The Empire Stone

by Chris Bunch

“I have none,” Peirol said.

  “What of your parents?”

  “They care little what I do,” he said, a guilty thought of his mother coming, being pushed away.

  “And your age?”

  “Fifteen,” Peirol said.

  Lanherne looked skeptical, then made a face. “As if I’m an expert at judging the age of the little people.” He thought a moment. “It’s hard work, requiring a careful eye and a love for detail, and you’ve got to develop a way with people, with the rich, being able to listen to their chatter and snootiness and not arguing back.”

  Peirol said nothing.

  “Take your purchase, my friend,” Lanherne said in a friendly manner. “And the best of luck be with you.”

  Two days later the Midsummer Festival ended, and Peirol’s family went south, back to the moors and their mine. In his mother’s bedroll, unknown to her, was a silver necklace, with a worked gem in its center. Peirol hoped she mourned his running away, but not for long.

  Ty Lanherne, pack on his back, silver in his pouch and a sword loose in its sheath, traveled north toward Ferfer. He glanced back, saw the small figure of a dwarf trudging about a quarter league behind, grinned, and broke into song.

  Peirol was still there, half-starved, boot soles worn through, stumbling, when Lanherne reached Ferfer.

  Peirol came back to the present, to the galleys, when Ostyaks muttered, “Like Baltit said. Not a bad life.”

  Quipus said suddenly, “Because you were free.”

  No one spoke again for the rest of the night, and eventually Peirol slept.

  • • •

  The next morning, Lord Kanen’s galley came alongside, and a long boarding gangplank was dropped between the two ships.

  Kanen came across the narrow plank, surefooted. He was grim, lips pursed.

  Callafo met him, trying to keep a worried expression from his face, and the two went into Callafo’s cabin in the poop. Slaves close to the stern said they heard Kanen’s voice, harsh in anger.

  A turning of the glass later, and Kanen came out and returned to his ship. A young girl, very young, was led out of his cabin by two guards. She wore slippers and a heavy robe, and looked frightened. One guard slung her over his shoulder, trotted across the gangplank to the Ocean Spell, led her to the foredeck, and waited beside the gleaming brass cannon.

  Callafo came out of his cabin, wearing traditional sorcerer’s robes, carrying a leather case and his wand. He ordered the foredeck cleared, and a small tent, blazoned with strange symbols, was pitched by the guards. He pushed the terrified girl inside, pulled the tent flap to after him. A few minutes later, he started chanting. Incense of different colors and scents drifted from the vent in the top of the tent. The chanting grew, and it was as if a chorus was inside the tent, for Peirol heard many voices, almost in a plainsong.

  He looked at the others on the bench, saw the fear. The direction of the chanting changed, and it seemed to come from all around the galleys, from the sea itself.

  Then the girl screamed, high, piercing, in utter agony, and the scream cut off at its peak.

  There was silence for a while, except for the plash of the waves against the galleys’ hulls.

  Callafo came out, and all men, sailors, slaves, soldiers, ship’s officers, looked away. Peirol thought he saw stains on the wizard’s robes.

  Callafo shouted for Lord Kanen. The corsair came to the bow of his Slayer.

  “South, four points off the Warrior’s farthest star,” Callafo said, without preamble. “Two ships, heavily laden. We’ll sight them just at dawn.”

  Sail was made, and the rowers told to sleep, for they’d be required during the night. Peirol didn’t think he could, but when he opened his eyes it was dark, and a bell marked the third glass of the second watch. He moved Quipus’s foot from his leg and tried to find a more comfortable way to lie.

  He saw motion, where the tent still stood on the foredeck. He heard men mutter, saw guards’ armor. The tent came down and was hurriedly rolled. The two men picked up something limp, carried it to the side, and tossed it overboard. It struck with a splash, and the clouds fell away from the moon.

  Peirol looked into the water, saw a white face bob up for an instant, a blood-streaked face torn by slashes, then the body was pulled under the keel, vanished.

  • • •

  There were two ships, as Callafo’s spell had foretold, fat three-master flutes, slow and heavily laden, following the coast’s curve. Their captains saw the ten black ships closing, far faster than the flutes could travel, raised all sail, prepared for battle, and no doubt prayed hard.

  The gods weren’t listening, any more than they’d heard prayers from the Petrel.

  Kanen’s signal flags went up, and the slaves manned their oars. Another set of flags, and the wing swept wide, pulling ahead of the flutes, then turned like wolves, driving the ships toward the shore. The flutes tried to run toward land, but the wind was in their throats.

  Peirol heard a growling sound from the soldiers waiting to storm, the sailors, and even some of the slaves.

  A cannon boomed, and the ball arced through the air, no pretense at a challenging shot, and smashed into the rearmost flute.

  “Hit her, gunner, strike her hard, for she’ll be ours before noontide,” Quipus shouted gleefully, and then screamed as Barnack’s whip cracked across his shoulders.

  “Serves y’ fiddlin’ right,” Cornovil managed, and then the drum cadence came faster, and they were rowing too hard to talk, to think, nothing but the feel of the iron cleat in their hands, tearing away calluses, making blisters and breaking them, the wetness of blood, the tear of muscles. Guards cascaded buckets of salt water over them, and it was welcome. Their own cannon fired, and again Quipus rejoiced, and then a shadow fell, and they were alongside the flute, another galley nosing to the stern. Soldiers, shouting, scrambled over the Ocean Spell’s bows and up the flute’s sides. Peirol heard screams, shouts of men fighting, dying, and a spear thudded down into the deck beside him, but none of the slaves paid mind to the battle, slumped over their oars, gasping for air.

  Cries came for quarter, for surrender, and it was all over.

  The other merchantman was hove to not far distant, three galleys alongside it, one the Slayer. That ship’s cargo was different from the bales and boxes of the craft the Spell had seized.

  There were passengers aboard. Merchants, nobles, who knew? Peirol was never told. But he saw the cold-blooded sorting that Kanen made. Young men and young women were put to one side for the slave market, and those richly dressed who might be ransomable to another. There were a few boys aboard, evidently not suited for the block, for Peirol heard them scream as swords spitted them, and the bodies were thrown overboard.

  He saw four women standing alone, close enough for him to see they were in their middle years, and saw Kanen point to them. The soldiers aboard that ship howled, broke ranks, and tore at the captives. Peirol looked away, tried to block his ears against the screams.

  Two of the women, he was told, lived long enough to be cast down into the Slayer, reward for the oarsmen, and Peirol heard mutterings of envy from the rowers.

  The wing, carrying its prizes, made its way back to Beshkirs, and again Lord Kanen of the Sporades was hailed for his luck and skill.

  Peirol remembered only the screams and the face of the nameless girl Callafo had sacrificed for that “luck.”

  • • •

  Two days after the galley returned to Beshkirs, Peirol finished his bait. He held the ring out to the barracks guard he’d taken aside, turned it carefully, so the silver caught the reflections from the sun shining through the barracks skylights, shot them into the heart of the diamond, which reflected them out in shatters of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.

  “Where’d y’ get that?” the guard wanted to know.

  “I made it.”

  “From what?”

  “From the sun, from the moon, from the metals of the earth,” Peir
ol said. “We dwarves have many powers.”

  “‘Ats what I heard. Whacha want me for? You gimme that for a present?”

  “No. But I’ll reward you well.”

  The guard’s eyes gleamed.

  “I’ve heard of a man named Niazbeck,” Peirol said.

  “No shit. Magnate Niazbeck. Jewels is his main interest, but he’s got others.”

  “I want you to take this to him, to his shop, offer it for sale. Tell him or his representative a man of the galleys made it, could make many more, far more beautiful, if his circumstances were different.”

  “What’s cir-cum-stances?”

  “Job. Life.”

  “You mean, you want me to tell him you want to be his slave?”

  “Yes.”

  “I get caught doin’ that, sayin’ that, liable Lord Kanen or Callafo’ll have my skin for a shield-cover.”

  “You can keep half of whatever the ring brings.”

  The guard made a sound deep in his throat.

  “Don’t cheat me,” Peirol warned. “As I said, we dwarves have powers. Strange powers. Some night, your sword might come alive, dance in your hands, leap for your throat. Or your dagger, when you’re sharpening it, suddenly turn, and dive into your guts. Or your spear — ”

  “Shut yer yap! Sounds like you’re layin’ a curse! Gimme that ring.”

  He held it for a time, turning it back and forth. He clearly wanted it but kept glancing, worriedly, at Peirol, fearing his curse.

  “I’ll do it,” he said finally. “First time I get a free shift.”

  Peirol hid his grin. If his plan worked, he could be one small step closer to continuing his quest for the Empire Stone. At any rate, he’d be better off than he was now.

  But Peirol heard nothing, didn’t see the guard before the slaves were told off to be ready to sail.

  This time it was to war with the Sarissans.

  6

  OF SARISSANS AND BLACK CITIES

  Peirol had never dreamed of so many ships. All the galleys and other warships of Beshkirs were ready for the summer’s campaigning, plus auxiliaries, which meant any merchantman a couple of tiny robinets or even moyen could be mounted on, as well as ships manned by Beshkirs’s allies of the moment, some of the tiny sea-kingdoms dotted like cancers up and down the Manoleon Peninsula, after prestige or loot.

  The galleys sailed first, to give flank security for the fleet assembly, which had to be done at sea, for Beshkirs’s harbor couldn’t hold a quarter of the fleet. Ships arrived singly and by squadrons. Someone said there were five hundred, another said a thousand.

  Peirol overheard one of the ship’s officers say they’d be better off with half the ships and a tenth the warlords, but had no idea what the man meant.

  Everyone was awed by the splendor, and even Barnack lashed a gaping slave more lightly than he might’ve otherwise.

  Baltit said, wryly, “Don’t it say something about man that his greatest show is when he’s about to start killing his brothers?”

  “If,” Quipus said, sounding very sane, “the Sarissans are men, after all.”

  He was quickly hushed.

  By now, Peirol had pieced together mutters and whispers about the strange ones from the north. They were tall, majestic in appearance, a head taller than a man. They were covered with long, silky hair of a yellow-auburn color. They looked a bit like the lions of the far northern deserts, if lions stood on two legs and had arms and hands, with glaring slits of eyes, like great snakes. Their sex was either hidden in their bodies or by their hair, for no one knew which were male, which female, or if there were more or less than two sexes.

  They were fierce warriors, and seemed to love battle even more than man. They neither gave nor sought quarter in battle. Sometimes they raided, sometimes they conquered, with no seeming logic to their plans. No one knew what happened to the people they overran, but the lands they raided and moved on from were left blackened, barren.

  The Sarissans had been unknown until a bit more than a generation ago, when they’d appeared from the jungles of the Unknown Lands to the north. No one seemed to know where their name had come from, or what it meant, since no one had ever learned their language. They’d conquered the Unknown Lands and erected huge cities along the coastline seemingly overnight, which proved they were not human.

  Emboldened, they built strange ships and sailed out as raiders against any human ship or village they came upon. At first they had no cannon, depending on the old tactics of ramming and boarding, but they learned quickly, and now had guns at least as powerful as any in Beshkirs.

  “Yes, yes,” Quipus had added dreamily, “great, great guns, with cast shot, and none know the secret of their powder, if it be natural or sorcerous. ‘Tis said they mix it with seawater, but that cannot be, cannot be, for wet powder will not burn, nor explode. Perhaps they use a secret wood for the charcoal, or have the purest of nitre, or unknown spells, but none knows, none knows.”

  There had been attempts made to talk peace, but diplomats never returned from their parleys. There was great fear the Sarissans had the temerity to want to own the world, when all knew it was man’s. Since the island of Parasso and the city of Beshkirs lay close to the Unknown Lands, the Beshkirians — in spite of not yet finding profit from fighting the strangers — were loudest in demanding their destruction. With the Sarissans destroyed or driven back, Beshkirs could return to its normal position as king of the freebooters.

  “Poor Lord Kanen,” Cornovil said. “Havin’ to be content with glory, ‘stead of gold. That was the way I thought, once.” He clinked his chains to make the point.

  The battle fleet was to sail east around the tip of Parasso, then northeast, across open water, until it closed on the Unknown Lands. Then it was to bear along the coast until they found ships to attack, or, better for the possibility of loot, one of the Sarissans’ stone cities, which were said to be huge, monolithic.

  The weather was clear, the sun warm, the sea dappled, and the wind behind them, so the oars weren’t manned except at dusk and dawn, when the galleys beached and the other ships anchored offshore from them.

  Ostyaks broke silence to say, “I feel luck all about me, luck and gold.” Peirol snorted, having come to the conclusion there was no such thing as luck in his world save bad.

  This was also true for Quipus. When the fleet reached Parasso’s end, ready to make the jump across the open ocean, the Ocean Spell was sailing just behind Kanen’s Slayer.

  Callafo, in his impressive robes, held a ceremony on the ship’s forepeak, to implore guidance and help from Parasso’s gods as men crossed to the Unknown Lands. There was the usual smoke of various colors, incense of various odors, chanting, flashes from the water like strange lightning, and in the middle of the ceremony, Quipus started laughing.

  Callafo broke off his chant, looked at the slave in disbelief. “Silence down there!” he roared. Quipus owl-eyed the wizard, shook his head, laughed on.

  “Quiet him!” and Barnack and two soldiers leaped down from the catwalk, hammered the madman.

  Callafo finished the ceremony, stalked back, looked down at Quipus. “Two, no, three dozen lashes,” he snarled. “A lesson for insolence.”

  “But he’s mad, sir,” Baltit said stupidly.

  “And a dozen for this man as well. Impudence is evidently contagious. Barnack, I want to hear those strokes in the stern, so lay on well!”

  Callafo glared at the others on the bench, who were looking properly humble.

  A few minutes later, two gratings were lashed to the mast, and the whip-crashes began. Baltit held silence, as befitted a sailor, but very strangely, when the first stroke landed on Quipus, he began laughing once more, and his laughter didn’t stop until the sentence was complete and he was cut down.

  Peirol watched not the victims but the sorcerer, noting his enthralled smile, and a flashing, absurd, impossible promise streamed through his mind, was gone.

  The two were dragged to their bench and re
manacled. A bucket of salt water was cascaded on them, less further punishment than a balm, and the voyage continued.

  Now, on open water, Peirol realized the galleys’ lack of seaworthiness, as the Ocean Spell wallowed and took green water on as long rollers came aboard. Ostyaks was seasick, throwing up on the bench, and other slaves did the same. Peirol tried to ignore the smell, concentrating on the blue sky above and the green seas. He was grateful for the waves, for they washed the slaves clean. But cursing sailors on the pumps behind the mainmast felt otherwise.

  There was no sign of land, no place to beach the galleys, and so they slept head-to-toe as the sails above cracked in the strong winds.

  Four days later, the lookout in the mainmast’s crosstrees shouted “Land!” and Peirol saw the Unknown Lands. They weren’t that dramatic: low, rolling dunes, with green splashes here and there. The land was not quite a desert, but appeared infertile.

  The fleet turned east, staying well offshore, for fear of running aground on uncharted bars, and Captain Penrith put two experienced seamen in the chains to watch for the changing color of rapidly shoaling water. The Slayer passed close by, and Peirol saw Lord Kanen in the bows, wearing armor, eager for battle.

  Even though they were close to land, none of the galleys beached that night, nor anchored, but drifted, sails lowered, and half of the crew remained on watch. But nothing happened, and at dawn they raised sail and went on, the fleet streaming behind them in motley formation.

  It was almost midday, and Peirol was feeling an appetite for the stew he could smell heating, when a lookout cried, “Sail on the sta’board quarter, two enemy ships, more,” and they’d found the Sarissans. Peirol wondered how the lookout could tell they were enemy, but the drums sounded and the whips cracked, and again the oars bit into the water, sent the galleys skimming.

  Peirol chanced losing the stroke, saw why the lookout had been so certain. The four ships fleeing ahead of the Beshkirians were of no human design. Their mainmast rose from the forepeak back at an angle, with a single lateen sail. There was a second mast coming up from midships, pointed forward, with four triangular sails on either side, sheets running to booms extending from the bow and stern. A fifth sail, also triangular, was set from the tip of the main mast to another boom on the stern, extending straight aft.