Chase the Morning

Chapter Five

As long as that glorious blaze of light lasted I knelt there, dumbstruck, dazzled in eye and mind, buffeted and shaken by cold gusts. Small waves lapped at the wharf, the tall ships rocked gently at their moorings with soft slow creaks and groans, like a wind-driven wood. I felt like the least leaf in it, dry and light, quivering before that autumnal wind. Only when the clouds closed like a gate above the horizon and shut the colour out of the world did it slacken and die; and I came to myself, miserable, shaken, cold, and clambered stiffly to my feet.

Dreams. Hallucinations. Delusions. Schizophrenia –

I tumbled those wretched little weasel-words over and over in my mind, and more and more they felt like sheer presumption, blind hubris. As if I thought all infinity could be encompassed in my own little brain. As if I’d glimpsed a great cathedral dome, and claimed it was the roof of my own skull. Accept what I’d seen? No question of that. A tidal wave – accept or reject it all you like, the sea rolls over you just the same and teaches you an invaluable lesson, not to overestimate your importance in the whole order of things. Not believing – that would have been the hard thing. That would have taken a lot of imagination. That could really drive a man mad.

Only last night I had been given a glimpse of infinity; but now I’d balanced upon the world’s edge, and stared out into its abyss. Those depths had tugged at me, drawn me like the emptiness beyond a cliff, but a thousand times more strongly. They’d sucked my thoughts out into hazy distances, and even now, when the vision was withdrawn, it was mortally hard to force them back. Against that vast backdrop myself or any human being seemed vanishingly small, and our concerns insignificant, passing things, bubbles in an immense unending waterfall.

And yet we must matter, if only to each other, if only to give each other that fraction more of meaning, that slight extra significance. What more could bubbles do, than cling?

I had to help Clare. I didn’t want to think why any more. But into this world beyond the Danube, this borderless wilderness, I couldn’t venture on my own, not far. The twilight had turned grey, and in the still air the cold sea-haze clung clammily about me; along the wharves dim yellow eyes of light were winking on. A chilly drop of rain splashed against my brow. Wearily I climbed into the car, slammed the door, twisted the key in the ignition, and turned away back along the wharves, looking for a way back out into that maze of side-roads. I had to find something first; and it might be the hardest.

But either luck was with me, for once; or I was beginning to find my way about. The rain was growing heavier, and I’d already passed by the mouths of two streets that seemed somehow too dim and unpromising under their mantle of drizzle. The third looked no different, but as I passed across its mouth a distant gleam caught my eye, a tiny spot of colour piercing the rain-curtain for an instant. I braked, swung the car bumping and bouncing across the rough wharf, into the mouth of the street. There it was still, distant, tiny, a ruby among folds of grey velvet. My feelings told me nothing, one way or another; but I’d no better sign to follow. Down the street it led me, only a little way, to pull in beneath the windows of a grim-looking building. Once, perhaps, it had been a company’s offices, a commercial fortress that ruled the fates of men from here to Norway or Vladivostock. Now a modern signboard, peeling and unreadable, obscured the carved door lintel, while most of those windows were blanked off with what looked like tarpaper behind the glass. It turned them into dark mirrors; and the image that stood in one was the mouth of the lane opposite, and the light that shone at its end. I sprang out and stood blinking, peering through the rain as it bounced and splashed over the car roof; then I slammed the door behind me, and began to run. It was the signboard of the Illyrian Tavern.

At the lane’s end I went splashing into a running gutter, ankle deep, at the pavementless edge of another road. Three bounds carried me across, almost sending some sorry soul on a bicycle wobbling off into the gutter, and a fourth up to the faded red door. The latch was odd, and I was still struggling with it when I felt it shift and the door swing back. Out of the gloom peered Katjka’s features, foxy and astonished. ‘Stefan! Come! Come in! There’s nobody about – Agnece Bozij! You’re soaked! Come dry yourself by the fire!’

I seized her by the arms, and she slipped them playfully under mine and ran her fingers up and down my ribs. ‘Something sso urgent again, ej?’

She drew me into the warm gloom, and nudged the door closed with a thrust of her hip. I became aware that she was only wearing some kind of white linen shift. ‘Jyp!’ I said hastily. ‘Is he here? Or where –’

‘Ach, any minute!’ she said airily. ‘He’s always in here of an evening –’

‘Doesn’t he go to other places sometimes? The Mermaid?’

She shrugged, and made a face. ‘Well, sometimes – but always he drops in here, sooner or later. Just to say hello! You can wait, can’t you? Mmmnh?’

‘Katjka! Damn it, this is serious –’ I got no further than that. There were spices on her lips, sweet and hot, and she burned against me through the crisp linen. In my unstable state that was enough. I clutched her, felt her writhe and sank myself in her kiss as if to drown myself out of a world that had grown too vast. A great many things might have happened next if the door latch hadn’t jabbed me painfully in the small of the back as it opened. We flailed wildly and grabbed the carved bannister just in time to stop ourselves tumbling downstairs.

‘Well, hello young lovers!’ carolled Jyp cheerfully. ‘This some new routine I’ve not heard about, Kat? On the stairs, huh? Enterprising, I’ll allow, but a mite athletic for me –’

She gestured dismissively at him, and ruined the effect by putting out her tongue as well. ‘You idle sot! And here is poor Stefan who has been looking for you in such hurry!’ she lamented.

‘Well, he wouldn’t have found me where he was headed!’ Jyp’s drawl couldn’t have been more laconic, but I saw the sudden alertness in his look. ‘Glad you came, though. I was hoping you would. Wanted to say sorry, sort of, for the way I went and acted this night gone. So here I am, ol’ buddy – what’s a’brewin’?’ I gathered my breath, but before I could speak he’d caught at my arm. ‘Not more trouble with those mangy Wolves? Here was I just hearing they’d shipped out as if Old Nick himself was at their asses –’

‘That’s right!’ I said. ‘And they’ve got – a friend of mine with them! They were after me, but – Jyp, I need help! And fast!’

I heard Katjka’s sharp intake of breath. Jyp nodded slowly. ‘Sounds like you do,’ he said. ‘But if they’ve sailed already, an hour more or less won’t make no difference.’ He overrode my protests with hands uplifted. ‘Hold on, hold on. Suppose you come sit down and tell me all about it – and you, girl, scare us up some eats, eh? Then come listen yourself, y’hear?’ She nodded and went padding down ahead of us, disappeared into the darkness and reappeared almost at once with a bottle and three of those little flasks. Jyp took them with a nod so courtly it was almost a bow, and ushered me into a highbacked booth by the fireplace. ‘Always knows what’s needed, that girl. There, get that down you; one gulp, and then another. I’ll be glad to have her word on this. Katjka’s been around awhile, learned a lot. She’s got a feeling for this kind of thing.’

He poured me my second flask of the fierce spirit, then one for himself, and sighed as he settled down opposite me, shifting his scabbard around. ‘The unrighteous man findeth no place to lay his head, as my old man’d say. Truth to tell, way things’ve been shaping around here lately I was thinking I might sign on and ship out again awhile. In case the neighbourhood’d turn a mite hot for me, y’understand. Then I heard those bastards’d lit out, and I was coming down here to celebrate. Only now – well, spill it, Steve.’

Spill it I did, my shock dulled by the drink: the whole tale of the raid on the office and my chase down here. After a minute Katjka arrived, clumped tall steins of beer down on the table, and squeezed into the booth beside me, leaning her chin on her bony hand and gazing at me intently. As I told my tale I saw my listeners’ lean faces harden. The firelight flickered in the girl’s grey eyes, and the lines around her full mouth deepened. Jyp’s eyes narrowed, and he seemed to stare right through me, out into horizonless distances. The thought chilled me; I shivered as I told of that final vision, and felt Katjka’s arm around my back, her thigh pressed against mine, and was glad of it. She did seem to know what was needed – and more to the point, was quick to give it; what had she been trying to give me in those mad moments before Jyp walked in? What had I needed?

‘That’s all,’ I said, and took a deep draught of my beer.

Jyp blew out his breath sharply, and looked at me askance. ‘Now just what in hell were you hoping to do if you had caught up with the bastards? Take on a whole shipload of Wolves on your lonesome?’

I’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask that. ‘It was me the Wolves were after, I could have offered myself to them, if they’d let her go.’

Jyp spared me the laughter, just looked bleakly at me. ‘They’d have taken you cheerfully and kept her. Or let her go all right, overside. Or worse. They’re not nice folk, the Wolves.’ Katjka snorted. ‘In fact, if you want to get technical, they’re not folk at all.’

Katjka spoke, slowly. ‘She’s yours, this girl?’

‘No,’ I said hastily, ‘nothing like that. She works for me, that’s all – I feel responsible for her – for this –’

‘Well? demanded Jyp, but he was talking to Katjka, not me.

She shrugged, and from somewhere she produced what looked like a small oblong book and laid it down on the table; then she took my hand, and laid it palm-downwards on top. It felt warm, as if it had been next to her skin, and I realized it was a pack of cards. After a moment she released my hand, shuffled the cards and with flicking fingers began to deal them out on the table between us. They pattered stiffly down in neat overlapping rows, and when she had finished she motioned to me to turn one over, and then another. A little impatiently I turned over two at random; a girl I knew once had told fortunes with Tarot, a pretty tiresome girl, and I was expecting to see the same again. But these were ordinary playing cards – or not, for I had never seen anything like them. I had drawn the knave of diamonds first, and the double figure sneered up at me, swarthy, moustachioed like an Elizabethan brigand, with such malice in its glittering eyes that they shone and sparkled with the cold fire of real diamonds. Hastily I turned it back, and looked at the other; but it was the ace of hearts, and in the trembling light it seemed to swell and pulse, bright liquid red.

Katjka turned that one back. ‘One more,’ she said hoarsely. Reluctantly I turned over – I don’t know why – the last card dealt. It was the two of spades, and there was no sign upon it except the two black pips. But suddenly that blackness seemed to deepen and grow hollow, as if the pips were really openings into emptinesses beyond. They made my eyes blur, their focus swim, so that the two swam and shimmered and merged momentarily into one, a shimmering cavernous ace. Katjka plucked the card from my fingers and with a violent gesture swept the whole pack together.

‘Nothing?’ demanded Jyp.

‘No!’ answered Katjka curtly. ‘There’s a shadow over this business. There were faint signs, but … nothing I can understand, Christe pomiluj! Nothing …’

Steps from the back of the cellar like room broke the silence, and the waft of something spicy, singing with tomatoes and peppers and frying onions, more appetising than I would have believed possible. A face rose in the gloom, round and red and wrinkled as a winter apple but sporting a majestic hawk nose and a beaming smile; it was framed by a gaudy scarf and escaping ringlets of raven-black hair. The woman who came waddling up, bearing an immense and laden tray, could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy, plump but healthy; she laid down the tray with arms brawnier than mine.

‘Dekujeti, Malinkaçu!’ said Katjka. Evidently this was Myrko’s wife; she bobbed me a curtsey and reeled off a great stream of chatter I couldn’t understand. I rose and imitated Jyp’s bow, and the old woman seized my hands and chattered again, then kissed me forcefully on both cheeks and disappeared again, still chattering.

‘She was wishing you well in your ordeals,’ said Katjka slowly. ‘And telling you that you must eat. It’s good advice; you may need strength. I wish I could help you, but I cannot; sso …’

Jyp, already tucking into his plateful, lifted his head and met her eye. ‘Le Stryge?’ he asked.

‘Sztrygoiko,’ she answered.

‘Damn,’ he said, and went back to his food again.

At first I only picked at it, too panicky almost to force it down. I could feel the evening wearing away, that strange ship and all aboard it drawing further and further out of our reach. But the spices set water in my mouth and fire in my innards, and I began to eat as hungrily as Jyp. Even so, I was glad to see he wasn’t lingering; the moment his plate was clear he stood up, took a final swig of beer and tossed down his coarse linen napkin. He raised an eyebrow at Katjka. ‘Well,’ he sighed. ‘Time to go call on old Stryge, I guess.’

‘You don’t seem too eager,’ I said.

‘It’s got dangers of its own,’ Jyp told me. ‘But at this hour they shouldn’t be so bad.’

‘Dangers?’

‘He keeps odd company. Best be going; it’s a walk, and we won’t be wanting to take that automobile of yours. The Stryge gets kind of touchy about that sort of thing.’

Katjka walked with us to the stairs. Nobody had asked to be paid for the food or the drink, and I had an uncomfortable feeling I’d offend somebody by offering. ‘You will take care of Stefan, won’t you, Jyp?’ she said urgently, and suddenly put her arms around me. She didn’t kiss me, only touched her cheeks rapidly to mine, and let go; it seemed almost like some kind of formal embrace. Jyp nodded soberly, and motioned me up the stairs. She made no move to follow, but stood looking silently after us, tapping that pack of cards nervously against her thigh.

A cool wind slapped me in the face as I opened the door, but the rain had stopped. The skies had cleared, the clouds raced ragged across the sky. I was surprised to see how light it still was without them, a kind of greyish twilit clarity that dimmed colours and made distances deceptive. Jyp closed the door carefully behind us, and motioned me up the street. Water still pooled in the gutters and gleamed in the seams between the worn cobblestones, so that the road ahead seemed to reflect the sky, and each oblong cobble became a small stepping stone across it. Jyp seemed to be brooding, and we walked in silence awhile. He was the first to speak. ‘Said I wanted to render ‘count of myself for last night.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Seems to me I do – after you saving my bacon maybe three times now. Guess you knew I was scared, huh? But it wasn’t just for me. I’ll say that. I was kicking myself good an’ hard for ever letting you get involved. Feared getting you any deeper in’d only bring down worse dangers on your head.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Should’ve thought of that a mite sooner, shouldn’t I?’ I didn’t answer.

‘So I thought I’d scared you off. But I got over my fright. Old Stryge, he fixed that thing good and proper, sent it wailing off in a puff of smoke – so I thought that was all right now. Next thing I heard, the Wolves have gone –’

He shook his head. ‘Steve, this is all my fault. I should’ve warned you better, maybe bought you protection. But honest, I never dreamed anything could happen to you out there. I’ve never heard of Wolves striking as deep into the Core as that, not ever before. Others, sure, now and again, but Wolves never. It looks bad, Steve.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ I told him impatiently. ‘You’re not responsible for those sons of bitches. Or where they decide to tear apart. Who is, come to that? Where do they come from? You said they weren’t really folk – what’s that supposed to mean?’ I was beginning to get angry now, with the food and drink in me burning away shock and amazement. ‘What’s this about the Core? If these Wolf creeps are after me I should damn well know all about them, shouldn’t I?’

Jyp, though, was slow to answer. ‘Can’t tell you exactly all,’ he said, as we turned at the top of the road. ‘Don’t think the Wolves know it all themselves, not for sure; but I’ll tell what I can. Way the story goes, their ancestors were plain men enough, though wolfish still, a batch of ragtag pirates and their doxies down Carib way in the early days. Seems they got too much even for their buddies, and one day found themselves stranded on some little pimple of an island right off the map. An ill-famed place already, by all accounts, a sacred place of the cannibal Carib Indians of old, and shunned even by them; they dared land there only to feed their heathen gods with blood. Weren’t meant to survive, you see, those maroons. But survive they did, as vermin does, by forbidden flesh.’

‘Forbidden – you mean, they turned cannibal too?’

‘Surely, and worse, by lying with their own flesh and breeding so, kin with blood kin. Flourished, too, like the devils they were; for it wasn’t only their own they ate, but took to sharking out in crude canoes to waylay small ships that strayed near, and seeking to lure larger ones onto their island’s reefs. God help the poor souls who fell into their hands! It’s said they kept a few and bred them, like cattle, to slaughter. I’ve heard tell of some who got to living that way, in Scotland long years back – Sawney Bean, if you’ve heard of him, and his kin? But these were worse. And they got to be worse yet.’

Suddenly the food sat heavy and sickly in me. The implications of what he was saying … I forced them aside. ‘Jyp, just how do you get any worse than that?’

He kicked idly at a shred of polythene wrapping that blew into our path. ‘Well, folk who went that way almost never came back; so fewer and fewer went, till the isle was all but forgotten. Then maybe it dropped out of the way awhile, the way places do. And meanwhile they changed. Over the generations, bit by bit.’

‘Evolved, you mean.’

Jyp looked blank. ‘Don’t know about that. Sounds like this Darwin, and I was brought up strict. They changed, that’s all I know. Like as not something unhuman crept into that bloodline along the way; maybe it was just their own bad blood showin’ through – and maybe there was something else on that island. Long and the short of it is, Wolves aren’t human. Don’t look quite like any of us. Don’t think like us; surely don’t smell like us! They can’t breed with the line of man any more; only their own foul kind.’

I whistled. ‘They’re a new species? My God, it makes sense. That’s how it’s supposed to happen. A small isolated group, interbreeding freely, swapping genes about – a mutation sticks, and they begin to breed true. It’d explain that foul skin colour, and the size of them. But happening to humans, to men –’ Unheard of, maybe; but now I knew why my skin crawled at the very sight of these things. It was ancestry speaking, warning me off the interloper, the intruder – and more than that. The predator …

‘And my boss thought they were just punks! If you know what those are.’

Jyp blinked. ‘Sure. And I’m not surprised. Like I said back when, it’s amazing how folk only see what they want to see –’ He smiled wryly. ‘Tell you something, Steve. The world’s a lot wider place than most of them ever realize. They cling to what they know, to the firm centre where everything’s dull and deadly and predictable. Where the hours slip by at just sixty seconds to the minute from your cradle to your tombstone – that’s the Core. Out here, out on the Spiral, out toward the Rim. It’s not like that – not always. There’s a whole lot more to this world than just a mudball spinning in emptiness like the wisemen say. It’s adrift, Steve, in Time and in Space as well. And there’s more tides than one that ebb and flow about its shores.’

He lifted his eyes to the dimming sky. ‘So one day, maybe, for everybody, one such tide comes lapping about their feet. And most just look and draw back before more’n their toes gets wet. They look and don’t understand, or won’t; and they turn back into the Core again, forever.’

‘But there’s always a few that don’t?’

‘And they look out upon infinite horizons! Some bow down in fear and slink away from the truth they’ve seen. But others, they take a step forward into the chill wide waters.’ He nodded, to himself, deep in his own inner seeing as he walked. ‘And across them, eventually. From Ports like this one, often enough, where comings and goings over a thousand years and more have tied a knot in Time, to all the corners of the wide world. Lord, lord, how wide!’ He looked up at me suddenly, and I saw his teeth flash in the twilight. You’re a well-learned kind of a man, Steve. Just how many corners d’you think the world has?’

I shrugged. ‘Four, as a figure of speech. But in reality –’ I saw Jyp grin again, but went on and stuck my head in the trap. ‘None, because it’s a sphere. More or less, anyhow.’

Jyp shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. Ask the mathematical men. Like I did, when I learned me my spherical navigation. Even stuck deep in the Core they know better than that. A sphere’s a concept, a limiting case; so they don’t say no corners, they say it’s got an infinite number. And Steve, know what? Every which one of those corners is a place. Places that were, that will be, that never were save that the minds of men gave them life. Lurking like shadows cast behind the real places in that reality of yours, shadows of their past, their legends and their lore, of what they might have been and may yet be, touching and mingling with every place at many points. And you can search your life long and never find a trace of them, yet once you learn you may pass between them in the drawing of a breath. But are they the shadows, Steve – or is your reality theirs?’

I stared, speechless, but Jyp went on, talking in a soft sing-song almost to himself, like somebody mulling over something he has known all his life, and still amazed by it. ‘There, west of the sunset, east of the moonrise, there lies the Sargasso Sea and Fiddler’s Green, there’s the Elephant’s Graveyard, there’s El Dorado’s kingdom and the empire of Prester John –’

‘Huy Brazeal?’ I suggested, for that strange cargo came back to mind.

‘Been there; it’s okay, but there’s other places. There’s everywhere. Riches, beauties, dangers – every damn thing within the mind and the memory of men. And more too, probably – only those paths are kind of harder to find.’

But thinking of that cargo had brought other memories, and with them freight of bitter anxiety. ‘And that’s where they’ve taken Clare?’ I caught his arm. ‘Then how the hell can we ever hope to find her again?’

Jyp smiled, a little wryly. ‘That’s what we’re going to find out, Steve.’

I let go of him. Despair trickled down with the last drops of rain. ‘You and your bloody step forward! Damn the day I ever took it!’

Jyp shrugged. ‘Not for me; I’m here because you took it, three times over. And maybe not for you, neither.’ He laid a hard hand on my shoulder. ‘See, Steve, this side of town you soon learn you can’t see the end of everything, where any deed’s going to lead you. But one thing I’ve noticed, and that’s that a whole lot depends on how you first came to take that step. Old Stryge, he says the same, and he’s a real cunning bastard. With me it was slow, step by step you might say, an old shipmate I helped out from time to time, who showed me the ropes as his only way to repay. And me, I’ve done what I’d call all right – slowly. But you now, you just came barrelling in all in a moment, to help a man you didn’t know and to hell with the risk to yourself. That’s what I’d call a long straight step and a clear one, a good deed you shouldn’t repent of, not till you see how it all pans out in the end. I’d have said you’d do right well for yourself from such a beginning, only …’

He hesitated, stopped walking and began to stare around the street, as if looking for someone or searching out his way. But there was only one possible turn-off, on the far side ahead and to the right, and no living thing in sight except a distant dog, yellowish and skinny, probably a stray, that disappeared into some doorway or other. ‘Only?’ I prompted him. ‘Only what?’ But suddenly he set off across the empty road at a great pace, heading for the corner, and I had to trot after him; breathlessly repeating my question, and nudge him hard before he answered, slow and unwilling.

‘Only … it’s with all this reaching out, reaching into the Core. Can’t help wondering if … well, if maybe the step wasn’t all yours, good though it was. If, somehow you mightn’t have been lured in – sucked in, you might say. And that part of it could be bad.’

We walked on in silence. I could hear Jyp breathing fast, and his brow glistened; we were walking quickly, yet I’d seen him less affected by a running fight. Once or twice he would glance back the way we had come. I looked, too, and saw nothing; but his hand was seldom far from his sword hilt. The street we turned into was wide and open, one I vaguely remembered driving down at some time or other. One side of it was still lined with the old warehouses, but the other had been mostly cleared. After a few yards the old imposing wall ended abruptly and barbed-wire fencing took over. Behind it massive corrugated iron sheds had been erected, looking far dirtier and more desolate hunched beneath that bleak sky; here and there a lot stood vacant, overgrown and rubbish-strewn. It was in front of one of these, lying between two of the larger sheds and ending in a high and ancient brick wall, that Jyp stopped. He glanced quickly around, and I saw his eyes widen momentarily. But when I looked I only glimpsed the hindquarters of a dog disappearing hastily around the corner, the same dog probably, nervous of man’s eye as strays tend to be. Jyp seemed edgier than ever; he muttered something, then with sudden furious energy he flung himself at the barbed-wire and shinned straight up it to the top, agile as a monkey. I tried to follow him, impaled my palm on the first strand and dropped back to earth, swearing. Jyp nodded, set foot to one strand, hand to another, and heaved them so far apart I could easily clamber through.

The lot was like the rest, if anything more neglected. It was heavily overgrown and strewn with rubbish, everything from neat domestic piles tipped straight through the fence and black plastic sacks which all appeared to hold horribly dismembered corpses, to great loose swathes of soiled and shredded refuse, and even chunks of machinery. Rusting and anonymous, they poked up like strange growths among a sea of grasses, fireweed and purple willowherb at least five feet tall and in places higher, concealing the treacherous contours of the rubble beneath. The huge corrugated flanks of the sheds presented an interesting contrast, one in modern pastel shades on a brick foundation, the other in the bare galvanised metal of the fifties, rusting now and heavily patched, apparently decaying from the ground up. It was this one Jyp headed for, still silent I followed, sucking my palm and trying to remember my last tetanus shot. Even in that fresh wind the place stank as we passed through, but there was a worse atmosphere about it, something that Jyp evidently felt as keenly as I did. The grasses whispered like voices in the gathering dark, and looking back I saw one patch ripple against the wind, as if something was moving beneath, following closer and closer on our heels. Jyp saw it too, and I heard his breath hiss between his teeth; but he only plunged silently on.

As we reached the side of the older shed he seemed to pull himself together and walk with his usual calm swagger; too much of it, perhaps. In many places the wall patches themselves had half-rusted and been overlaid with others; here and there they’d gone on rusting, and left a gaping, jagged hole. Near one of these the grasses seemed to grow thinner, and a clear space was marked with a wide scar of ash. Here Jyp stopped, and booted the decaying wall, raising a thunderous boom.

‘Up, Stryge! Up and out, you mangy old spider! There’s callers in the parlour!’

For a moment nothing happened, and Jyp was just about to kick the wall again when something stirred and scrabbled behind it, and gave a groan so dry and rusty I thought it was the metal giving way. Then out of the jagged gap, like a beast from a den, rolled a hunched-up form that I only knew was a man by his mane of white hair. His limbs began to unfold, very like a spider’s, and I saw he was wrapped in an ancient and filthy-looking black coat, tied about the waist with a scrap of greasy rope, which hung down below the knees of his baggy greyish trousers. The boots beneath were ancient and cracked across both soles, the hands he dug into the earth like a mole’s claws, crooked and hard. He crackled as he moved, like dry leaves, and the stench of him struck like a blow. He lifted his head slightly, squinted at us without looking up, his very posture full of furtive cunning. All in all, a tramp, a bum, as typical a no-hoper as ever I’d seen, and as pitiful. I couldn’t help looking my disbelief at Jyp. This?

But Jyp’s face was a pale mask of alarm in the dusk, and he shook his head in sharp warning. Then the old man coughed once, a terrible hacking rasp, heaved himself up on his hands with alarming energy and glared right up into my face. I was so shocked I stumbled away. Beneath the ingrained dirt the face was hard and square, deeply lined, the brow high, the nose a blade and the mouth a thin colourless slash above a jutting arrogant chin; the clear grey eyes drove into mine like a clenched fist. Madman, was my half-formed thought; psychopath –

I wanted to turn and run. But they held me as a snake holds a rabbit, those eyes, and suddenly I saw the intelligence that blazed out of them, alert, cold, malign, mercilessly perceptive. Tramp and madman faded from my mind; all I could think of was ascetic, anchorite, philosopher or high priest. But of what awful belief?

‘Doesn’t like the look of me,’ rasped that rusty voice. Rusty, but clear, magisterial; I was less surprised than I would have been a minute ago. There was just the trace of an accent at times, though what kind was past telling. ‘Get the brat out of here, pilot, and yourself after. What’ve I to do with him? I owe him nothing. There’s no service he could owe me. What use’d I have for a pretty clothes-rack, an empty shell, a hollow man? And there’s a stink on him I don’t like –’

At the end of my tether, I snapped back ‘That just makes it fucking mutual, doesn’t it?’

The old man sprang up with a truly frightening snarl. ‘Out! Or I’ll spill his brain like a stale heeltap!’

Jyp’s hand caught my arm, tightened. ‘That’s enough, Stryge you old shrike! You mayn’t owe him anything, but you owe me, still – and I owe him, threefold! So save the insults, okay? And the spilling bit. There’s plenty to Steve here, and I know it. And how about a little help?’

The old man grumbled and muttered, Jyp cajoled, pleaded, even obliquely threatened when the old man turned that alarming gaze on me again. But only obliquely, and I noticed him glance behind him after that, more than once, at the waving grass. At last the Stryge sat back on his haunches, sunk his head on one arthritic hand and growled ‘Ach, have it your own way! He’s been messing with Wolves, that’s obvious, so he’ll want to know where they are – or where something is –’ He looked up and my skin crawled under the icy perception of that glance. ‘Or maybe somebody, eh? Halfway through a Wolf’s bowels by now, no doubt. Go look for him up there –’ Probably he read something in my reaction, because he chuckled unpleasantly. ‘For her, then, and leave me be! D’you have anything of hers? No? Anything she gave you, then?’

‘I don’t think so –’ We gave gifts occasionally, flowers on her birthday, a tie at Christmas, nothing more. Then I remembered the old filofax calendar I hadn’t thrown away because the currency tables on the back were so useful, and produced that.

‘Very romantic!’ sneered the old man. ‘Now do some work for once in your lives – build me a fire here! Boil me up some water from the tap there!’ Jyp and I glanced around the revolting lot and exchanged dismayed glances. ‘Go on!’ cackled the Stryge. ‘A little dirt’s never killed me. There’s wood by the wall, there; and paper enough!’ I gathered the wood, while Jyp impaled foul bits of paper on his sword, street-cleaner style, and together we got a fire laid and lit on the ashen patch. Meanwhile the old man sat hunched over the calendar, brushing his fingers slowly against it and crooning softly. Jyp came back with an oil can full of dubious water and rested it deftly among the sticks to heat.

‘If he thinks I’m going to drink any bloody potions …’ I whispered to Jyp, and then jumped as he clutched my arm. Another figure stood at the edge of the firelight, and for a moment I was afraid we’d attracted attention from the road. But this was a figure as scruffy as Stryge, a much younger blond man in a torn donkey-jacket and tight ragged jeans. Lean-faced and sallow, his sparse beard pointed but unkempt, he stood surveying us with narrow, hostile eyes. Stryge looked up and grunted something, and the young man padded over and squatted down beside him, gazing up at him with a peculiar intensity. Jyp’s grip tightened.

‘What’s he got to be here for?’ he hissed at Stryge. ‘I’m not staying here with him – get rid of him! Lose him –’

The yellow-haired man spat back a volley of curses in a thick Irish accent, and sprang up to face him.

‘Jyp, no!’ I hissed, hanging onto him. ‘If he can help –’

‘Enough!’ thundered the Stryge, with a force I wouldn’t have credited. ‘Sit, Fynn! And you also, pilot! Upon pain of my utmost displeasure!’ Jyp’s knees seemed to fold under him, and he slumped to his haunches beside me. The young man ducked down, cowed, by Stryge’s side. ‘Fynn will do you no harm while I’m here, be assured of that.’

‘He’d better not,’ said Jyp between clenched teeth. Fynn sat silently, head lowered but glaring at us. There was something about him, the snarling curl of his lip, the way the hair grew back from the low widow’s peak on that sloping brow – the colour of that hair. I began to feel less than well. It wasn’t so long ago I’d seen that odd yellowish shade.

The water was bubbling in earnest now. The Stryge, with Fynn scrabbling at his back, came and seated himself cross-legged on the far side. He muttered and gestured over it as it seethed and spattered, slopping over the side into the fire. Wisps of steam drifted across its dark surface, like mist on the night sea. For a long time, still muttering, he stared into it, squinting from various angles. Then he picked up a shaving of wood, and tossing the calendar aside he laid the shaving lightly on the surface of the water. We all leaned forward to watch as it bobbed there, aimlessly at first. Then, abruptly, it changed direction, glided slow and straight to the edge and sat there quivering. Jyp sucked in his breath sharply. ‘So that’s their heading, eh? By south-south-west, a quarter … Why, that’ll be –’

‘The Caribees,’ said the Stryge quietly. ‘West Indies, most likely. Knew I didn’t like the smell. First that dupiah, now this … Ach.’

‘But why?’ I demanded. Fynn giggled, but the Stryge silenced him with a raised hand.

‘Fair question. Because their main plan failed, that’s why. Smuggling that deadly thing in, for some purpose or other. So they came after you.’

‘Me? Why me?’

‘Simple. You brought it upon yourself. Poking after them with your sendings like that. Your spells.’

‘My –?’

‘They must’ve been on the look-out already. They’ve their own ways of looking, just as you have.’

‘You mean the computer? But there’s nothing magical about that.’

The old man cackled suddenly, as if at some private joke. ‘Anything you say, mon enfant. Your sendings came too close, and they traced them back. Just warned you off at first; but you would persist. Then they took a closer look. Decided they wanted you.’

‘Yes, but why?’

The Stryge shrugged. ‘How should I know? I would not want you in a gift, but have I the brain of a Wolf? Perhaps your sendings made them think you to blame for the plan’s failure, and to excuse themselves they would take you back to whoever is behind it. When they lost you, they went for the next best.’ The thin lips curled contemptuously. ‘They’d checked on that, too. The person you care for most in the world – and who cares most for you.’

I stared, and only just stopped myself braying with laughter, telling him he was daft. He had to be. The whole idea was daft, utterly bloody insane. Serve me right for taking an old wino seriously. Clare? What had she meant to me, till all this blew up? Not that much. A secretary I’d have been sorry to lose – okay, a little more than that, a friend, a welcome spot of human warmth in the business day. But I’d lots of friends, hadn’t I? More than most people, maybe, since part of my job was maintaining contacts. Colleagues, regular clients, and in my spare time the regulars at Nero’s and Dirty Dick’s, the crew down at the squash courts, the one’s I’d gone rock-climbing and hang-gliding with at intervals – hell, half the Liberal Club, the half that went there because it was a nice old-fashioned place to drink. Good company, all of them – not the sort of friends you’d spew out your troubles to, maybe, but then that was what made them good company. You didn’t humbug them, they didn’t humbug you – one of Dave’s handy West African expressions. And after all, it wasn’t as if I didn’t have the other sort of friends. I’d got on fine with my parents while they were alive, still did with my uncle and various aunts; though admittedly we’d lost touch a little, living so far apart. That was the trouble with my college friends, too, scattered all over the globe; how long since I’d heard from Neville? Come to that, how long since I’d seen Mike? He wasn’t that far away.

A scrabbling unease was undermining my annoyance. But it was still ridiculous. I wasn’t in love with Clare – anything but. I’d been closer, far closer to a good dozen or so girls since I left college – hadn’t I? Never mind the odd pick-ups this last year or two; far closer. About Stephanie, Anne-Marie, two or three of them, I’d been serious, really serious. Begun thinking about marriage even. Not to mention …

My teeth clenched shut. It was stupid; that was the past, wasn’t it? But then it all was. And he was talking about right now. His eyes were mirrors; and mirrors have no mercy. I’d never seen myself like that before. I felt, in memory, the touch of a hand on my arm, a voice concerned, sympathetic, a brief gust of that warm perfume. It wasn’t much; but there wasn’t any more, not from anywhere. I’d seen to that, carefully, systematically, neatly. If she was really the closest I stood to any other human being, then where the hell did that leave me?

I couldn’t answer it. Something was crumbling above my head, and suddenly I couldn’t be sure of anything any more. I’d been thinking about myself – bad enough. But what about Clare? How close had she come? She’d had boyfriends in plenty; what did she feel about me?

If he’d flung the water in my face, and the can and the fire after it, that old swine could hardly have shocked me more. He knew it, too. Those eyes held me while I writhed inside, seeing every scrap of my inner turmoil and relishing it, the way a sadistic child might enjoy a squirming insect impaled on a pin. If Clare was who I cared for most, if she cared the most for me –

‘What – what’re they going to do with her?’ I croaked. Fynn giggled again, and Jyp spat some word at him. Stryge appeared not to notice. He leaned forward, weasel-quick, grabbed my hands in his and brought them down towards the sides of the boiling billy-can. I flinched, but the grip of those arthritic claws, cold and horn-hard, was unbreakable.

‘Do you want to know, or not? You will feel nothing you cannot bear!’

Wide-eyed, helpless, I let my hands be drawn out over the fire, my palms pressed slowly and carefully to the ribbed metal. I gasped involuntarily, but it was nothing like heat I felt; it was more the violent energy of the bubbling water, making the tin vibrate like a drum, like a mass of drums. Throbbing, pounding, a wild insistent rhythm, and above it, in the chatter of the bursting bubbles, in the roaring of the fire beneath, something more – a babble of voices, a chant singing. ‘What is it?’ I gasped. The tin quivered like a living thing under my hands, harder and harder to restrain.

‘It is a rite,’ said the old man darkly. ‘A ceremoniecaille. I recognize it. A mangé – a sacrifice, perhaps to purge their failure in the eyes of their god, perhaps to a blacker end. That I cannot see; darkness hangs around it, a darkness hot and sweltering beneath damp leaves. But for that rite in particular there can be only one fit offering – and that must be a cabrit sans cornes.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘A goat without horns. Such a name.’

But I didn’t need any translations, either literally or what it really meant. I felt my scalp tighten with the horror of it, and I sprang up, tearing away my hands. ‘Then, Christ, what can we do about it? We’ve got to get her out –’

All Stryge did was smirk up at me in the firelight and shrug, and that was the last straw. A fury such as I’d seldom felt or given way to rolled over me like cold lightning, and I felt my hair bristle. ‘Damn you!’ I yelled. ‘There must be something! And you’re going to help me find it here and now – or I’ll wring your scrawny bloody windpipe into nothing!’ Jyp shouted something I was past hearing. ‘By God I will! And I kicked the boiling can at the Stryge.

Somehow he must have had a hand up to deflect it. The can bounced aside, a great plume of water leaped hissing into the fire, but not a drop touched him. A huge steamcloud boiled up around me, and it smelt not dank and oily as you might have expected, but soft and salty and warm as a tropical seawind. Fynn snarled and sprang up, and I saw with a thrill of horror that even without the firelight his eyes glowed yellow as amber. At my side I heard the rasp of sword leaving scabbard – and the sharp click as it was thrust back. Jyp’s hand landed on my shoulder.

‘Easy, lad!’ he hissed. ‘Keep off the shoals! You don’t know the lie of ’em! Give me the helm a minute!’ He turned to Stryge. ‘You said you’d help, old man, and so you have. Okay, damfino, but that’s just the easy part, making sure what anyone could’ve guessed. Not the kind of work we need to come to Le Stryge for, that, is it? Not enough to level any scores, is it? And not at all like the great Stryge to leave a job halfway done …’

I held my breath, as the steam dispersed into the darkness, and the old man huddled over the last embers of the fire. Fynn stood tense, ready, rigid except for the constant opening and closing of his fingers and his panting breath. He relaxed only when the old man spoke, and his tone had changed to a complaining whine. ‘You young folk, never ready to show any spirit! Never ready to go out and do, want everything laid out before by us who’ve had to work for it! Thought better of you, pilot, but you’re just like all the rest. No balls.’ He glared at me. ‘Though there’s some with no soul, either. And precious little brain. What d’you expect me to do when they’re off and away already? Why d’you think they hurried? Afraid of you?’ He snorted, and blew his nose on his fingers. ‘Once out of harbour, safe, and well they knew it.’

I looked aghast at Jyp, who shook his head angrily. ‘Lay off it, Stryge. There’s plenty that can be done so far off – and you can do it. As we both know!’

‘Not without damaging your precious little bit of skirt as well. Your sweet little Clare. So otherwise it means fitting out a ship, doesn’t it, and going after them! You wealthy? Hah?’

‘No,’ I said unhappily, thinking how much I could raise on my flat at short notice, and the car, and the sound system – though that was last year’s, and unfashionable with the reviewers these days. ‘How much would it cost?’

Jyp clicked his tongue. ‘A lot, Steve. I’d help with my mite of savings, but it wouldn’t make much odds. A decent ship, why that’d cost nigh on two thousand, with another thousand for a crew, five hundred or so on supplies.’

‘Thousands of what?’

Jyp blinked. ‘Why, guineas, of course.’

‘Guineas? You mean, one pound five pence? In modern money?’

‘What other kind is there? Money’s money.’

I gaped at him an instant, and then suddenly I burst out laughing in sheer disbelief. ‘Jyp, you can’t be serious! I earn more than your two thousand in a month! My savings –’

‘No kidding? Ah, but it’s got to be gold,’ he warned, tapping the side of his nose knowingly, ‘and it’s a hell of a poor rate you get for it when you’re in a hurry –’

‘Never mind the rate!’ I barked. ‘If I could lay hands on that sort of money in a couple of hours, can you find me a ship? And a crew? And how soon?’

‘You mean it?’ Jyp slapped his scabbard a ringing blow. ‘The best, pal! And by sunup! Starting with the best pilot afloat if you’ll have him, namely me! I was getting kind of bored ashore, anyhow. And you’re setting your course for strange waters –’

I was nearly speechless. ‘Jyp – it’s far beyond anything I’ve ever done for you! I’m more grateful than I can say –’

But Jyp had already rounded on the Stryge. ‘Satisfied, you old polecat? You ready to help now? Or have we just called your bluff?’

The old man snuffled noisily. ‘Get you your ship, and I’ll come along.’ Jyp blinked again; evidently he hadn’t expected that. He was just about to object when the Stryge added ‘Provided, of course, I can bring a brace of friends –’

For the first time I saw real alarm cross Jyp’s face. ‘Not on any ship of mine!’

‘Jyp!’ I whispered.

‘You don’t know, Steve! He’s ill enough company, but lordy, any friends of his’ll be worse –’

‘Take it or leave it!’ growled the old man.

‘We need him, Jyp,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t think of anyone else.’

Jyp ground his teeth. ‘But shipping out with us! He hasn’t never done such a thing that ever I’ve heard of! Why now, for this? He doesn’t care a fig for you, and little more for me! So what in all the hells is the old devil really up to?’ He shivered, and then sighed. ‘But if you really believe we need him, Steve –’

‘I … I don’t know. I suppose you could say I … feel it in my bones.’

‘I just hope Fynn don’t end up pickin’ em.’ Then he surprised me again, adding thoughtfully ‘But we’ll play it your way, Steve. Any feelings come to you, I’m inclined to trust.’ He slapped me on the shoulder. ‘So, you just hop back into your closed auto and get raising that money sharpish! If we miss the dawn-tide and the land-wind we’ll needs wait till sundown, and give the Wolves a full day’s lead.’ He looked back over his shoulder. ‘We’ll sail at dawn. Be aboard well before; I’ll send you word where.’

A sour chuckle floated after us. ‘Save your breath, cabôt. I’ll know.’

It was getting hazy and chill as I drove back into town. My first stop was at my flat, for a number of reasons. I wanted to change and pack, choosing the best clothes for what could be a pretty rough-and-tumble voyage. That done, I went through the rigmarole of opening my little wall safe and rummaging in it for my modest hoard of slightly illegal Krugerrands. Then I locked the place up, not without wondering whether I’d ever see it again, and set off for the Liberal Club. I knew that was one of the likeliest places to find Morry Jackman this time of night. Morry had sold me the coins, and I knew that within five minutes of finding him he’d inevitably be trying to sell me more. I liked Morry, and hoped his heart would stand the shock when this time I agreed.

‘Tonight? You mean, like now this minute?’ He put down his drink, and looked at me like a kindly owl. ‘What’re you doing, Stevie boy, flying the country?’

The truth can be best at times. ‘I’ve got a deal going – a chance at a Caribbean charter, very cheap if it’s in the ready. Guineas, yet.’

Morry nodded sagely. ‘Caribbean for four grand? Don’t blame you. On a night like this I’d pay pieces of eight, yet. Isn’t an extra share going, is there? Ah, never mind. One more sticky and we’ll go open up the shop,’

I drove back to the docks very carefully. The haze was turning to fog, and I didn’t want to risk any accidents with that little bag of coinage chinking and chuckling unlawfully to itself on the seat beside me. Morry had come up with an amazing assortment, everything from quarter-angels and Jersey crowns to Austrian imperial half-thalers in modern reissues and, like the good lad he was, he had been quite ready to take my cheque for a fair five thousand pounds’ worth at his untaxed prices. If the police found me with that they’d be bound to get suspicious and delay me, maybe fatally. So I contained my impatience, let the drunks go roaring past me into obscurity, and concentrated on finding my way. I made a couple of false turns at first, and began to sweat a little; the tendrils of the mist pointed this way and that like thin mocking fingers. But it was only shortly after midnight when a mellow gleam at street’s end caught my eye, and I pulled up outside the Illyrian Tavern. So I was beginning to find my way around, was I? To fit in. Oddly enough, that idea made me feel almost more uncomfortable. I glanced nervously into the night as I climbed out of the car. I’d never been scared of the dark in the world I knew – but here?

There were plenty of people there, to judge by the hubbub, but the shadows hid them well. While I was still on the stairs, though, Jyp hailed me excitedly from a small booth by the fire. ‘Steve! Let me present to you Captain Pierce, of the brigantine Defiance –’

A huge silhouette loomed up out of the booth behind him, towering over the two of us. ‘Give me your hand, sir!’ he thundered, and extended an arm swathed in so much lace I could hardly see his. ‘Your servant, Master Stephen!’ The hidden hand was ham-sized and hard as leather. His long sandy hair, curled like a spaniel’s, framed a ham face, too. Below his heavy jowls layer upon layer of foaming ruffles spilled down the front of a peculiar waistcoat, its front panels heavily embroidered and extending almost to his knees. ‘I’ll desire your better acquaintance, sir, upon our voyage! But for now, time presses and tide awaits, and I fear we must bring our bargain to a speedy term!’

‘You’ve got the money?’ breathed Jyp.

I spilled out the bag upon the table. Panic seized me, seeing it sitting there in the firelight; had I made a fool of myself? Or misunderstood Jyp? Were values in this crazy world as different as everything else? It looked like such a pathetic little pile, compared to all the pirate hoards I’d seen in books and films. Jyp and the captain stared at it a moment without speaking, and I sweated. Then Jyp whistled softly. ‘And you said you weren’t rich!’

With an apologetic glance at me the captain picked up a coin at random, took a gnawing bite at it, and stared at the result. Tlove o’God’s will!’ he breathed. ‘Fine coin, this! Must be damn near pure!’

Shaky with relief, I realized that gold meant for use, as opposed to sitting on velvet bank trays, must almost always have been debased – ostensibly to make it harder, more likely to stretch its value. Jyp nodded with sublime complacency. ‘What’d I tell you, skipper? There’s your ship, your men and their vittles, and enough to buy ’em all over again. Want your trifle weighed out now?’

‘The remainder,’ I said decisively, before the captain could get a word out, ‘is for you and your crew the moment we get Clare back safely. And as much again, upon our return. Tell them that!’

Pierce surged up, and bowed with such sweeping courtesy that I could only copy him. ‘You are a very prince, sir, a prince! And by all that’s holy, you shall have the maid, while there’s power in our arms! Snuff with you, sir?’ Anxious not to offend, I took a moderate pinch from the silver-mouthed ram’s-horn he flourished, and snuffed it up as I’d seen done in films, off the back of my hand. I hoped I wouldn’t sneeze. One doesn’t, with a large Havana, lit, jammed up each nostril; and that’s what it felt like. I was speechless, but luckily Pierce was too busy plugging his own cavernous nostrils with the lethal stuff to notice. He noticed all right, though, when Jyp scooped the gold back into the bag in one swift gesture and gave me it back.

‘About that tide –’ he said.

Pierce sneezed violently down his ruffles and roared for his hat and coat. Old Myrko hobbled up with a knee-length frock-coat stiff with elaborate piping and gleaming buttons. Over this Pierce buckled a broad leather belt slung with a huge rapier, jammed on a broad-brimmed felt hat with a tall plume, tucked an ivory-headed cane under his arm and remarked, ‘It’s but a short step to the wharf, sir! Would you go afoot, or shall we take your car?’

He didn’t seem to fit my car, either physically or mentally. Jyp thought it was safer left at the tavern, anyway; they would keep an eye on it. ‘Katjka specially,’ he said dryly, as we climbed the stairs. ‘On at me again about taking care of you, she was –’

‘Is she around? I’d like to say goodbye –’

‘Better we don’t linger.’ But I did, hovering on the last step, full of strange feelings. And somehow I saw her, right at the back of the dark room, her hair tossed back, her cat eyes watching me with expressionless intensity. She raised a hand to blow me a kiss; but it wasn’t her fingers that touched her lips. It was the pack of cards.

The fog outside had changed, not thinned exactly but concentrated into banks and streamers that swirled around us on a faint chill breeze. We walked in silence, except for Pierce’s cane tapping the stones and his scabbard slapping against his stiff coat. Jyp’s sword was slung over his shoulder, and he seemed sunk in his own thoughts. So was I, and they were none of them comforting. I’d set off on long journeys before now, but with my destination printed fair and square on the tickets in my bag and the rites of passage common to every airport the world over; check-in, aisle seat, no smoking please, baggage checks and passport controls, security scans, adenoidal announcements and flickering departure screens. I’d never thought of them as reassuring before; but I would have welcomed them now, stepping out into a misty void of infinite possibilities. Maybe I was going to fall off the edge of the world.

When emptiness opened before us, though, it was only the street’s end, and the globes of gold light were not stars but the lanterns of the wharf. Beyond its rim shadowy masts lifted, and men were busy about it, scurrying up and down a gangplank, hefting sacks and rolling kegs. Above our heads there was a sudden creak, and a net of large barrels went swinging across on a spar, to be let down with much shouting and cursing into the shadows below. Pierce filled his lungs, and his bellow carried easily over the hubbub. ‘Mister Mate! How’s she stand?’

‘Well, sir!’ The answer echoed up from below. ‘Last loads come aboard now, and she trims nicely!’ A string of technical details about loading followed, sounding surprisingly modern, and a brisk exchange of orders sent gangs of dark-clad men running this way and that. I moved to the wharfside, out of the way, and looked down.

‘Well?’ demanded Jyp, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘How’d you like her?’

My mouth went dry with alarm. ‘Jyp!’ I protested. ‘She’s tiny! You can’t have seen that bloody vast ship the Wolves have! She’s a quarter the size –’

Jyp chortled. ‘Surely, yes, but that’s a great lumbering merchantman! The Defiance here’ll have the heels of it, and draws far less; she’ll outsail the Chorazin at every point, and go where they’d ground or founder. And if need be she can outrange them. See there, just along the tumble-home!’ He pointed to a row of closed panels like upright trapdoors on the shallow incoming curve of the hull. ‘There’s eighteen-pounder guns behind those gunports, ten to a side, and long nine-pounders as chasers in bow and stern both. More ordnance than most ships this size’d carry, near as much as a frigate, but she was built for that, see? And to carry a larger crew than usual. The Chorazin’s a wallowing whale, but this, this is a shark, built for speed and snatching prey. Think I’d find you anything less? Though it was our luck Pierce had her in dock till this week, careening. It’s a privateer we need, and Defiance – she’s one of the best!’

It seemed I’d hired myself what was essentially a miniature private warship. I was all for private enterprise, but this was a bit much. I was still clutching my head at the thought when there came a sudden hail from high above, from the mist-cloaked mastheads. On deck and wharf alike all movement froze, and the clear voice sang through an expectant silence.

‘Wind’s from the land! Dawn ho! Dawn is coming!’

The very call seemed to strike through the mist, severing its tangled streamers, flattening its billows. Through it, somewhere out in the still-hidden distance, I saw the first faint trace of light. It fell upon the faces of the men about me, and revealed them as the weirdest crew of cutthroats I could have imagined. Faces lined, faces scarred, faces that could have been carved from ancient wood, or simply formed in it by the vagaries of age; fierce, feral faces such as few men bear in this modern age, faces of every race I knew and some I didn’t. Not all were men. There were several women, every bit as hard-faced and dressed much the same way – though there was little uniformity among them. And at that hail, without waiting for the bellowed order that followed, they snatched up every scrap of gear that littered the wharf and staggered, grotesquely laden, to the gangplank. Somebody coughed beside me, and I turned to find a hard-eyed little brute of a man bobbing nervously and touching his knuckles to his mahogany forehead. ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, master, but cap’n’s compliments and may I kindly be seein’ you aboard now?’

‘Yes, of course –’ I began, but he’d already snatched up the flight holdall that was all my luggage, seized my elbow and more or less dragged me to the gangplank. It was only three planks wide, without rails or anything at the sides, but I had no trouble till I was almost at the end. Some eager soul stepped on too vigorously and almost bounced me over; but a long hand shot out from the deck, caught my arm and more or less lifted me in.

‘Losing your sea legs already, Master Stephen?’ asked a husky, sardonic burr.

‘Mall!’ I laughed. ‘You’re coming along?’

She turned at a shout from the stern, but stayed to clap me on the back. ‘A shame to leave the hunt half done, and me with the smell of Wolf just in my nostril! Aye, I’m shipped as quartermaster – and that’s me called to the helm now!’

‘Told you I’d get you the best, Steve,’ grinned Jyp, appearing as she vanished. ‘Scrappers all, and she a match for the whole pack of ’em.’

‘Nobody I’d want more at my side in a roughhouse,’ I agreed. ‘Except you, maybe.’

‘Me?’ Jyp shook his head ruefully. ‘That’s rightly kind of you, Steve, but you little know. Her – well, there’s not a swordsman or woman to match her in all the great Ports, nor any other kind of fighter from Cadiz to old Constantinople. Hasn’t been, since before my time.’

‘Before – she doesn’t look so old! Younger than you, if anything.’

‘Must be a heap of folk she’s younger than, but I don’t see so many. She’s been around, Steve –’

A sudden commotion stopped him. Down the gangplank, complaining loudly, the old man called Le Stryge came limping. Two figures ragged as himself supported him on either arm. One was Fynn, vulpine as ever, and the other, to my surprise, was a young girl, skinny, pale and bare-legged beneath a ragged black dress, but by no means unattractive. Her dark hair straggled damply over her high cheekbones; they made her green eyes look immense, and gave her smile that hungry quality that refugees have in news pictures. I would have expected a tough crew like this to be wolf-whistling her, if nothing else, but instead they gave back, positively scuttled out of the way. Many of them made the jabbing-horns sign with their fingers, or whistled and spat. Fynn looked around with a horrible leer, and they stopped at once. Le Stryge halted at the gangway’s end.

‘Master Pilot! Three to come aboard!’ He bowed. ‘My humble self, Fynn whom you know, and may I present to you Peg Powler. A useful associate, I have no doubt.’

‘No doubt!’ muttered Jyp, and gestured towards the bow. ‘You’ve the starboard foc’sle cabin. Best you get there and stay for now, you’re upsetting the lads!’

The Stryge bowed. ‘Anything to oblige, Master Pilot! Come, children!’

The strange trio hobbled off, and the bustle on the deck parted to let them pass. I was about to ask Jyp about the girl, but he checked me, caught my arm. ‘There, Steve! Can’t you feel it? Tide’s changing. It’s slack now.’

I glanced over the side. The greyish light was growing, but I could make out nothing but the mist heaving sluggishly below the gunports. ‘I can’t feel a thing. Are we sinking down any further?’

Jyp’s laughter came easily, but there was something in it, something new that set my hair bristling as easily as the freshening breeze. ‘Not the tides of water, Steve, slow and dragging! When our tide turns, when the channels are clear, and there’s no danger of grounding – why then, Steve, we can sail east of the sun itself!’

Even as he spoke, the light changed, and quite suddenly the cold greyness was shot through; the high mastheads sprang into being, tipped with radiant light.

‘Cast off, bows!’ thundered Pierce astern. ‘Loose heads’ls there! Hands aloft to loose tops’ls!’

The rigging thrummed like a giant guitar under a rush of climbing feet, and over our heads a great fall of parchment-coloured canvas dropped with a crash, thrashed an instant then filled with a boom and bellied taut.

‘Hard a’starboard the wheel! Hands to heads’l sheets! Haul, you bitches’ brood! Haul!’

As the blossoming sails caught the wind they pulled the bows around, out from the wharfside.

‘Cast off astern!’ roared Pierce. ‘Sheet home! Hands to braces!’

I caught the rail as the ship surged suddenly beneath me, heeled slightly and leaped forward, urgent as a living thing.

Over the world’s edge the sun climbed, and its low light played out across the sunken mist that stretched out to meet and merge with the dawning clouds, and turned it to waves of surging gold. The harbour wall slid by, the smells of tar and fish faded in the cold pure wind. I heard the water gurgling beneath us, but it seemed scarcely to exist as that limitless tide of light struck through it, turning all to misty translucency, water and air alike. Looking up I saw the topsails catch the air and fill – or was it the radiance that filled them, so strong, so fresh I seemed to breath it in and be borne aloft myself, a shimmering gust of fire?

Ahead of us the clouds opened. I no longer saw the sun, as if it had sunk beneath our bows; but its light shone up before us, setting a stark and shadowed solidity on the clouds, and edging them with gold. Coastlines took shape there, fringed with bright beaches, peninsulas, promontories, islands darkly mountainous and tree-crowned. Vast and all-enveloping, the archipelago lay spread out beyond our bowsprit, and the azure channels opened to receive us. Our bows dipped, lifted, skipped and lifted again, higher and higher, while the mist broke across them and scattered to either side in tall plumes of slow-falling spray, and over us great seabirds wheeled and cried. In Jyp’s voice I heard the same wild exultation, limitless as the horizonless blue beyond.

‘Over the dawn! Over the airs of the earth! We’re under way!’