The Sea Watch (82 page)

Stenwold shook his head. ‘Not this time,’ he told the Fly. ‘I have a different vessel in mind.’

The four barques rose smoothly from the lightless depths towards the sun, bullying their way up the gradient of gradually lightening water until they broke through the mirrored glitter of the surface, breaching the waves on all sides of the little ship’s dark silhouette.

Three were slender, dart-shaped craft, driven up from the abyss by water forced through their siphons. The last was far broader, a great curved carapace with a dozen busy paddling arms below to flurry it through the water. From this last vessel emerged Rosander.

He had taken the time to dress well for the land-kinden. He wore his armour of pale stone, even down to the helm, so that what now crawled from the barque’s interior looked less like a man and more like a huge, jagged statue. Behind him, his select followers climbed up into the light, shading their eyes: little skittering Smallclaws, hulking Greatclaws in armour of accreated shell, lithe Kerebroi with spears and knives. The smaller vessels began disgorging their crews, too, crawling out to crouch on the rolling hulls and look up at the landsmen’s ship.

It was a little enough thing, that ship, and Rosander knew that the land-people had far greater vessels they could launch. If they wanted to overwhelm him by main force, this little vessel surely could not hold enough land-kinden to accomplish it.
Why, I alone could probably overcome their crew, surely.
He looked up at the great round sail that bellied up there in the wind, sagging and wrinkled in places.
Perhaps they do want to surrender or talk terms, though I cannot think that they will accept such terms as I’m minded to offer.

Rosander grinned to himself. ‘Chenni,’ he said, ‘want to see some land-kinden craftsmanship?’

‘Surely,’ the Smallclaw artificer piped up, and Rosander reached out for the curving hull, ready to jam his spiked gauntlets into the wood to give him purchase for the climb.

‘Wait, wait!’ called a voice from above, and a ladder of cloth was unfurled before his face. He regarded it doubtfully, but the voice explained, ‘It’s silk woven with steel thread. Come on up.’

Rosander heard Chenni make an approving sound. ‘I’ll get you one, never fear,’ he assured her, and then applied himself to ascending the ladder. It was an awkward climb, swaying and creaking, and he took it steadily to avoid looking foolish before his own people. The ladder was as strong as the landsmen claimed, confirming that they were an ingenious lot, which fact would make the impending land campaign all the more profitable.
About time that worm Mandir was knocked off his pedestal
, Rosander reflected. Perhaps the booty from this land venture would be enough to break the Hot Stations’ stranglehold.

He hauled himself over the rail which, being less cunningly reinforced than the rope, snapped in three places. Nevertheless, he was left standing on the deck of the land-kinden ship: he, Rosander, Nauarch of the Thousand Spines Train and future conqueror of the land.

‘Bring on your warriors,’ he instructed, waiting for the lower reaches of the vessel to disgorge further land-kinden. All around the ship his people waited, ready to dig their claws into the hull and haul themselves over the side, to butcher every landsman on board. Rosander glanced around, the narrow eyeslit of his helm sweeping the deck, but no angry hordes of landsmen became apparent. Indeed he saw only two men, dark and stout the pair of them. The nearest, who had let down the ladder, was now edging backwards, staring at Rosander with alarm, while the other . . .

‘Hah,’ Rosander grunted. ‘And it
is
you, at that. I didn’t believe it.’ He stomped his way forward, hearing the deck beneath him creak, while Chenni pattered along beside him. This particular landsman faced up to his scrutiny without fear, as well he might. ‘You escaped,’ Rosander rumbled. ‘I heard the news. You escaped the Edmir and you escaped the Man of the Stations too, all the way back to your home on the land. You’ve warned your people, no doubt. They’ll give us some sport, then, which is all to the good.’ Rosander reached up and tugged his helm off, squinting a little in the bright sun. ‘You impress me, landsman.’ He grinned abruptly, showing surprisingly delicate teeth in his narrow mouth. ‘Kneel, kneel before me now and swear yourself one of the Thousand Spines, and I’ll make you my deputy on land when I’ve conquered it.’

The land-kinden regarded him with a slight smile. ‘I fear that’s an honour I can’t accept, Nauarch Rosander,’ he said. ‘Even so, I’m glad you remember me. My name is Master Stenwold Maker of Collegium and I am here to speak for my people. Will you hear me out?’

Rosander regarded him almost fondly. ‘You were free,’ the Nauarch said. ‘You had escaped, and now you come back. My warriors surround this ship. Are you so eager to rejoin us down in Hermatyre? Hear you out? Oh I’ll hear you out, Master Stenwold Maker, but I make no promises.’

He saw a gratifying twitch in the man’s expression when return to Hermatyre was mentioned. Rosander couldn’t blame him, for Claeon was never a kind captor.
Well, let us see how my becoming master of the land tilts the balance against Claeon. Perhaps my next campaign will see me take Hermatyre and bring some justice to that wretched place.

‘Perhaps we should go below,’ Stenwold suggested, ‘out of the sun.’

‘Get him to show me the engines of this contraption,’ Chenni prompted.

‘Do it,’ Rosander ordered the landsman, and Stenwold nodded and gestured them to a hatch that led below. Before heading down, he glanced over at the other land-kinden present.

‘Master Allanbridge?’ he said, making the name a question.

‘I’ll be fine,’ the other replied, obviously uneasy all the same.

Stenwold nodded and set off into the ship’s interior. ‘I had forgotten your companion for a moment,’ he confessed as they descended, every step of Rosander’s eliciting a groan of tortured wood. ‘She piloted the barque that brought me to Hermatyre. She also did her best to keep me out of Claeon’s hands. For that she’s earned a look at our engines, if nothing else.’

The space below had only two rooms, one of which housed the engine. The other, Rosander saw as they reached the foot of the stairs, had a table set out, and furniture that he identified after a moment as designed for sitting on. Apparently these land-kinden believed that there really was something to talk about.
Surrender terms, perhaps? Or maybe this Stenwold will sell his people yet.

‘Come on, then,’ Chenni prompted. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’

Stenwold paused, then called back up. ‘Jons! Are you done there?’

‘As much as,’ came the reply.

‘Would you come down here and show Mistress Chenni how the engines work?’

‘With pleasure.’ A moment later they heard the man stomping above their heads, and then he was letting himself down the ladder.

‘We should talk,’ Stenwold told Rosander, gesturing at the table. ‘Amongst the land-kinden, one debates with one’s enemies around a table, to try and find another solution than war.’

Rosander grunted and went over to one of the chairs, reaching out for it and turning it between armoured finger and thumb. As Stenwold headed about the far side of the table, the giant Onychoi brought his fist down on it, with no great display of force, and instantly reduced it to matchwood.

‘Got anything stronger, or should I stand?’ he growled.

Stenwold, not the least put out, sat down across from him. ‘You are Rosander, Nauarch of the Thousand Spines Train.’

‘Well done.’ Rosander put his helm down on the table. ‘What do you
want
, Stenwold Maker? Amongst the sea-kinden, the Kerebroi may talk and talk, but
we
act. Debate is a coward’s excuse for putting off the strike.’

‘I’m sorry that you feel that way,’ Stenwold replied. ‘Nauarch, you are not Claeon.’

Rosander’s lips twisted into an unwilling smile. ‘Nicest thing anyone’s said about me for at least a moon,’ he shot back. ‘So what?’

‘I mean you are not consumed by malice, nor are you terrified of losing your power. You are secure in what you possess, whereas Claeon is not.’

‘A fair assessment.’

‘Neither, unless I guess wrong, are you one of the Littoralist movement,’ Stenwold went on. ‘You don’t lap up all that business of theirs about the destiny of the sea-kinden to reclaim the land from the hated land-kinden, who drove your ancestors from it a thousand thousand years ago, or whatever.’

‘Fools and madmen,’ agreed Rosander.

‘So, why do you make yourself my people’s enemy?’ Stenwold asked him.

Rosander shrugged, stone pauldrons moving massively. ‘I bear your kinden no ill will. Surrender to me and you’ll not be ill-treated, though we’ll be disappointed if we don’t get our fight. As you say, I’m no tyrant, but I am an adventurer, Maker. And now I know the land is there for the taking, that is the new adventure I choose. To be the man that conquers the land! To be remembered for ever as he who took that great step.’ Rosander was grinning even at the thought. ‘And my Train would follow me even beyond the sea, despite all the tales they have been told at their mother’s tit. I would reward them for that loyalty, because I would make them all princes of the land, with landsmen to wait on their every need. And I would do this, Maker, because I can.’

There was now an odd vibration running through the wood of the vessel, which he assumed to be the engine working. ‘If your servant has any ideas about taking us elsewhere, be assured my people have orders to hole this barque and take it to the bottom, if necessary,’ he warned Stenwold. Listening out, he could hear voices over the rumble of the engine: Maker’s man explaining something to Chenni. ‘I thought it was the sails that made these things go, anyway. Obviously I was misinformed.’

The hull lurched slightly beneath him, not enough to make him shift his balance, but a new movement he did not entirely like. ‘Maker,’ he cautioned softly, ‘do you think I cannot kill you if you’ve planned some treachery?’

‘With ease,’ Stenwold Maker agreed, although there was a tension to him that Rosander could clearly read. ‘Perhaps . . . some fresh air, maybe?’

The hull shuddered and swung again and Rosander nodded. ‘You go in front of me, Maker, and gather your servant up too. I suddenly suspect that you are trying to be clever, and that may in turn mean that you’re being unwise.’

‘Jons!’ Stenwold called out. ‘Bring Mistress Chenni above decks, if you would.’

‘That time already, is it?’ the other landsman replied. ‘Well then, little miss, if you’d come with me.’

Rosander waited at the foot of the steps for his aide, who came pattering around from behind the landsmen, looking enthusiastic.

‘It’s a fine piece,’ she said. ‘Not clockworks at all, but burning some kind of oily stuff to make it go. Knocks Mandir’s tricks into a barrel. We should certainly get one.’

‘Yes, but what is it
doing
?’ Rosander stressed.

She goggled up at him. ‘Why, it’s . . . working.’ She frowned.

‘Go on up, Nauarch. You shall see all,’ Stenwold Maker said softly.

Rosander glared at him and stomped up the steps, heedless of the tortured sounds they made as his weight bent and bowed them.

‘If you think . . .’ he started, but it was never clear what he imagined Stenwold might think, because his voice trailed off.

The slack, bellying fabric he had taken for sails had grown taut now, forming a great rounded bulk above them. And the sea . . .

The sea was gone. There was no horizon. Rosander stormed towards the rail, furious . . . and stopped dead.

There was the sea, still, but it was a dark canvas far below them, glittering with pinpoints of reflected sunlight. He could see no sign of his people, or even their vessels. Instead the water was fast giving way to something lighter: green and grey and dusty tan. The
land
.

‘We are not just land-kinden, you see,’ Stenwold remarked quietly, beside him. ‘We are air-kinden also.’

Rosander’s gauntleted hand lashed out and grabbed him by the arm, painfully tight. ‘Take us back,’ he hissed. ‘Take us back down,
now
.’

‘Oh, we will. This is no kidnapping. You can see for yourself we are in no position to overpower you,’ Stenwold assured him, his voice catching slightly with the pressure of that grip. ‘But look, there is your new kingdom. There is the land.’

Despite himself, Rosander found his eyes drawn to the great expanse that now filled the whole of their view, stretching as far as his eyes could squint in the bright, dry light.

‘There is my city,’ Stenwold, pointed. ‘There is white Collegium, your intended victim. But inland of Collegium lies the city of Sarn, where the soldiers of the Ant-kinden march, and they would march to our defence, as would other allies. The Vekken from down the coast, for example, and the Tseni by sea. Who knows who else?’

Rosander made a growling sound in his throat, whereupon Stenwold spoke swiftly on, ‘But the warriors of the Thousand Spines are fierce and brave, so perhaps you would best all who came against you, and then capture my city. But my city is not the land, Rosander, for beyond Sarn there is the city of Helleron, many tens of miles further inland, where they mine and smelt and craft – our own version of the Hot Stations. That marks the edge of the Lowlands, which is the region I call home.’ The landscape was still passing swiftly beneath them, with no sign that it would come to an end any time soon. ‘But perhaps, eventually, you would prevail, Rosander. Perhaps. So I must tell you that, beyond Helleron, there is the Empire of the Wasps, a warlike nation that in size is greater than all the Lowlands. Then there is the Three-City Alliance and the Disputed Principalities, and of course, if you go north past the great ridge, the Commonweal, vast and ancient, greater than all the rest. All this might you conquer – in twenty years or fifty years of never seeing the sea.’