by Col Buchanan
‘Let’s go,’ Coya insisted, struggling into his saddle.
They wasted no time saying words over the fallen ranger. As the others mounted up, the young man Xeno stood by the unmarked grave finishing his hazii stick, as though even Coya Zeziké could not hurry him.
‘The big man will be missed,’ said one of the rangers.
‘Aye, a dying shame,’ said the young man Xeno without feeling, and in his tone of voice hung a single certainty: life is tough, deal with it. And then Xeno tossed the remains of his hazii stick onto the mound of earth and climbed into the saddle.
In a single line they rode out from the clearing with the occasional glance backwards, leaving a grave behind marked by nothing more than a smoking roll-up curled upon the dark, upturned earth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
After Losses
‘What do you mean we’re heading for the Isles of Sky?’
The cat lifted her gaze from the floor at the tone in the longhunter’s voice, while every other face in the mess room turned to Ash for an answer, faces bright in the daylight pouring through the open gun ports. A few shouted out angrily, demanding an explanation from the old farlander, their voices strained by what they had already been through and by the thought of even more lying ahead.
‘A straight run into the Hush and back was the deal,’ one of the crewmen declared, and others called out their agreement from the many benches and tables about the room.
They’re going to mutiny, Ash thought as he held up a hand in an effort to calm them, and he glanced towards Meer and Aléas, who were facing the skymen of the Falcon too.
They’re going to go crazy, said his glance to the hedgemonk.
I know, Meer replied with a waggle of his brows.
Where was the captain in all of this? Trench was the one supposed to be breaking the news to his crew, not a shattered Ash still stunned from all that had happened in the Edge. He was nothing but a target here, a target for their collective hostility if ever there was one.
He gripped his sheathed sword and held Cole’s steady gaze, for the longhunter was the closest to him with a weapon, and he looked just about ready to use it.
Cole had said a handful of words since escaping the kree warren with his cat, having caught up with the rest of the party as they ascended the slopes of the Edge with their hauls of Milk. During their zel-ride back to the skyship the battered longhunter had kept his thoughts to himself, yet upon their return to the Falcon, Cole had insisted on knowing when they were heading home and, in front of the others no less, opening up the whole matter while Ash could barely hold his feet or think of anything but his cabin’s bunk.
Something had changed in the longhunter down in those tunnels, where he had been left for dead while the survivors fought their way to the surface. Ash could see it in him, the difference in his spirit. He was determined to return to Khos now, whereas before he had seemed merely resigned to the fact.
Yet here he was, being told there was a long way to go yet before that could happen. They were going to the fabled Isles of Sky first.
‘If Dalas were here he wouldn’t stand for it!’ shouted someone else to wide agreement, a lean skyman who pushed off from one of the cannon along the sides to glare across the room at him, and just then Ash wasn’t certain if he imagined the crew pressing a fraction closer.
They were sore at the loss of big Dalas, the real backbone of this ship, a man they had all liked. And they were ragged too from the scents of the wind they had all been continuously breathing in while waiting for the party’s return from the rift, in no mood for this sudden shifting of plans. Ash could sense the potential of violence in the air, their tensions gathering for an explosive release.
Aware that their anger was wholly justified, Ash struggled for the right words to diffuse the situation. His head was pounding again in great throbs as though someone was jumping upon the side of it, and had been ever since he’d emerged from the kree tunnels barely able to see, carrying the body of Kosh on his back.
Now Ash faltered, his vision dim. Again he glanced to Meer for support, and the hedgemonk opened his mouth to speak, only to be usurped by another voice behind them.
‘We couldn’t tell you, damn it all,’ rumbled the captain, and the gathered crewmen parted to allow Trench to step through their circle, his pet kerido chirping on his back.
Captain Trench stood before them, glaring, with his single eye shot red with alcohol and lack of sleep; a man seldom seen outside his cabin during their voyage, now standing as a brooding presence amongst them all. ‘We’re at war in case I need to remind you of it. Or maybe you’re all too ignorant to know what would happen if word leaked about a ship of the Free Ports heading for the Isles of Sky? Aye, we’re going to the Isles, and only after that do we return home.’
‘We signed up as a ship’s free company,’ said another skyman. It was old Stones the chief pilot. ‘We deserve to cast a vote on this.’
Captain Trench squared up to the smaller grey-haired man. The pet kerido hung loosely from his shoulders, looking back with its glassy eyes at all the figures surrounding it.
‘This is my ship, damn you!’
‘Aye, and our lives.’
For a moment Trench appeared to sway on the brink of a great fury, but then he turned his back on the pilot to glower instead at the rest of the crew, and he growled low and menacing. ‘Anyone who has a problem with our new course can get off at the coast and take their chances. Is that understood?’
‘And what if we all say no?’ announced the pilot. ‘Will you fly the ship by yourself?’
‘Please,’ said Ash and raised his hand again. ‘There is no need for this. Let me make it worth your while so that we share no hard feelings here.’
‘And what are you offering, farlander?’
‘We have Milk. Enough that some can be shared out amongst the crew.’ And he looked to Meer for confirmation of what he said, but the monk waggled a sly hand uncertainly. ‘Plenty of Milk,’ he pressed on regardless, for they would make do, somehow. ‘Every man who wishes to stay on will earn a portion of Royal Milk for the risk he takes in this venture. Every man who wishes to get off at the coast will earn the same.’
They were stunned into silence by his offer. Even a thimbleful of Milk was a fortune to these skymen.
And so I buy their lives again, he reflected with a narrowing of his eyes, thinking of the skymen Dalas and Jarad lost in the hive of the kree; thinking too of his old friend Kosh, foolish enough to have come with him, buried now on the slopes of the Edge.
Holding his tongue, Ash watched as the crew talked themselves into accepting the offer, while around them the stirred-up dust slowly settled in the late daylight spearing the room and his sensitive eyes. Seeing the change in their mood Captain Trench strode away as though the matter was already settled, neither looking to Ash or any other.
‘We had a deal,’ snapped Cole, isolated now in his anger.
‘We can still take you back to Khos with us. Our deal remains the same.’
The longhunter held his breath for a long moment, considering Ash sharply.
‘The Isles of Sky,’ he mocked. ‘If I’d known you were this crazy, old man . . . If I’d known you were clearly out of your mind . . .’
‘Yes,’ snapped Ash, turning away with thoughts of his bunk. ‘Well now you know.’
*
A figure was sitting in the corner of the dark cabin when he awoke, and Ash knew at once that it was a dream he was having, for he could see that it was his dead apprentice sitting there slouched in the chair with a foot up on the side-table, a shadow with eyes gleaming pale and lively.
‘Bad times,’ Nico said in a hush, and in the quietness of the night Ash could hear the sounds of snoring from the other cabins, but not from the empty bunk above his head.
A grunt was all that he could manage in response. He couldn’t move when he tried to, though the fact did not disturb him much. Rather it was a reason to relax further, for
there was nothing else that could be done.
‘I was sorry about Kosh,’ said his apprentice. ‘He was a good man. I think he went bravely, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Ash croaked. ‘He did.’
‘That’s all you have to say about it?’
‘What else should I say?’
‘Some remorse perhaps. Some grief.’
Around them, the ship groaned and creaked as she sped on her course across the night sky. From the ceiling, the unlit lantern rattled minutely to the vibration of the thrusters. All was normal, yet here he was speaking with the dead.
‘Kosh is hardly the first good friend I have lost, Nico. We are Rōshun. We live by the sword. It is wise to prepare ourselves for these things long before they happen.’
‘That must be a strange way to live.’
‘It is the only way to live.’
‘Still. To have known someone for that long—’
‘Enough,’ Ash snapped at the boy, and his voice was like the lash of a whip.
Ash sighed and tried to move again. Nico always had a way of unsettling him with his questions. ‘What is it you want, boy?’
‘Only to talk a while.’
‘Fine. Then talk.’
Footsteps padded by the door of the cabin. A shadow crossed the beam of lantern light leaking from beneath the door. For a moment he thought it was the ship’s medico Shin come to visit him again for a late-night tumble, but the footsteps carried on.
‘I tell you this,’ said his dead apprentice. ‘Those kree frighten the life out of me. I’m glad I wasn’t in those tunnels with the rest of you.’
But Ash barely heard him, for he was thinking of Shin now. Maybe he should go and visit her once Nico was finished goading him here. See if she was up for the company of an old man in the loneliest hours of the night.
The chair creaked and Nico sat forward to settle the front legs lightly on the floor, set his foot down too.
‘You really think this is going to work then?’
‘What is it you are asking me?’
‘The Isles. Do we have enough Milk for the Isles?’
Ash chuckled ruefully at the boy, a sound that emerged like a hacking wheeze.
‘So this is why you are here. To see how your chances are faring, eh?’
‘You haven’t answered my question. Is there enough Milk for the procedure?’
‘Barely. Meer thinks we can get by.’
‘A shame we can’t just water the stuff down a little.’
‘Hmf.’
Nico’s voice grew serious. ‘And you think it will work? That I’ll be myself again, not just some vegetable lying there unable to speak?’
‘How would I know – am I a seer? We will have to wait, and see what happens.’
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Nico hissed back at him. There was anger in his voice now. A tone of accusation. ‘You’re not the one who’s dead.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Isles of Sky
Ash emerged onto the deck with a heavy hood thrown over his head, drawn out from his cabin by the shouts of the lookouts and the excited clatter of feet across the decking.
The old farlander moved with slow deliberation, for truly he could barely see today, the world diminished to dim shadows and nauseating washes of colours. He made his way up to the fore-deck, where the skymen clustered there parted before him, until he clutched a hand around the rail, and faced the figurehead of the falcon and their direction of travel.
The skymen murmured amongst themselves, clearly interested by what lay ahead.
Days ago the ship had reached the eastern coastline of the Great Hush, and the ruffled azure sea that was the Eastern Ocean. From there the Falcon had turned due south, following Meer’s suggestions and the zigzagging coast as the air grew ever hotter and more humid, all of them glad to be gone from the lands of the kree.
Even from beneath his hood, behind his goggles, he was squinting fiercely against the rays of the sun. Through his sickening vision he glimpsed Aléas standing there at one of the mounted eyeglasses; or at least he glimpsed the sheen of the young man’s straw hair and scented his familiar soapy freshness.
‘What can you see?’ Ash asked him now, surrounded by the press of the skymen. It was the time of midwinter back in Khos, shortest day of the year, yet here on the Falcon’s decks the crew were stripped down to short trousers and sweating beneath a blazing equatorial sun.
‘A mountain range,’ Aléas answered. ‘Rising near the coast. Runs from east to west across our path.’
‘A big range?’
‘Sure is.’
Ash couldn’t help but drum his fingers upon the rail in a slowly gathering excitement. Perhaps they were going to make it after all, he thought with sudden wonder, and the relief that he felt right then was like the shedding of thirty years, as though a weight he hadn’t known he was carrying all this time slid slowly from his back.
‘Tell me everything you see.’
‘We’re high. To our left lies the Eastern Ocean. Some big clouds floating over it like islands. The sea is sparkling. It looks calm down there. I can see the white wake of a ship in the water. And I can see real islands on the horizon, lots of them.’
‘The Shell Islands,’ announced Meer’s voice from behind. ‘The beginnings of them anyway. They say they wrap the girth of the Eastern Ocean.’
‘So these mountains will lead us to the Isles of Sky?’ Aléas asked.
‘No, lad. You’re looking at the Isles right now.’
The mounted eyeglass squealed as Aléas turned it sharply back to the sea. ‘Which ones?’
‘Not out there. There. In the mountains.’
Another squeal of the mount.
‘You’re losing me.’
Ash interrupted. ‘The name is a false trail, Aléas. The Isles of Sky are only named so to throw others off the scent. Part of keeping their location a secret.’
‘Wait,’ said the voice of the longhunter Cole from nearby. ‘You’re saying the Isles are not islands at all, that they’re in those mountains instead?’
‘Yes,’ cackled Meer. ‘The Isles are really a city spread across those peaks we’re flying towards, a city known as Mashuppa. And in a way the peaks are islands, only instead of water surrounding them, for much of the year they are surrounded by clouds. And their foothills connect to the sea by a river known as the Cocachim. You see the big estuary there on the coast?’
‘Yes.’
‘The sandbars make for treacherous navigation and help to hide the river mouth. The Guild traders of Zanzahar use it to sail all the way to the foot of the mountains.’
Ash could hear the skymen listening eagerly, and passing along the words in mutters that were spreading back along the ship. There seemed no sign or sound of the captain yet, still holed up in his cabin, even now.
‘That’s odd,’ said Aléas at the eyeglass. ‘I swear there’s something rising out of those mountains. I can just about see it. A line running right up into the sky.’
‘Yes,’ chuckled Meer. ‘That will be the Sky Bridge.’
‘The what?’
‘You’ll see!’
It was shockingly humid at this latitude. Ash’s shirt was open and the sleeves of it rolled up from his tattooed arms. He could feel the warm sough of air tugging at the sweaty hairs of his chest. Something nudged at his leg and he saw that it was the cat. He stroked behind her ears absently as he gazed at their nearing destination.
‘How did you come to this place?’ asked the longhunter of Meer.
‘As a stowaway, on one of the Guild’s trading ships.’
‘You must like taking chances,’ quipped Cole.
‘I was young, foolish. It’s not something I would care to repeat. Being a stowaway is a miserable way to travel, I can tell you.’
Ash grunted, knowing only too well what he spoke of.
‘The natives of the Isles call themselves the Anwi. It means the lost, or the fallen, or something like
that. They believe that they are descended from exiles cast off from one of the moons, people who had to settle here on this world long ago.’
‘Hah!’
‘It’s true, lad. It’s what they believe. Anyway, when I was there some friendly Anwi took me in and allowed me to stay with them in the city. A family of artists and intellectuals. I grew close to their daughter, who was in training to be a Crucible, a kind of priestly engineer come Observer. They were pleased because she had never shown any interest in having a lover before then.’ He chuckled, thinking back on it. ‘Triqy, she’s called. If we’re lucky, for a share of the Milk she will help us restore Ash’s apprentice using the rest of it.’
The mountains hung in the hazy distance, though it hurt Ash to focus on them. He was finding it hard to grasp that they were almost there at last, almost at their final destination; a myth made real.
‘Time to get ready,’ the monk declared with a slap of the rail. And when those around him stared at him blankly he said, ‘Well we can hardly land in the Isles looking like this, can we? We must arrange our disguises.’
‘Disguises?’
*
The flowing burnooses were comfortable to wear in the stifling heat, and by the time the ship was nearing the mountains the crew looked splendid in their new Alhazii outfits, many with their heads covered by the deep folds of hoods. Others hung over the sides while they painted a new name on the hull of the ship in Alhazii script. A new flag was run up so that they flew the colours of the Caliphate. For all appearances they looked like a Guild skyship of the Alhazii.
Aléas appeared on deck with his hair and skin dyed darkly like the rest of them, a shocking change in appearance, though the sharp angles of his features remained unmistakable in Ash’s watery vision. He stopped to watch the monk applying fine strokes of paint to Ash’s features, replicating the tattooed scripts seen on the faces of the more devout Alhazii.
‘Good job,’ he commented, and Ash grunted without turning his head. ‘You look like a half-sized version of Baracha.’