by Glen Cook
These days the Upper Kingdom was wild country, frontier country, snuggled up against the Slang Mountains, that shielded Dreanger from the south. Chaldarean cultists and anchorites, and pagan nomads, still haunted the Upper Kingdom, in company with the ghosts of seven thousand years worth of Dreangerean dead.
Today the Upper Kingdom was commonly called the Kingdom of the Dead. The barren hills on either bank of the Shirne, for as far as thirty miles back, were networked with tunnels that led to the tombs of half a thousand generations. The Instrumentalities of the Night made grave robbers and tomb raiders wish they had chosen more auspicious careers.
The original significance of being buried in the Hills of the Dead had gotten lost centuries before Josephus Alegiant, but even now, amongst those who claimed unalloyed Dreangerean blood, there was a social imperative for having one's corpse laid down underneath the Hills of the Dead.
That part of the Upper Kingdom had accumulated immense reserves of dark magic. Only the Holy Lands boasted a superior supernatural status and more concentrated magical power.
The Wells of Ihrian were the Heart of the Soul of the World.
Gordimer asked, "What do you think of captain Tage, Rashal?"
"I think you're letting your fears get the better of you again, my friend. That man might be your most loyal and valuable follower. He's truly, totally Sha-lug." No man but er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen would dare speak so directly to Gordimer the Lion.
The marshal was not pleased. But he could do nothing. Much as he hated it, he was at er-Rashal's mercy.
Gordimer had great difficulty grasping the fact that not everyone thought the way he did, that every man was not a slave to bloody ambition.
Captain Tage was a competent man. How could he not…?
Er-Rashal said, "Huge events will overtake us in coming years. If you go on the way you have been, those events will devour you, me, Dreanger, and the Kaifate of al-Minphet. Because you, driven by baseless fears, will have eliminated everyone with enough nerve, strength, and ability to lift a sword."
Gordimer rose. He stamped around. He cursed. He threatened. He appealed to God. He told his only friend, "You have to help me, Rashal. I can't control my thoughts. But they can control me."
"I'll do what I can. For Dreanger's sake as well as yours. But my best efforts won't do any good if you don't make an effort yourself. Remind yourself, whenever you think you smell a plot, that there's an excellent chance that it's imaginary. Talk to me before you start killing people. Sit down with me and we'll study the evidence. And let me question the suspects before you kill them. We don't want to waste good people. Abad did that. Abad wasted too many good people. Which was why you gained enough support to remove him."
Er-Rashal did not mention that he had been chief wizard to Gordimer's predecessor. No need to give Gordimer anything else to brood about.
"I try, Rashal. I really try. But it's a disease."
"Just let me question your suspects. Don't do anything yourself. Don't draw the lightning."
Gordimer grunted agreement. But he did so with secret reservations.
7. The Andorayan Travelers
Shagot rested his palms on his knees. He panted. He had stopped only seconds before he started puking from the exertion. He had done way too much drinking and loafing lately. Though he would never admit it, particularly to Sigurdur and Sigurjon, whose parents must have lost a riddling contest to a boulder to come up with names as unimaginative as those. Not that he and his brother had fared much better.
"Shit," Shagot gasped. He fought for air. "How the hell… can we still… be this far… behind… those assholes?"
Shagot and his companions stood in a saddle on a ridge in the Jottendyngjan Mountains, fighting for wind while studying the road south. The fire in Shagot's lungs was less a problem than his incredulity at the fact that those pussy missionaries were still safely ahead. But, there they were, looking like ants scaling the flank of the next line of mountains.
Svavar said, "I don't like this. We should've taken a ship down and waited for them at the Ormo crossing."
Shagot grunted. He did not waste breath reminding Svavar that the Ormo Strait was not friendly territory. Any ship from Andoray appearing there was inviting a ferocious disaster.
The Southron villains had to be overhauled from behind. On dry land.
Sigurdur asked, "What're we gonna do when it gets dark, Grim? They's trolls and dwarfs an' shit up here."
"Yeah. Not to mention ghosts and haunts left over from the god times," Sigurjon added. By the god times he meant prehistory. The gods were marginally active even today — witness the Choosers who took Erief away — but not much had been heard from them since those legendary times when the early Andorayans drove the wild, mystic, primitive Seatts north beyond the cliffs of ice, into the lands of always-snow.
"The old folks gave me all the wards and charms we'll need to get through the night For as long as it takes to catch those girls."
"Who gave them to you?" Svavar wanted to know. "Not Vidgis, I hope. Because if it was Vidgis we're dead already and we're just too boneheaded to lay down and stop kicking."
Vidgis had gotten Svavar to top her once, in a drunken hour. He insisted that it would not have happened if she was not some terrible witch who had enchanted him.
Chuckling, Shagot agreed. "Oh, yeah. She's a witch." The way all women are witches. She just had a few extra years on her. "Pulla, Trygg, and that bunch gave them to me. They're tribal charms. Charms they wouldn't have given us if Snaefells and the Skogafjordur hadn't witnessed those marvels."
"Huh?" Sigurdur said. Not the brightest man, Sigurdur. "What marvels?"
"Sigurdur, you think the murder of a king is something that happens every day?" Erief would have become king if he had lived, Shagot knew. "You think the Choosers of the Slain just drop in?"
"Oh. No. I get you. But I do reckon they picked us six mainly so they could get us out of town."
So Sigurdur was blind in one eye but could see out the other. Shagot had not realized that the old folks might have chosen this group so he and the others would not be hanging around causing trouble.
Those assholes Trygg and Pulla would pull that kind of shit, too. Old people did not like chaos, confusion, tumult, or excitement. They wanted life calm, quiet, and predictable.
Shagot thought he must be getting old himself since he had no trouble understanding why the old people wanted him out of the way.
"Let's just catch these guys, then get our asses on home." Of a sudden, Shagot found himself able to consider Snaefells special. Found that he could think of the village as home. He was amazed.
Shagot the Bastard was not able to catch those Missionaries. Those ferocious southerners who did not believe in raising a hand against their fellow man. Day by day, hour by hour, he and his companions gained ground, but never, ever, did they actually catch up.
Shagot's band was a scant thirty yards behind when they reached the shore of the Ormo Strait, at a village called Ara. Hallgrim and Finnboga both wasted arrows. Naturally, they missed. Shagot barked, "Quit it! You might hit the ferryman in the fog."
The boat the fugitives had chartered was small, manned by a single oarsman who must be a true man's man, for the strait was fourteen miles wide here. Ara was not the customary jump off for those who wanted to cross. That was Grynd, thirty miles southeastward along the coast. Commercial ferries ran there, making the four-mile journey through treacherous currents to Skola on the tip of Friesland.
Grynd and Skola were too civilized. Shagot could not go there. Erief's enemies and King Gludnir's friends were much too common there.
Unstringing his bow, taciturn Finnboga observed, "If we need proof that those two are villains, this is it."
"Because they chose a smugglers' crossing?"
The boatman would conduct his passengers to Orfland, a swampy, sparsely inhabited, totally impoverished island off the west coast of Friesland. The fugitives would have to traverse Orfland on foot, t
hen cross to the mainland from Orfland's nether end — without ever attracting the attention of anyone who mattered in Friesland.
Sigurdur said, "I'm not comfortable leaving Andoray on foot."
That was such a dumb thing to say that Shagot just nodded. "You guys go scare up another boatman."
There was no boatman to be found. There was no one in the village. Not a soul. But the evidence said Ara had been a busy little town until a few hours ago.
Sigurjon said, "I don't like this, Grim. Something weird is going on.”
"I think you're right. Let's wait here. When that boat comes back we'll go across. Keep your bows strung. Just in case." He made sure his sword was loose in its scabbard. It was a fine old blade that had come from a monastery in Santerin, probably left there by some noble trying to bribe the local god.
Hallgrim asked, "What do you make of this fog? Fog usually burns off by this time."
"We're at the mouth of the Ormo Strait. There're strange currents and tides and fogs here all the time."
Hallgrim did not talk much. Shagot wished he would give up the vice altogether. When he did speak he always brought up something disgusting. Often he belabored the obvious when everyone else did not want to be reminded.
He did not shut up. "Will we all fit in that boat? It didn't look that big."
Shagot grunted. His brother Svavar asked, "You want me to hit him on the head?"
"He might not notice. Besides, it's a good question. And I think we will fit What I'm wondering is, how long will we have to wait? I didn't see a mast or a sail. And at the wrong time of day the current is going to be vicious."
The Ormo Strait joined the landlocked Shallow Sea with the Andorayan Sea, to the west. The Shallow Sea was so called because at dead low tide a tenth of its bottom lay exposed and a third of the remainder did not rise above a tall man's head. Ships on the Shallow Sea were broad of beam and drew very little water. And had to be guided by very knowledgeable pilots. There were just two small areas in all of the Shallow Sea where, at high tide, the water was over a hundred feet deep.
Navigation in the Ormo Strait was particularly harrowing. Immense volumes of water raced back and form as the tides turned.
People like the smugglers and fishermen of Ara knew their waters better than they knew their wives. They started learning the waters when they were toddlers.
Svavar sighed. "Yeah. We'll be lucky to get out of here today."
Sigurdur said, "The moon is almost full. We could manage a night crossing."
Finnboga mused, "We should liberate some horses after we get to the mainland. Then we could catch up fast"
Except, Shagot thought, that would make it impossible for them to come north again — assuming they stayed ahead of the pursuit after they stole the horses.
Svavar said, "It looks like the fog is thinning out"
But visibility remained less than a bowshot.
Shagot said, "You guys that went sneaking around, poking into stuff. Did you find anything that explains why nobody is home? Or where they went?" The absence of Ara's villagers bothered him. That likely meant an intercession by the Instrumentalities of the Night.
Those nights on the road, coming down from Skogafjordur, had produced only the feeblest of troubles. Even considering the charms the band carried, the supernatural weather had been unnaturally mild.
Shagot shuddered. He did not like thinking too much. But he was captain of the band. And it never hurt to be paranoid about the dark.
The Huldre Folk had followed them. The hidden people were of more than passing interest to them. Maybe they were responsible for all those little delays that kept the band from catching the foreigners before they escaped from Andoray. Why? If the foreigners' god became established here he would chase the hidden folk away.
"Hey!" Finnboga shouted. "There's a boat out there. It's coming in."
Shagot saw it, too. It was not the boat that had taken the missionaries away. This was a regular fishing boat, the kind that spent every clement hour at sea, fishing. It was shorter and wider than the war craft Shagot and his companions knew. But it seemed too well kempt to be your usual fisherman.
Shagot pulled his band together. "As far as these people are concerned, we don't know starboard from larboard. We're landlubbers. Understand? And let me do the talking." The fisher looked like it would require a minimum crew of three, though he could see only one man on deck. And there was a deck. So the boat had a hold. Which made sense for a fisherman — or smuggler — who wanted to keep his cargo from washing overboard in heavy seas.
The closer the fisherman approached, the more perfect she seemed. They could pile aboard her and run all the way down the western coast of Orfland, to put themselves into position to ambush the missionaries after they completed their grueling passage through the island's bogs. They would not have to slay the crew of the boat, even. If the fishermen were cooperative.
"Name's Red Hammer," the boat's master said. "And you men look like you need to get somewhere in a hurry, without being noticed." Before Shagot could respond, he added, "And this's my cousin, Smith."
"Smith?"
Red shrugged. "He just wants to be known by his nickname."
Shagot grunted, confused. He could not get his thoughts to follow. "What about the old man?"
"That's Walker. My father. He's getting old and slowing down. He isn't much use anymore. But he don't want to quit the game. So we take him along when we go out."
Shagot said, "We do need to get across the strait. And down the west coast of Orfland, to Tyrvo, or even to Grodnir's Point on the Friesland shore. That would be particularly useful."
Red Hammer nodded. "We can do that. So we just need to agree on a price. And to unload our catch." The stench of fish filled the air.
"We'll help you unload," Shagot promised. "So let's talk cost."
Initially, Red Hammer asked if what they wanted was worth thirty-five gold pieces.
Shagot laughed. "No. How stupid do we look? We don't have that kind of money, anyway. We look like kings? You won't find one piece of gold between us. You lunatic. Be happy that we'll give you five Santerin silver pennies."
The bargaining did not last long. Shagot was in a hurry. The fishermen were impatient to unload their cargo.
The tide was turning.
Svavar worried aloud as he stumbled along under a heavy sack of fish, some of which still wiggled. "We're getting too good a deal, Grim. They'll try to rob us."
"There's six of us. They may be big and dumb but they aren't that dumb. What do you want to bet they've got some illegal cargo that we'll help protect in order to get where we're going?"
Shagot understood such thinking. He had done things like that himself when he was not off with Erief.
“They have them a devilish look in their eyes, Grim."
"And I don't blame them. This is as lucky a day as poor people ever get."
Svavar went right on worrying about treachery and betrayal. Red Hammer might sell them to Gludnir.
Whenever Shagot met the eye of Red or Smith they seemed amused. As though they knew his worries and found them entertaining.
Shagot was sure he had the angles covered. These men were just fishermen and smugglers with no reason to turn treacherous.
It had been a hard go for Shagot, lately. Weariness hung on his bones like tattered cloth. He told the Thorkalssons, "Don't wake me up unless the ship is going under and the water is up to my nuts."
He found a place out of the way, on deck. He wanted nothing to do with the hold. The stink of fish was bad enough where he was.
The fog was closing in again.
He thought he dreamed.
He was sound asleep but saw his surroundings as though he was wide awake. The fog grew weaker. The sea became calmer. The people of the sea came up to frolic round the boat Beautiful maidens from the deep, indistinguishable from human girls except for their beauty, sang to the fishermen. Walker seemed to bless them. He seemed to get younger as the b
oat moved out to sea, too.
The sea itself changed. The water darkened. A growing chop came running in on the bow. The people of the sea stopped following.
Soon the fisherman was battering its way into the teeth of a rising storm. Its crew remained unperturbed, even after waves started leaping over the bow, hurling white spume. Then it was green water, pounding the foredeck with the fists of giants.
Indifferent, the crew forged on.
The three were no longer amiable or chatty. They worked ship — when they did anything at all — with very little talk. Shagot could not understand how they managed to cope.
Fierce lightning began dueling inside the storm. Several bolts stabbed the sea near the fishing craft. A bolt hit Red Hammer.
Shagot understood, then, that these mad fishermen had sailed them all to their deaths.
His eyes recovered from the glare. He saw the lunatic redhead standing with his arms upraised, his roaring laughter competing with the thunder. He welcomed the caress of the storm.
Shagot finally realized that he was not at the mercy of insane fishermen at all. He became more frightened than ever he had been, even in the deeps of the night, far from any friendly shore.
Walker sensed his shift of being the instant the fear took hold. He turned away from the storm and looked Shagot directly in the eye.
Shagot almost cried for his mother.
Walker was old but not nearly as old as before. He had become someone of strength and substance. But what pierced Shagot with terror was the fact that Walker had only one eye.
Shagot scarcely had a chance to whimper before darkness collapsed upon him.
The boat, now a golden barge, emerged from the storm onto an emerald sea like none ever seen by the traders and raiders of Andoray. The barge, invisibly propelled, moved in alongside a quay of polished rose granite. Officious, chattering dwarves with vast beards tied the barge up, then hustled aboard. They collected the sleeping warriors and took them ashore, carried them up a long road that led to a vast sprawl of a castle barely discernable atop a tall, sheer-flanked mountain.