Master of Whitestorm

by Janny Wurts

  The marshal's huge lips spread into a grin. "This wretch wants his dinner, I believe." He snapped the ring into the lock at the mate's belt, and his grin widened into a leer. "Let him be first. We'll take bets to see whether he can swallow fast enough to beat the call to oars."

  Haldeth blotted sweating hands on his loincloth and feigned unconcern. The marshal pulled his own chain from the grating, then yanked him forward and secured the end to the officer's belt. Shoved toward the companionway, Haldeth stumbled. The mate cursed the wrench at his balance which resulted, and viciously retaliated with a kick. Haldeth crashed to his knees, but managed to grab the doorframe before he fell full length. Resolved to take his revenge, he stepped through with an exaggerated limp. Yet his eyes fixed hungrily on the back of the mate, and his ear remained tuned to the tread of the marshal on his heels.

  Sandwiched between their Mhurgai escort, Haldeth and Korendir began their walk down the upper deck gangway. On either side, row upon row of slaves bent muscled backs in unison over the sweeps; a few grimaced in hatred as the detested marshal passed by. Sunk in animal misery, most showed no emotion at all. When Haldeth and his benchmate reached the companionway to the lower deck, the upperdeck mate caressed his whip-stock and spat on the boards at Korendir's feet. The insult drew no reaction. Korendir stepped squarely on the patch of spittle and stood with witless subservience while his Mhurgai overlords rearranged themselves for the descent.

  The inhuman quality of Korendir's acting left Haldeth chilled. He forced a deep breath to steady himself as the marshal stepped around him and lowered his bulk onto the ladder. Korendir followed. His palms left wet marks on the top rung; except for that small betrayal, he might have been born nerveless so little emotion did he display. Haldeth felt a quiver invade his knees.

  The mate seemed not to notice. Encumbered by the slave chains, he lowered himself awkwardly, head tipped back to watch Haldeth. "Step on my fingers, thou, and I'll draw blood."

  With a silent vow to break the man's knuckles, Haldeth set his weight on the ladder. That moment, Korendir snapped his heel upward. His leg iron cracked into the marshal's chin. The man overbalanced and tumbled backward with a bellow of surprise. The mate twisted on the rungs and snapped savagely at Korendir's chain. The pitch binding the lock parted instantly. Korendir launched himself from the ladder, dropped like a stone toward the deck. He struck the marshal's chest with both feet. Bone splintered, accompanied by a hideous scream.

  The mate jerked back in horror. Before he could reach for weapons, Haldeth stamped down and pinned his knuckles to the rungs. Helpless, the officer cried out as Korendir closed his fists over the leg iron now which dangled empty from his belt. Haldeth jumped upward, caught the companionway latch and banged the hatch closed overhead, just as Korendir set his weight to the fetter and yanked.

  Bruised fingers wrenched loose; the mate toppled, yelling, from the ladder. The lowerdeck guard charged down the gangway to the rescue. He dared not throw his knife for fear of striking the wrong man. His concern proved a waste of effort. Haldeth leapt the full height of the ladder and landed squarely on the mate's skull. He bent, plundered keys to his freedom and weapons before the corpse had stopped shuddering.

  Bloodied to the wrists over the body of the marshal, Korendir straightened, sword and knife in hand. He met the guard's rush with a stop thrust and skewered the man through the chest. Korendir ripped the ring from the officer's belt and dangled the keys before the stupefied lowerdeck slaves.

  "You all stand condemned," he shouted. "Who among you would fight?"

  A crack punctuated his words. The companionway hatch swung open, and the upperdeck mate dropped through, screaming a Mhurga battle cry. Newly released from his chains, Haldeth met the attack with seventy pounds of leaded oar wielded like a quarterstaff. The officer crumpled like a burst grain sack.

  A shout from the benches hailed his fall. A pair of hands shot up. Korendir tossed the keys. Haldeth flung himself up the ladder and once again slammed the hatch. He clung to the grating, holding it closed with his weight while slaves frantically unlocked shackles. Feet pounded overhead, counterpointed by staccato strings of orders. Nallga drifted uneasily on the sea, her orderly stroke abandoned.

  Men leapt from the benches and joined the rebellion beneath the companionway. Soon the bodies of the fallen were stripped of weapons; other men brandished the sheared ends of their oars. A yelling horde waited to receive any Mhurga who dared attempt the companionway by the time Haldeth's strength yielded to the prying tool applied from above.

  The smith dropped clear. Caught by a dozen pairs of hands, he was shoved aside by men crazed with hatred through years of Mhurgai oppression. Slaves forced themselves at the ladder. Bodies swayed and battered upward, struggling to reach the open hatch. Their rush was messily stopped by a stand of Mhurgai dartmen. The slaves who survived fanned in an angry ring around their dying companions and screamed threats. Others sought longer lengths of oar to bludgeon any dartman foolish enough to show his face.

  "Stalemate," Korendir said softly in Haldeth's ear. "We'll have to end it quickly. Choose six steady men and follow."

  The smith complied without question. He picked his men swiftly and met Korendir and a second party on the gangway amidships.

  "Out," Korendir ordered. "Through the oarports and climb the strakes. Take the quarterdeck, and Nallga is ours."

  The men needed no urging. They footed their way over benches vacant and inhabited. Others joined them as the keys circulated into fresh hands. The squeeze through the oarport left each man vulnerable for a moment, but with the companionway the focal point of the mutiny, no crewman thought to guard the rail. A brief, bloody struggle saw captain, quartermaster, and three sail hands dead on the deck. Armed with their weapons, a shark gaff, and several marlinspikes, the slaves resolved the dispute over the lowerdeck hatch with vengeful dispatch. At the end no Mhurga remained alive.

  Haldeth stripped the scarlet salamander device from the masthead and pitched it over the rail. Laughing like a drunk, he pronounced Nallga a free vessel. The keys of her murdered crewmen circulated quickly, and the top deck became packed with rejoicing humanity. Men rifled the captain's coffers for gold, then broached the rum stores to sounds of tumultuous cheering. Fruit nets and perishables shortly littered the planking of the quarterdeck. Lifting two brimming tankards from the cask, Haldeth sought amid the chaos for Korendir and did not immediately find him.

  Worry dampened his exuberance. Fate had a malevolent touch, if Korendir proved to be one of the handful of fallen. Haldeth shoved his way aft. Inquiries after Darjir drew a string of blank faces. Openly distressed, the smith thrust his tankards into the startled hands of a stranger, then extended his search beyond the laughing crowd of the living.

  Twilight had long since faded into night. Stars hung poised over the yardarm, cold after the orange glow of the lanterns. Oppressed by rising hopelessness, Haldeth almost missed the slim shadow bent over the lashing which secured Nallga's cutter to its davits.

  His relief found release in anger. "What in Neth's almighty image are you doing now? We're free men. Isn't that worth a celebration?"

  Korendir paused. Wind flapped the folds of the officer's cloak draped over his shoulders. "Free?" His breath hissed through his teeth. "How long will that last, in waters infested with the entire Mhurgai fleet?"

  Haldeth perched himself on the rail. "There's talk of sailing north."

  Korendir interrupted. "Also talk of sailing south." His tone turned icy. "South, Mhurgai vengeance will finish us off. North, unless someone browbeats this crew into sealing the oarports against the weather, winter storms will make a quicker end. The first gale would see us awash to the quarterdeck, and that scrap of a sail won't draw to weather."

  "What in Aerith do you propose instead?" Haldeth clenched his fists on his knees, unhappily aware his companion had spoken nothing but fact.

  Korendir shrugged. "I don't intend to spoil my chances by waiting to see if this lot
of drunken revellers can reach agreement." He jerked his head at the cutter. "She's provisioned already. I'll sail for the coast of Southengard."

  Haldeth stared, openmouthed. "What then?"

  Korendir's expression could not be read in the close, tropical night, but his hand moved to his belt and emerged cradling a pair of rubies pried from the eyes of Nallga's figurehead. "I'll build myself a holdfast," he said carefully. "The defenses will become the death of any man who tries to break in."

  "That's well beyond price of your gems," Haldeth pointed out.

  Korendir rattled the stones like dice in his palm. "These should buy me a horse and a good sword. I've heard any man who lifts the Blight of Torresdyr will inherit a wizard's treasure. Perhaps there is enough wealth to quarry the stone."

  Haldeth felt a qualm pervade his middle. "That quest is impossible! Every man who attempted it ended up buried without a marker in the King's tiltyard. Are you mad?"

  Korendir turned back to the lashing. "Impossible tasks pay best," he said simply. "Don't look to me for patience."

  Haldeth resisted a sudden urge to grab the man's shoulders and shake him. "Would you sail alone, then?"

  Korendir's fingers hesitated on the knots. A strangely mirthless laugh convulsed his throat. He tossed one of the rubies to Haldeth. "Help yourself to Alhar's other cloak and a rigging knife. I need a second man to launch and crew this cockle shell anyway. All along I meant to remind you of that."

  * * *

  Emarrcek, southernmost peninsula of Southengard, lay one hundred and fifty leagues to the north, a long, tortuous sail in an open boat, even for men seasoned to the hardship of the oar. Yet the first days of freedom passed pleasantly. Warm, southern winds pressed the cutter on a steady course, and dolphins danced in the swells. Haldeth scratched the scabbed-over sores left from the chafe of his leg irons. He spoke in wistful remembrance of two daughters and a wife, murdered by Mhurgai on the morning his village was raided.

  "They must have landed to reprovision. Neth knows, we had nothing of worth to merit a sacking, and the boats they used for landing carried water casks. I was in the forge, heating stock to make horseshoes, when the shouting drew me out. Costermongers were being cut down in the market as they protested thefts from their stalls. Lindey and my girls were at the well. I ran there with no other weapon than the iron stock I had in my hand." Immersed in the grip of ugly memories, Haldeth failed to notice: Korendir was no longer quietly listening, but had turned his back. His fists were clenched white on the rail, and the tension in his shoulders had little to do with keeping balance against the wave-driven pitch of the boat.

  Haldeth bent his head, knuckles pressed to his temples. "You know," he said bitterly, "they never screamed. They had no time. The Murgai with their butchering swords were that fast. Lindey first, and then the girls, all three were beheaded in a heartbeat. Just because they happened to be in the way. I was behind the hedgerow, close enough to strike, but Neth! For the one murdering animal I might have laid out, five others would have instantly skewered me." The retelling broke off as Haldeth heaved in a tight breath. "I still remember how the blood plumed in the water of the filled buckets. When the pressgang came and set chains on me, I was too dazed with horror to even care."

  Haldeth spasmed in a violent shiver, and as if the shrug that followed held power to throw off past horrors, he forced a dry practicality. "I could not have saved my family. Any who resisted were killed. But each day I wake up wondering why I was left to survive. I have no home to return to. The people I cared for are dead." His eyes turned, searching, toward Korendir. "What about you?"

  No answer came back. The only movement about the braced figure at the rail was the slap of black cloak in the gusts.

  Pressed by loneliness and the need for shared catharsis, Haldeth at length asked outright: "Did anyone you love escape slaughter?"

  That caused Korendir to turn around. His face showed no expression. The glare which had unsettled his late Mhurgai masters focused for long minutes on Haldeth. With no more recognition than if the smith were a total stranger, the eyes stayed bereft of human warmth, while the hand clenched on the haft of the boat's only rigging knife could at a stroke turn to violence. Unnerved afresh by the ruthless slaughter that had overcome Nallga's crew, Haldeth offered diffident apology. He moved and spoke cautiously in his companion's presence after that. But relations between them stayed edgy. Korendir perversely remained aloof. Sounds and sudden motions startled him to his feet, muscles braced taut against threats only he could perceive.

  The weather turned cold, gray, and forbidding. In alternate shifts the two men slept and stood watch at the helm. If the demands of the winter ocean forestalled moments for idle companionship, the boat was too cramped for avoidance. Korendir kept to himself. During meals and off hours he maintained a brooding solitude, speaking only when necessary.

  A fortnight later, the wind shifted and blew furiously from the north. Spray shot like needles of ice over the bow, drenching the boat and everything within. Korendir was forced to fall off on a northwest course lest both of them perish from exposure. Haldeth shook his fist at the sky, but the weather did not relent. The tiny craft drove haplessly through the Inlanic ocean, past Emarrcek and the haven of the south coast.

  The days turned bitter, and the nights black and miserable, with the wind a tireless moan through the stays. Whipped by sleet, then snow, the boat pounded close-hauled through the northern latitudes, graced only fitfully by cloud-bleared glimmers of sun. Rimed with salt and ice crystals, Korendir's beard whitened to match his companion's. Unkempt as a fur trapper, Haldeth slapped raw knuckles on his knees and swore he would never again venture upon the sea.

  The boat reached Karjir Head in the depths of a midwinter freeze. By then, the sail streamed in tatters, and water leaked through every seam in the hull. Both men were bone thin and exhausted from days of constant bailing, and landfall went badly. Wallowing and sluggish under a water-laden bilge, Nallga's boat slewed in the surf. A rock punched through her starboard planking.

  "Praise Neth for a favor," gasped Haldeth. Still infected with sardonic humor, he leapt the gunwale and splashed into a churning moil of foam. Korendir dove for the forward locker. He managed to salvage the rigging knife before the craft rolled and tossed him headlong into the sea. He surfaced, swimming strongly. The refugees from Mhurgai captivity dragged themselves ashore, soaked, starved, and bleeding. The land which greeted them was untenanted; a wilderness of dark forest which stretched to the far horizon.

  Korendir stood shivering on the sand, seemingly absorbed by the breakers that chewed their boat into splinters. "Do you know how to snare rabbits?" He sounded unconcerned, as if he offered conversation in a tap room.

  "What?" Haldeth shook his wet hair like a dog, his earlier levity stripped by the bite of cruel wind. "No."

  Korendir managed a mangled smile. "You'll cook, then."

  Haldeth whirled, one fist clenched to strike. His knuckles raked air as Korendir dodged and vanished into the brush beyond the dunes. Belatedly Haldeth recalled that they possessed no flints to make fire. The rabbits, if Korendir caught any, could hardly be eaten raw, and were they to have any warmth, the spark must be made by friction.

  * * *

  Four days later, in the coastal town of Dun Point a gemsetter cleared his throat. Before him, two square-cut stones splashed highlights like blood across the white linen covering on his countertop.

  "Rubies, you say?" He straightened with a depreciative sigh. "The 'stones' you brought are glass. Common cut glass." He blinked myopically, and noticed his clients' appearance for the first time.

  Clad in filthy, ill-smelling rags, the ruffians exchanged a long glance. Starved as beggars, both were heavily muscled through the chest and shoulders; their skins were chapped from exposure to salt wind and weather. The gemsetter did not care to imagine what circumstance had brought them into his shop in Dun Point. Afraid that his word might be taken badly, he wished only for these strange
rs to depart.

  "Glass," he repeated. He poked the stones with chubby fingers. "Only glass. I'm sorry."

  The men exchanged no word, but acted with perfect timing. The white-bearded giant seized the gemsetter's wrists, while his bronze-haired companion vaulted the counter and locked the stunned merchant in a wrestler's grip from behind. The move was accomplished with such speed the victim caught no glimpse of drawn steel. Before he could think to react, he found himself pinioned with a dagger pressed to his throat. The hand which held the blade bore down with steady and merciless pressure.

  "They're glass, you insist," an equally cold voice said in the merchant's ear.

  The gemsetter quivered in helpless outrage. "My trade is honest, unlike yours, thief. Take what you will and go. And may your neck get stretched in the hangman's noose for your crime."

  A breath of air tickled the merchant's collar; the chill of the knife disappeared. The bronze-haired man stepped back, and his white-haired companion opened his fists. Freed, the gemsetter spun to face the attacker with the dagger. He met eyes disturbingly gray.

  "Who are you?" he demanded.

  "Not a thief." The barbarian's accent was cultured, strangely in contrast to his dress and manners, and the coloring of his hair was something not seen among mortals. He sheathed his blade with a leopard's easy grace. "Have you any market for glass jewels?"

  The gemsetter rubbed bruised wrists, a shaken expression on his face. "Travelling players sometimes want baubles for costume pieces. And of course, the east quarter trollops own chests of them. I'll give four silvers. You won't get a better offer."

  "Done," said the bronze-haired man. No smile touched his lips as he extended a grimy hand.

  The gemsetter shivered and counted coins into a palm welted with calluses. Silly with relief over the fact he had not been robbed, he stood and trembled as his strange clients left the shop.

  The red glass remained, a bright glitter against the linen. Odd, the gemsetter thought as he scooped up the ornaments and wrapped them away in tissue. He had seen such a pair only once, glued to the eyes of a figurehead on board a Mhurga galley. He paused, one hand on the lock of his strongbox, then shook his head. Impossible; in all the Eleven Kingdoms no thief existed who could steal from the Mhurgai and survive.