by Mel Odom
“Something’s holdin’ him,” Tomas said, fighting to bring Mat onto the longboat.
“Skeleton,” Darrick said. “It’s holding on to his leg.”
Without warning, the undead thing erupted from the water, lunging at Tomas with an open mouth like a hungry wolf. Galvanized by his fear, Tomas yanked back, pulling Mat into the longboat with him.
Calmly, as if he were reaching for a dish at a tavern, Maldrin picked up his war hammer and smashed the skeleton’s skull. Going limp, the undead creature released its hold and disappeared into the whitecapped water.
Darrick’s chest heaved as he sucked in huge lungfuls of air. “River’s full of skeletons. They followed us in. They can’t swim, but they’re in the water. If they find the boat anchor—”
The longboat suddenly shuddered and swung sideways, no longer pointed into the current so that it could ride out the gorged river easier. It bucked like a mustang, throwing all the sailors aboard it around as if they were ragdolls.
“Something’s got hold of the rope!” one of the sailors yelled.
Shoving the other sailors aside, Maldrin raked a knife from his boot and sawed through the anchor rope as skeletal hands grabbed the longboat’s gunwales. The boat leapt into the river, cutting across the whitecaps like a thing possessed.
“Man those oars!” Maldrin bawled, grabbing one from the middle of the longboat himself. “Get this damn boat squared away afore we all go down with it!”
Struggling against the exhaustion that filled him as well as the longboat being tossed like a child’s toy on the rushing river, Darrick pushed himself up and crawled over to Mat Hu-Ring. “Mat!” he called.
Lightning flashed, and thunder filled the river canyon through the Hawk’s Beak Mountains.
“Mat.” Tenderly, Darrick rolled Mat’s head over, sickened at once by how lax and loose it was on his neck.
Mat’s face kept rolling, coming around to face Darrick. The wide dark eyes stared sightlessly up, capturing the next reflection of the wicked lightning in them. The right side of Mat’s head was covered with blood, and white pieces of bone stuck out from the dark hair.
“He’s dead,” Tomas said as he pulled on his oar. “I’m sorry, Darrick. I know ye two was close.”
No! Darrick couldn’t believe it—wouldn’t believe it. Mat couldn’t be dead. Not handsome and witty and funny Mat. Not Mat who could always be counted on to say the right things to the girls in the dives in the port cities they visited on their rounds. Not Mat who had helped nurse him back to health those times Darrick’s punishment from his father laid him up for days in the loft above the butcher’s barn.
“No,” Darrick said. But his denial was weak even in his ears. He stared at the corpse of his friend.
“Like as not he went sudden.” Maldrin spoke quietly behind Darrick. “He musta hit his head on a rock. Or maybe that skeleton he was fightin’ with done for him.”
Darrick remembered the way Mat had struck the cliffside on the long fall from the canyon ridge.
“I knew he was dead as soon as I touched him,” Maldrin said. “There wasn’t nothin’ ye could do, Darrick. Every man that took this assignment from Cap’n Tollifer knew what our chances was goin’ in. Just bad luck. That’s all it was.”
Darrick sat in the middle of the longboat, feeling the rain beat down on him, hearing the thunder crash in the heavens above him. His eyes burned, but he didn’t let himself cry. He’d never let himself cry. His father had taught him that crying only made things hurt worse.
“Did you see the demon?” the boy asked, touching Darrick’s arm.
Darrick didn’t answer. In that brief moment of learning of Mat’s death, he hadn’t even thought of Kabraxis.
“Was the demon there?” Lhex asked again. “I’m sorry for your friend, but I have to know.”
“Aye,” Darrick answered through his constricted throat. “Aye, the demon was there right enough. He caused this. Might as well have killed Mat himself. Him and that priest.”
Several of the sailors touched their good luck charms at the mention of the demon. They pulled at their oars in response to Maldrin’s shouted orders, but it was primarily to direct the craft. The swollen river propelled the longboat swiftly.
Upriver, lantern lights burned aboard the single cog fighting the mooring tether as the river rushed against it. Captain Raithen’s crew waited there, Darrick guessed. They didn’t know the captain wasn’t coming.
Giving in to the overwhelming emotion and exhaustion that filled him, Darrick stretched out over Mat’s body, as if he were going to protect him from the gale winds and the rain, the way Mat used to do for him when he was racked with fever while getting well from one of his father’s beatings. Darrick smelled the blood on Mat, and it reminded him of the blood that had been ever present in his father’s shop.
Before Darrick knew it, he fell into the waiting blackness, and he never wanted to return.
ELEVEN
Darrick lay in his hammock aboard Lonesome Star, his hands folded behind his head, and tried not to think of the dreams that had plagued him the last two nights. In those dreams, Mat was still alive, but Darrick still lived with his parents in the butcher’s shop in Hillsfar. Since he had left, Darrick had never gone back. Over the years since his departure from the town, Mat had gone back to visit with his family on special occasions, arriving there by merchant ship and signing on as a cargo guard while on leave from the Westmarch Navy. Darrick had always suspected that Mat hadn’t visited his home or his family as much as he had wanted to. But Mat had believed there would be plenty of time. That was Mat’s nature: he never hurried about anything, took each thing in its time and place.
Now, Mat would never go home again.
Darrick seized the pain that filled him before it could escape his control. That control was rock-solid. He’d built it carefully, through beating after beating, through bald cruel things his father had said, till that control was just as strong and as sure as a blacksmith’s anvil.
He shifted his head, feeling the ache in his back, neck, and shoulders from all the climbing he’d done the night before last. Turning his head, he gazed out the porthole at the glittering blue-green water of the Gulf of Westmarch. Judging from the way the light hit the ocean, it was noon—almost time.
Lying in the hammock, sipping his breaths, stilling himself and controlling the pain that threatened to overflow even the boundaries he’d put up, he waited. He tried counting his heartbeats, feeling them echo in his head, but waiting was hard when he measured the time. It was better to go numb and let nothing touch him.
Then the deck pipe played, blasting shrill and somehow sweet over the constant wave splash of the ocean, calling the ship’s crew together.
Darrick closed his eyes and worked on imagining nothing, remembering nothing. But the sour scent of the moldy hay in the loft above the pens where his father kept the animals waiting to be slain and bled out filled his nose. Before Darrick knew it, a brief glimpse of Mat Hu-Ring, nine years old in clothing that was too big for him, flipped down from the rooftop and landed inside the loft. Mat had climbed the chimney of the smokehouse attached to the barn behind the butcher’s shop and made his way across the roof until he was able to enter the loft.
Hey, Mat said, digging in the pockets of the loose shirt he wore and producing cheese and apples. I didn’t see you around yesterday. I thought I’d find you up here.
In his shame, his body covered with bruises, Darrick had tried to act mad at Mat and make him go away. But it was hard to be convincing when he had to be so quiet. Getting loud enough to attract his father’s attention—and let his father know someone else was aware of his punishment—was out of the question. After Mat had spread the apples and cheese out, adding a wilted flower to make it more of a feast and a joke, Darrick hadn’t been able to keep up the pretense, and even embarrassment hadn’t curbed his hunger.
If his father had ever once found out about Mat’s visits during those times, Darrick kn
ew he would never have seen Mat again.
Darrick opened his eyes and stared up at the unmarked ceiling. Just as he would never see him again now. Darrick reached for the cold numbness that he used to cover himself when things became too much. It slipped on like armor, each piece fitting the others perfectly. No weakness remained within him.
The shrill pipe played again.
Without warning, the door to the officers’ quarters opened.
Darrick didn’t look. Whoever it was could go away, and would if he knew what was good for him.
“Mr. Lang,” a strong, imperious voice spoke.
Hurriedly, reflexes overcoming even the pain of loss and the walls he’d erected, Darrick twisted in the hammock, fell out of it expertly even though the ship broke through oncoming waves at the moment, and landed on his feet at attention. “Aye, sir,” Darrick answered quickly.
Captain Tollifer stood at the entranceway. He was a tall, solid man in his late forties. Gray touched the lamb-chop whiskers he wore surrounding a painfully clean-shaven face. The captain had his hair pulled back in a proper queue and wore his best Westmarch Navy uniform, green with gold piping. He carried a tricorn hat in his hand. His boots shone like fresh-polished ebony.
“Mr. Lang,” the captain said, “have you had occasion to have your hearing checked of late?”
“It’s been a while, sir,” Darrick said, standing stiffly at attention.
“Then may I suggest that when we reach port in Westmarch the day after tomorrow, the Light willing, you report to a doctor of such things and find out.”
“Of course, sir,” Darrick said. “I will, sir.”
“I only mention this, Mr. Lang,” Captain Tollifer said, “because I clearly heard the pipe blow all hands on deck.”
“Aye, sir. As did I.”
Tollifer raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“I thought I might be excused from this, sir,” Darrick said.
“It’s a funeral for one of the men in my command,” Tollifer said. “A man who died bravely in the performance of his duties. No one is excused from one of those.”
“Begging the captain’s pardon,” Darrick said, “I thought I might be excused because Mat Hu-Ring was my friend.” I was the one who got him killed.
“A friend’s place is beside his friend.”
Darrick kept his voice cold and detached, glad that he felt the same way inside. “There’s nothing left that I can do for him. That body out there isn’t Mat Hu-Ring.”
“You can stand for him, Mr. Lang,” the captain said, “in front of his peers and his friends. I think Mr. Hu-Ring would expect that of you. Just as he would expect me to have this talk with you.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Then I’ll expect you to clean yourself up properly,” Captain Tollifer said, “and get yourself topside in relatively short order.”
“Aye, sir.” Even with all his respect for the captain and fear of his position, Darrick barely restrained the scathing rebuttal that came to mind. His grief for Mat was his own, not property of the Westmarch Navy.
The captain turned to go, then stopped at the door and spoke, looking at Darrick earnestly. “I’ve lost friends before, Mr. Lang. It’s never easy. We perform the funerals so that we may begin letting go in a proper fashion. It isn’t to forget them but only to remind ourselves that some closure is given in death and to help us mark an eternal place for them in our hearts. A few good men are born into this world who should never be forgotten. Mr. Hu-Ring was one of those, and I feel privileged to have served with him and known him. I won’t be saying that in the address topside because you know I stand on policy and procedure aboard my ship, but I wanted you to know that.”
“Thank you, sir,” Darrick said.
The captain placed his hat on his head. “I’ll give you a reasonable amount of time to get ready, Mr. Lang. Please be prompt.”
“Aye, sir.” Darrick watched the captain go, feeling the pain boiling over inside him, turning to anger that drew to it like a lodestone all the old rage he’d kept bottled up for so long. He closed his eyes, trembling, then released his pent-up breath and sealed the emotions away.
When he opened his eyes, he told himself he felt nothing. He was an automaton. If he felt nothing, he couldn’t be hurt. His father had taught him that.
Mechanically, ignoring even the aches and pains that filled him from that night, Darrick went to the foot of his hammock and opened his sea chest. Since the night at Tauruk’s Port, he hadn’t been returned to active duty. None of the crew had except Maldrin, who couldn’t be expected to lie abed on a ship when there was so much to do.
Darrick chose a clean uniform, shaved quickly with the straight razor without nicking himself too badly, and dressed. There were three other junior officers aboard Lonesome Star; he was senior among them.
Striding out on deck, pulling on the white gloves that were demanded at ceremonial occasions, Darrick looked past the faces of the men as they stared at him. He was neutral, untouchable. They would see nothing on him today because there was nothing to see. He returned their crisp salutes proficiently.
The noonday sun hung high above Lonesome Star. Light struck the sea, glittering in the blue-green troughs between the white rollers like a spray of gemstones. The rigging and canvas sheets above creaked and snapped in the wind as the ship plunged toward Westmarch, carrying the news of the pirate chieftain’s death as well as the unbelievable return of a demon to the world of man. The men aboard Lonesome Star had talked of little else since the rescue crew’s return to the ship, and Darrick knew all of Westmarch would soon be buzzing with the news as well. The impossible had happened.
Darrick took his place beside the three other junior officers at the forefront of the sailors. All three of the officers were much younger than he, one of them still in his teens and already knowing command because his father had purchased a commission for him.
A momentary flicker of resentment touched Darrick’s heart as they stood beside Mat’s flag-covered body on the plank balanced on the starboard railing. None of the other officers deserved those positions; they had not been true sailing men like Mat. Darrick had chosen to follow his own career and become an officer when offered, but Mat never had. Captain Tollifer had never seen fit to extend a commission to Mat, though Darrick had never understood why. As a rule, such a promotion wasn’t done much, and hardly ever was it done aboard the same ship. But Captain Tollifer had done just such a thing.
The officers standing beside Darrick had never known a bosun’s lash for failing to carry out a captain’s orders or for failing to carry them out to their full extent. Darrick had, and he’d borne those injuries and insults with the same stoic resolve his father had trained him to have. Darrick hadn’t been afraid to take command in the field even when under orders. In the beginning, such behavior had earned him floggings under hard captains who refused to acknowledge his reinterpretation of their commands, but under Captain Tollifer, Darrick had come into his own.
Mat had never been interested in becoming an officer. He’d enjoyed the hard life of a sailor.
During their years aboard the ships of the Westmarch Navy, Darrick had often thought that he had been taking care of Mat, looking out for his friend. But looking at the sheet-draped body in front of him, Darrick knew that Mat had never been that interested in the sea.
What would you have done? Where would you have gone if I had not pulled you here? The questions hung in Darrick’s mind like gulls riding a favorable wind. He pushed them away. He wouldn’t allow himself to be touched by pain or confusion.
Andregai played the pipes, standing at Captain Tollifer’s side on the stern castle. The wind whipped the captain’s great military cloak around him. The boy—Lhex, the king’s nephew—stood at the captain’s side. When the pipes finished playing and the last echoing sad note faded away, the captain delivered the ship’s eulogy, speaking with quiet dignity of Mat Hu-Ring’s service and devotion to the Westmarch Navy and that he gave his life w
hile rescuing the king’s nephew. Despite the scattering of facts, the address was formal, almost impersonal.
Darrick listened to the drone of words, the call of gulls sailing after Lonesome Star and hoping for a trail of scraps to be left behind on the water. Slain while rescuing the king’s nephew. That’s not how it was. Mat was killed while on a fool’s errand, and for worrying about me. I got him killed.
Darrick looked at the ship’s crew around him. Despite the action two nights ago, Mat had been the only one killed. Maybe some of the crew believed, as Maldrin said he did, that it was all just bad luck, but Darrick knew that some of them believed it was he who had killed Mat by staying too long in the cavern.
When Captain Tollifer finished speaking, the pipes played again and the mournful sound filled the ship’s deck. Maldrin, clad in sailor’s dress whites that were worn only on inspection days or while at anchorage in Westmarch, stepped up on the other side of Mat’s flagcovered body on the plank. Five more sailors joined him.
The pipes blew again, a going-away tune that always wished the listeners a safe trip. It was known in every maritime province Darrick had ever visited.
When the pipes finished, Maldrin looked to Darrick, a question in his old gray eyes.
Darrick steeled himself and gave an imperceptible nod.
“All right, then, lads,” Maldrin whispered. “Easy as ye does it, an’ with all the respect ye can muster.” The mate grabbed the plank and started it up, tilting it on its axis, and the other five men—two on one side with him and three on the other—lifted together. Maldrin kept a firm grip on the Westmarch flag. Maybe they covered the dead given to the sea, but the flags were not abandoned.
As one, Darrick and the other officers turned to the starboard side, followed a half-second later by the sailors, all of them standing at rigid attention.
“For every man who dies for Westmarch,” the captain spoke, “let him know that Westmarch lives for him.”
The other officers and the crew repeated the rote saying.