by Brian Daley
Wavewatcher was howling in anguish. He grabbed his lance again, drew and aimed. Gil saw sudden, deadly grace, synthesis of hunter, athlete and soldier. The release was one of enormous force. The lance struck through a shield, pinning the grapnel man to the boat’s hull, penetrating the wood. The attackers pulled frantically, drawing themselves in under the protection of the stern while arrows rained down on them. Hidden by the stern’s projection, they’d be able to climb to the deck.
Wavewatcher took up a cutlass. It was small, almost frivolous in his huge hand. “You aloft there, ’ware my commands! The rest, position yourselves about the deck.”
Gil picked a spot at the portside rail and waited, one hand on a ratline, and the other still tensing, loosening on his sword. There were outcries astern, the first of the boarders. He turned, about to help, when a clambering caught his ear. He leaned over the rail slowly and nearly had his head taken off. A Southwastelander clung there, showing his teeth in a sneer. The fingers clawing the hull for purchase were blunt and visibly strong, the Occhlon nimble in his light mesh armor, his curved weapon dangling from its sword loop. Unable to reach the American from where he was, he climbed directly upward, unnerving Gil, who would never have gone against an enemy waiting with the advantages of firm footing and weapon in hand.
The boarder abruptly began to edge sideways, catching Gil by surprise, to move away from him before trying the rail. The American followed, listening to the grunted, labored breathing, unsure what he’d do when he faced the man.
The boarder sprang the last few feet, screaming Yardiff Bey’s name. He had an arm and a leg over the rail when the other, galvanized by the hated name, got to him. Gil brought his heavy bastard blade around in a flat arc. The boarder could only spare one hand to raise his scimitar; the broadsword carried it backward and knocked the boarder off balance. Gil took a more resolute swing. The blade bit through the woven gorget and into the neck. Dropping away, the desert man’s face was awful in its disregard of his own death.
A shouted warning from Skewerskean made him spin. Another boarder, a shorter man, had dropped to the deck, ready to fight. Mariners and their foes staggered across the deck, locked in death duels. Wavewatcher had a cutlass in either hand now, the ringlets on his chest holding drops of enemy blood suspended among them.
Gil crossed swords with his new opponent, whose style relied on his edge. Yells from the Mariners told of more of the assault party making it to the deck. Seafarers raced to meet them, their bare feet slapping alarm on the planks.
Gil engaged the second man in a high line, putting down his own panic. They exchanged hair-raising strokes, edges laying back and forth. The man had a long, strong arm, but his footwork was conservative. The American pressed against that possibility as blood pounded at his temples. All sounds faded but the swords’ clanging and his own heartbeat. He kept control of their fencing distance, coming into range and getting out again to his own advantage. A shout penetrated his concentration; the tinkling of bells proclaimed Skewerskean in combat.
Gil’s opponent was slow responding to a croise, backing up against the head ledge of a hatch, and swaying. For a moment his defense was open, though the American could not ordinarily have exploited it. But something in him drove his point in under the vulnerable throat. The boarder fell back with a flopping of limbs and that same expression of loathing. Gil paused to catch his breath, hearing Wavewatcher call, “Ho, aloft! Prepare to fill-all on my—dammit!—on my order.”
The interruption had been another antagonist. The harpooner was busy both with the battle and monitoring the Gal’s progress downriver. With both topsails filled, the ship began to draw ahead at the wider mouth of the Wheywater. The harpooner called on the embattled men at the tiller to keep her off a little, to increase headway through the water.
There was a scraping at the ship’s side. The dory had come with a second wave of attackers. Snatching up a carpenter’s hatchet from a weapons rack, Gil ran farther toward the bow, to keep them from getting a line onto the Gal.
He was too late. Two boarders swarmed onto the deck together. With hatchet and sword he launched himself at them, swinging wildly. The world swam at him, begging combat through a red mist.
Berserkergang filled him; he coursed with a killing joy. His attack left one dead, the hatchet buried in his chest, the deck-roll playing with pooling blood. The second boarder joined Gil at the death-duel. The American felt exultation in the Rage. Dunstan’s sword seemed familiar now, sending strength and cunning up his arm. Always heavy before, the weapon hefted light as a fishing rod.
Berserker blade screamed against desert scimitar. Gil’s lips were drawn back, teeth locked, ears flattened to his skull in animal fury. He was hyperaware of time, distance and possibilities of slaughter. He disowned fencing to hack and hew without letup. The Occhlon was the bigger man, with a thick black mustache and angry brows. His attack was powerful and confident. But Gil, enfolded by savage depersonalization, met it, swinging Dunstan’s sword with a terrible vitality.
The Southwastelander gave ground to a flurry of wild slashes, then reversed field and came on again. Both hammered with swords held two-handed, notching and blunting them. Wavewatcher’s voice, bull-horning for the hoisting of jib and flying jib, trimming them by the wind, went unnoticed.
The Southwastelander’s exertions left him off balance. Gil pounced on the moment’s invitation, bashing the other’s guard aside, thrusting with Dunstan’s sword. Standing over the dying Occhlon, he knew a split second’s contentment, then whirled to find more slaughter.
Battle had passed; Mariners were clearing the deck of their enemies’ bodies and seeing to their wounded, but the Berserkergang didn’t recognize that. Gil moved suspiciously down the deck as seafarers drew back, watching him uneasily, seeing that something wasn’t right with him. Blood that had run down the fullers of his uplifted sword dribbled off his knuckles. He approached a pair of Mariners, seeing no reason why he shouldn’t attack them too.
His ankles were seized from behind with a tinkling of bells, his feet yanked from under him. He sprawled flat on the deck, cracking his chin, dashing breath from his lungs. A weight like all the Dark Rampart landed on him. In a moment the Mariners had wrested his sword from him, and pinned his arms. He fought and writhed like a salmon, but this was only the second time the Rage had come to him; it couldn’t vet drive him to the superhuman extremes that it had Dunstan. Eventually, the murderous fit dispersed, to be replaced, curiously, by nothing more than fatigue and calm.
“Better now?” piped Skewerskean, from where the little man held one of Gil’s legs. Gil, gasping, said he was.
Wavewatcher, sitting patiently on the American’s back, warned, “Whatever baresark malice you called upon, save it for the enemy. Enough is enough, agreed? Let him up, lads.” Gil felt as if he’d been through a wringer.
One of the men aloft yelled, sighting a sail. The big-bellied harpooner hauled Gil to his feet effortlessly, setting him against the rail among Mariners straining for a view. The Gal was standing clear of the Wheywater and out to sea. Another ship had rounded the point, appearing from behind Death’s Hold. A big sailing barque, she had on her foresail and mainsail the device of a golden sea horse on a red field. Spying the Gal, the barque had come about, wearing ship briskly. She had a brown-and-white bird painted on her bows.
Gil speculated dizzily whether he was up to an escape in one of the Gal’s boats, or swimming if he must. Then a triumphant cheer went up from the brig’s crew. When Wavewatcher called for sail on the starboard tack, men jumped readily for the ratlines. Some broke out flags, to hoist the signal that there were wounded aboard. More vessels were appearing from behind the stronghold. A smile had parted the harpooner’s dense beard. He thumped the American on the back; Gil almost lost his hold on the rail. Wavewatcher laughed. “When you tell this tale, say you no sooner came to the sea than you encountered its very overlord.” He saw no understanding on the other’s face. “That four-master is his fl
agship; no less than our monarch, the Prince Who Sails Forever.”
Chapter Sixteen
Many waves cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.
The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s
THERE’D been no disabling wounds among the Gal’s crew, nor anyone slain except Gale-Baiter. Replacements were put aboard the brig and her own personnel, Gil included, transferred to the four-masted barque, the Osprey. The Prince Who Sails Forever had questions for all of them.
Wavewatcher and Skewerskean appointed themselves the American’s unofficial custodians. They helped him up the boarding ladder and hustled him below decks, out of the way of busy crewmen. The forecastle was crowded, the ship having manned for war, but the two partners found Gil room to stow his gear and rig a hammock alongside theirs in a converted storeroom.
Osprey and her half-score escorts, smaller two- and three-masted vessels, were working toward the Outer Hub, scouring the coast, insuring that no enemy had eluded them. The fleet had been late for its rendezvous with the Long-Dock Gal, apparently arriving shortly after the Hand of Salamá had fled south. The Prince had sent a party ashore at the opposite side of the delta, to assure that Death’s Hold had been completely gutted. The party, spying the Gal’s predicament as she neared the Wheywater’s mouth, had rushed to tell their Liege. Swift ships were being sent after Yardiff Bey’s even as Gil boarded Osprey.
Wavewatcher and Skewerskean had to make their full report to the Prince, explaining that the Lord of Sailors was eager for any news off the wind-roads.
“What are wind-roads?” Gil wanted to know.
The harpooner was shocked by his ignorance. “Why, the breezes of the air, which are thoroughfares of the oceans. In that wise, we Mariners call ourselves Children of the Wind-Roads.”
“Never heard it before. How long till we get to this Isle of Keys?”
“Scuttlebutt aboard of here says this flagship will soon join the rest of the fleet at the Outer Hub. But the seas are ours once more, and many Mariners would rather put aside further enmities with landlubbers. Um, nothing personal.”
“No offense.”
“Most feel, though, as does the Prince, that no trace of Salamá should be tolerated, especially on the strategic Isle of Keys.”
“What will the Prince do?”
“Put his recommendation before a gathering of masts, as when we voted for war after the Inner Hub was razed.”
Gil made a sour face.
“Bey got what he wanted in Glyffa. Salamá is ahead of the game.”
The partners frowned at one another. “The Prince will want to hear this,” Wavewatcher concluded. Both got up to go. Gil stripped off his blood-spattered byrnie and reclined in his hammock.
The storeroom was dim, filled with the smell of Osprey’s wood and odors of a thousand cargoes and sailors, smoke of lamps, and the bite of incense. Two Mariners, off watch, were throwing dice for lOUs. They noted the stained byrnie, nodded to the American’s casual greeting, and left it at that.
Osprey was making way now, her bow rising and falling on the open sea. Gil thought for awhile that he might grow seasick from the hammock’s sway, but depleted by the Rage, he fell asleep instead. Skewerskean shook him awake, saying the Prince wanted to speak with him. The American rose unsteadily, having no sea legs, and followed the two through narrow passageways and ladderwells.
He emerged at last, to take his first good look around the barque. High overhead, cirrus clouds were torn and shredded by the winds, in shapes of stress and speed. Down at sea level though, there was only a light breeze to carry the sails. Low swells rolled, the color of blue ink, and Osprey’s bow sliced the water at a leisurely five knots.
By Crescent Lands standards, the barque was a giant, a quantum leap in marine design. She had four tall masts, rigged with what looked to Gil like ten square miles of canvas and duck. It risked vertigo for him to peer up the six courses of sail on the mainmast, to the ship’s summit. The mazework of creaking rigging held the eye, bewildering it, as wheeling seabirds called out over the sheering of the barque’s bow wave.
Men were scrubbing down the deck, coiling line and doing other work, but there were racks of javelins, cutlasses, pikes and shields close to hand. He made his way aft and stopped when Wavewatcher did, the harpooner calling for permission to mount the quarterdeck. An officer in trim blue silk granted it. The two partners waited behind, as Gil clambered up the ladder.
Under the curved spanker sail an awning had been set, shading cushions and a sturdy-legged table burdened with food. A man waited there, a short, erect figure with a crisp white goatee and the bluest eyes Gil had ever seen, in a crinkled brown face. He wore a uniform of white linen and held a staff almost as tall as himself, an osseous twist of narwhale horn capped with a golden sea horse. Over his heart was pinned a golden broach shaped for his ship’s namesake, an osprey. The Prince Who Sails Forever.
“It is gracious of you to come,” he began, “for I know you have been through much. I am Landlorn, captain of the Osprey and of the Mariners too, it may be admitted. Will you sit and take your ease with me?”
When Gil was seated, the Prince of the Waves continued. “Gilbert MacDonald, I believe you are named? And they call you Gil? May I? Thank you. I should be much in your debt if you would relate more of the events current in this war being fought inland.”
“Oh, sure, your Grace. It—”
“Ah, please! Friends call me Landlorn; will you not do me that honor?”
Gil took to the Prince from the start, to the scrupulous courtesy extended to everyone. He was sure that anyone who led the rowdy Mariners could be a hard-case boss when he had to. Soon, he was telling Landlorn his story, of the Two-Bard Commission and of Yardiff Bey, Cynosure and Blazetongue and the Occhlon, and of Arrivals Macabre.
In the end, the Prince said, “You shall come into your chance to see the Isle of Keys, if the Mariners second my will of it; dislodging southerners from their sea-keep is work for the Children of the Wind-Roads, and therein lies tragedy, for I would rather they could stay out of it, unparticipant.” His expression showed private sadness, then he roused himself. “I trust you’ve been made comfortable?”
“Thank you, yes. But it’s all a bit strange for me; I’m a dry-land type.”
Landlorn’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, but I, too, am a landsman by birth.”
“You? Then how’d you end up here?” Gil saw immediately that it had been a gaffe. Gil had answered the Prince’s questions though, and Landlorn’s etiquette compelled him to do likewise.
“I come of royalty; one of the lesser kingdoms whose name you would not know. My older brother had the throne, and there was little liking between us. He proclaimed it my duty to fetch him the bride he’d been promised by a neighboring king. I was to bring her by sea, and was obliged to swear by oaths of honor and magic that I would make no other landfall until I had brought her to him, do you see?
“Her name was Serene. On that voyage she came to mean much to me. We were attacked by corsairs and our ship burned, leaving us two adrift on a hatch cover for days. Mariners picked us up at last, a rough-handed lot not much better than pirates themselves, then.”
He broke off, listening to men working to a long-haul chantey. Skewerskean’s clear voice joined in, holding to the higher notes playfully.
“We might have plead for ransoming, but I would not yield her up to my brother after all we had gone through, and Serene did not wish it either. I was sufficiently the swordsman that those nomads took me on. So you will understand, this royal scion started out lowly on the backs of the oceans. I thought the day must soon come when I should be free of my vow, and I would wait it out.
“But I had to shun the shore, so my crewmates dubbed me Landlorn. I acquired the ways of the sea, learned, mastered. I had been schooled, and so could resurrect lost lore from old books that had survived the Great Blow, and Osprey is one product of that. The Mariners put me at their head and I am content, though there was
more to it than that. My brother is dead now, and the bonds of my vows eternal unless I become Oathbreaker and risk the magic that sealed them. But I love the oceans; much rather would I be sentenced to life at sea than the same on land exclusively. I have seen the waters in all their stations and offices; the Wind-Roads are my realm and Serene is mine, and I am fulfilled.”
Landlorn was speaking absently now, staring off over the sea. Gil said a fast good-bye and rejoined the harpooner and the chanteyman at the quarterdeck ladder. He marveled at the Prince’s story, wondering why it had left him with a deep, unidentified sadness.
Wavewatcher and Skewerskean gave him a hand in picking up what Mariner life was all about, and became his friends. They replaced his torn and bloodied clothes with new ones, a soft sealskin shirt and buckskin pants and jacket. The jacket had wing epaulets, sewn with metal lamellae to protect the shoulders from sword cuts.
Then the American was introduced to Mariner life. The Children of the Wind-Roads, under the care and dominion of the currents of air and ocean, were intimates with them. They had dozens of names for dawn, even more for sunset, cloud formations and portents of weather. Gil would point to swells in the morning and ask the Mariner name for them, but when he’d ask again at noon, the swells looking no different to him, the two would have a new answer. The nuances escaped him completely.
The sailors defined the subtlest variations in clouds, their height, texture, luminosity and drift. Weather predictions were extraordinarily accurate. Charts were exhaustive, and the shorelines on maps, but interiors were largely ignored; the Mariners merely called them “inlands.” When Gil mentioned it, Skewerskean countered, “Does the landsman’s map tell of reef, channel and shoal?”
