by Kage Baker
“Aren’t you putting in? Ai! Aren’t you stopping?”
“No! We’re headed upriver!”
“Please! Listen! We can’t stay here! Will you pick us up?”
“What?”
“Will you pick us up?” The man had run out to the end of the pier, staring out at them as they glided by. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
“We’re on a bit of a schedule, I’m afraid,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Can’t do it.”
“Oh, please! You don’t—look, the wood’s all wet. We can’t cook anything Bolter and Drill are sick. And at night—” The man cast a furtive glance over his shoulder at the forest.
Smith groaned. “Can’t we give them some oil, at least?” he muttered.
“Would some oil help you?”
“What? Oil? Yes! Just pull in for a minute, please, all right?”
“Bring up a keg,” Lord Ermenwyr ordered Stabb. He raised his voice again to call out in a bantering tone, “So I take it you’re not happy in Beautiful Smallbrass Estates?”
“I wouldn’t live here if you paid me a thousand crowns!” the man screamed, panic in his eyes as he realized that the Kingfisher’s Nest was truly not going to stop.
“Maybe we can pick you up on the return trip!” Smith cried.
“Damn you!” The man wept. Smith grimaced and turned away, watching the river. He heard the splash as Stabb hurled the keg of oil overboard. Turning back, he saw the man wading into the shallows, grabbing desperately at the keg as the eddy carried it close. To Smith’s relief he caught it, and was wrestling it ashore when the tide carried them around a bend in the river, and dark trees closed off the view.
“There, now, he can get a nice fire started with the oil,” said Lord Ermenwyr, watching Smith. “And there’ll probably be a relief crew arriving any day now.”
“What’s in those woods?” asked Smith. “Demons?”
“No!” said Willowspear. “This is a holy place. They brought their terrors with them. This is what happens when men profane what is sacred. The land itself rejects them, you see?”
Smith shrugged. He kept his eyes on the river.
They made hours and many miles upriver before the tidal bore gave out, then moored for the night in a silent backwater. In the morning they lit the boiler again, and thereafter the Kingfisher’s Nest progressed up the river in a clanking din that echoed off the banks, as the dipping ranks of oars worked the brown water. Birds flew up in alarm at the racket, and water serpents gave them a wide berth.
On the fifth day, they ran aground.
Smith had relinquished the helm to Cutt while he downed a stealthy postbreakfast filler of pickled eel. He swore through a full mouth as he felt the first grind under the keel, and then the full-on shuddering slam that meant they were stuck.
He scrambled to his feet and ran forward.
“The boat has stopped, Child of the Sun,” said Cutt.
“That’s because you ran it onto a sandbank!” Smith told him, fuming. “Didn’t you see the damned thing?”
“No, Child of the Sun.”
“What’s this?” Lord Ermenwyr ran up on deck, dabbing at his lips with a napkin. “We’re slightly tilty, aren’t we? And why aren’t we moving?”
“What’s happened?” Willowspear came up the companionway after him.
“Stop the rowers!” Smith ran for the boiler stopcock and threw it open. Steam shrieked forth in a long gush, and the oars ceased their pointless thrashing.
“You have hyacinth jam in your beard, my lord,” Willowspear informed Lord Ermenwyr.
“Do I?” The lordling flicked it away hastily. “Imagine that. Are we in trouble, Smith?”
“Could be worse,” Smith admitted grumpily. He looked across at the opposite bank. “We can throw a cable around that tree trunk and warp ourselves off. She’s got a shallow draft.”
“Capital.” Lord Ermenwyr clapped once, authoritatively. “Boys! Hop to it and warp yourselves.”
After further explanation of colorful seafaring terms, Smith took the end of the hawser around his waist and swam, floundering, to the far shore with it, as Cutt paid it out and Strangel dove below the waterline to make certain there were no snags. After four or five minutes he walked to the surface and trudged ashore after Smith.
“There is nothing sharp under the boat, Child of the Sun,” he announced.
“Fine,” said Smith, throwing a loop of cable about the tree trunk. He looped it twice more and made it fast. Looking up, he waved at those on deck, who waved back.
“Bend to the bloody capstan!” he shouted. Cutt, Crish, and Stabb started, and collided with one another in their haste to get to the bars. Round they went, and the cable rose dripping from the river; round they went again, and the cable sprang taut, and water flew from it in all directions. Round once more and they halted, and the Kingfisher’s Nest jerked abruptly, as one who has nodded off and been elbowed awake will leap up staring.
“Go, boys, go!” said Lord Ermenwyr happily, clinging to the mast. “Isn’t there some sort of colorful rhythmic chant one does at moments like these?”
The demons strained slightly, and the Kingfisher’s Nest groaned and began to slither sideways.
“That’s it!” Smith yelled. “Keep going!”
The Kingfisher’s Nest wobbled, creaked, and—
“Go! Go! Go!”
—lurched into deep water with a splash, and a wave rose and slopped along the riverbank.
“Stand to,” said Smith. As he bent to loose the cable, he became aware of a sound like low thunder. Looking up over his shoulder, he pinpointed the source of the noise. Strangel was growling, glaring into the forest with eyes of flame, and it was not a metaphor.
Smith went on the defensive at once, groping for weapons he did not have. As he followed Strangel’s line of sight, he saw them too: five green men in a green forest, cloaked in green, staring back coldly from the shadows, and each man wore a baldric studded with little points of green, and each man had in his hand a cane tube.
Strangel roared, and charged them.
Their arms moved in such perfect unison they might have been playing music, but instead of a perfect flute chord a flight of darts came forth, striking each one home into Strangel’s wide chest.
He kept coming as though he felt nothing, and they fell back wide-eyed but readied a second barrage, with the same eerie synchronization. The darts struck home again. They couldn’t have missed. Strangel seemed to lose a little of his momentum, but he was still advancing, and smashing aside branches as he came. Not until the third flight of darts had struck him did his roar die in his throat. He slowed. He stopped. His arms remained up, great taloned hands flexed for murder. Their forward weight toppled him and he fell, rigid, and rolled over like a log rolling.
His snarling features seemed cut from stone. The lights of his eyes had died.
The Yendri stared down at him in astonishment.
Smith turned and dove into the river.
He was scrambling over the rail of the Kingfisher’s Nest when the first dart struck wood beside his hand. He felt Willowspear seize his collar and pull him over, to sprawl flat on the deck, and he thought he saw Lord Ermenwyr running forward. Cutt, Crish, and Stabb gave voice to a keening ululation, above which very little else could be heard; but Smith made out the clang that meant someone had closed the stopcock, followed by a tinkly noise like silver rain. He looked up dazedly and saw poisoned darts hitting the boiler domes, bouncing off harmlessly, and Lord Ermenwyr on his hands and knees behind the domes.
“Rope! Rope!” he was shouting, and Smith realized what he meant. The Kingfisher’s Nest had been borne backward on the current, stopped only by the cable that he had not managed to loose in time. It swung now on the flood, its cable straight as a bar. Smith dragged himself forward to the tool chest by the boiler domes, and, groping frantically, there he found a kindling hatchet.
He rose to his knees, saw two Yendri directly opposite him on the bank in the
act of loading their cane tubes, and took a half dozen frenzied whacks at the cable before diving flat again. The darts flew without noise. But he heard them strike the domes again, and one dart bounced and landed point down on his hand. He shook it off frantically, noting in horror the tarry smear on his skin where the dart had lain. Someone seized the hatchet out of his hand and he rolled to see Willowspear bringing it down on the cable, bang, and the cable parted and they shot away backward down the river, wheeling round in the current like a leaf.
The oars had begun to beat again by the time Smith could scramble to the helm and bring her around, thanking all the gods they hadn’t grounded a second time.
“Was anybody hit?” he cried. The demons were still howling, hurling threats palpable as boulders back upriver. “Shut up! Was anybody hit?”
“I wasn’t,” said Willowspear, picking himself up. “My lord? My lord!”
Smith spotted Lord Ermenwyr still crouched behind the boilers, his teeth bared, his eyes squeezed shut. Sweat was pouring from his face. Smith groaned and punched the wheel, and Willowspear was beside his liege lord at once, struggling to open his collar; but Lord Ermenwyr shook his head.
“I’m not hit,” he said.
“But what’s—”
“I lost one of them,” he said, opening sick eyes. “And Mother’s right. It hurts worse than anything I’ve ever known. Damn, damn, damn.”
“What can I do for you, my lord?” Willowspear lowered his voice.
“Help me up,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “They need me to do something.”
“Who were those people? What happens now?” Smith asked, steering downriver.
The lordling did not reply, but steadied himself on his feet with Willowspear’s help. He brushed himself off and marched aft to Cutt, Crish, and Stabb. By the time he reached them he was swaggering.
“Now, boys, that’s enough! What good will shouting do?” he demanded.
They fell silent at once and turned to him meekly, and Smith was astonished to see their hideous faces wet with tears.
“Now we are no longer a set of four, Master,” said Cutt.
“Of course you are. Look! I’ve caught old Strangel right here.” Lord Ermenwyr held up a button he’d plucked from his waistcoat. “See? There’s his living soul. I’ll put it in a new body as soon as ever we’re home. But what does he need now?”
The demons stared at him, blank. Then they looked at one another, blanker still.
“Revenge!” Lord Ermenwyr told them. “Lots of bloody and terrible revenge! And who’s going to be the hideous force that dishes it out, eh?”
“…Us?” Stabb’s eyes lit again, and so did Cutt’s and so did the eyes of Crish.
“Yes!” Lord Ermenwyr sang, prancing back and forth before them. “Yes, you! Kill, kill, kill, kill! You’re going to break heads! You’re going to rip off limbs! You’re going to do amusing things with entrails!”
“Kill, kill, kill!” the demons chanted, lurching from foot to foot, and the deck boomed under their feet.
“Happy, happy, happy!”
“Happy, happy, happy!” The planks creaked alarmingly.
“Kill, kill, kill!”
“Kill, kill, kill!”
A while later they had come about and were steaming back up the river again, at their best speed.
“Half a point starboard!” Smith called down from the masthead. Below him, Willowspear at the helm steered to his direction cautiously, glancing now and then at the backs of his hands, where STARBOARD was chalked on the right and PORT on the left. On either side stood Cutt and Crish, shielding him each with a stateroom door removed from its hinges. Lord Ermenwyr sat behind him in a folding chair, shadowed over by Stabb with yet a third door. The lordling had his smoking tube out, but its barrel was loaded with poison darts gleaned from the deck, and he rolled it in his fingers and glared at the forest gliding past.
They drew level with the place where they had been attacked, and there was the cut cable trailing in the water; but of their assailants there was no sign.
“Two points to port,” Smith advised, and peered ahead.
The fogbanks of the coast lay far behind them; the air was clear and bright as a candle flame. From his high seat he could see forest rolling away for miles, thinning to yellow savanna far to the north and east, and he knew that the grain country of Troon was out beyond there. Westward the land rose gradually to a mountain range that paralleled the river. Far ahead, nearly over the curve of the world perhaps, the mountains got quite sharp, with a pallor nastily suggestive of snow though it was high summer.
And in all that great distance he could see no house, no smoke of encampments, no castle wall or city wall, and no other ship on the wide river. He saw no green men, either; but he knew they would not let themselves be seen.
“One point to starboard,” he cried, and his voice fell into vast silence.
By evening they had gone far enough, fast enough, for Smith to judge it safe to drop anchor off an island in the middle of the river. Crish and Stabb were left on deck to keep watch, and Curt blocked the companionway like a landslide.
“This is a good wine,” Lord Ermenwyr remarked, emerging from the galley with a dusty bottle. “Nice to know there are still a few honest merchants left, eh?”
Smith sighed, warming his hands at the little stove… He looked around the saloon. It was quite elegant. More polished brass and nautical curtains, bulkheads paneled in expensive woods, not one whiff of mildew. And nothing useful. No weapons other than in potential: a couple of pointless works of art in one corner, a dolphin and a seagull cast in bronze, slightly larger than life and heavy enough to kill somebody with. They didn’t suit Smith’s tastes, as art. He preferred mermaid motifs himself, especially mermaids with fine big bosoms like—
“Here,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pressing on him a stoneware cup of black wine. “A good stiff drink’s what you want, Smith.”
“I’ll tell you what I want,” Smith replied, taking the cup and setting it down. “I want to know who killed Strangel.”
Lord Ermenwyr shifted in his seat.
“He isn’t really dead,” he said hastily. “Not as we think of being dead. Really. With demons, you see—”
“They were the Steadfast Orphans,” said Willowspear. “Those of our people who refused to accept the Lady’s marriage and … and subsequent offspring. They are an order of fighters, Smith. They will kill if they believe it’s justified.”
“Like Flowering Reed,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “He was one of them.”
“Hell,” said Smith, with feeling. “Are they after you again?”
After an awkward pause, Lord Ermenwyr said, “I don’t think so. They might have been on their way to Hlinjerith.”
Smith thought of the pleading man on the landing, and his horror registered on his face.
“They wouldn’t harm those men,” Willowspear assured him. “Especially not if they were ill. The Orphans are stubborn and intolerant and—and bigoted, but they never attack unless they are attacked first.”
“So as to have the moral edge,” sneered Lord Ermenwyr. “Mind you, they have no difficulty hiring someone else to kill for them. And they’ll go to great lengths to arrange ‘accidents,’ the hypocritical bastards.”
“Strangel charged them, so they took him out,” said Smith. “All right. But what’d they go after me for?”
“I think they’d probably spotted me on deck by then,” the lordling replied, “and it’s open season on me all year round, you know, what with me being an Abomination and all.”
“But they worship your mother, don’t they?” Smith knitted his brows. “I’ve never understood why they think she won’t mind if they murder her children.”
“They worship Her as a sacred virgin,” Willowspear explained. “And it is thought that Her … defilement, hm, is a temporary state of affairs, and if, hm, if Her husband and children cease to exist, then the cosmic imbalance will be righted and She will be released from He
r, hm, enslavement and return to Her proper consciousness.”
“It doesn’t help that Daddy’s a Lord of Darkness,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Complete with black armor and other evil clichés. But the fact is, the Orphans simply don’t like anybody. They despise people like Willowspear for not holding to the Old Faith. They don’t like demons just on principle, because chaos isn’t in line with their idea of cosmic harmony. And they really hate your people, Smith. Especially now. Which is unfortunate, because nobody else likes you much either.”
“Oh, what did we ever do to anybody?” Smith demanded. He was cold, and tired, and starting to feel mean.
Lord Ermenwyr pursed his lips. “Well… let’s start with acting as though you’re the only people in the world and it all belongs to you. The rest of us get relegated to ‘forest denizen’ status, as though we were another species of beast, or maybe inconvenient rock formations. It never seems to occur to you that we might resent it.
“Then, too, there’s the innocent abandon with which you wreck the world, and I say innocent because I really can’t fathom how anybody but simpletons could pour sewage into their own drinking water. You cut down forests, your mines leave cratered pits like open sores, and—have you noticed how expensive fish is lately? You’ve nearly fished out the seas. I might add that the whales are not fond of you, by the way.”
“And the other races never do anything wrong, I suppose,” said Smith.
“Oh, by no means; but they don’t have quite the impact of the Children of the Sun,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “You’re such ingenious artificers, you see, that’s part of the problem. Yet I do so love your cities, and your clever toys, like this charming boat for example. I’d be desolated if I had to live in the forest like the Yendri. Do you know, they didn’t even have fire until Mother taught them how to make it? I can’t imagine dressing myself in leaves and living in a bush and, and having nasty tasteless straj for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” He glared at Willowspear, who rolled his eyes.
“It is a simple and harmonious life, my lord,” he said. “And it harms not the earth, nor any other living thing.”