by Dan Abnett
There was no rhyme or reason to them, as though they were images painted on a hundred different cards and then tossed to the wind, fluttering and falling in chaotic patterns that hinted at meaning but ultimately revealed nothing.
Corridors and stairways, he thought. Doors opening onto the same rooms, over and over again. It was as though it was the same scene replaying itself endlessly in his mind. The only difference was the footfalls. Each night they seemed to get a little closer. Huge, thundering footfalls, like the tread of a giant. And he knew, with the omniscience of the dreamer, that when those footfalls finally reached him, he was going to die. It was only a matter of time.
“What if they are not dreams,” Tz’arkan said. “What if you see the future, like drowning in the bilges on the pirate ship?”
“That cannot be,” he hissed. “These sights are pure madness. Nothing in this world can be so twisted and malign.”
“Even so, little druchii. Even so.”
“Be silent! Do you hear me? Be silent!”
Malus felt eyes watching him. He looked up and saw Tanithra studying him warily.
The daemon chuckled. “She thinks you mad, Darkblade.”
“And why not?” Malus muttered. “She’s probably right.”
His work complete, Urial set the brush aside and straightened, holding the bowl with both hands. “Furl all the sail you can and still make headway,” he told Tanithra. “Once we begin threading the maze we will need to move slowly and deliberately.”
“With this wind off the bow we’ll have to struggle to make headway at all,” she said, never taking her eyes from the horizon.
But Urial shook his head. “If my theories are correct, it won’t be the wind propelling us inside the maze.”
At that, Tanithra turned, but if she was expecting a more detailed explanation, she was to be disappointed. Urial had already bowed his head over the bowl and was muttering a long, breathless chant. Once again, Malus looked to the north, but the horizon seemed like an empty plain of featureless slate. He looked back astern and in the far distance he could still spy the black sails of Bruglir’s fleet. The corsairs would stand well out to sea while the captured ship attempted to penetrate the island’s wards.
The chanting was growing louder. Or rather, it was making its presence felt more intensely—he couldn’t hear an increase in volume, but the air was trembling with each syllable. He could feel each ripple against his skin, like tiny wavelets stirred by an invisible hand. They washed over him and radiated away from the ship in ever-widening circles, reaching to the horizon.
Something was happening ahead of them, perhaps a mile off the bow. There was a mist gathering in the air, slowly spreading to the east and west like an unfolding screen.
Urial straightened, raising the bowl to the sky as if making an offering to the divine. His head tilted back and he poured the bowl of blood onto his upturned face. Crimson soaked into his white hair and pooled in his open eyes and mouth. The blood steamed as though freshly spilled, rising in curling tendrils from his eye sockets. When he looked down and smiled, his eyes were orbs of purest red, shining with power.
“I can sense it out there,” he said, his voice sounding clear but somehow diminished, as though he spoke from a great distance. “It is like an unravelling of the world. Tanithra, do exactly as I say, without the slightest hesitation and all will be well. Now, take in your sails. We will be at the threshold in just a few moments.”
“All hands! Furl sail!” Tanithra cried at the men in the rigging. “Smartly now, sea birds, if you value your lives!”
The mist was thickening, filling the sky ahead of them. It had no discernible shape—just a vast, shifting mass of curdled air, blown by a wind not of this earth. The last sails were brought in and Malus could feel the ship slowing in the water as she came up against the wind-borne waves. She rose on the white-capped swell and then as she nosed over the crest Malus could feel the ship gather speed, as though she were a wagon at the top of a high hill. He felt his guts come unmoored as the ship plummeted down, down and down, falling forever and then the mist closed over them, blotting out the sun.
“Three points to starboard!” Urial cried. “Steady! Steady! Now two points to port! Quickly now!”
Malus could see nothing. The air shrieked and whistled, but he felt no wind against his face. The ship twisted and yawned, first one way and then another, as though she were caught upon four different seas at once.
To the highborn’s horror, the world began to waver about the edges, as though he stood upon the verge of another waking vision. He fought against it with all the rage that was left to him and prayed to the Dark Mother that it would be enough.
Someone screamed. Urial continued to shout course changes to Tanithra. Malus looked over and saw the hard-bitten corsair bent almost double, her one eye tightly shut even though they were wrapped in shadow. Yet her hands still plied the wheel, driving the ship through its countless gyrations as it fought a storm unlike any other.
Suddenly, the wind dropped to a muted growl and Malus heard the pure tone of a ship’s bell echoing out of the mist. Through the swirling mists to port the highborn thought he saw the rough outline of a railing, then a ship’s deck strewn with debris and stricken with age. Boards were warped and covered with mould and fittings were pitted with rust and grime. And yet Malus saw scrawny shapes scrambling along the deck, clad only in tattered rags and sniffing the air like animals. One turned towards the highborn and he saw the figure point and throw back his head to let loose a long, plaintive wail bereft of sanity or hope. Before he could see more the raider abruptly turned to starboard and the ragged figure was swallowed by the mist.
He could hear more cries now, coming from lookouts at the bow and high up in the masts—he shivered at the thought of men high above the deck, surrounded on all sides by the unearthly smoke.
“Ten points to port!” Urial said, his voice sounding even fainter than before. Something made Malus look in that direction—a premonition perhaps, or the unseen manipulations of another waking vision—and abruptly saw a wide-beamed shadow looming from the mist, heading directly at them! If they didn’t turn the ship would strike them on the beam and break them in half.
“Hard to starboard!” Malus cried. “Put her hard over or we’re lost!”
“NO!” Urial roared. “Steady as you go.”
The ship loomed before Malus, pointed at them like a dagger aimed for his heart. “Brace for impact!” he cried, flinging up his hands in a vain attempt to ward off the blow he knew to be coming.
And yet, nothing happened.
Malus lowered his arms and his mouth gaped in horror. The ship was passing through them, like an apparition, yet it looked as solid as the one he was standing on.
Then Malus realised that he recognised the grim figures watching him as the ship passed by.
It was their ship.
Malus saw a pale, grim-faced Hauclir watching him stonily from the apparition’s bow. Other crewmen became apparent, each one grim as death as the ships passed one another. He saw Tanithra, still bent before the wheel and blind to the madness surrounding her. When he saw the gaunt, pale-faced apparition at Tanithra’s side, Malus started as though stung.
Is that what others see when they look at me, he thought? He watched the ghostly version of himself recede into the distance until the ship was once more swallowed by the mist. Then the deck he was on plummeted once more before coming to a bone-jarring halt. The highborn staggered, his heart in his throat at the fear that he would be thrown about like a cask of ale and tossed overboard into the ghostly storm. And then he realised that the moaning was gone and the mist receding like early morning fog.
They were sailing across dark water beneath a dark sky and before them an island reared up from the water like the ruins of a drowned kingdom. The isle’s steep cliffs were piled with the broken debris of hundreds of years of lost ships. Directly ahead of the raider lay a sheltered cove with long stone sea walls like
two curving arms, their surfaces studded with twin towers that jutted into the sky like broken teeth. The shoreline of the cove was piled with the jumbled detritus of countless shipwrecks and upon the dark and refuse-strewn waters rode almost a dozen ships at anchor—Skinrider ships, some larger and far more powerful than the captured vessel the druchii had arrived in. High on the cliffs overlooking the cove rose a ruined citadel, crumbled and broken by the weight of centuries and the ceaseless gnawing of the sea wind. Pale fires burned in the citadel’s windows and the arrow slits of the malevolent towers on the sea walls. Everywhere lay the crushing pall of enormous age, as though this were a place the rest of the world had forgotten long, long ago.
They had reached the Isle of Morhaut.
Chapter Twenty
THE COIN OF THE REALM
The raider drifted from the bank of mist, riding uneasily on choppy grey waves. A breath of wind, reeking of rotting bone and wet mould, brushed Malus’ face and pulled at the furled sails high above.
No one spoke. Even the sound of the water slapping at the hull was muted somehow—it was as though everything lay buried beneath an invisible mantle of incalculable age. Finally, it was Malus who broke the silence. “We should lower some sail and learn what we can before returning to the fleet.”
Tanithra didn’t seem to hear him at first. She turned to look at him, moving as though in a dream. “Why is the sky dark? The sun was shining when we went into the fog.”
“It’s this place,” Urial said. “It… is elsewhere. A place that is no place, teased from the fabric of physicality like a thread pulled from a tapestry.”
The corsair shook her head savagely. “Stop it! You’re making no sense!”
Malus managed a quiet, bitter laugh. “Such are the ways of sorcery, Tanithra. I like it no better than you. Focus instead on what you do understand. Like those towers yonder,” he pointed to the citadels rising from the sea walls, “and the ships in the cove. What are we facing here?”
Tanithra gave him an uncertain look, but turned her attention to the island just a few miles away. “We’ll have to get closer,” she said after a moment. “At least with all this darkness we should be able to make a fairly close run in towards the cove and then head back into the mist without raising any alarms.” She snapped out a series of orders to the men in the rigging. Moments later the mainsails were unfurled and the raider gathered headway, running before a mild wind that now blew from the south—if such a direction had any meaning in a place like this.
Malus turned to Urial. “Can you sense any other wards between us and the island?”
Urial shook his head. His eyes still glistened red. “No. But… it is difficult to be certain. The very air here seethes with power. A skilled sorcerer can conceal much beneath such a shroud.”
The highborn sighed. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
The former acolyte shrugged. “For what it is worth, the sorcerer we fought on this very ship wasn’t particularly skilled—merely a receptacle of a great deal of power. I don’t think the Skinriders are any better sorcerers than they are sailors.” He turned about, taking in the dark vista around him. They are merely skulking in the ruins of a much greater power.”
“Eradorius, you mean.”
Urial nodded. “He was one of the mightiest sorcerers in the time of Aenarion.” He paused as his eyes fell upon the ruined tower. “I wonder what he was fleeing from?”
“That was millennia ago. Does it matter?”
Malus’ half-brother fixed him with a bloody stare. “Time is a river, Malus, remember that.”
“You highborn and your riddle games,” Tanithra growled, shaking her head. “If I were you, I’d be more concerned about the twelve ships anchored in the cove.” She surveyed the distant hulls with an experienced eye. The smallest of them is as big as Harrier. Big Tilean and Empire warships, not the clapped-out scows we’ve been facing. I’d wager these are the Skinrider chieftain’s prize ships, the fist he uses to keep his men—and the other North Sea raiders—in line.
Malus frowned. “Can we outrun them?”
Tanithra nodded. “Oh, yes. We can sail circles around them, even in this awkward beast.” She patted the wheel almost affectionately. “But we can’t outfight them on the open sea.”
The highborn considered this and shrugged. “Then we catch them at anchor and burn them. A swift raid into the anchorage with Bruglir’s ships and a dozen dragon fire bolts and the Skinriders are broken.”
Tanithra chuckled coldly. “A flawless strategy, Admiral—but they’ve anticipated this.” She pointed towards the towers rising from the sea walls. “If you look closely you can see that those citadels have stone throwers situated to fire on the approaches to the anchorage, all the way up to the gap between the sea walls themselves. That’s plunging fire, lobbing stones in an easy arc right down onto a ship’s deck. A skilled crew could hole a ship in minutes and we know that the bastards are good shots, if nothing else.”
Malus shook his head in consternation. “Then we put on all the sail we have and give them as little opportunity to fire at us as possible. We can be in and out of their reach again in minutes. You said yourself that stone throwers only cover up to the entrance of the cove.”
The corsair grinned mirthlessly. “That’s right. Now why do you suppose they would do that?”
The highborn considered the sea wall for a moment, trying to put himself in the minds of the raiders tasked with defending the cove. “Because… they don’t need to fire past that point.”
Her grin widened. “Just so.” She pointed to the tower on the left. Look closely near the base of the tower.”
Malus did, but it was Urial who spotted it first. “There’s a chain leading from the tower into the water behind the sea wall.”
“That’s right. A harbour chain, stretching across the mouth of the cove from one tower to another. If a ship hits that she’ll be stopped dead in the water, helpless in the shadow of those two towers while the crew tries to turn her around and escape.” She looked back towards the stern. “And with the wind coming up from the south, a ship would actually be pushed against the chain, making their job that much harder.” Tanithra nodded sagely. “It’s a tactic the Bretonnians perfected after they got tired of us raiding their seaports and the Skinriders have put it to good use here.”
“AH right. How do we drop the chain?” Malus asked.
Tanithra shook her head. “I expect the tower guards only allow in ships that they recognise. We can’t break the chain from out here. We’d have to get into one of the citadels and lower it from there.”
Malus studied the towers at length, tapping meditatively at his chin. Plans swirled in his head as he considered the problem. He began to discern a way to thread them all together and a slow smile spread across his face as the pieces fell into place. “Then that’s exactly what we’ll do,” he said. “Turn us around. I think we’ve seen enough.”
Urial studied Malus warily. “You have a plan, then?”
“Dear brother, I always have a plan.”
Bruglir folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “That’s the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard.”
Malus was unfazed. “We don’t have to fool them, brother. Just tempt them and even then only for a short time.”
The captain frowned. “But Karond Kar?”
“Our ships fight the Skinriders every summer as they return to Naggaroth. They wait for us to head back with full holds and then try to steal our plunder. And what do they take? Gold? Gems? No. They take the slaves and as many of the crew as they can. Now think of Karond Kar and how many slaves pass through there every month. Thousands, all shackled and ready to transport.” Malus took a sip of wine from one of the captain’s cups. The challenge will be in convincing them we aren’t trying to attack them long enough for them to listen to our ruse.”
Bruglir’s fierce glower swept over Malus, Urial and Tanithra in turn, as though he believed he was being made the victim of some kind of elabo
rate joke. “So while we’re talking to their leader, a landing party slips off the ship, somehow enters one of the sea wall towers and lowers the chain just in time for our fleet to attack the anchored ships.”
The captain thought it over once again and once again shook his head. “A great deal can go wrong.”
“There is a certain element of risk in every daring plan,” Malus replied. “Don’t worry about what might go wrong—we’ll be working to ensure that doesn’t happen. Consider instead what will occur if things go right. The Skinriders will be broken, their treasure houses will be ours and you will return to Hag Graef as a hero. A very wealthy hero, I might add. You could buy a ship for each and every man in the fleet—every woman, too, for that matter,” he added, nodding towards Tanithra.
The druchii captain continued to brood, tapping at the table with a gloved finger. Finally he sighed. “How would we co-ordinate our actions? The fleet will have to come in effectively blind.”
Malus looked to Tanithra. They had discussed this at length on the way back to the rendezvous. “After we pass through the mist, the fleet waits two hours before starting its own passage. We will have men waiting in one of the towers by that point, ready to drop the chain.”
Bruglir thought it over. “And if the Skinrider chieftain doesn’t believe your story?”
The highborn shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, ultimately. By that point the fleet would be on the way and our men in place in the tower. Those of us brought before the chieftain will just have to put up a stiff fight and try to hold out until help arrives.”
“Your chances would be almost non-existent.”