And in that moment Argoth knew he did not have two days. He didn’t have one. The thrall was changing him, bending his desires and forming a link between their minds. It might take two days for his admiration to bloom into full worship, for his thoughts to roll open like a scroll before his Master. But long before that the Skir Master—
He cut himself off. He needed to move them down to the lower deck next; he needed to get to the barrels of seafire.
The Skir Master looked up. “What did you say?”
“A semi-liquid is what we want,” Argoth said. “Too thick and you’ll plug the pumps and lances.”
Argoth felt light-headed. He needed to think and not think. He walked to the window to breathe in fresh air. The sun had sunken low in the west. Over the horizon lay the New Lands and his wife. Nettle. Shim. Their images cleared his mind. “Great One,” he said. “We’ve been using bowls. If we want to produce a great quantity, I fear we must move to a larger, more ventilated place.”
“There are too many eyes and ears on the main deck,” said Leaf.
“Then let us work on the lower deck, where the materials are.”
The Skir Master looked at the bowls and nodded. He turned to Leaf. “Have this moved to the lower deck. And I want something to eat.”
* * *
Half an hour later Argoth stood on the lower deck, the barrels of seafire half-a-dozen paces aft of where they were set to work. The cook’s boy brought three bowls of food to them. Both the Skir Master and Leaf were given beef, pickled radishes, and rice. Argoth was given a foul-looking stew full of knuckles, the hard cartilage between bones. He dipped his spoon in and saw a white hair poking out. He plucked it up. It wasn’t a hair, but a whisker still attached to the severed muzzle of a rat. Argoth dropped it back. He turned the stew with his spoon. There was an ear and a foot, and who knew what else.
He set the stew aside.
“Eat,” said Leaf with a grin.
“I’m fasting,” said Argoth.
“Eat,” said the Skir Master. “We have a long night ahead of us.”
The Master was right. Of course, he should eat. The food may be filthy, but he needed his strength to teach. Argoth dipped his spoon into the stew, filled it with a hearty helping, and brought it to his mouth. It stank, and when he put it in his mouth, he convulsed, but the Skir Master needed him, so he crunched the knuckles and other bits anyway and swallowed the mess down.
The voices of the men above deck carried down. The Skir Master scooped the last clumps of rice from his bowl and set it aside. “It is too quiet. We need more privacy. Order pipes and dancing.”
Leaf nodded and took the stairs above. Soon the pipes started and the men began to pound deck. Leaf returned, this time with grog, which he held out to Argoth.
Argoth was sure someone had pissed in the cup, but the Master had said he’d need his strength, so he brought it to his lips and immediately thought of Nettle. The boy had pissed in his cup once as a child when they’d weaned him from diapers. He’d cleverly, if mistakenly, used it as a chamber pot.
Argoth put the mug down.
Upon the table two open-flame lamps burned. They were there for light, but also to test the mixtures. Unfortunately, they were too large to fit through the bung hole of a seafire barrel.
The Skir Master looked at Argoth with puzzlement on his face.
Argoth cursed himself and quickly shifted his focus. It was good the bung holes were so small, he thought. Very safe. Very much like keeping the lamps away from the bed when he and Serah made love. However, the crew should be banned from this area. No telling what careless men might do. Argoth said, “Let us compare your mixture, Great One, with the finished product.”
“Leaf,” said the Skir Master and gestured at the barrels with his chin.
Leaf walked over to one of the barrels, easily worked its lid off and set it aside. Then he dipped a cup and brought it back to the table.
The open flame of the lamps on the table, the bowl of dark seafire, the opened barrel just paces behind—he doubted he would get a better chance.
The Skir Master narrowed his eyes.
“Observe the consistency,” Argoth said.
The Skir Master reached out and grasped both lamps and pulled them back slightly.
Argoth dipped the thumb and two fingers of his good arm into the bowl of seafire and rubbed them against each other. He held them out for the Skir Master to see. “That is what you want, Great One. Mark it.”
“What are you hiding?” asked the Skir Master.
He should not hide things from the Master. He should tell him all. He looked down at the stomach that contained Nettle’s Fire. Better yet, he would show him.
He dipped his fingers again, making them good and wet with the moisture. “Here is what I hide,” he said, and then he stuck his fingers in the flame of one of the lamps. His fingers flashed blue, then spat into flame. Argoth brought them up between him, Leaf, and the Master.
The Skir Master raised an eyebrow in alarm.
Then Argoth mustered all his will, turned, and dashed for the open barrel.
“Stop him!” shouted the Skir Master.
Argoth raced to the barrel, his fingers burning.
One pace from the open barrel, Leaf grabbed his splinted arm and jerked back.
The pain screamed up his arm, but he’d fought through worse. He turned and shoved his flaming fingers into Leaf’s eye, wiping seafire along the eye socket and nose and up the tattoo.
Leaf cried out, raising one hand to his face, but he did not fully release Argoth.
Argoth twisted and chopped down with his good hand, and then he was free. He turned, lunged for the barrel.
“Stop!” the Skir Master commanded.
Argoth froze, the barrel only inches away, the pain of his blackening and blistering fingers shrieking up his arm.
The Skir Master strode toward Argoth, displeasure on his face.
Horror overtook Argoth: what had he done? How could he have betrayed his Master? He almost fell to his knees. But there was one small part of him that wanted something else.
“Nettle,” he said.
“Down!” ordered the Skir Master.
Argoth faltered, but then he mustered his strength. “Nettle,” he said. And suddenly the Skir Master’s command seemed less important than it had. His son’s sacrifice would not be wasted.
“Nettle,” he said more forcefully. This was for him and for Grace, Serenity, and Joy. For Serah. A battle cry rose within him, and he shouted his son’s name. “Nettle!”
For one brief moment his mind cleared, and he thrust his burning fingers into the black liquid waiting in the barrel.
A blue-green fire raced over the surface.
Argoth almost faltered from the pain, but he snatched his hand back and wrapped it in his tunic, wiping off both flame and skin.
The seafire in the barrel spit, flashed, and then, with a cracking thunder, flames exploded upwards. Thick smoke poured forth and rolled along the ceiling.
The Skir Master took a step back.
Argoth retrieved the hatchet he’d stowed between the barrels earlier. He brought it up and swung it against the rope binding the barrel, splitting it cleanly.
“No!” the Skir Master said.
“Yes,” Argoth replied.
Leaf was on his knees, violently trying to wipe the seafire from his face with his tunic. The Skir Master leapt over him.
But Argoth grabbed the lip of the burning barrel with the head of the hatchet and pulled with all his weight. The barrel toppled over, splashing the burning seafire over the deck. The remaining contents of the barrel spilled forth, washing over and around the Master’s boots, circling the man.
The blue flame raced over the surface of the widening pool.
Argoth backed away.
The Skir Master looked down at the spreading fire. Then the pool of seafire burst into flame and choked the passageway with smoke.
Clasping the hatchet, Argoth tur
ned and ran. Men shouted from the stern. The cook stepped out holding a long knife, probably the very knife that had hacked up the rat that had gone into his soup, and looked up the passageway. Argoth swung the flat of the hatchet and struck the man in the face.
The cook fell back, and Argoth raced past him up the stairs to the main deck. Thick brown and yellow smoke billowed out of the hatches, the Skir wind carrying it forward over the deck into the sailors who had recently been dancing. An officer shouted for a team to descend with barrels of sand.
Argoth leapt up the stairs to the aftercastle and raced to the stern. A dreadman stood by the helmsman. “The Skir Master,” Argoth shouted. “Help me get the ship’s boat in the water!”
The dreadman hesitated, then joined Argoth. He ran to the rope and pulleys of one of the davits, Argoth the other. But Argoth had no time for an easy lowering. He hacked through the ropes and his end of the boat swung down and out.
The unexpected weight caught the dreadman off guard. The rope raced through his hands, burning them. He stumbled forward, cursed, and looked at Argoth with anger.
The boat had fallen, but not all the way. It dragged behind the ship, half of it still out of the water.
Argoth raced to the dreadman’s side. He acted as if he were going to hack through the tangle. Instead, he buried his hatchet in the man’s leg.
The dreadman yelled out.
Argoth yanked the hatchet out and kicked the man in the head, knocking him overboard.
Men raced up the stairs to the aftercastle.
Then an explosion rocked the ship, sending the men racing up the stairs sprawling.
Argoth brought the hatchet down with all his might, cutting the rope, and the boat fell the rest of the distance to the water.
A man shouted blood-curdling intent behind him.
Argoth turned and saw a dreadman charging him, sword held high. A large eye had been tattooed on his bare chest.
Argoth brought up his hatchet and parried the blow, but the force of the blow knocked the hatchet out of Argoth’s hand.
The dreadman brought his sword back.
Argoth was not in a state to fight him, so he scuttled backward and flung himself over the edge of the stern. Then he was falling, watching the Ardent pull away with the dreadman looking on.
Argoth pulled his broken arm to his chest to protect it, bracing himself, thinking he was going to land on the boat.
But he did not land on the boat. He crashed heels over head into a shock of the cold water. He gasped in a lungful of water, rolled, then came to the surface in a choke and turned to look for the boat. A wave lifted him, showing him the boat only a few yards away. He sidestroked toward it with all his might, holding his useless arm at his chest.
The dreadman who’d come at him on deck flashed down in the corner of his eye and splashed into the water.
At the crest of the next swell, he looked back. The dreadman was swimming after him hard, gaining on him.
Argoth swam with all his might. Two, four, eight strokes.
He looked back. The dreadman was only a few yards behind.
Another stroke and he touched the boat. Argoth reached up with his good hand, grasped the top wale, and swung his leg up, and then it was over the wale and onto one of the thwarts.
He looked frantically about for a weapon. There was nothing but the length of rope that had attached the boat to the davit.
The dreadman’s hand grasped the wale behind him.
Argoth lunged for the rope lying under one of the thwarts.
The dreadman pulled himself up.
Argoth spun around, lunged at the man and slipped a make-shift noose over the dreadman’s neck. Then he looped the rope about his body and heaved back. The rope tightened about the dreadman’s neck and pulled him into the boat. But Argoth knew that wouldn’t be enough. He turned, and before the dreadman could gain leverage to pull Argoth to him, Argoth took one bounding step and jumped off the side of the boat opposite of the dreadman and into the water.
He attempted to swim under the boat, but he could not get the leverage he needed and realized it wasn’t going to work. He grabbed the rope higher and pulled with all his might, expecting the dreadman to haul back on it. But no tug came, and Argoth burst to the surface. He treaded water, fearing what would come, but nothing moved on the boat.
Men cried over the waves. They would see this boat, and those that knew how to swim would come after it. Surely the dreadman was waiting for him, but Argoth saw no other choice. He steeled himself, then reached up and pulled himself in.
The dreadman lay across the thwarts, his neck broken, the water from his clothing dripping into the bilge.
Argoth looked at the man. Strong, clearly someone who had seen many battles. A good soldier gone to waste.
He unlooped the rope, pushed the body aside, then began to tie the tiller. He would not have enough time to erect the ship’s small mast and rig the sail. However, if he tied the tiller, he might, with one oar, row in a straight line away from the burning Ardent and her men.
He finished tying the tiller and looked back at the ship. Her sails had caught fire—yards and yards of fire billowing up into the evening sky.
Then an enormous explosion cracked like thunder, shuddering the ship, throwing men, wood, and great gouts of fire up into the rigging and out to sea. One of the thrown men, his entire body aflame, snagged in the rigging and writhed there.
Moments later a rain of fire began to fall to the sea. It fell in great infernos and small drops, all of it streaking through the sky to burn atop the darkening water.
Another explosion tore the air. The force of the blast, even from this distance, almost knocked Argoth into the thwarts. It rent the ship, and she began to list.
Argoth retrieved an oar, fitted it, and sat on the thwart. He was about to turn the boat to row directly away from the Ardent when a fierce wind kicked up about him, sending sea spray to sting his eyes.
The Skir wind.
He crouched low in the boat, the wind whipping about him. Moments later a violent gust slammed into the boat, knocking him into the wale. And then, as quickly as it had come, it departed with one final line of spray that receded away toward the Ardent.
Argoth’s fingers throbbed with pain. They were black, and where the outer charred skin had sloughed off, a bright pink. They didn’t hurt as much as he would have suspected, but that only meant the fire had burned all of his nerves. He suspected he might never feel in those fingers again.
The splint about his broken arm hung loosely. He tightened it up as best he could with his burned hand. Then he set his one ore, sat upon a thwart, and began to row, the red and green eye of the paddle dipping in and out of the water.
He hadn’t gone very far when he heard the Master’s command in his mind. “Come to me.”
“Nettle,” he said. “Serah. Serenity. Grace. Joy.”
“Come to me!”
But Argoth repeated the names of his family members again like some murmured prayer.
The Skir Master shouted again in the back of his mind.
But Argoth rowed on. “Nettle, Grace, Joy, Serenity, Serah. Nettle, Grace, Joy,” he muttered.
The ship burned brightly. Any ship within miles would be able to see it. His only hope was that the others were nowhere nearby. Or, at least, too far out to make it here before the Skir Master died.
When he did die, Argoth would feel it, for a thrall only had power when the Master was alive. When he died, so did the bond. Of course, he had read that the bond worked through a man like roots in the soil. So although the bond might die, the roots would remain, and it would take some time before all traces of the thrall were gone.
Argoth wondered how many thralls the Master had. Dozens? A hundred? Surely, the inlay by the pulpit was some type of thrall, which made Argoth question how many of those slaves were skir. Certainly Shegom was one of them.
He looked up and found that the sky was clear. The first evening stars shone in the h
eavens. He took a moment to get his bearings by them and considered trying to rig the sail.
A wind buffeted him, then another.
At first he thought it a normal gust, but it did not abate.
The sound of sea spray hastened toward his boat. Argoth turned and saw the Skir wind racing toward him. Shegom was coming. He had heard of Skir Masters summoning whirlwinds to the field of battle, of men being picked up and carried away.
Argoth released the oar and immediately wriggled underneath the thwarts, wedging himself as best he could.
Moments later the wind knocked the boat, lifting one side and pushed it sideways. Then the pitch of the wind rose, screeching over the wales.
The oar jerked violently in its lock. It jerked the other way, then broke free with a wrench and flew up and away. The pitch of the wind screamed over the wales until it howled like a hurricane. The boat tipped precariously on its side and scudded over a wave.
The dead dreadman dislodged and tumbled out into the water.
Sea spray kicked up, driving into Argoth’s face like needles. He shut his eyes against it and turned his face into the side of the boat as the wind picked at him.
The boat lurched, twisted, was tossed about like a leaf. And then it was airborne. He began to slip and braced himself. Then the boat slapped down on the water in the midst of heat, fire, salt spray. And then as quickly as it had come, the wind abated.
Argoth opened his eyes and saw the sky full of smoke. He listened for the wind, but it was gone, so he wriggled halfway out from under the thwarts and surveyed the scene. All about him pieces of flotsam burned, smoke piling into the sky.
Someone shouted.
A hand grasped the wale.
Argoth kicked at the man’s head as he came over. He bent over to untie another oar so that he might use it as a weapon. But the boat rocked.
Argoth turned, oar in hand.
Leaf stood before him, water running from his clothes into the boat. The skin about his eye was blackened and cracked from the burn. Raw pink and red flesh shone where much of his eye tattoo had been.
Argoth drew back to strike, but Leaf simply snatched the oar out of his hand and kicked him into the prow. Argoth’s head smacked against the side of the boat.
Servant: The Dark God Book 1 Page 44
