The Way to Babylon (Different Kingdoms) (40 page)

They splashed into the shallows and slipped on the smooth stones. The boat was drifting into the current, the long poles dipping in the dark water and pushing her away. They were floundering chest-deep, and Riven went to Madra’s head, helping to hold it above the water. The grypesh swam out after them, and there were battles fought there in a welter of blood and foam. Riven could see nothing for the water in his eyes, but when the dark shape of the hull loomed up he pushed Madra towards it. Other hands took her from him, and he grasped the side of the craft, too tired to pull himself up.

Teeth sank into his leg, and he was jerked under the water. He choked for air, water gurgling into his ears and fighting to enter his mouth. The teeth shook him. His hands met a furry body and claws that flailed at him. He dug his thumbs into the eyes, a red bonfire blazing at his chest, and heard an underwater bubbling squeal. Then he was released, and whooping for air in the moonlight. Something hooked under his collar, hauling him upwards and choking him. He tried to fight it, but he had not the strength. He was lifted out of the water and dumped with a smack on hard wood. There he lay, gasping and looking into the unreadable eyes of Isay.

Finnan was shouting commands, and swords were still flashing at the beasts who fought to clamber on board. Riven had lost his in the river, but he snatched up one of the long river poles and stabbed it down on the crowds of hairy heads that thronged the water, clicking against skulls. But there were too many of them. They swarmed on board with the agility of rats and leapt for the defenders. The flatboat drifted helplessly downstream like a stricken beetle, as the crew fought for their lives against wet teeth and rabid eyes. Men went down with two or three of the beasts ripping at them; or fell overboard and were killed in a froth of churning water. Riven managed to prise a knife from a dead sailor’s hand and stood between Isay and Darmid as they tried to keep their attackers away from Madra’s still form on the deck. The Myrcan stave was almost invisible as it smashed bones and cracked skulls, hurling the animals into the river, and Darmid’s sword wreaked havoc also. Riven darted in with a stab when he could, but there was little room between them. He stepped back and chanced a look at Madra. Blood marked her torn robe in many places and her eyes were closed, but she was breathing.

Darmid fell with his throat torn out and a grypesh worrying at it. Riven stabbed his knife in deep behind its ear and it went limp. Then he picked up Darmid’s sword and met the next grypesh with a savage thrust that disembowelled it. There were fewer of them now. The flatboat was out in midstream and the current was carrying the swimming beasts away. The defenders’ plight was no longer so desperate. They advanced steadily along the boat, forcing the grypesh back until the grey beasts were scrabbling on the cabin deck. Bicker and Finnan killed the last one there. Its body fell with a loud splash, to be taken by the river. Then the fight was over.

Bodies lay in heaps on the deck, in the cabin, in the hold. The flatboat was dripping with blood. Wounded men were groaning quietly, and a crippled grypesh bubbled with pain until a sailor finished it off. Riven bent to Madra, but did not know what to do. He glanced at Isay helplessly. The Myrcan’s face was a wilderness.

‘Twice I have failed you, Michael Riven. Third time pays for all. It will never happen again.’

Ratagan stalked over the bodies towards them with his clothes in shreds. ‘Is she alive?’

Riven nodded, but could not speak. He took off his bloody tunic and wrapped it around her, smoothed the hair away from her face.

There was a lurch and a bump. A grinding noise started from the hull, then was still. They looked up, and saw that the boat had drifted against an islet in the river. The current held it fast there, and it drifted no farther.

‘O
VER HALF MY
crew are dead,’ Finnan said. The firelight flickered over a face as grim as stone. He poked the embers with a stick. ‘I am not even sure they will be enough to crew the boat upriver.’

‘We will take the place of some of them,’ Bicker said, ‘though our people have suffered also. Three of our company were lost, Darmid, Rimir and Tagan, and the maid is grievously hurt. That leaves six to man the poles along with your eight. It should be enough.’

‘Most of our gear has been lost, and all your horses,’ Finnan went on as if he had not heard him. ‘But why they attacked in such numbers and with such determination is beyond my ken. They even took to the river. Why would they behave in such a fashion?’

Bicker shrugged, but his eyes flicked over the fire for a second to Riven. And Riven sat beside Madra as she lay on most of the bedding they had left, with strips of cloak bound about the wounds which bit into her, and Ratagan on her other side with his face twisted in concern. She was conscious, but could not speak because of the gash at her throat. She smiled for Riven, though, and that smile was like a sword blade thrust in his chest. He gripped her hand with white knuckles, and could say nothing, to her or to anyone else. He felt he had finally been given the spade to bury himself with.

‘How many days to Talisker?’ Bicker was asking Finnan.

‘Just over a week,’ the pilot replied. ‘Maybe somewhat longer for us, now, with everything.’

‘Too long,’ Bicker said with quiet savagery, burying his eyes in the fire.

They buried the bodies of those who had died on the boat, but had to leave the others where they were, for grypesh could be seen prowling on the bank. There were scores of the animals. They were all set to poling now, and it was hard work navigating the flatboat upstream. For Riven, it was agony. He seemed to have cracked bones complaining all over his body, and when they stopped at night, he ate, stayed by Madra for a while, and usually fell asleep beside her.

They moored in the evenings to various of the islets dotting the river. They did not dare camp on the western bank where the attack had been; the eastern bank showed no signs of life, but the tangled strips of trees continued along it and they mistrusted what they might hide. Even so, Bicker and Luib had to hunt on the eastern bank to supplement what food they had left. They found deserted houses, sometimes whole hamlets left lying empty with mutilated cattle in the fields around them. The land was dead and uninhabited, and the carrion birds were never out of the sky.

A week went past, and the picture did not change. Madra’s wounds began to heal, but her voice did not come back. The rest of the crew and the company poled doggedly on, and most days the silence was broken only by the plop of the water and the odd cry of wild fowl. It grew warmer, and the mosquitoes that shimmered over the water began to plague them incessantly. They lit smoky fires at night to keep them at bay, but were soon itching with bites.

After nine days, they sighted Talisker through the haze. The river curved in wide sweeps through the flat of the Vale, with hedged fields surrounding it, and in the middle of one great meander there was a steep-sided hill on which the city was built. It was like a mountain of walls and houses and streets rising out of the Vale with the river curling round its feet, lapping at the high walls. The light glinted off a white tower at the very summit of the hill, and Riven caught the glitter of metal on the battlements as a helmet or spear blade caught the sun. In the river around the walls were crowds of boats filled with a multitude. Their noise could be heard even at this distance, and a hint of the smell drifted down the wind.

‘And here we are,’ said Finnan. All his gaiety was gone now. ‘That is the river market you see before you in the water. On those boats you can buy anything from a loaf to a life. I have kept my half of the bargain, though I never guessed how costly it would be for me. Beyond the river market is the Rivergate. We shall pass through there to the city docks.’ For a moment his eyes turned away from the city to the sleeping form of Madra. ‘What will you be doing for her?’

‘We must find a leech,’ Bicker replied. ‘In that great city it should not be hard.’

‘I know one,’ said Finnan. ‘I will take you.’

After a while they were poling through crowds of anchored boats that teemed with people. The craft were tied together, and there were mazes of decks and gangways. It was almost like a second, floating city in the shadow of Talisker itself. Hundreds of voices were crying out their wares. There were drunken brawls that rolled from one vessel to another and ended with a splash in the cloudy river, and there were glimpses of painted female faces, bodies barely concealed by thin silk shafts. Invitations and threats, bargaining and cursing filled the air, coming from the mouths of men, women and ragged children and mingling with the sound of dogs barking, chickens fussing, mules braying. The surface of the water was littered with scraps of cloth, pieces of rotten fruit, mouldy vegetables and human detritus, and the air was as crowded, with the smell of excrement, rotting meat, unwashed bodies and a thin sting of strong spice. To try and take it in was like drinking too strong a wine. Riven turned his attention to Madra, and brushed the flies away from her face.

Somehow Finnan made sense of the tangled labyrinth, and brought them through the lanes and alleys of boats until they could see looming ahead of them the solid sunwashed stone of the city wall. It reared high above their heads and made the river market into a town of ants, the meaningless scurryings of insects. A great dark arch appeared, and then they passed into shadow, with the sounds of water glooping as echoes in the high tunnel and the light playing along the sides like silk in the wind. The splashes of their poles bounced round them, and when they spoke their voices bounced with them. Rats criss-crossed the water like caterpillars, their tiny
screes
a mocking reminder of grypesh.

Then the sun burned on the water ahead and they were dazzled by the sudden brightness. They came out into a wide waterway that ended in docks. The buildings of the city arced up steeply on all sides, covering the docks in shadow. There were large boats there that could have been called ships; they were webbed with a confusion of lines and ropes, and had the spider figures of men clinging to them. Cargoes were offloaded on to the stone docks, and again they caught the sharp pungency of unknown spices. Hoarse cries busied the air, and Riven heard the gulls screaming as they fought for odd fish on the quay and whirled round the masts of the ships, speckling the docks with guano.

Finnan knew the harbour master well, and found a berth for the flatboat. The company helped make her fast, and then gathered what was left of their things together. Luib carried Madra off the boat, and stood with her in his arms as they completed the formalities of berthing. Two of the crew stayed to oversee the unloading of the meagre cargo, and the rest were paid by Finnan with the same silver knuckles that Bicker had purchased the company’s passage with. Then the sailors dispersed, shouting bawdy welcomes to others they knew who were busy at the bigger ships. Finnan led the company through the curious stares of many to the end of the docks, and the steep climb up the hill to the city proper. The streets were narrow, dirty and cobbled, and the gutters were clogged with all forms of evil-smelling filth. Pails were emptied from upper windows, making their way hazardous. More than once, they saw a passerby, soaking wet, shout threats and curses at an open window. The city was a vast maze of narrow alleys pocked with ale houses and middens, shops and smithies, brothels and moneylenders. Armed men stood in groups at many of the street corners. They would start to jeer at the company, but stopped when they saw the Hearthware sashes and the Myrcan staves and whispered amongst themselves.

‘Sellswords,’ Finnan said ominously. ‘They have been hired in droves to police the lower city.’

They climbed ever more steeply, and the streets broadened, became cleaner. Stone began to replace the wood of the lower city, and there were fewer ambushes from above. They encountered taverns with painted signs hanging outside, and shops with their wares displayed in the windows. The people were better dressed, but just as curious. At last, Finnan stopped before a high stone house that had as its sign a serpent twisted round a staff.

He glanced at Madra, but she was asleep. Riven fidgeted and glowered beside Luib as the Myrcan cradled her. The river pilot turned to Bicker.

‘We are here. Phrynius is a friend of mine.’ He laid an odd emphasis on the word. ‘Some folk in the city see him in a different light. It is said he is one of the Hidden Folk—a wizard of sorts—and as such he is not always popular. I stopped his neighbours burning his house once, and for that he owes me. I know not what you people think of his kind, but he has never harmed a soul that I know of. You have my word he will do his best to help the maid here.’

‘Not all people shun the Hidden Folk,’ Bicker told him quietly. ‘I see no reason to doubt you, or your friend.’

Finnan nodded and smiled, then he hammered on the door with his fist. ‘Open up, father greybeard. It is I, the river pirate, come to say hello!’

There was a long pause, then finally a rattle of bolts, and the door opened a fraction; in the crack appeared one bright black eye. The door was opened fully, and they saw a little dark man with a pointed grey beard and eyes like black pebbles. He beamed broadly at Finnan’s grinning face, showing pink, empty gums.

‘My dear boy, how good to see you! Come on in!’ Then he seemed to squint and. see the others standing there. ‘Company? Finnan, has there been trouble?’

‘That could be said.’ The pilot sighed. ‘Your help is needed, your way with hurts. We have a patient.’