The Forlorn

by Dave Freer

  The channel erupted into a chaotic inferno. Hashvilli raiders leapt desperately from their burning ships onto the shelterless mole, where the arrow rain fell in heavy sheets. The tide and the night wind carried the wash of flames out and around the harbor mouth, isolating those already on shore from the remaining vessels.

  From his duty point, Keilin watched in fascinated horror. Surely they would surrender, or run now? This was butchery, not war. But it seemed not. At the end of the South Mole, beyond the range of all but the heaviest bows, the surviving captains had a hurried council of war. The Hashvilli live close to the sea . . . and they swim like fish. If they could get past the breastwork and tear down the arrow platforms, it would be all over.

  Men began pouring into the water outside the moles. How were they to know that the blood of all the domestic livestock of the town had chummed that water for the last two hours? And the deep channel between the outer reef and the mole had always been a favorite hunting ground of the great carcharinids. It was here that the blood and gurry from the whale flensing ran, rather than into the harbor. After the first, and then abruptly the second screaming man was ripped under, the rush for shore became frantic. The cries of "Sharks! Sharks!" were loud enough to carry even above the other horrible sounds of battle. Nothing their captains could do would force those men back into the water.

  But those on the North Mole had seen what their companions on the South Mole were doing. The north channel between the reef and the mole was shallow and sandy. Now, at low tide, you could wade neck-deep along it. There was one deep hole, but that was near the shore, behind the breastwork. It too had been chummed, but less successfully here.

  Keilin saw them coming, their topknots visible between the waves. Now that it had finally come, he found himself detached and ready. The first axe-wielding raider rushed out of the surf. His face was a grinning mask of hate, and he shouted in triumph. Keilin waited patiently. In the shallow surf gill nets had been spanned in a foot-tangling mess. As the raging marauder splashed forward to meet the boy, he stumbled. Keilin's assegai plunged. Blood gushed into the water.

  Thick and fast they came. Soon the bank was full of struggling, fighting men. Keilin had no time to think, just react.

  Then, when the water was black with topknotted heads, a sharp whistle sounded. Teams of fishermen on the quay began the rhythmic hauling they did every day.

  A three-hundred-yard seine is heavily weighted with lead balls along the bottom line and sweeps with force along the seabed. A wading man in deep water is less than agile, and the net ripped inwards faster than a man could swim. On the quay the sweating, heaving men pulled as they'd never pulled before. And the topknotted raiders in the water tumbled like skittles as the sweeping lead line knocked their legs out from under them.

  The net worked as well for men as for fish. A few clung to the top line and slashed at it vainly. It had been reinforced with light anchor chain, with extra buoys to keep it up. Most of the raiders simply tumbled over each other. Struggling bodies rolled and sprawled along the meshes. The rip of the net dragged them inexorably into the bag. The bag . . . where the head- and foot-lines were sewn into a reinforced pouch that could take seven tons of fish. When the bag slid into the deep hole near the shore the teams slowed, almost stopped. The few men who were not in the net bag scrabbled over the top to freedom. But the rest . . . well, the pieces of old iron tied on to the bag of the net kept it down, and when the net was finally hauled to the edge of the mole, the fishermen methodically speared any bodies that still twitched.

  On the South Mole now, the raider captains saw that their only hope was to crack the spear wall. And now they set to it with discipline. The pikes held . . . And then, under the barrage of thrown axes, the channel-side flank folded. Two men turned to run.

  Four of the Hashvilli were up. Standing on the breastwork stones. Cutting at the unprotected heads below. Making a gap.

  With a bellow that echoed above the din, Beywulf leapt into the fray. The two-handed sword swung in an unstoppable arc.

  The frail flesh and bone of eight legs were no obstacles. Then he jumped up onto the breastwork. He hurled back those who would take the weakened place. Cap bounded up beside him, and turned to face the panicking pikemen, not the assault.

  "Hold, damn you! You bunch of bloody gutless bastards." Such was the power of that voice that the wavering spears steadied.

  In front of them Beywulf cut a one-man sortie into the raiders' ranks. And then, having hewed down all before him, he retreated, scrambling under the spears, back to safety. In his wake lay carnage. And there was no eagerness to try again.

  The sea wolves were milling about in confusion when the catapults flung another tub of fire brew. The catapult crew had attempted to adjust their aim to help the endangered folk on the mole. They were partially successful. The barrel struck the inner wall and shattered into staves. The greasy liquid spewed out across the white stone. The Hashvilli were a running, yowling mob even before the mess took flame. They were jumping from the pier head, sharks or no sharks, and swimming for the galleys still offshore.

  On the northern mole, the flame wash had eased enough for another captain to put more men ashore, before his ship also caught fire, as catapults flung fresh fuel. The raiders had seized a still-burning mast spar and used it to ram the pikes aside. It led to a vicious and wild melee. Gutting knives clashed against cutlasses and boarding axes.

  Keilin flung himself into it.

  Cut. Thrust. Parry. With the clockwork strokes of S'kith guarding his back. But it was all coming apart. Some took to their heels. In two minutes it had gone from strategy to chaos.

  Then came Beywulf's familiar battle bellow. At the head of the surge, Cap and Beywulf flung a party of South Mole defenders into the rescue. Somehow the tall man rallied them all. He called order out of confusion, discipline out of chaos. In minutes the tide of the battle was reversed, and the raiders were flung back in full retreat.

  Keilin leaned exhaustedly on S'kith, surveying the body wall around them. The Hashvilli were dropping weapons and jumping for flotsam. A flood of topknotted heads was swimming out to the remaining galleys. And being pushed off and cut at, as the five remaining vessels began hoisting sail, running for the open sea, with a last few arrows from the shore pockmarking the moonlit water behind them.

  * * *

  It was morning. A cold, crisp, unforgiving morning. The bright new sunlight stabbed at his eyes. Keilin wanted to turn over and avoid it, but there was something heavy lying half across his chest. With difficulty his dull aching head ordered his eyes to open again and focus on whatever it was. It was not going to be easy, but it beat trying to move. Moving sent waves of nausea washing up from where his stomach had once been.

  Reluctantly he opened his blurred eyes again. It was an arm. And a breast. An extremely large, naked breast. For a few moments, he lay there hypnotized like a rat staring helplessly into the swaying cobra's eyes, watching how the brown nipple moved as the woman breathed. Interest's snake stirred . . . and then nausea jumped up and beat it to death. He struggled out from under the imprisoning arm and thigh. She stirred, and with a small sigh settled back to sleep.

  Keilin staggered out. He had to empty his bladder and oh . . . hell's teeth! He felt dizzy and sick. Flashes of memory from last night kept blurring into his reluctant mind. It had been a night of firsts. First time he'd killed a man. The thought still made him uneasy. He kept remembering the terrible threshing convulsive jerks transmitted up the assegai shaft. He splashed water into the porcelain basin from the cracked jug with faintly shaking hands. Washed his face. First time he'd really ever been drunk. When wariness was all that kept you alive it wasn't something you even considered. He poured water into the glass that stood on the washstand. He was suddenly desperately thirsty, with a strange rising saltiness in his mouth. He drank and looked across at the woman who still snored gently. First time for that too.

  She'd rolled over onto her back, and had rather ine
ffectually pulled the rumpled sheet over her nakedness. He stared at her, trying to clear his memories of last night. She was perhaps twenty or more years older than he was, with faint lines around her closed eyes, and stretch marks on her belly and big breasts. He felt a sudden need for a second and third glass of water, and then . . . a desperate need for that bucket and seat next door.

  The sound of his retching woke her up. She brought him a glass of water and a towel, and held him unself-consciously against her breasts while she wiped the beaded sweat off his forehead. "My God, boy hero, you look a lot younger in the morning light." She looked faintly guilty, as well as amused. "I think my sons are older than you are."

  He felt his face going hot. "Still, we were both drunk, I guess." She became aware of his embarrassment, of the fact that he was holding his hands in front of his nakedness. Gently she pushed them aside, "And you do wield a beautiful big spear." She rubbed her breast across his cheek. "I see part of you isn't feeling too bad any more . . . It's still very early, and after last night I don't think anyone will be awake for a while. Come back to bed for a bit, before you grab your clothes and slip out of here." She gave a wry smile at his look of surprise. "You heroes'll leave in a haze of glory. I've got to go on living here. At least let me pretend to be a respectable captain's lady-o."

  Keilin discovered that adrenalin and deep breathing provided the most wonderful hangover cure, and he was actually whistling when he reached the main road. He noticed abruptly that his ankle pouch was missing. He was about to swear and turn around, when another piece of last night's vagueness came back to him. He'd given it to Kim—Shael—before he'd left with Mara. If looks could have killed. . . She'd known exactly where he was going and with what intent. That was why she had come across and demanded her bracelet. He'd solved part of his own problems by simply giving her the pouch. He nervously realized he wasn't going to enjoy asking for it back.

  "Hello, youth!" Beywulf's cheerful bellow echoed down the street. "You look like the cat that ate the canary . . . and now you've got indigestion. Well? Did you get lucky last night?"

  He looked at Keilin's expression. "Well, well! And it wasn't with our little Princess. I saw her this morning. She's looking likely to curdle milk. Or was it that terrible an experience for her?"

  Keilin shook his head, looking at the windows of houses around them.

  "Pussycat got your tongue, boyo? What! You mean that's worn out, too!" He guffawed and took Keilin's arm. "Come. Let's go and have some breakfast. Maybe that'll restore you enough to swap lies with me."

  Over a hearty meal of red flannel hash and toasted muffins served by a very respectful barkeeper at the Silver Anchor, Keilin caught up on the plans . . . and the happenings of the previous night. "We'll be sailing on the afternoon tide—if the channel's clear by then. Or if we can get those girls to part with S'kith." Keilin discovered that when everybody had got drunk last night his "friend" had tried alcohol, too, and decided he very much disliked it.

  He'd been trying to keep in the background when he'd been discovered by the town's three professional girls. "They tried to get him to drink with them, and he refused. One of them asked if he'd given up screwing as well. He pulled his trousers down and showed her he hadn't." Beywulf laughed. "The pimp tried to interfere. With his trousers still around his ankles S'kith threw him into the harbor . . . from over there." He pointed to the railing outside the tavern. It was a good twenty yards to the water. "Then he walked off carrying a girl under either arm, with the third hanging on to his neck with her legs wrapped around his waist . . . still with his blooming trousers down!"

  Bey took a deep pull from the foamy pint pot. "Believe me, lad, he'll be a legend here long after we've been forgotten."

  * * *

  By ten the town's hangover was forgotten. Men strained on ropes, heaving wreckage out of the harbor channel. Small boats picked their way between the straggle of broken masts and tangled rigging sticking up out of the water, dropping grapples for shore-based hauling teams. Along the tideline, scavenging men and women disturbed the flocks of shrieking gulls from their gruesome feasting. But by noon the gulls had it to themselves again. Every man, woman and child was hauling on the pulley-stacked ropes, dragging pieces of vessel out from between the moles. That channel was the town's lifeblood artery, and if the danger had gone, the town was eager to see trade and fish flowing up it again.

  They were working folk in those parts. The channel hadn't been clear by high tide, but by evening it was at least navigable. The only external signs of the Hashvilli raid were the fire-blackened stones of the South Mole. And on the end of the moles a series of tall poles, adorned with topknotted heads. Cap's party could sail on the dawn tide.

  For a while Keilin sat and listened to the talk in the Silver Anchor. Cap held court with several of the town's prominent citizens and some of the senior captains. "You've a very defendable site, but you need some kind of warning system. Say a watchtower on that cliff promontory. With pigeons, or a mirror signalling system." Beywulf, sitting picking at a platter of pickled mussels, scallops and sea violets, saw the doubts in the minds of non-military men.

  "It'd have great commercial possibilities too," Bey commented amiably. This pricked their interest far more than Cap's military assessment.

  "How so, good sir? Tell us more."

  "Put a light in. It'd be a great aid to navigation. I've heard safe landings on this coast are a bugger to find in foul weather. You come in close hunting them, and pick up a reef instead. Ships'd find Port Lockry without having to risk coming inshore." He could see the skippers nodding. "It'd bring ships here rather than to Narhoon River or Northaven. Besides," he said with a sly wink to one of the merchants, "knowing the trawlers were coming in with full holds—before everyone else did—'ud make a hell of a difference to the price of cod, wouldn't it?" There was general laughter and agreement.

  Keilin slipped away, off down the streets and back to the house he'd left early that morning. Coming to a familiar turning he grimaced. This was where he'd worked out that he didn't have his ankle pouch. Its familiar weight was there now, a little lighter without her bangle in it. He hadn't had to ask for it. She'd thrust it at him, before walking off, without saying a word. She still wasn't speaking to him. Women! He sighed and walked on.

  Perhaps because of this his knock was tentative. But here at least he was welcome. It was still night when she woke him up. "It's an hour before dawn. You'd best be going soon." The candlelight was kind to her face, but he could see that the usual smile was gone. Then it came back with all the poignancy of autumn. "But we still have a little time . . ."

  Once again he was amazed by the breadth of her gentleness, followed by the depth and frenzied urgency of her need.

  Keilin was down on the quayside about half a minute before Beywulf set out to fetch him. He was more than slightly taken aback to discover that Bey knew exactly where to look for him. Considering that the sky was only just turning gray it was surprising to see how many of the townsfolk were there. "By the way," said one of the townsmen, a familiar face from yesterday evening's tavern gathering, the owner of one of the boatyards, "a little, sneaky, blond rat-faced fellow came into town yesterday afternoon asking after you folk. Offered me a fair amount of gold to delay you when he heard you were sailing this morning." He smiled reflectively. "Boatyards are good places for tar, and a fair number of folk contributed the feather pillows. Good voyage to you."

  Keilin stood at the rail of the good ship Starchaser. He was surprised to see the Princess standing next to him, at first. Then he realized that she'd decided that her silence wouldn't put as many barbs into his flesh as her tongue could.

  The three girls who had kissed and hugged and cried over the bemused looking S'kith were waving. "Look at those cheap prostitutes," Shael said, in an arctic and pointed fashion, raising her finely carved nostrils. "You'd think they actually cared. In actual fact they'll be selling their bodies to any disgusting man before midmorning."

&
nbsp; "It's probably all they have to sell. Besides, just because they're whores, it doesn't mean they don't have feelings. S'kith's probably the first man that treated them as if they were important and superior to him."

  "Hmph!" She snorted in disdain. "You should know. You're familiar with women of that kind. But I don't see your slut come down to the docks to cry over your departure!"

  He ground his teeth. Finally he spoke, and his voice differed violently from the slightly tentative tone he normally used with her. "She isn't a slut. Don't you ever say that about her again. As for crying, I hope she's not. She's got enough to cry about. Her husband and her three sons are eight weeks overdue from their last voyage. She was on the South Mole fighting to see that they had a home to come back to, if they ever come back. And she's worth ten of any princess I ever met." He turned on his heel, and left her standing alone and stunned to wordlessness at the rail.

  They felt their way carefully out of the channel, pulled by cautious teams of rowers in longboats, and with lines to the moles. Nervous sailors peered over the bow, until the three masted barquentine felt the first rise of the swell of the open sea. A cheer of relief went up, and the bosun's salt-crusted voice bellowed for hands to hoist the sails.

  Keilin had few memories of his only other sea voyage. Besides, that had been in the Narrow Sea, where the waves are small. Here, in the open water, were waves that had had a whole third of the globe in which to build up. The Starchaser corkscrewed on the great blue-gray swells as she angled across them, the water frothing and bubbling at her bow. Keilin found that relief at getting clear of the harbor was entirely reserved for good sailors. He and Shael, having each decided to avoid the other forever, were abruptly reunited leaning over the stern rail and barking at the seagulls in tandem. An amused and somewhat sadistic cabin boy came and rang the chow bell at them and bellowed, "Brefaaaast! Cooome for brefaaast! Cookie got nice gurry bacon a swimmin' in gurease, an' luvery slimy arf-coooked eggs, sloppin' about your plates!"