Southern Fire ac-1

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Perhaps, but what is it that you are not telling me? What is the secret hiding behind your eyes, Chazen Saril?

  Kheda nodded slowly. 'Then we may hope, even if they have magic, there are none too many wizards to spread it around.'

  Chazen Saril seized eagerly at this notion. 'Even the northern barbarians of the unbroken lands aren't overrun by their spell casters.'

  'So we've taken the first step in reclaiming your domain, honoured lord,' Kheda congratulated Saril with a wide smile. 'You had better see if this island can offer any kind of accommodation appropriate to your dignity.'

  'You think I'm staying?' Startled, Saril gaped. 'I didn't intend—'

  'You there!' Telouet snapped his ringers at the wide-eyed village spokesman. 'Your lord requires a bath and a change of clothes. See to it!'

  'It's time to take some care for appearances,' Kheda said in a low voice as the man scuttled away. 'You want to instil as much confidence in your people as possible when they start gathering here.'

  'We will send signals north as soon as possible,' Atoun broke in. 'Make sure all your people know where to come.'

  'You need armour,' Telouet added. 'And a personal attendant, my lord.'

  'Indeed,' Kheda agreed. 'There must be someone among your swordsmen who can serve for the moment. As and when they arrive, you can choose a new body slave from those of your household who survived.'

  'You are abandoning me and mine, Daish Kheda?' Chazen Saril stared belligerently at him. 'After this one paltry fight?'

  'Not at all.' Kheda folded his arms and faced the plump man down. 'I am seeing you consolidate this first step to restoring you to your own.'

  Saril's expression turned petulant. 'These mud islands scarcely sustain the people who live here. How are they to support the whole population of the domain?'

  'I suggest, my lord, that we look to reclaim some more of your territory, to give everyone room to breathe,' Kheda retorted.

  'How far is the next sizeable island? Might that make a more defensible position, offer a more fitting residence?' Even with Atoun's tone entirely respectful, there was no getting away from the impoliteness of that question.

  So why aren't you indignant and demanding I chastise my impertinent underling? Why are you just chewing your lip and looking shifty, my lord of Chazen?

  'Leave us.' Kheda waved Atoun and Telouet away with a curt hand and both men reluctantly retreated a short distance. 'Whatever you tell us of your domain's resources, whatever we learn of your seaways, Chazen Saril, I swear to you that I will not look to take undue advantage in our future dealings. Take whatever augury you like, to see my good faith on this.'

  'With the miasma of magic all around us? What divination do you imagine will hold true? Oh I trust you; that's not my concern. The thing is, the next island we'd need to take, to be sure of holding this one—' Saril tugged at his tangled beard, not meeting Kheda's eyes.

  'It holds some secret?' Kheda tried to be patient with the man.

  'It holds my brothers,' snapped Saril abruptly.

  'Oh.' Kheda kept his voice carefully neutral. 'And it's vital that we hold it? If we're to keep the invaders at bay in this reach of the domain?'

  'Yes.' With another of his quicksilver changes of mood, Saril heaved a defeated sigh and caught up a broken spear shaft. He sketched a rough map in the sand. 'See how the currents run? If we hold that island, we can deny these invaders the rest of this reach.'

  As long as they don't have magic to carry them over the waters heedless of such things.

  Kheda nodded slowly. 'Do you know if the invaders have taken it?'

  Saril flung the broken spear shaft away into the trees. 'It's all but certain.'

  'Perhaps these invaders merely see the island's strategic value.' Kheda hesitated before continuing. 'Or is it possible that they have some deeper purpose in taking it? Could they know what they would find there?'

  'Much good it will do them, even if this is all some insane pretence to cover up an attempt to cast me from my domain.' Chazen Saril's voice was hard and bitter. 'My father may have held back from killing my brothers outright but he decreed they should be gelded and blinded, their tongues slit. There were four. One killed himself soon after. Another died when an attack of break-bone fever turned to bleeding sickness in the rains three years since. Two remain.' Saril's eyes bored into Kheda's, searching for any reaction. 'Nameless.'

  'Are these nameless housed separately or together?' Kheda asked dispassionately.

  'They're held together, in a compound in the centre of the island.' Saril knelt to find a seashell. His hand hovered over the map scrawled in the sand before stabbing it with the white spiral. 'I believe you owe me a secret in turn. What does the Daish domain do with its surplus sons?'

  'I will only speak for my father.' Kheda wasn't about to give away anything more than he had learned. 'Daish Reik's final decree offered my younger brothers the choice of death, or of castration and passing into my hands as zamorin slaves.'

  'What did they choose?' demanded Saril.

  'That is none of your concern.' It might be an open secret among Kheda's household that Rembit had been born of Daish Reik and his second wife Inril but everyone knew to keep their mouths shut. 'Your concern is retaking your domain from whoever these people are, spell casters from some unknown land or mere counterfeits, intent on setting up one of your crippled brothers as figurehead in your place.'

  'I must consider what to do for the best before we make any more voyages.' Saril shook his head stubbornly. 'We must see to the dead here first. Their crimes warrant burning but that would make this beach a place of ill omen and this island has no other landing.'

  And you could spin out such debates with yourself and your people to lose us any benefit accrued from the battle we've just won.

  'Atoun!' Kheda snapped impatient fingers to summon his commander. Telouet came too. 'This is the next island we must take.' Kheda pointed at the map drawn in the sand. 'Ask the Chazen shipmasters for only such waymarks and warnings of currents as we will need to reach it safely'

  'Do we know what forces to expect?' Atoun studied the map and pointed at the bleached white shell. 'Is that some stronghold?'

  'A retreat for some afflicted unfortunates of the warlord's family,' Kheda said blandly. 'They do not suffer from anything contagious.'

  Just the hereditary affliction of being born a son to a ruling lord.

  'My lord Chazen Saril—'

  Kheda turned ready to quell any ill-timed curiosity from Telouet but the slave was thinking about something else. 'We should be on our way to this next island before any burning of the dead. We don't want to raise an alarm for whoever awaits us with a column of smoke.'

  'I don't know where we can burn them,' said Chazen Saril obstinately. 'Not so late in the dry season. We could set the whole island alight. I shall have to take time to consider this carefully.'

  Kheda looked at the bodies piled up in ungainly heaps 'Have them taken to the mountaintop and thrown into the crater. They burn and your island is purified at one and the same time.'

  Chazen Saril opened his mouth to protest but Telouet forestalled him.

  'As you command, my lord.' The slave bowed low and turned to shout orders at the village spokesman.

  'I'll be sure the ships are ready to depart.' Atoun's bow was more perfunctory, his mind already on the next assault.

  'You lay a heavy burden on my people, Daish Kheda,' cried Saril angrily, jowls quivering. 'Hauling this many dead all the way up to the peak. You don't think this risks binding these invaders to this island? You don't fear the malice that brought these people here will now pour molten rock down on these defenceless forests? But now you've given your orders,' he concluded with grim satisfaction, 'I will not humiliate you by countermanding them. We will just have to wait, and for my own requirements to be met. I was about to set these people to setting up watch posts and fuelling beacons, so we might at least know if our retreat is cut off, when we set about th
is next conquest of yours.'

  'I must consult with Jatta.' Kheda bit his tongue and walked away without ceremony.

  Actually, Chazen Saril has a point there. It wasn't the most sensible thing to suggest, that the dead be thrown into the fire crater. 'Never make decisions in the heat of anger or the chill of shock.' Daish Reik is proved wiser than you yet again. Are you wise enough to meet this challenge? You may be wiser than Chazen Saril but that's not saying a great deal. Do you remember him being so prone to switching between fear and folly? What are you risking, for the Daish domain, fighting alongside a man ill prepared to meet the demands upon him?

  As he crossed the beach, Telouet caught up with him. 'What now?

  Kheda's pace didn't slacken. 'We drive these savages from this next island. The sooner we hand Chazen Saril a territory he has some chance of holding, the sooner we return home and ensure all his people go back to demand his protection. Summon a boat.'

  Kheda stood aloof as Telouet hailed a skiff. Once aboard the Scorpion, Kheda claimed the shipmaster's seat to take the weight of the armour off his weary feet. Closing his eyes, he strove to calm himself, recalling the subtle exercises to relax his shoulders and back, arms and legs that Daish Reik's ever-faithful body slave Gaffin had taught him.

  What was it he told you? 'Not as good as sleep, but good enough when there's no chance of sleep.' What else would he be telling you, him or Daish Reik? That you being irritated with Saril will only benefit your foes? Let the Chazen warlord see to his domains concerns. You address your own.

  Some indeterminate time later, Kheda heard the shipmaster's step on the deck. He spoke without opening his eyes. 'Jatta, have we been given all the water we need? Are the men fed? We don't want to go into a fight and find half of them disabled by cramps.'

  'It's all in hand, my lord,' Jatta assured him. 'And something's put a goad into Chazen Saril,' he added with some surprise.

  Kheda opened his eyes at that.

  'He's probably afraid we'll leave without him,' Telouet mocked. He handed Kheda a cup of water, sweet with a hint of purple berries. 'At least someone's found him some armour.'

  Kheda saw Saril now wore a chainmail shirt and helm. The silver-chased helm didn't match the copper-ornamented plates of the hauberk but at least he looked a little more like a warlord. 'Where's Atoun? How soon will we be ready to sail?'

  'The more delay, the more we lose any element of surprise,' agreed Telouet.

  'We shouldn't be too much longer,' Jatta said comfortably.

  The shipmaster's confidence was justified. The sun hadn't traversed much more of the heavenly compass by the time the modest fleet set their oars in the water with a determined crash. Kheda was still pacing the Scorpion's side decks through sheer impatience though.

  'Come back to the stern, my lord.' Telouet spoke over the urgent note of the piper. 'We won't get there any faster if we have to stop and fish you out of the sea.'

  The Scorpion's swordsmen and archers keeping watch on the trireme's upper level studiously avoided Kheda's eye.

  'True enough.' Kheda walked carefully back down the length of the speeding ship, curbing a desire to signal the rowing master to order an ever-faster stroke.

  If they spend the last of their strength now, they'll have nothing left to get you back to Daish waters, when the time comes to leave Chazen Saril to face whatever it is that's plaguing his domain. When the time comes to make sure the Daish islands are prepared to fight any such assault, be it magic or just drug-addled wild men.

  The waters opened out into a major channel and the close-gathered fleet broke free of the islands tangled in their matted swamps and knot trees. The next islands were little more than scrub-covered hummocks in the distance, fringed with white sand behind crooked walls of coral. A fresh breeze blew away the last of the muddy smell that hung around the Scorpion.

  Kheda and Telouet sat in the shelter of the sternposts, silent as the shipmaster and helmsman guided the long, lithe ship away from the vicious teeth of the reefs, the Horned Fish barely staying ahead of them. They soon passed the chain of barren islets and a larger stretch of land appeared ahead of them.

  'That's it.' Kheda rose to his feet.

  Telouet raised a signal flag on the sternpost and the heavy triremes fanned out either side of the lighter vessels carrying the two warlords. The rowing master walked the length of the gangway, lavish with his praise for the rowers. The bow master and the sail crew waited in the prow, ready to back the Scorpion's swordsmen and archers, alert for any enemy that might appear.

  The Scorpion rounded a blunt-nosed headland to find a shallow cove protected by a sizeable reef breaking the sea into white foam. Pale sand gave way to short dusty grass dotted with tall nut palms. Their grey trunks rose in graceful sweeps, fringed fronds bleached yellow by the season waving in the breeze, their rustling echoing the susurration of the sea. Well spaced and with no brush to speak of beneath them, the trees offered nothing by way of cover to any lurking enemy.

  'This is the landing the Horned Fish's shipmaster told me to make for,' Jatta told Kheda.

  'Let's hope this is as easy a fight as the last one,' Telouet murmured fervently, one hand on a sword hilt.

  'Can you see any movement?' Kheda took an unconscious pace forward.

  'Nothing.' Telouet shook his head as he reached out to restrain his master with an arm across his chest.

  'Perhaps the invaders never came here?' said Jatta dubiously.

  Kheda shot him a sceptical glance. 'You'd pass up a clean, open island like this in favour of those stinking mires?'

  'All depends what you're used to.' Jatta shrugged.

  'What are these wild men used to?' Kheda wondered aloud. 'How will we ever know, if we cannot question any captives?

  'Who needs to know?' Telouet was still watching the shore, trying to see beyond the palm trees into the darker green forest behind. 'All they need to know is they're not welcome here and we can tell them that plain enough without words.'

  Cai and the heavy trireme helmsmen were making a cautious approach to avoid the merciless reef. Atoun and all the warriors waited impatiently, sliding down the stern ladders as soon as the ships reached the sheltered shallows, splashing through crystal-clear waters on to the brilliant sand, staying close together, swords at the ready. Archers on the side decks of the triremes stood alert to return a killing storm of barbed arrows for so much as a thrown stone.

  No missiles appeared. No enemy appeared. The only sounds to rise above the crashing of the surf were the cheerful squawks of crookbeaks foraging among the palms. Atoun signalled this way and that. The warriors broke from their defensive knots and spread out. As they approached the gently curving trees, Kheda was irresistibly reminded of beaters on the hunt, flushing out forest deer and ground fowl that he and Sirket might down with swift arrows, while Rekha and Janne flew their proud hawks at lesser birds fleeing on the wing.

  'Doesn't look as if there'll be much sport today,' he remarked to Telouet as Atoun raised a sheathed sword to indicate there was no more foe to be fought.

  'Chazen Saril's keen to go ashore again.' Telouet pointed to the Horned Fish, which was approaching the shallows, Saril standing in the prow.

  Keen to learn the fate of those who'd once been his brothers? Or looking to remove them once and for all from the domain's accounts?

  Kheda considered his options. 'Let's join him. This domain has no great tradition of warfare so I'm not confident he's capable of meeting an unexpected enemy.'

  Jatta had already given the rowing master the word and the rowers began turning the Scorpion stern on to the shore.

  'My lord.' Telouet went down the ladder first to hold it firm for his master. Kheda hurried down the rope rungs and they waded ashore. Kheda saw his own well-hidden curiosity openly reflected in Telouet's expression.

  'You are welcome to my shores.' Saril greeted him on the beach with an incredulous grin at odds with his formal words.

  'I thank you for that grace.' Kheda
was looking around as he gave the customary reply 'Atoun, is there no sign of these savages?'

  'None.' The warrior shook his head.

  'Perhaps they never came here after all,' suggested Saril with sudden hope.

  'Perhaps they've come, got what they wanted and left.' Kheda fixed Saril with a meaningful look. 'We should visit this residence you keep here.'

  'Very well.' Saril chewed his lower lip reluctantly. 'With just a small escort though.'

  'Atoun, pick me a few good men to go looking inland,' Kheda ordered his commander. 'In the meantime, leave a solid guard for the ships and have the rest search the shoreline in both directions. Anyone who finds so much as a wild man's footprint is to raise a horn call.'

  'If we're going inland, I'll scout out the path myself,' Atoun told him robustly. 'You wait here with Telouet and follow on when I tell you, my lord.'

  'As you wish,' said Kheda mildly.

  'You allow your people a great deal of latitude,' observed Chazen Saril, looking with disfavour at Atoun's back.

  'As long as they earn it by doing their duty in exemplary fashion.' Kheda waited patiently as Atoun allotted tasks to his warriors to his satisfaction and then gathered a small detachment around himself, running along a path no more than a dry score in the turf beneath the nut palms, disappearing over a rise some little way inland.

  Handpicked swordsmen came to ring Kheda and Saril, looking to Telouet for their orders.

  'When we get the signal, lads,' he told them easily.

  As he spoke, Atoun's familiar whistle floated up on the breeze and Kheda looked at Telouet. 'Well?'

  'Everyone keep your eyes skinned or I'll peel your eyelids back with my belt knife.' With the other swordsmen on all sides, Telouet walked a few paces ahead of the two warlords, swords drawn, his face hard and dangerous.

  'I haven't seen my brothers, not since—' Saril broke off, drawing the sword he'd got from somewhere. Sunlight wavered on the blade.

  'You cannot blame yourself for being eldest born.' Kheda hefted his own weapon, settling it in his hand. 'And if your brothers suspected what Chazen Shas had planned, they could have fled when he lay on his deathbed.'