A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  “And the whales?” Kronmir asked.

  Parmenio smiled and ran a thumb along his mustache, of which he seemed rather proud. “No idea,” he said. “I have fought the Iberians my whole life, the Genuans a dozen times, and the ships of Dar as Salaam once, but I have never faced a sea monster. Before my voyage here, from Dar, I had never even seen one.”

  Kronmir sighed. “My apologies.”

  “None needed. If there are pirates to be exterminated, I’m your man. But for this, I am working with myth and rumour and gossip, and my friend, I tell you, the gossip of sailors is something to make a soldier blush.”

  They shared a glass of wine and played chess, and then the captain went on deck to take his watch. Kronmir shot at targets with a marine’s crossbow, and then with his balestrino, a tiny steel crossbow. Lucca used an easterner bow with either hand and could loose arrows in a steady stream even while running or leaping. The sailors enjoyed their antics, and the watch below came up to do laundry and some of the more daring souls took turns with the practice swords. Kronmir exchanged a dozen blows with Captain Parmenio, who was both strong and clever.

  “Fighting pirates has given you a strong wrist,” Kronmir said.

  Parmenio wiped the sweat from his mustache. “I’m damn glad there are not many pirates like you, sir.”

  The lookouts declared the horizon clear at sunset, but Parmenio did the lantern trick again.

  “It is every night in pirate waters,” he said. “I feel that our adversaries should be treated with the same respect.”

  Another night passed without incident, and the ship ran on. The third day dawned cold and wet, and there was patchy fog, but despite the perfect weather for some dread event, the ship ran east and east without let or hindrance. Toward evening the wind backed and moved from their starboard quarter to the port quarter, and became fitful, and there was much fiddling with the sails, but before dark, the wind steadied and grew stronger. Parmenio tossed the log himself and came aft twirling his mustache in satisfaction.

  “Almost nine,” he said. “Were I a praying man, I would say it was God’s will. I have seldom made a passage so good.” But he touched wood when he said it, and behind him, Antonio scratched a backstay with a callused finger.

  The fourth day dawned fine, with clouds few and white and billowy. Before noon, they had seen land birds, and Parmenio was unavailable, as he was standing at the tiller with Atkins, alternating between log casts and using a lead weight on a line with tallow to test the bottom. Kronmir fenced and ate, feeling well enough at last, and in midafternoon he was finishing his second meal of salt cod when Parmenio joined him in the coach, the long bench with a velvet cushion along the magnificent stern windows.

  “I wonder if you will be good enough to sign my log,” he said. “No one will ever believe that I passed from Harndon to the Eagle’s Gate in four days. But we had white sand in forty fathoms at daybreak, and now the Eagle’s head is in sight from the masthead. We might just weather the entrance to the Inner Sea before nightfall. I wouldn’t do it in the dark, I can tell you.”

  The captain had a glass of a fine sweet red wine, a true riccoto of Berona, in celebration, and he shared it with Kronmir, who went on deck, saw the huge white rock called the Eagle’s Head from the deck, and signed the log.

  The sun was sinking in the west, and still they ran east.

  “I am taking a risk,” Parmenio said conversationally. He’d invited Kronmir to the quarterdeck, a rare honour. “I probably ought to anchor and ride out the night, but...”

  He had Antonio up in the crow’s nest, and the Etruscan mate was waving. He shouted, and there followed a long exchange.

  “Pass the word for Master Hautboy,” Atkins called down into the waist of the ship, but Kieron was already on deck, and he swayed himself outboard on the shrouds and began to climb toward the mainmast crow’s nest.

  “Antonio does not like something ahead,” Parmenio said. And...” He paused.

  “And there is also something like a pod of whales behind us,” Kronmir said. “I beg your pardon, Capitano, but I speak Etruscan, even the kind you and Antonio speak.”

  Parmenio raised an eyebrow, but his head was too engaged with the problem of the moment to consider Kronmir’s facility with Etruscan.

  There passed a general alarm as a young boy appeared with a drum at the head of the companionway and beat it, if not well or rhythmically, at least very loudly. Aloft, young Kieron had his far-seer up.

  “Never seen anything like yon,” he shouted. He was looking astern of them.

  Parmenio never hesitated. “Man the sides, serve out the crossbows, and rig the boarding nets,” he called. He turned to Kronmir. “You and your companion seem to me to be good men of arms. Please join me here to defend the quarterdeck,” he said. “You have armour?”

  “Just a mail shirt,” Kronmir said.

  “You might want to fetch it,” Parmenio said with a ghost of a smile.

  “I never part with it,” Kronmir admitted. “I have it on this minute.”

  Parmenio started in surprise, but he passed it over and demanded something called the siphon to be rigged forward.

  Kronmir fetched Lucca and their bows. From his own case he fetched a black stone jar. Wearing gloves, he carefully dipped each of ten crossbow bolts and all of his tiny steel spikes in the tarry stuff in the jar, and then when the job was done, he put oiled silk over the top of the stone jar and tied it back on tightly, placed the whole inside a copper container with a lid, stripped off the fine chamois gloves...and threw them over the side.

  To Lucca he said, “Do not scratch yourself with the heads of the bolts.”

  Lucca raised an eyebrow. “Fatal?” he asked.

  “Unpleasantly so,” Kronmir said.

  The ship ran on. Now the White Eagle was towering over them to port, and in the distance, the lights of Southern Iberia began to twinkle. Kronmir had time to imagine the slim hands of some Iberian woman lighting the candles in her seaside home, and to wish...

  “Sternward pod is coming up hand over fist,” Kieron called. “They ain’t no whales, Cap’n. Tentacles and beaks.”

  “Jesu Christe,” Parmenio swore. He knelt, crossed himself, and leapt back to his feet. He had his mail on, and Atkins, already armoured, closed a fine browned breast-and-back on him and two sailors began to fuss with the buckles.

  Kronmir’s servant came on deck. He was difficult even to notice, a nondescript man in nondescript clothes, but where the eye lighted on him, men noticed he had a long copper or bronze tube and that it appeared very heavy and it had something like a hook or an axe blade.

  “Whale! Port side aft!” Hautboy yelled.

  A great head—terrifying, needle pointed, many-toothed, black and yet patchy with sea growths—broke the surface of the sea, and the whole great beast broached, three-quarters of its vast, ship-sized bulk coming free of the water before it slammed back, half turned. Just for a moment, Kronmir saw one of its great eyes—indeed, horrified or not, he had the impression that he had truly been eye to eye with the thing, and it had seen him, and then it crashed into the sea and through half the ocean aboard them. The ship heeled, the sails were wet, and the thing gave a flick of its tail and was gone. It seemed to run alongside them for a few ship’s lengths, a pale green smudge under the clear water, and then it rolled and went for the depths.

  Parmenio crossed himself. “Jesu Christe,” he said again. “It almost had us.”

  Kronmir frowned and looked over the side. “I do not think so. I think that was a warning, and well meant.” He shrugged. “I cannot tell you why, but I live and die on my opinion of men’s souls.”

  Parmenio looked at him a moment.

  “That animal had a soul,” the assassin said.

  “What else do you see?” Parmenio called to the top.

  “The things with tentacles are gaining!” Hautboy called.

  “Two leviathans off the starboard bow, between us and the straits,” Antonio called
in Venikan.

  “Leviathans?” Kronmir asked.

  “Sea serpents. Larger than whales, and more malevolent. We have seen them lately in the Inner Sea.” Parmenio shrugged.

  Kronmir looked aft. “Could the whales and the leviathans be enemies?” he asked.

  Parmenio looked at the compass. “I wish I knew. It’s is a beautiful theory, and in less than a minute, when I have my last chance to commit to the straits or turn south, I will have to decide whether I will risk my ship, my cargo, and our lives on this insane but delightful theory.” He smiled. “Are you a betting man, Master?”

  Kronmir could not hide his snarl of disdain. “No,” he said.

  Parmenio shrugged. “Alas! I am.”

  “Serpent!” screamed the lookout.

  A triangular head, the size of the forecastle, surfaced alongside. The head moved, striking the ship a glancing blow.

  A volley of crossbow bolts tore at the head, and the beast went under.

  “’Ware the tail!” Parmenio roared. He had the tiller, and he laid it hard over to port.

  The round ship jibed, the wind filling her mainsail as she turned hard across it. She heeled heavily as the whole mainsail took the wind broadside on, but the coils of the sea serpent struck only empty water.

  “Weather mate!” Parmenio roared. “Wind! For the love of God and Mary the Virgin!”

  Kieron stood by the mainmast, one hand around the stained wood, and began his song.

  Kronmir, gazing over the size, saw an opaline flash and then another, as if there were oil on the water. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing...

  “Eeeague!” he called. He had a light crossbow in his hands, the head covered in sticky black tar. He snapped the bolt at the nearest jellylike beast coming sluglike up the side.

  The bolt struck home, and a dozen of the Eeeague screamed together, a terrible choir of agony and sea-stink. The one he’d struck turned jet black in the blink of an eye and fell away into the sea. The others climbing the ship’s side seemed to lose animation. Their oily, reflective skin grew dull, like worms drying in the sun after a rain shower.

  Kronmir leaned well out and shot straight down with his little balestrino. The Eeeague he struck turned black. The others gave a mewl of sadness, and all fell away. The ship, released from their grasp, began to gather speed.

  Away forward, another half dozen of the Eeeague—or perhaps each one had six arms? Six bodies? Kronmir couldn’t think. He had never seen anything so alien, and even as he rewound his balestrino he had a hard time grasping what he had just seen...

  Away forward, his anonymous servant spun along the side as six more attacked. The Eeeague had trouble with the forecastle’s high sides, and the ordinary little man used a ship’s pike and then a sword so fluidly that he appeared to be dancing, and when he stopped moving, the forecastle was clear.

  The ship’s contingent of crossbowmen and several sailors loosed bolts into the waves until Parmenio ordered them to cease, and the ship raced away into the east again, having returned to her original course and slowly gathering way as the weather worker’s magery added to the wind.

  Captain Parmenio was examining the three-quarters of his great sword of war that was left to him. He had struck repeatedly at something gelatinous that had come into the waist of the ship, and its flesh had eaten the point of his sword.

  “I gather that we have met the Eeeague,” he said, but his voice was high and a little wild. Atkins, who had a heavy axe in both hands, came up behind his captain and two sailors poured seawater on his back plate without warning. Parmenio sputtered and was then shown the hole a hand span wide in his back plate.

  “Christ and all the saints,” the captain swore.

  The coast of Iberia raced at them. The Eagle’s Head was tall and white crowned on the port side, and to starboard, Ifriquy’a loomed in an evening haze of purple-pink mountains, but there were lights on that coast, too.

  “Faster,” Parmenio called to the weather mage.

  Atkins shook his head. “Topsail and foremast can’t take too much wind, Cap’n. We took an almighty jolt when the serpent hit us. Foremast stay parted.”

  Parmenio ran aft. Kronmir thought that they might as well be speaking another language, and went back to watching the sides.

  Just aft of the stern and the wake, the sea grew suddenly dark.

  “’Ware!” Kronmir called.

  The enormous triangular head rose swiftly from the wake and lunged on the sinuous serpent’s neck. Kronmir’s hand came up and he shot into the great eye, a single malevolent wheel of liquid ebony in the heavy, crystalline brow.

  His heart seemed to stop.

  The head fell toward him, and then, almost under its jaws, so close that the whole of the ship shuddered, a mighty whale broached, its tapered head striking the serpent under the head where the snout full of needlelike teeth met the diamond-riveted coat of the long body. The sound of the impact was like a thunderclap and the two monsters fell away, sliding into the sea like sinking ships even as a wall of spray and solid water fell into the ship, drenching the sails, knocking a sailor over the side and slamming Kronmir into the after mast so hard that lightning streaks of red crisscrossed his vision.

  Another rush of Eeeague came up the sides. These screamed as they came and emitted torrents of their acid.

  Lucca stood over Kronmir. His heavy arbalest blew one into black fragments, and then another as he shot again with Kronmir’s spare weapon.

  Kronmir gained control of his trembling hand and loosed the tiny bolt from his balestrino.

  Then Lucca and Parmenio and a dozen sailors were fighting with staves and pole arms, at least until the heads of the weapons melted or rusted away, but even as the Eeeague took a sailor and dismembered him, the Eeeague themselves were suffering the effects of Kronmir’s poison, which seemed to dry them, rot them, and weaken them—and drive the survivors to a frenzy.

  Revenge? Kronmir’s mind asked, lazily. Do they feel? Do they think? The poison was an Outwaller concoction he’d become aware of in Liviapolis. It was cruel to men and horses. He was unsurprised that it was hellish for the Eeeague as well. He began to span his balestrino, painfully aware that his hands were not interested in obedience, aware too that the circle of armoured men defending him was shrinking.

  White lighting played against the nearest glistening mass. It froze as if galvanized and then exploded, showering everyone on the quarterdeck with acid. Lucca fell, a mass of burning sludge on his face, and Kronmir forced his head and body to cooperate, got himself to his feet by rolling to the left and got his hands on one of the pails of seawater that the sailors had used on Parmenio. It was half full and he hurled it straight at his partner, who inhaled half of it and went down sputtering, but the acid was washed away, and he was left screeching in pain from the salt.

  Lucca whimpered, got a hand under himself, and his good eye met Kronmir’s. And then he passed out and his head hit the deck with a thump.

  Parmenio’s arming coat was full of holes under his shredded metal armour, but he was delivering a stream of orders, and the mainsail, with fifty holes burned right through, was being stripped off by eager sailors as another was brought on deck. The weather mate was leaning over the side, working. Kronmir saw the whale slam into the serpent again, and the disturbance of their two bodies in the water was so great that the ship turned on its beam ends, and men were thrown into the scuppers and worse.

  Parmenio was looking back, past the two monsters. He had an odd smile on his face, and not a particularly pleasant one.

  “Ready about!” he called.

  The sailors were hauling the new mainmast taut. Less than two minutes had gone by since the first contact. The ship, despite the loss of her mainsail, had never stopped her long turn to port that had taken her from a northeasterly course with the wind on her starboard quarter through a southeasterly course with the wind perfectly on her port quarter and past that again to a broad reach with the wind coming right
over her gunwales, pushing her far down in the water as she ran due south, but now, all standing sails trembling, she was turning back west, having already passed through half of the compass rose. The wind was against her now, and all her sails were flapping or even fighting the wind, but she still had way on her, and the two fighting sea creatures were now a hundred paces off the starboard side, the weather-worker quite competently keeping the wind steady in the foresails, reenforcing the shredded main until it was down, and casting offensive workings at the serpent each time it broke the surface.

  Atkins, the mate, was in the ship’s waist. “At the serpent, lads!” he called. “The whale’s a friend!”

  A dozen heavy bolts vanished into the green scales of the serpent as a coil rose from the water. Bubbles burbled to the surface everywhere. Kieron leaned out from a shroud and a bolt of red lightning leapt from his hand and struck the triangular green head. The ebony eye moved, and like lightning the great head shot around, the mouth opened—

  Flayed and bleeding, the whale rose from the sea like a vast, injured wrestler who has not yet surrendered, and came down across the serpent’s midbody, dragging the thing down even as Kieron landed another bolt of red lightning.

  Kronmir was not focusing well, but he was on his feet, a tridentine spear in his hands. There were men gathering in the waist.

  The ship was now running almost north, broad reaching with the wind on the port quarter, having passed through almost two hundred seventy degrees. The breeze had crossed her bow while she still ran on from the rapidity of her jibe, and her odd round hull and sharp bow seemed in perfect harmony in the rising sea. Kieron’s bursts of mage wind had helped, and now the ship was completing her turn, still at speed.

  She passed the rising bubbles that were the only evidence of the fight between serpent and whale. The party in the waist were putting their crossbows, loaded, on the deck.

  Kronmir turned to Parmenio, who was watching the water, his head well out over the starboard side as he steered very carefully.

  “One chance,” he called.

  Atkins waved.