by Kirby Crow
Scarlet waved a hand. “It’s not important.”
“The hell—” Liall started out loudly and got quieter. “The hell it isn’t.”
“Let me understand you. It’s all right for men to grope me or pay me to grope them, but killing me is strictly out of bounds.”
By now, Liall was holding his head in both hands. “You’re killing me,” he snarled. “Let me say this before my skull cracks open: I’m sorry things have been difficult for you, but there is little I can do about it.”
“Maybe not, but that’s no reason to punish me.”
Liall gave him a look that was so startled and hurt that Scarlet felt ashamed. “You believe I am punishing you?”
“Why are you going back to Norl Udur?”
“I told you.”
“You told me very little. I’m sure there’s more.”
“As you have guessed, there is,” Liall replied uncomfortably. “But I am not attempting to punish you. I cannot tell you certain things because it would be dangerous for you to know them. Have you never heard that ignorance is bliss? In your case, ignorance is protection. There are things I will not know for certain until we arrive in Rshan, and I’d rather not risk you.”
“Risk me how?”
Liall sighed and sagged a little. “You insisted on coming,” he repeated, avoiding a real answer, and he put his hands down to grip the wooden edge of the bunk. “Do you think I enjoy knowing that stinking mariner tried to buy you? Do you think I enjoy drinking and eating with men who have nothing but contempt for you and would happily kill if I were not here to stop them?” He looked unhappy and glanced away for a moment. “As for my behavior last night, it was an excess of drink, not contempt, and... and I am only a man, after all.” He risked a glance at Scarlet. “The wish that prompted me to treat you so badly at the Kasiri camp is still very much in force, I fear.”
Scarlet grew still. “What wish is that?”
Liall regarded him in strained silence for a long moment. “The wish of a man who wants very much to be your lover, but does not know how to go about it.” After a pause wherein Scarlet was held silent purely by surprise, Liall held his hand out to him. “Come, please, let us mend this quarrel. You must trust that there are things I cannot explain to you yet, and trust in what I feel for you.”
There was no ‘must’ about it, but Scarlet relented at the pain in Liall’s voice. He got up and sat stiffly beside Liall on the bunk. “It’s hard for me to believe you don’t know how to go about something, or anything.”
“Believe it.”
“Is it...” Scarlet paused, thinking. At first, Liall had done the pursuing. Now he felt like he was the one chasing Liall, and suddenly Liall had absented himself from the equation. “Is it something I’ve done?”
“No,” Liall said quickly. He pressed Scarlet’s hand. “But I cannot talk about it yet. Please forgive me.”
Scarlet sensed the conversation was hopeless. They seemed doomed to misunderstand each other. He changed the subject. “Have you taken anything for that bad head? Maybe you should lie down.”
“If I lie down, I will not get up again for the rest of the day,” Liall said and closed his eyes briefly. “With some breakfast and che inside me, I will feel better. I’m also sorry I left you alone last night. That was a foolish thing, considering the mood of the crew. It won’t happen again.”
Scarlet shrugged, as if it did not matter, but he suspected Liall’s eyes saw more keenly, despite the hangover. He offered to scrounge breakfast, but Liall declined.
“Good penance for my indulgence, and the fewer encounters you have with the crew, the better.”
3.
Pursued
A mariner pounded on the door at the turn of the watch, around dawn or thereabouts. Scarlet had already risen and was careful not to disturb Liall, sitting on the floor and busying himself with repairing a lace on his boot, which looked to be close to falling apart after nearly a month at sea. Liall had already told Scarlet that he was wasting his time mending, but the pedlar did not listen. He would get much better gear for them both in Rshan, and cover Scarlet’s white skin in silk.
The knock sounded again and he cracked one eye open. Scarlet glanced at him and then the door, and he nodded. Scarlet was safe enough with him nearby, or as safe as he could make him. The crew’s hatred for the foreigner in their midst was a tangible thing, heavy and onerous to live under, but there was no way around it. Scarlet got up and answered the infernal pounding as Liall’s hand crept toward the hilts of the knives he kept forever near.
The hatch opened and Oleksei stood there, eyeing Scarlet in hostile silence. He would not even speak to ask for Liall, and the unnecessary rudeness made Liall sharp when he roused himself and edged Scarlet out of the way.
“What?” Liall growled.
“Captain Qixa wants you.”
Liall nodded and dismissed Oleksei with a curt gesture. The mariner went, but not without a last glance at the object of his dislike.
“Is something wrong?”
“I do not know yet. Perhaps.”
“Can I go with you?”
“No. Remain here.”
Liall threw on a woolen coat and slid his hands into a pair of fur-lined gloves. The weather had turned steadily colder day after day, until now they huddled in the cabin most days, conserving body heat and talking about this or that, playing dice, or inventing word games and riddles to stave off boredom. Scarlet had told him so many tales about his family and of the people of erstwhile Lysia that Liall now believed he had known each and every one of them individually. He was a little surprised that his young companion proved to be such an adept storyteller. When asked, Scarlet would only reply that he inherited the talent from his mother.
For Liall’s part, he did his best to remember the books he had read in childhood. Those were the tales he told, more charming and neat than Scarlet's stories of Lysia, but infinitely less frank. When he ran out of books, he told Scarlet of his years with the Kasiri tribes, and the splendor of the kingdom of Minh, the exotic provinces of Khet, and of the Wasted Lands that lay far to the west, beyond the reach of all civilization. He was sure Scarlet did not believe most of it, especially the tales about Minh, which were stranger than fiction, yet he enjoyed them immensely.
“It sounds very odd,” Scarlet would say for the tenth time. And then, once: “My brother Gedda is in Minh, among all those splendors and strange wonders. I wonder if he’d think me as odd as I’d think him?”
In moments of boredom, Liall would consider ruefully that they could have been entertaining themselves in other ways, more pleasurable and heady ones, but that open door led to a dozen others, each thornier and harder to breach than the last, so he let it be. It was enough for now that they had found some middle ground with each other. There were certain compensations: when they bedded down at night in the single cabin bunk, Scarlet lay close to Liall and sometimes accidentally pillowed his head on Liall’s shoulder after falling asleep. Liall might have sought to relieve his body then, seeking to quench the fires Scarlet ignited in his bones with the press of his body and the warmth and nearness of his skin, but he dared not. There were too many secrets between them, and Liall had not taken a lover—a real lover—in a very long time. His last experience with love had been catastrophic, to put it mildly.
Liall patted Scarlet’s shoulder. “Leave the door open if you wish. They won’t trouble you.”
“I might trouble them,” Scarlet shot back.
Qixa was on the quarterdeck, his breath steaming in the frigid gray dawn. Liall did not need to ask the captain what he wanted. The schooner was on the leeward side in the near distance, still far enough away yet, but she was faster than the larger, heavily-laden brigantine and her gaff sails were trimmed for speed. Obviously, she was trying to catch the brigantine. Liall observed the red and yellow flag she flew at high mast.
“Arbyss colors,” Qixa said, not believing it a bit.
Neither did Liall. “Not a
t full sail this far north. What are they hurrying to, an iceberg?” There was no trade in the winter with Rshan, and that was the only land that lay on this course. Besides, the schooner moved too swiftly even for full sail. Her holds were empty. Liall surveyed her lines. “No cannon,” he stated. “It could be worse.”
He knew they were in deep trouble. So, apparently, did Qixa. The captain turned and barked orders at Oleksei: secure belowdecks, douse all fires, break out the weapons. Qixa gave Liall a look that spoke much.
“Not my doing, ap kyning. You can believe it.”
“I do. This is Faal’s work coming home to roost, I suspect. That schooner is not after our cargo.”
There was no other sense in the schooner’s pursuit: she could not carry away a fifth of their holds, laden with wood and oil and spice and furs, and there was better piracy in warmer waters without the hazards of ice and wind and a well-armed crew of giant Northmen. The Rshani brigantine was altogether too much trouble for mere pirates. No, the cargo they wanted was roughly man-sized and white-haired. Liall did not know for certain who wanted to prevent him from reaching Rshan, but he had a good idea. Now, he resolutely turned his thoughts away from Rshan and to the present. There was to be a battle. Once more, he fiercely regretted last night’s wine.
Liall returned to the cabin and found Scarlet seated on the floor mending his boot. Scarlet looked at Liall’s face and rose immediately.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Liall put his hands on Scarlet’s shoulders. “Now, you must listen to me, and do as I say. In a while, perhaps less than an hour, you will hear some noise from topside. I want you to bolt the door and be quiet.” Scarlet’s own Morturii knives were on the bunk. Liall took one up and slid it from its sheath, putting the hilt in Scarlet’s hand. “If anyone tries to force their way in, kill them.”
Scarlet looked at the edge of the dark, eerily beautiful knife and then at him. “What’s happening?”
“What always happens with men like me. You would have been safer going into the Wasted Lands than following me, little one.”
Scarlet seized his arm when Liall would have left quickly. Liall could not look at him. He was too sick at the thought of what would happen to the pedlar if the crew were not strong enough, if they did not prevail and drive their pursuers back or burn them into the cold sea. He could see the scenario unfolding in his mind’s eye: the crew dead, himself fallen or taken, and the bloody raiders finally discovering the bolted cabin and its lone inhabitant.
Beauty, like gold, was coveted everywhere, and being male had never guaranteed Scarlet’s safety from certain kinds of assault. There would be the inevitable joking and leers. They would take their time, no longer being in haste, and they would have him as they willed. Liall quailed to think of it, he who had seen so much of blood and death, but the thought of what they would do to Scarlet’s flesh made him weak.
It was then, after months of denial, that Liall began to realize he no longer had a choice in whether or not he loved Scarlet. Fear welled up in his chest and he pushed it back savagely. He had loved once and men had died for it. Many futures had been lost, his own among them. He would not make the same mistake again only to watch his world fall apart. Yet, at that moment, he could not imagine any future at all that lay beyond Scarlet’s death. The world seemed to drop off at that point; a far vista abruptly severed into a hopeless void.
Liall made to go, keeping the words he wanted to say behind his teeth.
“No,” Scarlet urged, stepping after him. “Stay here.”
“It’s a small difference, but I can be of more use above.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“No!” Liall turned and grabbed Scarlet’s shoulders, shaking him hard. “You’ll do as I say!”
Scarlet gaped at him, shocked by his sudden violence, and Liall’s anger vanished. “I crave your pardon,” he said in shame.
“I’m not afraid, Liall.”
“No. I am the coward here, not you, too weak to watch your blood being spilled.” With that, Liall had no more words to share. He shook his head helplessly and released Scarlet.
Liall rejoined Qixa on the quarterdeck. Oleksei, Mautan the mate, and the quartermaster were gathered in a knot. For once, Mautan was not smiling. Looking leeward, Liall saw the schooner had gained greatly just in the time he was gone.
“Keep her on the leeward,” he warned. “That will give us some advantage, but not much.”
Qixa nodded, his arms crossed, watching the deadly lines of the ship closing on their stern like a sleek hound on the water. There was nothing else he could do.
When she was two hundred paces out, the mate gave a shout to the men on the main deck, all lined up as they were with their knives and swords and hatchets in their hands, silent as the tomb, watching the schooner grow and fill the horizon. At a signal from Qixa, they moved, some shinnying up the ropes and some bellying up to the port-side rail with shields in their hands to deflect arrows. These would try to protect the sails and masts and also hack through any grappling implements thrown at them from the schooner deck.
Liall saw a man marking his forehead with an ancient sign, and another—a mariner with ruddy-gold hair and a face even younger than Oleksei’s—looked to the north, toward Rshan, and nodded as if making some silent pact. This was the worst part; the knowing. Watching them slip up behind and then alongside bit by bit and seeing their numbers, the weapons in the hands of the enemy crew, their set faces. There were a lot of them. Not Rshani, thank Deva, but lean, brown-haired Morturii and stout, parchment-skinned axe men from Minh. Liall had been wrong about the empty holds; they were filled with fighters.
It did not take long. The Ostre Sul dove into a thick fog that seemed to have rolled in from nowhere, smelling of fish and rot, and clouding their vision. The brigantine’s sails vanished into white clouds.
They raced now, neck and neck into the north, and when the length of water between them was perhaps fifty paces, the schooner captain gave a shout. Some of the enemy crew leaped forward to the rail then, succumbing to nerves or just tired of standing. The captain, a grizzled Morturii commander in blackened Minh armor who straddled the quarterdeck as if bolted there, signaled for the hooks.
The grappling hooks, iron claws attached with strong rope at one end, were thrown. Some missed the brigantine and trawled the sea uselessly; others struck the gunwale and held fast, their strong barbs sunken deep into wood or jammed between crevices. The Rshani crew leaped to hack the ropes that held them, and the Morturii captain shouted another order. Arrows flew from the schooner. One volley—all there would be time for before their two hulls began to scrape—and several of the men nearest the railing screamed and fell, impaled through the chest and arms.
The compact size of the Minh warriors gave them an advantage. From the schooner, the Minh were shinnying or swinging over on the grappling ropes, either to prevent the hooks from being dislodged or to drop like spiders on the Rshani crew from above.
Liall had put aside his knives and taken a sword from the weapons master. He had had it in his hand from the moment the arrows flew. It was a long, double-edged blade, probably Qixa’s own, and felt good in his grip. The watchers higher up on the quarterdeck—Liall, Qixa, the quartermaster and Mautan, Oleksei and perhaps thirty other skilled fighters—waited for the arrows to land before they moved a muscle. One volley of arrows was all Liall expected, since they were at such close quarters.
He was not wrong, and as the Minh archers dropped their bows to the deck and blades flashed from their sheaths, Liall charged off the foredeck with Mautan and the others, roaring loud enough to wake the dead. Half of all soldiery was intimidation, and he made best advantage of his height and appearance. A Morturii swordsman rose in his path and he struck the man down as he passed, fixed on a target near the port anchor; a hook embedded in a post. Two of the fighter’s fellows tried to take him down and he turned to slaughter them, wielding the double-edged sword like an axe, felling the
m like saplings.
Liall struck down another Minh on his way to the side, sword straight into him and out, not even stopping to make sure he was dead. Then a larger Morturii blocked his way and they fought briefly. The Morturii was enthusiastic with his weapon, but no true swordsman. At the last, he gave up parrying Liall’s thrusts and maneuvers and simply threw himself at the taller man. Liall went down with him and the Morturii rolled and kicked, seeking to get his hands around Liall’s throat, but Liall snatched up a dislodged hook in the deck and pushed the barbs into the Morturii’s face.
Dazed but on his feet again, Liall hacked at a hook stuck firm in the brigantine’s side and cut it away as an enemy crashed over him again and dragged him into the thick of the killing, rolling and tumbling.
Again, Liall threw them off and rose, and while he was fighting his way back to the side to detach more hooks, another Morturii clothed in flamboyant armor and armed with a long-knife in each hand came at him. This Morturii was good. Liall lurched aside from one well-aimed thrust, but the Morturii’s left blade went shallowly into his shoulder. The man took a fool’s moment to grin at his handiwork and Liall smashed a fist into his jaw and watched his smirking head snap back. Liall used his knife to open a wide, red smile in the man’s throat.
On the schooner, the Minh were hauling on the ropes, dragging the tethered brigantine close to their side, at last sealing their wet hulls, which screeched like mating wildcats. They lashed the ropes to their ship to make them fast, and then began to leap the distance between them, three at a time. Soon, enemy fighters swarmed over the Ostre Sul’s deck.
The Rshani crew were in grave trouble. They were outnumbered two to one, and they had already lost many to the arrows. They had only one hope: to cut the ropes that bound the ships together and swing away from the schooner into the swell, separating the raiders on their deck from the greater numbers of their fellows on the schooner. Then they could kill the enemies that remained on their ship and then face the second wave.