Pirate Wars (20 page)

“I’m to—”

“I beg you to.”

The Ghost Trader took a step back, clutching at a table edge with one hand. His elbow struck against a pile of books and made it fall. Neither of the two men even looked as the heavy volumes fell to the floor in a cloud of dust and lay there like dead doves with outspread wings.

“You alone are able to do me this last favor,” said Forefather urgently. “If I ever knew how to do it myself, it was long ago—I cannot remember how. But you, my friend, you know it.”

Forefather might sound to others as if he were speaking in riddles, but the Ghost Trader understood his every word. Their meaning lay before him as clearly as if someone had cut them into glass with a diamond. And their sound was just as painful to his ears.

“You ask much.”

“No,” said Forefather. “Only resolution.”

“It’s more than that. You are—”

“Old.”

“That we all are.”

“Old and faded. And as good as forgotten. They might revere something of what they believe I am. The nameless creator, the father of all, the word at the beginning of time. But I am not really that. They’ve forgotten the truth, and
soon it will fare with me as with all the other forgotten gods, whom I myself once created. I will disappear.”

“You want me to change you into a story? The way I did with Munk’s mother?” asked the Ghost Trader in a trembling voice. “But that’s as if I were to kill you!”

“No. You would give me a future, if there can still be such a thing in this world. Do it, my friend.”

“But it’s wrong.”

Forefather shook his head with an amused smile. “How can stories be wrong? You know better than that. I beg you. And afterwards…”

“You will live on as stories,” said the Ghost Trader somberly. Perhaps Forefather was right. What were they, the gods, in the eyes of men other than stories?

Forefather read his thoughts. “I knew you would understand.” Without waiting for an answer, he sank back onto the chair. He placed his right hand on the binding of the book, as if he felt more connected to its empty pages than ever. “Step behind me,” he said, closing his eyes.

Still the Ghost Trader hesitated. Then he made a conscious effort, took a step behind Forefather, and placed both hands on his shoulders. Tears gathered in his one eye, and it wasn’t long before they were running down his cheek. It was the second time within minutes that he’d wept. Before that, centuries had passed without even one tear appearing, but now they dropped freely on Forefather’s shoulders and were soaked up by his robe.

“I make you into a story,” he said gently. “You will be a
story in which light emerges from darkness. In which people are born and die. In which sorrow and injustice happen, but also good fortune and great joy. A story of being born and passing away, of ascent and decline, and the constant hope of a new beginning. Of fathers and sons and spirits and the life in eternity. And of the humans you have created and who will tell themselves these stories, for they are part of them and forevermore one with you.”

The fragile body did not collapse, did not even twitch. But when the Ghost Trader carefully lifted his hands from Forefather’s shoulders, he saw that the life had slipped out of the old man’s body like a young bird leaving its nest. And with it flew the stories of Forefather, out into the world to be told and heard and told again.

“Farewell, my friend,” the Trader whispered, and he bent over and kissed the old man on the forehead. “Your road was hard, but today it is the easier, for it goes on elsewhere without burden and guilt and grief.”

The Ghost Trader buried his face in his hands and wept until his tears finally stopped.

Then he went on his way to the highest point of the city, where Aelenium almost touched the sky. As he walked he drew the silver ring from beneath his robe. His fingers stroked the metal, feeling the invisible current of power.

He did not look back at Forefather as he left the library. He felt as though he were hearing a thousand voices in the distance, and they were all telling one story. And thus it would become true.

The sound of
the battle penetrated Griffin’s consciousness as a distant rumble. First it was a muffled booming and roaring like the wind at night beating against the hull and making the sails flap spookily. Then voices emerged, screams, the clattering of blades, and the thundering of pistol and rifle fire.

Griffin started awake. He was lying on the hard floor of a house, among groaning wounded, who’d been laid out in rows side by side in a field hospital, most of them only on blankets, some—like him—on the hard, bare floor.

Someone had placed a few old pieces of clothing under his head. The air was humid and heavy, the emanations of blood, sweat, and fear of death mixed to a rancid stench.

Griffin got up with difficulty and staggered dazedly once on his feet. He moved drunkenly toward the exit. He had to
be careful not to trip over the other men—and a few women—on the floor. A doctor who was bending over a wounded man in soaking bandages cast an exhausted glance toward Griffin, then turned again to the one who was more in need of his help.

The wounds in Griffin’s side hurt, primarily because he’d stood up too quickly. He told himself it wasn’t bad, and he felt ashamed that they’d brought him here because of these scratches.

Had he been so weakened? He could hardly remember. Before his eyes he saw Soledad as she’d leaped from the coral bridge into the middle of Tyrone’s men. And there’d also been Buenaventure and Walker. But then? A desperate battle. Acrid smoke. And some sort of bright light, with something moving inside it that looked like a gigantic snake.

Yes, he remembered the serpent. And its feathered wings.

Very vaguely also the men who’d held him firm on the back of a ray while the turmoil of a battle passed beneath him. Then nothing more. That hadn’t been sleep but unconsciousness.

As he stumbled through the door into the open air, still more images crowded up in his mind. The kobalins in the water. The shape changer dissolving before his eyes into thousands of tiny beetles. And then Jasconius shooting out of the deep with mouth wide open and swallowing the jellyfish boy.

Jasconius, who had sacrificed himself for Griffin and defeated the lord of the kobalins.

Griffin ran out into the street. He was instantly surrounded by the tumult that prevails behind the lines of any battle: Figures swarmed in confusion like ants; wounded who’d been borne from the battlefield, some silent, others screaming; occasional men who’d lost their nerve and now ran frantically back and forth, murmuring wild snatches of conversation or bursting into tears.

In vain he kept his eyes peeled for his friends. Before him lay one of the largest squares of the city. In former times, dealers had offered their wares from tents and stands, wares they’d shopped for in their ships in Haiti or the Antilles Islands. There’d been cheerful crowds, fragrant spices, and exotic foods, even in those last tense days before the invasion.

Today the square was covered with wounded or exhausted fighters who were seeking rest here for a moment. The real battlefield was about fifty yards away, where three broad streets opened into the square.

Griffin turned and looked up at the top of the mountain. There was no smoke rising anywhere. That meant that at least so far the upper third of the city remained undamaged.

Suddenly the dust was whipped up around him, and a mighty shadow sank down onto the square next to him.

“Griffin!” called d’Artois from the saddle of his ray. “You’re on your feet again, then.”

“Yes, Captain. How bad is it?”

D’Artois looked as weary as all the fighters in this battle, but in his exhaustion he registered something that Griffin recognized with dismay as a shade of resignation. “Not
good,” said the captain. Behind him his marksman was using the pause to reload his rifles and pistols.

When he’d awakened, in those strange, blurry moments in which thoughts gain a life of their own, one question kept running through Griffin’s head over and over. Now he spoke it aloud. “Why doesn’t the Ghost Trader help us?”

“What’s he supposed to do, boy?”

“He could awaken the spirits of all the fallen and let them fight on our side!”

D’Artois let out something that sounded like a mixture of laughing and yelping and might rather have fitted Buenaventure. “If it were only so simple…. How are the spirits supposed to decide who’s their friend and who’s their enemy? Believe me, this has been talked about more than once, but it’s pointless. The Trader has to explain to each individual ghost who he’s supposed to fight with. If we had an army of conjurors who could keep the ghosts under control…But he alone? Impossible.”

“Is there a ray around here anywhere for me?” Griffin looked up at the sky, where fewer than a handful of the powerful creatures floated. Their sharpshooters were firing bullets down onto the attackers from the air.

“Most of us are fighting on the other side of the city,” said d’Artois. “They’ve broken through the wall over there. Count Aristotle has fallen and many good men with him. But as well as we can, we’re keeping Tyrone’s people from the road to the upper quarter from the air. So far we’re still managing.” He looked over his shoulder and saw that his marksman was
finished reloading. “Climb on, Griffin! I can set you down on the landing area.”

Griffin didn’t wait to be asked twice. He hurried over the outspread wings of the ray and climbed into the saddle between d’Artois and the marksman. “Thanks,” he said. “I think I’m more useful as a ray rider than on the wall.”

“We may be desperate,” replied d’Artois, as he made the ray ascend, “but we’re only defeated when we give up. You’re a brave fellow, Griffin. I—and many others as well—have heard what you did for us out there. It’s a wonder that you survived—but perhaps there’s more behind it. If you infect us all with your luck and your courage, boy, maybe we still have a chance.”

Griffin had turned red as the captain spoke, and he was glad that neither d’Artois nor his marksman could see his face now.

The ray bore them a little way up the mountain, away from the embattled wall and the broad square. Then it began to circle the coral mountain. Griffin saw that the battle was raging around the entire city like a boiling whitecap. On the other side, the throng of dueling and shooting men had moved up the mountain, but a whole crowd of ray riders were holding the attackers in check. The wall was broken, but Tyrone’s men had no chance against the concentrated attacks from the air. As long as the defensive positions didn’t give in other places so the ray riders had to divide up, the damage below remained limited.

“Captain?” Griffin asked.

“We’re just there. There’ll be a ray for you down in that square.”

“While I was gone, did you hear anything about Jolly?”

The soldier shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“No sign at all? No weakening of the Maelstrom? Or…I don’t know…”

D’Artois shrugged and let the ray descend. “We have no scouts outside anymore. I have no idea what would happen if the Maelstrom were to suddenly close. If the polliwogs’ mission had succeeded and had some sort of direct consequences for us, we’d probably notice it in one way or another, don’t you think?”

Griffin nodded thoughtfully, but in truth his thoughts were already elsewhere: outside over the sea, over a roaring chasm of rotating, foaming masses of water. And with a girl who was opposing that all alone.

The captain let him climb down to the ground and then guided his ray up into the air again.

Griffin waved to him, then turned to the handful of rays lying with wings outspread on the north edge of the small square. Their riders were dead or wounded, and not a few of the animals had been wounded by kobalin lances or pistol shots.

He chose a ray that was only slightly injured, scratched it on its shallow head, and climbed into the saddle.

“Here, catch!” cried one of the stall boys taking care of the animals. He threw Griffin a saber. “We have no more sharpshooters left on the ground. You’ll have to manage alone.”

Griffin shoved the saber into a sheath on the saddle. With a whistle and a whispered command he made the ray rise in a narrow semicircle. Dust puffed up beneath him as the broad wings whipped up the air over the ground.

Moments later he was on his way to the other side of the city. From above he cast a last look at the defenders fighting on the wall. Finally he turned the ray around, flew out over the water, and rode over the fuzzy roof of the fog ring as over a meadow of white grass, until he saw the open sea lying beneath him.

In the far distance mist veiled the horizon like a gray mountain, whose tip constantly shifted, rose, and then collapsed, flowing apart and again taking shape. The creeping fingers of the Maelstrom would soon reach Aelenium.

“Fly as fast as you can,” he cried to the ray, but really it was more a command to himself. “Take me to the Maelstrom.”

Soledad ran a pirate through with her saber as he climbed the wall waving his blade in the certainty of victory.

What a blockhead
, she thought bitterly.
It’s really an army of blockheads that’s going to defeat us
. That made the defeat even more painful, even though the outcome was still the same.

Walker and Buenaventure were fighting on the crest of the wall, as if they’d just hurried fresh into the battle. Yet they were as exhausted as Soledad, and the strength they were using and throwing at their adversaries was nothing but a last spasm.

Many defenders had fallen, first in the battle with the
kobalins and now in the battle against the pirates and the cannibals. Parts of the wall, it was said, were already overrun, over on the other side of the city. Count Aristotle, who was leading the defense there, had been killed, and with him several human members of the council. It was only a question of time as to when the first enemies would get up to the top and would storm into the refuge halls in the center. With the women and children, Aelenium’s last hopes would die. What sense would it make to duel for victory on the wall if those for whom they were fighting were killed by the barbarian hordes?

Soledad was accustomed to pirate raids, but she had never seen a battle of this scale. Nothing of all this had to do with honor, with pride, or with heroism.

Soledad didn’t feel like a heroine when she killed an antagonist, only like someone who’d won another minute or two; she doubted that it was any different with her enemies. The cannibals who’d been stripped of all humanity by rumors and legends finally showed themselves to be ordinary men who fought and fell for their cause.

Certainly they were horrible to look at, with their painted bodies and grisly trophies dangling at their shoulders and hips. But in certain ways they resembled the kobalins, for they also were being driven into battle by others.

Tyrone had drawn the leaders of the tribes to his side, had taken part in their rituals, honored their customs, and finally made himself their king.

And now his subjects were dying for him in droves,
blinded by his promises, led astray and made use of. Victory might await them at the end, but at what price? The Maelstrom would make no distinction between them and the other humans. He would brush them from the face of the earth before they could recognize the extent of his deceit.

All the while the winged serpent god raged among them like a demon, spreading the same horror among friend and foe. The inhabitants of the city had him to thank that the wall was still standing on this side of Aelenium. Many arrows were sticking out of his scaly body, but his pointed tail and, even more, his fearsome jaws sowed multiple deaths among the attackers.

Soledad had expected that the cannibals would panic at the appearance of the serpent, but that had quickly proven to be rash hope. When the first arrows pierced the serpent skin, the tribal warriors lost their reverence and threw themselves against the creature in desperate waves. Some inflicted wounds on him, others bagged a crimson feather from his wings. But there was no time for any of them to savor the triumph.

Soledad’s arm gradually grew numb, her wounds became harder to ignore. Her entire body hurt, and her sight dimmed even in the midst of a duel. Her reserves were dwindling.

Something had to happen. Otherwise far more than just her life would end on this day.

The ray shelter at the top of the coral mountain cone was empty when the Ghost Trader walked through the great door. Even the young animals were taking part in the battle.

All the stable boys were down in the city with their charges to provide for the wounded rays in squares and in broad streets. All that was left behind up here was a damp, slightly fishy smell.

Outside it was long after noon and the sun was deep, so that its beams only reached the edge of the circular, fifty-foot-wide opening in the ceiling. Up there the edge glowed like a golden ring and reflected in the pools of water on the floor.

The Ghost Trader strode across the empty hall and approached the stairs that led in a broad sweep up the curving walls to the opening. He’d just climbed the first few steps when his eye fell on one of the pits that gaped all along the base of the walls.

He’d been mistaken when he assumed that all the ray berths were empty. A single animal was still there, in a pit at a slant under the stairs, and even from the steps the Trader could tell by the leathery skin and the wheezing breathing that this was a particularly old ray. Obviously it was too weak to fly outside with the others.

The Ghost Trader hesitated for a moment, then he climbed down the stairs again, went to the edge of the pit, and squatted down. His knees ached with the motion, his entire body seemed to groan and to creak.

The animal was lying comfortably in the water, with outspread wings, through which went a gentle waving motion with each panting breath.

“Well, old fellow,” said the Trader, and he had the irritating feeling that he was talking to himself. “I guess you’d have
liked to be outside with the others, wouldn’t you? That’s the hard thing once you learn where and to whom you belong—you can never get free of it, whether you want to or not.” He smiled sadly. “It’s no different with me.”