The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle)

by M. Edward; mimulux McNally

  Tilda snapped her eyes up in time to see a boulder plunging down from high above, with more following. The first, half the size of a man, crushed a backpack Dugan had only just gotten loose from, missing him by inches and sending a sharp, echoing bang off the mountainside. The rocks behind it came like hail.

  Tilda ran for the nearest shelter, the tunnel back into the Underway. Crashing rocks echoed behind her like cannon blasts, and a horn was blowing. She reached the bend in the short tunnel and turned to find the door closed. Fitz and his boys had shut it up behind them before leaving, but they could not have gone very far yet. Before she could start hammering on the door to bring them back, Dugan barreled into the tunnel behind Tilda and slammed her against the rock wall even harder than he had bashed her off the cottage before gutting Procost. She at least took this blow on her shoulder and hip rather than with her forehead, though she crumpled to the ground all the same. Dugan snatched his sword out of her numb hand as Tilda blinked up at him, and the blade. His eyes were as cold as they had been facing the knight.

  “I’m sorry?” she tried.

  “Me too,” Dugan said.

  *

  When the stone rain began to fall the closest cover to Block had been the smoldering barracks, which he ran behind. He looked back around the edge in time to see Dugan follow Tilda into the tunnel. He had fully expected Fitzyear to seal the door behind them and doubted the gnome would be brought back by any amount of pounding. Fitz was worried for his own men, which was a feeling not totally alien to Block.

  High up the mountainside a horn sounded and guttural voices hooted and roared, almost barking. From a ledge or shelf far up there multiple pairs of hairy arms threw another volley of stones ranging in size from melons to barrels, most of which arced at Block’s shelter as they could not get at the tunnel opening directly below. Block put his back to the wall and looked at the open gate in the palisade as the rocks started crashing into the wrecked barracks, knocking down what remained of beams and scattering ashes and embers.

  Tilda was likely dead already, as she would have been for sure had his and Dugan’s roles been reversed. Block could at least get out of here himself, and live to fight another day. The old dwarf growled and bolted out from behind the wreckage, turning away from the gate and heading back for the tunnel entrance. His own choice surprised him a bit.

  He yanked a pistol from his kit bag and fired it up the mountainside on the run, knowing he was not going to hit anything but hoping to make the bugbears cautious, if they were capable of it. The hooting redoubled and more stones were hurled. Block dropped the pistol back into the bag, drew the other and fired it as well, which was a shame as at just that moment Dugan sprinted out of the tunnel entrance, sword in hand.

  The man saw Block coming and angled away, meaning to move around him for the gate. There was no way the dwarf was going to run down the sprinting human, so Block skidded to a halt and spun, racing straight back to get to the gate first. Stones crashed all around both of them. Block and Dugan closed on the gate at the same time from different angles. Up the slope the bugbears howled, for the gate was too far away for them to pitch stones with any accuracy.

  “Block!” the renegade huffed. Block slid a dagger from a sleeve and threw it at the man’s head. Dugan narrowly batted it away with his sword but the dwarf had another in each hand as they came together. Dugan tried to twist sideways but Block lashed out and cut him shallowly across a hip. Dugan swore and swung a blow the dwarf ducked under. Still half back-peddling, Dugan’s back hit a palisade post and he barely kept his feet. Block lunged a blow that would have nailed the man’s spine to the log through his belly had Dugan not proven exceptionally fast for a man his size. He threw himself sideways with another parting counterblow Block barely parried with his second dagger, as the first buried almost to the hilt into the wood.

  Dugan rolled and came up swinging a blow that would have cut Block in half had the dwarf chased him right away, but leaving one dagger stuck in the wall he paused to draw a fourth from a boot. He threw it high as he charged but rather than bat at it Dugan only ducked and leveled his sword, forcing Block to switch his grip on the dagger he still held and bring it down against the sword blade, pushing both weapons to the side as he slammed into Dugan’s chest.

  They fell to the ground, weapons locked. Dugan reached for Block’s throat with his free hand while the dwarf went for his eyes. Before either got a grip or a gouge, Tilda Lanai ran past the struggling tangle.

  “They are climbing down the mountain!” she shouted in passing as she ran out through the gate.

  Block blinked after her, then down into the furious eyes of the man under him.

  “You didn’t kill her?”

  “Does it look like I did, you mad little bastard?”

  A smaller stone, only the size of a grapefruit, hit in the yard and bounced past them. Block looked over his shoulder and saw several great dark shapes scrambling down the sheer mountainside while those remaining above tried to skip smaller rocks toward the gate like they were throwing stones across a pond.

  “Am I the only one running?” Tilda called from outside the fort. Block looked down at Dugan.

  “Truce.”

  “Get the hell off of me!”

  A stone bounced by, narrowly missing Block’s head. The dwarf growled and stood to run, pushing off with a foot on Dugan’s sternum. The man likewise growled and scrambled to his feet.

  A narrow but deep chasm Block had seen from the top of the palisade surrounded the place for the long-ago landslide here had cracked open the ground. When the Dauls had constructed their fort much later they had made the gate as a drawbridge, raised and lowered with rope winches Block had also seen above, all ruined now. The gate door was however left in its down position as a bridge. Tilda was already across it, pointing her long gun back at the mountainside where the bugbears descended back out of range.

  “Careful,” she said. “The bridge wobbles.”

  In fact it did more than wobble as Block ran onto it, with Dugan directly behind him. When the bugbears had bashed the winches and cut the ropes, the bridge had fallen hard, breaking the spikes that were meant to secure the far end. It had also knocked the round beam around which the bottom end rotated out of its metal braces. When Tilda had run lightly across it, the bridge had shuddered. When Block planted one foot on it at a huffing sprint, the near end of the unsecured wooden platform slid under the bulky dwarf’s weight, and he stumbled sideways. When Dugan hit it a step behind him the whole surface shifted sharply forward.

  It was a near thing. The man fell forward and landed spread-eagle in the center of the short span. The dwarf, with a lower center of gravity, kept his feet. That made him stumble two steps forward, and just a bit sideways. One foot hit the very edge of the bridge, half-on and half not.

  *

  The Corner Stone of the House that Tilda Lanai served wheeled, spun his arms, and for a frozen moment she thought surely Block would catch himself, right the ship, and run across the bridge to stand beside her. But it was not to be.

  Seeing Block’s predicament, Dugan scrambled sideways and threw out an arm, straining for the edge of the dwarf’s Guild cloak or even the end of his braid. Block tottered for a long moment. Then he fell. Dugan’s hand closed on nothing and his chin banged against the bridge. Just that fast, Captain Block was gone.

  Dugan scrambled to the edge on hands and knees and looked down into the darkness untouched by the sun high above in the clear sky. He looked up at Tilda but she did not meet his eyes, only stared at the last place Block had stood. Dugan scuttled the rest of the way across on all fours, and stood up beside her.

  “Tilda,” he said.

  “What?” she asked numbly. He had no answer.

  Inside the palisade one nimble bugbear had already reached the ground. It loped across the yard straight at the open gateway with its fellows whooping high above it, dark shadows cavorting against the yellow stone of the mountainside. Tilda looked acros
s at it coming for a few moments, and when it was nearing the gate she raised her gun. The thick hair and hide of a full-grown bugbear might have been proof against a lead ball, but Tilda shot it in its gaping, fang-rimmed mouth. It fell in a heap.

  “Tilda,” Dugan said again.

  “Yes,” she said. She put a heel against the near edge of the fateful bridge and threw her weight at it, but it moved only slightly. Without a word Dugan crouched and put his hands on the edge, and shoved hard in time with her next lunge. The bridge did not move far, but in its present state it did not have to. A corner of the far end slipped off the rocky edge and the whole thing turned before plunging down, crashing and splintering for long, long moments.

  High above on the mountainside, the shadows of the bugbears were still as they stood silently watching. The rest that had started to climb were nearly down into the yard. Tilda looked across at them. She set her gun down on its stock and dug a ball out of a pocket. She started to reload.

  “Tilda,” Dugan said for the third time.

  “I know,” Tilda said, though she was not sure what she meant. When her gun was reloaded, she turned and walked away into the woods.

  Chapter Twelve

  It had been so long since Zebulon Baj Nif had slept in a bed that when he awoke he had no more idea of what he was lying on than of where he was.

  Something lumpy but soft, yielding in some places but firm in others. Zeb hoped faintly for a woman before realizing it was only a mattress, irregularly filled.

  He opened his eyes one at a time, and blinked in the faintest light. There was a curving wooden wall on one side and a coiled hammock hanging above him, though he was on a bunk. Zeb became aware that his whole world was gently rocking. Hospital wagon, he thought. But no. The constant sound in his ears was not the creak of wooden wheels or the whine of an axel needing grease. It was the slap of waves on a hull. The roll of the sea.

  “Fatch ipi thrajipi,” Zeb muttered in Minauan, a phrase it would not do to translate. His voice cracked and rasped dryly.

  Wood scraped wood, and Zeb craned his neck sideways. On the other side of the narrow room beneath a high porthole, a figure stood but remained indistinct in the meager light. Two steps brought it bunk-side and Zeb narrowed his eyes as it, she, knelt.

  “Drink,” a vaguely familiar voice said, female and accented. A tin cup touched Zeb’s lips and he pushed himself up to his elbows to gulp the metallic-tasting water. When the swallow of water was gone, the figure withdrew and rummaged around somewhere. Sparks were struck, a candle flickered to life, and the Far Western woman with the long, black, unkempt hair stood on her tippy-toes in the center of the room to pass the flame to a lantern swinging from the ceiling.

  Memory trickled back to Zeb more than it flooded. He raised his right arm and stared at the inside of his right elbow. Not a scratch. When he moved it though he saw the scarring to either side of the joint, faint white spider webs on his tan skin. The movement was painless.

  “It is well?” the woman asked in Codian, returning to kneel beside the bunk and grasping Zeb’s wrist without asking. She manipulated the arm some more, bending the joint and moving it side to side. Zeb could not have stopped her had he wanted to, as he presently felt about as powerful as a sickly kitten. The woman peered at his elbow as would a carpenter who had just blown the sawdust off a fresh piece of work.

  “Who are you?” Zeb asked, mouth no longer dry but his voice still rough. The woman blinked at him.

  “You do not remember?”

  “I do,” Zeb said. “But I never got a name.”

  The woman let his wrist go, and Zeb’s arm flopped limply back to the mattress. She stood, wearing her trousers with the patched knees and a long shirt with a rough, thigh-length hem, likewise beige and equally shapeless. She bowed from the waist.

  “I am called as Amatesu.”

  “And you still say you’re not a priestess?” Zeb croaked.

  Amatesu straightened and looked thoughtful, giving her small mouth a pretty purse.

  “I am not a cleric in the way of Noroth,” she said. “Not dedicated to a single god of your Ennead. I am shukenja. I am…a talker. With the spirit world.”

  Zeb had no idea what that meant, though if the arm which he had thought was sure to be an amputation job was healed, he was fine with whatever Amatesu wanted to call herself.

  “But you did fix my wing here, right?”

  Amatesu blinked. “Wing?”

  “Arm, I mean. It is just a…manner of speaking.”

  “You do not have wings.”

  “No, I know that…” Zeb sighed and with a grunt he managed to sit up slowly and turn sideways on the bunk, shaking bare feet out from under a coarse blanket and placing them on the deck flooring. He extended his right hand.

  “I am just trying to say thank you, is all.”

  Amatesu took Zeb’s hand and give it one quick shake. Her hand was small but her grip strong, and Zeb had an uncomfortable memory of her fingers inside his right elbow. Another sensation distracted him however as his bottom shifted against the mattress under the blanket.

  “Am I naked?”

  Amatesu nodded. She released his hand and pointed to the end of the bunk.

  “There are some clothes in the…box. Locker. They are gathered from the sailors.” Amatesu wrinkled her nose. “Yours from before were…not good. I had to burn them.”

  Zeb was not quite there yet. “Sorry. Who exactly took my clothes off?”

  “I exactly did.”

  “And…” Zeb sniffed the air and faintly smelled lavender. “Have I been…bathed?”

  “Yes.”

  Zeb was nonplussed, but Amatesu’s face was utterly impassive.

  “Okay then,” he finally said. “Well, if you ever need the favor returned…”

  Amatesu blinked, and for just a second Zeb thought she almost smiled. Almost. But she was quickly back to business, nodding at the porthole.

  “I suspect you have many questions. I shall let you dress, and you may find me on the…” she waved a hand at the ceiling. “Top floor.”

  “Deck.”

  “Deck. Thank you.”

  With a final brief bow Amatesu turned to leave the room, stepping smoothly into her clunking wooden sandals without a break of stride.

  The clothes in the locker were freshly cleaned, dark trousers with cuffs a bit too long, and an off-white billowy shirt that was too tight through the chest. Zeb could not comfortably close the eyehooks higher than his breastbone, and felt ridiculous with a plunging neckline.

  His boots, armor, and helmet were wedged under a stool bolted to the floor, and as he pulled them out, Zeb blinked in surprise. Boots polished and re-soled, ring-mail links cleaned, oiled, and sown onto a new leather jerkin well padded across the shoulders where his old one had long since worn out. Even the Ayzant helmet with the nubby point of a broken spike had a fresh linen lining and new cords attaching the leather neck guards to the steel cap.

  There was however no sign of Zeb’s axe, dirk, crossbow or quarrels.

  Zeb slid the ring-mail on, mostly to address his neckline issues, and was surprised to find that it fit perfectly. He had a strange feeling that his unconscious body had recently been a tailor’s mannequin.

  Or perhaps not so recently. Standing tall to peer out through the porthole, Zeb saw only blue sky and water, no coast. Apart from that, moving around had started his stomach to rumbling for he was famished. He blew out the lantern and stepped out of the cabin through a door that did not fit very well in its jamb.

  He was in the middle of a passageway, stairs and daylight at one end but the rest lost in darkness. He walked for the light with both arms extended to trail along the walls and the additional cabin doors, though the rocking of the ship was quite modest. A big vessel, then.

  Halfway to the light, Zeb stopped. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and though it was warm, he shivered. He turned and stared down the passage behind him but saw only darkness, and hear
d only the creaking of the ship. He went on, looking back every few steps, and mounted the worn wooden stairs as fast as still wobbly legs would take him.

  Topside was sunny and canvas sails flapped overhead on two masts, one front and one back, or fore and aft if Zeb had the lingo correct. He emerged on the forecastle and a few sailors loitering about looked over at him, none seeming to be surprised. They were in main swarthy men with skins baked by the sun of what Zeb at least hoped was still the Norothian Channel.

  Amatesu was approaching from above-deck cabins to the aft, but before she reached him Zeb headed for the starboard gunwales, the opposite side from his porthole below. He was relieved to see a dark line of coast on the northern horizon, though it was far away. Too far to swim, for sure. They were sailing west. Amatesu arrived with a deep wooden bowl, steam floating up and carrying the smell of clams. She handed it over with a spoon and Zeb had bolted half of the thin chowder before mumbling thanks. Amatesu waited, looking toward the coast with her lank hair blowing wildly about her face.

  “How far are we out of Larbonne?” he finally asked.

  “Four days.”

  Zeb blinked and swallowed a spoonful without chewing.

  “Today is…the Twenty-second Day of Eighth Month?”

  Amatesu frowned. “I do not know your calendar well, but that sounds right.”

  “And I’ve been down all this time?”

  “For four days. You needed rest.”

  Zeb nodded, thoughtful. Hungry as he was he was not actually starving, but he was too embarrassed to go any further into detail on just how Amatesu had handled his care and feeding for all that time.

  When the bowl was empty a nearby sailor stepped over and held a hand out. Zeb gave him the bowl and said “Bekhem,” in Zantish. The man answered “Na darin,” which sounded like the Channelspeak that was a blend of about a dozen coastal languages. The fellow took the bowl back aft, where Zeb now noticed the Far Western swordsman he had last seen four days ago, standing by the open hatch to the galley with his arms crossed over his ornate breastplate. His two swords were still at his belt though the man did not wear arm or leg greaves at present, nor his helmet. He was bald apart from a long, tight topknot, and was looking in Zeb and Amatesu’s direction with an impassive face. Zeb sighed.