The ship’s watches were broken into periods of four candles, one man with the duty of the bell-ringer, watching the sandglass to count time. Two Hidreng always manned the rudder, the captain uncomfortable with barbarians steering the way day or dark. So too was the deck officer and the sailor in the crow’s nest always a Tek. Not that they could get lost on a clear night with a hundred ships in front of them, lanterns hanging from their sterns.
The middle watch tonight filled out with six Silone sailors, as favorable in numbers and conditions as they were apt to get with the moon having disappeared over the horizon.
Meliu stepped from her cabin wrapped in a rabbit-fur cloak she’d picked up in Bdein. A merchant’s daughter needed to be ready for winter.; a hell of an excuse to spend some silver. She’d visited the open deck the past several nights, claiming the watch bell having wakened her. She strolled the length of the boat, and tonight, instead of staring out to sea from the bow, she climbed the steps to the stern castle.
The deck officer was a man called Darwen, an ordinary bloke you’d never expect of wielding authority. She doubted he was anything more than an ordinary sailor promoted after the Gull’s capture.
“Good evening, sir.”
“M’lady.”
His eyes twitched to her, but didn’t linger as she desired. She spread her cloak with a shrug, showing more skin as she crossed before him. He blinked and grinned, eyes following this time. She leaned on the rail, its creak bringing a rise of bile to her gut; wavesickness wasn’t something she could afford right now, but muttering a prayer for Life wasn’t an option.
Ivin stormed up the stairs, grunting, a frown and hard eyes pinned on Darwen. The officer’s eyes shifted and Meliu muttered a quick prayer, her stomach settling.
She rushed to Ivin with a hand to his chest to stop his advance. “Tulk! He wasn’t doing anything.”
Ivin snarled, leaned into her ear, but said nothing.
Meliu gasped. “No! He wasn’t staring.”
Ivin shoved her aside, stepping toe to toe with the man who stumbled backward with wide eyes. “I did nothing, sir!” Ivin towered over the Hidreng by near a foot, and outweighed him by twenty stones, but it was the sword at his side which no doubt brought the stumble to his step. Darwen carried a sailor’s falchion, but such a weapon was more apt to hew ropes than flesh. He wasn’t a warrior.
She glanced over the castle’s rail toward the bow and noted a man slipping toward the captain’s door.
Ivin grunted and growled, and Meliu came to the man’s rescue. “Even if he did… it was innocent, my fault.” She spoke the keyword, and Ivin calmed, but he poked the Tek in the chest before backing away. “Tulk is a very jealous man. I should return to my bed and cool his fire.” She winked at the officer, who hid his face, and took Ivin’s arm.
Once in the cabin, Ivin grinned. “I could’ve gutted him without his ever drawing a blade.”
A shadow passed their window and rapped on their door three times. Flickers later, a light came from the captain’s cabin, and she could feel her heart in her breaths. “All’s as planned so far.”
Within a couple wicks the shouts started. They rushed outside to see the new captain holding a lantern aloft, the deck officer shouting from above. Fluttering linen ripped the wind.
“A breach in the sail, Captain!”
Segur screamed, coughed, his voice full of gravel. “Son of a whore! Did you see anything?”
“No, sir. Not a damned thing.”
Meliu said, “I saw a shadow by the mast a wick ago, too dark for a face.”
Segur spun on Kemin as he climbed to the deck. “You! I want every barbarian on deck, now, you northern bastard.”
The Silone sailor fled back down the stair.
“Darwen! Roust every loyal man and get the spare sail up here! No time for a repair. If those bone-eaters think we’re hiding from a fight, they’ll come back and burn us until the waves put us out. Hidreng hands on that sail! No more barbarian sabotage!”
Darwen raced down the sterncastle stairs, damned near spilling to his ass as he went. He hustled past the fake captain without a glance to his shadowed face, but stopped to wait for Silone sailors reaching the deck.
Meliu took count: seventeen men, every Silone aboard except Captain Swolis. She couldn’t help but smile when Ivin said, “You four… seize the rudder and strap the remaining Teks to anything handy.”
The men hollered, “Choerkin!” and trotted toward the stern.
So simple, so far. In a matter of wicks they’d taken the Soaring Gull, but there was work to do.
A young sailor stared at the ripped sail. “Eh, now. We’ve got a ripped sail and two dozen pissed off Tek in the hull!”
Meliu smiled at the man. “They’re bringing us the sail now.” Meliu stepped down the stairs and waited. In a flicker men came down the dark passage hauling the sail.
“Out of the way woman!”
Meliu prayed, and Light and Dark answered. She possessed no fear any longer, the demons didn’t bring more than a blink when she unleashed tendrils of Dark in the belly of the ship. Then came the screams. The sail hit the floor and men scrambled over one another heading for the mess and their berths.
She yelled up the stairs, “You men! Come get this sail.”
She strode forward, advancing on her enemy with serpentine Dark guiding her steps. Doors slammed, and for a moment she considered locking them. It was the plan. Bar the doors, hold the bastards secure. Hang them later? No. The Tek still outnumbered the Silone. Capture put them at risk. They needed to reach New Fost, warn the people of the armada coming.
There could be no risks.
Her prayers intensified and Dark slithered to penetrate the door. On some level she realized the screams were more horrifying than the demons had ever been, the sounds of men dashing their heads into walls, tearing at each other in a fruitless battle to defeat terrors that weren’t even real. But Light kept sympathy from creasing her emotions with worry. All she knew was confidence and victory. Satiation.
Meliu stood facing the stair as Silone hefted the sail, man-handling its bulk up the stair. They wore nervous frowns to a man, and she wondered what each saw in her smile as the Dark surged until silence overcame the withering screams. Will they regret not having killed me? Or will they worship me as a god, their savior?
There was a weak bump on the door to her left, a soft scratch, then nothing. She released her prayers, knees wobbling.
Ivin came rushing down the treads, the horror on his face dimming her pride. “You were supposed to lock them in! What the hells have you done?”
She straightened and walked to him, fighting the urge to sob. What have I become? “I don’t know, but it won’t be pretty.” He reached for her, and she shoved past, climbing the stairs. She stumbled on the last step, taking a knee. Kemin took an arm and lifted her to her feet, and she struck his chest a dozen times, wordless screaming at the last. She shoved him away and ran to her cabin, slamming the door and plunging into the down-ticked bed. But there was little comfort in the plush pile, with its smell of perfume and Ivin.
I’ve become worse than those I seek to destroy. But even as she lay crying, she knew she would recover. She knew the sun would rise, and priorities would make her forget the Dark left behind in the night. She knew she would smile, convinced she wouldn’t become more of a monster than she’d already become, or worse, that she wasn’t a monster at all.
Ivin didn’t join Meliu in bed for several candles, as the crew celebrated Swolis’ return, and they passed judgment on the few Teks remaining alive.
The crew them shoved into the strait without ceremony, Mulopo last, before they got busy replacing the sail. With luck built on skill, they’d catch the rest of the fleet before anyone realized they trailed.
The captain barred the doors below deck and nary a soul possessed the courage to open them, to see what the priestess had done to the poor bastards. Ivin was glad for that. Too much for a single day already, nob
ody needed the carnage.
He crept into the cabin, body and soul exhausted, to find Meliu asleep, still wearing her dress and shoes. He kicked off his boots and slipped in beside her.
But she wasn’t asleep, and she murmured: “Forgive me?”
His arm eased over her waist as he snuggled close, but his mind watched Captain Mulopo and his sailors pushed into an unforgiving and black sea, cold and horrifying. Certain death. Whatever she’d done, it wasn’t so different. “You think I’m mad at you?”
Her voice trembled. “Yes.”
He held her tight. “No. Never mad.”
Ivin strolled onto the Gull’s deck not long after dawn, slipping from Meliu’s side, letting her drowse after a rough night’s slumber. The cabin was dark and guilty, the world outside was sunshine and smiles, even if odds were against the mood lasting. Shouts of “Choerkin” greeted him and he nodded to each in turn before climbing the stair of the sterncastle.
Captain Swolis stood with his hands behind his back, his beard from last night shaved. His eyes were hard and his lips straight as an arrow as he studied the sea ahead. He was maybe forty years old, six feet tall and lean, Ivin imagined leaner, after being shoved into a crate in the ship’s hull.
“Good day to ya, Choerkin.”
“Aye, a pleasant enough day.”
“Not so pleasant as it might be, I reckon.” He pointed east into the sun. “Our man up top hasn’t spotted a sail. Nothin’ at all.”
Ivin turned, covering his eyes with his palm. Foolish, as the man up high with a telescope could see four or more times as far as he could. “We lost more candles than we thought last night?” In the fracas, no one bothered turning the sandglass to count time.
“Likely as not, true. So I hope. If not we’d be seeing the tail end of the fleet if they’re travelin’ so slow as Kemin claimed.”
Ivin digested those words and the angst beneath their surface. “You think they’ve gone full sail?”
“Might be, or they caught a better wind, a better current… the vagaries of the Parapet Straits and her waters.” He pulled a pipe from his breast pocket, strolled to a lantern left burning, and lit the tobacco with a stick he cupped from the wind. Smoke billowed, and he smiled. “Godsdamn. I missed the smoke more than a man should. You know where this came from?” He held his pipe aloft.
Ivin grinned. “The pipe or the tobacco?”
Swolis laughed smoke through his nose. “The leaves come all the way from the Gorotan, further south than even a man of the sea like myself has thought to travel. They say that so far south people will live their lives and never see snow.”
The Gorotan was a peninsula at the southwest of Northern Vandunez, ruled by city-states rather than clans, and indeed, he’d heard rumors of the heat so far south. “I’m not so sure I’d appreciate a place which never snows, but I could do with less for a while.”
“Ever tried the pipe?”
“The Lord Choerkin was ever too tight with his purse.”
“The leaf will clip your strings for sure… Kotin was a wise man.”
The pang of memory struck his breaths with an irregular beat of his heart. “He was. I wish I’d been so wise to realize that when I had the chance to say so.”
“All children should be so lucky, I reckon. But most of us ain’t til it’s too late.”
“Cap’n!” The shout came from above, and they glanced to the crow’s nest. “First sail.”
“Only one? What is she?”
“Aye, Cap’n. A cog, heavy in the water.”
Swolis took a long pull on his pipe, staring at the deck. Ivin’s patience didn’t survive the man gnawing his pipe. “A good sign, yes?”
“If she’s heavy in the water she’s moving slow. Within the next few candles we’ll know more.”
Ivin took to pacing for a stint, then leaned against the castle’s rail until Meliu joined them. Her step lacked its usual bounce, but her smile returned as she clutched the rabbit fur cloak around her shoulders.
“What word?”
Captain Swolis answered as she leaned against Ivin. “We’re seeing three ships so far, priestess.”
“I could see a dozen ships with the naked eye yesterday.”
“Aye, so I’ve heard. I ain’t good at horsehittin’ about important things… We’ll catch stragglers, but unless they slow or drop anchor somewhere, we ain’t catching them.”
Captain Swolis’ words disheartened, but there was always hope he was wrong. They ate, walked the ship’s deck, and peered east. As the sun fell in the west, they passed the first ship, then a second. By middle watch, the glass in the crow’s nest could still only spot the lanterns of three more ships. By morning they gave up hope.
They passed half a dozen more ships over the next three days. Ivin’s gut sunk lower every dawn to dusk until acceptance settled in. There was nothing to do for whatever was to come. Some sailors wanted Meliu to lead them in prayer, but most everyone onboard wasn’t comfortable with such a thing after the horrors on Kaludor. Including Meliu. Her holy robes remained tucked away and hidden, if she carried them with her at all.
Ivin was sitting in their cabin with his feet propped on a stool, chin tucked to his chest and dozing, when the cry went out:
“Smoke on the horizon, Cap’n!”
Meliu rolled over in bed, muttering a prayer he figured was to ease her stomach. Only his eyes moved. He would see nothing by hurrying outside. Smoke would be visible a score of horizons. Whatever was burning, did he want to see it at all? Not unless it was Tek fleet struck by Edan flames.
Meliu said, “New Fost?”
He shrugged as he stood, strapping the Ar-Bdein’s swordbelt around his waist. “We’ll know in a few candles I suspect.”
They stepped into a gray afternoon and onto a deck where frowns replaced smiles. Ivin took a straight line to the sterncastle and climbed. Kemin stood beside Captain Swolis, whose lips puffed thick pipe-smoke.
Ivin resigned himself for bad news. “We’ve reached the Bloody Plain?”
Swolis spoke with his pipe dangling from his clenched teeth. “Aye. We passed the last Tek village horizons back.”
“So New Fost burns before we even get there.”
“No way I can say, Choerkin. We wait, we see.”
But they didn’t have to wait and see, they only had to listen to the cries from on high.
“Ships burning! Our warriors line the beaches waiting. We haven’t missed the fight, Cap’n!”
Ivin stared at Swolis, and the captain back at him. “What good are we, Choerkin? These men ain’t warriors. Most ain’t chopped more’n wood in their lives.”
“Maybe we aren’t much use, but this lady might be.”
Swolis’ face remained straight, but Ivin knew he’d witnessed the bodies removed from below deck and dropped into the strait to feed the sharks. No man who’d seen it could forget. “A hundred ships… Unless she can call Kibole in the flesh, I don’t see how she keeps these men alive.”
His conclusion was sound but felt as a kick to the gut. “Stayin’ alive is the plan? How far you think this cog will get when it swings wind to run?”
“If you’re telling me your plan is to fight and die, I can tell you right now, these men won’t be keen to the suggestion.”
“No.” Swolis was right again, but still wrong. “We sail straight through.”
Swolis puffed. “I’m listenin’.”
“Straight through their line with their flag flying, they won’t think twice fast enough to stop us. Full speed toward New Fost until the shore stops us. We make for shore and fight there.”
“The Gull’s strength is her weakness. We can run shallow waters them bastards can’t, but if we hit a godsdamned reef? Half these men don’t know how to swim. And we don’t have rowboats for many.” He called to the man in the nest. “Buen! How close are ships to shore?”
“Hard to say yet, for certain, but the tide’s in and deep, from what I’m guessin’.”
Swol
is scratched his head, and Kemin said, “Ain’t a man on the Gull who’ll wanna run from a fight, I reckon. Not a fight that counts a chance.”
Swolis paced, tapped the spent tobacco from his pipe, then packed it fresh. “Listen well! I want everything ain’t precious nor nailed down cast into the sea! Lighten the Gull so she might soar! Emudar!”
Fists, axes, and falchions rose in the air. “Emudar!”
“Just don’t be throwing nothin’ you might bash a Tek’s head in with!”
The cry rose again, “Emudar!”
Sailors scattered and Swolis eyeballed Ivin. “My momma always told me sailors were damned fools, but it didn’t keep her from marryin’ one, nor birthin’ a half dozen. Still, I don’t reckon she’d ever’ve seen this one a comin’.” He grinned with his pipe pinched between his lips and held flame to the bowl until his face glowed orange.
By the time the crew emptied cargo and supplies from the ship’s hull over the rail, the Soaring Gull bore down on the rear of the Tek fleet. The tension built as they approached until Meliu made Ivin move to the forecastle to be closer. They stood with three sailors, the only men with bows onboard.
Ships blazed in the unprotected harbor ahead of them, but most of the Tek fleet sat anchored in a horseshoe, letting smaller ships move in to attack. She guessed the Tek warships would head for land after decimating the Silone boats.
The approach was slow, giving her time for her nerves to settle before passing the first Thonian ship. They passed a couple hundred strides to the enemy’s starboard, and not a sailor gave them much of a look.
Ivin stared straight ahead, and she resisted leaning into him. Captain Swolis navigated them full speed as the sun closed on the horizon to their backs, finding a straight line that’d cut all the way to shore. They swept past another half-dozen ships before she heard the first clunk on the ship’s prow, followed by a second and third.
A sailor leaning over the prow below bellowed: “Bodies! Decapitated! Think I seen its face.”
She kissed two fingers and put them to her lips before praying for Light, and Elinwe’s blessing eased the dread creeping into her soul. But when she glanced to a ship a hundred paces off the port bow, the Light couldn’t hold back her fury.
Trail of Pyres Page 42
