Snakewood

by Adrian Selby

  “Lee-ho! Tack on the header,” shouted Wilbo as the crew and the stronger slaves fought the braces to make the turn.

  “Still closing!” came the shout from the mizzen-yard.

  They were a way off still, closer but surely aware of the danger they were in if they kept on at us. I finished up the flasks and headed out to the quarterdeck.

  Ahead the horizon grew dark, the sky lost as its colour and the sea’s became the same. The bow was now slapping down on the trough between the steepening waves, the sea and storm turning quickly and savagely on us as if we were mosquies biting the back of a giant.

  “Best get the brew round, Sand,” said Ethin. He took his share and I dropped to the main deck to split the flasks with Harl. They should be stronger now for some hours; thinking, seeing more clearly. The price on the far side of it was steep, but who now cared?

  “Fuckers are still closing!” shouted Ethin over the noise of the wind and sea. “They want to see us right into it!”

  “I’m pushin’ us east some, Captain; might get us some headland on the Shahn’s coast’ll tek the belly outa this waves. Get the boys outta the rigging.”

  “Give the word, Wilbo.”

  As the minutes went by the fringe of the storm reached us, the bellies of clouds low and massive above. As we pushed into it we lost the chasing sails to shadows, visible only as the ship headed each wave.

  Wilbo and Ethin shouted and then screamed to be heard as the wind made the rigging sing.

  “Reef sails! Dano, get below and get the pumps and buckets going with anyone able to work! Battens on the foredeck hatch!”

  Now Wilbo was cursing and barking at the wheel, the waves were hitting us from beam and bow as the storm forced a contrary pattern on the currents that preceded it.

  Each time he aimed to tack and keep at the waves we’d be hit from starboard. Shortly the waves grew to hills, foaming and hissing as the caps blew at us; sheets of rain whipped us from all sides as though seeking a weakness.

  Another hour drew by, consumed by us reacting to and passing on the shout to adjust the haul and keep us with Wilbo’s best guess of the wave front.

  I muttered the names of the old magists still worshipped around this coast and no sooner had I done it we were facing a fierce wave, foaming white, seemingly boiling and at my eye’s height on the quarterdeck. As the helm steadied us to hit it, yells went up from the deck crew fragmented by another wave across the beam. The hit took some of the boys on the starboard side off their feet, swinging from the braces, but the loss of control saw the yard turn and the boat heel about. We rode the wave off line and broached as we fell into the trough and into the next wave port side on. I saw Harl get caught up as the main spar tore out the stays and the edge of it hit the wave and break. The rigging whipped down towards deck as we heeled back and Wilbo and the helm fought the rudder to straighten us.

  In moments Harl and most of the other slaves screaming and tearing at the wreckage were gone, some of their bodies left rolling about the deck as we worked our way over to cut the ropes that were dragging the piece of spar and torn sail in the water port side. I could just make out the shrieking below deck as the children cried out. Water must have flooded down through the hatch the crew were bringing the bilgewater up from.

  “Get those ropes cut, Sand!” bellowed Ethin. “I need two more to get below and keep the pumps working!”

  Two of the crew were already hacking at the ropes as I swung myself off the quarterdeck to the port gunwale. In moments we’d released the damaged spar and sail and I held tight to a ratline as we rose and fell.

  The helm and sailmaster kept us at the waves, too few of us now to help with a course without further risk to the masts. I had no sense of time, the mist off the waves that hit the bow blurred everything, I felt only the successive moments of weightlessness as we were held by, and fell on the back of, each crest. Soon enough I was called below deck where the boat’s dance had thrown a barrel at one of the boys there, smashing his arm. The others were retching and helpless as the first brew began its claim.

  I refreshed the brews and sickness mix, did what I could to ease the agony of the wounds and relieve the exhaustion setting in. We couldn’t get the water out for want of sure transfer of the buckets as we rolled and shuddered. Each blow brought a yelp from the girls and among the other droopers unable to help us there were spasmic wails and a shouting that I had to silence with the quickest poison I had, for they were distracting the men bailing.

  I knew then for certain this ship wouldn’t make land; I only then read it in the eyes of the women holding onto the children and the webbing that covered the casks of wine and spices. They were the last of the slaves not yet helping or put to death.

  “I don’t want to know it if it’s coming!” yelled one, her sharp Citadels accent, one I’d grown fond of as I’d recovered from the betony, betraying a rising terror. I nodded, taking her meaning.

  From a loop in my belt I took a tin flask. The eyes of the young girls were fixed on the tin, as though some force to stay the storm were within. I collapsed as the galley did into a trough, on my knees before the woman.

  “A mouthful each, when it’s time, the girls first I beg you!”

  She took the flask with a shivering hand and clutched my shoulder. We could share only a nod before I was kicked, one of the boys pulling me to a pump.

  I worked the pump as the storm tore at the ship. I was lost in it, I could not say for how long. The brew boiled my muscle and sang in my aching shoulders as I span the handle and drew into the buckets.

  At some point we were hit hard, and as we went over some barrels left their webbing and crashed against a porthole, breaking the storm plate, bringing in a thick spray of black water and the freezing wind.

  I shouted up for more bodies but none came.

  There was a cry overhead, some break visible in the sweeping rain perhaps. Then I saw a tint to the gloom, barely noticeable despite the brew’s sharpening of our sight to the blackout of the storm as night overtook it.

  “We may have hit its peak, boys! Let’s give Wilbo enough to get us to the coast.”

  With wood from the smashed barrels the porthole was nailed up but other damage had been done. A shout came through that there were leaks aft, sending the sea pissing like a wall of drunks into the ship.

  I started up a worksong, called them for all they had as I looked about for a piece of mast or hull that would bear me when it came to it.

  Soon we were up to our ankles in water, the bilge full. Ethin was at the hatch. He looked about, shook his head and vanished, shouting up at Wilbo.

  Some of the boys started the shakes now, no more brews were going to delay us paying for that first and heaviest mix. The Droop had hollowed out some marrow in me too, I switched to the buckets for a break but we were slowing.

  Looking out from the hatch as I passed the water up I saw enough of the clouds to know that the spray off the caps had diminished. More pieces of a yard, sails and rope lay in heaps around the midship. The crew above deck were holding on by instinct. They’d begun their songs to whatever magists might stride out from the land to protect them, the whispering drones of men past taking orders.

  “Are they still working?” shouted Ethin.

  “Aye, just about, we’re paying it back now, I can’t stop the brew’s claim!”

  He nodded. There was blood over his face, his arm held close to his side, protecting a rib perhaps.

  “Keep going, buy us an hour or two before she goes under, it’ll blow past us by then and we’re just going to have to hope the current’s taking us in on whatever rafts we can muster. The smallboat’s done for, the rest of the main mast cracked when we got hit abeam an hour or two back.”

  “There isn’t an hour here, Captain; it’s over.”

  Five of us only were left with enough strength to pump out the water as it came to our shins then knees. The strong persistent howl had given way to gusts. One of the boys fell down, sh
uddering and clutching his head. Sometimes the brew’s claim was fatal.

  “We’re going down,” I said, stopping at the pump and standing straight, “smallboat’s smashed. Take your fill of water; I’ll break open a cask now. Find some flasks for it and then find something’ll bear your weight in the sea.”

  I took the claw of a hammer to one of the freshwater casks and filled some skins, throwing them at those fit enough to move themselves above decks.

  I looked over at the women and girls as I went to the ladder. They were stood now, shivering and haggard in the seawater.

  Some silver-blue of night through the hatch above us caught the eyes of the Citadels woman as they filled up, staring at me as though I might have an answer. She held the smallest girl tightly to her breast, face in a shroud of sodden blankets, bruised arms like sticks around the woman’s waist. She then glanced at another, older woman whose sorrow wrote and somehow authorised their fate with a gentle nod, unquestionably a mother at some point in her past.

  The young woman held the flask out in front of her with shaking hands and took out the stopper.

  “Let’s drink, girls, it’ll give us some strength.”

  The Wayward Lady went down at dawn as the sun began warming the breeze over a recovering sea. Six of us were sat on lashed-up casks after the killing over wood suitable enough for rafts was done.

  We stayed within sight of each other for a time, but soon enough we rowed our way apart with torn planks, hoping to find the coast before the water ran out. I shook Ethin’s hand once before our casks drifted apart, the last I saw of him, Wilbo and the others.

  Then I was alone. Sometime after that the water had gone.

  I passed out of time on the Droop I’d re-concocted to escape my reliving of what had been done to me as a slave.

  I had accepted death on this sea. Its vastness beneath and around me matched the perfect still blue of the sky. Both crushed me against this raft with their indifference, an unknowing of the fact I was alive. What more would a mountain have cared for a leaf floating on a pool on its flanks?

  I recalled almost nothing of my old life. A stream of images were there but I could make little sense of them. I woke on occasion and had been talking, conversing with someone, but the sense, the answers, vanished as I did so. The colours my skin had bleached to were my only solid reference that I must have at some point fought and killed as a soldier, though the skin was burned and flaking. I wanted that missing part of me, for comfort, for something to give me strength. This other voice in me knew the man I was, and someone had taken it from me. This I knew, and I held this in my gut; it anchored me, the only comfort I had.

  Sometime later I was weeping and singing in the night, silent white eyes beyond count above me. I remembered a boy and a girl I cared for. I knew I loved that girl somehow. There were other faces, a windmill, I was in somebody’s arms. I stared into a stream, entranced by the boy staring back, his nose running from crying. Then I was hacking at soil so hard from frost and vivid to my mind I woke screaming and was sick, so unlike was it to the rolling of this featureless, hopeless plain.

  Chapter 8

  Gant

  We left Araliah and Kailen’s estate and headed north for Ithil Bay, troubled by what we had read and heard of those of our brothers killed.

  There was little grief along the way. Once we thought we were being tracked due to what we put out to give us some warning of the assassin or assassins, though after what that scapo told us we were inclined to think, despite Kailen’s view, it was one assassin. The vapours that the titarum seeds give off caused a coughing that give us a chance to do for five what were looking to jump us one night. They were only thieves expecting some poachers or common travellers. The rest of our troubles were because we were mercs, but our silver lined the way with the militias working the lands about us. Times were we’d have seen to them all for stopping us, but the less noise there was for an assassin to get news of the better. We figured we had fewer problems than was usual through Issana for there were troubles north that took the attention of the militias what were normally strong around the borders protecting their shiel crops and such.

  I last seen the port of Ithil Bay some six summers previous, on my way up to see my sister that last time I was returning some plant for the hast.

  She laughed at me for seeming to exaggerate the city it was, the hundreds of ships there, docked and moored in the wide bay. Men of all colours and speech you could find on the wharves. Some spoke with the chattering of crows and others would speak to you in a way like singing, where a word meant different things if said in a high or a low voice.

  It was only in Issana’s docklands that you would find such a gathering. Inland was inward-looking and unwelcoming for the most part, few settled from elsewhere without being driven out by the preachers waving their books of oaths that the sayings made famous.

  The docks were as busy as I recalled from that last visit. The colours for the guilds from lands and hasts from all over the Old Kingdoms were worn on the quartermasters, chaplains and guildies what run the sheds and set the caravans. Merchants come from far about to feast upon the war Issana was fighting on its far border, against the Vilmorans.

  Like all the Issanaian ports there was a strong presence of the Post and the “Greens” of the king’s guard; green was the colour of their hauberks as red was the colour of the Post. (Always struck me as odd that the Post would call its lowest ranks “Reds” and yet its highest rank, the leader, was called “The Red” and not something with “Reeve” in the title.) Anyway, Issana’s king was a big one for the laws and punishments throughout his lands, but where men land from sea with a need to fuck and do plant, well, he wasn’t fool enough to discourage their interest in some well-defined districts away from the aristos and merchants, so he kept the preachers out of Ithil Bay as well.

  Coming from the south into Issana past the hills around the south end of the bay, we hit some big camps spread out across the vale that descended into the bay itself.

  The camps were proper established which was a surprise given what Issana was like with refugees. Many would’ve been looking for work on the docks from whatever troubles in their homelands sent them away, troubles enough that Issana was the better option. Here too were the farmers and tradesmen that couldn’t get a settle in even the worst districts choking up the eastern end of the bay. The oligarchy was north with the war I’m guessing; not enough Greens about to dislodge these thousands washed up in boats from the west of the Sar or the Gulf.

  We passed through the clouds of flies and screaming duts in these nests of tents. This time of day the men were down the docks or else waiting for the dark so as to hunt in the forests and take their chances with the Issanaian settlements whose common it was.

  Begging was ferocious, it was obvious we had coin. Our skin was mainly our peaceful route through, for none of them could much use a sword or take a man who was immune to most crude venoms and poisons from the years on fightbrews.

  The ragged remnants of the old city walls were still counted the boundaries for the city itself, the remains of the Four Arches still dwarfing the main roads into the filth of the Dens as were called the north part of Ithil Bay. West Dens and East Dens fell with the slopes into the streets of the docks, where the offices and guildhouses were found along with the better taverns. The Greens said nothing to us, mercenaries were a common sight in Ithil Bay. You might not think it but few mercenaries were trouble, most just looking to escape the battle and noisies from the mixes. You don’t win purses if you’re fighting the soaks and bucks loaded up on shiel or cut caffin.

  Still, we heads for the East Dens and looked for somewhere to put the horses and our heads down where the militia might not be looking.

  We led the horses through a dark hive of lanes where the droopers and dealers were sunk in their different stupors.

  A shouty little dut was throwing a bucket of piss into the lane from a doorway as we approached, bawling at some so
ak what was blocking his way. It was a fire-blackened inn of sorts, no sign, more someone’s own room with a bench for some kegs. Chairs were mostly full of men past speaking to each other, their own voices being company enough for their thoughts between the last fall and the next drink.

  “We need a stable, somewhere quiet, payin’ well,” said Shale to the ’keep.

  One man stood and gestured to the others, despite their lack of interest, telling them to stay where they were. He addressed us square on, soaked enough to not weigh the odds on us.

  “You in Jaki’s patch, boys, you be paying well enough for Jaki?”

  Shale had this look about him what he give people, like he was still and cold as a statue. The lad stiffened a bit, put off as he give us a proper look and saw our colour. Then Shale smiled like a girl with a new-sewed dolly, which the lad echoed with a weak and unsteady smile of his own.

  “We’ll pay Jaki, lad, no fear.” The boy got himself a silver coin which fairly staggered him a moment after bracing for trouble. There was a murmur about as it flashed the candlelight on its way to some pouch in his belt. He ran out.

  The ’keep took a few mugs out from a shelf. He had a forehead and bald crown so big and heavy they squashed his nose down to lips and chin, fighting each other for space. I don’t think he could’ve looked upwards if he wanted to.

  “Will be more back seeing you got coin,” he said. “Rum or beer?”

  “Boy’ll hopefully get us a stable, safe enough if we pays. And rum,” said Shale.

  “Safe enough if you pays, aye.”

  He give us a measure of rum and then one of the others in the room starts up, a line or two about some fierce mix he’s got specially for what he called his richer clients. Clients is one of them slippery words for sure, as though the acquaintancy was a dependence of some sort. We ignored him till he got noisy, then Shale put him out.

  The other lad come back as we were into our second rum, with a man must have been Jaki. Little colour on him from some recipe of a field drudha or a cooker, probably used it to settle a fight before one began as was often the case with us and our colouring. He was trying to put the show on with the leather vest and some long and decorated knives. Blades were oily for sure but no notches or marks from them being punched through wamba or scale, clean grips.