The Warrior's Tale (The Far Kingdoms, Book 2)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  “These creatures,” The Sarzana said, “who are better friends than any of the butter-tongued fools who danced attendance on me at court, came from many places. I used the . . . there is no word for it in Konyan nor Orissan nor any speech I know . . . souls would be the approximation if they had been men, but they were but the spiritual presence of animals, killed at sea or on land. I gave them new flesh, and animated them, with powers and strengths they’d never known before. They know it, too, and their gratitude never ceases. One day, when or should I say if I can flee this island, I will set them free, and they will be the rulers of this land, ruling more mercifully than man ever could, keeping common cause with the other creatures on the land and sea.”

  “But again I’ve turned from my story. I could feel the Moment coming when a ship would slip into harbor, carrying orders for my death. It seemed like the villagers also felt something, because when I was allowed to go down the great stone steps, I heard mutterings against the soldiers, and the fishermen went out of their way to show me small kindnesses. It touched me to my depths, as it has always touched me when those who are under the iron boot do what they can to preserve their humanity. And it reminded me of my own village, so many miles and years gone.

  “One day, a courier did arrive. I braced for the moment of death, but nothing happened. Life seemed to continue as before, except now I was forbidden to visit the village. One night, I was roughly seized, and held in a locked chamber under this mansion, guarded by a full squad of soldiers. This was the end, I thought. But the sun rose the next day, and I yet lived, and I was set free. Now I could go wherever I wished on the island — because the villagers were gone!”

  “How?” That was Corais.

  “At nightfall, the soldiers commanded them to collect at the waterfront. They were ordered into their boats, taking nothing with them. Their crowded boats were taken under tow by warships. This I discovered from discreet questioning of the soldiers. It took divination to learn the rest. The boats were towed well out to sea, out of sight of land. The soldiers had been ordered there must be no witnesses to my coming death, and they gladly obeyed this order, feeling perhaps the doom that pursues king-slayers might be fooled. The villagers’ boats were rammed by warships, and the poor floundering men, women and children let drown or made sport of by archers and spearmen. Not one soul was allowed to survive.

  “I knew then my life’s cord was measured in fingerspans. I was desperate. I thought long, and then realized blood is a lever in magic, a great weapon. The villagers . . . I thought of them as my villagers . . . would not have died in vain. I cast the first of my great spells. It swept in that night, like a sudden winter storm. The soldiers knew nothing, felt nothing. But my animals, my friends and servitors, felt the weight of all the generations they’d been prey to men. And that compact with the gods that frightens animals when they see man was broken. They were given free rein to revenge themselves.

  “They did just that, in one long night of gore. I must say, I listened to the screams with satisfaction. My spell required my beasts to show no more mercy to the soldiers than they gave the fishermen. Some died easily, in their sleep, some fought back and were butchered, some tried to flee to the ships and were drowned by the seals or my dolphins. By dawn, I was the only human on Tristan.

  “I ordered the bodies brought to the end of the plateau, beyond this mansion, and tossed over the cliff, to be carried away by the strong currents. Then, and it was a savage chore, my servants and I went from ship to ship in the harbor, cutting free the moorings, setting full sail so the ship sped out beyond the headlands, to sail and sail with no hand at the helm through desolate seas until the sea grasses and monsters took it down into the depths. Then the next ship, and the next, until the outer harbor was as bare as the inner one had been after the villagers were killed.”

  The Sarzana stopped. None of us said anything. This tale of blood and murder was as ghastly as any I’d ever heard. Indeed, the Konyans were a hard race, from rulers to ruled.

  Then he said: “I left the barracks and the corpses inside alone, deliberately, as a warning to anyone who arrived intending harm.”

  “That doesn’t seem like much,” Cholla Yi said. “You must’ve known the barons would send more assassins.”

  “I knew they would, and they did. But they ran into my second great spell. This is one of confusion. It’s a simple one, correct, Evocator?”

  “It is,” Gamelan said. “But to conceal an entire island requires great power.”

  “Oh, I hardly went to that amount of trouble,” The Sarzana said, a note of pride in his voice. “All that was needed was a slight miasma at four or five days distance from the island. Enough for a navigator to doubt his charts or astrolabe, a captain to have suspicions about his underlings, and so forth. That was enough to guarantee I’d never be found unless I wanted. Besides, why would anyone want that hard to discover what happened? That tale of doom for anyone who murdered me lingers on, and who would chance the wrath of the gods if they did not have to?”

  The Sarzana rose, stretched, and went from couch to couch, ceremoniously refilling our glasses. None of us had drunk heavily, so taken were we by his saga.

  “It is late,” he said. “Or, it is early, and you have much to do to make your ships seaworthy. Perhaps we should find our beds.”

  We stood and lifted our drinks in a strange sort of toast. We then started out of the room. I stopped. A thought had taken me, and I had the boldness to ask. “Sarzana? You said you could see a bit into the future. What, then, lies ahead for you? Will you spend the rest of your days here alone?”

  “Prognostication comes hard when one is trying to use it for your own good,” he said. “So it is with me. I know what I think I see, but perhaps it is just a wish: I see myself returning to Konya. I know that if I land anywhere the people will remember me. Time enough has passed, and the barons’ evil has grown, so there would be a great and final rising. Perhaps I’m foolish, and just a dreamer, but I still hope that my native islands will find true peace again, a peace that shall linger until time itself has a stop. And I know how to bring this to them. But, as I said, perhaps it is just an illusion, a happy mirage.”

  “Why didn’t you use one of the ships, crewed by your animal friends to return to Konya?” Corais, ever the practical one. “You said you came from a seafaring family.”

  “I said the power that blurred my powers is gone, but there still seems to be some remnant, or perhaps I’m still ensorcelled by a conjuration laid on me when I was first dethroned. I can’t think of sailing without my mind falling into confusion. A mental version of the common fumble-finger spell, I suspect. No. I must be saved from my exile by someone else, someone who is willing to trust my words and believe he shall be rewarded greatly when I return to power.”

  * * * *

  Corais went to her quarters in the mansion, and the three of us went down the steps. There was a soft moon out, and we could see clearly. I waited until Cholla Yi had gone on to where the sailors of his gig drowsed on the beach, then asked Gamelan what he felt.

  “He is a king,” the Evocator said. “And kings don’t have the same views I do. I think he intends well, that he truly wishes the best for his people. I didn’t sense any waves of hatred for them, which he might well have felt after they overthrew him. I also perceived, behind his words, a truth that these barons are more savage than The Sarzana or even those bloody-handed captains he spoke of. But these are only feelings, with no facts or magic behind them. If my powers would return, even a bit of them, I would know better. What did you perceive?”

  “No more than you did,” I said. “In fact, less. There was nothing about the barons that came to me. But, yes, The Sarzana does appear to intend benevolence.” I smiled. “If it’s possible any king is of that nature.”

  Gamelan chuckled and turned toward the small cottage I’d assigned to him. He walked toward it as if sighted, and I marveled how quickly we can learn to overcome frailty if we are stro
ng enough. At the door, he turned back.

  “It was . . . interesting,” he said, “to speak to another Evocator, one with talents nearly equal to mine. Or, rather, what mine were. Meaning no disrespect to your own talent, Rali. But it felt, when he referred to our common art, almost as if I was back at the Palace in Orissa, sharing trade secrets with another.” He sighed. “It seems to me,” he said, “what we must do is ride with the current, much as we have done. Perhaps The Sarzana can give us aid to set our course home. He is a great sorcerer. Perhaps he might choose to help us, although it’s easy to tell what debt we would be incurring. Certainly he hinted strongly enough at the end of his tale. And just possibly the reward would be worth the price.”

  Then he said goodnight and went inside.

  It was only an hour or so before dawn when we parted. I thought that if I tried to sleep, in all likelihood I’d just toss and turn, thinking of The Sarzana’s tale, and a single hour’s nap would do no more than turn me into a growling lioness at my duties. Besides, it was better I walk off the dying fumes of the evening’s wine.

  I walked to the waterfront and along the beach. I returned the salute of two sentries, but didn’t bother them with idle chat. The night was as calm and mild as a summer’s evening. I waded into the blood-warm water and kicked at the surf, seeing it spray in the moonlight, which made me giggle as if I was still a child. That feeling of happiness that had come upon me off the island still hung on. All I could wish for was . . . and I shut off the thought before it could complete.

  I went all the way down to where the creek mouth entered the water and saw one of the ship’s boats landed there. I thought I’d sit down and wait for the sun to come up on a thwart. But the romantic spot was taken. Dica and Ismet lay asleep on a cloak, naked in each others arms. The sight made feel glad and sad at the same time.

  I heard footsteps and turned. It was Polillo, evidently taking, as was her frequent custom, the last watch before dawn.

  We looked at each other and the two women sleeping in the sand. Neither of us said anything.

  I bent and pulled the cloak up over the two. A small smile touched Dica’s lips, but she didn’t stir.

  Then I walked away back down the beach . . . Alone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SOUTH TO KONYA

  The next day we set to. By the gods, it was wearisome. By the time we were done and our galleys rode at anchor looking as if they’d just been launched with the blood of the sacrifices fresh on their prows, any of us who’d dreamed of buying a small boat to play within our twilight years had discarded the notion. Amalric always had little use for ships, except as a necessary way to move his goods from one port to the next, but my feelings became stronger: I wished I could become the Greatest of Evocators, and pave the damned seas so no one save those who were demented, and I include all sailors in that lot, would need water for any other purpose than bathing.

  It might seem I’m railing on, and I suppose I am. But let me tell you just what we had to do to make just one galley seaworthy once more:

  First the ship would be stripped of anything removable, so it rode high in the water, and then it was rowed close inshore, until it grounded on a rock-free bottom. Then it would be dragged further into shore and when the tide fell, heavy logs, padded at the end, kept the ship from rolling onto its side.

  Next we started scraping the hull free of the barnacles and seaweed. In the process we scraped enough skin off our hides to make belts for an army. Then all those shellfish we scraped off died and began to rot. By midday our brave warship smelled like a dockside latrine. This task, I’d been told by Klisura, required no shipwrights ability beyond having a large neck and small helmet, so the Guard would be perfectly suitable. I growled, then saw he was attempting a joke, and regained my good humor. That lasted until I realized I’d have to set the proper example for my women and be the first to wade out and begin scouring away.

  “I thought,” Sergeant Ismet said, from where she labored a few yards away, “we were going to be noble huntresses and all that, instead of scullery wenches to these tubs.”

  “Pleasure,” I managed, “comes after business.”

  It wasn’t that we were being taken advantage of — Cholla Yi had Klisura and the other shipmasters driving the sailors even harder. Nor were we doing the worst job conceivable, which came after the ship’s bottom was sufficiently clean. This job was for the fleet’s various petty offenders, both the handful from my Guardswomen who needed more severe punishment than a boot or backhand from her sergeant or a week jakes-cleaning, and the much greater number of sailors who’d fallen afoul of their masters-at-arms.

  All rotten ropes had been stripped off the ships and tossed in a great pile on the foreshore, and the punishment parties were assigned to pick the tarry ropes apart, strand by strand. These threads were then driven into the space between the ship’s planking, using a tool like a narrow chisel and a mallet. Since this served to reseal any leaks, even the laziest sailor worked with a will on this task, but to make sure a particularly vicious master-at-arms with a knotted rope-end paced back and forth behind the workers. He was forbidden, however, to strike any of my women.

  Polillo had explained it to him simply: “Only the Guard touches the Guard.” The brute considered Polillo’s muscles, looked into her icy eyes, and nodded understanding.

  Once the hull was caulked, it was painted. The paint was a reeking mixture of tar, oil and some vegetable poisons from the island. The poison would hopefully help keep new barnacles and weed from clamping onto our hull for awhile. Each one that did would slow the ship and make it more unwieldy to row and steer; plus it’d eventually eat through the planking. While all this was being done outside the ship, more was being done above us. All rotted wood was replaced — we were lucky and found a yard full of seasoned timber we could use. This included already-shaped tree trunks that replaced masts that’d split or had rot in their core. The decking and timbers were oiled. We found enough rope in and around the village to replace our old rigging.

  Also, the holds and cabins had to be fumigated. In an Orissan yard, I was told, an apprentice or journeyman Evocator would have cast a spell on the ship, so that all the rats, roaches and other vermin would have been blighted. But we had no such recourse, at least not at first. I determined, after a sailor nearly died from breathing the fumes from his sulfured torches, something must be done. With Gamelan’s help we produced a spell that worked very well, thank you. It consisted of rat’s blood, the remains of a few ship insects, the blossoms of a night-flower whose scent carried many yards, clay from the village’s burying-ground and a few simple words in ancient Orissan. Soon the galleys were relatively pest-free.

  Everything on the ship was carefully checked, replaced if possible or strengthened if not. Finally, the refit would be complete, and on the high tide the braces would be struck away, and the ship dragged back into deeper water, its anchors having been rowed out and all hands pushing handsomely on the capstan.

  That was one ship. Then another was beached — and the task begun anew.

  It was exhausting — but there were still some of us who had energy for other things, some for good, some not. I noted Dica spent most of her evenings in Sergeant Ismet’s company, the two of them carrying light bedding off into the country beyond the village if they were not on duty. I heartily approved — pillow talk is one of the best ways to learn, and my Flag Sergeant had been the first shield-lover for more than one aspirant in the past. Somehow, Ismet also knew how to painlessly let her affairs come to an end, with neither discipline nor her young lovers’ hearts being hurt.

  Others began, renewed or continued affairs. I’d always thought being aboard ship would make one romantic. But not on a warship, and not when the most privacy obtainable is a few minutes in a canvas-cloaked jakes in the bows of a ship, or having the nearest hammock hung no closer than two feet.

  Once again the old problem with the men roused itself. Regularly one or another of my Guardswo
men would be importuned for her favors, some politely, some crudely, some demandingly, as if the sailor had certain rights given by the gods to sow all the furrows he could reach. I don’t know why men seem to share a common fantasy — that a woman who chooses to find love among her own is deluded, and never has known a “real lover.” It isn’t just men with equipment grotesque enough to grace a stallion in rut. I’ve heard a pip-squeak clerk promise a great strapping corporal “such a night of love that you’ll forget all this foolishness.” Pah! Let those who think like that spend their time drilling soft sand with their never-to-be-sufficiently-lauded tools, since they seem to match love with post-hole-digging! It isn’t just sailors who act like this — it was a constant problem in barracks in Orissa, every time certain young lords came a-wooing the Maranon Guard.

  Enough of that. Suffice it to say the would-be lovers were rejected in much the same manner as they proposed — some with a smile and a laugh, others with a well-driven blow to just below where their mother’s cord was cut off and above where their souls seemed to live.

  I allowed my women to be used as common laborers until half the galleys were completed, then stepped in and told Cholla Yi firmly his sailors and marines could finish the task. We had another job — to make sure the fleet would be well fed when we sailed on.

  * * * *

  I remember clearly our first great hunt. I remember my women hallooing and rattling their spears against shields as the great boar snorted and broke out of the thicket . . . It pelted toward me, tusks gleaming dirty yellow in the late afternoon sunlight, blood glinting from the spear-wound in its shoulder. There were no other two-legs in the world but me, and for me nothing but those huge curved swords flashing as the boar squealed, put its head down for the charge, and ran onto the head of my spear. The shock sent me stumbling back, and I went to one knee, bracing the spearbutt on the ground as the animal ran itself up onto the spear and against the cross-bit halfway down the shaft. It roared its soul to the heavens, stumbled sideways, and fell before it knew it was dead.