The Dragonstone

by Dennis L McKiernan

  Black-fletched arrows whistled through the air, thunking into ship’s wood or slashing through canvas sails, but one took Jarl through the neck, and he fell backward, dead before striking the deck.

  Now the black galley pulled to the starboard, edging alongside. “Hard alarboard,” shouted Borkson, snatching up Jarl’s pipe and signaling the crew.

  Gasping in fear, Alos spun the wheel leftward as the crew pulled the halyards ’round, and slowly the helm began to answer, but then the ship lost headway as the broad lateen sails of the galley sliced across the flow of air to the kravel.

  “She’s got our wind, Cap’n!” cried Alos. “The black ship has stolen our wind!”

  “Bring her about!” shouted the captain, raising the bo’s’n’s pipe to his lips and sounding the signal, yet in that same moment—thnk! chnk!—grappling hooks thudded over the wales, and the black galley, her drum silent and her oars now shipped aboard, began to wrench the kravel to her side.

  “Repel boarders!” shouted the captain, drawing his saber. But then, “Oh, Adon, Trolls.”

  In the light of the witchfire and clambering up to the main deck of the black galley from the rowing deck below came behemoth Trolls. The men of the Solstråle cried out in fear, some leaping overboard in their panic, while others fell to their knees. And on the stern of the dark ship, the Wizard, glowing with ghastly flames, laughed in malevolent glee.

  As Trolls clambered across the wales from galley to kravel, Alos, shrieking, abandoned the wheel and sprang down from the poop deck and bolted through the aft cabin door. Howling in panic, he fled along the passageway and scrambled down the aft ladder and forward through the crew’s quarters and down a second ladder and into the holds below. Sternward he ran, along the planked aisleway and among the piled barrels and crates and bales, Alos weeping and hissing, whining to himself, “Hide in the bilge. They’ll never find you there. Hide in the bilge, the bilge.”

  Sissing, moaning, he started down through the stern trap to the bilge below, but the falchion in his belt snagged on the rim. As shrieking and bellowing and screams of terror came from above, Alos hurled the weapon away into the darkness, the blade tumbling and clattering along the plank aisle. And then he was down and through, slamming the trap behind.

  On his belly, Alos slithered through putrid bilge water across ballast stones, groaning and crawling toward the bow, away from the trapdoor aft, his breath coming in harsh gasps, whines and grunts and moans leaking from his lips. At last he fetched up against a thwart and could crawl no farther.

  Panting, hissing, lying in water sloshing over the round rocks, still he heard the sound of chaos adeck. Then footsteps clattered down from above as someone else fled into the hold. “Don’tcomehere, don’tcomehere, don’tcomehere,” Alos gibbered and hissed through clenched teeth, trying to remain silent, emitting tiny squeaks instead. Then a ripping and rending of timber sounded, followed by a hideous roar, and a voice in the hold shrieked in terror, panicked footsteps running along the plank walkway. There came a massive thud, as if something had dropped into the hold from the deck above, followed by the sound of ponderous footfalls overtaking the ones fleeing.

  “Ygahhh!” shrilled the man, and his footsteps ceased, then he howled and howled and howled, as if in the clutches of a monster who lifted him up.

  The massive thumping treads came back along the walkway, bringing the screaming along with it. Yet, suddenly, there was a horrid roar and the snapping of metal. Then there sounded a hideous cracking of bones, and the screaming stopped, followed by a sodden thud as something fell to the planks. Now there was a heavy, deep grunting and moaning as the ponderous footsteps began again, but this time unevenly, as of a monster limping.

  Blue-green light leaked down through a chink in the planking above Alos’s head, and puffing and sissing, clenching his fists and teeth, trembling uncontrollably, Alos raised up and peered with one eye through the gap overhead, trying to see.

  There in the dimness above, down the walkway a monstrous bulky form loomed darkly, approaching, faltering, as if lame, groaning with every other step as it hobbled toward the witchfire light shining through the rent-open hatchway to the deck above. Alos could see it was a Troll, and he started to scream, but he clamped both hands across his mouth, stifling the sound. And then the monster’s injured foot—the right foot, the foot that had stepped on a thrown-away falchion that had somehow become wedged in a crack in the dark, the foot that had borne the whole of the Troll’s weight on the sharp point of the blade—that foot came down directly above Alos’s upturned face, and a dark ichor that burned like fire plopped into one of Alos’s fright-wide eyes.

  His hands still pressed across his mouth, Alos shrilled through his nose in agony, and he pulled his right hand away and frantically clawed at the eye. Yet the caustic burning drove deeply into the socket, into his skull. In unbearable anguish, Alos jerked down and away, rolling over and plunging his face into bilgewater. And as he shrieked, bilgewater bubbling, and raked underwater at his eye, the groaning Troll above, unheeding, clambered back to the deck.

  * * *

  Time passed, and more time, and at last the shrieking above ceased, though there were yet moanings and weepings, as of men captured by Trolls.

  Below in the bilge, Alos trembled and waited in silence, his right eye yet in torment, though the water had washed some of the fire away, and again and again he submerged his face in bilgewater to try to relieve the burn.

  Finally, feet clattered down the ladderway—not the ponderous treadings of Trolls but lighter steps, instead—and he could hear voices speaking in a tongue he did not understand. Rutcha and Drôkha? Are they looking for me? Again Alos clamped his hands across his mouth, sealing in his whimpers and whines, and he shrank back against the thwart, waiting for them to find him, waiting for his doom, wishing he had a weapon, wishing he now had his cast-off falchion, somewhere on the walkway above. If I had my falchion and someone came after me, I could kill them in silence and be safe. And he wept for his hurled-away blade. But the Foul Folk were not searching for Alos; they had come for the cargo instead. Grunting and swearing, they moved the barrels and crates toward the hatch, where Trolls lifted it to the deck above.

  After a time, the Spawn left the hold behind, clambering up ladders and away. Alos could hear distant shouts and the beat of the drum, but these sounds, too, faded away, leaving silence after. Still Alos cowered in the bilge, trembling, weeping, moaning, his right eye filled with pain, and in the quiet the empty ship slowly rocked, swaying in the waves, the bilgewater sloshing to and fro across Alos.

  But then he again heard the beat of a drum, drawing closer and closer still.

  They’re coming back to get me!

  Alos whined and gibbered and wept into his hands.

  Suddenly, with a horrendous crash, a great brass beak crashed through the side of the ship, timber splintering, water gushing inward after. Alos shrieked in fear, and tried to scramble hindward, but the thwart stopped him. Outside, the drum pounded and with a groaning and screeching the brass beak ponderously withdrew, the waters of the Boreal Sea thundering inward through the breech left behind.

  Beneath the planking of the bottom deck Alos howled in terror, and choking, coughing, half strangling, he clawed his way across ballast rocks toward the distant stern, fighting through whelming torrents, attempting to reach the bilge trap. But the ship settled and Alos was plunged completely underwater, yet he clawed onward.

  Again the brass ram crashed through the hull of the foundering Solstråle and judderingly withdrew, and more water thundered inward to flood the hold. The ship slowly canted sternward in prelude to its a final plunge downward.

  Underwater, Alos finally reached the trap and was up and through, yet the hold was nearly full, but he swam straight up and into a trapped pocket of air. Coughing, gasping, he had only time for a breath or two before the pocket vanished under the rising brine. Now he swam toward where he thought the hatchway would be, and just as it seemed he
could swim no more, he popped through. The canted decks were awash, the stern fully submerged, the Solstråle plunging fast. And as the ship went under, Alos was pulled down by the suck of the undertow. Down he was dragged and down, into the nightdark Boreal Sea, and though he tried to swim, he could not defeat the pull. And when the suck at last vanished, Alos drifted in the depths, spent, stunned, not knowing or caring which way the surface lay. But something slammed into him from below, and he was borne upward again. And tangled in wrack he came once more to the crest of the sea.

  Overhead stars gleamed, remote and diamond cold, and of the black ship there was no sign.

  * * *

  Two days later a Fjordlander Dragonship fished Alos from the waters. They found him clinging to a shattered spar, nearly drowned and suffering from thirst, his right eye blind and burned and filmed over white. And he screamed when he saw the longship’s oars and heard the stroke-drum sound. He gibbered for days, and spoke of a black ship, and shrieked in the night of Trolls. Yet all he would say when he seemed sane was that his ship had foundered.

  They took him to Mørkfjord and set him aland.

  He began drinking that day—“To forget,” he said—and he stayed that way for thirty-three years.

  * * *

  Mewling and gibbering and hissing of Trolls, Alos crawled backward from Arin.

  Sailors came up behind. One shoved to the fore, a sandy-haired man, the Gyllen Flyndre’s first mate. “What’s all this houndin’ one o’ our passengers wi’ swords and axes and knives, eh? We’ll ha’e no murthers aboard this ship. Look at th’ poor lubber; y’ ha’e driven his wits away wi’ fear.”

  Aiko growled and turned toward the mate, and he blenched but stood his ground.

  Arin stepped between the two. “’Tis not we who affright him so, but his own phantoms, deliriums.”

  “He’s full of drink and seeing things,” added Egil.

  The sailors looked down at the cowering old man, and one of the men turned to the first mate and said, “Aye, Guntar, he was brought aboard unconscious drunk.”

  Arin turned to Aiko and Egil. “I don’t understand why he’s on the ship at all.”

  Aiko and Egil glanced at one another, as if sharing a secret, and Egil said, “After a week of searching, I finally found him last night…while you were packing provisions aboard the Brise, love. I knew there wouldn’t be time to convince him to come with us, and so instead I took him to the Cove and bought him two flagons of Tryg’s best brandy, and then I asked Olar and Yngli to lade him aboard the Gyllen Flyndre when he passed out.”

  Arin’s eyes widened. “Dost thou mean thou spirited him here against his will?”

  Aiko sighed. “Dara, you said that perhaps we needed him, that he might know the way to the holt of Ordrune.”

  Arin turned to Aiko. “Dost thou approve what Egil has done?”

  Aiko lowered her head and peered at the deck. “Dara, I aided Egil, for I paid coin to Captain Holdar for Alos’s passage to Jute.”

  Arin shook her head, and looked at Alos, the old man’s mouth now stretched wide in a soundless scream as he clawed at invisible foe. Then she turned to the first mate and gestured at Alos. “Canst thou and some of thy men bear him to his cabin? I will fetch some balms to lay these phantoms to rest.”

  The mate nodded and signaled to two of the men, but it took six of them to carry the shrieking, wrenching, flailing, drunken old man to his tiny quarters.

  CHAPTER 36

  The sailors wrestled Alos into his bunk, the old man shrieking and flailing, and moments later Arin appeared, carrying a small satchel filled with packets of herbs and powders. She mixed a white medick in a cup of water, and as two of the men held the oldster down, Arin pinched his nose shut, and when Alos drew in a breath to scream, she poured the mixture down his throat. Hacking and coughing, Alos screeched, “Eeee, poison, poison,” and then fell unconscious.

  Arin nodded to the sailors. “Ye can leave, now. His phantoms are temporarily at bay.” The men trooped out, and Arin began mixing another drink, this time crumbling a dried petal of a yellow flower into water and stirring, bits of the petal swirling ’round and ’round, changing the color of the liquid.

  As the Dylvana treated Alos with her medicks and bathed the old man’s brow, the Gyllen Flyndre fared southwesterly, riding upon the sapphire tides of the great Boreal Sea. Her sails were filled flush by favoring winds, and her hull shsshed through the water, bearing her crew toward faraway Gelen, across the wide channel from Jute. It was in this channel, if all went right, where Arin and Egil and Aiko, and even perhaps Alos, would leave the ship to pursue their own destinies. But that would be three or four weeks in the future on a journey just begun…for the Flyndre was but a half-day out of Mørkfjord and sailing along the coast, the high cliffs passing a mile or so to larboard. She would keep to the seaboard lanes throughout the following days, for she was a coastal trader and seldom ventured far out upon the wide deep waters of the world; for the most, her captain and crew sailed within sight of land, especially when on the waters of the stormy Boreal Sea.

  And while Arin ministered to Alos, Aiko and Egil spent time walking the deck, getting their sea legs under them, for it had been weeks since Egil had been upon a ship, and Aiko had only fared at sea a sparse number of times—when she crossed from Ryodo to the mainland, and a few trips to islands south. After a while Aiko stopped her pacing and sat in the sun and began treating her weapons and armor ‘gainst the spray, oiling the steel and bronze and leather to ward off the brine. Egil, though, remained filled with a restless energy and he paced the length of the ship, striding back and forth, threading his way through sailors, asking any and all if they knew the way to the holt of Ordrune the Mage. Yet the men shook their heads, for none held the answer, and so Egil continued his prowling. He stopped now and again to watch the Rianians bring the carrack to a new tack, the helmsman haling the wheel hard over, the deck crew setting the yards such that the sails made the most of the wind. Too, he would stand long moments in the bow, as if willing his sight to fly o’er the darkling waves and spy out the distant goal, for he was now eager to be in Jutland, where there might be someone who could lead him to the lair of the sought-after Mage. At other times he would stand in the stern near the tiller, speaking quietly to Captain Holdar, master of the ship.

  “Nay, Egil, I have not heard of this Mage you seek.” Holdar stroked his ruddy jaw. Clean-shaven was the captain of the Flyndre, a short, stocky man in his mid-forties, dressed in dark blue jerkin and breeks, and he wore black boots and a black leather vest. His hair was close-cropped and ruddy red as well. His eyes were blue and set within the plump features of a well-fed merchant, though a hint of ruggedness lay deep in his gaze. “I’ve no business with Mages and such. Instead, I deal with trappers and traders, and the fur merchants of Gelen.” Holdar paused as Aiko climbed up the ladder to the poop deck to join them. And after nodding to the yellow warrior, the captain turned to Egil and said, “Besides, laddie buck, what would I do with a Mage, eh? Ask him to charm the Flyndre, har?”

  “Not this Mage, Captain. With him you’d be lucky to escape with your life.”

  “Oh? One of the black ones, aye?”

  Glumly, Egil nodded

  “Then it be just as well I don’t know this, this—”

  “Ordrune,” supplied Egil.

  “Aye, Ordrune. I’ll give him wide berth, if you don’t mind. But, hoy, why do you seek him, him a black one and all?”

  “I have a score to settle with him,” said Egil, his look grim.

  Holdar’s eyes widened, and he said, “Well now, my friend, him being a Mage, take care you don’t bite off more than you can chew.”

  “I do not plan on going alone, Captain, unless there is no other choice. Instead, there are the bloodkith of forty Fjordsmen eager to take off his head.”

  Aiko pursed her lips and frowned…and then intoned, “Take these with thee, no more, no less, else thee will fail…”

  Egil looked down
at her.

  She caught his gaze and said, “There is more at stake here than blood-vengeance, Egil One-Eye.”

  Egil sighed and nodded and gestured toward the quarters where Arin tended Alos, then said, “We know not whether Ordrune holds that which she seeks. Yet I will stay my revenge until her—until our quest is complete.”

  Aiko nodded, and in that same moment, Arin stepped forth from the cabins below. Egil and Aiko climbed down the ladder to the main deck and joined her.

  “He has finally fallen into a natural sleep,” said the Dylvana, glancing back at the aft cabin quarters. She reached out and took Egil’s hand, as if seeking comfort, then said, “Whatever happened to him apast, it must have been terrible.”

  * * *

  On the second day out from Mørkfjord, Alos stumbled from his cabin and to the main deck of the Gyllen Flyndre. Shielding his one good eye from the bright morning sun, he peered ’round the deck, stunned. “Eh, where in Garlon’s name am I?” he muttered, then shouted to any and all, “I asked, where in Garlon’s name am I?”

  Sailors turned and stared at this filthy oldster, his clothes stained and rumpled, one eye watery brown, the other blind and white, teeth missing here and there, the remainder coated with an ocherous film. Then the old man seemed to suddenly realize that he was on a ship, and he collapsed to the deck weeping.

  The first mate shook his head and growled, “Jan, go get th’ Elf. Her ward has got loose.”

  But it was the yellow woman who came to the deck. She tried to get the old man to his feet, but he was as slack as a sail in irons, and so she slung him over her shoulder and headed for the aft quarters, snarling at the cabin boy to fetch a tub and hot water and soap, as well as chewing sticks and mint leaves, if he had them.

  For the next three or four candlemarks, there were howls and thumps and sloshings and cursings from behind the old man’s locked cabin door.

  * * *

  “Surely there’s something to drink aboard,” whined Alos, slipping into his clean though wrinkled breeks, the clothes freshly scrubbed and sun-dried and faintly smelling of salt.