by David Hair
‘Cuzka lectruz a’nakish!’ she screamed in the ancient Aldar tongue.
‘Probas, aerius fulgur!’ Vyre shouted in Old Magnian, summoning the same power.
Two minds, one purpose: in sorcery it was called a meld, where two practitioners fused their powers, magnifying and multiplying their spells beyond their individual capabilities. Most weren’t capable of doing it, and those who could usually only managed it with a few people in their entire career. It took months, even years, of training.
But somehow, she and Raythe managed straight off.
There was an appalling crack of power from the heavens, a concussion that shook their bones and stunned their senses. Instantly, a blinding flash of pure white light seared her vision, as if reality had split in two and spilled the light of heaven through the crack. That bolt of light stabbed from the skies into the water where the Bolgrav marines were wading ashore. She barely saw the result, just a crackling vision of silhouettes caught up in the rictus of a deadly dance, arms splayed, heads thrown back, water spraying about them as they leaped and fell.
She swayed from the rush, but more energy poured into her, sucked from all round her. She saw the three old men fall and felt the wounded one die. The flames of the portal went out and the grass around her feet withered.
But she and Vyre straightened, blinking in the aftermath, clung to the meld and roared out their conjoined commands, even as a distant voice aboard the frigate shrieked, ‘Bombards, fire!’
*
The closer the frigate got to the shore, the more intensely Toran Zorne felt the energies streaming through the burning edifice on the beach. Only around a hundred yards separated them now and he could make out a dark-cloaked figure clinging to the frame, supported by a redheaded woman . . .
It’s Vyre . . . finally.
The longboat rode a wave to shore, the marines shipped oars and piled into the shallows, wading knee-deep in water as the skies swirled above, nature itself rebelling against the prolonged unleashing of sorcery. He could feel it like heat against his soul’s skin: like a ringing inside his head.
It’s a Westgate, he saw at last, realising that Vyre had greater proficiency than he’d been told. He’s moving his people across this bay – presumably there’s no inland trail for their wagons. It was impressive work. No wonder he’s eluded me so long. It also raised the possibility that the Otravian might actually step through and escape him.
‘Ready the next volley,’ he told the captain beside him in the forecastle. ‘Faster!’
I’ve hunted him too long. It’s time to end this.
The captain bellowed his orders to the signalman, Trimble set the flags and the bombard crews worked feverishly, while Zorne focused on Vyre, amplifying his vision with the praxis so that he would see his quarry’s demise.
A moment later, the impossible happened.
From a purple bruise in the sky burst a jagged bolt of pure light, smiting the shoreline and the wading marines. Zorne barely glimpsed the result, but he heard the cut-short shrieks as the water boiled, billowing steam.
He reeled, his composure shaken; when he could focus again, he saw blackened, smoking bodies floating in the waves through the haze of steam and the stink of ammonia and violets. Beside him the fat, bewhiskered captain was babbling in terror and Trimble, still chewing his moronic redleaf, just gaped.
Impossible, Zorne’s brain offered. That is impossible.
His dazzled eyes sought Vyre and the redhead, but he could only make out their outlines. The fires of the Westgate had winked out and they were the only ones on the slope, holding hands with their outer arms raised, facing towards the ship.
They’re going to do it again –
‘BOMBARDS,’ he shouted, ‘FIRE!’
But before even one had belched its load, he felt that distinctive shift in the unseen that had heralded the previous blast and he knew he must move.
While all around him stood paralysed, he catapulted himself over the railing into space . . .
Then the ship behind him exploded and his back was pierced by dozens of knives of pain and something hammered into the back of his skull, blasting the world away.
*
Raythe wrenched his hand from Kemara’s in horror, staring at the Bolgravian frigate – or what was left of it, a shattered hulk of burning timbers, subsiding with a sizzling hiss into the waves. Another powder keg blew up, and the poop deck, the last intact part of the ship, burst apart in an orange flash and more broken timbers rained down. Bodies floated amid the debris. His ears rang and his legs felt like jelly and the wound in his side was still leaking blood.
Beside him, Kemara had fainted, collapsing in a graceless swirl of skirts and hair. His eyes went from her emptied face to the wreckage and back again. Her chest rose and fell, her face ghost-white.
We performed a meld, but that wasn’t the praxis she used. Somehow, she invoked the mizra – but the meld still worked, better than any meld I’ve ever heard of.
The sheer impossibility of it all stunned him.
A meld of praxis and mizra – surely that can’t happen? And yet it did . . .
It was no wonder she’d told him to piss off when he offered to teach her the praxis. That door was already closed, and of course she couldn’t tell him why without risking a witch-trial.
Staggering away, he dragged his thoughts back to the practical.
Two old men lay unconscious at his feet; the other was dead, his life snuffed out by the spells that had saved the rest. An eerie silence hung over the beach.
Then the distant rattle of flintlocks reached his ears. Across the bay, tiny smoke-shrouded figures were arrayed on the beach – where his daughter was. They’d landed the marines over there. The Westgate was closed and he was half a mile away, with no recourse but to prayers.
*
Zarelda saw the faint glint of the portal across the bay wink out and her mind screamed, Father!
But the crack of flintlocks resounded on the beach below her, a lead ball seared past and one of Rhamp’s men sitting right beside her folded over with blood blooming on his chest. A third of the Bolgravian marines on the beach dropped to one knee to reload, swathed in smoke, while others stepped forward to aim the next volley.
Terror almost paralysed her, but she had to pull herself together. The gate was useless now, so she threw herself to the ground, even as another ball smacked into the frame where she’d been standing. Then, with a guttural cry of, ‘Obvini – obvini!’ – which she guessed meant attack – the marines lumbered up the pebbled beach into the narrow strip of dunes, just as a third longboat hit the shore.
Then Vidar’s voice rang out. ‘Fire!’
A ragged volley of flintlock balls and arrows punched into the Bolgravs and half a dozen of the imperials staggered and dropped. The Bolgravs immediately fired back, aiming into the dunes now, but even as they did, she saw Vidar’s men rolling into hollows and behind rocks and the carefully coordinated volley splattered wastefully, as did the next as the Bolgrav marines sought half-glimpsed targets.
‘Archers!’ Elgus Rhamp shouted, and bowstrings sang, punching shafts into the Bolgravian formation, and suddenly the marines realised they were in trouble. Their officer staggered, an arrow in his chest, and now it looked like every one of the defenders’ shafts and balls was hitting its target, carving through the imperial soldiers.
‘Charge!’ Sir Elgus bellowed, and his mercenaries rose and ran at full pelt, a ragged line of hunters led by Vidar and Jesco close behind. They slammed into the reeling marines with spears and swords and what followed was brutal. The Bolgravs were hacked down from all sides as their formation broke apart. Jesco moved like a dancer, spinning and lunging, while Elgus wielded his sword like a bludgeon, cleaving through limbs and all the while roaring savagely. One man tried to crawl away, but Tami leaped on his back and slit his throat, crowing shrilly.
Zarelda glanced back to the beach and saw the last longboat was being hauled around and relaunched, t
he men taking flight without joining the fray, leaving the marines on the beach to die. In a few more moments, it was all over and a brief cheer was raised, but it quickly subsided into relative silence, leaving just the moans of their own wounded, the crying of children and the braying of frightened beasts.
They’d held – they’d won.
‘That makes it only marginally less horrible,’ she whispered, but then she amended that assessment: this was far, far less horrible than losing would have been. She cast about and saw that Banno was whole, if white-faced, at the fringe of the cheering mercenaries, and she breathed thanks to Deo for sparing him.
Then she remembered her father and gazed back across the waves. Dad? she breathed. Dad?
Then a man emerged from the dunes and onto the beach and waved, and though he was only a dot, she knew it was him.
Zarelda fell to her knees in sheer relief.
Part Two
Secret River
1
The luckiest prick in Shamaya
‘Who’s this one?’ Raythe asked as he made his way from patient to patient. The casualties were lying under bloodstained blankets behind the dunes. Cognatus, on his shoulder in his favourite parrot shape, was unseen and unfelt. The familiar was unsettled, frightened by the power Kemara had manifested.
As am I . . . Dear Gerda, she’s a mizra-witch. But she was also their only real healer, and while he needed desperately to talk to her about what had happened, that had to wait.
The day after the battle, the expedition was still regrouping, hunting the horses and righting wagons and seeing to the wounded and dying. Kemara was in charge of medical matters, aided by Varahana’s Sisters of Gerda.
She couldn’t quite hide the flinch when she looked up and saw him. ‘I don’t know who he is. Someone fished him from the sea.’
‘He’s a Bolgrav?’
‘Well, he’s Imperial Navy,’ Kemara replied. ‘The navy pressgangs men from all nations. But he doesn’t look Bolgravian, does he. His hair’s too dark.’
‘Is he the only surviving enemy?’
‘He is now. He was washed all the way from the eastern beach after the tide changed. One of the marines on the beach survived a bit, but he died in the night.’ She’d been awake since yesterday afternoon, Raythe knew. He’d helped her clamber across the river and around the cliffs, although they were both exhausted, but there’d been no chance for either of them to rest since.
The entire caravan had made it to Verdessa. The troopship had sailed away after the slaughter on the beach, no doubt fearing the same fate as the frigate, but it would reach the Verdessan garrison’s docks at Rodonoi inside three days and Raythe had no doubt larger forces would be sent to intercept them. Tomorrow, regardless of the state of the wounded, they would have to move on.
‘Do the best you can,’ he told her. ‘And when he wakes, assign a guard.’
‘That won’t be necessary – his back’s been flayed good and proper. He won’t be able to move on his own for weeks.
Raythe winced in sympathy. ‘Very well, I’ll question him later. What of our own?’
‘A couple of Rhamp’s men were wounded, and two men and one child were hit by stray balls. There are two dozen others with minor injuries – cuts, burns and the like. And nine died.’
‘I know,’ Raythe replied, in a haunted voice. ‘But we all knew the dangers, and we all joined this expedition anyway. You and I need to talk about magic.’
‘When I’m done trying to save the people who placed their lives in your hands.’
He caught her shoulder. ‘Do you still want your power cauterised?’
She met his gaze and for once she didn’t shrug away his hand. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. She bit her lip, then added, ‘Whatever you’ve been told, the mizra is not evil. It’s just different.’
That went against everything he’d learned – from Deist priestesses and Church sorcerers. Consider the sources, his parents might have said, cynics to their toes.
‘Different how?’ he asked, trying to sound non-judgemental.
‘I don’t know, because I’ve nothing to compare it to. It’s, um . . . well, unruly, like an unbroken stallion.’ She met his gaze, her defences down for once. ‘It’s addictive, and it’s a death sentence, but when I use it—’ She shuddered hungrily.
Her face changed and it was like watching a panther bare its teeth. But when he thought of what they’d done together, he couldn’t condemn it. ‘I’ll keep your secret,’ he told her, and for once elicited a grateful look from her.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and turned back to her work.
Still uneasy, Raythe went looking for his daughter.
He found Zar sitting on a driftwood trunk, and Banno Rhamp had his arm around her shoulder. They were so wrapped up in their conversation they didn’t hear him.
‘They’ve been giving me shit about it all day,’ Banno was saying. ‘I stuck a Bolgie in the side, but I couldn’t make my arm swing again, even though he was helpless. Bohrne had to finish him off while I puked in the sea.’
Raythe’s first taste of war had gone much the same way and he felt sorry for Banno, but they looked too intimate for his liking, so he coughed pointedly and they leaped up, blushing.
‘M-Master Vyre,’ Banno stammered.
‘There’re wagons needing repairs,’ Raythe said. ‘Go and make yourself useful.’ He watched the young pair strain towards each other, clearly wishing to embrace but scared to, then Banno mumbled something and fled.
Zarelda put her hands on her hips. ‘Just because he didn’t kill people doesn’t make him less of a man.’
‘I never said so.’ He went to his daughter and hugged her, holding her as close as his damaged side would allow. Kemara had stitched him up once she was certain she’d got the fragment of shrapnel out. ‘Banno stayed when older men ran.’ He stroked her hair, shuddering at the thought that she’d been shot at. ‘So did my daughter. I’m very proud of her.’
He sensed her mood soften. ‘I was so scared,’ she admitted. ‘But I kept the gate open.’
‘I know, and that saved lives. If you hadn’t, those last few folk to pass through would’ve been trapped in the spirit realm until it ate them up.’
He felt her shudder. ‘Why can’t the empire just let us go?’ she asked sadly.
‘If they did and word got around, others would follow. And they may have guessed the importance of Gospodoi’s mission.’ He thought on that. ‘And there’s another thing: someone warned me before we left Falcombe that a Ramkiseri agent was on my trail – a man named Zorne. He’s said to be implacable.’
‘Then I hope he was on the ship you destroyed,’ Zar said. She, like everyone else, believed that he alone was responsible for the lightning strikes that had destroyed the frigate; there was now awestruck silence as he passed by.
‘Me too.’ But his thoughts were of Kemara. What the healer had done was illegal, but legalities didn’t trouble him. It was theologically evil, too, and that didn’t bother him either. But it was deadly dangerous, and that did scare him. After all, mizra had destroyed the world once.
But we blasted that frigate together. I can’t even separate her part in that from mine.
If anyone got wind of what had happened, Kemara would be condemned, but that moment inside the meld told him that he needed her. If the empire found them again, she might be the difference between life and death.
He put these troubling thoughts aside and tousling his daughter’s hair again, murmured, ‘Remember your promise. Learn the runes, learn the praxis and keep that young man at arm’s length, hmm.’
‘Yes, Dad, but—’
‘No buts. I’ve done my rounds and the only wagon that’s not being readied for travel is ours. Let’s get busy.’
*
Kemara watched Raythe until he was out of sight, then she exhaled and sagged. Another moment postponed, another few minutes purchased for her to somehow think this whole thing through.
Her
patients were stable now, laid out beside fires on this desolate beach. All day, sheepish men who’d fled the impending carnage had been slinking back into camp, pretending they’d been chasing a runaway horse or some such, and had got back just after the Bolgravs went down.
‘Hey, healer,’ a rasping voice said, and she turned to find Osvard Rhamp leaning against her wagon. He pointed at his right arm, which was sporting a sloppily tied, blood-soaked bandage. ‘See to it.’
She stiffened, then put aside her alarm. ‘Certainly. We have cauterising knives in the fire, ready to use.’
Osvard’s piggish face went a little slack. ‘It’s just a scratch.’
‘Yes, but infection can kill a man more painfully than disembowelling. We can’t risk that.’
He bunched his fist – then stiffened as Tami entered the tent.
‘Osvard, stop being a prick,’ she drawled, and evidently she derived authority from Elgus Rhamp, because Osvard lowered his gaze. But Tami wasn’t done with him. ‘I didn’t see you on the beach, Osvard.’
The mercenary glowered. ‘I was there.’
Tami lifted an eyebrow, remarkably confident for someone half his size. ‘Really?’
‘I have a salve you can take,’ Kemara offered, to defuse the tension. She picked up a small clay pot with a wax seal. ‘A light smear, twice a day.’
‘Take it, Ossi,’ Tami advised. ‘I’ll see you in camp.’
‘You bet you will,’ the man said sullenly, snatching the pot from Kemara and stalking off.
‘He’s a mean dog,’ Tami sneered, ‘but he responds well to a good lashing.’ She pulled the curtain across the tent so the patients couldn’t see them and dropped her voice. ‘We ladies should look out for each other.’
Being alone in the small space with a former spy wasn’t comfortable, but Tami seemed to be offering friendship – although that in itself felt suspicious. ‘Do you have a medical complaint?’
‘Not as such; I just don’t want to get pregnant and I’m out of sour-nettle cream.’
‘Come back tomorrow and I’ll have a fresh batch boiled up for you,’ Kemara replied. She looked the other woman up and down, then asked, ‘How did you end up with the Rhamps?’