Lord of the Isles (41 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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J
abbering and hunched over like crabs, the Serian sailors staggered up the gangplank onto the bow of the
Golden Dragon.
Each carried on his back a chest that Cashel had been sure was a load for two of them. The sailors didn't look nearly as sturdy or well fed as Frasa and Jen, and even the Serian nobles were wispy-looking folk by the standards of Barca's Hamlet.
“They're tough little buggers,” Cashel said to the sprite as he strode ponderously up the gangplank. It flexed noticeably under his weight and that of the two cargo chests he carried, one on either shoulder. “Hard to believe how strong
they are when they look like they'd blow over in a good wind.”
Mellie laughed above him. The sprite was a tiny weight in his hair, as though a lock had become twisted by the breeze. “Oh, very strong,” she said, but it sounded to Cashel as though she was mocking him.
The
Golden Dragon
had seven transverse cargo holds, each completely separated from the others. The design made it hard to rebalance the cargo at sea, but it also made the vessel extremely sturdy and seaworthy. A hole beneath the waterline could only fill one compartment, leaving a more than adequate reserve of buoyancy.
The ship's captain was stripped to a breechclout like his men but he wore a sash of red silk to indicate his rank. The sailor ahead of Cashel started to lower his case into an open hold. The captain screamed furiously at him, waggling a switch made from the spine of a large stingray. He pushed the man toward the last hold sternward.
The captain turned his attention to the next bearer: Cashel. The Serian's tone changed in midchirp, though Cashel of course couldn't understand a word of it anyway. Bowing, he directed the youth on to the next hold.
A pair of sailors were pegging the hatch cover onto the nearer hold. A third man followed, lashing the pegs with cords made from the bark of some fibrous plant.
Cashel knelt. Sailors in the hold grabbed both chests and swung them down to be cross-laid among others. They flashed him bright smiles, but the clipped rat-tat-tat of their speech made him
feel
, falsely he knew, that they were hostile.
Paper lanterns dangling from the main spar threw twisted shadows as Cashel straightened, breathing hard. Two chests were a heavy load, though he wouldn't have admitted that aloud. He climbed the six narrow steps to the quarterdeck from which a rope gangplank connected the vessel to the arm of the quay reaching out from the shore.
The
Golden Dragon
's hull was entirely given over to cargo. The three small cabins were arranged in a square-bottomed
U around the stern; their combined roof formed the quarterdeck where Jen and Frasa now stood, watching but not directing the loading. A skiff hung from a platform off the stern.
The brothers had brought the Goddess of Mercy and her consorts aboard in three careful trips, placing them in the central cabin. After that the pair took no more part in the proceedings. They nodded to Cashel as he passed them. He guessed the common sailors slept on deck on nights the
Golden Dragon
was at sea, and he wouldn't be surprised if the ship's officers did also.
The Highlanders were fascinated by the work going on around them, but they were no more involved in it than Frasa and Jen were. Pound for pound the little men were probably as strong as anybody in the compound, Cashel included. They prodded one another and laughed as Cashel walked by with Mellie back in her usual spot on his shoulder.
“Couldn't they help?” he murmured to her. He knew several Highlanders were on guard in the foyer, but the rest of the contingent was cheerfully idle while everybody around them worked.
“Why should they?” Mellie asked. “Why are you working so hard?”
“What?” he said. The whole notion surprised him. “Well, people work, Mellie,” he said.
“I don't work,” the sprite said. “
They
don't.”
She stuck her thumbs in her ears and waggled her fingers at a watching Highlander who wore a six-inch hardwood splinter through his upper lip. A swastika was tattooed on the white skin of one cheek and a sunburst on the other. The grotesque little gnome laughed so hard he fell over backward, holding his sides.
Cashel waited for three sailors to hunch out through the courtyard gate beneath their loads. The yard was almost empty. Cashel started on through to the covered storage, but the secretary met him in the door, waving. The Serian spoke only his own language—or at least not that of Haft—but his
gestures and a glimpse past him convinced Cashel that the building had already been cleared.
He turned to gather up the last case from the yard. Serians at work scurried about in a fashion that struck Cashel as hopelessly uncoordinated. Maybe that was true, but they still managed to get the job done. It'd drive a normal fellow to madness having a crew of these folk chatter and bustle about the field during harvest, but Cashel guessed they'd get the hay in.
“Cashel,” Mellie said in the flat voice she used for things that weren't a joke, “it's time to leave. They're coming in.”
“Huh?” said Cashel.
Wood sagged with a crash in the factory building. The secretary ran out onto the quay, jabbering twenty to the dozen. Another impact threw the remnants of the stout front door against the inside walls. The mob must have gotten a proper battering ram, because there'd been no chopping and delay: they'd smashed straight through in two blows.
Cashel had leaned his quarterstaff against the back wall of the yard, near the gateway. He located it with his eyes, then picked up the remaining cargo chest with both hands: his right on the back handle, his left underneath the dense hardwood a little forward of center. He guessed it held pottery, but that didn't much matter.
The remaining sailors scampered out of the yard on the heels of the secretary. There were triumphant shouts from inside the building, then the snap of bows and high-pitched screams.
“Oh, Cashel!” the sprite said. Funny how he could hear her so clearly in this bellowing chaos.
Three Highlanders came out of the building in a bowlegged run. The last of the group lagged several steps behind. He bled from a cut in his thigh and carried a human ear, also bloody, in one hand. Cashel planted his left foot and started his throw.
The doorway filled with locals, street toughs of the sort Cashel dealt with when he met Jen and Frasa. Several of
Themo's guards were close behind in the mob, delayed by their bulky armor. Cashel launched the case with a stiff-armed motion, as though he were casting the stone at the Harvest Festival.
He didn't know how much the missile weighed: two hundred pounds or so, he judged, enough that the thrust turned him neatly around to face the gate.
The hardwood case crashed into the mob at about throat height. Men burst but the missile didn't: it was still in one piece as it vanished behind flailing limbs, well back into the press where folk had thought they were safe. Those who'd been in its path weren't in nearly as good condition as the box.
Cashel grabbed his staff as he ran for the bow gangplank. He wasn't quick but he moved fast enough when he got going. Lanterns dangled from poles along the quay. All the Serian sailors were aboard the
Golden Dragon
, but several Highlanders waited along the quay.
As Cashel cleared the gateway the Highlanders shot arrows toward the yard behind him. He heard one missile
whack!
against a guard's shield, but the screams of unprotected thugs indicated that others had found softer targets.
“Duck!” Mellie cried. Cashel hunched over as he ran. An arrow snapped close enough to ruffle his short hair. The archer was a Highlander with his legs wrapped around the main spar at the head of the vessel's mast. Mellie had said that they weren't very good shots … .
Normally a sailing ship worked out of harbor with the help of rowed tugboats, but that was out of the question tonight. Sailors were poling the
Golden Dragon
away from the quay on the port side to get room to back the vessel with its four long sweeps. The gangplank from the shore to the ship's prow was still in place. The Highlanders galloped up it like monkeys running.
Cashel turned at the foot of the gangplank. “Mellie, dear one, you'd best get clear,” he said though he didn't expect her to pay him any attention. Lanterns bobbed overhead,
throwing a fairy-soft pastel illumination over the scene.
There might have been a thousand rioters in Harbor Street, but relatively few of them had come straight through the building and out the back of the yard. Cashel heard the sound of breakage from inside; furniture and the window sashes, he supposed. All the cargo had been reloaded, with the exception of the case he'd used as a missile.
The first men through the gate arches were a pair of Themo's guards, and even they moved cautiously. Their shields were proof against the Highlanders' light bows, but the pair who'd met the box Cashel threw would be nursing bruised ribs if nothing worse.
“This way!” one of them shouted over his shoulder. “Here's the loot, here's where the devil worshippers are hiding!”
They sidled forward, staying behind their shields. Another guard and a dozen civilians, one of them with blood that couldn't be his own dyeing his whole left side, ran out to join them. Light bloomed through the upper-story windows. The rioters had managed to set fire to the factory office.
A few arrows zinged toward the rioters, but the Highlanders were hunters rather than soldiers. Their quivers were narrow bamboo tubes with only three or four arrows in each.
Cashel waited, saying nothing, aware only of motion. Faces didn't matter anymore. More rioters darted out of the factory yard.
The guards brandished swords. “Let's get him!” one shouted as he feinted toward Cashel. Another guard bulled forward, his shield high to completely protect his head. Cashel swung the full length of his staff in a low arc that smashed the guard's ankles and swept both legs out from under him.
The man hit the path screaming at the pain of crushed joints. His helmet fell off and his shield bonged against the ground. The third guard had lunged an instant later. He tripped over his comrade's legs and pitched onto his face. Cashel hit him on the back of the head with the quarterstaff's
butt as he shifted his hands to centergrip the weapon.
Cashel began to rotate the staff, crossing his wrists with each revolution. He watched the mob through the spinning hickory, saying nothing.
Another armored guard had joined the survivor of the trio who'd rushed the gangplank, but this man was limping and showed no sign of wanting to try conclusions with the man who'd thrown the cargo chest. Several score civilians, some of them women, were on the quay; more joined them every moment as the fire took firm hold of the building behind them.
One threw a stone; Cashel's quarterstaff batted it away, but it wouldn't have hit him anyway. Most of the civilians carried clubs or metal bars, though there were a few swords. The rioters hadn't brought missiles into the factory with them, and the yard wasn't paved to supply the lack.
Cashel risked a glance over his shoulder. The vessel was heavily loaded, so the sailors were having trouble pushing it away from the quay. Rioters began to jump the narrow gap, disrupting efforts to move the ship. Somebody hurled a lantern. The paper shell flared up and the oil oozed across the wood in a spreading blaze.
Cashel spun the staff. Everything else stopped in his mind. Blue fire danced from the ferrules, as cold as the hoarfrost that coats twigs in winter.
The staff spun faster. Cashel's arms couldn't keep up with it, yet they did … . A wind was blowing, snarling, roaring.
The
Golden Dragon
lurched away from the shore. The gangplank fell out from under Cashel's feet and splashed in the harbor. He was still standing and the staff spun. Its iron tips swept a glowing blue circle beyond which the rioters screamed in horror.
“Jump!” Mellie cried.
Cashel jumped backward, over the bows of the
Golden Dragon
. He collapsed on the deck. The ship quivered under him, still sliding backward from the shore. Cashel lay on his
stomach. He was so tired that he felt the muscles of his mighty chest straining just to breathe.
Serian sailors were thrusting the long sweeps through oarlocks on the deckrail as the captain screamed and slashed at them with his ray-spine baton. The mob on the quay crowded through the factory gate again, too frightened to care that the building was fully involved by fire and likely to spill blazing debris in all.directions when it collapsed.
“You're so
strong
, Cashel!” Mellie cooed as she cuddled his ear.
There were squeals like those of a pig being butchered. One of the rioters was still aboard the
Golden Dragon.
Several laughing Highlanders pinned the man to the deck as another sawed at his throat with a bone knife.
Cashel clutched his quarterstaff, sucking in deep breaths, and let oblivion sweep over him in shadows lit by the occasional blue flare.

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