by David Drake
The deck came level. The prow rotated seaward in line with the staff as though the vessel were pivoting on its mast. The deck now had a tacky grip on the rabbitskin boots when Sharina shifted her feet.
“Pissadara!” Alfdan shouted. The unfelt wind roared around them, making Sharina’s marrow tremble; the Queen Ship slid forward.
She’d expected to hear the crunch and scrape of shingle against their keel as she would’ve done if an ordinary vessel were being dragged into the water, but the only vibration was the high tremble of the wind. She and the others on the ship’s deck were in an existence of their own, cut off from the world around them as if by thick diamond walls.
The ship accelerated, moving faster than any real vessel could have done. They reached the new shoreline, at least a mile beyond where the coast had been when Sharina was growing up in Barca’s Hamlet. The water had a sluggish, gelid appearance, and the surf seemed to cling a long time to the beach before rolling back. The Queen Ship sped outward, leaving the swells as unmarked by its passage as the land had been.
Alfdan pointed his staff southward; the vessel obediently followed the wizard’s direction. Sharina braced herself, expecting to be flung toward the outside of the curve as she would have been in a carriage, but she had no feel of them turning—beyond what her eyes told her about the way the world moved around her.
Alfdan’s band was beginning to relax. Men talked among themselves in the manner of old associates in familiar surroundings. Several took food out of their packs or swigged from skins of liquid—wine, beer or water, Sharina couldn’t tell. Franca watched them longingly.
Neal, the big auburn man, was seated on the other side of the mast from Sharina. She leaned sideways and called, “Neal? As we’re a part of your band now, you need to feed us. We left our rations back at Barca’s Hamlet when you waylaid us.”
“Oh, good eating for Beard in Barca’s Hamlet,” said the axe, jolted out of his low-voiced litany by the key word feed. “Blood and brains, blood and brains and rich marrow for Beard!”
Neal looked disconcerted, then switched his gaze from Beard to Sharina herself. “Food?” he said. “Oh, food.”
“We had a whole bear,” said Franca. “Mistress Sharina killed it. We could have dried the meat and lived on it for months!”
“Here, mistress,” said Neal, rummaging in his wallet. “It’s smoked fish, that’s mostly what we have. We build weirs and Alfdan calls fish into them. He has a lure. Lugin, give the mistress some of that wine.”
“And for my companions,” said Sharina sharply. “We’re all together now.”
She squatted to take the packet, a slab of dark, oily fish wrapped in an unfamiliar large leaf. After she broke off a chunk—it flaked when she twisted—she handed the rest to Scoggin. He started to bolt it, then caught the sudden hardening of Sharina’s eye. He quickly divided the piece with Franca.
Neither of her companions was used to being part of society. They’d been surviving in a harsh world where being quick was the difference between life and death. They had to readjust to caring about other human beings.
“How long have you been with Master Alfdan?” she asked Neal through a mouthful of fish. It tasted wonderful, but the oily richness hitting her empty stomach made her gorge rise. She paused, hoping she wouldn’t vomit.
“Me?” said Neal, chewing on a similar fillet. “Three years, near enough. He found me on Tisamur, when he was searching for the Stone Mirror.”
He nodded toward Alfdan, standing statue straight. He held out the staff as he mouthed inaudible words of power. The script at the wizard’s feet continued to turn in silent regularity like thin clouds scudding across a summer sky.
“He uses the mirror to find things,” Neal explained. “Just a little pebble, you’d think, no different from any other that you’d turn up with your plow. But Alfdan sees things in it.”
“Burness’s been with Alfdan from the start,” Neal said, nodding to a balding, older man talking volubly and with hand gestures to two others in the bow. “They were both rooming in a tenement on Erdin when She first came. Alfdan told fortunes and made charms, you know the sort of thing.”
Sharina nodded. “I know,” she agreed.
She looked over her shoulder at Alfdan. She wondered how long he could keep the staff out straight.
Alfdan would’ve been a conjurer, a hedge wizard; but not altogether a charlatan. There was somebody like him in every neighborhood of the larger cities; similar folk travelled through the borough, setting up their booths during the Sheep Fair and occasionally in other seasons as well.
“Alfdan took Burness with him,” Neal said. “There were two other guys too, Burness says. One I never met, but Tadli was the man the faun killed just now on the shore. He’d lasted a long time, though.”
Neal grimaced and chewed in silence for a time, his eyes on the horizon. Sharina thought she saw something moving there, on the surface of the gray sea or in the sky just above it. Neal’s attention was on his memories.
When She came, when the weather chilled and the night sky began to ripple with wizardlight, Alfdan learned he could find objects of power. Perhaps the talent had always been in him but too weak to be noticed; perhaps Her power and the changes She wrought in the world squeezed Alfdan’s mind into a pattern completely new to it.
“He’s Alfdan the Great, now,” Neal said in a wondering voice, still looking beyond his present company. “He does amazing things. I’ve seen him do things that I couldn’t imagine being done. Wonderful things!”
“And Alfdan will freeze,” said Beard, “and you will freeze, and all the wonderful toys your great wizard is collecting, they’ll freeze also. Because they’re just toys—he gathers them to have them, not to use them. But my mistress—”
The axe laughed as musically as an infant watching a hanging bauble turn in the wind.
“—she’ll use Beard. Beard will drink his fill many times more before the ice comes!”
Neal shivered. “Does it have to talk?” he muttered.
“Beard tells me things that I need to know,” Sharina said, though she understood Neal’s discomfort. “But perhaps, friend axe, you can keep your opinions more to yourself while we’re in such close quarters?”
“Hmpff!” said Beard. “It won’t change anything, whether I say things or I don’t, you know.”
Though the axe did subside with that remark. He began to sing in a low voice, “They struck with swords and hard they struck till blood ran down like rain....”
Neal sank into gloomy introspection, his eyes on his hands folded in his lap. He obviously didn’t want to think about a doom he couldn’t avoid. Sharina didn’t have any better answers than Neal did—neither to his problems nor to the more complicated business of getting herself back to the world she knew; but she hadn’t given up trying.
She smiled. She wasn’t going to give up, but she didn’t see even a path to an answer to anything. It was funny if you thought about it in the right way.
Men in the bow murmured, nudging one another and looking toward the southwest. Nobody spoke. Sharina turned, squinting to sharpen her vision.
Something was coming toward them, either on the sea or flying just above it. At first she thought it was a bird with long, sparkling wings, but when it changed course slightly she saw that it was a fish whose pectoral fins were each as long as its body. A figure rode on its back and waved a wand or spear. It wasn’t human, though at first she’d thought it was.
Alfdan moved for the first time since they’d started south: he pointed his staff a few degrees to the right of its previous bearing. The great fish squirmed through the air in a desperate attempt to follow, but it fell inexorably behind. Finally it vanished in a haze of crimson wizardlight.
“What was that?” Sharina said to Neal. “Have you seen it before?”
Neal remained silent, lost in his bleak considerations.
“We’ve seen that sort of thing, sure,” said another man. “They’re not real, we figure. They�
�re mirages, because lots of times they just scatter away after a while.”
Beard laughed. “Oh, they’re real,” he said. “As real as you are when you’re here on the Queen Ship. The ship doesn’t sail in the world you’re from, you know; and the place your great Alfdan has taken you has its own residents.”
The man who’d told Sharina that what they’d seen was a mirage gaped. He must not have heard the axe speak before.
“Are those things dangerous, Beard?” Sharina asked. She turned back in the direction she’d last seen the fish and its rider. The sky was empty and the sea was its usual turgid gray. “The residents?”
“Not unless they catch you, mistress,” the axe said with its usual enthusiasm. “If they catch you, they’ll kill you all! Beard will be alone in this place with nothing, no blood to drink ever again.”
Did the axe think he’d frighten her, or did he just have a wry sense of humor? Well, Sharina’d been places before where if you couldn’t laugh at horrors you had nothing whatever to laugh at.
“We’ll hope that they don’t catch us, then,” she said with a faint smile. “I’d hate to leave so good a friend as you, Beard, in such a terrible place.”
The axe laughed merrily. His voice was a pleasant tenor when he was at ease, but when he saw the hope of slaughter his tones rose till they were indistinguishable from a small brass bell ringing a tocsin.
“Oh, yes, mistress,” he said. “You’ll treat Beard well, he’s sure you will. Ah, Beard hasn’t had a master like you in thousands of years, thousands.”
Sharina continued to smile. It was always good to have friends; and in this world, Beard wasn’t a bad friend to have.
“Look, mistress,” Franca said. Instead of touching her shoulder, he extended his pointing finger past her face, then lowered it.
Sharina turned and saw trees on the horizon. “Are there islands here?” she said. There hadn’t been—she hadn’t seen—islands in this portion of the Inner Sea when she’d crossed it in her own world, but if the sea level was dropping perhaps....
“They walk on water, mistress,” Beard said. “They came down from where the Ice Capes were. Now it’s all ice there for hundreds of miles south, so the trees have had to move.”
“How do trees walk?” Scoggin demanded. “They can’t! They never did before!”
“Did you think it was only wizards who gained power when She came?” the axe chuckled. “It wasn’t. Some wizards, and some—other things. Perhaps they now call themselves Larch the Great, do you think?”
“Look, Layson,” said Scoggin, leaning sideways so that he could see the man who’d been speaking. They must have exchanged names while Sharina was talking with the wizard. “What is it that that fellow—”
He waggled a finger toward the stern. Like many other people Sharina’d met, Scoggin didn’t choose to name wizards—any more than they would demons—for fear of what they might be calling to them.
“—plans to do? Is it like the axe says, he’s just sailing around till we all freeze?”
Neal turned, awakening from his state of detachment. “Do you have a better idea, Scoggin?” he said. His tone was questioning, not a sarcastic snarl. “Because he’s keeping us alive, it seems to me.”
“He didn’t keep Tadli alive just now,” Franca said unexpectedly. Because he was so quiet, it was easy to forget his presence—and the fact that he heard and understood things.
“He didn’t keep any of you alive just now!” Beard said. “My mistress and I kept you alive!”
“What do you say, mistress?” Layson said. “What would you do?”
Alfdan had adjusted his wand again, returning them to their previous course. Did he have some tool of art to tell him where to steer? Sharina saw another grove of trees to the west, but they were too far away for her to make out any details before the Queen Ship left them behind.
Alfdan stood fixed by the strain of his art; everyone else was waiting for her reply. It didn’t make sense except in human terms, but Sharina’d learned since she left home that the answer to the question, “Why me?” was always, “Because you will.” These men wanted her to lead them, because they knew she was willing to lead.
“You talk about Her,” Sharina said. “When She came, when She made things change. Where is She?”
Men looked at one another or at their hands. She wasn’t sure they’d have given her an answer even if they had one. “Maybe Alfdan knows,” muttered someone seated behind her.
“She is in the north,” said Beard, speaking in a precise, pedantic voice. “She is in the farthest north, from where everything is south. She is in a palace beneath the ice, and there She weaves the fate of the world. Ice and death and silence!”
“Then...,” said Sharina. There was no other answer, after all, though her mouth had gone dry. “Then I think that’s where we should be going, or at least I should.”
“And Beard should go, mistress!” the axe caroled. “Oh, so very much blood to drink before they slay you, mistress, so many monsters and halfmen and so much blood!”
Alfdan’s wand thumped against the shining deck before him. The Queen Ship slid to a silent halt at the base of a craggy headland. The narrow cliff beyond and that of the similar headland opposite were nearly vertical; they framed a narrow fjord. Here and there grasses sprouted from cracks in the rock.
They’d reached their destination without anyone except the wizard being aware they were approaching land.
Alfdan wavered with the effort of the task he’d just accomplished. He tried to sit but he was already collapsing when two of his men caught him with the skill of experience.
The deck was again as slick as the film over melting ice; men slid off, then scrambled out of the way of their fellows. Sharina let herself follow, holding Beard up in both hands to avoid an accident. The axe chuckled.
She landed on her heels, flexing her legs to take the shock. Even so she winced: her makeshift boots were thin protection against bare rock.
Sharina walked down to the narrow shoreline, looking into the fjord. The water was dark blue but clear; she could see the rock wall continue to slope jaggedly into an abyss.
“There’s where you’re going, mistress,” Beard said happily. “There’s where you and Beard are going soon!”
***
“Oh bye-bye good woman, I’m gone,” Chalcus chanted, leading his six crewmen down the dock. As they walked, hauling on a hawser reeved over the top of a pair of shearlegs, the Bird of the Tide’s new mast rose in tiny jerks toward vertical. Without the shearlegs to give them leverage, they wouldn’t have been able to start the pole from the horizontal.
“You gonna miss me, you’ll see,” Chalcus sang, taking another short step with each weighted syllable.
Ilna, waiting at the base of the mast with a wedge and maul, thought again how much his voice reminded her of liquid gold, smooth and pure and perfectly beautiful. No sign of the effort—and she knew how much effort it was for seven men without pulleys to replace a mast—could be heard in the chantey. She called, “Once more!”
“A rider, she’s a rider I know,” Chalcus caroled, and the mast quivered straight according to the plumb line tacked into the side of the mast partner that would shortly hold it.
“Enough!” called Ilna and dropped her wedge into the slot. She stepped back and brought the maul around in a three-quarters circle to slam the tapered oak home.
Hutena had insisted—insisted—that Ilna should stand back and let one of the crewmen or Captain Chalcus himself set the wedge. Ilna didn’t flatter herself that she could be of any real help on the line; she was strong for a woman, but she simply didn’t weigh enough to matter with what was more a job of lifting than pulling. But the notion that she couldn’t use a mallet—or a hatchet either one—as well as any man in Barca’s Hamlet or this crew, that she would not have.
She wasn’t sure she’d convinced the bosun, but she certainly convinced him that he should keep his opinions to himself when they clashe
d with hers. All the while Chalcus had stood with his back to the pair of them, whistling a merry tune called, “I am a Noted Pirate,” and juggling the knives of all five crewmen while they pretended to watch him instead of the argument.
Ilna smiled wryly. She supposed she’d been better entertainment than the juggling, but the men hadn’t wanted her to catch their eyes when she was in a temper like that.
Four men continued to brace the hawser while the others ran back to catch the stay ropes already hanging from the collars. Ilna moved to the rail, giving the sailors as much room to do their work as the Bird allowed. Chalcus ran the forestay to the bow, then set his foot against a bitt and tensioned the rope before he took a quick lashing through the deadeyes. Ilna heard the mast groan as it strained. Chalcus wasn’t a big man, but she’d met few who were stronger.
With the stays temporarily fastened the men on the dock returned, coiling the hawser as they came. Chalcus swaggered toward Ilna, adjusting his sash. He was proud of the show he’d just put on and well aware that Ilna’d seen and understood how impressive it was.
She smiled wryly. She’d always felt it was wrong to boast, and maybe it was; but Chalcus wasn’t any more proud than she was, of what she did and of what he did also. Maybe the willingness to flaunt what was fully worthy of pride was a more honest attitude than her own.
Anyway, she certainly wasn’t going to change Chalcus. Nor would he change her, she suspected.
“I was beginning to worry about the good Commander,” he said. “If he simply let us go on about our business we’d be lost, wouldn’t we? But he’s not so subtle a man as that, I’m pleased to see.”
Chalcus nodded toward Cross Street, leading down from the castle, but the rattle of ironshod wheels on cobblestones would’ve drawn Ilna’s attention anyway. A two-wheeled cart came around the corner, guided by four servants on the paired poles front and back. They must’ve struggled to keep the weight from running away from them on the slope, but now they got their footing properly and continued toward the Bird of the Tide.
At a muttered command from Hutena, he and the men with him dropped the hawser on the dock and boarded the ship quickly. Hutena gestured to the deckhouse; Chalcus grinned and shook his head minusculely.
