by Mike Wild
Her companion sighed and struck a match, lighting a huge pipe he had produced from a pocket. He blew smoke from his nose. Three distinct plumes of smoke at the same time.
Kali nodded. There was only one kind of nose that could do that, and the last one like it she’d seen had been on a desiccated and mummified face sealed inside the Old Race machine she had purloined to reach the Crucible, the machine she’d named ‘the mole’.
Three nostrils.
“Fark me,” Kali said. “You’re a dwarf.”
The figure snapped his gaze further towards her, so much so that the tin bells woven into his beard jangled. Then he took a deep, thoughtful draught of his ale and a pull on his pipe, inhaling hard before replying.
“Ya seem to be quite unphased about that fact. Most people might find it surprising that they were sitting having a beer with one o’ the Old Races. Particularly as most of ’em think we’re a myth.”
“I’m not most people. I’ve met some of your kind before. Sort of.”
“Pah! Bollocks.”
“It’s true. Okay, one of them had only a bit of dwarf blood running through his veins and the other, well, he was half dwarf, half elf – a dwelf called Tharnak.”
The dwarf’s eyes widened and without so much as a by-your-leave he planted both his palms on Kali’s chest.
“Hey! What the hells do you think you’re doing?!”
“Just checkin’ summat,” the dwarf said, apparently satisfied.
“Yeah, there are two, all right!” Kali snapped. “Pits of farking Kerberos, are you some kind of pervert?”
“What do you know about the dwelf?” the dwarf asked, ignoring her protest.
Kali, despite her indignation, was intrigued.
“Long story. The question is, what do you know?”
The dwarf stroked his beard, regarding her with great care.
“You haven’t told me. What brings you to Gransk, smoothskin?”
“I intend to take passage on the Black Ship.”
“Is that so? Well, now, that might present a bit of a problem.”
“How so?”
“Because I intend to sink it.”
“What the hells are you talking about?”
The dwarf began to chuckle heavily into his beer, as if she had asked the question of all questions. “That, smoothskin, is also a long story. A long, long, long story. Longer than you can imagine. And it begins where that ship is goin’.”
“You’re talking about Trass Kathra.”
“That I be.”
Kali’s eyes narrowed. “Is that where you’re from?”
The dwarf didn’t answer for a second. And when he did, it wasn’t an answer at all.
“Jerragrim Brundle,” he said, sticking out his hand.
“Kali Hooper.”
“Well, now, Miss Hooper. You and I have a lot to talk about.”
“We do?”
“Not least that I think I’ve been expecting you.”
“What?”
“As I said, it’s a long, long story. But here is not the place for it’s tellin’ –”
“Where, then?”
Brundle studied her. “That rather depends on what happens later.”
She got little more out of him, there and then, other than small talk over their continuing drinks. So many continuing drinks that even she began to feel their effects. But no more so than Brundle. After a few hours she was rocked back in her seat as the dwarf slammed his tankard into hers, sending ale flying everywhere.
“Ya know, for a smoothskin, you can down yer drink as well as a dwarf!”
Kali flushed. Despite the circumstances, she suddenly felt immensely proud, as if holding her own with one of the Old Races was vindication of everything she had tried to discover over the years. Maybe, she thought, that all she’d ever wanted – all she’d ever really wanted – was to get shit-faced with the people she admired the most.
“Yer not so bad yerself!” she responded, slamming her tankard into his.
Ale foaming and dripping off their heads, she turned to one of the bar’s tiny windows.
“It’s dark. Time to go?”
“Time to go,” Brundle agreed.
As Kali and Brundle exited the tavern, a figure sitting hunched at the bar turned slightly to watch them go, the light from the doorway illuminating a hard face framed with greasy black hair, and a strange ‘x’ shaped scar on his upper left cheek. He didn’t know who the shortarse was or why he was here – didn’t, in fact, even recall him coming in – but the presence of Kali Hooper came as no surprise at all. He expected he’d be seeing her again quite soon.
First, of course, he, too, had to get aboard the boat. The security he’d checked out earlier that day was comprehensive, and while he could have got aboard by taking down a couple of guards where they stood, they would eventually be missed, and that would spoil everything. No, if he wanted to get aboard he’d have them take him aboard, and for that the fact that even some veteran sailors in town refused to sail on the vessel worked in his favour. It was already short of crewmembers and he had significantly increased the odds that they would need to find more by arranging a little accident by the dockside some hours before. The cargo crates that had inexplicably sheared from their crane had crushed at least six of the pre-assigned crew and injured a good few more. Enough for Freel to have to resort to emergency measures to find replacements.
Gransk was not that big a port and so it was only a matter of time.
The stranger stared into his drink and waited for the crack on the head that signalled the arrival of the press-gang.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FAITH HAD indeed stepped down from alert as Kali and Brundle emerged into the darkness, and though patrols were still present in the streets, their regular circuits of the shadowy alleyways were easy to predict and avoid. The pair of them made their way down to the waterfront, but from the shouts and hammering and clanging of tools it was clear before they got there that the coming of night had not quietened their destination as it had the rest of Gransk.
The dockside remained a hubbub of activity, all of it centered around the Black Ship Kali had until now seen only from a distance. She and the dwarf hid behind crates – Kali the only one needing to duck to do so – and watched as Faith came and went on the gangplank, labourers carried supplies aboard, and workmen dangled on ropes at various points along the hull, securing rivets and otherwise effecting preparations for the ship’s seaworthiness. One of the strange, cigar shaped objects she had seen in the convoy was being loaded by crane, joining seven others which had already been secured to the deck near the ship’s stern.
All in all, It looked to Kali as if the ship was going to sail that very night.
And what a ship. Kali couldn’t take her eyes off it. As huge as it had seemed from the street, it seemed huger still here. Constructed of rune-inscribed metal plating rather than timber, its prow curved threateningly downwards like some great insectoid proboscis, and sweeping back from it, overshadowing its decks, were a series of static sails made not of cloth but metal again. The shape of half shells, eight of them, they appeared to be currently at rest, receding one atop the other, as squat almost as the ship itself, like some armoured carapace. The effect was so streamlined and organic, the vessel looked less ship than predatorial beast.
What struck Kali more than anything was that it also had two hulls. Each resting in the water some twenty yards apart, the vessel straddled them as a bridge might straddle pontoons in a river, and this made the ship seem even more solid, seemingly unstoppable in all of her dimensions.
Kali whistled softly.
“Never seen a cat before, eh?” Brundle said.
“Cat?”
“Catamaran. Two hulls make the vessel much more stable in the water. Standard design for a dwarven warship.”
“This is a dwarven warship?”
“Based on one, anyway. Though ya can tell not built with passion.”
“Why
in hells would they build a dwarven warship?”
“Seein’ as there’s no one to go to war with anymore, survival’d be my guess. They have to get through the Stormwall first, don’t forget. And then there’s uppards o’ two months’ sailin’ ahead o’ them, in some o’ the wildest seas there is. Then there’s the things that live out there. Chadassa Raiders, untershraks, the Great Weed. And, o’ course, there’s the weather – the sunderstorms can rip an ill-clad ship apart wi’ one strike.”
“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Kali said.
“Oh, that’s not all, smoothskin,” Brundle cautioned. “’Cos if they survive that lot, they’re gonna need somethin’ as immovable as me tenth wife’s arse when they face the swirlies…”
“Swirlies?”
“The swirlpools, smoothskin,” Brundle said, as if it were obvious.
“What are swirlpools?”
“They’re the barrier between the island an’ the rest o’ the world.” Brundle tilted his head upwards, at the looming shape of the Hel’ss. “A little legacy of our friend up there. Quite the lasting legacy, I might add.”
“Hold on again. There’s a relationship between the Hel’ss and Trass Kathra?”
Brundle laughed. “I wouldn’t call it a relationship as such. Unless o’ course yer thinkin’ o’ me and me thirteenth wife, may the bulbous bitch rot in Zlathoon. Nah, smoothskin, last time around that thing up there did its best to obliterate the island, an’ what it left behind makes what’s left o’ the Stormwall look like a squirt o’ piss from a babby’s knob.”
Kali shook her head, struggling with the surfeit of information. “Wait a minute? Last time around? Are you trying to tell me that the Hel’ss has been here before? And what do you mean – what’s left of the Stormwall?
“Like I said, it’s a long –”
“Enough! Who the hells are you, Brundle? Where do you come from?”
The dwarf shot her a glance, raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t ah tell ya, smoothskin? Trass Kathra’s me home. I’m what yer might call its caretaker.”
“What?” Kali said. “What?”
But her befuddlement fell on deaf ears. Brundle was already moving, taking advantage of a quiet moment on that part of the dock to shift position. With a growl of exasperation, Kali followed him to another hiding place nearer to the ship, behind a stack of barrels.
“Will you please tell me what’s going on?”
“Right now ah think we’d be better concentrating on what’s going on with the ship.” The dwarf pointed. “Take a look.”
Kali turned her gaze in the direction Brundle indicated. There was fresh activity on the gangplank – or for the moment, to be more accurate, before it. A number of wagons were arriving on the dock, and from the first of them Jakub Freel alighted, followed by a number of mercenaries. Kali was hardly surprised to see Freel here, but what did surprise her was what was forcefully disembarked from the wagons that lined up behind his.
Civilian prisoners. Hundreds of them.
“Well, now,” Brundle muttered. “This is interestin’.”
Kali ignored him and looked on as Freel and his men took up position at the head of the gangplank, inspecting the prisoners as they were ushered aboard the ship. Led by them in wrist and ankle chains, like slaves, Kali saw men, women and children who, by their varying modes of dress, seemed to have been taken from all across the peninsula. She knew instantly that she was looking at the ‘vanished’, those who had spoken out against the Faith and been imprisoned for their beliefs, and she gasped as she began to recognise some familiar faces amongst them. Too many familiar faces.
There were some of Jengo Pim’s men – among them, Pim himself – and there… oh, gods. Red. Hetty. Pete Two-Ties and others from the Flagons. There, too, were people who had become friends after helping her with supplies and information in the last year: Martha DeZantez, Gabriella’s mother; Abra, and Poul Sonpear, the mage from the Three Towers, his powers clearly constrained by what appeared to be a scrambling collar about his neck.
And there…
Dolorosa.
Dolorosa but not Aldrededor.
Alone.
The woman was injured – badly. Being carried aboard the ship on a stretcher. But despite her condition, still scowling. Spitting in the faces of the Faith gathered around her. Had she been able to wield a knife, she would have been slitting their throats.
Good girl, Kali thought. Yet still cringed as the woman was taken below decks with those who had preceded her.
Kali wasn’t having this. She made to move from behind the barrels but Brundle’s iron grip held her back.
“Easy, easy,” he said.
“Those people are friends of mine. Family.”
“All the more reason we get aboard that tub secretly,” Brundle countered. “You’ll not be able to help with one o’ the Sword’s namesakes stickin’ in yer belly, now, will ye?”
“Oh, so now we’re going aboard, are we? I thought you were going to sink her?”
“Ah may still have to. But for the time bein’, things have changed.”
“You’re right, there,” Kali responded angrily. She tried to struggle from his grip but Brundle reasserted his strength, pulling her back.
“Listen to me, smoothskin,” he growled, more serious than she had ever seen him. “It is imperative that you stay alive. Imperative, do you understand me?”
Kali swallowed, shocked by the outburst. “Why?”
Brundle smiled. “Ah think yer know that, lass. Ah think you know that.”
Kali pulled her arm away, and Brundle let her, knowing she was going nowhere. At least for the moment. Because then events took an unexpected turn.
Prisoners continuing to be ushered aboard, Jakub Freel took up position at the head of the gangplank and shouted across the harbour.
“Miss Hooper, I know you are out there And I would suggest you surrender yourself to me now!”
Dammit, Kali thought. The Eyes of the Lord must have got a good enough look at her after all. Or maybe Freel just expected her to be there – let’s face it, if she were in his shoes, she would. The question was, what was he up to? What happened if she didn’t surrender herself?
“Kali,” Freel went on. “We know each other well enough for me to call you Kali, don’t we? As you can see I am amassing a good number of your friends aboard this ship. A sufficient number that I am able to spare a few. Therefore if you do not reveal yourself within one hour, I shall kill one of them. If you do not reveal yourself thereafter, I shall kill another every ten minutes. Do I make myself clear?”
As crystal, you bastard, Kali thought. In fact the message was so clear that Freel didn’t dwell on it. His ultimatum delivered, he stepped down once more, going about his business as if a threat to commit mass murder was nothing to him. Nothing at all.
Beside Kali, Brundle blew out a breath.
“Ah don’t think ah like this man,” he said.
“I thought he was a friend, once,” Kali replied. She made to rise again and Brundle once more held her down.
“I thought we’d been through this?” he said.
“What choice do I have?”
Freel had her in a stalemate and the only way to break it was to take the initiative. But if she was going to give herself to Freel, she was going to do it her way. The only way she could.
And as the ship showed every sign of sailing soon, the time to act was now.
“You’ll get yourself killed,” Brundle warned.
Kali winked. “That’s never stopped me before. You sticking around?”
“Oh, aye, I’ll be sticking around,” Brundle replied. He seemed to find his answer amusing somehow.
Kali sighed. “And let me guess – you’ll tell me about it some other time?”
“That’s about the long and the short of it, smoothskin.”
Kali narrowed her eyes. “Was that a joke?”
“No,” Brundle said warily. “Why?”
“Well, you
know…” Kali said. She flattened her palm and moved it up and down, comparing their heights. But all she received in response was a blank expression. “Oh, never mind.”
Kali continued on, darting from crate to crate along the dockside, until she reached a spot behind where the prisoners’ wagons had arrived. Most of them had been embarked now and, as she’d hoped, those remaining were being manhandled by only a couple of Faith, confident their charges in chains would present them with little resistance. They were also just out of sight of the main part of the dockside, which served her purposes perfectly.
Kali waited while one of the two was occupied dragging a particularly recalcitrant prisoner from the wagon’s rear and then stepped up behind the other and tapped him on the shoulder. Clamping one hand over his mouth, she swiftly delivered four nerve-numbing blows to spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch, – and then caught his boggle-eyed, paralysed form as it fell, dragging it out of sight. There she delivered a knockout punch to the man’s face, just because she felt like it, and no more than a couple of seconds later, dressed in the Faith robes she stripped from her victim, stood beside his brother, who had only now managed to extract his charge.
Kali apologised mentally and jabbed the prisoner in his side, forcing him into line with his fellows. Their passage to the ship coincided with that of more Faith who, between them, dragged the semi-conscious forms of men who appeared to have been press-ganged, and, for the sake of camaraderie, she jabbed one of them in the side, too, quite harshly. The man, with a mane of long, black hair and a strange, ‘x’ shaped scar on his left cheekbone, bucked and, clearly not as out of it as he seemed to be, raised his head and glowered at her. The glower turned into an unfathomable expression as he caught sight of her face under her hood.
Kali frowned, though had no time to ponder the look as she and her companion, the last of the prisoners shuffling in their midst, reached the gangplank. A few yards above Jakub Freel stood momentarily studying each prisoner and, though this was the first time Kali had managed to get this close to him since the Sardenne – longed to find out what had happened to him – she knew she dared do nothing. If what she had planned was going to work convincingly, she had to walk a fine line between success and failure.