Scorpion Mountain

by John Flanagan

  The growl came again, even louder and more threatening this time. Where was it? Davos cast his gaze back and forth around the raffle of sails and ropes that littered the forward deck.

  “What is it?” asked one of his companions. It was Patrokos, the one who had shown signs of panic a few minutes earlier.

  “It’s nothing,” Davos told him, although from the way the hairs on the back of his neck had risen, that was obviously a lie. “Just a—”

  “Dog,” said the third member of the party, as Kloof emerged from the far rowing well and paced deliberately over the untidy folds of the hastily lowered sail.

  Her lips were curled back from her huge teeth. Her hackles were raised, making her appear even larger than she was. And her eyes had a manic, dangerous light in them. She advanced on the three men, her head low, her stride deliberate.

  At the stern, Lydia and Edvin became aware of the situation on the foredeck.

  “Where did they come from?” Lydia asked, reaching for a dart from her quiver and clipping the atlatl to it. Edvin laid a hand on her arm.

  “Careful. You might hit Kloof,” he said. Then, as he saw the withering glance she turned on him, he added awkwardly, “I mean, if she moves suddenly, or jumps at them, you could . . . accidentally, of course . . .”

  He trailed off but she nodded reluctant agreement. Relieved, he added, “Besides, she seems to have things pretty well in hand.”

  Davos chose that moment to try to draw his sword. As soon as he moved, Kloof leapt at him, hitting him with all her weight and sending him crashing back to the deck. She stood over him, her tail lashing furiously, snarling and snapping those massive jaws just centimeters from his face. Relinquishing his grip on the sword, Davos raised both his arms to cover his face in a vain attempt to stop the furious, snarling dog.

  His two companions backed away from the scene, but neither one made any attempt to draw a weapon. They had seen what happened to Davos.

  “What do we do?” asked Patrokos, his voice high pitched and whining with fear. His friend nodded his head toward the sea behind them.

  “Jump,” he said. But Patrokos looked at the water, looked at Kloof, and shook his head.

  “I can’t swim,” he bleated. The other man shook his head in disgust.

  “This would be a good time to learn,” he said. Then he grabbed Patrokos’s arm and dragged him over the side into the sea.

  chapter twenty-three

  Under Stig’s direction, the remaining members of Ishtfana’s crew were lying belly down on the deck, menaced by Stig’s, Selethen’s and Ingvar’s weapons, while Ulf and Wulf moved quickly among them, lashing their hands behind their backs. Jesper and Stefan, who had boarded behind Hal and so had taken no part in the fight, hurried to lend a hand. In a few minutes, the Hellenes were all securely tied.

  Thorn, the aggrieved look still on his face, stepped up to Ingvar, who turned to him, smiling.

  “You stole my fight,” Thorn accused.

  The huge youth shrugged. “Didn’t see your name on it,” he replied. But Thorn shook his head and repeated himself.

  “You stole my fight. And you said my thing.”

  Ingvar frowned at that. “Your thing?” he said. “What thing would that be?”

  “My tactical plan. My battle order,” Thorn said, glaring. Still Ingvar showed no sign of understanding, so he added, “Let’s get ’em. That’s my battle plan.”

  “That’s a battle plan?” Selethen put in, smiling.

  Gilan, who, like Jesper and Stefan, had boarded too late to take any part in the fight, grinned in return. “It’s about as complex as Skandian battle plans seem to get.”

  Selethen considered this and nodded sagely. “Simple plans are the best. There’s less that can go wrong.”

  “Exactly,” Gilan agreed. “Once you’ve said, Let’s get ’em, you’ve said it all, really.” Thorn turned to the two foreigners and gave them a withering look. Selethen and Gilan smiled easily at him, remaining decidedly unwithered.

  “I’ll thank you,” said Thorn, “not to disparage Skandian tactics.” Gilan and Selethen both made disclaiming gestures.

  “Far be it from us to disparage,” Selethen said.

  Gilan hurriedly agreed. “It was more a case of discussing than disparaging.”

  Thorn eyed them for a few seconds longer, then shrugged. “Very well then.” He turned back to Ingvar. “And you should know, Ingvar, that I am the battle leader. When it’s time for someone to say, Let’s get ’em, I will be the one doing the saying. You will be one of the boys who does the getting. Clear?”

  “Absolutely, Thorn. My apologies. I got carried away, I’m afraid. Blame Hal. He’s the one who fixed it so I can see what I’m doing.” Ingvar touched his hand to the tortoiseshell spectacles strapped over his eyes.

  Hal stepped forward and put a hand on his massive shoulder. “All the same, Ingvar, you should be careful. What if someone had slashed you across the face and you lost the spectacles? You’d be helpless.”

  Ingvar grinned. “Think about that, Hal. What if someone slashed you across the face? Spectacles or no, you’d be pretty helpless too.”

  And Hal had to admit that he was right. The young skirl turned to Thorn with a rueful smile. “You can take some of the blame too, Thorn. You were the one who taught him how to wield that enormous bargepole.”

  “Did you see him, Thorn?” Stefan chimed in. “It was just like you said. He chopped, he stabbed, he hooked and he chopped again. It was like poetry.” He stepped forward to slap Ingvar on the back in congratulation. The big boy shuffled his feet, embarrassed at being the center of attention and admiration.

  Thorn finally lightened up. “You did well, Ingvar,” he admitted.

  Ingvar looked up and beamed at him. Thorn’s praise wasn’t easily come by—particularly for someone who had just usurped his position in a fight.

  “Thanks, Thorn,” he said.

  Stig, who had finished supervising the binding of the prisoners and, with the twins’ help, had dragged them into a line along the bulwarks, rejoined the group.

  “If we’re finished with this mutual love fest,” he said, “what do we do now? How do we get this ship to go where we want it?”

  Hal acknowledged the question and gestured to the hatch leading to the rowing deck.

  “Good point,” he said. “Let’s go talk to the rowers. Stig, Thorn, come with me. The rest of you keep an eye on the prisoners.” He remembered his manners and looked apologetically at Selethen, realizing that he had just told the nobleman what to do rather abruptly. “If that’s all right with you, Wakir?”

  Selethen gestured graciously for him to go ahead. “Perfectly all right, Captain Hal. I’m here to obey orders.” A sly grin touched his lips. “Particularly if someone yells out, Let’s get ’em!”

  “Everyone’s a comedian,” Thorn grumbled. Then he and Stig followed Hal through the hatch to the rowing deck below.

  They went down a short companionway, momentarily blinded by the dimness belowdecks after the bright sun outside. Even before they could see clearly, the smell assaulted their nostrils. It was the smell of dozens of unwashed, sweating bodies, kept cramped in the badly ventilated space of the rowing deck, and of the dirty, foul-smelling water that washed back and forth in the bilges farther below.

  As their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they saw row after row of dirty, bearded faces regarding them. There was neither friendliness nor hostility in the eyes that turned toward them. The three Herons paused at the bottom of the ladder, crouching slightly under the low headroom of the rowing deck, taking stock of the situation. In spite of Davos’s earlier fear, the rowing master, whose body could be seen sprawled on the catwalk aft, had made it a practice never to carry the key to the slaves’ chains on him. That would have been placing temptation too close to their hands. Instead, it hung on a peg
by the aft hatch, well out of the slaves’ reach.

  As a result, the slaves were still held firmly in place, chained to their oars below the level of the central catwalk. Hal moved a few paces aft and thirty-odd pairs of eyes turned to watch him as he went. Toward the stern, he noted several men collapsed over their oars or slumped on their benches, nursing injuries.

  “Fetch Edvin,” he said softly to Stig. “And tell him to bring his healer’s kit. We’ve got wounded men here.”

  The fact that they had been wounded by his own action in bringing the Heron slamming alongside was all too obvious to him. The least he could do was have Edvin patch them up as best he could. He stepped a few further paces, stopping about a third of the way down the catwalk. He looked around those unwavering eyes, looking for some glimmer of trust, finding none.

  “We need your help,” he said, after a pause.

  Nothing. No reaction. No buzz of conversation. He looked quickly at Thorn, who shrugged, then he continued.

  “I’m Hal Mikkelson, skipper of the Skandian ship Heron. We’ve captured the Ishtfana and imprisoned her crew. You’ll probably be glad to hear that her captain is dead. He was killed in the fight.”

  “That wasn’t Bloodyhand,” a voice from a bench close to him growled. “It was his first mate, Kyrios. Bloodyhand didn’t come on this voyage.”

  Hal made a small moue of interest. “Well, that’s news to me. Nevertheless, we’ve killed or captured Bloodyhand’s crew. But we have no wish to keep you imprisoned here. I plan to set you all free.”

  That created a stir of interest. A low muttering ran along the benches as they heard that magic word free—a word none of them had hoped to even think about for the rest of their lives. Hal held up a hand and silence gradually fell.

  “But, as I said, we need your help. We plan to drive Iqbal and his Tualaghi bandits out of the town of Tabork, and we need to use this ship to do it. We’ll set you free, feed you and clean you up if you wish. But we’ll need you to row the ship back to Tabork for us.”

  Again, there was muttering on the benches. This time, he sensed a darker reaction. He hurried to reassure them.

  “There’ll be no whipping, no ramming speed, no force used. We don’t even want you to fight for us. Just get us to Tabork and you’re free to go.”

  He paused, looking around, waiting for a reaction. He saw uncertainty in some eyes, agreement in others, hostility and distrust in a minority.

  One of the rowers spoke up. “What if we say no?”

  Hal spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “We won’t try to force you.”

  Then Thorn stepped forward and spoke. “But we won’t unchain you, either. You can stay here, locked to your oars, while we find another way to get into Tabork. In other words, if you won’t help us, we won’t help you.”

  Hal glanced at his old friend. It was a harsh threat, he thought, and one that he wouldn’t have made. Yet he saw the sense in it. Thorn was simply promising to pay the rowers in their own coin. Don’t cooperate with us and we won’t cooperate with you.

  In fact, it wasn’t a threat that Hal would carry through. If necessary, they’d tow Ishtfana behind the Heron to the rendezvous point on the coast. Once there, they’d have plenty of men to row the ship to Tabork. But it would take time, and Hal knew that the sooner they got back to Tabork, the better it would be. The longer they took, the greater the chance that Iqbal would be suspicious on their return. Their entire plan could collapse if the slaves didn’t agree to one more journey at the oars.

  The silence in the dim rowing deck seemed to stretch on for minutes. Hal heard footsteps on the companionway and turned to see Edvin descending into the rowing deck, wrinkling his nose in distaste. He had his healer’s kit slung over his shoulder in a canvas satchel. Hal pointed to the injured men in the stern.

  “Down there,” he said. “See what you can do for them.”

  Edvin hurried aft along the catwalk, stopping at the sternmost oar, where the rower slumped against the hull, nursing an obviously broken arm. His face was lacerated and bloodstained. The slightly built healer stepped down onto the rowing bench beside him and began to mop gently at the gash on his forehead—caused by a splinter from the shattering oar.

  He worked quickly, but with a light touch that caused as little discomfort as possible. And he spoke in soft, encouraging tones to the man as he worked. The other rowers had swiveled on their benches to watch.

  Edvin finished cleaning the wound, smeared it with a healing paste and quickly bound the man’s head with a clean linen bandage. His deft touch, and his caring manner, impressed themselves on the watching slaves.

  Gently, he pried the man’s left hand away from his broken right forearm, inspecting the injury with critical eyes.

  “Stig,” he called, “I’m going to need you to straighten this arm.”

  The tall first mate hurried down the catwalk and stepped down onto the bench. Edvin showed him where he wanted to grip and pull the arm back into position.

  “When I give you the word,” he said, “do it firmly, but don’t jerk it. Just pull smoothly and keep going until it’s straight. Then I’ll splint it.” Stig nodded, licking his lips nervously. Edvin touched the wounded man on the shoulder, and leaned close.

  “This will hurt,” he said. “It will hurt very badly. But it will only be for a minute. And we have to do it if you don’t want your arm to be bent for the rest of your life. Understand?”

  The man nodded, sweat breaking out on his forehead in anticipation of the pain to come.

  “Yell long and loud if you want to,” Edvin told him.

  The man looked up into the steady eyes of the healer and trusted what he saw there. “Do it,” he said.

  Edvin prepared himself with two wooden splints and a roll of bandage, then nodded to Stig. “On three,” he said. “One, two, three.”

  Stig gripped and pulled steadily, stretching the arm against the tendons and muscles that wanted to keep it crooked and crippled. Edvin had chosen Stig deliberately. He was young and his muscles were hardened by long hours of rowing and weapons practice. He was stronger than anyone on board, except perhaps Ingvar, and strength was what was needed to put that arm back into a straight line. Thorn, of course, would have been stronger, but with only one hand, he would have been incapable of pulling the two halves of the bone back into position.

  The rower screamed in agony, his cries echoing down the length of the rowing deck, the other rowers wincing and turning away as they heard it. Then the arm was straight, the bone was back in line and Edvin quickly wrapped the splints in position, one on either side, whipping the linen bandage round and round to hold them firmly in place and keep the arm straight and supported. The man stopped screaming, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

  “You can let go now,” Edvin said. Stig released his grip on the man’s arm and stood erect. His brow was covered in sweat too.

  “Thank you . . . ,” the rower gasped. He put his filthy left hand up to touch Edvin in a gesture of gratitude. “Thank you, my friend.”

  There was a collective release of breath from the rowing benches. Then the man who had queried Hal spoke up.

  “We’ll row you to Tabork.”

  chapter twenty-four

  Butrus ibn’Shaffran leaned on his spear, gazing out over the dark ocean, and yawned quietly.

  The sun had set several hours earlier, plunging into the bloodred western waters of the Constant Sea in a spectacular display of light. As yet, there was no sign of the moon and the sea was black, glistening occasionally with reflected starlight, or where a wavelet toppled over and broke into white foam.

  Aside from the muted sounds of the ocean, there were the sounds of the desert behind him as the heat of the day departed. The coast here was hard, rocky ground, but there was a belt of sand dunes half a kilometer wide just inland from the beach, and the sand constantl
y emitted a low-level whisper of sound as the grains cooled, contracted and shifted closer together. Butrus was a town dweller, not a desert nomad, and the sound was alien to him—alien and a little disconcerting. But now, as most of the heat dissipated into the clear night air, it was dying down.

  He estimated that he had another two hours on watch and yawned again. Behind him, the camp was sleeping. They had eaten early, before sunset, and the men had promptly spread their sleeping blankets close to the cook fires and turned in. They were experienced campaigners and took any opportunity to snatch a few hours, or even minutes, of sleep. Only Butrus and five other sentries remained awake and on guard—along with the troop sergeant major, who seemed to need no sleep and had a disturbing ability to materialize out of the dark, virtually without warning, to check that his sentries were all awake and alert.

  “Anything moving?” The sergeant major’s hoarse whisper came from just behind Butrus and startled him out of his thoughts. He was sure he actually jumped several centimeters in the air, then brought his spear and himself to the correct vertical position, stiffening to attention as he did so.

  “No, Sergeant Major,” he said, managing to keep his voice low in spite of the shock. The forty-odd men sleeping on the beach wouldn’t thank him for waking them with a shouted reply.

  “Then what in the name of the Crimson Djinn of Djebel-Ran is that?”

  The sergeant major appeared beside him, grabbing his shoulder and jerking him around so that he was facing to the half right and out to sea. And there, sure enough, was the faintest sign of a bow wave—indicating that ship, a large one, was only forty meters off the beach. Butrus groaned inwardly. That slipup would cost him a week’s fatigue duty, he knew.

  “It’s a ship, Sergeant Major,” he said in a dejected tone.

  “A ship. So it is. Were you planning on reporting it to me?”

  The voice was laced with sarcasm and Butrus ground his teeth in frustration and a sense of unfairness. After all, the sergeant major had already seen the ship. He had pointed it out, in fact. It seemed somehow excessive to now tell him what he already knew. Nevertheless, he was the sergeant major.