by Jude Fisher
Katla stopped wriggling and stared at him. ‘You have a most bizarre imagination, Tam Fox,’ was all she could say.
The mummers’ chief laughed. ‘Aye, it is quite creative. You should make the effort to discover its horizons for yourself . . .’
‘Take your hands off her!’
The speaker’s voice was pitched low and soft, but his tone was menacing. ‘If you don’t take your hands off her at once I’ll prick out your kidney and feed it to the gulls.’
Katla spun around and saw that her brother, Halli – who had killed two men in all his life and was still suffering nightmares as a result – had appeared as silently as a stoat and had a belt-knife pressed into the small of the mummer’s back.
She laughed and extricated herself without too much difficulty from Tam Fox’s grasp. ‘It’s all right, Halli. No harm done.’
Tam shrugged and stepped away. ‘Your loss, little wildcat.’ He winked. ‘We’ll see what your Da says when we get back to Rockfall, eh?’ And with that he moved smartly past the pair of them and made his way between the curious rowers to where the tillerman stood shouting out his instructions. A few moments later the crew shipped their oars as the Snowland Wolf entered the inner harbour and then everything else was subsumed by the bustle of landing and unloading.
It was close to midnight before Katla and Halli were able to step into the last of the faerings, as if Tam Fox’s punishment for the insult to his pride was to delay their discovery of the city as long as he possibly could.
Fretting with impatience, Katla craned her neck over the others in the boat, avid for every detail. There were ships everywhere – merchant ships, wide-bellied and short-ribbed; knarrs and longships and fishing vessels. They rowed so close to the Sur’s Raven, the King of Eyra’s own ship, that she was able, by leaning out as far as she could and with Halli holding her legs and the rest of the crew egging her on, to brush the very tips of her fingers against its elegant strakes. ‘It’s so beautiful!’ she cried, looking back at the swell of its bow, the clean lines of the stempost, the roaring dragon’s head.
A moment later they passed a ship of oak so dark and weathered it was almost black. Its stempost boasted an ugly figurehead, roughly carved and of grim aspect, a great round head of no recognisable creature on Elda, mouth wide open as if to devour the world. Katla stared at it, fascinated. As they skimmed past it, the moonlight struck the single lump of glass that had been set as its eye, and a memory clicked into place. A moment later, she cried out, ‘It’s the Troll of Narth!’
Everyone laughed good-naturedly at her wild enthusiasm: many of them were Halbo-born and bred, and none but Katla first-time visitors. They had seen the Troll a hundred times and more: it was a way-station, a landmark, a dull piece of ancient history.
Katla, however, was transported back to winter firesides and her father’s tales of the old war, the war before the one he had fought in, the one in which his grandfather had been killed. Those times and their artefacts had taken on almost legendary status for Katla. While the other females in the steading had put their hands over their ears and groaned at the bloodthirsty tales that Aran Aranson told, Katla had been enraptured. She stared back at the great black hulk. So this was the ship in which Ravn’s grandfather, King Sten, had escaped from the Battle of Horn Bay by sheer brio and superior seamanship, outrunning a dozen Eyran vessels which had been captured by the enemy and were now crewed by mercenaries and slaves under Istrian command. The Troll was already an ancient ship then, but Sten had worked on it all his life and he knew every vibration of its rudder, every gradation in the tension of its lines and sheet and so, confident in his knowledge of his ship and on home territory, he had steered a dangerous course right through the middle of the Bitches, that treacherous range of reefs that lie like sharks’ teeth off the eastern coast. Eight of the pursuing ships, sure of their prize, had come straight after him; six had foundered on the invisible rocks. The remaining ships, surrounded by chaos, had altered course and lost the wind, and by the time they had found it again, the Troll was gone, vanished into the labyrinth of islands up the coast. Sten had rejoined his fleet off Wolf’s Ness and together they had turned back and fallen upon the Istrians in their borrowed ships. It was a short battle, for the enemy were outnumbered and at a loss in these tricky waters. Forced to choose between the Bitches and the mercy of the northern king, many Istrians made the fatal error of choosing the latter; for although Sten ordered that the survivors be saved and taken back to Halbo, it was only the slaves he freed, and they had wept with gratitude. Many had stayed in Eyra, for there was nothing awaiting them in the south, and worked on farms and in nobles’ houses until they could afford their own piece of land. Many took ship to the Eastern Isles where land was cheap, which accounted for the preponderance of dark-haired folk, and for a slightly disdainful attitude towards the easterners from the wealthier Eyrans. The mercenaries Sten had brought back into his own service, for he appreciated good fighting men and had no illusions about loyalty and patriotism; but the Istrians he hanged and quartered on the very docks which they had planned to sack; and then catapulted their bodyparts across the lower half of the city. ‘As a message to the others,’ he had famously informed the single Istrian he had spared – a gangling, black-haired boy from Forent, who had wisely not revealed himself as the heir to the lord of that city. And now, as the tale played itself to an end in her head, another thought struck Katla: she had encountered that man’s son at the Allfair. Rui Finco, Lord of Forent, had presided over her trial, pronounced her guilt, sentenced her to burn. She made the sign of Sur’s anchor to ward off evil, and focused her eyes on the town ahead.
At last, the faering grounded on the shingle below the quay. The crew splashed up onto the beach, the ground oddly stable and unmoving beneath their feet, and dragged the boat up above the tideline. By the time they had got their bearings, Katla and Halli found themselves alone, the rest of the crew having dispersed like mist into the night of their home town.
‘We should find lodging,’ Halli said, sensible as ever.
But Katla’s eyes were shining. ‘How can you think of sleep? There’s a whole city to be explored!’
She raced up the narrow stone steps onto the docks and stared around with delight, even though there was little to see here beyond the usual paraphernalia of such an area – tarpaulins stretched over sacks of grain, casks and chests piled higgledy-piggledy, drying racks and nets, carts and sleds and livestock pens; and behind these a shantytown of marine industry – ropemakers, sailmakers, netters and caulkers. Beyond, another Halbo beckoned: Katla could sense its seamy presence in the air – a miasma of smoke and ale and sex.
‘Come on!’ she grabbed her brother by the arm and dragged him around the corner into a place marked by a bedraggled twist of string upon a pole with the name knotted into it in the traditional Eyran fashion: Fish-eye Lane. The first tavern they passed offered the gorgeous sight of two men puking in its doorway. Katla regarded them with interest but Halli guided her quickly past. He had been to Halbo before. The Bosun’s Cur was not the sort of establishment to take your sister into, even one as unladylike as Katla; but then again, it was hard to think of anywhere he could.
Farther up the lane they passed a group of women in split-fronted breeches and bizarrely stiffened corseting which spilled their pale breasts up and over the whalebone like an offering to eager hands. Katla grinned widely at their regalia.
‘Come up the steps with me, little lad,’ the oldest of the group called in the broad, coarse accent of the east mainland. She parted the fabric of her pantaloons for a better sight of her wares. ‘I’ll teach you a couple of new tricks. Have you tried “the Rose of Elda”? It’s what they all want at the moment. Guaranteed to make you shoot before your friend here has had time to count his coin.’ She leered at Halli. ‘I might even do you for free, since you’re such a handsome fellow, if your mate here pays for the Rose—’
Katla, puzzled as to why anyone should want to pay a g
reater price for a briefer encounter, and curious to know exactly what ‘the Rose’ entailed, opened her mouth to ask, but Halli pushed her roughly in the back.
‘We’ve just arrived, ladies,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘and we’ll need considerable sustenance before we have the strength to do your skills true justice.’
Katla quirked an eyebrow. How strange to hear her diffident brother so confident and self-possessed.
‘I’ll take the Rose!’
The cry came from behind them. Katla turned to see a motley bunch coming up Fish-eye Lane led by a small round figure in a boiled leather jerkin. Behind him was a tall, gaunt, one-handed man in full wargear, an ugly fellow wearing a skullcap and a lugubrious expression and, some steps in arrears, a fearsome-looking woman with a cropped head and a mouthful of pointed teeth. Walking beside her was a giant of a man with a long sword banging against his leg.
‘Sell-swords,’ said Halli in a low voice.
‘Aye, I know,’ Katla returned cheerfully. ‘Joz! Hey – Joz Bearhand!’ She waved and whistled.
The big man stopped in his tracks. He squinted ahead, then turned to the woman beside him. ‘Well, now, Mam: look what the tide threw up: it’s Katla Aransen, by Sur!’
The woman strode forward until the light cast by the sconce in the brothel’s doorway fell squarely upon her. The whores took one look at this new arrival and without further discussion took their business further up the street.
‘We thought you were dead,’ Mam grunted, looking Katla up and down suspiciously.
‘You looked dead the last time we saw you,’ the small fat man said, grinning up at her. ‘Laid out on the shoreline like a half-burned trout, you was, and yer hair all frizzled off.’
‘Fish don’t have hair,’ the skullcapped man pointed out with deadpan logic.
‘She didn’t neither, Doc—’
‘Shut up, Dogo.’ Joz Bearhand pushed the little man aside and gave her a hug to suit his name. ‘I’m glad you’re alive, girlie.’ He stepped back and patted the sword at his side. ‘Best blade I’ve ever had, this. I’ve a hankering for a dagger to match.’
Katla smiled delightedly. ‘Ah, the Dragon of Wen.’ It was indeed the best sword she had forged, other than the carnelian blade which Tam Fox now had in his possession. And much luck may it bring him, she thought. ‘It’d be a pleasure, Joz.’
Mam glanced at the sword and curled her lip. ‘Lost me a fortune, that thing. I’d say it carried bad luck.’
It was hard to believe the Dragon of Wen could have lost the mercenary woman a fortune, Katla thought. At the worst she could sell it for a good sum. ‘Bad luck?’ she asked.
Mam laughed and the light from the sconce gave her filed gnashers a grim and bloody aspect. ‘Your sweet brother,’ she said, ‘borrowed this little beauty and proceeded to use it to make a kabob of the shipwright.’
Katla frowned. Quite how Fent had come by the Dragon with which to carry out the deed she had no idea; nor why the death of Finn Larson should be such a loss to a mercenary troop.
‘The King promised us one of Larson’s ships,’ Joz said helpfully, as if reading her mind. ‘Thought we’d take to the high seas in our own right, instead of in the service of some other rich bastard, make our own fortunes. Bit of a problem now he’s a goner.’
‘But you still got the price of one—’ the small man called Dogo started, then stopped with a yelp as the tall man in wargear kicked his shin. ‘No need for that, Knobber, I was just thinking of that coffer of coin we fished out of his ten—’
‘Aye, well Danson’s prices have gone through the roof since old Larson’s demise,’ Mam said dourly.
Katla went uncharacteristically quiet. She found herself wondering about the coffer of coin, and whether it might have contained the money her father had stolen from his sons and taken to Finn Larson in order to commission the ice-breaker which obsessed him to the point at which he had even agreed to throw her into the bargain – Knots within knots, she thought, frowning. ‘This coin—’ she started, but Halli, aware of the reputation of these apparently mild-mannered folk, and witness to their considerable violence at the Allfair, stepped in front of her and changed the subject rapidly. ‘Since it seems my brother lost you a fortune,’ he said, ‘the least I can do is to offer you an ale as some reparation for your trouble.’
Mam grinned horribly. ‘It’ll take more ale than you’ve ever seen, little bear, to win my favour; but I suppose it’s a start.’
The Enemy’s Leg boasted a crudely painted sign and a tally-board outside on which a number of frayed old strings had been knotted in various complex arrangements. Halli, Katla and the mercenaries perused the board, complete with inventive mis-knottings and unintentional errors with interest. ‘Shepherd’s Eye’ sounded like a dish worth avoiding, but: ‘Kipper’s Ale,’ Doc said, smacking his lips appreciatively. ‘Two bits a flagon. That’ll do me.’
‘Don’t know how you can drink that stuff,’ the one-handed man observed. ‘Tastes as bad as it sounds. Fish’s piss.’
‘It’s a bit salty,’ Doc conceded. ‘But you know, Knobber, it reminds me of home. Tastes – well, I’d say “authentic”, but then I’d have to explain the meaning of the word to you. So I’ll stick with right good.’
The ugly man took a cheerful swing at Doc, who sidestepped neatly so that Knobber’s fist connected dully with the top of Dogo’s skull. In the ensuing confusion, Katla slipped into the inn ahead of the rest of the group. Inside, the taproom was low-ceilinged, dark and wreathed with a smoke so pungent it made her eyes burn. The place was still crammed with customers even at this late hour. Unable to look down for the press of the crowd, Katla could feel wood shavings crunch under her feet with each step she took. A proper seagoing, shipmaking town, she thought approvingly. Everywhere she looked there was evidence of it – tables and seats made from old seachests, a nook constructed out of an upended, broken faering in which four men were noisily playing knucklebones, antique figureheads caked in the greasy black oil from the lamps and the cooking adorned the walls; ales entitled Deep Anchorage and Double Fisherman’s, Marlinspike and Old Bilgewater. Katla hoped the latter was someone’s idea of a joke and not an accurate description, and ordered a flagon to find out, despite Halli trying to purchase her a small glass of light wine which he evidently regarded as a more suitable beverage for his little sister.
Old Bilgewater proved to be a dark and supple ale with the sort of bitter aftertaste that could pickle walnuts and probably your tongue if you drank the stuff for too long; but Katla gulped it down and left most of the talking to Halli.
‘You came in with Tam Fox, then, did you?’ Mam asked straight out.
Halli nodded. There was no point in denying it, since no other vessel had followed them in. ‘Da sent us for supplies,’ he said truthfully, if economically. ‘Since the Snowland Wolf was sailing.’
‘How’ll you get back then, I wonder?’ Mam canted her head enquiringly. ‘Last I knew it, Aran had a perfectly good knarr of his own for fetching his necessaries in.’
‘It’s being repaired,’ Katla supplied quickly, knowing that her stolid brother was not quick with a good lie. ‘The Fulmar’s Gift.’
Knobber cackled. ‘Good name that!’
Joz Bearhand grinned.
Dogo stared at Knobber, then at Katla and finally at Mam, his brow wrinkled with puzzlement. ‘Eh?’
Knobber made a great play of retching deep in his throat, then gobbed copiously onto the tabletop. ‘Fulmar’s gift,’ he said delightedly, pointing at the gleaming spittle. ‘That’s what they do, see, them fulmar-gulls.’
Dogo looked pained. ‘Don’t see what’s so funny,’ he mumbled. ‘Nor why you’d name your boat so.’
‘They’re like that, the Westlanders,’ Joz said, winking at Katla. ‘Strange sense of humour they have.’
‘Aye, run you through as soon as look at you, too,’ Mam said darkly. She turned to Katla. ‘You look a lot like your fox-haired brother,’ she remarked.
‘People often say that.’
‘He’s not with you, then?’
‘No. He stayed behind.’ An image of Fent straining at his bindings in the barn, his eyes bulging with outrage, rose irresistibly to the surface of her mind. She dropped her head to hide the smile she was unable to suppress, but Mam saw it anyway and narrowed her eyes.
‘I heard Tam Fox’s troupe is giving an entertainment for the King’s wedding at Halfmoon, night after next, and that the Wolf would be sailing in this evening,’ Knobber interjected into the moment of silence that fell. ‘Some folk were talking about it down on Rats’ Wharf this afternoon.’
‘But we didn’t know ourselves how fair the winds would be or when exactly we’d put in,’ said Halli, bemused. ‘How could they have known?’
‘A message-bird came from the ship – one of Tam’s pretty pigeons.’
Katla frowned. She’d seen no pigeons on board the Snowland Wolf; but just before dusk fell she had been surprised to see a raven settle on the top yard, just to the left of the mast-head. It had seemed odd, for ravens were not seagoing birds, but she had been so distracted by the draw of the land that she had thought little more about it at the time.
‘Not that there’ll be a welcome for the likes of us,’ the skullcapped man the others called Doc said, glaring at Dogo. ‘Not after we tried to recoup our loss.’