Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  He stayed on the deck, smoked some stock, and Kallotronis joined him. They talked about the Souliote hills and drank wine. Before the stars had moved far, Vilna came on deck.

  “I hate ships,” the officer said quietly. “Like a prison, on water.”

  He looked up, saw the Dark Forge and spat into the water.

  “This will help,” Aranthur said, handing the nomad Kallotronis’ wineskin.

  Kallotronis lifted his fingers, deliberately mimicking the sign a priestess made blessing a congregation.

  “I liked it when your men started shooting into the evil thing,” Vilna said.

  Kallotronis nodded and took the wineskin.

  “Probably not worth a shit, but it makes everyone feel better. And who knows? A lucky ball, and maybe you win.” He took a long pull.

  “You have fought with…eversham? Before?” Vilna hesitated.

  Aranthur realised that the nomad officer was shaken; that perhaps he was expecting too much from all of them.

  Kallotronis leant back and stuck out his long legs.

  “I’d take more of that good stock. Eh, syr. Do I really need to keep calling you syr?”

  It was a peculiar moment. Aranthur knew that it was probably important to Vilna; the nomads, despite their freedom, valued hierarchy. But he also knew that among Arnauts, the whole idea of rank was… laughable, mostly.

  Aranthur knew there was only one answer, with a fighter like Kallotronis.

  “Call me whatever you wish. Just don’t smoke all the stock.” He refilled the pipe, lit it, and handed it to Kallotronis. “My friends call me Aranthur.”

  Kallotronis smoked for a while.

  “Good name,” he said. “Vilna, I’ve fought fucking everything. Men, monsters, demons, baraka, eversham, ghosts…”

  He opened his big, dirty linen shirt to show a chest full of amulets and scars. He reached into the fancy velvet doublet he always wore and took out a pistol ball.

  Aranthur felt the sihr.

  “Lady!” he spat.

  Kallotronis, having got the reaction he wanted, grinned.

  “Don’t be a little girl. The Dark magik is the best for the killing.”

  Aranthur made the sign of the Eagle without conscious thought.

  Kallotronis took a pull at the pipe and handed it to Vilna.

  “Eagle doesn’t care what weapons we use. Kill your foes. Stay alive.” He shrugged. “Eagle only cares that you kill the bad ones and let the good ones live, and even then…” He grinned. “I don’t make a lot of moral judgements when I’m fighting.”

  Vilna drank some wine and nodded.

  “How many of the sihr bullets do you carry?” Aranthur asked.

  “Only two left. I keep them for…eversham foes. I shot a man with one, once. Didn’t mean to, but he was the target that offered.” The Arnaut looked at the stars. “Nasty. But very effective.” He raised an eyebrow, almost daring Aranthur to make a comment. “I used one yesterday.”

  “Who makes them?” Aranthur asked.

  “Hedge wizards. The kind of self-trained idiot who isn’t afraid to do a little blood sacrifice to make a little silver.”

  “So you know what the cost is…”

  “So I do, syr. Do you?”

  Aranthur nodded. He had no trouble meeting the big man’s eye. He was a big man himself.

  “Yes.”

  Kallotronis sat back and reached for the wine.

  “Good. Then we don’t have to discuss it.”

  “I can make you ten balls with saar,” Aranthur said.

  “Nah. The saar flows away. Unless you shoot it immediately. Sihr lasts. Because it is death.” Kallotronis nodded knowingly.

  Aranthur had a moment of revelation. He had been about to refute what Kallotronis said, and then he understood…

  Sigils and wards were devices for keeping saar active.

  He reached into his pouch and found the three ancient sling bullets. He put them in Kallotronis’ hand.

  The Souliote mercenary looked at them carefully.

  “Sling bullets,” Aranthur said.

  “I know,” the older man said. He pulled his rich beard.

  “The sigil would require to be powered. And I have no idea how long the power would last.”

  Kallotronis frowned. “If this works, why doesn’t everyone do it?”

  Aranthur shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’ll guess, based on history. In the time of Tirase, the power was leaching away, and this sort of device was too… expensive, in time and money and saar.”

  “So?” Kallotronis asked.

  Aranthur exerted himself, and all three sling bullets suddenly glowed a fierce blue-white.

  And they remained that colour.

  Kallotronis whistled.

  “Now…” he smiled, and his smile was wicked. “Now, perhaps, we can fight these things.”

  He put the three sling bullets in a horn cup, and they lit a portion of the deck.

  “Let’s see how long they last,” Kallotronis said.

  Inoques came down from her command perch to look at the sling stones. In the darkness, she gave Aranthur a glance that in another woman might have been flirtatious. He didn’t know how to read her.

  “You are full of power,” she said. “I see why the priest fears you. But you must be more wary—there are old things on this river, and they do not love us, or our powers.” She leant very close. “You smell of power, man.”

  “You are a practitioner,” Aranthur said with some embarrassment.

  “My people call me Alassahhr.” She smiled. “I might say ‘wind witch’ in Byzas, but witch sounds so primitive, and what I do is very…” She shrugged. “Careful.”

  She smiled again. Aranthur decided that she was flirting. He smiled back. Even though he was sure she was hiding something.

  “So please take care.”

  “I will not cast again,” he said. “I have much wisdom yet to learn.”

  She nodded. “Yes, it’s good you know this about yourself.” She looked at him carefully, as if assessing the age of a horse. “If you are the kind of man who can learn, I could teach you.”

  He flushed, but it was dark. When she went back to her command deck, though, he found that Vilna was hiding a grin and Kallotronis was laughing quietly.

  “She has your number, boso.”

  “I think maybee she wants more than his number,” Vilna said.

  Both men laughed. Aranthur had an urge, which he knew was foolish, to show resentment. Instead he smiled.

  “I like her tattoos,” he said.

  “Which shows that you have some wisdom, Bahadur,” Vilna said.

  Kallotronis glanced at Vilna. “Bahadur?”

  Vilna shrugged. “You’ll see, Arnaut-man.”

  Kallotronis handed the lit pipe to Aranthur.

  “Eagle! Heroes get people killed.” But he rattled the cup with the old sling bullets, which was still bright with new light. “Still,” he said thoughtfully. “Still.”

  The Delta island of Seta had a great port on the ocean side and a smaller port on the river side. Both were crammed with fishing boats and local river ships, and three great Megaran merchant galleys whose long sides virtually filled the outer harbour, even partially beached on the mud flats.

  Inoques made a face. “Al-Khaire is under siege,” she said soberly. “No one can run the river.”

  “We did,” Aranthur said.

  The tattooed face lit up as if the sun rose.

  “So we did. But you had me,” she said, a flat statement of fact. But then she relented and smiled. “Yesterday I was angry. Now I am proud.” She shrugged. “I have much to learn, too. Emotion is complex.”

  The small harbour was so full that she refused to risk her ship.

  “We will anchor in the lee of this behemoth,” she said, pointing out the greatest of the Megaran trade galleys. “And swim ashore.”

  Aranthur immediately examined the mudflats and the sandy beach for monsters.

 
“I’ll protect you,” Inoques said, and he couldn’t decide whether he was being mocked or not.

  “Vilna, go to the three galleys and tell the navarks of the battle and its result,” he said. “Warn them of events in Al-Khaire. Look for their reactions. Ask what they’ve heard.”

  Vilna saluted.

  Dahlia made a face. “I can do that. They’re probably all people I know.” Then she paused.

  Aranthur shrugged. “Mayhap I’m being foolish, or stupidly secretive, like Drako. But something is clearly wrong. I think we need to be wary.”

  He called all the troopers together, Safian and Pastun and all. He stepped up on a barrel of salt fish.

  “We’ll be here until the change of tide tomorrow mid-morning. Anyone not aboard is left behind.” He beckoned to Chimeg. “Two lines, and we’ll put a little coin in their hands.”

  Chimeg gave a nod.

  Sasan already had a table out, and Dahlia had the rest of Ansu’s coins on the table. They managed to give each man and woman about three silver soldii—the price of a few cups of good wine.

  Aranthur beckoned to Chimeg and Haran. With Sasan and Vilna, he had a sort of “command council.” He glanced at Kallotronis, who shrugged and sauntered up as if he, and not Aranthur, were in command.

  “I want to give them a night off,” he said. “Am I being foolish?”

  Sasan shook his head. “No. No one wants to be marooned in this humid hell. But a cup of wine and a night of rest… Listen, let me find us a taverna. We can just take it over, keep them together.”

  Haran and Vilna both nodded.

  “That’s the best way,” Vilna agreed.

  Aranthur noted this for the future.

  “Very well. Inoques says we swim ashore.”

  Vilna nodded. “We all know how to swim. We need to land all the horses and exercise them while the sailors do sailor things. Then we load all the horses back, and post a watch—show everyone where ‘our’ taverna is.”

  “You’ve done this before,” Kallotronis said.

  It was obvious that the big Souliote and the wiry Pastun nomad had become, at least allies, and perhaps friends.

  Aranthur went to the command deck, where Inoques was speaking with her first mate, the tattooed man in the white kilt. This morning, he saluted Aranthur by placing both fists to his forehead.

  “Captain, it is our… thought,” he began, “to choose a taverna and have all our people drink there, together. Could you help us choose one?”

  “Immediately,” she said. “I have a full day’s work, but this is a fine notion. The tavernas will be crammed with sailors, but I know a place with a garden. Can you swim?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Good.” She unwound the black cloth from her chest and dropped her kilt. “Put your clothes in a bladder,” she said. And then, with a wicked smile, “You can use a bath, anyway.”

  The first mate handed Aranthur an oiled bag.

  He was still dressed like a Safian bandit, in voluminous trousers, a dirty shirt, a dusty khaftan that reeked of his old sweat, and a blood-soaked turban that had once been a handsome pale blue. He stripped them off, trying not to watch her muscled, lithe body, neatly covered in lines of script as if an entire book had been written on her—equally, trying to appear as unaffected by nudity as she was.

  She prodded his khaftan with a tattooed foot.

  “You can’t wear this. It’s disgusting. Mera?”

  Her mate went below into the cabin under the command deck.

  “He is my apprentice. A very good apprentice. In a year or less, he will have his own ship.”

  She smiled at him again, as if he needed smiles to mollify him.

  He tried to stand casually, naked.

  She leant over and licked her thumb, and then ran it across his face. He had forgotten the cut there. It was exactly what his mother had done when he was young and had dirt on his face, and he grinned.

  She licked her thumb as if tasting his blood, and her eyebrows went up.

  “Ah,” she said.

  She grinned back. It was not a natural look on her face—forced.

  “Share my bed tonight, foreigner?” she asked. “Since you like what you see?”

  Aranthur blushed over most of his body.

  The mate brought him a white kilt, which had a thousand pleats and which was not unlike a linen fustanella. Aranthur rolled it tightly with the man’s help and put it in the oiled leather sack.

  “Come,” Inoques said, and leapt over the side.

  Aranthur followed, into the deep green water, and then he was swimming. He was a powerful swimmer, if not a particularly good one, and in moments he was on the beach.

  He put the kilt on and let the wind dry his skin. Inoques wrapped herself in black, complete with a head-covering veil of light katan; she was almost completely covered. He followed her up the hot sand to a path that quickly became a street, lined in fish houses and net-dryers. Inoques led him up a side street full of cats, and she paused, squatted, and spoke to the cats, who milled around her. In seconds there were a dozen, then dozens, and then hundreds of cats, all attempting to rub against her.

  She glanced back at him.

  He stepped forward amid the flood of fur and patted an old tom with one eye and a huge head. The big cat rubbed his scarred face enthusiastically against Aranthur’s ankles.

  “They know me,” she said. “Always.”

  She laughed, and walked on. She snapped her fingers and the cats scattered, except the old tom, who stood licking Aranthur’s ankle and then meowed loudly at Inoques.

  Aranthur stroked his matted fur and his shredded ears and got bitten for his pains.

  Then they went up a lane that smelt of azalea and jasmine and cat piss. They came to a gate, and Inoques knocked. A small man opened the gate, bowed, his ragged turban almost touching the ground, and the two had a rapid exchange in Masri. Aranthur caught a few words: wine; sleep; garden.

  The man bowed, and Inoques led the way into a courtyard garden with a magnificent orange tree and towering bushes full of flowers—yellow, red, white, a riot of colour and scent. There was a sort of arbour with benches and tables. Half a dozen men and one woman sat about, obviously nursing the results of a night of heavy drinking.

  Inoques moved through them like a queen, and the woman, at least, bowed her head as she passed. Two cats followed her, and Aranthur wondered why there were no cats on the ship.

  He followed, aware, as one of the men looked at him with a certain wine-soaked malevolence, that he was completely unarmed. But no violence was offered, and he followed Inoques in to a cool room.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  The room was big enough for forty or fifty, with benches, and a pair of long, low, tables. Enormous red water jars, as big as grain jars at home, hung from the beams and cooled the room.

  “Perfect,” Aranthur said.

  She nodded. “Don’t tell the proprietor.”

  They were led into another room, and then down an arcaded inner courtyard to a whitewashed room where a man sat on a carpet. He appeared very old, with a skimpy white beard and a magnificent silk turban.

  He rose when Inoques entered, and then cushions were brought, and a pipe offered around. Inoques smoked a little, polite sips of smoke, and began to bargain. Aranthur could tell it was bargaining by the rhythm. There was a crescendo, frowns, the pipe was pushed away, offered again. Finally Inoques shrugged, truly annoyed, her mouth set.

  “Sorry, this won’t work,” she said in her accented Byzas.

  Aranthur rose.

  The turbaned man hid his emotions and reactions well, but Aranthur could tell he was surprised by Inoques.

  He reached out an arm, and spoke forcefully.

  She paused.

  Aranthur was sure that the man was apologising. It was a tone of voice, a hand gesture.

  She sat again, folding her legs under her.

  “Everyone is so on edge since the sky broke open,” she said to Aranthur
.

  She spoke, and the turbaned man spoke at length.

  “He agrees. He says that he is being very careful with his stores of wine and beer, because… everyone acts to excess. They think the world is ending.”

  Her eyes met Aranthur’s, and he saw the questions there. Inoques was one of the people who wondered if the world was ending. Or she knew things that he didn’t.

  The older man held out his hand.

  Inoques took it, and clasped it, and the man rose and held both hands to his forehead.

  Aranthur bowed.

  She rose, cat-like, to her feet.

  “We have an arrangement. We are welcome for food and drink any time after the afternoon prayer. Mats will be laid for sleeping.” She glanced at Aranthur. “My priests will pay for all this.”

  Aranthur nodded.

  The old man looked at him, his eyes veiled—or perhaps drugged. But his voice, in Byzas, was sharp enough.

  “You are an Imperial?”

  Aranthur nodded. He hadn’t prepared a deception.

  The man sipped smoke. “Someone in this town is killing Imperials. And there are men offering hard coin for news of many things. Temple things. God things. And Imperials. I offer this to you for nothing, because you are now my guest and a friend of my friend.” He closed his eyes, and then opened them. “Inoques says you are trying to close the hole in the sky.”

  Aranthur didn’t see any reason to hide.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “May all the gods smile on you, then. Since the hole opened, it is as if it is in my own head, and there are many who suffer worse than I.”

  Aranthur bowed, and followed Inoques out of the curtained room. But there she stopped and faced him. She smiled up at him; he was a head taller or more, and much heavier.

  “Do you accept my offer?” she asked, without shyness. “About tonight?”

  Aranthur had never been quite so boldly propositioned, but he needed… It was not a moment to hesitate. It was like fighting. Her eyes had more challenge than love, but he liked her challenge, and he recognised that she was more powerful than he. He also found that since the moment with the cats, he… liked her. She was remarkable.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then Butun will marry us.”

  Aranthur flinched, and Inoques laughed.

  “Listen, hero. I have been in your country many times, but you are in mine. I am a respectable person, a temple servant. I request you for marriage for tonight. In the morning, we will be unbound.”