Slaves of Socorro

by John Flanagan

  Once he felt the anchor break free of the rocky bottom, Stig called, ‘Anchor’s clear!’

  Hal ordered Stefan into the bows again. When he was settled in position, Hal ordered the twins to begin rowing. Slowly, Heron crept forward.

  ‘Go left!’ Stefan called, pointing with one arm out to port. When the ship was on the right track, he held his other hand up, arm bent at the elbow, and Hal centred the tiller, creeping forward at a snail’s pace, waiting tensed for the next helm order.

  And so, slowly, painstakingly, they crept out of the shoals until they were in clear water. Then, with a sigh of relief, Hal had the twins ship their oars and hoist the starboard sail.

  Eagerly, as if she were glad to be back in her natural element, Heron began to slide smoothly through the waters, heading south for Socorro.

  They sailed south on a series of long, smooth tacks, zigzagging across the south wind and rolling the kilometres under their keel.

  On the third day, Hal passed the tiller to Stig and was consulting his chart of Arrida’s western coastline, facing the widths of the Endless Ocean, when Gilan stepped close to the chart table – which was actually the lid of the locker where Hal kept his charts and navigation notes.

  ‘Are you free to talk?’ Gilan asked. He knew Hal was still thinking about what they would do when they reached Socorro and wanted to see if he could help plan their next move. Hal looked up, smiled and gestured for the Ranger to join him.

  Thorn watched from his favoured spot by the mast. He nodded to himself, satisfied with the sight of Hal and Gilan co-operating. Two good minds at work there, he thought.

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ Gilan asked. ‘We should reach Socorro the day after tomorrow.’

  Hal stabbed his finger at the chart. There was a narrow bay approximately five kilometres north of Socorro. The chart showed no sign of any settlement or village there.

  ‘I plan to put in here, make camp, then go overland and reconnoitre,’ he said. ‘I want to make sure Tursgud is there, and see where Nightwolf is moored. Plus I want to check out the layout of Socorro for myself– where the slave markets are, where the slaves are held, what sort of garrison they have there and so on. There’s no point in barging in blind and hoping for the best.’

  Gilan nodded. ‘Socorro is a cosmopolitan city,’ he said. ‘It’s a hodge-podge of different races from around the Constant Sea and the coast of the Endless Ocean. They’re all drawn by the slave markets, of course. But even so, your Skandians, with their fair complexions, northern clothing and heavy builds, will stand out in the crowd. Might be best if someone went in ahead of the rest of you and bought local clothing. The Socorrans wear long flowing robes and headdresses that should conceal your men pretty well. Except Ingvar,’ he added. ‘It’ll be pretty hard to conceal him.’

  Hal grinned. Ingvar did tend to stand out in a crowd. ‘Are you volunteering?’

  ‘I thought maybe Lydia and I could go in and pick up the disguises we’ll need. She’s olive skinned. She’ll pass for a local pretty easily. Plus I imagine she’s good in a fight, if that’s what it comes to.’

  ‘She’s better than good,’ Hal told him. ‘I’d have her guarding my back any day.’

  ‘That’s good enough for me,’ Gilan said. Neither of them questioned whether Lydia would be willing to join Gilan on the expedition he was planning. They knew that she would go without hesitation.

  ‘Then,’ he continued, ‘once you’ve got some local clothes, you can go into the city yourself and look around. Or, if you like, I could scout the place for you?’ He made the offer, but he knew what Hal’s reply would be. The young skirl was shaking his head before Gilan finished the sentence.

  ‘No. I said I want to see it for myself,’ he said, his eyes riveted on the chart before him. ‘If you go on someone else’s information, there’s always something left out. No offence,’ he concluded, looking up to see if Gilan was offended.

  The tall Ranger smiled his understanding. ‘None taken. I’d feel the same way.’

  There were a few seconds’ silence before Gilan raised another point that had been on his mind.

  ‘You Skandians, you recognise a ship if you’ve seen it before, don’t you?’

  Hal nodded. ‘We’ve been around ships all our lives. It’s no special skill. We get to recognise features of a ship the way you recognise a face if you’ve seen it before – or a person’s way of moving and holding himself. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well, I assume this Tursgud is the same. So what’s to stop him recognising this ship when you sail into Socorro harbour? I’m guessing that’s what you plan to do?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t plan on making my way back to this bay overland,’ Hal said, pointing to the inlet they had discussed earlier. ‘Once we’ve got the prisoners free, we want to get away as fast as possible.’

  ‘So my point stands. Won’t Tursgud recognise your ship? After all, it’s a pretty distinctive sail plan, isn’t it?’

  ‘I see what you mean. But I plan to disguise the Heron,’ Hal replied. Gilan cocked his head to one side in an unspoken question, and Hal pointed to the smooth, swelling shape of the triangular sail. ‘We’ll take down those yardarms and sails and I’ll rig a new extension to make the mast taller, and shape a new yardarm to take a square sail – I can cut that from our canvas weather shelter. Then I’ll take down the heron figurehead on the bowpost and replace it with something different.

  ‘If Tursgud is looking for us – and he probably won’t be – he’ll be looking for that triangular sail. He won’t look twice at a small square-rigger. We might even scuff up the paint on the hull a little,’ he added thoughtfully.

  Gilan pursed his lips, looking up at the graceful, wing-like sail, visualising a clumsy square sail in its place. Hal would be changing the ship’s most distinctive feature, he thought. That should throw Tursgud off the scent.

  ‘Will she still handle well with a square sail?’

  Hal snorted in sardonic amusement. ‘She’ll handle, but not well. She’ll be clumsy and she won’t beat into the wind the way she’s doing now. But the important thing is, she’ll look completely different. Tursgud won’t recognise us – particularly if the crew are all in Socorran clothing. We’ll look like a small local coaster. On top of that, once I’ve seen where Nightwolf is moored, I’ll give her a wide berth. Odds are they won’t see us until we’ve got the prisoners on board and we’re heading out to sea. And by then I’ll have our normal rig back up again.’

  ‘They’ll come after you, of course,’ Gilan said.

  Hal shrugged. ‘I’ll face that problem when we get to it. With any luck, the wind will favour us. Otherwise, we’ll have to make sure we get a head start on them, so we’re out to sea before they have a chance to catch up.’

  ‘Looks like you’ve thought of everything,’ Gilan said.

  ‘No. I know I haven’t. There’s always something you haven’t thought of. But over the next few days, I’ll try to fill in as many gaps as I can.’

  Gilan clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I like the way you think,’ he said quietly. ‘It never pays to be overconfident and it’s always a good idea to assume that something will go wrong.’

  There was nothing patronising about his attitude and Hal found himself feeling secretly pleased at the Ranger’s words. His self-confidence had taken a beating after his mistake in pursuing Tursgud into the shoal waters several days before. He had spent the previous day thinking over the plan he was formulating, trying to see where he had missed an important point. That was why he had been glad to share his thinking with the Ranger. He had wanted an unbiased opinion and he’d sensed that he would get one from the tall Araluan. His own crew tended to believe that he could do no wrong. It was flattering but, in a situation like this, unhelpful.

  ‘We’ll see how things develop,’ he said, folding the map and putting it back in the chart locker they had been using as a table.

  ‘Land! Land to the east!’ It was Jesper, taking a turn on the loo
kout position. He was pointing to their left and instinctively the other crew members moved to that side of the ship. On the horizon was a grey, indistinct humped shape rising from the sea. A few seconds later, Jesper called again, pointing to another land mass, south of the first.

  ‘Land! Another cape! South-east of us!’

  Hal shaded his eyes, looking at the two masses of solid land, with a gap of some thirty kilometres between them.

  ‘It’s the two headlands of the Narrows of Ikbar,’ he said. ‘That’s the entrance to the Constant Sea.’ The southern point of Iberion and the northernmost point of the Arridan coast formed the headlands that marked the narrow strait leading into the Constant Sea.

  Ulf and Wulf had turned on their benches and were peering, like the others, at the strait. Hal saw a quick look pass between the two of them and made a mental note not to reply to anything they said.

  ‘Who’s Ikbar?’ Ulf said. His brother turned away to hide a smirk.

  Gilan glanced at Hal curiously, saw he wasn’t planning to answer, so spoke in his place. ‘He was an Arridan demigod, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ Hal said quietly. But it was too late.

  ‘And what did he do?’

  ‘Well, Ulf, I’m not sure that he did too much of anything,’ Gilan said. ‘Just paraded round being a demigod.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ Hal said, taken aback. ‘How did you know that was Ulf?’

  It was Gilan’s turn to be surprised. He tapped his right forearm. ‘He’s got a scar, right here,’ he said. ‘See?’

  ‘You mean like this?’ the other twin said, grinning widely and baring his forearm to show an identical scar. Gilan looked from one to the other, not sure what to say.

  In the Heron’s final duel with the pirate ship Raven, Ulf had been wounded on the forearm by one of the pirates when he was boarding. As he fell back, his brother surged forward to avenge him – and received exactly the same injury. It was obviously a favourite tactic of the enemy swordsman to strike at his opponent’s forearm – although Hal and Stig sometimes thought Wulf took the wound on purpose so that people couldn’t distinguish between them.

  ‘Oh . . .’ Gilan said. ‘I’m sorry, Wulf. Or is it Ulf?’

  ‘Yes,’ they both replied, delighted to have a new victim.

  Gilan looked to Hal for assistance.

  The skirl shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. You brought this on yourself.’

  Then Ulf, or possibly Wulf, went back on the offensive. ‘So this Ikbar was a demigod. What does a demigod do exactly?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Gilan said. ‘That’s probably why he was only a demigod.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ulf/Wulf. ‘If he actually did stuff, they’d make him a full-time god, not a semi-demi-deity.’

  Gilan’s eyes darted from one to the other. Yet in spite of the Ranger Corps’ reputation for keen-eyed observation, he couldn’t tell the identity of the one who was talking. And he had a suspicion that they’d shifted seats when he’d glanced away for a second. He realised that the rest of the crew were watching with expressions of tolerant sympathy on their faces.

  Before he could say anything, one of the twins – and by now he had no idea which one it was – asked a further question.

  ‘Maybe he was thin. Was he thin?’ He directed the query to Gilan, who shrugged.

  ‘I’m not sure. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because it’s called the Narrows of Ikbar. Maybe if he was thin, that’s why they called it that. Because he was narrow as well.’

  ‘Aaaahm . . .’ Gilan began, then stopped. He looked at Hal, who was just too slow wiping the amused look from his face.

  Gilan raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you put up with this all the time?’

  Hal pursed his lips, pretended to consider the question, then shook his head. ‘No. I have a foolproof way of dealing with them,’ he said.

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘I have Ingvar throw one of them overboard,’ Hal said, smiling sweetly.

  Gilan looked from one to the other. ‘Which one?’

  Hal shrugged. ‘Doesn’t really matter. It usually shuts them both up. You might like to try it. Or, for a change, you could throw them both over the side.’

  Gilan shook his head wearily. ‘What a truly excellent idea.’

  It was midafternoon when Heron ghosted into the little cove that Hal had selected two days earlier. As they came under the lee of the high cliffs on either side of the bay, the breeze was masked and the sail shivered and flapped loosely.

  ‘Down sail,’ Hal ordered. ‘Out oars.’

  Stig, Ingvar, Thorn and Stefan had their oars ready in the oarlocks, and as Jesper and the twins brought the sail down and stowed it, they began to pull on the oars in a steady rhythm, sending the ship sliding into the cove, creating a perfect V at her bow in the sheltered water. The bow wave spread slowly across the inlet and rippled gently against the rocks at the base of the cliffs.

  ‘Jesper,’ Hal said, pointing to the bow. Jesper nodded and moved swiftly forward to take up a position as lookout.

  ‘All clear,’ he called, his voice echoing in the confines of the narrow bay.

  Hal turned to Gilan and Lydia, who were standing at his side, watching events.

  ‘No rocks or reefs marked on the charts,’ he said. ‘But it never hurts to make sure.’

  The bay was some two hundred metres long, and ended in a narrow, sandy beach. As Jesper called his reports from the bow, it became evident that the sand continued out into the bay, forming a clear bottom. Beyond the beach was a sparsely wooded patch of level ground, which quickly gave way to steep, rocky slopes leading up to the U-shaped ridge that surrounded the bay on three sides. Hal eyed the trees and nodded in satisfaction. There weren’t many of them, but there would be enough to provide him with the two new spars he’d need to re-rig Heron. And the widely dispersed trees had an advantage. If there were enemies in the immediate neighbourhood, there would be no thick cover to conceal them in the event of a surprise attack. He scanned the hills surrounding the bay and saw no sign of movement or danger.

  ‘We’ll beach her,’ he said quietly, and the rowers on the benches nodded. If there had been any sign of danger, they would have anchored well out in the bay. But a shore camp would allow them to have a proper cooking fire and camp site. They’d eat and rest well this coming night.

  Sitting atop her inverted image, Heron slipped quietly down the bay. When they were twenty metres from the shore, Hal called to them to cease rowing and the ship slid smoothly onto the beach, her bow grating in the coarse sand. As she came to a halt, her bow fixed in the sand, her stern swung slowly to the right. Then the keel grated lengthwise against the sand and she stopped completely, heeling over to starboard.

  Jesper jumped down over the bow and ran up the beach with the sand anchor, driving its metal flukes deep into the yielding sand to hold the ship fast. He stopped, wiped his hands on his trousers and looked around.

  ‘Nobody home,’ he called, his voice echoing faintly off the rocks. The oarsmen drew in their oars and stowed them along the line of the ship, with a series of rattles and bumps that sounded unnaturally loud. Then, once again, there was silence in the cove.

  ‘Set up camp,’ Hal ordered and the crew busied themselves unloading the wooden frames and canvas cover they used for a tent on land, as well as a shelter on board their ship.

  ‘May as well make the most of that,’ Hal told them. ‘I’ll be cutting it up for a sail before long.’

  Gilan could see that each member of the crew had an assigned task when it came to making camp. Edvin was assembling stones for a cook fire, and laying out his pans and implements. Jesper and Stefan were busy clearing a space for the sleeping tent while Ulf and Wulf lugged blankets and bedding ashore. Ingvar was loaded with the wooden frames and canvas that would form the tent, placing them beside the cleared space while Stig prepared to supervise the building of the tent.

  Only Thorn and Lydia seemed to have no assigned tasks, but he noticed
they were constantly scanning the ridge above them, their eyes always moving and their hands close to their weapons – an axe in Thorn’s case and the quiver of atlatl darts in Lydia’s.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ Gilan asked Hal.

  The young skirl thought briefly. ‘You might take Thorn and Lydia and scout the ridge,’ he said. ‘Make sure there are no locals up there waiting to surprise us.’

  Gilan nodded and made his way to the bow, dropping over the side onto the wet sand and trudging to where the one-armed warrior and the slim girl were standing, still scanning the ridge line.

  ‘Let me know if you see anything that frightens you, princess,’ said Thorn, grinning at the girl. ‘I’ll go and chase it away with my axe.’

  ‘What makes you think you could get halfway up that slope without keeling over, old man?’ the girl replied crisply. Gilan had the impression he was listening to the latest instalment of a long-standing dialogue. Thorn’s soft chuckle at her pithy reply, and her deep frown at the shabby old warrior, confirmed his thoughts.

  ‘Hal wants us to check that ridge,’ he said.

  They both looked at him and nodded. They had been expecting such an order and they turned and set out up the beach. There was a narrow path that ran up the hill and they headed for it. Gilan unslung his bow from his shoulder and moved his cloak so that he had access to the arrows in his quiver. He noticed that Lydia had withdrawn one of the long darts from her own quiver, fitted the atlatl to the notch in the end and held it ready to throw. Thorn simply rested his axe over his left shoulder.

  Sailors, once on land, were notoriously unfit, Gilan knew. But as he led the way up the steep, narrow path, sending showers of pebbles rattling down the hill, he noticed that these two were exceptions to that rule. Neither of them was breathing hard when they reached the top of the ridge. He might have expected that in Lydia. She was slim and wiry and looked to be in excellent condition. The much bulkier Skandian surprised him, however. He realised that the bulk was pretty well all muscle, with little excess weight being carried in the form of fat.