Wintercraft: Blackwatch (2 page)
‘They sound convinced,’ said Derval. ‘Something to do with the veil, so I’ve heard. The old councils tried everything they could to kill her off when she was in Albion last, but nothing touches her. She bleeds, she heals. Just like you.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘On the Continent somewhere. All I know is the council don’t want you crossing the sea to find out. But if they’re worried about this woman, she can’t be all that bad. She sounds like an interesting one, if you ask me.’
Silas emptied his pocket and pressed a coin pouch of his own into Derval’s hand. ‘This is for your silence,’ he said. ‘If I find out you have told the wardens about me, I will hunt you down, slit your throat and watch your blood drain out of your lifeless body drop by drop. Do you understand me?’
‘As always,’ said Derval. ‘You keep the money coming and I keep my mouth shut. It is always a pleasure dealing with you, my friend. I hope we meet again soon.’
Silas nodded and a slight smile flickered across his eyes. ‘With luck, we will.’
The two men clasped hands in farewell and Silas skulked away from the inn as quietly as he had arrived. His horse was stabled in the blacksmith’s yard, right where he had left it. He unhitched the stall gate, saddled the restless beast, and rode out of the village without looking back.
Silas spent the whole of the next day on the move, staying away from the main trails. He rode his horse over snowcovered hills, through frosted fields and alongside frozen rivers. The presence of a councilman in the wilds and the council’s fear of the woman called Dalliah Grey had helped him to make a decision.
It took two days to find a hidden dock where smuggling ships set sail for the Continent. Once there, he convinced a captain to allow him passage on the next vessel to leave that night by offering his horse in trade. If what Derval had said about Dalliah was true, Silas had to meet her. Given enough time he could hunt down anything, and his reputation as the High Council’s most capable collector was known as far as his name had travelled. If he could find her, one of the council’s oldest enemies could well become his greatest ally.
The ship set sail just before sunset on to a calm ocean, and as soon as he was at sea, watching his homeland drift out of sight, Silas knew he was doing the right thing.
The journey to the Continent would have taken only a few hours in fine conditions, but the northern countries were in the middle of a freezing winter. Ocean currents were carrying sheets of ice southwards down the Taegar Sea, forcing ships to push their way through and making the crossing a slow and treacherous one.
Silas spent most of the journey out in the open on deck, but as the hours passed and the evening slipped into the dead of night he crouched in the centre of the cargo hold, cleared a space in the dirt on the floor with his hands and pulled open the neck of a black drawstring pouch. Rows of fat leather sacks swung from bars lined up above him, each one swaying gently, following the slow motion of the ship as it cut through the icy waves. He could hear chunks of ice grinding against the hull, scraping at the wood like a thousand fingernails as he emptied the pouch’s contents out on to the floor.
A handful of coins rattled out first, then a silver ring and three rolled notes. Two of the notes were sealed with buttons of wax, but the third had cracked open and was busy unfurling itself slowly across the floor. Silas pocketed the coins and the ring and picked up the open note. The seal was dark green and stamped with a rolled scroll: the mark of Albion’s High Council. He struck a match and held the flame close to the paper to read its words.
Order is Hereby Given for the Capture of
Silas Dane
.
Traitor, Thief & Murderer.
Collectors May Claim a Substantial Reward of
Gold and Land
upon Presentation of this
Dangerous Criminal
to
the Warden of the Watch.
North Tower, High Council Chambers, Fume.
Silas looked over at the dead man who had owned the pouch. His body was still warm, his neck twisted awkwardly against the floor. Collectors were resourceful and persistent, but he had not expected one to find him on the open sea.
‘Good work,’ he said, nodding towards the man’s lifeless eyes. ‘You came closer than most.’ He rubbed a streak of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. A shallow cut burned there for a second or two before the skin sealed itself perfectly, healing in moments, leaving no sign that there had ever been an injury. The collector’s attack had taken Silas by surprise. It would not happen again.
He allowed the match flame to catch upon the corner of the page, consuming it in a burst of heat and embers. ‘The council does not give gold to dead men,’ he said. ‘You should have known better.’
Silas stood up, grabbed the collector’s wrists and dragged him roughly across the floor. Then he unhooked an empty leather sack from its hanging place, wrestled the body into it and hooked it heavily back into place. No one would find it until they arrived at port, and by then he would already have left the ship behind.
Silas left the sack swinging with the rest and made his way to the front of the hold, where a trapdoor led up on to the main deck. He climbed a short ladder, grabbed the door’s handle and pushed it open, letting moonlight spread across his face. The deck was rough and untidy, tracked with deep scratches and stained with everything from wine to animal dung. The smugglers did not care what they carried, so long as it brought them a profit at the end of the journey. There had been eight men on the ship when it left the dock, including Silas and the captain, whose clothes bristled with hidden weapons since he trusted his own crew as little as he trusted the strangers who had paid their way on board.
Silas carried a weapon of his own: a sword forged of blue-black metal that was still sheathed beneath his stolen robe. He stood out in the open, listened carefully and made a note of every man’s position on the ship. The captain was pacing in his cabin; he could hear his bootsteps scraping on the floorboards. The helmsman was at the wheel and two young men were climbing among the rigging, bundled in thick clothes and arguing loudly with each other. The fifth man was in the galley cooking potatoes and old beef, another was snoring in his sleep, and the last would give him no more trouble: the dead collector, swinging gently in the hold.
He checked the position of the stars. The night was clear and moonlight shone upon the floating ice, making the frosty surfaces shine like ghostly lights as the ship travelled north-east. Silas knew the journey well. They were following the wide sea channel that spread like a scar between Albion and the Continent, heading for the northern Continental town of Grale. He had made that journey many times during his time in Albion’s army, and so far it seemed the captain was keeping his word. The ship was set to reach Grale within the hour. They were right where they were meant to be.
As the moon moved steadily across the sky, the ship’s heaving sails caught a favourable wind and sliced more swiftly through the frosty waters. None of the crew questioned the whereabouts of the missing passenger – he could have fallen overboard and no one would have cared – so while the smugglers ate their midnight meal Silas patrolled the ship instead, looking for anything else that was out of place.
If one collector could follow his trail on to that ship, a second could have found it just as easily. He stood at the back of the ship, behind the helmsman’s tied-off wheel, and looked back towards Albion. His homeland’s dark cliffs had long since retreated over the horizon, but between the ship and the distant coast Silas spotted something moving in the water. It was a low black shape, far enough away to be indistinct, even to his sharp eyes. Something was following the ship. Silas made sure he was out of sight, and watched.
It could have been a whale. Small whales often travelled along the Taegar Sea in winter. But as the shape drew closer a square of black cloth flapped silently above the waves and Silas spotted two shadows crouched beneath it, struggling to keep a small sailing boat on course. The ice had been enough to slow the large ship down, but its hull left clear waters behind it and the little boat was manoeuvrable enough to nip safely between any chunks that passed its way.
Silas walked through the shadows and stepped up on to the ship’s guard rail. He balanced there perfectly, pulled off the stolen robe and let the icy wind rip through the long leather coat he was wearing underneath. He looked down at the churning ocean. The water sliced and foamed beneath him, black and fast. He waited until the two shadows were looking away, then stepped casually off the rail, plunging feet first through the air and down into the freezing ocean.
The water swamped over his head and the ship’s powerful wake captured him and pulled him down into the depths. He opened his eyes, waited for the current to release him, and remained underwater, reorienting himself in the direction of the little boat’s hull. The weight of his sword pulled downwards and the ocean blurred his vision, but he did not need clear sight for what he was about to do. His sharp ears lifted tiny sounds from the water, listening for the creak of ropes or the echo of the men’s feet shuffling across the boat’s oiled wood. Dull thuds carried towards him, and Silas’s heartbeat throbbed glacially slow as he stretched out his arms and swam silently towards his enemy.
No breath left his lungs as he reached the boat and hung beneath it, keeping one hand pressed against the wood, feeling for the movements of the people above as vibrations against his fingertips. One man was talking loudly enough for Silas to hear, and he concentrated until the words became clear.
‘… enough to bring down a walrus, that one. Don’t think I’ll need it, though. Good old-fashioned cunning … that’s what’ll finish him in the end. I’ll bet he hasn’t seen the likes of me in his lifetime, no matter how tough they say he is. Hey! You even listening?’
Silas felt a hard jolt reverberate through the boat. The other passenger yelped but did not answer.
‘Ignorant rat! I never shoulda brought ya along. You’re as useless as a pig at a rabbit shoot. Maybe I should throw ya over the side right now and test those weedy little arms of yours. What do you say to that?’
Silas placed his other hand on the hull and pulled his knees up into a crouch. The hull was slippery, but he held on and moved along it in a silent crawl until he was as far from its occupants as it was possible to be. His grey eyes broke the surface of the water and he pulled himself up, making the boat rock and shift as he climbed aboard. Two pairs of terrified eyes glared at him in the dark.
‘It can’t be!’
The collector reached for his blade, but Silas was faster. He took five steps across the boat, sent the sword spinning into the sea, then wrenched the man’s arm behind his back before throwing him casually over the side.
‘Hey! S-stop!’ the man yelled as the boat left him behind. ‘C-come b-b-back!’ Silas ignored him. In water that cold the fool would be dead within minutes, so he turned his attention to the second passenger, who was now cowering beneath a blanket, a useless sword quivering in his hand. Any apprentice who gave up a fight so easily deserved to be run through by his prey.
Silas drew his own sword and wrenched the blanket away in his fist. A young boy looked up in terror, dropped his weapon and held his grubby hands up to protect his face. Silas glared down at him and dragged him to his feet. This was definitely not an apprentice. He was scrawny and weak; a servant boy brought along to do whatever the collector did not want to do himself.
The boy looked down at his feet as his master’s pathetic shouts faded into the distance. Silas studied him carefully. The smugglers’ ship was moving away and the little boat was starting to drift off course.
‘Can you sail?’ he demanded.
The boy nodded quickly.
‘And do you know how to reach Grale?’
He nodded again.
‘Then get to work. Give me any trouble, and I’ll put you over the side just like your master. Understand?’
Silas released the boy, who set to work immediately, checking a compass that was sewn into his left sleeve and adjusting the sails to carry them steadily across the waves.
‘Keep the sail up,’ ordered Silas, wringing the sea water from his clothes and drying his skin as best he could on an old blanket. ‘Follow the ship until you see land, then turn in towards the cliffs. I do not want to be seen.’
Under the boy’s guidance, the little boat cut swiftly through the waves while Silas stood at the bow, looking out over the ocean to where the distant shores of the Continent would soon be moving into sight. A single lantern slung from the great ship’s bow glinted ahead of them as the boat kept pace. Silas whistled once – a long piercing call – and was answered by a deep cackle from somewhere amongst the huge sails.
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