Dangerous Waters

by Juliet E. McKenna

  ‘What was—’ Before Zurenne could ask, she was horrified to see Jilseth slump on the seat, insensible.

  The lady wizard fell heavily against Master Rauffe. His hands were full with managing the rebellious horses as the coach rocked and swayed, discarded possessions on the highway jolting their wheels. He threw Jilseth off with a heave of his elbow before he realised what he had done. She pitched forward, unable to save herself.

  ‘Madam mage!’ he cried, aghast.

  Zurenne’s choice was no choice at all. She had to let the enchanted mirror fall to grab hold of Jilseth’s gown. Only her other hand on the seat’s rail saved them both from a deadly tumble into the traces and chains and the horses’ hooves pounding on either side of the carriage pole.

  ‘My lady—’ Master Rauffe thrust out a hand to help push Jilseth backwards. The carriage swayed alarmingly.

  ‘See to your horses!’ Zurenne managed to wrap her arm around the unconscious lady wizard’s waist. As long as the carriage didn’t overturn entirely, she and Jilseth were as safe as she could make them. Until the corsairs seized them.

  She could only hope that Raselle and Mistress Rauffe between them were keeping Lysha and Neeny safe, tossed around inside the carriage.

  The handle of the dagger which she’d demanded from Licanin dug into her side. She couldn’t spare a hand for the weapon. Would she be able to get into the carriage if the corsairs forced them to a halt? If she did, what could she possibly hope to do to defend her daughters from enslavement or worse?

  Her hand holding the seat rail ached. Every jolt threatened to tear her arm out of its socket. She could barely catch her breath. All she could do was watch Lord Licanin’s men galloping ahead.

  They had already forced a path through the terrified Halferans clogging the road. Now they spurred on to attack the corsairs, yelling obscenities with their swords raised high.

  ‘Slow this carriage!’ Zurenne yelled at Master Rauffe.

  If he couldn’t the horses would soon be trampling the closest Halferans. Master Rauffe’s reply was lost in the commotion. She didn’t ask again. Like the terror-stricken families huddled together on the highway, Zurenne couldn’t drag her gaze from the skirmish unfolding ahead.

  The numbers looked evenly matched. Wouldn’t mounted men have a decisive edge? That was some truism of battle which she recalled her husband mentioning.

  Perhaps not. One rider was already surrounded. Captain Arigo. Zurenne cried out with helpless anguish. His poor horse was falling victim to corsair blades slashing at its forelegs and hocks. The animal collapsed, its screams tearing the air. The portly guardsman, so long loyal to her and Halferan, vanished amid a murderous Archipelagan throng.

  Reven spurred his colt’s flanks bloody in a vain effort to save his captain. Heedless of his own safety, he set about the corsairs with crude sword strokes.

  Zurenne gasped. Held aloft, all the Licanin and Halferan swords had shone bright silver in the sunlight. Now as their blades hacked downwards, inky darkness flowed along the steel.

  Reven landed a glancing blow and the raider reeled away. Zurenne expected the barbarian to come back with a strike to be the death of the bold young trooper. Instead, the man stood frozen with shock. Even at this distance, Zurenne could see the lifeblood pouring from the Archipelagan’s wound.

  ‘Saedrin!’ she gasped, disbelieving.

  That slash on the corsair’s chest was gaping ever wider. Inside a breath it was as broad as a man’s hand, glistening scarlet splintered with bone. The deadly gash ripped upwards, snapping the man’s collarbone so that his sword arm hung useless. Loops of bowel bulged through the blood cascading down his belly and thighs.

  He threw back his head, screaming in unendurable agony. His shrieks ceased as he collapsed. As he toppled backwards, Zurenne saw he had been bodily torn apart. His corpse landed in the dust in two distinct halves.

  She saw other raiders trying to flee and mostly failing. The slightest scratch from a Caladhrian weapon grew into a mortal wound before a man could take a handful of steps. The highway was a slaughterhouse of severed limbs and pools of blood.

  ‘Come on!’ Master Rauffe lashed the carriage horses into a gallop. He didn’t give them a chance to shy away from the carnage. The frenzied animals plunged onwards, straining to escape the horrors littering the road.

  The way ahead lay clear. Any raiders who hadn’t suffered injury were scattering into the woods.

  ‘Onward!’ Lord Licanin appeared at Zurenne’s side, his horse lathered with sweat and spattered with blood.

  ‘Our people,’ Zurenne screamed, encumbered with Jilseth limp in her swoon.

  ‘They’re following,’ Licanin yelled before his horse outstripped the carriage.

  With Master Rauffe’s bellows urging the horses on, they soon caught up with the troopers whose swords glistened with that deadly darkness. Lord Licanin’s guards clustered around him, grim-faced. The Halferans drew up around the carriage. Zurenne saw vomit on the shoulder of Reven’s chestnut gelding. The boy looked at her, his face a mask of misery.

  ‘We must find help!’ Zurenne held Jilseth close as she shouted at what remained of her own household guard. ‘For those on the road behind us! The faster we ride, the sooner we can send swords back to save them!’

  The words rasped in her throat. Was there the remotest chance they would find anyone on the highway this side of Karpis Manor? Anyone other than murderous corsairs?

  She fell silent as the men formed up to ride ahead of the carriage, a few falling back with Lord Licanin to guard the rear. Zurenne felt sick at the thought of those they had left behind to the raiders’ brutalities. She could only cling on to the carriage’s seat and save Jilseth from falling as they reached the debatable shelter of the woodlands.

  This belt of woodland wasn’t a broad one, only there to serve the closest farms. They soon sped through it, reaching open farmland once again. Spiralling smoke smudged the horizon on either side, towards the sea and inland.

  Zurenne ignored such tokens of misery. She was scouring the clearer sky ahead for any plume of dust kicked up from the summer roads.

  She would have signed away every plough length of Halferan land, poured every coin from the manor’s strongroom’s coffers into Lord Karpis’s hands herself, in return for the sight of his liveried guards riding to their rescue.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Great Forest

  11th of Aft-Summer (Caladhrian Parliamentary Almanac)

  13th of Lekinar (Soluran calendar)

  CORRAIN HAD NO idea where he was. This cursed forest was full of different trees, each one shaped by chance and yet everything looked the same as far as he could see.

  Where had this Mandarkin brought him? Corrain looked down at the sleeping mage lying beside the log where he sat. The scrawny man’s head was pillowed on the saddlebags.

  Corrain paused in his whittling to brush curls of green wood off his breeches. Testing his belt knife with his thumb, he continued. The blade would serve a little longer before he needed to fetch out his whetstone.

  There’d been neither sight nor sound of anyone in this stretch of the woods; not since that startling moment the day before when a blast of white-hot light had swept them here.

  So the coin from the hollow stump had bought that much magic from the Mandarkin, and Corrain ventured to hope, some trust. After all, the mage could have used such wizardry to abandon him and to steal the gold for good measure.

  As they’d reached the hiding place, the mage had relaxed his hold on Corrain’s hand. That eerie insubstantiality hiding them had yielded to the welcome sight of solid flesh and bone. Soluran pursuit was echoing through the trees as Corrain had unbuckled the saddle bags. The Mandarkin’s eyes had gleamed as bright as the gold and everything had vanished in that furnace glow.

  Corrain touched his cheek with tentative fingers. His face hadn’t felt this sore since he’d been chained to his oar bench in the height of summer.

  How s
killed was this mage? Corrain hadn’t seen the lady wizard Jilseth suffer any such scorching. He looked down at the sleeping Mandarkin. When would the skinny bastard wake up?

  As soon as they’d arrived here, the starving man had ripped open the saddle bags, devouring whatever food he could find. Then he’d collapsed like a pole-axed sheep, unchewed meat still in his mouth. Corrain had noted that his last instinct had been to seize hold of the coin, both arms wrapped around the saddlebag as he slept.

  He looked up at the sunny sky. Last night, between fitful snatches of sleep, he’d contemplated the lopsided Greater Moon. It was definitely waning from its full as the Lesser waxed fat past its half. Corrain laid his carving aside on the log and checked his count on his fingers. These last few days were blurring into each other almost as much as the trees were.

  If he was correct, the most recent of the highest springing tides that the corsairs relied on would have come and gone two days ago. Had the Karpis and Tallat men succeeded in ambushing the raiding galleys? What of the three such tides before that? Had they shared their secret with the other barons’ guards up and down the coast, as Corrain had urged?

  Did he even need to come back with a wizard? Maybe the corsairs had been scared off, faced with resurgent, defiant mainlanders?

  Maybe so and maybe next festival it would rain soup and hail sausages. Lack of sleep must be making him light headed. Lack of sleep and food. He wished he hadn’t thought of soup and sausages. There couldn’t be any such feast to be had inside a hundred leagues and what little food remained was pinned under the Mandarkin’s vermin-ridden head.

  Corrain took a drink from his leather bottle. Wherever this place was, there were signs that the Mandarkin and his men had spent time here before. A fire pit had been dug, lined with stones and later refilled, while close at hand a reassuringly swift and clear spring flowed along a pebble-strewn bed.

  Was this place marked on the wizard woman’s map? If so, the Solurans hadn’t thought to come looking here. As soon as he woke at first light, Corrain had circled the campsite to make sure they were quite alone.

  So far. He wanted to be away from here as fast as possible. Deor or some other Forest Folk might come scavenging around such a campsite.

  The Mandarkin mage stirred. Not yet opening his eyes, he stretched his arms and legs and yawned.

  ‘Good day to you.’ Corrain poured water from his leather bottle into the crude cup he’d been shaping from a stubby branch snapped from a tree.

  The mage looked at the cup with some surprise before taking it and drinking deep. Corrain hoped he’d take the thing as a gift, rather than the insult it implied. He wasn’t letting that man’s lips touch any bottle which he must drink from.

  ‘Corrain. My name is Corrain.’ He tapped his chest in case there was any confusion.

  ‘Anskal. I am called—’ The Mandarkin broke off to swill some water around his mouth before swallowing. ‘Anskal.’

  Briefly, Corrain wondered what he’d just decided against saying. No matter. Now the mage was rested, they had far more urgent business to address. He’d waited long enough to explain, silently rehearsing his words as he whittled.

  ‘My home lies far away to the south,’ he began.

  ‘South is the home of dragons,’ the Mandarkin said instantly. ‘They are death to magekind.’

  Both his eyes and his speech were far clearer today, as he declared that scrap of lore.

  ‘I’ve never seen a dragon,’ Corrain assured the scrawny man. ‘They don’t live in our lands or anywhere close.’

  The Mandarkin pursed his chapped lips and then shrugged. ‘Forgive me. Continue.’

  ‘My home is attacked by men from the southern sea. We need a wizard to drive them away, to convince them never to return. They have no magic,’ Corrain added. ‘Not like the Solurans.’

  Anskal cocked his head, curious. ‘You have no wizards in your land?’

  ‘Not ones who will fight.’ Corrain did his best to contain his ire. He didn’t want the Mandarkin to think his contempt for Planir and Hadrumal extended to all mages. ‘They scry and—’ What did wizards really do, when it came down to it? ‘They help with other things.’

  Anskal considered this. ‘Your home, this is where you were born?’

  ‘Yes.’ Corrain nodded. ‘I am Caladhrian and my lord—’

  Anskal silenced him with an upraised finger and held out the cup. ‘More water.’ As Corrain obliged, he held out his empty hand. ‘Your knife.’

  Corrain managed to cover his hesitation by fumbling with a fold of his jerkin. Why would the mage try to stab him after they had shared a drink of water and their names? Anyway, if he tried, Corrain was confident that he could snap the little bastard’s arm before he could do much damage. He unsheathed the blade which Fitrel had given him, Halferan forged steel.

  ‘What—’ He snatched back his hand.

  Too late. Anskal had nicked his finger with the knife. Deft, the Mandarkin mage caught a smear of blood on the edge of the cup. He smiled at Corrain’s startlement.

  ‘As you grow, the land of your birth passes into your bone and blood.’ He swirled the water around to sluice the blood from the rim and passed a hand over the cup. Magelight showed green between his dirty fingers.

  As he looked into the spell, Anskal frowned. Corrain leaned forward to try to see the tiny vision.

  ‘Your home has suffered,’ Anskal warned.

  ‘We must return as soon as we can.’ Corrain set his jaw and looked away. It was better not to know for now. Or was it? What would his blood have shown Anskal of Halferan’s coastal villages? Surely he couldn’t mean the manor itself? ‘What—?’

  Too late. Anskal had emptied the cup onto the ground. He patted the saddlebag. ‘I will help you for gold and for a life far from here.’ His gesture took in the forest, Solura and Mandarkin beyond.

  ‘We will give you all that you wish for and more besides.’ Corrain nodded before pointing at the saddlebags himself. ‘But we will need some coin for the journey.’

  His thoughts were already racing ahead. Which way should they go from here? That depended on where Anskal had brought them. He wondered how close they were to the river and how much coin would it cost them to take a ship to the coast.

  Curse that for a fool’s notion. No Soluran vessel would give passage to a Mandarkin. They would have to head east. No one in Ensaimin would care who his travelling companion might be. East and then south. There must be some port on the Bay of Teshal where they could find safe passage to the Caladhrian coast. Any captain with a pennyweight of sense would welcome a wizard aboard if he was sailing to corsair-infested waters.

  He had better find the map which Kusint had drawn him. Corrain grimaced. He hoped the fool youth hadn’t fallen foul of those Solurans and their wizards, or that sneak Deor. Corrain didn’t like to think of Kusint being questioned, even threatened with violence, for answers he couldn’t possibly give.

  But there was nothing he could do about that. Kusint had made his choice, just as Corrain had. Now the most important thing, the only important thing was getting home to make sure that wizardry drove off those accursed corsairs for good. Maybe the Mandarkin would be able to read the map and tell him where they were. He reached for the saddlebag.

  ‘No coin.’ Anskal looked up, a dark glint in his eye, and seized Corrain’s bloody hand.

  This time the white light didn’t scorch him, though being swept off his feet left him reeling like a drunkard. The sensation was akin to staggering across a ship’s deck in the sort of storm that could break a ship in two. Or it would have been, if there had been anything beneath his boots. Thankfully the magic lasted barely a breath, even if that felt like half a life-time.

  ‘Your sword!’ Anskal shouted.

  Corrain had reached for his blade as soon as he felt solid ground under his soles. As his vision cleared, he saw the white light shooting outwards to scour a wide circle of cobbles free of drifting ash. Acrid smoke stung Corrain’s eyes. Wh
en he saw the scene before him, he would have wept regardless.

  Halferan was burning. Not some coastal village but the manor itself. The gatehouse must have gone up first. It was a barely smouldering shell, a ruin of half-burned wood and smoke-stained brickwork.

  Guard hall, stables and the steward’s dwelling were still throwing off heat to challenge the summer sun even if few flames were visible. Greedy fires roared, full throated, in the great hall, flickering through the shattered and sooty windows. The roof beams were beginning to yield. As Corrain took in the nightmare, a rafter fell in with a crash of breaking tiles.

  Raiders were searching the kitchen and the storehouses. Smashed doors and shutters hung askew on twisted hinges. Wasteful antics in the bake house and brewery had strewn malt and flour all around.

  Their arrival may have taken the corsairs unawares but sword-wielding raiders were now running forward with murder in their eyes. Anskal grinned. A twist of azure magelight swept up mingled dust and debris to blind them.

  As the Archipelagans retreated, coughing, their strangled yells of alarm brought others rushing from the unburned buildings. Anskal tossed up a handful of cerulean sparks. They drifted idly for a moment before darting straight for the foremost raiders. As one man dodged, the gleam shot into his ear. Two more swallowed the sparks as they yelled. The last dropped his weapon, clapping a hand to one eye.

  They all collapsed, dead before they hit the cobbles. While their faces were contorted with pain, there wasn’t a wound to be seen. The corsairs rushing to support their attack scrambled backwards, slipping and falling in their haste. An Aldabreshin shell-wrought horn sent a frantic alarm far beyond the walls.

  Some stalwart had the presence of mind to find a short bow. He loosed a broad-bladed hunting arrow straight at Anskal. The Mandarkin’s contemptuous gesture brushed the shaft aside a good plough length short. For good measure, he set the wood and feathers alight, their ashes scattered in the breeze before the steel head went winging straight back. It struck the would-be bowman between the eyes. He toppled backwards, screaming.