attention of any children in the crowd, lest they persuade their parents to leave before the show concluded (when money was traditionally left), and it maybe also helped some of the cruder innuendo sail over their heads. However, watching adults would invariably join in as well, harkening back to their own simpler days.

  “Oh no Ì didn’t!” Kangkang squealed, in response to Nyoi’s stern accusation.

  “Oh yes yòu did!” the audience chorused joyously. Jeya joined in.

  “Oh no Ì didn’t!”

  “Oh yes yòu did!”

  The Kangkang puppet turned fully towards the audience, as though to menace them with hìs stick. “Oh no Ì didn’t!”

  “Oh yes yòu did!”

  And, as the traditional trio of exchanges was completed and everyone in the close-packed crowd shouted as loud as they could, with appropriate waving of their arms, Jeya swiftly but delicately coaxed a purse out of hér mark’s pocket.

  Sa, god of thieves and tricksters (amongst others), must have been smiling on hér: it was a small cloth pouch, secured with a drawstring, and shé experienced a brief thrill of triumph as it came free. Triumph because the mark didn’t twitch, despite their damp clothes sticking to them and making it more likely for them to feel what shé was up to. Triumph also, because the pouch was reassuringly heavy, and promised possibilities beyond just a roof and food for the night: perhaps she could even buy into a crew…

  Brief, because as shé stepped casually away a hand grabbed hér arm, and shé found hérself hauled around by the Adranian shé’d decided not to target in the first place.

  SAANA

  THE KRAYK’S TEETH cut through the low surf and hit the black mud with an undignified squelch. Saana leaped off the flat deck and onto her clan’s new home before her yolgu had even stopped moving. The salt water splashed her boots, but she didn’t linger in the breakers, pushing on up the beach with her alder roundshield strapped to her left forearm and sea leather helm on her head. However, her father’s sword remained sheathed. Instead she carried a stick with the clan’s whitest sheepskin bound at one end, to be unfurled when necessary: the white flag she hoped would open the way for parley.

  Behind her she heard the rest of the Krayk’s Teeth crew following her lead, and then the hulls of the other ships making landfall. There were seventeen; seven taughs, weather-beaten veterans of long fishing trips, and no less than ten mighty yolgus, the great ships in which her people crossed oceans to raid and trade. Five were on their maiden voyage, with new sails spun over the long, dark winter, and between them they’d carried the Brown Eagle clan and as many possessions and supplies as possible.

  Saana looked dubiously at the marsh, still scattered with patches of snow and undoubtedly riddled with bogs and streams. The sleds would struggle over this terrain, but it would be better than hauling everything by hand. She just needed to ensure they stayed behind the shieldwall.

  They’d been seen, of course; the local fishing skiffs had fled as soon as her fleet had come into view, back to the town on the shore of the wide tidal creek that cut up through the salt marsh, away towards the distant mountains. She could see the tiny shapes of defenders on the walls.

  She looked over her shoulder at the semi-organised chaos, and scanned it until she found the person she wanted. “Nalon!”

  The Flatlander looked up, then kissed Avlja on the cheek and made his way towards her. Saana studied him as he approached, wondering again whether this was the best course of action, whilst also knowing that it was the only one available. Behind Nalon, Avlja fixed Saana with a glare promising retribution if her husband got hurt.

  Nalon was the only Brown Eagle who hadn’t been born on Tjakorsha: he was from these Flatlands, which he called Narida, although considerably further north. Some twenty years previously, Iro Greybeard had chased down and boarded the Flatlander ship on which Nalon had been a passenger. Normally that would have ended badly for Nalon, but Avlja Ambastutar had been on the Greybeard’s crew that day and had stepped in, somewhat smitten. Nalon had been given a choice, courtesy of Iro’s very rough grasp of the Flatlander tongue and, Saana suspected, some emphatic hand gestures; go with them, or go over the side. He’d unsurprisingly chosen the former, and once Avlja had some time to work her charms on him they’d wedded, and now had two sons. The elder, Tamadh, would be in the shieldwall alongside his mother.

  Nalon reached Saana and nodded respectfully. He’d taken some time to break his habit of bowing to everyone, but these days he was as relaxed as anyone from Koszal. “You needed me, chief?”

  “I need to talk to the sars,” Saana told him simply. “I want you there.”

  Nalon’s face twisted. “Your language is good, they’ll understand you.” His speech was accented with the overdeveloped vowel sounds of the Flatlanders, which meant many people found it hard to tell his mood from his voice. However, after months of being instructed in Naridan by him Saana could read Nalon as well as anyone in the clan save his own family, and he was obviously agitated.

  “I don’t just need them to understand,” she explained, “I need them to believe. You were a Flatlander; they might listen to you.”

  “As well reason with a mountain as with a sar in his armour,” Nalon snorted, switching to the Flatlander tongue. It had the rhythm of an old saying, and didn’t do much for Saana’s confide
nce. She hoped Nalon’s low opinion of the Flatlanders’ ruling warriors was something idiosyncratic to the man. If they were truly as uptight, unbending, and ferociously stupid as he claimed…

  Well, as she’d told Ristjaan, she’d never expected this to be easy.

  “Then let’s go and speak to some mountains,” she told him grimly, and turned back to the disembarking clan, raising her voice. “Rist! You’re with us! Tsolga, bring the fighters up, but hold back unless this all goes to the depths! Zhanna!” She caught sight of her daughter’s red hair, and held her gaze for a second. “Keep the Unblooded in the centre!”

  “Good luck with that,” Ristjaan muttered, trudging up with his axe slung casually over his shoulder.

  “Shut up,” Saana said sharply. “I can’t have this ruined by a bunch of hotheads.”

  “Suppose this works,” Ristjaan said, as they set off towards the town while Tsolga screeched the fighters into some sort of order. “Suppose you talk the Flatlanders into letting us settle. What will the Unblooded do then? Remain Unblooded forever? Live a life of shame?”

  “We’ve crossed an ocean, Rist,” Saana said, hopping over a narrow stream trickling down to join the main creek. “Our lives will change in ways you and I can’t imagine. Perhaps that will be one of the lesser changes. But,” she sighed, “I doubt it will come to that. They know war here, too.”

  “Chief, you want to wave that flag?” Nalon asked nervously. “I’m not looking to take an arrow in the eye.”

  “We’re still out of range,” Saana replied.

  “Even so,” Rist said, “it can’t hurt to let them think on it a little longer.”

  Saana eyed him for a moment, wondering if it was a good idea to have brought her old friend along, instead of someone less likely to question her authority. On the other hand, should everything go to the depths there was no one she’d rather have beside her than Ristjaan the Cleaver, the most renowned Scarred warrior of the Brown Eagle clan.

  “You two are as timid as my mother,” she muttered, but paused a moment to fiddle with the binding that held the bleached skin in place, before shaking it loose. She passed it to Nalon. “There. You wanted it out, you can carry it.”

  “A fair trade,” he nodded, raising it above his head. The wind that had brought them ashore caught it, and made the sheepskin flap clumsily. “I hope they respect the flag of parley here.”

  “Don’t tell me now this flag may not work,” Saana said, exasperated.

  “Southerners are strange people,” Nalon replied defensively. “You can never tell.”

  “But they’re northerners,” Rist protested.

  “They’re southerners to me,” Nalon pointed out. “I’d never been further south than Idramar until the Greybeard took me off that ship. I heard all sorts of strange stories about southerners when I was a boy.”

  “What was said?” Saana asked, intrigued despite herself. There was some movement on the walls of the town ahead. Perhaps their flag had been sighted, and was causing a stir, but she would take any last information she could get about these foreigners.

  “Some said they eat their own children in the winter, but we always took that as a scare tale,” Nalon said. “Others said they don’t follow honour, but I can’t see any sar unbending enough for that, southerner or no. Mainly, people just said…”

  “Yes?” Saana prompted.

  “Mainly, people said they’re little better than the bloody Raiders,” Nalon muttered.

  “Wait, is that us?” Rist asked, frowning.

  “Uh…”

  “That’s us,” Saana sighed. She’d always thought of the Flatlanders as one people, and never really considered that northern Naridans might not like the southern ones. Then again, until she’d started speaking to Nalon in detail, she’d never thought the sars might be seen as anything other than warlike protectors. Instead, Nalon had drawn on memories of his youth to paint a picture of arrogance, hubris and occasional brutality. Clearly, this land was as complex as anything they’d left behind in Tjakorsha.

  “Looks like three are coming to meet us,” Rist said, squinting. “Think they’re sars?”

  “They’re on foot, but I doubt it would be anyone else,” Saana replied, seeing the glint of sunlight off metal. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the reassuring mass of her warriors trailing behind, with Tsolga at their head. The old woman might lack the strength for combat now, but she still had a voice like a blackstone axe, and had been the clan’s horn-sounder since before Saana had been born. Attacking or holding, Tsolga would leave no one in any doubt as to what they should be doing.

  She could see the three Naridans more clearly now. The central one was slightly more advanced, presumably their chief, and stocky. The one on the left as she looked at them was of a similar build, but the one on the right was taller and slimmer. The Flatlanders tended to be short—Nalon was amongst the shortest men in the clan—but that one looked to be her height.

  Each one wore a suit of the curious sar armour. It looked like a heavy cloth jacket with metal nail-heads glinting in it at regular intervals, and two chest plates polished until they shone, but her people had long known that, thanks to Flatlander sorcery, any part of it could turn an axe blow. The clan had hoped Nalon might be able to tell them more, but he’d denied knowing anything, despite having learned from a Flatland ironwitch—a ‘smith’, as he called it—for a few years before his capture.

  The sleeves extended past the elbow, and the coat was split from the waist into panels reaching to the sars’ knees, allowing them to straddle their monstrous mounts. Their shins were protected with solid metal guards, and their forearms and hands were encased in armoured gauntlets. Their plumed metal helmets had armoured panels affixed that fell to protect their necks, while allowing them to turn their heads. Each one of them carried almost a clan’s wealth of steel into battle on their bodies. Even their faces were armoured; only their eyes could be seen above the snarling visages of their war masks, and those eyes were no softer than the metal.

  A jolt of recognition struck Saana. She’d seen the central sar’s mask before; a scaled face baring shark-like teeth. Of course, a mask could be duplicated, or passed between owners, but as they got closer she became certain.

  “The one in the middle killed Njivan,” she muttered to Rist.

  “Njivan?”

  “You don’t remember?” But of course, Rist had been on any number of raids since Saana had made her one and only venture to the Flatlands, fifteen years ago. Now she thought back on it, Njivan and Rist had never been close. “He took an axe hit from Njivan, then carved him straight up the middle.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Rist nodded, then laughed grimly and patted the handle of his weapon. “Well, I’ve got a better axe.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t need it,” Saana said. They were perhaps twenty paces away from the sars. “Stop.”

  Her two companions halted. She took two more steps, then planted her feet in the coarse grass, all that was keeping her from sinking into the soft ground. Behind her, she heard Tsolga yell obscenities at her shieldwall to stop them lumbering into the usual whooping, screaming charge.

  The sars also halted, each with one hand on the hilt of the longer sword sheathed at their waist. Saana noted almost absently that the long scabbard of the central warrior was decorated to about half its length with carvings and artwork, while those of the two flanking him were bare, white wood.

  Saana took a deep breath, made one last mental rehearsal of the words she’d practiced with Nalon so many times, then began to speak.

  DAIMON

  “FATHER,” DAREL ASKED uncertainly, as the three of them trudged across the salt marsh towards the oncoming Raiders, “why are we doing this? They don’t follow the Code, so their flag of parley holds no weight.”

  It was a question Daimon wanted to hear answered, too. Black Keep’s walls would barely serve to repel a thief in the night, let alone the advancing Raider horde, but he still felt more
and more vulnerable the farther behind he left them. It would have been better had he been mounted on Silverhorn, but even had they been willing to risk their mounts in the unsteady footing of the marsh, the great longhorn dragons were still deep in their winter torpor. Tavi the stablemaster had his tricks, but he couldn’t rouse them this quickly.

  “Your father would learn how the savages know about the flag of parley in the first place,” their father replied grimly. “Also, the leader presumably intends to treat with us somehow. This gives us an opportunity to sever the viper’s head.”

  “You would violate a parley?” Daimon asked, surprised despite himself.

  “As your brother stated, they do not follow the Code,” Asrel snorted. “In fact, they likely intend the same for us. Look to your weapons, and be alert. Should they seek to take our lives then they will learn that no Raider is a match for a sar.”

  “Father,” Daimon said, frowning. “The one with the flag… he does not look like a Raider.”

  “He is dressed like a savage,” Asrel retorted, “but your eyes are better, boy. What do you see?”

  “He is right, Father,” Darel weighed in. “The man looks like one of us!”

  “Curious,” Asrel said. “A hostage?”

  “Perhaps,” Daimon agreed, but it felt wrong. The man certainly looked Naridan: he wasn’t oversized, his skin was a healthy copper rather than milk-pale, and although he had whiskers they were only a shadow of the animal-like growth of hair the male Raiders sported. However, he wasn’t bound, or even under a close guard, and wore skins and furs. He appeared to be accompanying the other two of his own free will. Like them, he sported a thick black line from his hairline down to the bridge of his nose. Only the big man, however, also had what looked like black-stained scars on his cheeks.