Corsair

by Brian Ruckley

  They nodded.

  ‘I need you two to wait here for Hamdan and me to come back. We have to go and do something, then we’ll come back to you and we’ll all jump down together. Is that all right?’

  He did not know if it was trust he was seeing in their eyes, but he felt the burden of it settling upon him even so.

  ‘We’ll be back very soon. If anyone else comes before us, or if anything bad seems to be happening, you just jump. Don’t wait for us. Jump down to Corena and she’ll carry you away from here. Do you understand?’

  Again the nods.

  ‘Brave girls,’ he said. It sounded foolish, yet it was true and what else was there to say?

  They stood, the four of them, and watched Corena clamber onto the balustrade. Yulan lifted Tessunt up to her. The boy did not want to go and whispered, ‘No,’ in Yulan’s ear.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Yulan whispered back. ‘This lady here, she’s the only one of all of us who knows about boats and water and things like that. She’ll keep you safe.’

  Corena stood there for a moment, Tessunt wrapped around her, his eyes clamped tight shut. Then she was gone, before even Yulan was quite ready for it. She jumped out and away from the balcony, one arm outstretched, the other holding Tessunt tight.

  They all leaned out to watch her plummet down. Her hair streamed in the wind. Tessunt was wailing. Then Corena hit the water with what seemed terrible force. A foaming white fountain rose and she and the child were lost in it. Swallowed. Only to reappear a moment later. Corena was half-swimming, half-wading towards the nearest of the boats. Tessunt was coughing and spluttering.

  ‘See?’ Yulan turned to Navene and her sister, meticulously concealing the uneasy feeling the sight had woken in the pit of his stomach. ‘It’s easy.’

  XII

  ‘We’ve already agreed we can’t swim, haven’t we?’ Hamdan said.

  He was following Yulan around the cooling corpse of the cave bear, clambering over the heaped rubble that had trapped it.

  ‘That boy’s done it,’ Yulan observed. ‘Those girls are ready for it. I’m sure we can manage.’

  ‘Merkent does like to say that the Free always finds a way, but there’re ways and then there are ways …’ whispered Hamdan glumly. ‘And don’t you pretend you’re looking forward to it any more than I am.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not,’ Yulan said with heartfelt conviction.

  ‘Probably doesn’t matter,’ Hamdan observed, ‘since I reckon you’re about to get us killed, more likely than not.’

  ‘We’ve got to try,’ Yulan said, peering cautiously around a corner. Finding nothing amiss, he led the way on. Deeper into the keep.

  ‘The Orphanidon says he’s bound to the girl. Alone, they might each be worse than Kottren Malak ever was. Together … I don’t know. I don’t know how far we get, however fast a boat we’ve got, if they decide they don’t want us to go. And what if she’s not lost yet? What if this Enna’s still there to be saved?’

  ‘I’ve not got the blood of a leader running through my veins, son,’ Hamdan smiled. ‘Merkent seems to reckon you might have and believe me, I don’t envy you for it. All I know is, we probably don’t get far from here if we leave behind a crazed Clever who doesn’t want us to, and neither do those waifs you’ve adopted. You ready to kill another child to save those three if you have to?’

  Yulan shook his head at that, not in denial but to loosen the question’s grip. He did not have to answer it yet, and did not want it tangling up his thoughts like a creeping vine, distracting him.

  The building was groaning around them. A wind was blustering back and forth. There were seams of light, Yulan realised, leaking through jagged cracks in the walls. The bear’s fate was on his mind.

  ‘Being part of the Free, and all of this – it can’t just be about the payment, and feeling alive,’ he muttered. ‘We have to be trying to finish what we start. Doing what’s needful. Always finding a way, like you say.’

  ‘Spoken like …’ Hamdan almost laughed. ‘… well, spoken like someone who might be about to get himself killed, and me along with him.’

  Of the two huge doors that opened onto the menagerie hall, one was hanging at a graceless angle, its metalwork twisted. The other was shattered. Less than half of it remained attached to the hinges. The rest lay in pieces and splinters in the corridor outside, strewn around the mangled hunk of knotted iron that must have exploded out through it. That iron was, Yulan guessed, the remains of one of the doors from the cages within.

  He exchanged a glance with Hamdan, and saw in the archer’s eyes the same serious concentration he felt in himself. They kept a fair distance between them as they entered the hall, one drifting left, the other right. There were no torches or lamps here now, as there had been when last Yulan stood in this chamber. There was light, though, for there were holes in the walls. A gap in the ceiling. Rubble was scattered across the floor. A wind ruffled Yulan’s hair. He advanced slowly.

  ‘Enna?’ he said.

  The girl was sitting almost exactly in the centre of the hall. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. Her head was down, her face hidden, tucked away into that cave made by arm and knee. All around her, the empty cages began to shake. Their open doors swung back and forth. Their bars clattered and trembled as if in the grip of some tremendous tempest. But there was no tempest. Only the same constant swirling of agitated air that pervaded the rest of the keep. And a little girl sitting alone in the midst of it all.

  Alone apart from the dead. There were bodies on the floor, men and women alike. Each one with the inimitable loose emptiness of death. And there was the rent corpse of the great lizard that had once resided in one of those cages. The huge reptile had been torn almost in half by some huger, fiercer foe. Its entrails were spread across the flagstones.

  Enna slowly lifted her head.

  ‘Who killed my father?’ she asked.

  There was an ominous weight to her tone, even though her voice was strangulated and stretched out and unmistakably that of a young child. The rattling of the cages almost drowned it out. Yulan could see the anguish in her red eyes quite clearly. Those eyes had been veined with red the first time he saw them; now dark crimson was their only colour save the black of the pupil. Blood vessels had ruptured in there.

  ‘Who killed my father?’ Enna asked again, more forcefully. She seemed to be looking at them, but Yulan could not tell whether she was blind or not.

  Out of the side of his eye, he caught the movement of Hamdan raising his bow. Yulan hissed and shook his head.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said.

  One of the cages screeched as it buckled, the bars folding like straw. Its door twisted, tore itself from its hinges and crashed down, ringing like a dull bell on the stone floor.

  ‘Enna,’ Yulan called. ‘Can you hear me?’

  The floor was shaking beneath their feet.

  ‘Who killed my father?’ the girl cried out, the cry all grief and anger and despair boiling around one another in hopeless bewilderment.

  ‘Enna, it is …’ Yulan began, and lost the rest of the words when a knot of air, solid as a giant fist, punched him in the centre of his chest and staggered him. The same gust howled on and barrelled into Hamdan, sending the arrow he had got to his bowstring flashing up harmlessly to strike the roof.

  Enna was rising unsteadily to her feet. No, not to her feet, Yulan realised. Onto hands and knees. Crawling, in her stained and loose gown, towards them. Or perhaps towards the doors.

  ‘Give him back,’ she was raging, and the need in her cry was enough to break his heart.

  He made to close on her, not even knowing what he would do if he reached her. He could see the image of him embracing her in his inner eye, but he was acutely aware too of the weight of his sword in his hand.

  In the event, he did not reach her. The floor bucked beneath his feet, kicking him up. As his feet left the floor so the flailing wind took hold of him and tumbled him. He was s
wept backwards, helpless as a straw on a storm, and slammed into the wall to one side of the doors. The back of his head smacked against stone. He fell to his knees, his vision blurred. There was a roaring in his ears, blasting at him from within the air itself.

  He blinked and saw Enna rising unsteadily to her feet, hobbling past him into the open doorway. There were strips of blood across the back of her gown. Old welts, re-opened, bleeding once more. Anguished memories of the past and its terrible, tangled meanings all raw and fresh in her body.

  Beyond her, Hamdan had been thrown down just as Yulan had. He was scrabbling for his bow.

  ‘We’re all going,’ Enna was saying. ‘We’re all going to find him. All together.’

  She glanced at Yulan as she turned in the doorway and stood there upon the threshold of the wrecked menagerie. Her red gaze fell upon him, though he did not believe she really saw him, or knew him. The awful extremity of her distress and fury destroyed cages, but it was not setting her free.

  ‘I hate you,’ she said. ‘Where are they? Who killed my father? I want everyone.’

  Again the walls and the roof and the floor trembled. A fever had hold of the castle, and shook it. Blocks of stone fell and shattered with thunderous booms.

  Yulan pushed himself up and forwards. He drew back his sword and swept it in at Enna’s head. Fearing, as he had never done before, what he was about to do and what it would mean to him. But the sword never reached the child. Another blade blocked it and pushed it back.

  Lake stepped between Enna and Yulan. He had his shield up over his head. Debris from the arch of the doorway, and from the roof above, pattered onto it.

  ‘She is my charge, my promise,’ the Orphanidon said.

  The shield dipped suddenly and an arrow Yulan had not even seen coming smacked into it and stood there like a quill. Yulan took a step back. He was not as steady on his feet, or as clear-sighted, as he would have wished to be if he must face Lake once more.

  ‘She’s going to shake this castle to pieces,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing.’

  As if in confirmation of his words a piercing screaming of metal erupted behind him. First one of the cages, then another and another unfolded like an opening flower, the bars tearing themselves free and spreading. Splaying out.

  ‘Enna,’ the Orphanidon shouted without looking at her. His eyes darted between Yulan and Hamdan. Between sword and arrow, both aimed at him.

  ‘Enna,’ Lake cried again. ‘It is Lake. I can help you, child. I can keep you safe.’

  Yulan could not clearly see the girl behind the Orphanidon.

  ‘I can’t hold it,’ he heard her say. ‘I can’t send it back. It’s all wrong. I just want everyone to …’

  Whatever the last word she spoke, Yulan did not hear it. None of them did, for a storm rushed out from her. A wind such as Yulan had never known, with weight and malice and irresistible strength. It flung him backwards, spinning and sliding him across the floor. As he went, helpless, he lost hold of his sword. He saw Lake hurled high, almost to the ceiling, and coming spinning down like a loose-limbed doll. He saw Hamdan tumbling, trying to roll with the blast.

  Stone slipped from stone and the furthest section of the hall began a slow collapse. The grinding rumble was engulfing and deafening, but Yulan heard Enna through it: screaming not with a human voice but with the voice of the sky, howling out the tempest.

  And then it was snapped out. As if a door had been slammed shut. The air passed in an instant from chaos to calm. The noise quietened. Enna’s cry was gone. As Yulan lifted his heavy head, peering through shifting veils of dust, he saw that she herself was gone. The doorway stood empty.

  XIII

  Yulan rolled onto his front and pushed himself up. Every muscle ached. His sword lay close by. He picked it up. Hamdan was lying unmoving, close to the far wall. Yulan limped across to the archer. His ankle throbbed with the memory of the twist he had given it in the passage up from below.

  As he knelt at Hamdan’s side, searching for signs of life, he heard a wet moan and looked round. Lake was impaled upon one of the splayed bars of a cage. The round iron shaft had punched through the shoulder of the Orphanidon’s shield-arm. The ageing warrior was trying to pull himself free. A fatal wound, Yulan guessed, feeling a distant, unexpected kind of regret at the thought.

  Hamdan was not dead yet, at least. The archer stirred beneath Yulan’s hand.

  ‘Get up,’ Yulan said.

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ Hamdan rasped indistinctly.

  Yulan heaved him to his feet and got his shoulder under Hamdan’s arm. He half-dragged him towards the door.

  ‘Find a way, you lazy bastard,’ he hissed, for want of anything more helpful, and was rewarded with a grudging snort of a laugh.

  Together they stumbled their way out into the passage, weaving around chunks of fallen stonework and great cracks laid into the floor. Hamdan’s strength grew bit by bit, and Yulan was grateful as the weight laid across his own shoulders diminished.

  When they came to the corner, ready to turn and work their way past the dead bear to the waiting balcony, a sound behind him made Yulan pause and look. Enna was there in the corridor, back by the doors to the menagerie hall. She had one hand pressed to the wall and was leaning against it. Her head was down so that her lank hair hid her face.

  ‘Where are my brothers and sisters?’ Yulan heard her groan. ‘I want them. Now.’

  A rising wind brushed Yulan’s cheeks and he felt hope carried away upon it. He glimpsed a future and felt it pulling him, irresistible.

  He shook Hamdan off and pushed the archer inelegantly towards the bear, and the balcony beyond it. He did not know if Hamdan had seen or heard Enna.

  ‘Make sure the girls are safe,’ he said without taking his eyes off Enna. ‘Get them down to the boats, if they haven’t gone already.’

  ‘What?’ Hamdan said, sounding still dazed.

  ‘Now!’ Yulan shouted. ‘Jump. I’ll be a step behind you, that’s all.’

  The archer hesitated. Yulan glared at him, gathering up all the command and authority he could.

  ‘Go!’ he snarled. ‘Ready the boat.’

  Hamdan frowned and moistened his lips, licking away the dust of the crumbling castle.

  ‘I’ll see the girls are safely gone, but I’m not jumping without you,’ he muttered as he moved towards the dead bear. He sounded weary, pained. But firm.

  Yulan only nodded, and started back towards Enna. His battered body was rebelling, protesting every step. He forced it on. Do what’s needful, he told himself, and his limbs and his heart.

  Enna was not reacting to his approach. Unless the rumbling shivers that passed through the walls and floors were reaction. Somewhere outside, Yulan heard a great crashing and booming. Another tower surrendering out there along the walls, probably. He imagined the whole keep collapsing and spilling back and down into the cove below. Vast slabs of stone raining upon water, boats. He moved more quickly.

  Lake came reeling out from the hall between Yulan and Enna. The Orphanidon’s shield was gone. His left arm hung limp at his side, and that whole flank from shoulder to waist was drenched in blood. His tunic was heavy with the stuff.

  Yulan knew a dying man when he saw one. Lake’s eyes denied it, refused it. They were as sharp and full of intent as ever, fixed upon Yulan.

  ‘Leave her be, sellsword,’ Lake hissed.

  Yulan grimaced in frustration.

  ‘You want a Permanence here?’ he snapped. ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘You don’t know,’ Lake insisted.

  Behind him, Enna was moaning. Trembling.

  ‘Hold firm, girl,’ Lake said, ‘Just for another moment.’ And he lunged at Yulan.

  A man so maimed should not have been a threat. But Yulan was all bruises and pain and weariness, and Lake was, in the end, still an Orphanidon. The Empire of Orphans had crafted him from childhood, and made him a weapon. He had disavowed that history but he remained
a weapon.

  Their blades clashed and Yulan could feel that there was strength yet in Lake’s one good arm. He gave ground, feet searching for the safe spaces between rubble and cracks. Even amid desperation, his mind found the distance to see in himself a half-buried reluctance. There was some small part of him that still did not want to commit to this, to the violence and death. He saw no such reluctance in Lake’s steady gaze. And he knew, as only one who had come alive out of past violence could, that commitment was half the fight.

  Yulan set his rear foot to the ground, and both hands to the hilt, and hammered a flurry of slashing blows in at Lake. The Orphanidon found the speed from somewhere to block or turn each, angling his own blade to send Yulan’s glancing away.

  Lake gave an abrupt, shuffling dance forward of his feet and launched a kick into Yulan’s midriff. Like a thread through the eye of a needle, he found the one instant in which sword’s movement, balance, weight all conspired to hold Yulan there, unable to avoid the blow. It numbed his stomach and sent him staggering back, almost tripping over the debris that littered the passage.

  For a moment he was hunched over, struggling for breath and composure. Lake might have killed him then, had he not been just as spent. The Orphanidon swayed unsteadily. For that one moment, he seemed to lack the strength to hold his sword up and its tip touched the floor.

  Enna wailed, half-scream, half-fury. From her hand, pressed against the wall, a thousand cracks suddenly webbed out through the stonework. The greatest of them raced straight ahead, ripping itself along the length of the corridor, spitting out fragments of stone. The whole keep shook. Greater convulsions still wracked the walls and ceiling. From Yulan’s left, a tempest of destruction erupted. That whole wall seemed to tear itself apart and an all-consuming hail of rock splinters and shattered masonry and misting mortar filled his world and senses.

  He felt the skin of his face being lacerated. He felt the blast punching that whole side of his body. He felt the dust filling his nose and mouth. Some larger, blunter hunk of debris slammed against the side of his head and he fell.