by Kai Meyer
The kobalins possessed no bodily strength. Their advantage was in their sheer mass. When one died, two others slid forward into his place. When one was wounded and fell to the ground, those behind did not trouble about him but jumped, climbed, and crept on over him. Thus they trampled many of their own fighters to death and filled the hearts of the defenders with horror at their cold-bloodedness and cruelty.
Buenaventure no longer counted how many he killed. Again and again he slashed a broad swathe in the flood of attackers. After a while his opponents grew fewer; it was as if more and more of them made a detour around him and instead turned against Walker and the other men. So Buenaventure had time to take a breath, and in that brief moment when time was frozen, he realized the truth about the alleged strategy of the kobalins: There was none! They followed no strategy, no elaborate battle plan. And it wasn’t the will to victory that drove them up to the enemy walls, but sheer panic. Whatever it was that their leader had threatened them with in case of defeat, it must be much worse than death by a saber blade.
Buenaventure caught sight of one of their chieftains under the water. He wore a head ornament of a set of open shark’s jaws, which he’d put over his head like a helmet. His ugly face peered out between the open jaws. On both sides he’d fastened the arms of an octopus, which hung down from his head like braids. He was screeching and gesticulating excitedly, and with every movement of his head the octopus arms dangled and whirled crazily.
With one leap Buenaventure jumped from the crest of the defense wall into the water, in the midst of the squealing, roaring, shimmering mass of the kobalins. He heard Walker call after him and swear, but he had no time to look around. Again he let both blades whirl, the short straight one and the curved toothed one, and both cut into fishy kobalin flesh and sowed death in the ranks of the enemy. He wasn’t proud of the many small victories; he felt no triumph when they avoided him and fled before him. All was only a means to the end, steps on his way to the goal.
And that goal was the chieftain.
The kobalin with the shark head ornament noticed the doom that was approaching him when he briefly stopped screaming orders and let his arms drop. For a moment he looked a little dumbfounded, his slits of eyes widened and revealed coin-sized fish pupils. Then he called over his soldiers in his chattering, exhorting speech.
Too late.
Buenaventure reached him on a trail of lifeless kobalins. The lane that the pit bull man had slashed clear around him had closed behind him again after a few steps. And yet none dared to fall on him from behind. Instead the kobalins stormed unbroken up the wall, where they were received by the blades of the defenders, but as far as they were concerned, they chose one skirmish over the other.
Buenaventure had eyes only for the chieftain. The creature bared his teeth, and now the pit bull man realized what barbaric purpose the shark jaws had: As an additional pair of jaws around the kobalin’s head, it doubled the fearsome sight of his own horrible teeth. The chieftain might have put another opponent to flight that way. But not a veteran of the fighting pits.
The pit bull man’s saber whistled down, cut through the lifeless octopus arms, splintered the shark’s jaw, and beheaded the chieftain in a single blow.
A high whimpering and wailing arose, and the wave of attackers stopped. The death of the chieftain didn’t decide the battle, wasn’t even the fraction of a victory. And yet it gained the defenders of the northern wall a moment of rest.
The kobalins withdrew. Those who’d just emerged from the water slid under the waves. Others whirled themselves round and rushed back into the surf. And many who were not fast enough to follow the stream of their brothers to the water were killed by the men and women on the walls.
A moment’s pause, no more. It wouldn’t be long before another chieftain took the place of the dead one, browbeat the attackers again, and formed them into further assaults. But for a moment the fighting on this part of the foremost wall died down.
Walker leaped down from the barricade, killed a straggler, and ran to Buenaventure. With an exuberant mixture of curses and jubilant cries he hugged his friend, and the two returned to the wall together, gathered their strength, cleaned their wounds, and waited together for the next wave of attackers.
They knew it was coming when the first dead fish rained down from the sky. Sparkling silver, as if the stars themselves were plunging into the sea.
Griffin clutched the reins of the flying ray. The shock of his marksman’s death had struck him so hard that he’d almost broken out of the ray riders’ ring formation. But then he got himself and the animal under control again, and for a few seconds he was too busy guiding the ray back into his path to think about Rorrick.
Only when he had the flight stabilized did the knowledge of his marksman’s death overwhelm him again. He could still see Rorrick sitting behind him, even feel him, although his body had long vanished under the waves. The picture was overlaid by Rorrick’s last seconds, the lance, then the fall.
Griffin’s muscles were cramped. His knuckles showed white, as if they’d burst the skin at any moment. Thousands of thoughts were shooting through his head. Fear of a second lance. Despair that everything they were doing was in vain. And above all, the certainty that he bore the blame for Rorrick’s fate.
If he’d made the ray fly faster; if he’d flown higher or deeper; if he’d paid attention to where in the water most of the lances were coming from—well, then Rorrick would probably still be alive. But he hadn’t done any such thing. And Rorrick was dead.
He was on the brink of just giving up. He was a pirate, not a soldier. He’d often fought—if not so often as he might have claimed earlier—and he’d seen men die and ships sink. But this was something different. This was a war. Not a skirmish at sea, not a raid on sluggish, ponderous trader galleons.
War, he thought once again. And suddenly the idea of killing and being killed had nothing daredevil about it anymore, and certainly nothing heroic. In these moments it didn’t matter who felt himself in the right, who was forced to fight, or who followed a lofty ideal.
We’ll all die, he thought. Then an unexpected objectivity came over him, which frightened him almost more than the despair that had held him in its spell first.
We all will, went through his mind. Every one of us.
Jolly too.
He took his hands from the reins and rubbed his eyes with his palms, so hard that it hurt and he saw fiery wheels rotating before his eyes. Then a bit more of his reason came back.
“Griffin!”
D’Artois’s voice made him look to the right. The captain had brought his ray right alongside Griffin. The wings of both animals were almost touching, a chasm of emptiness yawning between them.
“Griffin, you must go back to the shore. There are more marksmen there. You mustn’t give up now!” The captain’s face was dead serious, his cheek muscles working determinedly. “Do it, Griffin! Now!”
Griffin nodded jerkily, then he let his ray drop six feet down and turned it around. At a narrow angle, really too sharp for such a placid animal, he broke out of the ray orbit toward the inside and flew up toward the coral cliffs of Aelenium. Beneath him, in the waters between the two sea star arms, the waves looked as if they were boiling, while everywhere skinny kobalin arms poked up through the surf and flung lances into the sky. None came close enough to Griffin to threaten him.
The place where Griffin had started out lay on the opposite side of the city. He had the choice of going around the cliff, with its gables and towers, or gaining altitude and flying over. He decided on the second choice.
The ray shot over the gaps between the houses of the city, over narrow lanes and steep gables, tower points with twiglike coral battlements, and the outermost roofs of the palace. Griffin saw the familiar buildings beneath him to his right and the Poets’ Quarter, in which the Hexhermetic Shipworm continued to dream in his silken cocoon. He also could see—far away—the lower defense wall, just above the place where
the sea star point ended in the massive mountain cone. Somewhere there Walker and Buenaventure were fighting, but at that distance he couldn’t make them out anywhere.
On that side of the city, in the north, beyond the water and over the fog, black clouds of smoke were rising, and occasionally the booming echo of distant cannon thunder drifted over. The Antilles captains were fighting against the fleet of the cannibal king. The sea battle appeared to be still undecided.
Griffin saw something else in his flyby, up in the center of the city, where the buildings were the highest. He was too shattered by Rorrick’s death to be able to process the whole complex at the first look, but then he recognized it. It was the library, where Forefather’s rooms were, the holiest of the holy temple of knowledge in the sea star city.
On one of the balconies, a semicircle with bizarre coral outgrowths pointing in all directions like frozen arms, two men were observing the battle.
Forefather and the Ghost Trader.
They stood side by side, motionless, not looking at each other but staring out at the rings of ray riders rotating in opposite directions around the mountain cone. At countless points within the flock there were flashes and then reports when the marksmen fired their weapons toward the water. The kobalins answered their attacks with a black hail of lances from below.
The Trader’s hands were extended from beneath his dark robe and clutching the edge of the balustrade. Forefather was supporting himself with both hands on a stick that towered over him by a head. Griffin could see that their lips were moving, but the sound of the battle and the rushing of the ray’s wings drowned out their words.
The ray bore him past the balustrade, barely a stone’s throw from the two mysterious figures. Griffin felt a prickling on his skin, a tickling and scratching, as there sometimes was over the deck of a ship when a mighty stroke of lightning came too close. Like an invisible explosion, the certainty flared in him that there were things happening on this balcony that would decide the fate of Aelenium, perhaps of the entire world.
Suddenly the battle was only half as important and certainly not decisive. This was all taking place just to win time. Time for Jolly and Munk, but perhaps also for something else.
He shuddered as he tried to imagine what that might be. His imagination failed at the task. He was almost glad of it.
The balcony with Forefather and the Trader was behind him. He was uncertain if they’d noticed the single rider on his ray, off course outside the ring formation and near them.
Griffin shook himself, got his head clear again, and looked for his landing place in the confusion of narrow streets. What was he fighting for? To that, at least, he had an answer.
Certainly not for Aelenium. Not even for himself.
Most of all he was fighting for Jolly.
Up on the balustrade, dozens of fathoms over the turmoil of the battle, Forefather’s hands clutched his long stick. The liver spots on the backs of his hands were stretched, and the Ghost Trader could imagine he heard the old man’s knuckles crack.
Above them, on a coral ledge, sat the two black parrots, Hugh and Moe. Two pairs of eyes, each a different color, stared impassively down on what was happening below.
“We cannot wait any longer,” Forefather said in a hoarse voice. It was even hoarser than usual from the long, sometimes excited conversation. “You must do what has to be done.”
“No, not before the second wall falls,” countered the Ghost Trader. “I’ve said it many times, and I say it again: The danger is too great. And the price…” He let the words die away with a somber shake of his head. “The price could be higher than we can imagine.”
“Against that are hundreds of deaths. And perhaps the final destruction.”
“The one can produce that as well as the other. Let’s not argue about it anymore, old friend. I’ve made my decision. Until now they’ve held the first wall. After that we have the second. And only then…” Again he broke off.
“You’re still placing all your hopes on the polliwogs.” Forefather surveyed him out of eyes that had watched the eons pass the way a mortal does the ebb and flow of the tides.
“And why not?”
Forefather shook his gray head. “What makes you so sure of them that you would risk everything?”
“There’s no certainty, I know that.” The Ghost Trader hesitated. “But I know the boy. He has the power that is needed.”
“But does he also possess the sense of responsibility and the wisdom that such a task requires?”
“That is why Jolly is with him.”
“She’s still a child too.”
The one-eyed one smiled sadly as he looked at Forefather. Above, both parrots titled their heads. “Still a child, you said, not only a child. And you know why. You know the difference.”
“But you also know what happened the last time. We both witnessed it, very much like today. We stood by and watched and were unable to change it.” He sighed. “Even then we were too weak.”
“Today we are wiser.”
“Are we?” Forefather giggled hoarsely. “I’m older than you, but even I am still waiting for the wisdom of age. Gradually I’ve given up hope of ever attaining it.”
The Ghost Trader smiled again. “At least you’ve learned to know the obstinacy of age.”
“If I were as obstinate as you think, I’d force you to do everything necessary. Instead I’m trying to convince you, and I am forced to observe how unsuccessful I am.”
The Trader suddenly grew serious. “It won’t work. Not yet. Only if there’s no other way out.”
“We’ve seen so many die, you and I. So many squandered lives in all the ages.”
Over the water the ray riders formed into a single broad ring, which moved closer around the cliffs of the city. They’d given up trying to free the waters of the kobalins as far as the fog. Instead they were concentrating on the shores and on the waves of attackers who surged up from the surf there.
“It’s raining dead fish in the north,” said Forefather, pointing to the flashes in front of the fog background. The evening sun bathed the edge of the clouds in a reddish yellow firelight. From a distance a rain of sparks seemed to be falling in front of the fog.
“Then he’s here,” said the Ghost Trader. “He comes late.”
“Not late enough.”
“Hardly.”
Again the old man turned to the Trader. “You can change the dying into stories, my friend. But more stories have been told about the two of us than anyone could ever collect or write down. Doesn’t that mean that we are, in a sense, long dead?”
The Ghost Trader thought about it, then he nodded. “Perhaps we just haven’t noticed it yet.”
On the Kobalin Path
Can’t be much farther to the center of the earth, Jolly thought gloomily. She felt as though she and Munk had been running through this darkness for a lifetime. Aina had led them through the ruins of the sunken coral city, on a downward slope. Two or three times they’d come to the edges of dark chasms and had to dive down along the rock walls. And they were always going farther down.
Once Aina warned them not to take the direct way along a row of remarkable rock chimneys from whose tops rose something that looked like black smoke. It actually was the boiling, ash-filled water out of the maw of the earth.
“Undersea volcanoes,” Aina explained, adding that the warm waters around the craters were inhabited by all kinds of animals that were better not encountered.
Jolly soon saw that Aina had been right to warn them. In the distance, almost at the limit of her polliwog sight, Jolly saw mighty silhouettes eddying around the chimneys. The creatures resembled white-skinned morays with gigantic mouths and repellent light feelers that arose between half-blind eyes. The polliwogs might have fallen victim to them had Aina not led them in an arc around the crater. As she did so the girl kept urging them to hurry, especially if they had to deal with detours like this.
She didn’t speak about it often, but
she seemed to be very worried about her friends, whom she’d left behind in the clutches of the Maelstrom. Perhaps she also felt guilty for what had happened.
More than once, Jolly imagined how Aina might have been in those days when she left to go to the Maelstrom. Had she undertaken her fate as willingly as Munk? Or had she felt as Jolly had?
They left the chimneys and their warm waters behind them. Aina went first, followed by Munk and Jolly, who kept her eye on the jagged rocky landscape on both sides of them.
“Aren’t you afraid?” Jolly asked the strange girl suddenly.
“Of the Maelstrom? Certainly. I—”
“No, I didn’t mean that. If we really should succeed in destroying him and freeing your friends…then you’ll come back up to the surface with us, won’t you?”
Aina hesitated. Then she nodded slowly.
“The world today is a whole lot different from your time. Everything has changed.”
“Not people,” said Aina, and a bitter expression played around the corners of her mouth. “People never change.”
Jolly exchanged a look with Munk. “What do you mean by that?”
The girl didn’t answer right away. She seemed to be thinking, as if there were suddenly a wall between her and her memories that she had to overcome first. “People weren’t good to me. They were afraid because I was different from them. We could do things that—”
“That they couldn’t do,” Munk finished her sentence.
Jolly’s feelings wavered between agreement and amazement. She knew what it meant to be different. But wasn’t that ultimately only a question of the people you surrounded yourself with? The pirates aboard the Skinny Maddy had themselves been outcasts, the lepers of society—and they’d accepted Jolly for what she was.
Munk’s bitterness, on the other hand, obviously applied to the inhabitants of Aelenium. Certainly he’d enjoyed their honoring him as a savior. However, maybe their admiration had only been the mask behind which they concealed their fear of the polliwogs? Suddenly this idea didn’t seem at all farfetched to Jolly. Perhaps Munk had just seen through the people much sooner than she had, and now he shared Aina’s dislike.
