by William King
“You exonerate your brethren so easily don’t you? It’s always easy for you priests.”
“I am not a priest. I am a soldier.”
Her mouth twisted in a faint moue of disapproval.
“You don’t like priests, do you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“They don’t like me. They don’t like anybody who is not what they define as human.”
“People are like that.”
“Again, you let your people off so easily.”
“I know what it is like to be an outsider,” he said.
“At least they think you are human.”
“I know some people who think Aquileans have horns, tails and cloven hooves.”
She laughed. “Do you?”
“Only the hooves. That’s why I wear boots.”
“Was it part of your cunning plan to infiltrate the Order of the Dawn?”
“Yes. What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Being down there in the depths, swimming among the rubble of kingdoms.” He was curious, as he often was about things he would never experience. It had led to some interesting conversations with Old Ones in his time.
“It’s strange and it’s beautiful. There are things that can stagger you with their loveliness. There are monsters that would give you nightmares. Well maybe not you, but you know what I mean. It is home for me in a way that the surface never really will be. It’s funny I sometimes think I have more in common with the Quan than with you surface dwellers.” She said it as if confessing to an unmentionable sin.
“They say the Old Ones made your people, just as they made the Quan.”
“They did not make the Quan. In ancient days the squid folk fought with the Old Ones and lost. Dhagoth enslaved those who survived. He made them his servants and his hunters. He used them to fight his enemies. He turned their last Leviathan into his palace. At least so my people believe.”
“The Old Ones did make your people though.” He was not sure why he was pushing that point home. Maybe he just wanted to get some reaction, see some emotion appear in those extraordinary eyes.
“So the Elders used to claim. They took ordinary human fisher-folk and transformed them. That is why we are still blood kin to the people of the Land. We still have much in common even if the Old Ones altered our lungs to let us breathe under the sea. The Quan came from somewhere else though, a different world beyond the sky.”
Kormak paused to consider the vista of the vast expanse of time and space conjured up by her words. How little they knew of the Old Ones and what they had done. They had bent entire peoples to their will before civil war brought their empire crashing down. Now all that was left were a few survivors of a race that had once been close to gods.
He thought of the gigantic statue he had seen emerging from the sea. Perhaps the same was true of his own people. Perhaps those who claimed that the world was caught in an inevitable downward spiral to chaos and destruction were correct.
“You are looking unusually thoughtful,” Rhiana said.
“It happens sometimes,” Kormak said. He smiled. “The fit always passes though.”
“Ever the man of action, eh?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I think you do yourself a disservice.”
Kormak shrugged and looked into her alien eyes, wondering what was passing through her mind. “We will see action soon enough,” he said.
She looked off into the distance, in the direction in which he suspected the Kraken’s craft lay. “I wonder what he is up to. He has spent years planning this and as much treasure as any man could use in a normal lifetime.”
“Some men desire things other than money. Some use it as a tool.” He did not want to tell her what Jonas had told him about the Kraken’s relationship with King Aemon. He had been given the knowledge in trust. She might have heard the Kraken talk about his brother, but he did not need to confirm any suspicions she might have.
“Or perhaps he plans on living longer than a normal lifetime. The Quan had that secret and if he becomes a lifestealer then he will have it too.”
Kormak considered this. He had met many men whose ambitions had reached far beyond those of ordinary mortals. He had killed most of them.
He wondered if he would succeed this time or whether it would be his own life that ended. Every time he set out on a mission that possibility arose. The odds foretold that one day death would claim him as it had claimed other Guardians.
It came to him then that the sea made him uneasy. He did not like being confined aboard a ship. He did not like the idea that if this floating wooden platform was lost so was his life. His skill at arms would make no difference so far out of sight of land. Mortal strength would not save him. He relied on this vessel and its crew.
Their vessel was huge and strong, but he had seen seas whose waves could swallow it like a shark taking down a minnow. He thought of the Kraken and the giant squid he had summoned. If such a thing were to attack them now, it would not matter whether he could kill it. They were too far from land to ever make their way back.
“What troubles you, Sir Kormak?” Rhiana asked.
“I find I do not like the idea of spending too much time at sea,” he said.
She smiled that dazzling smile. “I am the same on land. I never really feel at home there in the thin air and bright sunlight.”
Her smile vanished like the moon going behind a cloud. “I fear though that this matter will be resolved beneath the water. There is no land at the spot marked on the Kraken’s charts. He seeks something beneath the sea and if I read those charts aright it will be down deep. I fear that is where Leviathan lurks.”
And there it was, Kormak thought. She had put her finger on what was troubling him. He had a foreboding that he was going to have to go deep beneath the waves and face the Kraken and the Quan in their own environment.
“You don’t think we will overhaul him before he reaches it.”
She shook her head. “Not with these winds and these currents. We will not be too far behind him though. At very least we will have the opportunity to sink his ship. Perhaps we can do it before he goes into the Deeps.”
“That’s something at least,” Kormak said.
“If he does go below I will follow him,” Rhiana said. She waited for him to say something.
“As will I,” he said. “I have come this far to get him. I will go as far as it takes.”
The sun’s light on his face woke Kormak. He had slept on the sterncastle wrapped in his cloak. Rhiana stood nearby, hand cupped over her eyes, looking into the distance.
“They will spot the Kraken’s ships soon,” she said.
Kormak pulled himself upright. “You think?”
“I know.” She sounded certain. He did not bother to ask her how she could be. She had senses other than he did and she could use those of her familiar too, no doubt.
The lookout cried sail ho from overhead. Zamara shouted orders. The drums started beating, summoning the crew to their battle stations. Frater Jonas stepped up to the sterncastle and began to bless them all. For once the sailors stopped swearing and mouthed the words of the prayers. At such a time it did not hurt to make sure you stood in the Light of the Holy Sun. From force of habit, Kormak found himself saying the words himself.
Rhiana picked up a long spear she had brought. It looked like a harpoon. She tested its balance. She looked uneasy as the crew made their devotions.
Ahead of them the sleek lines of the Ocean’s Blade pierced the horizon. Someone aboard the ship had noticed the pursuit. Its many oars moved like the legs of a centipede as the trireme came round to face them.
It brought its ram into attack position and narrowed the ship’s profile, making it a harder target for their missile weapons. It came to Kormak that they could lose this fight even if they won it. If the beak of the ram stove in their sides, the Sea Dragon would go down along with its prey. They would never make
it home to land.
A short distance from the Ocean’s Blade lay the Kraken’s Reach. It too was preparing for war. Men flooded onto its decks and began to man catapults and ballistae. The sea anchor was being hauled up and sail added as the ship swung around into a position to attack.
Kormak took a deep breath and ran through the calming exercises he had been taught back on Mount Aethelas. He would worry about such troubles when they happened.
More and more crossbowmen moved around him, taking up firing positions on the forecastle. The ballista was crewed. The acrid tang of alchemical fire made Kormak’s mouth dry. Rhiana’s nostrils flared in distaste. Incongruously the dolphin flashed from the water as if leaping with joy.
“No monsters coming?” Kormak shouted. His words were barely audible over the clamour on the deck.
Rhiana shook her head but her expression was strange. “There is something but it is far, far below us. Leviathan perhaps.”
“Be sure to tell me if it rises,” he said.
She smiled. “You’ll be the first to know.”
He stared off into the distance. “They are not running,” he said.
“With the wind we have they could not get far,” she said. “They will try and take the weather gauge away from us, move into a position where we are sailing against the wind and where their oars give them the advantage.”
Kormak understood at once. The Ocean’s Blade had sweeps but the Sea Dragon was much larger, slower and more cumbersome, more like a floating castle than the long, sleek war-machine they faced. The trireme’s course would take it past them and to the south.
Zamara bellowed at the helmsman and the prow began to sweep round. The Ocean’s Blade changed its course too. Kormak noticed its sails had been taken down and it was now moving completely under oar-power. Against the wind, sails would only be a disadvantage. And again, it made the ship less of a target.
The engine crew shouted to each other and began to adjust the tension of the ropes on the ballista. They loaded an alchemical shell. The engine commander bellowed an order and the great arm swept forward, sending its missile arcing through the air towards the Ocean’s Blade. It fell short and the engine commander nodded, undismayed. He had just been trying to find the range.
Rhiana looked pale and tense. Her eyes narrowed. The long slits in her throat were sealed so tight as to be almost invisible.
Kormak’s hand toyed with the hilt of his sword. He kept it sheathed from force of habit. He would not draw it until a foe stood in front of him.
He flexed his knees, his movement in time with the vessel’s as he prepared himself to fight on the unsteady deck. From behind them, Zamara’s voice boomed out, giving orders, adjusting the course of the ship, to keep the distance between the two craft closing.
The catapult fired again.
The war-engine on the sterncastle joined in to bracket the trireme with fire. By accident or design, the war-galley turned tightly and began to come straight at them, avoiding both shots. The boom-boom-boom of its drums rolled across the water. Its oars moved in unison and it surged forward. It was going to ram.
Kormak took another deep calming breath. The Sea Dragon rolled in the swell. The galley raced closer. The second of the Kraken’s ships altered course. Its siege engines fired, sending huge rocks tumbling through the air. As they splashed into the nearby water huge spouts leapt into the air.
Rhiana’s knuckles went white on the shaft of her spear. Frater Jonas kept up his prayers from the rear of the ship. The war-engines fired at the Ocean’s Blade once more. One of the jars of alchemical fire hit. The warriors on the Sea Dragon roared triumphantly but nothing happened.
Perhaps the flask had failed to break, or perhaps its contents had proven to be inert. The intensity of the drumbeat from the trireme increased. The ship surged through the water, the great beak of the ram breaking the waves into a foaming mass.
Within heartbeats it was within crossbow range. The command to fire rang out. A hail of crossbow bolts flickered between the two ships. The pirate crew crouched out of line of fire. Towards the rear and on the sterncastle a few were visible from the elevated height of the Sea Dragon’s forecastle. The arrows scythed down on some but men with shields protected the helmsman and the captain. Kormak could see no sign of the Kraken.
Smoke rose from the decks of the Ocean Blade. Perhaps the ballista shot was taking effect after all. Less than two hundred strides of open water separated the two ships now. The ram aimed at the Sea Dragon like a great spear.
A massive rock tumbled out of the sky over the Sea Dragon. Wood splintered near Kormak. Men screamed. He heard howling and whimpering from nearby and saw a man lying crushed where a huge piece of shot had landed. It had driven a hole in the deck and the man’s broken body lay beneath it. Blood turned the deck around him red.
The Sea Dragon’s war-engines fired again. One shot missed. Another shot hit the Ocean’s Blade. This one erupted into a conflagration. Perhaps it had hit a pot of lantern oil.
Flames ran along the deck of the ship. Burning men leapt into the water, their bodies outlined by halos of green flame. Jumping into the water did not extinguish the fire. They sank into the depths still surrounded by the baleful alchemical glow.
Another hail of crossbow bolts flickered out at the oncoming galley. One struck a shield-bearer and sent him screaming to the ground. Another hit the helmsman. He slumped over the wheel. His weight moved the Ocean’s Blade’s rudder. It swept out of the line of its attack run.
The oars no longer rose and fell with a regular rhythm. Pirates leapt overboard, trying to get away from the flames. Some of the oarsmen, braver, drunker or more crazy than the rest, kept rowing. In the confusion of the battle they probably had not yet realised what had happened.
Zamara altered the course of the Sea Dragon. The great ship heeled round as the galley moved closer. It was not just the remaining oarsmen keeping it going—it was pure momentum.
The Ocean’s Blade burned from end to end. More and more of the crew jumped overboard.
Even crewless the galley would be deadly. The ram would not even have to bite deep. It would just need to hit them and have the flames spread to the Sea Dragon’s pitch-soaked timbers.
Another massive rock smashed into the Sea Dragon’s sails. The canvas tore with a ripping noise so loud it sounded like a scream.
Zamara bellowed more commands. The war-engines turned on their pivots to face the second pirate ship. The crossbow men strode across the deck to new firing positions. Kormak glanced over to see how far away the second enemy ship was.
Not so close yet. There would be more missile fire before any conflict. He glanced back at the blazing trireme. It was only thirty strides away now.
Twenty strides. He could feel the heat coming from the floating bonfire. Another man leapt overboard, screaming, covered in flame.
Ten strides. The Ocean’s Blade was so close now that the fire might leap between one ship and the other. Kormak held his breath.
The galley slid by the prow of the Sea Dragon as the great cog completed its turn. Its oars no longer moved. It was losing momentum. Soon it would be a floating funeral pyre for the men who had died aboard it. Kormak smelled the stink of their burning flesh now.
The second pirate ship bore down on them. It was even larger than the Sea Dragon. Armed men crowded its rigging. They lined its sides, howling battle cries, shouting challenges and obscenities. The engine crews kept a rain of missiles arcing between the ships. The Sea Dragon no longer lobbed alchemical fire. Zamara did not want to risk a collision with a burning vessel.
It was obvious the pirates wanted to get to grips with them and take them as a prize. It was equally obvious Zamara wanted to do the same to them. Kormak looked at Rhiana. She smiled, not afraid but wary.
Kormak studied the twisted faces of the screaming pirates and remembered the dead of Wood’s Edge, the raped woman, the men and children with their throats cut. He thought of all the other places he had s
een devastated by men such as these. He did not bother to force his anger down. He let it warm him. He welcomed the coming conflict.
The two ships came together with a mighty crash. Pirates vaulted over the railings and swung from mast to mast using the guy ropes of the sails. They came over with swords in their hands and daggers between their teeth.
At an order from Terves, the marines raised their shields and formed a solid line. They met the pirates with the discipline of first rate line infantry. They blocked blows with their shields and stabbed through the gaps with their swords. The crossbowmen kept firing into the enemy ship. Some pirates returned fire with a mixture of spears, darts and bolts.
Kormak took a moment to assess the situation. The pirates outnumbered them. The Sea Dragon had taken a beating while Zamara dealt with the trireme. The pirates charged with as unnatural savagery and no concern for their own lives.
Someone dropped out of the rigging above him, smiling, brought a long curved blade down towards his head. He stepped away, unsheathed his own blade from the scabbard and took the man’s head off. It rolled away, dribbling blood, still smiling.
The sheer weight of the pirates pushed the marines back from the barrier. More of the enemy swung down from above to attack from the rear.
Kormak leapt down from the forecastle, booted feet crunching into the shoulders of a pirate, sending the man sprawling. Even as he struggled for balance, Kormak stabbed down, piercing his target through the heart.
He confronted a small group of pirates. His blade flickered out, removing a hand, an arm, penetrating a chest. In as many heartbeats he killed three men. The rest did not even blink but came on fighting.
Drugged, judging by the way their pupils were dilated, or under the influence of evil magic. The image of men still rowing even as alchemical fire burned their ship sprang into his mind. These pirates were not going to retreat and their morale was not going to break.
Zamara’s marines had realised the same thing. Shouts of dismay went up under the berserker onslaught. Men slid in blood, tripped over loose entrails. The tight packed formation of the marines was breaking up.