by Richard Nell
There could also be spring storms that would rip them apart—the same storms that drowned the coast of Sri Kon in an often yearly tribute to the smallness of man. Ruka supposed they could land on some other island and pick another season, but the sailors may have families and orders, and no interest at all in delay.
And what will I do with these men once we arrive, if we arrive?
The people of ash believed that they alone were the children of gods. How would they react to the dark-eyed and dark-skinned foreigners, and a world rich beyond comprehension, where men ruled as kings by birthright?
Ruka dragged Nipples by the armpit to the edge of his ship. The man wriggled and screamed in protest, but whether and how far the man could swim was not Ruka’s concern. Without pausing, he threw him over the railing. He would make it to the dinghy, or drown.
The cold of the wind and rain on his face felt pleasant and like home, and he ignored the crew’s stares.
The men of ash would see this enormous ship and panic just at the sight of it. They would not believe that the world was so vast, that they had once come from paradise, that the Vishan were islanders, that a foreign temple held runes with all their gods and symbols. Not any of it.
“We’ll make them understand, brother, with the sword if we must.”
Ruka sighed, and glanced at the islanders—his crew and perhaps soon his retainers, and frowned.
Only the gods knew what they would think of his dirty, ignorant people. They would see men who killed each other over scraps and words and almost anything at all—folk who lived in squalor with little wealth even amongst the great families. Will they think us animals?
Bukayag bared his teeth. “They will fear us, as they should.”
Ruka rested his hands on the railing, looking up at the moon and knowing the day and week by Pyu gods and reckoning now before his own. He wished he could see birds flying South, and for a moment longed for the simple days of revenge and escape as he’d fled away North.
No doubt Beyla would have known what to do, even if she was wrong.
“We have our plans,” said Bukayag.
Ruka wondered if his plans were like a handful of sand, grains slipping through his fingers as soon as he squeezed. He intended a hard path of maybe blood and greatness, driven and designed by him for a people who may not want it. And what would he do if they said no?
“It makes no difference,” said Bukayag. “We will do what must be done, and give those who deserve it justice.” He used this last word like a slur, and Ruka knew any excuse for bloodshed would do.
I’m the only one who knows, he thought, no one is asking for justice.
Bukayag growled. “I know, brother. I know.”
Ruka sighed. We’ll deal with Trung, as I promised you. I’ll put him in your hands and let you rip his bones through his skin. But after that, I do not know.
He let the cold sea spray catch his face as he leaned off the ship. He reached his hand to wipe his eyes and felt the flesh curved and wrinkled on his brow. He felt down past the lumpy cheeks to a bulging jaw, crooked teeth exposed and locked. He supposed Bukayag was smiling.
* * *
They were at the Southern edge of Halin when sails crept into sight.
“A patrol. They’re coming West and fast with the wind—they’ve seen us, sir.” Kwal stopped squinting and yelled at the men to turn South-West. “I don’t know if we can outrun them, sir, we’ll see.” He unhooked a rack covered in tarp, exposing swords, bows and bundles of arrows.
Ruka took a deep breath and glanced at the drooping sail. The wind was low, and none of them could do much but wait.
In his Grove he gathered javelins and armor, then walked to his ship-builders and told them to pool up buckets of pine pitch. He chastised himself for not reading and learning more about Pyu naval warfare—he’d been too busy with basic principles and building his weir, and he’d only read a fifth of the books in Farahi’s library. But he had his tricks. And he supposed flaming arrows were flaming arrows.
“Do what you need to, Captain. We’ll fight if we must.”
The intense young man nodded, but it was clear he’d rather escape.
Ruka watched and waited while Kwal and his men pulled at ropes and angled the rudder, pivoting and ‘tacking’ against the weak wind. The wood creaked and the square canvas stretched, soon like a huge bird battling the breeze. The silent race continued most of the morning.
“They’re a coastal vessel and pumping their oars like madmen,” said the captain bitterly. “They’re too quick and we’re too heavy with supplies, but we’ll see how brave they are.”
He went back to the rudder and made a head-long dash South towards what the Pyu thought was endlessness and death. He raised Sri Kon’s silver flag high and watched his enemy’s outline loom.
“Make ready,” he said to his crew, who were sweating from the chase and fear but armed themselves in silence.
The islander’s bravery and competence again stirred Ruka, as well as their devotion to their tasks. He had no wish to see such men die here before seeing new lands and mysteries. He glanced at the sun.
It was high and clear, the enemy close now to bow range. In his Grove Ruka set up targets and walked the distance measuring. He fired test arrows, but had little practice with the weapon, and decided the draw could only be so strong before the wood snapped.
“Lower the sails, and tell your men to take cover,” he said. Kwal, paused, but obeyed. Arun watched it all, waiting beneath the cabin’s roof smoking one of his cigars.
Ruka first stepped to the stern and brought a shield from nothing. He held it out over the water so the sparks missed the ship. He knew the crew could see but no longer cared. They would serve him in truth before the end, by choice and not by order, and in any case Farahi would know Ruka’s powers soon enough.
For a time he waited at the stern, shield held high as Trung’s ship approached.
By the make and outline of the enemy he knew the distance, so he turned and counted paces in his Grove. The small sail grew, then the sight of the narrow paddles wrenching their way through the sea.
Four hundred. Three fifty. Three hundred.
The dead moved a wagon along the ground while he threw javelins drenched in pitch. At two-fifty, the enemy’s flaming arrows splashed and sizzled into the water. A few bounced off the hull.
“Throw the arrows off if they land, and put out fires,” Ruka called, though he probably didn’t need to.
Halin’s ship moved closer, slowly but surely, every pull of their oars another gain on the sailing vessel.
Two hundred paces. One fifty.
The enemy’s missiles were more on target now. Some bounced to burn on the deck or cargo-coverings, but Kwal and his men scrambled under shields to toss them off, dousing charred marks in buckets of sea water.
Ruka at last tensed and moved back, giving himself space to run. When he had enough room, he surged forward at a sprint, torso angled to be jerked up in the throw. He released as he struck the rail, growling with the effort, pulling a throwing-spear from nothing mid-throw.
Sparks flew but paled next to the true fire burning in flight—the weapon already soaked in fuel by the dead. Blue flames roared, dimmed by the rush of air.
Ruka jogged back to his spot without watching, and checked the distance. He angled his throw and ran again, shield still in his off hand, raising to block a batch of well-placed shots before the release.
This time he watched and saw the first steel spear plunged deep into hull, completely in flames and out of the sailor’s reach. The second he put into the mast, the flames leaping up quickly into sails.
He smiled as he watched them, knowing his foes were already dead. He looked back at his men and almost called for them to huddle under their shields and simply wait.
But he looked back at the coastal scout and saw it hadn’t stopped or turned. It kept coming, oars yanked through the sea to a steady drum.
Ruka looked at the ship
and examined every memory of every design of island ship, seeing again that his enemy was a kind of warship, but designed for speed and ranged warfare—not for closing with an enemy.
He stared at the bow, and soon Kwal stood beside him. They breathed together. The enemy ship had an outline of wood like a cap on the front. Lines were traced around a hidden bulge, like a shell, with something else beneath. With horror Ruka realized it was a cover, a ruse—to hide the true purpose of the fast, sleek vessel. It was a giant ram.
He leapt back and yelled at the men to brace themselves, to turn, to make sail or by god do something, anything. But it was too late.
The drum stopped and the enemy crew cried out in triumph and maybe terror as they struck.
Ruka’s junk shook and shattered from the rear, wood spraying and giving way to the reinforced bronze ram now revealed as the cap splintered,
He flew from his feet, senses reeling as men screamed over the crunch and groan of the wood. He lost track of up and down as the world spun, not knowing if it was him or the ships that moved. He bounced twice along the hull and crashed against the mast.
“For the king!”
He heard men yelling and hoped they meant Farahi. Iron and bronze and wood clashed as the men raced together with daggers and clubs, the sounds of their vicious fighting mixed with the roar of flame.
Stand us up, brother. We have little time. Stand up!
Pain shot through Ruka’s leg and back and every movement was agony. Bukayag shook his head, and snarled. He punched the deck to rise. Ruka knew his leg was broken, and perhaps his ribs. Bukayag didn’t care.
Take these.
Ruka lifted two killing swords in his Grove, and his brother took them mid-cut as he swiped at the first Trung pirate in reach. The blade took the man’s arm off without slowing, and Bukayag howled with an open mouth full of blood.
Our ship is doomed, brother. We take theirs, or we’ll die at sea after all.
Kwal and his men were already fighting bravely, and had handled the clash far better. They were outnumbered and shaken, but from all the rowing the enemy were no doubt exhausted.
Ruka couldn’t see Arun, but if he was alive he’d be murdering his way to safety.
Clear us a path, brother. We need to put out the flames.
Bukayag roared and charged into the fray, stabbing and hurling men back as they tried to close. Trung’s sailors fell back in panic just at the sight of him. He was blood-soaked and wielding swords as long as an islander’s torso, roaring as he limped straight towards the enemy without fear.
To Ruka the violence seemed a blur of gore and hacked limbs. He paid attention only to his goal, and together with his brother leapt across a broken gangplank on a dangling rope.
The enemy’s sails were in tatters, burnt halfway already by Ruka’s fire. He saw Arun hanging off the hull, hands wrapped in cloth, straining at the burning javelin. It came out and he plunged into the sea.
Bukayag seized another man and hurled him overboard as he staggered for the mast, then rammed his fist into another’s face, blood spraying on the sparse white canvas that still remained. He dropped his last sword and clutched the flaming spear lodged through solid cedar. His arms and back bulged as he strained and growled.
“Take it back, brother! It’ too deep, I can’t move it!” His voice was choked and desperate, a lion roaring in its cage.
Ruka felt his skin singing. He closed his eyes and thought of the first tools he’d taken to his Grove—axes and saws, wood-files and scrapers. They hadn’t been real, only images in his mind from seeing them as a boy. But they had appeared. Nothing had become something, imagination made manifest.
Ruka tried to picture this one specific spear in his mind, but he couldn’t focus. He smelled burning flesh and maybe it was his. He cried out in his Grove for his brother to stop, to let go, to find another way.
Please, he cried. I can’t. I’ve lost something Ruka the child once had. I can’t bring it. I can’t! Let go!
“There is no other way,” Bukayag held them fast to the burning iron. “Succeed, or watch us die.”
Ruka fled further from the reality of the world, running into the woods of his Grove, away from the clearing made by the dead into an untamed wild. He fled into dense spruce that scratched his skin, wondering how far it went, too afraid in truth to try. The trees ended almost quickly, and he saw a lake he hadn’t known existed. he knelt on the muddy bank and plunged his hands into the water.
Like the river Flot as a child, it burned as ice on his skin. He took sharp breaths and looked down through the water hoping to see the bottom. But it wasn’t like the clear, blue beaches of Pyu that could be pierced by eyes to see a world that spun and rested below. It was Ascomi water—dark and green, hidden and cold beyond comfort or desire, required but never enjoyed.
He spasmed with a laugh as he looked at it, thinking even in his mind he was trapped. Even in his Grove the paradise of his forebears was lost forever. He shivered and wondered why he couldn’t imagine warmth instead. Why hadn’t he as a child pictured a perfect land of sun and plenty? Why must he look out at a lake that stretched forever into mists, near frozen and lifeless, good only for bland, bottom-dwelling fish, toothy monsters lurking in the muck and algae of a still, fetid pool?
Fish in Pyu were colorful things—a mix of blues and reds or metallics, shining in the hot sun as they twirled as if for an audience. They reflected the beauty of a beautiful land, proving just another mockery in an unfair world.
Ruka wanted the new world in the depths of his mind—not just the plants and war-forts called castles, or the tools or the clothes. He wanted a warm, Bato breeze; he wanted a hotspring steaming beside resting mountains. He wanted Girl-from-the-pit to dangle her feet with him while she tossed her hair, so he could see she was happy and in a perfect place he’d built for her.
He saw no reason it could not be so. He would bring it all back, one grain of sand at a time, and if he did then perhaps he would have made a paradise in truth. Perhaps the land of the dead required sacrifice from the living—the unmaking of the world. Imagination in reverse.
There are rules, he thought, even in the land of the dead, there are rules.
Ruka looked beneath the cold water and saw his javelin in his hands. He pulled it from the lake, watching it vanish in his brother’s world as swift as it was called.
Bukayag wasted no time. He ran to the bronze ram still lodged in the sinking junk. “A long-spear, brother, give me something to pry.”
Ruka walked in a daze to his armory and obliged, and his brother pushed it down between the hulls, levering the steel shaft between the mashed wood of the two ships.
Arun was back on board now and did the same. He met Ruka’s eyes, and there was only purpose—the will to live. Ruka didn’t bother considering how the man climbed up.
Kwal dove over his doomed ship’s rail, hands clasping for safety. His half-dead crew fought on behind him, oblivious, keeping the ten or so remaining attackers busy.
With a scream of effort, Bukayag took another spear and used both to push off from the sinking boat. The wood creaked and fell, separation speeding the intake of water as the hull made sucking sounds.
Some of the Trung crew now noticed the shifting ground and panicked, running back to reach for ropes or leap at gangplanks. Arun turned and cut down those who made it, until the distance and height lurched from one pace to five, swaying in the waves and making all movement difficult.
Two others leapt but fell to float in the sea and wait to die. Unlike the Ching-master, they would have no chance to climb a moving hull. All at once it was over.
Bukayag released and Ruka slumped on the enemy’s flat deck, feeling as if the fire still burned on his skin, as if his leg and chest were being crushed. The last of the crew were fighting on to their doom, soon to be pulled down by the sea, or their foes, to drown in bitter duels to the death.
Kwal bled from several stabs and cuts. He lay still but his chest rose and fe
ll with life as Arun sat and threw away wet tobacco, looking unharmed but miserable.
Ruka realized his fortune of silver was gone—sinking now to bury itself in sand, ignored by the fish and crabs who had no use for it. Just like men, he thought, ignorant of power beyond their understanding.
A month’s worth of supplies sunk alongside his fortune. The coastal fighter would have much less stored, no doubt—enough for patrolling near shore and perhaps only a few days at sea. They may not have new cloth for sails, nor lumber for repairs.
He lay back and groaned, staring up at the cloudless sky. He felt tempted to wallow in the teeth-grinding horror of pulsing heat in his body, or in the losses and ill-fortune and ignorance that put him here.
Instead, he laughed . Despite everything, he was still better off now then when he came North. He was much more than an Outcast with a dead mother and the loneliness of the frozen steppe. He knew more than any man or woman of ash in two thousand years, and he was still alive.
“Pirate,” he managed, already focused on his Grove and sending the dead to weave new sails, “check for food and water below. We will need it.”
He heard nothing but the distant sound of men in mortal struggle, and the splashing of Trung’s ship in the sea. But if the dangerous shadow rose and obeyed, Ruka wouldn’t have heard him anyway.
Chapter 35
Kale hadn’t taken more than two steps into the city before grabbing Asna’s arm. Ketsra was a madhouse.
The farmer-king’s city had looked like an anthill’s surface from above, and now Kale saw the plugged, filthy tunnels below. He felt trapped instantly in the throngs of sweaty, bustling bodies, donkeys and oxen, dogs, carts and make-shift bazaars that stretched out and blared with competing sounds.
Osco and Asna had it worse. Compared to Kale they were almost country boys, and their eyes shot back and forth for danger, lost in the hot, stinking tide of foreign words, colors and smells. Asna held one hand on a knife, the other on Kale’s shoulder, and muscled through beggars and merchants with his shoulder or hip, heedless of the damage in his wake.
