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Authors: David Drake

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BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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C
ashel awoke from dreamless sleep, his skin prickling. The warm, sweet smell of the flock filled the night; but the sheep were up and pacing too, and there was a faint odor which didn't belong.
He'd been sleeping beneath a wagon parked next to the sheep pen. The wagoner was glad of his presence, because it saved him the need to stay with the load of pottery on a night that looked like rain. Strangers rightly trusted Cashel or-Kenset the way they trusted the sun to rise in the east and the earth not to open beneath their feet.
“Cashel?” Mellie said in his ear. “Somebody's using powers very close by. I don't think they mean well.”
A wagoner's ox lowed a nervous challenge from the adjacent cattle pen. The Gravel Ford Inn had separate enclosures for sheep and cattle, and a horse corral besides for those times when there were more riders and pack animals than the stables could accommodate under cover.
It was dangerous to enclose strange horses and oxen together. An energetic horse might kick and bite its neighbor out of nervous irritation; but an ox has horns as well as a temperament beneath its stolid exterior, and not infrequently the ox will finish the fight a horse started. Better to quarter the species apart.
Cashel rolled out from between the wheels, leaving his long traveling cloak on the ground where he'd been lying. He cinched his belt tight over his tunic and surveyed the night with the quarterstaff in his hand.
It wasn't rain Cashel smelled in the air, nor the Stroma River either. There was a salty tang that was out of place so
far from the sea; and there as the smell of corruption, of things long dead.
“It's coming closer,” Mellie warned. She didn't sound frightened; just alert, like a squirrel high on a trunk following the prowling dog with its eyes.
The inn was even older than the one in Barca's Hamlet. For centuries the Stroma River had been crossed by a bridge raised on pilings above the surface of the river even at flood stage, but the inn's name hadn't changed.
The abutments of the present bridge were Old Kingdom masonry, relics which survived the fall of the span they'd anchored and the civilization of which they were a part. The inn's outbuildings reused ashlars from the villas of wealthy folk of former times.
Nothing unusual seemed to be stirring. With the quarterstaff balanced in his hands, Cashel walked around the paddock toward the river. Water gurgled against a retaining wall that had been ancient when the Old Kingdom fell; the smell of salt and death was stronger.
“Cashel!” Mellie said. Figures rose from behind the retaining wall with a mechanical suddenness. Starlight glimmered on rusty metal and wetly gleaming flesh.
They were liches like the one which Garric killed in the inn yard, but there were many of them this time: more than Cashel could be sure of in this uncertain light. One had a shield which trailed strands of seaweed.
“Attack!” Cashel shouted. “Attack!”
His first thought was for the sprite on his shoulder, but he didn't dare take the time to put her in a place of safety. He stepped forward, using his staff as a spear. The iron ferrule crunched all the bones from wrist to elbow in a lich's arm.
The creature dropped its rusty sword, then picked it up in the other hand. It came on again unaffected, though jellylike flesh and bits of bone sloughed from the shattered limb.
“Attack!” Cashel cried, backing swiftly. Most of the liches ignored him and strode toward the inn, but he still faced three of the monsters.
He spun the quarterstaff overhead; when a lich thrust a spear at his midriff, the ferrule whacked the point aside; Cashel's overhead stroke with the other end crushed the creature's skull.
That
lich collapsed into a dripping pool and stayed down. The other two came on, inhumanly murderous, slightly flanking him from either side.
The first of Benlo's guards spilled out of the inn's door, hacked twice into the lich confronting him on the flagstone porch, and fell when another monster chopped him with a broad-bladed axe. The guard's sword still flopped from the chest of the lich he'd stabbed but not put down.
Cashel blocked a cut from The one-armed lich. The swordblade was corroded; there were even barnacles on the steel. Nonetheless the stroke was fierce enough to chip wood from the hard hickory staff.
More guards came out of the inn, shouting in hoarse amazement. Steel clanged and flashed red sparks as men met the liches' attack.
Cashel grunted as his heel hit the wall of the paddock. He'd backed as far as he was going to go.
He supposed Mellie would be all right. She'd lived a thousand years without him, after all.
I
lna felt the warmth wrap softly around her. She wriggled in pleasure at its embrace. “I'm coming closer,” the darkness whispered. “I'll be with you soon.”
She couldn't see its face—she didn't know if it had a face—but she knew that it cared for her as no one else could care. It would make sure she became what she
deserved
to be.
Cashel's shout ripped through the dream like a icicle plunging
from a high tower. Ilna shot bolt upright from her bed in the stable loft. The word hadn't penetrated, only the awareness that the brother she'd cared for all her life was in trouble.
“Attack!” Cashel shouted again. Steel met steel in a ringing crash.
Tenoctris was already halfway down the ladder; she'd awakened before the shout. The older woman must have heard something in her sleep just as Ilna did.
Rather than wait for Tenoctris to reach the bottom of the ladder, Ilna gripped the edge of the loft and swung down. Her feet dangled in the air for a moment; then she let herself drop in the assumed confidence that there was nothing but the hardpacked earthen floor beneath her.
“Attack!”
The shock of a three-foot fall into darkness was nothing. Cashel was in trouble.
Most of the dozen stalls were occupied by horses or mules. A mare screamed nervously and kicked her box. The stableboy was trying to quiet her, but all the animals were whickeringly restive.
There were more shouts and the clang of weapons from the inn yard. Ilna had been slow to rise, wrapped in her fantasy of contentment. Thinking back, she couldn't pick a single dream image from memory; and the whole, the gorgeous paradise that had enfolded her, had an aftertaste like that of rotting meat.
A man screamed in a voice that rose in pitch until it stopped as abruptly as glass breaking. Ilna slid open the stable door. By the open sky's relative light, her eyes searched for a weapon. Tenoctris scurried past.
Ilna knew that there were rakes and forks in the stables somewhere, but she didn't have time to search. Hanging from a peg on the doorpost was a simple halter, a rye-straw rope spliced into a bight on one end with the other reeved through to form a running loop. She snatched it down and stepped into the yard.
Tenoctris seated herself cross-legged by the corner of the
stable building and plucked a blade of the long grass growing from a seam in the stone foundation. A dozen men and liches fought in a confused mass in front of the inn proper. Cashel wasn't among them: his bulk would have marked him to her eyes.
There wasn't anyone as tall as Garric in the melee either, but bodies lay on the stones for living fighters to trample.
Garric burst from the inn's door, holding a sword in one hand and the doorkeeper's long-legged stool in the other.
“Haft and the Isles!”
he bellowed like a herd bull challenging the world.
A lich cut at him. Garric blocked the sword with the stool's seat, stabbed the lich through the eyesocket with a return stroke as quick as a frog's tongue, and smashed the skull of a second monster with a backhand flick of the stool.
Cashel stood across the inn yard, fighting two liches with his back to a stone wall.
“Haft and the Isles!”
Ilna's blood was as cold as a midwinter storm. She sprinted the fifty feet to where her brother defended himself.
The liches moved as though they were the limbs of a single entity: one drew back as the other thrust, then reversed the process the instant Cashel focused his attention on the immediate threat. The creatures reminded Ilna of a praying mantis shifting its weight from side to side as it prepares for the double stroke that will doom its victim.
Cashel knew better than to fight opponents working in perfect unison; instead he concentrated on defending himself. The quarterstaff spun as a dynamic shield before him, its motion as smooth and assured as the shuttle of Ilna's loom.
Cashel's wrists crossed and recrossed, feeding the heavy staff from one hand to the other. He'd get tired eventually, even Cashel; but for now the blurred rotation was as strong and sure as water flowing down the channel of the Stroma River. The liches poised and feinted, but they could not pierce his guard.
Ilna stepped behind one of the creatures, judged her distance,
and flipped the loop of the halter as the lich swayed. The rope settled over the hairless, glistening skull. Ilna pulled hard as though she had a stubborn ram in the halter.
The lich jerked backward. A man would have gagged, but this creature twisted and tried to cut the halter with its rusty sword. Ilna ran three steps to pull the lich off its feet; the halter was too short for her to take another hand-over-hand grab on her end.
Cashel shifted the quarterstaff from vertical to horizontal and tore the ribs out of his remaining opponent in the same spinning motion that had protected him for the several previous minutes. The creature fell like a bird with a shattered wing; its sword arm still slashed, but its body could no longer keep itself upright.
Ilna's lich cut at her ankles. She leaped high without letting go of the halter. Cashel took a stride forward and brought the iron-shod cap of his staff down like a thresher swinging his flail. Gelatinous flesh and fragments of bone splashed in all directions.
“Ilna?” Cashel gasped. “Did he hurt you?”
Across the inn yard Garric laughed like a joyous demon. Ilna turned. All the liches were down. Guards and other travelers stood to either side gaping, but Garric was alone in the midst of the carnage.
The sturdy stool in his left hand had been hacked and beaten to splinters; little remained but one leg and fragments of the seat. Garric's blade was twisted like a ribbon fluttering in the breeze.
“
Haft and the Isles!
” Garric shouted. He spun his battered sword high into the air, then as it fell caught it again by the hilt. As though the spinning blade had cut the strings holding him upright, Garric toppled face-first onto the pile of bodies, lich and human.
Ilna ran toward him, but the drover's beautiful daughter Liane darted from the inn to Garric's side before her.
“
I
t's moving!” Meder cried as he leaned into the hawser which the four of them were trying to drag up the slope. Nonnus had reeved the other end through a three-hole block joining the dugout's mast to the ram of the trireme. “Is it moving?”
“Pull!” the hermit said.
The dugout's lower hull groaned as it began to slide down the stone ramp. The vessel's own weight drove moisture from its soggy underside as it pressed against the unyielding gneiss.
“It's moving!” Meder repeated.
Sharina staggered forward, picking up the pace as inertia began to work for instead of against them. She trod on Asera's heels. Nonnus held the head of the rope; Sharina was at the lower end near the water. The nobles were between them. Neither Asera nor the wizard had been any real help on the drag, but Sharina wouldn't have allowed them to stand aside even if Nonnus had been willing. Sometimes the principle of a thing is more important than the thing itself.
Always
the principle of a thing is more important than the thing itself.
They'd only crudely shaped the log. Nonnus had been particularly scornful of his own handiwork, but his intention had from the first been for the simplest possible dugout, fitted with twin outriggers for stability and a mast for a sail cut down from the trireme's own canvas. A high degree of finish would improve the vessel's looks, make it sail better, and increase the comfort of its crew; but more work meant more time.
The survivors wanted to leave Tegma's deathly silence as soon as humanly possible.
The dugout was moving briskly. “Sharina, board and cast off!” Nonnus called.
Sharina dropped the rope and jumped lightly onto the dugout as it slid along past her. They didn't have the manpower to launch the vessel by brute force, so Nonnus had rigged the block and tackle to make up for the deficiency. The most seaward point they could reach to attach the tackle was the trireme's bow. Though the warship was solidly ashore, the several feet of water lapping its seaward extremity were enough to float the dugout, overweight though it was.
“Pull as if you're a man!” Nonnus said. Meder must have let go of the rope when Sharina did. “Pull!”
The dugout hit the water with a splash; the bluff bow porpoised and the vessel skewed sideways. Those on shore needed to continue hauling until the vessel was wholly afloat to save untold additional effort.
Sharina hopped over the sail and stood in front of the mast. The tackle ended in a bight attached to another bight on the mast by means of a thigh-thick wooden pin. Removing the pin was the only thing necessary to release the dugout, but that could be done only when the vessel floated free and took the tension off the tackle.
“Ready!” Sharina called. The dugout wallowed and began to swing starboard, away from the tackle's pull to port. Nonnus had taken the end of the port outrigger in his hand and by a combination of lifting and pulling was straightening the vessel's line. The two nobles were still on the rope, pulling with effort but no apparent understanding of the process.
They'd packed the stores under nets in the dugout's belly before they attempted the launch. There'd been some grain aboard the trireme; scarcely a bite for the full complement of hundreds, but a week's supply for the four of them who'd survived the Archan attack and Meder's wizardry. There was a jug of oil, several bunches of root vegetables, and fresh water in plenty: four tarred casks, as much as Nonnus thought the dugout could safely carry.
They had no meat, but the hermit thought he'd be able to
catch fish with dough balls. The bodies of creatures killed in the fighting spoiled quickly in the humid warmth, and there was no animal life remaining on the island.
“Cast off, child!” Nonnus shouted. “Board, you two!”
Sharina kicked down at the pin with her right heel. The wood gave but not enough: the ropes or the wood itself must have swelled since Nonnus had determined the fit.
The dugout bobbed as Nonnus lifted himself over the stern in a motion as graceful as a fish leaping. Sharina tugged the hand axe from her sash and whacked the wood hard with the back of the blade. The pin dropped and the tackle slid over the side, drawn by its own weight.
Crying for help, the nobles splashed through the calm water and grabbed the stern. The hermit ignored them as he prepared to spread the sail. Sharina took a pole cut from an oar and set her weight against it, fending the dugout away from the ramp. They'd launched just as the tide turned, but the harbor water was so still that the ebbing current was no real help.
Nonnus gestured. Sharina stepped over the spar and walked backward along the starboard rail with her seated pole, thrusting the dugout seaward without changing her own position relative to the shore. When she reached the stern, she laid down the pole and reached over the side to lift aboard first Asera, then Meder, with smooth, strong pulls.
Though Sharina kept her face blank, she was contemptuous of the nobles' inability to carry out simple physical tasks. They were both in good health and Meder at least was fairly muscular. She thought of her mother fawning over the pair in Barca's Hamlet … and her own marvel that folk so fine would notice
her
.
The dugout's mast had been the trireme's bowsprit; the spar on which Nonnus was raising the sail had been one of the warship's long upper-bank oars. The trireme's mast, split neatly in half, formed the twin outriggers which two more oarshafts bound to the dugout.
It had been easier to cannibalize the warship for the fittings
than to shape Tegma's raw vegetation, and the seasoned wood was preferable anyway. The hull was only part of the new vessel which hadn't came from the trireme.
Meder lay panting in the belly of the vessel. “Look at my hands!” he wheezed. His rope burns were worse than Sharina would have expected for the slight help Meder's efforts had been to the process. “I could have launched us without all this tugging and splashing. By using my art!”
“No,” said Nonnus as he tied off the sail's lift to a bitt at the base of the mast. “Because I wouldn't have let you.”
He walked to the stern, moving with the delicacy of a gull stepping over a swelling wave. “Give me room,” he ordered, “but stay back of the mast.”
Nonnus took one of the two paddles; Sharina already held the other. They began stroking the dugout forward. Asera and Meder huddled near the mast and spoke in muted voices.
The sail was limp, the air so still that Sharina couldn't feel its motion on her damp skin. Mist already shrouded Tegma's shore, and she thought the sound of waves breaking on the reefs was louder.
She glanced over her shoulder. Nonnus smiled at her in satisfaction. His strokes with the makeshift paddle looked so smooth that only the wake curling behind the blade indicated how extremely powerful they were.
The fog thinned. There was a breeze and it cut like a knife of frozen glass, though Sharina realized that she'd probably have luxuriated in the warmth if she were back on Haft. The days of muggy heat had thrown her body's temperature control awry.
They'd crossed an invisible barrier between worlds. The world in which the risen Tegma existed was behind them. The chill wind came from the world into which Sharina had been born, the real world.
Breakers growled an angry warning. The fog was thinning. Sharina could see foam now, around coral heads like the molars of walruses that grind the hardest shellfish into sand and less than sand. Low vegetation wavered on the rocks, dark
against the surf's white warning. The reefs were just as dangerous to a vessel trying to escape as to one thrown against them from the open sea.
Nonnus tucked his paddle under the mesh of a cargo net. Taking two additional turns in the sheet to the port edge of the sail, he adjusted the angle of the canvas to the wind; the bow swung slightly. The dugout was monstrously unhandy in comparison to a Haft fishing boat, but Nonnus wouldn't have risked this escape without the expectation of success.
The sun was just risen; it had been noon an hour before on Tegma, and the blurred red ball had throbbed down through the mist. Here gulls wheeled and called. A large body slid from the reef into the open sea, unseen save for the splash.
The reefs were a solid curving line, foaming as they prepared to receive the dugout and its passengers. Another seawolf dived into the water to wait.
If I looked into the lagoon now, would I see buildings sunk for thousands of years?
But the water was gray with foam, opaque more than a few feet below the surface.
Nonnus canted the steering oar. He slacked the starboard sheet and took several more turns around the port bitt. The vessel continued to swing sluggishly. The surf snarled louder as they neared. Meder and Asera looked around in growing agitation; Meder scrabbled at the net covering some of the provisions and his case of magical paraphernalia.
Sharina glared at them stonily, but her own heart was cold. She'd seen the scraps of wreckage thrown up on the strand of Barca's Hamlet, heavy timbers smashed and clawed before being spat out by the reefs of a distant sea.
By the reefs of Tegma.
“There!” the hermit shouted. Gripping the tiller bar in his teeth, he loosed the port sheet and drew the starboard line taut. The dugout's slow turn reversed, bringing the bow again on a direct heading for the reef. A gap showed between two coral heads, but even that spit water high before drying on the surf's ebb stroke.
The breeze freshened. The dugout gained speed, hastening
toward the rocks with suicidal enthusiasm. Although the wind was behind them, spray from the waves' impact spattered Sharina's face.
“When I call you,” Nonnus said, shouting to be heard over the hammering surf, “run all the way back to me. Now,
run
!”
The nobles were already up, terrified by the onrushing rocks. Meder hadn't managed to get his case out of the cargo net. He and Asera scrambled over the provisions.
Nonnus hopped onto the stern transom, clinging to the fall supporting the spar as he balanced over the foaming sea. Sharina threw herself into the far stern, the place the hermit had vacated. The steering oar wobbled unnoticed.
The bow rose as the passengers shifted their weight to the stern. Nonnus loosed the fall, dropping the sail with a bang of the spar on the gunwales. The dugout's thick hull struck the reef, scraping over and through the coral on momentum. If the sail had been set, the shock would have snapped the mast off at its base.
The dugout ground to a halt midway over the reef. “Forward!” the hermit shouted. “Into the bow for your lives' sake!”
Sharina leaped over the nobles, another pair of obstructions to her course. Nonnus was already raising the sail again. Sharina hopped over the spar. Asera and Meder, though reacting faster than they might have done, had to wait for the wet canvas to rise out of their way.
Sharina climbed onto the bow and grabbed the forestay. Spray shot high about her. The nobles clambered to her side, hunched over and gripping the gunwale as well as the support rope.
The dugout tilted minusculely downward and began to move again. The mast and the sail's center of force were forward of where the reef gripped the hull.
The dugout slid into open sea. The thick, one-piece vessel was scraped, but it had withstood its battering progress through the reefs as no planked ship could have done.
Sharina heard the waves roar in frustrated anger behind them.
BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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