The River of Shadows (11 page)

“I know that,” said Taliktrum. “Of course we must sail. The question is, where?”

“And before that, the question’s
how,
” said Fiffengurt. “As in, how far can we get? We have water but precious little food. The rats fouled most of the grain in the hold, and devoured everything in the smokehouse, and ate through the tin walls of the bread room. And all the animals are dead.”

“You lie,” shouted a voice from among the ixchel standing on the hay bales. “I heard a goat bleating on the orlop deck this morning, m’lord, as plain as I hear you now.”

“Can’t be,” said Big Skip, shaking his head. “Teggatz and I did the inventory. There are carcasses we couldn’t account for, true enough. But they must have been burned to cinders, or else hurled themselves over the sides. There’s no blessed way we missed a goat.”

“Goat or no goat, we’ll soon be hungry,” said Pazel.

“That’s right,
Muketch,
” said Haddismal, “and without decent food the men won’t be fit to fight, should it come to that.”

“We lack medical supplies as well,” said Fulbreech.

“And the ship needs repairs,” said Fiffengurt. “That foremast is only a jury-rig—one more hard blow and she’ll fall. And probably take the kevels and the chase-beams with her. The gun carriages want attention, too.”

Suddenly Uskins giggled, loud and shrill. “Fit to fight!” he said. “Who do you think to fight, Sergeant Haddismal? That armada, maybe? What odds would you give them, eh, crawlies? Let’s wager, let’s have a little fun—”

Taliktrum’s finger stabbed down at Uskins. “That buffoon should not have been admitted. Who brought him?”

Uskins lowered his voice. “No one brought me, Lord Taliktrum. I merely followed my friends.”

Now it was Alyash’s turn to laugh. “What blary friends?”

Uskins’ mouth twisted, but he made no reply.

“Quarreling imbeciles!” said Taliktrum. “Your race truly is a misstep on the part of nature. By the sun and stars, act like men! Where is the sorcerer? When can we expect his next attack?”

The argument exploded again. Haddismal pointed out that Arunis’ last attack had only occurred after the ixchel drugged every human aboard. The ixchel fired back that drugged sleep was kinder than what giants had meted out to their people for five hundred years. Jeers and insults flew. When order at last returned, however, it was clear that no one knew where Arunis was hiding.

“I will say this,” said Bolutu. “He will not wait long. The South is changed, and powers have arisen that were not here … before. Arunis will not risk his prize being snatched by some mage or ruler mightier than himself.”

“What can he do, though?” asked Big Skip. “If he could use the Stone, he’d have come for it already, wouldn’t he?”

“Let him try,” said Haddismal, and his men rumbled in agreement.

“You speak in ignorance,” said Hercól. “The mage is three thousand years old. He has survived cataclysms beyond anything we have experienced. Do you think he will let himself be thwarted by a small company of marines? No, it is the Nilstone itself that thwarts him, for the present. And it is these two”—he indicated Pazel and Thasha—“who have best understood his tactics. How does one handle a poker heated in the furnace? With a glove, of course. That simple insight, when Thasha brought it to me, explained so much of the sorcerer’s efforts and schemes. This creature”—Hercól gestured at the Shaggat—“is his chosen glove. Arunis cares nothing for him or his deformed version of the Old Faith. He merely believes the Shaggat will serve his purpose.”

“Arqual’s purpose, too,” hissed Myett.

“Now, that just ain’t so,” said Haddismal. “The Emperor wants the downfall of the Mzithrin Kings, and he planned to use the Shaggat against them. That’s true, and well deserved, after all their crimes. But His Supremacy knew nothing about the Nilstone, or Arunis for that matter. He never meant things to come to such a pass.”

“Tell that to the survivors.”

Everyone turned. It was Lord Talag, Taliktrum’s father. He stood in the midst of the ixchel on the hay bales, leaning on the shoulder of a younger man. His thick gray hair was tied back in the style of elder ixchel, and his eyes blazed with fury. “Tell them!” he spat again. “The limbless, the eyeless, the orphaned, the mad. ‘Don’t blame Arqual. We never meant the Shaggat to do so well. We thought he would only sack a few cities, burn a few regions, exterminate a people or two. A brief civil war is all we had in mind—a war to break your will to fight
us
, when our fleets came in turn.’ Give them comfort, giant. Tell them how much better their lives will be under the Arquali heel.”

Pazel was alarmed. Since his abuse by the rats, Talag had been quiet and withdrawn. But here he was again in all his ferocity, Talag the mastermind, who had swept all his people up in his dream of a homecoming, who had exploited Ott’s war conspiracy as deftly as Arunis had. Here was the genius, the human-hater, Diadrelu’s brother and her twisted reflection. As much as anyone aboard, Talag had brought them to this moment. Was he recovered enough to lead the clan once more? And which was worse, the clear-eyed hatred of the father, or the hazy delusions of the son?

Talag began to cough; perhaps he was not so recovered after all. When the fit finally ended he shook his head. “In any case, your plans for the mad king have failed. The soul entombed in that statue will never breathe again, let alone reach his fanatics on Gurishal to lead them in a new holy war. The sorcerer may do all that you fear, if and when he comes for the Stone—but not with the aid of the Shaggat. My son has foreseen this, and much else that he has yet to reveal.”

Thasha looked at Pazel and rolled her eyes.

“Go to your rest, Father,” said Taliktrum. “Lehdra, Nasonnok, escort him.” Turning to the humans, he drew a deep breath. “In sum: you cannot locate Arunis, you have no idea what to do with the Nilstone, you do not know the first thing about the surrounding country or the armada that passed us, and you do not have a plan. Am I leaving anything out?”

“We’ve gold enough to buy a fair-sized realm,” said Haddismal. “We can hire the best curse-breakers this South has to offer. They’ll fix the Shaggat, if he can be fixed. And if we can pop that stone out of his hand without killing him.”

“Or yourselves,” said Taliktrum.

“And meanwhile,” put in Alyash, “we look for a place called Stath Bálfyr. We have course headings from there, as you probably know. Headings for a safer, western return across the Nelluroq, behind the Mzithrini defenses, to the Shaggat’s homeland of Gurishal.”

“Y-ess,” said Taliktrum. “From Stath Bálfyr. So I’ve been told.”

Pazel saw the sudden alertness in every ixchel’s face, and knew its source. Diadrelu had told Hercól everything, a few hours before her death. The ixchel had deceived the deceivers. The course headings were a fiction, the old documents that contained them forgeries. Stath Bálfyr was real, but it was no starting point for a run across the Ruling Sea. It was the ixchel homeland, a country ruled by the little people, the land Talag had sworn they would return to and reclaim.

He’s not going to tell them
, Pazel realized.
He’s no fool: better that they should want to find Stath Bálfyr than that he should have to drive them there with threats. Of course it may come to that in the end
.

“Sirs?” said a thin voice from the edge of the chamber.

It was Ibjen, the dlömic boy.

Taliktrum looked at him dubiously. “You have something to add?”

“The armada, sirs,” said Ibjen, his voice shaking. “There was talk of it in the village. Just talk, you understand. We are simple folk—”

“You don’t have to convince us of that,” said Taliktrum. “Speak quickly, and be done.”

“Out here we have little to do with the Empire, sir,” said Ibjen, “and the news we do have comes by way of Masalym. When my father came out to the Sandwall, boats still made the crossing from the city every day or two, and soldiers would be billeted with the townsfolk, and speak of the
Platazcra
, the Infinite Conquest. But that was years ago. For a long time now we have been abandoned—that is why my mother chose to send me here.”

“You ramble, boy.”

Ibjen made an apologetic nod. “Sir, before your ship we had had no visitors in half a year. And the last visitor died of fever in just three days. We have no doctor, so my father and I tended him as best we could. He was not a man of Masalym. Some guessed that he came from Orbilesc, others from Calambri.”

“These names mean nothing to us,” said Taliktrum. “If you cannot get to the point—”

“Listen to him!” said Thasha. “He’s doing us a favor, being here.”

“And those words blary well
do
mean something—one of ’em at least,” added Fiffengurt. “
ORBILESC
is engraved on our blary sheet anchors, though the letters are faded now. I always wondered if it referred to her home port.” He gestured at Ibjen. “You carry on, lad. I say you’re mighty brave, to step aboard this ship.”

Ibjen did not look brave at that moment. “Orbilesc and Calambri are cities far to the west, in the heart of Bali Adro,” he said. “And it is true that the Empire’s greatest shipyards are there.” He looked at Thasha and swallowed. “My father sent me to the neighbors’ house when the stranger began to die. But last night he told me something he had never mentioned before. That the dying man had broken his silence before the end. That he’d said he came from a village on the banks of the River Sundral, near Orbilesc. He said that the whole of the city had been caught up in some huge, secret effort, for years. That Imperial warships turned away all private vessels at a distance of fifty miles, and that a strange glow hung over Orbilesc by night. Later the mountains began to shake, and boulders crashed down upon his village. The fell light grew stronger. And finally the river gushed with boiling water that killed every fish, every frog and snake and wading bird—even the trees whose roots drank from the stream. That, the man had claimed, was when he fled east.”

Ibjen gazed beseechingly at his listeners. “My father thought it but the ravings of a dying man. Until yesterday, that is. Now he believes that Orbilesc was building ships for the Emperor. The same ships that passed in the gulf, Thashiziq. The ships of the armada.”

There was a long pause; the men were too unsettled to speak. To Pazel’s surprise it was Big Skip who broke the silence.

“Right,” he said. “Fleet or no fleet, we have to sail before we starve. And it can’t be north across the Nelluroq, even if we wished to—”

“Which we do
not,
” said Haddismal, “until we reach Stath Bálfyr, wherever that may be. This is an Arquali ship, and Magad’s word is law, even here on the far side of Alifros.”

“Glory to the Ametrine Throne,” said Alyash drily, “and if that ain’t motivation enough, there’s the small matter of him crucifying us, with our families, if we return to Arqual without completing the mission.”

Pazel kept his face expressionless.
Magad’s done all the punishing he’s going to do
, he thought.

“So,” said Big Skip, “turn east and we might catch up with that hellish armada; turn west and we might find the hellish place it came from. And either way we won’t get far before we’re too hungry to do our jobs. Ain’t it simple, then? We head due south—to this Masalym, thirty miles across the bay.”

No one seconded the motion. Big Skip raised his bushy eyebrows. “It’s a city,” he insisted. “They’ll feed us, just as these good village folk gave us water. What about it, mates? Thirty miles to the butcher’s shop, says I.”

But Bolutu shook his head. “The Masalym of my day would have been a good choice,” he said. “It was a trading city, and so used to visitors—either by sea, or out of the strange mountains of the Efaroc Peninsula at its back. Yet if Masalym today is ruled by the same power that launched those ships, then I for one would rather keep my distance from the butcher’s shop.”

“Ha!” blurted Uskins. “The butcher’s shop!”

His laugh was jarring, almost a scream, and nearly everyone looked at him in anger. Uskins flinched, as though expecting a blow. Whether or not his fear was justified Pazel never learned, however, for at that moment the ship’s drums erupted in pandemonium.

“Beat to quarters! Beat to quarters!” Already the cries resounded through the ship.

“Damnation, we’re still at anchor!” shouted Fiffengurt. “Alyash, get to the starboard battery! Sunderling, on deck! Set Fegin and his men to bracing that foremast! Go!”

“Are we under attack?” Taliktrum shouted. “Fiffengurt, how can this be?”

“It can’t!” snapped Fiffengurt. “There’s no way in Alifros a ship’s crept up on us! But who knows, who knows, in this mad country?” He turned wildly about. “Pathkendle! Wake the anchor-lifters! We can’t afford to leave more iron on the seafloor! Run, by the Sweet Tree, run!”

A Hasty Departure

22 Ilbrin 941

Pazel sprinted from the manger. He heard Thasha shouting his name but did not look back. Foreign-born, mutinous, expelled from the service, sentenced to death—amazing how it all disappeared. In emergencies he was simply a tarboy.

Refeg and Rer, the anchor-lifters, slept in a kind of stall behind the portside cable tiers. They almost never moved quickly. Pazel flew across the orlop with all the speed he dared, leaping the broken floor planks, flinging open doors.

He heard their breath, deep organ wheezes, before his eyes discerned their shapes. The brothers slept side by side, curled in beds of straw, their six-foot-long arms folded against their mammoth chests. Their skin was yellow-brown and rough as rhino hide, and festooned here and there with clumps of fur, green-black, like moss on stone. They were augrongs, survivors of a race that had all but disappeared from Alifros, dwellers in an Etherhorde slum when not serving on some Arquali ship. They spent nearly all their time asleep, harboring their titanic strength, rising for just one meal a week or to perform some labor that would have required scores of men. Their language was so rich in metaphor it seemed almost the language of dreams, and Pazel was the only person aboard who spoke it.

Left to themselves, augrongs could take a quarter hour to wake, and another quarter hour to get to their feet. Shouting, pleading, beating on cans did nothing to speed the process, and no one in their right mind would nudge them with pole or pitchfork. But a faster method had occurred to Pazel. Bending close (but not too close) to their sleeping heads, he summoned his memory of the Augronga tongue and boomed in an inhuman voice:
“Music in the forest: tomorrow calls me, I answer with my feet.”

Two pairs of fist-sized yellow eyes snapped open. The creatures surged upright, grunting like startled elephants. Pazel smiled. It worked every time: he had recited a phrase reserved for the saddest farewells. Each augrong thought that he was hearing the other’s voice, and after countless years cut off from their people, the brothers’ deepest fear was separation.

When they caught sight of Pazel they heaved irritated sighs. “Always the same one, the babbler, the noisy goose,” rumbled Rer, his huge eyelids drooping like batwings.

“Noisy till he’s plucked,” said Refeg, making a halfhearted swipe at Pazel.

Pazel jumped backward. “Emergency, emergency!” he cried, stripping the finesse from his Augronga. “Beat to quarters! Hear the drums!”

With impressive haste (for augrongs) the brothers stumbled out of their bedding and made for the No. 3 ladderway. They knew where they were wanted: at the main capstan, where each could do the work of fifty men in the arduous job of lifting anchor. Pazel slipped around them carefully, watching those vast flat hands. The augrongs had never hurt him; in fact he thought they appreciated his occasional service as a translator. But despite his grasp of their language, their minds remained a mystery. And Pazel could never forget that they had helped Arunis extract the Nilstone from the Red Wolf. From that day forward Pazel wondered just what kind of power Arunis had gained over the creatures, and if he could count on it still. But any mention of the sorcerer brought warning growls from the augrongs.

Pazel sprinted ahead, and in short order he was climbing the No. 3 ladderway. Five steep flights of stairs, each more crowded than the last, and the drums still sounding overhead. When he burst onto the topdeck at last he found himself in a crowd of men and tarboys, soldiers and steerage passengers, all making for the starboard rail. It was late afternoon; the sun was low and orange in the west. Pazel ran toward the bow. He could see Mr. Fiffengurt ahead, hobble-running, with an ixchel riding his shoulder.

When Pazel caught up with Fiffengurt he found that the ixchel was Ensyl. She was a wispy, earnest young woman with eyes that darted restlessly, until they suddenly fixed on you, and drilled. Catching sight of Pazel, she leaped from Fiffengurt’s shoulder to his own, landing lightly as a bird.

“Have you seen them?” she demanded.

“No,” gasped Pazel, still winded from the stairs. “Who are they? I can’t see any ship.”

“There’s no ship,” said Fiffengurt. “That’s why we were caught off-guard. Damnation, if those villagers betrayed us—”

They reached the tonnage hatch. As he had done many times, Pazel set a foot on the rail and leaped up to catch a mainmast forestay. With one hand on the wire-taut rope he leaned out over the yawning shaft, Ensyl clinging fiercely to his shirt. Now at last he could see over the crowd.

“But I still don’t—”

His words died in his throat. He saw them: dlömu, hundreds strong, lining the shore road from the village to the Tower of Narybir. They were still coming, pouring through the gatehouse, leaping down from the wall, even passing over the dunes about the tower’s foot. Were they forming ranks, carrying weapons? The land was too distant for him to be sure.

“They look like Mr. Bolutu,” said Ensyl. “Is it true what they’re saying in the clan, Pazel—that those beings rule all the South, that there’s no one else here at all?”

Pazel leaped to the deck again. He struggled to answer her as he raced to catch up with Fiffengurt, who had almost reached the forecastle. In normal times the commander gave his orders from the quarterdeck, but Fiffengurt was showing great deference to Captain Rose, who could still communicate by shouting through the window of the forecastle house.

Pazel went straight to that window himself. Alyash and a Besq midshipman were already standing before the dirty glass, yelling to the prisoners within. Framed between them, Captain Rose’s huge, choleric, red-bearded form glared out at the deck. “Stand aside, Pathkendle!” he bellowed, his voice rattling the glass.

Pazel jumped back. On the captain’s right stood Sandor Ott, a short man with the most savage face the tarboy had ever beheld. The spymaster’s eyes moved ravenously, devouring information. One hand, mottled with age spots and knife-scars, the fingernails mangled decades ago by torture, lay flat upon the glass. Behind the two men the other hostages crowded, struggling for a glimpse of the deck.

There was Neeps! The Sollochi boy lit up at the sight of Pazel, and he flashed a tarboy signal (two fingers pinched to the thumb:
Standing by to assist you
) with an ironic grin that Pazel found almost miraculous.
I’d be going mad in there. How’s he managing to keep up his spirits?

There was no sign of Marila, and an instant later Neeps himself was shouldered aside. As he had many times before Pazel felt the ache of guilt. He had promised to get them out of there, weeks ago, but had made no progress at all.

The lookouts in the crosstrees were flinging down reports. “Warriors, Mr. Fiffengurt! Fish-eyes, every one, and armed to the teeth!”

Fiffengurt snapped open his telescope. “Conveyance!” he bellowed. “Where’s their blary boat?”

“Not a boat to be seen, sir!” came the answer from the lookouts. “Not a launch, not a dinghy! They must have
walked
into that town!”

Over the shouting Pazel caught Thasha’s voice. She was there at the rail—with Fulbreech, to Pazel’s undying irritation. They stood shoulder to shoulder, heads inches apart, taking turns with her father’s telescope. Suddenly, as if he could feel Pazel’s gaze, Fulbreech glanced over his shoulder. “Come and see, Pathkendle! Make room there, Thashula—”

He nudged Thasha over with a familiarity that almost drove Pazel mad.
Thashula?
It was her childhood nickname, but Pazel had thought she hated it; she’d certainly never encouraged
him—

“Well, come on, man,” said Fulbreech.

Pazel lurched forward and took the telescope, his face shouting
Fool!
in a banner of scarlet.

No question about it: the dlömu were warriors. They were tall and muscular, though slender like those in the village. All carried weapons—swords, hatchets, flails, glaives, crossbows, clubs—and a variety of other implements, from coiled rope to hammers and picks. They wore no armor, no shirts even, but many sported a kind of dark, round, tight-fitting cap. Some held standards aloft, a white bird against a field of deepest blue. A number of dlömu were inspecting the tower door.

“How did they
get
there?” Thasha asked suddenly. “Do they have a camp in the woods? If so they stayed blary quiet yesterday.”

“They could have come from the north side,” said Pazel.

“From the Nelluroq?” said Fulbreech, incredulous. “How? We sailed for five days along that string of dunes. There’s no harbor, no other inlet—just beach after beach, pounded night and day by those lethal waves.”

“They look blary lethal themselves,” mused Fiffengurt. “However they got there, I’m glad there’s three miles of water between us.”

“Under three from the end of that jetty, sir,” put in Mr. Fegin.

Pazel glanced at the long, smooth seawall jutting out into the gulf from one end of the village. A number of dlömu stood near its base. Like the others they were examining the
Chathrand
with the keenest interest.

“That bunch by the gate must be the officers,” said Thasha. “Look—they’re sending messengers up and down the ranks. And they’re pointing telescopes at us as well.”

“Then they know this is a human ship,” said Ensyl. “That would explain their curiosity.”

“It’s
one
explanation,” said Fiffengurt. “Mr. Brule, update the captain. Ah, listen! Your friends Refeg and Rer are on the job, Pathkendle.”

A deep, slow
click … click
, like a reluctant grandfather clock: it was the turning of the capstan, as the anchors rose heavily from the seabed. They were harrow anchors, Pazel knew: far lighter than the mammoth mains; still the men would be glad of the augrongs’ help before the task was done.

“Good thinking,” said Alyash. “They might wheel guns out of that village. Just as well we’re through with it.”

Thasha turned to him accusingly. “Ibjen lives in that village,” she said. “His father’s waiting for him.”

“
Ibjen
should’ve mentioned the army camped out in the bush,” countered Alyash.

“Ten seconds between clicks,” said Fiffengurt, “and we’re at fourteen fathoms. Quickly, now: who’s got the calculus for me?”

No tarboy had to ask what
the calculus
meant. Pazel focused instantly:
Ten seconds a click. Six clicks a minute. Four cable-feet
per click. Cable length twice the vertical depth
. “That’s about … about—”

“Seven minutes,” said Thasha, “before we could get under way. If we needed to.”

“Admiral’s daughter!” said Fulbreech with an approving grin. Absently he passed the telescope to Pazel again, but his eyes remained on Thasha. “Doesn’t she amaze you, Pathkendle?”

Pazel snatched the telescope, calculating the time it would take Fulbreech to strike the water once Pazel pushed him over the rail. Two seconds, maybe. Then a faint voice reached them from the shore.

“Silence on deck!” shouted Fiffengurt.

The voice came from somewhere near the village gate. Pazel squinted and saw a man bellowing into an enormous, funnel-shaped shell, which he held before his face like a voice-trumpet. Try as he might, Pazel could not catch a word.

Then the soldiers parted, and a new figure walked out upon the quay.

He was a massive dlömu, broad in neck and shoulder, and his walk was somehow cruel. The others did not approach him. Something about the man brought the armada itself to mind—something vile, Pazel thought. But whatever it was refused to surface in his memory. The man gestured at the crier, and the latter screamed into the shell-device once again.

“Pathkendle?” said Fiffengurt.

Pazel shook his head. “Sorry, sir, I can’t hear a thing.”

Fiffengurt turned to the midshipman. “Get some steerage passengers up here on the run, Mr. Bravun—some who ain’t been deafened by cannon fire.” He twisted, pointing his good eye up at the
Chathrand
’s pennants. “Wind’s on the port beam. We’d have to tack a sight
closer
to those gentlefolk before we could turn and run.”

“We’ve no cause to run anywhere, till we decide a course,” said Alyash.

“Drogues bow and stern, Mr. Coote, if you please,” said Fiffengurt. “We’re close enough without this drift.”

Coote set men running, and in short order Pazel saw an umbrella-like drogue tossed from the forecastle on its chain. In calm waters the drogues would keep the
Chathrand
almost at a standstill, but unlike the anchors they could be jettisoned, and built anew from wood and canvas.

Midshipman Bravun returned with three steerage passengers: a bearded Simjan man, the apple-cheeked Altymiran woman who had lately become Mr. Teggatz’s galley assistant, and an older, white-haired woman whose husband had perished on the Ruling Sea. Fiffengurt silenced the chatter again. “Cup your ears and face forward, everybody,” he said. “Let ’em see we’re listening.”

The signal worked: once again the dlömic crier shouted his imperative command. The steerage passengers whispered together, debating what they’d heard. It was clever of Fiffengurt to call on them, Pazel thought: locked in their compartment below the waterline for most of the voyage, the steerage passengers had been buffered from the noise of both battle and typhoon. It was about the only good luck they’d had since stepping aboard the Great Ship.

“We ain’t sure, Mr. Fiffengurt,” said the bearded Simjan, “but he
might
be talking about a putative.”

Fiffengurt frowned. “Come again?”

“ ‘Chin of the putative,’ ” said the Altymiran woman. “That’s what he said, sir.”

“Madam,” said Fiffengurt, “
putative
ain’t a thing, and don’t take an article.”

“Does that mean it can’t have a chin?”

The white-haired woman merely clung to the rail and stared. When Pazel’s turn with the scope came again, he held it up for Ensyl. The ixchel woman steadied it with both hands. “Focus, Pazel, good. That’s strange: the leader is taking off his boots.”