Call For The Dead

by Glen Cook

  I remembered an old friend who had disappeared long ago. Whaleboats had never been very sincere. Unless he had hidden it damned well.

  "The damned can be no more damned than they already are," Colgrave countered. A grim rictus of a smile crossed his tortured face. "Perhaps the not-yet-damned can be spared the horror of those who are."

  My eyes never left my target, but my mind ran wild and free. This was

  Colgrave, the mad captain of the ghost ship? The terror of every man who put to sea? I had known him forever, it seemed, and had never sensed this in him.

  We all have our mysterious deeps, I guess. I had been learning a lot about my shipmates lately.

  "There is life for you in my service," the sorcerer argued. "There is no life in defying me. What I have once called up I can also banish."

  "This be no life," the Trolledyngjan muttered. "We be but Oskoreien of the sea."

  Priest nodded.

  Barley was poised to charge. Colgrave caught his sleeve lightly. Like the faithful old dog he was, Barley relaxed.

  I relaxed too, letting my bow slack to quarter pull. It was one of the most powerful ever made. Even I could not hold it at full draw long.

  I stopped watching the sorcerer's eyes. There was something hypnotic about them, something aimed specially at me.

  His hands caught my attention. They began moving as he argued with Colgrave, and I ignored his words for fear there would be something compelling hidden in his voice. His hands, too, were playing at treacheries.

  I whipped my shaft back to my ear.

  His hands dropped into his lap. He stopped talking, closed his eyes.

  A wave of power inundated me. The creature was terrified of me! Of me!

  It was the power I had felt as Dragon's second most famous crewman, while standing on her poop as we bore down on a victim, my arrows about to slay her helmsman and officers. It was the power that had made me the second most feared phenomenon of the western seas.

  It was the absolute power of life and death.

  And in that way, I soon realized, he was using me too.

  I had the power, and he did fear me, but he was playing to my weakness for that power, hoping that it would betray me into his hands. In fact, he was counting on using all our weaknessess....

  He was a bold, courageous, and subtle one, that creature in red. Whatever the stakes in his game, he was not reluctant to risk losing. Not one man in a million would have faced Dragon's crew for a chance at an empire, let alone have recalled us from our fog-bound grave.

  He spoke again. And again he made weapons of his hands, his eyes, his voice. But he no longer directed them my way.

  He chose Barley. It made a certain sense. Barley was the most wicked killer of us all. But I held the power of death, and Barley would have to get past Colgrave and Priest to take it away from me.

  He whirled and charged. And the Trolledyngjan smacked the back of his head with the flat of his ax. Barley pitched forward. He lay still. Colgrave knelt beside him, his eye burning with the old hatred as he glared at the creature in red.

  I nodded to the Trolledyngjan. I was pleased to see that I was not alone in my awareness of what the sorcerer was doing.

  "I think you just made a mistake," Colgrave said.

  "Perhaps. Perhaps I'll send you back to your waiting place. There are other means to my ends. But they're much slower...."

  "You shouldn't ought to have done that," Priest said. "Barley was my friend."

  What? I thought. You never had a friend in your life, Priest.

  One of the black birds shrieked warningly. Colgrave reached out....

  Too late. Priest's left hand blurred. A throwing knife flamed across the space between himself and the creature in red.

  The sorcerer writhed aside. The blade slashed his left shoulder. His left hand rose, a finger pointing. He screamed something.

  "Wizard!" I snarled.

  And loosed my shaft.

  It passed through his hand and smoked away into darkness. He looked down the length of my next shaft. His bloody hand dropped into his lap. Pain and rage seethed in him, but he fought for control. He wadded his robe around his hand.

  My gaze flicked to Colgrave. We had a standoff here. And unless the Old Man did something, that wizard would pick us off one by one. Colgrave had to decide which way to jump.

  Colgrave had to? But he had told me.... But....

  XIV

  Al1 the black birds had joined us. They were big. I called them albatrosses, but their size was the only thing they had in common. They lined up between us and the wizard. Their pupilless yellow eyes seemed to take in everything at the same time.

  They were doing their damndest to make sure we knew they were there.

  I had always been aware of them. For me they had become as much a part of Dragon as Colgrave or myself. What were they? Lurkers over carrion? Celestial emissaries? Sometimes, because I sympathized with their plight, I wanted to make them something more than what they were.

  Those sentinels posted by a dead man were as trapped as we. Maybe more than we were. Their exit might be even narrower.

  Neither Colgrave nor the creature in red paid them any heed. To those two the birds were squawking nuisances left from another time.

  Those squawking nuisances had been trying to guide us since our recall. We had seldom heeded them. Maybe we should have.

  Why were they trying to intercede? That had to be beyond their original writ. That, surely, had been but to keep their summoner informed of what was happening amongst things he could only banish, not destroy.

  I suppose his lastsecond death compelled them to interpret their mission for themselves.

  One squawked and threw itself into the pentagram.

  There were sorceries upon that bird. It was nothing of this world. The spells shielding the thing in red were less efficacious against it than they had been against arrow, dagger, or amulet.

  Nonetheless, it fell before it reached the sorcerer. The stench of smoldering feathers assailed my nostrils. Smoke boiled off the writhing bird. It emitted some of the most pathetic sounds I had ever heard.

  Then, like the bird the sorcerer had downed at sea, it became a snake of smoke and slithered off like black lightning, through air and cellar wall.... I presumed.

  The thing in red had begun some silent enchantment. We now faced it amidst a vast plain, walled by mists instead of limestone.

  A second bird threw itself into the pentacle the instant the first changed and hurtled off.

  It penetrated a foot farther. Then a third flopped clumsily forward, achieving perhaps fourteen inches more than the second.

  Mica's voice echoed eerily from the mist behind us. "Captain. Bowman. Hurry up. There's a big mob in the street. They're armed. We're in trouble if they break in."

  Another bird hurled itself at the sorcerer. This one managed to sink its beak into an ankle.

  The sorcerer called down a thunderbolt. It scattered flesh and feathers.

  Another leapt.

  The Old Man said, "Have Toke and Tor gather the men behind the house, Sailmaker. If we're not up in ten minutes, go back to Dragon. Tell them not to wait for us. They'll have to clear the estuary before the fleet gets back from Cape Blood."

  "Captain!"

  I could read Mica's thoughts. What would they do without Colgrave? Dragon would become lifeless without the dead captain's will animating it.

  "Do as I say, Sailmaker."

  Two black birds threw themselves into the pentacle together. The sorcerer got the first in midair. The second landed in his lap, tearing with beak and talons.

  They had to be driven by more than their original assignment. Maybe the gods were interceding....

  Barley clambered to his feet with the Old Man's help. He was groggy. Colgrave dithered round him.

  The grumble of a crowd working itself up reached the cellar.

  We were in trouble.

  "Maybe we ought to run for it," Priest suggested.


  Colgrave hit him with that one cold eye. "Colgrave doesn't run." Then, "We have an enemy here." He indicated the thing in red. "He's decided to send us back. We have to stop him. Sixty men counting on us.... I don't want any of us to go back. It's for forever this time."

  "I'll buy that," I muttered. It reflected my thinking of the moment. But I was surprised to hear it from the Old Man. It was not his kind of thinking.

  It seemed that the black birds had been trying to stop us from compounding our sins. That was all I could get their admonitory squawks to add to. "Sorry, guys," I murmured. A sin or two looked necessary for the greater welfare.

  I did not want to see that quiet, fog-bound sea again. Eighteen years was long enough. The others felt the same.

  I could see just one way to get out of it. Kill the sorcerer in red. Another murder.

  What was one more death on my soul? I asked myself. Not a pennyweight.

  The last black bird hurled itself into the pentagram.

  The sorcerer was covered with blood, reddening its clothing even more. Pain had destroyed the delicacy of its face. And yet a tiny smile began to stretch its lips again.

  I drew to my ear and let an arrow fly.

  The others had the same idea at the same instant. The Trolledyngjan hurled his ax. Priest and Barley flung themselves against the waning Power of the pentagram. Colgrave drew his blade and followed at a more casual pace. The Trolledyngjan whipped out a dagger and joined him.

  My arrow and the Trolledyngjan's ax did not survive the smashing fist of a lightning bolt. Both weapons touched the creature in red, but only lightly.

  The last bird became another serpent of night and slithered off to wherever they went when they devolved.

  The spells protecting the sorcerer gnawed at Priest and Barley. They screamed like souls in torment.

  And kept on.

  They were Colgrave's favorite hounds, those two. Because nothing stopped them.

  They had been the two most dreaded-in-fighters on the western seas.

  A continual low moan emanated from the Trolledyngjan. Colgrave made no sound at all. He just leaned ahead like a man striding into a gale, his eye fixed on the sorcerer's throat.

  Priest and Barley went down. They writhed the way the birds had. But they kept trying to get to the creature in red. Barley's blade struck sparks from the stone beside the wizard's ankle.

  Its smile grew larger. It thought it was winning.

  I sped three arrows as fast as I could.

  The first did no good at all. The second pinked him lightly. It distracted him for an instant.

  His attackers surged at him, threatening to bury him.

  I sent my third arrow beneath Colgrave's upraised arm. It buried itself in the creature's heart.

  The Old Man's blade fell. It sliced the flesh away from one side of that delicate face.

  The thing slowly stood. A mournful wail came from between its motionless lips. The sound rose in pitch and grew louder and louder. I dropped my bow and clapped my hands over my ears.

  That did not help. The sound battered me till I ached.

  The Trolledyngjan was down with Priest and Barley. I did not expect them to rise ever again.

  The creature in red touched Colgrave. My captain started to drop too.

  He fell slowly, like a mighty kingdom crumbling.

  "Go, Bowman," he told me in a voice that was hardly a whisper, yet which I heard through the sorcerer's wail. "Take Dragon back to sea. Save the men."

  "Captain!" I seized his arm and tried to drag him away. The thing in red touched him. The touch anchored the Old Man.

  "Get the hell out of here!" he growled. "I'll handle him."

  "But...."

  "That's an order, Bowman."

  He was my Captain. These were my comrades. My friends.

  "Will you get the hell gone?"

  He used the old Colgrave's voice. It was strong. Compelling. I could defy it then no more than ever before. I seized my bow and fled.

  XV

  The others had needed little urging to make a run for it. Mica and the Kid were the only ones hanging around when I hit the mansion's door. Not counting the owner and half an army of citizens headed our way.

  It was your basic mob. A ravening killer monster made up of harmless shopkeepers. An organism without fear because it knew its components were replaceable.

  Mica screeched, "Come on, Bow-man! You going to wait till they tie you to a burning stake?"

  I was not as numb as I looked. I was looking for the thousand-eyed monster's brain cells. I had eight good arrows left.

  But Mica was right. The mob did not have a brain. Random fragments had begun vandalizing the grounds.

  I took off round the side of the house.

  As we loped along, the Kid asked, "What happened down there? Where's Barley and Priest and the Trolledyngjan and the Old Man?"

  "Down there. All gone but the Old Man and the sorcerer. The thing is all chopped up, but it's still alive." "You left him there?" "He made me, Kid. You ever win an argument with Colgrave?" He just grinned.

  "Hold up for a second, Bowman," Mica panted. We were in the street now and drawing some startled looks. "What happens when they go?"

  "What?"

  "Colgrave runs us. What do we do without him? And that wizard called us back. What happens when he dies? To his spells?"

  "Oh. Man. I don't know." I was no expert on wizardry. Some sorceries devolved with the death of the sorcerer, and some did not. I could not tell him what he wanted to know.

  There were shouts behind us. I wheeled. Part of the mob was after us.

  "Let's take them," the Kid said.

  There were about twenty of them. For a Dragon sailor, protected by the Bowman, the odds did not look bad.

  The earth started quivering like a bear in restless slumber. The timbers of nearby buildings creaked.

  Our pursuers stopped, looked back.

  We could see the steep tiled roofs of the mansion. Cracks lightninged across them. They began sagging, as if some huge invisible hand were pressing downward....

  The cracks leaked a black fog that looked first cousin to the one that dogged Vengeful D. The breeze did nothing to disperse it.

  "Let's hike," I said. "While they're distracted. Maybe we can catch the others."

  I was afraid Toke and Tor would sail without us.

  Could anger be an absolute? The cloud over the mansion said it could be. I felt it from a quarter mile away.

  That shadow was a being. It echoed the feeling I had been given by the creature in red. I now understood our ambiguous reactions to the sorcerer. He or she had no meaning if the thing were not human at all.

  It was not alone. A second being held it in a deathgrip. That being radiated an absoluteness too, an utter refusal to yield to any other will.

  "Colgrave," I whispered.

  Colgrave had been a man, of that there was no doubt. But he had been larger than life and animated by a determination so unswerving that it had made him a demigod.

  "Children of evil," Mica muttered.

  We resumed walking toward the waterfront. No one interfered. We were forgotten.

  The Torian Hill shook like a volcano about to give birth.

  "What?" I asked.

  "We are all children of evil," Mica said.

  "What're you talking about?" He was off on some sideways line of thought, saying the obvious and not meaning what he was saying. "Keep stepping. I don't think the Old Man will win this one."

  "He already has, Bowman. He's forced that thing to take its natural form. Look. It's fading. It can't stay here that way."

  He was right. The thing was evaporating the way a cloud of steam does.

  So was the thing created by the will of my Captain.

  In minutes they were gone.

  There were tears in my eyes. Mine. The Bowman's. And I was the deadliest, coldest, most remorseless killer ever to sail the western seas, excepting only the man for whom my
tears fell.

  I had hated him with a passion as deep and black and cold as the water in the ocean's deepest deeps. Yet I was weeping for him.

  I averted my face from the others.

  I had not wept since I did not know when. Maybe after I had killed my wife, when I had been alive and still one of the smaller evils plaguing the world.

  We reached Dragon. They had the mooring lines in but the gangplank still down. The crew manned the rail. Their eyes were on the hills behind the city. Their faces showed relief when we raced onto the wharf. Then dismay when they realized we three were the last.

  They had the drunk at the head of the gangplank, holding him like a hostage against Portsmouth's ill-will. "The others?" Toke asked. "They won't be coming," I replied. "What do we do?" "You're asking me?" He was First Officer. He should have taken charge.

  He looked me in the eye. He did not have to speak to tell me that he was no Colgrave, that he was incapable of commanding Vengeful Dragon.

  I glanced around. Every eye fixed me with that same expectant stare.

  I am the Bowman, I thought. Second only to Colgrave... Second to none, now. "All right. Mica. Take the old guy and leave him on the wharf. Healthy. Tor, standby to make sail."

  Some of them looked at me oddly. Letting the drunk go was not Dragon's style.

  But Dragon had changed. We had learned, just a little, the meanings of pity and mercy.

  "Give him something to tell his grandkids," I remarked to Tor, whose disappointment was obvious. He was the most bloodthirsty and least changed member of the crew.

  A breeze rose as the gangplank came in. It was a perfect breeze. It would carry us into the channel at just the right speed. I assumed Colgrave's old place on the poop and peered at the sky. "You still with us?" I murmured.

  I started. For an instant I thought I saw faces in the racing clouds. Strange, alien faces with eyes of ice, in which no hint of motivation could be read.

  Was this what Colgrave had seen? Had he just looked up whenever he wanted to know if the gods were still with us?

  I had a lot to learn if I was going to replace the Old Man.... I looked at the clouds again. I saw nothing but clouds. Imagination?

  I paused to reflect on the fact that I was the only survivor among Dragon's four great evils.