by Brian Daley
Wavewatcher added, “And does the hawk concern himself with the rabbit’s warren?”
They had their own estimations of worth. A man could be unexcelled with weapons or bare hands, but if he lost equilibrium aloft or couldn’t steer by the stars, his status was lowly. Wavewatcher, who’d hunted the whale whose every part was valuable to the Mariners, was listened to with respect, but Skewerskean’s chantey’s made work easier, whether he sang a hand-overhand to synchronize the tautening of the braces, or a long-haul ditty for heavier work. The little man was therefore the more welcome shipmate, with his gift for making drudgery bearable. His repertoire was staggering, though he could improvise endlessly on any subject, high or low.
“Mariners would sooner swear than discourse,” he told Gil, “but they would sooner sing than swear.” Tradition, law, philosophy and mythology were all bound up in memorized verses and sagas, chanteys and hymns. Restless voices poured out gratitude, humor, pride and pain.
Raised by one parent or the other, Mariner boys might spend their youngest years at sea or ashore. But early in life they began learning the lore of their peculiar tribe. When a Mariner youth took his first ship as a man, he swam to it, from shore or another ship. Naked, without one article from his former life, he made his rite of passage. His survival depended solely on his new shipmates; he might not see his loved ones for years or, in some cases, ever again. Among them he’d have to earn, beg or otherwise obtain all that he needed or wanted in life. Subsequent changes of berth would be more sedate, made as an adult. Yet, all Mariners were fond of exchanging stories about their frightening Free Plunge, as they called it, through menacing waters to an unknown world, their first ship.
Life in the closeness of Osprey was rigidly codified. Each person had a right to as much privacy as was feasible, under Ship’s Articles. The first things the two partners taught Gil were the priorities for right-of-way on deck and in the passageways and ladderwells. As supernumerary, the American classed among the lowest groups, having to defer to officers, men on duty, and virtually anyone else with anything useful to do. The pecking order was complicated: a junior officer off watch would be expected to yield way to a crewman on duty if the weather placed certain demands on the ship. There were dozens of individual rules. Gil simply let anybody who wanted to pass him go right ahead.
Sleeping accommodations, food, free time and shares of profit were governed by strict laws of propriety. Over everything loomed the sanctity of the Ship, holy of holies. Every thought and action must be considered in the context of its effect on that common bond, shared habitat.
Osprey’s crew was an elite. The barque was Landlorn’s greatest accomplishment, and there was always more to learn from her. Gil lost himself in blue days and starry nights, motionless gulls shedding air from their wings, the creaking and snapping of rigging. He was making decent headway after Yardiff Bey. The Prince wanted to go against the Isle of Keys, and the Southwastelanders were being driven from the Crescent Lands. At times, he was very nearly content.
But other sails began to appear in the sea around Osprey, a field of sailcloth bearing for the Outer Hub, to hear the rede of war.
Chapter Seventeen
And seas, and rocks, and skies rebound
To arms, to arms, to arms!
Alexander Pope
“Ode for Music on St. Cecelia’s Day”
OSPREY, attended by her smaller and slower escorts, arrived at her home port on a flawless morning. The Outer Hub rested on a mountainous jut of island west of Veganá, its mammoth walls and defenses commanding the only usable anchorage there. Gil had learned that the citadels of the Mariners were called Hubs because all life and commerce of the Children of the Wind-Roads revolved around them.
Fortifications radiated from a complex perched on the slopes above the city proper. The harbor’s gates were enormous, their timbers strapped and faced with iron, the blunt heads of their rivets as wide as dinner platters. They were operated by heavily geared machinery powered by teams of oxen laboring in roundhouses. There were emplacements of mangonels, ballistas, fire-casters and flame-sluices. Gil noticed most of those were pivot-mounted, and could be brought to bear on the harbor if it came to that. The walls were of immense stone blocks, and he wasn’t surprised to learn that, like most of the more awesome constructions in the Crescent Lands, the Hub antedated the Great Blow.
The harbor was crammed with the gathering of masts, assembled craft of a seafaring nation, from bobbing gigs to a barque nearly the size of Osprey, riding stately with sails clewed up, masts dominating the maritime forest. Every ship had her emblem, a grasping kraken or sweet-faced mermaid, ram’s head or diadem, pouncing black panther or four-winged gull.
Osprey anchored at the harbor’s center. A longboat was put over the side for the first parties to go ashore. Wavewatcher and Skewerskean were among the first to go. The American promised to catch up later, saying Landlorn wished to see him.
The awning had been removed from the quarterdeck. The Prince of the Waves was at the rail, narwhale staff in hand, gazing distractedly at the Outer Hub. Gil pardoned himself for interrupting; the man left off his woolgathering.
“The pursuit of Yardiff Bey’s ship was fruitless; my captains never caught sight of him. What thing is it, in your estimation, stolen by him from the library at Ladentree?”
“Don’t I wish I knew! Important enough for him to waste an army, is all I can tell you; something he needs badly, or something he’s awfully afraid of.”
The Prince accepted that. “His enterprises threaten us all. Have you heard tell of our other citadel, the Inner Hub, that was destroyed? I have yet to envision what force broke her sea wall, sank her picket ships, crushed her war engines and the turrets that held them. Marry, Bey was responsible, but in what terrible fashion he accomplished it, I cannot ken. We never observed his renowned flying ship; many of our vessels mount heavy missile-throwers that he shuns.” His hand swung the staff with its golden symbol. “If such destruction was loosed on the sea, the Mariners may meet it yet. I fear that.”
He was interrupted. A woman had come on deck, draped with a heavy cloak against the ocean breeze. She looked younger than Landlorn, her graying hair caught back from a heart-shaped face in a long plait, fastened with pearls. On her brow was a circlet of polished coral set in platinum. Her countenance was happy but careworn; ebullience made her appear more hardy than she was on closer inspection. Landlorn went to her, preoccupations forgotten.
She hugged him. “Well-come, husband.”
“And you, wife.”
Gil witnessed it with interest. So this was the woman who’d cost the Prince a lifetime exile on the sea, or rather for whom he’d chosen one. Landlorn, remembering the American was there, said, “This young ally we met up with on our voyage had a bad time of it from Southwastelanders. He is called Gil.” Holding her hand up proudly, he finished, “And this is my lady wife, Serene.”
Gil bowed, something he’d almost never done, even in courtly Earthfast. Serene’s good-humored dignity seemed to warrant it. The Prince recalled what he’d been about to say.
“You completed part of the riddle for me, Gil. I asked myself why, if Yardiff Bey had the wherewithal to raze the Inner Hub, we saw none of it in our affrays with the Occhlon. Now I know he was engaged in his act of theft, diverted by more pressing matters.”
Gil considered that. “Could be. Maybe he threw away men on the Inner Hub as he did getting to Ladentree.” The thought struck sparks. “Was there a library at the Inner Hub? Archives or something?”
“Certes; our travels gather us much old doctrine, and many ancient books.”
“Then it’s a good bet Bey was hunting a copy of Arrivals Macabre there; that’s why he attacked your citadel. Let’s see, that would be, uh…” He calculated intervals, talking to himself. “It would have been just before everything blew up in his face in Earthfast. He masterminded the assault or whatever it was and netted a copy of Rydolomo’s book. He brought it to Earthf
ast, the copy whose binder Andre deCourteney found in his sanctum. When we took the palace-fortress, Bey skipped with the pages, to Dulcet’s house. When he found out he had the wrong copy, he got busy on the invasion of Veganá and Glyffa, so he could get to Ladentree. So naturally you people haven’t seen any sign of the slam he used on the Inner Hub; he’s been tied up with his main game, bagging Arrivals Macabre. But he’s got it now, probably the right one this time.”
Serene was watching worriedly, and Landlorn was scowling. He finished his reconstruction. “If Bey’s latched onto whatever it was he wanted, we’ve got to get at him as soon as we can. Put if off and there might be no stopping him.”
He regretted having put it all out in front of them when he saw Serene’s face marred with apprehension. Landlorn said, “I will be speaking to the Mariners tonight, here in the harbor. That will decide the question of the Isle of Keys.”
Gil shied from asking the obvious question because Serene was present. She pursued it herself. “Will they affirm your plan?”
The Prince Who Sails Forever admitted, “It is moot. They are weary of war, and with every reason. It would be a costly battle, I trow, but if we do not go to the Isle, it will put forth its grasp to find us. Best confront it now.”
His wife agreed dolorously, and Landlorn slipped an arm through hers, twirling his staff, jollying her unavailingly. Gil left them to their reunion.
Going ashore in the next boat, the salt spray putting its taste on his lips, he caught sight of Landlorn pacing the quarterdeck, Serene evidently having gone below. The last view the American had of him was the Prince’s silhouette against the sky, with the wind stirring his hair, watching his people and their land, on which he had never set foot, and never would.
That evening Gil returned to the harbor, doing his best to help a half-loaded Skewerskean guide the weaving, gloriously drunken Wavewatcher. The harpooner had won a contest, hurling his throwing iron, in a whaler’s tavern called the Golden Fluke, and made much of the celebration with his winnings. Gil had tagged along through the noisy, prosperously frenetic harbor town while the partners made the bars, paid off their many debts, bellowed songs, pinched cup-girls, gambled emotionally, traded lies with other Mariners and threw away an amazing amount of money. They sang him their ballads and chanteys and clamored to hear his, and taught him the hornpipe. Somewhere along the way—he couldn’t remember where—he’d acquired a tambourine.
But they’d torn themselves away from it all when the hour came to hear their Prince. After boozy negotiating, a dory and boatman were hired for a scandalous sum. The two chivvied Gil aboard and loaded the cask of ale they’d brought, refreshments for the cruise. The harbor had filled and overflowed. The fleet was aglitter with lanterns and torches, spread to the sea-gates and beyond. The sky was still clear, with a slice of moon among the stars.
An immense dredging barge, lit with cressets, had been brought to the center of the harbor, where shipmasters had gathered in hundreds to sit in a profusion of costumes and attitudes, giving ear. If the popular response was too evenly divided, it would be the captains who cast ballots to choose what answer the Prince was to receive.
The boatman had to work carefully to get near the barge; the water was carpeted with craft, so that a person could have walked from side to side of the bay. As they waited, Gil told the two about Landlorn’s concern over Yardiff Bey, and whatever it was that the sorcerer had done to destroy the Inner Hub.
“Verily,” agreed Skewerskean, “ten thousand voices in the Outer Hub are whispering to each other about just that. One hears the words Acre-Fin.”
“Well, I haven’t heard. What’s that?”
“Acre-Fin, every bugaboo of the oceans, the fear and dread of sailors made real, the sea’s violence incarnate, its oldest denizen. New worries call up an old terror, the fish that eats whole ships and crushes islands. What the truth is, I do not claim to know, but you will hear that name tonight.”
They were quiet for a time. Gil, muddled, speculated if that might be the secret of Arrivals Macabre. But no, the attack on the Inner Hub had happened before Bey’d won his prize at Ladentree.
Wavewatcher was humming, a fair imitation of a courting walrus. “What was that ditty you sang, Gil-O?” he rumbled. “About the watering hole on the road to the underworld that is exclusively for horse soldiers?”
Gil leaned his head back and broke into “Fiddler’s Green,” dolefully.
Marching past, straight through Hell, the infantry are seen,
Accompanied by the engineer, quartermaster and Marine
For none but shades of cavalry dismount at Fiddler’s Green…
He was stopped by resonant notes from a massive gong on the barge. Silence pre-empted every song, greeting, toast and argument, so the only sounds were the creak of rigging, the knock of hulls and the plaints of sea birds. Landlorn came into the circle of light; Serene was at his side. Ovation began, but he waved it aside with the narwhale staff. The Prince’s face was morose in the rippling red light of the barge’s cressets.
“Salutations, you Children of the Wind-Roads. I bow to you in your thousands, your ten-thousands.” He lowered his head in homage. “I bear tidings no Mariner can like. Though the seas are ours again, there is unchecked danger from the land. We have ripped the Flaming Wheel down from Death’s Hold, sending southern ships and sailors to the floor of the ocean, but the evil that moved them still thrives.”
Murmurs blew through the crowd, fanning louder.
“I cringe to see our keels exposed to the cruel rams and rostrums of the enemy. I loathe the fire that burns our sails, and the wailing that lifts in the quarters of our slain. Our foemen are gathered, making new plans. It is my thought that we strike against them now. Thither too went Yardiff Bey, who wrought our every injury.”
Gil tried to gauge the Prince’s success from the faces around him. Many were dubious, drained by their battles. If they rejected Landlorn’s proposal, the American would have no choice but to rejoin the Crescent Landers.
“The men of Veganá and the women of Glyffa are on the march,” the Prince was saying, “and it may be that they will go beside us against the Isle, but we may not rely on it. With them or not, it falls to us to unseat Salamá from its island.”
Wavewatcher and Skewerskean were on their feet now, rocking the dory, bellowing support. Others were doing the same, but many more were quiet, unconvinced. Landlorn was grim, unwilling to put war-fervor into his people.
“The Inner Hub is smoke and ruin,” he reminded them. “Many of your kin and shipmates are sped. There are those who say we have taken our vengeance in full, and I would not nay-say them; what I ask is not simple recompense. There must be no taint of the Masters outside their own shores.”
People were vacillating. Gil was about to ask how much longer this could go on, but Wavewatcher was pointing into the sky, nearly upsetting the dory. “See! See there, in the south!”
A line of light had appeared, like a comet, brightening the night. Its brilliant head shone; its tail cut a path of splendor down through the darkness, straight at Shardishku-Salamá. Legends were preserved here, just as in the Crescent Lands. The same word being taken up at that moment before the Temple of the Bright Lady was being repeated through the Outer Hub.
“What are you guys talking about? What’s the Trailingsword?”
They explained to him as the first shock subsided. It was eloquent of Landlorn’s status that he had their attention again quickly.
“I cannot tell what mystical portent this is, though I hear you call it Trailingsword. Perhaps it is, proclaiming the seven times seven days left to us, or perhaps not. But it is some great sign, demanding our heed. What is your will? Do we purge the Isle of Keys?”
The Mariners split the air with their consent. Cutlasses flashed in the light of the Trailingsword as Wavewatcher, Skewerskean and the boatman chanted Landlorn’s name. Joylessly content, Gil studied the Omen. With its pommel-head uppermost, it mirrored his Ace of
Swords, reversed. What had Gabrielle told him months ago, that the tarot’s meaning in that alignment could be tragedy?
Unimportant now. It was enough that the Children of the Wind-Roads would sail south.
Chapter Eighteen
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul…
Emily Dickinson
“Hope is the Thing with Feathers”
FERRIAN, onetime Champion-at-arms of the Horse-blooded, Defender of Corrals, was fond of taking a scroll or book high into the uppermost parts of the library complex at Ladentree.
His wound had mended slowly, over weeks. He would never lose his limp, but he could walk, and sit a horse. The Healing Sages had advised him to stay for a time, to complete his recuperation, and he’d complied, reckoning his role against Salamá ended. The Trailing-sword had declared as much. Seeing its splendor in the sky each night, he’d been moved with a profound new mood of hope.
Now he sat cross-legged in the tower of a silent bell so large a dozen men might have sheltered beneath it. Its bronze was green, its rope decayed away long ago, for the Birds of Accord nested nearby. The place had a solemnity that appealed to Ferrian, a thoughtful freedom he held especial. At times he heard the songs of the Birds, pure trilling like no other sound in the world. There was an airy view for miles, and an intimacy with the weather he’d missed in the Chambers of Healing.
Sitting with a folio in his lap, he heard the voices of the Birds again. This time there was unfamiliar cadence to it, a disorderly intrusion of other, shriller notes. He put the folio aside carefully and rose, pulling himself up with his left hand, to spare his leg. Following the sounds, he rounded the giant bell to a far corner of the tower. He trod carefully; rotting boards made treacherous footing.
