Heritage of Fire

by Dave Luckett

  Oversea. West oversea, again. The Outer Isles. Something about the very name ...

  "We seem to have become a pair of fly-by-nights," remarked Nela. Her voice sounded calm. "I could easily become tired of it."

  "There'll be honour for mages again," said Gerd. "There better be. I'm one too, or will be."

  "You'll need an evening tide, with the peak sometime after sundown," said Alissa, after a pause. Practical, always practical. But she sounded distant, cool. "A week, you say?" Nela nodded, firmly. "Wednesday or Thursday, then. Find a ship sailing then. I'll get up tomorrow." Nela opened her mouth to protest, but Alissa simply repeated. "Tomorrow. It's about time I got to the pot on my own legs, anyway. Then, by the time you have to go, I'll be able to swing a hammer again." She flexed her hand again, experimentally. "There's work to be done."

  *

  The Outer Isler wasn't all that different from a Kihree longship, to Gerd's eye. She was single-masted, though the mast wasn't made to be stepped down on deck, and it was in two pieces. She had a proper sternpost, where a longship's lines swept up in a continuous curve, and she could carry more sail, but she was still long for her beam and only half-decked, made for the timber trade. Her sides were even pierced for sweeps.

  He came aboard that afternoon, to chaffer with her master, a nuggety little seaman with a wall-eye and a face like a walnut shell, not made for showing pleasure. It hardly changed when Gerd offered fare or labour. "Aye. We'll be clearing Thursday. Two days more to unload. Not many dock labourers, see. All gone for soldiers."

  "You've still to load for the return," said Gerd, but the seaman shook his head.

  "Small chance of that. Another time I'd wait for a return cargo, but that'd be whistling in the dark now. We'll be sailing in ballast, I reckon. No matter. Profit on this voyage was more than the barky's worth. I knew there was a reason for the haste. Evening tide'll suit. Get yourself and your wife aboard by sunset."

  "How long to the Outer Isles?" Gerd dreaded the days of puking.

  "It was a week here, so maybe the same back. Depends. The south wind serves now, coming or going, but a southerly won't last in this season. It might come round west, and then look out."

  Gerd nodded. He stepped out over the side and climbed the short ladder to the dock. A lever-crane worked with a treadmill windlass was plucking bundles of sawn timber from the Isler's deck. Lumber for rebuilding a burned city. Lumber that wasn't available locally, and had to be brought in, because the people of Walse had cut down their own forests.

  Lumber that was worth an amazing price, just now, the first supplies in. Gerd shook his head. Someone would always turn a profit. He climbed to the dock and walked off through the impromptu market at its land end, the numbers revolving in his head.

  He found Alissa up, hobbling around the tiny room, swinging her arms. Nela was watching her, frowning but saying nothing.

  "I'll be right in another day," said Alissa, as Gerd came in.

  "No, you won't." Nela folded her arms. "You might be able to walk. Just about."

  "Then I can walk down to Basden and see what's going on. There's some there who know me. I can show some apprentices how it's done, at least."

  Nela looked across at Gerd as if in appeal, saw his face, sighed, and nodded. "All right," she said. "If you must. Let me look at those feet."

  Gerd politely turned his back. "I've found berths - well, at least a space - in a ship bound for the Outer Isles. Clearing Thursday evening for Westrand."

  "Hm," said Nela. "Does that hurt?"

  "No." Alissa's voice was stolid. Of course it hurts, thought Gerd.

  He stared up at the ceiling, and spoke in the Wizard's Tongue. He heard Nela stop moving. Then she answered him in the same language.

  "What was that?" asked Alissa. There was sudden hardness in her voice.

  "Just asking a technical question," said Gerd. "Smiths use their own speech too, so I've observed."

  Alissa grunted. "Maybe. I wouldn't talk like that if I were you. Not now, not here."

  "You're probably right. Nela, how is Alissa, in the common?"

  Pause. "She's mending. I don't know about tomorrow, though."

  Gerd almost smiled. "Let's face it, nobody does."

  *

  The sun grazed the horizon. It was time to be going.

  Gerd had sold Jane on, for a higher price than he had paid for her, to a wool-packman who had three other donkeys that looked well cared for. Already the wool trade was starting again. It would take much more than a raid to destroy the reason for Walse.

  He walked with Nela down to the port, passing by Basden. As Alissa had thought, there was work to be done there. The lords were ordering weapons from anyone who could make them. Hammers were already ringing, and the forges glowed. Mind you, it had cost a lot to get the roof-timbers raised again. Gerd nodded. Lumber was pricey, and would be so for some time.

  They said farewell. They shook hands, and Gerd could feel the calluses on Alissa's hardening again. She'd been swinging a hammer, and no doubt her strength was coming back. The rest... he didn't know. She seemed harder, dryer, more contained within herself. And she didn't come down to the dock. A piece of barstock was just coming up to heat in the forge, and a striker was standing by. She turned back to her work.

  The port was no more than a few minutes' walk. Gerd and Nela kept side by side, through streets that were coming to life again. Nela stayed muffled in her hooded cloak. The evening was cool enough for that. Rubble was being carted away on drays, or used to build new walls. Street traders were crying wares.

  Gerd looked about. "There's no stopping this now." He didn't mean only the rebuilding, and Nela understood him.

  "No. I wouldn't be able to live openly here. Not for years. And as for the Kihreeans..."

  "I could almost pity them."

  "But not quite."

  "No. Not quite. They didn't do it alone, but nevertheless they did it. It had to come to this, sooner or later."

  They turned at the top of the street, and began the descent to the docks. The light was dimming, now. Twilight was shorter. Change was in the air. "You're ready?" Gerd asked.

  "As ready as I'll ever be," she replied, not changing her pace.

  They went aboard. The same crane Gerd had seen before was just lowering a net of broken stone into the hull, for ballast. There was no shortage of broken stone in Walse.

  The ship's master did no more than jerk his head towards a low booth under the half-deck, a space about the size of a clothes-press laid on its side. Its entrance was only a curtain, for the most exiguous of privacy. Gerd put his head in, nodded, and entered, Nela following. Someone had slung a couple of hammocks from hooks. They could lie in the hammocks, or roll them up, stow them, and sit on their packs. No doubt passengers often had sea-chests. The whole cabin was knocked together out of canvas and lath. Even the decking was temporary, boards pegged roughly together.

  They opted to sit together in the dark, not speaking. The sounds of the ballast being stowed increased, and then diminished. The tide was just at the peak. A rumble announced the lines being released at the bow, and sharp orders and then a chantey told them that the headsails were being loosed. Gerd felt the bows being pushed around by the wind. The after line was hauled in. She was pointing the right way, and the wind and tide took her away from the dock. Another series of orders, and the mainsail filled. She leaned over, and the sound of water bubbling along her side could be heard. They were under way.

  They waited. There was plenty of time. It was an hour or more to the opening of the river. Gerd made his preparations. When it came, he knew it would be sudden.

  And it was. They met the first full rollers of the open ocean. He felt the ship's head swing around, the orders that put her before the wind. The south wind. She was headed north, not making easting to round the Wizard's Isle.

  He stood up, slowly and carefully, and heard the rustle of Nela's robe as she did the same. They were forced to half-crouch below the deckh
ead. The ship rolled. Any moment now.

  A step on the gangway outside. Gerd, listening, could hear the rasp of mail. He grinned in the darkness.

  The curtain was swept aside. The last of the evening light was weak, but the cabin was utterly dark. A helmeted head thrust in, preceded by the gleam of a dagger point. Gerd caught the shine of the headpiece, and knew that for the moment its wearer could not see him. He was waiting, ready, his own dagger out and reversed in his hand. He could see where the rim of the helmet didn't cover the man's neck. He struck, hard. A sullen thud. The man collapsed to the deck, scrabbling.

  In the tales, they always obligingly pass out when you hit them, thought Gerd. He kicked, and this time the helmet came skittering off. But getting the first one in is useful.

  Nela was already crouched, more or less over the man. She had been murmuring for some time, and now she reached down, her hand going to the back of his head. He relaxed.

  "Dead?" asked Gerd.

  She shook her head. "He'll be very sore in the head, though, when he wakes."

  He was already through the entrance. As soon as he came into the open air, the Penrose sword swept out. A turn and a step, and he was on the afterdeck. The master and the steersman stared at him.

  There was another man in a mail shirt here. A dagger gleamed in his hand, too. He was holding it negligently, though, and he was facing towards the seamen, watching them. At Gerd's step he turned. His eyes opened wide with shock, and he froze for an instant. He might have been fast enough to pull his sword, but his dagger was in the wrong hand.

  Gerd didn't bother with a parry. He simply used the length of his blade, as Alissa's master had said. A single cut to the leg below the other's mail shirt, and the dagger thrust was moot. It slid off Gerd's mail while the other fell bleeding to the deck.

  "Well?" said Gerd, ignoring the writhing body. "This is a poor way to treat paying passengers, Captain."

  The master's face only closed in a little more. "It was owner's orders, to head north. The rest they didn't ask about. Or say, neither."

  "North? For Shelstro?" A single nod, dour, not pleased.

  Nela stepped up from the gangway. She took one look at the man on the deck, and knelt. The materials were already in her hand. The man had dropped his dagger and was desperately trying to hold his leg closed, but he was sliding into unconsciousness.

  "Any more of them?" asked Gerd.

  The master shook his head. "They only boarded us just after you did. Had a letter from the owner. Kept quiet until we'd reached blue water. Didn't want a fuss, I guess. They didn't say what they was going to do. I only found out when they braced me."

  Nela was trying to bind the wound. "Help me," she demanded. "He'll bleed to death unless I get this closed."

  Gerd eyed the seamen. The master looked steadily back, then shook his head. "Stand by to come about," he said to the steersman, and then, cupping his hands around his mouth, "Hands wear ship! Lay her on the starboard tack!"

  Gerd sheathed his sword. He knelt, and his hands covered Nela's. The man was relaxing into unconsciousness and already the blood was pooling on the deck.

  "Here. And here," said Nela. "I can't ... ah. That's better. Yes. Like that."

  There was a pattern to flesh, he realised, like the pattern in the oak of the door, but far more complex. Nevertheless, it had a logic, a tension like a stretched sail, like cables holding a net of vessels and fibres. It could be torn apart, but it could be remade. He traced the patterns, following Nela's small light, remaking them.

  The blood flow slowed, stopped. Nela breathed out, slow and hard. "That will do for now. I can't..." She swayed as she knelt, and Gerd's arm went around her shoulders. He looked up at the master.

  "So now. We've changed course. Where to?"

  The master set his mouth. "Well. Happens I don't like people pointing daggers at me on my own deck. Also happens I don't like orders to take my ship to Shelstro, all things considered, even if I'm told that the Kihreeans have given me safe conduct. So, I'm turning for Westrand, and the owner can beach me there, if he wants. There's other berths."

  "The owner. That would be Master Barra."

  "Aye." The master paused. Then: "How did you know?" he asked.

  "I didn't, until I saw the fellow below. He and I have met before. But I knew before then that it had to be someone like Barra."

  *

  Gerd gestured. "We run. The message goes out. The Kihreean fleet must have been ready to sail, even then. Six days later, Walse gets burned. But about four days before the Kihreeans appear, and maybe only two days after we ran, Barra sends an urgent message to Westrand, ordering a cargo of timber brought in all haste. He sells at the top of the market, and makes a killing." He grimaced. "Literally."

  "So Barra knew about the raid in advance."

  "Yes."

  They sat in the cabin, facing each other over a hanging table made from a bit of scrap planking.

  "Lucky for Barra, it was his ship we chose to take passage in. We walked right into his hands," said Nela, but then she saw it, and shook her head. "No. That wasn't luck. This ship was the first Outer Isler to come in, because he knew about this in advance, and you were doing the choosing. So we didn't fall into his hands, he fell into ours." She reflected for a moment. "And now?"

  Gerd thought of the sacked city, the burned ships. He thought of the dagger, taken from a dead man whose shield might once have covered him. But mostly he thought of Alissa. "If he's in our hands, I think we ought to squeeze," he said.

  She stared him hard in the face. "You want revenge."

  "I want justice."

  "Your justice."

  Gerd heard himself saying: There is law everywhere. We carry it inside ourselves. Where else can it be, if not there?

  Or was it him who had said that?

  He looked down, then up again. "Then tell me, where shall we find justice? Any kind of justice? Shall we go to the local lord, and tell him? What do you think would happen then? We're mage and apprentice, remember? And hunted felons, to boot, if anyone recognises us, guilty of attacking a lord's man and then fleeing. We'd be accusing a respected member of the Merchants of the Coast with only maybe-if evidence." He heard himself, and it was convincing. But there was more. "And the merchants and the lords are allies in this thing. I'm fairly sure more of them knew it was coming, too. It's all been too smooth, too quick."

  She watched him. "All true. So you are going to kill him. You'll have to do it by stealth. There is no way to challenge him in the open."

  "He would have done far worse to us. He would have sold us to be flayed. He has already done far worse to many others."

  "Nevertheless. That's what it comes down to."

  "Then that's what it comes down to." Gerd remembered the merchant on the Dry Plains. He would have cut the tribesman up in leisurely fashion. That was different. Wasn't it?

  She nodded, but it was not in answer to that question. They sat in silence.

  24

  Moonrise would be not long before midnight, but the moon would still be only a crescent. It had not yet risen when the boat's keel grated on the pebbles of the beach. Gerd jumped out, picked up Nela, and carried her to the dry land, then gave a hand to shove the boat out again. "Here, at dawn," he said, and the master agreed, a dour nod.

  He splashed back to the strand, and sat to dry his feet and resume his hose and boots. Nela kept watch, leaning on her staff, but there was nothing moving but the little surf and the night wind.

  "Which way now?" he asked, rising, and Nela nodded towards a break in the low cliff.

  "There. About half a mile. The park fence doesn't cut off the cliffs. Wild romantic views, you know."

  They climbed the beach, and then the little gully. "Watch out for mantraps," said Nela, in a mutter. "Though poachers would hardly be landing from the sea."

  From the top of the slope, they could see the manor. A long rectangle, a tall two storeys high, it really did have wild romantic views. It lay o
n the gentle slope of a further hill, looking out to sea, backed by woods. The dip in the foreground was dotted with stands of trees, artfully arranged with an eye to the sight-lines. There were no lights showing. Midnight wasn't far off.

  "If he's not in residence," murmured Nela, "remember what we agreed. We go away, we re-embark, and that's that." She glanced across at him, sharply. The rising moon gave enough light to make out faces.

  He nodded, and led off. They had a steep, hidden ditch to negotiate, but that was expected. The park was silver and sable in the faint moonlight, and open sward between the trees, not hard to move silently. Gamekeepers, if there were any about, would be watching the woods. Guards? None in sight, anyway. This was a merchant's country residence, not a lord's seat. A merchant with a formed body of armed retainers? A fortified stronghold? The lords wouldn't like that.