The Starfollowers of Coramonde (23 page)

The Mariner
scratched his head. “Very well. I gauge the Isle of Keys will be our next
objective, saved for last.”

They all went
to the dock. The
Long-Dock Gal
had been moved to the quayside for final
work. Seamen were laboring with caulking irons, mallets and grease wells.
Braces and bits, carpenter’s hatchets, rave hooks and augers lay nearby. She
was a small brig, carvel-built of finely sawn, smoothly trimmed planks, more a
thing of the sea than those ungainly cogs the Crescent Lands used. The
Gal
didn’t have her name on her bow, what with literacy uncommon. She bore instead
a painting, a winking blonde. Right away, though, the American saw she had no
ram or ship-fighting engines.

“Your boat
doesn’t look like it can protect itself,” he pointed out.

Gale-Baiter
winced, collecting his self-control. “She is not a ‘boat,’ nor is she an ‘it.’
She’s a
ship,
you see? On open sea she dances rings ’round anything not
best friends with her. No southern scow can match a Mariner craft. We come
alongside and board; that is the long and short of it.” He took in the progress
his men had made. “We will not be done by nightfall, and I won’t navigate this
poxed river in the dark. First light, then.”

Swan billeted
her troops in the dusty, deserted houses of Final Graces. For herself, she took
the cobwebbed inn. Gil found her seated in a rickety chair, helmet put aside.
She’d just finished writing up the day’s report in her journal, and had a
compact ledger open, balancing expenditures and funds of Region Blue. She
looked up.

He was having
a tough time getting started; she broke the silence. “This damnable war has
leached away monies I needed. It was my hope to squeeze into the budget a
bridge project. Trade would have doubled.” She sighed. “Impossible, this year,
and there will be extra hardship for that. But you didn’t come to give ear to
administrative woes, did you?”

He stared
into heavy-lidded brown eyes. “I thought,” he began, halted, then switched from
what he’d wanted to say. “I thought you might not mind taking Jeb with you. You
could leave him with Ferrian at Ladentree.”

She closed the
ledger. “I shan’t be stopping there. It falls upon me to rejoin the Trustee
with all speed.”

“Oh.” He
fooled with his hat, thumbing its creases. “Will you tell me what’s the
matter?”

She leaned on
the chair’s arm. “You are being rash. Your friends may need you, in Veganá, and
I mislike what is in your mien when you speak of
him,
the sorcerer. Does
he look the same, do you think, when he talks of you?”

“No. I mean,
he’s one pretty cold fish.” He lost patience. “Are you holding this against me,
or what? Every Mariner alive is heading for the Isle of Keys; this whole thing
could be over before the Trustee and the others get the baby to her home city.
Angorman and Andre don’t need me, but Dunstan does. Swan, I can’t depend on
anyone but me. Can you tell me you wouldn’t hang in for the whole distance, in
my place?”

Her severity
failed. “No. No, I should imagine I couldn’t tell you that.”

He took her
hand. Rising, she pressed to him. He kissed her, taking the pins from her hair
deftly, familiar with them now. She shook out the flowing blue-blackness. Her
finger hooked for a moment at the chain that held the Ace of Swords to his
breast. When he pulled her toward the stairs she didn’t resist; events were
shifting again; their respite was almost done.

They took one
another hungrily. Neither had expected their exemption to last forever. They
made a last denial of any truth but their own; it wasn’t altogether futile.

Who thinks to wrest the sea from
us

Or rule us with the sword?

We grappled Occhlon vessels
nigh,

And gave our brief, complete
reply,

“Pikes, cutlasses, and board!”

from “The Southwastelanders’ War,”

a Mariner song

GIL came up the gangway just after sunrise, thankful to find
the
Gal’s
deck firm under foot, forgetting she was still quayside on a
quiet stretch of river.

He went to
Gale-Baiter, who stood calmly by the rail. “Anything I can do?”

“Only in
giving these lads room. We are overdue for rendezvous with the fleet, and shall
back-and-fill down this river. At least the ebb tide’s with us.” He sniffed the
air. “It be against a head wind, though.”

The American
didn’t know what any of that meant. He kept out of the way, along with his
saddlebags and the wrapped bundle of Dirge. Crewmen were freeing berthing
hawsers from their bollards, while men in a longboat readied to warp the
Long-Dock
Gal
into the current. The harpooner was bawling orders aloft; Gale-Baiter’s
first officer had been lost in sea battle, and Wavewatcher was serving in his
stead. Skewerskean seemed everywhere, noticing each detail, his sleeves’ bells
sounding each movement. Gil liked the crisscross lines of laughter in the
little man’s face.

Swan had led
her column out shortly before, one of the troopers towing Jeb Stuart’s rein.
They’d been near the end of any words they could say to one another.

“When I come
back,” he’d insisted, “I’ll come through Glyffa, get Jeb, and see you in Region
Blue.”

“In Region
Blue,” she’d supported his contrivance. Then she’d taken up the mirror-bright
helmet of her rank. Watching her horse being brought up, she’d added, “Once
again now, you have nothing more to risk than your life.”

She’d never
looked back. He’d felt an awful hollowness threaten, and made himself go to the
dock imitating high spirits.

The
Gal
got into the current’s fairway. The longboat was brought aboard and topsails
set for maneuvering. The Wheywater was green and wide here. The Mariners were
calmer away from the quay. They’d be happier still on the open sea. His own
discomfort, Gil thought, would grow proportionately.

Gale-Baiter
didn’t have many men aloft; few were needed to man the topsails.

“Note how
some of them be singing whilst others are a-sulk?” the captain inquired. “After
repairs were done, some of them slicked up and went to try their fortune with
your Glyffan playmates. And some were kindly received, and some not. Well, this
is one place where the ladies’ decisions are not to be questioned; even these
jolly-boys know that. I put the lucky ones up in the yards, where they are safe
until the rest get over their snit.”

He spoke a
command that Wavewatcher relayed with a roar, “Back that mainyard! And hop to;
you move like a damn bargeman!” Backing the mainyard made the
Gal
drift
broadside down the current’s fairway. Gradually, a bend in the river came in
off the bow.

The captain
had the foremast topsail backed too. Wind hit both sails’ forward surfaces, and
the
Gal
took a stern-board. Gil began to think they were going to back
downriver.

The brig was in
position to stand fairly down the Wheywater. Yards pointed into the wind that
came from the sea; she floated with the current and the ebb tide, moving with
beautiful economy. Ahead, the green waterway spread broader. Gil congratulated
himself on bypassing the campaign for this more pleasant transportation.

Later,
Death’s Hold came into view around a point of land, alone on a wide gray delta
to the north. Black smoke seeped from its cracked battlements and rose from its
gutted spires, where the crab and the gull had dined on bloated carrion.

Gil was
mesmerized by it, shivering. Death’s Hold was the place he’d glimpsed in the
Dreamdrowse, but this devastation hadn’t been part of the vision. Gale-Baiter
had assured him no Horseblooded had been found there. The American’s hope,
redirected to the Isle of Keys, was more the product of insistence than of
faith.

One of the
hands aloft exclaimed and pointed. Two smaller craft had put out from the other
shore, some way ahead. One was a dory-boat, the other a longboat of eight oars.
They were packed with men, the sun splashing from brandished weapons. Their
course was for interception. Gil counted a dozen men and more in the longboat,
plus whatever the dory held. Besides himself and Gale-Baiter, there were nine
men on deck to meet them. The captain called several more down from the yards;
boarding was clearly the order of business. “That lice-ridden masquerader must
have kept more men hidden below decks,” he rasped, “if he can afford to throw
this many at us in a diversion, leaving them behind.”

Wavewatcher,
who’d put his harpoon away, was feeling the point of a lance with his thumb.
Other Mariners collected cutlasses from the racks, took up boarding pikes or
strung bows. Gil tucked Dirge behind some coils of hawser and drew the Mauser.
His satisfaction in his decision to sail had evaporated. When the last few
rounds were gone it would be sword’s point, with him no different from anyone
there. He’d have hocked his soul for a handful of bullets.

Gale-Baiter
barked more orders, including one that the master’s cabin shutters be secured.
The fore topsail filled, and the
Gal
drew ahead, her bow swinging slowly
to the fore. The two boats pulled madly, the dory falling behind the longboat.
Waiting at the rail, Gil heard Skewerskean mutter something about their luck
that it was only two boats. Gil didn’t think their luck was running so hot. Men
aloft in the yards waited anxiously for their captain’s orders to fill all, but
the brig hadn’t cleared the river’s shelves yet, and Gale-Baiter bided his
time.

The longboat
was preparing—clumsily, Gil thought—to come alongside. A man stood in its bow
with grapnel and line. Skewerskean had taken up his re-curve bow. He drew,
aimed, released. The shot was long, the arrow missing by an arm’s length, but
shields were raised in the longboat. The next shaft was true, but buried itself
in leather plies.

The raised
shields bore the naming mandala of Yardiff Bey. The Mauser came up and blasted
twice, Gil’s reflex reaction to the sorcerer’s blazonry, prodded, in part, by
the Rage sleeping within him. The shots went wide. The Mariners were aghast,
except Gale-Baiter, who’d heard a handgun at the White Tern. The American
restrained himself. The shots hadn’t deterred the Occhlon; perhaps Bey had
prepared them for the possibility of gunfire.

Resting both
elbows on the rail, Gil squeezed off the Mauser’s last round. The man in the
bow pitched into the water, his mail shimmering once, and was gone. Another
rushed to replace him, and the grapnel whirled round and round.

Gil brought
the Browning Hi-Power up carefully, resolved not to shoot unless he was certain
he’d hit, and that it would make a difference. Gale-Baiter hollered, “Do for
the coxswain, their steerer!” If the boat were pilotless, it might let the
Gal
slip by. Gil fired twice, too quickly. Tongues of spray leapt in the longboat’s
wake.

“Should’ve
saved ’em,” he rebuked himself. Holstering the Browning, he tugged Dunstan’s
sword free. His hand gripped, loosened, gripped tighter on it. Skimming his hat
aside, he considered removing his byrnie, in case he had to swim for it.
Compromising, he only loosened its lacings.

The man in
the longboat threw his grapnel, missed, and began reeling in furiously, aware
that the brig could soon make faster way. He waited behind a shield through the
next salvo of arrows and javelins, then cast again. The grapnel missed the
rails, where the Mariners might have chopped it loose, and lodged where tiller
connected to rudder across the sternpost, impossible to get without someone’s
exposing himself to archers in the boat.

Wavewatcher
saw what had happened. Gil, standing near, saw the man’s big, freckled paw
reach for the belt knife hanging at the middle of his back, sailor-style, where
either hand might take it. Gale-Baiter stopped him, saying, “It is my place.
Stand away.” He took his own knife in his teeth and vaulted the rail.

Gale-Baiter
let himself down quickly by the few handholds there were. Men in the longboat
were hauling line rapidly, ducking under Mariner covering fire. The captain
dropped the last few feet, to cling to the sternpost. The dripping line being
too taut to release, he began sawing with his blade. Bowmen in the longboat
hadn’t shot at the Mariners on deck, having no clear targets. But now arrows
began to hiss, drilling the air.

One
transfixed the captain’s leg to the rudder. Two more sank home, one in his
thigh, one just below the scapula. Gil had one second’s look at Gale-Baiter’s
face as the captain, pasted to the rail, realized he was dead. Falling, he tore
loose the arrow holding his leg to the rudder. Rings of water sprang from his
impact. The line remained. One Mariner got a leg up on the rail, meaning to
retrieve his captain. Skewerskean caught his arm and flung him back. “He was
dead, fool; so will we all be, if we do not stand together.”

Wavewatcher
was howling in anguish. He grabbed his lance again, drew and aimed. Gil saw
sudden, deadly grace, synthesis of hunter, athlete and soldier. The release was
one of enormous force. The lance struck through a shield, pinning the grapnel
man to the boat’s hull, penetrating the wood. The attackers pulled frantically,
drawing themselves in under the protection of the stern while arrows rained
down on them. Hidden by the stern’s projection, they’d be able to climb to the
deck.

Wavewatcher
took up a cutlass. It was small, almost frivolous in his huge hand. “You aloft
there, ’ware my commands! The rest, position yourselves about the deck.”

Gil picked a
spot at the portside rail and waited, one hand on a ratline, and the other
still tensing, loosening on his sword. There were outcries astern, the first of
the boarders. He turned, about to help, when a clambering caught his ear. He
leaned over the rail slowly and nearly had his head taken off. A
Southwastelander clung there, showing his teeth in a sneer. The fingers clawing
the hull for purchase were blunt and visibly strong, the Occhlon nimble in his
light mesh armor, his curved weapon dangling from its sword loop. Unable to
reach the American from where he was, he climbed directly upward, unnerving
Gil, who would never have gone against an enemy waiting with the advantages of
firm footing and weapon in hand.