“I’m sorry?” said Samuel.
The Ardian raised his head and repeated the murmuring. It had a strange, droning quality, like the monotone hum of a mistfire engine. It filled the entire cabin, drowning out all other sounds.
The Doctor woke up. He was on a canvas bunk bed. The droning sound continued in the darkness. He reached out and his hand touched a cold metal surface, vibrating in tune with the hum.
A curtain opened, letting in some light from a table lamp. A bearded man in a green cloak looked at him intensely.
“Gut. You waked,” he said with the harsh Varyagan accent.
“I… yes, I am awake,” Samuel replied weakly. “Are you a doctor?”
He was still dizzy and nauseated. The bearded man nodded and handed him a bowl to retch into; Samuel gestured it wasn’t necessary.
“I’m a doctor too. Samuel Ben Hagin,” he said.
“I am Magnus Ingvarsson,” the other man said, shaking Samuel’s hand. “You rest now. I bring Admiral.”
Admiral?
“Please, just tell me — where am I? What is this place?”
Ingvarsson smiled but said nothing. He turned around and disappeared down a long, narrow corridor.
The Admiral was a short man, like all sailors on this mysterious vessel but, unlike the others, was clean shaven except for abundant sideburns, flaxen yellow like the rest of his hair. A large, straight nose dominated a determined face.
The cabin they were in had rounded walls, made of thick metal sheets joined with thick iron rivets, and was very sparsely equipped except for a console filled with gauges, switches and dials beside the Admiral’s table. There was a small, thick-framed round window in one of the walls, but Samuel could see nothing but darkness behind it. The constant, irritating humming filled this place as well. The air was stuffy, smelling of dozens of men cramped in tight quarters.
“Fridrik Otterson,” he said simply instead of a greeting.
“Admiral, I hear.”
“Well, ja, but let’s not dwell on formalitaet too much. What were you doing in the middle of the ocean? We saw no other castaways and heard of no Western shipwrecks in these seas.”
“I drifted off far from where my ship sank. We were at anchor before Huating.”
“That is far indeed! You were very lucky we found you at all. We’re tva hundred and fifty miles north-by-northeast from Huating.”
Samuel recalled the navigation charts with some difficulty — his head was still spinning.
“You’re headed for Chosun?”
The Admiral laughed.
“Nej, herr Doktor.”
“But… there is no other land between here and Tyr Gorllewin. Unless you’re trying to reach…”
“The fabled islands of Yamato? Ja, that is exactly where we’re going.”
Samuel leaned back in his chair and tried to gather his thoughts.
“The storms… the maze of waves… the navigation problems,” he said, trying to remember all the many reasons he knew for nobody but the Bataavians being able to reach Yamato.
“All of this, we have discovered, working only on the surface of the sea,” said the Admiral, smiling.
“This ship…” Samuel understood at last. “We’re sailing under water!”
A buzzer sounded on the steel wall. The Admiral pressed a button on his console. The heavy round door swung open and into the cabin came another man, silver-haired, wearing a dinner jacket and round metal glasses. In his hand he held a pocket watch on a chain that he kept checking nervously.
“Doktor Nobelius,” the Admiral introduced him. “The finest naval inventor in the Khaganatet.”
“Honoured,” said Samuel.
“Likewise,” said Nobelius swiftly. “Amiral, in ten minutes we need to make another tryckkontroll… A pressure check,” he added for Samuel’s benefit.
“Ach, ja, Doktor. We’ll be right with you.”
The inventor left hastily.
“I’m guessing the existence of this ship is supposed to be a secret,” said Samuel.
“Oh, it is — for now. But you won’t be telling anyone in the West about it for a while. We’ve set our course and will not surface until we are in Dejeema.”
Dejeema. The name invoked an even greater sense of mystery.
“The Khaganatet has been trying to chart these seas for years,” the Admiral continued, “ever since we’ve reached the coast of the Stora Havet — the Great Ocean — and built the harbour at Alexisborg. We have learned many sekret — the Bataavians are not as good at keeping them as they think. But, we wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing. There is only one such boot in the world and we didn’t want to lose her.”
“Just like Ladon,” said Samuel quietly, remembering the vastness of his own ship.
Each nation is trying to outdo everyone else in making the machines of war… where will this race end?
“Pardon? Anyway, we found out we were late to the party. Another power is heading for Yamato as we speak. Hence our hurry — and the poor Doktor’s angslan… uneasiness. This boot was never properly tested.”
“Another power? Not the Dracaland — I would know…”
“You wouldn’t,” said the Admiral with a laugh, “but nej, it’s not the Dracaland. Nor Breizh, nor Midgard, nor any of the old ones. There’s a new child in the nursery, as they say, and it’s eyeing Yamato as its new leksak… new toy. And if we don’t hurry there will be nothing left of it to share.”
A sailor appeared in the cabin’s round door and cleared his throat.
“Ach, ja, naturligtvis. Nobelius is waiting. Excuse me, Doktor — you may return to the infirmary. And it’s probably best if you hold on to something for the next ten minutes.”
Three loud whistles echoed throughout the vessel. He heard many heavy boots running to and fro around the deck amid barked orders. The tongue of the Varyagas, like those of their Western kin in Midgard and Niflheimr, was most suited to pronouncing orders, he had always thought.
Their vast empire stretched across two continents, from the cold Venedian Sea in the West all the way to the borders of Qin in the East. Most of this enormous landmass was poor and inhospitable — dark northern forests or arid open steppe, with little value other than some furs and fish; but the Varyagas possessed an insatiable hunger for land and discovery, a legacy of their Norse ancestry. It did not surprise Samuel that once the Varyaga explorers had reached the Great Ocean, the Khaganate decided to push still further eastwards, beyond the known charts.
He felt the change in the air pressure in his ears and then the bulkheads started creaking and groaning worryingly. Within five minutes everything was over; another three whistles announced the end of the pressure test.
He lost count of the many exercises and training routines the crew of the Diana, the underwater ship, had performed over the past two weeks. He would have lost the count of days if it hadn’t been for the calendars hanging on the wall of almost every cabin. The vessel surfaced only by night, to replenish the air stored in Doctor Nobelius’s ingenious tanks, and nobody but the maintenance crew was allowed outside.
Samuel had studied the sea through the round window in the Admiral’s cabin, but he saw only the gloomy, dusty murkiness, barely illuminated by a faint evertorch. On one occasion the Admiral showed him the surface through Diana’s periscope. He realised immediately they were in the middle of the famous sea maze. The storm waves rolled back and forth in random directions, heedless of the prevailing winds; the clouds and mists covered the sky and the horizon with an impenetrable curtain of grey. All the navigation devices behaved as if broken. Only after submerging the ship to below a hundred feet the compass started showing north again.
“How do the Bataavians get through this?” he asked the Admiral later.
“There is one route always open clear for them. Every year they send only one ship. A sailing ship, mind — the Yamato do not allow maskines… engines. And when it returns with cargo it also brings the details of what th
e route will be the next year — for it always changes. It is a much more elaborate system than the crude barriaer of the Qin.”
“Is Yamato really worth all this effort?”
“I have spoken to a Midgaerd spy who sailed on their ship once — he told me of the riches the land keeps; there is koppar, kamfor, silks, cotton, porselin… but most of all, there are people who were, he said, among the most ingenious he had ever met. The years he had spent on Dejeema had been the best of his life — and he had travelled far and wide. And they are fiendishly clever. It is a waste to keep a nation like that under lock and key.”
“But they obviously wish to keep their doors closed from us.”
“The rulers, maybe. But Philip — the spion — told me there were many people in Yamato who demanded a change. All they need is a little… assistans from outside. The Bataavians are too weak and too set in their ways for this.”
“So this is not just about taking the Bataavians’ place,” Samuel guessed. “You want to start a revolution. That’s a bold ambition for a commander of a single ship.”
“A ship that can sail under water, mind. But my mission is just a beginning. If I succeed, we will build more ships like Diana, merchant ships and war ships and eventually the rulers of Yamato will realise the futilitet of their boundaries.”
“And what about that other… Power you’ve mentioned?”
“One thing at a time, Doktor. For now my greatest worry is reaching Dejeema in one piece. The closer we seem to be to Yamato, the deeper we have to go to avoid the effects of this sea labyrint. Hence all the tests and exercises.”
“How deep can this ship go, if need be?”
“We don’t know,” Otterson smiled. “We have never sailed as deep as we are at the moment.”
Samuel wriggled uneasily in his chair. The creaking of the bulkheads overhead suddenly seemed a lot more ominous.
The Bohan had set up his headquarters in the same stone-and-water gardens that the Heavenly Army had used during their brief hold on Huating. Dylan landed his dragon on a square in the middle of the walled city, surrounded on all sides with tall buildings of white walls and black tile roofs. The town was loud and crowded with refugees, soldiers and merchants. The guards led him through a sculpted gate past a tall wall and immediately the din quietened, replaced by the babbling of water and the chirping of sparrows.
The paths in the garden were as angular as the wrinkles on Bohan’s face, a convoluted labyrinth of bridges and gates designed, not out of convenience, but following some greater, Heavenly scheme. At select places stood intricately eroded stones or statues, pavilions overlooking flower ponds or grand old trees, with boughs sprawling like wooden snakes, supported by bamboo poles. Dylan knew there was nothing random about the placement of these features; the Qin left nothing to chance.
Following the guards, he was trying instinctively to map the garden paths in his head, but soon gave up. He had seen the Gardens from dragonback; it was just a tiny space in the middle of the bustling city. But they had been walking now for far longer than it would take to traverse this space from one side to another in a straight line, and they seemed no closer to their destination.
I am literally a-mazed, he thought, with a chuckle which made one of the guards look back at him and frown.
Another gate and another wall appeared before him on top of which coiled a dragon sculpted out of blue clay tiles. Past this wall the garden was even quieter, only an early cicada buzzed in the top of a great pine tree.
This tree must have been planted when this place was just a village, Dylan thought, admiring the gnarled, twisted, blackened trunk.
The guards stopped.
“Please,” the Bohan gestured him to follow further, into an expansive bungalow, the walls of which were open and airy, carved with intricate latticework of wood and lacquer. This was the largest and most opulent building Dylan had seen so far in the Gardens.
The Bohan led him along a corridor of wooden planks, polished to such perfection that they seemed to be covered with glass. Water trickled in a covered gutter alongside, cooling the entire house down. His navy boots squeaked on the slippery surface and he was finding it hard to keep up with the pointy-bearded man without stumbling. At last they reached their destination — a small square room. Red lanterns stood on black iron stands in the corner; a golden screen showing a coiling dragon adorned the opposite wall. The Bohan closed the door behind them carefully.
A table of polished wood stood in the middle of the room on four tall legs of eroded stone. On the table lay several thick brushes, an ink stone, several pieces of paper, a lacquer tray filled with what looked like sand and a copper brazier in which blue fire burned. Dylan immediately sensed magic.
“Sit, please,” the Bohan pointed to two chairs on both sides of the table. “We shall write a formal request to the tai-pan at Fan Yu.”
He reached for the brush and paper and Dylan dictated what should be written. When they finished, the Bohan blew on the ink, rolled the paper carefully and dropped it into the flaming brazier.
He turned to Dylan with a smile.
“It will take a moment to decipher the message and deliver a reply. Let’s have some tea.”
The Ardian knew better not to question what had just happened. At his host’s signal the golden screen slid apart, revealing a hidden entrance. Two men entered the room. One was a servant carrying a pot of fragrant tea and two white china cups. The other wore the robes and the hat of a priest. He held a sharpened bamboo rod in his hands.
The Bohan poured the straw-coloured tea from on high, splashing it all over the tray — a sign of luxury. By the time Dylan had finished his second cup, the priest staggered, touching his forehead with his fingers.
“Ah, good,” said the Bohan, “it was faster than I expected.”
The priest rolled his eyes up and started to shiver in spiritual ecstasy. The servant who had brought the tea now guided his hand holding the bamboo rod over the sand tray.
The rod trembled and started moving, as if on its own, writing Qin letters in the sand. The Bohan copied them onto paper. The message was brief, but the priest seemed exhausted by the ordeal and the servant had to escort him out of the room.
“The ship will be dispatched in two days, with the right of passage through Ederra Strait,” the Bohan read out the characters.
“That means they will be here in a week,” said Dylan, still reeling from what he had just seen. At last, here was the explanation of the astonishing speed with which information seemed to travel throughout the Qin Empire. He pointed to the sand tray.
“What — what was that?”
“Magic,” the Bohan replied with a self-satisfied grin.
The vast watery expanse of the Qian River spread like a narrow sea between the tall pagoda underneath which Dylan had set up camp and the opposite shore, almost two miles away.
“You were right, Ardian,” the Admiral said, studying the brown, stormy waters through the long, heavy telescope attached to his iron hand. “Hard to believe that’s not the Sea. I could wage an entire battle between these shores.”
“Perhaps you will have it, if we fail to establish a bridgehead.”
“Are you certain this is necessary? I could defend this crossing with a few gunboats for years.”
“It’s not just the crossing. There’s a trade port on the other side that the rebels might use as an alternative to Huating. We have orders to assist the Imperial Army in its capture, if we can.”
The Admiral ran his fingers through the balding hair and sighed.
“Ah, politics. How I loathe it. Interfering with a good war.”
“Sir?”
“I also got new orders yesterday. Once this here battle is over, I’m taking my ships up north, to Ta Du. Don’t worry — there are a few gunboats coming to take my place, and the Qin fleet is supposedly on its way. You shouldn’t be lacking in ships.”
Dylan frowned. “I haven’t heard of any new developments over the
re.”
“I don’t know what’s going on either — but we can both guess it’s going to be something big.”
They both nodded in silence. The storm clouds and crow flocks had not yet been fully dispersed here in the south and already they had started gathering elsewhere.
There is always war in Qin, he remembered his son’s words. Bran — for the first time in weeks he recalled the boy’s face, his voice. He looked eastwards, where the great river entered a broad, funnel-shaped bay of the Qin Sea. A line of Reynolds’s warships obscured the horizon, reminding him instantly of the upcoming battle.
“Let’s make the best of what time we have, then,” Dylan said with a dry smile.
He gazed down on the camp. Three thousand men in blue uniforms busied themselves among the white tents — an army with no name. It seemed an impossible task to train so many soldiers in such a short time, and yet he had succeeded — with great help from his lieutenants and officers of the Twelfth Light Dragoons. The dragons of both regiments rested in the hastily built stables a bit further to the west. There had been little need for them so far — the rebel scouting parties had fled as soon as they saw their glinting scales in the sky. Both the men and the beasts itched for a fight.
“You know, Ardian,” the Admiral spoke just as they were about to return to the camp, “I’ve been thinking lately about what happened to your son.”
Over the few weeks, the two men had exchanged many tales. Reynolds knew now with details the story of Ladon’s final journey, and they had both agreed that the Ifor serving under the Admiral in the days of the Kyrnosian Emperor must have been Dylan’s father.
“Sir?”
“I had a certain idea of my own… but it will have to wait until after the battle. Look, here she comes,” the Admiral said, pointing downstream, “our signal.”
A ripple formed on the horizon, which grew fast to a white foaming wave, stretching from shore to shore. A giant tidal bore, many times greater than the famous wave at Môr Hafren in Gwynedd, rushed towards them with the speed — and sound — of a steaming omnibus, taking everything with it. Only the most tightly anchored vessels could withstand its terrible force.
The Year of the Dragon Omnibus Page 58
