In darkness he lay. Lost. Hearing collapse and thunder as if from very far away. Feeling the flagstones beneath his cheek shivering. Body and mind were empty.
Then: Get up, his own voice whispered within him. Get up.
He blinked. Blood in his eyes. Pain in his temple.
Get up.
He coughed as he levered himself up onto one knee. His vision was blurred, as if water coursed down over the whole world. His ears rang, the ringing laid over the sound of the castle quaking and tumbling. Some huge block of the ceiling crashed down beside him, and he barely noticed it.
Dimly, he saw Lake slumped against the wall to one side of the passageway. He was trying to push himself upright, using his sword like the walking stick of a fallen old man. Further on, Enna was there. Taking one short step after another. And beyond her … what? Yulan blinked again. There was something there, behind Enna. Some shape. Some movement.
The lion came, impossibly, out of the darkness, out of the veiling mists of grit and mortar and took hold of Enna. Feeble, emaciated, the lion came and shook her. She made no sound, and nor did it. Quietly, it simply took her shoulder in its mouth and shook her like a doll.
Yulan stared, barely understanding what he saw. Experiencing it as if it were a waking dream. Lake turned to look and cried out.
‘No!’ the Orphanidon roared, and as if the sound summoned up strength he heaved himself to his feet and lumbered towards the beast and the child.
Lake’s sword came up, and in the same moment the roof came down. Finally broken, all its decades or centuries of resilience defeated, the castle began to fold in on itself. A rain of stone in deep, deafening surrender. It engulfed everything in front of Yulan, snatching away his view of Enna, Lake, lion in an instant. It fell around him, beating at his back.
He turned and stumbled away. As fast as he could, on feet he could hardly feel any more, on a floor that rocked and pitched like the deck of a boat. At the corner, he saw Hamdan ahead, in the midst of climbing over the great back of the corpse-bear.
‘Get out!’ Yulan tried to shout, surprised at how faint and weak his voice sounded. ‘It’s all coming down!’
And it did, in their wake as they struggled and strove to reach the balcony. All the Sorentines’ handiwork fell in on itself. Yulan could not breathe, could not hear. Saw only dimly. Until he was at the door to the balcony and there was sky before him.
Hamdan was there for a moment, and then gone, throwing himself out into the air. Yulan took one hobbling stride, another, and planted his hand on the balustrade and vaulted clumsily over.
‘I can’t swim!’ he cried pointlessly as he fell, because there was nothing else in his head but that one very simple thought.
XIV
Being dragged from the water was at once an immense relief and distinctly painful. Corena leaned down and snagged Yulan’s collar with a boathook and heaved him in close to the side of the boat. It was rough. Less so, though, than the flailing around he had been doing after the sea rushed up from very far below and hit him. It had felt much like being hit with a door.
‘Is anyone coming after us?’ Corena asked him as he lay sprawled on the deck, as wet as he had ever been.
‘No,’ he gasped. And that was all he could say.
Hunched on the last rock, as far from the shattered remnants of the castle as it could get without wetting its feet, was the black ape. As they drifted slowly past, it watched them with all the solemnity of an old and wise man. Yulan read no entreaty, no hostility, no accusation in its gaze. Yet the sombre gravity of it struck him. The sheer indifferent acceptance in the creature’s eyes that it had somehow survived and come out unscathed from the mayhem of the Corsair King’s fall. The madness did not seem to have touched the ape, which simply sat on a rock and observed the passing of a boat.
‘Can we get in any closer?’ Yulan asked Corena on impulse.
She eyed him as if he had lost whatever sense he might once have had.
‘I’m curious,’ was the only explanation he could offer.
He and Corena and Hamdan stood along one side of the boat, holding it in against the rocks with poles. The sea wanted to bear it off and carry it out into the landless expanse. It took a good deal of effort, a good deal of leaning the poles hard into crannies, to hold the boat steady even for a short time.
‘Hurry up,’ Yulan grunted.
The ape looked at them. It looked at the poles and at the boat as it gently rose and fell. With languorous care it unfolded its arms, set its weight on its knuckles and picked its way over the weed-cloaked rocks.
It climbed up into the back of the boat, as far as it could be from the vessel’s human occupants, and settled itself there in the stern. It spent a little time picking at something caught beneath one of its fingernails. And then shuffled round, almost as if it wanted to watch the island receding into the distance, or the pale wake that trailed behind them.
The children lay down to sleep beneath canvases Corena had found stowed beneath benches. To Yulan’s amazement they did sleep, quickly and deeply.
Corena did not, of course. She stood tall at the tiller in the dwindling light with the sky turning orange and purple behind her. The ape had not liked that, her intrusion upon a space it thought it had claimed for its own. But Corena was master of a new ship, better than the scow she had left in the cove, and she was not minded to have her captaincy questioned by an animal she had not invited aboard. She scowled at the ape until it yielded, and curled itself in to a corner.
‘Why is there an ape on the boat?’ Hamdan asked placidly.
He and Yulan sat cross-legged in the prow. Both exhausted. Bone-weary, Yulan would have called it. A bag of aches and pains, emptied out of all strength. But also of all worries, just for now. His mind had settled into the stillness of a deep pool. Neither was ready for sleep, though. Neither could put the day aside quite yet.
‘I’m not sure,’ Yulan admitted. ‘It seemed … I don’t know. It seemed cruel to just leave it there. I thought perhaps it wanted to leave, but did not know how to ask. Who would want to stay in that place, after all?’
‘And what are you going to do with your new friend, exactly?’
Yulan shrugged.
‘I’m not ready to be father, or brother, to an ape. There’ll be somewhere for it to go, I’m sure. Someone who wants it. Perhaps Merkent will have an idea or two.’
Hamdan shook his head, smiling.
‘On the whole, you know, there’s two reasons people join the Free. Either they think it’ll make them rich, or they’re looking for something they’ve not found anywhere else. The ones who last are the ones who find that something.’
‘And what is it I’m looking for?’
‘No idea. I imagine you’ll know it when you find it, though. You just need to get a bit more serious about staying alive long enough to figure it out.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Yulan said.
He blinked and wrinkled his nose. His still contentment was fading. A familiar feeling was returning.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ he said.
Meet the Author
Brian Ruckley lives in Edinburgh. He has worked for a series of organisations dealing with environmental and youth development issues, but now writes full-time.
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By Brian Ruckley
The Godless World
Winterbirth
Bloodheir
Fall of Thanes
The Edinburgh Dead
The Free
A Tale of the Free: Corsair (ebook novella)
A Tale of the Free: Exile (ebook novella)
A Tale of the Free: Tyrant (ebook novella)
If you enjoyed A Tale of the Free: Corsair, read more in
The Free
by
Brian Ruckley
They are the most feared mercenary company the kingdom h
as ever known.
Led by Yulan, their charismatic captain, the Free have spent years selling their martial and magical skills to the highest bidder – winning countless victories that shook the foundations of the world. Now they finally plan to lay down their swords.
Yet when Yulan is offered a final contract, he cannot refuse – for the mission offers him the chance to erase the memories of the Free’s darkest hour, which have haunted him for years.
As The Free embark on their last mission, a potent mix of loyalty and vengeance is building to a storm. Freedom, it seems, carries a deadly price.
www.orbitbooks.net
About Orbit Short Fiction
Orbit Short Fiction presents digital editions of new stories from some of the most critically acclaimed and popular authors writing science fiction and fantasy today.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Meet the Author
By Brian Ruckley
Bonus Material
About Orbit Short Fiction
Orbit Newsletter
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Brian Ruckley
Cover design by Nick Castle Design
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: March 2016
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ISBN 978-0-316-35693-0
E3
Corsair Page 8