A laugh cut through the sobbing. “Bone. Imago. It . . . it all became real for a moment. The absurd . . . the mad truth of our lives. Children. Over there. Playing. Laughing. So ordinary a sight. No? And we’ve crossed the continent twice, to know such things.”
He did not know what to say. They stayed that way a long time.
A boy ran up to them, and Bone clenched his fist, for this gangly seven-year-old with unruly dark hair, a red cap, and a slingshot, was none other than Yngvarr’s son.
“Ah,” the boy said, “I remember you two. Well, I’m here to guide you.”
“We tried to save you,” Bone began.
“Taper Tom never needs saving!” the boy said cheerfully.
“It’s not worth it, Imago,” said Gaunt. “Boy, take us to the tavern. I need a drink.”
When they got there, a brawl was raging inside. As they watched, Freidar was thrown out beside a pair of Bison’s crew.
“Fight!” yelled Taper Tom in joy and raced inside.
Helping the old Runewalker up, Gaunt said, “What happened?”
“There’s a bit of a dispute between Erik’s crew and Yngvarr’s.”
Bone clenched his fist. “You don’t say.”
Freidar said, “They say the Nine Wolves have declared themselves Skrymir Hollowheart’s men.”
“That should be Eight Wolves, by the way,” Gaunt said.
“And they said many insulting things about the men of Soderland, Garmstad, Ostoland, the Five Fjords, and Oxiland.”
“All Bison’s crew, in other words,” Gaunt said.
Freidar said, “They were on the verge of blows when Katta tried to mediate. That was when Yngvarr backhanded Katta with a mug! Well, by now all in the tavern knew Katta was a blind man. Times may have changed in Kantenjord, but honest folk know you don’t bring battle to the helpless.”
“Katta’s a long way from helpless,” Bone noted.
“Shh,” said Gaunt.
They slipped within, sizing up the brawl.
It was a fine venue for a fight, with three broad oaken tables to battle upon, weapons and shields hung on the walls, bottles of spirits to be grabbed from the bar, and a blazing fireplace to illuminate the manic scene. Upon the center table, Mad Katta swung this way and that with his staff, connecting with a familiar, massively built, thick-headed foamreaver with a scar on one cheek. Taper Tom was rushing to and fro, launching rocks from his slingshot at Katta. Somehow Katta was always somewhere the stones were not.
Leaping Bison’s crew battled Ironbeard’s, and Bone wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart if he hadn’t sailed with Bison this long. The northerners, perhaps, wore more scars and furs.
“Enough!” rang out a voice.
Flanked by Malin and Brambletop, followed by some twenty Likedealers, was Tlepolemus, his face twisted in fury. “You break the peace of Larderland and your oaths!” He grabbed two combatants and knocked them together. As they fell in a heap, Tlepolemus bellowed, “Stand down!”
The crewmen seemed ready to settle down, and both parties hesitated. Yet Yngvarr seemed eager to finish Katta, and Katta was focused entirely on the foamreaver.
“You’d side with that nithing Glint?” Taper Tom shouted at Brambletop. “Against your own father?”
“You always take Father’s side,” she shouted back, “even when he beats you!”
“He made me strong!” said Taper Tom.
“You’re no blind man!” Yngvarr said to Katta. “I say you’re a liar!”
“Your stench fully compensates for my blindness!” said Katta good-naturedly, to the laughter of the tavern.
Erik Glint now burst in, followed by Ruvsa the Rose herself. “Well!” said Erik. “Yngvarr so fears me he must waylay my crew behind my back? Even one who is blind?”
“I will not speak to the nithing who’d cuckold me,” said Yngvarr, still giving battle, still blocked by Katta’s staff.
“Husband, cease!” roared Ruvsa, with a voice in her throat Gaunt could only envy. “Not in twenty years has Larderland been so upended! Cease! Or by the founding law your ship is forfeit!”
Now Yngvarr backed away from Katta. “You would not,” the foamreaver said.
Tlepolemus broke in. “Is it ever said of Ruvsa the Rose that she speaks idle words?”
“No,” Yngvarr spat, “it is not.” And he threw down his sword. “If she chooses Erik Glint for her bed, I cannot stop her. But I demand satisfaction from him, for his men have broken the peace and wantonly attacked ours.”
“We attacked?” sputtered Freidar.
“You are an idiot, Yngvarr,” Ruvsa said. “We are estranged, but I keep my vows better than you keep yours—”
“I demand holmgang!” Yngvarr said. “Erik and I will duel upon the Holmgangway. Or else he must forfeit captaincy, by your precious law.”
“We’re to leave tomorrow,” Erik said, eyes sizing up the younger, larger man. “By tradition a holmgang is fought three days after the challenge or more. I accept if we ignore tradition and fight at midnight.”
Yngvarr smiled. “I agree. Midnight then.”
Ruvsa said, “Very well.”
Tlepolemus said, “On behalf of the Likedealers, I declare this agreed.”
“Hold,” said Katta. “I would take this challenge, on behalf of the captain.”
“What is this?” said Yngvarr.
“Explain yourself!” said Erik.
Katta smiled. “I find this opponent fascinating. I do not fully understand him, and I do not like leaving mysteries behind me. Besides, Bison needs its captain. Do you know of one fit to replace you? I would act in your stead.”
Gaunt said, “Katta, do you know what you’re doing?”
“Usually not,” the monk said. “But this time, I believe so . . .”
“I cannot gainsay your argument,” Erik said, pounding the table. “If Yngvarr agrees.”
“I do not!” snarled the slaver.
“So you fear to fight a blind man?” Katta said gently. “All of Leaping Bison’s crew will swear to my condition, having observed me over many days. It will be well known, thanks to the poet Gaunt over there, that Captain Yngvarr Thrall-Taker is afraid of fighting one so infirm. Even a self-proclaimed ‘wolf’ may not live that down.”
“Let it be, then!” snapped Yngvarr. “You die at midnight!” He stalked back to Ironbeard.
“You are mad,” Erik said, shaking his head.
“I come as advertised,” Katta said.
CHAPTER 31
A JOURNEY TO KANTENJORD, CONTINUED
(As told by Haytham ibn Zakwan, gentleman-scholar of Mirabad)
I had eagerly accepted the commissions of Princess Corinna, both in preparing balloons for her use and in piloting one to the land of Swanisle in search of aid for her cause. Thus I spent considerable time in the company of Haboob the efrit, giving me cause time and again to prove I was a gentleman of great patience. Also accompanying me was the Runewalker Nan, who seemed rather constrained pacing out weather-runes in my craft Rukh’s gondola, and as man-at-arms a barbaric hairy seventeen-year-old Oxilander named Rolf, whose lord had perished at Garmsmaw Pass.
I would like to claim we made a happy crew, but I am a better inventor than a liar.
On the day I came again into possession of this document, we were descending into Svanstad Fjord, just out of arrow-shot of a blockading fleet of longships fitted with red-and-white sails. Grim weather surrounded Svanstad proper in a shroud of mist, but out here the waters reflected a clear blue sky and white-capped stone heights. It was beautiful. It also afforded me a look at an unexpected sight.
A Kantening longship had pulled up beside the grand, but assiduously neutral, Kpalamaa galleon of Captain Nonyemeko. I stepped carefully around Haboob’s brazier, out of the path of Nan as she paced out a rune, through the stacks of yew longbows that were a gift from Swanisle’s King Rainjoy, and beside the glowering Rolf, that I might look out the ger’s window with a spyglass.
“W
hat is going on?” the young man said. “Have King Rainjoy’s ships preceded us to Svanstad?”
“They are days away,” Nan said, “and we were lucky to get them at all.”
“Thanks to the king’s respect for you,” I said, tightening the focus. “There. On the longship’s deck I see the bandit-warrior of Qiangguo, Snow Pine. And there is Liron Flint the treasure-hunter. And a small crew of Kantenings. Also . . . Eshe, the Kpalamaa spy.”
“She is a Swan priestess,” Nan said.
“Did I deny it? There is something peculiar here. Snow Pine and Flint are wearing strange masks with flexible tubes resembling reeds . . . these are connected to some apparatus aboard the longship, which Eshe guards. Snow Pine and Flint are jumping overboard! It must be some manner of breathing device, allowing underwater exploration!”
“Do try not to drool over the longbows, O great ibn Zakwan,” said the glowering, smoky presence of the efrit.
“That is what Princess Corinna will do,” I murmured, knowing well how much Corinna prized these weapons, the only ones to sting the Karvaks at Garmsmaw. I swung the spyglass to peer at the surrounding waters.
“Do not speak that way of a Kantening princess,” Rolf said, “infidel.”
“Infidel,” I said, now scanning the steep rocky shore. “Heathen. Pagan. Enemy. Corinna, whom I greatly admire, has never used those words of me, for she can appreciate the world beyond her nose. Which, I may add, is quite a lovely nose. Hold on, now . . .”
“Perhaps you admire her,” Rolf said, “but you speak far too casually of her. I might challenge you for it, were you not essential to the working of this craft.”
“I would accept your challenge, oaf, were you not essential to our amusement.” It was a mistake to say this, but I was annoyed by the distraction, for I was focused upon three figures on the slopes. Shockingly, I thought they looked familiar.
“Enough!” Rolf drew a sword (a fine one from Corinna’s armory, Tancimoor steel, or I’m a Swanling) “Runewalker, how long must we bear his mockery?”
“His mockery?” said Haboob. “You wound Haboob of the Horrid Harangues. Have I labored in vain?”
“Young man,” snapped Nan. “If you cannot tell by now who deserves your sword-point, there’s no help for you. Put that thing away before you hurt yourself. Inventor, what has you so preoccupied?”
I could barely say it. “Lady Steelfox of the Karvaks is on that shore, with her shaman Northwing and one guard.”
Rolf said, “Good! We can slay them!” His enthusiasm for killing the nearer infidel seemed to be forgotten.
But I said, “Stop and think! What is their purpose, away from their main force? They must be interested in whatever Snow Pine and Flint are doing. And Steelfox would not endanger herself recklessly. Her shaman will be well-prepared with magics. No, we must press on, deliver our weapons and our news.”
Nan said, “Rolf’s words have merit. It may be the Swan, or the All-Now, as you prefer, has granted us an opportunity.”
“Corinna placed me in charge of this craft,” I said.
“And she put me in charge of this mission,” Nan said. “And while I don’t share Rolf’s dislike of your people, Haytham ibn Zakwan, it is true you’re no Kantening. The choice is ours. I will try to direct the winds closer to that shore. Rolf, you will prepare to slay the Karvak lady with one of these fine bows.”
As we drifted closer to Steelfox, the falcon Qurca rushed by, and I saw upon its foot a message. Gently I opened the tent flap, and in it came.
The event was missed by Nan and Rolf, lost in their own preparations, and Haboob, uncharacteristically, said nothing. I untied the message and read one word in Karvak script.
Why?
I crushed the paper.
“Smoke,” I told Haboob, tossing the falcon out the flap. “Hide the balloon.”
The efrit seemed to swell and its darkness flowed through the opening in the ger and around the portholes.
“Inventor,” Nan said, “you betray Corinna.”
I said nothing.
“Infidel,” Rolf said, “order your unholy monster to remove that smoke, or I will remove your head.”
I drew my scimitar. “I will not murder my former patron. Let Corinna decide my fate.”
“I may aid her,” Rolf said, “but she is not my liege. For Oxiland, I strike.”
Rolf rushed me. I defended.
With her staff Nan traced a rune within the smoke.
Wind rocked the balloon, and from time to time the smoke cleared, showing us careening toward the fjord’s cliffs.
Rolf had a young man’s reflexes, and I’ve reached an age when my joints creak even when all is well. Nonetheless his fighting style might be charitably described as rustic, all sweeps and stabs. My training was by contrast rusty, but it had focused on duels in the confined spaces of cities.
I slipped in under his guard, pressed my scimitar to his throat.
“Yield,” I said.
He spat in my face.
At that moment I saw Nan aiming through a porthole with a longbow. The old Runewalker lacked the strength to pull it well, but she wasn’t about to lose her opportunity.
I had to finish Rolf, but I was loath to kill.
A fresh gale shook the balloon, and I heard Nan gasp, “The shaman,” before Rolf shoved me and cut my shoulder with my own blade. To avoid worse hurt I lurched sideways, and, locked together as we were, I and the Kantening fell through the ger’s flap.
The fall, to my surprise, was only some twenty feet, for we were rushing close to the waters. I plunged in, losing Rolf in the impact.
In my sputtering and flailing, someone grabbed me from below and hauled me under.
The last thing I expected was to find myself breathing air, but so I was, gasping and dripping upon a muddy surface. At first I believed myself within a cave, but as my eyes adjusted to the rippling light, I saw fish swimming past the boundaries of a bubble of air about ten feet across. Rolf was coughing water beside me.
Above us stood Lady Steelfox, the shaman Northwing, and a Karvak soldier I did not know.
“Can you answer my question, Haytham ibn Zakwan?” said Steelfox in the Karvak tongue.
When I could manage to speak, I answered, “‘Why?’ I did it . . . because I am shocked by how swiftly your people are using my inventions . . . to conquer the world. And also . . . my head was turned by a woman.”
“Honesty!” Steelfox said. “You amaze me.”
“I tried to protect you, just now.”
“Indeed, Qurca saw and heard. You gave Northwing time to speak with the spirits of these waters. I will spare you, Haytham, though you will now be my slave.”
“Will you spare this Kantening warrior?”
“He meant my death. Yours too, I observed.”
“He is young and can be a useful slave as well.”
Northwing spoke up. “The pompous inventor has a point, Lady. This is one of those we saw in Oxiland. They’re often at odds with Soderland. He might come around.”
“We shall see. Nine Smilodons, bind them.”
In this way we joined Steelfox and Northwing on their sloshing journey toward Snow Pine and Flint. I explained our situation to Rolf, who gave no response but to eye me resentfully. Northwing’s bubble of air shifted along with us, and I resolved never to stray far from the shaman. It was awkward travel, trudging down the slope of the fjord bottom, and many times I slipped, fearing that I would pass through the barrier.
The surface we now traveled upon was brittle and variegated, filled with branching structures, and with a gasp I realized what we walked upon.
“What is it?” Northwing asked.
“We’re on a coral reef. I never expected to see one so far north—”
“A what?”
“A structure built from the skeletons of tiny, sessile undersea animals—”
“Never mind. Even when you’re speaking a language I know, I don’t understand you half the time. Still, glad you’
re alive.”
“Likewise.”
Steelfox halted, raising her hand. “Something up ahead. Shapes approaching us.”
“Fish?” I said.
“Do fish walk, slave?” Steelfox’s blade was out, and I grieved that mine was lost somewhere in the waters. Indeed, I almost mourned the loss of Rolf’s. Shapes advanced through the dim green light, three of them. Gradually I made out the details of Karvak armor and weapons, and it dawned on me what the trolls had done.
“They’ve turned Karvaks into—”
“I know what they’ve done,” Steelfox said.
The three troll-touched Karvaks came to the edge of the air shell and stopped. Green light glinted from what had once been their right eyes. Looking at them, I realized there was no life within the warriors, for two were slain by arrows, and another by fire.
“Warriors!” cried Steelfox, raising her arms. “Acknowledge me!”
The three dead men bowed.
Steelfox let out a long breath. “What is your business here beneath the waves?”
As one the three turned and aimed their swords the direction whence they’d come.
“Lead us there,” Steelfox said. And so we followed the dead into darkness. I suppose we all must do so eventually, but this felt like unseemly haste.
We ascended a slope and the light improved, until we could see the sun perhaps twenty feet above. Seven more dead Karvaks gathered around a boulder surrounded by coral and undulating green kelp. Within a fissure in the stone was embedded a peculiar sword whose blade was a violet crystal mirroring its surroundings. So perfect was the reflection that until I recognized the violet tint I saw only a silver hilt hanging suspended in the water.
Beside the sword, seemingly unaware of their danger, were Snow Pine and Liron Flint, connected to the surface by ropes and rubbery breathing tubes. They were struggling to draw the sword from the stone.
“I’ve heard the tale,” I murmured. “The Schismglass, lost here by the hero Wiglaf’s fight with a troll-king. It can only be taken from its resting place by one of a ruler’s bloodline.”
“What does that mean, really?” snapped Northwing.
“I am an inventor. I do not write prophecies.”
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