by Jude Fisher
‘Do you remember his face when I told him she was still alive?’ Mam turned to Dogo.
‘Could’ve fried an egg on it!’
‘Thought he was going to dive overboard and push the damned boat to Rockfall!’
Katla sat there, staring at her feet. She did not know what to say, how to respond. She felt numb, stupid. Instead of replying, she turned to stare at Saro Vingo, lying on his side at the back of the stable, trussed up like a goose for the oven, a clout in his mouth. His hands were clenching and unclenching though he was fast asleep; and runnels of sweat ran across his face even though it was a chilly night.
‘We should just kill him and leave him here,’ she said at last. ‘He’s just another filthy Istrian, when all is said and done.’
Persoa raised an eloquent eyebrow.
‘Don’t take offence, my honey-boy,’ Mam said softly. ‘Hill-tribes is only technically Istrian.’ She leaned across to Katla. ‘Girlie, quiet down. I know you’re upset about the lad: we all are. But at least this one should fetch us some hard cash, and Altea Town’s not far from where they’ve taken your Ma. Providential, really. Sur must be smiling on us.’ And she treated the gathered company to her ghastly grin.
‘And you say there are no slaves in your country?’
‘Nor any houris?’
‘Well—’ Bera Rolfsen hesitated. ‘We have no slaves: that is true. We have bondsmen and women but we pay them for their work and afford them home and shelter for the duration of their lives, and often their own piece of land and livestock to tend. As for ladies such as you call “houris”, well, we have a different word for them—’
‘And what is this word, may I ask please, Be-ra?’
Bera could not help but smile beneath the enveloping black robe, despite the discomfort of the wagon and the rather dire circumstances in which she found herself. ‘Er, whores . . .’
‘And your “whores”, do they learn the sacred arts and worship the Goddess with the men who visit them?’
‘Such an act is not generally regarded as sacred in my country,’ she said primly. ‘It’s more of a business transaction.’
‘You mean, the men pay these women directly?’ The speaker sound puzzled.
‘Of course. Do they not here?’
‘Never!’ The woman was shocked. ‘Women never touch money in my country. It is defiling.’ She paused, then whispered something to the woman beside her in Istrian. When the second woman responded, two or three others joined in the discussion. At last she said, ‘Hana here says there are men who take payment for what we do and do not donate all the money to the shrines as they say they do.’
Bera laughed. ‘I’m sure they don’t.’
‘But that is very wrong.’
‘In Eyra,’ Bera said firmly, ‘women choose with whom they share their bodies, and if they take payment for it, that is their own business. No one can force them without punishment. Women are regarded as equal to men under our law, even within marriage. We are educated alongside our brothers. We run our own homes, we have our own money and we inherit property. And if a husband turns out to be a bad lot, his wife can declare herself divorced from him. I have done this myself.’
This was astounding news. Then: ‘Your men must be very weak!’
‘Not at all. They are big, strapping men, hard of muscle, strong of arm, fierce in war—’
‘Weak of mind, is what I meant.’
Bera laughed. ‘Well, they are but men, and they have their weaknesses, as all men do.’
‘And why did you “divorce” your man?’
So Bera told them the sorry tale of Aran Aransen’s obsession, his greed for treasure, his dream of gold, his love of adventure and the romance of Sanctuary; how he had channelled all their resources – both financial and human – to the construction of his expedition ship. How their son had been lost at sea. How their island had been left undefended. How they had heroically held off their attackers for so long; how her daughter had taken the lives of many raiders; how her own mother had died a stoic death.
There was an awed silence at the end of all this. Then the woman told the same story, at what seemed even greater length, to the rest of those who spoke only Istrian; and soon they all had something to say.
The first woman tapped her chest. ‘Felena,’ she explained. ‘Felena Taro. My father gave me to his brother and his brother’s friends when I was twelve. They returned frequently, and we ate better after they had gone. Then when I was fifteen he gave me to the Sisters. I dare say he took money for that, too,’ she said darkly. ‘Teria, over there, says she has worshipped Falla with more than three hundred men; so someone must be very rich for all her efforts. Finita has an idiot brother, who can barely make a sum or write two words; yet he has inherited all their family estates, while she was sent to the blocks. And Hana’s father is a lord who lost all his fortune gambling and made her part of his last stake. She was then exchanged with another man for the price of two camels. Two camels!’ Now her voice was shrill with outrage. ‘That is all they think we are worth. If they cannot raise a good bride-price for us, they will take whatever they can lay hands on, and care nothing for our welfare. In some parts of the country – in the Blue Woods and the Skarn Mountains – baby girls are left out on the hillsides to die, to nourish the wolves and the foxes, they are worth so little.’ She paused. ‘Although there are some men who value their daughters more highly. Finita says the Lady of Cantara’s poor daughter was stolen away by brigands at the Allfair last year, and that that is why her husband – Lord Tycho Issian – has launched this holy war against your people. He does so to bring her back; and to liberate your women from the barbarian practices of the North, to bring you back to the Goddess.’
Bera snorted. ‘Barbarian practices, indeed! I think it is the women of Istria who need liberating, not those of the Northern Isles! Besides, this holy lord of yours is the one who tried to have my own daughter, Katla, burned at the Allfair when she brought news of what had really happened to his daughter Selen.’
Now she had their attention. ‘And pray, lady, what happen to her?’ begged another in broken Old Tongue.
‘Why, it was not good northern men who took her! She was raped by the man who was to be her future husband, one Tanto Vingo—’
This elicited hisses and tongue-clickings and a great deal of chatter and more questions asked and answered. Despite the complaints of their handlers, they were still full of fascinated conjecture and lively debate four days later, when the wagon drew into Cantara.
‘Will he never wake up?’
Rahe strode up and down the main cavern in a magnificent huff, every so often stopping to stare down at the prone body of Aran Aranson.
Ilyina smiled to herself. She knew her husband too well. He would be away from here in pursuit of the golden one as fast as he could, were his navigator awake and in any state to wield an oar. She was enjoying the subtle torture of delay she was inflicting on him. In the pretence of checking on the Eyran’s health, she bent over his pallet and ran a hand across his forehead.
‘How is it with you, Aran Aranson?’ she said softly, while her fingers tied privy knots in his hair that would bind him to sleep for another week at least. She had a promise to extract from Rahe before she would allow him to leave, but he was not yet sufficiently worn down by frustration that he would agree to it. Another week or so should do it, she reckoned. He had never been a patient man, the Master, despite the longevity of their kind, nor did he seem to be improving with age.
Make no move till I have smelled you well.
The voice rumbled in his head, inescapable as death, and so he stood stock-still, barely daring to breathe. To be all but naked in this fearsome place was grim enough; but now to suffer the perilous attentions of this fanged creature seemed a trial too far after the many hard miles he had travelled.
I know your scent . . .
A tenebrous shape prowled about him. Lit by a hunter’s moon, its vast muzzle quivered with curiosity and its vast amber
eyes seemed to whirl in the darkness, as if the beast was sifting through all the scent-related information it had ever gleaned.
You smell like him, but you are not him, it said at last into his mind. Which is as well. For if you had been him, I would have had to eat your head.
There followed a brief pause, a lull before violence. Then there came another great rumbling which set his skull aquiver, made his heart beat fast and his legs tense for evasion, until he realised that the sound was not a growl which signalled murder, but the monster enjoying some private amusement.
In all his long life, he had not realised that cats had a sense of humour.
It did not make him feel any easier about his new companion.
Twenty-five
Invasion fleet
Rui Finco gripped the gunwale and stared out into unrelieved grey. Grey sky; row after row of grey waves, rolling relentlessly to a grey horizon. His expression was intent, his knuckles white. Not from fear of the unknown, for he had crossed this ocean before; not from seasickness, for he did not seem to suffer. No, his tension was caused by embarrassment at the scene which had played itself out on the quay the previous day, and from a certain fury at his own shortcomings.
He had, he had to admit, given too little thought to the practicalities of the voyage, too much to the wished-for outcome. He had visited the Forent shipyards only once in all the long weeks during which Morten Danson had been overseeing the construction of the invasion fleet, and that had been early in the process, when the ships were little more than curved, bare keels. He had nodded sagely, admiring the clean lines of the wood, the workmanship of the labourers, but his mind had been on other things. Dreams of grandeur and riches; dreams of power.
So when he had walked the length of the dock with the Eyran shipmaker yesterday in preparation for the embarkation, he had asked a very stupid question. ‘Where is my flagship?’ he had demanded brusquely, his eyes flickering dismissively over the troop-ships with their open rowing-benches and stacked crates of weaponry.
‘Why, here, my lord,’ Morten Danson had replied proudly. His extended hand indicated a longship, fine of prow, proud of line and entirely devoid of shelter or any sign of comfort.
‘That?’ He had stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth gaping. ‘Where are the cabins? Is there more of the vessel below the waterline that I cannot see?’
Twenty years ago, during the last war with the Northern Isles, he had crossed the sea in a vessel of solid, old-fashioned Istrian design, a three-decker galley with two hundred slaves chained to their oar-benches in the deepest compartment and the outer parts of the second deck around the comfortably appointed sleeping-quarters, chartroom and well-stocked kitchen used by the nobles and their officers. Only the lowliest members of the crew spent their time above decks in the teeth of the weather.
But unfortunately such vessels were constructed solely for bombast and close-range bullying: as serious ocean-going warships they were useless. Unstable in any but a mild sea, unmanoeuvrable in all but the widest and deepest of channels, the majority of the fleet had foundered before even reaching their destination.
Which was why he had gone to the trouble of acquiring a master craftsman from the Northern Isles to design a fleet which would weather the heavy seas of the crossing. Beyond that, imagination had failed him. And so he had not considered such things as living quarters and other quotidian matters.
‘I can’t sail an ocean in that! Where will I sleep? How shall I have any privacy? Besides – ’ as the true implications struck him – ‘I’ll be soaked, frozen!’
Morten Danson turned a bemused face to him. ‘The ship is what it is, my lord: one of the finest examples of my craft I could create under the time constraints. This is how the men of my country travel, both king and commoner—’ His eyes widened suddenly.
The Lord of Forent had turned to discover what had attracted the man’s attention, and found a long snake of servants making their way down the cobbled streets from the castle bearing all manner of goods with them. In their vanguard, six stumbling slaves struggled with a vast four-poster bed, complete with swaying silk hangings and a mound of coverlets.
Behind the Istrian lord, a bark of laughter was unsuccessfully stifled. Rui Finco had whirled around, his face accusing. Morten Danson amended his expression swiftly. ‘The men of Eyra will sometimes – if the weather is particularly bad, or if a lady is brought aboard – erect a tent for shelter. But usually they prefer to sail light and to sleep in bags made from sealskin sewn into a walrus hide—’
‘Seal? Walrus? We have no such creatures in the Southern Continent!’
The shipmaker looked thoughtful. ‘A sleeping roll made from bearskin or sheepskin would be warm, my lord.’ He paused. ‘If not particularly waterproof.’
Rui Finco groaned. He waved the stumbling servants away. ‘Take it all back to the castle, you fools. What place is there for such luxuries on a ship like this? Imbeciles!’
He caught Morten Danson by the upper arm and his fingers tightened mercilessly. ‘One word of this to anyone and your head shall adorn my prow,’ he warned. ‘Now go and sort out a tent for myself and another for the Lord of Cantara. The men will have fend for themselves. And you’d better do the same for each of the other ships’ captains, or there’ll probably be a mutiny.’
Now, he turned back from the rolling waves and surveyed his rolling ship. The sail was full: it sped along the tops of the waves like a mountain goat. He had to give the ship-maker credit for that, at least. Beyond their creamy wake, the rest of the fleet trailed away into the vanishing point. For the first time since the intense embarrassment of that scene on the dock, Rui Finco felt his heart swell with pride. Here he was, master of his own fate, leading an invasion force by craft and stealth into Eyra to avenge his family’s long-lost honour. He took in the leather tent in which he had smuggled on board his bundle of silk and wool covers, some wine, a lamp and his stack of diagrams and charts, and summoned a smile. He, at least, would be enjoying some measure of comfort on this voyage. Unlike the poor bastard amidships, heaving his guts up over the side. Grinning, now, he left the command of the vessel with his sea captain and sought a retreat beneath the leather shelter.
The ‘poor bastard’ was Virelai, who was finding the motion of the ship impossible to bear. It was strange, he thought, in a rare lucid moment between heavings, that he had not experienced this torture on his escape from Sanctuary in that tiny sloop, which had been even more at the mercy of the waves than was this great ship. He had already wished himself dead a hundred times since they had set sail the previous day. He who had rarely experienced physical extremes of any kind in his short existence was now subject to all-consuming nauseas, thumping headaches and tooth-grinding stomach gripes. He had never felt so mortal; not even when subjected to Tycho Issian’s attentions in Jetra’s dungeons.
The Lord of Cantara had had him racked in his quest for the killing-stone the dead stranger had spoken of. Tycho had obviously had a low opinion of his courage and willpower: for after only two hours of torture, during which Virelai had let his mind unfetter itself as his body could not and produced for the entertainment of the southern lord snippets of the songs with which Alisha Skylark had sung little Falo to sleep, lists of herbs, and the names of every yeka and the nomad with whom the sorcerer had ever travelled – all of which was as close to telling his torturer the whereabouts of the deathstone as he dared – Tycho Issian had given up and released him from the bonds without doing him any further damage. Had the Lord of Cantara owned any subtlety, he might have deduced some warped logic in all these ramblings, but the man was so obsessed, so impatient, that he simply could not be bothered to give it any thought, and had decided that the sorcerer knew nothing, that the stranger had been raving, and that Saro had brained him out of sheer personal loathing.
Virelai, in the relative safety of his chamber that last night in the Eternal City, with his arms and legs regaining their sensation in the most painful manner possib
le after blessed numbness, had been surprised by his fortitude in not giving away what he knew. He had, over the days which followed, congratulated himself on his loyalty to Saro and to Alisha, for all her madness, on his integrity and his strength: never qualities he had considered that he owned. And then – just as he was getting used to seeing himself in this more flattering light – he had found himself in the middle of an ocean on this vile, pitching ship, throwing his new-found pride up over the side along with his lunch, his breakfast and yesterday’s dinner.
‘I tell you, it should be me who fetches her out, not you!’
The Lord of Cantara was puce in the face now, a colour evident even in the unsteady light of the guttering candle. He had pushed his way into the Lord of Forent’s private shelter without any query or acknowledgement and demanded to be the first to set foot on foreign soil.
When Rui Finco had explained, with considerable care and patience, that the first part of his plan required only himself and Erol Bardson, Tycho Issian had erupted.
‘You mean to take her for yourself! I know it, I know it! You want to steal her and fuck her, right under my nose!’
Quieting him down without demolishing the makeshift tent had required determined effort, followed by a sharp, breath-stealing punch under the ribs. At this, the Lord of Cantara had subsided into all the lush bedding, where he had stared around, still wordless from lack of air, with growing suspicion, taking in the other man’s fine clothing, the elegant silver circlet with which he held back his long dark hair, and the extravagant surroundings.
Finally he accused: ‘If you do not mean to have her, then why all this luxury?’
It was a fair sneer; but Rui Finco was neither a fair nor patient man. ‘Look at you!’ he returned. ‘This is a mission which requires stealth and secrecy, not hot blood and irrationality. Given one glimpse of the lady in question you would surely be lost to carnal appetite, and then where would we be? Our heads must rule our hearts – and all other bodily aspects – or this whole venture will come to naught. Besides I have been to Halbo before and have some knowledge of its geography—’