Fox's Bride (7 page)

Chandur had to stoop on his way up the stairs, and his hilt scraped against the doorframe opening onto the deck. Sand scattered across the planking. The wind beat against a sail painted to show sun beams branching down from a camel's hump. The ship tilted, cresting a dune then plunging down its steep side. Veils of sand washed over the prow and Chandur, yellow grains gathering around coins embedded in the boards. The gold and silver pieces were enchanted, to Attract the men to the deck. Otherwise the Lightening magic in the ship might let the wind shove them overboard.

The warm brightness seemed a different world than the cabins, and Chandur was grateful for it. He breathed easier out here. He told himself he had done the right thing, clearing himself with Hiresha. She had looked distressed but thankfully had not cried.
Some things can't be.
The priest had foretold him marrying a younger woman with “eyes a'glitter,” though Chandur was not certain what that part meant.

“You're looking sun sick,” a sailor said to him. “Best be the bunk for you.”

“Hey,” another man said, “that an enchanted sword?”

Before Chandur could answer, a shout came from near the ship's wheel.

“Captain, look astern. They're riding out.” A man with an open green vest pointed behind the ship, to the city wall.

The great bronze gates had opened, and camels sprinted out, their riders lifting swords and bows. The long-necked beasts glided down the dunes, feet flowing, sand puffing behind them. One camel spun in circles, refusing to follow the urgings of its rider.

Chandur gripped the ship's railing, and a pressure built in his chest, a weight of fate. He had never seen so many camelry ride out, not for a murderer, not to hunt bandits, not for anything less than war.

The ship captain was a beetle of a man, arch-backed, fingers tapping together below his chin. He wore too much glazed jewelry. “Must be some trouble in the camps.” He wriggled a hand to their right, at a sprawl of leather tents between two sand dunes. “Hope we're too far to see it, when they begin tossing heads. Poor sons of jackals.”

Chandur did not believe the city guards were after the salt miners who lived in the slums.
They're after us, after Hiresha.
The camels were gaining on the ship, but they could not keep up that pace.

“By the Six and the sand!” A sailor pointed back to the docks where ships were casting off and floating down the dunes. “What're they doing? They don't have no cargo.”

“No ballast.” A man pushed back his turban for a better look. “They're to wreck themselves.”

The captain said, “What godless day is this?”

Janny stuck her head on deck, blinking in the light. “What's the shouting?”

Chandur said, “Get Hiresha.”

The pursuing ships thrashed about in the wind, lacking enough weight in their holds to balance their Lightening enchantments. After skimming off a dune, one tipped forward too far and skewered the sands with its prow. Chandur could see men tumble off the deck, and he hated to think of them hurt. Other ships skated on the wind, tilting at a frightening angle. One capsized and began to slide on its side. Another was airborne and flipped over, its masts shattering

“Ah, spit!” The captain clutched his own tunic. “They're after us.”

When a certain amethyst flashed in Hiresha's dream, it meant someone spoke her name nearby.

Her arms shone, jewels on her dress rippling with power that she was channeling into the ruby that Lightened the ship. Another enchantress who worked at the docks would have likely already charged the gemstone with magic, but Hiresha had wished to make certain. She withdrew her hands from the mirror, glass parting around her fingers then molding back to a flat surface.

“We're wanted.” The reflection of Hiresha in the yellow dress pointed to the amethyst.

Hiresha closed her eyes and left her dream laboratory.

She climbed marble steps toward waking. Maid Janny's voice drifted down from the top of the stairs in Hiresha's mind.

“Hiresha. Come quick, Hiresha. Something's gone spotty.”

The enchantress sprinted up the stairs toward consciousness, but she came no closer to the top. Her fatigue multiplied the steps in front of her and stretched them. Her sleep had been interrupted the night before, and the morning's trek across the city had exhausted her.

“Hiresha!” Janny sounded desperate. “Wake up. Think of Fosapam without clothes if you have to.”

The steps dissolved, and Hiresha slid down a stone slide. Her body groaned and turned over. She fell back to sleep.

The crew goggled at the captain. Cloth protecting their faces sucked into their mouths as they panted.

“What god-forsaken cargo we carrying?” The captain twitched around and fixed his squint on Chandur. “Do you know—Have you—Who are you?”

“I am Fosapam Chandur, spellsword.” He did not fear his destiny, whatever might happen today. Fate throbbed in him, a rush, a frothing heat.

“You run from your mistress? Or kill someone? Kill Pharaoh?” The captain clawed at his own brows. He whirled back to look at the dust storm of camels and the ships. “Stop us. Scorpion have mercy! Slack sail, drop anchor. Stop this ship.”

“No.” Chandur curled one finger at a time around the hilt of his stone sword.

He had been astounded by the reckless desperation of the pursuit. The priests or someone else of power must have forced captains to depart on pain of death, or they would not have chanced wrecking their ships. Chandur never thought their fleeing would cause all this.
Don't blame the captain for thinking Pharaoh has been murdered.
Still, Chandur would protect the enchantress to the last.

“Keep us moving,” he said.

“So it is you. May a thousand hyenas chew your broken bones!” The captain squared himself with Chandur, though his knees trembled. “We're honest traders, Founder preserve us! We stop this ship.”

Chandur activated the Lightening enchantment in the sword, shifting its weight from his arm to his mind. His outer robe ripped as he swung the weapon from his back. The sword was not a blade so much as a long wedge of red stone. Five feet and fifty pounds of jasper rock pointed toward the sky above the captain's head.

“I think I'd rather you kill me,” the captain said, wetness soaking down his shaking legs, “than have Pharaoh say I betrayed the gods' city. Stop this ship, I say.”

Sailors dashed toward the anchors and the rigging.

Chandur swung down, but he did not release the Lightening enchantment on the jasper sword. The captain did not deserve to die. Chandur even felt sorry for him, so he hit him with the blunt side of the stone wedge and only with about five pounds of its true weight.

Ribs cracked, and the captain sprawled across the deck. Chandur winced, hoping the blow would not kill him despite all his efforts to soften it.

Straining with his mind, he hefted the sword onto his shoulder and sprinted toward two men lifting an anchor. The flat of his sword connected with shoulder and side. Bones broke, and the anchor dropped back onto the deck.

Chains rattled as the second anchor was thrown overboard. Chandur would not let the ships and camels catch up with them.
They won't take Hiresha to the tomb.
With a crash, the spellsword splintered anchor chain and the wooden railing beneath it.

A sailor tried to knife him. Chandur wheeled away then smashed back with his sword, and the man was flung overboard, rolling down the dune in a wash of sand.

A ship was scooting across the desert. If the wind did not flip it over, it would intercept them in minutes. Another ship with more ballast had matched the pace of the camelry, also gaining ground.

Chandur lifted a fist to the sailors untying the rigging. “Get down. Down or I put you down.”

One man ran from him. Another carried a brass-weighted club from the hold to face him. Two more heaved on a line, pulling half the sail upward and slowing the ship.

The man with the club leaned in and swung. Chandur's reach was longer. He Lightened his sword too much, and it whipped into the sailor before Chandur could deactivate the enchantment. Instead of a clobbering, the blade only slapped with the weight of a feather fan. Embarrassment blazed in Chandur at the mistake though the sailor dropped his club anyway, perhaps from the shock of seeing himself hit with a red greatsword. The man threw himself to the deck in surrender. Chandur let him lie.

Men flung the rope down and scattered, and the sail unfurled with a snap of fabric. Far too close, riders whooped and cursed, and camels roared through their noses.

The sun's glare slid across the sail. The wind shifted on Chandur's damp brow.
They're turning the ship.

Chandur bellowed his frustration. “Who’re you to fight fate?”

He bolted toward the helm, swept a man with two daggers off his feet, and knocked down the man at the wheel. The jasper sword he jabbed downward, wedging it upright in the deck before he seized the spinning wheel.

Wood bit into his palms. Muscles strained in his arms, back, and calves. Sweat dribbled between the links of his circlet.

As he struggled to turn the ship away from the charging camels, a sailor scrambled up and gripped the jasper sword. The man grunted, eyes popping as he tried to lift it. The stone blade slid from the planking and tipped onto the sailor. He cried out. The sword pinned him to the deck.

Chandur steered the ship back toward the empty horizon in time to see a second vessel breezing across the dunes to cut them off. He braced himself to be rammed, expecting the hull to explode in splinters. Instead, the over-Lightened ship grazed off them like a leaf sliding over a wall. Timbers still crunched, men still lost their feet, and sailors from the other ship jumped onto the deck.

The second vessel rolled over, mast breaking.

Camels loosed battle cries nearby in deafening groans, and grapnels swung up from the guards to bite into the railing. Sand churned behind the ship. Its speed dragged. The captain had crawled to the second anchor and shoved it over.

While hefting the greatsword and kicking a man back to the deck, Chandur began to worry for Hiresha. He did not see how he could keep the craft moving by himself.
Unless, we're not to leave on the ship after all. Could shove a few men off their camels, ride away with her.

It might work. Or the ships might outrace them once their camels tired. He grew confused about where fate wished to lead him. He needed direction, but Hiresha had still not appeared from below decks.

The five boarders advanced with daggers and fish-hook flails. Chandur was looking for a sign, for guidance. Distracted, he did not back up fast enough, and a sharpened edge struck his sleeve, parting the purple fabric but sliding off the enchanted scale beneath. The next dagger cut toward his head. The ruby on his circlet shone once, and the bronze razor was Burdened and crushed against the deck. He felt the painful relief of knowing that fate had worked through the enchantress to save him.