The Anvil of the World aotwu-1

by Kage Baker

  “All right, then; we’ll just go around their silly blockade,” Lord Ermenwyr decided. “It’ll delay us, I suppose, but it can’t be helped.”

  Smith was already steering a course out to sea, but within the next quarter hour it became clear that one warship was breaking from its squadron and making a determined effort to pursue them. Lord Ermenwyr watched its progress from the aft rail. Willowspear stalked forward and prayed ostentatiously, like a gaunt figurehead.

  “I think we need to go faster, Smith,” the lordling remarked after a while.

  “Notice how they’ve got three times the spread of canvas we have?” said Smith, glancing over his shoulder.

  “That’s bad, is it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Well, can’t we just do something sailorly like, er, clap on more sail?”

  “Notice how they’ve got three masts, and we have one?”

  “I know!” Lord Ermenwyr cried. “We’ll light the boiler and get the invisible oarsmen going!”

  “That would probably be a good idea,” Smith agreed.

  “Yes! Let them eat our dust! Or salt spray, or whatever.”

  Smith nodded. Lord Ermenwyr fidgeted.

  “Ah … do you know how to get the mechanism working?” he asked politely.

  The boiler took up most of a cabin amidships, and it had been cast of iron in the shape of a squatting troll, whose gaping mouth was closed by a hinged buckler. Fortunately for everyone concerned, its designer had thoughtfully attached small brass plaques to the relevant bodily orifices, marked LIGHT BURNER HERE and FILL WITH OIL HERE and RELIEVE PRESSURE BY OPENING THIS VALVE.

  “How whimsical,” Lord Ermenwyr observed. “If I ever have to transform a deadly enemy into an inanimate object, I’ll know what form to give him.” He shuddered as Smith yanked open the oil reservoir.

  “Empty,” Smith grunted. “Did your ship merchant sell you any fuel?”

  “Yes! Now that you mention it.” The lordling backed out of the cabin and opened the door to the cabin opposite, revealing it to be solidly stacked with small kegs. “See?”

  Smith sidled through and pulled a keg down to examine it. “Well, it’s full,” he stated. “Good stuff, too; whale oil.”

  “You mean it’s been rendered down from whales?” Lord Ermenwyr grimaced.

  “That’s right.” Smith tapped the image stenciled in blue on the keghead, a cheery-looking leviathan.

  “But, Smith—they’re intelligent. Like people.”

  “No, they’re not; they’re fish,” said Smith, looking around for a funnel. “Mindless. Here we go. You hold that in place while I pour, all right?”

  “Promise me you won’t throw the empties overboard, then,” said Lord Ermenwyr, reaching out gingerly with the funnel. “Certain mindless fish have been known to stalk fishermen with something remarkably like intelligence. And a sense of injury.”

  Smith shrugged. When the oil reservoir had been filled, when the water pump had been opened, when the burner had been lit with a handy fireball and the troll’s eyes begun to glow an ominous yellow behind their glass lenses, Lord Ermenwyr stood back and regarded the whole affair with an expression of dissatisfaction.

  “Is that all?” he said. “I was expecting a rush of breathtaking speed.”

  “It has to boil first,” said Smith.

  There came a thump and clatter on the deck above their heads.

  “Master,” said a deep voice plaintively, “that ship threw something at us.”

  Smith swore and sped up the companionway.

  The bodyguards were standing in a circle, staring down at a ball of chipped stone that rolled to and fro on the deck. Willowspear, who had retreated as far forward as he could get, pointed mutely at the warship that was by then just over an effective shot’s length astern, close enough to see the blue light in the depths of the cabochon eyes of its dragon figurehead.

  “Was that a broadside?” inquired Lord Ermenwyr, worming past Smith to glare at the ship.

  “No. That was a warning,” said Smith.

  Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel all bent at once to pick up the stone ball, and butted heads with a noise like an accident in a quarry. After a moment of confused growling, Cutt got hold of the ball. He turned and threw it at the warship, in a titanic stiff-armed pitch that struck its foretop and broke the yard, sending it crashing to the deck in a tangle of rigging.

  Lord Ermenwyr applauded wildly.

  “That’ll slow ’em down! Good Cutt!”

  “What if all they wanted to do was speak with us?” cried Willowspear. “Do you realize we may have just lost any chance of resolving this peacefully?”

  “Oh, you’re no fun at all.”

  “The best we could have hoped for was being boarded anyway,” said Smith. “They’d have confiscated the boat and stuck us in a holding prison for civilians while they sorted us out. If we were lucky, we’d have seen the light of day after the war’s over.”

  “But—”

  “They’re cranking back their catapult for another shot,” warned Lord Ermenwyr.

  Smith saw that this was indeed the case, and that the warship’s crew, which had been going about their business on deck in an unhurried way until the strike and only occasionally glancing out at their quarry, was now assembled all along the rail, staring at the Kingfisher’s Nest as a hawk stares at a pigeon.

  The fighters among them held up their oval shields, bright-polished, and began to tap them against their scaled armor in a slow deliberate rhythm, clink and clink and clink, and the common sailors took up the rhythm too, beating it out on the rail. On bottles. On pans. The ratcheting of the great arm echoed it too as it came back, and back—

  “Hell! Here it comes,” said Smith, and prepared to drop flat, but the shot went high and fell short, sending up a white gout of water.

  “We don’t have anything we can shoot back with,” fretted Lord Ermenwyr.

  “If you’d told me about this trip ahead of time, we might have,” Smith retorted, watching the activity on the enemy’s deck. Now there were sailors swarming in the rigging, hauling up a replacement yard and cutting lines free, and there was a team busy adjusting the placement of the catapult. The moment it was set again, however, all hands paused in their work, all faces turned back to the Kingfisher’s Nest, and once again they began to beat out the rhythm, clink and clink, even the clinging topmen striking out their beat on the dull blocks and deadeyes.

  But as the catapult’s arm moved back, inexorable, there came a sound to counterpoint it: clank, and splash, and clank and splash, and clanksplash clanksplash—

  “Hooray!” Lord Ermenwyr made a rude gesture at the warship. “We have oarsmen!”

  And oars did seem to have deployed out of the panniers astern, jutting and dipping with a peculiar hinged motion, like a team of horses swimming on either side. The Kingfisher’s Nest did not exactly surge ahead, but there was no denying it began to make way, in a sort of determined crawl over the choppy swell. Over on the warship they launched their shot, and it arched up again and hung for a moment in the white face of the early moon before plummeting down in another fountain, approximately where Smith had been standing two minutes earlier.

  “Now they’ll see,” gloated Lord Ermenwyr. “We’ll leave them all befuddled in our, er—”

  “Wake,” said Smith.

  “Yes, and after dark they won’t have a chance, because we’ll slip silently away through the night and evade them!”

  “I don’t think we’re going anywhere silently,” said Smith, shouting over the clatter of the mechanism. “And there’ll be moonlight, you know.”

  “Details, details,” Lord Ermenwyr shouted back, waving his hand.

  They fled south, keeping the coastline just in sight, and the warship followed close. Its smashed yard was replaced in a disconcertingly short period of time, so the Kingfisher’s Nest lost some of its lead again. The whole chase had a bizarre clockwork quality Smith had never seen in a sea battle
before. The Kingfisher’s Nest paddled on, puffing steam like a teakettle, while the warship’s crew kept up its clattering commentary. Were they trying to intimidate? Were they being sarcastic?

  They never gave it up in any case, all the way down the coast, past a dozen fishing villages, past Alakthon-on-Sea, past Gabekria. The sun sank red, throwing their long shadows out over the water, and the white foam turned red and the breasts of the seabirds that paced them turned red as blood. When the sun had gone they fled on through the purple twilight, still pursued, and the warship lit all its lanterns as though to celebrate a triumph.

  “Aren’t they ever giving up?” complained Lord Ermenwyr. “What did we ever do to them, for hell’s sake?”

  “They’re chasing us because we’re running,” said Smith wearily. “I guess they think we’re spies, now. It’s a matter of money, too. We got off a shot at them and did damage, so we’re a legitimate prize if we’re taken.”

  Lord Ermenwyr lit his smoking tube with a fireball. “Well, this has ceased to be amusing. It’s time we did something decisive and unpleasant.”

  “It has never occurred to you to pray to Her for assistance, has it?” said Willowspear in a doomed voice. His lord pretended not to hear him.

  “It would help if we had a dead calm,” said Smith. “That would give us the advantage. Could you do something sorcerous, maybe, like making the wind drop?”

  “Hmf! I’m not a weather mage. Daddy, now, he can summon up thunder and lightning and the whole bag of meteorological tricks; but I don’t do weather.”

  “In fact, I don’t think I ever saw you praying at all, not once!”

  “Could you summon us up a catapult that’s bigger than theirs, then?” Smith inquired.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Lord Ermenwyr severely. “Sorcery doesn’t work like that. It works on living energies. Things that can be persuaded. I could probably convince tiny particles of air to change themselves into wood and steel, but I’d have to cut a deal with every one of them on a case-by-case basis, and do you have any idea how long it would take? Assuming I even knew how to build a catapult—”

  Smith hadn’t heard the shot, but he caught the brief glint of moonlight on the stone ball as it came in fast and low, straight for the glowing point of the lordling’s smoking tube. Without thinking, he dropped and yanked Lord Ermenwyr’s feet out from under him. Lord Ermenwyr fell, the ball shot past. It smashed into the nearest of the boiler domes, where it stuck. The dome crumpled along one riveted seam and began to scream shrilly, as steam jetted forth.

  “Those bastards!” Lord Ermenwyr gasped. “That could have been me!”

  “It was meant to be,” said Smith. “But please don’t call them names when they board us, all right? We might get out of this alive.”

  “They’re not boarding us,” said Lord Ermenwyr, scrambling to his hands and knees. “I defy them!”

  “Notice how we’re slowing down?” said Smith. “See the steam escaping from the boiler? It’s like, er, blood. It’s the vital fluid that makes the clockwork oarsmen row. And, since it’s leaking out—”

  “Dead meat!” bellowed Crish, wrenching the ball loose. He turned and shot-putted it straight into the bows of the oncoming warship, where it did a lot of damage, to judge from the hoarse screaming that followed.

  “This isn’t helping—” groaned Smith.

  “I’ll show them dead meat,” said Lord Ermenwyr, in a voice that made Smith’s blood run cold. He looked up to see that the lordling had risen, and had thrown off the glamour that normally disguised him. His pallor gleamed under the moon; he seemed an edged weapon, a horrible surprise, and there was something corpselike and relentless in the stare he turned on the warship.

  He leaned sidelong over the rail and reached a hand toward the water. Smith’s eyes blurred, he winced and blinked and turned his face away: for Lord Ermenwyr was warping size and distance, somehow, effortlessly dipping his hand in the moon-gleaming sea though it lay far below his arm’s reach, swirling the water idly, as though the sea were no more than a basin.

  He said something that hurt Smith’s ears. He called. He persuaded. Smith found himself compelled to look back and saw a light rising under the waves. The warship was perilously close, pistol bolts were hissing across the short space of water that they had not crossed, thudding and clattering home. The lordling ignored the bolts, though he turned his head slightly as the shadow of the bow loomed black in the moonlight. Smiling, he raised his hand full of water, and the light under the waves came closer upward, and grew brighter. He spoke a Word.

  Something emerged from the water and kissed the lordling’s hand, and that was all Smith registered before his brain refused to accept the geometry of what he saw. But it was bright, glowing to outshine the moon with the green phosphorescence of the depths, and it had a sweetish scent, and it made a high fizzing kind of sound that might have been speech. Smith trembled, felt a seizure beginning, and shut his eyes tightly.

  But he could hear the screaming on the other ship.

  He heard the wrenching and snapping of wood, too, and the full-throated and triumphant howling of Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel. He heard Willowspear’s footsteps swift on the companionway, and his pleading voice. Smith swallowed twice before he was able to mutter; “Have mercy on them, have mercy on them, o gods…”

  The shouting was going on and on. There was a bubbling, a rush of air and displaced water. There was still shouting. The smell diminished, the bubbling too, but the shouting continued.

  Smith opened his eyes and looked full into the moon. For a moment he glimpsed the double image of a towering shape below it that dwindled, solidified, patted its mundane form about it like a garment, and was only Lord Ermenwyr after all. Smith scrambled to his knees and peered over the railing.

  The warship was still there, though falling astern and foundering. Its bowsprit with the dragon figurehead, in fact much of its forecastle, was missing. Boats were being flung over and men flung themselves too, swimming desperately to get free of the wreck and of the brightness under the water.

  But the bright thing sank, and diminished, and a moment later there was no light but the moon and the now-distant lanterns of the ship, though they were going out one by one. No clattering any more, of any kind, for the first time in hours. Smith’s ears rang in the silence.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Oh, you really don’t want to know,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “They broke my toy, so I broke theirs.”

  A wind came across the sea and bellied out their sails. The silence filled gradually with the long-familiar creaking of the ship under way. Lord Ermenwyr took up his smoking tube again and relit it, shielding it against the wind with both hands. Smith steadied his trembling legs, got to his feet.

  “Thank you,” he said, “for not having them all killed.”

  “Well, aren’t you the magnanimous soul?” said Lord Ermenwyr, regarding him askance. “I couldn’t see myself facing Mother again if I’d given them what they deserved. Her stare of reproach could take out a whole fleet of warships.”

  “My lord, we must go back and rescue them,” said Willowspear.

  “No!” Lord Ermenwyr bared his teeth. “What do you think I am, a nice man? It won’t do them any harm to paddle across the briny deep looking fearfully over their shoulders for a while, expecting any moment some unspeakable creature to rear up out of the primordial oozy depths and … and … Oh, bugger all, I’m getting seasick again. Help me to my cabin, Willowspear. I want my fix, and I need to lie down.”

  Willowspear glowered at him.

  “I’m doing this for your Mother’s sake,” he said, and helped Lord Ermenwyr to the companionway.

  “Fine. Smith, you can stay up here and mind the steering-wheel thing. Boys, stand guard. Perhaps you can get Smith to teach you how to belay the anchor or some other terribly nautical business…”

  His voice retreated belowdecks.

  Smith staggered to the wheel and clung the
re, breathing deeply. Distant on the headland were the tiny yellow lights of a village. There was a fair wind; the stars were washed out by light, the night sky washed to a soft slate-blue, and the moon rode tranquil above the wide water. If anything unwholesome traveled below, it kept to its deeps and troubled the air no more.

  He brought his gaze back to the deck, and met eight red lights in a line. No; they were four pairs of eyes. Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel were watching him, unblinking as towers.

  “What is an anchor, Child of the Sun?” asked Strangel.

  What the hell, thought Smith.

  “All right,” he said. “You’re going to learn to crew this ship. Understand?”

  The demons looked at one another uncertainly.

  Smith woke on deck in the morning, sprawled in a coil of hawser, and—sitting up—felt every year of his life in the muscles of his lower back. Gritting his teeth, he stood and surveyed the deserted bay wherein the Kingfisher’s Nest lay anchored. It had seemed like a safe harbor by moonlight; he was gratified to see no other sail and a clear sky without cloud.

  “Child of the Sun.”

  He turned his head (feeling a distinct grinding in his neck) and saw the four demons standing motionless by the rail, watching him hopefully.

  “Are we to pull up the anchor now?”

  Smith ran his hands over his stubbly face. “Not yet,” he said. “See all these pistol bolts sticking in things? Pull ’em all out and collect ’em in a bucket. Find a wood plane and some putty and get rid of the splinters and the holes, all right? And I’ll go see if I can find a wrench so I can start taking the boiler dome apart.”

  The demons looked at one another.

  “What is some putty, Child of the Sun?”

  It took no more than an hour to show them what to do. Smith had discovered that the demons were not actually stupid; just terribly literal-minded. By the time Lord Ermenwyr came on deck they were scraping and filling industriously, as Smith sat in the midst of the disassembled boiler dome, tapping out the dent and realigning the seam.

  “Oh, good, I hoped you’d be able to fix that,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pacing forward and surveying the horizon.