The Rise of the Fallen (The Rotting Empire Book 1)

by Peter Fugazzotto

  Hanu too had drifted towards the front of the boat, away from Maja. He still shook the gourds and tilted them to his open lips, trying to coax out a drop or two. Eventually he too curled into sleep.

  They would not last long without water. They would die of thirst on a great sea of untouchable water. Maja smiled at the irony.

  In the afternoon, when the sun began to descend towards the western edge of the sea, the wind picked up again, gentle at first, like a whisper of things to come, then buffeting, until finally it howled and sent them careening over the waves. The sudden movement woke Hanu, who rubbed his eyes with his fist, and then pointed behind Maja.

  She could not hear his words. The wind swallowed them. So she turned and looked.

  A great wall of clouds, dark and swirling, rose out of the east. Lightning flashed from the heavens to the sea. A storm was coming. It would bring water. They could drink again.

  She turned back to Hanu and smiled.

  But he shook his head and pointed with more fervor.

  Then she saw it. The ship in the distance. Khirtan’s boat. It raced behind them, its sails full with the wind. With every moment, it came closer.

  16

  THE DUKE’S SHIP grew in size as it closed the distance with the smaller boat. Maja angled the rudder trying to figure out a way so the sails would catch more wind. Hanu was toying with the rigging untying and cinching with the same objective in mind. Sri had woken from his slumber and stared with puffy eyes towards the approaching vessel.

  A dark wall of clouds tumbled behind Khirtan’s ship. It raced as if he had summoned a storm to propel him. She knew that was impossible. Fungal sorcerers could do nothing with the weather or the sea. But still it felt as if the gods had gathered behind the torturer and she cursed her bad luck.

  The wind surging behind her had changed too. It was no longer warm and gentle. It had become cold and fierce, biting against her skin, and buffeting her knotted hair so that it lifted and banged against her cheeks.

  She turned again for a quick glance at the ship behind her. It seemed bigger already. It was now close enough that she could see the dark faces of the men crouched with spears and grappling hooks on the prow.

  “Is there anything you can do with that sail?” Maja yelled to Hanu.

  He worked a knot with hand, hook, and tooth. When he was finished, he looked up at the approaching vessel and then Maja. He shook his head sharply. “This is a fishing boat. Any more wind and I’m afraid the sail is going to tear open.”

  She could already see the fabric splitting at the rough-sewn seams, the strong thread visible, the gap of the sea beyond. “As long as the wind holds up, maybe we will have a chance,” she shouted above the howling wind.

  “They’re getting closer,” said Hanu.

  Maja resisted the temptation to look over her shoulder.

  She tried to think how they could handle the attack. Khirtan would bring his vessel close alongside. His men would toss grappling hooks to attach to the gunwale and they would drag the small vessel closer. Maybe she might be able to sever a line or two but the attackers also would be tossing spears. She could not both cut the lines and defend herself against the spears. The soldiers would pull the little boat until the wooden hulls scraped and the men would leap over the gunwales, shields and swords in hand.

  But she knew that she and Hanu would have a slight advantage. They had spent the last several years on boats. They had boarded vessels. They would be able to stand steady above the rocking and shifting sea. Their blades would swing more true.

  However, the advantage would be temporary. Even with her demon swords, time would run out and they would be overrun or the spears would find home.

  They could not win the fight. They needed to run. She needed to figure out some way to make the ship go even faster.

  She played with the rudder and turned the vessel in such a way that the wind caught the sails even more and the vessel surged. She laughed and snuck a peek at the boat behind. They were closer, their eyes visible, the dark clouds swirling behind them. But she felt her ship jump and pull away slightly.

  Then a shearing sound cut above the howling wind. Maja spun back towards the sail. The wind had swelled the fabric and in the middle pressed so hard that the sailcloth ripped apart at the seams. She thought for second that the fabric would hold and then it ripped in half, both sides lifted into the sky for a moment before suddenly fluttering like streamers.

  “We’re screwed!” screamed Hanu. He had leapt back down to the bottom the boat, and drew his sword.

  The pursuing ship was close now, surging at them, bearing down. Maja heard the howls of the men and she could swear she heard them calling her name.

  Sri stood up on the prow of the boat and bent his head to look into the deep green waters. “Better to drown than to return to his hands.”

  Maja jumped to her feet, abandoning the now useless rudder, and raced across the boat. The planks shuddered beneath her steps. She leapt past a shocked Hanu, bound across the boards to the prow, and grabbed Sri out of the air as he stepped off the ship.

  “Let me go,” Sri screamed.

  Maja struggled to hold the squirming boy and worse than that fought to find her balance as the seas wildly bucked. Cold hard drops of rain burst from the sky, and the blinding sheet pelted her skin.

  “I won’t let him have me.” Sri’s eyes were red and tears streamed down his face. He balled his hands and pounded his fists against Maja’s chest, but she just pulled him in tighter. She would not let him go. She would protect him. She had promised.

  “I know,” she said, “I know what he can do. If there is one thing I do when they board the ship, I will kill Khirtan. The others might take you. Maybe even kill you. But they won’t torture you like he will. I’ll chop off his head and toss it into the sea.”

  Sri collapsed trembling and weeping in her arms and Maja gently set him down on the floor of ship. By now, the storm had swallowed them and the waves lifted the ship and then tossed it down hard. She lost her footing and fell against the gunwale, her shoulder cracking against the wood. Hot pain burned through her arm and she tasted blood where she had bitten her lip.

  Khirtan’s ship loomed above them now but they had not tossed the grappling hooks. Instead, the yellow armored men fought to not be flung from the deck and into the sea. They clung to masts and ropes, their mouth wide with horror. The waves pummeled their vessel.

  The boat was within a spear’s throw but all thoughts of leaping aboard the fishing vessel had emptied from the men and they scrambled for their lives.

  The fishing vessel sunk deep into a trough of waves, great walls of dark misty waters rising above them and momentarily swallowing the sky. Then the fury of the sea reversed itself and the boat was flung skyward. As the boat bucked, Maja flew into the air. Desperately she grabbed at the bench hammered into the boat. Her fingers strained, sharp pain tearing through her joints, but she refused to let go. Above her Sri had been catapulted into the air and looked to be cast into the sea but Maja thrust her arm out and caught his ankle, and clutching him, yanked him back to her side. His face had paled with terror and even though his mouth formed a caterwauling “o” no sound escaped his lips. His hands tore at her, desperate like those of a drowning person. His fingers, nailless and bloody, ripped across her cheek. She slammed him onto the floor of the boat and tied a length of sail rope around his waist. The other end she firmly attached to the mast.

  She made to find another length of rope to tie herself down to the ship. But before she could find rope, a wall of waves smashed the ship. This time she was not quick enough to grab the bench and she somersaulted haplessly into the air. She tumbled head over heels, hands outstretched. Khirtan’s boat was distant and with a great cracking noise she watched its mast snap in two. The sea around his ship was littered with yellow, soldiers who had been flung overboard. Maja slammed into the deck. Her arms folded hard beneath her, unable to break the fall, and her forehead smashed against
wood. The deck filled with red swirling blood. She struggled to her hands and knees. The ship pitched and she fell onto her side and slid along the planks.

  A great wave of seawater exploded over the side of the boat, swamping her. For a moment, she thought the boat had been sucked under, but almost immediately the water drained away. She sputtered and coughed, the seawater thick in her lungs. She dragged herself to the mast. The boy was a sodden mess, his screams lost beneath the howling wind and roar of the waves. The world blackened with dots. She pressed her hand to her throbbing head and rivulets of blood poured between her fingers. She grabbed the rope between Sri and the mast, and tangled herself in it, wrapping it around arm and chest. She wanted to loop it one more time, maybe knot it, but then she passed out.

  17

  MAJA WOKE GASPING. Rain poured out of the skies and immediately she knew that they were still in some kind of hell. The boat pitched wildly and the sea cracked against the side of the boat.

  She was still lashed to the rope between the mast and Sri. But the mast had broken in two and splintered towards the clouds.

  Maja brought her fingers to her forehead. She winced at her own touch but when she drew her hand away she could see that the blood had congealed. It no longer poured out. She felt weak but the vertigo passed.

  Despite the crashing waves and the pitching of the boat, Maja sensed that they had passed through the worst of the storm. The sky was not as black as before and the winds only howled rather than screamed. Even the rain had let up, steady and cold rather than dropping down in sudden sheets.

  She pulled herself up along the mast until she stood on her knees. There in the aft of the boat, Hanu lay, tied down with ropes, his hook piercing the hull to anchor himself to the vessel. She let out a sigh of relief. She had lost sight of him during the storm and had feared that he had been tossed into the deadly seas like the Duke’s soldiers. She called to him. He did not stir. She began to untie herself from the rope.

  “What are you doing?” asked Sri. “Don’t untie yourself.” He was drenched, his robes tangled around him, his skin raw from where the rope had rubbed against his skin.

  “I need to check on Hanu.”

  “Leave him. Stay with me. I am scared. I cannot swim.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Sri pounded a fist against the deck. “I command you to stay here with me.”

  Maja laughed and finished untying herself. “See what that’ll get you.”

  As soon as she had freed herself from the ropes and began walking towards Hanu, she regretted her decision. The deck was slick with seawater, and the boat tilted dangerously in the waves. One moment, she stared down into the churning water and the next at the cloud-filled skies. Her feet slid on the surface and she began to race towards the gunwale. She snatched the rope and hung on until the ship centered for a moment and then she raced forward catching the rope that entangled Hanu just as the ship tilted again. She waited again until the world was level and then dragged herself along to her companion.

  “Hanu? Wake up. Are you alright?”

  He lay crumpled in a ball, held in place by the bindings of the rope, but he stirred at the sound of her voice. He opened one eye, the other swollen shut by a dark bulging bruise that covered half of his face. He moaned.

  “Are we in hell yet?” he asked.

  “Soon,” she said. “Don’t you worry about that. All roads lead to hell for us.”

  His laughter was interrupted when a sudden wall of water washed over them. “We’re going to die,” he said after it receded.

  “One of these days, Hanu. But right now we need to survive this storm.”

  “Khirtan? The boat?”

  Maja clung to the rope and stood. She stared out over the stormy seas, standing as tall as she dared, craning her head left and right. She could see nearly to the horizons. The sea boiled and churned and nowhere did she see the pursuing ship. The storm had freed them from their pursuers.

  “Hopefully sunk like a rock,” she said.

  He cackled. “Help me up. My hook is stuck in the damned boat and I can’t pull it out.”

  Hours later, Maja waited for the sea to swallow them. The three of them huddled in around the splintered mast of their small vessel, a boat that should never have been out in seas rough as this. She tested the length of rope that tied her to the mast. The knots were tight. She glanced at the ropes that bound the other two. The ropes would either prevent them from being tossed overboard or drag them to the bottom of the murky sea.

  They floated in one of the lulls in the storm. While the rain only cascaded lightly and Maja could scan the surface of the oceans for hundreds of yards around their boat, she knew that the fickle skies would change again.

  The storm had never truly relented. When she had thought that they had passed through the worst of it, the storm would surge again, tossing their boat, threatening to hurl them into the unforgiving sea. Maja wondered if the storm would ever break. Maybe they were dead and in some sort of hell.

  She remembered that day long ago, on the River Road, attacked by assassins when she had fought against the feeling of being dragged beneath the sea to fight for the Queen and her fellow Demon Guard. If she fell over now, how hard would she fight to swim back to the surface?

  Maja used a gourd to scoop water from the bottom of the boat. She had been at it constantly since she woke and had brought the water down significantly but with the weather and the waves it was an eternal task. Futile but it kept her busy, and for now that was good.

  Hanu had wrapped himself in sailcloth in an attempt to keep himself dry. While it might have protected some against the rain, it did nothing for the waves that broke across the gunwale and sloshed across the deck.

  Sri had fallen asleep. He looked peaceful to Maja, like the child that he actually was. She wanted to reach across and brush the water from his face. His hand, the one with the nails that Khirtan had torn out, clutched tightly to his breast, fingers tangled in his monk’s robe. Whoever this boy was, he did not deserve this. He deserved a normal childhood, not to be caught in the political machinations of the Duke, nor tortured by Khirtan, nor adrift in the middle of the sea.

  Hanu had bunched up the sailcloth and squeezed water into one of the several gourds that had not been flung overboard. He sipped the water from one of the gourds and made a twisted face. “A little salty but we’ve got no choice.”

  He stared into the dark clouds overhead. “Any sense of where the storm is pushing us?”

  Maja paused in her scooping. It felt good to rest her arm. Her fingers were swollen and wrinkled with the water, the skin pale as if all life had drained from it. She shook her head. “No use wondering. We can only pray that this storm breaks.”

  “Well if we’ve been driven south with the currents, we are heading straight into the pots of the man eaters. Better sharpen those swords.”

  “Those blasted lands are days, maybe a week, south. Won’t be much meat on these bones by then.”

  “We could still season some broth. And you with your white skin, I’m sure they’d find you tasty.”

  “And you come equipped with utensils. A feast on a boat. Even properly salted by the sea.”

  Hanu plugged the gourd in his hand, wedged it into the framing on the side of the boat, and picked up one of the empty gourds floating in the seawater on the bottom of the boat. “We’re pretty much screwed this time, aren’t we?”

  Maja returned to her scooping. Her shoulder was sore so she switched hands. That shoulder was not much better but at least she felt less pain in her wrist. “When are we not screwed, Hanu?” she asked. “When was the last time things went our way?”

  “We had a nice time at the port of Badang. Rice wine, grilled fish, clean beds.”

  “Then the fight broke out. Arlam is probably still rotting in that prison.”

  “We should go back and get him.”

  “Bring back a worm-eaten corpse?”

  “They wouldn’t ha
ve killed him,” muttered Hanu. “He killed the patrol sergeant in self defense.”

  “Not sure it would have been looked at that way.”

  “It was fucking Garu’s fault. He’s been trouble since the get go. Should have tied stones to him after Badang and dropped him deep in the sea.”

  “Bastard’s going to pay,” said Maja.

  “I just hope to never see him again.”

  Maja squinted into the rain looking past the front of the ship. A thick dark line smudged the horizon. The line peaked upwards in its center.

  She pointed a finger and stood suddenly. “Land,” she said. “And by the shape of it Yavasa. No cannibal stew for us.”

  “Not exactly welcome back there though, are we?”

  “This is your chance to get back in the good graces of the God-Emperor.” She laughed wildly. “Prove yourself worthy of groveling again.”

  Behind them the wind picked up and overhead the sky darkened. The rain grew from a steady drizzle to hard painful drops and then heavy sheets. Maja could not scoop the water fast enough and simply gave up. The boat would hold. It had held through the worst of the storm and with the wind pushing them she thought they might be at the island in a quarter of an hour or so.

  The wind carried the boat. It howled at them from behind, propelling them towards the dark shadow ahead. Maja untied herself from the rigging.

  “Safer to be tied to the boat,” said Hanu. “The sea will swallow us.”

  She crawled past him, on unsteady legs, until she reached the rudder. She squatted with it, grasping the smooth worn handle. “I can steer us through this storm towards the shore. I can find us a safe place to land and then this nightmare will be over.”

  “Don’t think it’s going to end when we reach the shore,” said Hanu. He looped additional lengths of rope over his arms and legs. “Not even sure that we’re going to reach the shore.”