Southern Fire ac-1

by Juliet E. McKenna

  'Then how are we to know what to do for the best?' cried Kheda before he could stop himself. He took a long slow breath. 'No matter. We'll just have to go south, as I said before. We'll have to see what we're facing with our own eyes.'

  Chapter Four

  The colour of this water's more like a river than the sea. It doesn't even have waves, it's so confined in this maze of mud and rock and oh, what I wouldn't give for some clean salt air, instead of this stifling stink.

  Kheda hastily suppressed that thought before he inadvertently made any kind of wager with the future. 'Is this a course Cai's ever sailed before?'

  'We've neither of us been in these waters.' Jatta shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed on the gap between two dusty islands lying half south ahead. 'We're well off the usual trade channels.' The shipmaster had his red route book absently clutched in one hand.

  Kheda looked past the Scorpion's prow to the stern of Saril's fast trireme, the Horned Fish, a precise two ship's lengths ahead, thanks to Jatta's expert guidance. 'Is it evidence of his good faith, to show us these byways?'

  'He has little enough to lose.' Jatta sounded noncommittal. 'I'll warrant heavy triremes will be ready to stare us down, if we try coming this way once he's back in his compound again.'

  'You'll be making your notes on these seaways though?' enquired Kheda innocently.

  'I'd be remiss in my duty to the Daish domain if I didn't.' Jatta's wicked smile belied his lofty tone. 'And a little skiff on a moonlit night can generally find a quiet channel to slip past a heavy trireme.'

  'Which might be useful under some different turn of the heavens,' allowed Kheda.

  If not for us, maybe for Sirket in some unforeseen future. Remember what Daish Reik told you at much the same age as he is now. 'Never assume that any situation mill remain as it is, no matter how long it has resisted the twists of fate.' Are we truly going to find ourselves facing magic here, in the face of all expectation?

  Jatta turned a serious face to Kheda. 'Have we left our own ships ready to chase off any Chazen ships using this panic as excuse to spy out our seaways?'

  'I had the signals sent before we left the Hyd Rock, and explicit orders to Janne Daish.' Kheda glanced back past the Scorpion's sternpost to Atoun's heavy triremes, Saril's two vessels leading them on. 'Besides, if we can win Chazen at least a foothold back in his own domain with a rapid strike, his people will have no choice but to retreat to their own waters.'

  'Do we know how many of these invaders hold this place?' Jatta was studying an island just coming into view. It was no great size but boasted the conical peak of a fire mountain rising stark and grey above thickly forested slopes. Knot trees reached down to the water and beyond, the solid ground fringed by swamps of tangled grey roots lapped by sluggish seas.

  'According to everything Atoun can determine, only a small force came this far east. Chazen Saril says they will surely be keeping to this one island. It's the only land in this reach with year-round springs of water.'

  I sincerely hope the assurances of the Chazen men are trustworthy. Most particularly in reporting no suspicion of magic hereabouts.

  'Chazen Saril's helmsman had better know where he's taking us.' Jatta looked at a confused cluster of little islets with disfavour. 'Some of these channels are so narrow and shallow a shoal of real horned fishes would be swimming in single file.'

  'There'll be scant landing, from what I hear.' Cai adjusted the Scorpion's course as signal flags fluttered from the Horned Fish's stern platform.

  'So once we've killed these invaders, we have only the one beach to guard against any more of them,' Kheda said bracingly.

  'That's Atoun's task, killing and guarding.' Seeing the Horned Fish slow, Jatta looked down the gangway and waved to the rowing master. The piper drew out his note and the Scorpion obediently loitered in the strait. Baffled by the tree-smothered islands in all directions, the currents made little headway against the rowers' determination.

  Kheda raised a hand in salute as the first of the heavy triremes passed the Scorpion. Atoun, unmistakable on the stern platform, raised his naked sword in salute. One of the Chazen ships passed on their other flank, the shipmaster rising from his seat to sweep a low bow to Kheda. As Kheda inclined his head in recognition, he saw Saril at the stern of the Horned Fish, naked blade in his hand, directing the heavy triremes with urgent gestures as they surged past.

  'He's going ashore?' Jatta was astonished.

  'It's his domain that's been invaded,' shrugged Kheda, impassive.

  'It's not the place of warlords to get themselves killed in skirmishes like common swordsmen,' Telouet growled. 'Hasn't he heard enough poets' laments to know that?'

  'I don't suppose many decent poets bother coming this far south,' commented Jatta with faint derision.

  'I doubt he'll go ashore. He's got no armour for one thing.' Kheda saluted Chazen Saril who was still wearing the remnants of his bedraggled finery.

  The heavy triremes laden with swordsmen passed both the Horned Fish and the Scorpion, leaving the two fast ships blocking the seaway, ready to foil any escape by the unknown invaders.

  'You'd have had the sense to find yourself a hauberk, even if I wasn't there to lead you by the hand,' Telouet snorted.

  'Keep such thoughts to yourself when Chazen Saril's within earshot,' Kheda remarked mildly. 'Or he really will demand I have you flogged.'

  'And refusal would cause such unwelcome offence.' Jatta spared Telouet an irreverent grin.

  'There's the landing.' Cai pointed to a stretch of dank grey sand barely visible between the bigger ships.

  The Scorpion's archers and swordsmen stood on the bow platform and side decks, alert to any danger from the lesser islets that all but enclosed this anchorage. Here and there a sheer cliff of black rock rose from the shadowed seas but, for the most part, dark green knot trees with their stubby, fleshy leaves came right to the water's edge. There was no sign of movement among the twistud grey branches, and scant breeze cooled the sweat on Kheda's forehead. A scent of decay hung heavy in the air, which hummed with the chirrups of countless, nameless insects.

  With rapid strokes, the heavy triremes were turning stern on to the beach, steering oars raised out of harm's way.

  'Invaders,' hissed Jatta as they all saw some movement on the sand.

  With a rush that drowned out his words, the heavy triremes drove for the shore. They grounded hard, barely still before armoured men poured down the stern ladders, plunging through the waist-deep water, swords drawn. Dark-skinned men erupted from the tree line, howling wordless, meaningless cries.

  The hair on Kheda's neck rose. 'They sound like beasts.'

  'Let them die like beasts,' said Telouet fervently.

  'Indeed.' Kheda heard the savage howling broken by screeches of pain with vengeful satisfaction.

  'Are they breaking?' Jatta was watching the greater contingent of archers that had been gathered on the Horned Fish. They were sending a storm of arrows across the beach, heavier than a rainy-season squall.

  'I can't see.' Kheda ran lightly along the Scorpion's landward-side deck to the bow platform, Telouet at his heels. Kheda's spirits rose at the better view of the carnage ashore. 'It's true,' he marvelled. 'They're only using wooden clubs and spears.'

  He pointed as Chazen and Daish blades flashed in the sunlight, cutting down the shrieking savages.

  'Which can still crack a skull or skewer a man like a roasting fowl.' Telouet scanned the shore, keeping himself between Kheda and any unseen, unanticipated threat. 'And we don't know they've no slings or arrows of their own. Get behind the bowpost, my lord.'

  'They're the ones being skewered.' Doing as Telouet bade him, Kheda nevertheless saw invader after invader fall to ruthless sword blows. The Daish warriors weren't even having to call on the skills honed by years of training, with no armour to foil, no razor-edged blades opposing them, ready to punish any errors of timing. A second wave of yelling men came charging out of the trees but arrows felle
d half before they joined battle with the steel-clad line of swordsmen now advancing up the beach.

  'Let's hope we take back every island as easily as this one,' said Telouet with satisfaction.

  'It's not won yet.' Apprehension kept a tight grip on Kheda's guts. 'Let's hope we don't suddenly find ourselves facing magic'

  'What's that?' Telouet started at some commotion on the Horned Fish's stern platform, everyone pointing to the shore and shouting.

  Kheda's heart missed a beat when he saw what was happening. 'It's Chazen's own islanders!'

  'Come out from their sanctuaries,' approved Telouet with a spreading grin. 'They'll want to play their part in taking back their homes from these despoilers.'

  'They've got them caught between a storm and a windward shore now.' Kheda shook his head slowly. 'This is a slaughter.'

  'Good,' said Telouet robustly.

  Fisherman slashed at the savages with boathooks and fishing poles. Those used to tilling the soil swung hoes and rakes. Hunters carried the broad curved blades that they used for hacking through underbrush and tore into the naked backs and legs of these unforeseen foemen. Chazen islanders who'd arrived empty-handed picked up wooden spears fallen from nerveless fingers and thrust them to deadly effect. The clamour on the beach rose to a new pitch of ferocity until Atoun blew a throbbing blast on his horn. A tense hush fell pierced only by groans of agony.

  Kheda saw Chazen Saril already beckoning to a row-boat creeping cautiously out from beneath a fringe of swamp trees. 'Telouet, we're going ashore.'

  'My lord.' The slave didn't bother trying to argue the point, following his master back to the stern platform.

  Chazen Saril waved up at Kheda from the little boat. 'My lord Daish! Let us visit our victory together!'

  'Nice of him to share the credit,' muttered Telouet. 'When we brought five times his warriors to the party.'

  'Rekha Daish will make him pay what he owes us.' Kheda followed Telouet deftly down the Scorpion's stern ladder to join Chazen Saril in the rowboat.

  As they approached the shore, the little vessel nudged aside bodies bobbing in the sluggish wavelets, blood vanishing in the silty water. They looked as if they'd been savaged by wild dogs; arms and bellies ripped open, gashes gaping in ruined faces.

  Train your men as the most ferocious swordsmen and your domain will be protected. It will also be more at risk, because all such men want to do is fight, while you doing your duty as their warlord means they seldom get the chance. A ruler's life is full of paradoxes.

  Telouet was marvelling at the corpses' scant loincloths and few paltry ornaments of feathers and paint. 'What kind of fool goes into battle naked as a newborn pup?'

  Kheda shot him a hard look. 'A man who believes he has something more powerful to rely on than leather and steel.'

  'But there was no fire.' Chazen Saril was looking confused. 'There was so much fire, before.'

  Eager hands reached out to draw the rowboat high on to the shore so that both warlords could step out on to dry land. Chazen and Daish warriors pressed close, swords still drawn.

  'Go, speak to your people.' Kheda caught Saril by the elbow and turned him towards a slightly built man who stood wringing his hands anxiously. 'Find out just what else we might be facing. Telouet, let's see what the wounded have to tell us.'

  With his slave close by, Kheda hurried along the shore where the Chazen islanders and those who'd come to rescue them were dispatching fallen wild men with ruthless efficiency.

  'Wait,' Kheda commanded curtly as he saw a Daish sword raised above an invader felled by a blow that had left his knees a ruin of white bone in a mess of torn flesh now blackened with flies, his lifeblood soaking into the dry ground.

  'It's all very well remembering your training,' Telouet commented to the Daish swordsman. 'But when a man's not wearing a hauberk, why not just run him through?'

  'True enough.' The Daish warrior smiled ruefully.

  The dying savage thrashed from side to side, scrabbling for some weapon. He tried to throw sand into the Daish men's faces but his strength failed him and his arm fell back. Telouet scowled and planted a heavy foot on the savage's wrist, nodding to the swordsman to do the same.

  'Who are you? Do you understand me? Do you know who I am?' Kheda crouched down beside the invader.

  'He doesn't look barbarian,' said Telouet, puzzled.

  'Not like any northerner, certainly,' agreed Kheda. Though, similar as his features might be to any Chazen or Daish man on the shore, this wild man was taller than most Aldabreshi by half a head, even the coastal people of the largest islands who tended to top hill dwellers by much the same measure. On the other hand, he was darker-skinned than even the people of the remotest heights.

  'What's that in his hair?' Telouet prodded cautiously at the man's head with the tip of his sword. Even with his strength visibly failing the man tried to twist away, spitting at the blade.

  'Paint of some kind?' Kheda couldn't tell if the savage's hair was inclined to curl like a hill dweller's or fall straighter, more like those with coastal blood, since it was caked solid with some thick red substance. 'Or just mud?'

  The man writhed weakly, muttering something with harsh defiance.

  'Does that sound like any tongue you've ever heard, any dialect from some distant reach of the Archipelago?' Kheda looked up at Telouet and the Daish swordsman.

  'No, my lord.' Both men shook baffled heads.

  'I've never heard the like,' Kheda admitted. 'Nor seen the like.' He stood and looked down at the dying man struggling for breath. His ribs rose and fell beneath a crudely daubed pattern of red and white discoloured with stains and sprays of drying blood. 'All right. Put him out of his misery.'

  As Telouet's sword thrust ended the wild man's torment, Kheda looked around the beach. Beneath their raucous paints, the next corpse and a wounded man just beyond looked remarkably similar to the body at his feet. 'Wherever these people come from, they don't get much new blood, do they? They look close as brothers.' Kheda turned from the sight of a ruthless islander smashing the wounded man's skull with an oar shaft. 'What exactly were they using for weapons?'

  Telouet bent to strip the body between them. 'That spear's no more than a fire-hardened spike of wood. This took a bit more making though.' He picked up a heavy club of coarse-grained hardwood with sharpened flakes of black stone embedded in it, blood and hair caught among them.

  'Do you recognise the wood?' Kheda took the club and turned it this way and that, mystified.

  'I can't tell lilla wood from nut palm, my lord. And this must have been what he called a knife.' Telouet pulled a blade of sharpened black stone from a crudely stitched leather scabbard tied to the dead man's brief leather loincloth.

  'So how have these people put nigh on an entire domain to flight?' Kheda gave the black stone knife a cursory glance and tossed it down on the sand. 'Atoun!'

  'My lord.' The heavyset warrior came running at the summons. Sweat ran in fat drops down his face to disappear into his grizzled beard. There was gore on his leggings and splashed across his sword arm and flies hovered greedily around his bloodied sword.

  'What injuries have we suffered?' demanded Kheda.

  'Our men took no worse than a few cuts and bruises. A few of Chazen's were caught by surprise, but they're weary and nervous besides,' Atoun allowed grudgingly. 'A couple of the islanders had their skulls split, a few won broken arms for their pains.'

  'How did these wild men fight?' Kheda moved to allow two grim-faced islanders to drag the corpse from between them, the body thrown on to an untidy pile of slack limbs and lolling heads.

  'Like madmen.' Atoun's grimace mixed bemusement with a degree of unease. 'No armour, weapons no better than a child's plaything and they came at us howling like heat-crazed hounds. Couldn't they see we'd cut them down like sailer stalks?'

  'Naked or not, they could still overwhelm us, if they have as many men as stalks in a sailer field.' Kheda walked over to the heap of hated dead and f
rowned at a corpse with bloody froth gathered around his mouth. 'Gloves please, Telouet.' Pulling them on, he drew his dagger and used it to prise open the dead man's mouth, hooking out a chewed wad of fibrous pulp.

  'What's that?' wondered Telouet.

  Kheda raised the tip of his knife and sniffed cautiously. 'I don't recognise it but it smells pretty potent. Something to enrage, to dull pain? To drive men to a madness that carries them beyond fear of death?'

  'Northern barbarians use drink and intoxicants to raise themselves to bloodlust,' commented Telouet.

  'Then perhaps there is no magic, my lord,' said Atoun slowly. 'These apparitions come shrieking out of the night to attack the Chazen islanders, breaking heads and clubbing down anything in their path, throwing firebrands and maybe something like dreamsmokes to muddle their victims. Couldn't this talk of magic just be fear and fancy?'

  Kheda shot him a stern glance. 'It wasn't some over-active imagination burned Olkai Chazen nigh to death.'

  'But that could have been sticky fire,' said Telouet with cautious hope.

  'Find me any scorched potsherd or scrap of naphtha cloth,' Kheda challenged. 'Find me anything needful for making such a weapon. In the meantime, let's see what tale Chazen Saril's people have to tell.'

  He crossed the shore in rapid strides to join the other warlord, who was still talking to the village spokesman. 'Chazen Saril, what happened to your people here?'

  'Much as befell the rest of us,' replied Saril grimly. 'These wild men came in the middle of the night, with fire bursting out of the empty air to burn the huts and storehouses while dust storms smothered any man of the village who tried to fight back. My people feared magic and fled.'

  'We've seen no magic today.' Kheda said carefully. 'How is that?'

  'The leader of the savages sailed west the day after their attack here.' Saril gestured vaguely towards the heart of his domain. 'He took most of his forces with him as well. He must have been the wizard.'