Marcella had returned from telling Levin about the water chastened, for even though Levin had had the good sense not to get into a shouting match over it, Marcella could tell he was quietly furious. Even Kuljin, the normally unflappable halfman, had seemed disappointed.
On a ship this size, it had been impossible to conceal Kuljin’s strange eyes from the others, but Limme had cautioned them to say nothing. “There is nothing strange about him.” She had explained. “He’s from a distant land, that is all, and the people there have strange eyes. Don’t trouble him about it.”
Helisende O’Sion had said that his eyes were ‘witchy,’ but the way she said it left no doubt that she found the quality attractive, not frightening. Fortunately she had been the first to speak, and Hawisa Ploughman had quickly added ‘dreamy’ to the list of adjectives the girls had begun to assemble around Kuljin. Half of the women had been violently raped among the Borni, and to them there was nothing attractive in any man, but the rest of them soon took to mooning over their two rescuers, who happened to not only be the only two men on the ship, but both quite handsome as well.
She certainly did not moon over Levin, but she definitely did not hate him anymore. Indeed, he had been nothing but considerate since leaving the Thimenians, and polite almost to the point of courtliness. He made sure that everyone got enough to eat, made sure that they each had a space on the deck and blankets or furs to sleep on, and made sure that everyone had something to do each day. Limme knew that they weren’t much of a crew, but every day he taught them something new about sailing the ship, and only broken Fyella did not participate in some way.
Poor Fyella just sat wherever she was told and stared blankly at nothing. The Borni had been particularly cruel to her, and when Limme thought of it she wished they had all been killed by the Thimenians.
Limme was applying whale oil to the ropes in back of (or aft of, as Levin would say) the mast when she saw the sail on the horizon, far to the east. The wind was blowing strongly from the west. She went and told Levin, who quickly summoned Kuljin.
“They’re on our line.” He told Kuljin, who nodded.
“Aye. Mortentians.” The halfman replied. “Royal navy I’d guess, or maybe a big merchant. Either way, they’re way downwind and won’t catch us for hours.”
“Sure.” Levin’s voice was deceptively calm. “But with that much sail on a Mortentian ship there’s no doubt they will. I don’t care how the wind is blowing. We can’t go any faster than this. They can get ahead of us and cut into the wind, and there’s not a thing we can do.”
“There’s that.” Kuljin said, pointing ahead. A thin strip of land was just barely visible on the southern horizon.
“Aye.” Levin said. “I’ve been seeing that. I hate to beach us on an unknown shore, though. Could be rocks or shoals or any kind of thing.”
“Well, one thing we’ve got going for us.” Kuljin replied positively. “We’ve got a very shallow draft, almost as shallow as a longboat, and no keel to speak of. That’s why we wallow about so much in the water, and that’s why we can’t stay steady on a hard tack. I know your Mortentian ships, and they’ve all got deep keels. Makes for good sailing, but if we can find any kind of shoals or sandbars, we can get much closer to shore than they can. Maybe we can get in close enough to where they’re afraid to follow.”
“Leaving us trapped by the shore where the war canoes are?”
Kuljin shrugged. “Better the peril you don’t know…”
Limme shuddered at the thought of encountering Aulig warriors on the shore, but the risk of being sunk by their own navy was greater.
For two hours they sailed steadily southward toward the shoreline, and to their east the sails of the Mortentian vessel paralleling them grew larger. The ship was still at least two miles off, and Levin was no longer afraid of being intercepted before they reached the shore. Indeed, the closer they got to land, the stronger the wind grew, until waves were breaking across the Wrath’s bow and the women had to go below decks to stay reasonably dry. The haze on the western horizon had resolved itself into a large mass of very tall and dark clouds, and the occasional flash of lightning marked where a storm was marching across the Emerald Peninsula.
The Wrath passed several areas of choppy water, the kind of places that marked shoals, and the Mortentian ship turned aside from its pursuit of them, afraid of getting caught on the rocks near to shore. The last they saw of it was its stern, sailing away eastward with the wind. This was no place for a harbor, and was in fact quite dangerous for any kind of ship. Twice they came across the recent wrecks of ships, one a large Mortentian rigged frigate and the other the burned out remains of an Aulig sloop.
Levin ordered the mainsail furled and ran the ship with just the working jib, and the small triangular sail billowed in the gusts of wind. Rain speckled the deck while Kuljin stood in the bow, looking for a suitable place to beach the Wrath that would not wreck her. He was only partially successful.
Under Kuljin’s direction Levin pushed the tiller hard alee, and the ship bowed over, fighting the waves and wind to come to port. The jib whipped about and Kuljin ran the lines, but the Wrath could not hold a hard windward tack, and kept falling away from the course Levin steered. Levin overcompensated, pulling her too far over, and she soon stood powerless with her bow directly into the wind. The surf caught her and began dragging her toward the beach, at least half a mile from the place Kuljin had selected for landing. By the time she fell back down on the wind and the jib caught the wind again, Levin could feel sandbars grating against the hull. They were fairly caught, and he only hoped he could get enough wind into the jib to beach her properly.
He brought her within fifty paces of the shore before she caught up on a stack of surf-piled sand and heeled over. Screams of surprise and terror came out of the hold, and Levin had to grab hold of the ship’s rail to keep from sliding off of the suddenly sloping deck. Kuljin worked his way back to Levin, holding onto the ship’s rail to keep from sliding down the deck.
“Well, you landed her.” The halfman laughed.
“You think she’ll come up with the tide?” Levin shouted back over the wind.
“It’s high tide now.” Kuljin replied. “And a storm surge on top of that. Only way this boat gets back to sea is if you can find a crew to dig a trench for her. The plus side is that by morning we’ll be a couple of hundred paces from the water. You needn’t worry about her capsizing.”
“Fine.” Levin replied. “I guess we sit out the rainstorm in the hold then. Come morning we’ll strike out on land, see what offers.”
“Yes. I don’t see that we have any other choices.”
The rain was falling in sheets when Levin and Kuljin entered the hold together, and they positioned the empty freshwater barrel to catch as much rain as it would. The women were gathered around inside the hold.
“We’ve tipped her up on a beach.” Kuljin explained to the women, making it sound like they’d done it purposefully. “By morning we should be on dry land. The good news is we are back in Mortentia. The bad news is that we don’t know where we are, although I thought I saw the top of a church just before we foundered. Come morning we’ll strike inland and see if we can find some people.”
“But what if we find the Auligs?” Matty Felder, a petite blonde farmer’s daughter from near Tarnanvolle demanded. “I won’t be taken thrall again!”
Several other women voiced agreement.
“We’ll all dress up like men.” Levin answered. “Everyone will take a weapon and all you women will put up your hair. We will look like an armed party, and we’ll try to look as dangerous as possible to discourage the Auligs. We’ll get inland as quick as we can, and try to make it to places where the Auligs haven’t been.”
“That’s your plan?” Complained Levora Saris, huddling next to her sister Atlis. “We try to look dangerous?”
“It’s about all we can do.” Kuljin said. “The ship is stuck here, and will be until another storm comes al
ong and washes it free.” He had to speak loudly to be heard over the rain. “We’ll need to strip her of anything of value and haul it inland.”
In the morning the storm was gone, and Levin awoke to see the bright light of the sun reflected off of the beach and into the hold of the Wrath. He untangled himself from Tiddy Tamson, a short brunette from Walcox who had curled up in the space under his arm during the night, and clambered over to the hold’s entrance to look out. They were at least two hundred paces up the beach from the surf, and the Wrath was surrounded by flotsam from the storm. The waterbarrel had maybe a gallon of rainwater in it, and everyone had half a cup to drink with their breakfast of salted herring.
Levin and Kuljin climbed out of the ship and the women passed the goods from the Wrath down to them in the sand. It took nearly an hour, and most of the Wrath’s cargo they simply left on the beach, taking only their clothing, weapons, the gold and silver and food. If they ever got to a place with a market they could buy plenty of things with the money they had, but for the moment it was just more weight to carry.
With Kuljin in the lead, they struck off more or less in the direction where he thought he’d seen the church, walking past the sand and into a country of stunted trees and brush. After forty minutes of difficult going they found a path, and five minutes later they came to the low stone walls of a medium sized village. The wind-smoothed walls gave the appearance of great age. With the exception of the church, whose upper floors were dressed in stone, the buildings all appeared to have been burned, and from the outside of the wall they could hear nothing.
They cautiously approached the town gate, a large wooden door that had been broken with axe strokes and lay on its side, attached by only one hinge. A single word in some Aulig language had been written over the gate in charcoal, but the rain had washed it away, and not even Kuljin could have said what it meant. A charnel smell of decay and old smoke hung in the air.
They drew their weapons and entered the deserted village, the women in a double line behind the two men. They had no way of knowing by what name the village was known, for the few buildings that might have once had signs were all burned down to their foundations. What looked like a long stone bridge hung over the town, and water ran from it. After a moment Levin identified it as an aqueduct, a long and narrow channel suspended over stone arches and placed to bring fresh water into the village from some nearby hills, dimly visible in the distance. Water from the recent rainstorm flowed strongly from it, splashing down into a large and deep cistern surrounded by a waist high wall in the middle of what had been the town square.
The village was old, that much was obvious. The one remaining intact building was the church Kuljin had seen from the Wrath, a large rectangular building of unmortared stone with a domed roof and a tower. Levin did not know to which of the Secret Gods the church had originally been consecrated, for the upper structure of the tower had been altered and a much newer four pointed Lionic star of white tile placed on top of whatever icon had originally existed there. The church had a single entrance, and the massive oak door was still shut in its arched frame. The foundations of the buildings that had surrounded the village’s central square were also of cut stone, and very ancient. Many of them still had four intact walls, with only the wooden roofs burned away.
Flagstones of some pale rock, much worn from use, lay beneath their feet while they scouted the deserted village. Dark stains lay on the street, evidence of recent violence, but they could see no bodies or people. The village gave a desolate and empty impression.
The women were thirsty, and Limme led them to the cistern. They had taken waterskins from the Wrath, and they filled them first, then they drank deeply of the cool, clear water. After making sure that the village was truly deserted, Levin and Kuljin joined them. After drinking they bathed their faces and hands.
“I haven’t seen a sign of life at all.” Levin said to Kuljin, and the halfman nodded.
“Yes, it’s been completely abandoned. The villagers were probably attacked, and most of them ran off into the brush. After the Auligs were done they likely returned and buried the dead.”
“But where are they?” Limme asked. “Do you think they’ve all left?”
“Sure.” Levin replied. “This close to the coast, there must have been repeated attacks by the raiders. I expect that any survivors would have fled far inland.”
“What I’m curious about is where the Auligs went. This would make a good base from which to stage further raids, but I haven’t seen any trace of them here. No camps, no fires, nothing.” Kuljin observed.
“Let’s see about the church.” Levin suggested. “It would make a good shelter for us, at least for the night. We could climb the tower and look about, maybe get an idea of where we are.”
Kuljin agreed, and they walked to the large door. It was locked, and it took both of them to force it open, slamming their shoulders into the heavy door in unison. The bar broke and the door swung wide, hitting the inside wall with a disconcertingly loud noise in the morning stillness. The interior of the church was dark, but the day was bright and enough light came in to illumine a double line of stone benches leading to a raised platform from which sermons would have been delivered. The violence of their entrance had disturbed the place, and reflected sunlight caught floating motes of dust in golden beams. There was room for perhaps two or three hundred people to sit on the benches, and they were polished from long usage. Icons stood in recesses in the walls, strangely untouched, as if the Auligs had been afraid to steal them, but all of the ceremonial relics were missing from the altar, and the wooden podium had been knocked over and broken.
Kuljin walked over to one of the icons, a bronze statue of a robed figure, neither distinctly male nor female, that looked polished, as if many hands had touched it. The face was concealed by a drape, carved in stone to look like cloth, as if the god wore a sack over its face, and the god had one hand extended like asking for something. The recess in which it stood was crowded with candles, beads and even silver and copper coins, meant as offerings to the god it represented. Not a god, Levin corrected himself, for the gods of the hundred kingdoms had been renamed by the Lionic church as angels who served the supreme god of light, Lio.
“It’s Gaikan.” Levin said, absurdly proud of himself for remembering what the figure represented.
“Don’t touch it!” Kuljin said.
Levin smiled, surprised at the halfman’s superstition. “It’s just a statue, Kuljin.”
“It’s the God of Plagues.” Kuljin replied, his voice tight. He had stepped to the center of the church’s aisle as if to avoid touching anything. “The offerings are meant to appease the god, and only the very sick touch it. You see how polished it looks? You see how it’s the only statue that isn’t cloaked in dust? The village is empty because all of the people have fled, and the offerings haven’t been plundered because they were put there by the sick. There’s been plague here.”
“But surely it is passed.” Levin said hopefully.
“Better not to touch anything.” Kuljin replied. “Let’s find a way up into the tower and have a look.”
Together they searched the church, and behind the altar they found a spiral staircase carved in the stone and leading up. They climbed it together and emerged onto a narrow balcony near the very top of the church’s tower. For a moment they looked around at the nondescript scrub forest that surrounded the village, noting a few burned farms here and there and a road leading south from town into the hills nearby. There was a large plot of land near the town’s south gate that looked recently dug up. Levin saw the reservoir from which the aqueduct drew water. Kuljin’s shoulders slumped beside him and he pointed to an indistinct shape that looked like a bundle of rags in the aqueduct. “There’s a body in the aqueduct.” He said grimly. “I was afraid of this when I saw the offerings in front of the statue.”
“Afraid of what?”
“It’s a nasty trick some of the Auligs from north of Vherador
employ.” Kuljin explained. “They put the body of a sick man in the village well, or in this case the aqueduct. It poisons the water.”
Levin swallowed and felt suddenly sick to his stomach. Every one of them had drank from the cistern into which the aqueduct flowed.
“Let’s see what we’re dealing with.” Kuljin said angrily. “And don’t tell the women yet. Not until we’re sure.”
Together they took a circuitous route outside of the town walls and up the side of a small hill, then they climbed the sides of the aqueduct and Kuljin looked at the body. The water had preserved it somewhat, but ravens or some other scavengers had been at it, and it could only barely be identified as human. The clothing was of a cut and style Levin had never seen before.
“These are Hulmini clothes.” Kuljin said. “They brought this man from Hulmin, probably already sick or dying, killed him and put him in the aqueduct.” Gingerly he turned the body over with a stick, careful not to touch it with his hands. An intact portion of the shoulder was covered in what looked like blisters, each one a small oval no bigger than a raisin, and in the center of each was a black spot. “It’s the black pox. Little wonder the village is empty, Levin. Everyone here is either dead or gone.”
They removed the body from the cistern and dragged it a short distance away, then covered it with stones. “What do we tell them?” Levin asked Kuljin.
“The truth, Levin. They have the right to know. If there’s a bright spot to this news, it is that I don’t believe we need to be worried about an attack on this village. The fields are full of unharvested corn, and the gardens will be full also. I think we can stay here until we know if we are affected.”
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 88
