Acacia, The War with the Mein

by David Anthony Durham

  They had followed the brig through the Shallows and along the chain of islands that marked the best route through the Outer Isles. There had been other ships around, and Spratling had no desire that his attack be observed. He sailed casually, stopping at several harbors as if to trade and then using the Ballan’s superior speed to make up time. It was always easy to spot the brig, as its sides were a brilliant white, luminous and unnatural to behold.

  By the third day the brig had grown wary. It increased its pace, all sails unfurled, but it was not until the morning of the fourth day that the Ballan chased the other ship to the brink of the shoals of one of the small atolls at the northern edge of the Outer Isles. The horizon was empty all about them, and Spratling let it be known this was the day. They would have the ship’s treasures today or not at all. They pursued them with the wind at their backs. Speed was theirs, but it was no easy task maneuvering into position to use the nail. But then the brig careened around on a tack back from the reef, directly into their angle of sail. The captain must have known the reef better than Spratling imagined, but no matter. The angle of attack was finally right.

  Though he hollered at the top of his lungs, he was not at all sure that they would hear him on the deck far below. With the whip of the wind and the spray flying up from the prow his words likely darted away into the sea vapors. Afraid lest his pilot choose from timidness to adjust his course, Spratling grabbed for the rope that stretched down from below the nest all the way to the deck. He wore the fingerless gloves he had adapted to this purpose in boyhood, during his first years at sea. He clamped onto the rope with a two-handed grip, his fingers interlacing over one another, and then he leaped free. He zipped down toward the deck with his usual dizzying speed, and was standing beside Nineas a moment later.

  “Don’t you even think about changing course!” he bellowed into the man’s ear. “Steady on to meet them.” He raised his voice even louder and projected it forward across the deck, which was crowded with his men, burly-armed raiders of various races, each with his own proclivities, his own chosen weapons, his own grievances and desires and reasons for having chosen a life of plunder. Slim and of medium build as he was, face handsome and boyish, muscles those of casual, easy youth, Spratling hardly looked man enough to direct this company. And yet, neither could he have looked more comfortable in the role. He spoke with ironic cordiality. “Everything as we planned, gentlemen. Everything as planned, and nothing before I shout the signals.”

  The prow of the brig dwarfed the Ballan’s crisp lines. It shoved its way through the water like a buxom barmaid through a drunken sea. It was so very white it did not look to be made of wood at all, though it had to be. Wire-framed posts bulged from the side of the brig in two lines, one row on the upper deck and one on the lower. They were just the size and shape to cradle the upper half of a man’s body as he leaned out over the water. Crossbowmen squirmed into them and let loose an instant barrage of bolts. This was a weak defense considering what a fully manned league brig was capable of. There would have been two or three times the number of bowmen on a properly defended ship. Still, the missiles were smeared with a flammable pitch. Something in the mechanism of releasing them sparked them to flame. The ones that hit the Ballan’s side or deck or darted into the sails burned with an undousable flame. The best the Ballan’s men could do was to use shovels to knock the bolts loose, scoop them and the pitch up, and hurl them overboard. This attack had been expected.

  The two ships carried on with their trajectory of collision. So near were they now, the Ballan’s speed seemed obscene, reckless. Spratling almost called for the wing sails to be furled, but there was not time. One of them had taken a bolt low, and the flames had already eaten a sizable hole in it anyway. Instead, he yelled to the men operating the nail, “Be ready! Await my word!” Watching the distance between the two vessels close, he added almost as an afterthought, “Men about the deck, you might want to grip something.”

  In the last moments he ordered a turn to better match the brig’s trajectory, to lessen the impact. The Ballan leaned to the effort of this, but when the two boats collided the force was something beyond the young captain’s imaginings. The sound was horrendous, as was the wrenching pressure of the impact. Men pitched all about the boat as the deck leaned over to one side. A shoulder of water rose up and swept across them, taking two men away as it drained. The small fires sputtered and hissed and flared to life again. Spratling had managed to get out the order to release the nail before he went careening across the deck on his back. The great arm of the thing tilted into motion quite slowly, falling with its own momentum. Spratling, watching it from where he lay tangled against the railing, drenched and gasping, thought sure the mechanism had jammed in some way. It was falling too slowly. It might not even carry through the wood of the other ship.

  But the weapon found its weight and speed. The steel point of the thing crashed through the other ship’s deck. The sectional design of it worked perfectly, bending so that the point dug deep and then flexed the instant the weight of the two ships tugged on it. It tossed up fractured beams on either side of the impact and punched a hole that sucked several of the brig’s men into it. The hook tore a jagged trench of splintering decking and beams in the brig as it carried on forward. It yanked the Ballan, and for a few moments Spratling could not get words out of his throat. They were like a pilot fish fastened precariously to an angry whale. He felt the iron point catching on crossbeams, felt them snapping under the force, one after another. Several of the crossbowmen were crushed between the two boats; the others all but gave up their attack and scrambled backward from their nests. All fine, except the nail was not going to hold! If it did not, they might well capsize from the jolt of coming unstuck and in the turmoil of waves and currents in the brig’s wake.

  Spratling made out Nineas’s voice, asking him what they should do. Had he orders? He did not, but fortunately his momentary blankness was to go unnoticed. The nail finally caught and held fast. The Ballan seemed to find some amount of peace with its new position and steadied enough so that the men could get their feet under themselves again. A few faces turned to find Spratling, who shot to his feet. The next order was obvious.

  “Board!” he yelled. “Board, board, board!”

  Their clamber up the planking was mad and precarious, only manageable at all because they did not think it through. Spratling, like the rest of them, just acted. He ran, clawed, jumped, all so fast it passed in a trembling, jolting blur. It was startling to plant his feet upon the deck of the brig. Everything in sight was layered in a thick, slick white paint, just as the sides were. It coated each contour and protrusion as if the whole vessel had been dunked in wax and hung to dry. Spratling and the men tumbling aboard all around him stopped in their tracks, bewildered by the strange appearance of it. But this did not last long. They had business to attend to. There were sailors coming toward them. Bolts scorched through the air all around them. The sound of clashing swords already struck music into the din. It was likely to be bloody for a few moments at least, but such was raiders’ work.

  * * * *

  Three days later Spratling strode up from the docks, his feet crunching on the crushed white shells of the path into the raiders’ town they called Palishdock. He walked at the vanguard of a growing crowd of people, his crew chief among them but swelled each step of the way as others joined them. Children clamored and exclaimed and shouted questions. Even the town’s dogs could not contain their enthusiasm. Their proud son had returned triumphant, with booty to benefit them all! Spratling could not keep the grin from his face. Small, ragtag company of persons and animals that this was, still it pleased him to stand at the center of their adoration, to be important, loved, to see the faces of young women flushed and admiring him. Such a role in many ways came easily to him, but he did not take it for granted. He strove daily to earn it and to make Dovian proud. In this way he was still a boy and Dovian a father figure larger even than his weighty frame.
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  Palishdock had not begun as a permanent settlement. Though it was six years old now, one could see a transient laziness in the shoddy construction of the huts. They were breezy structures set into the knobs and hollows of the sandy landscape, with gaps in the boards and simple palm-frond roofs. The walls were often little more than a screen thrown up to provide shaded semiprivacy. Many people cooked on open fires outside their homes, leaving the scraps for the dogs and the thronging population of cats. The town had about it a casual air, as if the whole place might be abandoned at a whim if the mess became unbearable or their fortunes faltered. Of course, it did have a wonderful harbor. It was a little shallow but soft-bottomed, with a single narrow entry point that was barely visible from the sea due to the rippling shape of the shoreline and the camouflage of the high dunes. Indeed, the whole town sat sequestered from view. Only smoke might have given them away, but the hard wood of the shrubs that grew all about the island burned cleanly. Few passing on the sea would have thought the white vapors above the place anything other than a peculiar blanket of haze. It was a perfect raiders’ retreat.

  It had been Spratling’s home since its founding, an event which he remembered well. He stood—a child still—at Dovian’s hip when the big man looked about the harbor, grinning, declaring that this was it, this was just the place for them, hidden from the world and a fine location to get at the business of raiding and profiteering, kidnapping and whatever other forms of thievery struck their fancy. He had said it could be so, and with the boy at his side, he had fashioned a world to live up to those dreams.

  Leaving the jubilant crowd in the courtyard of Dovian’s Palace, where Nineas and the younger crew members could spin the grand tale of their capture of a league brig, Spratling ventured inside. He carried with him a single narrow box of ornate gold. Dovian’s Palace was not, of course, an actual palace. It was a rambling hodgepodge of rooms and corridors only marginally better constructed than the huts of the village. Here and there beams and planks and sometimes entire sections of captured vessels had been used in the construction. The walls were hung with emblems, with nameplates and various samples of rigging, souvenirs won over the years. More than anything, the place resembled a labyrinthine fort best suited to boyish games of hide and seek, pirate’s eye, and thump the tail. Spratling had played all these games and more in these corridors, never loving them more than in the days when Dovian was still up and about on his feet, nimble despite his size, as willing to run and play as any boy.

  Spratling knocked on the doorframe of the man’s room with his foot. Hearing the invitation to enter, the young man did so. There was no light except for that slipping through the numerous cracks in the walls and ceiling, but as his eyes adjusted, this proved sufficient to see by. Dovian was just where he had been for several months now, when he had taken sick with a pain deep in his bones, a cough that racked his chest, and limbs that were tingly and numb. His bed stretched along the far wall, and his form lay on it, a great mound of humanity propped up by feather pillows nearly flattened by his weight. His face was in shadow, but Spratling knew the man’s eyes were on him.

  The young captain stood at the edge of the room and recounted the details of the raid. He named the men who had been lost, saying a word of praise for each of them. He described the taking of the ship, the damage the Ballan suffered, the performance of the nail. It had worked well, he said, but they should put it on a different ship and probably use it only against smaller vessels. In truth, it had almost torn the Ballan to pieces. He described the brawl that took place on the brig’s glistening white deck and detailed the treasure they had found inside. By league standards the ship was empty, but their standards were out of all natural proportion. His men had stripped it of every gold fixture they could find, all the silver cutlery, the ornate mirrors, the woven rugs, carved furniture, beautiful glass lanterns: all the trappings normal to a league vessel. Also, they had found a safe room and coerced the captain into opening it. He must have thought it was empty, because he seemed surprised to find a small shoebox-sized chest of league coins in it, the same chest Spratling now held in his two hands.

  “How many did you kill?” the bedridden form asked.

  “Ten men. Two boys. And…one girl. Theo cut her neck before he knew. I don’t blame him.”

  “And what did you do with the others?”

  “Bound them and locked them in the steerage. They’ve enough food and water to live for weeks, but I imagine the league will find them in a day or two.”

  “It’s good that you show mercy.”

  Spratling smiled. “You taught me that, as you taught me how and when to kill. Anyway, a raider likes to leave a few witnesses alive to spread word of his deeds.”

  Dovian made a sound at this. Perhaps it was a guffaw or perhaps a cough. He motioned with the bear paw that was his hand. Spratling moved across the room, placed a knee on the rug-covered floor, and looked into the large man’s face. Dovian stared back at him, bulky featured, creviced by time in the sun in the manner of Candovians. He had lost weight steadily for weeks now, but he was still a formidable figure. He lifted one hand and dropped the weight of it on Spratling’s shoulder. He squeezed the slim muscle of it with pressure enough to be painful. But it was not an admonishment, and Spratling did not wince.

  “You’ve done me proud, lad,” Dovian said. “You know that, don’t you? I wasn’t sure you were coming back from this one.”

  Spratling smiled wryly and acknowledged, “It was a bit dicey.”

  Dovian studied him, weighing the implications of this, perhaps imagining the understatement it represented. “It is no joy to me that your work is as bloody as it is, but that is nothing we can change. We did not make the world, did we? Did not give it shape and substance and set one man against another. None of that was our doing, was it, lad?”

  The young man nodded agreement.

  If this was meant to make the older man happy, it failed. It seemed to do just the opposite. The large, unwieldy components of Dovian’s face twisted as if physically pained. He planted a knuckle of his other hand in his eye as if to gouge it out. “I guess my work is done, then. I’ve taught you everything I could. Now look at you: eighteen years of age and already a leader. I’ll not complain now that I know for certain you are a man who can thrive in the world. That’s the best I could do. I’m sorry if it’s no life for a prince—”

  “Stop it! Come now, I won’t stay if you’re going to blubber like last time. I come back having taken a league brig and you start in moaning about the past again? I just will not have it. Do you want me to leave?”

  Dovian stared at him for a long moment. “At least the men see the royalty in you. No, they do. And don’t you go; you’re not dismissed yet! They do see royalty in you. They don’t know what they’re seeing, but you have got a command over them that’s grand to behold. They follow you where they would never follow other men. I named you Spratling so that none would imagine you are royal. Just one tiny fish like a million others in the sea. But there is no denying it, lad, you’ve nobility spilling out of your eyes, out of your mouth each time you open it.”

  “Even when I’m cursing?”

  “Even then…” The man seemed to sink farther back into his pillows, pleased by whatever image filled his head. “Even then you were still my Dariel, the prince who sought out the likes of me in the caverns below the palace. Why did you do that, lad? Such a strange thing for a boy like you to be up to, roaming the dark underneath. I’ve never understood it.”

  “Don’t try to. Anyway, I cannot remember enough to enlighten you.” Spratling indicated the box he had placed at the edge of the bed. “Would you look at what’s in this chest?”

  “You really don’t?”

  “No. All I remember and all I want to remember is this life. This—what we have here—is all that matters,” he said, infusing the statement with all the certainty he could muster.

  He tried all the harder because it was not true. Not exactly, at l
east. It was rather that he could not make sense of the memories preceding his life with Dovian. He could not understand them with any sort of clarity. The very thought of those early times seemed to weaken him. They pulled on him with a melancholy power otherwise absent from his days. When he did allow himself to think back to when he was still called Dariel Akaran it was his flight from the war and Val’s role in saving him that he wished to recall.

  He had left Kidnaban in the care of a man who called himself a guardian. This soldier had lifted Dariel straight out of slumber one morning and walked away with the boy in his arms. He had explained himself as he walked, though Dariel had been groggy and later could not remember what the man had said to soothe him. They had sailed from Crall to the mainland in just a few hours and were on their feet for two days thereafter. By the third, the man bought a pony for Dariel to ride, as the boy was exhausted, his feet blistered. He was apt to cry at any moment and often asked after his brother and sisters and begged to go back to them or to go home. The guardian was not unkind, but he seemed uncomfortable around children and often stared at the boy as if he had never seen a person cry before and could not for the life of him understand the waste of moisture.