Rose of the World (FOOLS GOLD)

by Fisher, Jude

  Katla dug the blade of the little knife deeper into the already sore-looking wound on Gasto Costan’s neck till he cried out and drew attention to his plight. Distracted by this noise, Baranguet and Bastido stared and stared at the bizarre scenario thus presented to them, and therefore did not notice the giant slowly complete his mission by handing over his clutch of keys to the Mistress of Rockfall. Bera’s fingers closed carefully around them, muffling all sound. Then she took a silent step backwards and subsided to the deck once more, into the shadows of the crossbeam.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Katla saw this curious exchange. Her grin widened. Now this was becoming interesting! In her imagination, all sorts of possibilities played themselves out in glorious detail. All of them came to a delightful conclusion with the hanging of both captain and lieutenant from the yardarm of the ship while she, Katla Aransen, heroine of the isles, steered them safely home to Rockfall.

  Galo Bastido started to swear: that much was clear, even if the words were not. He shoved Baranguet forward with a gesture which obviously meant: you deal with her. The whipman, matching her feral grin with his own, advanced, cutlass angled towards her.

  ‘Another step,’ Katla declared loudly in the Old Tongue, ‘and I’ll skewer your shipmate!’

  Baranguet laughed. Insolently, as if to test her resolve – she was, after all, just a girl; and what girl would cold-bloodedly harm a man just to prove a point? – he took a huge step forward. Katla jabbed the knife deep into Gasto Costan’s neck, making the man squeal in pain and panic.

  ‘For Falla’s sake,’ he shrieked at Baranguet, when the pressure of the blade lessened, ‘she’s a crazy girl, a little witch! Don’t provoke her, or she’ll send me to the fires!’

  ‘Where you sent your pretty wife?’ Baranguet asked unpleasantly. ‘Just because she fucked your little brother, who was smarter and richer than you?’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up! How dare you speak of that sacrilegious pair! You know nothing of the sorrow it caused me to get my courage up enough to do my duty and go to the Sisters—’

  ‘Your duty,’ sneered the whipman. ‘I heard you went to the burning, then moved into your brother’s house a day later and hired yourself a brace of whores.’

  ‘I didn’t, I didn’t!’ cried Gasto Costan, horrified by the truth in all this. He squirmed desperately in Katla’s steady grasp, but his efforts resulted only in a tightening of the chain across his throat so that his eyes now bulged with more than outrage.

  ‘Unlock your chains, Mother,’ Katla called softly in Eyran across the hold. ‘Unlock them, and then pass the keys to Kitten.’

  Bera looked unsure of the wisdom of this. ‘Surely it would be better to wait until they leave us, and then to free ourselves silently and secretly?’ she began.

  ‘If we are left locked and unarmed in this hold, we will be in no better position to escape than when they first brought us to the ship,’ Katla reminded her. ‘We need their weapons, and we need the hatch open.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Bastido shouted. He shoved Baranguet out of the way and came at her. In the blink of an eye, Katla had twisted her wrist and tightened the chain: now the sneering man could not breathe, or even cry out; but still Bastido came on.

  Katla waved the little knife at him. It was, she thought, pathetically small and blunt, but she reckoned she could still put an eye out with it if push came to shove.

  ‘Back off!’ she yelled. ‘Or he dies.’

  Bastido laughed. ‘Do you think I care whether he lives’ – and at this Gasto Costan began to writhe and weep – ‘or dies? He’s a vile little runt with all the morals of a rabid fox and the fighting skills of a twelve-year-old girl!’

  ‘At twelve,’ Katla mused, ‘I won the Westman Isles wrestling contest for the first time.’

  Galo Bastido cocked his head on one side and fixed her with his small beady eyes. ‘You really are a very annoying creature,’ he declared. For a moment, it looked as if he was considering his options; then fast as a biting dog he darted forward and stuck his hapless crewman through the guts with his cutlass. Gasto Costan sagged in Katla’s arms. Blood and fluid spread swiftly across his gaping tunic, followed by a sudden slippery outpouring of viscous tubing.

  Katla gazed down at this horrible sight. ‘That’s sort of spoiled my plan.’

  ‘One less man to pay,’ the captain quipped cheerfully, and advanced on her.

  She stepped quickly backwards, dragging her dying captive with her, then quickly extricated her chains from the groaning man and let him drop as a useful obstacle between her and the captain. Behind her, she could hear the click of a tumbler turning in a lock and chains clanking as her mother removed her shackles. She watched as Bastido’s eyes tracked the sound and widened in disbelief. Then he let off a barrage of abuse at the huge man who stood uselessly by watching the women.

  At last, Casto Agen came to life. Bending, he grabbed Kitten Sorensen by the wrist and hauled her to her feet. Kitten, of course, took one look at her attacker and swooned. The keys fell noisily to the floor.

  In the midst of all this, with the captain’s attention fatally distracted, Katla Aransen made her move. Scurrying in under the big man’s reach while he was caught up with the fainting girl, she retrieved both the keys and the sword from the scabbard hanging from his hip, and danced away, tucking the little knife into her belt. Then her fingers deftly worked the keys into place like a close-hand magician about to faze his audience with a dodgy trick.

  Neither of them appeared to fit. ‘Sur’s arse!’ Katla swore furiously.

  Galo Bastido was coming after her again. No time for messing around with this blasted lock, Katla thought. She waited a few seconds until he was within range, then whipped up the sword. An inch closer and she would have had him; as it was, she nicked his cheekbone. The keys went flying. They arced through the air and came down again, as neatly as if by design, in Casto Agen’s hands.

  Blood jetted out of the wound. Bastido said something clearly obscene in his own language, then smeared a hand across his face, leaving a grotesque trail down cheek and neck. His eyes glittered murderously through the spattered gore.

  Damn, she thought, but there was no time for regret. She whirled the sword around her head.

  He came at her too fast for caution, his cutlass raised for a barbarous downward chop. She felt the air part beside her ear and darted backwards. A quick glance ascertained her surroundings and she leapt behind a big timber support. A bare second later, Bastido’s weapon splintered the pillar, sending frayed chunks of oak spinning out into the dark air of the hold. Katla appeared around the other side of the post and jabbed her sword at his waist. But the captain was fast and well trained; the cutlass came down on her blade with a great clang, the force of his blow setting her arm-bones ajangle and sending tremors down into her fingers.

  Katla ducked and weaved. She was a head taller than her opponent; lighter and quicker, too, but he was built like a prize bull, bursting with year upon year of hard-trained muscle. She parried another bone-shocker from him, then spun away on her toes and swept her own blade around low. Bastido took a step back, but it was not quite far enough. The edge of Katla’s purloined weapon sheared across the big muscle of his thigh, making her opponent roar with surprise and pain. Damn, Katla thought; another inch and I’d have had his leg off. This judgement brought suddenly to mind a conversation with Tor Leeson about the good edge on one of her swords—

  Take a man’s leg off nicely, I’d say . . .

  That womanising bruiser, she thought fondly, though she had never been very fond of him in her life. He had had no gentle way with either swords or words; but he had died trying to save her from the burning. An Istrian blade in the back, they’d said. Fury filled her anew. Istrians were her enemies: and this man who faced her now more than any. He had murdered her friends and kin, burned her own grandmother in her family home. A nicked leg was barely a down-payment on the blood-debt he owed her.

  Snarling like a mad dog, K
atla ran at him, arms locked, sword extended. Galo Bastido threw his blade up to ward her off, but he had underestimated her pace and determination. The cutlass sheared off the Istrian sword with a shower of fiery sparks which lit the faces of both combatants for a few brief seconds. Then the cutlass described an elegant arc, gleaming silver like a leaping salmon, and spun uselessly out of the raider’s hands.

  Something moved in her peripheral vision but Katla forced herself to ignore it and concentrate on her opponent. As Bastido staggered backwards, she went after him, sword raised to deliver a killing stroke.

  The next thing she knew she was falling backwards and her arms felt as though they were being dragged out of their sockets. She stumbled, lost her footing, went down hard onto the deck, catching a cross-timber painfully in the small of her back. Something – somebody – had hold of her sword. She jerked her head sideways and saw that the thongs of a many-tongued whip had knotted themselves inextricably around the blade. She hauled fiercely, shearing through two of the thongs, but the man on the other end of it – Baranguet, of course – was not letting go.

  ‘Hell’s teeth,’ Katla groaned. She looked back. The raiders’ captain was coming at her now, empty-handed but furious, his face a gory mask. She could see the whites all around his eyes. He was definitely going to kill her if she stayed where she was. She went momentarily limp; and as she had hoped, Baranguet yanked hard on the whip. As he did so, she released the sword and flipped herself to her feet. She heard the whipman go down with a curse; heard the sword skitter across the deck. Then she ran at Bastido.

  Her lowered head took him hard under the ribs in a time-honoured Eyran wrestling gambit. She heard the wind rush out of his lungs. A moment later, she was astraddle him, her knees pinning his shoulders to the floor. She had outpointed Simi’s brother, Gill Fallson, with a manoeuvre very similar to this, and he was built like a bull, as was this man. It was all in the speed; she could hardly match him for power or weight; but big men never expected a girl of Katla’s size to put them down. She watched the raiders’ chief’s face twist into a grimace of frustration when he found he could not move his arms; then she grabbed the little knife she had taken from the sneering man and plunged it to the hilt into his eye.

  ‘That’s for Gramma Rolfsen!’

  Bull-like, Galo Bastido began to roar. He writhed in agony. Appalled that he had not simply and quietly died, Katla leapt backwards off him as if scalded. Slowly, deliberately, the captain levered himself to his feet, the hilt of the knife protruding obscenely. He fixed Katla with his one good eye blinking desperately and staggered two paces towards her, hands reaching like those of a sleepwalker. Katla took two steps back, hit a crossbeam and stumbled. A blast of pain shot through up her leg. ‘Sur’s bollocks!’

  Twisted ankle. Very painful, but not fatal as long as she didn’t let it slow her down, for Galo Bastido was still advancing, lurching with all the horrible obstinacy of an afterwalker. Gritting her teeth against the agony, Katla pushed herself upright and skittered sideways.

  A moment later, having come round in a panicky semicircle, there was nowhere left to run. The back of Katla’s head made audible contact with one of the starboard ribs, and when she reached back with a questing hand, all she found was splintering wood sticky with caulking-tar. She faced the raiders’ leader, her eye-teeth showing in a feral grin. She was quick, she was tough and she was very angry, she reminded herself. ‘Come on then, you bastard,’ she taunted him, putting up her hard little fists. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got left.’

  Galo Bastido snarled. He made a vile gurgling noise that might have been a curse, a threat or a last breath. Then he took a huge, staggering step towards her, pitched forward like a hewn tree and fell face down between her spread feet. The hilt of the little knife hit the deck first with the unforgettable sound of metal forcibly striking bone and gristle. Katla grimaced. The raiders’ captain lay still; but Katla had already seen a man who should have been well dead return to life. She waited another few seconds, and when he was still unmoving, booted him hard in the head with her good foot. He didn’t stir at all.

  ‘Got you.’

  A shocked silence floated out across the hold as if everyone was holding their breath; then Fat Breta started to scream and scream. Curses, shouts, howls of pain and fury rent the air. Women shrieked and men bellowed. Katla grabbed up the fallen cutlass from behind the still corpse of Galo Bastido and stared wildly about, trying to decide on her next course of action. She scanned the hold and its mass of bodies for sight of her mother, but in the midst of all the chaos it was hard to make out one filthy, half-starved Eyran woman from another.

  There came a sharp crack, then a shout, followed by another and another. Little by little the noise and movement seemed to subside, all except the incongruous keening noise of a trapped seagull, or a tortured cat. One moment, all was chaos; the next a space was clearing in the middle of the hold and people were breaking off whatever they had been doing to watch something.

  Baranguet had Simi Fallsen by the hair and his pet whip – now disentangled from the sword Katla had stolen from the giant – in his hand. Three women lay in front of him, red welts on their bare arms. Of these, in the gloom, Katla could recognise only Kit Farsen, whose face was turned up pleadingly, tears washing cleaner tracks down her grime-engrained cheeks. The keening sound went on and on, then stopped abruptly as the whipman wrapped his fist one more turn around Simi’s lank brown locks and yanked hard. Simi was a big woman – taller than the whipman by several inches, and even wider across hip and shoulder – but his hard muscles showed in corded swells down both arms as he bore her down until her throat bowed backwards. A moment later there was a resounding crack, and Simi slumped to the deck at his feet, her head skewed at an unnatural angle.

  ‘By the Lord,’ Bera Rolfsen was heard to say.

  Thin Hildi made the protective warding sign of Feya’s cradle.

  Kit Farsen began to howl.

  Baranguet laughed. ‘That one was very ugly,’ he announced to those assembled in the Old Tongue, his eyes alight with unholy glee. ‘And very noisy, too.’ He paused. ‘She must be descended from – what are those great ugly beasts you northern people believe in? That dwell in dark places, in caves and under bridges?’ He looked around. No one said a word. Ferociously, he kicked Kit Farsen hard on the arm. She shrieked and backed away from him, but he came after her. ‘What do you call these creatures?’ he persisted. He caught up to her, whip raised.

  At once, Kit’s wail subsided into gulped sobs. ‘Tr-tr—’ She took a deep breath, then wailed again as the whip cut through the gloomy air with a whistling sound and landed with a crack, catching her across the face. Blood leapt out of the cut. Tears sprang from her eyes. ‘Tr-tr—’

  Kit had always stammered when she was nervous. The boys had taunted her for it when she could not repeat her lessons, until Katla had punched them till they promised not to do it any more. Everyone was forever picking on little Kit Farsen.

  ‘Trolls!’ The word blasted out across the hold. ‘But there’s not a troll in all of Eyra as ugly as you. Your mother must have been a yeka and your father a warthog.’

  His attention distracted from the shuddering creature at his feet, Baranguet turned to fix his basilisk gaze upon Katla Aransen.

  Katla stared back at him, fierce with fury. There was no weapon in grabbing distance and nowhere to run. She stuck her chin out and waited. Why was she always fighting others’ battles for them? Halli would have warned her to keep quiet and seek an advantage, rather than rushing thoughtlessly into the breach. But she never seemed to learn. It was not even that she was friendly with little Kit Farsen, who was far too much a milksop to sustain Katla’s boisterous company for very long; and she had hardly known Simi Fallsen; but no one deserved to die so needlessly, nor be hurt for the entertainment of a sadistic brute. ‘You are a coward and a murderer,’ she growled. ‘May you burn in the fires of that bitch-goddess you call Falla.’

  She put
her fists up. It was, she had to admit, a pathetic gesture, but maybe if she could catch the tongues of the whip as it came at her, she could drag Baranguet off balance and that might at least give her a chance to run for a blade . . .

  A few paces away from Katla, Baranguet cocked his head on one side and looked her up and down, clearly unimpressed. ‘Not much loss to us if you follow the ugly one. I can’t see you fetching much, anyway,’ he grinned unpleasantly. ‘Where I come from we like a girl with some flesh on her, not some skinny little fox’s runt.’ He raised his whip.

  Katla ran at him, but it was an unequal and very swift contest. A moment later the many-tongued whip lashed out and though she caught two of the flails with one hand, the rest wrapped themselves tightly around her neck. Baranguet began to pull, and they tightened again. As she sank to her knees, gasping for breath, Katla heard her mother’s roar of protest, then the sound of a fist connecting with flesh and bone.

  A blizzard of black snowflakes filled her vision; then everything went fuzzy and dark and she heard and saw nothing more.

  Eight

  Alisha

  It was dawn when Alisha Skylark raised her head from the cold mud in which she lay, a chilly, grey dawn in which the sun made its presence known only by a bloody tinge to the easternmost clouds, as if it had little wish to examine the sights offered by the grim world below.

  She was alive. She hurt, but she was alive.

  For a few seconds a sharp buzz of elation revived her enough to look slowly from side to side, taking in her surroundings; then harsh reality overtook optimism. The dead lay all around, oozing out the last of their reluctant fluids into the cheerless air. Dead horses, dead men. All scattered across the ground as if some gigantic hand had reached down out of the sky, scooped them up, mashed them for a moment in its fist, then thrown them down again at random. As if the gods were playing knucklebones with lives, she thought. We mean nothing to them, nothing at all.