The Servants of the Storm

by Jack Campbell

  He and Asha looked back to ensure no legionaries were close enough to see them, then waved. Captain Banda appeared out of the forward hatch, spinning a line that he tossed their way.

  Asha caught it, passing the end to Alain while hanging onto it as well. Both Mages stepped into the water as quietly as possible while Captain Banda and Mechanic Dav, hard to see in their dark jackets, hauled the line in. Alain saw that the Terror was moving, drawing away from the landing and bringing them with it. The gentle roaring of the boiler creature could barely be heard over the sound of the river.

  Alain felt his robes soaking up water, gaining weight, the chill of the water eating into him. Only the rapid pull of the line kept him and Asha afloat.

  “Do you see them?” a legionary cautiously called in the park behind them.

  “No, they’re not here, either. It’s like they disappeared.”

  “They’re Mages.”

  “Yeah. I guess they did disappear.”

  “We did our job. Let’s get back.”

  Asha had reached the Terror and was being helped up by Dav. Alain arrived a moment later, pulling himself up against the weight of his water-soaked robes and grateful when Dav was able to assist him as well.

  Banda dropped back into the driving seat. Alain felt the Terror surge ahead, fighting the current to push farther up the Ospren toward Marandur.

  Dav helped Asha to the aft ladder, then Alain, before following and sealing the aft hatch. “We should have thought about what to do with the robes,” he said as Asha and Alain stood in the midst of puddles that drained down through the deck plates into the bilges.

  “I have a shirt and trouser to wear until the robes dry,” Alain said.

  “I have nothing,” Asha said.

  Dav grinned. “Maybe I can loan you a shirt. Excuse us, Alain.”

  He watched the two go forward past the curtain, realizing that his shirt and trousers were in the same place they were going. He had a feeling that Asha and Dav would want some private time. Resigning himself to a long, wet night, Alain went back to the boiler place to speak to Mari.

  She was sitting in the control seat watching the dials, but switched most of her attention to him. “Good job, my Mage. At the entrance to the dock area I saw a guy look at the Terror, but then he got distracted by you two and didn’t give us a second glance. Everybody else watched you and Asha while we got a hose on the fuel tank and filled up.”

  “You got what we needed?” Alain asked, grateful that the heat from the boiler creature was drying his robes.

  “As much as we could,” Mari said. “When we were about to leave, Banda got the idea of leaving the valve on the tank open far enough to drip, so if anyone sees any fuel we spilled and measures the tank, they’ll think there was a long-term slow leak that the security watches failed to notice. What about you?”

  “We heard the Imperials talking about orders not to have any confrontations with Mages. They believe the Emperor is trying to negotiate a deal with the Mage Guild, and they think it involves you.”

  Mari nodded sourly. “That’s to be expected. I wish I knew the details of whatever the Emperor was trying to arrange, but gossiping Imperials aren’t likely to know that.”

  “There were more Mechanics coming, and Asha and I also felt Mages approaching, but we left before either arrived. I do not think the other Mages sensed our presence.”

  “Great,” Mari said. “Is that it? Did anything unexpected happen?”

  “No.”

  “No?” Mari gave him an inquisitive look. “How was it?”

  “How was what?” Alain asked, feeling a surge of irrational guilt.

  “You and Asha, locking lips for looooong time.”

  Alain felt a momentary sense of panic. “You saw that?”

  “We couldn’t miss it, Alain. There was all this noise, and then it suddenly got almost quiet, so we looked, and there you and Asha were, engaging in a deeply meaningful game of tongue-wrestling.”

  “It was not actually a kiss,” Alain protested.

  “No?” Mari asked. “Your lips didn’t make contact?”

  “Yes. They did. But it was not a kiss. There was no sense of it being a kiss.” He felt terrible, and wondered how angry Mari might get, but instead she laughed.

  “I believe you,” Mari said. “First, because I trust you, and second, because I know you’re too smart to cheat on me where I can see you, and third, because I also trust Asha. Oh, and fourth, because if it had been a hot and heavy kiss, you wouldn’t have sounded a little bit disappointed when telling me it wasn’t a kiss.”

  “I did not sound disappointed,” Alain said.

  “Yes, you did. You finally got to kiss Asha, and it was no big deal. That’s good, Alain.” She laughed again. “I admit I’m very relieved we got away with stealing fuel out from under the noses of the Mechanics Guild and the Empire, but even if I wasn’t I wouldn’t be angry with you.”

  Something else had just occurred to Alain. “Mechanic Dav also saw it.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “I should—"

  “Not even mention it. If he holds it against Asha, he doesn’t deserve her. But I have good reason to think he thought it was funny that two Mages were freaking out everyone by kissing each other.” Mari rose up enough to kiss him. “There. That’s better, right?”

  “Much better,” Alain said. “I would like to stay so my robes would dry more, but I must go stand my watch with Captain Banda.”

  “Yeah. It’ll be a while before we clear Palandur, and it won’t be long now before we get close to Marandur.” Her humor fled, Mari waved him away. “Keep us safe, my Mage.”

  After the adventure in Palandur, Alain expected the rest of his watch to be boring. But instead he was kept alert by sensing the frequent presence of Mages along the river. Alain concentrated on keeping his own presence concealed from them as the lights of Palandur fell behind and gave way to open country outside the city walls. It was not until the Terror had left the city well behind that the sense of other Mages searching finally faded.

  “We have to stop soon,” Banda told Alain. “We spent a lot of time getting the fuel. There are not enough hours of darkness left to get to Marandur tonight, so we’ll lay up when I find a good spot and get to the Forbidden City tomorrow.”

  “I see few boats along the river.” Alain said.

  “That’s all you will see, boats going to and from a few small towns upriver, and most of that traffic can make the journey in a day so they don’t tie up along here. We’ll be past those soon, and then we’ll have the river to ourselves except for barges resupplying the legionaries that enforce the quarantine of Marandur.”

  By the time Asha came to take over the watch, Banda was bringing the Terror to shelter under an overhanging bank of the river.

  * * * *

  Only a single boat came down the river the next day as Alain watched while Asha and most of the Mechanics slept. The barge had legionaries sprawled on the deck, relaxing and enjoying the ride. Alain guessed that they were either leaving duty around Marandur or getting a brief break from the isolated assignment.

  He watched the legionaries talking and joking. Their uniforms and armor were different, but otherwise they looked much like other soldiers Alain had seen. Change the uniforms and they would have fit in among those who followed Mari.

  But that, he knew, was partly illusion. These legionaries shared some things with the soldiers who fought for Mari. But in other ways, they were very different. Just as he and Asha had looked like typical Mages to the Imperials at Palandur, but inside were not the same at all.

  The right thing. Mari had taught him that, or perhaps only reminded Alain of things his parents had tried to teach him when he was very young. The legionaries fought for their Emperor, doing what they were told. It did not matter whether the Emperor told them to do right or wrong, because whatever the Emperor said was right. Just as the elders of the Mage Guild insisted on total obedience, and just as Mari sa
id the Senior Mechanics who ran the Mechanics Guild did as well. That was the difference. Mari’s soldiers had decided for themselves what to fight for, and Mari did not want to force others to obey her own desires. She wanted to give them the choices, the freedom, that the elders and Senior Mechanics and common rulers of Dematr like the Emperor had kept to themselves.

  Alain looked at the relaxed, happy legionaries and understood Mari’s distress at the thought of war. These men and women would face death along with her own soldiers. But he could not think of any alternative that would save this world, not as long as some were willing to fight to enslave others. Little wonder that Mari saw the responsibilities of the daughter as a burden, not a blessing.

  That night, Captain Banda waited until well after sunset before starting out. “The closer we get to Marandur, the more we’ll be the only thing moving on the river, and the more sentries on the shore will be watching for anything unusual. We need the night’s protection. But we can’t approach the limits of Marandur too early. It has to be close to sunrise, because the river within the city has not been cleared or dredged since the siege that destroyed Marandur. We have to be able to look for obstacles ahead.”

  The increased tension as the Terror steamed up the last stretch of river contrasted oddly with their seemingly peaceful surroundings. There were few signs of human presence on the river banks, and no boats or barges to be seen.

  The evening fog had come on fairly dense when the Terror started out. Banda kept quiet, concentrating on steering the ship.

  The mist slowly dissolved as they traveled, until Alain could see ahead and behind a short distance as well as both river banks at once.

  “See that?” Banda suddenly asked, keeping his voice low even though the hatch was closed.

  Alain spotted something on the river bank that from this distance resembled a huge, dark snake coming out of the water and extending up the river bank before vanishing into the mist. “What is it?”

  “The chain. That’s a very heavy chain that can be raised to block the river. It was built when Marandur was the capital, to keep an enemy from sailing up the river and attacking the city. You can’t see it, but there’s a building a little farther up that bank of the river that contains a winch maintained by the Mechanics Guild. In an emergency, a lot of Imperials would put their backs to the poles on that winch and raise the chain.”

  “The city is a complete ruin,” Alain said. “Why is the chain still here?”

  “Because it’s well outside the walls of the city,” Banda said, sounding amused. “Which means it wasn’t affected by the Emperor’s ban, which means no one ever told the Imperial offices responsible for maintaining that chain that they should stop. So they didn’t. Just like the Imperial work crews that keep the river dredged even though the only boats that come up this far are resupply runs for the Imperial troops maintaining the quarantine of the city.” He pointed to the other bank of the river. “Over there the chain also comes out of the water a ways, but there isn’t any building or winch on that side. The chain is just anchored securely enough to hold it against just about any imaginable load.”

  “That chain could stop this ship?”

  “It could,” Banda said. “Especially with so much of this ship under the surface. I can’t imagine why the Imperials would raise the chain without good cause, but that’s one more reason to be very careful we aren’t spotted going into the city. If they knew we had gone in, they would raise the chain to prevent us from getting out again.” He peered forward. “I’ve never been this far. The Mechanics Guild ships I brought up always stopped short of the chain. Did you and Mari see anything of the defenses along the river when you were here?”

  “No,” Alain said. “We entered on the north side of the city, crossed the river near the center, and then left from the south side. We never saw the city where the river entered or left.” He paused to remember the frightening river crossing he and Mari had made on an improvised raft with barbarians in pursuit. “I do not clearly recall if I looked down to where the river left the city, but I have no memory of seeing anything standing in the river but the remnants of the bridges.”

  Banda nodded. “Even the Empire might have trouble building a guard tower in the middle of the Ospren. Let’s hope they only watch the river from each side.”

  When they had approached Landfall and Palandur, or even just towns along the river, Alain had seen the glow of lights as the ship drew closer to civilization. But the only light he saw as the Terror drew closer to Marandur came from the Imperial watch towers spaced around the city and the fires between them. Directly ahead, all was dark.

  Alain sensed another Mage. It felt as if he or she was asleep, and not close to the river.

  “Here we go,” Banda muttered as the Terror drew closer to the towers built on either bank of the Ospren. Strong lanterns cast light across the river, leaving no area of complete darkness between them. “We’ll have to creep along so it isn’t obvious we’re moving against the current.” As the Terror slid little by little between the watch towers, Alain looked to either side, watching for signs of alarm from the sentries whose shapes were silhouetted against the night sky by the lanterns on the towers. But his first warning of trouble came when the light on one side of the Terror brightened.

  Alain shaded his eyes against the light coming in through the small windows, vaguely making out two legionaries who had swiveled a mirror to focus the light of a powerful lantern on the Terror. The light played slowly over the driftwood camouflage, searching for anything that looked wrong.

  “If anything on this ship reflects the light of that search lantern, we’ll be spotted,” Banda whispered. He eased off the throttle to let the Terror appear to move with the current.

  Alain tried to see past the light to the legionaries. One of his hands went down to grip the hilt of his long knife. It would not be of much use if the alarm was sounded, but it was the best weapon he had.

  The legionaries were talking. One of them pointed, and the light swung back slowly over the Terror.

  Chapter Eleven

  “What are they doing?” Banda murmured, as if the legionaries could have been able to hear him.

  “I cannot tell,” Alain said, squinting against the light of the lantern.

  The Terror began drifting backward with the current. The light illuminated different parts of the ship as the Terror moved.

  A loud thwak broke the silence as a crossbow bolt struck the top of some of the driftwood disguising the Terror and ricocheted off.

  “That’s it,” Banda growled. “They saw something. Get ready—"

  “Wait,” Alain said. Despite the shock of hearing the bolt hit, he held himself from jumping into action. Why?

  Because something was missing. As Alain listened, he realized what it was. “There have been no other shots.”

  Banda frowned at Alain. “No. Just the one. If we were being attacked there should have been a dozen more bolts hitting us right after that one.”

  “Why would the Imperials only fire once?” Alain asked.

  “Maybe trying to provoke a response? Maybe…” Banda shifted as much as he could to look toward the river bank.

  Alain did as well. He could just see the shapes of two legionaries on one of the watch towers. One, with a larger helmet crest, was leaning in toward the second. Neither of them faced the river. “What are they doing?” Alain asked, mystified.

  Banda began laughing very softly. “Oh, I know what they’re doing. I’ve seen those exchanges before! That one legionary decided to enliven a dull night by taking a shot at some passing driftwood, and judging from the helmet crest on the other, his centurion is letting him know in very clear terms that it was a bad idea.”

  The concentrated light had left the Terror as the ship slowly drifted and was now focused on an empty part of the river. “Can you see the legionaries on the opposite watch tower?” Banda asked.

  “Yes. Though not well. They are…looking across at the tower on
the other side.”

  “Watching their friend get chewed out by the centurion,” Banda said. “A bored sentry distracted his own comrades. We got lucky.” He cautiously advanced the throttle again, steering away from the direct focus of the light as the ship moved forward once more. Alain kept an eye on the towers, but the centurion was apparently long-winded, inadvertently keeping the attention of the nearby sentries fixed on him while he berated the legionary for failing to keep a good watch. No one gave any sign that they were still paying attention to the driftwood, or had noticed that it had begun drifting the wrong way, toward Marandur.

  The sky was beginning to pale in the east by the time the Terror got far enough upriver to reach the walls of the city and pass between the remains of the two fortified towers that had once guarded the river entry. Nothing except their location identified the piles of decaying rubble as once having been part of the city’s formidable defenses.

  “How are we doing?” Mari asked.

  Alain looked down to see her standing at the foot of the ladder. “We have just entered the city.”

  “Can you still see the watch towers outside the city?”

  He looked back, seeing that the towers on either river bank were still visible. “Yes.”

  “Let me know when the towers are hidden behind the city walls. I’ll go out on deck then and help spot obstacles in the water.”

  “Good idea,” Banda said, his voice tight with tension. “I’d feel stupid if after making it this far we ran hard aground in Marandur or punched a hole in the hull by running into a wreck.”

  By the time the watch towers outside the city were out of sight, Asha had appeared at the ladder to take over the watch. Alain went down, then aft where Mari waited impatiently. “It is safe to go up now.”

  She raced up the ladder, popped the hatch, and went out on deck. Alain followed, climbing over the driftwood to make his way forward on top of the Terror as well. Mari paused to open the forward hatch so Banda could easily hear them, then settled to watch the water ahead.