by Hugh Cook
As for Miphon, although at first he seemed young, vigorous and cheerful, his eyes betrayed a desperate anxiety. Nightly, he dreamt of Elkor Alish exploring the depths of the green bottle, seeking and searching in the silent gloom, sword at the ready in case anything menaced him. In his dreams, Alish escaped; armies marched at his command; entire cities and civilizations were laid waste by the death-stone.
Miphon told himself that Alish had scant chance of
finding a ring to set himself free from the green bottle. But what if he escaped down a drop-shaft? In theory, that was impossible. Morgan Hearst said Elkor Alish was the best climber he knew, but if Alish tried to descend a drop-shaft, then intolerable forces of acceleration would pry him loose from the walls and send him hurtling down into the waiting fire trench. It seemed there was no escape that way - but Miphon had to remind himself that, trapped behind the portcullis, he had spent days without seeing the obvious way to set himself free.
The wizard puzzled the villagers, as did the third visitor. At first sight, he seemed the oldest, yet his face was as puzzled as if he had only just been born: odd things moved him to laughter or to tears. Many thought him simple, a moon-child: yet his talk was always sensible.
The visitors arrived as bad weather was setting in; a fishing smack, with a crew including a man who had fallen in heavy seas and dislocated his shoulder, struggled to haven through a mounting storm. The casualty had been half a day with his injury by the time the boat came to safety; someone skilled in manipulation can put a shoulder into place with ease if it has only just slipped out, but by the time Miphon saw the man, the muscles had long since locked rigid.
Miphon hated to be ruthless, but their need was great; he promised to put the shoulder back if he could have the boat. Even though the crewman was white-faced with shock and agony, he was in two minds about it; in a village such as this, a boat was wealth. Pain forced his choice. There was a hurried consultation with his family, for he did not own the boat, and would need others to guarantee the price to the owner, and share the debt-burden.
The agreement was made; now Miphon had only to remedy the injury. Opium would have been the drug of choice, to dull pain and put the victim into a stupor, but there was none to be had; this Scourside village lacked
even a name for the substance. That being so, Miphon had water put on to boil, to produce steam. He saturated a length of cloth with alcohol, then wrapped it round the injured joint and associated muscles. Despite his tenderness, his patient cried out, as well he might in the face of such pain.
With the help of a steady flow of steam, the alcohol slowly penetrated the muscles, dulling the pain sufficiently for Miphon to try and put the joint back. He took the arm and pulled it outwards from the body -steadily and slowly - then bent the arm at the elbow and moved it in an arc, bringing the hand toward the chest.
Miphon knew exactly what he was doing; he had a name for every muscle and every bone, and knew how they worked together. He had done this often enough before: there were few injuries he had not seen and treated at some stage in the years gone by. The joint slipped home with an audible clunk.
It was done.
* * *
Given a break in the weather, Hearst decided to put to sea without further delay, despite the danger of renewed bad weather; he found the only resolution for his sorrows was constant action. The renascent storm caught them at sea at dusk; soon they were in desperate trouble. They could not set a sea anchor and ride out the storm with a bare mast, because the wind would have swept them onto the rocks of the shore.
Then Blackwood took the helm and began to give orders. With a precise reading of wind and wave, with immaculate timing in his orders, with an exact estimate of how much strain the rigging and timbers of his cockleshell command could endure, he saw them through grim hours of light and darkness in seas that could have sunk the best ships of the fleet of Rovac.
For Blackwood, the night in the raging weather
brought divine release and giddy exultation.
Cursed by an empathy with all living things, he endured the terror of a rabbit seen ravaged by the talons of a hunting hawk, even as he thrilled to the beauty of the killing creature which was, after all, being true to the heart of its own nature. As for the conflict of human wills, such as he had seen in the bargaining for the boat - he found that almost unbearable.
But, guiding the boat through the storm, matching his new powers of empathy and heightened perception against the inanimate, he was free to rejoice in his abilities.
The long struggle with the sea took them clear of the shore, then, when the wind veered from north-west to west, they ran before it, and were driven far out to the east. Blackwood began to fear they would be swept far out into the Eastern Ocean, there doubtless to sink, for their boat was now taking in water.
However, eventually, when the wind slackened, they found themselves in sight of a cold granite island. There Blackwood brought their leaking boat to harbour. He was exhausted by then, and faltering; he almost wrecked the boat when crossing the bar at the harbour mouth. But they survived.
The island, they found, was Ork, the home base for a pirate fleet.
* * *
The leader of the pirates of Ork was Ohio. He claimed that a brother of his, Menator, commanded pirate ships on the west coast of Argan; they had gone their separate ways because of a quarrel, but now Ohio was thinking of rejoining his brother.
Ork had lately been blockaded for weeks by Collosnon warships. The Collosnon navy was determined to destroy the pirates, and Ohio's men - mostly recruited from Scourside villages - had no belly for a fight. Storms had scattered the blockade, but Ohio could not
leave until ships damaged in an earlier attempt to break the blockade had been repaired. While they delayed, the navy returned.
The travellers sweetened Ohio with a gift of that fraction of Gorn's dragon treasure which they had brought with them from Stronghold Handfast. Taking this gift in secret, he did not have to divide it with his men. In exchange for the visitors' gift and their silence about the same, Ohio offered to take them with him when he left Ork; they accepted the offer.
It was on the island of Ork that Hearst acquired a steel hook. It curved out from a short, rounded length of wood, the hollow end of which, padded with leather, fitted over the stump of Hearst's right hand. Iron bars ran from the wooden block all the way to a cunning piece of jointed flexible plate armour at the elbow, which would take the strain if Hearst lifted weights with the hook. He chose to file the end of the hook to a point and sharpen one side to a cutting edge; Miphon warned that this would diminish the overall utility of the hook, but Hearst snarled that he was a warrior, not a washerwoman.
The day came when it was time to leave Ork. Hearst, Miphon and Blackwood travelled in Ohio's lean clean-lined flagship, the Skua, and it was Blackwood who took that ship out to sea across the bar at the harbour mouth.
They had chosen a wild day on which to set sail. One ship was wrecked on the bar, but the others got clear of Ork, and the blockading Collosnon ships found it impossible to close and board in the heaving seas.
Both pirates and naval ships ran before an easterly wind, till the weather settled enough for the navy flagship to close and grapple with Ohio's Skua. A boarding party crossed and combat began. Then the weather took a turn for the worse, some of the grapples were hacked away, some tore loose, and the Collosnon boarding party was isolated on the Skua.
It was a fight to the finish.
CHAPTER FORTY
To the south, a lee shore raised prow-cleaving cliffs. Those wave-breakers slewed as the ship plumbed the sea's hollows. Morgan Hearst braced for balance as the Skua heaved up again, breaking free from the weight of the waters. He challenged the shrill scream of wind through rigging: 'Ahyak Rovac!'
Lightning forked across the sky. Bone-breaking thunder followed. His enemy menaced him. Hearst grunted, striking:
'Huhn!'
Swords swung: metal to metal. One
blade shattered. 'Huhn!' said Hearst. Driving his blade home.
His enemy gaped, pain too wide to scream. Hearst drew free his sword as the ship plunged down, then turned to face another challenge. He felt no fear: he was more than ready for death.
'Huhn!' said Hearst, as the ship recovered the sky.
It was a threat: but his enemy closed. Sword, cuirass, helmet. Cold steel with the sea-sting beaded upon it, grey upon grey. Eyes, sea-red, mad with fear and anger. Hearst swung left-handed, a cripple in combat. His enemy parried, almost took him with a quick thrust.
- So it's death then.
- This death as good as any.
- Hastsword, my hero.
- My brother in blood.
Hearst struck one desperate blow, sword wide-slicing for the hope of death with glory. Then he was open,
whore-wide open, off balance and falling. Metal thrust for his belly. Falling, he twisted to one side, evading the thrust.
His enemy shouted, raising his sword for a killing blow. Then a rip-rent squall struck, hit so fast that all went down as the ship heeled. The wet-wood deck canted, sliding to the sea's yawn. Hearst clawed his steel hook-hand deep into the wood as he started to slip. The mast gave with a sick greenstick snap.
Slowly the ship lumbered up toward level. Hearst worked his hook-hand free from the deck. Getting to his feet, he stood with his sword Hast in his left hand, looking for his enemy. Gone. Overboard. Sea's spray drenched the deck as a wave struck. A moment later came rain with the sting of ice in it. A buffalo-shouldered brawner came lumbering through the sleet toward Morgan Hearst.
'Huhn!' said Hearst.
Swords clashed.
The brawner knocked his blade to the sky.
So there he was, Hearst disarmed and his enemy chopping for the kill. Then the ship heaved up as a wave went whale-under. The brawner staggered, sliding. Hearst closed, for to close the distance was the only chance he had.
Hearst's hook-hand, right hand, dextrous, sliced through the side of the brawner's neck. The big artery gave with a spurt of blood that shot three paces, and would have gone a dozen but for the wind feathering it to a red mist soon lost in the sleet. Hearst saw his sword Hast caught in a raggage of rope and canvas. He grabbed it. He braced as another wave struck the ship.
The wave surged over the deck, sliding the brawner to the scuppers and gone, overboard: vanishing into grey waves with one flash of colour where sealight glanced from a ceramic tile slung round the dead man's neck. With quick-blink despatch, the body sundered under for once and for all.
Gone.
'Ahyak Rovac!' screamed Hearst.
And turned: steel seeking steel, challenge seeking challenge. But no swordsman faced him. He glanced right, glanced left. The Collosnon were cleared from the deck: the pirates had victory. Ohio's voice rose against the wind, thundering orders. The deck was a shambles of blood, canvas, spars and rigging; the lee shore was closing; it would be a near thing. Morgan Gestrel Hastsword Hearst sheathed his blade and set his hand and his hook to the work.
* * *
The Skua almost came to grief on the coast, but managed to find haven in a narrow strait between the coast and an island which lay only a little way offshore. A Collosnon vessel that tried to follow it was wrecked: the pirate blades were ready, and the few survivors failed to survive their survival.
For ten days the Skua lay at anchor while storm weather swept the seas; when it ventured out again, there was no sign of the Collosnon fleet or of the other pirate ships.
Riding the winter weather along the northern coast of Argan, the Skua headed westward. They struck once at a fishing village, a place of low houses and narrow graves which sheltered in a bay called Edge by a mountain called Scarp; they gained a haul of heavy-armoured lobster, glissando fish, broad-wing depth-ray and red-veined whiplash-eel. They sailed away leaving the sky behind them smudged with smoke.
Hearst worked words in his head, marking the monotony of their progress:
Cold is the cold sea, Grey is the grey sky, Wet is the wet wave, Diy is the clear eye.
And what would Saba Yavendar have thought of those lines? Hearst remembered the poet so clearly: a squat little man, not much bigger than a dwarf, who used to drink so he was buoyed up by alcohol when he stood up to recite in his battlesword voice:
Down from the mountains the open veins Run blood-red to the sea-coast plains. Sing Talaman-ho! Tala is a he-ro!
There had been a sneer in the word "hero". And Talaman's face had darkened with anger as Saba Yavendar went on to detail Talaman's heroism: the celebrated rape of his sister's son. the slaughter in the city of Hunganeil which had surrendered without resistance, the week of feasting on 'small pig' at the mountain called Quinneroom, and the murder of the oracle of Ellamura.
Oh yes. if ever true heroes walked the earth then Saba Yavendar was one of them. But in truth Hearst had never met the poet; he recalled only the memories of the wizard Phyphor. He lacked the curiosity to explore those memories further: he lived only to seek his death in battle.
He almost found it when the Skua encountered another Collosnon warship. In a desperate light, the Collosnon ship was set ablaze and the Skua went aground on a shoal close to shore. The pirates had victory, but they had to wait until the incoming tide floated their ship off the rocks before they could go anywhere; meanwhile, the smoke from the burning enemy ship slowly drifted up into the sky.
* * *
Morgan Hearst sat on the canted deck of the Skua, 328
watching the smoke of the burning Collosnon ship and brooding on his fate.
His closest friend, Elkor Alish, had become his enemy. He had lost his right hand, becoming a cripple. And he had lost his faith in the warrior ethos of Rovac, and had nothing with which to replace that faith.
So he wished to die - but in battle the habits of a lifetime did not allow him to do anything less than his best. He had fought well: something which other people had noticed.
'You did well,' said Ohio, coming up to Hearst, who was cleaning the last blood from his sword Hast, if you say so.* said Hearst.
it's the act which makes it so, not the saying. One day you must tell me where you learnt to fight.'
it's a long story,' said Hearst, sheathing his sword.
'So is life,' said Ohio. 'There's time enough for all the stories. You could tell me now: we'll have time enough before the tide floats us off these rocks.'
i doubt it,' said Hearst.
'Try,' said Ohio.
'Death is my story, and the carrion crow will tell it.'
'There's no crows in this country,' said Ohio. 'Just skua gulls. Why so sour, friend Hearst? You fought well, but from the look on your face a guess would have to say you'd lost the battle."
if you say so,' said Hearst.
'You're a strange one, you are,' said Ohio.
He scanned the sea, looking in case any other ships had come in sight. But there was only the burning hulk of the Collosnon warship. The sky was clear: the light wind aired the smoke toward the shore. The tide was slowly rising.
'How are you?' said Miphon, coming along the deck toward the two men. 'No injuries here.' said Ohio. 'Not unless you want to count this," said Hearst. 'Oh, your hand,' said Ohio, seeing the ugly blood
bruise under Hearst's left thumbnail. 'You'll lose that nail for sure.'
'No,' said Miphon. 'I'll fix that. Wait.'
Miphon picked his way along the canted deck of the ship to where a group of pirates were heating up a brew of red wine and spices over a fire built on a bed of sand. He scraped some hot coals into a small pannikin and returned to Hearst. Miphon blew softly on the coals; they glowed cherry-red; he heated the blunt end of a needle.
'No,' said Hearst.
'It won't hurt.'
'That's not the point.'
'Then what is the point? You'll lose that nail unless you let me work on it.' 'The point. . .' 'Tell me,' said Miphon. 'I'm tired of. ..'
'Of what? Being attended to by a pox
doctor? Do you think they'll get to hear about it on Rovac? Come on, give me your hand.'
Hearst extended his hand. Miphon heated the needle again and touched it to the thumbnail. He did it several times, slowly burning a hole through the nail.
'Does it hurt?' said Ohio.
'No,' said Hearst.
'But then, if you're a Rovac warrior, you wouldn't admit to the pain.'
'It shouldn't hurt,' said Miphon.
'I knew you were something special,' said Ohio, i always knew you weren't just the wandering swordsman you claimed to be. But I never guessed you were from Rovac'