Dangerous Waters

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Hosh was soon proved right. The rustle of reeds grew louder and Corrain realised they were rowing into a shallow estuary. The thrum of the planking beneath his feet told him when the galley grounded, even before the whip master’s muted shouts saw their anchors thrown overboard.

  Not that Corrain would have called them anchors; great slabs of stone pierced to hold crude barbs of oiled wood, rope knotted around a central groove. That was a puzzle, when Aldabreshin smiths made the finest swords he’d ever seen. Why was there so little everyday metalwork in the Archipelago?

  Or armour, come to that. Corrain pursued that thought as he hauled on his oar. Granted, some of the corsairs wore astonishingly finely wrought chain mail, the riveted links smaller than the curve of his smallest finger nail. But he’d rarely seen any raider wearing a decent cuirass or breast plate and never one that was Aldabreshin-made rather than stolen from the mainland.

  Corrain looked down at his feet. The Aldabreshi must use up every pennyweight of ore making slave chains. Those were certainly made with as much skill as their swords. Careful to remain unobserved, Corrain had tested every link, lock and hinge of his shackles, chains and manacles. He hadn’t found a single weakness.

  He watched one of the overseer slaves unlocking the end of the long, heavy chain that secured their fettered ankles. At the man’s nod, Hosh began dragging it along, through the smaller loops of chain that hobbled the rowers. Corrain watched the overseer hang the ring of keys back around his neck.

  Getting hold of those was about as likely as getting his hands on the Tormalin Emperor’s crown. Corrain watched the overseer unlock the next chain. Even if he had the keys, Corrain had calculated that he couldn’t possibly unlock enough slaves fast enough for them to stand any chance of fighting back against the armed corsairs.

  The whip master shouted again and the silent slave who sat between Hosh and Corrain shoved his way past to climb up onto the central walkway.

  ‘We’re to take the water barrels ashore,’ Hosh explained, unnecessarily.

  Corrain nodded. Taking the little barrels ashore to a spring, slinging them on poles to carry them back, this was a practised routine. Though so far, they’d always done that on some empty Archipelagan isle.

  Hosh was listening as the overseers and the whip master talked. One of the overseers didn’t seem too happy. The whip master rebuked him soundly.

  ‘We drank too much water,’ Hosh murmured, ‘because so many rowers were sick.’

  He broke off as the closest overseer clapped his hands sharply together. Slow and careful with his feet shackled, Corrain climbed up onto the walkway. As Hosh followed, the overseer grabbed his arm, snapping harsh orders.

  Hosh nodded and addressed the rest of the rowers. ‘We must take these smaller barrels ashore and fill them with water, to refill the big casks in the hold. Otherwise we might run short before we get home.’

  It wasn’t the first time the boy had been ordered to translate for the Archipelagans, since they’d realised he’d mastered their tongue. The whip master had finally been forced to accept that however hard he lashed the newly enslaved mainlanders, no amount of bleeding would induce them to understand Aldabreshin.

  Corrain didn’t necessarily like it. On the other hand, if Hosh was considered useful, surely that offered him some added protection amid the brutalities of this life.

  Shouts at prow and stern indicated the anchors were secure. Corrain watched the red-headed Forest youth scramble awkwardly onto the central walkway. The chain between his ankles was painfully short for his naturally long stride.

  Corrain had been watching him. Ashore, the youth had kept himself to himself, shunning both conversation and conflict. Disappearing into the ragged trees, he’d found somewhere safe to sleep that Corrain hadn’t discovered.

  Afloat, the red-head had concentrated on mastering his oar’s demands. Corrain had watched him gauge how to husband his energies without risking the whip for slacking. Too many of the other newcomers wrenched their oars back and forth in a panic, only to exhaust themselves and suffer the very lashing they had feared.

  As Corrain reached the galley’s stern platform, he looked down into the lamp-lit hold, through the open hatch. Slaves were shifting the bundles of dried fish, the barrels of salted meat and sacks of unmilled grain that had been stolen earlier that day. An Archipelagan tossed aside a haunch of freshly killed mutton. The bloody muslin wrappings smelled repellently rank.

  Hosh had said this raid was to steal supplies to fuel the summer’s assaults. The old blind corsair said the omens promised a season of unequalled plunder.

  They weren’t just stealing food. Corrain also saw a heap of tanned cattle hides. That made sense now that he’d seen how most of the corsairs’ armour was made from thick leather. Those hides would be boiled in oil or, more noxious still, in urine demanded at sword-point from the slaves. Wet and steaming, the leather could be shaped around a man’s thickly greased body before it cooled and hardened. Corrain had seen how the corsairs liked to prove their valour to each other, not flinching from the ordeal.

  ‘Why are they so wary?’ He ducked his head to hide a sneer, seeing Archipelagan archers vigilant in all directions. What did they expect to attack them out here? Marsh eels?

  Hosh was looking out to sea. ‘A lot of the galleys take on water here before they head south. Fall foul of the wrong ship coming here tonight and we could lose all this booty to them, never mind finding ourselves sold on to a new master at another slave market.’

  That was an unwelcome prospect, given the very real possibility that he and the boy would get separated. Beyond that, Corrain couldn’t see why corsair losses would be any concern of his. He shuffled towards the stern ladders fixed on both sides of the upthrust stern post. He climbed carefully down, wary of tripping over the chain linking his shackles. The water was cold and reached to his waist. Mud squelched between his toes. The river was brackish enough to sting the raw galls around his ankles.

  Slaves on board handed down the empty water barrels, each one small enough for a man to circle his arms around. Corrain shouldered one, no great burden empty, and waded towards the shore, to find a stretch of firmer land lurking amid the reeds.

  What a fresh torment this was, when he’d thought life as a corsair slave could no longer surprise him. To stand on Caladhrian soil and know he’d be leaving before the first hint of dawn.

  Hosh had gone on ahead, already telling the newly-enslaved they would eat once their labours were over. Corrain followed the red-headed youth as one of the overseers led the way along the solid ground. The man stopped and nodded to the first slave in line. Corrain guessed this stream threading through the reeds must be sweet enough to drink. The red-headed slave was looking around, contemplating the marshes.

  Corrain caught his eye. ‘Do you reckon we’ll get some of the bread they stole or the usual steamed grain and grit?’ He dumped his barrel on the squelching ground and held out a hand. ‘I’m Corrain.’

  After a moment’s consideration, the Forest youth set down his barrel and offered his own empty hand. ‘I’m Kusint.’

  Corrain felt sword calluses on the youth’s palm. ‘Is that an Ensaimin name?’

  When the parliament had last met in Trebin, Corrain had still been a captain in Lord Halferan’s guard. A good many traders from Ensaimin made the journey across the White River to mingle with Caladhria’s barons. He heard something of that accent in the younger man’s voice.

  ‘Ensaimin?’ Kusint’s lips twitched in a half smile. ‘No. I’m Soluran.’

  ‘Saedrin’s stones! How did you end up here?’

  Corrain had never met anyone from that distant kingdom, so far beyond even the Great Forest that once marked the limit of the Old Tormalin Empire.

  ‘Why should I tell you?’ Kusint withdrew his hand.

  Corrain shrugged. ‘In return for a jug of ale, if we find ourselves a tavern?’

  ‘I’ve yet to see one of those among the Aldabreshi,’ Kusint rema
rked.

  Corrain held his gaze. ‘Shall we look elsewhere?’

  Kusint’s green eyes hardened. ‘In these marshes?’

  Corrain could see he’d already assessed the idiocy of fleeing into the trackless saltings, exhausted and hampered by chains. Did the realisation pain him as much as it did Corrain?

  ‘And be dead before dawn?’ Corrain shook his head. ‘No— Shit!’

  A whip bit deep into his shoulder. One of the overseers hissed incomprehensible abuse. Kusint swiftly picked up his barrel, ducking his head, apologetic, before making haste to fill it.

  Curbing an urge to strangle the Archipelagan swine with his own lash, Corrain did the same. Hosh hurried towards him, bringing a pole and a rope sling to carry the barrel.

  ‘It’s a lick.’ Corrain knocked the lad’s hand away from the oozing gash. ‘My own fault.’

  Hosh would have said something but the other overseer summoned him with an irate yell. Corrain quickly set his barrel down and went over to Kusint who was struggling to untangle a sling.

  ‘Let me help.’

  The Forest youth took a step back. ‘I can manage.’

  Corrain saw his eyes following Hosh, hooded with suspicion.

  ‘Hosh is a friend,’ Corrain assured him.

  ‘He’s lackey to the slavers,’ the red-head snarled.

  Corrain shook his head. ‘He only grovels to the scum to keep his hide whole,’

  ‘You expect me to believe he killed a man in that cursed circle?’ Kusint was glaring at Hosh.

  ‘I’ll swear it to any god you wish.’ There would time enough to explain how Hosh had been thrown into combat against a half-dead simpleton for their captors’ vile amusement. He took the tangle of rope from Kusint’s hand. ‘So where did you do your soldiering?’

  ‘Who says I’ve been soldiering?’ Kusint slapped viciously at one of the night’s biting insects.

  ‘I know a soldier’s skills when I see them, with sword or pole arm,’ Corrain assured him, ‘even if Solurans learn different drills to Caladhrians.’

  Kusint cocked his head. ‘How do you know so much?’

  ‘Me and Hosh were troopers in Lord Halferan’s guard, a barony somewhere along this very coast.’ Corrain slung the rope around the heavy barrel and laid it on its side to thread the pole through the loops. He looked up. ‘Care to share your allegiance?’

  Kusint paused for so long that Corrain didn’t think he was going to answer. Then he shrugged, stooping to lift one end of the pole up onto his shoulder.

  ‘I signed on the muster with Captain General Evord Fal Breven. We won the war in Lescar, or so I hear, but not before my company was ambushed by brigands. We were sold down the river to Relshaz’s slavers.’

  Corrain silently rejoiced to hear bitterness to equal his own. Kusint would never be reconciled to this life, any more than he would. This news was unexpected all the same. He shouldered the back end of the pole and they began walking back towards the galley. ‘Which duke did your captain-general serve?’

  Lescar’s dukes tore at each other like cats in a sack, Corrain knew, for sake of a high king’s crown that no one had ever worn in all the generations since the Old Empire fell. When they ran short of vassals to send to pointless deaths, they hired mercenary companies with coin squeezed from their tenants. He remembered hearing rumours that peasants unable to pay the levy were sold to those Relshazri who’d long accommodated the Aldabreshin lust for slaves. One way or another, the dukes would get their money.

  As Kusint answered, although Corrain couldn’t see his face, he could hear an unexpected grin in the Soluran’s words. ‘No duke. An alliance of exiles from across Ensaimin joined forces with malcontents within Lescar. They hired Captain-general Evord to raise an army to throw down all the dukes. I enlisted as they marched through the Forest. I had a fancy to see somewhere new.’ He sighed. ‘Be careful what you wish for, isn’t that what they say?’

  Corrain was too astonished to answer. He had long known that any Lescari with a handful of wits fled their homeland, especially when the dukes’ bloody skirmishing erupted into full scale warfare. Such vagabonds would drift along the coast or traipse the high roads into Caladhria. The parliament disapproved of vagrants, so barons’ troopers with dogs and staves kept them moving onwards. Corrain had done his share of telling such unfortunates to seek better luck elsewhere. From what he’d heard in Trebin, most ended up in Ensaimin, amid that patchwork of fiefdoms and city states.

  Where it seemed that some had prospered sufficiently to raise themselves an army. Corrain wondered what the barons’ parliament had made of that.

  ‘So what about you?’ Kusint prompted. ‘How did you end up in these chains?’

  Corrain looked warily around. While he’d seen no sign that the whip master or overseers understood any Tormalin, there were enough mainlander slaves who would. None of them were too close. He lowered his voice all the same.

  ‘We were betrayed, me and Hosh, our comrades in arms and our liege-lord, Halferan. A man called Minelas led us straight into a band of corsairs’ clutches.’ Hatred all but choked him. ‘After taking our lord’s gold and promising to defeat them.’

  Kusint halted at the edge of the water, twisting to look back at Corrain, disbelieving. ‘How could one man promise to defeat a whole band of raiders?’

  Corrain could see the hope in his face nonetheless. Kusint sought some way out of these chains as fervently as he did.

  Corrain hesitated. Though Lord Halferan was a year and more dead, he was still loath to reveal their baron’s secret. ‘Not a man. A mage.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kusint turned away, disappointed, hefting the pole again. ‘So it was just lies.’

  They began wading out towards the galley, arms braced to lift the pole high to keep the barrel clear of the water. When they reached the stern ladders, slaves at the top tossed down the net used to haul the heavy barrels up. With one last effort, Hosh and Corrain hefted their burden into the mesh, rope sling, pole and all.

  As it slid upwards, Corrain stooped to wash the whip cut on his shoulder. Gritting his teeth against the sting of the saltier water, he scrubbed harder. He couldn’t risk it festering.

  ‘He wasn’t lying,’ he said distantly. ‘He really was a wizard. I saw his magic for myself. He killed a handful of my friends with it, so the corsair leader could murder my lord.’

  Corrain wondered if he would ever see that giant corsair again, with those gold chains plaited into his beard. On some Caladhrian beach or trading island, not merely in his dreams. Corrain had woken so many times after ripping a sword through the villain’s throat or spilling his entrails with a dagger.

  The Forest lad was frowning. ‘I thought your wizards were forbidden to kill. When there was rumour of magic at work in Lescar, everyone said that it was impossible.’

  ‘So Planir of Hadrumal told us.’ Corrain’s throat tightened as he recalled Lord Halferan’s anguish at the Archmage’s dismissal. ‘But this Minelas, he said that he would help us for the sake of natural justice.’

  And they had all been deceived, even their wise and noble lord. Because Halferan was desperate. Because Minelas was so poisonously plausible, with his open and courteous manner.

  Corrain should have thought it through. Mage or not, any man betraying a lifetime’s oath should never be truly trusted.

  He looked around the moonlit estuary. It had been so long since he’d spoken of any of this. He’d thought he’d become accustomed to that ever-present pain; the ache of knowing how utterly he’d failed his oath and his allegiance. Putting it into words prompted more anguish than he could bear.

  If he tried to flee, was there any chance he could escape? Would the Aldabreshin arrows miss him in the dimness? Could he outstrip the searching raiders, burdened with these fetters? Could he hide somewhere in the reeds until they were forced to quit the hunt, the galley drawn away by the tides?

  ‘Corrain?’ It was Hosh, floundering in the sucking mud.

  No. He c
ouldn’t try to flee now, not with the fool boy in tow, and he couldn’t leave Hosh to suffer whatever revenge the whip master would inflict on him.

  But that didn’t mean they couldn’t escape. They’d been talking of nothing else, the two of them, when they could find some peace and privacy. They had finally come up with a plan which would work as well, if not better, with three. If it worked at all.

  Corrain seized Kusint’s elbow to stop him climbing back aboard just yet. ‘Can you handle a small boat? Can you swim?’ He couldn’t and neither could Hosh but they’d agreed that couldn’t deter them.

  ‘I can swim,’ Kusint said slowly, ‘and I know something of boats. I was raised beside a river that makes your Rel look like a rain-fed stream.’

  Corrain looked steadily at him. ‘We have a plan to escape these slavers. It’s not without risk.’

  ‘Life without risk is like meat without salt.’ Kusint grinned with a recklessness born of unforeseen hope.

  A belligerent shout from up on the galley startled Hosh so badly that he nearly lost his footing. ‘We have to get back aboard!’

  He scrambled for the ladder. Corrain and Kusint followed with every appearance of cowed obedience.

  As Kusint grasped the rungs, he nodded at Corrain. ‘Till later, then.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Halferan Manor, Caladhria

  21st of Aft-Spring

  ‘YOU WON’T DELAY your departure?’ Zurenne swallowed. She didn’t want her voice to tremble. ‘The skies do look ominous.’

  As Baron Licanin looked from the groom leading his horse from the stable to the scudding clouds above, the lady wizard spoke up.

  ‘It won’t rain today, my lord, not before sunset. You’ll have no trouble on the road.’

  Zurenne could have slapped the woman. She had, in those reveries she allowed herself in the manor’s silent shrine. The lady wizard showed no shred of piety and never followed her there.