by Tom Stacey
Not long now.
The sailors around him seemed to pause in their efforts, some casting nervous glances towards the enemy ship, others towards the wheelhouse where the Captain in his bright motley was trying to coax one last burst of speed from his ship. At last, even he fell silent and to Callistan it seemed that the burly man slumped a little. The Captain fumbled in his pockets and produced a thin silver tube. He raised it to his lips and blew a shrill whistle.
“Men of the Lussido!” he cried. “Stand to!”
The cry echoed around the ship in many different tones and timbres and the hatches leading below were flung open, more men pouring forth with knives, old naval hangers, and hatchets in their fists. The Lussido herself seemed to sense the decision to stand and fight and she slowed, wallowing in the water and turning her head to present her side to the enemy. The tall men’s ship came alongside with an agonising slowness and then there was a savage jerk and a deafening crack. Several men were thrown to the deck but they recovered quickly and stood, clutching weapons in sweaty hands.
Callistan drew his falcata from the sheath on his back and tapped Beccorban on the shoulder. “I’m ready, Helhammer. Are you?”
Beccorban responded with a grunt and then a spiked boarding platform smashed through the rail and embedded itself in the deck, and all was chaos.
“We should be up there,” said Loster, wringing his hands and trying not to notice Riella’s look of surprise. He was sat on a poorly-built wooden chair in Droswain’s cabin. It was a small cabin, like any on a fighting vessel, and Loster had to duck his head to avoid the low beams, but it was comfortable enough — more so than the bolthole that Riella and Mirril had been assigned to. They had escaped for the moment and were sitting on the floor nearby. Droswain, perched on his cot, was less than happy with their presence. “I should be helping,” Loster continued.
“Doing what exactly?” The priest spread his hands. “Can you rig a sheet, or taper a sail for a crosswind? Perhaps you can fight the wind itself?” He chuckled and Loster lowered his head. “Forgive me, Loster. I did not mean to mock.”
“No more than usual,” added Riella, earning a glare from the small priest.
A muted roar, louder than the wind, vibrated through the hull and they all instinctively looked up.
“It seems they do not need our help,” said Droswain. “Encouraging, is it not?”
Loster nodded but he could not shake the feeling that he was not doing his bit, that he was running away again. He could feel the insistent tug at the back of his head that he had learned heralded Barde’s coming.
Droswain stood suddenly, coming to squat in front of him. The ship juddered and the small priest fell sideways, but he rode it smoothly, twisting his legs as though he had intentionally sat down. He leaned forward. “Are you afraid, Loster?”
Loster swallowed and looked at Riella but she and Mirril were still staring at the ceiling. He turned back to Droswain and searched the small man’s shrewish face for some kind of malice. Though it seemed open, it was difficult to read. “Yes, I am afraid.”
“It is a good thing to be afraid, you know? If you don’t fear then you cannot be brave, and if you’re not brave then people will not follow you.”
“Beccorban’s not afraid,” said Mirril. “He isn’t scared of anything.”
“Oh, but he is, child. He is scared of so many things.” Riella glared at Droswain but he just smiled back.
“I don’t want anybody to follow me,” said Loster quietly.
Droswain turned back to him and his smile dropped. “Oh, but you must!” He stood and even his pointy head nearly touched the ceiling. “That man, Beccorban, your father. Do you know that he goes by other names?”
“Careful, priest,” said Riella. “Beccorban is not the monster from the stories. He has saved every life here at least once.”
Droswain laughed and Loster shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Death may have mellowed him some but I can assure you that people never change. He is the Helhammer, and you, Loster, you are the Hammer’s Son!” The priest raised his arms triumphantly as though he expected people to applaud.
Loster frowned. “I’m not really his son.”
“Of course you are not. It’s symbolic! You don’t have to actually be the Helhammer’s son but he did bring you to me. It is a sign.”
“A sign of what…” Riella began but he waved her down.
“You said you wanted to help, Loster — well, you will. More than you know. The gods have sent us you in our hour of need. They have spoken to me.”
Riella snorted.
“The gods? They didn’t send me, my father did, my real father, Lord Malix of Elk. He wanted me to be a priest. It has nothing to do with the gods!” Loster tried to sound angry but all he could see were the bright red eyes of the Unnamed in the chamber beneath the Widowpeak, and his voice wavered. “The gods wouldn’t talk to you, you’re not even a priest! You were banished!”
“Men banished me, not the gods.” Droswain’s voice was dark. He pointed a finger. “Make sure you know the difference.” Mirril whimpered and Droswain ran a hand over his face. When it passed, something hard seemed to have melted behind his eyes — eyes so brown they appeared wholly black. He sat back down on the bed. “Hush, child. Do you know the children’s rhyme, ‘Watchers’?”
Mirrill nodded.
“Recite it for me.”
Loster was confused but Droswain sat forward, waiting for the small girl to start.
“Evil comes from darkest deep…” she began in a small voice.
“Louder.”
“Evil comes from darkest deep,
To steal your children in their sleep,
Watchers from beyond the water,
Take your son, take your daughter,
But good of heart and full of cheer,
Have nothing from this foe to fear.”
Droswain clapped his hands with delight and rocked back on his cot. “Very good, Mirril. Very good, indeed. Do you know the history of that rhyme?”
She shook her head.
“It’s just a children’s song,” said Loster. “My mother used to sing it to me and… she used to sing it when I was younger.”
Droswain chuckled low in his throat. “No, Loster. It is a poem, loosely translated from its original Dalvossi. The poet is unknown but the real poem ends rather differently. Would you like to hear it?” Loster’s voice caught in his throat but Droswain went on anyway.
“…Watchers from beyond the water,
Kill your son, eat your daughter,
All is lost, but there is one,
Soul-scarred, sinned, the Hammer’s Son.”
He had to admit. There was a grandeur to the words.
“It is a prophecy, Loster, and not some crooked seer’s ranting. I found it carved into the walls of the inner sanctum of a Temple Deep and I was exiled for it. You are the Hammer’s Son. You are the one who will lead us against the evil that hunts us.”
Loster sat stunned for a moment, unsure of what to say. He wasn’t a hero, he was a coward. He had not even possessed the strength to put Aifayne out of his misery. How could he ever be spoken about in the same breath as men like Beccorban? Violent, powerful, infallible. He was none of those things.
There was a great ripping sound and Riella let out a honk of mirth. “Him? You really must be mad, Droswain.”
“Quiet, you fool. I know more about this than anyone alive and when I say he is the Hammer’s Son I mean it. He fits the description. All of it.” He turned to Loster and his eyes were telling. “Don’t you?”
A sharp pain began at the back of Loster’s neck, and he had an image of Barde, bloody and mutilated, clambering from the pit where he had been slumbering, digging in to the soft parts of his head with nails that not even death could trim.
“He knows. He knows of your shame. It’s in his eyes,” said his long dead brother.
“If he is a hero then he should be up with the others, fighting. We al
l should!” Riella stood and even she was taller than Droswain.
“Not all of us need to spill blood to be useful,” the exiled priest spat back.
“No, you just get others to do it for you.”
“I’m used to women having more respect.”
“I doubt you’re used to women at all.”
“Yes, well, we can’t all rut for a living.”
“Or at all, in fact.”
“Shut up!” Loster broke in, clutching the sides of his head as the pain threatened to make his skull burst. He took a deep breath and yet still his head whistled.
“Can you hear that?” asked Riella, and for a terrifying moment, Loster was convinced that his innermost thoughts had been laid bare. She marched to the door and wrenched it open. A score of sailors were streaming past in a great long line, all shouting the same refrain. “Stand to! Stand to! All men on deck!” The whistle was louder now. Riella cursed and drew the small knife she called Esha. Droswain gripped her wrist so hard that his knuckles went white. “Don’t be an idiot, girl. You’ll just get in the way.”
“They are calling all men to battle,” she snarled. “Let go of me. Loster, are you coming?”
Loster ignored her. He was watching the last few sailors run past. All of them were eager to go and meet their deaths but one of them hung back from the crowd, until he picked his moment and slipped through a dark side door. Loster pushed past Riella and Droswain and made for the dark portal. Yes, there! A flash of movement. Riella called after him but he carried on, slipping inside the room.
It was empty.
It was a small storage cupboard, and the only points of interest were an open hatch on the floor with a ladder leading down and a row of lanterns hanging from hooks. One was missing. He pushed at the back of his teeth with his tongue. Why would a sailor abandon his crew to flee down below? To hide? Perhaps, but there was something else making him unsure. There were plenty of places to hide on this deck; the ship was a warren to the uninitiated.
“Go down,” said Barde. “You’re too scared to go and fight the demons, so slip down into the darkness. Nobody will see you. Oh, but you’re not afraid of the dark are you?”
Loster gritted his teeth and reached for the ladder.
The enemy came in waves. It was a disciplined attack, demonstrating a ruthless awareness that filled Beccorban with a momentary despair. This was not some mindless assault, it was a calculated attempt to take the ship. As the sea washed back down below the waterline, he could make out the ugly silhouette of a ramming spike, black against the deep unyielding green of the sea. They didn’t use it, he thought. They want prisoners. He remembered Antler Helm pointing at him back at the farmhouse but there was no sign of the strange warrior.
The smaller ones came first. Each was still a head higher than the tallest human sailor but they were not the thin, armoured knights he had seen on land. Those stayed back, watching through implacable helms. Waiting.
“A test, greybeard!” shouted Callistan with joy and Beccorban grimaced.
The smaller enemy wore coarse robes and held cruel, curved knives and long-handled axes. Their faces were uncovered and, though Beccorban had seen their bizarre pointed features before, his stomach fluttered with attempted fear. He ignored it, as he had so many times before. Instead, he cried, “Lussido!” and leapt to meet the enemy, stunning even Callistan with his speed.
Two hurled themselves from the boarding plank but one died in midair as Kreyiss stove in its chest, casting the body to one side like a broken ragdoll. The other swung a hooked blade down at him but he brought his arm up, trusting in the small metal plates sewn under the leather to ward the blow. It rattled down his arm with a thock like a woodsman’s axe glancing off of timber. Beccorban spun around for the riposte but his opponent was already falling towards the deck, a bright red gash where the nightmare face had been. Beccorban nodded his thanks at Callistan but the horseman could not see him — he was in his own world and in that world he was a god.
In his decades of fighting, Beccorban had seen only a handful of others with Callistan’s terrifying ability. The horseman carved through the tall robed men like a scythe through wheat. It seemed as though his falcata was never at rest, each cut beginning with the end of the last. Yet still the enemy did not run. These are not men, Beccorban reminded himself. The robed warriors fought until they died. As he tore Kreyiss’ killing end from the mess of its last victim’s skull, Beccorban scanned the deck around him. There were bodies all around. Nearby lay Grundis on his back with a great rent in his neck. They had lost fifteen men, their colourful clothing standing out from the enemy dead like flowers in a dun autumnal field.
There was a moment’s pause. Beccorban breathed deep and, though the icy air burned his lungs, it felt good. A sea-mist was rising. Already the beleaguered second enemy ship had been absorbed into the fog and soon they would not be able to see what came across the gangplank.
A thunking noise brought his attention back to what was in front of him. Six tall warriors in full plate armour were walking slowly towards them. A sailor behind him loosed an arrow and, though the shot was true, the arrowhead shattered on impact with that hard grey metal, the shaft spinning off into the ever growing murk. A murmur of fear rumbled through the men.
“Stand fast, lads,” growled Beccorban. “There’s naught but flesh and bone under all that pretty armour.”
Someone screamed, keening their hatred and Beccorban spun around to see who had made the noise.
It was Callistan, and he charged. Alone.
Callistan held his sword low as he ran, making the tall knights raise their weapons in defence. Yet he was not about to blunt his blade on that dull grey plate — he had learned that lesson at the country house. Instead, as he crossed the short span of the gangplank, he threw himself forward, ramming his shoulder into the thighs of the largest enemy. The metal giant folded at the waist, slipping and falling without a sound into the spume below. Callistan swore he could hear the crunch as the warrior was caught between the two warships.
A sword swept down from above and Callistan rolled away from the edge on to his feet. The enemy’s blade bit deeply into the wood and stuck there. Callistan whistled and his opponent looked up. He could not make out anything behind that helm but he imagined fear on the knight’s bizarre face and it made him grin. He kicked down savagely with his heel and felt the bones of the knight’s fingers — still wrapped around the hilt of the huge sword — snap like firewood. The knight drew its hand back quickly but Callistan swept up with his falcata and felt the parting resistance of strange flesh as he cut off the arm at the shoulder.
The knight fell to his knees and Callistan drew back his sword for the killing blow, but a sailor from the Lussido rushed past him, leaping high to bury a stiletto in the knight’s visor. It fell backwards, dead. A mob of men followed, none of them armoured but all of them seething with anger and fear.
“Come, horseman!” called Beccorban. “There’s work to do yet!” The big man jumped down on to the enemy deck, flailing and felling with his hammer.
Callistan joined the fray and the men of the Lussido pushed the enemy back. These foul, eerie creatures had harried and hurt them. They had chased them from their homeland and sought them on the sea, and though for many of them Veria and Daegermund itself were borrowed homelands, each fought like they were dremani.
The sailors quickly realised that their strength lay in numbers. These tall enemies were formidable but they could be hacked down to size if attacked from many different angles. Still, even when there were only a few of the knights left, they fought on, oblivious to the corpses of their comrades and the stink of death all around. The last two remaining knights were herded against the thick trunk of the mainmast. They had finally learned that to be surrounded was to die.
The men of the Lussido were exhausted and had lost almost half of their number. They backed away and stood waiting. Callistan and Beccorban stepped forward. Callistan had slipped in som
e blood and his once white tunic, already singed and burned, was now stained a dark crimson on one side, giving him the appearance of some demonic harlequin.
“Throw down your weapons,” said Beccorban, panting.
Callistan spat and ignored Beccorban’s disapproving frown.
The tall knights did not answer, so Callistan walked over to a thick tangle of rigging and hacked at it with his sword. Before the knights could react, they were swamped in the heavy black folds of the mainsail. The men nearby attacked as one, without orders, only stopping when fatigue demanded that they must. Pools of watery black blood ran from the broken things under the canvas.
Each man caught his breath and then somebody shouted, “Fourfinger!”
Callistan went rigid and spun on his heel. He tightened his hand around his weapon.
“Fourfinger!” came another voice and he realised that they were all smiling. At him.
“Fourfinger! Fourfinger! Four-fin-ger!” The men of the Lussido cheered and clapped and waved their weapons, all the while shouting the refrain that Beccorban had meant as an insult. Callistan looked over at the big man accusingly but he just shrugged and then broke into a grin. He smiles like a horse, Callistan thought.
“There’s more below!” somebody stumbled into the circle of men. “Scores of them, below decks!”
The men rushed to the nearest hatch with Callistan in the lead and Beccorban looming behind with his hammer’s killing end close enough to kiss. Callistan descended the steep steps one at a time — in truth he climbed down them. As he reached the bottom he could just about make out a long, high-ceilinged deck. A low moan sounded from somewhere off to the left. There were small holes all along the deck at floor level, though he could not tell if they were regularly placed — there were silhouettes in the way.
He called for a lantern and the men behind him gasped as the light chased away the shadows. Before them sat bench after bench of human prisoners. Each had suffered the amputation of their legs below the knee and were held on their seats by great iron pins that pierced their abdomens as well as leather straps that held their bloodied thighs in place. Across their laps lay great black oars.
