Stregg had left at dawn, not because he was eager to return home, but because he wished to escape the condescension of the other priests. His poverty marked him as a failure in their eyes, a man bereft of the Devourer’s grace. Their judgment galled Stregg. It’s easy to grow fat in Bremven, he thought. Try getting a sack of roots from a hungry peasant.
Taking a road that avoided the nearby town, Stregg headed east. His long strides soon sped him away from the Iron Palace. By late afternoon, he was traveling among less worldly folk who were more easily intimidated by a priest. Stregg’s mood lightened somewhat, and he reflected that although he was lowly within his order, he possessed gifts nonetheless. Even before he began dreaming of the Iron Palace, he sensed his master stirring in the world. To Stregg, it was a presence reminiscent of the faint tingling immediately preceding a lightning strike. Moreover, of late he had begun to have violent dreams that were so vivid he felt he was witnessing real events: A huge man was gutted on a boat. Another was garroted while he pissed. Helpless captives were slaughtered by maddened men. Such signs convinced Stregg that the day approached when even the Devourer’s lowest servants would be raised high.
After Stregg had traveled for several days, the eastern road dwindled to a trail on the grassy plain. Then he turned northward. On the final leg of his journey, Stregg’s pessimism over his prospects lessened, for he began to feel closer to his master. It was a subtle thing, and Stregg wasn’t certain that he was heading toward the heir. Nevertheless, it seemed logical that Bahl’s missing son would be in the north. If his mother had wished to hide, the Empty Lands were an ideal place. Only the Grey Fens were more remote, and they were deemed impassible. Stregg’s steps quickened, and at times, he fancied that he could feel the weight of silver around his neck.
As Stregg returned to his home, Yim prepared to leave hers. She slaughtered another ailing doe to smoke its meat for her journey and assembled other provisions. She tanned hides and replaced her bloodstained tunic. She fashioned a goatskin pack and made a water skin from a goat bladder. Yim gathered everything she thought she would need on the road, weighing each choice and changing her mind often.
There was one preparation that Yim couldn’t rush; she had to rebuild her health and stamina. She ate well and rested often, but days passed before she felt recovered. When she did, she went to Tararc Hite. There she offered her herd to Rappali, who was reluctant to take the gift.
“I want yar company, not yar goats,” Rappali said. “Stay, Yim. Ya’ve made a life here, and I doubt tha outside world’s improved since ya fled it.”
“You know why I can’t stay,” said Yim. “I must go for Froan’s sake and for your son’s.”
“It grieves me sorely that Telk’s gone, but gone he is. ’Tis fate, a thing beyond our changing.”
“And it’s my fate to leave, so I want you to have the herd.”
Rappali’s eyes welled with tears. “First Telk leaves, then you. ’Tis beyond abiding!”
“It’s hard,” said Yim, “but you’ll survive.”
“Aye, but will ya?” asked Rappali.
Yim didn’t answer, for she wasn’t sure. Instead, she changed the topic back to goats and made arrangements to bring the herd over.
Five days later, Yim returned to Tararc Hite at dawn to lead Roarc, his brothers, and their assorted kin to Far Hite. None had ever made the trip before, and after they experienced its treacherous convolutions firsthand, none wanted to make it again. Yim had corralled the herd to ease the transfer, but it was difficult nonetheless. The goats had to be carried over the wet portions of the route, which meant most of it. It took all day to fetch the entire herd. Afterward, Roarc roasted a goat to celebrate Yim’s gift.
Courtesy required Yim to stay for the feast, so she did. She felt ill at ease throughout the meal, for it seemed to her that Roarc was also celebrating her departure. His brothers and their families appeared equally glad that the strange outsider was finally leaving. Adding to Yim’s discomfort was her suspicion that the entire herd would be devoured before winter was over. It seemed emblematic of her life in the fens; all her work and sacrifice had come to naught.
Yim left the feast as early as politeness allowed, pausing to say good-bye to Rappali. The two friends moved away from the firelight and the others. Rappali forced a smile, but the moonlight revealed teary eyes. “Well, Yim, ya were always a stubborn one. Otherwise, ya’d have never made it here in tha first place.”
“I doubt I would have survived if you hadn’t found me.”
“ ’Twas fate, so ’twas tha Mother’s doing, not mine.”
“Still, I’m glad it was you.”
Rappali seized Yim’s hand. “Sometimes I have hopes of seeing Telk again. But as for ya … I know ’tis my last sight of ya.”
Yim responded by embracing her only friend with a fierceness that bespoke her reluctance to leave and the certainty that she would. The two clung to each other for a long while. Yim didn’t want to let go, but she did eventually. “Good-bye,” she whispered in a voice thickened by emotion.
“Good-bye, Yim.”
Making her way home by the light of a waning moon, Yim arrived at Far Hite well after midnight. It seemed particularly desolate without her animals. She walked down the empty pathway to her dark home, entered it, and sat upon her bed. Now, nothing remains to hold me, she thought. Nevertheless, something did—fear. With departure imminent, Yim feared her goal was beyond her capacity. She felt as she had upon the slaver’s auction block—forgotten, insignificant, and utterly alone. From that bleak perspective, Yim saw her hopes of finding Honus and somehow saving Froan as only self-delusion and foolish bravado.
Pondering her future, Yim had only one certainty—she’d receive no help from Karm. She recalled the goddess’s final visitation. Karm said I had a choice. She claimed I knew what would be gained and lost through it. Yim was convinced that all her visions had served to bring her to that moment. That moment’s past. I chose my path, and the rest is up to me. Yim wasn’t sure why that was so, though she suspected the goddess was constrained from further intervention. What ever the reason, Yim believed it was futile to look to Karm for guidance.
“So what will you do?” Yim asked herself, speaking aloud to fill the silence. “Remain here?”
The idea had some appeal. Yim envisioned herself as a hermit, ignored by the world and ignorant of its tragedies. “And if someone chances to see me, they’ll think I’m a boghaunt.” Upon reflection, Yim concluded her imaginary observer would be mostly right. “For I’d be swallowed by the bog, only not yet a ghost.” Such a life hardly seemed worth living. Having withdrawn from fens society, the only alternative to such an existence was to undertake her journey. To do that, she must accept that fear would dog her every step: fear that she would fail, fear that she would make things worse, fear that she would find Froan transformed into a monster, fear that the evil within her would gain the upper hand.
“Can I abide being so afraid?” Yim didn’t know, but she thought that she could endure it for a day. That day would begin when the sun rose. “When it does, I’ll leave and not worry about the next day until tomorrow.”
When the sun rose, Honus grabbed a sling and a handful of stones. Then he went out to hunt hares. Like everything he did, it was part of his training regimen. Hunting accomplished three objectives: It focused the mind; it enhanced skill; and if successful, it nourished the body. For Honus, it also provided a lesson in humility, for it proved the extent of his decline. He who had single-handedly slain thirty-six members of the Iron Guard had yet to bring down a hare after ten days of trying.
Exiting the ruined keep, Honus made his way to a grassy, eastward-facing slope where his quarry liked to breakfast. He squatted in the dewy turf, fitted a stone into the pocket of his sling, and became perfectly still. All Sarfs were trained to focus on the task at hand with minds emptied of all emotion except devotion for the goddess. “Achieve this,” the masters had said, “and your every act will honor Karm,
be it plucking a blossom or cleaving a man in two.” Ever since Honus had submitted to Daven’s discipline, he had struggled to regain that state of purity.
So far, he had failed, for bitterness tainted his feelings for the goddess. Honus strove to love Karm and believe that she loved him, but memories intruded to spoil his efforts. Try as he might, he couldn’t forget his long stretch of desolation or its cause. Squatting in the wet grass, he doubted it was possible.
Forget Karm, he thought, and think of Yim instead. The idea was blasphemy, and Honus knew it. Regardless, he cleared his mind of everything except the hunt and his devotion to Yim. Then calm stole over him. He no longer felt wet or chilled or hungry. When hares hopped forth to nibble moist greenery, he watched them without bodily or mental distraction. His focus was perfect and so was his aim. Each stone he let fly was an act of devotion and had devotion’s trueness. Three stones, three kills. It was over in an instant. Honus rose to gather his quarry with the confidence of a man who had finally found his way.
A breeze from the west eased the noon’s heat as Froan rowed. His back and arms were easy with the work, as were his calloused hands. He knew by heart each turn of the irregular course from the pirate island. Froan had mastered other nautical skills as well, and whenever the captain ordered “up sail,” he got to it as quickly as any man aboard. His pirate’s life had settled into a routine of daily raids that brought slim pickings from easy targets. On those ventures, Froan served only as a crewman. Others were always chosen for the boarding parties. Ever since he had been sent out to collect the fishermen’s catch, Froan hadn’t left the boat except to come ashore at day’s end. At nights, he ate with his crewmates, drank sparingly, and retired to the woods with Moli.
Faced with such a lulling routine, another man would have grown at ease, but not Froan. His powers of perception had sharpened, so he knew that the captain regarded him as a threat. Bloodbeard did everything to hide that fact. He was always affable to Froan, and he treated Moli no worse than he treated his own women. Whatever plotting he did was done out of sight with his closest men. Yet Froan could gaze into a man’s eyes and see beneath appearances. In the captain, he saw animosity, cunning, and patience.
Froan was impressed that Bloodbeard recognized him as a rival, and he was curious what the captain would do. He decided to observe his adversary and learn from him, confident that when the clash finally came, he would prevail.
Bloodbeard’s first move was to identify Froan’s allies within the crew. Those were Telk, whom the captain called Bog Rat, Toad, and the men who had raided the cattle boat with Froan—Chopper, Serpent, Gouger, and Eel. In addition to those six, Catfish had fallen from the captain’s grace after the incident with the fishermen. Froan noted how Bloodbeard closely watched all those men. Moreover, without being overly obvious, the captain isolated them from Froan and one another. It wasn’t hard to do, since the captain’s men outnumbered Froan’s by more than two to one. Thus, although Froan’s life had been peaceful of late, the longer circumstances remained calm, the more certain he was that they were about to erupt.
When the pirate boat was clear of the islands, Bloodbeard ordered the sail raised. Then the oars were pulled in, and the pirates let the wind take them upriver to their hunting grounds. The leisurely trip was nearly over when the captain suddenly commanded that the sail be lowered. As Froan rushed to tie the sail to its spar, he noted that the captain had fixed his gaze on a distant ship the likes of which Froan had never seen. It was a large craft, with two decks and a built-up stern and bow. Yet, unlike a cattle boat, it was sleek and fast looking. Oars bristled from ports in its lower deck, while the upper one swarmed with armed and armored men.
“Oh, shit on us,” said a crewman, “the guild’s war boat.”
“ ’Tis turnin’ toward us,” said another.
“Oars out!” roared Bloodbeard, “and row to save yer precious arses.”
Froan dashed to his bench, grabbed his oar, and waited for the captain’s beat. It came quickly and was a rapid one. “Long strokes, men!” shouted Bloodbeard. “If ye want to rest, think o’ danglin’ from a pole. Fer dangle ye will, if they catch us. And as they fit the noose ’bout yer neck, thank Shadow fer firin’ that cattle boat.”
TWENTY-FOUR
FROAN EXPECTED to row with all his might in a race downriver, but the captain had the tillerman swing the boat toward the river’s southern shore. The maneuver puzzled Froan, and he turned to the burly crewman rowing beside him, one of the captain’s men named Snapper. “Where are we headed?” asked Froan.
“Fer the fens. Ye can’t outrow a war boat.”
Froan glanced toward the other vessel and noted it was already in pursuit and gaining. “You mean the captain intends to run aground?”
“There’s precious little ground in that stinkin’ bog, as ye should know. Our cap’s lookin’ fer a place to hide. Mayhap he’ll find one. If not, ’tis the poles fer sure.”
Froan glanced at the southern shore. As far as he could determine, it was a solid wall of reeds. As the pirates rowed closer to it, his impression didn’t change.
“Bog Rat!” bellowed the captain, “climb the mast and guide me to a channel that’ll take us out o’ sight. One that goes far in, but don’t get us stuck. Fail me, and Ah’ll gut ye like a fish.”
Telk left his oar and shimmied up the mast. When the boat neared the bog’s outer edge, he called out. “Upstream, Captain.”
The boat changed course, and began to travel parallel to the vast expanse of reeds. Closer up, it was apparent that the reeds didn’t form a solid mass, but grew in clumps in the water. There were irregular channels between the clumps, but from Froan’s perspective, he couldn’t tell how deeply they penetrated the bog. He heard Telk call out again. “Up ahead, Captain.” Bloodbeard had the men slow their strokes as Telk guided him from his perch. “Turn soon, Captain … we’re near … almost here … now!”
The tillerman yanked his lever, and the boat turned sharply. Bloodbeard called out, “Oars in and use them to pole the boat.”
Soon the boat was slipping among the reeds, poled by the men and guided by Telk. The pirates wove an irregular course among the channels, which became ever narrower until reeds brushed both sides of the boat. “Halt polin’,” shouted Bloodbeard. “Bog Rat, off the mast. Snapper! Chopper! Cut it down. The rest o’ ye men, grab yer bailers and hop over the side. Fill the boat till it’s near sunk. And do it quiet.”
That was the last order the captain spoke. After the mast toppled with a crash, all the frantic activity was eerily quiet. Bloodbeard commanded his crew with hand signals, and the loudest sound was water splashing into the hull. Eventually, the boat rode low enough for the men to climb aboard and reach over the side to fill it. When the railing was only a hand’s length above the waterline, Bloodbeard signaled his crew to stop. Squatting low on the raised stern so his head didn’t poke above the reeds, he was the only dry man on the vessel. His crew, including the tillerman, sat on the rowing benches, chest-deep in tea-brown bog water.
The war boat was screened from view, so the enemy might be near or far. It was impossible to tell which, and that uncertainty heightened the fear that gripped the crew. Froan needed no heightened powers to sense it; every man’s face betrayed dread. He whispered to Snapper, “Surely they can’t reach us here.”
“They’ve no need. If they spot us, they’ll drop anchor and wait. A few days soakin’ in bog water bloats ye like a corpse. Then ye start to rot.”
“Better to go out and face them,” said Froan.
“And row through rainin’ arrows to take on armored men?” Snapper spat a bubbly glob that floated near Froan’s chest. “Ye thought ye were so brave and bloody, butcherin’ merchants and boys. Takin’ on a war boat’s a different sort o’ work.”
Froan tried to imagine how his powers would help him in the current situation. I could inflame the crew, he thought, but that would only spur them to suicide. He readily saw how the bog would encumber the
ir attack. The crew would be decimated before it even reached its superior foe, and Froan doubted he could terrorize enemies he couldn’t see. It’s not worth the risk to find out. Froan realized that he was stuck with the other men and would share their fate.
The sun sank low in the sky, and there was still no clue as to what that fate would be. Finally, Bloodbeard signaled a man named Mutton to come to him. After the captain whispered an order, Mutton shed his clothes, slipped over the side into the channel, and swam off toward the Turgen. Froan waited as anxiously as his fellow crewmen for Mutton’s report, but the sun set without his return. Darkness fell, and since the moon was past its final quarter, it didn’t rise until well after midnight. Sitting half-submerged in the dark and trying to slap mosquitoes quietly, Froan speculated on what had happened to Mutton. His shadow would have sensed a violent death, but not a drowning. Perhaps he got lost—it’s easy in the fens.
At dawn, Bloodbeard sent out a second swimmer, and this one returned. His report was whispered down the length of the boat from man to man; the war boat was anchored within sight upriver. The captain’s order was passed down the same way. They would sit tight all day and hope the war boat would leave.
That day was the most miserable in Froan’s life. He was hungry, waterlogged, mosquito bitten, and exhausted. But worse than his physical miseries was his growing awareness that the crew blamed him for their plight. The war boat’s appearance could have been happenstance, but Bloodbeard’s words—“As they fit the noose ’bout yer neck, thank Shadow fer firin’ that cattle boat”—had provided them with a scapegoat. Froan could feel the men’s anger grow the longer they suffered, and better than anyone, he knew the uses of hate. If they survived, the captain would be in a powerful position.
The Iron Palace Page 15