Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  “There’s still a lot of headway on the ship.” Even the rags were dangerous in this; bare poles would have been. The small spritsail at the bow was still holding, keeping the ship steerable, but the forestay to the mizzenmast thrummed like a hamstring. “Ach, Koru help us! The hull won’t stand much more of this from the sound!”

  The hatch flipped out of the crew’s hands, grabbed by the wind and ripped back off its hinges like paper tearing as Megan dug her claws into the deck to keep from being dragged loose, trying to breathe between waves.

  She blinked salt water out of her eyes. Stays parted with deep musical notes, the cables flying wildly. Five or six crew were fighting to hold the two-meter circle of the wheel whenever the rudder was in the water. She craned her head to look as the bow rose, and fought an internal cringe: waves, waves mast-high in black water as far as she could see, the tops ripping off into spume under the shrieking wind until sea and sky mixed into wolf-grey chaos. Megan coughed, waves pressed water into her nose, wind driving air out of her lungs. She put her head down, clinging to water casks lashed to the deck. Jaipahl crawled over to her like a brown bug under a waterfall, a waterfall that poured past him through the opened hatch into the hold. Bursts of seawater smashed the bucket brigade back into the dark, and the motion of the ship grew more sluggish, as if she had sand under her keel and no sea room. Between one wave and the next, Jaipahl was gone.

  “Jaipahllll!!!” Megan screamed into the wind. There was no answer but the empty rope flailing on the deck where he’d been.

  Below, someone screamed, and from forward the wooden shriek of the ship ran up the scale, making Megan’s teeth hurt before the mizzenmast broke just below deck. It swayed forward, leaned to port and pivoted in its collar, grinding the broken butt-end through the holds. The oak deck ripped. “Jaiiiiipahhlll!!!”

  The Flycatcher lurched, leaned to starboard and turned her bow out of the wind. A wave reared over the rail and seemed to hover for a second. The slats all along the ship’s bow sprang, pouring water below. She started to roll broadside, hesitated a long, long instant on her side at the top of wave. The massed screaming of the slaves and crew could be heard even over the storm’s sound.

  Megan looked straight down the width of the deck and down the black wall of water stretching below. She leaped over the gunwale, onto the side of the Flycatcher as the ship rolled, ran down to the keel coming up out of the water, and threw herself into the sea, trying to get away from the suction of the sinking ship. A dark shape struck her, and she clung, driving her nails into wood and sisal cordage.

  The coaster Liquid Radiance heeled in the wind. Shkai’ra looked up from relacing the shoulder-plate of her armor in annoyance.

  It was two hours past noon, and the wind was at their backs from the east; with the tide working for them they should reach Illizbuah before sunset, tomorrow if the Captain decided to salvage more storm flotsam. The flat Fehinnan coast was already a low blue line against the horizon in the west. The dozen crew and four—what the captain euphemistically called “rescued”—castaways all turned longing glances toward shore.

  At least I’m alive, Shkai’ra thought resignedly. That had been a question of some uncertainty, back half a week ago when the Radiance had picked her and the Fehinnans up off the beach, on receipt of signed scrip acknowledging the debt of passage money, as an act of well-paid benevolence to fellow Fehinnans.

  Fellow Fehinnans or residents, Shkai’ra thought, wiping sweat from her face. She envied the sailors, clad in light tunics or stripped to their breechclouts. Half an hour of this sun would turn her into a baked lobster if she so much as took off her shirt.

  The lookout at the mast called something in sailor’s argot, lowering his binoculars and pointing. Shkai’ra rose to her feet and walked to the rail; behind her, Ten-Knife-Foot curled on top of her duffle. When the merchantman had beaten herself to pieces on the sand, the torn had clung to her shoulders, yowling at the water all the way as Shkai’ra had floundered and waded ashore; a small miracle, like others in the years since they met. Perhaps there had been the will of a spirit in that; she made the warding gesture to the gods with her sword-hand.

  She knew no loose fingers would touch her things if they wanted to stay attached. Ten-Knife-Foot guarded everything he considered his very well. She shaded her eyes with a hand and peered ahead past the smooth ripple of the Radiance’s cutwater. The cat probably considered her among his possessions. All she could see was the glittering flat surface of the water, riffled by the steady onshore wind, and a few high clouds, land just visible on the horizon.

  “What is it?” she asked the sailor next to her as he squinted at the waves. He was a typical low-country Fehinnan, short and mahogany-brown with close-cropped wiry black hair; he glanced doubtfully up at her long-limbed height, as if surprised someone with red-blond braids could speak the language of civilization. Tall fair folk were rare in Fehinna, although not unknown north of the Cayspec or west in the mountains, and most such tribes were savages.

  “Wreck,” he said shortly. “No wonder a’t, wh’it storm blew itself out.” The hurricane had torn itself into mere storms against the coast, and the Radiance had ridden out the worst of it fairly handily in the lee of the offshore islands.

  Shkai’ra nodded, then drew up her binoculars. The sea leaped close, wavering with the motion. “It’s ...” she began. “Hmm. It’s a big round piece of wood, with bits of ropes and canvas hanging off it, and a body ...” The distant tiny figure moved, and a gull leaped away flapping “... no, with somebody alive hanging on to it.”

  ... damn seagulls, ... ow ... get off. Megan waved a hand just enough to scare the birds. The sun shimmered in her eyes as she blinked, trying to clear the stinging of salt. Her left hand was still tied into the snarl of rope where she’d lashed it when she started to fear her grip slipping; the wrist-galls were newly chafed open by the rope, stinging with salt. They wouldn’t fester, though she worried that the blood would draw sharks or barracuda. At least she was clean, having been in the water for a couple of days—wrinkled and badly sunburned, but clean. She’d had nothing but a rag loincloth and a few scraps of sail against the sun’s heat. She’d let her hair down at first to help cover her skin against the sun, but found it catching in every crack and tangling around her arms and legs whenever she was in the water, so had braided it up again.

  She tried swallowing, but her mouth was too dry, tongue like boot leather. She worked her hand free and pulled herself higher up on the board though it exposed her to the sun. From that position she could make better headway, lying belly down with the wooden edge at her armpits, paddling with her hands.

  The shoreline was a tantalizing darker blue ribbon on the horizon, maybe ten chiliois away. Too far away to abandon the hatch-cover and just swim. Either way, the current she was in pushed her further away.

  The water had warmed and changed color, tasting less of salt—an estuary of some kind. There were more birds in the sky and floating branches washed from inland. She paddled, started up as her face touched the water and paddled again, trying not to fade into unconsciousness.

  I just have to make it that far. After everything, I’m not giving up now. She edged back and laid her cheek on the warm, almost not wood, glad for the water lapping over it, then pulled a flap of canvas up to cover her head, rinsed and spat salt water, dribbling warm down her chin. Gotta stop doin’ that ... be too tempted to swallow ... crazy with salt. She spat, waved a hand at the gulls that had settled again. Sun. Flapping air-rats ... damn you, won’t get my eyeballs yet. Waves thundering in my head ... no, sails, dream ships chasing gulls away, dreaming tackle squeal, thunder’s the sails. What roused her from her daze was the shadow of the ship, blocking the sun that had burned down on her with bone-biting intensity. A real ship? A reaching boat-hook snagged at the ropes at one end of her hatch cover. Koru, let it be real....

  Shkai’ra had sauntered back to her duffle and scratched under Ten-Knife-Foot’s chin. She sat down, lean
ing against the barrel, throwing her dice idly against the deck rather than going back to the shoulder lacing. Have to figure out what to do once I get back to the City. Not completely broke, for once. Jaibo’ll probably still be visiting his kinfast up river.... She glanced over at the castaway they were just bringing onboard.

  A small, pale woman lying on the boards, black braids knotted and crusted with salt, silver nail-paint shining on her hands. Captain might get a good passage fee from that one. Looks like she might clean up nicely, though I don’t recognize the race. White-skinned as a Payalach highlander, but tiny, like a dwarf except that the proportions were normal. She craned her neck, more interested, as the bosun looked up and said something to the captain, smiling, pointing to the woman’s ankles and the wooden cuffs. The captain smacked his palms together and clasped self-satisfied hands in the small of his back as he turned back to the wheel. The bosun sent someone below and held a cup of water to the woman on the deck. Ten-Knife put his paws out on Shkai’ra’s knee and started to knead and purr. The castaway drank thirstily, coughed, drank more.

  “Ai! Cat! Stop that!” Shkai’ra unhooked his claws from her horsehide breeches and her skin, dice clattering to the deck, and looked up again as the crewman brought up a length of rope.

  They’re counting her a found slave. If she lives, her sale will be more than enough to pay for her rescue. There’s a good market for exotics in the City, and there aren’t many races that small. She looked down at the dice and grinned at the three sixes showing. “Ia, Ten-Knife, always lucky when I don’t know it or need it.”

  Her head snapped up at the sudden shouting forward, hand falling reflexively to the bone hilt of her saber. The half-dead castaway had exploded up off the deck when they’d tried to secure her ankle chains. One crewman stumbled back, bloody hands clamped over his face, the bosun lay on the deck with her throat slashed open.

  No blade, how—

  The castaway launched herself on the next, the one with the boathook, blocked the weapon with one forearm, snatched his belt-knife and slashed up with it in the same motion.

  Shkai’ra’s mouth pursed in a silent whistle. Not bad. Other crew answered the noise, grabbing up belaying pins and rope-ends as they ran. The captain jumped over the poop rail to the main deck, pulling his sword. The woman backed up against the rail, boathook in one hand, knife in the other, bloody to the elbows. She panted, swaying on her feet. Shkai’ra found herself watching, standing relaxed with her hand on her sword. She rather hoped the castaway would escape; that had been a good fight.

  There was a black blur from the duffle beside her as Ten-Knife streaked across the deck, leaped up and landed, all claws out, on the captain’s cotton-clad back. He shrieked with surprise and pain, spun around, trying to reach over his shoulder with the shortsword; the first mate reached to pull the cat loose and pulled back her thumb bitten to the bone. Ten-Knife jumped down.

  “Nia, nia,” Shkai’ra said chidingly as the mate swung her wooden club back for a blow. Ten-Knife hissed defiance with arched back and bottled tail. “That’s my cat.”

  The long curve of her saber flicked free; the captain turned at the sound, and she smashed the smaller Fehinnan sword loose from his grip with a harsh rasp of metal on metal. Snarling, the mate feinted Shkai’ra with her oak belaying pin, then leaped back from the bright sword edge as it hissed back and forth with negligent speed.

  “It’s not a fight unless you push it,” Shkai’ra said helpfully.

  The captain left his first mate to deal with the tall redhead for a moment, staring at the small woman at bay at the rail. “You pay passage, mofoar?”

  “Passage, or you try and sell me?” The woman’s voice was steady, her Fehinnan clear.

  “‘F you got no coin, you a slave—or you can go over ’t side agin.”

  She looked around at the ring of sailors and nodded. Then she grinned, threw the boathook at one of the crew and somersaulted backward over the side of the ship and into the water, taking the knife with her.

  Baiwun, she’d rather drown than be a slave. Not an ekafrek, that one, Shkai’ra thought, edging back as a few of the sailors turned her way. The oak railing touched the small of her back.

  Ten-Knife tripped another sailor by running under his feet and skittered down into the hold.

  “Rayab! Check t’ water, get ’t slave back,” the captain snapped. “Lissayaz! Don’t go after t’ animal, see t’ Tahm an’ t’others!” He wrenched his small sword free from the wood of the deck. Then he turned back to Shkai’ra, weapon held point up. It was a Fehinnan infantry shortsword, a leaf-shaped blade with a central blood-gutter and a circular guard at the hilt.

  Shkai’ra let her sword’s tip make small circles in the air and set herself against the rail; her left hand drew the long double-edged knife she wore across the small of her back.

  “You! Your animal cost’us that slave! You fishfukkin’ for’n—”

  He paused; the foreigner was taller than any of the Fehinnans onboard, and he had seen enough fighters to know the coiled look of a warrior. Any sailor could fight, and there were weapons and corselets in the arms locker, but ... that meter length of saber looked sharp enough to part a hair.

  “I’ll pay gild for the blow I struck you,” she said reasonably; her Fehinnan had an unusual accent, staccato and guttural. “But the cat was sent to me by the luck-gods. I can’t let any harm it, or my luck might go.”

  He growled and sheathed his sword with a snap. “Jest see I don see t’ beast agin or ay’all do more n add t’ yer fee. I’ve alus had a hankerin’ for catskin gloves!” She held his eyes and nodded once, slowly.

  “No sign, Cap!” the crewman called. “No swimmers!”

  He spat on the deck and stalked away. Shkai’ra looked over the rail into the green-brown water. Rather drown than be a slave. She sauntered back to her duffle and scooped up the dice in a thoughtful mood. Spunky little bitch.

  Smyna Caaituh’s-kin, General-Commander in the Iron House and Grand Captain of Fehinna, held a page of paper in the flame of the alcohol lamp on her desk. She poked at the ashes with the ivory stem of her pipe until they thoroughly mixed into the mess in her ashtray. Then she closed the folder in front of her with long wire-strong fingers, tying the ribbon, dropping on a glob of hot wax and rolling her sigil onto it with a small cylinder of inscribed stone. The smell of the wax mingled with the Iron House’s old scents: ancient mass-concrete, well-tended woodwork, warrior’s leather and metal, hints of tobacco and smoke.

  A touch on the china gong, and an aide came to file the papers in the sanctum; another brought her a jug of pomegranate juice, sweating coolness through the unglazed pottery surface. The soldier leaned back against her padded wicker backrest, lighting her pipe and blowing a meditative smoke ring at the coffered vault of the ceiling, sipped at the astringent liquid and thought.

  She was a tall Fehinnan and very thin in a muscular fashion, close-cropped black hair showing no sign of grey yet despite her forty years. The plain military tunic of dull scarlet cotton that reached to her knees bore few of the decorations she was entitled to, simply the golden sunbursts on the shoulders that marked her rank; for the rest she wore a family signet ring. A plain officer’s longsword stood in its rack by the door, a single-edged weapon with a brass basket hilt. She glanced up at it, then stared down at her hands on the desk and traced the soldier’s callus on the right as she considered the summary she’d just burned.

  “Divine Solar Light, but things were easier when I only had a cavalry regiment to think about,” she murmured softly; her accent had the liquid precision of a tidewater aristocrat.

  As General-Commander she was one of the most powerful people in the City, as long as she didn’t let either of the other two factions in the Iron House gain any ground. Which was difficult; the problem with being at the top of the heap was that it made you the only target for the ones a step or two below.

  War is a great simplifier, she thought. And I know just the war to start.


  The intelligence report had been fairly unequivocal. It had been fifty years since the Five Nations War, and Fehinna had recovered faster than any of the coalition that had fought her to a standstill two generations ago. They would be in no position to stop Fehinna expanding, as long as the armies of the God-King didn’t try to move directly north. And we’re ready.

  Her eyes lifted to the map across the room. Fehinna held most of the lowlands around the Cayspec; five centuries ago they had finished pushing the last of the western savages out of the fertile Piedmont country, over the Blue Crests and the great valley beyond, into the rugged wastes of the Payalach Mountains. No profit in war there, against wild highlanders who had little worth taking; most of them were headhunters, many were cannibals, and all of them had damnable skill with their horn-and-elm bows.

  Not north, no. Maailun and Eassho were both smaller than Fehinna but nearly as rich and much alike in customs and speech, properly worshiping the Sun, however heretical their fashion. Behind them the Penza city-states, Lankaz and Yawuc and the rest. The last great war had gone north, lasted a decade and killed every fourth adult in five great nations.

  South is the prize, she knew. Kaailun. Huge, populous, but rather backward by her nation’s standards; the people spoke dialects similar to Fehinnan, but they were pagans who slaughtered cattle and humans to the ancient spirits, Gawhud and Olsaytn, Jayskri and Ussay. She made the holy sun-circle over her chest. That would interest the priests, in their ever-eager hunt for heretics. More to the point, what had been a loosely united kingdom in her grandparents’ tune had fallen apart into feudal anarchy, an anarchy among which Fehinnan money and agents had laid the foundations of conquest.