by Mike Wild
Allantian? Kali thought. Not only did she – and, as far as she could tell, the Great Pongo – not look remotely Allantian, but the numbers were wrong. The Sword also paid no heed to the fact that the two of them were hiding under a blanket, which if she’d been him she might have found just a tad suspicious. She supposed you got what you paid for.
“Seen no one,” the figure next to her said. “Just enjoyin’ a drink.”
The soldier’s eyes narrowed, as if suspecting something but unable to put a finger on what.
“Your trade?” he demanded. “What business have you in Gransk?”
“I grease knobs. Luggleknobs.”
“What?”
“They assign ya to a docks an’ ya don’t know what luggleknobs are?”
“Well, no...”
“Then ar suggest ya watch your footing around town, greenhorn. Now why don’t ya leave an old lag to his drink, eh?”
The soldier hesitated, but the bluff – if that’s what it was – seemed to work, and he turned away from them with a grunt.
Kali gave it a moment before she spoke.
“What are luggleknobs?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Thought so. What just happened? Why did he think we were an Allantian?”
“Ah, that. Cloak o’ Many Contours. Handy bit o’ kit.”
Kali felt a stirring of excitement, despite the stench. “This is an artefact?”
“Artefact?” the stranger repeated. “No, just me old cloak.”
“And what does this cloak do?”
“Fools the eyes, mainly. You thought this booth was empty when you sat here, right?”
“Right. But the Sword clearly didn’t.”
“That’s why it’s called a cloak o’ many contours. It adapts to what it’s covering. You were a bit too bulky ta simply hide.”
“Bulky?”
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, smoothskin. Yer can’t help yer size.”
“Are you talking about glamour?”
“Aye. Portable glamour.”
“Then it is an artefact!”
“I told yer –”
“It’s just your cloak,” Kali finished. She sighed, getting nowhere. She looked at the bar, saw the Swords and the spheres were leaving, and then pulled the cloak off their heads, sucking in fresh air. She, too, made to leave.
“An’ where is it yer think you’re goin’?”
“They’ve gone so I’m going. I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure.”
A hand clamped about her forearm, solid as iron, and Kali turned to look at her companion for the first time. Wreathed once more in shadow, his face was gnarled and grizzled, hairy and a little pug-like, and comprehensively covered in scars. Even the scars had scars. None of these features were how Kali recognised him. It was the bells in the beard that were the giveaway.
“You.”
“Aye, me.”
“Okay, that’s it. I’m definitely off.”
“Ar wouldn’t. The Swords’ll be on full alert after our little runaround. Probably take ’em til nightfall to calm down. Whatever business ya have in Gransk’ll have to wait.”
Kali slumped back in her seat, supposing he was right.
“Okay,” she acceded. “So what do you suggest we do for the next few hours?”
A guffaw. “What else do ya do in a bar, smoothskin? We DRINK!”
He shouted to the bartender and, a second later, two pitchers of frothing ale were slammed down on the table. They were followed in rapid succession by two more. And two more. And two more. Kali matched her companion drink for drink, wetting her whistle with the local brew – clanger – then suggesting they moved on to something stronger. She ordered the guest beer – wobblehead – and not pitchers this time but the full barrel. The bartender eyed her suspiciously as he rolled it over, but Kali simply wiped her mouth, burped and tossed him a pouch of full bronze. The weight of it erased all worries from his face.
Kali drank and thought about her companion’s odd appearance, the artefact that was ‘just’ an old cloak, the way he had of speaking. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Depends on what ya mean by ‘here’. I haven’t fallen from that thing that’s appeared in the sky, if that’s what yer suggestin’.”
“I’m not. I’ve a lot of theories about what’s up there but one of them isn’t that it’s filled with rude little men.”
“Bugger off.”
Kali thought carefully about what she said next, but was pretty certain of her suspicions before she spoke. “What happened to your legs?”
“That’s somethin’ of a personal question, don’t ya think? Why don’t you tell me why yer tits are so small?”
“Hey! I know they’re small, all right? So, come on, answer the question – were they blown off? Amputated? Eaten by a ravenous shnarl? Or did they just rot away holding all that beer?”
“Mind yer own business.”
Without warning, Kali pulled away the remainder of the cloak covering her companion. As she’d suspected, the trolley on which he’d ridden had been discarded under the table and he was sitting there with a pair of legs that were fully formed – small, but fully formed.
Her companion sighed and struck a match, lighting a huge pipe he had produced from a pocket. He blew smoke from his nose. Three distinct plumes of smoke at the same time.
Kali nodded. There was only one kind of nose that could do that, and the last one like it she’d seen had been on a desiccated and mummified face sealed inside the Old Race machine she had purloined to reach the Crucible, the machine she’d named ‘the mole’.
Three nostrils.
“Fark me,” Kali said. “You’re a dwarf.”
The figure snapped his gaze further towards her, so much so that the tin bells woven into his beard jangled. Then he took a deep, thoughtful draught of his ale and a pull on his pipe, inhaling hard before replying.
“Ya seem to be quite unphased about that fact. Most people might find it surprising that they were sitting having a beer with one o’ the Old Races. Particularly as most of ’em think we’re a myth.”
“I’m not most people. I’ve met some of your kind before. Sort of.”
“Pah! Bollocks.”
“It’s true. Okay, one of them had only a bit of dwarf blood running through his veins and the other, well, he was half dwarf, half elf – a dwelf called Tharnak.”
The dwarf’s eyes widened and without so much as a by-your-leave he planted both his palms on Kali’s chest.
“Hey! What the hells do you think you’re doing?!”
“Just checkin’ summat,” the dwarf said, apparently satisfied.
“Yeah, there are two, all right!” Kali snapped. “Pits of farking Kerberos, are you some kind of pervert?”
“What do you know about the dwelf?” the dwarf asked, ignoring her protest.
Kali, despite her indignation, was intrigued.
“Long story. The question is, what do you know?”
The dwarf stroked his beard, regarding her with great care.
“You haven’t told me. What brings you to Gransk, smoothskin?”
“I intend to take passage on the Black Ship.”
“Is that so? Well, now, that might present a bit of a problem.”
“How so?”
“Because I intend to sink it.”
“What the hells are you talking about?”
The dwarf began to chuckle heavily into his beer, as if she had asked the question of all questions. “That, smoothskin, is also a long story. A long, long, long story. Longer than you can imagine. And it begins where that ship is goin’.”
“You’re talking about Trass Kathra.”
“That I be.”
Kali’s eyes narrowed. “Is that where you’re from?”
The dwarf didn’t answer for a second. And when he did, it wasn’t an answer at all.
“Jerragrim Brundle,” he said, sticking out his hand.
�
��Kali Hooper.”
“Well, now, Miss Hooper. You and I have a lot to talk about.”
“We do?”
“Not least that I think I’ve been expecting you.”
“What?”
“As I said, it’s a long, long story. But here is not the place for it’s tellin’ –”
“Where, then?”
Brundle studied her. “That rather depends on what happens later.”
She got little more out of him, there and then, other than small talk over their continuing drinks. So many continuing drinks that even she began to feel their effects. But no more so than Brundle. After a few hours she was rocked back in her seat as the dwarf slammed his tankard into hers, sending ale flying everywhere.
“Ya know, for a smoothskin, you can down yer drink as well as a dwarf!”
Kali flushed. Despite the circumstances, she suddenly felt immensely proud, as if holding her own with one of the Old Races was vindication of everything she had tried to discover over the years. Maybe, she thought, that all she’d ever wanted – all she’d ever really wanted – was to get shit-faced with the people she admired the most.
“Yer not so bad yerself!” she responded, slamming her tankard into his.
Ale foaming and dripping off their heads, she turned to one of the bar’s tiny windows.
“It’s dark. Time to go?”
“Time to go,” Brundle agreed.
As Kali and Brundle exited the tavern, a figure sitting hunched at the bar turned slightly to watch them go, the light from the doorway illuminating a hard face framed with greasy black hair, and a strange ‘x’ shaped scar on his upper left cheek. He didn’t know who the shortarse was or why he was here – didn’t, in fact, even recall him coming in – but the presence of Kali Hooper came as no surprise at all. He expected he’d be seeing her again quite soon.
First, of course, he, too, had to get aboard the boat. The security he’d checked out earlier that day was comprehensive, and while he could have got aboard by taking down a couple of guards where they stood, they would eventually be missed, and that would spoil everything. No, if he wanted to get aboard he’d have them take him aboard, and for that the fact that even some veteran sailors in town refused to sail on the vessel worked in his favour. It was already short of crewmembers and he had significantly increased the odds that they would need to find more by arranging a little accident by the dockside some hours before. The cargo crates that had inexplicably sheared from their crane had crushed at least six of the pre-assigned crew and injured a good few more. Enough for Freel to have to resort to emergency measures to find replacements.
Gransk was not that big a port and so it was only a matter of time.
The stranger stared into his drink and waited for the crack on the head that signalled the arrival of the press-gang.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FAITH HAD indeed stepped down from alert as Kali and Brundle emerged into the darkness, and though patrols were still present in the streets, their regular circuits of the shadowy alleyways were easy to predict and avoid. The pair of them made their way down to the waterfront, but from the shouts and hammering and clanging of tools it was clear before they got there that the coming of night had not quietened their destination as it had the rest of Gransk.
The dockside remained a hubbub of activity, all of it centered around the Black Ship Kali had until now seen only from a distance. She and the dwarf hid behind crates – Kali the only one needing to duck to do so – and watched as Faith came and went on the gangplank, labourers carried supplies aboard, and workmen dangled on ropes at various points along the hull, securing rivets and otherwise effecting preparations for the ship’s seaworthiness. One of the strange, cigar shaped objects she had seen in the convoy was being loaded by crane, joining seven others which had already been secured to the deck near the ship’s stern.
All in all, It looked to Kali as if the ship was going to sail that very night.
And what a ship. Kali couldn’t take her eyes off it. As huge as it had seemed from the street, it seemed huger still here. Constructed of rune-inscribed metal plating rather than timber, its prow curved threateningly downwards like some great insectoid proboscis, and sweeping back from it, overshadowing its decks, were a series of static sails made not of cloth but metal again. The shape of half shells, eight of them, they appeared to be currently at rest, receding one atop the other, as squat almost as the ship itself, like some armoured carapace. The effect was so streamlined and organic, the vessel looked less ship than predatorial beast.
What struck Kali more than anything was that it also had two hulls. Each resting in the water some twenty yards apart, the vessel straddled them as a bridge might straddle pontoons in a river, and this made the ship seem even more solid, seemingly unstoppable in all of her dimensions.
Kali whistled softly.
“Never seen a cat before, eh?” Brundle said.
“Cat?”
“Catamaran. Two hulls make the vessel much more stable in the water. Standard design for a dwarven warship.”
“This is a dwarven warship?”
“Based on one, anyway. Though ya can tell not built with passion.”
“Why in hells would they build a dwarven warship?”
“Seein’ as there’s no one to go to war with anymore, survival’d be my guess. They have to get through the Stormwall first, don’t forget. And then there’s uppards o’ two months’ sailin’ ahead o’ them, in some o’ the wildest seas there is. Then there’s the things that live out there. Chadassa Raiders, untershraks, the Great Weed. And, o’ course, there’s the weather – the sunderstorms can rip an ill-clad ship apart wi’ one strike.”
“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Kali said.
“Oh, that’s not all, smoothskin,” Brundle cautioned. “’Cos if they survive that lot, they’re gonna need somethin’ as immovable as me tenth wife’s arse when they face the swirlies...”
“Swirlies?”
“The swirlpools, smoothskin,” Brundle said, as if it were obvious.
“What are swirlpools?”
“They’re the barrier between the island an’ the rest o’ the world.” Brundle tilted his head upwards, at the looming shape of the Hel’ss. “A little legacy of our friend up there. Quite the lasting legacy, I might add.”
“Hold on again. There’s a relationship between the Hel’ss and Trass Kathra?”
Brundle laughed. “I wouldn’t call it a relationship as such. Unless o’ course yer thinkin’ o’ me and me thirteenth wife, may the bulbous bitch rot in Zlathoon. Nah, smoothskin, last time around that thing up there did its best to obliterate the island, an’ what it left behind makes what’s left o’ the Stormwall look like a squirt o’ piss from a babby’s knob.”
Kali shook her head, struggling with the surfeit of information. “Wait a minute? Last time around? Are you trying to tell me that the Hel’ss has been here before? And what do you mean – what’s left of the Stormwall?
“Like I said, it’s a long –”
“Enough! Who the hells are you, Brundle? Where do you come from?”
The dwarf shot her a glance, raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t ah tell ya, smoothskin? Trass Kathra’s me home. I’m what yer might call its caretaker.”
“What?” Kali said. “What?”
But her befuddlement fell on deaf ears. Brundle was already moving, taking advantage of a quiet moment on that part of the dock to shift position. With a growl of exasperation, Kali followed him to another hiding place nearer to the ship, behind a stack of barrels.
“Will you please tell me what’s going on?”
“Right now ah think we’d be better concentrating on what’s going on with the ship.” The dwarf pointed. “Take a look.”
Kali turned her gaze in the direction Brundle indicated. There was fresh activity on the gangplank – or for the moment, to be more accurate, before it. A number of wagons were arriving on the dock, and from the first of them Jakub Freel ali
ghted, followed by a number of mercenaries. Kali was hardly surprised to see Freel here, but what did surprise her was what was forcefully disembarked from the wagons that lined up behind his.
Civilian prisoners. Hundreds of them.
“Well, now,” Brundle muttered. “This is interestin’.”
Kali ignored him and looked on as Freel and his men took up position at the head of the gangplank, inspecting the prisoners as they were ushered aboard the ship. Led by them in wrist and ankle chains, like slaves, Kali saw men, women and children who, by their varying modes of dress, seemed to have been taken from all across the peninsula. She knew instantly that she was looking at the ‘vanished’, those who had spoken out against the Faith and been imprisoned for their beliefs, and she gasped as she began to recognise some familiar faces amongst them. Too many familiar faces.
There were some of Jengo Pim’s men – among them, Pim himself – and there... oh, gods. Red. Hetty. Pete Two-Ties and others from the Flagons. There, too, were people who had become friends after helping her with supplies and information in the last year: Martha DeZantez, Gabriella’s mother; Abra, and Poul Sonpear, the mage from the Three Towers, his powers clearly constrained by what appeared to be a scrambling collar about his neck.
And there...
Dolorosa.
Dolorosa but not Aldrededor.
Alone.
The woman was injured – badly. Being carried aboard the ship on a stretcher. But despite her condition, still scowling. Spitting in the faces of the Faith gathered around her. Had she been able to wield a knife, she would have been slitting their throats.
Good girl, Kali thought. Yet still cringed as the woman was taken below decks with those who had preceded her.
Kali wasn’t having this. She made to move from behind the barrels but Brundle’s iron grip held her back.
“Easy, easy,” he said.
“Those people are friends of mine. Family.”
“All the more reason we get aboard that tub secretly,” Brundle countered. “You’ll not be able to help with one o’ the Sword’s namesakes stickin’ in yer belly, now, will ye?”