Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (54 page)

Hosh hurried down the steps. Not that he wanted to get any closer to the murdering swine but he didn’t want to stand exposed and alone on the remaining pavilion’s terrace to draw that cold-blooded killer’s eye.

The last time the corsair captain had come here, Hosh had been merely another cowed slave of no account, trailing after Nifai when the overseer and all his peers among the ship masters and their most trusted crewmen had been summoned to the stone circle to hear Grewa’s predictions. The blind old man’s guidance had made them all so rich, after all.

Now Hosh had no such crowd to lose himself in. The best he could hope for was to hide behind the apprentice wizards now assembling behind Anskal on the beach.

One of the slave mages plucked at the Mandarkin’s sleeve. ‘His name is Molcho. He is not to be trusted.’

One of the former raiders instantly objected. ‘He led us on some of our most profitable raids.’

The erstwhile slave glared at him with unaccustomed boldness. ‘And what misfortunes pursued those who chose not to follow him? How many men died at his hand when they refused to surrender twice the customary share in their loot as he demanded?’

Before the raider could answer, the black-bearded raider shouted out as he waded ashore.

‘Good day to you. As you see, we offer friendship.’

With Grewa leaning heavily on his other arm, he held his sword hand out, empty palm uppermost.

The villain’s Tormalin was as fluent as Hosh recalled it. As it had been when the beast had concluded his business with that swine Minelas. When he had murdered Baron Halferan in the barony’s own marshes. And now Hosh didn’t even have the consolation of believing that the vile killer was dead, struck down with blind Grewa in Anskal’s first assault on this anchorage.

The Mandarkin laughed. ‘You hold no grudges?’

Hosh saw his own astonishment reflected on every other face ashore.

‘For you trying to kill me?’ The black-haired man shook his head, prompting a faint rattle from the chains in his beard. ‘We were not friends then.’

Hosh couldn’t understand it. The corsair captain Molcho’s inexplicably confident smile was now both warning and invitation.

Worse, Anskal acknowledged him with an answering grin, equally vicious.

The blind corsair said something in a low tone and the black-haired man Molcho nodded before addressing the Mandarkin in Tormalin speech once again. ‘May we come ashore? My companion finds the water unseasonably cold.’

Hosh would have given good gold to be close enough to hear if that’s truly what Grewa had said.

The Mandarkin mage raised a forbidding hand. ‘Not if you seek to reclaim what you have lost.’

‘No.’ Molcho shook his head once again. ‘But we would like to help you make the best use of what you have won here.’

‘Would you, indeed?’ Now Anskal’s tone was both intrigued and menacing. ‘Then by all means come ashore.’

Hosh felt for the folding knife through the cotton of his trews. He slid his hand inside his pocket and stealthily unfolded the blade. Short though the blade was, he could rip it into the side of Molcho’s neck before he was killed himself. Everyone would be taken entirely unawares.

He eased himself between one of the mageborn slaves and a woman looking at Molcho with utter revulsion. As the raider captain led blind Grewa ashore, Hosh measured the narrowing distance between them.

‘My thanks.’ Molcho reached the sand left firm by the wash of the tide.

‘So,’ Anskal invited, ‘tell me how you could possibly strengthen my hand?’ He gestured at the mageborn flanking him. ‘I have all the allies I need to use the treasures which I have won here. Better yet, I know exactly what I have. You can only have discovered their secrets by chance and piecemeal.’

Before Hosh could guess at the Mandarkin’s meaning, Anskal pointed at Grewa’s face.

The thick scarf hiding the blind corsair’s eyes tore in half, the cloth falling away. Hosh heard his own gasp of shock mingle with everyone else’s.

There could be no doubt that the old corsair was truly blind. His eye sockets were twin scarred hollows sunk deep into his head.

So how could he be looking straight at Anskal, holding up his hand as though to ward off the Mandarkin mage?

Anskal snapped his fingers and his magic ripped open the neck of Molcho’s tunic. The raider captain took a step forward, his face as ugly as Hosh recalled it in his nightmares.

Between that step and the next, everyone saw an ornate silver amulet studded with turquoise bright against Molcho’s dark skin. The ornament sprang upwards and flew straight towards Anskal’s waiting hand. Its incongruously sturdy chain hadn’t even snapped.

Grewa snatched for the thing, taking a long, confident stride as though he would chase it, blind man or not.

In the instant that Anskal’s fingers closed over the amulet, the blind corsair gasped. He stopped dead in the knee-deep water. Now he held his shaking hands out before him, palms beseeching like any other blind beggar.

Molcho advanced regardless with no sign of fear. ‘Return that—’

Hosh seized his chance. No one was looking at him. He wrenched the little knife free of his pocket, not caring that he cut both cloth and his own flesh as he did so.

One step took him towards Molcho before anyone noticed. The second brought him within striking distance of the black-hearted murderer.

But Molcho had seen him. With a sneer that infuriated Hosh, the man raised one brawny arm to block the puny knife’s stroke. His fist was already swinging around to finish the ruination of Hosh’s nose and jaw, begun when one of Molcho’s men’s sword pommel had smashed into his face in the Halferan marshes.

Hosh ducked and thrust. Captain Corrain had told him and the other lads often enough that they should always guard their crotch. Not only in hopes of fathering sons if they could find a girl near-sighted or drunk enough to bed them.

The captain had said that more men fell victim to a blade cutting the great vessels carrying blood down the inside of their thigh than died from a cut throat.

The little knife only cut empty air. Hosh sprawled forward to land on his hands and knees. He looked wildly around but Molcho had vanished.

‘What has happened?’ Grewa waved fearful hands lest someone might be approaching. His blind face quested helplessly from side to side.

Anskal was laughing as though he hadn’t seen such a jest in a year.

Hosh screamed insensate fury at the Mandarkin. He scrabbled in the sand for the feeble blade as dry sobs of rage choked him.

‘No,’ Anskal chided.

Hosh found himself flipped over to land flat on his back, the breath knocked out of him.

In the next instant, Molcho reappeared. He stooped over Hosh, massive hands reaching to seize him. Through his dizziness and the crushing pain in his chest, Hosh realised that the corsair had no need of a blade to murder him. He would snap his neck as easily as Hosh’s old mother could kill a chicken for the pot.

‘No,’ Anskal said again with that same infuriating amusement.

Molcho vanished a second time.

The deadly sense of suffocation faded. Hosh rolled onto his side. At first all he could see were the feet and ankles of Anskal’s contingent of mageborn. Then he saw they were all staring down the beach.

Forcing himself up onto his elbow, Hosh blinked through bleary eyes. Molcho was half way around the curve of the anchorage.

Anskal smiled at his apprentice cohort. ‘Let us see if our new friends have learned their lessons.’

In the next breath, Molcho was staggering in the knee-deep water before them. Hosh saw the gold chains that had been woven into the corsair captain’s beard were now looped around Anskal’s fingers.

‘So you have had the wit to use these trifles of magic which you have found among your plunder.’ The Mandarkin examined his loot; the silver amulet in one hand, the gold chains in the other. He might have been conversing with the two men over a glass of wine.

‘No,’ he corrected himself. ‘You not only made use of these little magics—and I will be interested to learn how you did that—’ he remarked ‘—you also had the sense to gather together other such treasures, even if you could not awaken their enchantments.’

He nodded. ‘All admirable, and most unexpected, given this curious realm’s hatred and ignorance of magic. But once again, I must ask—’ his voice hardened abruptly ‘— what can you possibly offer to persuade me not to add these trifles to my spoils and throw you and your crewmen into the sea, to await the mercy of the sharks and serpents?

‘As you see,’ he added with more menace. ‘I can stifle such trivial magic or stir it to do my will as I choose and you can do nothing about it.’

For a moment, Hosh truly believed that the two corsairs would turn tail and run. Only for a moment.

Molcho waded through the shallows to stand beside Grewa, offering a reassuring slap on his shoulder. The blind man’s flailing hands stilled.

No, Hosh concluded miserably, these men wouldn’t run. Where would they run to? Besides, they had already been using the magic in these two artefacts somehow, in defiance of all Archipelagan law and custom. They might be overawed by Anskal’s wizardry but they wouldn’t flee from it in blind panic like the trapped corsairs had.

‘We can offer you men,’ Molcho said warily. ‘Ships. Knowledge of these waters and these people. You have fended off one attack but if you have half the skills we can guess at, if you can summon the visions that mainland mages claim, you must know that can only be the first assault—’

‘You have taken this island and our plunder.’ Grewa turned his blind gaze towards the Mandarkin’s voice. ‘We yield to you as our conqueror. We ask what you would have us do next?’

‘If you wished to go back to whence you came, why haven’t you already done so?’ Molcho challenged Anskal.

‘But you are here and gathering allies,’ Grewa continued more boldly. ‘We can offer better men than these slaves and women. You have said that you wish to claim tribute in return for passage through these sea lanes?’ He shook his blind head. ‘The warlords will not offer that unless they have no choice.’

‘While you can undoubtedly sink their defiant ships, each wreck is as much a loss to you as it is to them,’ Molcho observed. ‘And how many such losses will it take to convince them to yield? We can offer you the means to extend your reach beyond this island in a much more profitable fashion.’

‘Can you indeed?’ Anskal’s tone gave no clue as to his thoughts as he contemplated his mageborn.

Motionless on the sand, Hosh could see the apprentice cohort striving to hide their reactions. Those divided along predictable lines.

One of the corsair swordsmen couldn’t conceal his vicious delight at the prospect of Grewa’s return. Two of the former slaves were so unmanned by terror that Hosh expected them to collapse onto the sand beside him. The Ensaimin mariners and the two Lescari were united in barely veiled contempt for their erstwhile captors.

The only sound to break the tense silence was the lap of the sea around the galley’s hull and the stir of the trireme’s oars.

Anskal pursed his lips. ‘Let us discuss this further, in more comfort.’

Molcho started forward though Anskal’s invitation was far from warm.

‘My amulet.’ Grewa remained standing still. ‘I must have use of that.’

Whatever else they might discuss, that was clearly not a subject for debate.

‘To see through another’s eyes.’ Anskal nodded before turning to his apprentices with a sly smile. ‘Then I choose—’

Hosh was startled out of his daze by Molcho’s brutal attack. The bearded man stooped. He caught up Hosh’s lost knife with one hand and seized his long tangled hair with the other. However slight the blade, the violence of his strike would have cut Hosh’s throat from ear to ear.

The folding knife skidded down his neck leaving no more mark than the stroke of a feather. Molcho spat some Archipelagan obscenity and ripped the blade down Hosh’s sleeve. The cloth yielded to reveal the silver-gilt and crystal arm ring.

Molcho drove the knife between the metal and Hosh’s arm. Though his skin wasn’t cut, the merciless pressure made Hosh squeal with pain.

His cry turned to a yell of panic as Molcho forced the blade downwards. The arm ring slid loose, down to Hosh’s elbow. He pressed his arm tight to his side, wrapping his hand across his chest to dig his fingers into his far shoulder. His terror was only outstripped by his determination not to let the artefact be stolen.

A beam of amber magelight knocked Molcho’s legs out from under him. Hosh fought frantically to free himself from the fallen man’s grasp. Even with the corsair captain stunned by Anskal’s attack, Hosh barely managed to escape and only by losing a skein of his matted hair to Molcho’s clenched fist.

He scrabbled backwards on hands and heels, his backside scraping along the shore.

‘Stop.’ Anskal’s hand fell heavy on his shoulder.

Hosh looked up, cringing.

The mage was staring unblinking at Molcho. Amber magelight wove painfully tight fetters around the raider’s ankles.

‘Power of life and death on this island is mine and mine alone.’