The River of Shadows

A Hasty Departure

22 Ilbrin 941

Pazel sprinted from the manger. He heard Thasha shouting his name but did not look back. Foreign-born, mutinous, expelled from the service, sentenced to death-amazing how it all disappeared. In emergencies he was simply a tarboy.

Refeg and Rer, the anchor-lifters, slept in a kind of stall behind the portside cable tiers. They almost never moved quickly. Pazel flew across the orlop with all the speed he dared, leaping the broken floor planks, flinging open doors.

He heard their breath, deep organ wheezes, before his eyes discerned their shapes. The brothers slept side by side, curled in beds of straw, their six-foot-long arms folded against their mammoth chests. Their skin was yellow-brown and rough as rhino hide, and festooned here and there with clumps of fur, green-black, like moss on stone. They were augrongs, survivors of a race that had all but disappeared from Alifros, dwellers in an Etherhorde slum when not serving on some Arquali ship. They spent nearly all their time asleep, harboring their titanic strength, rising for just one meal a week or to perform some labor that would have required scores of men. Their language was so rich in metaphor it seemed almost the language of dreams, and Pazel was the only person aboard who spoke it.

Left to themselves, augrongs could take a quarter hour to wake, and another quarter hour to get to their feet. Shouting, pleading, beating on cans did nothing to speed the process, and no one in their right mind would nudge them with pole or pitchfork. But a faster method had occurred to Pazel. Bending close (but not too close) to their sleeping heads, he summoned his memory of the Augronga tongue and boomed in an inhuman voice: “Music in the forest: tomorrow calls me, I answer with my feet.”

Two pairs of fist-sized yellow eyes snapped open. The creatures surged upright, grunting like startled elephants. Pazel smiled. It worked every time: he had recited a phrase reserved for the saddest farewells. Each augrong thought that he was hearing the other’s voice, and after countless years cut off from their people, the brothers’ deepest fear was separation.

When they caught sight of Pazel they heaved irritated sighs. “Always the same one, the babbler, the noisy goose,” rumbled Rer, his huge eyelids drooping like batwings.

“Noisy till he’s plucked,” said Refeg, making a halfhearted swipe at Pazel.

Pazel jumped backward. “Emergency, emergency!” he cried, stripping the finesse from his Augronga. “Beat to quarters! Hear the drums!”

With impressive haste (for augrongs) the brothers stumbled out of their bedding and made for the No. 3 ladderway. They knew where they were wanted: at the main capstan, where each could do the work of fifty men in the arduous job of lifting anchor. Pazel slipped around them carefully, watching those vast flat hands. The augrongs had never hurt him; in fact he thought they appreciated his occasional service as a translator. But despite his grasp of their language, their minds remained a mystery. And Pazel could never forget that they had helped Arunis extract the Nilstone from the Red Wolf. From that day forward Pazel wondered just what kind of power Arunis had gained over the creatures, and if he could count on it still. But any mention of the sorcerer brought warning growls from the augrongs.

Pazel sprinted ahead, and in short order he was climbing the No. 3 ladderway. Five steep flights of stairs, each more crowded than the last, and the drums still sounding overhead. When he burst onto the topdeck at last he found himself in a crowd of men and tarboys, soldiers and steerage passengers, all making for the starboard rail. It was late afternoon; the sun was low and orange in the west. Pazel ran toward the bow. He could see Mr. Fiffengurt ahead, hobble-running, with an ixchel riding his shoulder.

When Pazel caught up with Fiffengurt he found that the ixchel was Ensyl. She was a wispy, earnest young woman with eyes that darted restlessly, until they suddenly fixed on you, and drilled. Catching sight of Pazel, she leaped from Fiffengurt’s shoulder to his own, landing lightly as a bird.

“Have you seen them?” she demanded.

“No,” gasped Pazel, still winded from the stairs. “Who are they? I can’t see any ship.”

“There’s no ship,” said Fiffengurt. “That’s why we were caught off-guard. Damnation, if those villagers betrayed us-”

They reached the tonnage hatch. As he had done many times, Pazel set a foot on the rail and leaped up to catch a mainmast forestay. With one hand on the wire-taut rope he leaned out over the yawning shaft, Ensyl clinging fiercely to his shirt. Now at last he could see over the crowd.

“But I still don’t-”

His words died in his throat. He saw them: dlomu, hundreds strong, lining the shore road from the village to the Tower of Narybir. They were still coming, pouring through the gatehouse, leaping down from the wall, even passing over the dunes about the tower’s foot. Were they forming ranks, carrying weapons? The land was too distant for him to be sure.

“They look like Mr. Bolutu,” said Ensyl. “Is it true what they’re saying in the clan, Pazel-that those beings rule all the South, that there’s no one else here at all?”

Pazel leaped to the deck again. He struggled to answer her as he raced to catch up with Fiffengurt, who had almost reached the forecastle. In normal times the commander gave his orders from the quarterdeck, but Fiffengurt was showing great deference to Captain Rose, who could still communicate by shouting through the window of the forecastle house.

Pazel went straight to that window himself. Alyash and a Besq midshipman were already standing before the dirty glass, yelling to the prisoners within. Framed between them, Captain Rose’s huge, choleric, red-bearded form glared out at the deck. “Stand aside, Pathkendle!” he bellowed, his voice rattling the glass.

Pazel jumped back. On the captain’s right stood Sandor Ott, a short man with the most savage face the tarboy had ever beheld. The spymaster’s eyes moved ravenously, devouring information. One hand, mottled with age spots and knife-scars, the fingernails mangled decades ago by torture, lay flat upon the glass. Behind the two men the other hostages crowded, struggling for a glimpse of the deck.

There was Neeps! The Sollochi boy lit up at the sight of Pazel, and he flashed a tarboy signal (two fingers pinched to the thumb: Standing by to assist you) with an ironic grin that Pazel found almost miraculous. I’d be going mad in there. How’s he managing to keep up his spirits?

There was no sign of Marila, and an instant later Neeps himself was shouldered aside. As he had many times before Pazel felt the ache of guilt. He had promised to get them out of there, weeks ago, but had made no progress at all.

The lookouts in the crosstrees were flinging down reports. “Warriors, Mr. Fiffengurt! Fish-eyes, every one, and armed to the teeth!”

Fiffengurt snapped open his telescope. “Conveyance!” he bellowed. “Where’s their blary boat?”

“Not a boat to be seen, sir!” came the answer from the lookouts. “Not a launch, not a dinghy! They must have walked into that town!”

Over the shouting Pazel caught Thasha’s voice. She was there at the rail-with Fulbreech, to Pazel’s undying irritation. They stood shoulder to shoulder, heads inches apart, taking turns with her father’s telescope. Suddenly, as if he could feel Pazel’s gaze, Fulbreech glanced over his shoulder. “Come and see, Pathkendle! Make room there, Thashula-”

He nudged Thasha over with a familiarity that almost drove Pazel mad. Thashula? It was her childhood nickname, but Pazel had thought she hated it; she’d certainly never encouraged him “Well, come on, man,” said Fulbreech.

Pazel lurched forward and took the telescope, his face shouting Fool! in a banner of scarlet.

No question about it: the dlomu were warriors. They were tall and muscular, though slender like those in the village. All carried weapons-swords, hatchets, flails, glaives, crossbows, clubs-and a variety of other implements, from coiled rope to hammers and picks. They wore no armor, no shirts even, but many sported a kind of dark, round, tight-fitting cap. Some held standards aloft, a white bird against a field of deepest blue. A number of dlomu were inspecting the tower door.

“How did they get there?” Thasha asked suddenly. “Do they have a camp in the woods? If so they stayed blary quiet yesterday.”

“They could have come from the north side,” said Pazel.

“From the Nelluroq?” said Fulbreech, incredulous. “How? We sailed for five days along that string of dunes. There’s no harbor, no other inlet-just beach after beach, pounded night and day by those lethal waves.”

“They look blary lethal themselves,” mused Fiffengurt. “However they got there, I’m glad there’s three miles of water between us.”

“Under three from the end of that jetty, sir,” put in Mr. Fegin.

Pazel glanced at the long, smooth seawall jutting out into the gulf from one end of the village. A number of dlomu stood near its base. Like the others they were examining the Chathrand with the keenest interest.

“That bunch by the gate must be the officers,” said Thasha. “Look-they’re sending messengers up and down the ranks. And they’re pointing telescopes at us as well.”

“Then they know this is a human ship,” said Ensyl. “That would explain their curiosity.”

“It’s one explanation,” said Fiffengurt. “Mr. Brule, update the captain. Ah, listen! Your friends Refeg and Rer are on the job, Pathkendle.”

A deep, slow click… click, like a reluctant grandfather clock: it was the turning of the capstan, as the anchors rose heavily from the seabed. They were harrow anchors, Pazel knew: far lighter than the mammoth mains; still the men would be glad of the augrongs’ help before the task was done.

“Good thinking,” said Alyash. “They might wheel guns out of that village. Just as well we’re through with it.”

Thasha turned to him accusingly. “Ibjen lives in that village,” she said. “His father’s waiting for him.”

“Ibjen should’ve mentioned the army camped out in the bush,” countered Alyash.

“Ten seconds between clicks,” said Fiffengurt, “and we’re at fourteen fathoms. Quickly, now: who’s got the calculus for me?”

No tarboy had to ask what the calculus meant. Pazel focused instantly: Ten seconds a click. Six clicks a minute. Four cable-feet per click. Cable length twice the vertical depth. “That’s about… about-”

“Seven minutes,” said Thasha, “before we could get under way. If we needed to.”

“Admiral’s daughter!” said Fulbreech with an approving grin. Absently he passed the telescope to Pazel again, but his eyes remained on Thasha. “Doesn’t she amaze you, Pathkendle?”

Pazel snatched the telescope, calculating the time it would take Fulbreech to strike the water once Pazel pushed him over the rail. Two seconds, maybe. Then a faint voice reached them from the shore.

“Silence on deck!” shouted Fiffengurt.

The voice came from somewhere near the village gate. Pazel squinted and saw a man bellowing into an enormous, funnel-shaped shell, which he held before his face like a voice-trumpet. Try as he might, Pazel could not catch a word.

Then the soldiers parted, and a new figure walked out upon the quay.

He was a massive dlomu, broad in neck and shoulder, and his walk was somehow cruel. The others did not approach him. Something about the man brought the armada itself to mind-something vile, Pazel thought. But whatever it was refused to surface in his memory. The man gestured at the crier, and the latter screamed into the shell-device once again.

“Pathkendle?” said Fiffengurt.

Pazel shook his head. “Sorry, sir, I can’t hear a thing.”

Fiffengurt turned to the midshipman. “Get some steerage passengers up here on the run, Mr. Bravun-some who ain’t been deafened by cannon fire.” He twisted, pointing his good eye up at the Chathrand’s pennants. “Wind’s on the port beam. We’d have to tack a sight closer to those gentlefolk before we could turn and run.”

“We’ve no cause to run anywhere, till we decide a course,” said Alyash.

“Drogues bow and stern, Mr. Coote, if you please,” said Fiffengurt. “We’re close enough without this drift.”

Coote set men running, and in short order Pazel saw an umbrella-like drogue tossed from the forecastle on its chain. In calm waters the drogues would keep the Chathrand almost at a standstill, but unlike the anchors they could be jettisoned, and built anew from wood and canvas.

Midshipman Bravun returned with three steerage passengers: a bearded Simjan man, the apple-cheeked Altymiran woman who had lately become Mr. Teggatz’s galley assistant, and an older, white-haired woman whose husband had perished on the Ruling Sea. Fiffengurt silenced the chatter again. “Cup your ears and face forward, everybody,” he said. “Let ’em see we’re listening.”

The signal worked: once again the dlomic crier shouted his imperative command. The steerage passengers whispered together, debating what they’d heard. It was clever of Fiffengurt to call on them, Pazel thought: locked in their compartment below the waterline for most of the voyage, the steerage passengers had been buffered from the noise of both battle and typhoon. It was about the only good luck they’d had since stepping aboard the Great Ship.

“We ain’t sure, Mr. Fiffengurt,” said the bearded Simjan, “but he might be talking about a putative.”

Fiffengurt frowned. “Come again?”

“ ‘Chin of the putative,’ ” said the Altymiran woman. “That’s what he said, sir.”

“Madam,” said Fiffengurt, “putative ain’t a thing, and don’t take an article.”

“Does that mean it can’t have a chin?”

The white-haired woman merely clung to the rail and stared. When Pazel’s turn with the scope came again, he held it up for Ensyl. The ixchel woman steadied it with both hands. “Focus, Pazel, good. That’s strange: the leader is taking off his boots.”

“Most of them are barefoot already,” said Thasha. “They don’t seem to care much for shoes.”

The white-haired woman took a frightened step backward. “I think we should go,” she said.

“They’re shuffling equipment, too,” said Ensyl. “Collecting shields, and some of the weapons. But they’re strapping other things across their backs. Lighter weapons, maybe, and-”

“Hush!” said Alyash. “He’s calling again!”

The ship held its breath. No use, thought Pazel: he could hear only the tone of anger in the distant voice. It was a bit disturbing to think that the Chathrand had stolen part of his hearing forever.

“I really think we should be leaving,” begged the old woman, pressing a frail hand to her mouth.

The Altymiran woman smiled. “Not chin. It’s give he’s shouting. Give of the putative-that’s the first bit, and then stubborn, stubborn-”

“Stubborn the consciousness,” said the Simjan, looking at Mr. Fiffengurt for approval. Then his face turned pensive. “Actually, that doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Get rid of these fools,” said Alyash with an irate gesture. “Where’s our dear Brother Bolutu? He should be helping us sort out this gibberish.”

All at once there was turmoil at the village gate. More dlomic warriors were spilling out onto the road. But this time they were bringing villagers with them, at sword-point.

“There’s Mr. Isul,” said Thasha. “By the Tree, they’re taking hostages! But what do they blary want?”

Belowdecks, Refeg and Rer gave a final, satisfied roar. The capstans fell silent: the ship was floating free.

“Captain Fiffengurt,” said the white-haired woman.

“I’m not the captain, my dear lady-”

“Give up the fugitive. That’s what the creature said. Give him up or suffer the consequences.”

Sailors and passengers gaped at her. Then Alyash snapped his fingers. “The sfvantskors! Those lying bastards tangled with the dlomu before you ever laid eyes on ’em, Fiffengurt! They must have killed a few.”

“Nonsense!” said Pazel. “They told us their whole story, from the moment we sank the Jistrolloq. The only dlomu they’ve seen were dead ones, on a shipwreck.”

“And you believe them Black Rags?” said the midshipman.

Alyash turned and struck the man backhanded across the jaw. “That’s for your swinish nicknames,” he said. “I’d give it to you harder, Bravun, but you have a point. A sfvantskor will say anything to gain an advantage over a nonbeliever.”^ 3

“But their words rang true,” Pazel insisted.

“Especially your sister’s, eh?” said Alyash.

Pazel glared at him. Double agent, he thought. Or triple? How can anyone, even Ott, really know which side he’s on?

Fiffengurt rapped his knuckles on the wall of the forecastle house. “That Jalantri fellow’s trapped in here now. But there’s no harm in putting the other two on display. Get ’em up here! Let’s see who knows their faces.”

Messengers were dispatched to the Turachs. In sight of the dlomic warriors, Fiffengurt raised both hands, palms outward: Patience. A few minutes later a great mob of Turachs climbed the ladderway, escorting Neda and Cayer Vispek, who were chained hand and foot. At the rear came Sergeant Haddismal, dragging Ibjen roughly by the arm.

“We caught this one squeezing through a hawse-hole,” he said, “like he was about to shimmy down the cable into the gulf.”

“Then he’s the fugitive,” said Midshipman Bravun.

“Fugitive?” cried Ibjen. “Fugitive from whom? I just want to get back to my father!”

Ensyl glanced at the distant shore. “Are you a champion swimmer?” she asked.

“Champion? Of course not! Let me go!”

“Pazel,” said Neda suddenly, in Ormali, “have you seen Jalantri? Do you know why he’s been kept apart from us in this way?”

She was hiding her anxiety-but not well enough to fool a brother. “It’s complicated, Neda,” he said.

Her eyes grew suddenly wide. “Did they kill him? They did, didn’t they? Tell me the truth!”

Pazel was about to assure her that Jalantri was safe when Fiffengurt stepped forward, waving his arms. “Quiet, Pathkendle! Listen up, Mr. Ibjen, and you sfvantskors as well: I’m not handing you over to anybody without a reason. But you might just give me that reason if I find out you’re telling lies.”

“Now you insult us,” said Cayer Vispek. “We surrendered to you in good faith.”

“We’ll see,” said Fiffengurt. At his gesture, the sfvantskor prisoners and the dlomic boy were dragged to the rail, and stood facing the dlomu host. Once again the two sides fell silent, applying themselves to their telescopes.

“Their leader’s waving them off,” said Fulbreech. “He’s not interested in them, that’s plain.” He looked the sfvantskors over carefully. “I suppose they were telling the truth.”

“Of course we were,” said Vispek, angrier than ever. “What have we to do with them? Yes, we took some necessities from a ship full of those creatures. But the ship was abandoned, and the crew already dead.” He raised his shackled arms. “Mr. Fiffengurt, where is your shame? You have no reason to treat us like criminals.”

“Reasons, Cayer?” said Neda with quiet bitterness. “Who needs reasons? Excuses are good enough for Arqualis”-she glanced bitterly at Pazel-“and their pets.”

Pazel could not believe his ears. “How can you say that, Neda? How can you think that?”

“Wait!” cried Thasha suddenly. “The big man’s moving. Ah, look: he’s reaching for the shell. Maybe he’ll give it a try himself.”

With his naked eye Pazel could just make out the orange shell, as the mighty leader took it from his aide. But rather than shout into the device he tossed it contemptuously to the ground.

Humans and dlomu grew deathly still. Pazel heard the creak of timbers, the piping of shorebirds about the rocky islets, the bumping of a wheelblock against the foremast. And then came a sudden, desperate banging at the window, and Captain Rose’s furious, gale-surmounting roar:

“Run! Run her south! Ware the ship and blary run!”

As that very instant the dlomic warriors gave a terrible cry and began sprinting out along the jetty in their hundreds.

“Ware the ship!” howled Fiffengurt. “Bindhammer, Fegin, aloft your yardmen! Bend them topsails now!”

“Gods of death,” said Haddismal, pointing.

The first dlomu were nearing the end of the jetty, some two miles from the Chathrand. But they did not stop: they dived with the grace of dolphins into the sea. One after another they dived, in a long coordinated maneuver. Dozens, then hundreds: the battalion was taking to the waves.

“Madness!” said Fulbreech. “Swimmers can’t catch a ship! And even if they could, what then? We’re sixty feet above the waterline!”

Pazel looked at Thasha: her eyes were wild, darting. All about them swarmed the men of the First Watch, freeing braces, racing up the shrouds, bellowing from the jungle of ropes overhead: “Let fall! Sheet home! Man the weather halyards!” Already the fore topsail was billowing out the spars. The main topsail followed, and the two vast, cream-colored rectangles filled and pulled. A tightening energy filled the ship, and slowly her bow swung away from the island.

The dlomu had become a haze of black dots, appearing and disappearing in the waves. Some of the sailors regarded the spectacle with astonished grins; it was as if a herd of cattle had decided to burrow into the earth. But Pazel did not grin. He thought of how Bolutu and Ibjen had brought the wounded Turach so easily ashore. He snatched the telescope from Fulbreech. The warriors’ strokes were amazingly fast, and their legs frothed the water behind them. He turned to Ibjen, shouted over the din: “Will they catch us?”

“How in Hell’s Mouth should I know?” Ibjen shot back.

“Could you catch us?”

His senses told him the question was ludicrous: the dlomu were swimming; the ship was setting sail. Ibjen hesitated, looking across the water at the black, swimming shapes. “No,” he said finally, and dropped his eyes.

It should have set Pazel’s mind at ease, but it had the opposite effect. Ibjen’s reply had been laced with shame.

Rose went on bellowing through the window: “Let go the topgallant clews! More sheetmen to windward! Brace that foremast or lose it, you creeping slugs!”

Pazel looked up at the windsock fluttering on the jiggermast yard: enough of a breeze for headway, but not for speed. Doesn’t matter, he told himself. For how fast could they possibly swim? Three knots, four? Fulbreech was right: it was madness. But the dlomu came on, swift and arrow-straight, and the Chathrand was still turning about.

“Lapwing!” howled Rose suddenly. “Cut loose those Rinforsaken drogues! Her bow’s fighting the turn, can’t you feel it?”

He was right, Pazel knew at once: the canvas drogues were pulling against the turn like stubborn mules. Pazel shook his head. “Rose guessed the whole tactical situation from in there,” he said to Ensyl, “and he couldn’t even see what was happening ashore.”

“He saw us seeing it,” Ensyl replied.

A decisive chop from the forecastle: Lapwing was taking an axe to the drogue cable. On the third blow the cable parted, and the Chathrand leaned into the turn, gaining speed. Now her bowsprit pointed at the red tower (its lock had been broken, its doors flung apart), now at the empty dunes, now at the corner of the village wall.

Fiffengurt twisted aft. A glance and a nod, and the teams at the mainmast began hauling with a will. A sudden thought brought his telescope snapping up: yes, the aft drogue was clear as well. Then up went his gaze, and both arms, and, “Topgallants, bow to stern!” he thundered, and one after another the higher sails were loosed. They filled faster than the canvas below: more wind at that height. They were turning with a will, now, the ship canting leeward in her eagerness to come about. Fiffengurt put both hands on the rail and heaved a sigh.

“Now we’ll be just fine, boys,” he said to no one in particular.

He slid down the forecastle ladder like a younger man and turned to face the captain. Rose’s bellows had given way to coughs (the smoky forecastle house was affecting all the prisoners) but he gave Fiffengurt a nod of affirmation. Fiffengurt touched his cap, turned smartly about (chest out, chin high) and then the lookout screamed from the fighting top:

“Sand! Sandbar at half a mile, three points off the starboard bow! No depth! No depth! Sandbar right across our way!”

They had not started their run, and no speed endangered them. But the ridge of submerged sand was disastrously placed. It began at the eastern edge of the island and meandered shoreward for nearly a mile. Fiffengurt howled a course correction. Hundreds of men at the ropes scurried and swore. They could only tack north, right at the village gate, until the sandbar ended.

No one smiled now. The swimmers had gained a tremendous advantage: indeed the Chathrand’s new course was actually bringing it closer to them. Worse still, they could not attain anything like the speed of a straight downwind run. All at once the race looked very tight.

Pazel and Thasha climbed the jiggermast shrouds, just high enough to see the sandbar. “But it’s huge,” cried Pazel. “How did we miss it before?” For they had rounded the little island from the east, right through these waters. “It must be a lot deeper than it looks, some trick of the light. We sailed right over it.”

“Yes,” Thasha agreed. But even as she spoke he saw her reconsider. “Pazel, maybe it wasn’t there.”

“Don’t be daft.”

“Look where it begins.” Thasha pointed to the island’s eastern tip, a confusion of jagged rocks. “The serpent. That’s where it was smashing about, trying to break free of its bridle. What if it dragged the thing along the seafloor, too?”

“And plowed up all that?”

“You think your explanation’s more likely?”

Pazel shrugged. “No,” he admitted. Then he actually laughed. “Thasha, this mucking world wants us dead.”

She didn’t laugh, but she smiled at him with black mirth, and that was almost better. It was a look of private understanding. Not one she could share with Greysan Fulbreech.

Warmed, Pazel turned his gaze on the swimmers again: less than a mile off, and closing. They moved as a single body, like a school of dark fish. He shaded his eyes, and felt his dread surge to life again, redoubled.

“Rin’s eyes, Thasha-they’re swimming with objects on their backs.”

“Weapons,” said a voice beneath them. “Light and curious weapons, but weapons nonetheless. And why, pray, are you without your own?”

It was Hercol, dressed for battle, which in this case meant that he wore little more than breeches, boots and a small steel arm-guard. His longbow was in his hand; his ancient, enchanted sword Ildraquin was strapped sidelong across his back; and on his belt hung the white knife of his old master, Sandor Ott. Pazel had last seen that knife in Thasha’s hands, during the battle with the rats. He wished now that she had thrown the cruel thing away. Wearing it, even Hercol looked sinister.

“Fetch your swords,” said the Tholjassan.

Pazel sought his eye. “This is some sort of crazy bluff, isn’t it? They were trying to drive us onto the sandbar, maybe, or-”

“Fetch them.”

Thasha swung down to the deck. “Stay with Fiffengurt, Pazel, he needs you. I’ll bring yours from the stateroom.”

She was gone, and Hercol sped forward, shouting to Haddismal, and Pazel was swept into the martial frenzy of a ship preparing for violence. The cargo hatches were sealed with oilskins, the lower gunports were closed (too near the water, Fiffengurt had decided); the wheels of the deck cannon were greased; damp sawdust was flung down for traction; the firing crews assembled and rehearsed their cues. Arqual! rang a furious cry from the main deck, as ninety Turachs raised a clatter with sword and shield. Corporal Metharon, the Turach sharpshooter, led his archers to the stern.

The sun began to set. Fiffengurt hobbled for the quarterdeck, bellowing down ladderways, firing orders up the masts. Tarboys streamed up the Holy Stair, lugging cannonballs and buckets of powder; gunners darted about with match-pots like small, fiery lunch pails. Ixchel were everywhere: racing up the shrouds ahead of sailors to warn them of broken ratlines, adjusting the chafing fleece where ropes abraded, diving into guns to scrape the rust out of fuse-holes, retying sailors’ bandannas before they could slip. Humanity was their science: not a task existed on the Great Ship that they had not watched in secret.

As they ran north the sandbar grew taller, closer to the surface. The waves broke over it, choppy and low. Ship and swimmers were converging on the same point: that deeper blue where the bar finally ended, where the ship could jackknife east and run with the wind at her back, every inch of squaresail thrusting her faster. Lookouts scanned the gulf: no boats, no place to hide them. Whatever the attackers were doing, they were doing alone.

Off the starboard bow the water grew shallower yet, the waves collapsing into foam. “Ease away windward, helmsmen,” shouted Fiffengurt. “If we shave that bar the game’s up. Steady on.”

Pazel arrived just as Fiffengurt was starting up the quarterdeck ladder. He could see that the man was in pain-a rat’s jaws had savaged his left foot, and the wound had not yet healed. Pazel tried to steady him from behind, but Fiffengurt shook him off with a twitch.

“Pathkendle, I want you right there”-he pointed at the tip of the mizzenmast yard, twenty feet higher than the quarterdeck and about as many out over the gulf-“with a great blary Turach shield. We’ll have to judge depth by eyeball, see? Look straight down from out there. When that point clears the sandbar, you shout, ‘Mark!’ Not a second before-and not a second later, lad.”

“Oppo, sir. But our practice shields would be better up there. Hard to handle all that Turach steel.”

Fiffengurt waved consent. “Just don’t fall in the blessed sea.”

Warning cries from the stern: the dlomu force had split in two. One mass of men continued straight at the Chathrand; the other broke east, toward the sandbar. Moments later the shouts were renewed, this time mixed with shock: the splinter group was wading. Thigh-deep, knee-deep, and then they were running in mere inches of foam, sprinting along the sandbar’s crest. The fastest were drawing level with the Chathrand. Pazel stared, transfixed. Their belts jangled with strange hooks and daggers and coiled ropes. Their silver eyes looked the ship up and down.

Boom.

The first carronade shook the timbers under Pazel’s feet. Through the smoke Pazel saw the huge ball’s impact, the white spray, and two black figures crushed into the sand as if by a giant stake. The others did not flinch; indeed they put on a burst of speed. Then Pazel heard Metharon’s cry, and the shrill twanging of longbows. Six or eight more dlomu fell.

“Pathkendle!” raged Fiffengurt.

Pazel’s trance shattered; he swung out to the mizzenmast shrouds. Even as he climbed he felt tiny hands on his shirt, a tiny foot on his shoulder. “Get down, Ensyl!” he cried. “You won’t be safe out there! I don’t need help, I’m just a spotter!”

“Two can spot better than one,” she said.

Pazel argued no further: to judge by that grip, he wouldn’t lose her unless he lost his hair.

Four more blasts-and hideous carnage among the runners. The ship had opened up with grapeshot guns from the stern windows. The spray of flying metal ripped bodies to pieces. Yet those behind came on undeterred, through the pink foam, leaping the fallen and the maimed. Pazel felt his body clench with nausea. The gunners reloaded, visibly shocked at their handiwork. Ensyl was retching. Pazel forced himself on.

More arrows now, more death. What are they doing, what do they want? Pazel stepped onto the footropes, eased out along the mizzenmast yard. Beneath him, Hercol and Metharon fired their bows with deadly accuracy, bringing down one soldier after another.

In the waning light, Pazel could just make out the end of the sandbar, sixty or eighty yards ahead. He caught Fiffengurt’s eye and nodded, laying a finger beside his eye: I’m watching. Then someone among the dlomu gave a short, clipped command, and in perfect synchrony the runners dived back into the waves.

There were ragged cheers: some of the men thought the attackers were retreating. But who could tell? The dlomu had dived deep; Pazel could see no more than shadows in the depths. The archers hesitated; all their targets were gone. For a moment no one was shouting. They had fifty yards to go.

It was Uskins who broke the silence. “Oil, pour the oil!” he screamed suddenly. Pazel hadn’t noticed the first mate until now, and neither, it seemed, had Mr. Fiffengurt, who whirled on him in a rage. “Belay that order! Stukey-”

“Do it! Pour the oil!” shrieked Uskins, more desperate than before.

“Belay!” roared Fiffengurt again. “Stukey, you guano-eating worm! I ordered you to clear off the quarterdeck!”

For an instant Uskins’ eyes flashed with rebellion. He had been cowed after nearly destroying the ship in the Vortex, but his hatred of the quartermaster was stronger than his shame. Livid, he advanced toward Fiffengurt. “Ordered me? You’re not the Gods-damned-”

“Captain Fiffengurt!” howled a topman. “They’re boarding! They’re boarding portside aft!”

All eyes turned to port. At that moment a sailor at the gunwale screamed and twisted. A light, barbed grappling hook had just arced over the rail and snapped back, pinning him by the hand. Other grapples followed.

“Damn it, we can’t see anything here,” said Pazel.

“Yes we can,” said Ensyl, pointing down at their wake.

Pazel gasped. Half a dozen dlomu were clinging to the rudder. No, not just clinging-scaling it. They were swinging those scythe-shaped hooks, embedding them in the wood of the rudder stem, hauling themselves like ice-climbers up toward the deck.

Pazel howled a warning-and the climbers heard. Silver eyes snapped onto him: the only person on the Chathrand from whom they were not hidden by the ship itself. Two of the dlomu put their hands into small, tight shoulder pouches, tugging something loose. Then the hands flicked violently. Fierce insect whines sounded around Pazel, and near his left hand something struck the yardarm with a tok! It was a star of razor-sharp steel.

“Oh credek.”

Pazel yanked in his legs and clung sidelong to the spar, hiding as much of himself as he could. He saw Turachs leaning out from the taffrail. They had seen the dlomu on the rudder at last, but could still not get off a decent shot. The dlomu could certainly take shots at Pazel, however, and did: once again he heard the whines, and the t-t-tok! of steel striking wood.

“Don’t move!” said Ensyl. “I’ll watch the sandbar, you keep us alive.” She had curled herself into a ball, her feet on his neck, holding tight to his shirt and hair as she leaned out over the gulf, staring straight down. Even in that moment he was stunned by her fearlessness. This is why Dri wanted her for a disciple.

“Twenty yards,” she said. “You must shout to Fiffengurt-he’s listening for your voice, not mine. Fifteen-”

Breaking glass. Pazel peeked under the yard. The attackers had smashed a window in the stern. The officers’ wardroom, he thought.

“Ten yards, eight-”

Surely the Turachs were already there. Surely someone had dispatched them.

“Now!” hissed Ensyl.

Pazel shouted, “Mark!” with all his strength, and heard Fiffengurt respond instantly with commands of his own. Then the creak of the wheel, the groaning of cables and counterweights-and sudden howls of agony from below. The dlomu were being crushed between rudder and sternpost. Pazel looked, wished he hadn’t, wished he could spit the images back out of his mind. Their skin was not human; it ruptured like the flesh of some dark, plump fruit. But under the surface there was no difference-the blood, the muscle, the shards of bone…

“Pazel!”

He wasn’t ill. He should have been. Sometimes not to be ill meant you were broken inside. Then a hand gripped his shoulder. Not Ensyl’s hand. It was Thasha; she had raced out along the spar; she was begging him to come down while he could.

Trimming the giant sails was harder than spinning a wheel, of course: the Chathrand’s turn actually slowed her at first, and that was when the dlomu pounced. Grapples flew over the rails port and starboard, and a second team assaulted the stern, keeping well clear of the rudder. It was all very organized. Those still in the water swam very close to the hull, protected by its curve from any shots from the deck or gunports. The attackers were quiet and purposeful, as if they had done this sort of thing before.

The sailors cut their climbing-ropes with a will, and not a single dlomu gained the topdeck by that means. But many climbed twenty or thirty feet on the ropes, and then switched to hand-hooks. Soon there were ladders of these embedded hooks ascending from the waterline, and the Chathrand resembled some great prone beast assaulted by columns of ants.

The upper gun deck became a war zone. Dlomu flung themselves in through the gunports, which had been kept open for the cannon. The Turachs met them head-on, and killed many before they even gained their feet. Common sailors, armed with everything from cutlasses to galley knives, backed up the marines. Still a number of the dlomu managed to scatter deeper into the ship.

The unthinkable audacity of such an attack nearly let it succeed. But the sails were trimmed, the canvas did billow and pull, and the bulk of the attacking force was still a stone’s throw behind. For all their ferocity, moreover, the exhausted dlomu who entered at the stern fared badly against the Turachs-rested, furious and armored head to foot. Haddismal fought at the vanguard of his men, laying on in the wreckage of the wardroom with a great double-bladed axe, hacking off limbs that reached through the shattered windows, hurling down chairs and candlesticks and the bodies of the slain at those still climbing.

In the adjoining compartment, a luxury cabin, some twenty dlomu broke through the Turach ranks and sprinted up the Silver Stair. The few men who resisted them were swept away. They were one stairlength from the topdeck, and would have gained it if Hercol had not stepped into their path. Above the open hatch he stood, the black sword in his left hand and Sandor Ott’s white knife in the other, and his face was terrible to behold. Still the dlomu pressed the attack, for they could hear the Turachs storming after them from below. Hercol whirled and struck, his arms two blurs of black and white, and the dlomu began to fall. One after another they came, eyes maddened with the nearness of death, and one after another they died.

The ports were sealed, and the battle for the upper gun deck turned in the Chathrand’s favor. But from the quarterdeck, Fiffengurt looked down and cursed. The dlomu had fastened drag lines to the ship, scores of them, and flung them backward to their swimming comrades. A hundred at least had grabbed hold already, and more were piling on.

Then it came: a desperate warning, relayed from below by a living chain of ixchel: the attackers had uncoiled a flexible saw-blade, they cried, and were drawing it over the rudder in whiplash strokes. Left to it they would, in a matter of minutes, saw the rudder off at its base.

Fiffengurt closed his eyes and made the sign of the Tree. Then he snatched the rigging-axe from its hook on the taffrail and climbed up among the oil drums lashed between the lamps. With a few strokes he broke their seals, and lamp oil gushed in slippery torrents down the Chathrand’s stern, sloshing over the windows, soaking Fiffengurt and the dlomu alike, spreading in a great stain among the swimmers.

Fiffengurt looked up at the deck, his eyes full of murder and rage. “Matches, Stukey, damn you to the Pits!”

Uskins came to life, unlidded the match-pot, churned the live coals with a stub.

“Never mind, give it here!” bellowed Fiffengurt. Seizing the match-pot, he emptied it in a shower of sparks over the side.

There was no explosion, no inferno of flames, no screams of agony. There was only a great whoosh, and orange light, and sudden silence from the army below. Everyone stumbled: the Chathrand had just leaped forward, a carthorse cut free of its cart. Fiffengurt toppled between the lamps, staring, and once again it was Thasha who went, unbidden, Thasha who caught him before he could fall, only to stand there swaying, transfixed herself at the sight of the great pillow of fire upon the gulf, wider than the ship and widening still, falling behind them in little streamers of flame.

“Rin forgive me,” muttered Fiffengurt. He was blind: oil in his good eye, oil on the hand that tried to wipe it away.

“Don’t worry,” she told him, “there’s nothing to forgive.”

Beyond the fire, a dark mass trod water. The dlomu had known what was coming: they had dropped from the ship and the trailing lines, dived underwater, surfaced well behind the blaze.

3. Technically true. The Book of the Old Faith contains certain apocryphal material, including the Address of the Vengeful Seraph, who states: “To defeat the foes of Eternal Truth, lesser truths may be sacrificed, and deception wielded like a knife in the dark.” The materials appear in no copies of the Book before its third century of existence, however, and it appears likely that they were added by a war-like king, precisely to justify the training of a guild of holy assassins. Like the pruning of young oaks, editorship is power over a future one will never see. -EDITOR.

THE EDITOR RECOMMENDS OTHER READING TO THE FAINT OF HEART

To my thus-far-loyal readers: Happiness is not nothing. One should embrace it. The world groans under the weight of serious minds bent miserably over their books, over their smithy’s bench, their ledger or their laundry or their weevil-withered crops. Happiness may vanish in an eyeblink, never to return. Why should anyone spend the length of a tea-sip on a story that does not guarantee-absolutely guarantee-the emotion’s increase?

My purpose here is simply a warning. If you are part of that infinitesimally small (and ever smaller) band of dissidents with the wealth, time and inclination to set your hands on the printed word, I suggest you consider the arguments against the current volume. To wit: the tale is morbid, the persons depicted are clumsy when they are not evil, the world is inconvenient to visit and quite changed from what is here described, the plot at this early juncture is already complex beyond all reason, the moral cannot be stated, and the editor is intrusive.4

The story most obviously imperils the young. But certain others should weigh the benefits of persevering; these include the old, who after all will perish soon enough; the able-bodied, whose vigor may decline if they make a habit of reading at length; the unmarried, who had best cultivate more sociable pastimes; the married, who find the freedom to read only by neglecting commitments; those whose religious views are policed by employer, priest, king, grandmother or guilt internal; the nearsighted; the nervous; the gleefully patriotic.

But the first criticism-the sheer gray gloom of the tale-is the most damning. To that end, and conscious of my duties as a curator of this splendid archive, I have assembled a list of some seven hundred titles surpassing The Chathrand Voyage in both brevity and good cheer. Among them:

• Bissep, Mother K., The Good Millipede of Wilber Meadow

• Tennyson, Virzel, Kh’iguar Mutis (“Great Scaly Things Defeated,” bilingual edition)

• Lace, Helium, And Then They Were Married

• Slabbe, Lord Cuprius, What I Eat

• Ungrok, Egar, Battle for Battle’s Sake: An Adventure for Boys

The complete list is available upon request. It is quite startling how much one has to choose from. I merely implore you to recall that life is fleeting, and that choices must be made.

4. Do not misunderstand me: The Chathrand Voyage has merits aplenty. Why else would I dedicate this last effort of my life to its telling? Why else would the lord of this domain have granted me five (young, ambitious, “promising,” petty, cynical, rude) editorial assistants, and a meal allowance? Never mind that Holub’s Curse of the Violet King is better known. I know Mr. Holub. I wish him well and feel no envy, and incidentally he suffers miserably from ringworm.