As Iron Falls

by Bryce O'Connor

  “Lifegiver’s arse, girl,” the woman grumbled, accepting the help getting to her feet and rubbing her rear. “Did you have to take me down so hard?”

  “Sorry,” Syrah said sheepishly. “Are you all right?”

  At that, Lysa laughed, then threw an arm around her shoulders, steering her back toward Raz and the others. “Aye, fine! We’ll count it as payback for my knocking you into the wash-bucket yesterday.”

  “My robes still aren’t dry,” Syrah grumbled in agreement, looking down at her cloth pants and sleeveless tunic.

  Lysa grinned deviously, then lifted her arm from around Syrah’s neck to look around. “Who’s next?” she shouted to the onlookers. “You lot only got these two for another month! Don’t be shy now!”

  There was a general cheer from the onlookers, and Syrah glanced around happily at the shouting and laughing faces of the crew of the Sylgid.

  They had been at sea for just over four weeks now, and it had been a far different journey than either she or Raz would have predicted. The first several days had been the hardest, as might be expected, primarily because both of them struggled early on to gain their so-called “sea legs.” They had discovered, also, that Raz’s physiology apparently made him unable to vomit, a fact which Syrah wasn’t sure if she envied or felt pity for. The first two nights, she’d only been able to sleep after hurling a majority of their lunch and dinner over the side of the boat.

  Raz had kept his meals, but she didn’t want to see the scales of his face that unfortunate shade of green ever again.

  Worse than the seasickness, though, had been the struggle of getting to know the crew. At first, no one but Lysa and Garht Argoan himself had been really willing to speak to them, the distraught tension built from base mistrust and a larger fear of Raz’s appearance and reputation. It was amusing in its own way, considering it all now. For those first half-dozen days or so, Syrah and Raz had been on constant edge, always watching each other’s backs. They’d been on the lookout for any sign of betrayal, always being careful on the rare occasion they approached or were approached by one of the sailors, fearing trickery.

  Looking back on it, Syrah was fairly sure the men and women of the Sylgid had been just as suspicious of her and Raz as they’d been of them.

  It had been a slow process, building a mutual respect. They’d made three stops so far on their route—once at a small coastal village along the border and twice in other smugglers’ hideaways along the shore of the South—and with each sojourn Raz and Syrah began to worry less and less. They stayed stowed together in the stores every time, hiding away in the straw-strewn quarters where Gale and Nymara were being kept, but not once had they seen so much as a hint of deceit, much less actual Mahsadën agents storming the ship.

  Then, one day, a few of the younger sailors had gathered up the courage to ask Raz if they could see him fight, and things had rapidly improved from there.

  What Raz had initially called an opportunity for him to keep limber had quickly turned into a daily event for the crew as a whole to enjoy. There were a few fine fighters among them, but most came from the scattered backgrounds of outcasts and runaways, with little to no experience with a blade to their name. Learning this, Raz had started working with the least competent of the group, and within a fortnight he and Syrah had gone from unwelcome curiosities on the ship to cheered guests in the crew’s quarters for evening meals, dice games, and stories. It was pleasant—far more so than their lonely dinners in their guest quarters—and Syrah was slowly getting better at tolerating the proximity of men around her, though she still didn’t stray from Raz’s side around the crew.

  And now, as the first month of the trip came to an end, Syrah was starting to realize she was going to have a hard time leaving some of these people behind once they made the shores of Perce.

  “Dragon! Dragon! Dragon! Dragon!”

  Syrah rose from her thoughts to the chant, sniggering as Raz rolled his eyes and shook his head, waving a hand as he attempted to refuse the call. It always happened, when they opened the floor to sparring like this. For a while everyone had a good enough time watching and learning as Raz shouted encouragement and feedback to the fighters, all of whom were armed with staffs or wooden weapons they’d spent several days whittling from broken oars stolen from the lower deck and rowing galley. Eventually, though, they always wanted a taste of the main attraction.

  “Get up,” Syrah said, moving to plop down beside the atherian and giving him a shove for good measure. “Give the people what they want.”

  Raz scowled at her, though it was a look accented with more resignation than annoyance. She didn’t think he’d exactly warmed to the idea of allowing himself to be used as entertainment—Syrah suspected the shadow of the Arena still hung over him, in that way—but he’d come to accept that it bolstered spirits and served as a good opportunity for him to keep his own skills sharp.

  “Dragon! Dragon! Dragon! Dragon!” the chant continued from all around.

  “Fine!” Raz huffed in mock frustration, throwing his bare arms up as though in surrender before pushing himself to his feet. “It’s your funerals.”

  There was a resounding cheer from the ship’s company, and Syrah felt her own sense of anticipation, watching him move to the center of the cleared deck. Raz wore nothing more than a loose pair of cloth shorts, the emerald gleam that hid among the black scales of his body shining clear beneath the midday sun. He stretched his wings, allowing their red-and-orange membranes to bask in the warmth before pulling them flush to his back again. Muscle writhed and flexed along his legs, arms, and chest as he moved, and Syrah heard a giggle from overhead when he bent to pick up a large staff from the pile of wooden weapons, spinning it experimentally.

  She gave the two women sitting in the rigging above a sharp look, head cocked and the brow of her good eye raised in warning, and the pair of them blushed and fell silent.

  It had been too long, Raz had told her, since he’d been able to feel the freedom of the wind against his skin. In the North he’d worn a shirt or thin furs, even in summer. He was always saying that he enjoyed the feel of the Southern sun, and Syrah couldn’t really blame him. While she had a more tenuous relationship with his god, she’d come to enjoy the heat herself, shedding her robes whenever she could. The daylight was less harsh this far out at sea than she’d expected, and only on a few particularly harsh days had she been forced to dig out the miserable veiled hood the Laorin had gifted her as a parting farewell.

  “So?” Raz was asking, looking around expectantly. “Who’s it going to be?”

  One would think very few people might be fool enough to voluntarily pit themselves against a man known most commonly as “the Dragon,” but Raz always had his pick of those wishing to learn. He selected three of the dozen or so who stuck their arms in the air, and a minute later the fight was in full swing. Raz twisted and darted around the deck, dodging and ducking and parrying as he shouted suggestions to his opponents and pointed out things for the rest of the spectators to observe. “Look at Davos’ positioning here,” he’d say, or “Olona, grip that sword higher.” He would maintain the dance for a while, giving them the opportunity to practice their movements and positions while he himself took the chance to loosen up and stay nimble.

  Then, in a blur, all would be reminded of how Raz had earned his name.

  Whack! Clunk. Whack! Thud!

  Within five seconds, each of Raz’s adversaries were brought to ground, two having lost their weapons, the other looking down the end of the atherian’s wooded staff from flat on his back.

  “Excellent!” Raz said encouragingly, pulling the staff away and glancing around with a smile as the three sailors gained their feet to the rising applause of their comrades. “Much better, all of you. Now… Who wants to go again?”

  The sun was dipping well past its zenith before Lysa called a halt to the games, citing that all had tasks they’d been avoiding long enough. With grumbles of disappointment, the crew dis
banded, some up the mast and ratlines to see to the sails, others about the deck or down into the frigate’s belly below. Lysa herself took her leave of them shortly after, telling them both they were expected to sup with the crew that evening, which Raz and Syrah accepted heartily. Then, at last, they were left to their own devices.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be bothered with disembarking,” Syrah joked as they gathered up the wooden weapons and made for the door that led down into the rowing galley, toward the stern of the ship. “Maybe we could be sailors. Seafarers and scallywags!”

  Raz gave her an amused look, heaving the door open with one hand, his bundle of whittled swords and axes snug under the other arm.

  “Scallywags?” he asked her with a snort. “On the contrary, if you’re starting to speak like that, we should tell Argoan we’ll be taking our leave at the next port.”

  Syrah grinned. “Lysa told me Cyro is within a week’s ride of our next docking. Perhaps the Mahsadën there would be more accepting of you?”

  “If you mean they might consider just taking my head, rather than the drawing and quartering I’m sure the new šef of Miropa have in mind, then yes, much more accepting.”

  Syrah scoffed darkly, reaching the bottom landing of the twisted stairway. “Somehow, every time we discuss the South, Perce just seems so much more alluring…”

  “That’s the idea,” Raz told her, ducking as he, too, stepped down into the below-deck. “To make it seem like the viper’s nest is a better idea than the sandcat’s lair.”

  The rowing galley was the largest single chamber in the ship, with twenty rows of flat one-person seats on either side of a narrow walkway. It could hold forty oar-men, though Argoan had only rarely put more than twenty or thirty at a time to the task of rowing when the winds weren’t in their favor. Now, as the Sylgid rode a healthy southeaster gust that hadn't quit for several days, the place was abandoned, the majority of the crew set to checking the state of the sails, cleaning, and maintaining the ship. Gale and Nymara were kept among the storage rooms at the fore of the frigate, past the crew quarters, and so Raz and Syrah paid them a brief visit before heading back up to the top deck.

  The Sylgid was a glorious ship, a true pride for any seaman. She was a triple-mast with a high stern that housed the captain’s and guest quarters—where Raz and Syrah had been offered a bed and kept their things—and a curved bow crowned with the effigy of her namesake: a young woman whose hair flowed about her bare chest and shoulders like water. Argoan had confided in them that she wasn’t the fastest of what he affectionately called the “smugglers’ fleet,” but she was well-built, dependable, and had yet to fail him. She’d out-sailed pirates, could navigate the reef-strewn Northern coastline, and could haul half-again what most ships her class were able to. Syrah considered that she and Raz might indeed be in the process of getting spoiled by the journey. Forgiving the frigate their first few nights of discomfort, the Sylgid cut across the ocean smoothly, bouncing and bobbing only with the swells of the shore when they approached land.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon in their quarters, talking while Syrah practiced her spellwork and Raz sharpened Ahna and his gladius for the hundredth time since they’d left Highmast Cove. The captain had lent them a few books from his private collection, and they spent an interesting hour working on Raz’s understanding of Northern letters, which were slightly different from the script used in the fringe cities. They joked and thanked their respective gods that both Perce and the Seven Cities still kept the Common Tongue as their primary languages. After that, they took to the ship’s top-deck once more, marveling in the sunset over the western horizon.

  It was nearly dark, in fact, before the cook’s bell rang. Syrah and Raz allowed themselves a last few minutes to watch the dusk close off the day and the moon and stars to shine overhead, then headed below to sup with the crew not on the night watch. It was a pleasant evening, the plain meal of hardtack, bread, and salted meat over sauerkraut offset by raucous laughter, lecherous jokes, and enough ale passed around that by the end of the night Syrah had the hiccups. Raz eventually bid all goodnight for them before helping her to her feet, chased up to the deck by the boisterous catcalls of the men and titters of the women. They chuckled together and talked until he got her back to their lodgings and into bed, helping her kick off her boots before tucking her beneath the layers of wool blankets.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  Syrah watched Raz stir and look around at her question. He had just been in the process of settling down in his habitual place at the edge of the bed, his golden eyes glinting in the glow of the room’s single candle.

  “What is?” he asked her, finishing easing himself to the cabin floor. Ahna and Syrah’s staff lay along the far wall—they hadn’t wanted them falling with the rocking of the ship—but he had his gladius in its mismatched sheath in one hand.

  “All this?” Syrah said, her face half-buried in the pillow even as she waved her hand about them. Dimly, she became aware that she was much, much drunker than she’d thought. “Life. Friends. Without worrying if we are going to get stabbed in the back as we sleep.”

  Raz said nothing, turning to look at the door of the guest quarters. Slowly, he set the gladius aside, though he didn’t get up from his place on the floor.

  “It is,” he said after a while.

  “But it can’t stay like this, can it?” Syrah mumbled, feeling the sway of the ship claim her as the candle flickered by her bed.

  “No, I don’t think so,” came the quiet reply.

  Syrah nodded into the pillow, closing her eyes. She hiccupped once. “Guess we’d best enjoy it while we can, then.”

  If Raz answered her, she never heard it. She felt his hand, the one usually kept grasped around the hilt of his sword while she slept, reach out and take hers. She smiled, mumbled something unintelligible, and allowed herself to drift away into a peaceful sleep, comfortable and calm as the waves lapped against the side of the ship.

  It would be another two weeks before the quiet of this new world of wind and water would finally betray them to the cruelties of the sea.

  CHAPTER 22

  “There is a truth to the ocean that has always captivated me. On land, I have found that nothing is ever certain, that the bends in the road are not honest in their portrayal of risk and danger. Even among the clans, among family and blood, I thought man to be untrustworthy, to be deceitful. At sea, there is no such duplicity. The water never lies, never attempts to shield you from the fact that there is danger there, as much as there is beauty.”

  — from the private journals of Garht Argoan

  “Lysa. With me.”

  As one, Raz, Syrah, and the first mate all turned toward the open door of their guest quarters, where Garht Argoan stood outlined against the Sun’s light. It wasn’t all that strange for the Amreht to visit their cabin, but he usually came in high spirits, bearing books or food or telling them to come look at something in the water, like the dolphins that sometimes danced through the wake of the ship or whales leaping from the ocean in the distance.

  On this occasion, however, Raz felt at once that something wasn’t right.

  There was a tension in the captain’s bulky form, a tightness to his painted face that stood out like an ill omen. In one hand he clenched a spyglass—a collapsing instrument sailors used to see things at long distances. The other rested on the head of his war-hammer, fingers drumming anxiously against the steel. Lysa, who’d been sitting on the bed with Syrah going over a map of the Percian shore while Raz looked on from his place on the floor, leapt up at once.

  “Aye, sir,” she said in a rush, hurrying to follow the man out onto the top-deck without so much as a glance backward. When they were gone, Raz and Syrah exchanged a look of confused concern.

  Then, together, they clambered to their feet and made after the captain and his first mate.

  It appeared, at first glance, to be yet another wonderful summer morning at sea. Raz's skin tingle
d as he stepped into the Sun’s warmth, sending a shiver up his spine after the relative coolness of their cabin. The gulls, which had followed them since leaving the southern coast yesterday morning, were gone, flying back to the safety of land. Before them—southward—the sky was a dark azure that might have been a perfect reflection of the Dramion, were it not for the choppiness of the water. Raz frowned as he noticed this, eyeing the swells. This far out to sea, waves breaking gently about the Sylgid was a strange sight. Instinctively his forked tongue flicked out to taste the air, and his disquiet grew. There was a humidity to the morning, a denseness to the breeze that fluttered in the sails above. The tang of salt was lessened, somehow, and for a moment Raz couldn’t comprehend why.

  Then he noticed the ship hands leaning over the frigate’s sides, looking north with uneasy expressions.