Mr. Pallan had driven the crew ashore. Ellec and Lerica weren’t far behind. Ellec went once around the deck as Lerica dashed down, then up the companionway to the cabins, her arms full of chart cases and navigation instruments. They ran down the dock, and Lerica began handing her load to anyone who would take something. Kyric took the ship’s spyglass.
Ellec had two lengths of slow match burning in his hand. He gave one of them to Lerica. “We’ll have to go for her magazine,” he said.
She pointed along the shore. “There. We can use one of those boats.” She flashed her uncle a feral grin. “They picked the wrong night to attack us.”
They sprinted towards a rack where the smallest canoes were stored, faster than the fastest runner at the Games of Aeva. They slid a little two-man job into the water and vaulted the gunwales, paddles in hand.
The carrack bore down on Calico. Aiyan led Kyric across the harborside road to a low shed where seasoned lumber was stored. They reached the roof by way of a water barrel and had a good view of the area. All the streets into the town lay clogged with people pushing in both directions at once.
A flash came from the prow of the Baskillian ship, and the boom shook the shed beneath their feet, the echo sounding across the harbor. The carrack had fired her bow chaser. The shot went high, ripping through a warehouse on the other side of Calico. The people in the streets screamed, and it was like they were swept away from the harbor by a strong wind, some of them scattering into the alleys and yards.
Kyric raised the spyglass. The carrack steered closer to the wind. They would pass Calico broadside to broadside at a range of less than a hundred feet.
“There,” he said to Aiyan. “On a platform above the main yardarm. A sharpshooter with a musket.”
Aiyan nocked an arrow and drew. Even knowing where the man stood, he became a shadow against the mast when Kyric lowered the spyglass. Aiyan loosed and the shadow disappeared.
“We’ll wait until they’re about to fire, then try for the gunners,” he said.
The carrack edged closer. The distance wasn’t so great now, but the deck was crossed by moon shadows. Kyric missed his first shot, finding the range on the second shot and hitting a sailor who walked in front of his target at just the wrong time. Aiyan shot down a man who might have been a gunner, but someone took his place immediately.
The Baskillian ship came abreast of the little caravel and fired its three guns one at a time. Calico threw a spray of splinters into the air as a section of her bulwark ripped away.
“That last one was a skip,” Aiyan said. “They’re aiming for the waterline, trying to sink her.” He held up his hand as Kyric prepared to loose another shot. “We’re not doing much good, and we may need all our arrows soon.”
This is probably my fault, Kyric thought. It was stupid to have told Soth Garo that Ellec would run when his army arrived. He did it so that Soth Garo wouldn’t factor the ship into his battle plans, but he may have ordered this attack to prevent them from escaping with the knowledge of what was happening on Mokkala. The smarter lie would have been to tell him Calico wasn’t seaworthy, and that he could capture her from the land.
The carrack sailed past, canvas spread on every yard, and began to come about for another pass, its unfired cannons ready on the other side. Ahead of it, a tiny canoe streaked across the inlet, two figures paddling furiously.
Kyric watched with the spyglass. The canoe easily caught the ship as it tacked, coming under its bow. Without a pause, they leaped, catching hold of the hull and scrambling up the side, slipping over the rail to merge with the moon shadows.
Nothing happened at first. Then there seemed to be some confusion among the crew, but they were still completing their tack and most of them remained at their sheets and lines. Suddenly a fire broke out amidships. Not a big one, but bright enough light the deck. Some of the sailors beat at the fire with their shirts, others arriving with buckets of water.
A group of men with muskets drew Kyric’s eye. They were uniformed marines, and they circled to surround a man near the fire. It was Ellec.
He crouched in a posture of submission — and sprang twenty feet into the air, landing on the main rat lines then leaping again to the sharpshooter’s platform. The marines began firing as he found a loose line and swung toward the mizzen mast, letting it snap him into a summersault. He caught himself on the sail, clawing his way up it to reach the top of the mast, marines continuing to fire as he went.
A spot on Ellec’s shirt erupted in a jet of cloth and blood. He had been hit. But he hardly seemed to notice. He located a taut rope leading back to the main mast and mounted it with a cartwheel.
Kyric scanned the deck for Lerica. He couldn’t find her. The fire now only smoldered, and almost everyone on deck stood looking up, fixed on Ellec and his impossible stunts.
He cartwheeled along the line to the main mast, the marines below him frantically reloading. A tongue of flame shot up from a hatch. There was another flurry of movement on deck, and the ship passed its chance to fire on Calico a second time as it failed to complete its maneuver and veered toward the far side of the inlet.
Ellec cut one of the lines from the topsail, and with a running start along the yardarm, launched himself into a long arcing swing that took him away from the ship, letting go at the end and dropping into the ocean.
There was a low thud, and then the carrack exploded.
Kyric dropped the spyglass. The sea glowed red from the fireball, and shattered fragments of the ship seemed to hang suspended in the night sky.
“Lerica!”
He leapt from the roof and hit the ground running. He headed for the canoe rack, but Caleem intercepted him in the road.
“Paddling will soon exhaust us. We need a boat with a sail to conduct a thorough search.”
“Not this time,” Kyric said, dragging Caleem along with him and hauling a canoe out of the rack. “I have a direction.”
But to what will it lead me? he wondered as they quickly got in and paddled a zigzag course through floating debris. If Lerica had been aboard the ship, nothing would be left of her. And then there’s Ellec. He had been rather close. He could have been knocked out and drowned.
He heard her before he saw her, calling out to whoever might be there. She bobbed and splashed like a child learning to tread water, lunging for the canoe as they came close.
“You’re alive,” Kyric said. “And then some.”
She coughed and spat seawater. “I’m also wet. Help me in.”
“How did you not get blown to bits?”
“I’m tough that way.”
They hauled her into the canoe like a big fish, and she sat in the bottom, dripping and wringing her hair. A shout came from the beach. Lerica raised her hand against the glare of the moon, then waved.
“Uncle Ellec has already made it ashore,” she said. “He knows how to swim.”
“You don’t know how to swim?”
She shrugged. “I can . . . dog paddle.”
Kyric started laughing. “You serve on a ship, you live on the sea, and all you can do is dog paddle?”
She began to laugh too, and suddenly Kyric couldn’t sit upright. They laughed together until it hurt, and Caleem looked at them in puzzlement.
“Don’t worry,” Kyric said as he caught his breath. “It’s only nerves.”
CHAPTER 12: A Trail of Spice
The morning dawned to an overcast sky, the air thickly humid. The Baskillian carrack had been more than a hundred yards out from shore when its gunpowder magazine detonated, and still the dock and the harborside road lay littered with debris. Some of it had fallen on Calico, and only Pallan’s quick reaction saved her from catching fire.
She had a hole in her side. It was well above the waterline and the ship was in no danger of sinking, but she couldn’t take to the high seas until it was repaired. For now they patched it with what looked like a piece of canvas soaked in hot tar.
They had all been up half the nig
ht. Ellec and Lerica didn’t come out till noon, moving slowly when they did, like they were deeply sore all over. But Ellec showed no sign of having been shot.
King Tonah summoned his army to the field. He divided most of them into lines of bowmen and spearmen, and had them practice moving one line through another. One time he might have the archers fall back behind stationary spearmen, another time he would instruct the spearmen to charge through the line of archers. The Bantuan kept to themselves, and for once did not have their dogs with them. They all massed in one group and practiced changing formation from a column to a solid square, then back to the column. They did it stationary at first, then they practiced it on the run. For nomads with no formal military training, they could sprint in formation remarkably well.
The overcast remained all day, the clouds pressing down, and the rains never came. A group of Bantuan scouts returned in the late afternoon to report that Soth Garo’s army had arrived and was encamped only a few miles away.
“Do you have a plan,” Aiyan said to Ellec, “if the battle does not go well?”
They all sat at the captain’s table, dining together on the eve of battle as they had done at sea. Lerica poured rass wine for everyone.
“After we have completed our little task, we will stay in the harbor,” Ellec said, “hove-to and ready to sail. I will wait for you until the very last minute. With fair weather we can make it to the deserted island off the north cape and hide there while we effect repairs.”
“Don’t wait for me,” Aiyan said. “If the battle is lost, I will surely have been killed.”
“What is this task?” Kyric said, looking to Aiyan.
“Yeah,” Lerica said to her uncle, a little annoyed that she hadn’t been told.
“Alright,” Aiyan said, “but it doesn’t leave this cabin. I mean it.”
“When the enemy is engaged,” Ellec said, “we will help ferry the Silasese to the far side, past Tiahnu Rock, and land them behind the lines.”
Kyric took a drink and waited. “That’s it? That’s the big surprise?”
“No,” Aiyan said. “That’s the little surprise. I could tell you about the big one, but you’ll sleep better not knowing.”
After dinner, Kyric and Lerica went to the quarter deck and watched the sun slide toward the horizon. They held hands and didn’t say anything. At last, the sun touched the sea.
“Time to go,” Kyric said. “I have the first watch this evening.”
She released his hand. “Remember what Mahai said — don’t try to fight this thing.”
King Tonah’s house stood wreathed in cardamom incense by the time Kyric and Aiyan got there. Ilara was crouched down and crawling backward in full feathered regalia, attendant priestesses on either side blowing bamboo whistles. They made a chirping sound, and Ilara moved her lips as she lay a trail of spice from a painted wooden gourd. It took nearly an hour to encircle the house and complete the ceremony. By then, twilight had fallen.
“Sea spice and black cardamom will stop the demon,” she told them. “Take care and do not step on it. If the line of spice is broken, so too is the spell of protection.”
The larger Tialuccan houses were built around an inner courtyard, and Tonah’s was like two of these joined together. The Mokkalan royalty had developed the custom of sleeping in separate little houses within the courtyards, being no larger than a normal bedchamber. The family slept in one courtyard and royal guests in the other.
Kyric’s watch ended at midnight. Not that he would be able to sleep that night — he simply traded places with Aiyan, who had been sitting on the front steps. After the king had met with his four field commanders, discussing the day’s exercises and the growing water problem, he went directly to his sleep house with the queen.
How could he sleep at a time like this? No one else could. Kyric couldn’t figure it. Caleem had wanted to keep watch all night in full combat gear, but Mahai had persuaded him that they needed some rest in case Soth Garo attacked in the morning.
A couple of hours passed, and Tiah grew as quiet as it ever did these days. Kyric had time to think, and the question came to him again: What kind of life was this?
In the days since he and Caleem had brought Mahai out of Mantua, everyone in Tiah had become his friend. He was constantly returning smiles and waves everywhere he went. He could get a free meal at any house. Families sent baskets of fruit and jugs of rass wine to him aboard Calico. It was like winning the silver arrow at the games, only better — or maybe worse, because strangely, it made him feel lonely again.
He needed to talk to somebody, and Lerica was the only one, but he couldn’t talk to her because she was the very person that troubled him. It wasn’t her, actually. It was his love for her, this feeling that he didn’t love her enough, as a man should. If he really, truly loved her, how could he have been tempted by Dinala’s clumsy advances? Even last night, when he hadn’t been sure that Lerica was alive, he still didn’t know.
He closed his eyes and let his mind wander, slipping halfway to sleep. In his dream, he stood in Soth Garo’s tent, watching him lie naked on his sleeping mat. Wisps of white vapor rose from his second skin, gathering into a low fog that leaked out below the flaps of the tent. And then the skin stood up, leaving Soth Garo asleep.
Kyric snapped awake with a start. A ground fog had risen all around the house. Shouts echoed from inside, and he leapt to his feet, flying through the entryway and down the central hall. He turned the corner into the courtyard and stumbled to a halt.
The demon skin was there. Tonah and Caleem faced it with shields and spears and full armor. It swung its arms, driving them towards the corner with heavy blows to their shields, and when they could no longer retreat, knocked them to the ground. Mahai closed with it, his war club held high, but he seemed unsure about what to do.
Aiyan had circled behind the demon skin, his sword aflame. He launched himself into a two-handed slash, catching the entity on the back of the neck. His blade only bounced away with a high-pitched ring.
The skin turned and pushed, throwing Aiyan halfway across the courtyard. Mahai saw his chance and ducked in, grabbing Caleem by the collar and dragging him away. Tonah tried to regain his feet, but the entity turned back and seized him by the throat. Then came a sudden gust of wind, and the flutter of giant wings.
A monstrous bird landed in the courtyard — one of the Gavdi birds that Lerica had told him about. It raised its wings for balance and shrieked, a long deafening cry so painful that Kyric could do nothing but cringe with his hands over his ears.
Without warning, the skin shattered. A cloud of ice crystals drifted towards the floor, each one sublimating into a wisp of vapor.
Everyone watched, too stunned to move, as the Gavdi bird cautiously clawed at the place where the entity had stood. It cocked its head. It seemed . . . confused. It leapt to the roof with a hop and a flutter, looked around, then flew off in a storm of feathers.
Tonah climbed to his feet, one hand at his throat. He held his spear to the sky. “All honor to Ubtarune,” he said in a rasping voice. “His oneness with the Gavdi has not been in vain.”
“Does this mean the demon has been banished?” Mahai said. “Is Soth Garo without his skin now?”
“I doubt it,” Aiyan said, dusting himself off. “As you told us, the demon is possessed by him. I believe it will be part of him as long as he lives.”
“How did it get in?” Kyric asked. “I was out front and saw nothing.”
“It came through here,” Aiyan said, going to the entry to the side hall. He led them across the hall. The door to the practice yard lay shattered on the floor.
They followed Aiyan through the yard and the gate, to where the line of spice ran past it. A torch burned at the gate and they saw nothing amiss. Aiyan took the torch and followed the line. In the darkness at the back of the house, the circle of spice had been broken. It wasn’t from someone stepping on it. Something thin, a stick or a spear, had been drawn across it.
“We must discover who did this,” Caleem said.
Kyric shrugged. “It could have been anyone in the whole town.”
“By sundown tomorrow,” Aiyan said, “it won’t matter anymore.”
King Tonah eyed the westering moon. “Dawn is only an hour away.” He raised his spear. “Let our warriors awaken. Let the spears of our clans be raised. Go and make your final preparations.” He gave Aiyan a subtle nod. “Our troops will take the field before sunrise and lay in their hiding places, so that the enemy will know nothing of our trick.”
They went back in the house, Tonah to have a final word with Aiyan in his private chamber, Caleem and Mahai to don the last of their armor and accoutrements of battle. Conchs sounded and the whole household came to life. Kyric wandered out to the street, mainly to get out of the way.
From the grassland beyond the town came an uproar of barking and yipping. The patter of a Silasese drum drifted in from the waterfront. Tiah itself was quiet. The army had camped in the fields that night in case of a sneak attack. So he was surprised to see lines of spearmen coming in from the east side of town and forming up where the main road ran into the marketplace.
He walked down the street until he could see them clearly. They carried the oval shields and short spears of the Bantuans, without the customary straw hats. They all sat down in the road, anticipating a long wait. A Bantuan sorceress walked down the row sprinkling fennel on their heads. Naran stood at the front of the column. A man near the back had a few dogs with him, but he was the only one.
When he got back to the house, he found Aiyan sitting beside Tonah’s rock garden, a bowl of breadfruit in his hand. The stars had begun to fade away as the eastern sky grew light.
“They’ve all gone to take their places in the field,” Aiyan said. “Eat if you can. You’ll need the energy.” He took a huge bite. “Helps me hold down the butterflies.”
Kyric had never thought about Aiyan having the jitters. The man seemed so utterly still inside — so calm, and so confidant. Perhaps Kyric should follow his lead; his own stomach was plenty aflutter. He went ahead and ate a piece of the fruit. Breadfruit was always bland, but this one tasted like an old potato. “Could use a dash of cassia, maybe a little nutmeg.”
Black Spice (Book 3) Page 13
