by Paul Collins
‘I take it that means you're coming with me?’
Fontagu sniffed. ‘As concern for a child of your tender years is always my first priority, I do believe that in this case my presence is required, in spite of the obvious danger to my person.’
‘Could you repeat that?’ asked Tab. ‘No, don't bother. I'll remind you of it later if I need to.’
Fontagu bristled but said nothing.
Tab checked the street. All was clear. ‘Ready?’ she asked Fontagu.
He gulped and nodded. He appeared to have something wrong with his voice.
Tab hurried across the street to the tavern and pushed open the door. The hubbub dwindled gradually. All eyes were fixed on Tab and Fontagu, and not all of them were friendly. In fact, very few of them were.
Tab took a deep breath and headed across the room. According to Fontagu, who seemed to have an uncommonly detailed knowledge of the Quentaran underworld, the man Tab sought kept a booth at the back of The Purple Wart once or twice a week.
She was almost across the room when a thickset troll stepped out of an archway in front of her. His broad shoulders blocked out the door. By the smell of him, he was a drainer.
Tab looked up into the troll's mad, blazing eyes. She swallowed. No one in their right mind messed with a troll. Especially one with such disgusting breath and so many teeth.
‘Er, hello… ’ said Tab, sounding as friendly as she could.
The troll thrust out his hand and growled. His blubbery mouth twitched. Tab got the definite impression he was about to bite off her head, when -
‘Leave her be, Vrod,’ said a voice.
‘Sweet meat, good eating,’ the troll said. His voice sounded like gravel being crushed.
A hand tapped Vrod on the shoulder and the troll stepped grudgingly aside, though he never took his mad eyes off Tab.
Tab shifted her gaze to the man now standing before her. His eyes suddenly flashed in recognition. ‘You?’ he said in amazement. It was the same man who had tried to steal the magicians’ icefire gem more than a year ago, the same man she had locked in the pantry.
Great, Tab thought to herself. Just great.
She started to back away. ‘Uh… I think I made a mistake.’ She turned, intending to dart for the door.
‘Seize her!’ yelled the man. She felt vice-like arms close around her and she was lifted off the floor. ‘Bring the other one too.’
Tab heard Fontagu's whinnying whimper close behind as they were taken to a booth against the far wall. Tab was shoved into a seat and Fontagu squeezed hurriedly in next to her, looking as if he was ready to burst into tears. ‘Don't hurt me, please, please don't hurt me,’ he wailed over and over.
‘Vrod,’ said the tall man. ‘Shut him up. Nicely.’
Fontagu suddenly found a wad of phlegm-smeared cloth had been shoved in his mouth. His eyes widened indignantly but Vrod leaned down close to his face. Fontagu tried an unsuccessful smile.
‘That will do, Vrod.’ The tall man seated himself opposite them. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Tab. ‘I don't take kindly to being locked in a closet and left waiting for the tender attentions of magicians!’
‘Sorry about that. But I did set you free. You know, the string -?’
‘Ah, yes. The string. I suppose I do have you to thank for that. Imprisoned me, then freed me. Well, in that case, drinks all round.’ He shouted orders. When he turned back he saw a look of such confusion on Tab's face that he burst out laughing.
‘Come now, we must have honour among thieves. There is so little any place else!’
‘Does that mean you're not going to kill us?’
‘Kill you? Why, perish the thought. Not only do I owe you my life, twice over – for I would never have made it out of there alive had I had the gem with me! – but I bow before a greater thief than I.’ And he did just that. He stood up and bowed to her in a princely fashion.
Tab squirmed uncomfortably.
Fontagu gurgled something. ‘I think he's trying to say he helped,’ said Tab. Fontagu nodded vigorously. The tall man saluted him.
‘Now tell me why a slip of a girl like yourself, and one such as he’ – he indicated Fontagu – ‘would take such a risk as to come to a place like this at night?’
‘Are you Lord Verris?’
The tall man blinked. ‘I am he indeed. And at your service.’
‘Then I need your help,’ said Tab. ‘Quentaris needs your help… ’
THE CLASH
Verris left the Sailors’ Guild headquarters with a spring in his step and misgivings in his heart.
Thinking back on his conversation with Captain Bellgard, he hoped that he hadn't been duped by the girl. For sure, she had risked much in coming to see him, and had already lost her job at the guild for trying to convince the magicians. But if he had read her wrong, then he and his crew were about to become a permanent part of the Sailors’ Guild – a submissive part, one that had to take orders.
On the other hand, if he were right, he would soon be head of a semi-independent yet-to-be-named new guild. Navies were good at keeping their ships afloat – a full-time job in itself. It was a bit much to expect them to be specialists in two areas at the same time.
Hence the need for a corps of marines. And a Marine Commander. Once, long ago, the marines had been the navy's fighting force, going where the navy could not always go: on sea and on land.
He found Borges and told him about the deal he had struck with Captain Bellgard.
Borges stared at him, aghast. ‘And what was wrong with our old guild?’
‘And which one would that be?’ asked Verris merrily.
‘The Thieves’ Guild!’
‘Ah, that one. Well, let me ask you, Borges, when was the last time we had good pickings and lots of work?’
Borges stroked his beard, glowering. ‘You know damn well. It was before we stepped foot in this accursed city!’
‘But why? We could ply our trade here, could we not?’
Borges stared at Verris like he was mad. ‘And go where?’ he demanded. ‘We're trapped in this rat cage like everybody else, with no boltholes, and no escape! If we knocked over a big job, the City Watch would track us down in a minute.’
‘Exactly my point,’ said Verris. ‘There's no future in it, unless we want to become petty crooks, and that's not my style. So we're branching out.’
Borges gave him a helpless look. ‘But why this?’
‘Because we're good at it.’
‘The Venerable Lightfingers won't like it. Some people are happy with the old ways.’
Verris shrugged nonchalantly. ‘He can have the Thieves’ Guild all to himself. Him and the other beg gars.’ Verris rested a hand on Borges’ shoulder. ‘The rest of us will do very nicely as marines.’
Borges sighed resignedly. ‘If you say so.’
Verris looked up at the straining sails. Taut ropes hummed and cross-spars creaked, and the wind whistled through the rigging. They were making good speed.
Orders had been issued to tack towards a dense cloud bank on the eastern horizon, but only because Verris had pushed the matter and because Captain Bellgard was enjoying the thought that soon he would have a lord at his beck and call, though he hadn't quite decided whether to make the former Prince of Thieves a petty officer, or something even more subservient.
Bellgard was no fool. He had seized the chance with both hands. He had heard the story of the girl with bad dreams and did not credit it for a second, but Quentaris was undeniably undermanned, especially by experienced fighters. If he won this bet, he would have two hundred extra hands on deck, plus an even larger number of small-time crooks who would probably feel comfortable working under Verris.
And if he lost, well, they would have another guild on Quentaris but a fighting force just the same. Of course, he would have to put up with Verris as some kind of equal, but really he quite liked the man. He would never admit it, but he had a grudging respect for the man who stole from the rich and, j
ust as often, gave half of it to the poor.
Bellgard scowled at himself. He must be getting soft.
Verris and Borges looked out over the portside battle ments. Verris mused that he would be much happier when they drew close to the cloud bank, for in truth he needed Tolrush to attack. And with that thought in mind, he had marshalled his forces.
Overhead, within easy reach of his signal, was a clog – a small wooden cabin attached by rope to a crane high above, one of several upside machines used to swing sky sailors quickly from one mast or spar to another, in case of emergency. Verris had managed to commandeer three such cranes. With these, his combined fighting force of roughly three hundred men and women could be swiftly deployed to any point on Quentaris’ perimeter.
Bellgard had found out, of course, and had grumbled and harrumphed a lot, but even he saw the wisdom of it. Fighters need to be where the fighting is thickest, and quick smart too.
‘You think they'll fight, if it comes to it?’ said Borges gloomily. For him, no cloud ever had a silver lining. There was nothing at the end of the rainbow except grief. And if bad things could happen, they would.
Verris laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Cheer up, man. I'm sure there'll be half a dozen disasters, enough to please even you.’
Verris produced a spyglass and scanned the horizon. Still nothing. He looked ahead towards the cloud bank. They were making good time. If Tolrush was anywhere about they would surely try to stop them before they could vanish into what amounted to thick fog.
An hour later, there was still nothing. In another hour they would be into the clouds. Verris frowned. He wasn't sure how long he could hold together his followers, only some two hundred of which were actually his. The others were a motley collection of petty thieves, muggers and highwaymen short on work; he had convinced them to leave the Venerable Lightfingers’ guild and join his well-paid cause.
Only action could turn such a mixed group into a cohesive fighting force.
‘What's that?’ said Borges.
Verris pressed the spyglass hard against his eye. ‘Where -?’
Borges pointed from aft to port. ‘Now will you look at that,’ he said.
Behind them and a thousand feet above, a dark menacing shape bulged silently from a high cloud. It was long and narrow, and at the front two huge grappling arms opened and closed like pole-cutters. Verris whistled thinly through his teeth as he studied it through the spyglass.
‘It's seen a lot of action, by the look of it,’ he said.
As it slid fully into view, Borges paled. It looked like some demon ship or, as he said afterwards, a ship of the dead.
High overhead, lookouts in one of the several crow's nests began tolling a warning bell. The alarm spread. People rushed from indoors and scanned the sky, shading their eyes. The alarm had only been sounded three times before, twice when the city had been under attack by aerial creatures, and another time when a grim mountain-top castle had opened fire on them with ten-inch cannons. As terrifying as these were, there were few casualties and little damage, though the cannon balls and grapeshot – totally unknown weapons to Quentarans – had ruined the great canvas sails which afterwards had to be carefully patched up.
Despite these earlier false alarms, word quickly spread that this time was different.
‘No doubt about it,’ said Verris. ‘It's Tolrush all right.’ He handed the spyglass to Borges who took it reluctantly but put it to his eye. After a moment, he said, ‘She'll not make much headway with those sails. They're full of holes!’
‘Take a look at the propellers.’ Borges did so. The propellers were a blur of motion. Verris went on: ‘She's making ten knots, or I'm no sailor. So we've less than an hour till she comes alongside and tries to board us.’
‘You guessed right,’ said Borges.
‘The girl guessed right. Or saw rightly, whichever it is. Thanks to her we have a chance.’
Borges lifted his eyes upside and cursed. ‘If our people were up there we'd be travelling a darn sight faster.’
‘We might,’ Verris agreed, ‘but then we'd have no one to repel boarders. Quickly now, spread the word. Leave only a skeletal squad to the starboard. They'll swing to our leeward.’
‘Unless they keep to the heights and rappel down atop us.’
‘They'll not risk losing their propellers and rudders,’ said Verris. ‘Besides, they want us intact. There's no plunder in a crushed city.’
He was right. But Quentaris wasn't going to make it to the thick scudding clouds in which they might have escaped. Being larger and heavier, Quentaris couldn't hope to outmanoeuvre the Tolrushians. Nor offer a decent fight. Because of the siege, Tolrush would have had its entire populace inside the city walls when it was wrenched through the rift vortex – it would thus outnumber Quentaris by quite a margin. Worse, Tolrush had been a military city-state for over a century, its people groomed for war from when they were toddlers.
Quentaris lost its lead within half an hour.
Battle stations sounded, and all hands scrambled on deck or squirmed up the rigging. Citizens grabbed whatever they could: broomsticks, clubs, pots and pans, anything that could be used as a weapon. Magicians assembled on the walls along with Verris’ marines and what sailors could be spared from upside.
And then they waited.
Above them, every inch of canvas strained against the wind. Rigging whipped and jiggled, and the masts, with their cross-spars outstretched like arms, creaked under the load. To port and starboard, thick black smoke belched from the array of funnels atop the great engine-houses; and projecting from the sides, the enormous propellers were spinning as fast as they could. Even so, the marauding city rumbled closer by the second.
Ten minutes later, the predator city came alongside, moving into Quentaris’ wind shadow. Immediately, they dropped sails, and Quentaris shuddered as the two land masses ground into one another, prow to prow. On each side, magicians cushioned the impact with spells that exhausted them almost at once. Despite this, masts shook and rigging twanged. Two sailors dropped to their deaths as the jolt unseated them.
Then came grappling irons, looping through the air, snagging onto battlement and rigging. Within minutes, hundreds of Tolrushians had leapt across to Quentaris.
‘All hands, repel boarders!’ Verris screamed.
The fighting was fierce, mainly concentrated a long the portside perimeter wall and in the rigging above. Verris was not fool enough to pull all the defences from other key spots though. Tolrushians were known for their devious tactics: they might just take it into their heads to send a lifeboat, charmed to float, under Quentaris and up onto the other side. This meant that fully a fifth of his forces were doing nothing, but it couldn't be helped.
Nor did he have much time for regrets. Within moments of the two cities joining battle, he was in the thick of it. A mid-sized mountain troll leapt at him wielding a great battleaxe. Verris ducked beneath the arcing blade and thrust his sword up into the troll. The troll gasped, staggered back, and flipped over the parapet, dropping out of sight.
Then two Tolrushians came at him, trading blow for blow, trying to pierce his defensive swordplay. He parried, thrust, feinted, and parried again. One of the Tolrushians made a misstep, overbalanced, and Verris cut him down then turned all of his attention to the remaining foe.
A moment later the other Tolrushian was down too.
Up and down the battlements, the fighting ebbed and flowed. There were screams, cries and hoarse gurgling shrieks, some fading slowly as Quentarans and Tolrushians fell overboard, plummeting thousands of feet to their deaths.
The air wasn't just full of cries and grunts, it was also full of arrows. Verris saw one man with an arrow in his thigh, another in his shoulder, and a shield with six more sprouting from it. The magicians did their best to take care of aerial missiles, scorching some into flame in mid-flight, or else diverting them so that they fell harmlessly to the ground.
The frenzied fighting went on for
another hour.
Verris rallied his men, ordered them to weak spots, and made sure the wounded were pulled from the thick of the battle and taken to the healers at the hospital. More than once he praised good fortune that some of Quentaris’ best fighters like Hulk Duelph and Commander Storm had been in a War Cabinet meeting with the Archon at the time of the Upheaval. Their very presence inspired many a Quentaran that day.
‘Keep at them!’ yelled Verris. ‘We have them on the run!’
This was something of an exaggeration, but Verris had seen what few others had spotted so far: that the two cities were drifting closer and closer to the cloud bank. Just a little further…
At the first clammy embrace of cloud he put his fingers to his lips and blew a shrill whistle.
Immediately, a horn sounded.
Everywhere his men disengaged from the enemy and set about hacking at the grappling lines that bound the two cities together. Sails creaked as they tacked to take full advantage of the wind. Spars cracked and cordage thrummed as the land masses pulled slowly apart. Bodies fell screaming into the chasm between the rumbling monoliths.
The Tolrushians were taken by surprise.
As the last grappling lines were cut, Quentaris yawed two points to starboard. Everyone braced themselves as the city righted then surged forward. There were brief cheers, but the fighting hadn't stopped. There were still a couple of hundred Tolrushians on board, and the clash of cutlasses, battleaxes and pikes, and the screams of the wounded and dying, continued for some time before dwindling completely.
A conch sounded. Every lantern in the city was extinguished; every fire doused.
Except for the creaking of sail and mast, and the wind in the rigging, there was no other sound, unless counting the far-off muffled shouts of enraged Tolrushians as the floating city searched through the pea-soup fog for Quentaris.
Verris turned to find Borges standing beside him. He had a bloodied bandage strapped across his forehead. ‘Accursed cloud,’ said Borges grumpily. ‘Just when I was reaching my stride. Why, I could have sent a dozen more Tolrushians to meet their ancestors!’