He looked again through the window and stood up. “I promise I will tell thee more, but later.”
He swung the bag to his shoulder once more. “The steward’s party will take some time to set out, time we must use to our own advantage. Firstly, though, I am keen to learn if our own way truly exists for if not, well, then the race be lost before it has begun.”
Prescinda eyed them both for a while, her brows furrowed, until she quietly yet firmly said, “All right. You’ve bought yourself some time, Nephril. Provided I get your promise.”
“Between the Devil and the deep blue sea,” Falmeard absently observed.
“Indeed,” Nephril sighed. “Very well. Our party remains as three, be it for good or ill. Thou hast mine word upon that, Prescinda Sodbuster. I just hope I never have cause to rue this day.”
“So,” she asked as a grin forced its way across her face, “what do you want me to carry?”
***
“What on Earth’s that?” Prescinda laughed as she struggled to get two bags and a case through a doorway at the rear of the college.
Falmeard’s foot held the door for her but she couldn’t see his face behind his own burden. Only Nephril, encumbered by nothing more than his shoulder bag, could see where she looked.
“Ah, the naphtha-lorry. Aye, perhaps a little unusual.”
Tarpaulin hung over its cab, where it stood hidden between two old, broken-down stoom-wagons, grass beginning to grow along their beds. Its own bed had clearly been enclosed in boarding, although Prescinda could see three small windows along one side towards the rear.
Most unusual, though, was its colour - brilliant white.
She saw, when they got to it and where the tailgate should have been, that a door stood open, into which Nephril swung his bag and Prescinda dropped her own.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, Nephril. What’s inside?”
“Ah, now, there be a valid point,” he said and called out, “I think we have a slight problem, Falmeard.”
A stack of boxes, now squeezing to a scraping halt between the lorry and its neighbouring wagon, appeared to grunt back, “Eh?”
“Thou didst fit this thing but for a single gender, and only the two berths. Any suggestions?”
“Err,” replied the boxes before lowering to reveal the man. “That is a very good point, Nephril.”
“You still haven’t told me what it is,” Prescinda pressed whilst Falmeard put his boxes down and climbed up to peer beneath the tarpaulin.
“Falmeard tells me it be a campervan.”
“A what?”
“Campervan was it not, Falmeard?” Nephril shouted up.
Falmeard jumped down from the cab and announced, “Prescinda can have my berth. There’s plenty of room up front. I’ll sleep in the cab.”
“Why’s it called Campervan, Falmeard?” she asked.
“Ah, well, yes, a bit involved that. Some other time perhaps.”
He finally loaded his boxes before asking her, “Would you like me to show you to your berth, Madam?”
***
By mid-afternoon they’d finished loading the camper van and were drinking tea, knocking elbows around a ridiculously small table, when Prescinda gasped, “Oh. My stuff from the Halcyon, Nephril? I nearly forgot.”
“I’ll go get it,” Falmeard offered as he slurped the last of his tea.
“You’ll find everything in the occasional seat,” she called after him as he climbed down.
His footfall soon died away, leaving Nephril and Prescinda sipping their hot tea as cold air seemed to creep in between them.
“It’s ... it’s very ... well, very cosy in here, Nephril, but a bit smaller than I thought it would be.”
“Naphtha,” he said, “a great deal of it. In there,” and flicked a finger dismissively towards the bulkhead, where she’d thought the cab began.
She sniffed the air. “I thought there was an odd smell.”
Some more sipping finally exhausted their mugs, and Prescinda the silence when she said, “Nephril?”
He sighed and steeled himself. “Mine answer to thy burning question be a simple one, Prescinda. I could not afford to put mine own position as head of Galgaverre to the test. Mine authority there be shaky at best, thou see. I am after all a royal appointment in a realm now devoid of royalty.”
He looked at the tea dregs in his mug and carefully drained them through his teeth before studying the leaves once more. “They have the appearance of a bull, or so it would seem. I wonder if it means anything.” He peered at her over the top of the mug but then slowly lowered it to the table.
“The steward be imbued with reborn curiosity,” he began to add, “as well as carrying the weight of the guilds on his back. It makes him a determined opponent. A bullish adversary I suppose one might say. I could never have won, Prescinda, only ever have delayed matters. I know that now, but then, such is hindsight.”
“Nephril? What favour of Leiyatel have you promised the steward?”
Nephril smiled but it fell short of his eyes. “I have allowed his engers to alter the gaze of the Certain Power so that Leiyatel will soon look out almost wholly towards the east and so better sustain a journey that way. I have mine doubts it will work, though, for the land there rises, obscuring where the city doth lie. I hope it does not prove to be a carr sceld too far.”
“A carr sceld, Nephril?”
Approaching footsteps hurried him.
“’Tis the ancient tongue again, mine dear, meaning a shield of granite through which Leiyatel cannot gaze. And without her gaze, I fear, we will be lost to Nature’s vengeance. Mind thee,” he conceded as Falmeard climbed back in, “what befits or befalls us also befits or befalls the steward’s own men.”
“I’ll put it down here, Prescinda,” Falmeard puffed.
“Well, there’s not really anywhere else, now is there?”
He smiled more convincingly than Nephril had. “Err, no, not really I suppose. Any more tea on the go?”
“A quick one perhaps, Falmeard,” Nephril said, “for we must soon be off. I would much prefer to confirm our way in the daylight.”
“Our way?” Prescinda asked but remembered the frieze above the hall’s entranceway. “Ah, of course, Eastern Walk no less,” and they both stared at her.
She grinned. “Plain as the daylight you’ve just hoped for, Nephril, once you know where to look,” whereupon she passed him her mug. “Make mine a strong one would you, Nephril, whilst you’re at it?”
23 Almost Off the Beaten Track
When it started up, everything in the camper van around Prescinda began to rattle. Even her teeth it seemed. Only after Falmeard had made the engine race a few times did things begin to quieten down. She was just straightening from squeezing her bags beside her bunk when the whole naphtha-lorry lurched forward, throwing her off-balance.
“Hey!” she shouted as she tumbled to the floor, scraping her wrist against the edge of the bunk. “What’s going on?”
Nephril appeared at the doorway. “Lost something?”
“My bloody temper at this rate. What’s Falmeard up to?”
“I think the brakes were stuck.”
He climbed in and helped her to her feet. “Nasty graze thou hath there,” he noted, turning her wrist in his hand. “Hath thou finished in here?”
“Just,” and she looked around one last time.
Nephril held her in his gaze when she turned to face him. “Are thee sure of this, Prescinda?” but her look said it all and so they both climbed down, Nephril securing the door behind them.
Falmeard sat behind the steering wheel with cushions at his back so his feet could better reach the pedals. Prescinda climbed in beside him, sitting in the middle of the bench. Nephril then slipped in to her left and nodded as he pointed ahead.
Soon the college yard seemed to lurch about them, its ancient cobbles buffeting the camper van’s leather wheels as they squeaked against their wooden rims. Prescinda fervently hoped Ea
stern Walk would prove somewhat smoother.
The camper van wasn’t particularly large but Dica’s ways had been built for lesser carriages, ones drawn by hand or occasionally an ox or mule. In places, demolished buildings opened up a freer route but the turns and bends still caused problems.
“It’s because its rigid you see,” Falmeard had said during his third attempt at one junction, the camper van each time coming up against the corner of an inn. Finally, he chose another way and so eventually brought them more easily down to the Old Wall.
The rest of the journey to the Eastern Gate turned out to be quite pleasant if a little chill now that the sun had dropped behind the castle. They made far better headway, though, and so came back into the sunlight by the time the Great Wall and its gate loomed over them.
“Thou did check we can get this thing through the gate’s opening, did thee not?” Nephril asked Falmeard.
“Ah.”
“Only one way to find out, I suppose,” Prescinda said as she peered ahead, looking for the gap itself to appear around the curve of Eastern Street.
It was certainly a narrow squeeze, but by all breathing in, the camper van finally did pass through, albeit with inches to spare. They then rolled into the long expanse between the gate’s two outthrust arms.
There must have been a recent delivery of Belforas timber for the place teemed with huge logging wagons, a sea of men trundling small carts between. The huff and the puff of saws pushed and pulled the echoes of ripping wood about their ears and filled the air with billowing light brown dust.
The tumult made the camper van’s passage a little fraught. Carts dodged around them, their haulers’ faces swathed in scarves and their eyes matted with sawdust. As Falmeard guided them towards the two squat towers at the end - narrowed like defending fists - an empty logging wagon rumbled out in front of them amidst its steamy breath.
They came to an abrupt halt, the camper van lurching back and forth on its pliant leather wheels. Falmeard sent a tirade streaming after the fast vanishing wagon until a shout came from beside them. A carter needed to cross and so Falmeard pushed them on through the steamy cloud of the receding wagon’s wake.
“They must employ madmen to drive those things,” Falmeard eventually said when he’d calmed down a bit and they’d finally come out from between the towers.
Once beyond the castle, though, no-one spoke, each quietly staring after the wagon. They watched it turn, just beyond the bridge, onto the Lost Northern Way, the dust and steam of its rapid flight slowly drifting away to the south. It left a clear view of the junction itself, where Eastern Walk began.
Prescinda, her heart sinking, continued to stare as Nephril shifted uneasily beside her. Falmeard on the other hand seemed unaffected, taking an easy hold on the jerking steering wheel. His own gaze followed the progress of the logging wagon’s cloud of dust, now rising before a knoll a little way to the north.
As they drew nearer the bridge, Prescinda’s heart became heavier, her hands that bit clammier. The mighty Eyeswin could now be heard sliding its fluid mass beneath the road. Once on the bridge, however, its knocks and grumbles and sliding flow seemed to moan a warning from below.
And then they were past, as though Prescinda had merely dreamed it, as though she had only just awoken - stunned silent, floating towards the nearing junction.
The Lost Northern Way appeared like a lure to their left, a fragmented sight of a safe reprieve, but then Nephril screamed, “STOP! STOP THIS INFERNAL MACHINE!” and tumbled from his seat to the road. He rolled through the dust to a halt as the camper van squealed to its own.
Prescinda was soon running back, feeling dazed herself, but found him already trying to stand. She grabbed him just before he tumbled from the road.
“Nephril? Are you all right? Leiyatel preserve us, are you hurt?”
“What ... what happened? Why am I here, eh, mine dove?”
“Come on, Nephril. Let’s sit you down, eh?” and she heard Falmeard come up behind. “I need to take a look at you.”
“Is he all right, Prescinda? How’re you feeling, Nephril? You’ve not broken anything have you?”
Miraculously, Nephril seemed largely unscathed; a graze to his palm, a cut to his cheek, but otherwise surprisingly intact.
“Prescinda?” he asked, weakly, “what are we doing here?” and again tried to stand.
“No, Nephril, no. Be a love and just stay there for a moment would you? Get your wits about you first, eh?”
They cleaned his wounds whilst the castle’s shadow slowly crept nearer, the sun steadily sinking redly behind Mount Esnadac’s rise. He seemed much brighter by the time they’d finished, breathing more steadily, his lips no longer quivering. He now ran a hand through his sparse hair and looked up into Prescinda’s eyes.
“What happened?”
“Do you not remember, Nephril?” she asked, trying hard herself to recall.
“You fell from the camper van,” Falmeard quietly said, squatting down beside him. “You must’ve been jolted out or something, although the road’s not that bumpy here.”
Prescinda frowned. “You wanted us to stop, Nephril. You cried out. Don’t you remember?” but he didn’t, and nor did she really when she thought about it.
“We ought to get you back into the camper van, my friend,” Falmeard suggested, but Nephril and Prescinda both looked confused.
“What campervan, Falmeard?” Prescinda asked, looking about.
“Eh? Well, that one of course,” and he pointed. They followed his outstretched arm but only looked blankly back.
Prescinda knew they’d been in the camper van, knew full well what it was, but the memory somehow seemed vague, as though remembered from long ago.
“There’s nothing there, Falmeard,” she finally said, as though he were a fool, and Falmeard himself turned and stared, sharp and hard and uncertainly, along Eastern Walk.
24 Landlubbers All
For more than an hour, the Stepney Isle rocks had heaved in and out of view across the swell of Foundling Bay, off the port bow of the ketch. However hard Steermaster Phaylan had tried, he just couldn’t get the sails set right to take them west. It hadn’t helped that his previously competent crew of eight had steadily become no better than landlubbers.
The easterly had been stiff but steady all afternoon, ideal for their course, but nothing had seemed to go right. Only when the steermaster had left the tiller to his mate and moved amongst his crew had he realised what a mess they’d been making. After a great deal of tiring and often fruitless effort, the sails had finally billowed out across the starboard bow and pushed them beyond the point.
They’d been a little too close in for Phaylan’s liking, his mind filling with the promise of the sound of a tearing hull, but they’d been lucky. Not so once they’d tried to turn south, though, for his crew had by then gone totally to pot. Not one of them seemed able to hitch a knot never mind rig a sail, and so Phaylan had almost sailed singlehandedly down the western coast.
In all the time it took to go south - thirty miles or so - Masters Breadgrinder and Dialwatcher had stayed below, puking their guts. When Phaylan had finally gone down to them, after anchoring at last in the entrance to the canal, the stench had been awful. Despite it, Phaylan had been so jiggered he’d slumped down on one of the bunks.
“I hope we’re now there?” Dialwatcher groaned, wiping his mouth with a scrawny hand.
“Aye, thank Leiyatel, but I don’t know what use the crew are going to be, not now.”
Breadgrinder too groaned then rolled over in his bunk to peer groggily at Phaylan. “Don’t tell me they’ve been as sick as us?”
“That wouldn’t have surprised me either, the way they’ve all fallen apart. So much for a handpicked crew.” Phaylan now groaned himself and lay back heavily against the hull, peering up at the webbing of the bunk above. “I feel like shit myself,” he said and closed his eyes.
They lay quietly for a time, Phaylan trying to get his streng
th back and the Nouwelmers relishing the lack of a swell. The thud of plimsolls crossed the deck above, a muted admonition suggesting the crew hadn’t yet jumped ship.
“Thee were well warned,” Dialwatcher presently offered. “T’engers told thee thee’d ‘ave problems wi’ ‘em.”
Phaylan just rolled his eyes beneath their lids.
The thump of a boot made him open them and watch Breadgrinder prise his girth from his bunk. A stained blanket fell to the floor at his feet. He didn’t straighten, not because his head would have hit the deck above - which it would - but because he couldn’t yet unfold his guts.
“Maybe I’ll feel a bit better for a breath o’ fresh air,” he muttered “and I wouldn’t mind a look at where we are,” and he stumbled from the cabin.
“Maybe ‘e’s right,” Dialwatcher said, “maybe I’ll take a look an’ all,” and he too staggered out, leaving Phaylan in peace at last, if only for a moment or two.
Up on deck, the mate seemed to have pulled the crew into some sort of shape. One or two still stared wide-eyed at what their minds clearly insisted could not be, and even the mate couldn’t help but cast an eye that same way.
Breadgrinder and Dialwatcher on the other hand were quite evidently held by no such awe. Breadgrinder leant against the rail and settled his stomach by staring at the canal bank whereas Dialwatcher had wondered off to the stern, lighting his pipe for a smoke.
Steermaster Phaylan had brought the ketch to anchor just inside the still waters of the canal. They lay a half furlong or so off the northern bank, the buildings there now so near they loomed high above the ketch.
Dican architecture may have been seen as plain, when set against that of Bazarral, but the long rows of blank frontages here could have been seen as the epitome of plainness. All were flat and the colour of sand, the most interesting sporting nothing more than narrow slits along their upper reaches. Perhaps a couple of furlongs away, the opposite bank boasted exactly the same.
Quaysides ran in front of the buildings, broad and uncluttered. They struck Phaylan as odd, though, when he eventually came up on deck and leant beside Breadgrinder, looking out from the rail.
An Artist's Eye (Dica Series Book 5) Page 10