“Then let's hope Sir Erroll has found us a boat.”
I sent Yazizi off to market to fetch Faro and Penn, while the rest of us hurried through the drowned and lifeless streets.
The city sat atop a high promontory, the highest thing for miles around, and the descent to the seaside was a slippery ribbon of road that wound its way down the rough, rocky cliffs of the Salt Sea. All kinds of little houses and storerooms were carved out of the mossy shale along the road. Many of them abandoned. Through the open shutters I saw strings of drying fish and a few miserable dockworkers huddled around a fire. Dunoghan was struggling as much as everywhere else in this war.
“This can't go on much longer,” I said. “Something's got to give.”
No one heard me over the wind, the rain, and the crashing of the sea.
We found Sir Erroll at the barge pier, dripping from head to toe, his hood thrown back to shout at one of the barge captains. Even from a distance I could tell the other party in the conversation was doing a lot of head-shaking, gesturing at the sea and the sky. The little nagging fear in the back of my mind suddenly became a big one. No one would be keen to pole out to sea in this weather. We were probably lucky the knight had found anyone willing to even argue the point.
I'd planned to try to help our case, but before I could open my mouth, the woman took charge. She rode up and dismounted with aristocratic grace, gathering up her skirt to save it from the inch-deep rush of water draining out to sea.
I jumped from the saddle with no grace whatsoever and stayed by her side. Aemedd hid himself and his confused, bedraggled camel under an awning. They looked almost the same in this light; ill-tempered and badly dressed for the conditions.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” the woman began. She nodded at Sir Erroll and swept in to offer her hand to the barge captain. He made an awkward bow over it, stammering something unintelligible. “The pleasure is mine, Captain, though I wish we could've met in better weather. Were you negotiating your fee for taking us up the coast?”
He was too terrified to shake his head again. “I... Milady, I...”
“How much did you say it was? Three ladies? Four?”
“Milady, the storm, we can't‒”
The jangle of coins interrupted him. A pouch dropped out of the woman's sleeve, fat with silver. She pressed it against the captain's palm and curled her ruby-red lips into a smile that could charm a Saint into sin and vice.
“We're in a bit of a hurry, dear Captain. We do not have the luxury to choose our port nor our time of departure. They must be here, and now. Do you understand?”
He sighed like a man resigned to selling his soul. The pouch disappeared somewhere under his heavy coat. “I'll get some men together, Milady. It will take a few minutes.”
The woman dismissed him with a gesture. She didn't need words to tell him to hurry.
“Alright,” bellowed Sir Erroll, “let's load our kit and get ready to sail! Get the horses under cover!”
For once, we all worked, regardless of birth and status, and all to the same purpose. The barge was just big enough to fit everything, dividing our animals and baggage evenly between bow and stern. The horses didn't like it one bit. The barge pitched and rolled even in the relatively calm water of the harbour, and it was all we could do to keep them from bolting back up the rain-slick jetty. I took extra care in tying them down tight.
So we waited under the barge's leaky hide roof for Yazizi and the others to appear. The captain returned before they did, a couple of burly sailors in tow. Men with just the right amount of madness in their eyes.
“The rest of your party had better get here soon, Milady,” the Captain said in a voice like old gravel. “This weather'll get worse by the minute.”
“Hold fast, Captain. They'll be here soon enough.”
Grumbling, he went to check on the many complex parts of his glorified raft. An upside-down, elongated wooden dome for a hull, some hide stretched over the top as a shelter, and four big poles for propulsion and steering both. I could tell the captain's anxiety was genuine and overpowering. On the other hand, he was a sailor. Sailors panicked if they put their boots on in the wrong order.
We shared a collective sigh of relief when we saw our lost sheep appear at the top of the cliff, bedraggled, but alive. A sigh followed immediately by breathless gasps when a pack of Ducal cavalry came galloping after them.
Faro led the group, riding down anything in his way like a proper knight. Going by the blood on his sword, he'd already been in a scrap or two. He kept his companions formed into a tight V-shape, a miniature flying wedge, and they charged down the road as fast as they dared.
The scene played out in terrible silence. Hooves pounded on wet stone, slipping and sliding along the washed-out path. One poor Ducal soldier couldn't stop his beast in time. His broken body bounced down the cliff, still in the saddle, bashed to pieces against the rock face.
Yazizi found creative ways of slowing their pursuers, kicking down awnings and scaffolds until the road behind her was filled with debris. Animals tumbled, riders fell or were thrown. Some died on the rocks, others were merely injured. There were a lot of cavalrymen, though, and they didn't fall far behind.
The woman took command. “Gentlemen, to your weapons. Get us ready to cast off.”
Sir Erroll drew his sword, and I took the cover off my salvaged Harari spear. If the barge sailors wanted to object, the sight of bared steel convinced them otherwise.
The captain said nothing. He knew from the start he was climbing into bed with a snake. The money was just too good. What really worried him now were the dark silhouettes of three Ducal navy frigates hovering offshore.
“It'll take ages to light a lantern in this weather,” I told him, sputtering as the rain poured down my lips. “We should be away long before they can signal anybody.”
He scowled. “Listen, friend. All I care about is getting you off my barge. If that means taking you to wherever you're going... So be it.”
Couldn't ask for more than that. I pressured a sailor into undoing all the mooring lines save for one, to get us ready to cast off.
I looked up just in time to see Faro fall.
There was no railing, no ropes, nothing for the mare to use against the fatal momentum carrying it towards the edge. Hooves slid against mud and stone until they ran out of ground and began to paw at thin air. The beast threw Faro almost immediately, kicking and twisting like a snake, until a hard thump against the cliff edge broke its back. Its forelegs continued to pump away in vain.
The squire must've had a hidden talent for acrobatics, because he somehow managed to wrap his wet cloak about him as a cushion, and did his best to control his descent by rolling rather than getting smashed or impaled. Sharp rocks tore strips and patches of grey leather off him along the way, as well as long smears of blood. Finally he plunged into the ceiling of a small wooden shack at the base of the pier. It all but exploded into a cloud of splinters and dust.
Sir Erroll surged ahead to help his squire, but I caught him by the arm. It would take a miracle to survive that drop. I genuinely believed that was the last I'd ever see of Faro.
No one was more shocked when the dust settled, and the pile of shattered planks began to move. The squire emerged piece by piece, bloodied but alive, and limped towards us. He looked a mess, painfully gripping his right side. I grabbed him by the arm and hauled him on board moments before Penn and Yazizi galloped onto the deck.
“Push off!” the Captain roared. I took the liberty of slicing our last mooring line. The burly sailors employed all their brute force to pole us away from the pier. A few crossbow quarrels chased after us, but in this weather, the Duke's lads might as well not have bothered. All they could really do was watch us get away.
“Thank you,” the squire gasped. “Thank you.”
“You did well, lad,” I said, and handed him off to have his wounds seen to. Sir Erroll took every care with the boy. It was almost touching.
; Once we reached the deeper end of the bay, the sailors withdrew their poles and laid them flat along the length of the barge. They lashed pairs of them together, end to end, with complicated maritime knots. Then they put the extended poles back into the water and pushed, two men to a pole, to get us out to sea.
The wind and the waves only got worse on open water. The otherworldly howl never ceased or slackened. We yawed, pitched, rolled and surged in directions I couldn't describe, and I soon found myself doubled over the rail with several of the others, pouring my breakfast into the sea.
From the corner of my eye, I caught the woman talking to the Captain, her expression serious and urgent. I did my best to overhear in between bouts of spitting up.
“‒is a calm sea, Milady. We never need anything more than flat-bottomed cogs and barges. When the weather is this bad, we just don't go out.”
Her expression was cold. “It sounds like you're trying to prepare me for an excuse of some kind.”
“N-No, I just... It's going to get dangerous...”
“I see. Then you had better keep us close to land.”
It was not a suggestion, the way she said it. None of us fancied having to swim for our lives, but if it came to that, I'd rather we didn't have far to go.
The captain made another obsequious bow and gave a few indecipherable orders to his men. Meaningless nautical gibberish. After a few minutes we were skimming as close to the shallows as we dared. Every now and again I could feel a rock or a sandbar scraping the bottom, but it was no more frightening than every time a wave washed over the deck and threatened to sweep my legs out from under me.
The captain took a crude necklace from under his coat, a little bone carving of a fish over a Saint's cross, dangling on a hemp string. He rubbed it between his fingers. Praying to Saint Gemma, matron of sailors and fishermen.
“If you want to make yourself useful,” he said without even looking at me, “make sure everything is tied down properly. Hunt for leaks. Anything but standing idle.”
He had a point. It was all hands on deck if we wanted to survive this thing. I drafted Penn and started going over all our kit, which we'd stowed in a hurry, and started to rig some longer-term solutions. Not a bad job to have. It was almost dry under the big awning, and pleasantly warm between animals pouring out body heat.
How Yazizi managed to keep the horses from panicking was a mystery. She went from one to another and back again, always there with a gentle touch and a calming word, and by some magic the animals didn't panic. They almost seemed to get used to the awful movement of the boat and the occasional blasts of thunder nearby.
I took a moment to check on the squire, but between Aemedd and Sir Erroll, he seemed to be in good hands. Never thought I'd see the day when those two worked together on anything.
We survived for hour after hour. Everyone kept busy somehow while the iron-grey sky got a little lighter, then turned very dark very quickly. Soon we couldn't even see the shore. Horizontal rain lashed at us in sheets, and the waves grew bigger by the second, throwing us around on swells the size of houses. The captain had to order us further out to sea lest we get smashed against the rocks. The coastline here was even more jagged than at Dunoghan. My only comfort was that the barge, with her hull of cured bolewood, was too light to sink. Even if it got smashed to bits there'd be something to hold on to.
Blind luck and seamanship kept us going up the coast a while longer. We started taking short, wet, queasy naps in amongst the horses. I closed my eyes for a few minutes, but sleep felt a million miles away, no matter how tired I was.
I got up a shout from one of the sailors. He pointed ahead at a faint twinkle of light through the punishing rain.
“Thank the Saints,” the captain breathed. “It's the lighthouse. We're almost to the harbour mouth!” Then he glanced off the stern, to an equally faint string of lights that bobbed on the waves. Three Ducal frigates in full pursuit. “Not a moment too soon. Lads, prepare to turn and enter‒”
“Belay that!”
The woman strode into the fray again, and everyone stopped what they were doing to listen to her lay down the law. “Captain, we cannot land near Saltring. Don't ask me for an explanation. Suffice it to say that if we make port there, everyone on this vessel will be tortured and killed, yourselves included.”
He stared at her open-mouthed, trying to determine if she was serious. Of course she was. He asked stiffly, “What else would you recommend, Milady?”
“Continue north. Pass the city, look for a safe place to land.”
“With respect, Milady, there is no safe place to land. This stretch of coast is called the Giant's Teeth, and believe me when I say that name isn't as poetic as it sounds.”
She smiled, her crimson lips even more shocking in the gloom. “Take your chances with the nice, friendly rocks, or with the tender mercy of the Duke's Listeners. Your choice, Captain.”
All remaining colour drained from his face. That was no choice at all. He was in bed with the snake, and had just felt the first hint of teeth.
The calm and inviting harbour, what I could see of it, slipped on by.
The barge was built well. She'd carried us this far, and withstood her punishment with flying colours. My confidence wavered a little, though, based on her captain's greying face. She groaned louder and louder as the waves kicked her around like a ball. You almost couldn't call them waves anymore. They were high mountains and deep sloping valleys of waters. Cresting one, the men with the poles struggled to find bottom. Then we'd crash into another valley, and the poles would catch on shallow rocks, which nearly ripped them out of the sailors' hands.
I hung on, determined not to scream. My eyes stung constantly from the salt spray. My only comfort was that I had nothing left in my belly to chuck overboard. Penn and Adar looked equally miserable in their new jobs as extra hands for the pole teams. It was hoped that three men had a better chance than two of keeping the all-important poles from getting dragged off.
Squinting behind us, I could see the outlines of two frigates in the storm, lanterns burning bright. Men stood on the prow and brandished weapons, or looked at us through spyglasses. They were less than an hour from overtaking our little barge. What we would do then, I wasn't entirely sure. It didn't seem to worry the woman, though. She looked as calm as an old portrait.
The third frigate was nowhere in sight. They must have turned into Saltring. That could mean another world of trouble for us, but I didn't have time to worry about it right now. More water bubbled up between two of the timbers, and I painted it with oakum to plug the leak.
I noticed the captain trying to start another urgent conversation with the woman, but she was having none of it. The volume raised bit by bit as things got heated.
“This is my boat, Milady. With respect,” he added hastily, remembering himself, “if we run any closer, the rocks will rip her bottom out.”
“Those are frigates, are they not? They run deeper and heavier than we do. If we stick by the shore they can't approach us. If they catch us, that'll be the end of everything. Can you get us closer or not?”
He pondered her question for a minute. Then, “No, Milady. The best bargemen on this coast could not do it.”
“Unfortunate,” she sighed. “Very well. Please tell your men to turn and beach this craft.”
The captain gawked. “I... Begging your pardon?”
“Did I stutter? I said, beach us. Bring us to land. I don't care how.”
“But‒ But that's suicide!” the captain protested. In his affront, he took a step towards her. An aggressive, belligerent kind of gesture. It didn't take him long to realise his mistake as Sir Erroll's sword danced out of its scabbard and stopped just short of giving the captain a good shave. Penn and I moved with equal swiftness, warning the angry sailors with cold steel.
“Suicide,” the woman said sweetly, “would be defying my command. Land. Now.”
His expression was like a mother forced to choose between two c
hildren. “Please! Surely you could bargain with them!”
“My dear man, I would trust an angry Mother Nature with my life and my virtue sooner than I'd trust the men in those ships.” She nodded at Sir Erroll. “If he won't obey, throw him overboard.”
I actually felt for the man. He hung his head and gave the order. The sailors talked back, but they were shouted down. Mutiny wouldn't do them any good now. Not against trained soldiers.
“There's a break in the rocks there,” he said to his men. “Get us through safely and I'll give each and every one of you two ladies apiece. Move! Put your backs into it!”
The frigates struggled to keep up as we edged closer to the shore. They fell away, desperately trying to launch smaller boats in an effort to keep up the chase. They hadn't realised our real intention yet. I didn't think they'd be mad enough to follow where we were going.
The beach ahead was grey pebble and shell, with breakers that foamed and fizzed between sharp spines of shale and limestone. They resembled a giant, raggedy pike formation. I'd never seen such an inhospitable coast, but then I'd never been so close to Saltring before. True to the city's name, white sea-salt was caked around the bottom of the rocks wherever the high tide touched them.
I eventually recognised the 'break in the rocks' the captain was going for, and swallowed hard. Just about pissed my breeches. You couldn't fit an oxcart through there, let alone a fat-bottomed pitch barge.
At least drowning was a fairly painless way to die.
We swung precariously from left to right, turning almost at random. Every face was streaked with sweat and spray. The sailors pushed us closer to the break through brute force alone. They battled the sea to the best of their ability, but the sea had a mind of her own.
All it took was one wave with spectacularly poor timing. It came in and lifted us up, into the spear-tipped breakers ‒ forced us to watch the mighty wall of water separate into powerless white foam in front of our eyes. The cry went up, “Everybody hang on to something!”
In one great crash, the barge smashed to pieces against the northwestern coast.
Written in Blood Page 21