Slaves of Socorro

by John Flanagan

  At almost the same moment, a gold trader from one of the stalls lining the thoroughfare decided to lend a hand in the pursuit. He was a fat, elderly man, dressed in a knee-length sleeveless brocaded vest worn over the ubiquitous billowing trousers. His feet were shod in soft felt slippers, worked with golden threads.

  ‘Thief! Thief! Stop him, someone!’ he shouted indignantly, placing his bulky self in the path of the running man and bracing for the inevitable impact.

  The thin escapee sidestepped him easily. The trader’s clutching hands caught hold of his ragged shirt and held him for an instant. But the thief spun around, swinging the other man in a half circle, and breaking free of his grasping hands. The material of his shirt tore, leaving a strip in the gold trader’s fist.

  The trader went staggering off balance down the slope and crashed into the waiter, sending him and his tea glasses flying. The two men crashed to the cobblestones in a tangle of arms and legs as the first of the patrol arrived, running full tilt. He assessed the situation instantly, and hurdled the two fallen men in his stride. But his hobnailed sandals landed in the puddle of spilt tea that had been left on the slick cobblestones and his feet shot out from underneath him. He crashed down onto the cobbles, his mail shirt ringing with the impact, his spear clattering on the stones as it fell from his grasp. He rolled over onto his hands and knees, preparing to regain his feet, when one of his comrades arrived and, unable to avoid him, tripped over him and fell as well.

  The third man, swerving desperately to avoid his fallen companions, sidestepped wildly, felt himself slipping and regained his balance by rebounding from the nearest bystander – who happened to be Lydia.

  He shoved clear of her, resuming his headlong pursuit of the thief. Unfortunately, she was caught unawares and was sent flying into the display counter of a jewellery store, sending gold chains, necklaces and trays of rings showering into the air, bouncing and clattering off the cobbles. She lost her footing and sprawled on the floor of the stall, winded and disoriented. The stall owner screamed insults at her as he dropped to his knees, frantically gathering up his scattered goods.

  ‘Sorry,’ she gasped but, panicking as he thought she was trying to steal some of his goods, he swung an open-handed blow at her. She ducked, but a little too late, so that it caught her a glancing blow on the top of her head and knocked off her headdress, revealing her long hair.

  The stall keeper gaped at her, recognising her as female. Such a thing was unheard of in the gold market. The last time a woman had infiltrated here had been several years ago. He pointed at her, his scattered goods forgotten for the moment.

  ‘You’re a woman!’ he screeched, his voice breaking with surprise. Lydia scrambled for her lost kheffiyeh in a belated and useless attempt to resume her disguise. The trader turned, looking for the patrolmen who had caused the accident.

  Fortunately, they were intent on resuming their pursuit of the ragged thief they had been chasing, pounding off up the hill after him. He was now a distant figure, twisting and turning through the crowd, most of whom turned to stare after him.

  The merchant saw that they were going to be of no help and turned to his neighbouring traders, ready to raise the alarm.

  ‘It’s a woman!’ he shrieked. But before any of the surrounding Arridi could pay any attention, Gilan grabbed a heavy carpet from one of the stall’s other display tables and quickly threw it over the man’s head, muffling his high-pitched cries of alarm so they were nothing but a vague mumble.

  ‘Get your hat on!’ he ordered Lydia and, as she hurriedly wound the kheffiyeh around her head, hiding her hair and obscuring half her face, he pulled a corner of the carpet away from the stall keeper. The man, red faced and spluttering after being confined under the heavy material, drew breath for another cry of alarm.

  ‘Oh shut up,’ Gilan told him and hit him on the point of the jaw with a perfectly placed left hook. The man’s eyes glazed then rolled up and he sank back, as limp as a roll of carpet himself. Gilan flipped the corner of the carpet back over the stall owner to conceal him, grabbed Lydia by the arm and hustled her out of the stall, hurrying away downhill.

  Several of the bystanders sensed that something was amiss. But events had moved so quickly and the situation was so confused that they weren’t completely sure what had taken place. There had been a lot of running and shouting and falling and tables being knocked over and nobody had a clear picture of anything.

  One of them took a pace towards Gilan, saw the dangerous look in the stranger’s eyes and the way his hand dropped to the hilt of his long sword, and hurriedly backed off.

  Then the confusion increased as a group of urchins, following the excitement of the chase, caught sight of the gold chains and precious stones scattered on the floor of the stall and rushed to help themselves, shouting excitedly. Several of the stall keeper’s neighbours, in a surprising show of solidarity, stepped in to stop them and began cuffing and cursing the young boys, grabbing the chains and jewels from their grasping hands and sending them on their way. In the resultant confusion and bustle of activity, nobody paid any further attention to the two foreigners as they hurried away, disappearing into the milling crowds.

  ‘Well, that was exciting,’ Gilan said. He looked at her and added, ‘Your hat’s not straight.’

  Lydia adjusted the kheffiyeh. Her heartbeat was only just returning to somewhere near normal.

  ‘D’you still want to look at the slave market?’ she asked.

  Gilan turned a stony stare on her. ‘Let’s get the heck out of here. I think we’ve pushed our luck far enough.’

  When they returned to the small cove north of Socorro, Gilan and Lydia stood at the top of the ridge surrounding the bay, momentarily puzzled.

  The ship moored in the cove bore little resemblance to the Heron. She had a tall mast with a yardarm mounted at right angles, and a square sail furled loosely along it. In addition, the distinctive heron figurehead on the bowpost had been replaced by a circular piece of timber carved to resemble a watching eye. The eye motif was repeated on each bow, daubed there in blue paint. The hull of the ship was streaked with dirt and grime.

  For a moment, the two hesitated.

  ‘Is this the right cove?’ Gilan asked, although he knew he couldn’t have made an error as grave as coming back to the wrong place. But that definitely wasn’t their ship, and it definitely wasn’t where their ship had been when they had left that morning. The thought struck him that perhaps this new ship had arrived during the day and Hal and the others had sought to avoid it, putting to sea and sailing down the coast.

  Then Lydia spotted Ingvar’s massive bulk among the crew members moving on deck. ‘That’s them,’ she said. As she looked she recognised more of the crew. ‘Hal’s re-rigged the ship to make her look different.’

  Gilan raised an eyebrow. ‘He certainly succeeded. I wouldn’t have recognised her.’

  ‘But why aren’t they still on the beach?’ Lydia asked.

  Gilan was studying the beach where Heron had been run aground. Looking up towards the treeline, he could see a neat line of mounds in the sand – mounds where the earth had been freshly turned, so that the damper undersoil contrasted with the dry surface sand.

  ‘Those are graves,’ he said, pointing to the row of mounds. ‘There’s been a fight here. Hal must have decided to anchor out in the bay in case whoever attacked them decides to come back.’

  As he spoke, he loosened his sword in its scabbard. The action was purely a reflex, performed without any conscious thought. If there had been hostile forces here earlier in the day, there was nothing to say that they weren’t still somewhere in the vicinity. Lydia, noticing the gesture, touched her hand against the hilt of her dirk, reassuring herself that it was still there.

  They both scanned the slopes surrounding the bay.

  ‘Can’t see anyone,’ Lydia said.

  ‘Doesn’t mean there’s no one here,’ Gilan warned her and they began to make their cautious way down the slo
pe to the beach.

  ‘Who would have attacked them?’ Lydia asked. She was scanning the deck of the ship, trying to count heads to make sure nobody was missing. But the Herons kept moving around, making it impossible for her to keep count. She saw Stig, Hal and Thorn, and thought she recognised Stefan. Eventually, she was satisfied that everyone was on board.

  ‘Could have been anyone,’ Gilan said. ‘These plains are swarming with bandits. Could even have been those Asaroki who crossed our path this morning.’

  ‘But they weren’t heading this way,’ she pointed out.

  Gilan made a noncommittal gesture. ‘They would have had scouts out to either side. They could well have spotted the ship beached here and decided she’d be easy prey.’

  ‘Big mistake,’ she said grimly, glancing at the row of graves once more.

  They were halfway down the rocky path when they heard a cry from the ship. Stig was balanced on the starboard bulwark near the bow, waving to them. Lydia returned the wave and they picked up the pace, hurrying down the last of the path to the level ground at the bottom.

  Knowing he would have to row back in to pick them up, Hal had attached a short hawser to the anchor and buoyed the upper end with a float. Now he could simply untie the ship from the floating buoy, without having to bring in the full anchor rope, and row in to collect the two missing members of the party. Then, once they were aboard, the ship could be quickly moored to the buoy once more.

  In the calm waters of the bay, Edvin had lit his stove, set in a large pan of sand for safety. The crew gathered round while he served Gilan and Lydia coffee.

  ‘There’s not a lot of this left,’ the cook observed as he poured Gilan’s cup.

  The Ranger tilted his head quizzically. ‘Really? There was plenty when I left this morning.’ He looked suspiciously at Hal, who assumed an expression of total innocence that was an immediate giveaway.

  ‘It’s the sea air,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘It tends to evaporate coffee.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that too,’ Stig put in. He too had adopted an ingenuous expression.

  Gilan snorted. ‘Well, there’s plenty in Socorro,’ he said. ‘We can restock there. Why are you out in the bay?’

  They told him of the attack that morning, and how Kloof had given the alarm just in time. Gilan looked at the big dog, who was lying in the bow, happily destroying someone’s boot. He made sure it wasn’t one of his before he commented.

  ‘She’s a handy beast to have around.’

  ‘Very handy,’ Edvin agreed. ‘She saved my bacon when one of the raiders got behind me. Made a right mess of him, too,’ he added, with a satisfied smile.

  Gilan gestured towards the line of graves. ‘Who buried the dead raiders?’

  ‘We did,’ Thorn said. ‘Their friends didn’t seem inclined to and we thought it was better to bury them than leave them lying around in this heat.’

  Gilan nodded his agreement. Then he and Lydia described events in Socorro. Hal frowned as he heard the news that they couldn’t spot Nightwolf in the harbour.

  ‘I’ll need to know where she is before we sail in,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to end up mooring alongside her.’

  Gilan shrugged. ‘Sorry. The harbour is pretty crowded, and neither of us is very good at telling one ship from another. By the way, you’ve done a great job disguising Heron. We couldn’t recognise her when we came back.’

  ‘Unfortunately, the first of those statements tends to negate the value of the second,’ Hal said. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. ‘I’ll need to go and look for myself tomorrow,’ he said finally.

  Gilan nodded. He had expected as much. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he offered.

  Lydia looked up from her coffee. ‘Do you want me along too?’

  Hal shook his head. ‘You’ve pushed your luck enough,’ he said. ‘Gilan and I will go. The fewer of us, the better.’ He looked back to the Ranger. ‘You say there’s a spot overlooking the city where I can see the harbour?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Gilan told him. ‘With any luck, we won’t even need to go into the city itself.’

  But luck wasn’t with them. The following morning, they stood on the rocky outcrop overlooking the harbour while Hal peered closely at the ships anchored and moored there. He searched one section of the harbour at a time, using his cupped hands to screen out the surrounding areas, searching for that dark blue hull.

  But to no avail. He breathed out heavily, dropping his hands to his sides.

  ‘Can’t see her,’ he said. Then he pointed to a section of the harbour obscured by a group of taller buildings set close to the waterfront – warehouses, he assumed.

  ‘But those buildings are blocking my view. We’ll have to get closer – or higher.’

  He indicated one of the tall towers that Lydia had noticed the day before.

  ‘Should be able to see from there,’ he said. ‘What is it – some kind of lighthouse?’

  ‘It’s a prayer tower – a minaret,’ Gilan explained. ‘The Socorrans worship a trio of gods – Hahmet, Jahmet and Kaif.’

  ‘Not Kahmet?’ Hal asked.

  Gilan gave him a withering look. ‘Hahmet is the god of war, Jahmet is the god of love and Kaif is the god of good harvests, fair weather, business success and family matters.’

  ‘Kaif’s got a pretty full plate, hasn’t he?’ Hal observed. ‘Hardly seems fair.’

  ‘I guess they thought war and love would keep the other two busy. In any event, the prayer callers lead prayers to one of the three, three times a day. Hahmet at the sixth hour, Jahmet at midday and Kaif at the sixth hour in the evening. They climb up inside the tower to the balcony you can see at the top and call the prayers from there.’

  ‘Apart from that, are the towers occupied?’ Hal asked.

  Gilan shook his head. ‘There’s no other use for them. They’re so narrow you couldn’t use them as living space. Basically, they’re an enclosed spiral staircase.’

  ‘So it’s the tenth hour now. I figure we’ve got two hours before the midday prayer session begins?’ Hal said.

  ‘Plenty of time,’ Gilan agreed, and they began to make their way down the slope to the city. Gilan decided to enter by a different gate from the one he had chosen the day before. Both of them were dressed in the long white robes and kheffiyehs that he and Lydia had purchased and they entered without incident – choosing to follow a family group with baskets and nets of produce to sell, who occupied the gate guards as they calculated how big a bribe they could levy. Hal simply held up a gold five-dirum piece and the guards waved them through.

  They threaded their way through the narrow, flagstoned streets to the prayer tower. The surrounding square was virtually deserted. One elderly beggar was dozing in the sunshine, his back leaning against a wall. Other than that, a few people passed by, none of them paying attention to the two white-robed figures.

  There was no door at the base of the prayer tower – just an open arch-topped doorway. Inside, they could see the first few risers of a metal grid staircase winding round the interior walls.

  ‘Trusting folk,’ Hal observed.

  ‘Why not?’ Gilan replied. ‘There’s nothing here to steal.’

  Gilan and Hal glanced both ways up and down the street and, picking a moment when nobody was looking in their direction, they plunged into the dim coolness at the bottom of the tower.

  The metal stairs rang and vibrated under their feet as they made their way upwards, winding round and round in the darkness. There was no handrail on the inside of the stairs, so Hal and Gilan kept their right hands brushing against the outer wall of the tower.

  The stairs seemed endless and the darkness became blacker the higher they climbed from the entryway. Then, as they approached the top of the stairs, the light began to grow again until they eventually emerged onto the narrow balcony with its ornate carved railing, at the very top.

  They took a few seconds to catch their breath. They were both fit and in excellent condition, but it
had been a long climb. Then Hal stared out over the city, spread out below them.

  ‘Spectacular!’ he said. They could see the massive gold market roof off to the south, and beyond that, a wooden amphitheatre that was the site of the slave market. The houses, shops, manufactories and other buildings sprawled far below them. People moved on the busy streets, looking for all the world like small insects scurrying back and forth.

  And finally, to the south-west was an unrestricted view of the harbour and the ships moored there. Hal turned his attention to the section he had been unable to see from the hill outside the city. He scanned it for some time, working slowly over each section, then gave a satisfied grunt.

  ‘There she is,’ he said quietly.

  Nightwolf was moored alongside a wharf on the south-east, or inland, side of the harbour. The long, lean hull stood out among the smaller, wide-beamed trading vessels that surrounded her. He studied the layout of the harbour, noting that there were plenty of unoccupied berths in the northern arm of the bay, where the harbour narrowed and a river fed into it. Glancing from Nightwolf to the less occupied reach of water, he satisfied himself that a mooring there would be hidden from the wolfship’s view. He’d simply have to bribe the harbour master to make sure of securing a berth in that northern arm.

  ‘One small problem,’ he muttered to himself. ‘We’ll have to sail out past her when we leave.’

  He pondered that problem. He planned to re-rig Heron with her normal sails and yardarms once they were in the harbour. They’d need every ounce of speed they could get out of her when they made their escape. The city would be alerted and undoubtedly any ship trying to leave harbour would arouse suspicion. And, even with Heron’s normal rig, Nightwolf was probably the only ship in harbour that would be able to match her speed.

  ‘We have another small problem,’ Gilan said quietly. ‘Someone is coming up the stairs.’