The War of the Four Isles

by Andrew McGahan

  Dow was surprised enough to be distracted from other matters. ‘Outside? But—’

  ‘There’s no particular danger, as long as we’re careful. Come along, you’ll see.’

  The monarch was determined, Dow could tell, and so he nodded in resignation.

  With a smile, Benito led the way out into a short hall, the end of which opened to a long chamber lined with many beds. ‘You’ve been lucky to have a room to yourself,’ said the king. ‘There are only half a dozen like it in all Banishment – and we five kings take those, with one left over for Nell. Most of our folk sleep in the dormitory here, or in the one above in the attic; a hundred and twenty beds in all.’

  It was a large space, plain, but well-built of stone, and the beds seemed solid and comfortable. Many tall windows lined the walls, but the light was dim for they were all shuttered, though again there was no sign of any bars, or anything else prison-like. A few figures were moving about, sweeping floors and changing linen, but otherwise the dormitory was deserted.

  ‘I gather you had some peculiar notion that we were locked up in waterlogged cells here?’ Benito was ushering Dow to a stairwell at the centre the dormitory. ‘But it’s all perfectly pleasant and amenable, as you can see, the lack of privacy aside. Why, they even let us have feather quilts on the beds, for the cold.’

  His manner was cheerful, but now that Dow looked at the king closely, Benito’s once round face was thinner, and his eyes sadder than Dow remembered from their first meeting, long ago on the Twelfth Kingdom.

  They descended the stairs. ‘And here on the ground floor,’ the king continued, ‘we have the living quarters: kitchen, wash house, dining hall; all the basic facilities. We look after everything ourselves; there are no servants obviously, but nor are there any guards, not in the barracks. They deliver our supplies once a week, but otherwise are happy to ignore us.’

  It was a busier, noisier place than the floor above. From the wash house came splashing sounds and steam, and from the kitchen a clatter of pans and homely cooking smells. Beyond, Dow and Benito came to the dining hall. It was low-ceilinged but long and wide, and here amid a hum of conversation maybe seventy prisoners were finishing up their breakfast.

  They were an unremarkable assembly at a glance, mostly – as Benito had said – older men, with only a few women among them, and no children; all dressed very simply, with not a crown or sceptre or golden ring in sight. But Dow had not forgotten that these were the Heretic Kings themselves; sovereigns and high nobles of such importance that they had come close to assuming command of the Ship Kings empire.

  Indeed, he felt strangely uncultivated in their presence, uncouth even, for they were still, in some indefinable way, potently royal; and he was grateful that Benito led him straight through the hall without stopping or making introductions. Many stern and venerable faces turned to study him as he went – some of them distinctly unfriendly, he thought – but no one spoke to him. And though he looked about for Nell, she was nowhere in the room.

  They passed down another passage, and came at last to what was apparently a vestibule, from which a stout door led to the outside.

  Here Benito paused a moment, with a nod back to the dining room. ‘And so you see us,’ he said, his smile gone rueful. ‘Kings and princes, dukes and counts – and the odd countess too – reduced to this. We do not suffer any physical privations, but we suffer nevertheless; for the world and the war go on without us and yet here we must sit idle, waiting. And we are not folk accustomed to irrelevance.’

  Dow had been thinking about Nell again – where was she? – but now he forced himself to concentrate. ‘That’s why we were coming – to return you all to the Kingdoms, so that you could win control there and then settle a peace.’

  Benito regarded him strangely. ‘So it’s true, what Nell told me. You were coming to free us. On a Twin Isles ship, no less.’

  ‘I don’t think the ship will come now,’ said Dow, not wanting to pretend otherwise.

  ‘Yes, Nell told me that too. Well, do not despair, yours was not the only hope we have of rescue.’ The king’s expression hardened. ‘And don’t be deceived by the gentle breakfasters back there. Ferdinand and Carrasco have good reason to fear us yet! We still have loyal forces in our homelands, who will rise when we return. Armies! Fleets! There will be a reckoning on that day!’ Then he sighed. ‘Yes, but these things are slow to set in motion . . .’

  ‘Do you mean your boat?’ Dow asked, hope lifting. ‘Are you planning an escape?’

  ‘Our boat?’ The king’s laugh was humourless. ‘No. I did not mean that. And I did not say escape. I said rescue. There is no escape from Banishment. Come outside and you’ll see how it is.’ He reached to the wall, where many long coats hung on hooks, and took two down, handing one to Dow. ‘Put this on. With the hood up, you’ll look much like anyone else while we’re out there, should the guards happen to be watching.’

  They donned the overcoats, then Benito pushed through the door. Beyond was a grey morning, and cold air. Hooded or not, Dow felt nakedly exposed as he stepped out, but the king, nonchalant, led him along a short path to a hummock that rose beside the barracks. As they crested this rise, all of Banishment was laid open to their gaze – and Dow’s heart shank with comprehension.

  It was not that the island itself was anything so terrible. Banishment was merely a narrow ridge of stone, maybe three miles end to end and rising perhaps fifty feet above its surrounds. The barracks building stood on the north slope of the ridge and was the isle’s only structure; otherwise there was nothing to see but scrub and rock. A bare and unfriendly exile, yes. But it was the view from Banishment that was so bleak, for in every direction it was clear that escape, as the king had said, was a vain hope.

  To the south stretched the Banks. The tide that had nearly drowned Dow had withdrawn again, leaving the mudflats exposed once more, glinting wet under the clouds. Something deep and unpleasant stirred in Dow at the sight; the memory of death, a mortal fear. No . . . whatever might eventuate, he knew he could never set foot out there again. The south way was closed.

  To the north, meanwhile, extended the waters of the Golden Millpond, as dull and stagnant as Dow remembered them. The mainland was far beyond the horizon, of course, and not a sail was visible, but Dow was under no illusions. The Millpond was not empty; the full might of the Ship Kings home fleet patrolled it constantly, and guarded its two entrances, east and west; there was no prospect of escape in that direction either.

  Lastly, as a boundary between the Banks and the Millpond, in part the dam and rampart that enclosed the Millpond and held it back, and in part the foundation against which the sands of the Banks had been piled, stretched the Chain Reefs.

  They curved away west and east from Banishment in a belt about two miles wide; not really reefs at all, but more a series of flat-topped rocky shelves, set exactly at the level of the Millpond. The gaps between the shelves were plugged with sand, but through channels in that sand water from the Millpond was flowing in thin black sheets out across the Banks, feeding the mudflats and ensuring they never dried out, even when the tide was gone.

  A man might walk upon the reefs, Dow observed. That is, if he could bear the lacerations to his feet, after his shoes gave out; for every exposed rock surface had been carved into jagged blades by the ebb and flow of the water. And he would need to swim across the deeper channels without being swept away, and avoid straying into the waiting mudflats. But could a man travel two hundred miles in such a manner? For that was how far the Chain extended in either direction. And anyway, all that awaited a walker at either end was the open sea.

  No, there was only one way in or out of Banishment. North from its shore, a narrow path of laid stones ran for half a mile across the reefs to a point where an inlet of deep water opened to the Millpond. At the end of that path there rose up, squat and formidable, a tower.

  Benito nodded to it now. ‘There reside the only guards who serve on Banishment. And there they rem
ain for the most part. But anything or anyone who wants to come along that path must first pass through the tower.’

  So Dow saw. A dock ran from the tower out into the Millpond, where ships could berth, but the tower itself barred all access to the island. Cannon peered from many gun ports in the walls, covering all the approaches, and armed guards patrolled its battlements. One, indeed, had paused to stare at Banishment – directly, it seemed, at Dow himself and the king.

  ‘It must be an unpopular posting for the garrison,’ commented Benito. ‘In many ways, the tower is far more confined and uncomfortable than the barracks. They are a bored, resentful crew.’

  The watching figure had already turned away, uninterested – and Dow smiled. To think of the rewards the man might have earned, a thousand gold pieces, if only he’d known who he was looking at.

  The king continued, ‘Of course, when we first arrived we debated if we should assault the tower. But it’s stout and well-defended. The path is narrow and just one cannon could sweep it easily. And anyway, at the path’s end we’d find naught but a bolted iron door.

  ‘But that does not mean we gave up all thought of escape! Two men we sent on an expedition walking east along the reefs, and another two we sent west. The guards watched them go and did not a thing; in fact, we could hear them laughing. Understand – none of the four were supposed to go very far, they were to report merely as to whether such routes were feasible. But not a one ever came back to us.

  ‘Which left us only the Banks to explore.’ Here Benito gave Dow a wry look. ‘Mind you, we were never so foolish as to attempt the treacherous sands on foot!’

  ‘You built a boat,’ said Dow.

  The king nodded. ‘Actually, Nell was the force behind it. She chafes terribly at inaction, more even than the rest of us. We scavenged wood as we might from the barracks and had the vessel built and launched within a few months of our arrival here. But it’s no grand craft, and none too sound; we are royalty, not carpenters or shipbuilders. It’s barely fit to carry five or six souls, and not far.

  ‘Even so, we made trial with it upon the Banks at high tides. Again, Nell was at the forefront; I doubt the boat ever sailed without her in the crew. And they did make some progress in discovery at first . . . but never along any path that led towards freedom, only deeper into the wilderness, and in time I forbade them from risking their lives further. In fact, to drag you from the mud was the first use we’ve made of the craft in some while.’

  Curious, Dow was turning back and forth, from the tower to the ridge to the Banks, trying to measure the relative heights with his eye.

  ‘No,’ said the king, ‘your rescue was not visible to our guards. So little did the Banks concern the builders of this place, they did not raise the tower high enough to see south beyond the island. Indeed, we would not have seen you ourselves, except that a glow was noticed against the clouds two nights before – your ship, as is plain to me now – and so a few observers were keeping an eye on the sands, for any distraction here is a welcome one.’

  Dow pondered the sightlines again. If only the Snout had come this far. It would have been so simple to take the prisoners off. He stared to the southern horizon beyond the sands, where water seemed to glint in the distance.

  Benito said, ‘You search for your ship? I understand from Nell that it is hard aground, or if not, that it has departed the Banks by now?’

  Dow could only nod helplessly. There would be no sail rising in the south.

  The king gave Dow a judging look. ‘I must tell you then, that even had your ship come and offered to take us away, I’m not at all sure that we would have boarded it. Not a Twin Islands ship.’

  Dow started in surprise. ‘Why in all the oceans not? The Twin Islanders aren’t the enemies of anyone on here Banishment – they’re on your side. They stand against Castille and Valdez the same as you do.’

  ‘Maybe. But despite what is often said, the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. Sometimes they are just one enemy more.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You will.’ The king straightened, glanced at the sky. ‘Come along. It’s time to meet the others and decide what’s to be done with you.’

  *

  The council took place in the dining hall, now clear of breakfasters. When Dow and Benito came in, five men were waiting for them, seated around one of the tables; the high conclave of the Heretics.

  Benito introduced them to Dow one by one, each a stout and solid figure, imperious even without regalia; King Eugene of the Branch, of the Kingdom of Estland, and King Conrad of the Funnel, of the Kingdom of Marchis – both of whom Dow must have beheld three years ago upon the Twelfth Kingdom, little though he recognised them now – also, an Admiral Vasco of the Glacier, of the Kingdom of Leone, and a Duke Tomas of the Split Plain, of the Kingdom of Argive.

  ‘And this,’ Benito said of the fifth man, ‘is Baron Nikolay of the High Fens, of the Kingdom of Othrace. Does the name mean anything to you, Dow? It should, perhaps, for the Baron here is kin to our young Nell – her uncle, in fact. And now only living relative, for alas, Nell’s mother and father were both put to death when they joined with our cause, forcing Nikolay here to flee his homeland. The king of Othrace, you understand, remains in the loyalist camp.’

  Nell’s uncle! There was certainly no family resemblance; the baron was a heavy-set man of middle age, with drooping, jaundiced skin, and an air of apparent displeasure. But how strange it was to think of Nell having family at all. As a scapegoat, Dow knew, she had cut all such ties, so that she could go to sea. And yet her father and mother had joined her in rebellion, and now were dead for it – a grief that must only have added to her loneliness . . .

  ‘Ah,’ pronounced Benito, ‘and here’s Nell herself. You’re late, young woman.’

  Dow spun about and there she was, coming across the hall, a figure somehow so distant and foreign to him suddenly, it was as if he was seeing her for the first time in three years all over again.

  ‘My apologies, Majesty,’ she said, with a nod of greeting to the others as she sat down; a slight and youthful figure among the larger and older men, and yet accepted by them with evident respect.

  But to Dow she gave no acknowledgement at all – she would not even meet his eyes. For his part, Dow could not stop staring, so different did she seem from the previous night. All her cold aloofness had returned; her shoulders taut, her lips compressed. He had to forcibly remind himself that it hadn’t been a dream, that they really had been together, her body open to him in a blaze of heat . . .

  ‘Now,’ said Benito to Dow, ‘I know you’ve already explained some of this to me or Nell, but if you wouldn’t mind repeating it for the others: why has a Twin Islands ship been sent here, and how in all the oceans did you end up alone out there in the mud?’

  Dow blinked, taking a moment to come back to himself. But then he recounted the tale as best he could, from the meeting with the War Master, through their voyage across the Outer Ocean, to his doomed attempt upon the Banks. The council listened silently, but with an air of growing amazement.

  ‘By all the seas!’ exclaimed Admiral Vasco, when Dow was done. ‘You sail with a hardy crew, whatever else may be said. It’s a rare ship that encounters a monster of the abyss and lives to tell of it.’

  ‘Aye,’ marvelled Duke Tomas. ‘But for me, even rarer is the crossing of the Banks on foot. You have courage, Mr Amber. I have doubted many of the wondrous things attributed to you, but this deed cannot be argued, and I doubt no longer.’

  Baron Nikolay, however, was unsmiling. ‘As I see it, it was not courage that saved Mr Amber out on the sands, having mired himself so recklessly in the mud – it was us, and at some risk to ourselves. In fact, if I recall right, many of his supposed great deeds were likewise only achieved at a price paid by others.’

  Dow met the reproof levelly. ‘There’s no one who knows that better than I do, sir.’

  The Baron’s expression remained c
old. ‘What I want to know, New Islander, is why we should trust your purpose here and now?’

  Dow stared. Trust him? Why would they not trust him?

  King Benito cleared his throat. ‘It’s not just you we have to consider, Dow. It’s those that came with you; your Twin Islands friends.’

  Dow still didn’t understand. Everyone on the Snout had wagered their lives, just as he had, and over twenty had died, in the attempt to liberate these very men sitting around the table!

  ‘You think us ungrateful,’ King Eugene noted, even though Dow had not spoken. ‘But have you been told yet, Mr Amber, exactly how we Heretics came to reside here on Banishment?’

  ‘I was waiting until now,’ King Benito explained to his fellow monarch.

  ‘Then relate the tale. When he learns of our betrayal, he will comprehend.’

  Benito considered Dow a moment, as if ordering his thoughts. ‘Very well then. You should understand first and foremost, Dow, that we Heretics are not and never were traitors to our empire. If, for instance, the Twin Islands’ rebellion had been unmasked earlier, we would willingly have sent our ships to crush it, alongside the fleets of Valdez and Castille.

  ‘But the rebellion was not discovered in time, and so we have been forced to become realists. It’s too late now. The Twin Islanders, we think, will not be crushed without a war that ruins all the Four Isles in the process, and so we would negotiate a peace that grants the other Isles their freedom. But Ferdinand and Carrasco are consumed by desire for vengeance and for the recovery of absolute power, and they will happily destroy the world if they can be undisputed lords again over the ruins.

  ‘We think that madness. Our cause thus is to restore an independent Sea Lord to power – we consider the puppet Sea Lords illegitimate – and then to make an honourable peace with the subject Isles, rather than continue to bring all civilisation down in an orgy of bloodshed.

  ‘A year ago, we stood on the verge of realising that worthy ambition. We had our armies ready to march, and our fleets ready to blockade the loyalist ports. But before igniting such civil conflict, we had one last vital appointment to keep – a meeting with Damien Tender and Constance Reed. For yes, we were already in communication with the Twin Isles high command, preparing the way for the truce and formal peace negotiations that would follow, once we seized power.