Tales of the Old World (55 page)

By the time Stefan and his father reached the low thatched building that was
their own home, the sun had gone and a chill twilight was settling over Odensk.
Stefan tried to imagine the fleet of ships as they closed upon the coast; tried
to imagine the construction of the masts, the shape and position of the sails;
tried to picture the faces of the men, on deck or climbing in the rigging,
hoping that somehow they looked no different to his father and the men of
Odensk. Most of all he tried to imagine the ships turning away before they
entered the mouth of the cove, hoping against hope that their intentions were
not, after all, warlike.

But in his young heart he knew that there was no hope. His father’s
expression, and the calm, repeated mantra at each door along the way told him
that. The time had come, and there would be no returning.

Mikhal was still in the salting sheds, helping the women clean and gut the
fish ready for market. He looked up expectantly as he saw his father enter.
Stefan ran to his younger brother and embraced him, hugging his body tight
against his own.

Their father moved to the centre of the long room and called for quiet.

“The time for work is over now,” he said. “All of you go home. And may the
gods watch over us all.” There was a moment of silence, and then the women began
to collect together their bundles of food and belongings. A few celebrated the
working day ending prematurely, others looked curious or suspicious. The elder
women amongst them stayed quiet, but gathered their things together and left as
quickly as they could.

Fedor Kumansky led the two boys across the courtyard to the house. He turned
down the wick on the single oil lamp until the room was lit only by a faint
amber glow. Then he drew the heavy curtain across the narrow window, closing out
the last of the fading twilight. The embers of a fire still burned low in the
hearth, and the room was suffused with a smoky warmth. For a moment Stefan felt
safe again, comforted by this familiar world.

“Listen to me.” Fedor gripped him tightly by the shoulders. “Soon I must
leave you. You and Mikhal must stay here, where you will be safe. After I’ve
gone you will lock all of the doors and bar the shutters across the windows.
Open them to no one, no one, until I get back. And whatever happens, Stefan, you
must look after your brother. You understand that?”

Stefan nodded. He understood, and he did not understand. He understood that
his childhood was ending, understood that the time of his being a man was
beginning. Understood that he was Mikhal’s protector now, no longer his
playmate. But he did not understand why. He took his brother’s hand.

“But you will return, father, won’t you?”

Fedor bent down and removed the silver chain from around his neck. He showed
the boys the locket he held in his hand, an oval tablet inscribed with the
likeness of Shallya, the Goddess of Healing.

“This was your mother’s,” he told the boys. “She gave it to me just before
she died. It became my pledge to her that I would always care for you, our
sons.” Stefan touched the locket, and a picture of his mother, faint in his
memory, came back to him. He pressed the silver tablet into his brother’s palm.

“It feels cold,” said Mikhal.

“I’m giving this to you now,” Fedor told Stefan. “Keep it safe for me, just
as I will keep my pledge to your mother.”

“Why do you have to go?” Mikhal asked. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he was
shivering despite the warmth from the fire. Stefan drew a protective arm around
his brother, as his father had so often done with him.

“The time has come for me to fight,” Fedor said. His voice was grave but
calm, and Stefan suddenly realised that his father had been preparing for this
night for a very long time. He hugged Mikhal tightly but his shivering would not
stop.

“Why do you have to fight?” he implored. “Stay here with us!”

“Bad people are coming,” their father said. “And we must fight them, or they
will destroy us.” He smiled, trying to soften the message in his words. Standing
in the yellow glow of the oil lamp he looked very tall, very strong. It seemed
inconceivable that anyone, or anything, could defeat him. “Don’t worry,” he
said. “We’re ready for them.”

Stefan’s mouth felt dry and tight as he spoke. “We can fight too,” he said.
“We can fight by your side.”

His father shook his head. “No, you must show your bravery by staying here.
And staying safe. Look after your little brother. That is your duty now.”

Stefan looked down at the icon of the goddess, and twisted the braided silver
chain around his fingers.

“I’ll keep us safe until you return,” he said at last.

His father bent and placed a kiss on the forehead of each son. “Keep faith in
the goddess. She’ll watch over you always.”

Fedor Kumansky unlocked a cupboard by the side of the hearth and reached
inside. Stefan looked in awe at the sword in its scabbard fastened to the stiff
leather harness. Fedor drew the harness around his waist and secured it tightly.
Then he took two short daggers from the cupboard, and stuck one inside his belt.
He hesitated, turning the second knife over in his hands, then laid it upon the
table in front of the boys, and nodded.

“Stefan, my cloak,” he said gently.

Mikhal had stopped shivering now. Either that, or Stefan was holding him so
tightly that he could no longer shiver. Both boys were transfixed by the sight
of their father with the sword. Their father, the warrior.

“Are the bad ones going to come into the village?” Mikhal asked.

“No,” his father said. “We’re going to stop them before they get that far.”

Stefan could feel his heart beating faster and faster. The sick fear in his
stomach had returned. “But,” he said, “you’ll come back for us, you promise?”

Fedor Kumansky paused, one hand outstretched towards the heavy oak door, the
other held out to his children. His gaze was fixed upon the ground, but at last
he looked up and met Stefan’s eye.

“Keep your brother safe,” he said. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

Stefan felt something inside him about to burst. He wanted to sob, to cling
to his father, stop him leaving the house. Then they would all be safe. But he
knew that was not possible. Another Stefan was starting to emerge from the child
that had woken that morning, a Stefan who knew that could not be. But still he
needed something, some words of reassurance from his father that he could cling
to.

“Father,” he said. Fedor Kumansky had the door half-open. He turned and
looked back sadly at his sons.

“Is this how things must be now?” Stefan asked. “Will it always be like this,
forever?”

“No,” his father said, quietly. “Nothing lasts forever.”

Fedor was one of the last to arrive at the cove. The beachhead was in total
darkness, but from the voices audible above the roar of the waves, Fedor knew
that the men from the village were there in force. As he drew closer, bodies and
faces became visible. They must have numbered nearly a hundred, men armed with
swords, knives, staves, anything that would deliver a blow. At each end of the
bay, the two cannons sat primed and ready to fire. Set against the enormity of
the ocean, they looked puny and useless.

Fedor scanned the faces of the men around him. He had known many of them
since he himself had been a child. Daily they risked their lives together on the
ocean, trawling for fish with their nets, pitting their strength against the
cruel power of the Sea of Claws. These were brave men all, Fedor knew. His trust
of them was no less than the trust they placed in him. For a moment his heart
lifted; they might yet prevail.

The gathering storm that he watched from the cliff-tops that afternoon had
not abated. The sea boiled in great plumes around the rocks and crashed down
upon the shore. Only a fool would contemplate landing a boat in weather like
this. A fool, or a madman. He looked around at his kinsmen, and guessed many of
them had the same idea. Perhaps the storm would save them.

He joined a group of villagers who were studying the sea with a spyglass.

“How many ships?” he asked them.

Jan Scherensky lowered the glass and handed it to Fedor. “A dozen, maybe
more,” he replied. “Not all are bearing lights, so it’s hard to be sure.”

Fedor took the glass and looked out into the channel. A spread of lights
bobbed up and down upon the water line, sometimes dipping below the towering
waves, but moving ever closer to shore. It might almost have been the fishing
fleet, returning to port after the long night at sea. But these were no honest
fishermen.

“Well,” he said at last. “They’re headed in towards the mouth of the estuary,
that’s for sure.”

Heads around him nodded solemnly. The older ones amongst them remembered the
last time, when the Reavers had visited bloody slaughter upon their homes. Maybe
this time it wasn’t the Reavers, but one thing was certain: few travelled this
way from the north in friendship or for trade.

“They’ll be headed up river,” Jakob Kolb muttered. “Maybe they even fancy a
crack at Erengrad itself.”

Fedor nodded. “It was possible. History had it that raiders had got that far
before. The question is,” he said, “whether they’ve a mind to stop off here
first.” He knew in his own mind what the answer to that question was.

Andrei Markarov took the glass from Fedor and put it to his eye. He was a
young man, well over six foot tall, and one of the strongest in the village. And
yet Fedor marked the fear in his eyes as he took the glass. A young wife and
three small children at home. Fedor knew exactly where that fear came from.

“All the lights in the village are doused,” Andrei said. “Maybe they won’t
even know we’re here.”

“Maybe,” Jakob agreed. “And maybe not.”

“At any rate,” Jan Scherensky added, “it would be madness to try and land
their boats in this storm.”

Madness indeed, Fedor thought. He fell to wondering what form that madness
might take. Very soon, one way or another, they would find out.

Within a matter of minutes, the dark shapes of the ships themselves were
visible through the gloom, and voices from the men on deck were drifting in to
shore. Fedor motioned his men back to take cover behind the shelter of the rocks
lining the bay. Nothing must give their presence away; they must stay silent as
the grave, and wait.

Jakob Kolb crouched down behind a crag of rock beside his friend. “Small
ships,” he observed. “Small enough to navigate the channels of the Lynsk.”

Fedor nodded. “And big enough to cause us plenty of trouble. How many do you
make now?”

Jakob raised the glass above the rim of rock. “Fourteen,” he said at last.
“Men on deck of most of them. High in the water; no cargo aboard. They mean to
carry back more than they bring.”

Fedor felt the muscles in his stomach tighten. “Pray to the gods they keep
going,” he said, then added: “Gods forgive me that I should wish misfortune on
others.”

The wind suddenly dropped, smoothing the waves. Far above them, the moon
Mannslieb emerged from behind the clouds. Silver light washed over the bay,
picking out the black fleet in the water below.

The lead ship reached the entrance to the bay, then tacked away from the
beachhead towards the mouth of the Lynsk. The second and third ships in the
convoy made to follow. Fedor’s heart gave a leap; he shook Jacob’s arm in early
celebration. “Keep sailing,” he muttered, “keep sailing.”

Then a voice nearby said: “Oh no!”

The fourth boat was turning in mid-stream, back towards the shallows of the
bay.

“Not this way,” Fedor found himself whispering. “Not this way, not this way.”

Shouts broke out amongst the men on the fourth boat. Moments later, a burning
flare, flew up from the deck of the ship, lighting the night sky a vivid
scarlet.

“What have they seen?” someone shouted. “Why are they stopping?”

Fedor watched the leading vessels sway and churn in the water. He knew that
could mean only one thing: they were turning around.

A second and third flare spiralled skywards. Now every one of the ships in
the fleet seemed to be ablaze with lights. Voices screamed commands in a
language that bore no resemblance to any tongue of man that Fedor had heard
before.

Several splashes in the water, almost simultaneously. They’re dropping
anchor, he realised. He lifted the glass to his eyes once more and saw the
rowing boats being lowered into the water from the decks of at least three of
the ships.

Fedor Kumansky rose from behind the rock and drew himself up to his full
height. His throat felt parched and tight; his voice, when he spoke seemed small
and insignificant, but he forced it out, summoning all the power he could muster
to carry his commands above the sounds of the invaders closing on the shore.

“Aim the cannon!” he shouted. “Be ready to fight for your lives.”

For a long time after their father had gone there had been only silence. The
two boys sat cross-legged by the fire the only other light the dim glow of the
oil-lamp which they had been forbidden to turn any higher. To distract his
younger brother from his fears, Stefan had told stories: imaginary tales of the
lands beyond Kislev; the princes of Bretonnia, of the magicians that wove their
spells across the vast lands of the Empire. And he told Mikhal of the brave
warriors of Kislev, the strong, upright men like their own father, men who would
never be defeated, not by any foe.

The light from the lamp guttered and died. The only light and warmth in the
room now came from the embers in the hearth.

“It’s dark,” Mikhal protested. “Light a candle, Stefan.”

“We mustn’t,” Stefan said, firmly. “Not until father’s back. We have to
wait.”

“How long?” Mikhal demanded. Stefan made no reply; he wanted the question
answered too, and suddenly he wished he had a big brother of his own to protect
him and answer his questions. Most of all, like Mikhal, he wished their father
would return.