Corsair (2 page)

But he had, and the villagers swore he was the first, well, perhaps the second, to ever climb that seamount, although no one could remember that first man’s name.

It was getting cold. Gareth’s fingers were sore, salt-burned, and his ears felt like they were the finest porcelain, and would shatter if anyone tapped them with a fingernail.

“Hi,” Knoll said suddenly. “Look.”

Distant smoke boiled across the water from somewhere behind the seamount.

“Fire,” Thom said. “Something big’s burning!”

Knoll was reeling in the line as Gareth went to the rudder and brought the boat about as Thom raised the sail. Gareth let the current skitter the boat around the mount, close to a dark cliff and a cave, where the surf boomed in deadly invitation.

“Oh gods,” Knoll said softly. Something
was
burning.

It was their village. Sailing out from under that cloud were four ships like none they’d ever seen. Gareth could faintly make out their hulls against the water. They were black, with red lateen sails on three masts.

“What’re they?” Thom said.

“I don’t know,” Gareth said, but the flames gave him the answer.

“Linyati,” Knoll whispered. “The Slavers! I never heard of them this far north.”

“Gods,” Thom echoed Knoll, less a prayer than a moan. “Come on, Gareth! Hurry!”

• • •

The village was a shatter of flames and ruin, the only sounds the crackling of the fires, crashes as roof timbers collapsed.

The fishing boats were smoldering ruin, their oil-soaked wood having instantly flared up when torches were thrown.

There were two men dead on the docks, arrowheads coming out their backs. Half a dozen crabs from a broken trap crawled across their bodies on their way back to the water.

Gareth leapt over the bodies, the other two behind him, running for their homes.

A body sprawled at the foot of the street in a pool of blood. Next to him lay a broken boathook, and, with great wounds in their bodies, three dark-complected men in foreign, silk-looking garb. Gareth had time for a flashing thought that perhaps Old Man Baltit hadn’t been the colossal liar everyone thought he was, for he’d taken at least these raiders down, then ran on, heart hammering under his ribs, toward his house.

• • •

His father lay on his back, just inside the doorway. His hand had been chopped off, trying to push away the spear that had buried itself in his chest.

Gareth’s mother sat on the foot of the stairs, and for an instant Gareth thought she was still alive, until he saw the gaping slash across her neck, and the way her head lolled.

He was on his knees, and the only numb thought he had, over and over, was
I
didn’t even say good-bye, I didn’t say good-bye to them.

Time passed. He heard footsteps, didn’t turn.

Knoll’s voice came:

“They took … Thom’s whole family … my father’s dead … mother and my sisters are gone. They took them all. There’s no one left in the village.

“Only the dead, Gareth. That’s all they left.”

Another thought came to Gareth:

And I didn’t tell them that I loved them. I don’t remember, can’t remember, when I said that last.

Then the tears finally came free.

Gareth Radnor crouched behind a chimney pot, trying not to think about the steep gables on either side of him, the four-story drop if he slid on the slates, and the cobbles below that would hardly soften his fall.

Across the square rose the great temple of Megaris, the favored god of the Ticaons and, by extension, all of Saros. Atop the temple’s flat roof were four columns supporting a small stone canopy, and, in the middle, a great gong.

The gong was struck by monks every hour on the hour, its boom resounding across Ticao to the Nalta River, and across that to the slums beyond, one of Ticao’s familiar sounds.

But the square below, in spite of the hour — bare moments before middle-night — held three dozen people, staring up in curiosity and awe.

For something was awry with the worship of the god, or, some people whispered, with the god himself.

Ten nights now, instead of twelve strokes, the gong had sent out thirteen, and no one knew why. Monks and priests had prayed long and hard for an explanation of this omen, but without result.

The priests tried to keep the marvel a secret, but without success. Two nights ago there’d been four people who witnessed the phenomenon, the night before eleven, and Gareth saw more trickling into sight below.

He grinned, took a sling from his pouch, and took out a stone, carefully selected for its smooth roundness.

Across the way, a hatch opened and four monks clambered into sight. One carried the huge padded hammer used to strike the gong, and one of the others held a glass, watching the sands run out.

There should have been only two for the ceremony. Gareth supposed the others to be high priests present to keep demons from making an appearance, some sort of curse striking, or the monks in charge of the signal pulling some sort of tomfoolery.

The monk with the hammer pushed the sleeves of his habit back and lifted the tool. Previously it’d been with a flourish, but Gareth now thought he moved with a bit of trepidation.

The man with the glass lifted his arm, and lowered it.

The monk struck, struck again …

Three … four … five … six … seven … eight … nine …

Gareth stood, braced against the chimney, fixed his eyes on his target.

Ten … eleven …

Gareth whipped the sling into life.

Twelve …

Gareth released one end of the sling, and the stone hummed across the distance …

Thirteen!

Gareth had a moment to see one of the monks drop to his knees in prayer, heard the clamor from the square, tucked his sling in his pouch, and scrabbled back down the slates. He grabbed the knotted rope and slid over the edge, hand-over-handing down, down. Then Labala had him, and Fox was whipping the rope back down from where it’d been looped around the chimney. He was the one who could climb a sheet of glass if you dared him, who’d clambered up a drain spout for eleven nights and fixed the rope for Gareth to climb.

Labala was holding back laughter, great whooping roars that’d ring as loudly as the gong if he let them out.

They turned to run, and a voice called.

“You! You three! Stand where you are!”

It had to be a warder.

None of the three responded, but began to run.

“I said stop!” the warder called, and pelted after them, truncheon raised.

The fourth member of the team, Cosyra, dumped a bucket of slops out from the doorway she’d been stationed in, and the warder shrieked, skidded, and went flat. Cosyra leapt over him, ran after the others.

Even laughing as hard as she was, she caught up in a block.

They ran on a few blocks, ducked into a deserted mews.

“Eleven nights,” Labala gurgled, his bulk jiggling with laughter. “They’ll be gaoinga in the headbone in another ten.”

“There won’t be another ten,” Gareth said flatly.

“Why not?” Fox asked.

“We almost got caught tonight,” he said. “It won’t be nearly as funny if we end up in some priestly dungeon after twelve nights … or fifteen.”

Labala pouted.

“But we had them going so much!”

“Gareth’s right,” Cosyra said. “Always best to stop when you’re ahead.”

“Truths,” Fox agreed. “So what’s next?”

Gareth thought. “I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

“So do I,” Cosyra said.

“I’d like a night or two to hammer them out,” Gareth said. “Meet here, two nights gone?”

Labala grunted, Fox nodded.

“Two nights from now,” Cosyra said, and, without further farewell, went out of the mews and was gone.

Gareth and the others made good-byes, and Gareth made his way through the dark streets, ducking the torch of a warder’s patrol once, and spotting two footpads in an alley that he went around to his uncle’s house.

The ladder he’d left against the outer wall was still in place, and Gareth went up it deftly. The courtyard on the other side was empty, and he put the small ladder on the wall top, where it’d not be seen, went down the eight feet to the brick courtyard on one of his aunt’s flowering vines. He crossed the courtyard, used the jagged corners of the mansion’s brick facing to climb two stories, went across to a drain on a windowsill, up another story, and into his bedroom.

He uncovered a lantern, blew it into life, looked at himself in the mirror. A bit dusty, hands and feet dirty. He stripped, put his clothes in a hamper for a laundress, washed, and slid into bed.

His body said it was time for sleep, that the morning’s dullness with its quills and ink would come too soon, but his mind was still moving fast.

It’d been close to a year since his parents’ murder by the Linyati. The coastal watch had arrived just at dusk, and Gareth had wanted to rave where had they been, why were they always late?

But his village had been the third raided that day. One guardsman told him, although Gareth didn’t absorb the information until later, that this was, indeed, as far north as the dreaded and loathed Linyati had come on their raids, and perhaps this would be enough to get King Alfieri off his ass and declare war on the Slavers.

His mate had snorted, and said nothing would get that lard-butt moving except maybe setting fire to the throne itself. Or, he added, getting a priest to ban all the wenching he did, although that’d more likely get the priest banned.

Gareth didn’t care what kings did … all he wanted was to have his parents back, to say the words he’d not said that day. Or, failing that, to learn how to use a sword, and somehow find the Slavers who’d brought ruin to his village and kill them all, slowly.

Knoll and Thom, and two other villagers who’d seen the dark ships beach and fled into the moors, would be taken in by the nearest village and raised as one of them, as was common along the coast, where accident, storm, and creatures of the depths not infrequently brought tragedy.

A letter of credit was semaphored from Ticao, and Gareth went by the first coach to the capital, to be taken in by his father’s brother, Pol.

All he took with him from the ransacked house, besides what clothes he thought he might need, realizing most of what he owned would mark him for the bumpkin he was, was an ornate wand his father had been given when he completed his studies, a small but very dangerous-looking razor-edged sorcerous dagger used for cutting herbs, wicks, and magical circles, and a ring with a cameo of his mother that his father had made when they’d become betrothed.

The rest, and whatever else was salvageable in the village, would be auctioned, and whatever money raised would go to help support Thom and Knoll in their new homes.

The three boys made hesitant farewells, minds on the pyres burning on the headlands, and the bodies turning to ash on them. They swore they’d meet again, someday, and they’d never forget one another, all three knowing their words to be impossible dreams, no better than lies.

Gareth turned away from the ruins, toward a new life in the great city.

Pol Radnor was eight years younger than his brother, the wizard, and, at least as far as girth and ostensible merriment, very much like him. But where the Mage Daav Radnor had been content with being a minor magician in a sleepy village, helping the people and their animals with their woes and sicknesses, sometimes able to cast a bit of a weather spell, Pol was very ambitious.

He’d spent only three years as a shipper’s clerk before becoming a purser on one of his magnate’s ships. Two voyages later, he had made enough contacts and profit for his employer to loan him the money for a single cargo. The ship didn’t sink, and pirates didn’t spot the small merchantman, and Pol had begun his rise.

Now he owned directly or controlled half a dozen ships, had agents in twice that many ports, and was known as a fortunate man. The cargoes he agreed to carry not only arrived at their destination, but not infrequently at exactly the time they could bring the highest profits. Some said Pol had the Gift for the future, but he denied it with a chuckle, saying he was no more than lucky.

However, he was known to say, to his handful of cronies, that a man made his own luck.

It took little time for Gareth to realize that if it was possible to make your luck through hard work and careful insinuation into the right circles, Pol Radnor was lucky indeed, and it should not be long before his uncle would be named a King’s Servant, then possibly knighted, and, if he were successful enough, be granted a Merchant Prince’s cloak and allowed to wear furs on his robes.

He’d married well, to an older, rather plain woman named Priscian, another magnate’s daughter. So far, their marriage was unblessed, but Pol seemed unworried. Priscian’s dowry had not only included two ships with their crews and a newly built mansion not far from the river that divided Ticao in half, but a country estate and, most importantly, the gold and servants to operate them handsomely.

Gareth had always been a bit suspicious of Pol’s cheeriness, thinking no one could be that honestly hearty that much of the time. But after almost a year he grudged the man’s jollity must be sincere. He did notice, though, that Pol seemed happiest when his receivables were for gold, rather than silver.

Pol had allowed Gareth a respectable time, almost a month, for mourning, then announced the young man’s future. He would be permitted to follow in his uncle’s footsteps, first as a clerk, then as a chief clerk, then, if all went well, put in control of an entire division of Pol’s mercantile empire, for empire it surely would be in a few short years, Megaris blessing them.

Gareth asked when he’d be allowed to go to sea.

“Never, if it’s any of me, son,” Pol said. “I went, twice, and a blasted waste of time it was. Nothing but crude men, storms, seasickness, pirates, and uncertainty.

“I learned my lesson, and am going to do you the great favor of not making you repeat the course.

“As they say, a man with one foot on dry land is blessed, and a man with both feet there is in league with the gods.