Red Tide

by Marc Turner

  “What’s happening?” Galantas said to Barnick.

  “They’re battling for control of the seas—our mages and theirs.”

  “Who’s winning?”

  “No one.”

  Galantas wasn’t so sure. For while Malek’s ships swayed at the edge of the swell, the stone-skin ships sat perfectly still. In any case, a stalemate suited the Augerans just fine if it meant they could keep Malek’s vessels at arm’s length. But they hadn’t counted on Barnick and the other water-mages in Galantas’s fleet. Surely nine more Rubyholt sorcerers would tip the balance in the Islanders’ favor.

  “Get some lanterns lit,” Galantas said to Qinta. “We need to signal our other ships.”

  The Second nodded and moved away.

  Those ships began to reduce speed as they approached the stone-skin line. At the front of Galantas’s fleet, an unfamiliar vessel—a Needle, most likely—had heaved to. The Colossus, trailing close behind, was slow to follow suit, and the two ships came together with a bump and a scrape that provoked a healthy exchange of views between their captains. Galantas looked at the line of stone-skin warships. Ordinarily it would have been easy to run the blockade, for the Augerans could guard only the gaps between the islets, and any water-mage worth his bones could conjure up a wave large enough to carry a ship over the rocks. What was the point in doing so, though, if the sea beyond was caught in the throes of a sorcerous quarrel? What mage could steer a steady course on that swell?

  A speck of blackness arced out from one of Malek’s ships. A catapult stone. It hung in the air, growing in size, before it landed with a splash between two Augeran vessels. The stone-skins’ response was instantaneous. A blast of sorcery from the ship on the left cut a gash in the sky as it streaked toward Malek’s fleet. Galantas didn’t hear it strike home, but he saw the mainmast of the central vessel cut in two. It toppled onto the decks below.

  Stones against sorcery. No prizes for guessing who would win that battle.

  Barnick’s voice was urgent. “Galantas, look!” he said, pointing.

  The Needle ship at the front of his fleet had started moving again toward the stone-skin blockade. Its captain had evidently chosen to try his luck on the seething cauldron of water, and as the vessel approached one of the islets, the wave beneath it grew higher.

  “What’s the fool doing?” Barnick said.

  Galantas did not reply. What was there to say?

  The Needle ship advanced to within a hundred armspans of the Augerans. Then dozens of pinpricks of light blossomed on the decks of a stone-skin ship. They took flight. Fire arrows. Galantas heard their whistle even over the rumble of water beyond the islets. It was too late for the Needle captain to turn about, or do anything save wait for the deadly hail to land. Had the man’s ship been doused with blayfire oil? The fact his crew had started throwing themselves overboard wasn’t an encouraging sign.

  Ten, twenty, thirty missiles descended on the vessel, and its sails became spotted with light.

  Then its quarterdeck went up in purple flames.

  * * *

  Amerel opened her eyes. After the freedom of her spirit-walk, her body felt as stiff as the boards she lay on. Flies crawled over her, and she twitched and waved a hand at them, then rolled to her feet, cursing. Damned flies were everywhere tonight. Like the whole city had gone rotten.

  From the street outside came shouts and the clatter of metal. Amerel crossed to the window and looked down. A contest was taking place between four red-cloaked stone-skins and twice as many Rubyholters—if you could call it a contest. The Rubyholters seemed to be doing more screaming than fighting, moving so slowly in comparison to their foes they might have been pushing through water. Half a dozen heartbeats later, it was over. The last Islander tried to make a break for it, but if you were going to flee, it was best to do so before you were surrounded. The man was stabbed simultaneously from behind and in front, as if the stone-skins wielding the swords both wanted him for their score. At least he hadn’t attempted to join Amerel in the house.

  She moved back out of sight.

  Down a street leading to the harbor, the Guardian glimpsed a melee of combatants on the waterfront. A group of Rubyholters was trying to fight along a quay to where a three-masted ship was docked, but they made only stuttering progress in the face of resistance from five stone-skins. And all the while, more Augerans were arriving to support their kinsmen. On the water beyond, a barque was alight, sooty flames roaring into the night. Shrieking figures hurled themselves from the deck into waters made choppy by a dozen writhing tentacles. Amerel almost felt sorry for the stricken Islanders. How to plot your course to Shroud’s realm, by flame or fiend?

  Below her, the four Augerans set off at a trot in the direction of the fighting.

  Amerel considered. This part of the city was getting a little crowded for her liking. True, her immediate danger had passed, but already she could hear more shouts to the south. Coming this way? It was difficult to tell. That left her with a quandary. Stay put, or make a dash through the streets in search of somewhere quieter? Maybe the chances of anyone stumbling across her hiding place were slim, but while the excitement at this end of the harbor continued, she would always have one eye on what was happening to her body rather than concentrating on the mission.

  Time to move on, she decided.

  She descended the stairs two at a time and opened the back door a crack. The street beyond was still and silent.

  She slipped out into the shadows.

  Ahead the road narrowed, the houses to either side leaning in. The cobbles were smeared with blood, and dark lines ran down to an open sewer at the center. Shutters lay scattered where they’d been torn from the windows of houses. In breaking into one building, the Augerans had destroyed not just the door, but also its frame and the stonework to either side.

  At the next intersection Amerel caught sight of the harbor to her right, saw another ship burning—or maybe the same one. Then she was into darkness again. From a side street on her left came scuttling noises, and as she passed it she noticed a boy crouched over a man’s body, rifling through the corpse’s clothes. Scavenging? At a time like this? They start them young in Bezzle. The child must have sensed Amerel’s regard, for he looked up and stared at her with empty eyes.

  She hurried on. The sounds of fighting from the waterfront were fading, though whether that was because the buildings were blunting the noise, or because the Augerans had now stamped out the opposition, Amerel couldn’t say. Indeed the loudest shouts seemed to be coming from—

  Her step faltered.

  From the direction she was heading in. That couldn’t be right, could it? She was too far north now for it to be Rubyholt raiders.

  The Chameleons?

  For an instant, Amerel was tempted to turn and go back the way she had come. The problem was, three ships marked wasn’t enough to guarantee the success of the mission. Moreover, if the stone-skins caught Caval and Karmel, they might learn from them what they’d been doing here. And even if the Chameleons died before they were questioned, the blowpipes, darts, and dragon blood were clue enough as to their purpose. If the Augerans found the marked ships, they could replace the affected boards, and Amerel’s efforts tonight would come to nothing.

  Then there was the chance that the stone-skins would use the dragon blood on Erin Elalese vessels as Amerel had intended to use it on theirs.

  Drawing her sword, she took a right at the next intersection.

  And turned straight into the path of a Rubyholter coming the other way. He was a brute of a man with eyes so large they seemed to fill his face. There was no time for him to swerve around the Guardian, so instead he lowered his shoulder and tried to go through.

  Amerel threw up a Will-barrier.

  The man ran headlong into it, crashed off, and bounced back with a grunt and a clack of teeth. He fell limp to the ground.

  Two Augeran swordsmen materialized from the gloom behind him. Amerel wasn’t going to outdis
tance them from a standing start, so she held her ground. The stone-skins slowed when they realized she wasn’t running. They wore black cloaks and confident half smiles. Confident? Good. An evening whipping hapless Rubyholters would have lowered their expectations nicely.

  Amerel might not be the most skilled Guardian with a blade, but she had tricks aplenty to compensate. Transferring her sword to her left hand, she unsheathed a throwing knife in her right and hurled it at the Augerans. The throw went high of the man on the left, so high in fact that he didn’t even have to duck to evade it. He grinned, then shouted something in his native tongue, his derision plain.

  Using her Will, Amerel stopped the knife after it was past him, then reversed it and sent it flashing back at him, point first. It took the stone-skin between the shoulders, and he stumbled forward a step. He stared at her in indignation, as if he thought she wasn’t playing fair. And why should she? A knife in the back cut as keenly as a knife in the chest, and with considerably less risk to the wielder. She felt an answering stab of pain in her own back as her blood-dream rose up.

  The stone-skin crumpled to the ground.

  His companion half turned to look behind him, evidently thinking an enemy was at his back.

  Amerel charged him.

  Realizing his error, the Augeran spun to face her again, swinging his sword off balance in a decapitating cut.

  A nudge of Amerel’s Will halted the weapon in its tracks even as her backhand stroke passed under his blade and severed his right leg above the knee. He screamed and toppled sideways, then dropped his sword and seized his stump with both hands. Black blood spurted between his fingers.

  Amerel stepped past. No need to waste time finishing him off.

  She suspected he’d have trouble keeping up with her now.

  * * *

  A stone-skin surged through the back door to the tavern, sword raised to cut down Caval. Caval, though, had employed his power. To the Augeran he would appear naught but a shimmer, and the enemy hesitated.

  Karmel’s throwing knife was already on its way. Her target had been the soldier’s chest, but her fear for Caval had made her snatch at the cast, and her blade thudded instead into his neck. Some luck for a change. The stone-skin grunted and tottered, would have fallen backward if Caval hadn’t seized his cloak and heaved him down the tavern’s steps. The Augeran splashed into the water at the bottom, his weapon clattering from his grasp.

  Karmel drew her own sword in her right hand, another throwing knife in her left. Shadows gathered in the alley beyond the doorway, and a voice outside barked a question in a language she didn’t recognize. An Augeran asking after his kinsman, probably. Odds were, the speaker was alone, for surely a group of soldiers wouldn’t have lingered on the threshold. Either way, the Chameleons had to risk a sally outside before more of the enemy came through the front door. Karmel glanced that way now and saw a snarl of flies on the torchlit waterfront, the black hull that would have been her next target. But no stone-skins.

  Yet.

  She moved to the foot of the stairs. Caval winced as he drew his sword, and Karmel remembered the wound he’d taken to his arm on Dragon Day. Unlikely he’d be able to do much fighting with that. She gestured that she would take the lead, then crept to the top of the steps. Outside, the stone-skin shouted again, his voice directed out into the night.

  Calling for backup.

  His words dissolved into a strangled cry, then there was a scrape of metal on wood as something slid down the wall to the floor. The Augeran’s head dropped into view, leaking blood from a hole in one temple. A crossbow bolt protruded from the wound.

  “Friendly,” someone said, and Karmel’s wash of relief left her feeling light-headed.

  Noon.

  Karmel stepped over the stone-skin’s body, and Caval followed her outside. Noon was waiting for them. He reloaded a small crossbow, his movements sure and precise as if this brush with the Augerans had all been part of the plan. Karmel shook her head. Was she the only one with a pulse around here?

  “Trouble,” Caval said.

  The priestess looked left along the alley. Shadows approached, as if the darkness itself were drawing in on them. The slap of the stone-skins’ steps sounded loud in the confines of the passage.

  Noon was the first to react. He toppled a barrel toward the enemy before setting off at a run in the opposite direction.

  “This way!”

  Karmel dashed after the Erin Elalese.

  Earlier the refuse piled in the alley had provided useful cover on the way to the tavern. Now Karmel had to jink through it, her eyes filled with the dark. She didn’t see the overturned table until Noon hurdled it, jumped it late herself and clipped her knee, setting the joint buzzing. Thirty paces ahead, the passage was blocked by a handcart and its spilled contents. Noon veered through an open doorway in the wall to his left.

  Karmel followed him into a yard. Flies seethed about. To either side rose brick walls, and set into the one on her right was a metal ring to which the bloated corpse of a dog was chained. At the far end of the yard was a house. Its ground-floor windows were boarded, and the wooden door between them had a disconcertingly solid look. Noon tried the handle, found it locked. He withdrew a step and shoulder charged it. The door barely flinched.

  Karmel looked round. The walls were too high to climb without a boost up, and their pursuers would be on to them before they could scale them. No guarantee anyway that the next yard offered a better chance of escape. They had trapped themselves as surely as if they’d walked into a cell and shut the door behind.

  The footsteps of the chasing stone-skins drew near. Caval took up position to one side of the doorway. Beside Karmel, Noon raised his crossbow, ready to shoot the first Augeran who appeared. The priestess signaled him to lower the weapon. Better to draw all the enemy in and ambush them, than to kill the first man and spook the others into waiting outside.

  Noon nodded understanding.

  Karmel transferred her throwing knife to her right hand and drew the arm back in readiness to throw. Then she engaged her power and went still.

  Two black-cloaked stone-skins with shields trotted through the doorway and drew up. One of the soldiers was a woman—the first female Augeran Karmel could recall seeing. Her skin had a silvery cast to it against her companions’ charcoal gray. Caval and Karmel would be invisible to her, and as she looked about the yard, her brow furrowed as she tried to work out how the three targets she’d been following had diminished to one. She glanced down at the dead dog as if the creature might be part of the mystery.

  Karmel’s raised arm was trembling. A third Augeran appeared in the doorway, also carrying a shield. Just three of them? There were no noises from the alley to suggest more were on the way. Perhaps Karmel’s party would survive this after all. Noon lifted his crossbow.

  The female Augeran’s shield came up. “You will down put weapon,” she ordered.

  Noon ignored her.

  Stone-skin number three moved up to flank his companions. Karmel’s gaze shifted to Caval, undetected at the group’s rear. Her eyes flickered to the rightmost stone-skin, indicating her choice of target. Caval blinked in acknowledgment.

  “Down weapon,” the female Augeran said to Noon again, enunciating the words with exaggerated care as if she thought he might have misunderstood her first command.

  Caval attacked.

  A step forward, an extension of his sword arm, and the leftmost Augeran stiffened as Caval’s sword punched through his back. The other two stone-skins half turned, weapons ready.

  Thunk went Noon’s crossbow, and Karmel’s arm snapped forward, her throwing knife flashing toward the second male stone-skin. It struck him in the chest. His female companion was already falling, Noon’s crossbow bolt through her ear. Karmel’s victim landed atop her, his arm curling around her neck in a macabre embrace.

  Dead.

  For a moment the priestess could only stare at the bodies, half expecting them to stir to life again
. After Dian, she’d built the stone-skins up to be giants, but the soldiers she had met in Bezzle hadn’t matched up to the man she’d fought on Dragon Day. Few could, she suspected.

  Noon waved to get her attention, and Karmel remembered he couldn’t see her with her power employed. She released it. The Erin Elalese leaned forward and put his mouth to her ear. “You two stay here,” he said, looking from the priestess to her brother. “If there are more stone-skins outside, I’ll lead them off.”

  Karmel was silent, thinking. She knew his suggestion made sense. Every one of the Augerans who had seen the Chameleons thus far was dead. If Karmel and Caval faded into the shadows, they’d likely escape detection, for the next stone-skins through the doorway would have no reason to go looking for someone they couldn’t see—

  “Down!” Caval hissed, hurling himself at Karmel.

  His arms wrapped around her and his shoulder struck her chest, driving the air from her lungs. Her feet left the ground. A moment of weightlessness, then she thumped onto the floor, head cracking against stone. She slid an armspan across the yard before coming to a stop against the wall of the house.

  She lay on her back, sucking in breaths, her brother on top of her. Before Caval’s warning, she’d heard a rip of air, knew they’d been attacked by someone. With her head scrambled, though, she couldn’t say how, or from where. No more stone-skins came through the doorway. Noon whispered something in an urgent voice, and Karmel lifted her head, only for the yard to do a flip. Vomit burned the back of her throat. Had she been wounded? It was difficult to know with so much of her body aching.

  When her vision cleared, she saw on the ground a crossbow bolt together with a chunk of brick. She raised herself to a sitting position. Her elbows stung where she’d skinned them, and the back of her head felt wet. When she touched the spot, her fingers came back red. Noon crouched nearby, reloading his crossbow. He flicked his gaze upward. Of course, the roofs. That’s where the stone-skin shooter must be stationed, south of Karmel’s position. She looked that way, saw no one on the skyline.