The Sea Watch

Forty-Five

‘What are they waiting for?’ Pellectes demanded. The Littoralist leader clutched a spear in both hands, peering out over the heads of the warriors lined up in front of the palace. ‘He has more men than we do, doesn’t he? Or does he?’ He craned left and right, trying to see clearer without exposing himself to the eyes of the enemy.

‘This is but part of the boy’s force,’ growled Claeon sourly. Since the bulk of Hermatyre’s defenders had betrayed him – since Arkeuthys had betrayed him! – he was running out of options. ‘The other packs of vagabonds are combing the streets even now.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Pellectes demanded, almost jostling Claeon as the two of them stood at the back of their forces, in the gaping entryway of the palace itself. ‘Why not attack now? We have more warriors than he does, I think. Yes, I’m sure of it.’

‘And we’d be shorn of our walls, open to attack on all sides. No, all they have to do is wait.’ Claeon had come to the fight prepared, clad head to foot in armour of bone-coloured shell that had been minutely accreated to fit every line of his body. The bronze-beaked gold head of his maul rested on the ground before him.

His fingers itched to stick hot knives into Aradocles, his wretched nephew. To have had so much, and then so great a fall, all because of one sickly boy. If only it had been his own agents who had first located the heir, out there on the hostile land. How could it all go so wrong?

‘Something’s happening,’ Pellectes said suddenly, and Claeon leant forward to see a figure stand forward from the throng of insurgents.

‘Is that him?’ the tall Littoralist asked, frowning.

Claeon stared at the Krakind youth’s face for a long time before nodding. Yes, that was the visage, that was the look of his nephew, for all that exile on the land had toughened and leathered him.

A sudden strike now? he considered. With Aradocles dead, numbers would barely matter. What would the invaders be fighting for? The true bloodline would rest only in Claeon.

‘Where is Claeon?’ the boy out in front demanded. He wore no armour, and carried merely a short-bladed sword of unfamiliar design. ‘Claeon, my uncle, come forth!’

A lot of Claeon’s men were now looking back at him, but the Edmir made no move to present himself, scowling silently within his helm as Aradocles called him out.

‘Come to me, uncle! Let us not waste the lives of our people. Will you not fight me? Will you not decide this by single combat?’

No armour, and just that brief sword, but the boy was young and strong, and Claeon was no great warrior. And, besides, one look at me and they’d rush at me, tear me to pieces. Why should I trust this boy’s honour? Or even his control of his own forces? Claeon leant forward until he could murmur to the nearest of his men.

‘I promise great riches to any man who can send a spear into that strutting youth,’ he spat. ‘Shed his blood for me, and I shall reward it.’

Throwing spears was an uncommon art amongst the sea-kinden, as it was near-useless in the water, but there were a few who had made a practice of it to better surprise unwary opponents. Of these, one man at least was bold enough, or desperate enough, to listen to the Edmir’s promises. A lean, sinewy Dart-kinden, clad in a breastplate of overlapping scallop-shells, shouldered his way forward between his fellows.

‘Claeon!’ Aradocles called out again. ‘Do you fear me so much, uncle?’

Claeon ground his teeth angrily.

It was over in a moment. The spearman had reached the fore, and now had the spear cocked back for casting in one smooth motion.

There was a sharp snapping noise, and the Dart-kinden dropped, stone dead with a hole punched through his armour.

Utter silence descended, the sea-kinden on both sides staring. Claeon saw, though. He saw, in the front rank of the insurgents, there was a broad, dark, balding man of foreign features, a man who had once been confined in Claeon’s clutches, inside his very oubliette. Now the man had one hand directed forward, with some small rod in its grip, too tiny to be any serious weapon save that he had simply pointed it at the spearman, and the spearman had died.

‘The land-kinden,’ Pellectes moaned, and Claeon saw at last how the man really did believe his own fictions. In the mind of Pellectes, the land-kinden were the great monsters, the eternal enemy, the things that would get you if you erred. A sheen of sweat had broken out on the man’s high forehead, and he kept pointing with a shaking hand. ‘The land-kinden!’ he gasped again, as though the arrival of just one was enough to stave in the walls of Hermatyre.

‘Kill him!’ Pellectes shrieked, pointing a quivering hand that encompassed both the landsman and Aradocles, and a dozen people around them. ‘Kill him now! Or we’re all doomed!’ He shoved at shoulders, kicked and pushed and yelled, and then some of the defenders were surging forward, and then more and more who were out of earshot of Pellectes but saw the advance and assumed an order had been given, and then the entire mass of defenders was moving forth to do battle away from the protection of the palace.

‘Claeon, we must destroy the land-kinden!’ Pellectes cried out, and turned to see the Edmir backing away. The head of the maul dragged along the palace floor, and the plates of Claeon’s beautifully crafted armour scraped and slid, but Claeon’s face was ashen, and he backed and backed, and then he turned and ran into the palace.

Stenwold expected commands to be shouted, for the front rank of the insurgents to raise a fence of spear-points against the enemy, but it seemed to him that the entire force suddenly went to pieces, shouting challenges and war cries, half of them rushing forward, half of them standing still to receive the charge.

‘Get behind me, land-kinden!’ Aradocles snapped at him, readying his sword. For a horrible moment Stenwold thought the youth, carrying all that priceless royal blood, was about to rush headlong into the fray, but, even if he had intended to, his own followers got in his way, meeting the onrushing loyalists and clashing fiercely with them. Stenwold had seen the sea-kinden of the Hot Stations in their bloody hacking at the Echinoi, and he had seen their swift cavalry actions in the open sea, but here he saw the Kerebroi fighting their with own kind, and it was savage.

They were swift and lithe, these sea-kinden, and they were not soldiers such as the Ants or the Wasps might field. Instead they reminded Stenwold only of the old Inapt of the land, of the Mantids and the Moths. They descended on one another as individuals, fought a hundred separate duels and shifting skirmishes. Here Dart-kinden spearmen leapt at one another, spinning and turning, clashing shafts against one each other, sweeping their weapons’ butts around and lancing with the bone needles of their heads. Greatclaw Onychoi, hulking in their grand suits of armour, laid about with mauls and their terrible curved swords, the falxes that could shatter mail or bones with a single ponderous stroke. Others carried deadlier weapons: staves about which were twisted stinging cells that lashed and stabbed at their foes across a man’s length of space, killing with agonizing venom the moment they struck. They were good only for a single death, though, and soon abandoned, their wielders reversing the same weapons to present spearheads to the enemy. Around them a great number of the sea-kinden had resorted to daggers. Krakind ripped and tore at one another with their hooked blades, and sometimes just with the tearing Art of their bare hands. Swiftclaw Onychoi, Mantis-lean creatures that were kin to Fel, hammered and punched with their spines or with narrow-bladed stilettos. Those few of Phylles’s kinden walked through the fighting like bleak death, the stingers of their hands shooting left and right, and held off only by the greater reach of spearmen. Phylles herself was gone, lost sight of in the fury of the fighting, but Stenwold had no doubt that she was doing more than her fair share of the killing.

It was just what Aradocles had wanted to avoid. It was what might have happened on so much grander a scale outside the colony, if the great army of the defenders had not disbanded.

The heir himself waited. He had his Helleron-made shortsword in his hand, watching the ebb and flow of the convoluted melee. Stenwold had by now lost track of who was on whose side, but all the locals seemed to know.

A spearman leapt at the heir from the press, screaming a battle cry. Stenwold’s hand moved and the man was thrown back, the retort of the little snapbow lost amid the shouting. His hands reloaded mechanically. Aradocles glanced back at him, expressionless, and then nodded.

‘Land-kinden, follow me,’ he instructed. ‘We go to find Claeon.’

Stenwold had been in more than a few fights in his life, from seedy knifings in the back streets of Helleron, through skirmishes with enemy agents in a dozen cities, all the way to the hammer of war brought by the Wasps against Myna or the Vekken against Collegium. Never a fight like this, though. For him the melee had become something surreal and dreamlike. He was surrounded by sea-kinden: he and Paladrya ringed by Aradocles’s most fervent followers. The prince, the young Edmir himself, simply forged ahead, leading with his blade, but never needing to bloody it. On either side, the spearmen of his vanguard pressed forth, desperate to keep pace with their leader. They could not protect him, though, constantly moving as he was, and yet he was not touched, nor did he strike a single blow.

Stenwold, having long lost track of who was insurgent and who were those still clinging to Claeon, simply judged everyone by watching Aradocles. Those that raised a weapon against him, those that he levelled his sword at, they died, the snapbow punching them from their feet without their ever understanding what it was that killed them. Aradocles surged forward, dragging his warriors with him, and Stenwold shot and reloaded, shot and shot and reloaded, over and over. The range of his weapon was a little less than twenty feet at most, as he leant round Aradocles to take aim. His victims were busy concentrating on the young heir, barely understanding at first that the stubby twin-barrelled piece in Stenwold’s hand was a weapon at all. Here in Hermatyre they had nothing like it.

He had brought a sufficiency of snapbow bolts.

Ah, but this would be different in the Hot Stations, Stenwold admitted to himself, finding plenty of time for reflection in that almost casually bloody advance. A few of those spring-bows, those harpoon-launchers of Mandir’s, would lay us low in short order. We catch the sea-kinden here at the very turning point of Aptitude. But clearly the Man of the Hot Stations was jealous with his inventions, and none had made it as far as Hermatyre, and so the little device that Totho had crafted for his old mentor, that little trinket of murder, brought death like a plague upon Aradocles’s enemies.

Had there been more Greatclaw Onychoi there with their heavy mail, then Stenwold might not have had such an easy time, but the Kerebroi relied on speed and close-in fighting, and none of them was faster than a snapbow bolt.

At one point the defenders, almost in the entryway of the palace itself, had formed up a respectable row of spears, the Dart-kinden standing side by side with a discipline the rest of the field had not witnessed. Aradocles paused, glancing back at Stenwold, who merely nodded.

The young Edmir pointed his blade like a wizard from the Bad Old Days, some Moth Skryre bringing down a curse on his enemies. He pointed his blade, and a man in the centre of the line pitched backwards. He pointed again, and the next man’s helm cracked, a small hole drilled neatly into the skull beneath, which became a gap the size of a fist in the back of the luckless man’s head. The fatal sword selected a third target. By now Stenwold found he could load his snapbow without even looking at his hands, but then it had always been the genius of Totho’s weapon that any fool could become proficient with it after only a little practice.

A Kerebroi man, a lean figure with a greenish beard, was now trying to hold the defending spearmen together. Aradocles singled him out emotionlessly. In the last moment before Stenwold followed suit, the enemy leader met the landsman’s gaze, his face twisting into a mask of fear and loathing. Then Stenwold’s shot took him in the temple, snapping his head back, his body vanishing behind the rank of his followers.

The spear line broke apart, the lean and swift Dart-kinden falling into a chaos of struggling warriors trying to get out of the path of that deadly blade – and Aradocles advanced up the steps of the palace.

A shock went through the enemy. Stenwold saw it in their movements, as though a school of fish suddenly changed direction, all at the same time. Looking across the battle from the elevation of the steps, he realized that another contingent of Aradocles’s followers had finally arrived from the left, Nemoctes, in his mail and shield, driving a wedge through the weakened defenders. The battle had come to a close then and there, with his flanking assault, and Claeon’s wretches were being killed if they tried to resist, disarmed if they surrendered. Many who surrendered were still killed, Stenwold noticed, a hundred grievances and revenges being written out in blood. There was nothing he could do about it, and this was hardly a vice found only beneath the waters.

‘Claeon!’ Aradocles called out again, and entered into the palace – making it his own even as he did so.

Claeon descended hurriedly, wondering just how long Pellectes’s incompetent defence would hold the bastards back. Time enough for an escape, perhaps, if an escape was possible. Out into the open sea, head off into the depths. Someone will take me in. Some Benthist train, some minor colony out there. Then I’ll raise a warband and I’ll come back here. I’ll have that boy’s head on a spear, I swear it!

The door ahead of him swung open at a touch, a little water gushing past his feet. The next door would take him into the ocean.

And yet he paused. There could be insurgents waiting just beyond, hanging in the water, staking out his private dock. After all, they knew about it – when Paladrya and that cursed land-kinden had been taken from his oubliette, it had been this way they had come to escape. This, his private egress into the sea, and it had been sullied by base freebooters and fleeing prisoners.

He paused then because, of course, this hatch only opened outwards and, in all the excitement about the prisoners’ exit, he had never considered how their rescuers had got in.

He reached his hands towards the hatch once more, but hesitated. What if there was somebody out there?

And in the trembling fastness of his mind he heard the mocking words: Oh, there’s nobody out here, Claeon. Nobody at all.

‘Arkeuthys?’ He spoke the name out loud, unable to stop himself.

Indeed. That familiar pressure, the great mind of the sea monster.

You betrayed me! Claeon sent back to it, agonized. Why?

The boy is persuasive, the giant octopus replied idly. Come out, Claeon. Come into my arms and let me finish this. Your head would make a valuable gift.

If you truly wanted to kill me, then you’d not have warned me, Claeon divined.

Perhaps that is the extent of my sentiment, came the murmured reply, like distant rocks falling. Ah, Claeon, we have had such times together, have we not? We have been partners in each other’s misdeeds.

But you betrayed me! Claeon insisted. You were always my other half. You took joy in the work I set you! Why throw that away now?

Arkeuthys chuckled, unrepentant. Well, I always thought that I had matched you in wickedness for wickedness, Claeon, but then the boy explained to me that I had just been loyal to the man everyone thought was the true Edmir, so I decided that I would rather be the other half of someone less demanding. It’s over, Claeon. Give up now. Perhaps the boy will just hang you in a cage as a warning, rather than peeling your skin off.

Claeon whimpered and backed away, clutching the heavy maul closer to him, and then he was bolting back up into the main body of the palace, clumsy in his armour, rebounding from the walls and staggering. He could hear the sounds of the fighting getting closer every moment, it seemed, and he had only one place to go.

The throne room, his sanctum, provided no shelter now, but where else was there for an Edmir to meet his end?

He stumbled through the passageways of his palace, all abandoned now – as he had been abandoned, save by those fools currently being butchered under the incompetent command of Pellectes. Littoralists! I should never have reached out my hand to them. This is all Pellectes’s fault! If he hadn’t had me kidnap the landsman… but then how would I have enticed Rosander to keep the peace for me, save by dangling the land before him like a dead fish?

And he burst into the throne room, seeing the seat of all his power and command, yet taking no joy from it.

His throne room had a door, though it was very rarely closed. Now he got his hands about the rim and hauled at it until the valve-like disc closed shut behind him.

But there was no way to seal it. This was no pressure door, such as led into the ocean. Aradocles could pry it open with ease. Claeon had always relied on guards to keep out his enemies. Now he had no guard but himself.

He thought he could hear shouting beyond the closed portal. Were the cursed boy and his landsmen even now approaching, calling out his name? Claeon whimpered with dread and hate, raising up his maul. Can it be done? Then I shall do it. With a great cry, he launched the weapon’s beaked head at the door’s hinge, striking away jagged fragments of stony stuff, compacting the hollow chambers of the coral. Shouting incoherently, he struck four, five times, smashing the substance of the frame, pressing it in on itself. Either the door would fall completely away, leaving him not greatly worse off than he was before, or…

Panting heavily he stepped back and looked at his handiwork. He had exposed the tombs of a thousand tiny creatures: the barren little cells that their brethren had sealed them up inside, when they were built over, when Hermatyre was being laid down. The door still held its place, though and, when he tugged at it, it was wedged solid. He had now sealed himself within his throne room.

‘What have you done?’ a woman’s voice demanded, and he whirled about with his maul raised. Stepping from behind the throne came Haelyn, his majordomo. The Sepia-kinden woman looked aghast.

‘My throne,’ Claeon snarled. ‘I am the Edmir, no other. He shall not have it. This is mine.’

‘And what will you do now?’ Haelyn asked incredulously. ‘Do you think they won’t find a way in? And if they don’t, will you starve? Or what?’

‘I will defy them to my last breath. If I die, I shall be the last Edmir of Hermatyre to sit here and rule.’

‘Claeon, listen to me,’ she insisted, ‘there is another way. For all that has gone wrong between you, Aradocles is your nephew still. If you beg it of him, he will be merciful.’

‘Why?’ The Edmir scowled at her. ‘Why mercy, when he has me by the throat? Mercy is not for Edmirs. Mercy is only for the weak.’

‘What other chance have you?’ she yelled at him, stepping down from the dais. ‘Listen to yourself, Claeon!’

His eyes narrowed abruptly, and she stopped. ‘Who let them in, Haelyn?’

‘Who let who in?’

‘When they stole those land-kinden from my oubliette, when they took my dear Paladrya from me, who let them in? Who was it who betrayed me? I am betrayed, and who better for that than one who held my utmost confidence?’

Until then, he had only the faintest suspicion, his paranoia seeking any target, but now he saw the faintest flush of colours swirling over her skin. A flinch, a twitch of guilt, revealed even under the shadows of her Art, and he knew.

‘Traitor!’ he shrieked, and in the next moment he was running at her, maul upraised. She retreated upwards beside the throne, shouting his name, but he was done with that – done with her. His majordomos always failed him, sooner or later. Well, this last one would not survive him. He would regret only that he could not finish her off properly, and at his leisure, but perhaps it was fitting that his last act as Edmir should be a brutal one.

She dodged behind the throne, and his next swing smashed the back of it in a cloud of fragments, obliterating its beauty in a single moment. He would indeed be the last Edmir to govern Hermatyre from that seat. Haelyn retreated and retreated, but Claeon was mad with fury now, whirling the maul about him, cracking dents in the floor, in the walls, until at last she tripped and fell.

She screamed, and he savoured it, standing over her with the comforting weight of the maul in his hands. It was grimed now with pulverized coral, but he’d wash that off soon enough. He raised it high.

Her eyes had slipped away from the weapon, from his own gaze. She was staring now at something beyond him. He was a fool for doing so, but he could not stop himself craning around to look.

The Arketoi stood there, some half-dozen of them: pallid little hairless men and women, tattooed and almost naked, as like unto each other as siblings. They stared at him wordlessly, for they never spoke. Even as he watched, a few more of them trickled into the throne room, twisting their way through the walls, walking somehow in between the infinitesimal spaces between the dead coral. Some had gone over to the door, and were examining its smashed hinge.

‘Do not touch that! Do not heal it!’ Claeon protested. The majority of the Arketoi just stared at him reproachfully. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.

‘You hurt the colony,’ Haelyn whispered. ‘You hurt them.’

Claeon snarled. ‘It’s my colony! I’m the Edmir!’ But he saw Haelyn’s face and her immediate reaction. It’s their colony. It always has been. We are but guests.

The Arketoi began shuffling towards him, and he threatened them with his maul. One by one, they raised their hands towards him, as if in salute.

‘Get back!’ Claeon howled. He struck one a blow with the maul – not solidly, but the little man was such a frail piece of work that he crumpled immediately. The others simply came on at him, reaching out with their pale fingers. More and more of them crept into the room from every crack and corner, from nowhere at all. There were twenty – no thirty, at least – all focusing only on Claeon.

He swung the maul to all sides of him, catching another pair, but then they reached him, and Haelyn screamed again, not from fear for herself but for what they then did.

When Aradocles, Stenwold and Paladrya finally entered the throne room, through a perfectly functional door, they discovered Haelyn pressed against one wall, hands covering her mouth, and, in the centre of the room, nothing but the rough shape of a man – as though a statue had been abandoned to the ocean many decades past, and become thoroughly encrusted over by barnacles and coral.