And then Packer knew: He had asked for the wrong thing. God had sent the Firefish to achieve the destruction of the Rahk Thanu. Packer could have asked for anything. Anything at all. He could have asked God to fight this battle. He could have asked for a Jericho. But he had not. He had wanted to fight it himself. He had wanted this, wanted exactly what had in fact come to pass. He had wanted his sword and his own swordsmanship to win the day, to justify forever the path he had chosen when his opportunity for the priesthood was taken away. And God had granted it! But Packer was quite sure He didn’t like it.
This answered prayer was a curse.
And then, as if to confirm his worst fears, the next three sailors to approach him found no higher praise than to compare him to the archenemy of his soul.
“I never thought I’d see anyone as bloody as Talon, but you are. Maybe bloodier!” With a big, affirming nod.
“Not even the Witch could kill that many that fast!” A hard, respectful slap on the back.
“You move like her, catlike, you know? Like I was watching Talon all over again.” Big grin, more gum than teeth. Smith Delaney.
Packer grabbed his arm. “I don’t want to be like her, Delaney! Don’t tell me I’m like her. I don’t want to be good at killing.”
Delaney looked confused. “Little late for that, I’m thinkin’.”
Packer’s eyes were wild. “What have I done, Delaney?”
The sailor scratched his head. “What’ve you done? Well, you saved us all, for one. And second, if not for you we’d all be dead. You’d rather that?”
“No.” Packer let go of Delaney’s arm.
“ ’Cause we would be,” Delaney said earnestly, rubbing his arm. “We all know that. Look at ’em.” Packer looked at the gleeful crew, many still chanting “Death from the Vast” in a foreign tongue, apparently oblivious to the death and destruction of friend and foe alike who lay at their feet. “Every livin’, festerin’ soul aboard knows those Drammune bulldogs would be stripping our reekin’ flesh right now, rolling us to the beasties, ’stead of the other way round, except for what you done to save us. What you done.”
Packer now watched the process with glassy eyes, Drammune bodies, arms limp, heads hung and tongues lolling, manhandled into piles against shattered rails. “Yes. I did it.”
Delaney continued. “It’s them and not us ’cause you got a gift from God.”
“A gift?” Packer looked him with astonishment. “Didn’t you see the Firefish? That was the gift! God could have defeated that ship without anyone drawing a sword. Why didn’t He?”
Delaney shrugged. “He didn’t want to?”
“Because no one asked Him to! Instead, I asked to fight! That thing could have destroyed the ship before a shot was even fired.”
The old sailor squinted. “Didn’t think a’ that.”
Packer’s heart fell further. The memory of all he’d done now came back to him, not like a memory but like a waking nightmare, jumbled and chaotic, images of his blade slicing in and out, blood spattering. Eyes wide and fearful. Cries of pain.
How would he ever escape this?
And then the stench of blood and death and burned black powder rose up into his nostrils and went deep into his head, and began to choke him. He looked again at his hands, his arms, and understood that the blood that covered him was the life of men. He had scattered his enemies across the decks. Like a pirate.
He wanted to vomit.
And then he realized that he would, in fact, vomit, that he had little choice in the matter. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Well, don’t let the boys see ye.” Delaney grabbed Packer’s mop bucket and threw the reddened water back onto the decking. He then handed the pail to Packer, putting a firm hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you down the hold and find a nice quiet spot.” He maneuvered him toward the main hatch, the celebrated warrior clutching a pail in both hands and breathing heavily, trying to keep his stomach down. His hands and feet tingled; he felt the breeze through every hair on his sweaty, bloody scalp.
He fairly ran the last few steps, flew down the companionway, banging his bucket against it as he went, and barely got to the bottom before he was emptying out his guts. And then, when his stomach had nothing left, he began emptying out his soul.
When he finally finished, he looked around him. He was in the dark, alone. The hatch above him was closed. Delaney was gone. No chanting could be heard. He thanked God for that. He sat a long time, head pounding, until he felt fairly sure he could make it to his bunk without being sick again.
Packer left the bucket where it was, apologizing silently to whatever poor sailor found it. His hands were shaking like a dog’s hind leg as he followed a companionway astern. He felt weak, thin, transparent. It was an effort to take air into his lungs. His legs were numb. He shivered like it was midwinter. He did not want to go above, and so he felt his way through dark and unfamiliar companionways.
He turned a corner into a cargo hold, saw a lantern lit, resting on the floor. He tried to ignore it, tried to fight off the meaning, the memory. But it stopped him anyway. The crates here. The bench there. This was the place where Talon had interrogated him…so long ago.
And suddenly he knew he wasn’t alone. A chill raced up his spine as he wheeled to his right, drawing his sword as he did. Fen Abbaka Mux sat in chains, his beard caked with blood, his hair wild, his eyes closed as if asleep. Packer’s ears rang with a pounding din. Mux was not asleep. His lips were moving.
Packer looked at the sword in his hand and felt ashamed. He sheathed it. He did not want to appear to this man like Talon had appeared to him. He turned to leave, was leaving as Mux spoke.
“Packer Throme.” The voice was a rasp, but the rolling R’s reminded him of Talon. Another chill ran down his spine.
Packer turned slowly, met the commander’s eye. It was dark, and far away, brooding. “How do you know my name?” he asked.
Even if Fen Abbaka Mux had understood the boy’s question, he would have had no interest in answering. He had his own message to deliver. His voice was deep and ragged, and utterly assured. “Rahk thanu anachtai aziz. Eyneg anachtai aziz.”
Packer did not understand all the words, but the meaning was clear enough. He spoke of the Law of the Drammune, and of death. The supreme commander did not believe he was yet beaten, did not believe the Vast would prevail.
Packer dropped his eyes, saw a bucket of water on the floor at Mux’s feet. He remembered how terribly thirsty he had been when he had occupied that bench. He picked the pail up, smelled it, took a sip. Then he walked it to Mux. “It’s water,” he said softly. His hands shook as he raised the bucket. He felt no fear, but he felt weak to his very soul.
Mux looked at Packer suspiciously, surprised by the calm in the one blue eye he saw illuminated by the lantern. But he watched the boy with disdain, as though Packer were a small spider that needed crushing. Packer held the bucket close to the commander’s face. Mux did not look into it, or smell it. He did not acknowledge it at all until he spit in it.
Packer nodded, with a trace of smile. He wondered what it felt like to have so much pride, so much strength. How simple life would be if one never dwelt on one’s own weaknesses, if pride and hardness of heart were not sins, but values to be cherished and built up. He envied this man. He set the bucket down and walked away.
“Rahk thanu anachtai aziz,” Mux repeated, calling after him. “Eyneg anachtai aziz.”
The fist of the Law will kill you. I will kill you.
Packer made his way back to his bunk, head aching, body wrung, back to the tiny cabin Scat Wilkins had given him after he had managed not to kill Delaney those many months ago. He grabbed a blanket and climbed into his hammock. He lay there shivering. He wanted oblivion; he wanted sleep so endless he would never wake up.
When his heart finally slowed, when some warmth returned to his body, when the pounding in his head eased, his mind finally began to flow smoothly again.
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And then the whole battle unfolded before his eyes, not in bits and pieces this time, but in its totality, beginning to end. He was standing at the rail, and he tried to ram his sword into the lumbering warrior. He saw his own sword bend, recoil. Then he watched every fluid motion of every cut, every thrust, every puncture, every death, every injury with equal attention to every detail. He watched it like a man watching some disaster unfold, some horror about which he could do nothing…watching his barn burn with his livestock inside, watching a landslide take his home and his family with it, watching a ship blown onto the rocks with all his loved ones and all his possessions aboard. He could not stop it, but neither could he turn away from it.
His swordsmanship was almost perfect, and where it wasn’t, it was more than sufficient.
When it was over, when the battle finally stopped and his sword was poised an inch from the Drammune commander’s throat, Packer finally turned away from the vision. His back and shoulders were as tense as steel. His brain was an anvil pounded by the hammer of his heart. He had counted as he went. The count was seventy-nine, either brought down directly by his sword or by a crewman after Packer had slashed open a wound.
Seventy-nine men who had lived and breathed as the sun came up on the world this morning were dead now, and would be dead forever, because of his sword.
Will Seline had little trouble learning which upper corner was known as the Tower. The palace was, roughly, a huge rectangle. With its grounds it took up about a quarter of the space within the old Rampart of the city. The oldest part of the building, which dated back about four hundred years, was a square. The new kitchen and the new ballroom, along with servant’s quarters and a half-dozen formal sitting rooms, had been added only about a hundred-and-fifty years ago.
Above this new addition, as though resting on top of it, was an even newer suite of rooms, only eighty years old, designed for the royal family to use in the summer as an alternative to fleeing the city entirely. The theory had been that the coolness of the mountains could be accessed without the long and difficult trip, if only the suite were built on the highest part of the house. But the engineers who designed it hadn’t bothered to check on whether an additional forty feet of altitude would actually create any measurable climatic difference. And of course, it did not. So in the summer the rooms broiled under the sun and were all but unusable, and in the winter they were drafty and hard to heat, and hardly worth the climb. Only in the spring and the fall were they actually livable, but since all the rest of the house was equally livable during those delightful seasons, the suite was barely used at all.
When it was, it was most often as a place to send the royal children when they had misbehaved badly enough to warrant confining. It was they—Prince Mather, his younger brother, Ward, and their elder sister, Jacqalyn—who had named it “the Tower.” Jacq had actually come up with the term.
But now it was spring, and the place was quite pleasant. Draftiness felt like openness, remoteness felt like safety. The view of the city, particularly from the large porch built on the northeast corner, was superb. On clear days Panna could see all the way to the Vast Sea.
But it was still a prison, and it worked well in that capacity. Any thought of escaping from the Tower except through the one, main door left Panna’s head quickly, and with a surge of vertigo. A wide rim of roof blocked her view to the ground, but the few city streets she could make out below the porch balcony were at least a hundred feet down. With a long enough rope, escape was perhaps possible. But she would need to be far more desperate than she was now. And of course, she would need a rope.
The streets were almost invisible from the Tower, but not quite. Will Seline managed to find a street corner, some three hundred feet from the palace as the crow flies, from which he could see two open windows with white curtains fluttering in the breeze. The Tower. And there Will stood, hour after hour, on the doorstep of a pawnshop, hoping Panna would come to the window.
“What you lookin’ at?” the shop’s proprietor said, finally baffled enough to come out and ask. She was a frumpy woman, who sagged in almost every way it was possible to sag. She smoked a small cigar, and looked cross enough that Will Seline was quite sure few had ever asked her how she’d picked up the habit.
“My daughter is being held in the palace. I’m trying to get a look at her.”
The woman stood next to Will and squinted in the direction he pointed. “I don’t see nothin’.”
“Those two windows, right at the top. Just between the trees.”
“What, she run away from home?”
“No,” Will said in a tone that suggested the thought was an absurdity. Then he thought better of it. “At least, not this time.”
“Girlfriend of Prince Ward, is she? He has lots of girlfriends.”
“Perhaps, but she is not one of them.”
She shrugged. “Just what I hear. I know what you need,” she said matter-of-factly, and disappeared. She returned, after some loud rummaging, with a telescope. It was badly tarnished, badly dented, and the lens was cracked. But it worked.
“That’s great!” He tested it. “Thank you very much.” He could see the windows quite clearly now, enough to recognize that the curtains were cream-colored lace. He would be able to see Panna perfectly if she ever came to the window.
“Ten cents!” the frumpy woman accused.
“Oh. Of course.” He handed it back. “I’m sorry. I don’t have that to spare.”
“Make me an offer!” she demanded in the same accusing tone.
“One penny.”
“Sold!” She put out a hand, palm up.
Will fished in his pockets and completed the transaction.
“And don’t think about selling it back, cause I ain’t buyin’. Been tryin’ to move that piece a’ junk for years.”
Will wished her well, glad for the telescope but equally glad to be shed of the woman.
But he did not see Panna that day. That evening, he went to the gatehouse as he always did, but Chunk was not there. He gave the man who was there yet another letter, but this one addressed directly to the prince.
The next day, after only an hour of his vigil on the pawnshop stoop, the proprietor came out to see him again. She was wearing the same dress and smoking, or so it seemed to Will, the same cigar.
“You can’t stand there anymore,” she announced.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re runnin’ off business.”
“How am I doing that?”
“By being a priest. People come here because they’re in trouble. You make ’em feel guilty.” She narrowed her eyes. “You gotta go.”
Will pondered that. “Perhaps they feel guilty because they’ve spent their rent money on things they should not have been buying, and have come here to sell things they really should be keeping.”
She squinted. “What’s your point?
“Perhaps I’m advancing the Lord’s business.”
Her eyes grew harder. “I’m helpin’ people here. All you’re doin’ is sending ’em down the street to old man Hooper’s, and he’s takin’ away my money.”
Will pondered her. Perhaps she could be persuaded to look at it philosophically. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”
“Yeah? Well, I buyeth, and I selleth. You gotta leave.”
Will sighed. “I have a right to stand in the street.”
“So stand in the street.”
Will took one large step off the porch. She scowled and went back into her establishment. She closed the door, locked it, and put a Closed sign in the window. Then she put on her shawl, and left through the back.
A few hours later, a member of the Royal Dragoons rode up on a very large roan horse. He was a calm, mustachioed man with graying hair.
“Afternoon, Father.”
“Hello.” Will glanced toward the window of the pawnshop, saw the smoking woman peering out at him from behind a ragged curtain.
“You want to tell me
what you’re doing here?”
“I’m trying to see my daughter. The prince has her stowed away in one of those upper rooms.”
The dragoon nodded. “You’re going to need to come with me.”
Will was surprised. “Am I breaking some law? Or did you come here because this woman complained I was hurting her business?”
He shook his head. “Report I got was of a Drammune spy, dressed up like a priest.”
Will was impressed. He looked over at the woman, who closed the curtain quickly. “Very creative.”
“These are dangerous times.”
“I understand that. But my daughter is Panna Throme, wife of Packer Throme.”
He nodded again. “If that’s the case, I’m sure it will all work out. But you’ll have to come with me.”
“Gladly,” he said with the utmost sincerity. “Gladly.”
Delaney knocked and got no answer, so he pushed on the door, peered into the shadows as it creaked open. “Packer?” He could see his friend now, lying in the hammock. A scarred, bloodstained right hand hung over the edge. A fly walked around on his palm, in no particular hurry.
Marcus Pile peered in from behind Delaney. “Is he there?”
Delaney didn’t answer. “Packer?”
The fly buzzed, circled, and landed again on Packer’s hand. Then the smell hit Delaney. Dried blood and sweat and vomit. “Whew! Marcus, go get a bucket of water with plenty of lye. Someone here needs a bath.”
“Aye, aye.”
Delaney entered, and as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see Packer looking at him. The young man didn’t move. His eyes seemed distant, unconcerned.
“Oh, so you’re awake.”
No answer.
“Admiral wants you. I told Mr. Haas you’re sick. He told admiral that.”
The Trophy Chase Saga Page 62
