'Why not?' Dev had forced the Amigal into the narrow inlet as far as possible. The ship's stern was wedged against the muddy bank and stubby knot trees cloaked the fore-deck with their short fat leaves. Dev tossed the lees of his cup of wine into the brackish river, where the red stain slowly dissolved.
'Refill that and I'll break every bottle you've got aboard,' Risala snapped. 'If there are wizards and savages around here, I don't want you drunk!'
'What makes you think you've any say in what I do?' Dev grinned, unrepentant. 'Besides, drunk's probably no bad way to be, if you're going to be tortured by howling wild men.'
Risala chewed her lip. 'Don't think you can scare me off. I'm coming.' Her eyes were determined.
'I'm certainly not leaving you here to go wandering off,' agreed Dev. 'To get caught and betray me to their knives to save your own skin. Besides, if we're taken, you might just be the price of my freedom, sweetness.'
'How do we hide the ship?' Risala turned her back on him and studied the Amigal's mast, sails furled close. 'So we can get away, once we've seen all there is to see?'
'I'll cut some greenery.' Dev was lacing thick-soled leather sandals with sides that pulled up over the top of his foot. 'We cover as much of the deck with it as we can.'
Picking up a heavy-bladed jungle knife, he climbed carefully over the ship's stern. 'Pass me the anchor.'
'Don't make too much noise,' warned Risala, struggling with the heavy weight.
'Keep your own mouth shut in case someone hears you.' Dev calculated how much slack to leave for the tide before wedging the anchor among the knot tree roots. 'Letting your tongue run loose all the time isn't what makes a poet.'
His sneering rebuke silenced her, so he turned to cutting the new shoots sprouting from the swollen bases of the gnarled grey knot trees. Dev was soon sweating freely, forced to summon a whisper of magic to keep the insidious blackflies at bay. He worked rapidly and soon had an armful of the fleshy yellowy-green twigs to dump on the deck.
'We'll want plenty on the bow.' Risala looked apprehensively towards the open end of the inlet. 'In case someone passes by there.'
'As you wish, my lady' Dev bowed, mocking. 'And get a rope fast there while you're at it.' He went back to hacking at the trees. He kept an eye on Risala though and as soon as she was busy securing the fore anchor, her back turned, he brought his hands sharply together. A faint glimmer of dark blue light escaped his interlaced fingers as he jerked his hands apart.
Risala's head snapped round. 'What is it? Why have you stopped?' Her voice was tight with fear.
'Just catching my breath,' replied Dev. 'After doing all the hard work.'
Not rising to his antagonistic tone, Risala knelt to fix the stubborn branches more securely to the Amigal's rails.
Dev closed his eyes the better to concentrate on the magic he was rapidly running around the ship's hull. Invisibility wasn't that hard to work, whatever the whining apprentices at Hadrumal might think, just bringing together the antithetical elements of air and water. That would shield the Amigal from enemy eyes.
'Are you going to sleep?'
'No.' Dev opened his eyes to see Risala looking at him, scratched and dirty hands on her hips. 'See those sandals by the hatch? Put them on and be careful where you walk around here. I'll leave you for the savages if you stick a knot root through your foot or tread on a spinefruit husk.'
'Which way are we going?' Risala didn't argue, dropping to the deck to wriggle her feet into the sandals.
'That way.' Dev pointed west where the ground rose clear of the knot tree thickets and nut palms swayed in the breeze. Jumping back aboard, he fetched a bulging leather water skin from the stern cabin and dumped it by Risala. 'Don't snag it on any branches.'
'This is the right island?' She looked up for reassurance. 'You've been here before?'
'I have,' Dev lied easily. He'd never so much as set foot in this remote reach of Chazen territory but that didn't bother him. He'd been scrying out a safe route in every cup of wine he'd drunk since they'd left Daish waters. 'Get ashore.'
Slinging a leather sack over one shoulder by its braided cord, he watched the thin cotton of Risala's trousers tighten over her rump as she climbed over the stern rail. He'd only use her to buy his way out of trouble if there was nothing else for it, he decided idly. The flasks of liquor and the potent leaves for chewing or burning in the sack would probably be enough. Then he'd be entitled to take her gratitude any way he wanted, if he'd saved her life.
Following Risala, he glanced covertly at the ship from the edge of the knot trees. The magic dappled the water beneath her hull but to the unfriendly eye, the Amigal would just be a random pattern of shadows on the water. Dev grinned. If he irritated Risala enough, wound her dislike of him to a high enough pitch, would she suddenly be unable to see the ship? Then he wondered what one of these savage mages might make of his working. What would he make of theirs? He turned his back on the ship, expression one of anticipation.
'Here's a game trail.' Risala pointed to narrow hoof slots patterning a bare stretch of earth.
'Going in the right direction. Let's take it.' Dev pushed past the girl to follow the damp score through the burgeoning undergrowth. As he pushed aside a creeper-choked branch, it whipped back to catch Risala's face.
'I don't see why I can't have a knife,' she muttered resentfully, swatting leaves from her hair.
'If we run into these savages, a blade makes you a foe to be killed.' Dev sliced away an encroaching lilla frond. 'Unarmed, even a scrawny piece like you is a prize for a commander to enjoy'
Risala shuddered. 'I'd rather die than be taken by a wizard.'
'Keep talking and you can find out if that's an option,' suggested Dev sarcastically.
He pushed on through the branches and clinging vines, the girl following silent close behind. The humid air hung still and hot beneath the trees, broken only by the chirr of insects and the peaceable cries of loals and birds. There was no sign of other blades on the underbrush, so Dev allowed himself to believe this game trail was as little used as it had looked to his scrying spell.
'Watch where you're putting your feet,' he warned Risala curtly. 'Step on a sickle serpent and you'll be dead before you hit the ground.'
The inlet was long lost behind them when Dev, sweat coating his face, turned to Risala and snapped his fingers at the water skin slung over her shoulder. She proffered it and he eased the dryness at the back of his throat with a long drink. 'Drink all you can,' he ordered her. 'Then look for a stream to refill it.'
Despite the lushness of the forest all around, it was a good while later before Risala prodded Dev's shoulder and nodded silently to a rill. He kept watch while she knelt to replenish the water skin, moving off before she had got it settled on her back once again.
After the next stop to quench their thirsts, Dev began to move more cautiously. The trees were bigger now, mostly ironwoods reaching up to form a broad canopy whose shade denied the lesser brush of the forest floor. Logen vines and strangler figs swarmed up the tall trees to reach the distant sunlight. Dev and Risala made their way stealthily from one creeper-hung thicket to the next. As rotted figs squelched beneath his sandals, Dev looked up to see a flock of scarlet and yellow crookbeaks amiably bickering in the treetops. He caught Risala's arm, pointing upwards before pressing his forefinger to his lips. The last thing they needed was those birds scattering like a burst of flying flame, screeching out their alarm.
With the crookbeaks well behind them, Dev stopped and dropped to his hands and knees. The forest ahead looked lighter after the dense shade of the uncut depths and tandra trees were silhouetted against empty sky beyond. Wood rang as it was hammered and voices called out orders. Gasps and cries answered the crack of whips.
Dev crawled slowly forward to lie between two immature spinefruit trees struggling to rise above a robust cluster of sardberry bushes. Risala wriggled into the discreet hollow after him.
'What are they doing?' she wonder
ed in a whisper no louder than a breath.
'Making defences.' Dev kept his voice low, even though a shout would probably have gone unheard in the commotion they saw before them.
They looked out on a village standing at the top of a long fan-shaped bay. The low houses straggled along the line where sand gave way to soil, a scatter of vegetable plots and fowl houses further inland. Crops were trampled, fences broken, only a few damp drifts of feathers to mark the fate of ducks and hens. On the beach, the waters of the bay rippled over an unobstructed, shelving anchorage where fishing boats drifted on long tethers tied to heavy piles driven into the sand. The crude log boats of the invaders were piled haphazard along the high-water mark.
'I wouldn't mind getting a closer look at those logs, to see if I can recognise the wood,' Dev said thoughtfully to Risala. 'If we knew where their trees grew, we might know where these curs came from.'
'They just came right in and attacked.' Risala was gazing at the village where most of the houses had burned to stark charcoal skeletons, now sodden and weeping black stains into the ground. A couple of the storehouses and granaries had been broken down, left looted and empty. The others were packed with plunder, barrels and coffers stacked around them. 'The islanders couldn't have known what was happening to them.'
'These savages don't reckon on being caught like that.' Dev squirmed to bring his leather sack round, rummaging inside for a spyglass. 'Not so stupid as they look, eh?'
A new ditch sliced through the open expanse of beach. What looked like most of the men of the village were being forced to dig it deeper. The invaders, easily identifiable with their dark, painted bodies and their brief leather loincloths, were using spears and whips to drive women and children hauling heavy logs out of the forest beyond the village. Even with their crude stone tools, other wild men were making a competent job of sharpening wooden stakes to line the ditch's inner faces. Only a few narrow stretches were left untouched to give paths through the defences and more savage warriors guarded those with wooden spears at the ready.
'The savages are enslaving the Chazen people?' As Risala spoke, whips cracked to terrify a handful of girls struggling to tie ropes to a heavy log. 'And seizing their lands? Is this what they want from the Archipelago?'
'No way to say. They're destroying more than they're keeping, for one thing.' Dev counted the invaders beneath his breath. 'This ditch could just be temporary, to keep themselves safe from any Chazen islanders they've not rounded up. They might still be planning to sail north as soon as the rains are over.'
'These savages must be fools.' Baffled, Risala looked at Dev. 'Everyone knows you can't enslave a whole population. They always fight back sooner or later. Look what happened in the Fial domain when Lemad Sarkis tried to conquer it. What about Draha Akil's death, when all the barbarian slaves he'd brought for his oil tree plantations rebelled? You never keep too many slaves together, not if you've any sense.'
'I thought you were a poet, not a historian,' Dev murmured absently. 'You and I may know better but I don't suppose those hairy-arsed savages are too worried.' He handed Risala the spyglass. 'Watch those men, those Chazen islanders over by that stack of barrels.'
Risala peered through the bronze eyepiece. 'Do you think they're going to attack him, that wild man?'
'No.' Dev silently worked a brief spell to enhance his own sight and watched the knot of struggling islanders. The nearest savage had his back towards them and the barrels screened the arguing men from any other guards.
As Dev spoke, one of the Chazen men broke free from those trying to restrain him. He ran, feet skidding on ground still wet from the previous night's rains. He didn't attack the nearby invader but ran straight for the ditch, head down, arms pumping at his sides.
'He can't think he can jump it,' gasped Risala.
'That's not what he's trying to do,' said Dev grimly.
The Chazen man launched himself at the murderous spikes lining the ditch, arms spread, head flinching backwards. Risala clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her gasp of horror. The island women filled the air with full-throated screams. There was a flash, like lightning, and their cries of dismay turned to piercing wails of despair. The man did not fall to his death but hung, impossibly suspended in the empty air by azure bonds of light. He kicked and struggled, arms flailing, captured by the magic.
'You're not the only one would rather die than live under a wizard's rule.' Dev hid a reluctant grin with one hand. No Chazen islander could have seen it but the wizardry coiling through the air after the would-be suicide had been plain enough to him. Invisible enchantment had boiled up around the man after his first few steps. The savage mage, whoever he was, could have caught the islander before anyone even noticed his futile defiance. Of course, mused Dev, letting the man run and then letting everyone see him twisting in the air, frustrated and humiliated, was certainly a valuable lesson for anyone else with thoughts of rebellion. 'Look, there.' He pointed eagerly. 'The one with the lizard-skin cloak.'
An invader stalked out from one of the few remaining houses of the village. The retinue fawning after him looked no different from the other wild men, crudely dressed and splashed with paint. The leader alone wore a long cloak made from the entire skin of a whip lizard. It trailed down his back, clawed feet flapping at his side, the tail scoring a line on the sandy ground behind him. The lower jaw had been cut from the blunt head and he wore the skull like a helmet, the vicious upper fangs curving white against his dark face. His own smile was as white as the whip lizard's teeth and his laughter rang out as the last glimmer of sapphire magelight faded from his hands.
The savages guarding those toiling in the ditch turned to acknowledge the newcomer, falling to their knees in abject obeisance. Seeing their distraction, one islander hurled a baulk of wood at the man in the lizard skin.
The invader raised a casual hand and the heavy timber hung motionless in the air before bursting into flames. Inside an eyeblink, the solid wood was no more than a shadow of ash, blown away on the next gust of wind.
'Is that the wizard?' Risala could only manage a strangled whisper.
'Hush.' Dev was watching intently.
As the savages' mage advanced, his followers joined in his loud amusement, nodding and laughing. The Chazen men cowered in the bottom of the ditch. The women and children slowed to a reluctant shuffle, averting their faces from the man still struggling in the empty air above the murderous stakes.
'What's he going to do?' Risala hissed.
'Leave him there,' Dev shrugged.
'What are we going to do?' There was a quaver in Risala's question.
'See what happens next,' grinned Dev. 'Should make a good few stanzas for this epic of yours.'
Risala gazed balefully at the scene before them, chin resting on her hands. Dev watched the man in the lizard cloak.
Ignoring the islander still imprisoned by magic, the savage mage was moving between the groups of wild men, nodding and gesturing. The invaders bowed low, some dropping to one knee or prostrate before him.
Mages have real power among these people, Dev thought silently. There's none of the scraping and apologising Hadrumal teaches, all restraint and self-denial lest mageborn offend the incapable mundane. Perhaps these savage mageborn banded together and dictated their terms to those that lacked their talents, instead of living on sufferance or being driven out as freaks and menaces.
'What's that?' Risala whispered urgently. She pointed at a vessel that had just rounded the far headland of the long bay, sliding over the water indifferent to wind and wave.
Dev abandoned his speculations. 'Offhand, I'd say it was a boat,' he replied sarcastically. Though it was an uncommon enough craft to warrant a closer look. Four of the invaders' narrow tree trunk hulls had been lashed together and roughly boarded over, a pair of scullers standing at the stern while everyone else sat crowded on the unrailed deck. There was a sizeable contingent of wild men aboard.
'Our friend the Lizard is keen to be first
in line,' murmured Dev.
The savage mage was hurrying down from the village, his cloak lashing behind him. His spearmen all turned towards the water and bowed low, those closest to the newly arrived boat prostrating themselves on the sand.
Risala sank low to the ground as the strange vessel grounded in the shallows.
A man sitting cross-legged in the prow stood up. The bright colours of his own long cloak swirled around as he stepped off the crude decking. His feet didn't touch the water. Opening his arms so the cloak flapped like the wings of some enormous bird, he walked through the air on a path woven of magic drawn from both sea and air. The lattice of light veered from green to blue, bright beneath his feet, reaching out ahead of him. He arrived, perfectly composed, on the dry sand just below the newly dug ditch and the bridge of magic faded to a turquoise memory. His retinue splashed hastily through the shallows to gather in an obsequious half circle behind him.
'Is that a magic cloak?' Risala's eyes were huge.
'No, just glory bird feathers.' Dev considered the newcomer in his mantle of gaudy plumage. That spell to get ashore dry-footed was a simple enough trick but Lizardskin was bowing low, his whole body cringing. Feathercloak was capable of far more than that, it would seem.
Feathercloak was nodding, seemingly in approval, and Lizardskin stood upright, clapping his hands together. Brawny savages appeared from one of the larger storehouses carrying chests and a tightly tied sack. Lizardskin's ingratiating gestures plainly invited Feathercloak to help himself from the loot. Feathercloak stood aloof, raising one hand to beckon someone else forward.
'Now who do you suppose this is?' Dev wriggled forward a little on his elbows. A tall savage stalked forward from Feathercloak's followers. He bowed low to his master before looking down on Lizardskin with a supercilious sneer. He wore no cloak but boasted a breastplate of closely tied white bones and more ivory shards were woven into his thick hair.
'What sort of bones are those?' Risala swallowed hard. 'Do you suppose they eat—'
'Who cares?' Dev dismissed the question as the bone-decorated savage knelt down to open a coffer. He held something up to Feathercloak, who shrugged and shook his head. The Bone Wearer tossed it away. The warm colours of turtleshell showed dark against the sand, rimmed with gold bright even under the dull skies. Whatever the Bone Wearer found next satisfied Feathercloak, who summoned another underling to take it, a man distinguished by a necklace of shark teeth. As the Bone Wearer opened the sack, he offered up a handful of something to Feathercloak. At the shake of his master's head, he tossed the pearls aside, the gleaming drops hitting the sand like priceless rain.
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