Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (14 page)

Tyrfing looked at him quizzically and then nodded. ‘Too far south to be a simple hunting run,’ he bit his lip. ‘Any more?’

Heimdall scanned the sky, making all the others look up as well. ‘None. Not a flash of colour in sight. Though this air, this fog,’ he paused then. ‘It is not natural.’

Another roar echoed through the grey fog, closer this time. Half the crew ducked instinctively. Shushing whispers flew across deck. Ilios warbled from the corner of his beak. Heimdall murmured the translation. ‘Male. A big grey and no rider. He seems to be chasing something.’

No sooner had the deep words left Heimdall’s mouth than a distant patch of fog blossomed orange. The whooshing sound of flame and the splash of some unfortunate seabird drifted by shortly after. Ilios growled as softly as any gryphon could.

‘Something is wrong,’ this from Tyrfing.

Farden sighed, laden with many thoughts. ‘I think you’re right.’

With a nod to Heimdall and Loki, the two mages crept back to the aftcastle. Tyrfing whispered orders as he passed each man. ‘Silence now. Not a noise,’ he urged.

Roiks was still trading hearsay on the stairs with another sailor when they passed him.

‘I hear a dragon can spy the heat of a man’s heart, and ‘is breath too.’

‘That ain’t true. They would have come down on us already.’

‘True it is.’

‘Roiks,’ chided Nuka. ‘Silence.’

Roiks threw a rough salute and fell silent. ‘Aye, Cap’n.’

Tyrfing, Nuka, and Farden bent their heads together. ‘Roiks is right,’ said Farden.

Nuka made a concerned face. ‘About our hearts?’ he asked.

Tyrfing shook his head. ‘No. But they can sniff out magick. It’s why the wild ones hunt it.’

‘I’ve got several scars to prove it, if you’d like to see,’ Farden offered.

Nuka waved a hand. ‘Then, begging the question, why aren’t we aflame this very moment? We must be a beacon of magick with all these mages aboard.’

‘Must be this fog. Heimdall said it wasn’t normal.’

Silence, but for the fog, the creaking ship, and for the roaring circle of dragons above.

Farden rubbed his nose. ‘We need to go ashore.’

‘What, all of us?’

‘No, just a few. You and I. Heimdall maybe. To see what’s truly going on here,’ said Farden. Tyrfing made a face at his suggestion. Farden narrowed his eyes at him. ‘Spit it out, uncle.’

‘I agree with going ashore, but with all… to be honest…’ Farden’s eyes got narrower. Tyrfing let the words tumble out. ‘I don’t think you’re fit enough to come, Farden.’

As Farden opened his mouth to speak, there was a whoosh of wings overhead. A dark shadow skimmed through the fog, dragging wind behind it. It was so close it worried the pennant at the tip of the mainmast.

The
Waveblade
held its breath. The silence in the dragon’s wake was almost painful in its severity. Teeth clenched like vices. Fingers strangled cloth, rope, and railing. Abdomens clenched and brows furrowed. A gryphon poised itself. Breath lingered in the darkest parts of lungs, burning.

Just as the ship was teetering on the cusp of exhaling, somebody foolish dropped their sword.

The peal of the blade striking an iron shutter was enough to wake even a Krauslung drunk. There was a screech, almost of delight, as the dragon heard the clang and clatter through the fog. A dark shape wheeled and flapped. There was a treacherous moment in which the whole crew hoped the dragon was not a foe after all, instead some benevolent emissary sent by the Old Dragon to guide them into port. That concept was quickly and universally eradicated as soon as the first spout of curling flame flirted with the iron point of the bowsprit.

Nuka let his lungs and tongue loose. ‘Forward ranks, fire at will! Wind mages, get us moving! Roiks, give that overgrown lizard the full prickly glory of our broadsides when I turn her. Let’s show this beast what steel tastes like!’ he yelled, as he spun the wheel as far over as it would go. The
Waveblade
lurched to do his bidding.

Tyrfing whirled around to order Farden to get below. Much to his horror, he found his nephew standing calmly with his arms crossed and his boots untied, laces trailing tauntingly.

‘Don’t you dare…’ he gasped.

‘Looks like you don’t have much of a choice in the matter, uncle,’ Farden shrugged, and before Tyrfing could even flinch, he was kicking off his boots and hopping frantically towards the nearest railing.

‘Stop!’ Tyrfing shouted, leaping after him. But it was hopeless.

With a kick of his feet, a mock salute, and one last grim look at the icy water, Farden hurled himself overboard, leaving nothing but his boots wobbling on the deck.

‘Man overboard!’ A woman’s voice. Probably Lerel. It was the last thing the mage heard before the ice-cold sea knocked the air from him.

The words he heard next were very clear indeed.

‘You’re a dim-witted, cretinous, obtuse, ignorant, blunt-nosed
fuckwit
, Farden, and that’s all I will trust myself to say at this moment in time.’

‘You forgot stubborn,’ Farden spluttered. It wasn’t often in life that a man gets to involuntarily punctuate his words with sea-water. This, unfortunately, was one of those times. Farden had experienced one before and from what he remembered, it hadn’t improved much. He retched and spat.

Farden was dropped on the shingle like a sack of dead bones. Tyrfing stood over him and swung his arms in a circle to warm them up. He winced at the cold that was trying its hardest to penetrate his chest. ‘What were you thinking, boy?’ he wheezed.

‘Of a way to get you and I ashore.’

‘Well… you certainly did that,’ Tyrfing spat sand from his mouth. He pressed his hands to his armoured chest and pressed hard. Within a few brief moments, steam was coming from his wet robe. Farden waved his hands and slapped his own chest, his tongue too cold to get the words out. Tyrfing rolled his eyes and knelt by his nephew’s side. He spread a hand over his ribs and pushed down. Farden winced as the magick stung him. The heat was intense, like the fire burnt at the centre of his bones.

‘See? This is why I wanted you to stay behind. You’re still on the verge of exhaustion. You can’t handle magick. Not to mention the fact that you’re about as good a swimmer as a boulder troll,’ hissed Tyrfing. He looked around. The fog was as thick on the beach as it was on the sea. The world around them was monochrome; a canvas of wet slate, granite, and fog. Even the tide-abandoned seaweed had been dyed a charcoal grey. It was about as welcoming as it was warm. ‘And what exactly was your plan, anyway? Now that we’re here? Why just the t…’ His questioning came to an abrupt halt when they heard a commotion somewhere out to sea, muffled by the fog. The two mages turned to listen as there was a deep thud and a roar. Silence followed and they both frowned.

‘We need to get off this beach,’ Farden coughed. He put his red-gold fists against the stones with a clank and pushed himself up. He couldn’t hide the fact that his arms shook with the effort and the cold.

‘If the rest of your plan is as well-thought out as that, I cannot wait to hear it.’

‘Sarcasm does not become an Arkmage.’

Tyrfing grunted, and shed his soaking white robe. The armour underneath glittered in its intricacy. Farden chose to keep his cloak on. Despite the spell, he had to fight to keep from shivering as he waited for his uncle to stow his unwanted clothes under a slab of granite. Hearing the frantic drum-roll of chattering teeth, Tyrfing looked up. Farden was going a paler shade of blue. He almost looked like Durnus. His scars stuck out, pink and livid. Wet hair clung to his face like the tentacles of some dishevelled, black squid. Tyrfing shook his head. ‘You’re not ready,’ he muttered. Farden threw him an acidic look.

‘For what?’

A sigh. ‘Anything.’

Farden simply sneered, and began to trudge up the beach. He moved as quietly as his feet and the shingle would allow. He soon heard his uncle catching up. His steel sabatons played dull notes on the stones.

The peculiar thing about fog is that it is a canvas for the imagination. The mind paints its own monsters on its grey wisps. Tendrils become claws. Whorls become faces. Shadows of cliffs and rocks become crouching enemies. Ambushes. Marauders. Dragons. Farden glared at each and every one of them, but nothing came. They all faded as the fog swirled.

Only when another dull boom rumbled through the fog did Farden turn around. He hesitated. ‘Do you think…?’

‘No, no I do not. That ship was built to fight daemons. A few dragons should be manageable,’ Tyrfing replied tersely. His tone was a concoction of uncertainty and anger, the latter directed at the former and at Farden for causing it.

It was a long and silent walk that took them to the sheer cliff-face that marked the edge of the beach. The mountain rose up out of the wet boulders and splintered shingle without so much as an introduction or a gentle angle. In places, it actually lent out past the vertical, making little hollows and miniature caves for the fog to linger in. Farden and Tyrfing looked around for some sort of a path, or a road, or anything that would lead them somewhere civilised. No luck.

Tyrfing crossed his arms. ‘Now what?’

Farden scowled and pondered the question for a moment. He then dug into his cloak pocket and produced a copper coin, bitten by a sliver of green rust on one side. Tyrfing rolled his eyes. ‘Scales, we go left, Arkathedral, we go right,’ decided Farden.

‘It’s such a treat to see sheer tactical brilliance in action.’

Farden glared. ‘What’s your problem, uncle?’

‘Your impetuosity, for one.’

‘I think you’ll find I’m the only one doing what’s necessary. I’m doing what we came here to do.’

‘You’re doing the first thing that came into your head, nothing more. Like the same old Farden.’

Farden’s reply was sickly in its scorn. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint. Everybody likes a bit of nostalgia.’

Tyrfing tried to summon some patience. ‘Just toss the damn coin.’

Farden did so. With a chime, the coin rose, and fell, and Farden held his palm out for his uncle to see. ‘Scales. Left it is,’ he said. He turned and walked away before Tyrfing could venture a reply.

For half an hour they walked with the cliff at their right shoulders. The wet rock undulated between sheer and intrusively angled, but at no point did it show any sign of a doorway or stairwell. Nor did the beach show any sign of transforming into a road or path. At some points, the mages had to crouch and shuffle along like ducks to avoid banging their heads on overhangs. The worst element of it was that the fog refused them any sense of distance or time; they wandered on in a bubble of featureless grey, the cliff-face their only hint of actual progress.

Farden’s thoughts had been stewing while they walked, and now they were coming to the boil. As they emerged from under yet another section of overhanging granite, slick with moisture and bedecked with rotten moss, Farden turned on his uncle.

‘Do you know what the problem is?’

Tyrfing looked a little startled to say the least. ‘Are you saying there’s only one?’

Farden ignored the retort and stuck to the scripted tirade he had been working on for the past ten minutes. ‘Nobody is giving me a chance. Nobody trusts me to make a right decision for once. The ideas I have are always the foolhardy ones, the impetuous ones. Whatever Farden suggests must be wrong. Same old Farden.’

‘That’s not true. If it were, Farden, we wouldn’t be in Nelska this very moment. This was your plan, to come to the Sirens for a cure. Not ours.’

‘And I would place good coin that you’re already regretting listening to me.’

‘That’s not true…’

Farden cut him off. ‘I came back because Albion was killing me. In fact, the more I think about it, it actually
did
kill me. I came back to make amends and yet all I seem to be making is trouble again. Have you seen the way the younger mages look at me? Most of them don’t see a legend, they see a legendary failure wandering the decks. A Written who gave up his Book. Who made mistake after mistake and now expects the world to pay for it. I bet they’ve all figured out my connection with Samara too,’ he hesitated as he spoke her name. He still couldn’t get used to it. ‘They judge me before I’ve had a chance to open my mouth. And you’re no different uncle. If you had been the one to jump from the ship first, you would have been leading the way, being the heroic one. But me? I’m stubborn and impetuous. I’m condemned before I even act.’

‘Do you blame us? A sabre-cat can’t file off its teeth and go gallop with the deer, Farden.’

‘I thought you said I’d come back from Albion a different man.’

‘Some of you has, some of you hasn’t. Most of you, Albion has stolen. Changed you into gods know what, I don’t want to know. Thankfully, that Farden seems to be fading away each day that passes, and I can see more of the Farden that exiled himself. But you left a rash, stubborn, angry man. A great mage, but a broken man. Now the mage part is broken too, and the rest of you with it. My apologies if that sounds harsh. I thought you might appreciate the truth.’

Farden didn’t. ‘Broken things need fixing, uncle,’ he said.