The Sacred Band

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Melio held his mouthful of water so long that at some point he lost the world. Probably only for a moment, for when his eyes opened again, his mouth was still filled with water. Geena’s body still touched his. Wet ribbons of her short auburn hair striped her round face. “That was fun,” she said. She planted a quick, salty kiss on his lips. “Great to be alive, isn’t it? Thanks for the grab.”

Melio realized his cheeks were ballooned out, his mouth still full of seawater. He spat, which unleashed a fit of coughing and retching. He crawled out of the compartment. The fish that had crowded the hull were all gone, as was anything that had not been secured. The boat pitched about at the mercy of the chop.

Geena was already checking the sail for damage. “All well?” she asked, looking unaccountably chipper. “Everyone have all their fingers and toes and wiggly bits?”

Clytus held the broken mast for support. His shirt had been stripped off, and he stood, sending a string of curses after the league ship. Kartholome did not waste his breath on them. He sat panting near the bow, his beard canted off to the side. One of his bone earrings was missing. Judging by the dribble of blood down his neck and the stain on his thin white shirt, it had been yanked free.

“They do that on purpose,” Clytus said. “They have a betting pool. The captain that runs over the most fishing vessels each moon cycle wins it.”

The galley lumbered away, looking slow and dull now, hardly the mischievous creature that had nearly sunk them. “The league,” Kartholome muttered. “Nothing else like them in the world. Wait until you see, Melio. Wait until you see what I have to show you.”

Since the mainmast had snapped, they took up oars and bent their backs to pull on them. They headed west, sailing lightless under a sliver of moon. They kept the islands north of them, bulky shadows that they ran alongside of, until sunrise. They pulled into a small cove, managed to hide the boat in the overgrown foliage, and slept under the dappled light, to the ever-present sound of crabs creeping across the fallen leaves.

The next night they turned in to the Thousands. They inched forward slowly, sharing the post of lookout on the bow, at the tiller, or on the oars. The place took its name from the numberless islands that jutted up everywhere. Some just reefs barely parting the surface of the ocean, others large outcroppings bursting with vegetation, loud with birdlife, and crowded with small monkeys that Kartholome claimed swam between the islands regularly, hunting snakes.

“Snakes?”

“Yeah, there are a lot of them on the small islands. On the bigger ones the league has mostly killed them off.”

They reached one of those large islands that afternoon. They pulled the boat aground on a small beach, hemmed on one side by a sheer rock face and on the other by a tangle of vegetation. The beach dropped quickly so that only a few feet out the water fell away into deep blue. This was why Kartholome knew the place. Midsized frigates and transports could pull up to the beach. Leaving Geena to watch the boat, Kartholome led the other two up a fissure in the stone that became a steep path. The beach was lost from view almost immediately.

The climb was short, and soon they walked through a forest of palm trees. The fallen fronds crunched under their feet. A few minutes later, Kartholome brought them to the edge of a slope above a large valley. He indicated with a wave that this was the view he had brought Melio to see.

Melio stepped beside him, wrapped a hand around a palm trunk, and looked out over a compound of buildings and clearings, water tanks and training fields. Military units marched through maneuvers in one area. In another, soldiers sparred with wooden swords. In still another archers shot at distant targets. Men and women filed in and out of the buildings. A line of wagons pulled in and people began to unload them, passing the crates into the gaping mouth of an enormous storehouse. For the second time in recent days, the sigil of the league blazed out at him, this time burned into the slanting roof of the warehouse. The leaguemen, it seemed, wanted even the heavens to see their prosperity.

“What is all this?”

“This is what the league gets up to in private. This is where they train their army.”

“The Ishtat?”

“No, no. That’s on Lavren. This is Sire El’s little project.” Kartholome propped his foot up on a root and leaned on his thigh, continuing to survey the scene below them. “The league started a breeding program years ago. The idea was that they could make quota slaves themselves instead of having to collect them from around the empire. The Fanged Rose let them take over the Outer Isles to do whatever they wanted. Sort of compensation for Dariel blowing the platforms to bits. The last eight years they’ve been hard at it, but they were breeding even before that. Ever wondered why the Ishtat are so loyal to a bunch of cone-headed freaks? The Ishtat are loyal because they’re part of the family. Each and every one of them, Melio Sharratt, was fathered by a leagueman and a concubine herself bred for the purpose.”

Melio’s gaze snapped over to him.

“You heard me,” Kartholome said. He ran his fingers down his beard and then gave it a tug. “It’s quite a regime they have set up. I don’t know much about it-just what some of the Ishtat let slip when drunk and disgruntled with Papa. Seems that all the leaguemen are descended from just a handful of founding members. They breed children, and select some of them to have their heads bound. Those become leaguemen. Others they make Ishtat. Others become workers and all that. Some get discarded. Heard about worse things, but you don’t even want to know the details.”

Melio did not want to know the details, the logistics, the methods of such mass impregnation. Yet he could not help thinking about it. He saw storehouses of beds, leaguemen moving from one to another, a woman in each, babies crying beside them. He hated the thought. Leaguemen raising children like livestock, while he and Mena had not made their real love into a child. He still wanted nothing more than that. By the Giver, if she had only allowed it when they had the chance!

“I see you’re thinking about it,” Kartholome said. “Don’t. Like I said, the Ishtat are raised on another island. These guys are a newer thing, not the same bloodline. Sire El’s army. They’re from quota stock, born and raised for it. If they don’t show an aptitude for fighting, they’re sent away as regular quota. Or they used to be sent as quota. That’s all changed now.”

Melio asked, “So what are they training for?”

“Good question. Answer: any eventuality. To the league it doesn’t really matter who wins or loses, because they know that either way they’re the real winners. If that’s all that matters to you-if you don’t have a sliver of morality in your body-well… it’s easier to adapt. No qualms and questions to wake you at night, you know? These soldiers may help take over the Other Lands. They may be given something to do in the Known World. I think it all depends on what happens with the Auldek invasion.”

“Any chance they’re being trained to help protect the empire?”

Kartholome turned a withering look on Melio. “I think the league has decided that the empire’s days are numbered. Maybe the Auldek will finish it. If they don’t manage it, Sire El’s boys will finish whatever’s left. Either way…” He slid his fingers down his beard again and let the fate he pulled from it loose on the air.

All three men heard the running feet at the same time. Geena bounded into view. She slid to a halt and wiped her ginger hair back from her forehead before saying, “We have a problem. An Ishtat patrol found our boat.”

Clytus cursed.

“Gets worse. They saw me.”

The plan they came up with was simple. Geena smirked disapprovingly at it, but she took up her post without a word. Using the point of Kartholome’s fishing knife, she made a small cut in the flesh just above her knee. She smeared blood up and down her leg, and then she sprawled across the path as if she had fallen. Melio and Kartholome hid behind trees off to one side. Clytus sank down behind a root network on the other, draping a few palm fronds over him for good measure.

It’s mad to do this, Melio thought. We’re not at war with the league. I could approach them and explain… what? That the queen had sent him to spy on them? Would he convince them that he had not seen or would not report what was clearly in view? If he named himself he would die just the same as if he did not. He had not fully understood it before, but he was so pressed up against the league’s private parts that nothing he could say to them would explain it away. What the league was doing was deeply wrong. Witnessing it put him at war with them, whether he declared it or not.

The men arrived at a jog. Melio heard their feet grinding the coarse sand, pressing fronds flat. One of them demanded that Geena stand and face them. She answered that she could not stand. She had hurt her ankle. Twisted it running away from them. The soldiers moved again, assuring her that she was in for more hurting if she tried anything.

Melio slid one eye out from behind the tree trunk. Two Ishtat soldiers stood near Geena. They had their swords out. Another had stopped a little way down the path, looking nervous. Geena clutched at her ankle in pain, her face a mask of fear. The expression looked absurd to Melio. She would never quiver that way. She would never let her jaw drop like that or lean forward in that manner, surely offering a view of her breasts. The Ishtat did not know her, though. Melio pulled his head back behind the tree.

The soldiers demanded to know who she was, if she was alone, how she got here, what she was up to. Geena answered their questions in a pitiful, trembling voice that Melio could barely recognize. He was not sure if she was a terribly good actress or a terribly bad one. He guessed it depended on what things one expected to come out of the mouth of a distraught young woman. She was sputtering and circuitous and even sounded a little insane. Piecing together what she was saying was as confounding for Melio as it must have been for the soldiers. But it gradually took shape.

She had been on a fishing boat, she explained. She and her father and brother. They were working the channel when a league galley ran them over. So stupid of them! Of her brother, she meant. Stupid, stupid to be in the way of the big ships. She told him they shouldn’t taunt the big ships, but he did.

Nice use of the truth, Melio thought. Exaggerated, adjusted, but with a twisted kernel of fact in it. She had them listening, which was strange in itself. Ishtat did not usually let people talk much. They should have pinned her to the ground beneath a savage knee and fanned out in the woods. Ask questions later. But they didn’t. These soldiers weren’t the sharpest.

“Melio was so stupid!” Geena wailed. “I hate him! I’m glad he fell in.”

Melio glanced at Kartholome, hoping to share a wry smile at the use of his name. The pilot did not seem to be listening. He stood with his back plastered against a palm trunk. One of his arms was a flat paddle at his side; his other had unbuttoned his shirt and was fumbling on his abdomen as if he already feared an injury. His gaze fixed on something in the distance, and his lips silently mouthed something. He had gone gaping, as Hephron-a boy Melio had trained with-used to say of younger boys who showed their fear. Melio cursed himself for getting so far into danger with nothing but a dagger on him and without even men he knew he could trust. Stupid indeed.

“Did he drown?” the soldier asked. Melio could feel the man’s gaze scanning the palm forest.

“Yes,” Geena said. “He and my father both died. They left me. They…” Emotion, apparently, overcame her.

One guard said something to the other that Melio did not catch. The one down the trail must not have heard it either. He called, “What are we doing? All those tracks on the beach. Don’t forget that.”

Melio wanted to smack him. Or to smack himself on the forehead.

To his surprise, the two nearest Geena seemed to buy her explanation that she had been running back and forth when she got to the beach. She had been delirious. Only her alive in the boat for three days, drifting on the ocean waves, seeing islands but not able to get to them. She tried to make the sail work, but she had never been good at it and it was broken. “I couldn’t fix it.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” one of the soldiers said.

“She got here, though,” the farthest soldier pointed out. “I don’t like this. Just grab her and let’s take her back with us. Let Finn decide.”

“No, no, don’t let Finn decide,” Geena pleaded. “He’ll decide wrong. What does Finn have to do with it? He didn’t find me. You did.” Her voice changed slightly-grew less pleading and more certain-when she repeated, “You did.”

Am I hearing this? Melio glanced at Kartholome again, but he hadn’t moved.

“I’ll do anything. Let’s do anything you want. Let’s do that first. Can we?”

After a pause one of the soldiers said, “Anything we want?” So much lechery in three words, so much pleasure at another’s distress. So little true sympathy when he said, “Let’s take a look at that lovely leg, then. It’s a nice leg. I think we’ll all like it.”

“I’m getting Finn,” the far soldier said. “I’m not going to answer for this later.”

And there it was. Melio had not come up with a plan as he stood behind a tree, but plan or not, he had to act. He came from around the tree just as one of the soldiers slid his sword into its sheath and knelt near Geena. Melio had walked forward several steps before they noticed him. It was the farthest soldier who called, “Hey, there’s one! I told you! Stop! Sta-”

He cut off his cries when Clytus rose in a shower of palm fronds. The soldier turned and ran, Clytus in pursuit.

The soldiers by Geena reached to draw their swords. The one closest to her should have used the moment to back away from her. He did not, though, and because of this oversight he was perfectly positioned to receive the full force of a kick from her lovely, muscular leg. He doubled over, clutching his groin. Geena snapped another kick into his face, grabbed him around the neck, and yanked him down. That was all Melio saw of them.

Melio neared the third soldier himself. Though he walked with confidence and military precision, he had no idea how he was going to get past that Ishtat sword. The dagger held out to his side had never seemed smaller, like a wasp’s stinger. The confident way the soldier moved his weapon into ready position showed that he felt the same about it. His sword had a gentle curve to it, similar to a Marah sword. It was thinner, but Melio knew the steel of it was unusually heavy. In all likelihood, I’m about to lose limbs, he thought. All these years I’ve kept my limbs. For this. For this…

He thought that as he closed the distance. He thought it as he saw the soldier draw the blade back, tense through his arms and shoulders and torso and legs. Thought it as the man began the step that would initiate the swinging arc the blade would cut. In the face of that, he knew that what his body began-a spin during which he would drop low and try to kick the man’s forward leg-would not work. He knew he would never get to use his dagger, but he held the weapon white fisted and wanted nothing more than to carve it through this stranger’s abdomen with a fury that came upon him sudden and raw and filled with longing for the woman he was about to lose. Though he cried her name in his head and saw her as she had been that first day on the docks in Vumu-lean and bare breasted, suntanned and salt caked, a priestess of Maeben-he knew their story was over. He knew she had never really been his. Knew it and hated it.

What happened next took only an instant. As he began his spinning kick, something small zipped over his shoulder. He heard it whirring in the air, though it shot straight and fast as an arrow. He carried through with his kick, turning his back on the swordsman as he did so. In the blur when he faced away from him, he saw a shape moving toward them, and then he was around. His tensed foot impacted the man’s weighted leg with all the force he could have wished. He felt one of the lower leg bones break instantly.

His eyes flicked up. The soldier’s face was fixed in an absurd expression: his mouth loose, cheeks flaccid, eyes crossed and staring at the jagged crescent of metal protruding from his forehead. Melio spun with the force of his kick, and then used the motion to twirl away from the sword, which carried around for a moment before falling from the man’s limp hands as he crumpled. Melio sprang up and stood, gaping at the soldier.

Kartholome strode past him. He bent over the man and thrust a fish knife into his chest. The soldier gasped, a slow grotesque elongation of his mouth. Kartholome put his hands on the protruding metal disk and began tugging it. It took some effort to get it free. When he had it out, he turned, holding the bloody, sharply pronged disk in front of him. It was small enough to rest on the palm of a hand. The prongs looked as sharp as knifepoints, backs curved treacherously. He met Melio’s gaze. “As a child,” he said, “I was good at darts. Later, I got good with these throwing stars.” With his knife hand he indicated the pouch of the disks strapped around his torso, inside his shirt. “I am not the bravest man, but I have good aim.”

Melio, breathing hard, said, “I believe you.”

He picked up the fallen soldier’s sword. Geena had done the same. Both of them began to move in the direction Clytus had chased the third soldier. A few steps on, they saw him returning, also newly armed, with the man’s helmet sitting tiny on the crown of his head. When he reached them, he spat off to the side and then grinned a bloody, fat-lipped grin. “Who’s got a plan, then?”

B ait again,” Geena grumbled. “It’s somebody else’s turn next time.”

She went in the lead as they descended through the crevice to the narrow beach at the cove. Melio, just behind her, wore the black tunic stripped from the soldier she had killed, helmet tight on his head. He carried the Ishtat sword unsheathed. He smacked Geena with the flat of it as they scrabbled through the stones. Clytus and Kartholome followed, likewise dressed in stolen garments.

The white-hulled clipper had been driven right up the beach. It dwarfed their battered fishing boat in its shadow, all sharp lines and glossy coating, masts absurdly tall and wide. A rope ladder from the bow descended to the sand. Three sailors sat or stood a little distance down the beach, along with a single figure in Ishtat black. Melio saw one man on the bow and another walking forward from the stern. If there were more, he could not see them.

The trick would not survive more than passing scrutiny, so Melio did what he could to give them a few more seconds. “Hey, Finn,” he called, infusing his voice with mirth, “look what we found.” He shoved Geena, sending her tumbling out the mouth of the crevasse. She landed on the sand, crawled forward, then ran toward the group of sailors on the beach until she saw them, and tried to circle them as if she would dive in the water and swim for it. The men rose to the bait. They spread out to intercept her, trying to hem her in, their hands out as if they were herding a chicken.

Only the Ishtat soldier, Finn most likely, stood where he was. He fixed Melio with his gaze, a question on his lips. And then he noticed Clytus and Kartholome, both of them on the beach now and closing behind Melio. “Who are you?” he snapped. His hand shot to his sword hilt and he began to draw. “Stop right-”

Melio ran the last few steps, sword out at his side. He swung, cutting off the man’s words as his blade sliced through his abdomen. Clytus and Kartholome drew their weapons. Geena dropped flat on the sand just before Kartholome’s throwing stars hissed through the air above her. One scorched by without hitting anyone. The next slammed into one man’s chest. Another hit the base of a second’s neck. A third man caught the twirling steel in a warding palm. He twisted around with the pain and force of it. Melio hit him with his shoulder and carved him as he tripped on his own feet. Clytus arrived, screaming like ten men and hacking with brute force. The sailors were soft sacks for the hewing.

Kneeling a few moments later, hand resting on the hilt of the sword he had sunk into the sand, Melio panted out the fear and exultation. He was not a squeamish killer. He had seen too much violence for that luxury. Nor was he haunted by it afterward, as he knew Mena was. He knew it was necessary. He just didn’t enjoy it much. And, most important, if he had died here, Mena would not have known how he died. He would not have been able to explain it to her, to talk it through, to assess what his death meant to her. That, as much as the actual combat, was the possibility he breathed out onto the beach.

Clytus and Geena took care of the two men on the boat. Still another Clytus found at the stern, trying to climb down into their skiff. This one begged for his life and offered his services as pilot. Clytus seemed willing to consider it, but once aboard Kartholome would not hear of it. He stabbed the man as he had done the first soldier, turned his hunched over body around, grabbed his legs, and hefted him into the sea. Melio watched this as he hung on the ladder, about to climb aboard. He would have to study this Kartholome closely. So far, he hadn’t figured out what to think of him.

I’ll have to study them all closely, he thought.

Once they had checked the ship, named the Slipfin, and confirmed there was no one else aboard, they gathered at the stern. They watched the sea for other vessels as they decided what to do next. Melio assumed they would take a few supplies and flee in the fishing boat. They would sail for home with the news they had gathered, perhaps bring Kartholome along to be further questioned. He had assumed this, but not because he had actually thought it through.

“What if we took this ship?” Geena asked. She stood on the railing, balanced on the balls of her bare feet. “Took it right now and sailed for the Other Lands. We could find Dariel. You said he might be alive, Kartholome. Let’s go get him!”

“How would we do it?” Clytus asked.

“Straight across,” Geena piped.

“This boat is fast,” Kartholome said, “and I’d expect some very decent winds on the Slopes.”

“Faster than the Ballan,” Clytus admitted. “Fast enough to outrun sea wolves?”

Kartholome shrugged. “Could try it. I think some league captain has probably done it. They do treat their clippers with the skin.” He slid his hand over the white coating on the railing, the same that covered the hull and portions of the deck near the bow.

Melio expelled a breath. The others gave him a moment to follow up on it, but he just lifted a palm to the sky and motioned vaguely.

“Melio’s right,” Clytus said. “There’s more than one way. What about going up and over, along the ice?” He cocked his head, lips pursed to warn against hasty judgments. “Might be safer, but it could take months. Longer if we get caught in the ice. It might even drift us backward, or out to sea. Could be a slow death. That’s never been the way I planned to go to the afterdeath.”

“Straight across,” Geena repeated. “It’s faster to our fate no matter what.”

“We’d need supplies,” Kartholome said. “There’s a whaling outpost north of here.” He pulled his beard in thought. “Yes, on a small island. It’s called Bleem. The league used it as a landmark between here and the old platforms. There should be supplies. They outfit ships for long trips. Might even be men on it looking for work.”

“Looking for work?” Melio asked. “You want to gather up a boatful of whalers and head across the Gray Slopes on Queen Corinn Akaran’s business, a rescue mission searching for a prince?”

The other three shared an expression. “Does he always state the obvious like that?” Kartholome asked Clytus.

Clytus did not answer. “We could use another body to crew this thing. Help with the watches. Not to mention some strong arms to throw harpoons, and then again to fight if we ever get there. We could send a message from Bleem. You could write one, yes?” Melio nodded, just an answer, not a commitment. “We send a message to Nineas on the Ballan, and he could send a bird to the queen. They’d know what we were up to, at least.”

“Perilous journey to foreign lands,” Geena said. She was not quite grinning, but there was a mischievous tension twitching her cheeks. “No guarantee of return. Death possible. In case of success, riches beyond imagining!”

“It would work for me,” Kartholome said.

Geena grinned. “Me, too. It’s making me tingle just thinking of it.”

“You’re all mad,” Melio said. “It’s a crazy idea. It’s sailing off the map. Who knows what we’d be sailing into?”

Clytus stood on his toes and scanned the sea a moment. “We could leave it and try to limp back to Tivol in the fishing boat. Might not make that either, though. If we leave the clipper, it’ll be found by tomorrow, and we’d be captured a little after. No good options, as I see it.”

“Look,” Melio said, “I know you all are chancers. You’d have to be to be brigands. You like risk, fair enough. But think for a minute: we sail west… and die. Name the method. There’s a thousand to choose from. If that’s what waits for you over there, would you still say go? Tell me truthfully.”

“I would,” Geena said.

“Aye,” Clytus agreed.

Kartholome shrugged. “Why not? Riches beyond imagining…”

Geena jumped off the railing. She stepped close to Melio, took hold of his arm at the elbow. “I want to do this because Dariel would do it. Don’t you think he would? He’d do it for you. For Clytus. I’d like to think he’d do it for me. Let’s do it for Dariel. If we die… what’s it matter? We’d die in style.”

She was so close and so attractive in a boyish, playful way that he remembered her kiss on the boat after they had both almost drowned, tangled together as close as lovers. And that reminded him of the pledge he had made to Mena. If he lived, he had sworn he would do anything for her. Everything for her. If he had the chance, nothing would stop him. That was what he had thought in his last moments of consciousness.

“All right,” Melio said, “but only because Dariel would do the same for us.”

“We’ll need harpoons,” Kartholome said. “Lots of them.”

“Harpoons?”

Geena said, “A whaling outpost has plenty of those. Come, Melio Sharratt, let’s get to know our new ship. Welcome to the order of brigands.”

Melio pulled back. “No, no. Welcome, you three, to the proper service of the crown.”

“Call it what you will,” Geena said. “Let’s go. No use waiting for a patrol to stop by. I’m done being bait.”