Angus Wells - The God Wars 01

by Forbidden Magic (v1. 1)

  He realized that he had drowsed when the door opened to admit Mehemmed with the evening meal. The cabin was dark, and when he looked to the window, the warboat

  was lost in the night.

  "It's still there," said the young sailor. "Closer now. I think that by dawn they'll be within hailing distance."

  His voice was carefully neutral, as though he feared to show any hint of weakness to the seaman Calandryll saw stood just beyond the hatch, but there was a flicker of sympathy in his eyes and he smiled as he set the tray down.

  "Will your captain use his arbalests?" Bracht asked.

  Mehemmed shrugged, the movement conveying all such responsibilities to his captain, and ducked out of the cabin. The door closed and the bolt thudded home. Calandryll saw that a flask of wine was included among the items on the tray: he filled the two mugs, passing one to

  Bracht. ,

  The Kem grunted his thanks, dosing himself with the nostrum before downing the alcohol.

  "At least he feeds us," Calandryll said. Bracht nodded and began to eat.

  After, there was little to do save rest on the bunks and talk until sleep took them.

  "Tell me about Kern," Calandryll asked.

  Bracht sniffed and said, "Kern is your word for it, a southern word. We call it Cuan na'For, which means the Land of Horses."

  "The forest is the Cuan na'Dm, is it not?" Calandryll prompted when his companion fell silent. "What does that mean?"

  "The Heartland," came the answer. "The Cuan na Dm is the great forest that surrounds Ahrd. That's a sacred place, tended by the Gmagach, who were created when the world was young. The folk of Cuan na'For seldom venture there, for the Gruagach are jealous guardians and apt to treat intruders unkindly."

  He laughed curtly and emptied the last of the flagon into his mug.

  "They tend to kill people. They are strange creatures— devoted to their wardship of the Holy Tree—but they care for Ahrd. The rest?" He sighed fondly. "Oh, it's a fine, free place, unlike your home. We have no cities, but live in tents and follow our herds over the grass. It's foaling time now, and the grass will be lush. The sun will shine and the wind will blow; the rivers will run blue, and my clan will follow the horses north."

  "You said you were Asyth," Calandryll murmured into the darkness. "There are five tribes, I believe."

  "The Asyth, the Lykard, the Valan, the Helim, and the Yelle," said Bracht. "The Asyth raise the finest horses and the stoutest warriors."

  "Are you at war with the Lykard?" asked Calandryll.

  "Not when I left," said Bracht. "Why?"

  "When I spoke of leaving Gessyth by the Geff Pass you said the Lykard were enemies."

  Bracht chuckled.

  "Mine, I am not much loved by the Asyth, either."

  "Why not?"

  There was a long silence, then the Kem said, "It is a personal thing."

  Calandryll frowned but made no attempt to press the matter it was obvious that Bracht had no wish to discuss it. Instead, he asked, "Were you a warrior?"

  "We are all warriors," Bracht said. "Sometimes the clans fight one another, and we steal horses—that's the way of Cuan na'For—and sometimes the Jesserytes cross the Kess Imbrun to make war."

  "It's strange that the folk of Kem—Cuan na'For," Calandryll amended, "worship a tree when you raise the finest horses, while the Jesserytes worship Horul."

  "The Horse God?" Bracht sniffed again, dismissively. "The Jesserytes are a strange folk. It's said they worship a horse because they couple with them, but I think that may not be true. We worship Ahrd because we have always worshiped Ahrd."

  He yawned sleepily. Calandryll asked, "Have you fought them?"

  "Aye, at times," Bracht answered, "When the mood comes on them they seek to cross the Kess Imbrun after our horses and our women, and we join to send them back. Or give them to the crows. But those are little more than skirmishes—we've fought no great war since the High Khan Tejoval sought to invade us, in my grandfather's time. He brought an army over the rift, vowing that he would bum the Cuan na'Dru and Ahrd with it. All the clans sent warriors then, and we destroyed the Jesseryte army. The old men say it was a mighty battle and the rift river was red with Jesseryte blood. They say the crows got too bloated to fly then."

  The bunk creaked as he shifted, yawning again. Calandryll wondered how he could be sleepy: he felt too nervous to contemplate slumber. He asked, "Have you ever been in love?"

  Bracht sighed and said, "Do you think of your Nadama?"

  Now Calandryll paused, taken aback. The question had sprung unbidden to his lips, and he was not sure why he had asked it. He realized that he had not thought of Nadama since ... When was the last time? Since their encounter with the byah? Since the dreams along the trail to Aldarin? He said, "No."

  "I thought I was," Bracht said, "Once. But ... something happened."

  His voice grew flat and Calandryll sensed that he touched on another forbidden subject. "I think," he said slowly, "that I have accepted she's lost to me. She might be wed to Tobias by now; certainly by the time I return."

  If I return.

  He was surprised by his own acceptance, by the absence of that knife that had turned each time he thought of her. It was gone now: it seemed that imminent danger, the possibility of death, cauterized the wound. He conjured an image of her face and found it blurred, as though time and distance eroded the edges of his memory. He felt a weight was lifted, something in his soul freed: he chuckled.

  "Good," said Bracht.

  "Aye," he agreed, "it is."

  "And so is sleep," said the Kem.

  Calandryll nodded in the darkness, hearing Bracht change position, the bunk creaking. Through the port he heard the steady, soothing slap of waves against the hull, the low, slow groaning or timbers. He closed his eyes.

  And found himself standing on the deck of the Sea Dancer, the sun bright on his face, the wind died away to a listless murmur that draped the sails like wet sheets hung from the spars. All around, the Narrow Sea glistened, smooth as a millpond, and the crew moved past him, unseeing. Rahamman ek'Jemm stood behind the wheel with Bracht at his side. The mercenary's hands were bound and when Calandryll called his name he gave no sign that he heard, staring at the black boat that drew steadily closer, driven by great black oars that swept the waves in silence, a figure in a black cloak standing at the prow, one hand caressing the dragon's head. The boat came alongside and the figure sprang to the Sea Dancer's deck. Calandryll could not see its face. A hand beckoned and ek'Jemm bowed, pushing Bracht to the companionway. The black-cloaked figure towered over the Kern as he was shoved rudely forward, then reached out, grasping him by the waist, lifting him high. Calandryll began to run as the monstrous figure held Bracht high, turning to the rail, but his legs were jelly and the planking of the deck seemed to buckle and give way under his feet. He shouted, but no one heard and all he could do was watch as Bracht was tossed over the side, to the warboat that was no longer a vessel, but a huge, black dragon that raised a gaping, many-toothed maw to accept the body. Calandryll shouted again and this time the black figure turned toward him and he saw red eyes burning within the smoky shadows of the face. He struggled to draw his sword, but the blade was mired in the scabbard as firmly as he was mired to the deck, and all he could do as the relentless figure strode toward him was raise his hands in protest, feeling fingers like steel claws lock about his wrists, lifting him as they had lifted Bracht . . . Who said, "You dream! Calandryll, you dream!" pinning his flailing arms down on the bunk.

  He opened his eyes and saw the Kern's face close, his breath redolent of ek'Jemm's nostrum.

  "Dera!" he mumbled, wiping sweat from his brow. "I thought ..."

  He shook his head, the dream already fading, the images breaking as the mist had broken in Aldarin harbor, swirling and dissipating, lost even as he tried to hold them.

  Bracht let loose his arms and pointed to the window.

  "I think you had best ready yourself."

&nb
sp; He crossed to the port, squinting into the brightness of a new day, and groaned. The warboat stood off the starboard quarter, its sail furled, the sweeps that drove it like giant drumsticks beating a relentless rhythm on the skin of the sea. He could see the figurehead. See the bulging red eyes and the flared nostrils, the carved fangs, painted white, a curling scarlet tongue between the black lips. Circular shields decorated with a variety of fanciful designs hung along the bulwarks and behind the prow and among the oarsmen stood archers, shafts notched ready. He felt a vibration from above, heard a dull twanging sound, and saw a bolt whistle through the morning air. It raised a splash to port of the warboat.

  "Ek'Jemm uses the arbalest," he cried. "Perhaps he means to fight."

  "Perhaps I misjudged him," Bracht said. "Perhaps his bolts will frighten them off—if they be no more than ordinary corsairs."

  A second bolt fountained a glittering column no closer than the first and the warboat veered rapidly to starboard, cutting around the Sea Dancer's stem with an agility the larger vessel had no hope of matching. Calandryll saw the archers raise their bows. The arrows were brief, dark flashes against the blue sky. He heard a man scream, the sound shrill as a sea gull's cry, and the dark boat was gone from sight.

  He turned as the hatch opened and a hulking seaman armed with a cutlass filled the doorway. Behind him stood three more: hope faded.

  "You're to come topside."

  The man stood back, cutlass poised. His order required no translation: Bracht glanced at Calandryll and smiled.

  "Ahrd be with you, and your own goddess."

  "And with you."

  Calandryll wanted to say something more in reply but could not find the words. He slung the satchel from his shoulder, briefly touched the talisman concealed beneath his shirt, and stepped into the narrow corridor. Bracht followed him, menaced by the sailors' heavy blades, and onto the deck, to the companionway, and up to the poop.

  Rahamman ek'Jemm stood with folded arms and dour face beside the helmsman. A bare-chested Kand stood miserably by the arbalest; another lay moaning on the deck, two arrows protruding from his right leg. The war-boat was already past the merchantman, swinging wide around her bow, gone past before the arbalest mounted there had time to sight and fire.

  "I tried," ek'Jemm said, "and that's the result."

  He pointed to the wounded seaman, the shafts bristling from deck and mast and sails.

  Bracht grunted and said, "You give up easily, Captain."

  The Kand turned cold green eyes on the freesword. "As I told your comrade, I'll not forfeit my ship for a miserable one hundred varre. If it's you they want, they'll see you now and I'll give you to them. If not," he shrugged, "then we'll fight."

  As if to emphasize his point a second volley of arrows arched into the azure. They seemed to hang for a moment, suspended at the apex of their flight, before rattling onto the Sea Dancer's deck.

  "A warning," ek'Jemm murmured, studying the dark shafts that thrust from the planking.

  The warboat came back along their port flank, dancing over the waves, driven by the steady sweeping of the oars. Calandryll saw that the stem rose up, fashioned in the shape of a dragon's tail, a massive, paddlelike rudder at its base. Two men held shields raised to protect the helmsman. The archers stood on a small deck behind the prow and on a raised aisle that ran like a spine down the length of the warboat, the oarsmen sat on recessed benches to either side. They appeared to follow the orders of a slim figure wearing fine silver mail that glittered proudly in tne sun, the face hidden beneath the shadow of a beaked helm.

  "That's their captain?" Bracht asked. And when ek'Jemm gmnted an affirmative: "Give me a bow and I'll kill him."

  The Kand studied him speculatively, as if considering the possibility, then shook his head. "A wounded animal's worse than a healthy beast."

  "Two shafts at most," Bracht said confidently, "and he's dead."

  "The deck of a ship's no steady platform," ek'Jemm returned.

  "Nor's the back of a running horse," said Bracht. "I can do it."

  Ek'Jemm smiled briefly and shook his head again. "No," he said firmly, "I'd not anger them. If you're all they want, I escape easy."

  Bracht's eyes blazed contempt; the Kand ignored him, turning to stare at the warboat.

  The dark craft swung dramatically to port, cutting close under the merchantman's stem. Calandryll stared at the armored figure commanding the archers, wonder; ing if he looked on Azumandias; wondering then why a mage should employ so physical a means of attack when surely magic must serve him better than arrows. Something about the stance, the drape of the hauberk, was wrong and he gasped as realization dawned.

  "That's a woman!" he cried. "The captain's a woman!"

  "No woman commands a Kand warboat," ek'Jemm grunted.

  "No corsair vessel sails out of Lysse," Calandryll snapped. "But this one did, and that's a woman."

  The figure raised gloved hands then, removing the helmet, and his point was proven: a thick spill of flaxen hair tumbled loose, framing a strong face from which eyes grey as storm-tossed waves studied the Dancer, a wide, full-lipped mouth issuing a command that slowed the warboat. .

  "Burash take me!" ek'Jemm muttered. "You're right.”

  "And she's lovely," Bracht softly. "Ahrd, but she's a beauty!"

  The woman seemed oblivious of their stares and the arbalest alike, contemptuous of the danger, although ek'Jemm might then have hit her square, or bowmen picked her off. Her order brought her craft almost to a stop, drifting close under the merchantman's stem, protected there from the great crossbow. She tossed her helm to the deck and cupped her hands about her mouth.

  "You carry two passengers, Captain—I'd have them."

  Her voice was melodious, carrying clear across the gap between the vessels.

  "You'll leave my ship be?" ek'Jemm shouted,

  "I have no quarrel with you," the woman called. "It's your passengers I want. Hand them over and you're free to go your way."

  "I've a man wounded," the Kand returned.

  The woman's face clouded for an instant, then she cried, "I regret that, but you fired on us."

  Calandryll could not help staring at her. Would likely have done so even had she not represented such a threat: her beauty compelled attention. He started when he felt Bracht's hand grip his arm.

  "Be ready," warned the Kem.

  He nodded, instinctively reaching for the stone at his throat, mouth opening to utter the spell. Then gaping as he felt the smooth surface bum his fingers, looking down to see. the dull red transformed to flame, as if he clutched fire.

  Abruptly, the air about him shimmered, filled with the heady scent of almonds, stronger than he had ever smelled it, cloying in his nostrils. The air seemed brilliant, as though the risen sun fell from the sky to hang between the two vessels. He heard Bracht shout; ek'Jemm cry out. Then he, too, shouted as he saw the sea boil, a great surge of turbulent water rising from the gap between warboat and merchantman, as if some vast, unseen beast rose from the depths, angry. Water seethed, rising to hang in a swirling glittering pillar that joined sea and sky. A sheet of liquid drenched the poop, draping a rainbow across the Sea Dancer's stem, and he felt his hair tom back by a wind that sprang from nowhere. Dimly through the spray he saw the warboat engulfed by the spout, tossed like a cork, spun round and round, the archers tumbling like stricken.pins to the deck, falling into the scuppers. He saw the woman thrown against the prow, embracing the dragon's neck, pressing herself hard against the wooden effigy as her long legs flung over the side. For an instant he thought she must lose her grip and topple into the maelstrom, but then the very spinning of her craft hurled her back onto the deck and she rolled inelegantly across the planking to crash down among the terrified oarsmen.

  The warboat was lifted by the wave, the sweeps in disarray, the furled sail ripped loose to flap uselessly, a tom rag in the grip of elemental fury. Then the air reverberated with an ear-splitting blast and the spout was gone. The wa
rboat fell seaward, taking on water as it crashed against the waves. The wind grew stronger and he saw the impossible happen: saw nature divided against itself. The Sea Dancer's sails filled, drumming with the rhythm of the wind, the merchantman gaining headway, surging away from the warboat. Which was driven in the opposite direction by a gusting no less fierce than the gale that propelled the cargo vessel. Waves crashed over the ducking prow, the black sail, tattered now, driven out straight, the oars helpless. He heard ek'Jemm shout again, and saw the portly Kand stagger to the wheel, lending his bulk to aid the helmsman, holding the Sea Dancer stem-on to the ferocious wind.

  Within moments the warboat was a dwindling speck, then it was a blur on the skyline, then gone. Calandryll realized that he still clutched the red stone. He released his grip and the wind dropped. He looked about. Bracht clung soaked to the arbalest, a wide-eyed seaman on the weapon's other side. The four armed sailors sprawled gaping against the taffrail. Ek'Jemm and the helmsman clutched the wheel as if fearing they might be tom loose and swept overboard. The wounded sailor lay at their feet mumbling a prayer to Burash, and all along the deck men hung from sheets, or held the rails, not quite believing in the calm that fell. Calandryll alone had sought no support: he stood brace-legged on the poop, dazed by the magic that had saved them.

  "Burash protect us," ek'Jemm said slowly, his voice hushed as he stared at Calandryll. "What are you?"

  Calandryll shook his head. The wave, the wind—neither had been things of his conscious making: he had no better idea than the captain what had happened. He opened his mouth to speak, but Bracht intervened.