Prince of Outcasts (19 page)

Feldman supplied the bare facts: “The eastern edge of Java and Lombok are close to west and east of Bali—almost close enough to swim, in easy reach for any sort of little fishing boat, and they had many sailing vessels . . . yachts, they called them then.”

Thora's right hand closed unconsciously where the hilt of her backsword would have been. “It's a king's duty to find his people fields to plow if they lack them, to work the land and feed their children,” she said. “So the first Bear Lord of my folk did, by the sword when he had to.”

“Rajadharma, they say here,” Deor said. “As Hengist and Hrosa led my people, in the very ancient days:

“Engle and Seaxe upp becomon,

ofer brad brimu Britene sohton,

wlance wig-smithas, Wealas ofercomon,

eorlas ar-hwaete eard begeaton!”

He thought for a moment, then said: “Or in the modern tongue:

“—since from the east Angles and Saxons came up

Over the broad sea. Britain they sought,

Proud war-smiths who overcame the Welsh,

Glorious warriors, they took hold of the land.”

Everyone nodded, and Feldman went on: “Raja Oka rules east Java and the whole of Lombok as well as Bali proper these days, and bits and pieces elsewhere. He's the grandson of the first, Oka the Great, and there are Balinese colonies all over. They just headed out to anyplace they thought might be doable—they even tried New Guinea, though not twice.”

“Desperate and fierce and ruthless as so many were in the terrible
years,” Deor said. “Sometimes taking land spear-won, sometimes being pushed back into the sea and dying with their families, either way sparing the food-stocks back home so that their kinfolk might live.”

“It looks like this is one of the places they fought their way ashore,” Feldman said.

Then he frowned. “Though I've never heard of it, specifically. Probably it has its own ruler and he doesn't want to attract Oka's attention or pay tribute. We'll see.”

John nodded, feeling his heart swell suddenly as the wind brought a strange spicy waft and the palms swayed in the distance, the light of dawn flickering and flashing on their fronds.

We will see,
he thought.
And I'll have a chance to see. We'll go back as soon as we can
—duty prompted that—
but until then . . . we'll see things strange and wild!

*   *   *

“Christ have mercy!” he said later that day, as the sun was just an hour above the western horizon.

When he crossed himself there was pure awe in the gesture. The harbor was broad, shaped like an irregular C pointing southwest. Most of the shoreline was farmland or forest or gardens—he thought he could see glimpses of what must be villas, with pools and artificial streams and very beautiful gardens. Otherwise it was as if it was in two different places at once, or two profoundly different countries whose capitals were close enough to see in a single sweeping glance.

One was to the west, their left-hand side, or port-side as sailors said. There rose a spread-out walled city of palace and temple, pagoda-like structures towering up in narrow pyramids of one roof after another, each smaller than the last. Or triple rows like steep triangular hills carved from white rock in fantastically intricate patterns, patterns that blazed with light from gilt and stucco and metal and glass. Open spaces full of trees or busy roads separated them, and he thought he saw leaping fountains. Farther inland were compounds like those they'd seen in the countryside, but jammed together to front on dusty streets that thronged with people. The whole was very substantial but not huge; there were
probably at least twenty thousand people, possibly thirty, not quite half what a really big city like Portland or Corvallis held.

On the eastward side of the bay to their right was a structure just as huge, but . . .

“That looks sort of like a Classical building,” John said.

Music was his favored art, but he'd looked into architecture too since he was bound to be a patron of all of them someday. After a closer look he went on:

“Not quite, though—maybe Venetian, or Byzantine? And not as big as Todenangst, say, unless there's a lot more on the other side of that crest, but still pretty damned big. And not anything you'd expect to see in this part of the world!”

He thought it must have been built into and over the side of a substantial hill, sculpting away the bulk of the earth. Most of it was made of some stone that ranged from white with a slight hint of pink through rose to deep dusky scarlet.

“Coral block,” Feldman said, identifying it. “Pretty, and easy to work. Maybe blocks over a core of pounded coral fragments. But it doesn't make that . . . whatever it is . . . as lighthearted as I'd expect just from hearing
built of pink stone
.”

No indeed,
John thought.

Wall and terrace and rising stair, tall slender round towers with bulbous tips, narrow slit windows much taller than a man in blank surfaces that would be easy to defend even if it wasn't strictly a castle, flanked by engaged pillars twisted like spirals. And on the topmost tier columns and domes, eerily elongated and . . . somehow subtly twisted. As if they were notes in the harmonies of songs he'd never heard. He blinked his eyes. There had been a shimmer before them, as if he was seeing
through
the scene before him. Folk were crowded on the walls, watching, ant-tiny at this distance. A black and yellow flag flew in many places, though it was impossible to see the details of it. Looking closer, he had the impression that there were many enclosed courtyards, possibly very large.

Captain Ishikawa had come up and was standing with one hand on his
katana and the thumb on the guard, ready to flick it out as his right hand reached for it—that seemed almost instinctive in Nihonjin entitled to wear the twin swords. Ishikawa was also a naval officer, and an engineer, a man of varied accomplishments for his thirty or so years. He looked narrowly at both sets of buildings.

“These are new,” he said.

In English which was still strongly accented—he pronounced
these
as
zese
—but now fully fluent and understandable, unlike the third-hand book-learned variety he'd spoken when he arrived on Montival's shore that spring.

“Both the city to the west, and that structure to the east. Built since the Change; I think that one may incorporate ruins”—he nodded to the mass of rose coral—“but neither existed before the ancient world fell.”

A rueful shake of the head. “It is humbling, to see others building so, in so many different countries, when in Nihon we strive to keep the old in repair.”

John inclined his head slightly. The Japanese—or the ones he'd met in the past six months—were an impeccably polite people, but also intensely proud. Ishikawa was more approachable than the others around Reiko, which made him only extremely reserved and taciturn by Montivallan standards.

“Your people have had their war to fight, Captain Ishikawa, against terrible odds. That consumes all the energy they have to spare.”

Feldman and his First Mate had been scanning the harbor as well. “Now, here's the question: where do we head? Because we have to beach her, and soon. Unless they have a drydock free here.”

Under the ramparts of the coral-built palace-city were docks and wharves, also solidly built of stone, and a breakwater. Anchored a bit off from them was a very large ship, a long sleek shape with flush decks and four towering masts and a hull painted some neutral blue-gray color. Smaller ships were at the wharves, some of types he was familiar with, others the odd-looking ones called prau in these seas.

Feldman examined the giant. “That's a pre-Change ship, by the Lord of the Universe! Two thousand tons, or even more. I've heard they built ships for sail, sometimes, right before the end.”

“The displacement would depend on her lines underwater,” Ishikawa said, and Radavindraban made a wordless sound of agreement as he used his binoculars.

“Steel hull, then,” Feldman said enviously. “She'll be fast, from the look of her spars and the amount of canvas she could spread. Not very nimble, though; she's ship-rigged, all square except a gaff on the mizzen and the staysails and jibs. And she'd draw deep—thirty feet, maybe more. I don't like the look of this bay, see the mottled color of the water, shading to green and back to blue? Shallow spots, reefs or mudbanks or both. I wouldn't care to exchange broadsides with that monster either, though.”

John nodded; the steel sides would make her relatively immune to fire, and nearly so to catapult shot and bolts.

“And the ancients built it for . . . amusement?”

“Not one damned thing amusing about her now,” the Captain said. “She's got a full broadside, probably modifications since then. Fifteen firing ports a side, and more on her deck. That's a specialist warship, and a very strong one. Stronger than any single ship in the Royal Navy.”

He peered closely, his lips moving. “I can make out her name. H . . . A . . . S . . . T . . . U . . . R . . .
Hastur
.”

He turned his glass to the westward. “Now, they've got much less in the way of dockage and wharfage over there. I'm not very surprised; Balinese don't really take to the sea well. Praus, plenty of fishing boats, and very little else . . . except that barquentine. Smallish, two hundred tons, maybe two-fifty. Looks fast though . . . catapults too, some sort of light sea-scorpion.”

“Aussie, Cap'n?” Radavindraban said.

“Yes, from her lines. And they like that rig, square on the fore and fore-and-aft on the main and mizzen except for a main top'sle. Darwin, maybe. Or maybe Townsville, or Cairns. And she's got a shark-mouth painted on her waterline.”

His brows went up. “And they're weighing anchor and making sail. Making sail right away, they tied a float to their anchor-cable and threw it overside. They're anxious to make our acquaintance, it seems. Mr. Mate, all hands to battle stations.”

The crew already was, but they stood to in anxious tense silence when Radavindraban conveyed the message; Ishikawa nodded and trotted down to the catapult he and his men crewed. John frowned. Something was bothering him. . . .

Something besides being on a sinking ship and having multitudes trying to kill me. The things I do!

“Captain,” he said. Feldman glanced aside at him, frowning the way a man did when his concentration was upset. “This island doesn't do much trade, right?”

“None, from what I've heard,” Feldman said flatly. “It might as well have sunk right after the Change. Which is a bit odd; it's fair-sized, and obviously well-peopled.”

“But those people there”—John pointed eastward—“have that bloody great ship, the
Hastur
! And a bunch of others. And that building is something you'd talk about if you ever saw it. Why hasn't any word of this got out? Why hasn't someone like you put in here to see if there
was
any trade? And brought out news?”

“Not worth my while, but you're right in principle. Someone would . . . like that little Aussie barquentine. In the last decade or two with trade picking up the way it has . . . it's become harder to be entirely out of the way than it used to be.”

He snapped his fingers. “Unless you're
trying
to stay out of sight! I should have thought . . . well, busy. Those ships are all colored blue-gray. Camouflage, yes; pirates and warships. Honest merchantmen usually don't try that hard not to be seen!”

Just then the masthead hailed: “Small craft putting out from the quays to eastward below the pink castle, skipper! Dozens of them, crammed with men! I can see spearheads, and some of 'em are galleys with catapults in the bows!”

A moment later. “More small craft from the westward harbor setting out towards us as well, skipper! Same sort, but not as many!”

“Any sign of movement from the big ship?” Feldman called back.

“No, skipper. She'd take a while, that 'un. Anchored fore and aft, too.
Wait. . . . Some of the small boats are putting alongside her, men going aboard, lots of 'em.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Feldman said. “We'll head west towards the Balinese, and hope we get there before those galleys do. This may well come to a close-quarter action, and I don't like fighting galleys in confined waters where you can't dodge about to make them exhaust their rowers. They can come at you right out of the eye of the wind.”

John nodded wordlessly and vaulted over the railing and down to the main deck. Evrouin was moving towards him with the canvas sack and his shield over his back, and he took a deep breath and nodded.

“Full gear, Sergeant Fayard,” he called to the underofficer of crossbowmen. “This looks . . . serious.”

Out of the frying pan, into the fucking fire,
he added silently, and saw the thought echoed in the underofficer's eyes.

John had expected to feel better when he had a chance to do something he was properly trained at. Right now, he'd have settled for being a supernumerary idler again. The valet-bodyguard started pulling things out of the bag; Deor wiggled into his mail shirt, then started helping Thora, as Ruan shrugged into his Mackenzie brigandine and buckled the straps under his right arm and stepped through his longbow to string it with his thigh braced over the riser. John's mouth was suddenly very dry and he wanted a drink very badly, but you didn't want a full bladder in a suit of plate before you had to.

What in the name of all the Saints and the Virgin is going on here?

He didn't know. He didn't even know if anyone else knew, either. Maybe the Australian ship could tell him, if
they
weren't coming to attack him too. He considered that as he bent and twisted to let the plates and pieces settle and they were buckled and fitted and strapped.