by Oisin McGann
Groach came to his senses, and for a few seconds could not remember where he was. He was in a soft bed, his head laid on down pillows, and he was wrapped up in a heavy swathe of blankets. The air around his exposed face told him the room was cold, but it just made him feel all the cosier snuggled up as he was. The bedroom was much smaller than the last one he had slept in, with rough plaster walls, bare floorboards and mismatched wooden furniture, but it was homely and comfortable and he felt safe here. Getting up, he dressed quickly, jogging on the spot to warm himself up. Spring was cold and summer came late this far north.
The bar of the tavern was no less dark in the morning than it had been the night before. The small, dirty windows let in dull shafts of light, but were no brighter than the oil lamps had been. The customers were smoking, talking, eating and drinking as they had been all night; the time of day seemed to have little bearing on life in the storyhouse. Groach looked around for Draegar, but the Parsinor was nowhere to be seen.
Stories were being traded over the tables around the room, and Groach made his way over to one to listen. Two men moved to make room for him, one a squat Gabbit with an eye-patch and an ugly scar that extended out of it around his head, and two fingers missing from his left hand; the other a Traxen mercenary in a headscarf and camouflage paint. Groach sat down and listened quietly.
Draegar came in two tales later with Cholsch. They were arguing about something.
‘There are soldiers moving up and down the main roads all the time. The last two nights there has been more traffic along this road then I’ve seen since the war with Sestina,’ Cholsch was saying.
‘Then it will be easier to conceal ourselves,’ Draegar insisted. ‘We don’t have much time. Whatever Namen intends to do, he means to do it soon. We must get to Noran quickly.’
‘Well, at least wait until this afternoon. That way you might get a night’s travel out of it, before anyone gets suspicious.’
‘Agreed.’
Draegar nodded to Groach as he sat down at the table.
‘Another story!’ the mercenary cried. ‘Temina, another round of drinks, if you please.’
‘I am reminded of a time …’ Draegar began.
‘I have a story,’ Groach interrupted quietly. After a few tankards of mead, he was getting into the spirit of things.
‘Let the little man speak,’ said the mercenary. ‘Let’s hear what he has to tell.’
Groach looked queasily around at his now-silent audience and swallowed a mouthful of mead from the tankard that was placed before him.
‘I haven’t travelled much,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve lived most of my life in the same place. We were not allowed out much, my colleagues and I. But our work brought us to Hortenz sometimes. We took a number of trips out on esh-boats, often spending days at a time at sail, just studying the gas and what lay beneath it.
‘On a gusty day in mid-autumn, we were out of sight of land in gale-force winds. The ship was rocking violently, and the churning esh made it impossible to navigate. Late in the afternoon, one of the pumps tore loose, smashing a hole through the hull of the starboard pod and throwing four men overboard. It is said that what the esh takes, it keeps, for there is no rescue for a man overboard. He does not float and he does not swim. He falls until he hits the bottom.
‘It was only by the grace of Everness that there was no fire, for a hydrogen explosion would have killed us all. The ship rolled onto its side, and all those above deck had to hold on for their lives. I was in the centre pod, below decks where we were trapped beneath the surface of the gas. The doors were jammed shut and the vessel was just barely afloat. The only hope of anybody making it to shore was for the men above us to unhitch our hull and let it fall, releasing the weight so that they could right their pod. There were five of us in my section of the hull: an engineer, a bosun’s mate, two other botanists and myself. After some time, we heard the sounds of sawing and hammering, and at first we believed they were going to cut the hull free with us inside. We were horrified.
‘We tried smashing a hole in the wall to get out, but we had little more than our hands and feet to hit it. The thought of falling to the bottom of the esh where we would be smashed to pieces or suffocated was more than we could bear. Soon, however, the engineer told us that it sounded more like they were cutting their way to us. They were going to get us out.
‘If you can imagine, we were trapped in a small room, lying on its side so that the portholes on one side looked up through the gas towards the light of the sky, while those on the other side gave us a view of the depths below us. The whole ship rocked and pitched in the wind. We could see through the portholes the sailors dangling down on ropes, wearing gas masks to get at the hull, and they had only makeshift tools. There was also the muffled sound of voices, men trapped in another part of the pod, and we could hear work going on in that direction too.
‘It grew dark and the wind continued to build. Soon, the sailors above us had to give up. They could not see, and it was too rough to work. They tapped on the hull, signalling to us that they would try again at first light. The esh at night is dark, but not black. It has a light of its own, a dull yellow glow. It is caused by algae drifting in the thicker gas, deep below the surface. So, when darkness fell, it was the turn of the portholes on the floor of our cabin to let in light. It was a strange sensation, as if the world had turned upside down and there was a yellow moon below us.
‘The cabin was sealed, so we had air, but it would not last forever. We tried to rest and sleep as much as we could so that we would breathe less. Later in the night, the wind died down and the esh became very still. I was lying on the floor and gazing down out of one of the portholes when I saw something. At first I thought it must be an esh-floater. We saw them from time to time, lolling about in the gas that was their home. But this was different. It was bigger, and it moved with purpose. It took me some time to realise that it was a ship. I shouted to the others.
‘We wanted to believe that it was just a wreck, or perhaps even our reflection on a lake or river below us, but we could tell from the way it moved that it was neither. It circled our position, staying far enough down to prevent us from seeing it clearly.
‘Men have tried to build ships that could sail beneath the esh, but their attempts have always ended in disaster, and we could see that this was a ship built for the surface; it had sails and even a flag, which meant only one thing. This was a ghost ship, one of the thousands of vessels claimed by the esh, but one whose crew had not made it into the afterlife. We watched in terror, unable to take our eyes off it. Even when we saw shapes, figures, rise up towards us from it, we did nothing.
‘But then the bosun’s mate let out a scream, and the spell was broken. We started shouting and shrieking to the crew above us to get us out. We would quickly use up what air we had left, but we did not care. Ghosts are lonely creatures, desperate for others to join them. And we knew they were coming for us. In the dark, enclosed cabin, we were at their mercy. The fear drove us mad. Hammering and kicking at the wall that was our ceiling with anything we could get our hands on, we were no longer worried about the esh getting in. As long as the phantoms didn’t get in first.
‘The remains of the crew heard us, and must have been convinced by our screams that we feared for our very souls. They risked their lives to hang down into the gloom and tear frantically at the walls that separated us. Beneath our feet, we could hear the sound of fingernails scraping against the wood and sometimes dragging across the glass of the portholes. I was sure I even heard the creatures gnawing at the tarred wood with their teeth. Above us, the sailors were shouting to each other that they could see things moving around the edges of the ship. The work grew even more urgent.
‘I looked down through one of the portholes in the floor, and saw that the ghost ship was becoming larger and clearer. I yelled to the others that it was rising towards us. We were going to be rammed. A split appeared in the wall over our heads and a wisp of gas seeped in. An
axe-head pierced the timbers, and under a steady barrage, the hole grew. Esh flowed in and we breathed deeply, readying ourselves for the moment when we ran out of air. I peered down through the gas rising around our feet to the world beyond the porthole. The dead men’s ship was coming right for us.
‘The last few bits of board were broken away by the sailors and gas gushed in as they threw a rope down. We had no masks in the cabin so we would have to hold our breaths as we climbed up to the surviving pod. I was the fourth one out. Just as the engineer grabbed the rope below me, the mast of the haunted ship smashed through the porthole and tore a gash along the lower wall of the cabin. I clambered out with the engineer close behind. With the gas around our faces, we could not see a thing, relying on the crew with masks to guide us up the rope against the side of the pod. We dragged ourselves up onto the sloping deck of the third pod and heaved in breaths of life-giving air. The captain wasted no time, yanking back on the locking levers, and releasing the wrecked pod that had held us. With a shudder, it broke free and we held tight as the remaining hull lurched back away from it and then rocked back and forth until it had settled into an upright position. We heard the hiss of the shattered pod falling down through the esh, and then nothing.
‘In the swaying peace that followed, I asked the captain if they had got the people caught in the other section of the pod out in time. He told me that a team of sailors had broken through to the cabin where the others had been trapped even before they had reached us, but sailors had found only a hole in the lower side of the hull and the signs of a desperate fight. The cabin had been empty.’
Groach took a sip of his mead and waited for someone else to break the silence in the room.
Hilspeth and the Myunans were sitting in the cab of the wagon, each of them trying to come up with an excuse for getting off that would not make the driver suspicious. Ever since he had mentioned the fact that he was due to be met by Noranian troops, the idea of walking the rest of the way had become far more attractive. Lorkrin had his tool kit out, and was doing something to his face. Hilspeth kicked him and gave him a hard stare.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed.
Lorkrin had given himself boils and blisters all over his face.
‘I’m going to say I’ve got a disease,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Maybe he’ll throw us out.’
Hilspeth rolled her eyes back, but she didn’t have any better ideas, so she said nothing. Lorkrin was reaching over to tap the driver on the shoulder when the driver hit the brake and brought the wagon to a shuddering halt. Ahead of them was a small village – a storyhouse, and a few ramshackle houses, along with some market stalls.
‘This is a rough neighbourhood,’ he said over the idling motor. He looked back and his eyes opened wide at the sight of Lorkrin’s face, but he quickly turned to stare ahead again. ‘You’d best get out of sight. Passengers attract attention in this neck of the woods. Get yourselves under the tarpaulin and stay there until I tell you it’s safe.’
Not knowing what else to say, the three fugitives climbed over the back of the seats onto the flatbed behind, and slipped under the cover with the crumble cones. Lorkrin, a little disappointed by the lack of reaction, let his face settle back to normal. The driver released the brake, and they trundled noisily down the hill to the village. They rolled through without incident and passed on out the other side into a copse of trees set on high banks on either side of the road. They were barely out of sight of the village when the wagon ground to a halt again. Peeping out from under the tarpaulin, Taya could see that there was a fallen tree blocking the road. The driver sighed and got down from his cab. He carried a wooden club in one hand as he went over to inspect the tree.
He did not appear surprised when two Parsinors wearing masks and cloaks slid down the banks on either side and drew swords. The driver, who obviously had no illusions about the speed of his vehicle, did not even try to get back into the cab.
‘I’m not going to fight you,’ he called. ‘Take what you have to, just don’t hurt me. The wife would murder me if I came home injured.’
‘We only want your wagon,’ the bigger Parsinor told him, and Taya’s jaw dropped when she recognised Draegar’s voice. ‘We’re only borrowing it. We’ll bring it back when we’re finished with it.’
‘I’m sure,’ replied the driver dourly.
‘You have my word,’ Draegar assured him. ‘Go back to the storyhouse in the village and wait there. Your goods will be delivered; you can count on that. Just stay in the village and we will return your wagon. Leave the village, and we will have to dump it in a river somewhere. Do you understand?’
‘Aye.’
‘Good.’ The two Parsinors lifted the tree out of the way and another, smaller masked man slipped down the bank on the left and climbed into the cab. With a quick glance at the tarpaulin-covered pile on his truck, the driver shook his head and started walking back in the direction of the village.
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Taya whispered to the others, ducking her head back under.
‘We know,’ Lorkrin groaned.
‘Move over,’ they heard Draegar say. ‘You’re going to have to drive.’ The second Parsinor seemed to have gone.
‘But I’ve never driven a wagon before in my life. Why can’t you do it?’ came Groach’s voice.
‘Because they don’t make vehicles for Parsinors,’ Draegar growled. ‘How am I supposed to work the pedals with feet like these? Drive, get on with it. The sooner we get going, the sooner you can be back in Noran.’
There was the sound of grating gears, then Groach took the brake off and the wagon swerved backwards into a ditch. The botanist shouted an apology, shifted out of reverse and gunned the engine, throwing them forward and nearly pitching them into the ditch on the other side.
‘By the gods!’ Draegar roared, ripping off his mask and cloak. ‘Whatever made them give up on horses?’
‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it,’ Groach cried out, as the truck lurched back and the engine stalled.
Cursing under his breath, Draegar got down from the cab, pulled the crank handle from its clips, and walked around to the front of the wagon, inserting the handle and cranking it until the engine started once more. Groach put it into gear and turned the large, wooden steering wheel to straighten the vehicle out on the road. Then in jolts and starts they made their way forward.
‘I told you we should have kept walking,’ Hilspeth murmured to the Myunans.
‘He’s going to have a fit if he finds us here,’ Lorkrin hissed.
‘I think he’ll probably kill Shessil long before that happens,’ Taya told him.
Groach’s control of the wagon improved gradually, until he was able to make it go forwards without grinding the gears or stalling the engine too often. He did have problems keeping it out from the edges of the road, but at least they were heading in the right direction.
‘Have you any idea what you’re going to do when we get there?’ Draegar asked him.
‘I’m not sure,’ the botanist replied. ‘But my friends from the project are in Noran. He must still be using them. Once I tell them what they’re working on, they won’t take it any further. With their help, I might be able to stop Namen from doing whatever it is he wants to do.’
‘It’s my bet that he will use it in the Kartharic Peaks,’ Draegar said. ‘The Karthars are strong and a war with them would be costly. With the esh as his weapon, he could kill the Karthars in their thousands.’
The wagon coughed and spluttered its way along the road, the afternoon sun glinting off its bodywork, and dust and pebbles spitting from under its wheels. The noise and smoke meant that keeping a low profile was impossible, but its passengers, both those in the cab and those concealed behind them, hoped that they would slip into Noran unnoticed among all the other vehicles that were making the same journey. The flaw in this plan became apparent as they came around a curve in the road, and encountered a convoy of wagons carrying the same load as
themselves. The eight flatbed trucks were being escorted by three battlewagons. Groach brought the truck to a skidding halt, but they had already been seen. The vehicles were refuelling at a bule-oil depot in the front yard of a tavern. A battlewagon reversed up to them and an officer waved them forward.
‘Crumble cones? Group up with the rest. We’re trying to keep as many of you together as possible, but you’re coming from all over the place. Have you enough bule oil? This depot is almost out and the next one is two hours’ drive away.’
‘I … I think we have enough,’ Groach stammered, checking the gauges in front of him. ‘We don’t have to join up with you if it’s going to cause you trouble. We’re managing all right on our own.’
‘We’re not taking any chances with hijackers,’ the Whipholder barked. ‘Who’s the Parsinor?’
‘G— g— guard,’ said Groach. ‘A friend who’s come along … in case of hijackers.’
‘We’re much obliged, but we’ll handle any problems from here on in,’ the Noranian told Draegar. ‘Just stay out of the way from now on.’
Draegar nodded, saying nothing.
‘Get it in line!’ Groach was instructed. ‘Move ahead of us and close up behind the last wagon.’
It took three attempts for the botanist to get the vehicle in gear before pulling ahead of the battlewagon and joining the convoy. Groach exchanged looks with Draegar and the Parsinor shook his head. There was no going back now. Behind them, a small hand let the tarpaulin drop back into place.
‘Aw, bowels.’
‘Lorkrin, mind your language!’
17 PHYSIOLOGY RATHER THAN BOTANY
Emos had taken to the air again, and he was incredibly weary when he landed in the yard in front of The Lush Oasis, but he knew he was not far behind now and he was sure he would find news of Draegar here. Both he and the botanist had come here and the vehicle that was carrying Taya and Lorkrin had passed by; all of which had left Emos tired and confused. He suspected that the Parsinor had sent the children to Brodfan with the woman, but that they had defied him. He still did not know why everyone seemed so keen to get to Noran. He slunched back into human form, shrugged the backpack from his tired shoulders and pushed the door open.