The drag pulled on the bow and in the widening gap a portion of the starboard sweeps bit into the swell.
‘Take us into the open,’ Reuth told Gren. He nearly dropped then, quivering, his legs almost without strength.
The steersman nodded. ‘The line?’
Reuth gestured up the middle. ‘It looks to be opening up.’
The Lady limped along now, but the narrows broadened here, the current slower. The vertical cliffs still allowed no respite for any crippled vessel, but they made headway. Reuth allowed himself a glance to the rear. Incredibly, many vessels still followed.
He returned to scanning for the best route ahead. Don’t fail now, he told himself. Not when we must be nearly through. He examined the waters emerging from round each looming rock ahead; some frothed far more than others, suggesting a rougher path. He decided to keep to weaving through the middle to avoid getting pinched against a cliff.
This long drawn-out section of the way wore hardest upon him. He was already exhausted, unable to focus as well as he had. He dragged a hand down his face and rubbed his stinging eyes. Then he thought of the oarsmen still pulling below him and shook off the mood. None of them had been spelled through any of this. The Lady simply didn’t have a large enough complement.
‘We might be through,’ he told Gren.
The steersman rolled his massive shoulders to loosen them. ‘We might.’ Then he frowned. ‘I smell smoke.’
Reuth squinted ahead. Smoke? How could there be … He caught coils of black smoke now curling round the rocks ahead. What in the Lady’s name…?
The stern of a tall three-tiered vessel came edging out from behind the looming centre tooth – an enormous galley entirely engulfed in flames.
Shouts of alarm sounded from the crew below.
‘Lad…’ Gren murmured.
Reuth simply stared. A sea battle ahead? A sea battle in the middle of the narrows? But the Lady’s entire crew was given over to the benches. How could they possibly hope to—
‘Lad, choose…’ Gren prompted, louder. ‘Now.’
Reuth shook himself. Choose? Now? He studied the vessel’s aimless spin as it came heading broadside down towards them like a wall of fire. Black smoke billowed, cloaking a portion of the channel.
‘Hard port!’ he shouted.
Gren thrust the tiller arm over. The Lady’s bow swung towards the port shore of the narrows while the burning vessel, helpless in the current, coasted directly across their line. Smoke blew across the deck in thick sooty billows that blinded Reuth.
‘Pull!’ Tulan urged, coughing. ‘Keep pulling!’
The hungry roar of flames now overtook the rush and hissing of the waters about them. Gouts of flame penetrated the wall of smoke like bursts of those damned Moranth munitions. A firestorm much taller than the Lady came crackling and thundering, as searingly hot as an enormous kiln, directly past their starboard side. Reuth covered his face. He coughed and gagged in the thick oily smoke. Something hot kissed his hand and he yelped, jumping and waving the hand.
‘Put those fires out!’ he heard Tulan barking. ‘Douse those embers!’
The pall of smoke began to clear. ‘Sail’s caught!’ Storval shouted.
‘Drop it!’ Tulan ordered.
‘Cut the ropes!’ Reuth heard Storval call.
Blinking, Reuth felt more than saw the bundled sail come crashing down, crossbar and all, while flames licked about it. ‘Overboard!’ Tulan bellowed. ‘Now!’
Men grunted and heaved. Wood grated, then a heavy splash announced that the burning bundle had struck the waves.
Reuth started then, remembering his duty, and called out: ‘Back over, Gren.’
The steersman grunted his surprise and slammed the arm across. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured.
Reuth wiped his face and his hands came away black with soot. ‘Is it a sea battle, Gren?’
‘Don’t know, lad.’
‘Because we can’t—’
‘Never mind. You just get us through.’
Reuth gave a quick shamed nod. ‘Yes. Sorry.’
He studied the possible paths ahead. The way appeared to be broadening. He did his best to choose the turns that would send them into a line that would allow the most options. His main concern now was their waning speed. The men were spent, of course, and their headway was flagging. Yet the current was also weakening. Even portions of this section ran smooth.
After a few more slow turns they emerged into a full wide channel marred only by a few isolated rearing teeth. It appeared they’d run the Guardian Rocks.
Gren shot Reuth his mad grin.
Tulan came stomping up to the stern. Soot blackened his sodden furs and his beard seemed to have caught fire along one side. He was drawing in great breaths as he laid a hand on Reuth’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘Well done, lad,’ he croaked, his voice almost gone. ‘Well done.’ He turned to peer ahead, drew in a great lungful of air. ‘Now what?’
‘There are a few mentions of a settlement here. Ruse, some write it.’
Tulan grunted. ‘Fair enough. We’ll make for it. We need safe moorage for a refit.’
Gren began untying himself from the tiller arm. ‘You’ve your sea legs now, I think, hey?’
‘I’ve had enough of the sea.’
Gren laughed. ‘There you go. You’ve the way of it now.’
A sailor Tulan had sent up the mast now called, ‘Our shadows are with us. One close, others distant.’
Reuth glanced behind. Indeed, more vessels were limping out from among the rearing teeth. They were far behind, but it appeared that the lead one was their pirate friend.
The crew continued to row, but at a leisurely pace. The narrows broadened. There was almost enough of a breeze to warrant lowering a sail, if they still had one.
‘Something ahead,’ the lookout shouted.
Reuth shaded his eyes but couldn’t make anything out. Tulan called up, ‘What is it, man?’
‘Hard to tell … ships! Looks like a mass of ships!’
Reuth thought of his worries about a sea battle. Tulan’s brows crimped and a hand went to check for the sword at his hip. ‘See that everyone’s armed,’ he ordered Storval.
‘Aye.’
They closed at a slowing pace. What awaited ahead was a mass of ships, but no fighting. The forest of mismatched galleys, launches, fishing boats and cargo vessels were congregated around a slim side channel. As they neared, it became clear that most had seen heavy fighting. Reuth made out archers crowding almost every deck. ‘Don’t like the look of this,’ he murmured to Gren.
‘We’ll surprise ’em,’ Tulan answered. He leaned over the stern railing. ‘Full speed! Looks like a reception committee.’
‘You heard the man,’ Storval announced. ‘No more easing off! You and you – back to your positions.’
Ahead, a single arrow took flight above the ragtag navy and with that signal the vessels dispersed like a swarm of bees. It looked to Reuth as though they meant to cordon off the entire narrows.
‘Chase speed!’ Tulan bellowed out.
The Lady’s Luck surged ahead, though with not nearly the power and crispness of earlier in the day. It was now a race. Reuth motioned to the opposite cliff face and Gren nodded. He slowly angled the bow aside.
‘Ramming speed!’ Tulan ordered. In answer, the Lady’s Luck hardly accelerated. ‘Row, you wretches!’ the huge man raged. ‘Put some effort into it for a change!’
The fastest of the navy vessels was leading the dash to the opposite cliffs, but it looked to Reuth as if they might just slip past first. He congratulated himself on being of Mare – the greatest seafarers and shipbuilders on the earth.
He turned to Gren with a smile on his lips. ‘We might just—’
‘Get down!’ the steersman cried, and yanked him by an arm.
A rain of arrows came slamming into the Lady’s Luck. Men yelled all up and down the benches. The sweeps clattered and slapped into chaos. Some caught the water to drag. The L
ady lost headway as if sliding up a sand bar. Tulan was now bellowing among the oarsmen. A second volley of arrows swept the deck and Gren held Reuth in the cover of the ship’s side.
Something rammed them in a snapping of sweeps and grinding of timbers. Reuth’s head struck the side, leaving his vision blurry. He peered up to see that a smaller galley had struck them a glancing blow. Grapnels flew from the enemy vessel while a crowd of archers continued to rake the Lady.
‘Cut those ropes!’ Tulan roared.
A second blow shuddered through the Lady’s Luck as another vessel scoured alongside.
‘Repel boarders!’ Storval called.
‘Doesn’t look good,’ Gren hissed, looking down. Reuth followed his gaze to see an arrow standing from the man’s thigh.
‘Gren! What should I do?’
‘Be a good lad and tear a piece of cloth for me.’
Reuth tore at his own shirt. The steersman snapped off the standing length of shaft then reached under his leg, clenched his teeth, and yanked on something. He grunted his agony, then lifted a hand holding a bloodied arrowhead and shaft. He tossed it aside then sat heavily, nearly passing out. Reuth tied off his leg.
Another impact threw him from his feet to roll across the stern deck. He clambered up and peeked over the side. They’d been rammed from behind to be knocked clear of the ships that had surrounded them and now they drifted with this new galley – the pirate vessel that had followed them in.
Armoured men and women, all in deep blood-red tabards, leapt from its bows to the Lady’s stern. One of them, a shorter fellow with a strange grey-blue pallor to his skin, peered down at him. Surprisingly, the fellow carried no weapons, only two short sticks. ‘Where is your captain?’ he demanded.
‘I command here!’ Storval answered, climbing the stern deck, sword out.
The newcomer raised his hands, fingers spread. ‘Man your sweeps. We’ll cover your retreat.’
‘And who in the Lady’s name are you?’ Storval sneered.
‘Doesn’t matter. Get your banks in order. They’re closing again.’
Storval peered past the man to the rear, grunted his assent. He sheathed the sword and thumped down to the main walkway. ‘Man the sweeps!’ he called. ‘Everyone! Now!’
Reuth leapt the stern railing. Storval? Why Storval? Where’s … He searched among the benches then found him lying sprawled among the bodies. His uncle, fallen, motionless. Dead.
The newcomer now stood at his side. ‘Lad? What is it? Are you all right?’
Reuth raised his gaze to the man. Behind, across a gap of water, three of the leading chase vessels suddenly burst into flames for no reason that Reuth could see. Figures dived overboard. But it was all muted and distant. As if everything was a long way away. He heard himself say woodenly: ‘My uncle is dead.’
‘I’m sorry, lad,’ the fellow murmured. ‘You are the pilot? We saw you here, at the stern.’
Reuth nodded. The fellow was looking at him strangely, and nodding to himself. ‘We are in your debt,’ he said. ‘And the Crimson Guard pays its debts.’
CHAPTER VIII
Orman jogged north without pause, ever upwards. He collapsed only when it became too dark to see. The next dawn he drove himself onward again. He stumbled and tripped the entire way. He found himself missing handholds, or falling over rocks as he misjudged them. He cursed the throbbing blindness of his left eye then. He also knew he was climbing faster than he should for his own safety. The change in altitude was making him light-headed. His nose bled. He was so short of breath he sometimes gasped, bent over, almost blacking out. His legs burned as if he was dragging them through coals, and the vision of his one eye swam.
Yet he pushed on. Soon the bare rocky rises and ridges gave way to snow cover. It was dense and heavy and wet. A white fox yipped at him as he waded through the knee-deep crests. After half a day’s journey across these broad fields of whiteness, he came to a halt at the barrier of a cerulean face of sheer ice pockmarked by streams of run-off. The roaring of the combined waterfalls seemed to shake the heaped gravel he stood upon. His breath plumed while he searched the sculpted gleaming ice face for the best route up. Satisfied, he tore strips from his trousers, wrapped them about his hands, and started up.
His fingers immediately became numb. His route sometimes took him past cave openings that gushed icy waters. The spray sent him into uncontrollable shivers. A few times he nearly lost his grip upon the knobs and undulations he clung to and so he drew his hatchets and proceeded up by hacking and hammering at the ice face.
Halfway, he paused to glance back and behind. The massive shoulders of the Salt range descended below in gigantic sweeps of ash-grey stone and misted forests. Low foothills obscured the Sea of Gold. He knew that if he could see it, it would appear no larger than a puddle. And he was only halfway up this enormous slab of ice. It must be a good four chains thick.
He climbed on and at last pulled himself up on to a vast plain of gently undulating snow and ice. He’d reached the top of one of the ice-rivers that dominated the upper crags of the Salt peaks. What some named the Frost Serpents. He stumbled on. Winds of stinging ice rime lashed him, yet he hardly felt the cold. At night he wrapped himself in his plain cloak and curled up next to ridges of naked gleaming ice that reflected the night sky like mirrors. He felt as if he were floating among the stars. He awoke with a solid layer of iced hoar frost over his thickening beard.
On the third day of climbing, the crackling of ice halted him. He paused to listen. All this time he’d heard the distant booming and grinding of this massive ice tongue. Only now did the cracking and snapping sound near. He edged one foot forward, hunched, knees bent, meaning to test the ice. Then the ground fell from beneath him. He tumbled, clawing at a passing sheer face. The ice slashed and tore the flesh of his palms and fingers. He struck something that punched his legs into his chest and knew nothing more.
* * *
Some time later he awoke to the wet kisses of heavy fat snowflakes. He blinked to clear his eye and saw stars glimmering down upon him through ragged gaps in thin cloud cover. He watched them for a time. Their graceful deliberate progress was so stately and beautiful it made his heart ache. They appeared within a slim opening between ice cliffs. A narrow slash some three man-heights above the perch he lay upon.
He would have yelled for help but he knew there was no one to hear. He relaxed then, and tucked his hands – numb clubs of blood – under his arms, and watched the show.
The Realm-Lights shimmered into view next, the wavering sky banners that some said marked a gate to other realms. Perhaps the land of the giants, the Thel-kind. Or the Tiste, the Children of Night. Or the Joggen race, as some named the hoary old Jaghut, in northern Joggenhome. The storied creators of winter itself in the times of heroes. He found these curtains and graceful banners breathtakingly beautiful. He’d always admired the lights. Especially those few winters when he’d trapped and hunted the borders of the Holdings with his father. It was consoling to see them now, somehow. As if he’d come home. Home to where he belonged.
He felt himself drifting off to sleep and a small voice railed against this, screaming somewhere far off. But he was tired, so very tired.
Something hit him in the chest. He looked down: a coil of knotted fibre rope. He peered up, narrowing his one eye. A shape obscured the gap above. Mechanically, dully, he began wrapping an arm in the coils. He could not use his hands – they were beyond feeling, beyond use. After numerous turns of his arm through the rope, it began to rise. It stretched, tautened. He was pulled upright. He knew that if he hadn’t been so very far gone in numbness, he’d be in agony. His arm was probably being twisted from its socket.
Hanging limp, he was drawn up the ice face, unable to help in any manner. At the top, he was heaved over the lip of the crevasse and allowed to flop into the snow, where he lay staring up at an extraordinary figure – a giant, so tall was he. Yet painfully slim, and so pale he seemed to glow. His wild mane of hair wa
s snow-white, as was his long ragged beard, and despite the frigid cold he wore nothing more than a loincloth. He peered down at Orman with something akin to startled bemusement, like a fisherman who’d landed a particularly puzzling catch.
‘What are you doing here, child of the lowlands?’ he asked in a quiet and gentle voice.
Child of the lowlands? ‘Are you Buri?’ Orman gasped, his mouth numb, the words slurred. ‘The eldest who brings winter?’
The giant’s silver brows rose. ‘Is that what they say in the lowlands?’ He shook his head. ‘I am Buri, but I am not the eldest. Come, I will take you to shelter.’ And the ancient being bent down, lifted him and set off with him in his arms like a child. Above his mane of white hair, the dancing curves of the Realm-Lights circled his head like a crown.
* * *
When Orman next awoke he lay in a cave, a glittering cave of ice. A fire burned over exposed naked granite. He was alone. He allowed his eye to fall shut once more and slept again.
The mouth-watering scent of roasting meat roused him. He opened his eye to see a large bird carcass roasting over the fire. Buri sat opposite, watching him, his long thin naked arms and legs akimbo.
‘What is a child of the lowlands doing here amid the ice-fields?’ the ancient one repeated.
And Orman told him everything. Slowly, piece by piece, while he picked at the roasted bird. Including his shameful behaviour at the stream. The loss of his half-brother. All this Buri took in without making a sound. He started only once, when Orman described how he jammed Svalthbrul into the stones and Lotji took it.
When he finished, both were silent for a time. The fire snapped and crackled between them. Dawn’s light brightened the ice cave opening with a pink glow. Finally, Orman could stand the silence no longer and cleared his throat. ‘Will you not come, then? Lend your help? Your clan is sorely outnumbered. The invaders must number in the thousands.’
Buri raised his gaze from the fire. In the light of the flames, his great mane of hair and beard, so pale as to be colourless, now glowed orange and red. His eyes, however, held a deep amber radiance, like embers themselves. ‘No, little brother. I am gathering my strength.’
The Malazan Empire Series: (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne, Blood and Bone, Assail) (Novels of the Malazan Empire) Page 367