This Forsaken Earth

by Paul Kearney

  “I’ll have a sup of that beer, Captain, if you’re to do nothing but stare into it,” a voice said beside him.

  He looked up. “You’re welcome to it, Esmer.”

  The woman took a seat beside him, close enough for her elbow to nudge his ribs. She was a pretty thing, past the first flush of youth, with black hair and eyes to match. As she took the beer from Rol her shawl slipped to reveal a Kassic slave-brand on her left shoulder. He had kissed that brand in the past, and supposed he might well do so again. Esmer and he understood each other, in many ways.

  “A short cruise, but profitable, I hear,” she said.

  “We picked up a slaver.”

  “Yes.” Her jawline tightened. “What of its crew?”

  “Threw them overboard.”

  She leaned into him, a smile lighting her face. “So? Then you have made the world a little better.”

  “With what, murder?”

  “Justice.”

  Rol nuzzled her hair. It was musky as a cat’s fur, and full of woodsmoke. “It’s a fine line between them, Esmer.”

  She cupped his face. “Lonely tonight, my captain?” And she looked up at him with the firelight burning in her black eyes. Rol leaned and kissed her on the lips.

  “Always lonely, Esmer. You know me.”

  In the morning he pulled back the deerskins from the windows and let the sunlight slot through them in long bars of honeyed warmth. Esmer stretched in the bed, her white limbs stark against the furs. “Can’t you keep the morning out for a while longer?”

  Rol kissed her absently. “I have things to do, ships to attend to.”

  “You and your ships,” Esmer drawled. “The only woman men like you ever take to wife is that bitch widowmaker Ussa.”

  Rol walked downhill, a corkscrew progress into bowels of stone, the searching rays of the sun cut off. The Revenant was in the dry-dock where he had first encountered her almost a year before, propped up by a maze of timber frames and baulks, her topmasts lying on the quay amid a welter of stores and cordage and all manner of naval supplies. A mere abandoned carcass she had been back then; now she was aswarm with life. Working on her were most of the artisans that the Ka possessed: shipwrights, blacksmiths, caulkers, riggers, sailmakers; they swarmed over the Black Ship’s hull like maggots taking apart a corpse.

  Elias Creed stood on the quay consulting lists of work-rotas and supplies, and having a shouted argument with Gallico, who was invisible somewhere under the bulk of the Revenant’s hull.

  “How goes it, Elias?”

  “More heat than light, but we’re getting there. Kier has replaced half a dozen of her bottom timbers, and a couple of her transom planks which had been battered loose.” Creed had something of a smirk on his face. “You slept late?”

  “I had a busy night. How long before she’s ready for sea?”

  “Have you a piece of string?”

  “Answer me, damn it.”

  Elias raised an eyebrow, looking closely at his captain. “Kier thinks another three days of fine work.”

  “What kind of fine work?”

  “Well, he has yet to glaze the stern-windows, and there’s the headrails to look at.”

  “That’s just prettying nonsense. Tell him to make her ready for sea and forget the other bullshit. Now, what of the Astraros?”

  “She’s still none too sweet-smelling, but we’ve ripped out the slave-deck and repainted her below. You said you wanted her foremast converted to square-rigged—”

  “Forget about that too. Get those nine-pounders into her and rustle me up a crew. I want her ready to sail within a week.”

  “What’s the sudden hurry, Rol? We only just got in.”

  “We must put back out to sea, Elias, as soon as we can. Now, see to it. And tell Gallico he’s going to be master of the Astraros whether he likes it or not. She needs an experienced skipper, not some half-baked merchant pilot. That’s an order—these are all orders.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Creed said quietly.

  Rol paused. “Humor me, Elias,” he said. He touched his second mate on the shoulder, frowning. His frown deepened as his eyes traveled over the beached carcass of his ship.

  “What’s that old man doing working on the Revenant?”

  “Who? Oh, Aveh. He’s one of the slaves we freed. Turns out he’s a carpenter, and a damned good one. Kier wants to take him on as carpenter’s mate.”

  “Very well. But he has a son, a half-witted boy. There’s no place for the child on a warship—you make that plain to him.” Creed said nothing, but his gaze shifted to the crowded wharves beyond the dry-dock. Following his eyes, Rol saw a pack of the Ka’s youngsters engaged in horseplay, running along the waterfront and hooting with laughter. One of their number was being herded up and down with brisk welts of a switch; they had put a goat-collar about his neck, and its bell clanked hollowly as the boy scrambled and stumbled in a middle of a jeering crowd of his peers. The boy with the goat-collar was Aveh’s son, the half-wit. He was crying and holding his hands over his ears.

  “He’ll not do so well, if he stays here alone,” Creed said.

  “That’s his father’s problem,” Rol retorted.

  They worked twenty-hour days on the two ships, at Rol’s insistence, and Gallico canvassed up and down every passage and tower in Ganesh Ka for volunteers to crew the Astraros. These were young, for the most part, bored with fishing or logging or herding goats. Most had seen service of one kind or another at sea, but some were landsmen who merely seemed willing and able and quick-witted enough to make some use of themselves. When Gallico had gathered some sixty altogether he set them to work alongside the Revenants, cutting gunports in the sides of the Astraros and setting up the tackles and ring-bolts that would hold the nine-pound cannon in place.

  Rol saw nothing more of Canker for several days; the Thief-King seemed to have disappeared. But Miriam managed to have a party of her musketeers loitering about the dry-docks most hours of the day and night, ostensibly to keep an eye on the mountains of marine stores that were building up there (the Ka had its fair share of larceny), but in reality, Rol thought, to keep an eye on the apparition she had seen a few nights before.

  They refloated the Revenant six days after their return to the Ka. The Black Ship was towed to the outer wharves and there moored fore and aft while the heavy but mundane work of restowing her hold got under way. Alongside her, the Astraros floated as trim as a lady’s maid. She had been scrubbed and repainted several times over, and the vile usage she had suffered was now but a memory. If the Revenant was a battle-scarred old destrier, the xebec was a racehorse. She would not take much punishment, Rol thought, but on the other hand, she would outrun most of her punishers.

  “Two more days,” Gallico said as he stood at Rol’s side on the wharf and surveyed the two vessels with an air of vast satisfaction. “I never would have thought it possible. Kier and his new mate—what’s his name—they’ve done wonders.”

  “Aveh. You’re short a chips, Gallico, so Aveh will move into the Astraros. Let him—let him take his son aboard with him.”

  “The half-wit?”

  “It’s not much of a mouth to feed.”

  “His father will be happier, I suppose. Very well. I had to cuff half a dozen of the local scallywags off him this morning anyway. Evil little bastards, children.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  They stood and watched their crews at work about the two ships. One hundred and fifty-odd men and women; the Revenants a tightly knit band who were in many ways the elite of Ganesh Ka, and knew it. The Astraroes, still raw, but keen to prove themselves, and happy to have Gallico as their captain.

  “My own command,” Gallico said. “Well, she’s a flyer, and good-looking to boot, but I’ll miss that old black bitch of ours. I’ve put my blood into her.”

  “The command of one’s own ship, the company that sails her. That is the finest thing in this life, Gallico. Wait until you’ve been at sea in her a month or two,
and you’ll wonder how you ever took someone else’s orders.”

  “You may have a point there. I’m itching to see what this filly can do, I must admit.”

  “The guns will take the fine edge off her speed.”

  “Exactly. And those lateens will be hard to get used to.”

  “Alter the sail plan if you like. She’s yours now, Gallico, to do with as you please. As soon as we put to sea we’ll—”

  “Cortishane.”

  Rol turned. It was Miriam, and four of her musketeers. Her face was set and pale. “You’re to come with me, Cortishane. Artimion wants to talk to you.”

  “Artimion knows where he can find me.”

  “A private word, he wants, in his chambers. Now.”

  Rol looked at the men behind her. Their muskets were all at half-cock, in their hands, not slung on their backs as usual.

  “Are you arresting me, Miriam?” he asked lightly.

  “No, but I’m not taking no for an answer either. You’ll come with us, one way or another.”

  Rol shrugged. “Very well. Gallico, carry on here, but do me a favor.” He smiled. “If I’m not back by tonight, start looking.”

  The halftroll nodded.

  Artimion kept to his rooms more and more these days. Pierced by a Bionese bullet some seven months before, his lungs now fell prey to a series of infections and fevers which flared up sporadically, and just as quickly passed again. One of these lung-fevers was running its course through him as Miriam and her unsmiling comrades escorted Rol into his presence. Artimion was propped up in bed, his black face running with sweat, the whites of his eyes shot through with blood. He coughed into a sodden rag and gestured for Rol to sit by the bed, then waved a hand at Miriam. Face twisted with concern, the red-haired woman left, and the two men were alone.

  “They get worse,” Artimion rasped. “Rol, pass me that water, will you?” There was a jug and cup by the bed. Artimion slurped greedily, then cleared his throat. It sounded as though he were breathing through slime.

  “You need a physician,” Rol told him. “A real one, not some highland quacksalver.”

  “It’ll pass. It always does. I’ve been too long on land, is the problem.”

  Rol nodded. “The land is a dirty place. You’d breathe freer if you were at sea again.”

  Artimion shot him a strange look. “Tell me about your ships—how goes the work? Miriam tells me you have your men working like things possessed.”

  They talked of things naval, the hard-edged, precise nomenclature of all things pertaining to ships and the sea. The light came back into Artimion’s bloodshot eyes, and he straightened in the bed as if even talk of ships was a tonic for his fevered frame.

  “The crew of the Astraros—how raw are they?”

  “Oh, they’re seamen of sorts, in the main. Small-craft sailors, inshore fishermen. Perhaps a dozen have blue-water experience. Gallico will soon knock them into shape of some sort. It’s gunnery experience they’re really lacking; I doubt more than half a dozen of them have ever pointed anything bigger than a swivel.”

  “How are you for powder and shot, provisions?”

  “We’ve dried out the Revenant’s powder that got wet in the last fight. Nine-pounders take a much smaller charge. Kier Eiserne has made a powder-magazine in the hold, though it’s not tin-lined. Fighting one side, she could give forty broadsides.”

  “Good, good.” Artimion’s attention trailed away. Rol saw there was blood in the balled-up rag he held in one fist.

  “Rol, we have rubbed along together well enough, these last months. At one time, I wanted you gone from the Ka as soon as you had something that could float. But you have stayed, and had you not, this city might well be a smoking ruin by now. For that I thank you.”

  Rol watched Artimion warily. “Think nothing of it.”

  “But my misgivings remain—they are stronger, in fact, than they ever were. What are you, Cortishane? I know the Blood is in you—it is in me also, else I’d be dead by now. But what is this thing you have shown us? Be honest with me now. What are you?” Artimion’s face glistened with sweat. Rol could not meet the appeal of those thread-veined eyes.

  “I don’t know, Artimion, truly. I wish I did.”

  Artimion slumped back in the bed. His fist kneaded a goatskin bolster. “I have been talking to Canker.”

  “I’m sure he’s been a veritable fount of knowledge.”

  “He is that. I’m not a fool, Rol; I know he has a mission, a play of his own to stage in which I have merely a bit part. He has been digging up legends in Bionar, looking for I’m not sure what. He wants you for this so-called sister of yours. He believes he knows more about you than you do yourself.”

  “That is the impression he likes to give.”

  “He was always a good liar, it’s true. But I sense truth in there now. He’s afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “He is afraid of you.”

  “Good. May that fear speed him on his way back over the mountains.”

  Artimion’s sigh turned into a cough. When he got his breath back he expended it again in a vicious series of curses. Rol knew that behind his back the skin flap that covered the doorway had twitched, but he did not turn round. Once, he would have been able to tell who it was that eavesdropped there, but Psellos’s training was being slowly forgotten. His hand strayed to Fleam’s hilt, and he felt the warmth there, the minute tremors in the steel.

  “I want you to go with Canker to meet this Rowen Bar Hethrun, this rebel Queen,” Artimion rasped. “Go by sea; it’s quicker. Find out what it is she wants, with you and with us.”

  “The fever has boiled your brain, Artimion,” Rol said icily.

  “Canker is not the only person who is afraid of you. Your secret is leaking out even as we speak, Cortishane. I’d heard rumors these six months, as had everyone, but they were dismissed as the tall tales of your mariners. Now they have been confirmed.”

  “Indeed. And who’s been spreading that night’s glad news?”

  “Miriam.” Artimion raised a hand as Rol made as if to leave. “Don’t blame her. She doesn’t hate you, but she loves this place, and—”

  “She loves you, Artimion,” Rol said. “She always has.”

  “Perhaps.” Artimion’s brows furrowed. “In any case, she has warned all her musketeers about you. Another little incident like the last, and they’ll do their best to kill you.”

  “Still, it’s a comfort to know she doesn’t hate me.” Rol knew now who was outside the door. “Canker, I think you can make an appearance.”

  The King of Thieves ducked under the flap. “Impatience made me fidget. I must be getting old.”

  “So you have suborned Artimion, have you? What addled moonshine did you dream up to convince him I must be your ferryman?”

  “I told him that he has too many enemies already to go making more.” Canker’s face was grave.

  Rol spoke to Artimion without taking his eyes off the Thief-King. “Have you ever thought that we might do well by ourselves in handing this fellow over to the Bionese? There are two horses in this race, after all.”

  “That has occurred to me,” Artimion admitted. “But our choices are not all you might think, Cortishane. Bar Asfal will never stop hunting for this place no matter what we do, if only because Ganesh Ka was his brother’s foundling. And if he hears the rebel pretender has a brother, he will never stop hunting you either.”

  “And besides,” Canker added, “Rowen will win, in the end. Especially if that brother is by her side.”

  “I see your minds are in accord,” Rol said. “Canker gets me, whatever good that does him, and Artimion sees the back of me. Everyone’s a winner.”

  “Take the Astraros,” Artimion said. “She’s the fastest vessel we have. Go with Canker.” He paused. “You must leave the Revenant here to defend the Ka.”

  “Leave the Revenant. I see. And who will captain her?” Rol asked.

  “I will. As you said, I need sea
air in my lungs again.”

  Rol laughed. “Give up my ship, for you to sail? Never.” He stood up.

  “The Revenant must stay here,” Artimion said. “Call it a loan. You will see her again.”

  “I refuse. What now?”

  “Miriam has forty of her musketeers waiting in the passageways outside,” Artimion said wearily. “If you leave this room without Canker at your side, they have orders to shoot you on sight.”

  Rol blinked. “You’re bluffing.”

  “I’m too tired to bluff, Cortishane. Grow wings and light fire in your eyes if you will, but at least one of them will find a way to put a bullet in you.”

  For a moment, Rol actually tried. He closed his eyes and attempted to summon up the rage, the desperation, whatever it was that brought out the other thing in him, that fire in his blood. But nothing happened. Fleam was cold and unresponsive in her scabbard, as inanimate as steel should be.

  He opened his eyes again. Artimion and Canker were staring at him as mice might eye a snake.

  Psellos was right, he thought. They are all cattle, in the end.

  He would see Rowen again. That was something. She and Canker might even possess in truth some of the secrets they dangled in front of his nose like bait. But to leave his ship behind, in another’s hands…

  “All right,” he said at last. “Let’s lift the curtain on this little performance, and see where it takes us.”

  It had been no bluff. The musketeers were there, in white-faced ranks. He walked through them as though he were a condemned man, Canker beside him like the jailer, which in a way he was. Miriam’s handsome face was blazing with tension and dislike. Rol smiled at her. “I’ll see you again, Miriam.” She did not reply, but all around, her musket-bearing minions looked down the barrels of their weapons and followed the track of Rol’s heart.