Pen began picking out and ruffling big sciatic nerves, hard, starting with the nearest men. His victims discovered this the first time they started to step forward, and instead fell or staggered, shrieking in surprise and pain. It took a minute of close concentration to work through the entire dozen.
A gasp of surprise brought his attention around. Jato’s eyes were rimmed white. “You’re that sorcerer!”
No denying it now. “Well, yes, but no danger to you. We can still escape.” Pen gave the rowboat a shove. It didn’t budge. “The four of us, plus me, should still manage to sail. Hurry!”
Jato did hurry—choosing to pelt away along the sand, trailed by his remaining men.
“Bastard piss on you for cowards!” Pen yelled after them, uselessly.
He wheeled, urgently surveying the harbor for other, smaller boats, and smaller rowboats to get out to them. The three likely candidates he’d picked out the other night were gone fishing or whatever, their owners making good use of this bright sailing day, their ferries tethered out at the moorings awaiting their return. Nothing else lay within immediate rowing or even swimming distance, though a couple more full-sized probably-pirate ships had recently arrived to drop anchor and await their turn at the loaded piers.
A yelp from behind him and Lencia’s scream of “Seuka!” whipped him around again.
Pen had overlooked one man, the crewman who had made to surrender first. For whatever reason, he’d chosen to grab up Seuka and start running for the town. Seizing the potential reward? Planning to offer her to the Guild as an apology in hopes of gaining a pardon? Saving her from the evil sorcerer? Pen couldn’t guess, but the son of a bitch was fast, even with Seuka struggling and kicking in his grip.
Worse, Lencia had started running after them.
“Lencia, stop!” Pen cried at her, and was unsurprisingly ignored. “Sunder it!” He clenched his teeth and sprinted in pursuit, his straw hat blowing off.
The kidnapper, or rescuer, angled up through the shore clutter. Pen overtook Lencia, her legs churning and her face set in a determined grimace, and did not stop. Moving targets were harder to hit with the delicate but so-effective internal disruptions, and this fellow was no exception. Furious as Pen was, he wasn’t furious enough to risk death and Des.
He didn’t have to. About the time the crewman swung in past the warehouse near the prison-side customs shed, Seuka finally managed to get a hand on her belt knife, draw it, and poke at her captor. He barked more in surprise than pain, but flung her aside reflexively. She slammed into the whitewashed wall and slid down. The fellow started to reach for her again, but then looked over his shoulder at Pen wrathfully closing upon him, jolted in fear, abandoned his prize, and just ran.
Pen let him go. He stopped, gasping, by Seuka, who was sitting up shakily not-crying.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she sniffled, breathlessly. No broken bones, at least, as there might have been. Bruises would show later.
Lencia arrived in their wake, also winded and not-crying, or at least denying the smears evaporating on her flushed cheeks. “Seuka, you idiot! Why did you let him grab you?”
“I didn’t let him. He just did!”
Pen turned back to survey what was happening on the beach. Quite a lot, regrettably, as people hurried to and away from the men he’d left in moaning heaps near Jato’s rowboat. The hunt would be up in minutes, and this time, he suspected, they would not repeat the mistake of trying to take him on with insufficient numbers.
Better give them something else to worry about.
Des, what do you make of the contents of this warehouse?
Crammed. Bolts of cloth, piles of clothes, furniture, all sorts of miscellaneous thievings. Plaster floor but wooden roof. The impression of an edged smile. Very dry.
Do it.
Yes, Penric, love.
He braced one arm against the wall and leaned, enduring the ripple of heat that even the most downhill of magics generated in his body. And this was going to be very downhill indeed.
Enough. Let the white god’s fire do its own work. An offering to make up for that cold temple plinth.
Right. Saving room for dessert, my lord.
A grin snaked over his face. Des only used his old title when she was exceptionally pleased with him.
“On your feet, now,” he told Seuka, giving her a hand up. She rose easily, so thin and light. No wonder her would-be stealer had made good time. “Follow me. Let’s go around the back of this building.” Temporarily out of sight from the shore, though more than one person must have seen where they’d run to.
They skated along the side facing the town, passing a locked double door. Pen kicked it open in passing to provide a better draft for his soon-to-be furnace. He paused at the corner. From the next building over, the customs shed, a few men ran off to investigate the uproar going on down by Jato’s rowboat. Pen led the girls past the rearward side of the long shed, trailing his hand over the planks, feeling each little back-blow of heat, magical friction Learned Ruchia had dubbed it. Dry wood indeed.
Next over was the prison. A half-dozen guards on the roof were gathered gazing out under the flats of their hands, also toward the shore. Pen considered efficiencies. Moving fast wasn’t going to be useful for much longer, but he thought he might squeeze one more foray out of it.
Leaving the sisters next to a building that would shortly be ablaze wouldn’t do, so he took their hands to prevent straying and had them hunker down by the corner of the prison, holding his finger to his lips to enjoin silence. He walked around to the back entry where, this time, two guards were posted, leaning against the stone wall but otherwise alert. Reaching for their short swords, they both pushed off and scowled at Pen’s smile as he approached with both his hands held out empty. For a moment, poised to react, they were usefully still.
Lingual nerves, sciatic nerves, axillary nerves, brush, brush, brush, and they were down, choking and writhing. He stepped around them and down the steps, lifted the bar, and popped the bolt. A quick jog down the dark central corridor left every lock hanging open. He pushed his head into the main prison, just as full of unhappy men as it had been the other night, and was there no end to this trade, and called in Adriac, “The rear doors are open. What you do with that fact is up to you.”
He hurried back out to where the girls stood staring down in shocked fascination at the guards he’d dropped.
“Was that a magic spell?” asked Lencia.
“No. Well, not technically. I really don’t think of anything other than a shamanic persuasion or geas as a spell, exactly.” They scrunched their brows at him, disbelievingly. “I’ll teach you the distinctions sometime if you’re interested, when we get home. But first we have to get home. This way.”
They continued on from the prison. Pen did not look back as the first hoarse voices reached the back doors and grew louder, fearfully marveling. Some of those men might die in this escape attempt, but… not by his hand.
You can’t save everyone, Pen, Des consoled him.
Yes. I learned that well back in Martensbridge. I am not likely to forget.
He was flushed with heat, sweat tricking down his neck and back. The next building seemed to be a run-down taverna. A couple of servants idling by its back door stared at him and the girls as they trotted past, but did not attempt to impede them, their attention seized by the outflux of men from the prison. They hastily darted back inside and barred their door, shouting warnings. Pen led the girls around the far side of the dingy building to where he could again get a view of the harbor.
The crane he’d climbed the other day had been moved out to the pier, probably by an ox team, and was engaged in either loading or unloading one of the ships. The stevedores had dropped their work and were shouting and pointing back up the shore toward the warehouse and customs shed, from which dark gray smoke was now billowing, its nose-stinging acridity already penetrating the soft salt air. Most of them abandoned the pier and jog
ged off toward the fires. Pen expected some sort of bucket brigade from the sea would soon be organized. He didn’t think they’d be able to save either building, but they were welcome to try.
His feet were still planted on this bloody island. Ships. Boats. Rowboats. Rafts, barrels, anything.
Out in the harbor beyond the pier, Falun’s galley still sat. Pen hadn’t had much luck with the gratitude of freed prisoners up to now, but being chained in the hold of such a ship must surely concentrate the mind. Given the choice of rowing to Rathnatta and slavery, or Vilnoc and freedom, surely he wouldn’t have to apply much persuasion…? He could probably swim out that far, but—
“Do you see any rowboats at all?” Pen asked the girls, squinting.
Lencia stood on tiptoe. “There! In the shadows under the pier.”
“Ah. Yes. Well, it’s our rowboat now. Come on!”
In the clash between terror and excitement, excitement must be winning, for they followed him all-eagerness, laughing a bit wildly. They slid down and clambered awkwardly over the stones at the shaded base of the jetty. The boat’s painter was hitched to a rusty iron ring driven into one of the big boulders. Pen waded without hesitation into the murky water laced with tan foam. It wasn’t cold by his standards—in the cantons, you could drive a horse and sleigh across properly cold water—but it was cooler than his body, and drew dangerous heat from his blood. He ducked his head for good measure, then shoved the boat around close enough for the girls to tumble in.
Oars lay tucked under the thwarts. Pen was more surprised by their presence than he would have been by their absence, at this point. He might have swum ahead towing the boat by its rope, he supposed, much like his imagined dolphin, but it would have been slow going. He unhitched the knot, heaved a leg inboard, and shoved off, flopping down into the damp bottom where he lay wheezing for a moment.
The girls must have been in a rowboat before—well, Raspay was a port town—because they earnestly pulled up the heavy oars and managed to get their pins seated in their oarlocks without dropping one overboard. Then they looked to Pen.
“Where are we going?” asked Lencia. “We can’t row to Vilnoc.”
“Alas, no. Just out to that galley.” Pen gestured. “You boys can row if you want.”
“Oh!” Seuka grinned in delight, and the two hastily arranged themselves on one seat, an oar each. They pulled with reasonable coordination, and the boat began to slowly move alongside the ship docked on this side, its hull rising up like a wooden wall.
A head and shoulders leaned over the top of this bulwark. “Hey!” shouted the silhouette. “What are you doing?”
Good question. Pen wished he knew the answer. He crawled over to the side of their boat, propped his chin on the thwart, and considered the passing hull. Running a dual line of rot along it just below the waterline for several yards as they rowed by seemed almost routine, but he wasn’t above trying anything. He wasn’t sure if he was about to sink a pirate, a prize, or a legitimate merchant, and at this point scarcely cared.
Des giggled. She was getting dangerously excited much like the girls, but he couldn’t bleed off her nervous energy with rowing.
As they came out into the sunlight and the view widened, he rolled over on his back and studied the rigging of the ship tied up on the far side of the dock. Almost out of range, he snapped stays and started a couple of fires in the rolled-up sails. “The Bastard’s blessings upon you all,” he murmured, and bit his thumb at them.
Lencia gave him a chary look. Seuka, intent upon her rowing, just sucked her lip in concentration.
Pen considered his next plan. It was probable that most of Falun’s crew were enjoying time ashore, though some might be engaged with provisioning. Prisoners, even if chained, required some guards. He was getting very practiced with guards, but that was no invitation to get careless. He was also hot and ragged and worried, with red anger pulsing treacherously through his veins, but dwelling on any of those things was no help. He hoisted himself upright and squinted at the galley.
“I think I see climbing netting hanging over the port side. Row over that way.”
They passed not far from another vessel at anchor, clearly a rich pirate by its sleek lines and three masts prepared to carry a wide burden of sails for speed. Some crewmen hung on its landward-side rail, pointing and goggling at the clawing blazes ashore, the flames a strange transparent orange in the bright daylight, the air above them shimmering. Pen systematically snapped every stay within his range, igniting the rigging as it collapsed. Cries turned to screams.
There was crew aboard the galley, ah, for they, too, had collected on the starboard side to watch the inexplicable disaster progress. Visible smoke was finally rising from the pier. The hull Pen had perforated was starting to list, ever so gently, outward.
Two boys and a man plodding along in a little rowboat passed unremarked, with all this show going on.
“Isn’t this Captain Falun’s slave galley?” asked Lencia apprehensively as they slid into the shade of its far side.
“Ayup,” said Pen, discarding his wet, worn, stolen sandals as slippery and useless. He sat up and prepared to reach for the netting.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Probably,” sighed Pen. “I think I’m getting used to it.” He looked up past the line of oar ports, back at the girls. “Stay here a few paces off, and be ready to row away if they start to come for you.”
They looked at each other. “Without you?” said Seuka in a tentative voice.
“If necessary.”
Lencia cocked her head at him, and said in a remarkably dry tone for a ten-year-old, “To where?”
Pen stared around the disrupted harbor. “I’ll… return.”
“You’d better,” said Seuka, with determination.
Pen swung up onto the coarse rope weave and flashed a grin over his shoulder. “I thought I was the evil sorcerer.”
Lencia shot back, “Yes, but you’re our evil sorcerer.”
“Ah.” Pen hung a moment, liminally, letting that claim settle into his bones. It made him feel oddly fond. “Yes. I think that must be so.”
Seuka nodded firmly. “So don’t you get hacked up, either.”
“I’ll do all I can.” He hesitated, then corrected that to, “All we can.” Because whatever he was heading into, he wasn’t going alone. He tapped his lips with his thumb, felt for toeholds, and pushed himself up the side.
I told you I liked those girls, said Des smugly.
You were right. He paused just before mounting the deck. Sight. No souls immediately nearby, though that didn’t mean someone farther off couldn’t be looking this way. He rolled silently over the rail and crouched barefoot, taking his bearings.
He was on a kind of walkway between the rail and one of the two low sheds or cabins that filled the deck fore and aft on either side of the mainmast. This galley was square-rigged in an older style, though with a smaller mast toward the bow for some sort of jib sail that had the air of a later addition. Somewhere, there must be hatches down to holds… there. He edged around the cabin, found the dark square in the deck, and slithered down something like a lethal cross between a stairway and a ladder.
Headroom was scant, he found out by barking his scalp. This space seemed devoted to cargo and crew quarters, judging by the hammocks tucked here and there. Down again. This was the oar deck, oval beams of sunlight from the ports dotting the deck and benches in a row, the glimmer of wave reflections dancing over the low ceiling, a surprising lack of stench. And one more descent, into unrelieved shadow; his dark-sight came up without thought, laying his surroundings bare. This was the hold for Falun’s lucrative human cargo. Pen could tell by the long rows of leg irons bolted to the hull braces.
Empty. Falun hadn’t loaded on yet.
Bastard blast it, I could have sunk this accursed ship the other night!
Pen fell to his knees in something not quite a prayer. Lord god Bastard, I dedicate this day to you. I hope
you are suitably amused. In fact, you can have this whole detestable week…
Apart from two sisters waiting in hope for him out on the water. Pen was keeping that godly gift. That being so, falling over in a lump of rage and despair and drumming his heels on the deck like some uncannily dangerous two-year-old was not an option.
Preferably not, murmured Des. You know we old mothers have tricks for dealing with such tantrums.
I’d rather not find out.
He sighed and clambered back to his feet, and up the ladder-stairs. No prisoner-crew to conscript. A ship too big for him to sail. What next?
If you start pining after those dolphins again, said Des, I’m going to slap you.
Pen’s lips twitched up despite everything. What, I think it’s a grand idea…
Pen stepped up into the light to discover that what was next was Captain Falun exiting the door from the aft cabin and stopping short, staring at him in astonishment. “You!”
Pen scratched his scalp, damp and sticky and itchy with seawater. “You know,” he said conversationally in high Roknari—the mode of scholar to servant was nicely insulting—“I’ve been having an extraordinarily aggravating day. You probably shouldn’t add to it.”
Falun didn’t listen, of course. People seldom did. Instead he started back and drew a sharp cutlass from a rack on the cabin wall, turned, and lunged at Pen.
Pen sheared the complex conglomeration of nerves in his armpit clean in half. Falun’s arm fell limply and hung at his side, the cutlass falling from suddenly lifeless fingers to clatter on the deck. “What…?” He stumbled, unbalanced, the arm swinging from his shoulder like a heavy sack, confusingly painless.
He’d never be lifting a sword again. Or a spoon.
“I could do the same thing to the nerves from your eyes, you know,” Pen informed him. “It wouldn’t even be theologically forbidden.”
For all his dapper air, Falun didn’t keep captive slaves in line, or control the rowdies who kept them in line for him, by being kindly or slow. He bellowed and bent and grabbed for the cutlass with his working hand. Pen danced back from the rising slash and scraped Falun’s sciatic nerves good and hard, and then he went down and didn’t get up.
The Orphans of Raspay: A Penric and Desdemona novella in the World of the Five Gods (Penric & Desdemona Book 7) Page 11
