by D. P. Prior
‘Where’s Lallia?’ Cadman suddenly remembered. ‘The strumpet who was with the bard?’
Ikrys sighed and sat on the ground, holding his head in his hands. ‘Long gone,’ he said with a yawn. ‘And I’m too tired to care.’ The gargoyle curled up into a ball and closed his eyes.
‘Up!’ snapped Cadman. ‘That’s the sort of sloppiness that will get us both killed. Up, and get after her, unless you want me to gift-wrap you and send you back to Verusia.’
Ikrys lifted his head and whined. ‘I need to rest. Channelling is not as easy as it looks.’
‘Do it,’ Cadman said. ‘Or our agreement is at an end.’
Ikrys clambered to his feet and unfurled his wings. ‘And I thought Blightey was bad,’ he said as he flapped into the air.
Cadman turned and started back towards the tower. For a moment he desired nothing more than the security of its reinforced walls, but he quickly realized it was an illusory safety, no better than the blanket of fat he wore. The Dweller was coming for payment. If it didn’t accept Rhiannon as a substitute for Shader he was finished. He only hoped the old monk, Limus, had read the situation right. He’d said there was a bond between her and Shader. Perhaps it would be enough.
Actions beget yet more actions, he chastised himself as he entered the tower and made his way to the rooftop where Rhiannon lay prone beneath the clouds. Cadman peered over the crenulations at his servants, animated corpses, simply extensions of his own will. Amongst them he could see the stooped and white-robed figure of Pater Limus. Somewhere in the depths of the cadaver’s ravaged soul Cadman could sense a grief welling up into resistance. Most of his victims never showed such autonomy; their simple souls were either long gone or ousted at the moment of reanimation. This one was strong. Too strong. Cadman raised his hands and let loose a bolt of darkness that swiftly reduced the old monk’s body to a bubbling putrescence.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Cadman bent double in agony as lesions tore through his fat flesh. The illusion vanished, but the cuts bit deep into his bones and frayed his ligaments.
He sensed Limus’s soul fleeing the remains of his body, felt its fear and self-condemnation. Cadman didn’t give a damn about the old priest’s fate, whether his soul was to languish in limbo or to slowly dissolve into oblivion. All that mattered was that, deprived of a body, it was unable to harm him, and that was an end to the matter.
THE TEMPLUM FLEET
The wind gusted and Shader slapped down the page of the Liber. He tried once more to focus on the verse but the salty ocean spray was spattering the paper and rendering it transparent. It would be all too easy to use that as an excuse to stop. He could equally well have used the frenetic activity of the Aura Placida’s crew as his reason to give up. There were teams of men in the rigging, and dozens more scuttling around the decks tying off ropes and securing anything that looked as if it could move.
The ship pitched violently, a torrent of water washing the planks and soaking Shader’s breeches. He probably should have moved the minute the turbulence started; there hardly seemed any point now. He tugged down the brim of his sodden hat and stared at the page, but his attention was immediately arrested by movement out of the corner of his eye.
Captain Podesta strode the decks sporting a red polka-dot neckerchief that covered the gash he’d received from Shadrak. He’d been lucky; a hair’s width to the right and he’d have bled out back in the jungle.
Shader blinked rapidly and tried to refocus on the verse. It was one of those oddities that were strewn throughout the Liber, passages that jarred with the reader and didn’t quite seem to fit: “Cessate et cognoscite quoniam ego sum Deus”—“Be still and know that I am God.”
Adeptus Ludo had pointed it out to him back at the seminary. It was the only passage in the entire Liber to use the word “Deus.” Elsewhere there was no mention of gods or God. Ain was simply “Ain” and Nous, the manifester of all things, was simply “Nous”. Eingana was a ravished angel; the Archon was referred to as a “Radiant One”, a being of light; and the Demiurgos was interchangeably called “the Father of Lies”, “the Deceiver”, and “the Smothered Radiance.”
The Grey Abbot had told Shader that Frater Gardol referred to these peculiar passages as the “golden thread” running through the scriptures. Adeptus Ludo had lectured about something similar, before he’d been reprimanded by Exemptus Silvanus. Follow its course, he’d said repeatedly, and it will guide you through the labyrinth of obfuscation.
Be still and know…
‘Cup of tea?’ Elpidio crouched down beside Shader and thrust a steaming mug in his face. ‘Sabas said you looked like you needed one.’
Shader closed his eyes, said a quick mental thanks to Ain, and then shut the Liber.
‘Thanks, Elpidio, that was just the excuse I needed.’ An interruption from without. There was no sin in that. Shader took the scalding cup, quickly switching it to his other hand so he could grip the handle. ‘How’s the boy from the Dolphin?’
‘Been coughing blood. Sabas says he’ll die if he don’t eat something. Just been sitting with him, poor sod. Can’t even tell us his name, so we’ve taken to calling him Little Amidio.’ Elpidio gave a quick look left and right. ‘Don’t tell the Captain.’
‘Knight’s honour,’ Shader said.
‘Eh? Oh, yeah. Good.’ Elpidio sat opposite Shader and copied his cross-legged posture. ‘What you doing, then? Praying?’
Shader set the cup down on the deck and thrust the Liber into his coat pocket.
‘Kind of,’ he said, taking up the tea again and tasting it. ‘Meditatio, they call it in the Templum. Reading a verse over and over until the meaning sinks in and illumination follows.’
‘Oh,’ Elpidio sniffed. ‘Sorry I disturbed you.’
Shader laughed at that. ‘Don’t be. I’ve seen more illumination at the bottom of a deep well.’
The ship banked and half the tea sloshed onto the deck.
‘So why do it?’ Elpidio asked.
Shader shrugged and took another sip. It was a good question, the same one he’d been asking himself for years. Why indeed? What was the point? Aristodeus would no doubt say it was all about self-regulation and fear of the unknown. Ludo thought it was a matter of love, of becoming more authentically human, selfless and self-giving. Those were ideals Shader admired, but they were also entirely alien to him. He supposed he was just hoping that if he followed the disciplines he might suddenly be turned inside out, destroyed and rebuilt, like a lightning-struck tower.
‘What’s that for?’ Elpidio pointed at the knotted prayer cord around Shader’s neck.
Shader rubbed one of the knots between his thumb and forefinger. ‘It’s an aid to Contemplatio,’ he said. ‘Helps to keep the mind busy whilst you sink into silence.’ Be still and know that I am God.
‘Oh,’ Elpidio said. ‘My brain’s always chattering. Seems nothing shuts it up, except maybe going up in the crow’s nest. Don’t know if it’s the height or the wind whipping my face, but that’s the only place I get any peace.’
Shader nodded. He could only imagine what the boy had been through with the loss of his parents, the family business, and even his home. He was undoubtedly treated well on the Aura Placida. Podesta was like a father to him, and Sabas was as close as a hulking Numosian could get to being a doting mother. It could be a lot worse, he guessed. Probably was a whole lot worse for Rhiannon, after what she’d been through at the hands of Gaston.
‘Where’s your creepy friend?’ Elpidio made a show of scanning the deck.
Shader nodded towards the forecastle. ‘Up there.’
Osric was looking out over the bowsprit, his mist-like body virtually transparent, a greyish outline pearled with sea-spray.
Shader started as someone stepped from the shadows and headed towards the hold. ‘Ho, Cleto!’ Shader raised a hand in greeting.
The sailor gave him a sullen nod and prowled off, muttering under his breath.
‘What you do to him?’ Elpidio said.
<
br /> ‘Didn’t let him kill the assassin back there in the jungle.’
‘Right,’ Elpidio said. ‘That was pretty dumb.’
Shader gave him a wry smile. Maybe it was. Maybe he’d come to regret it, but it had certainly seemed like the Nousian thing to do at the time.
‘As long as I don’t get a knife in the back, I can live with Cleto’s disapproval,’ he said.
Elpidio looked indignant. ‘He won’t do nothing. Not now you’re crew, more or less. Captain says that’s the way it is: no fighting among ourselves. We’re all family here.’
‘And families don’t fight?’ Shader regretted the words the second they left his mouth.
Elpidio seemed to sense his discomfort and forced a smile. ‘Mine don’t. Not anymore.’
Shader held the boy’s gaze. He saw the glistening of moisture around his eyes. Elpidio did nothing to disguise it.
‘Mum used to say tears made you grow,’ he said. ‘Reckon I should be bigger than Sabas by now. Bigger than a giant, maybe.’
‘Tell me about you family,’ Shader said.
Elpidio looked away and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Cleto says it don’t matter. They were just gutted like pigs and that’s all there is to it.’
‘That all they were?’ Shader kept his voice low and even. ‘The same as pigs?’
Elpidio sucked in a deep breath and faced Shader with bloodshot eyes. His cheeks were flushed, and freckles stood out on the bridge of his nose. ‘It’s what we all are, ain’t it? Shogging pigs. That’s what Cleto says: we eat, shit, and die and no one gives a…’
‘No one to mourn us? No one to remember?’ Shader said, more to himself than to Elpidio. ‘Everything we do is insignificant? Everything we think is delusion?’
Elpidio frowned. ‘Eh? You saying it’s all a load of bollocks? Nothing’s worth it?’
Shader shook himself clear of that train of thought. He’d been down that path too often in the past. ‘Thought that’s what you were saying, Elpidio. All this,’ he swept out an arm to take in the ship, ‘the great cities, music, art: all for nothing, all self-deception.’
‘You getting angry?’ Elpidio pushed himself backwards and uncrossed his legs.
‘So what if I am?’ Shader said. ‘None of it matters. We’re all just mindless animals. Even your parents’ carefully cultivated vineyard was really just a freak accident. If you wait long enough, perhaps a monkey will surpass them. Maybe this time next year we’ll be drinking vintage Merlot produced by a herd of antelope.’
Elpidio let out a blast of laughter and snot. ‘That’s not even funny.’ He creased up, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
‘Then why are you laughing?’
‘I’m not shogging laughing.’ Elpidio let out another burst and was shaking from head to toe.
Shader laughed with him, but stopped abruptly when he noticed the tears streaming down the boy’s face. ‘You miss them?’
Elpidio winced and then nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he croaked. ‘I miss them.’
Shader held out his arms and let Elpidio bury his head in his chest, sobbing without restraint. Shader ran his fingers through the boy’s hair and tried to find something to say that might bring even the slightest comfort.
***
Scores of black sails combed the waves like dorsal fins, sweeping ahead of the Aura Placida in a wide arc. Podesta passed Shader the spyglass.
‘Looks like they have big quarry, eh?’ he said, taking a swig from a bottle of rum.
Shader gasped as the scene came into focus. The reavers were bearing down upon a flotilla of white-sailed galleons. At this distance, and with the low cloud cover, it was difficult to be certain, but he could have sworn he saw the red Monas flapping from the masts of some of the ships.
‘That’s a Templum fleet,’ he said, almost not believing his own words.
‘Aye,’ Podesta said. ‘Let’s just hope the reason for their incursion into Sahulian waters doesn’t join all the other unsolved mysteries on the seabed, eh? The reavers outnumber them two to one; with those thunder-weapons they used on us, your Nousian friends won’t have a chance.’
Shader focused in on the Templum flagship. The decks seemed to sparkle as sunlight glanced off of burnished helms and blades. It was hard to pick out any details at this range, but he was certain armoured men were massing towards the aftcastle and swiftly forming up into disciplined ranks. He swung the spyglass and caught sight of a white-robed figure flanked by two men in black with splashes of crimson.
‘The Ipsissimus.’ Shader’s voice was hoarse.
‘What?’ Podesta took the spyglass. ‘Shog me for a salty seadog. What the Abyss would lure the old spider from his lair, eh?’
Podesta lowered the spyglass and pointed. ‘Two of the reavers are breaking away.’ He offered Shader the spyglass but there was no need. The black sails looked like rotten teeth at this distance, but Shader could clearly see them pulling back from the group and swinging towards the Aura Placida.
‘Decisions, decisions, eh?’ Podesta said.
Already there were murmurings amongst the crew, many of whom had stopped their work to gawp and gesture over the side.
The Captain squinted out over the waves. ‘If we take a south-westerly course, we might just make it close enough to Sahul for the Imperial fleet to get involved.’
‘Might?’ Shader could see the two reavers growing steadily more visible as they closed the distance. ‘We still have quite a lead on them. Surely we could…’
‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ Podesta said, scratching his beard.
For a moment he looked like the king of fools in his motley attire of garish colours, the tricorn crammed low on his head like a mockery of admiralty. The impression suddenly vanished, as if swept away by a gust of wind. Podesta drew himself upright, pulled back his shoulders and hollered.
‘Let go the mainsail! Hoist the lateens! Bring us about, Mr Dekker! Prow to the enemy and make it snappy! Let’s see if we can spear us a reaver with the bowsprit, eh?’
He gave Shader a mighty slap on the back and leaned out over the rail to observe the approaching ships. Cleto stepped out from behind the mast, gave Shader a sideways glance and moved to Podesta’s side.
‘Want me to break out the rest of the cargo, Captain?’
‘Good man, Cleto. Always like it when a sailor can read my mind. Ten men lining each rail to give the mawgs something to think about, the rest up on the aftcastle. That’s where we’ll make our stand if they board us. You know the drill. And don’t forget the oil!’
‘Captain,’ Cleto said as he hurried towards the hold.
‘Oh, and Cleto, tell the men, no firing till they get my order. Understood?’
‘Understood, Captain.’
Podesta turned to Shader, a grim expression on his face. ‘Don’t fancy our chances much,’ he said. ‘Best hope we have is to do the unexpected.’
‘Attack the two coming at us and then flee?’ Shader said, peering towards the main body of black vessels starting to surround the Templum fleet.
‘No, no, no,’ Podesta said. ‘See, even you expected that, and a mawg’s a much craftier creature than a knight or a priest, or whatever you are today. Straight down the centre.’ Podesta pointed to the channel between the approaching reavers. ‘Right into the heart of the swarm.’
‘You’re attacking the entire fleet?’ Shader said. ‘That’s suicide.’
Podesta shrugged and stared down at the waves. ‘Sometimes we don’t have all the choices we’d like,’ he said. ‘But if I’m going down to mawgs, it’s not going to be because they ran faster than me. And besides, I thought a holy avenger like you might appreciate the opportunity to save your friends.’
Shader didn’t think that was very likely.
So this is where it was going to end. He’d never considered death at sea. Not quite the slow fading from life he’d envisioned at Pardes. But this is what he was trained for, as were the fighting men he’d seen on the Templum flagship. They w
ere Elect knights, sworn to serve the Ipsissimus; sworn to die for him and to see it as an honour. Shader gripped the hilt of his sword and narrowed his eyes against the squall. This is where Ain had led him. So be it.
Cleto’s barking voice ripped him from his thoughts and announced the commencement of the path they had chosen. Sailors who’d only minutes ago been coarse and carefree fanned out along the starboard rail with the same long-barrelled weapons Cleto had taken to the jungle. The rest were massing on the aftcastle, many of them also brandishing the Aeterna-tech weapons, others with cutlasses and crossbows. Cleto strode the length of the deck, shouting commands in exactly the same tone as the Elect drill-sergeants had used. It was a marvel to watch: a line of scruffy seamen loading lead balls, tamping them down, and then raising the barrels to sight the enemy. Once he was satisfied, Cleto ordered them to lower their weapons and wait. He then ran to the aftcastle and went through the same routine.
Podesta was beside Dekker at the helm, gesticulating with sharp cutting motions of his hands and repeatedly uttering ‘uh?’ and ‘eh?’
to make sure he’d been understood. Dekker looked pale, rigid hands clutching the wheel as if it were holding him in existence.
A tortured howl came from the galley. Podesta’s jaw dropped, and he turned to Shader, eyes wide and frightened, bottom lip trembling.
Sabas emerged from the galley with a hefty cleaver in each hand. He’d removed his apron and wore only breeches and a vest. He’d always looked a big man, but at that moment Shader saw him as a giant, all bulging muscle, whereas in his usual attire he’d appeared stocky and not a little fat. He acknowledged Shader with a nod. The humour had left his eyes. They’d grown feral, and his lips were drawn back in a snarl. He came to stand before Podesta and lowered his gaze.
‘The boy?’ Podesta asked, his voice quavering.
Sabas shook his head. Podesta’s hand went to his mouth, tears streaking his cheeks.
‘Maybe it’s good he don’t have to go through this again,’ Sabas said in a low rumble.
Podesta nodded and wiped the snot from his nose. He sucked in a deep breath and drew his shoulders back. He flicked a look at Shader, but there was no sparkle in his eyes.