The Rose Sea

by S. M. Stirling

  "Here, Karah!" A strong arm circled her waist and flung her backward towards the land.

  It was Bren, but now the monster was bearing down on him, climbing over the wreckage in its eagerness, crushing and breaking wood and bodies beneath it. She floundered six paces to the shore, seized her sword from the pile of clothing, and turned back into the water. All the fear she'd felt while the crocodile bore down on her was gone, lost in the knowledge that Bren was about to die. She raised the blade and shouted, wading out as fast as she could without tripping.

  Maybe if I stab it in the eye…

  Godsall. Maybe it would have a stroke and float away, while she was at it.

  There was a body in its jaws, born aloft and shaken like a fish in the beak of a heron—not Bren, Sergeant Ddrad. His open mouth was screaming but he still struck with the blade in his hand, striking sparks from the flinty armor until it shook him apart in a shower of blood. Bren was right there beneath it with a half-pike in his hands, which looked like an eight-foot toothpick against the beast's gape. The great jaws opened again; the beast was half out of the water, its little legs scrabbling at boulders. Even in the hindering stream, Bren's thick-muscled body moved with heartstopping grace. He lunged—upward, into the roof of its mouth. It clamped its jaws down, but in the same movement he'd whipped the butt of the half-pike into its lower jaw.

  The whole enormous power of the crocodiles jaws drove the sharp steel of the pikehead into its palate. It screamed, a shrill sound like a thousand steam cookers venting—a sound that stabbed painfully into the ears. Then it twitched its head, and Bren went pinwheeling into the water a dozen paces away. The pikeshaft snapped like a twig, and the crocodile bellowed in a mist of blood. It took one step forward—

  "With me," Father Solmin yelled. Karah turned, and saw Amourgin at the priests side. The two of them began flinging powders into the water and shouting at the top of their lungs.

  The water began to hiss—then turned an ugly shade of orange. Smoke rose from it, dark orange and stinking, and curled around the monster. The giant crocodile slowed, though its teeth still snapped and its tail still lashed back and forth.

  Amourgin's doing magic in front of the priest, she thought, and noted a few others who gazed at the priest and the corporal with speculative expressions and poorly hidden curiosity. But she had no time to wonder about the law-speaker and his illegal magic.

  Even with the mist and the curling smoke, dozens of muskets were able to fire from the shore—not without screamed curses when damp priming powder misfired or slowmatches went out. A rapid stutter of shots built, more and more as musketeers reached their stacked weapons. Water spurted up around the sluggish beast, and blood spattered where the heavy bullets struck home. A file of pikes waded out to it, the long razor-edged pyramidal heads of the weapons punching with the two-armed thrust meant to penetrate cavalry armor. It bellowed and thrashed, knocking the shafts aside or wrenching them out of the wielders' hands, but more took their place. Halberdiers climbed over the wreckage of the canoe and slammed their massive weapons down on its spine and sides.

  Blood turned the water pink, the blood of human and reptile. Even in its death throes, the beast was deadly-huge. At last a musketeer came out with her weapon held high overhead and fired with the muzzle not a foot from the yellow slit-pupiled eye. The king crocodile reared out of the water impossibly high, like a great rough-barked tree reaching for the sky, then crashed back in a wave that knocked Karah off her feet again. When she struggled erect, the beast was dead—still twitching, and some of the soldiers were driving their weapons into it with blind fury, moving like wind-up mechanisms.

  Bren came to her side, his naked body bruised and grazed, but whole.

  "You're all right?" he wheezed.

  "Apart from being scared pissless," she said, then hugged him clumsily with one arm, the other fist still clenched on the hilt of her sword. "Godsall, you could have been killed!"

  He nodded, then turned to the riverbank. "Fall in, there!" he called to the ones still beating on the crocodile's corpse.

  "Get those other canoes tethered"—several were drifting downstream—"tend to the wounded, lets have some order here!"

  Captain Tagog and the noncoms were adding their voices to his. Bren and Karah slogged their way to shore. "Damn," Bren said softly, looking out to where the dead and injured were being hauled from the waters grip. "Damn. Damn you for dying, Ddrad, I'm going to miss you."

  "He was a good man," Karah said, sliding her hand under his arm.

  "He was a friend. I led him a long way from home to die, him and too many others," Bren said quietly. Karah saw the unshed tears in his eyes, saw the way he bit his lip and looked out over the bodies. "Damn," he whispered. Then he shook himself.

  "All right, nobody told you to stop working!" he shouted. The soldiers stacked weapons once more and went back into the river with gingerly caution—all but a much-enlarged overwatch, their muskets primed and pointed out to the waters.

  Captain Tagog came up with something that glittered on the point of her sword a ruddy copper band as broad as a man's hand, covered in raised glyphs. It had been hacked across, but the circular shape was still visible, like a bracelet for a giant Solmin and Amourgin peered at it with interest, the law-speaker bringing out his spectacles. Then both recoiled with identical grimaces of disgust. The soldier flicked the copper circlet into the mud at their feet.

  "That was on the lizards forearm," she said grimly. "I don't think that writing means 'return pet to owner.'"

  "Crocodile, not lizard," Amourgin said absently, in scholars reflex. "Tseldene script—Old High Tiranese, the wizard's dialect."

  Solmin nodded in professional approval. "It's a dedication to the One—in Its aspect as Death-by-Stealth, the Fanged Terror. Crocodile-god cult. And a warding of sight, to prevent a magician sensing the beasts coming, and another of control and domination."

  He pointed with a stick. "The wizard's blood would be added to the metal while it was still molten." At Amourgin's raised eyebrows, he went on: "You don't want to know the rest of the rite. Believe me, sir."

  "This was a sending?" Bren asked.

  Both the magicians nodded "At you particularly, I'd guess," Amourgin said. "The beast didn't stop to feed, or strike at others in the water. You or Karah."

  Bren had been dressing while he spoke. He tightened his belt with unnecessary force, and clashed his sword home in the sheath. "Then you two will see to our protection—together. And that is an order."

  He turned to Tagog. "We'll build a common pyre and grave," he said. "See to it."

  CHAPTER XV

  "These fell here: Ensign Towi Fulin, Sergeant Sleffer Ddrad; Privates Mrado, Dotakbotsl, Trail, Dorax, Galodden. All honor to them, who faced death unflinching. May the Father shelter them, the Mother comfort them, the Child be with them, until the world is made new. By Prince-Heir Bren Morkaarin-Strekkhylfa, officer commanding, XIXth Imperial Regiment of Foot Five hundredth forty-first year of the New Empire, twentieth day, Month of Falcon Turning."

  Grand Admiral Willek felt the blood rushing to her face as the officer read it, and knew anyone who watched her would see it; it was a curse of the Tykissian strain. The temptation to have the little monument blown to fragments was overwhelming, but the troops wouldn't like it, and besides that they were short of powder. It was only a heap of fieldstone, anyway, with one naturally smooth slab for the rude chiselwork of the inscription.

  "Its the thirtieth of Falcon Turning now," Willek said "Ten days. Now we know they didn't turn up any of the jungle tributaries. We can catch them if we push hard, we're about equal in numbers."

  "The troops are tired," the officer said neutrally. "And we're a Three-forsaken long way from anywhere."

  Willek looked up; the soldiers were standing around their beached canoes, murmuring among themselves. They looked ragged and hungry, but these were the best, the fiercest, and the ones most deeply committed to her. Everyone was very conscious of the hu
ge rotting bulk of the crocodile, mostly pink bone by now but still swarming with vermin. On the whole, she was satisfied with morale. Except for the group of Life Guards around Shemro, of course.

  Their commander came up to Willek and saluted smartly. The Shillraki dragoons around her drew closer; Willek had an excellent reputation among mercenaries—she always saw that they were paid promptly, and in good sound coin, and she'd promised a quadruple bonus to all survivors of this expedition.

  "Grand Constable," the Guards officer said, "I must protest. The Emperor is not well—"

  The Emperor is under a sped of slow wasting and obedience, Willek thought smugly.

  "—and should not be subjected to these hardships. I must insist that she be—"

  A cannon sounded further downriver. Around the curve came the prow of a Tseldene battlebarge, its painted oars flashing in the bright tropical sun like the vermilion legs of some monstrous centipede against the blue-green water and deep-green jungle. Four more followed it, their sides bright with metal and paint, their decks equally bright with the weapons of the troops. Another cannon thudded.

  "Li' pieces," a Shillraki officer said, in their whistling accent "Four-p'onders, murtherer guns, swivels. Not'in heavy."

  Willek's voice rose with a whip crack of command: "Let's get to work, gentlefolk. Set up the fieldpiece there"—it was a bronze six-pounder, and now worth the living hell it had been getting it through the jungle—"to keep those bumboats at a respectful distance. The rest of you, set the working parties to hauling the canoes. They'll not get those barges up the rapids soon, if at all, provided we give them a warm reception now. Move!"

  * * *

  "We took their cannon," the officer said "And pursued their rear guard to the head of the rapids, as you ordered."

  He gestured to the pile of sixty or so heads the Tseldene soldiers were piling at Darkist-Colchob's feet Blond Tykissians, black-haired, hook-nosed Shillraki. Mongrel-looking sailors.

  It's interesting how severed heads all have the same foolish expression, the Tseldene emperor thought Perhaps something to do with the severing process, but there was rarely the fine grimace of agony you otherwise got on a dead face. He couldn't really concentrate, not with the voice of the Cold One forever in his mind, begging, pleading, commanding, promising horrors and delights. There were times when he saw with the One's own eyes, and that was something to shake even a soul as long in the world as his.

  "Your orders, Lord of Ten Thousand Years?"

  "Go, go—help prepare the barges."

  Upstream teams of workers were hammering long steel wedges into cracks in the granite, or spiking block-and-tackle rigs to the larger trees. The musical tink-tink-tink of sledgehammers carried through the background burr of the rapids. On the deck of his barge the first cables were being reeved up through the hawseholes, and rowing slaves were herded onto the deck as long iron bars were thrust through the capstans. Their grunts and howls sounded, gobbling and thick from tongueless mouths as the sweet music of the lash crackled.

  "Most efficient, most efficient," Darkist-Colchob murmured, gratified and surprised. When you dealt every day with a civil service eight thousand years old…

  Ahead, at the turn of the river, something crashed through the thick undergrowth at the watersedge. It was huge—Willek raised her hand and forward progress stopped. She had seen some of the horrors the river held—she had no wish to discover, too closely and too late, that this thing ahead was another of them.

  She heard screams, and suddenly a tribe of junglemen boiled out of the trees and splashed into the river, running heedless.

  "You never see them unless they want you to," she muttered to her aide.

  The man nodded. Willek's army sat frozen, holding its place along the banks, hidden in the shadows of the overhanging trees, silent.

  The last of the junglemen tribe raced into the water—the first were already halfway across, swimming frantically. Willek wondered what would make the natives take to it swimming, instead of in boats. What sort of predator…?

  And then the trees parted, and the hunter crashed out, and sloshed into the water. Willek bit on the back of her hand to keep herself from screaming one of the guards beside her fainted.

  It was a creature made of water, entirely magical; in its misshapen body she could see bits of trees and pieces of boats… and the limp, bloated forms of those it had consumed. They floated and bobbed inside it, terrible to behold.

  It was after the junglemen, reaching out, touching them, sucking them into itself, one after the other. A few made it to the far shore and fled, still screaming. Some of her soldiers raised weapons to fire at the monster, but with the smallest gesture of a hand, she held off their fire. Silence, she thought, not even daring to breathe. Nevertheless, the monster paused in midstream, still and waiting, looking around as if it sensed the presence of the Tykissians. No, she thought, frantic. She had no idea how to go about fighting off a thing made of water. She thought, but the harder she thought, the more ideas eluded her. The thing rose up and started in a slow walk toward the spot where the first boats hid, and Willek felt doom approaching—but then another of the junglemen struggled onto the far shore and into the greenery with a crash, and the watery horror turned and took off after it.

  The sounds of screams and of the monsters lumbering progess grew fainter, and finally disappeared.

  Willek sat for a long time after it passed, sucking thoughtfully on her lower lip. Finally she gave the signal, and the boats proceeded upstream again.

  That had been no natural denizen of the jungle. She had felt the tingle of magic about it. It had been, for an instant, keenly interested in them—and even though it had been distracted, and had gone chasing off after the junglemen, Willek had felt about the monster a taint she'd hoped never to cross. It was, she suspected, one of Darkist's creatures. And though it was hunting widely and not selectively, she felt from the stink of the magic around it that it hunted for her.

  She shivered and thought of the glowing gold icon that lay ahead of her. Time pressed. She needed to find the thing, and lay claim to the world quickly—before the darkwoven magics of those who wished her ill caught up with her.

  "I know enough to keep the judges honest and pay the troops on time," a voice murmured softly "Beyond that, what?"

  Karah stirred in her sleep, blinking. She was lying with her head in Bren's lap; his hand stroked her hair idly She lay still, listening. Amourgin and Eowlie were seated behind them in the big canoe; ahead was the mast and the tall narrow sail. Most of the other crew-passengers were asleep, except for the helmsman and the ones on the simple rigging lines. Moons' light glittered on the still waters of the river, throwing a winding avenue of brightness down their southward path. The other canoes were around them, their wakes phosphorescent streaks. Tall papyrus overhung the river on both sides, dark and ragged against the moons and huge soft stars of the southern skies. It was never quiet, but the hum and buzz and bird calls were muted now, in the third watch not long before dawn.

  By night, in a broad channel, with the heat less fierce, the great swamps above the rapids were even fairly pretty. In the daytime, going overside to hack a path through the winding, floating clumps of reed… she shuddered inwardly The leeches were as long as a big mans thumb; what they'd all do when the salt ran out, she didn't like to think.

  Amourgin answered, equally quiet "Make the margraves and the counts pay their share of the taxes, for starters," he said. "Right now, the free-farmers and tenants and small merchants are being ground down slow but sure."

  Bren chuckled softly. "Right, you've got the Throne rocking under my fundament right there. I see your point, though. What about the cities? Should I let them go their own way internally, as Shemro has?"

  "You shouldn't let the bankers and the Guilds-Merchant turn them into closed corporations, that's for certain," Amourgin said. His voice was passionately earnest "And try reigning in the Imperial Tykissian Eastern Seas Company and the other
chartered combines. They're as bad as the upper nobility, in their way, trying to turn Melcan and the new colonies into their private fiefs."

  "Is there any vested interest you don't think I should alienate, my friend?"

  "You could tighten the laws protecting the thralls, sir," Amourgin said "And do something about the pariahs."

  "Now there's the Tykissian commonfolk and the priesthood you'll set against me, too. Bren the Tyrant, eh? Who'll be for me, besides you and your friends?"

  Amourgin inclined his head: "Easier to let things drift, I know. But think: why did our ancestors fight the Old Empire in the first place?"

  Bren's teeth flashed white in the darkness. "Loot."

  "They only became warriors when the Old Empire started raiding them. Oh, yes, they were pirates—but they were a free people, and in the Old Empire everyone but the wizard-kings were slaves. And that matters. Look at what we've done, in only five or six centuries—I know we think of the Old Empire as civilization incarnate, but did they ever build ships that could sail the outer oceans? Or make gunpowder or cast cannon, or build watermills?"

  "Watermills are civilization?" Bren said dubiously.

  "They are if you're a thrall grinding grain by hand every day," Amourgin said grimly. "That's just an example. I could have mentioned printed books, or optical glasses, or even magic—the Old Empire could do marvels, but we're better at common, everyday magic like purifying a city's water supply, or putting the hex on a swarm of locusts."

  He adjusted his glasses. "But if we go the way of the Old Empire, what's the point in it all? The Old Empire's wizard-kings ruled for ten thousand years, and that's all they did—rule. No wonder they became sadistic monsters!"