Corsair

by Brian Ruckley

  Yulan ignored him. His eyes followed the surprising keepers of this menagerie: children. There were perhaps a dozen of them, all young, all clothed in drab rags. All shuffling barefoot between the cages, sweeping away straw and dung that had spilled out onto the floor, pushing food through the bars. Some were hunched over. Some looked to be so thin they might collapse at any moment. Their dirt and rags and illness made it hard to tell how old they were.

  Kottren, having evidently noted Yulan’s gaze, said simply, ‘My children.’

  ‘Your children,’ Yulan echoed.

  He had seen a similar kind of suffering among Corena’s people. Had even known it once or twice himself when young, under the crushing weight of near-famine. The anger he felt stirring in his breast might be dangerous, for him as well as others, so he hid it away.

  ‘Every one sprung from my loins,’ Kottren muttered. ‘I care for them best as I can, now their mothers’re gone.’

  Yulan wondered at the fate of the mothers, but did not enquire. He doubted there was anything to be gained from further exploration of the fetid swamp that was Kottren.

  ‘D’you want to feed them?’ Kottren was asking. ‘Perhaps the lion?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘You’ll let me feed you, at least,’ Kottren said, beckoning one of the nearest children.

  She came – Yulan thought it was a she – on unsteady legs. Yulan noted that most of the other children stopped where they were, scattered about the hall, to watch. There was something in the way they held themselves, their expressions … anxiety, perhaps? Trepidation? He felt a tension tightening the musty air. It did not quite fit Kottren’s casual gesture and the calmness with which the girl responded. So much here felt subtly – or not so subtly – off-kilter, as if the Corsair King’s imbalances had seeped into everyone and everything.

  ‘I should be getting back to the boat,’ Yulan said, just a little more curtly than he intended.

  The girl stood before him, gazing up at him. Her eyes were red-veined and had some sort of encrustation at their corners. There were sores on her face. Her fingers were crooked, over-aged. She looked to Yulan like misery given form. He found himself wanting to give her a smile, to offer some small comfort.

  ‘She can fetch whatever y’want from the kitchens,’ Kottren said.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Yulan. He found it difficult to shift his eyes away from that girl, but he did. ‘I’m awaited. What message shall I take with me?’

  ‘Message? Oh, the tithe notion?’

  ‘One-tenth of everything the fishing boats land, delivered up to you each month for as long as you live, in payment for peace.’

  It was an offer riddled with trips and traps, only to be made if the Corsair King proved – as he had so far – resistant to intimidation. None but an idiot would seriously entertain it for long. Yet Kottren stood there, grasping and tugging at the fringes of his russet beard. For all the world, it looked as though he was giving the matter serious thought.

  ‘I’ll sleep on it,’ Kottren mused, almost to himself. ‘Sometimes answers come, y’know? Creeping into a sleeping head like … spiders, I suppose.’

  He smirked unappealingly at Yulan.

  ‘Lake here’ll walk you back to your boat. I’ll bring you my answer down there in the morning. Early. I always rise early. Keeps the years from weighing too heavy, y’know?’

  IV

  There was little vegetation on the island. Stretches of short grass strewn with pink and white flowers were interrupted by bare rock and patches of gritty soil. Although a few stubborn bushes had rooted themselves in crevices, they could hardly be said to be thriving. It all meant there was little shelter from the wind blustering across the low, sloping isle, but Yulan – to his surprise – found it rather pleasant. Without the unsteady deck of a fishing boat beneath him, there was a certain appeal to the vast sky and the clean wind.

  There might be little greenery, but there was life in abundance. The spine of the island had been colonised by thousands of gulls. Their nests were all around, even within a pace or two of the path down which Yulan and Lake walked. Their quarrels and conversations filled the air, a cacophony riding white wings.

  ‘You used to be an Orphanidon?’ Yulan said as they walked through the tumult.

  ‘I did.’

  Yulan could not see Lake’s face, for Kottren’s bodyguard followed behind him. He imagined it to be entirely still and expressionless.

  ‘You don’t look the part,’ he said. ‘Not now, if you ever did.’

  No answer came to that. It had been an easy and crude jab, Yulan knew, but he had to take the measure of this man somehow.

  ‘You’re very far from home, in more ways than one,’ he continued. ‘I thought being an Orphanidon was all about noble service to the Empire, not selling your sword to mad bandits.’

  The gulls were growing angry as the two men passed through the heart of their nesting grounds. White shapes lunged down out of the sky, screaming accusations. Some dived so close to his head that Yulan could feel the sweep of their wings. He heard Lake’s quiet reply clearly enough, even among those distractions.

  ‘I have not been an Orphanidon for many years. I serve as I please.’

  The accent was unfamiliar, certainly not that of any native speaker Yulan had ever met. It proved nothing, but it could be the voice of an Imperial exile.

  ‘It’s an inglorious cause you’ve chosen to adopt,’ Yulan observed.

  ‘Less so than was the Empire of Orphans.’

  Fragments of eggshell crunched beneath Yulan’s feet.

  ‘You fell out of love with your masters, then,’ he said. ‘That’s a point in your favour. Kottren Malak might be mad, but the Orphans make him look sane as sane can be.’

  ‘Just so. I choose to serve a lesser madness, and have thus improved my station.’

  There might have been a whisper of wry humour in that. It really was hard to tell with Lake, and Yulan had always thought himself rather good at reading a man’s tone.

  ‘I hope your Corsair King will not force us to our swords,’ he said. ‘His madness might be the lesser, but it’s still not worth dying for.’

  ‘You think I would die?’ Lake asked, and Yulan definitely heard amusement in that. ‘I know the Free, and your great capacities and terrible magics. But you do not know the Corsair King as well as you think. Even if all your hundreds came to this place, his would not be the only people dying.’

  Yulan stopped and turned to face his companion. Lake stood four or five paces behind him. Just out of sword reach. Whatever his past had truly been, the man was capable and careful.

  Before Yulan could say anything, a rush of wings had him ducking away; too slow to avoid the stabbing impact of a beak on his skull. Yulan cursed and touched his hand to his scalp. It felt wet and sticky. A moment later, he could feel the blood trickling down his forehead.

  ‘First blood. It is best to keep moving,’ Lake said impassively. ‘These birds defend their families, even at peril of their own lives.’

  Corena’s scow was moored in the lee of the island’s furthest point, where the rocks sloped away beneath the sea. Kottren’s motley little fleet had its own berthing in a cliff-ringed cove beneath the castle. They had not allowed the fishing boat anywhere near that.

  The waters looked calm but Yulan still felt a twinge of foreboding at the prospect of a night afloat. At least he and Lake were spared any further aerial assaults. For whatever reason, the gulls chose not to nest down here on the lowest ground.

  ‘You can hail a boat to take you aboard,’ Lake said. ‘The Corsair King will meet you here in the morning.’

  Yulan regarded the grizzled warrior. He read a subtle tension in the man’s posture and eyes. His own mimicked it, he knew.

  Yulan’s every instinct told him this was all still edging its way towards bloodshed. He knew a good deal about woodworking and carving and had sometimes heard craftsmen say that a piece of raw wood held within it a shape
that it wanted to become. He felt imprecisely but strongly that the day now drawing to a close had the shape of a bloody tomorrow within it, willing its own expression.

  He suspected that Lake had the same sense. Perhaps even the same thought: This man might be dangerous if the time comes. Why wait for that time to choose its own moment?

  ‘You wonder whether you should try to kill me,’ Lake said.

  Which was at once a good deal more blunt and more precise than Yulan was entirely expecting. He let his hand drift just a touch closer to the hilt of his sword. Barely noticeable.

  ‘You hesitate,’ Lake continued in a matter-of-fact way, ‘which means you have lost. If you attempt me now, I will kill you.’

  Yulan knew, as fact not hubris, that he was better with a sword than at least nineteen out of any twenty men in the Hommetic Kingdom. The problem was that this one had the manner and assurance of that troublesome twentieth. In all likelihood, Hamdan was watching from the boat offshore and, given his absurd talents, could probably put an arrow or two in Lake even from there, but that would be of little consolation if Yulan was already dead.

  ‘I have spent three times the years since your mother squeezed you out learning the matter of violence,’ Lake announced. ‘I have embraced it and made it my own.’

  Yulan forced some looseness into his shoulders and a smile onto his face.

  ‘I’m sure you’re very happy together, but I didn’t come here to kill anyone. Only to lift the burden of Kottren off from the backs of the fisherfolk.’

  For the first time, Yulan thought he saw the faintest flicker of contempt in Lake’s face.

  ‘You should not disavow your willingness to kill. You diminish and weaken yourself. Now I know, still more certainly than before, that if you attempt me I will kill you.’

  ‘I thank you for the lesson,’ Yulan said lightly. ‘I regret any disappointment it may cause, but I’ll not be attempting you now. Perhaps another time?’

  Lake gave a little nod of his head. Yulan turned his back on the warrior and waved to the fishing boat.

  ‘You should consider, when you ponder what is to come, that I am not the greatest danger on this island,’ Lake said behind him. ‘There is more power here than you see, and it will oppose you.’

  Yulan steadfastly kept waving, which took a certain effort given how much he disliked the sound of that.

  V

  ‘How could he have an Orphanidon and something worse fighting for him?’ Hamdan asked in disbelief.

  ‘What’s an Orphanidon?’ Corena asked.

  ‘Warriors of the Empire of Orphans,’ Hamdan explained before Yulan could say anything. ‘The Emperor’s personal army and the best killers there are, most’d say. Those who’ve not met the Free, anyway.’

  They were sitting cross-legged on the deck of the fishing boat. It was rocking so gently that Yulan found if he kept his eyes fixed on the planks he could master his nausea. Out in the darkness he could hear the faint sound of waves slapping rocks, but they sounded half-hearted. The sea was not making war on him tonight.

  ‘One man can’t make much difference,’ Corena said.

  ‘It’s not about the number; it’s the nature of the man,’ Hamdan said, shaking his head. ‘Whole history of the Free proves that. Orphanidons are much the same.’

  ‘He might be lying about the something worse,’ Yulan said. ‘But one Orphanidon’s enough to fret over, anyway.’

  He flapped a hand at a fly buzzing in his face, wishing it would go and immolate itself in one of the torches burning around the boat to keep the night at bay.

  ‘I failed. Half the purpose of me going in there alone was to see what faced us if it came to the sword. All I bring back is questions.’

  Hamdan snorted, almost dismissively.

  ‘Questions we didn’t even know to ask before. Don’t go flogging yourself for missing the mark of perfection. You’ll have flayed your back to the bone by the time you’re my age, believe me.’

  ‘Of course it comes to the sword,’ Corena said with more than a hint of irritation.

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Hamdan. ‘Not yet, anyway. If your Corsair King’s foolish enough to take a tithe from you, even Munn of Festard won’t be able to shrug that off. Lords can’t stand by while bandits go around squeezing all the juice from their fruit, can they?’

  Corena scowled and rose to her feet. She stamped away, shouting angry orders at her unlucky crew.

  ‘You’ve all the gentle touch of a rock,’ Yulan observed.

  Hamdan did look a little guilty. He rubbed at his eye wearily.

  ‘And you’re very serious for a young man,’ he grunted.

  That was true. Yulan had been serious for a child, serious a youth. Nothing had changed yet, if it ever would. He had always felt, from his earliest years, that there was a bigger world beyond his homeland. One where greater deeds and consequences awaited him. He had followed the scent of them north, out of the wastes. To the Free.

  ‘But you’re right,’ Hamdan continued. ‘I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It’s been a bad day. You’ve had solid ground under your feet. Me? I’ve been stuck out here with only the waves for company.’

  He wobbled his hand in imitation of the rocking sea and grimaced.

  ‘True, though, isn’t it? If the Free turning up at his door isn’t enough to frighten this Kottren off, him being stupid enough to try for a tithe’s about the least painful way out of this I can see.’

  ‘He’s not nearly as scared of us as he ought to be, that’s for sure.’

  ‘How many swords did you count?’ Hamdan asked.

  ‘Twenty-three. Could easily be the same again out of sight.’

  ‘Who wins, if it’s you and me against fifty of them?’

  Yulan shook his head.

  ‘Before the Orphanidon showed up on the game board, I’d have said us. Now? Maybe still us? Unless Lake’s telling the truth and there’s even worse than him waiting for us. I tell you, though, it might be Kottren Malak needs killing more than any man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Oh, you’re young,’ smiled Hamdan ruefully. ‘The world’s got far, far worse than Kottren Malak in its quiver. You carry on the way you’re going, might be you even get the chance to kill some of them. Just make sure you’re getting paid well to try it, because they’re the ones liable to kill you right back.’

  A slab of the hard, grainy bread that passed for food on the boat landed suddenly in Yulan’s lap. He started and looked up at Corena.

  ‘Not much to eat, but us tithe-fruit make do with what we have,’ she said as she threw another to – or perhaps at – Hamdan.

  ‘He didn’t mean to offend,’ Yulan said on behalf of his comrade, who nodded in confirmation.

  ‘I daresay,’ she grunted. ‘Folks often don’t. Tell me this: we going to get our throats cut in the night?’

  Yulan shook his head. ‘Hamdan and I’ll take watches by turn. I don’t know what’ll happen tomorrow, but I promise we’ll live to find out.’

  He watched her back as she went to organise her own little crew for the night.

  ‘He has children in there,’ he said softly. ‘Kottren. We should get them out.’

  ‘Careful, son,’ Hamdan grunted. ‘Might be you think too much. If you didn’t want to be different, you’d no business joining the Free. Folks’ll fear you, maybe admire you. There’s not many of them will end up liking you, no matter what you do.’

  The archer stretched himself out, setting his back to the deck and clasping his hands behind his head. He closed his eyes.

  ‘I’ll sleep first, unless you tell me otherwise.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Yulan leaned on the gunwale, staring out over the island. A half-moon was lighting it with faint touches of greyish silver. The ripples on the surface of the sea glinted. In the far distance, he could see feeble little touches of orange light: torches or lamps in Kottren’s castle.

  He had toyed with the notion of creeping back in there tonight. Fin
ishing things quickly. He had not seen quite enough in his time ashore to be certain of that outcome, though. He did not know where in the crumbling castle Kottren slept, or whether Lake watched over him.

  And there was still the chance, however slender, that this all would end without blood. There was no way to know, but Yulan could not help playing things out in his mind. Since childhood he had sometimes seen both the past – memories – and the future – possibilities – more clearly than those around him. It was part of why he had left his home in search of something more. It was part of why Merkent had sent him to this forsaken island. The Captain of the Free had told him: ‘You’ve got talents, but they’re like unbroken horses: no use to anyone until you prove you can ride them. So let’s find out if you know how to ride.’

  ‘Told you, you think too much,’ Hamdan said.

  Yulan looked down at him.

  ‘I can hear you thinking from here,’ said Hamdan, eyes still closed. He rolled onto his side. ‘Just keep your watch well. The answers are waiting for us on the other side of the night, but tomorrow can’t talk until it gets here.’

  ‘All right,’ Yulan said.

  ‘And don’t get sick. If you empty your stomach on my head while I’m asleep, I’ll throw you overboard.’

  Yulan made a sound halfway between grunt and laugh.

  ‘I mean it,’ Hamdan said.

  ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘Neither can I. What’s that got to do with anything?’

  VI

  ‘What in the name of all the entelechs is he wearing?’ Hamdan asked, staring in poorly concealed amazement at the Corsair King.

  Kottren Malak was advancing slowly down the path towards Yulan, Hamdan and Corena. He came with close to a score of attendants and fighting men. Some of the former flanked him, holding up tall staves that attracted the ire of the seagulls and thus spared Kottren’s head from their attentions. Yulan wished someone had told him of that trick yesterday. As Hamdan said, though, the most striking thing was Kottren’s attire.

  ‘Are those seashells?’ Hamdan asked.