Tales of the Old World (110 page)

Before dawn Viehdorf would burn.

“It is time,” Gastoen said, his voice deep and commanding, brooking no
question. Karel rose from his bed, his head turning towards the open doorway of
his room. Gastoen had already withdrawn, however, satisfied that his son would
rise from his slumber and hurry to join his father outside.

Or, perhaps, thought Karel, his father knew that he had not been asleep. His
body cried out from fatigue, the weariness of long hours spent before dawn
hauling lobster pots and fishing nets from the chill waters of the Sea of Claws,
a labour which had only ended late in the afternoon, as the small fleet of tiny
fishing boats returned to Wulfhafen, their occupants grumbling about the meagre
catch. It was not yet late enough in the year for the lobsters to be numerous,
and many of the pots went without an inmate, or yielded such miserable specimens
that the clawed creatures were summarily tossed back into the sea. Still, the
grumbling was not so very serious as it might have been amongst the fishermen of
the many other coastal villages scattered across the Empire, for even if the
lobster season was still months away, a far more profitable season was about to
begin for the men of Wulfhafen.

Karel quickly dressed himself, emerging from his tiny room into the much
larger common room of his family’s home. He could see his mother standing calmly
in the centre of the room, a clay mug gripped firmly in her tired, wrinkled
hands. She smiled at her son, a warm, loving expression, yet with the thread of
worry mixed in to tarnish the reassurance the old woman hoped to bestow. When
Karel stepped towards her, she gave him the clay mug, its contents steaming; he
gratefully accepted the cup and sipped away at its contents. He was not
surprised to find that she had mixed some rum into the tea. The alcohol would
keep him warm far longer than the tea. His mother was always so very practical.

“Your father is waiting,” the old woman gently prodded as Karel lingered over
his tea. The youth nodded and slugged down the remainder in a single gulp,
wiping the excess from his chin with the sleeve of his jerkin. Karel handed the
mug back to the care of his mother’s wrinkled hands and stooped downward to kiss
her cheek. He was surprised when his mother tried to slip an object into his
hands as he hugged her.

“What is this?” Karel asked, staring at the tarnished steel kitchen knife.
His mother pushed his hands and the knife they gripped against his chest.

“You can never be too careful,” she explained. “Slip it beneath your clothes.
Better to have it and not need it, than to be without.” With those last words of
warning, Karel’s mother manoeuvred him to the door and into the cold night
air.

Karel found his father leaning against the side of their hut, staring down
the narrow lane that made up the village of Wulfhafen. It was nothing much, as
villages went. A scattered mass of simple huts, perhaps two score in total: a
large wooden meeting hall, where the village men would spend long summer nights
drinking and carousing; a mass of ramshackle boat houses closer to shore; a
small warehouse where food would be stored, kept in a community trust; and a
small coach house, the domain of Wulfhafen’s only wagon and four horses. Gastoen
looked up as his boy joined him, smiling and gripping Karel firmly by the
shoulder.

“Tonight you officially become a man,” Gastoen said, smiling into his son’s
face, his tobbaco-stained teeth broken and pitted. Gastoen stared at Karel,
reading the youth’s features. He thumped his son on the back and began to walk
slowly down the lane.

“Everyone is nervous their first time,” Gastoen explained. “You will do just
fine. Why, when I was your age, I was probably even more anxious than you are
now.” Gastoen punctuated his remark with a short, cough-like laugh.

Karel looked hard at his father, considering his words. He seemed older now
than he had been only this morning, helping his son pull empty lobster pots back
into their boat. Karel idly wondered if his father had also been unable to
sleep, if he was having problems adjusting to the new nocturnal habit demanded
by the long autumn nights. He would have thought that after these many years,
his father would have adjusted to the yearly pattern. Perhaps it was something
besides the alteration in routine that had upset his father.

“Are you certain that what we are doing is right?” Karel muttered, almost
under his breath, as he pursued this last train of thought. Gastoen stopped,
turning to face his son, both men, old and young, shrouded in the shadows of the
huts to either side of the lane. Gastoen opened his mouth to speak but waited
until a figure that had been advancing upon them from further down the lane
passed them by, the last chords of the sea shanty the man had been whistling
drifting away into the night. Only when the tune could no longer be heard did
Gastoen speak.

“I myself asked that question of my father when I was your age,” Gastoen
confessed. “We stood, perhaps, in this very spot. He explained to me the way
this wretched world of ours works. He said that in the sea, for the shark to
grow big and strong, it must devour thousands of smaller fish. For the kraken,
it must consume numberless whales to survive. As it is in the sea, so it is on
land. For a man to prosper, he must have prey. It is the way of things, Karel.
To have joy, yourself, another must suffer.” Gastoen sighed and put a gnarled
hand on his son’s head. “Believe me, we have things much better here than in
other places. If what we do brings us such prosperity, can what we do be wrong?”

The question seemed genuine to Karel, as if his father was not certain of the
answer himself. The youth would have challenged his father’s reasoning further
when, suddenly, the shadows in the narrow lane danced away from them, retreating
away from the beach. A bright light glared from the shore, dazzling in its
brilliance, far more wondrous than the pale, feeble light of the tiny sliver of
Mannslieb hanging in the night sky. Karel shut his eyes and flinched away from
the sudden brightness, but Gastoen had already gripped the youth by the shoulder
and pulled him into sharing the accelerated trot the old man had adopted.

“The beacon fire has been lit!” Gastoen exclaimed as the two made their way
toward the shore. “Our place is on the beach.” Gastoen paused as they passed the
last of the thatch-roofed huts. He removed a heavy boat hook from his belt and
pressed it into Karel’s hands.

“Keep this ready,” Gastoen ordered, his voice heavy with concern. “Stay close
to me. Perhaps nothing will happen tonight, but as your grandfather always used
to warn ‘expect every storm to be a hurricane’.”

The men of Wulfhafen were gathered around a roaring, blazing fire. The mound
of wood rose several feet above the rocks, promising to spend hours before
burning out. Karel could make out the figure of Veytman, Wulfhafen’s chief
citizen, ordering men to stack the empty kegs of oil they had used to douse the
wood with into an orderly file some distance from the advancing surf. Veytman
spotted Gastoen and Karel as they advanced onto the sand and broke away from the
bonfire crew to meet them.

“You are late, Gastoen,” Veytman reprimanded the older man. Thin and powerful
where Gastoen was paunchy and frail, Veytman cut an imposing figure. The man’s
dark hair and rakish looks marked him out as the direct descendent of
Wulfhafen’s founder, the pirate Wulfaert. The narrow, elegant blade sheathed at
Veytman’s side was the finest steel in all the village and had been the pirate’s
when he had plied the coasts of Bretonnia in his sloop The Cockerel. “We should
have been glad for your help in setting the bonfire.”

“I am sorry,” Gastoen began, trying not to meet Veytman’s gaze.

“I see you brought your son along,” Veytman observed, focusing his cold blue
eyes on Karel for the first time. Veytman studied the boy for a moment and they
looked back at Gastoen. “Are you certain that he is ready for this?”

This time Gastoen did not avoid Veytman’s gaze. “He will do what is expected
of a man of Wulfhafen,” the old man snapped, fire in his voice. Veytman nodded
and clucked his tongue.

“We shall have to see about that,” the rogue said, running a smooth finger
through the slight brush of moustache upon his lip. “Just be certain that he
knows the rules. No hiding anything. Everything that washes ashore must be
valued and appraised before it can be distributed equally amongst the village.”
Veytman let his face soften, and winked at Karel. “Then, there is always the
Captain’s share to consider,” the man laughed.

“Do you think we will catch anything tonight?” Gastoen asked Veytman. Veytman
turned, casting his eyes out to the darkness of the nighttime sea. There was
motion there, the ceaseless undulation of the waters. But of what might be
lurking above or below that undulating mass, there was no clue.

“No,” Veytman shook his head, “it is early in the season yet. The fog is just
now starting to become thick, the wind only now beginning to sound with Ulric’s
howl. I don’t think that we will catch anything tonight. But it is useful to
keep everybody in practice. We must let the indolence of summer be forgotten.”
Veytman turned away from Gastoen and his son and walked over to the roaring
fire, warming his hands before the flames.

“Come along, boy,” Gastoen said, gripping Karel by the shoulder. “He has the
right idea. It will be a long night, and we may as well be warm.”

“Lights on the water,” the keen-eyed villager said. Karel was immediately
roused from his napping by the sudden activity all around him. He looked away
towards the roaring bonfire for a moment, then turned his gaze to Veytman. The
rakish hetman of Wulfhafen removed the long, slender tube of his looking glass
from within the breast of his coat. Like his sword, it was an heirloom from the
pirate Wulfaert, a rare and valuable device looted from an elven ship, if the
legends of Wulfaert held any truth in them. Veytman placed the tube to his eye
and gazed out at the black expanse of the sea.

“Fortune smiles upon us on our first night!” Veytman laughed, replacing the
looking glass within his coat. “She looks to be a merchantman, a fine prize for
so early in the season!” Veytman looked over at a burly villager standing
nearby.

“Emil, encourage our friends to come ashore,” Veytman said. Emil took the
long, curved horn from his belt and put it to his lips. Soon, the man’s
bellows-like lungs sent a loud, mournful note echoing into the night. Gastoen
and the other men of Wulfhafen stared at the distant lights from the ship
expectantly, even Karel becoming caught up in the excitement. The men watched
and waited. When the lonely bellow of an answering horn sounded from the ship,
the men of Wulfhafen turned to one another, their wide, cruel smiles bespeaking
their silent glee.

Karel watched as the lights of the ship came closer towards the shore. The
youth understood what was happening, and his excitement abated as his mind made
the leap from the scene he was witnessing and that which must surely follow.
Emil blasted the horn once again as the ship drew still closer, drawn through
the night and the fog towards the promising light of the beacon. Like a moth to
the flame.

A captain wise in the ways of the north would never have fallen for the
trick. The best charts of the northern coast of the Empire, that neglected,
shunned region beyond the Wasteland and the Drakwald, described a craggy stretch
of shore as Wrecker’s Point. It is a place riddled with sharp fangs of rock,
submerged shoals and razor-sharp coral reefs. The refuge promised by dozens of
tiny harbours is like the call of the siren, luring ships to their doom and no
practised captain would accept their lethal charms. An experienced mariner would
take his chances with the sea’s doubtful mercy in even the most vicious storm
than accept the certain destruction of a landing on the treacherous coastline of
Wrecker’s Point.

But the evils of geography are not the only dangers to menace the ships
sailing the route between Erengrad and Marienburg. A wicked place will often
find wicked men all too willing to put to use such a blighted site. Several
villages exist amongst the craggy rocks and fangs of the shoreline, tending
their small fleets of fishing boats until Ulric’s Howl, that terrible, chill
wind which heralds the coming winter, brings a more profitable catch to their
shores. But the best charts are expensive, and experienced captains in short
supply. Far more numerous are the maps produced by cloistered scribes in the
cartography shops of Altdorf and Nuln, drawn by men who have never seen the sea
or heard the warnings of Wrecker’s Point.

The ship continued, Emil and his counterpart on the vessel sounding their
horns above the soft roar of the tide. It drew so close that Karel fancied that
he could see the bonfire reflecting off the white canvas of the ship’s sails.
His young eyes tried to pierce the veil of night to ferret out the shape of the
ship from the darkness that enshrouded it. A part of him wanted to look away,
but he could not. It was not the fear that his elders would think him not ready
to become a man that prevented him. It was because the drama was too compelling,
too awful for Karel to turn from.

The sound of the ship striking the jagged fangs of rock that lurked just
below the waters of the inlet tore the night asunder. It was like the bellow of
some bestial god betrayed, a cry of pain and wrath. The cracking snap of the
wooden hull as it split upon the rocks was the most horrible sound Karel had
ever heard in his life, more terrible even than the cries and screams of the men
onboard the ship that followed the death cry of their vessel. Karel focused upon
the lights of the ship, trying again to pierce the veil, trying to see the
conclusion of this terrible drama he was a part of. He could hear the screams;
the cries of terror as the black waters flooded the ruptured hull, as the sea
reached up with its amorphous claws to pull the dying ship down to its watery
grave.