The Straits of Galahesh loa-2

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  It was a beckon, a summons, and Nasim knew that if he stepped forward and accepted his hand, he will have given up all he had striven for, all he had fought for since regaining himself in the keep of Oshtoyets.

  “Nasim, stop!” This came from Sukharam, a boy he hardly knew.

  He paused, his breath coming rapidly, his pulse beating heavily along his neck. He swallowed once. Twice.

  “Nasim!” Sukharam called again. “Listen to me! You cannot do this!”

  And then he stepped forward.

  And took Muqallad’s hand.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  N ikandr woke as a hand shook his shoulder.

  He blinked as the sounds of the wind and the feel of his weight upon the deck returned to him.

  He stood before the Yarost’s starward mainmast, his arms hanging at his sides. Every part of him felt as if it were weighted with lead.

  Anahid stood beside him, and after long moments he realized she had been the one who had touched his shoulder.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Off course,” she replied. Her face was dour, as if he had disappointed her in some way, perhaps because he was not Jahalan. “If you can find the strength, another day will see us to land, and then we can begin skirting it eastward.”

  “I don’t know if I can stand another day.”

  “You will, son of Iaros, or we’ll never reach Yrstanla.”

  Nikandr took a deep breath. He stretched his jaw. He shook his head until his neck hurt. But none of it managed to drive away the sleep.

  Anahid evaluated him with a long, searching look.

  “I’ll make it.”

  She looked doubtful. She appeared tired as well, exhausted even, but there was grim determination in her eyes. How the Aramahn managed to stay awake for such long periods, he would never know. “The winds will be stronger today as we reach the edge of the storms.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The tightness in my chest is finally leaving. I first felt it on our way across the neck, and it has been with me ever since.”

  “I’ll be ready,” Nikandr replied.

  “See that you are,” she said, nodding over his shoulder.

  He turned sluggishly and found Styophan approaching with a steaming mug in his hand. Nikandr accepted it gratefully. It was filled with pyen, a tea that contained the fermented bark of a tree that grew in the lowland swamps of many of the Grand Duchy’s islands. They’d found it in the physic’s chest in the galley.

  He took one large swallow. The scalding liquid burned its way down his throat, but he didn’t care. The pain served to wake him up, and the sooner he got the liquid into his gut, the better.

  He was nearly ready to begin calling on his havahezhan when something caught his eye far out to sea. He moved to the windward gunwales and steadied himself while drinking his pyen. His eyes refused to remain steady, however, and no matter how forcefully he tried to remain awake, his eyes began to close.

  And then it came again.

  “Do you see it?” he asked Styophan when he stepped up to the gunwales at his side.

  “What?”

  “The darkness against the sea. Three leagues out”-he held his arm straight out-“there.”

  Styophan stared. “ Nyet.”

  After downing the last of his drink, Nikandr used his spyglass to watch for minutes more, but it never recurred. He didn’t like it, though. It was dangerous to fly so close to the sea. Any loss in lift or an unforeseen gust might drive you down on top of the waves, so Landed windships rarely did so, but the Maharraht would often fly this way because it made them more difficult to spot against the dark sea. Many of their ships’ sails were dyed gray to add to the effect.

  In the end, there was nothing he could do about it. Even if he’d wanted to, there was no way he’d be able to catch up to the ship. He’d be lucky to bring them safely to the shores of Yrstanla.

  “Son of Iaros?”

  “Coming, Anahid.”

  He returned to the mainmast and drew once more upon the wind, using it to guide the ship and her sails. As he had for the past seven days, he drove them onward, fighting the prevailing winds. Their only saving grace was that though the winds were normally unpredictable over the Sea of Khurkhan, they were generally heading northwest-an oddity he could only assume was due to the storms centered on the Vostroman archipelago-so all he need do was correct so that they were headed due north.

  Were Jahalan with them, the two of them could have traded time at the mainmast.

  But Jahalan wasn’t…

  The image of his old friend often played through his mind when he was at his weakest. It did so now, haunting him as he fought to keep the ship headed in the right direction. Tears welled up in his eyes as snow began to fall, but he blinked them away and bent his will to the task ahead.

  At least, he thought grimly, the memories of Jahalan were keeping him awake.

  Past midday a fog rolled across the sea, dropping visibility to little more than an eighth-league.

  “Keep close watch,” Nikandr ordered Jonis, a sharp young officer who’d proven to have excellent eyes.

  They moved slower, partially because of the fog but also because Nikandr was nearing exhaustion. He found it progressively more difficult to commune with his spirit. It was not only growing tired, its demands upon him were also growing. Nikandr could feel his heart beat heavily, could feel it skip and his breath grow short if he drew upon the winds too fiercely. And the winds were starting to shift against them. They eddied for several hours past midday and then began to push against the ship head-on, stunting their progress. The best Nikandr could do was to slip northwestward as the wind tried to push them east. If the winds picked up any further, they would be lost, and the ship would be pulled back over the heart of the sea, and if that happened, there would be no returning.

  Nikandr drank more pyen, but it was having so little effect that he asked Styophan to bring him the last of it. He took the final pinch and packed it between his cheek and gums.

  He began to shake after this, and yet he felt no less tired. Then again, maybe he would have simply collapsed if he hadn’t taken it.

  An hour later, he leaned his head against the mainmast, his eyes closing of their own accord.

  He woke, only vaguely realizing that Styophan was holding him up.

  “Not yet,” Styophan said, rolling Nikandr’s shoulders to try to get his blood moving again. “We’re nearly there.”

  “I can’t,” he said, but the words were so soft he barely heard them. “I can’t.”

  “You can, My Lord.”

  When Nikandr didn’t respond, Styophan pressed him up against the mainmast and struck him across the cheek. Nikandr barely felt it.

  Styophan struck him again. “We are not yet done, My Prince!”

  A third time he struck, and Nikandr vaguely tasted something warm and slick in his mouth.

  Blood, he realized.

  He shook his head, which did nothing, and fell to his knees.

  But then he heard something else. Something new.

  The sound of cannon fire coming off the windward bow.

  He dragged himself to his feet and looked, able to stave off some small amount of the clutching weariness. The way ahead was still cloaked in fog, but it seemed not so thick as it once was. The sound of a cannon came again, accompanied by a brief flash.

  “Ready cannons, men,” Nikandr called as he resumed his position at the mainmast. “And prepare the muskets.”

  “The coast is near,” Anahid said. “I can feel it.”

  Nikandr could as well, but not in the same way. The air smelled different. It smelled of earth, of the cold loamy scent of a forest in winter. And now that he put his mind to it he could hear gulls far below, off the landward side of the ship.

  As they approached, the cannon fire intensified. And then it was mixed with musket fire.

  “Follow the cliff line,” Nikandr ordered, speaking only loud enoug
h for the master to hear, “but stay above land.”

  Orders were passed about the ship. The keels were reengaged by the pilot. The land mass would provide them ley lines to work against once more. They would not be as strong as those that ran among the islands, but they would be strong enough in this meager wind.

  As Anahid lowered the ship, the pilot brought them in line with the cliff so that it was only a few hundred yards off their landward side. The fighting intensified, men shouting orders or crying out in pain.

  And then they saw it. A dozen ships, all of them moored to the cliff. Their landward masts had been disengaged, and spread apart until they were positioned like three-legged stools against the cliff face. It was not ideal, but all ships made for fighting were constructed so in case the ship couldn’t reach the safety of an eyrie.

  Nikandr could already tell that they were the ships Konstantin had sent. He didn’t at first understand why they would be moored, but the reason came clear when he noticed that the nearest three ships had been gutted. They’d stopped here for repairs, perhaps after a battle with Yrstanlan ships that had been sent to intercept them, or even because of damage sustained during the crossing of the Sea of Khurkhan.

  Further west, stationed at a gentle curve of the snow-covered cliff, were a dozen janissaries wearing white uniforms and rounded turbans with tall, colorful plumes, but there were also several dozen ghazi with them, the militia of the Empire’s outlands that heeded the call of the Kamarisi when it came. While the ghazi fired muskets, the janissaries manned three cannons, which had been maneuvered behind a low rock formation that provided them protection against return fire from the Grand Duchy’s ships. But they were completely open to attack from the rear, and so far, thank the ancients, they hadn’t spotted the Yarost approaching through the fog.

  “Lower the ship even more,” Nikandr ordered Styophan. “Reload the cannons with grape, and have no one fire until I do.”

  Styophan went quickly about the ship, passing orders, while Anahid used her bonded dhoshahezhan to gradually increase the heft of the ship and bring them closer to the level of the cliff ahead.

  As the musket fire continued and the three Yrstanlan cannons belched black smoke one more time, Nikandr moved to the bow and took a musket from the ship’s master, Vlanek. Eight others stationed themselves along the landward gunwales, each man loading his weapon smartly.

  Nikandr’s exhaustion began to lift as he loaded his musket. No sooner had he finished and laid the musket against the gunwale when one of the janissaries turned and began shouting to his men. Nikandr waited for one of the men to pick up on the danger and to begin issuing orders.

  It came a moment later. A tall janissary wearing a large red turban. They were close enough that Nikandr could see the black, iridescent feathers pinned to the front of the officer’s turban with a large jeweled medallion.

  He aimed his musket for this man as the first scattered fire came in from the rag-tag ghazi. Several shots bit into the hull. Others flew high, punching through canvas.

  Nikandr released his breath and pulled the trigger.

  The musket kicked.

  Through the puff of smoke he saw a spot of blood appear on the chest of the man with the feathered turban, just above his heart. The tall man tipped backward, eyes wide, trying to catch himself with flailing arms, and then he was lost among his men and the rocks and snow at their feet.

  The rest of Nikandr’s men fired in tight sequence, followed by the forward cannon.

  At the cliff, all six men stationed at the two nearest cannons were thrown to the ground in a mass of red. More fire came in from Grigory’s ships, dropping some that had risen to face the threat bearing down from their rear.

  The ghazi were not well organized, but they did manage to maneuver themselves to have decent cover against both the Yarost and the ships lashed to the cliff. Nikandr and the others reloaded quickly, firing upon any that took to the cannons, but then the Yarost flew past, and the ghazi were able to hide behind their rocks once more.

  “Take her up,” Nikandr called, “and circle back.”

  The fighting continued as the Yarost swung out to sea and arced westward, but by now two of Grigory’s ships had freed themselves from the cliff. They were heading up, and it was clear to everyone that the men of Yrstanla had long lost their advantage. They began to retreat, taking ponies that were tied a few dozen yards from the cliff.

  Still, the Yarost and the other two ships harried them until the two dozen that remained had ridden northward into the fog.

  Nikandr stepped off the skiff and onto the deck of the Drakha. Grigory stood on deck, flanked by three of his kapitans. By now Grigory could no longer be surprised that Nikandr had found his way here on the shores of Yrstanla, and yet as he studied Nikandr-glancing occasionally up to the Yarost, which was now lashed to the cliff above them-he looked more surprised than if Nikandr had stepped onto deck wearing the Grand Duke’s mantle.

  Breaking from custom, Grigory did not welcome Nikandr onto his ship. He merely stared, waiting for Nikandr to state his business.

  For Nikandr’s part, he was surprised at how quickly and vividly the memory of Grigory firing a shot into the chest of his man, Ervan, came to him, and more than this, his actions on the shores of Duzol… He’d left Atiana for dead after she’d caught a stray bullet in the struggles on Uyadensk.

  He had tried to prepare himself for standing face-to-face with Grigory-he’d been imagining the scene ever since learning of Konstantin’s wish for Nikandr to find him-but now that he was here he found it difficult not to reach for the pistol hanging from his belt.

  “Your brother has sent me,” Nikandr said at last.

  “Has he now…” Grigory looked doubtful, as if he was sure, even before Nikandr presented evidence, that this was all some lie on Nikandr’s part to deceive him.

  From the inside of his cherkesska, Nikandr pulled out the folded paper that had been waiting for him in the kapitan’s desk. It had Grigory’s name written upon it in Konstantin’s hand, and it had a red wax seal of Bolgravya holding it closed. After taking one deliberate step forward, he held it out for Grigory.

  Grigory was too far away to accept it, and there was a clear note of reluctance on his face to meet Nikandr halfway, but his curiosity seemed to overcome any revulsion he still harbored for Nikandr, and he stepped forward and took it. He examined the seal carefully-more than was needed-and then cracked it open. He unfolded the note and read it twice before raising his gaze and staring at Nikandr. His face had already flushed, but now it was positively red.

  He remained this way, his eyes boring into Nikandr, and then he turned his head and stared up at the cliff and the ships that were lashed to it.

  When he turned back to Nikandr, something cold and hard had settled within him. Gone was the emotion. Gone was the redness of his skin. They had been replaced with a cold calculation that made Nikandr nervous.

  “Take him and the others belowdecks,” Grigory said as he tucked the letter into his long black cherkesska and began walking toward the stern of the ship, “and place them in chains.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  W hen Nikandr woke in the hold of the Drakha, he had no idea how much time had passed. It had been near sunset when he’d been taken down and-as Grigory had ordered-placed in chains in the holding cell. He could see little outside the barred window set into the door, but he could see some light.

  He vaguely recalled his own order to Styophan that he and the rest of his men comply with Grigory’s demands-there was no need for the duchies to be warring, not when they needed one another so desperately-but it all seemed so distant, so dreamlike, that he wondered if it had happened at all. Yet here he was in a cell, his legs manacled, the chain between them running through a stout ring set into the angled hull that acted as one of the cell’s four walls.

  Despite the chains, despite lying on the floor, he’d fallen asleep nearly instantly once the streltsi had left him alone. He was still drows
y now, even though he was sure that he’d been asleep for over a day.

  It was clear that they weren’t flying. The ship was too stable for that, though there was a creaking as the wind rocked the ship against the three landward masts. They couldn’t remain long, however. The janissaries would return. Had they been near a city of any size, they already would have, but they were at the eastern edges of the Empire, a region that hadn’t seen real war since the War of Seven Seas. It was a place that would have been drained of its fighting men long ago, leaving only the untrained and undisciplined ghazi in place with a handful of janissaries to command them when the need arose.

  Much to the Grand Duchy’s advantage, as it turned out.

  Nikandr wondered where his men were. Most likely they’d been spread among the rest of Grigory’s ships so that no resistance could be formed.

  Nikandr took his soulstone in his hand and gripped it. He could not sense his havahezhan, but as tired as he was, as far as he had pushed it, he refused to do more than simply search for it. Surely if Grigory had known of his abilities he would have taken the stone from him. Even without this, he was surprised Grigory hadn’t taken it as he had years ago. Perhaps after doing so he had thought better of it. Or perhaps he didn’t care. They both knew they were far from the reach of the Matri.

  In a few hours, the sun went down, and darkness reigned. He heard men coming and going, working on the ship in preparation of launching, most likely in the morning. Nikandr wondered when Grigory would come to see him, but then he thought that perhaps Grigory had decided not to. He had already ignored his brother Konstantin’s orders, and though he hadn’t apparently been able to bring himself to kill Nikandr outright, he’d decided to leave him where he would raise the fewest number of questions.

  With that realization, and his continued feelings of exhaustion, Nikandr laid back on the floor and fell asleep.

  When he woke again, he was not alone.

  Grigory sat on a stool near the door. Light was coming in through the window. By the ancients, he’d slept through the entire night.