And there were lights on the shore nearby, fires.
“That’s it!” Gathmor said. “The fort!” He took a deep breath to yell his triumph, and Rap clapped a hand over his mouth just in time.
5
The crew rowed gently, holding the ship against the gusting breeze. Dead ahead, on a narrow meadow between hillside and beach, were the remains of Fort Emshandar. Dead ahead.
Rap had described the scene, but the sailors could make out most of it themselves. The great bonfires on the sand showed the dancing anthropophagi, while sounds of drums and chanting drifted over the waves, as did the rank odors from the smoking ruins of the stockade, and a stronger, stomach-churning scent of roast meat from the celebration. Large things were being cooked on spits.
“Can you see the water?” Gammor asked grimly. He was keeping his voice low, but the wind would carry sound out to sea anyway.
“I think so, sir. In the ruins. A well, with a windlass. There’s men there. No, they’re women.” Rap thought he could hear the windlass creaking, but that might be the turnspits on the beach.
“Doesn’t matter.” The mate thumped his fist on the rail in baffled fury. There were hundreds of the anthropophagi, and the jotnar were in no shape to fight anyway, whatever the odds.
Sagorn had been watching and listening, heedless that he might be noticed in the flicker of the bonfires. Now he became Andor again. “We must not linger. That fort must have had occult defenses. It would not have lasted a week in the Nogids without them.”
“So?” Gathmor snarled. The other passengers had been sent to their cabins long ago. Anyone but Andor would have been.
“So the anthropophagi must have sorcerers of their own. They will have farsight, too.”
The jotunn grunted agreement. “We’re dead without water.” Like them all, he was having trouble speaking. They were all shivering and staggering. The rowers would fail soon.
“There’s a streambed,” Rap croaked miserably. “Farther up the hill.” Of course. That was why the fort had been built on this spot, and why its well had found water.
“There’s a thousand cannibals between us and it.”
“I can see in the dark, sir. But I can’t swim.”
Again the brutal hand thumped Rap’s shoulder. “Who can, with a bucket of water? The Gods sent you, lad. Do it, and you’re a free man.”
Rap did not reply. If he didn’t do it, he would be a dead one.
Stormdancer carried no dinghy and needed no fancy docks. Rap piloted her back along her previous course until the fires were out of sight. Farther would be safer, but the rowers could barely make way against the current being sent through the channel by the storm, and Rap was too weak to walk very far. One final spurt drove the bow up on the beach, and the men collapsed on top of their weaker companions. Without fresh water to revive them, they likely could not even push her off again.
The mate scrambled over the rail with a rope. Rap followed, clutching two buckets. The drop was not far, but he fell in a heap, struggling and spluttering in thigh-deep water. He swallowed a fair bit without meaning to, yet it felt good. The sailors had told him stories about seawater driving men mad, but perhaps a little wouldn’t hurt in the short run, and there might not be any long run to worry about. The anthropophagi would not need to add salt to their Rap stew, that was all.
“Gods, it’s dark!” Gathmor had blundered into a rock and was now tying the rope around it. “If I let go this cable I couldn’t find the damn ship again. You still there?”
“Aye, sir.”
“I’d come with you if I thought I could do a damn bit of good.”
“I’m sure you would, sir.”
“I’ll try, if you want. If you hold my hand.” The mate was suffering an attack of fallibility. Perhaps he had never before in his life had to admit that another man was better than he was at anything, and that must be hurting his jotunnish pride.
Rap said something reassuring as he staggered away across the sand. He was the seeing man in the land of the blind, but he kept remembering the warning that Sagorn had passed along by way of Andor’s voice and memory—the anthropophagi might very well have sorcerers of their own.
They must have! The Nogids lay like a barricade across the road home from Faerie. Certainly Rap was not the first occult genius to be shipwrecked here. Adepts and even mages … not all would have died without telling their words of power. There might be many seeing men in this land of the blind.
Moreover—and the sudden insight felt more like a flicker of delirium than any sort of sane logic—down the centuries the Impire had launched dozens of campaigns to conquer the Nogids; so the sailors had told him. But the imps had never achieved more than a scattering of strongpoints, little forts like Emshandar, to succor the naval traffic. They were perpetually under seige, he had been told. Sooner or later they all got taken and sacked. Tonight was a case in point.
The legions’ opponents, therefore, had not been mobs of primitive savages but the wardens of the west. The Nogids must lie in Zinixo’s sector. They were a quarantine, a barrier defending Faerie itself from being overrun by the masses of the Impire. The Protocol kept East’s legions at bay, and likely North’s raiders, also. No occult defense the Impire put on its forts would last long when the warden of the west decided to clean house.
Tonight’s anthropophagous treat came courtesy of the dwarf.
Rap’s weakness appalled him. True, his clothes were soaked and clinging, but even so, he should not be shivering to such excess. He staggered, making far more noise than he should as he scrambled through the brush on the hillside.
Every few minutes he had to stop and rest. His head was pounding like a farrier’s hammer, and all his muscles had turned to … no, not to water. Mud, maybe.
The shore flats were narrow: tide-washed sand, a strip of rocks, and then some scrub at the base of the slope. He knew he must climb well away from the beach before he rounded the curve in the hill that blocked his view of the anthropophagi—and blocked their view of him, also. The hill seemed unfairly steep, and the dry scrub was sharp and thorny and noisy. Just because his farsight didn’t work through hills didn’t mean that a sorcerer’s wouldn’t, but as he angled higher he began to hear the drums more clearly and see the flame-lit smoke roiling upward in the wind, and then sparks.
He took a farewell glance at Stormdancer, her prow almost clear of the water, and one thin thread of a cable curving down to a boulder. Gathmor sat morosely on that rock, sword in hand and totally blind. No one seemed to be moving on board. It was a ship of the dying.
Now Rap had reached the spur and he needed another rest, but he crouched low and forced himself to crawl through the prickly scrub until he had a clear view.
Once there had been a narrow stream valley notched into the hill. One side had collapsed ages ago, and the debris from the landslide now formed a little shelf on which Fort Emshandar had stood, a bulge on the shore. The rest of the gorge was still there, higher up the slope. It could not hold any great torrent, but surely there would be some water there? The Gods could not be so cruel as to make it completely dry?
Most of the anthropophagi were down by the fires. Not one of them wore as much as a string of beads. Few were still dancing. Many seemed to be feasting—God of Vomit!
Four chattering women were clustered around the well in the ruins of the fort just below Rap, so close that he could hear their laughter. He saw a whole pailful of water being tipped from the draw bucket into a pitcher, and the sight was a stab of pain to him. He wanted to leap up and run screaming down there. He quickly directed his attention farther seaward.
The shore below the fort was packed with canoes, dozens of them drawn up on the sand. Fuzzily Rap wondered if he could somehow damage those, to frustrate any pursuit when Stormdancer left. Then he knew he must be growing lightheaded.
Yet he could detect no sentries anywhere, and the lack of them was an ominous hint that the cannibals might be relying on occult protection;
and just as that thought occurred to him, his mental eye was caught by two anthropophagi who had left the victory feast and were running away from the firelight. They were running in his direction. For a freezing moment he thought they must be guardian sorcerers who had noticed him; then one of them seemed to trip and pull the other down on top of … of her. Oh, that! He sighed with relief and sent them a private blessing. Now he noticed other couples similarly engaged. Obviously the anthropophagi would not be indulging in that sort of celebration if they had any suspicion of enemies skulking nearby.
Deliberately, but shakily, he rose to his feet. Tiny whispers inside him said he should continue slithering through undergrowth, but no mundane eye could see him in this darkness, and no bush would hide him from sorcery.
His sodden boots were eating the skin off his toes, but he hobbled as fast as he could up the slope to the little gorge. He could hear no water running, but soon his farsight picked it out—slimy pools, small trickles. He stumbled down the rocks, remembering his arrival at the fairy village, when he had thought he was thirsty. He had not known what thirst was then. Oh, praise the Gods!
He stopped drinking before he made himself ill, but it was the hardest thing he had ever done. He had no time to let the first load settle and take on another. Well, he would be returning. He filled his two buckets and began staggering up the bank with them.
They were impossibly heavy. The rope handles cut his blistered hands, and he staggered with weariness, slopping more water into his already sodden boots. Almost all the anthropophagi had paired off, many not even bothering to leave the firelight. Apparently that was dessert. The drums had stopped. If he kept on swaying like this he’d arrive at Stormdancer with two empty buckets …
But he did reach the ship eventually. Gathmor was slumped over, holding his head as if it were about to fall off. His sword was thrust in the sand at his feet beside two empty buckets. Rap kicked a pebble and the sailor jumped a league in the air. He drank right from a bucket and afterward he muttered a prayer of thanks.
Then he said something else, but Rap was already heading back with the empties, going for more.
By his third trip, the drums had started again, and most of the lovers seemed to be back dancing and feasting. Anthropophagi must have remarkable stamina. Perhaps it came from their diet.
He felt a few spots of rain. The wind was backing.
He delivered his buckets and went back again. And again …
The fifth trip was a dangerous blur. Rain was falling heavily, and the wind was stronger. Even the distant surf sounded louder, so the storm was still increasing. Storm or not, the ship must leave before dawn. Rap was so unsteady now, slithering and stumbling, that he dropped one of his buckets coming down the hill. He handed over the other and fell to the sand.
“Need a break,” he mumbled.
Gathmor had handed the precious cargo up to eager hands. There were people stirring on board now, revived by the water. “Everyone’s had a drink, lad. You’ve done all you can.”
Rap forced out the hateful words. “I’ll do one more.”
“No. You’re beat! You’ve done great, though. Really shows the jotunn in you.”
“How far to the next fort?”
“Gods know. Depends where we get blown.”
Two buckets—even two half buckets—would mean very little water among seventy, but divided among the strongest rowers, it might make the difference between safe haven and shipwreck. Rap struggled to his feet, feeling as if he weighed more than the ship and all its crew together.
“One more,” he insisted.
“No! Get aboard. That’s enough.”
Rap took up the buckets and walked away over the sand, and Gathmor could not have noticed at first that he had gone, for he was busy shouting orders to the crew.
Rap scrambled up the hill with his eyes tight closed against the streaming rain. The Gods were having fun, sending rain now. But Gathmor had been right, he was very close to his limits. He reeled with weariness, fighting for every step, waving the empty buckets around to keep his balance.
He tripped, fell, and rolled into a spiky bush. For a moment it was just pure heaven to lie there with his mouth open and the downpour washing his face. And he could sleep for days if he let himself.
Sleep? He sprang to wakefulness. He hadn’t slept, had he?
Probably not, or not for more than a few minutes. But he had been awakened by shouting.
One quick scan around told him how bad things could become in just a few minutes. Dawn must be close, for the darkness was no longer impenetrable—he would have noticed that sooner had he kept his eyes open. He did not bother to hunt for his buckets. He was on his feet and running down the hill before he knew he had started to rise, and all the demons of the Evil were screaming in his ears.
It was a three-way race.
Stormdancer was leaving. The sailors clustered around the prow were heaving her seaward. The tide had gone out since she was beached, and the bosun’s shouts rang through the night as he called time to the men. Every push moved the hull a fraction farther into the waves, but it was hard and desperate work for a sadly weakened crew.
Rap was staggering with weakness, windmilling down a thorny, tangled hillside. Only his occult ability to see in the dark let him avoid the roots and bushes and trees, but his magic was no help in keeping his balance. Rain had become a cloudburst, grass and dirt were slick and greasy. He slid and fell and rolled and scrambled up to do it all again; but his progress was agonizingly slow.
And racing along the sand were several hundred angry cannibals, all howling at the top of their lungs, all waving spears and bows, heading for the ship and already almost past their beached canoes, although others had turned aside to run out a few of those, planning to cut Stormdancer off if she escaped. That made it a four-way race, then.
As Rap reached the shore, a roar from the sailors announced that the ship was free, sliding away into the dark. Men had fallen headlong into the surf and now were scrambling up, grabbing one another’s hands, grabbing also at the nets that had been hung over the bow for just this purpose.
As Rap reeled across the sand, the ship was already drifting off into the night, being caught now by the wind, trailing her struggling tangle of men like some strange marine weed.
He galloped into the waves, but the cannibals had seen him and their yells redoubled. He fell headlong, rose, fell again, and breathed water and choked and lurched forward, tripping repeatedly because the sea caught at his legs. His pursuers were moving much faster than he could and he was already almost out of his depth and Stormdancer was moving fast now, turning away, heeling as she escaped from the lee of the hill and the gale caught her.
Half a dozen anthropophagi were closing in on Rap, with a couple of giants in the lead. They were swimming while he just floundered, helpless in the waves, trying to run on tiptoe in the troughs, trying not to drown in the crests, being carried shoreward, but his farsight found the cable even as two huge hands reached out for him. He grabbed it just seconds before it could slither out of reach. The anthropophagite’s fingers touched his shoulder, and then the rope whipped him away, burning his tattered hands, almost yanking his arms from their sockets, burying him under leagues of suffocating black water.
The tension eased; he knew he had only seconds before the next jerk, and it was not easy to think straight when farsight said you were four cubits underwater, but he managed to wrap the rope around one wrist before it pulled taut—and then it did and he shot through the sea like a fish. It slackened and he lashed fruitlessly, straggling to reach that surging, essential, breathable surface, but before he got there another heave on the rope sucked him along again, and deeper, spinning him giddily. If the sailors knew he was there they could haul him in, but they’d better do it soon …
6
Gathmor sent two youngsters over the side as the faun came within reach. They bent a line around his ankles and hauled him inboard bottoms up, so he’d jettison
some of his bilge on the way.
Even so, he carried a cargo of seawater that would have floated a galley. They worked him like a bellows to pump it out of him and get him breathing again.
But the seer’s work was not over yet. The channel that had seemed so unending to his farsight was still only one of many in the archipelago. Even on a bare pole Stormdancer crossed it in a couple of hours, living up to her name, leaping and plunging against a sea anchor. If the sun came up, no one knew it, and the deluging rain cut visibility to less than a length. Neither Gnurr nor Gathmor could guess where the ship was by then; there were rocks out there, rocks and shoals and islets as uncountable as the stars of heaven, and only one man aboard could scry them.
With the tiniest sail the ship could hoist, still every blast seemed likely to unmast her. If that happened, she’d be a hulk, bearing her crew to the last weighing. And if she broached to, she’d be on her beam ends in seconds. It took four men to hold the steering oar, and she moved like a pig. Another three men kept the kid awake, walking him up and down, slapping his face, pouring rainwater into him—they had plenty of water now—and yelling in his ear. “There!” he would mumble, or “Rocks that way!” and then his head would droop again.
The mate reckoned afterward they’d likely gone through Eel-skinner Gap by way of the Bunghole—a couple of times they’d had cliffs in view on both sides, and not much more than an oar’s length away at that. It went on for half a lifetime, seemingly, but when nothing had shown up for an hour, they knew that they’d broken through into Dyre Channel itself, and by then they couldn’t waken the faun anyway, so they rolled him in a blanket and laid him under a bench and said a prayer that he would live.
Water willy-nilly:
I came like Water, and like Wind I go,
Into this Universe, and Why not knowing
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
A Man of His Word Page 76