Southern Fire ac-1

by Juliet E. McKenna

  'There's no way of knowing.' Kheda resolutely turned his mind from all he could imagine. 'Did Chazen Saril get to a trireme?'

  'He got to a fishing boat, I think,' Itrac said dully. 'But there was so much fire and smoke, I can't be sure. Then Ket and Stiwa got us to the despatch galley but the wild men attacked as we were pushing off. When we got clear, we found we'd lost them both. I don't know if they're alive or dead, any of them.'

  'It's possible we may yet have news of them.' Kheda released her hands. 'I've had word that Chazen triremes are holding the Hyd Rock.'

  Itrac stared, mouth open. 'Chazen Saril lives?'

  'It's possible, but no more than that, I cannot lie to you. As soon as I know anything for certain, I'll send you word.' Kheda looked back towards the boats. 'We had better get back to Olkai.'

  Itrac hesitated, uncertain. 'What happens now?'

  'You may have sanctuary here, on this shore and beneath the trees, within reason. Gauhar's people will feed you and help tend your wounded,' Kheda said firmly. 'I will sail for the Hyd Rock and find out what I can. Whatever happens, I will summon all my warriors to fight these invaders.' He smiled at Itrac. 'Go on. Tell your people they are safe.'

  'I will. Thank you, Daish Kheda. We of Chazen are in your debt.' Itrac moved slowly at first, then began walking with more purpose, her back straightening, her head lifting.

  'She didn't say anything about magic,' commented Telouet quietly.

  'Would you?' Kheda asked sardonically. 'If you were seeking sanctuary from people who can cross an ocean balancing on hollowed-out logs and call a rain of fire down from an empty sky. What else could it be?'

  'Then why do you risk giving these people sanctuary?' Telouet grimaced. 'Attacked by magic is touched by magic and magic corrupts everything it touches.'

  'Wise men have written that an innocent victim of magic should not be condemned,' Kheda said slowly. 'They'll be tainted by its touch, true enough, but it's suborning magic, deliberately calling it forth, that's the true abomination, according to many sages. Besides, we have to fight it. We cannot just run before it like storm-tossed birds. There are talismans to turn its malice aside, aren't there?'

  Telouet looked unconvinced. 'What do we do now, my lord?

  'I'm not going anywhere till the heavy triremes catch up with us. Then all the crews will need to be fed, watered and rested. While they're doing that, we can send a message bird to Janne and Sirket. Who knows, they might have news for us as well.' Kheda shrugged. 'I want every fisherman Gauhar can spare sent out to scout for other Chazen survivors. They can spread the word that they're to be sheltered for the present. Then we make for the Hyd Rock and see what those Chazen triremes can tell us. Hopefully we'll find out just what disaster has come up from the south and if it's likely to come any further north.'

  Chapter Three

  'What if Chazen Saril is indeed dead?' Telouet handed Kheda a cup of water.

  The warlord drank it down gratefully. Even with the breeze of their passage over the water, the sun was still punishingly hot. He was still in his armour but he'd discarded his helm before it could broil his brains. 'Then we offer however many of his ships have fetched up at the Hyd Rock the choice of flight, death at our hands or swearing allegiance to the Daish domain.'

  'Offering fealty's their only sensible course,' declared Atoun.

  'If Sekni Chazen is still alive, and with some of the children, they might think different.' Seated in his shipmaster's chair, Jatta was leafing through a small book bound in battered scarlet leather, locks on its three clasps.

  Kheda could never see Jatta consulting his book without recalling Daish Reik's pointed advice.

  'Leave the business of sailing to your shipmasters and see to your own responsibilities. Do not get too curious either; a true seamaster will give up his first-born child before he'll share the secrets of his routes.'

  Every shipmaster made a record of the seaways he travelled, both those open to any ship wishing to traverse a given domain and those supposedly permitted to local vessels only. Allegedly unbreakable ciphers hid notes of landmarks, warnings of every lurking reef and sandbar and peculiarities of tide and current to help or hinder. 'I hate to say it but I think it's highly unlikely Sekni Chazen still lives.' Kheda handed the cup back to Telouet. 'Even if she does, I cannot see her trying to establish a regency when there's no child anywhere near an age of discretion.'

  'No ship will hold out for Sekni or Itrac, come to that, not now they're in our waters,' opined Atoun robustly.

  'Not and commit themselves to returning to a domain overrun by mysterious invaders who burn everything in their path.' Telouet looked meaningfully at Kheda.

  The warlord shrugged, face non-committal. 'Let's hope Chazen Saril is still alive.'

  The other men looked at him in some surprise. Kheda met their stares, composed.

  'If he's alive, we round up every last one of his ships and men and send them back to join him in driving off these invaders, whoever they may be. If he's dead, we either wait for these wild men to come north and attack us or we take on the burden of claiming the domain and dealing with its difficulties ourselves.'

  'Neither being an inviting prospect,' Atoun acknowledged.

  'And Ulla Safar, Ritsem Caid and Redigal Coron might well object if we seized Chazen lands,' Jatta observed as he returned his attention to the seas ahead of the trireme.

  'Ulla Safar would flog his oarsmen to bare bones, if he thought he could claim some Chazen island,' growled Atoun. 'He'd love to see us with his forces on either hand.'

  'Ritsem Caid wouldn't stand idly by while Safar did that.' Telouet shook his head.

  'No, he wouldn't.' Kheda got to his feet. 'So we could find the Caid domain attacking Ulla troops to the north while we were embroiled with Safar's men down here, with the ships fleeing Chazen getting in everyone's way. That would leave these invaders digging in, quite undisturbed and doubtless making ready for their next step north to our lands.'

  The silence between the four of them was surrounded by the rush of water, the piping flute and the creak and splash of the oars.

  'So we're all going to be pleased to see Chazen Saril's fat face safe and sound,' Atoun grunted.

  'And we'll show him appropriate respect,' said Kheda mildly. 'How soon will we be there, Jatta?'

  'We're slowing a little in the currents hereabouts.' The shipmaster gestured to a line of shoals and reefs off towards the south. The dark scar stretched across the azure sea fore and aft of the Scorpion, foam boiling up where the furious waves forced themselves through the scant fissures between the rocks.

  'The Serpents' Teeth should give these invaders pause for thought.' Atoun looked with some satisfaction at the natural ramparts. 'They've always broken Chazen ambitions.'

  'Chazen Saril has always been content with his lot.' Kheda found himself hoping Saril was still alive and not just for reasons of governance. The southernmost warlord of the entire Archipelago might be inclined to indolence but there was no malice in him. Kheda let slip a wry smile.

  Remember when you told your father how you envied Sard's lesser burden, with his circumscribed domain and its scant resources, goaded beyond endurance by Daish Retk's expectations? You expected a tongue lashing, if not a beating, not his booming laughter.

  'You'd better be the best foreteller between the southern ocean and the unbroken northlands before you wish for another man's life. Who knows what lies beyond the next rains for any of us?'

  Neither of us realised those words had the ring of portent, did we, my father? Neither of us foresaw your death before those next rains had ended, leaving me ruling the domain, barely married to Janne, not even as old as Sirket.

  'They're putting up sails back there.' Telouet was looking past the sternposts to the heavier triremes following the Scorpion.

  'They'll be pulling their canvas down soon enough.' Jatta clapped the helmsman on the shoulder. 'Cai was born and bred in these waters. He knows how contrary the winds are.' />
  Cai grinned as he concentrating on feeling the ship's course through the twin stern oars. Kheda noted the helmsman's own book of sailing notes tucked securely by one thigh.

  I wonder how soon Jatta will be telling me he's willing to see Cat raised to command of his own ship, a despatch galley or such? Well, he'll have the pick of the domain's best mariners to replace him, for the warlord's personal trireme.

  Kheda glanced back at the heavy triremes surging in their wake. Unlike the Scorpion, such ships drew their whole crew from the particular island whose produce supplied them, spare sons opting to serve the domain by taking up an oar instead of a plough or a hunting spear.

  Jatta's head snapped round as they all heard a flurry of horns passed from one ship to another.

  'They're changing course.' Telouet squinted across the brilliant sea.

  'The signal is to summon help for one of our own, under attack.' Jatta's angular brows met in a scowl above his beak of a nose.

  'Then we join them.' Kheda's voice was untroubled; his face a bland mask but apprehension twisted around his gut like one of Sain's flowering vines strangling a sapling.

  Is it come to this already? Have these invaders come north in the night? Are we going to be sunk with fire and magic before we even reach the boundary of our own waters?

  Jatta whirled round to shout orders down to the rowing master. The sweating oarsmen strove to turn the narrow ship in an impossibly tight circle. Jatta joined Cai in hauling on the twin tillers as the seas seethed around the biting blades.

  With the Scorpion rocking, struggling back through the waters the rowers had just stirred up, Kheda saw the heavy triremes surging behind a narrow islet of white sand topped with a sprawl of dusty green brush and the darker tufts of nut palms.

  'We can cut round up there.' Jatta was standing at Cai's shoulder, pointing, and his route book open in one hand. Absently, he fingered his braided beard. The scars and calluses he'd earned as a rower in his youth were vivid on honey-coloured skin bequeathed by some distant ancestor from the north where Aldabreshin territories touched the unbroken barbarian lands.

  Atoun tapped an impatient foot on the close-fitted planks of the deck, oblivious to Telouet's exasperated glare. The toiling oarsmen hauled the trireme past the little island; the rowing master and bow master both pacing up and down the lower gangway, shouting exhortations.

  The channel opened out ahead of them. Thanks to Jatta's short cut, the Scorpion's course now lay alongside the heavy galleys as they ploughed through the strait.

  'It's a Chazen merchant galley.' Jatta's contempt rose above the noises of sea and ship. 'Chasing down a low galley of ours.'

  Reefs forced the Scorpion away to the side. As the trireme hastened towards clear water Kheda got a good view of the chase underway ahead.

  The low galley was one of many such vessels linking the myriad islands within every domain. Men sat three to a bench and sweated over their oars on a single open deck.

  Shipmaster and helmsman shared a meagre stern platform canopied against the sun. A square-rigged mast stood always raised behind the first six banks of oars, twice that number behind. At the moment, the Daish men were dropping their sail in a confusion of cloth. The great galley had three masts to their one, so no wind would help them outrun this pursuit. Their only hope of escape was their smaller ship's shallower draught as they sought to skip across the reefs cutting through the strait, heading straight for the Scorpion.

  'I hope that helmsman knows his shoals,' murmured Jatta fervently.

  The low galley darted between two spiky reefs; the roaring sea splashed right up over the Daish ship's shallow sides, soaking her unprotected oarsmen. The great galley couldn't follow and seeing the heavy triremes bearing down on it, wallowed in the deeper waters in an attempt to turn its course to the channel where the Scorpion waited.

  'Do they think they can pass us?' scowled Atoun derisively.

  'They're not slowing,' Telouet observed.

  'They're heavily laden,' said Jatta thoughtfully.

  'And heavily manned.' Kheda could see archers lining the side rails of the upper deck and the glint of sun on chainmail armouring the men behind them. Rowers would be sweating on the middle of the three levels below, thirty banks of three oars to each side. Great galleys were happy to take the weight of so many men in trade for the muscle needed to propel their vast cargoes between domains. Kheda took a moment to judge the Chazen ship's speed between two usefully prominent clumps of wind-tossed palms. Yes, the great galley was certainly heavily laden; that was probably all that had saved the lesser galley thus far.

  What's in your capacious holds? Trade goods, or Chazen troops to attack helpless Daish vessels, to seize Daish land now you've been driven out of your own?

  'I don't think they fancy their chances just now,' said Atoun with grim satisfaction.

  Belatedly, the shipmaster of the Chazen great galley had ordered a sudden stop. The sails on the three tall masts were being struck. The oars on one side began backing while the others dug deep with new urgency.

  'He's going to try and make a run for it.' Jatta glanced at Kheda.

  'Ram him before he can make the turn,' Kheda ordered.

  The shipmaster barked the order to the rowing master and the piper's note sounded shrill and rapid. The Scorpion's swordsmen and archers ran for the prow, to find a safe handhold for the collision and to be ready for the fight that would follow.

  'Signal to the heavy galleys to make ready to board.' Kheda moved to call down to the bow master, who hurried to the prow. As the signal horn drowned out the flute's voice, the rowers marked their own time with a low rhythmic growl, an ominous sound as the trireme bore down on the enemy.

  'They're a good crew,' said Jatta dispassionately. The great galley had all but made the whole turn as the Scorpion drew near.

  'Aim for the stern,' Kheda told Jatta. 'Cripple their steering.'

  The shipmaster moved to take one of the Scorpion's two tillers from Cai.

  Kheda recalled the conversation he'd had with Daish Reik, the first time he'd been in a battle at sea, just a little older than Mesil.

  'I've heard tell hitting a ship at the wrong angle can rip the ram clean off a trireme. And very silly we'd look without it. Which is why you'll see the helmsman match their course as soon as we hit.' Daish Reik had been smiling with vicious anticipation, teeth white in his black beard. 'Besides, the ram's built separate from the hull just in case he gets it wrong. We won't sink. Now hold on to something.'

  Kheda took a firm grip on the shipmaster's chair. The Scorpion surged through the sea, the white beaches and the myriad greens of the shore flashing past.

  'They're yielding!' came a shout from somewhere.

  Kheda shook his head at the hoarse cries of the Chazen galley's frantic signal horns. 'Too late.' The Scorpion was already within a ship's length of the great galley.

  The trireme's brass-sheathed ram ripped into the planks right on the waterline. A shudder ran the length of the Scorpion. With a grunt forced out of every man aboard by the impact, it was as if the ship herself groaned. Cai and Jatta threw all their weight against the twin tillers. The crossbeams at the Scorpion's bow, reinforced where they projected on either side of the ram, crashed into the galley's side, springing the weakened seams of her planking still further. The jutting timbers smashed the great galley's rearmost oars. Screams came from the galley's middle deck as rowers were clubbed by their own splintered oars sent in all directions.

  'Back!' yelled Jatta.

  The rowing master had already set the oarsmen to dragging the Scorpion back from the great galley. Water poured in through the gash in the wounded ship's side and she began listing almost immediately. The sea was suddenly full of men desperately trying to swim clear of the foundering vessel amid a confusion of broken and flailing oars.

  There was a second crash and then a third as two Daish heavy triremes drove their prows into the great galley. Their rams rode higher than the Scorpion's
, designed more to bite and hold fast to make a bridge for swordsmen intent on boarding. The stricken vessel shuddered, already sunk to her oar ports. The warriors on the great galley threw their swords into the sea in open surrender as the deck filled with all those who'd been below decks fleeing the encroaching waters.

  Kheda saw women and children struggling in the confusion of noise and panic.

  They're not raiders. They've fled whatever disaster it is that's ravaging Chazen. I need to know where they've come from, what they've seen.

  He took a step forward. Telouet stretched out an arm to bar his way. 'You'll go no closer to their archers than this, my lord.'

  Kheda turned to Atoun who was watching the Daish swordsmen taking possession of the galley with visible frustration. He pointed to a man feverishly ripping pages from a book to let the heedless wind blow them away to oblivion. 'Bring me that shipmaster!'

  Rope ladders were already slung over the Scorpion's stern and Atoun disappeared at once, soon reappearing in a small boat rowing for the ruined galley.

  Kheda sat in the shipmaster's chair watching the great ship sink to rest on a hidden reef, uppermost deck knee deep in water, only prow and sternposts rising clear of the sea. Every time a wave lapped at the wreck, the sound of breaking wood rippled through the air.

  Close at hand, the sounds of hammering and urgent repairs reverberated through the Scorpion. Kheda leaned forward to call to Jatta.

  'What's the damage? Are we still fit to sail for the Hyd Rock?'

  Jatta came halfway up the stairs from the lower gangway. 'There're a few seams need caulking and there's the usual damage to oar loops and such. Nothing we can't bear.' He disappeared again.

  'My lord.'

  Kheda turned to see what Telouet was looking at.

  'I don't think he was going to wait to pay his duty to you,' said the slave thoughtfully.