by Rj Barker
“It was not,” the officer shouted back. “It was flown in by women and men, and as the Keyshantooth sits in the harbour entrance we know they have not escaped.” One of the other officers raised a hand, trying to pull the younger man down but he shook him off. “So those women and men who burned my ships—” He stopped, breathing heavily, then got control of himself and seemed to calm a little. “Who burned your friends,” he said, then added, “my friends,” before turning his head, looking at those gathered. “Where are they? Ask yourselves that, and look at the faces around you. Look for those who you do not know.”
Coult pulled on Joron’s arm. “Time for us to move, lad,” he said.
Joron knew he was right. But that shipwife had his sword and he recognised his voice as Barnt, the man Cwell had given it to and it seemed the island was his now. Joron looked up, committing Barnt’s face to memory. He wanted his sword.
Another tug on his arm from Coult. “Come, Joron.”
“Look for those strangers and make sure they are brought to me,” said Barnt. “I will pay well for them, and they will pay well for what they did!” A roar went up at that – it was a rare deckchild that didn’t like a good execution; the bloodier and harder someone died, the better.
Joron and his small group started to move off when the shipwife raised his voice again. “You!” Joron had no doubt the man spoke to him, it was the way his luck ran. He turned, head down in a way he hoped came across as reverent, not as an attempt to avoid being seen. “Look at me when I speak to you, man.” Joron did, raising his head and, as he had seen so many deckchilder do, managing to look at the officer without meeting his eye.
“Ey, Shipwife,” he said.
“What are you doing with those gullaime?”
“Came off the ships, Shipwife,” he said. “Taking ’em up road, Shipwife.” Quiet was falling around them, and from the corner of his eye he saw Coult’s hand come to rest on the hilt of his curnow.
“I do not recognise you,” said the shipwife. At those words, it was as if some spirit were invoked, as if the malign, choking smoky air suddenly came to life and focused itself on Joron and the women and men with him, and with its unkind attention came that of all the gathered deckchilder. “No, I do not recognise you at all.”
A scattering of sand in the sandglass. The moment when the last grains are falling and the glass must be turned, the moment a hard decision must be made.
A breath taken in panic.
A surety of violence.
“Peace, Barnt.” The man who spoke reached up, touching the shipwife’s arm. He wore the one-tail of a deckkeeper and he was the same man Joron was sure he had seen somewhere before. “I know that man’s face – not sure from where, but it is familiar.”
Barnt stared down at the deckkeeper. “Very well, Viss,” he said. “And you, man,” he said to Joron, “you should not be standing around with something as valuable as two gullaime. Get them up to the lamyard.”
“Ey Shipwife,” he said with a quick bow of his head.
As they walked away Coult came to stand by him. “A stroke of luck there,” he said, “I thought we were Hag bound for sure.”
“That shipwife’s words will spread though, and . . .”
“It will work well for us,” said Coult.
“It will? We are strangers here and—”
“Think how many others are strangers to each other, Joron. Think how many, outside your own crew, from my ship, say, you would recognise on an island? Few, right? No, all that shipwife has done is sow chaos and that may help us.”
“I hope so.”
They walked on, climbing the steep hill, women and men making way for them as they guarded the gullaime and as ever, few wanted to be near the windtalkers. Arguments were breaking out as they passed, small groups demanding each other justify their place on the island. But the gullaime were like a day pass, allowing their little group through with no questions and it made Joron think. He found Coult and pulled on his arm.
“Ey?”
“I have had a thought,” said Joron, “that shipwife gifted it to me.” Coult raised a brow at this. “Gullaime, come here.” The windtalker hopped forward.
“What want?”
“Do you think the gullaime from the ships out there, the ones in the lamyard here, would follow you?”
“Follow follow?” It snapped its beak at the air. “Some yes. Some not. Gullaime fear.”
“We are here for our people, Joron,” said Coult, and he gave a sideways glance to the gullaime. It was easy for Joron to forget how uncomfortable the creatures made those around them.
“Ey,” he replied, “but you heard that shipwife, Coult. The gullaime are valuable to them. They have dealt us a blow in taking Safeharbour from us, maybe we could repay that blow by stealing their gullaime.” Coult did not reply, and Joron added, “Think how much more effective would we be if every ship of ours had windtalkers.”
A second, then Coult smiled.
“You’re a crafty one, Twiner. But where will the lamyard be? We only have ‘up the hill’ as instruction.”
“Near windspire,” said the gullaime, “always near windspire.”
“It is not on our route out,” said Coult. “The easiest route out is around the base of the isle, and if our people here have been badly used they will not have the energy to climb a steep hill.”
“I will go, they need not,” said Joron.
“I will accompany him,” said Anzir.
“As will I,” added Farys.
“You have loyal people,” said Coult. “Very well, I and mine will come with you but we must get our people away first. When we meet Brekir at the bothy I will tell her what we plan, and we only go if she has enough room in the boats for the birds.”
“Very well, let us hurry then.”
And they did, up the Serpent Road, not as grand or wide as the Serpent Road at Bernshulme but built along the same idea. Where Bernshulme’s was a glory, Safeharbour’s was sided by the blackened remains of people’s lives. Twice Joron was sure he saw the remains of bodies, probably caught in the first fires of the attack. He wanted to go back and find that young shipwife, hurt him. Fires still burned all over Safeharbour, unnatural purple or green fires all the way up the road where hagspit had been left to poison the land.
But he had a duty.
The Grand Bothy appeared from the stinking smoke, the curved roof still unfinished, more through lack of materials than lack of will. It had been roofed with flat plains of cured gion. Walls of sharpened varisk stalks surrounded the base of the bothy and two seaguard stood at the gate. Joron glanced around – there were people in the dark and he did not know if they were his or Barnt’s, then he saw a familiar figure emerge from the mist and approach the seaguard.
“Sent to bring more hagspit, I am,” said Brekir.
“Well it ain’t here is it?” said the seaguard. “Don’t keep it where people live, do we? It’s over there in the—” but he never finished. Brekir’s straightsword flashed out through the man’s neck, and from behind the second guard a shadow left the wall and cut his throat.
“Come on.” Brekir’s voice, clipped and sharp, cut through the air, and from all around them her deckchilder appeared, cutting down those they did not know before running past Brekir and into the bothy. They piled shields against the inside of the fence while she watched, and when the last was past and into the bothy she rushed in. Joron turned to the gullaime.
“Find somewhere safe to hide in the shadow of the wall, we will be back to free your people next.” Then he was shouting, “Bands on!” and black bands were produced from pockets, tied around arms that marked them as of the black ships. Joron ran to join the fray, curnow raised and fear singing its weakening song in his gut, but at the same time there was that terrible exhilaration he had started to feel somewhere deep inside with every fight, something he felt was becoming a part of him, something he needed.
Into the bothy. To his landward he saw a shipwife w
ith no black band. The man looked confused at what was happening, was doing up the belt around his trews, and Joron lashed out with his curnow, cutting him down. From seaward a man came out of the darkness, screaming as he raised his sword and was felled by a blow from Anzir, who carried a beaked bonehammer, of the type the bonemasters used. Farys, smaller than Joron and Anzir, kept low, using knives to stab the unsuspecting, and nearly all were unsuspecting, surprised by the sudden onslaught just as Meas had planned back on Tide Child. There were few about in the Grand Bothy, the action in the harbour having pulled everyone down there. Brekir stood with a bloodied sword, waiting at the entrance to the lower levels.
“Coult! Twiner!” she shouted, and cut down a man who ran at her, barely a thought in her movement. “We must hold the gates to this building. My first crew are clearing the bothy, my second are in the lower levels finding the prisoners. I’ve also set crew to cut through the varisk wall at the rear of the bothy. If we make a show of defending the gates it may distract anyone from noticing.”
“We will,” said Joron, “but Shipwife . . .”
“Ey?”
“They have a lamyard here, we think it will be up near the windspire. If we can take their gullaime it will hurt them as much as getting our people back.”
“More even,” said Brekir, but her doleful voice was far away. “We would not be able to protect you, Deckkeeper. Getting our people to the boats must be our first priority.”
“I will risk it, Shipwife Brekir,” he said, as they jogged back toward the gate, weapons jingling in the smoky dark. “It is worth it.”
“Are you sure? When this is done the island will be crawling with those out for our blood.”
“I have walked through Safeharbour, Brekir,” he said. “I am ready to spill blood to avenge this place.”
Brekir nodded. “Very well,” she said, as a roar of anger came from out in the mist. “Ready yourselves. Here they come.”
14
Meetings and Partings
They locked their shields, making a wall between the two stout varisk gate posts; behind them two barrels of hagspit had been brought in and Joron wondered what Brekir had planned for them. A rut of half-buried varisk ran between the posts to stop the gates and Joron was curious as to why they did not form on that, use it as leverage for feet caked with mud and carbon. He found himself in the second row, as women and men boiled out of the night full of fury, eager to avenge the insult done to their ships. The time for thinking was over. Some brave but foolish souls ran straight at the wall of shields only to be skewered on spears that Brekir had the foresight to bring with her and her crew. After the first few fell those attacking stayed back, dim shapes in the mist. He heard a shout.
“Crossbows, get crossbows up here.”
The man heading Brekir’s seaguard yelled out: “Close the shields. If any fall to a bolt they’ll answer to me.”
The shields were brought closer together, overlapping, making a tent of treated gion that closed out the sky, concentrated the smell of humanity: sweat and bad breath and fear. A rattling on the shield wall, as if the shields were being repeatedly punched. In his mind Joron was thinking not of what was happening, not of the coming violence or the sharp bolts. He was thinking of tactics, of what to do, taking his mind into the future where he could have some effect on events, not in the now where he must simply stand with these women and men and weather the storm of crossbow bolts.
They were undisciplined, these deckchilder that attacked, not shooting from lines as Meas had told him you must. No concentrating their shot on one target. Instead an ill-timed and -aimed hail of bolts. This was angry women and men loosing off at random, furious, unthinking. This was not how fleet deckchilder behaved. This was not how Meas’s crew would behave.
And he knew these fighters could be beaten.
A thud against his shield, a shock against the aching forearm with which he held it up. A bolt sticking through. It had punctured his stinker coat, not his flesh. He was cold.
Behind him voices, the first of the prisoners coming out of the bothy, confused, not dressed for the night’s chill, wide eyed and blinking as deckchilder harried them on, started to push them toward the rear of the building, making them keep their heads down so they were not spotted.
“Going to be fun getting out of here for us,” said the woman beside him, and she spat into the mud.
“No one wants to live forever, Girtane,” said the man by her. “Weren’t you just complaining about how much that bad foot of yours aches this morran?”
“Ey, I suppose it’ll not ache at the Hag’s fire.”
“At them!” A roar, from outside the shield wall.
“Brace!” Brekir’s voice from behind them. Joron dropped his shield, holding it at a more comfortable height and crouching down a little. In front of him women and men were running from the mist, shields of their own held up, using them to push away the spears of Brekir’s deckchilder.
“Knives!” shouted Brekir. Short blades were drawn by those on the second rank and a moment later there was impact. Bodies hitting the shields. Screaming bodies, wishing the worst of the Hag on them. Swearing they would find no warm place to rest. Promising desecration of those they attacked.
“Hold them!” shouted Brekir, “we don’t need to beat them right now, just hold them!”
“Easy for you to say, glum sither,” hissed the man beside Joron, grunting as he pushed against his shield. Joron was frightened – madness not to be – but it was a strange fear, a blunted fear. Not like the first time he had fought, that fear had been sharp, cutting. But now he had experience. He knew he was unlikely to die in this first rush. Knew few of them were. Maybe one. Maybe two. But this was the first engagement, muscles were fresh, minds were working. The death came later, when you were tired, or worse, if the wall broke – but these were Brekir’s hand-picked seaguard and deckchilder, her finest. And Brekir served Meas.
They would not break.
Until they had to, of course, until they must leave. And Joron hoped Brekir had something planned for that because then he would be scared. Then he would be running with all his strength, because the fury of their attackers, currently contained by the shield wall, would be loosed on him and those around him.
All was shouting, anger. Someone screamed in pain. He could not see whether it was on his or the other side. He hoped it was them, they had more people. Behind him the prisoners were still coming out of the bothy.
“Move, move! Run, quick as you can.” Could he hear those whispers or were they in his imagination? They felt like they were carried to him on the song of the island.
Another scream, a space in the shields before him as someone fell and he moved into it, his bone knife gripped tightly in a sweaty hand, momentarily meeting the eyes of the woman – filled with triumph – who had felled one of the deckchilder.
One of his deckchilder.
And all was noise.
All was violence.
He punched the shield forward into the face of the woman, heard her screech. Drew back his shield as she brought her hands up to her injured face and the man beside him ran her through. A blade came at him and Joron pushed the shield forward again. Shouting as he did, unaware of the noise he made, unaware of anything but the need to protect and to fight and to live. His shield trapped the arm of the attacker and Davand by him hacked at it – blood and flesh and bone – and it was pulled back. He was in the heat and the passion and the pressure. Thrusting with his bone knife, not seeing a target, more often hitting a shield than anything. Pushing and pushing. And it seemed to happen forever and it seemed to take no time at all.
“—dy. . .”
“—eady . . .”
“—ready . . .”
“Be ready!”
Brekir’s voice – ready for what? He heard an axe against a barrel. Then smelled acrid stinging, pungent hagspit. Looked down, saw dark liquid running between his feet, pooling where it hit the line of buried varisk. Oh Breki
r, he thought, I see why they made you shipwife.
“Be ready!”
He glanced behind him: no more were leaving the Bothy, only Brekir stood there now, with two deckchilder and an overturned barrel. In her hand a torch burned.
“Now!” she shouted. And they stepped backwards, the wall dissolving as they turned to run and those attacking them let out a great scream of triumph as their opponents seemed to retreat. One step, two steps, and the air behind lit up with purple and green fire. Triumph turned to agony as the hagspit ignited around those rushing forward, a cruel flame that could only be extinguished by sand, and there was none of that here. Then Joron and Brekir’s crew were running round the bothy. Brekir stopped at the broken fence – there stood Coult, and Farys, her face pale and drawn, her scars dark shadows. Behind them stood the gullaime and, far enough back from it to avoid its vicious beak, the windshorn.
“You still intend to free the island’s gullaime, Joron?”
“Ey,” he said.
Brekir put out her hand, clasped his arm. “Stay with Coult, he’ll not lead you far wrong and his deckchilder fight like the Hag watches them. I will wait as long as I can on the beach, but I’ll not endanger my boats or my ship.”
“I would not expect you to.”
“Mother’s Blessing, Joron Twiner,” she said.
“Mother’s Blessing, Shipwife Brekir,” he replied but she was already gone, vanishing into the brown and drooping gion.
15
Dead Run
It was the season of dying. Gone were the riotous colours of the growing times, to be replaced by uniform brown as varisk and gion withdrew life from the plants above and stored it in their roots for the next season. In times of high heat sometimes leaves blackened, became sharp-edged and flaking to the touch, but the dying season was a time of softness, of wetness, of slipping and sliding along paths as they were slowly revealed by the withering vegetation. There were no firm handholds, no places to put your foot that you could be sure would stay; more often than not the vines and leaves that covered the floor would split and spill overripe, decaying and stinking liquid from their skin like pus from an infected wound. The smell was no worse than the burning town below, and while it did not choke Joron, it filled the air, coating his mouth and nose, restricting his breathing.