Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 71

Driven by the enhanced wind, the Chaser practically flew across the waves toward Serrimundi. The krakener pulled far ahead of the Norukai fleet, and the crew made makeshift repairs from the sea serpent attack along the way.

They could not reach Serrimundi fast enough to please Nicci. After seeing the number of serpent ships, she was convinced that even Serrimundi’s new defenses could not withstand such an attack. The much larger city of Tanimura might stand a chance, with its full navy and strengthened army, but not Serrimundi. Effren and Larrikan Shores had already been wiped out by a much smaller Norukai raiding fleet.

Serrimundi was more than ten times larger than Renda Bay, however, and such a city simply could not be evacuated in only a few days. It seemed an impossible situation.

She stood at the bow of the Chaser with Nathan, Bannon, and Lila, discussing options. Even with their speed and significant head start, Nicci doubted they would have enough time to make the necessary preparations—whatever those might be. Together, they tried to develop a plan that would give Serrimundi the best chance of survival.

Just before the Chaser approached the line of reefs beyond the harbor mouth, they encountered one of the patrol boats. As they raced past, Nicci cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Light your signal rafts. The Norukai are on their way!”

The patrol boat’s crew dropped the floating platform overboard and lit the pile of green kindling to raise a column of smoke that could be seen for many miles. Other widely separated scout boats spotted the signal and replied in kind, lighting their own rafts to pass the message along and notify everyone in the city. The lookout on top of the Sea Mother bluff hammered on her gong to sound the alarm.

Serrimundi was on full alert by the time the Chaser sailed past the Mist Maiden and four other armored cargo ships that defended the mouth of the harbor, just beyond the towering stone carving. When the krakener pulled up to one of the repaired piers, Harborlord Otto, Lady Olgya, Captains Ganley and Straker, and other city representatives hurried to meet them.

“The Norukai are maybe two days behind us,” Bannon blurted out. “We have to get the whole city on high alert.”

Otto nodded soberly. “We are as ready as can be. Everyone is armed and trained, the ships are reinforced with metal plates. We knew this might happen.”

“You have made an admirable effort here, but alas we are convinced it will not be enough to save Serrimundi,” Nathan said.

Captain Ganley looked indignant. “Don’t underestimate us. Our people know this is their only chance to save their homes. They will not give up without a fight.”

“It will be a battle such as the Norukai have never seen.” The harborlord crossed his arms over his chest.

“But you will still lose. Even if you inflict numerous casualties on the raiders, they will still burn your city to the ground,” Nicci said. “Tanimura’s defenses are ten times stronger. They have built up a whole fleet of warships ready to defend the sea, and their standing army includes a garrison from D’Hara, thousands from the city guard, and countless refugee recruits. Oron, Perri, and the other gifted are already there with General Zimmer. Our best chance is to lure the Norukai fleet directly to Tanimura, where they will be wiped out.”

“But what about Serrimundi?” Otto asked, his voice cracking. “What are we to do?”

“You may not need to fight at all,” Nathan said, touching a finger to his chin. “We have an idea to protect your city. Lady Olgya’s actions gave us the idea, in fact.”

The gifted woman from Ildakar was surprised. Her hair hung loose now, rather than in the familiar braids, with a ragged hunk where an enemy soldier had cut one off. “I inspired you? I am intrigued.”

Otto looked from Nathan to Nicci. “I like the sound of that, but I don’t understand what you mean.”

Leaving the krakener, Nicci walked down the dock, all business. She regarded the rolling hills, the sections of the city that spread inland from the neat, protected bowl of the harbor. Her memory and her imagination had not failed her. “Yes, it is possible.”

Otto and the others followed her as she walked the length of the pier, anxious to hear what she would suggest. In front of the first line of warehouses Nicci turned and looked back at the harbor, the headlands, and the opening to the sea. “The Norukai islands are far to the south, and this is new territory for them. Before Captain Kor’s raid, Serrimundi had never before been attacked, so the Norukai know very little about your distant city. None of Kor’s raiders escaped alive, so no one was able to bring a report to King Grieve. He isn’t aware of the exact location of Serrimundi.”

Nathan brushed the front of his new vest and adjusted his embroidered cape, as if he were about to step onto a stage. “If fate treats us favorably, we may be able to distract the Norukai and trick them into sailing right past Serrimundi.”

“We want to hide your city,” Lila said, with as much inflection as if she were merely remarking on the weather.

Ganley gasped. “Hide Serrimundi? Where would you put it?”

Nicci lifted her chin. “If we time it right, the Norukai might not see the harbor at all. Because we killed their serpent god, King Grieve is pursuing the Chaser. He wants his vengeance on us. If we can provoke them, taunt them, and make them keep chasing us, we might get the entire fleet to sail past Serrimundi … if they don’t see the harbor in the night.”

“How could they not see an entire city?” Otto removed his wide-brimmed hat and wiped perspiration from his brow. “I still don’t understand this.”

But Olgya began to smile. Nicci looked to Captains Ganley and Straker, both of whom stood ready to follow her instructions. “If other armored ships join us as we race away, King Grieve will keep following us.”

“He wants to kill me, too,” Bannon said. “And Lila. We just have to keep the Norukai too preoccupied to look for Serrimundi. That’s why we can’t let them see the city.”

“We must camouflage it,” Lila said, as if impatient for the discussion to come to the point.

Amid the surprised gasps, Nathan held up a finger. “A sufficiently gifted person such as yourself, my dear”—he turned toward Olgya—“could summon a thick mist to blanket the mouth of the harbor, just as you hid our ships from the Norukai after Renda Bay, and outside the Cliffwall canyon before that. If the raiders don’t know to look for Serrimundi, then the diversion should be straightforward enough. Before that, we need to stall and harass the raider fleet, make sure they arrive at night and sail past this part of the coast.…”

Nicci turned to Otto. “Harborlord, you’ll need to darken the city tomorrow and each night until the Norukai pass. No one can light fires or lanterns after sunset. Serrimundi must be pitch black when the serpent ships come after us.”

“But my city wants to fight too!” Otto said. “Are you suggesting that we hide here in the fog and let Tanimura handle the war for us?” The lines in his face deepened. “Sorceress, you gave a grand speech that all the cities of the Old World must pull together against our overwhelming enemy. Serrimundi can’t just sit by and let Tanimura face it themselves! We are not cowards.”

“I’m not suggesting that you do nothing.” Nicci’s lips took on a hard smile.

Bannon rested a hand on the ornate pommel of his new sword, and his grin was enthusiastic. “After the Norukai chase after us in the dark, the rest of Serrimundi’s warships can follow all the way to Tanimura. When the battle begins there, you can strike them from behind.”

Lila added with a grim smile, “If you stay far enough back, King Grieve will never expect you.”

“A large curtain of mist…” Olgya twisted her long hair in her fingers. “While you lead them away like a fox on a hunt, I can create a thick fog bank to hide Serrimundi.” She looked out to the towering figure of the Sea Mother on the bluff. “And that is just to start.…”

The following day, knowing the Norukai fleet was fast approaching, the kraken hunter sailed away from Serrimundi followed by four armored cargo ships. Serrimundi scout boats ranged farther south, prepared to light their signal rafts as soon as they spotted King Grieve and his raiders.

Left behind, Olgya watched them go, vowing to do her part to save the city.

Harborlord Otto had dispatched runners throughout the city, issuing a complete ban on fires, lanterns, not even a candle behind a shutter for the coming night. When darkness fell, Serrimundi had to be invisible, swallowed up in darkness and fog. Olgya had practiced her spell to call up the mists in the sea.

Near sunset, the lookout on the bluff spotted a curl of signal smoke to the south, which meant the raiders would be here within hours. Ready to intercept, the Chaser and the four sailing ships angled swiftly toward the smoke to provoke the oncoming Norukai fleet. They would taunt the serpent ships and bolt away, sailing north, leading them toward Tanimura for the final battle.

More than an hour later, near full darkness, the provocateurs sailed back past the harbor, pushed by magically enhanced winds. As deepening night blanketed the harbor and city with gloom, Olgya got to work before the Norukai could heave into view in hot pursuit. Waiting beneath the Sea Mother carving at the headlands, she used her gift to touch countless droplets of water, raising a mist from the calm waves beyond the mouth of the harbor. At first it was like faint steam rising from a pot of water about to boil, then it thickened into lacy wisps of fog that coalesced with other strands into a low-lying blanket.

The mist rolled up and into the harbor, blanketing the hills, flowing along the coast, and extending out to sea. Even as the darkness thickened, no lights twinkled from any homes in the crowded city. Olgya thought of families huddled together in the dark, comforting one another. The night had an unnatural hush.

Back at Ildakar, she had watched her glorious city vanish behind the shroud of eternity; now she had to make another city disappear, but in a different way. Olgya thickened the mist around the mouth of the harbor so the Norukai would see nothing but a blurred coastline, if they could make out anything in the darkness. As the last gloom faded into deep night, she spotted the blue sails of more than a hundred serpent ships racing after the Chaser and the four armored cargo ships. The enemy fleet was dizzying in its size, but Olgya had seen it before, at Renda Bay. She now saw the sense in Nicci’s plan; no matter how hard the people might fight back, these ships would have destroyed all of Serrimundi’s defenses, filled the harbor, and burned the city to the ground.

Even if the trick worked, however, Olgya intended to make her mark here.

As the thick fog spread and settled, Olgya took a dinghy and rowed out of the mouth of the harbor. The currents were erratic, but she used her gift to steady the boat as she made her way out to the long line of dangerous reefs beyond the harbor.

Rowing hard, she picked her way along the foamy line until she chose a place to lay down another deadly trap. She created a small shimmering ball of light, flickering cold flames that were tightly layered like the petals in a rosebud. She laid the glowing kernel among the reef rocks, ducking from the spray hitting the rocks. Her little spark glimmered there, immune to the water that tried to douse it. This wasn’t normal fire, but would become a beacon bright enough that she hoped it would lure some of the oncoming Norukai ships right to the Keeper.

Finished, she rowed back to the sheltered harbor, confident the trick would work.

Out on the reefs, her enigmatic light grew brighter in the fog.

Lars stood at the bow and howled into the night, shouting a challenge at the fleeing ships. The Chaser sailed ahead into the darkness.

He remembered Nicci from Ildakar. Now the blond sorceress kept provoking the raider fleet by lashing out at them with bolts of lightning. King Grieve drove his fleet after them in a headlong charge. Groaning at the benches, the muscular Norukai pulled on the oars, driving the serpent ships faster than any wind.

The small krakener and four large warships fled north with all possible speed, which told Lars that the sorceress could not sustain her attacks. She and other gifted provocateurs had struck and harassed the serpent ships at sunset, but then they turned and fled. Obviously, they feared King Grieve’s mighty navy! Nicci’s lightning had been nothing more than a sting to enrage the wild bear of the Norukai fleet, and the serpent ships swooped after her, closing in for the kill.

Lars commanded his crew, “Pull at the oars. You are not weaklings!” The muscular raiders, both men and women, sat at the benches and gritted their teeth, groaning with the effort. The oars dipped into the water, cut deep, and pulled back. He did not want his ships to lose their quarry in the darkness as thickening fog rose all around them.

While Grieve and his fleet sailed forward like a battering ram, Lars and his ten ships hugged closer to the shore. This was farther north than he had ever explored, even on their recent destructive raids. Just like his comrade Kor had been, Lars was under a death sentence, obligated to fight until he died. He would keep attacking these scared little people for as long as he could, but he didn’t expect they would manage to kill him anytime soon.

Now his raiding ships sailed through the black night and suffocating fog, but Lars could hear waves rushing against the nearby coast. “Row faster! The sorceress is out there somewhere. We must be the first to catch her.”

“Will King Grieve feed her to the serpent god?” asked one of the warriors.

“There is no serpent god,” said Ura, a muscular woman who was too ugly even for Lars. She’d shaved her head to make herself nearly indistinguishable from a male, although she could not hide her heavy breasts. “We are the serpent god, and we take the sacrifices ourselves.”

Lars said, “First we have to catch them.”

The oar master pounded on the drums, and the serpent ships plunged into the impenetrable fog. Near the serpent figurehead, one sailor cried out in surprise and pointed forward. “Lars, look! Some kind of beacon.”

A bright light sparked upward from the veils of white mist, like a full moon. It glowed and pulsed at the waterline, tempting, dazzling.

“What could it be?” asked Ura.

“It is magic,” one of the raiders muttered.

“Of course it is magic—we are hunting a sorceress!” Lars said. “That is where she must be! Adjust course. We will follow that light and run it down.”

The sailors pulled hard on the oars, and the serpent ships cut through the water like vipers ready to strike. The tantalizing beacon glowed through the fog, calling them. It lifted higher in the sky then dropped low again.

“Prepare your weapons,” Lars said.

The Norukai seized their assortment of blades and clubs and rushed to the front of the ship, ready to swing themselves overboard as soon as they cornered their prey. The glow brightened, and Lars had to shade his eyes. He still didn’t know what it was, but the beacon seemed to be retreating. “Faster!”

Just as the first serpent ships approached the dazzling orb, he heard the crash of breakers—far too close. He had only a moment to think before his ship ran aground.

“Reefs!” Ura screamed just before she was hurled overboard by the impact. Jagged rocks ripped open the lower hull, smashed the keel.

Lars slammed against the rail. Many of his sailors bowled into one another and tumbled over the side, yelling in rage. Hulls cracked and crunched as more of his serpent ships smashed against unseen reefs. The glowing beacon hovered mockingly overhead, brightened to a flare, then winked out, leaving them in mist-shrouded darkness.

Another serpent ship careened into Lars’s vessel from the starboard side, crushing the hull, snapping off the oars like twigs. The impact shattered his ribs and his left arm, and Lars fell over the side as his ship tilted. Water gushed into the open gap in its hull.

He plunged into the roiling water and flailed with his useless broken arm. His bare chest scraped against the sharp reef rocks. He saw dozens of his crew scrambling for purchase against the heavy waves, holding on to the wreckage.

At least seven of his vessels had run up onto the reefs, and Lars realized that the glowing orb had lured them into treacherous waters. A trick! Hundreds of wounded Norukai were swept out to sea or caught up in the churning foam and pulped against the rocks.

The fog grew even thicker, hiding them from the rest of the receding fleet. Lars could only hear the resounding crashes as more serpent ships plowed into the reefs and other vessels. When he tried to shout, a curl of seawater gushed into his mouth. He coughed, his shattered ribs stabbing like knives. He tried to pull himself onto the questionable safety of the reef.

Ura climbed up on the rocks that were slick with green seaweed, reaching for a handhold. She cried out as something grabbed her. She clawed at her leg, trying to break free, but she was jerked into the water. Nearby, Lars heard more screams, not just anger and surprise from the wrecks. His people were being attacked! The Norukai clawed for shelter on the reefs, but more were swept under, seized by something beneath the water.

Lars squirmed about, looking for an enemy. “Who are you?” He had lost his sword during the fall, and his arm was broken, but he bunched his other first. “Where are you?”

Humanlike forms glided up out of the water, sleek and gray, covered with scales and with mouths full of needle teeth. They slithered onto the reef rocks to fall upon their helpless prey.

The selka had pursued the Norukai fleet, waiting for their chance, and now they rose from the foamy water. Three of them grabbed Lars. He struggled, but they tore him to shreds before dragging his body in pieces under the waves.