Army of Shadows

15

Jup was frantic, and seethed with a cold fury, but knew that keeping his head was the best hope of finding Spurral.

Stryke did the logical thing and ordered the band to find a boat. They scoured the shore and came up with nothing except small canoes, totally unsuited for venturing out to sea. He considered building a boat, or possibly a raft. But with time at a premium, and his doubts about whether they could construct something truly seaworthy for who knew how long a voyage, that looked impractical.

Boat or no, their biggest problem was finding out where Spurral might have been taken. Jup's farsight was useless because a vast body of water like the ocean, he explained, gave off an energy of its own that swamped the pinpricks generated by living beings riding it. So they needed the dwarfs' help. Which proved harder than they had first thought, simply because the natives seemed to have disappeared. Some had obviously been taken by the raiders. They could only guess that the rest had gone into hiding, probably in the depths of the jungle, or perhaps in the labyrinth of tunnels that riddled the dead volcano.

Stryke decided to concentrate their efforts on finding them. Surveying the terrain from the highest point they could easily get to, which turned out to be the outcropping where the catapults stood, he hastily scrawled a crude map of the island. This he divided into more or less equal segments. Then he split the band into eight groups of four or five members each and allotted each group a segment to search.

His own group included Jup, Coilla and Reafdaw, who was one of the Wolverines' more experienced scouts. Stryke made a point of having Haskeer lead one of the groups assigned to the farthest tip of the island. He wanted to keep him and Jup apart for now, given their tendency to aggravate each other. That was a complication they could do without.

Stryke's team had an area of jungle to search. It wasn't one of the densest parts, and they were able to pace out most of it, looking for any sign that might betray the dwarfs.

Those humans had to be slavers," Coilla said as they trudged. "No other reason I can see for taking prisoners alive."

"Oh, great," Jup groaned. "And that's supposed to cheer me, is it?"

"Yes. Slaves have a value. It doesn't serve the slavers to be careless with their wares."

"Assuming they are slavers. Who knows what goes on in this world?"

"I think Coilla's right," Stryke said. "They sought out the young and fit, so it figures. Spurral might not be having too good a time of it, but they don't gain by harming her too much."

"Not too much," the dwarf repeated bitterly. "This isn't lifting me, Stryke."

"I know. But don't we like to try working out the odds before any mission?"

"Yes," he sighed, "I suppose we do."

"Well," Coilla remarked by way of steering the subject elsewhere, "one thing we've found is that this world isn't made up of just dwarfs."

"Worst luck."

"And if there's humans here too," she went on, "there could be other races."

"Like Maras-Dantia?" Stryke said. "The way they got here, I mean."

"Could be. From what we know, Maras-Dantia was like a big sinkhole once, sucking in all those races, including ours. Could have been the same here."

"Why does it have to have been once?" Jup wondered, taking an interest despite his worry. "You mean some time in the past, right?"

She nodded. "Has to have been. All the races were too well rooted. That must take time. Other thing is, no new races were turning up out of nowhere. We never heard of anything like that, did we?"

"Doesn't mean to say it only happened way back in the past and can't happen now. Why did it stop?"

"It'd take better heads than ours to know that."

"Maybe it's happening all the time," Jup persisted. "If not in Maras-Dantia, in other places. Like here."

"Could that have been how that crew who wanted the stars got to Acurial?" Coilla wondered. "By chance? You know, perhaps they fell into — "

"Don't think so," Stryke interrupted, "not from what Pelli Madayar said. I got the sense they weren't the sort to be tossed around like corks."

Reafdaw had been walking ahead, scanning the greenery. Now he stopped and held up a hand. They cut the talk and froze. He used gestures to indicate a point on the jungle floor that to them looked no different to any other. They quietly caught up with him.

He pointed downward. Two things became clear with scrutiny. There was trampled vegetation in a particular spot. And when they grew accustomed to the scene they could make out a patch of ground that had a phony look to it. It was just about possible to see the lines that hinted at something like a trapdoor. They silently positioned themselves around it, weapons drawn. Stryke began issuing orders via signing.

Jup and Reafdaw crouched and inserted their blades into the almost invisible slits. On a signal they levered the trap out of true, and with Stryke's and Coilla's help, lifted and tossed it aside.

A piercing scream came from the pit they exposed.

They looked down. A young female dwarf was cowering below in a hollow not much bigger than herself. She wasn't alone. Three dwarf children, all males, clung to her. Their dirty, upturned faces were terrified.

Jup spoke softly to them in Mutual, assuring them they were safe. The orcs stepped back out of sight while he did it, to save spooking them. At last Jup won their confidence, and got them to accept that the orcs were friendly. They were helped out of their dank pit and given water, which they bolted.

Stryke judged it best to take them to the elder's longhouse. On the way they were silent, and noticeably still fearful. But the orcs, and even Jup, despite his anxiety, held back on questioning them.

Being in the more familiar surroundings of the village, and then the longhouse, seemed to reassure the quartet. If not exactly relaxed, they at least became easier in themselves. They were given food, and more to drink.

The girl's name was Axiaa, or something very much like it, and she was related in some obscure way to the three children. Obscure because, as she haltingly explained, in the closed community of an island, everyone was related.

The boys were called Grunnsa, Heeg and Retlarg, as far as Stryke and the others could nail it. Their names didn't translate to Mutual, and the dwarfs' throaty first language made understanding no easier. Grunnsa was the oldest, at ten or eleven seasons. Heeg and Retlarg were perhaps seven or eight, and brothers. Grunnsa was their cousin, and possibly their uncle too, such were the island's tangled relationships.

It seemed that the brothers' parents had been taken by the humans. Grunnsa's might have been too, or could be in hiding somewhere. It was unclear.

"Who were those raiders, Axiaa?" Stryke asked.

Being addressed by an orc, and the servant of a god to boot, made her a little shy, but she answered, "Gatherers."

"Seen them before?"

"Oh, yes. They come from time to time and take away some of our kin. Never all. They like for there to be more when they return."

"Why do they take you?"

"To trade. Sell. For work on other islands."

"Are there many other islands?"

"Yes. Many."

"The dwarfs have visited them?"

"A few have. The brave ones. But most of us never leave here."

"Why?"

"Outside" — she waved a hand in the direction of the sea — "is death."

"Oh good," Jup said.

"Axiaa," Coilla asked, "do you know where our friend was taken? The she-dwarf we came with?"

"The goddess."

"Er, yes, that's her. Where did she go?"

"Bad place."

"But do you know where? How could we find it?"

The girl didn't seem to grasp that.

"We know!" Retlarg piped up.

Coilla turned to them. "You do?"

"Yes," Heeg confirmed.

"The grown-ups don't know we know," Grunnsa confided. "But we found out."

"How?"

"Show you?" Retlarg asked.

She nodded, puzzled.

The three youngsters leapt to their feet and tore to one side of the spacious room. They fell upon a piece of furniture not unlike an ottoman: a couch that doubled as a storage chest. Throwing aside its coverings, they raised the top. There was a jumble of household possessions inside, which they cheerfully tossed onto the rush-matted floor as they burrowed. At last they retrieved a rolled, yellowing parchment, about the length of an orc's arm, secured with a round of smooth twine. They ran back to Coilla and gave it to her.

Along with Stryke, Jup and Reafdaw, she took it to the feasting table. Sweeping aside the remains of their earlier meal, she unfastened the scroll and rolled it out. They weighed down its corners with coconut drinking vessels and fat candles.

It was a chart. Whoever had drawn it, quite a while ago from its state, had a fine hand. It had been executed in different coloured pigments, now much faded.

The map showed a world dominated by ocean. But sprinkled with islands of all shapes and sizes, some in close clusters, others alone, a few isolated. There were hundreds of them.

"I'm guessing the one we're on," Stryke said, "is here."

He pointed to a shape quite far south, but reasonably close to a number of others. A red cross had been drawn inside its outline, and there were some crude symbols underneath. None of the others had that, save one. This bore a stylised skull in its centre and it had been circled in black. It was northwest of the first, and without knowing the chart's scale they thought it looked not too far away.

"Gotta be that one," Jup reckoned.

The three kids clamoured to see, the table being too high for them. They were hoisted up onto chairs.

"Is this where we are?" Coilla wanted to know, pointing at the island with the cross.

They confirmed it.

"And the place these Gatherers come from?"

" There! " they chorused, plonking grubby fingers on the island with the skull.

"That clinches it," Stryke said.

"Now how do we get there?" Jup inquired gloomily.

"In a boat," Grunnsa suggested.

"They're all too small," Coilla reminded him.

" No," Heeg insisted. "The big boats."

"There are big boats? Where?"

"In the boathouse, of course," the boy replied, as if he were the adult and she the child.

"Where is this boathouse?"

"Outside the village." Grunnsa pointed vaguely in the direction of the extinct volcano.

"Must be that place we saw them guarding," Stryke reasoned.

"So what are we waiting for?" Jup said.

At that point the longhouse's door opened. Haskeer and a pair of grunts came in. They had the elder with them.

"Found him and a couple of others hiding in the tunnels," Haskeer explained. "He's pissed off with us."

The elder's angry expression verified that.

"Why?" Jup wanted to know.

"Ask him yourself. He doesn't talk to mere servants."

Jup addressed the elder. "We're sorry about your trouble with the Gatherers. What can we do to help?"

"Your offer comes too late. You should have stopped them."

"We tried."

"Those who fall from the sky must be more powerful than the Gatherers. Yet it seems you are not."

"We want to avenge you, and to get your islanders back. But we need your help."

" Our help? What can we do that those who come from the sky cannot?"

"We need boats that can put to sea, so we can pursue the Gatherers and punish them."

The elder became tight-lipped.

"We know you have such boats," Stryke told him. "And where the Gatherers are to be found."

The elder shot the children a sharp, disapproving look. "It is forbidden."

"What's forbidden?"

"Our customs forbid any from leaving here and voyaging to other islands. It brings wrath upon our heads. We believe the Gatherers would not have known of us if some of our kin had not ventured out and been captured."

"We understand," Jup sympathised, "but we aren't bound by your customs. And one of our number was taken by the Gatherers. We want her back."

"It isn't just the Gatherers. There are other dangers on the outside. Great dangers."

"We can deal with them," Stryke came back harshly. "But what about the boats? Do you hand them over or do we take them?"

He said it with sufficient force to give the elder pause. "There are two," he admitted. "We took them from certain of our kin who were building them secretly, in defiance of custom. They would have used them to leave here and try to make a new home free of the Gatherers."

"Might not have been a bad idea."

"Did you not survey this world from your vantage point in the sky? You seem to know little about it. For all that we suffer from the Gatherers, this island is safe compared to what dwells beyond it."

"We'll take our chances."

"When we seized the boats they were incomplete. They are not yet seaworthy."

"Would it take much to finish them?"

"I think not."

It occurred to Coilla to ask, "If you don't allow seagoing craft, why did you keep them?"

"We had no intention of keeping them. They were to be publicly burnt, as a warning to any who would try the same foolishness. But then you arrived."

"Lucky we came when we did."

"Can we get any of your islanders to help us make the boats ready?" Stryke said.

The elder shook his head. "It would go against our customs and stir up unrest."

"And the same goes for any of you helping us sail them?"

"It does."

"To hell with your stinking customs then. We'll manage alone."

"Not quite," Coilla said. "Jode was island-born, he told me so. He'll have sailing skills."

"You seem to know more about those humans than we do," Haskeer jibed.

"Good thing I do, isn't it?"

"That's settled," Stryke decided. "We'll start work on the boats right away. As to you." He fixed the elder with a hard look. "Forget any idea you might have about taking it out on these kids for aiding us. Or we'll bring wrath down upon your head."

"Have we done chin-wagging?" Jup pleaded. " 'Cos while we're standing here flapping our tongues there's no saying what Spurral's going through."