Slaves of Socorro

by John Flanagan

  They could hear footsteps shaking the metal stairs, far below them. Hal glanced around desperately, looking for some way to escape. If they went down the stairs, they would run into the person who was coming up.

  Of course, they could wait by the doorway that led to the balcony and overpower whoever it was – so long as it was only one person. He listened again and could hear only one set of footsteps labouring upwards – growing slower the further they came.

  He was loath to do this, however, as he didn’t want to attract any attention, or raise any sort of alarm in the town. It was more than possible that someone had seen them enter the tower. If the prayer leader were found unconscious, the word might go out that two foreigners in long robes had been seen here. That could lead to a hue and cry and might alert Tursgud to the fact that he had been followed.

  He looked at the Ranger and saw that he was obviously thinking along the same lines, looking for a way to escape.

  Except there was none.

  ‘Maybe we can hide round the far side of the balcony?’ Hal suggested.

  But Gilan shook his head. ‘They move around the balconies, calling the prayers to all points of the compass. We could try moving around ahead of him but the balcony is too small and the tower too narrow. He’d spot us for sure.’

  ‘What’s he doing here anyway?’ Hal demanded angrily. ‘You said he didn’t lead any prayers until midday.’

  Gilan shrugged apologetically. ‘I may have got the times a little wrong,’ he admitted.

  Hal glared at him. ‘Well, this is one heck of a time to find that out!’ he fumed. ‘What are we going to do?’

  In reply, Gilan gestured upwards. ‘The roof,’ he said. ‘We’ll climb up there. Chances are he’ll never look up.’

  The roof was a steep conical affair, covered in smooth, flat tiles. It projected out a little further than the balcony, providing vestigial shade to the prayer caller – although close to midday as it was, any shadow it cast was virtually nonexistent. The tiles were covered in the dust and dirt of many years in the desert air. They looked slippery, Hal thought. He didn’t like that.

  But Gilan had already climbed onto the balcony. Reaching out and a little backwards, he seized the edge of the tiled roof and heaved himself up. For a moment, his legs dangled over empty space as he got a firm hold. Then he clambered onto the roof, one hand grasping the pointed spike that surmounted it.

  ‘Come on!’ he hissed urgently. The footsteps were closer now. Closer, but even slower.

  Hal hesitated. He was used to swarming up and down the masts of ships without a second’s thought. But a mast was nowhere near as high as this. He glanced over the balcony rail and his head swam.

  ‘Don’t look down!’ Gilan warned him, a second too late.

  ‘You could have mentioned that earlier,’ Hal said through gritted teeth.

  The footsteps on the stairs were growing ominously closer. He stepped one leg up onto the balustrade, leaning in to support himself with his hands on the tower wall. Then he stepped the other leg up as well, half turning so that he was facing the tower.

  He gripped the edge of the roof. A small gutter ran round the circumference. It provided a handhold, but it was frighteningly small. He hesitated. To gain the roof, he’d have to swing himself up and out over the yawning drop below him.

  ‘Hurry it up! I’ve got a friend in Araluen who’d be up here in seconds,’ Gilan said in a loud whisper. He seemed to think that would encourage Hal to move faster.

  ‘Maybe you should have brought him,’ Hal snarled. Then, taking a deep breath, he heaved himself up and over the edge of the roof, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the smooth, dust-covered tiles. He hung in the balance for a second or two, then Gilan seized him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him up.

  His legs were still dangling over the edge of the roof when they heard the prayer leader arrive on the balcony – fortunately a little way around the tower from where they were. Hal drew them up quickly and half crouched, half lay on the steeply sloped tiles. He could feel his hands and body slipping, ever so slowly. Gilan strengthened his grip on Hal and stopped him from sliding further. They crouched on the roof, their faces only centimetres apart.

  Below them, Hal could see the back of a turban-clad head as the prayer leader moved to begin his call. His voice rang out with amazing power, ululating and wavering in a strange singsong chant. In the first few words, Hal caught the name ‘Kaif’. Obviously, these prayers were for the god of harvests, family life, business success and two or three other categories that he couldn’t recall at the moment.

  ‘What if he looks up?’ he whispered.

  ‘He won’t,’ Gilan said definitively. When Hal looked at him, he shrugged – as well as he could in their current position.

  ‘Who climbs all this way and then looks up?’ Gilan whispered. Then he added, ‘Now shut up before he hears you.’

  There was little chance of that happening. The prayer caller’s deep baritone voice rang out over the city, booming out his requests for a happy family, a good harvest and a profitable year. Or at least, Hal supposed that was what he was praying for. The prayers, naturally, were in the Arridan language.

  He felt himself slipping again and pressed his flattened hands as hard as he could against the dusty, slick tiles. There was little resistance there. Gilan, with his grip on the spire giving him an anchor, heaved him back up a few centimetres. But he was in a bad position, with little leverage.

  The caller stopped and Hal breathed a sigh of relief.

  He’s finished, he thought, and none too soon. Maybe he’ll go down now.

  But to his horror, he heard an echoing prayer ringing out from the next tower in line. And then the next after that. Once all five had finished, the caller below them began another prayer, his rich voice booming and echoing over the city.

  ‘Does he have to cover off all his categories?’ Hal asked desperately.

  Gilan nodded, biting his lip with the effort of holding Hal steady. ‘Probably,’ he replied.

  Fortunately, this prayer was shorter. But they still had to wait until it was repeated from the other five towers, the voices growing progressively fainter as the distance increased with each one.

  The caller moved to the other side of the tower and began his next chant. He was out of their sight now and Hal took advantage of the fact, and the noise that the caller was making, to place his feet further apart, pressing hard against the tiles of the roof to get better purchase. For a moment, as he moved, he began to slide again and his heart shot into his mouth.

  At this point in proceedings, he realised, if he tumbled back down onto the balcony and overpowered the prayer caller, people would immediately sense that something was wrong. The prayer sequence would be broken and the callers in the other five towers would be waiting for their tower to continue the prayer. It wouldn’t take long for someone to come and investigate.

  Perspiration sprang out on his forehead. And, worse still, on his hands.

  ‘Hold on!’ Gilan hissed.

  ‘Try saying something useful!’ Hal snapped back at him. He removed one hand from its tenuous grip on the tiles, wiped it desperately on his robe, then pressed it flat against the tiles once more. He repeated the gesture with his other hand.

  Thorn would have fun up here, he thought, and resisted a hysterical urge to giggle.

  The prayer rang out across the city as the other towers repeated it. Then their caller was chanting once more. As he came to the end of this chant, Hal was sure he detected a note of finality in the man’s voice.

  Oh please, just finish it and go, he pleaded silently. His right leg was beginning to cramp with the effort of holding his weight against the inexorable force of gravity pulling him towards the edge of the roof.

  Again, the other towers repeated the prayer. Then the man appeared on the balcony below them again, close to the doorway. He threw back his head and called something that sounded like:

  Haiyaaahali!

>   This had a definite note of finality to it. And the other towers repeated it in order, the series of Haiyaaahalis! echoing across the sprawling buildings below.

  Hal watched the top of the turbaned head turn towards the doorway leading to the stairs, then disappear from sight. He groaned with relief as he heard the man’s footsteps receding down the metal stairway. Then he allowed himself to slide over the edge of the roof, swinging his legs back in to the balcony and letting go.

  He misjudged slightly, catching his ribs on the balcony edge as he tumbled down, then landing heavily on one knee. But those two pains were nothing to the agony in his thigh as the cramp suddenly knotted and took hold of the large muscle there.

  He rolled onto his back, his knee raised, grasping the tightened muscle and groaning. Gilan dropped lightly down and knelt beside him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  Hal glared at him through the agony of the cramp. Why do people ask that when you’re lying on your back groaning, Hal wondered. Instead, he simply shook his head and said through gritted teeth, ‘Cramp.’

  He experimented desperately, trying to find a position to ease the knots in his thigh. But, as always happens with a cramp, there was no way he could move his leg without exacerbating the problem. He kneaded his fingers into the tightened muscle, trying to loosen it. For a moment, it eased, then constricted again, worse than before.

  ‘Aaaaaah!’ he cried.

  Gilan knelt by him, unable to help, watching anxiously.

  Hal clenched his fist and pounded it repeatedly into the offending, tight-knotted muscle. I’ll have the mother of all bruises there tomorrow, he thought. But the action loosened the taut muscle a little. He put a hand up to Gilan.

  ‘Help me up,’ he gasped. Gilan drew him to his feet. Or rather, to his foot, as he stood on his left leg, unwilling to put weight on his right. He bent over, breathing heavily.

  Gilan looked at him apologetically. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I really thought the prayer call wasn’t until midday. And I thought it would be for one of the other gods – not Kaif. The prayers to them are a lot shorter. They have less to do, after all.’

  Hal glared at him, busily kneading his thigh muscle and wincing with the pain that caused.

  ‘In future, try to get your times and your gods right,’ he said.

  Gilan looked suitably chastened. He gestured to Hal’s leg. ‘Can you put weight on it?’

  Hal tried, then shook his head as he felt the movement of his leg about to trigger another savage cramp.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Give me a minute.’

  Gilan nodded sympathetically. ‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘Remember, you’ve got to make it back down those stairs.’

  Hal glared at him through pain-wracked eyes.

  ‘Thank you so much for reminding me of that,’ he said.

  There was a fresh, steady breeze blowing out of the north-west the following morning. The crew rowed Heron out of the narrow inlet where they’d been anchored, then hoisted the new mast.

  Ulf and Wulf wrinkled their noses in distaste as they sheeted the square sail home. By now, they were used to the smooth, powerful curve of their usual rig, reminiscent of a bird’s wing. The square sail, like all sails of its kind, tended to surge and flap in the breeze. It wasn’t possible to sheet it home as firmly as their triangular sail. It billowed and relaxed alternately, causing the ship to move forward in a series of surging, lurching swoops.

  ‘How does she handle?’ Stig asked, standing beside Hal and watching his friend’s lips move in a silent curse at yet another lurch.

  ‘Like a log,’ Hal said bitterly. He’d forgotten how clumsy a square sail could be.

  The square sail notwithstanding, they made good time down the coast. In under two hours, they were off the entrance to Socorro harbour. The pungent smell of smoke that Lydia had commented on two days previously mixed with dust and spices and a slight taint of decaying matter to overlay the fresh sea air.

  ‘Furl the sail,’ Hal ordered. ‘We’ll row in.’

  He wasn’t about to negotiate the harbour entrance under sail. It was a narrow channel with shoals and mudflats on either side, and a sharp, almost ninety-degree turn to starboard halfway along its length, to prevent raiders dashing into the harbour and seizing any of the ships moored there.

  ‘Leave the yardarm up,’ he called, seeing that the crew were preparing to lower it and stow the sail properly.

  ‘Just furl the sail on the yard and leave it in place,’ he said. ‘I want us to continue to look like a square-rigger, even if we’re rowing.’

  The normal six rowers took their places on the benches and began to stroke smoothly, sending the slim ship speeding across the long, lazy swell towards the harbour entrance. There was none of their previous surging, stop-and-go movement now. The oar strokes were steady and powerful and the hull was graceful and well shaped, cutting through the water easily.

  The fort on the southern headland, which had appeared squat and stocky when viewed from the hill above the town, took on a different aspect from sea level. It towered over them as they entered the harbour mouth, dominating the narrow entry channel. Its walls were formed from massive sandstone blocks that glowed with the colour of honey in the sun. A yellow flag, emblazoned with a red lightning shape, flapped lazily from its battlements. Hal could see helmeted heads lining the ramparts, and could make out the pale ovals of faces turned towards them. No ship would enter this harbour without undergoing a thorough inspection, he thought.

  He noticed the angular forms of several catapults on the battlements – clumsy throwing machines that could hurl large boulders over a long distance. He guessed that their range was at least equal to the distance between the two promontories.

  No ship could leave harbour, either, he realised, without risking a rain of jagged rocks plunging down on it from those catapults. In a few days, they might be facing such a threat.

  Thorn, standing by him, seemed to share the same idea. ‘They’re not terribly accurate,’ he said, nodding towards the crane-like arms of the catapults. ‘But if they let go in a salvo, things could be interesting.’

  Hal shrugged. He was confident in Heron’s agility and speed of manoeuvre. Avoiding the clumsy machines, slow to shoot and inaccurate, would be relatively simple.

  ‘It’d take a lucky shot to hit us,’ he said.

  Thorn looked at him, head tilted to one side, for some seconds. ‘Sometimes people get lucky,’ he replied.

  ‘Nothing we can do about that,’ Hal told him.

  Thorn nodded fatalistically. ‘True enough.’

  They had slid past the fort now and the channel took a sharp turn to the right. Hal steered through the bend and the harbour opened up beyond it.

  To the south there was a forest of masts, all bobbing and rocking on the remnants of the swell that forced its way through the narrow channel. He was relieved to see that the northern arm of the harbour was still relatively unoccupied.

  Lydia was in the bow, keeping a lookout. She turned now and called to him, pointing to starboard.

  ‘There’s the harbour master’s wharf.’

  He followed the line of her pointing arm and saw the universal sign for the harbour master’s wharf – the symbol of the local currency – indicating that this was where visiting ships paid harbour and mooring fees. And bribes, he added cynically. In this case, it was an ornate letter D, signifying dirum, with two slanting bars through it.

  He steered the Heron towards it. There were two men on the wharf, relaxing in the shade of a canvas awning. They rose lethargically and moved to the wharf’s edge as Heron came alongside. Thorn, who had moved to the bow, tossed them a mooring rope.

  Once the ship was secure, and wicker fenders had been hung over the side to protect the hull from the rough timbers, Hal and Thorn stepped up onto the wharf.

  Gilan raised an eyebrow in question. Did they want him along?

  Hal shook his head curtly. As a young skirl,
he was used to harbour officials trying to browbeat him and take advantage of his apparent lack of experience. Thorn’s weathered face and grey beard more than compensated, and they were accustomed to letting officials assume he was the captain of the ship. Adding the Ranger’s presence might be overkill. And it might make the harbour master wonder whether they had something to hide.

  The boards of the wharf vibrated under their boots as they strode in step to the small wooden shack at the base of the wharf. The line handlers, their work done, returned to their relaxed positions in the shade.

  They pushed open the door of the harbour master’s shack and went in. For a few moments, they were virtually unsighted, until their eyes, used to the bright glare of the sun outside, became accustomed to the shady interior.

  The shack was divided into two rooms, with the larger one serving as an antechamber to what Hal assumed was the harbour master’s office. The door to that section was closed, and inscribed with Arridan script that he couldn’t read.

  The larger room was furnished with wooden cabinets along one wall, a rather threadbare carpet in the middle of the floor and a large table with one wooden chair behind it, where a clerk was seated. The surface of the table was chaotic. Sheaves of paper and rolled scrolls were scattered across it. Some were overflowing from file trays. Others simply littered the table top. A small work area had been cleared in the mess, in front of the seated clerk.

  The clerk was dressed in the local fashion, in the same sort of flowing robe that they wore, and with a kheffiyeh on his head. His headdress was arranged in a different style from theirs, so that the sides were folded upright, away from his face, and gathered on top of his head. It seemed a more practical style for someone who was working indoors, hunched over papers.

  The man’s robe was grey rather than white, with several unidentifiable stains on it, most of them down the front, where food had spilled. His person showed the same lamentable lack of cleanliness. His skin was oily and his cheeks were fat – as was the rest of him. He filled the flowing grey robe quite substantially. He didn’t rise as they entered but, glancing beneath the table, Hal could see that his feet dangled several centimetres above floor level.