by K. J. Parker
“Of course it is,” Genseric said. He extended his hand over the side and dropped the box into the sea. “Careless of me,” he said. “Now I haven’t got any evidence against you.” He leaned forward, bringing his mouth close to the captain’s ear; at the same time, he caught hold of the captain’s thumb and levered it back until he felt significant resistance. “Don’t feel bad about it,” he said quietly, “you did your best. Now, unless you want to go and fetch your cards, how soon before those Lodge ships catch us up?”
For a moment he thought the captain wouldn’t speak. Then: “Tomorrow, first light.”
“That’s fine,” Genseric said. “Now, what I want you to do is increase speed; not too much, just enough to make it so they don’t catch up till, let’s say, a couple of hours after noon tomorrow. I’m sure you can manage that, and if you can’t, Sergeant Laxa here will cut your head off. All right?”
The ship’s first officer could read a chart just fine. He told them they were two days from Zatacan, on the Blemyan coast. He plotted them a course for the nearest Western port; three days with a good wind, five if they were unlucky. He was pleased and terrified to find that he was now in effective command, and promised to do exactly as he’d been told. He personally vouched for the loyalty of his helmsman, who could read a chart and lay in a course as well as anyone in the fleet.
“You’ll have a job, though,” he said. “The catboat’s fast, but so are those sloops following us. You sure you don’t want to stay and see if we can’t make a fight of it?”
Genseric pulled a sad face. “Personally, I think we could,” he said. “I don’t think Lodge people can fight worth a damn, from what I saw back at Beal. But I can’t risk it. We’ll do it my way.”
The catboat had to be hauled up on to its derricks and lowered into the sea, with its crew on board. It swung wildly on the way down, nearly spilling Orderic into the sea; he grabbed for the side and got the helmsman instead, and they collapsed in a heap in the bottom of the boat. Fortunately it was too dark to see the look on her face.
Needless to say, they couldn’t risk a lamp or a lantern. The sky was overcast; good from the point of view of getting away without the sloops seeing them, disastrous for navigation. The helmsman had brought a small piece of stone, mounted on a small piece of wood, and a shallow bowl; fill the bowl with water and float the wood in it, and the stone, being magic, would always point north. When Orderic had been told that that was how they’d be finding their way, in the dark, in the infinite sea, he’d had a panic attack and Genseric had seriously considered leaving him behind.
“Of course,” the helmsman had said, “if it’s a dark night I won’t be able to see the lodestone. But that’s all right. Come first light, if we’re astray, we just change course.”
The catboat had a tiny canvas cabin, big enough for two people to sit side by side if they didn’t mind touching knees. Genseric decided he minded, so he assigned Orderic the first shift of guard duty.
All night and most of the first day she sulked and didn’t say a word. Genseric took that as a good sign.
The helmsman was a short, spare man, about fifty, with a big nose and long black hair in a single braid. He gave the impression that he was having the time of his life. His first command, he explained. Genseric gave him an uneasy grin and congratulated him. He learned a lot about him during the course of the first day; how his family had been fishermen for generations, but his eldest brother had got the boat when the old man died and he didn’t fancy shipping on a merchantman, so he joined the navy, just in time for the Battle of Tragous, which had been a shambles and no mistake, but he’d been lucky, he’d been with the squadron that showed up late and missed out, basically they’d turned up, seen what was happening and got out quick, and after that he’d been on troop transports for six years, and now he was helmsman on the Achiyawa, which was a good ship, don’t get him wrong, but a man wasn’t going to get anywhere, if the major saw what he meant, and besides, this war, everywhere you looked there was some bugger making a fortune out of it, every fool with a boat bigger than a walnut shell, it broke a man’s heart to see all those opportunities slipping by, and knowing that any moment the Achiyawa could be ordered into battle, and no disrespect, but the command in this war, not fit to run a ferry across a small river. No, if he had his chance, he knew what he’d do.
Genseric waited for a natural break, then said, “Tell you what. If you can get this thing landed anywhere in the Western empire, you can keep it. Yours, free and clear, and an honourable discharge from the Service to go with it. How would that suit you?”
“Can you do that?”
“If I can get that bloody woman safely delivered to Forza Belot, I can do anything I like.”
The helmsman grinned. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.
She was seasick. It was the first sign of humanity she’d shown. At first, Genseric suspected she was faking it; but nobody could vomit that hard at will, he was sure of it, and the shade of green her face had turned was entirely authentic, in his not inconsiderable experience. Orderic and one of the marines were similarly afflicted, but for once Genseric wasn’t bothered at all. He sat in the prow most of the time, watching the horizon for any trifling irregularity that could mean land. There was no sign of the sloops, or any other ships at all.
The first bit of Western territory they would reach, the helmsman informed him, was an island, Pandet or some such name; it was four miles out from the mainland, and there ought to be a squadron of ships there, unless they were on patrol. In any event there would be a dockyard and a garrison, and sloops and cutters to carry Genseric and his party to Atrabeau. He sounded so confident that Genseric’s heart sank, but the helmsman promised him faithfully that Atrabeau was massively defended and no real use to anybody, and the Easterners hadn’t been near it since the war started; it was only twelve miles from the Blemyan frontier, so it’d be incredibly tactless for the East to attack it, not if they wanted to be friends with Blemya. This time tomorrow, he said, if this wind keeps up. We’re practically there.
Those familiar with the stretch of coast between Atrabeau and Zatacan know just how quickly the Creed squalls can get up, and how ferocious they can be. Opinions differ as to the origin of the name. Some hold that it derives from the length of the average storm – just long enough to recite the Confession, the Five Pillars and the Exeat – while others maintain that reciting the offices is a sure way to still the winds and subdue the waters, which is why a storm lasts as long as it does.
Genseric, huddled in the bottom of the catboat, could hear someone screaming scripture into the wind. Coming from a family with a long and proud tradition of unbelief, he didn’t know the words and couldn’t join in, but he paraphrased as best he could: Lord, whoever you are, please make it stop. That, apparently, wasn’t good enough. An empty water barrel fell on his back, and he stopped, in case his imperfect prayers were annoying the Divine.
“Where is this?” Orderic asked.
It was a stupid question, not deserving a reply. The beach the storm had pitched them up on was broad, flat and featureless; the sand was white, there were no rocks, precious little driftwood or seaweed. In the distance, Genseric could just make out the dark green of a pine forest.
The helmsman was gazing at his bribe, the foundation of his future prosperity, which was now just so much firewood. They’d hit something on the way in which had torn the bottom out of her, and she’d shed strakes all the way up the beach. The mast was somewhere in the deep water, a long way away. A few bits and pieces were bobbing up and down thirty yards or so out, but the captain showed no inclination to go and fetch them.
“I didn’t see any island,” Orderic was saying. “Or is this the island? It’s too big, isn’t it? I thought you said there was a town.”
Genseric didn’t think it was the island. He hadn’t really been keeping track of their progress during the storm, but it had been horribly fast, at least until they lost the mast, and, as for direc
tion, he didn’t have a clue. But wherever they were, he was quite sure it wasn’t where they were meant to be. One of his many regrets was that his armour was at the bottom of the sea. He’d taken it off in case he had to do any swimming, and it had gone the way of the rest of their cargo when the catboat was holed. Orderic still had his sword, but that was their entire defensive capability.
He got up and trudged across the soft sand to where she was sitting, with her back to the keel, staring at her bare feet as though she’d never seen them before. Her hair was a sodden rope and her arms were covered in sand. “I don’t suppose you know—”
“No.”
He sat down beside her. “Well,” he said, “I suppose we ought to make a move. It won’t be that long before it gets dark.”
“I haven’t got any shoes.”
“That’s unfortunate. But we can’t stay here forever. We’ve got to find out where we are.”
She wasn’t looking at him. Neither was anyone else; they were all giving their entire attention to something on the landward side of the wreck. He saw it quickly enough: a dozen or so horsemen, hurrying towards them. Ah, well, he thought.
It wasn’t long before he could tell they were soldiers, twelve lancers and an officer in a red cloak with a fur collar. He stood up and went to meet them.
The officer was light-skinned but the features of his face were pure Imperial; a young man, maybe twenty-four or five, in gilded parade armour, with an ivory scabbard for his sword. “Who the hell are you?” he said.
“We were shipwrecked,” Genseric said.
“I didn’t ask how you got here.”
“My name’s Genseric.”
He was annoying the young officer. “East or West?”
Something in the way he said it, a hint of distaste for both alternatives. “Excuse me,” Genseric said, “but is this Blemya?”
“East or West?”
“West,” Genseric said. “We were heading for Atrabeau, and there was this sudden storm which came out of nowhere. We don’t want to be any trouble to anyone, so if you could just—”
“Sergeant,” the officer said. At once, the troopers fanned out, forming a half-circle. Their lance points were universally level with Genseric’s head, a really quite impressive display of drill. One of them slid out of his saddle, planted his lance firmly in the sand, advanced on Genseric and pulled his hands behind his back. “Tell your men to put down their weapons.”
“We haven’t got any,” Genseric said; then he remembered Orderic’s sword. “We’re on a diplomatic mission,” he said, but nobody seemed interested.
The officer had ridden past him, and was looking at Lysao. “Who’s that?” he said.
“We’re on a diplomatic mission,” Genseric repeated, “escorting a representative of a—”
“This man is armed,” the officer snapped. The half-circle shifted and reformed around the ship, as Orderic raised both his hands in the air. “If you’re diplomats, where’s your credentials?”
“We lost them in the shipwreck,” Genseric said, “along with everything else, but I can assure you, we’re properly accredited—”
“He’s lying.”
She hadn’t shouted, but she didn’t need to. There was a nasty moment of silence, and then she went on, “I’m a citizen of Beal Defoir, an independent state recognised by the Blemyan crown. Several days ago these men attacked my home and abducted me by force. I demand that you arrest them.”
Genseric recognised the glazed look that froze on the young officer’s face. He’d worn it himself, in his time, when some routine job had suddenly sprouted horns and wings and metamorphosed into something horribly difficult. Under other circumstances he’d had sympathised. “Don’t listen to her,” he said, trying to sound scornfully confident. “The fact is, she’s a convicted criminal. Extraditing her was our mission. She’ll say any damn thing just to keep from being taken to Atrabeau.”
The officer looked at him, then back at Lysao. There was a wretched weariness in his face that would have melted a heart of stone. “Has anyone got any papers or means of identification?” he said. No answer. “Fine,” he sighed. “Corporal, go back and get seven horses, no, forget that, bring a cart. The rest of you, I want this wreck searched. Anything you find, bring it to me.” He slid off his horse and tethered it to the keel, then wiped sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “Sergeant, gather this lot up and keep them together, I don’t want any of them going anywhere.”
Genseric watched the corporal gallop away. One less, he thought; that’s probably as good as it’s likely to get. She had a particularly insufferable smirk on her face. He glanced at Orderic, who was looking straight at him, waiting; he didn’t dare nod, but he flicked his eyes quickly at the officer, then at the sergeant, then looked away. He let his left hand hang by his side, closed his fist, lifted first the thumb, then the index finger, middle finger, ring finger, little finger; and then he threw himself at the officer and dragged him to the ground.
The cloak helped; Genseric was able to drag it over the officer’s head with his left, which meant he could draw that handsome ivory-hilted sword with his right and use it to stab its owner just above the thigh, where there’s a gap between the bottom row of plates of the regulation cuirass and the top of the cuisse. He put an extra bit of strength behind it, just to relieve his feelings, until he felt the blade grate on bone; then he jumped up, letting the impetus drag the sword out of the wound, and looked round to see if Orderic had read his signals. Apparently yes; the sergeant was staggering backwards, as Orderic lunged forward to stab one of the troopers, who’d been a bit slow figuring out what was happening. Then another trooper monopolised his attention for a moment or so; a tricky customer who feinted a skull-splitting chop to bring his guard up, then started to shift into a groin-level stab; Genseric read him right, pivoted on his back foot and cut down on his outstretched arm, catching him just above the wrist. He was overdoing it – the hand came off and went flying, and Genseric stumbled forward, briefly losing his balance. That could have been disastrous if there’d been anyone behind him, and it was pure luck that there wasn’t. But he recovered well and was nicely poised on the balls of his feet when a trooper lunged at him with a lance. He shifted left, caught the lance just below the head with his left hand, reeled the trooper in like a fish and cut his throat with a little backhand flick. As the trooper went down, he saw the helmsman topple over backwards; he reversed the dead soldier’s lance and threw it at the man who’d killed the helmsman, missed but drew him forward into a simple feint-high-cut-low. As he killed him, he thought he saw a shadow cross the dying man’s face; without looking, he pulled out the sword, reversed it and stabbed blindly behind him, registered an impact against something too hard to pierce; turned as tightly as he could and brought his sword up just in time to block a half-hearted cut; angled his blade so the cut would slide off and converted the block into a downward thrust that slithered off the scales of the cuirass down into an improvidently advanced knee. The pain and shock of that bought him enough time for a step back and a rather belated assessment of the situation, which he concluded with a rising cut under the chin – again, overdoing it, he cut right through to the poor devil’s teeth. Another step back and count the men standing – three. Orderic, one marine and the other sailor. Victory, apparently. He caught his breath and forced his mind clear, so difficult to do after a scrimmage. He was covered in blood, but he was pretty sure none of it was his, so that was all right.
An awful thought struck him and he looked round; but she was still there, frozen stiff, a look of pure horror on her face. “Get her,” he snapped, and Orderic snapped out of whatever dream he’d been in, bounded across and grabbed her by the wrist; she screamed, and Orderic bellowed, “Quiet!”, and she stopped. Genseric stooped over the fallen marine; all over with him, poor sod, his head was split open down to his eyebrows. The helmsman he knew about. “You,” he called to the marine, “get those horses.”
“Maj
or.” Orderic pointed with his sword at the dead bodies. Yes, but there wasn’t time, the corporal would be back with his cart – the corporal, who’d heard everything, names, the request for asylum; damn. His idea had been to leave the mess and let the sea clean it up; by the time the bodies were found, they’d be over the border. He’d forgotten about the corporal. But an extra enemy might well have turned the fight against them, he’d done well to shorten the odds; it’s never perfect, and you have to do the best you can. He shook his head. “Get her on a horse,” he said. “Better tie her to the girth or something, I can’t be bothered with any more fuss.”
Fortuitously there was some rope, just about enough, one end of a broken line tied to a cleat hook on the side of the catboat. He guessed she was still in shock; it occurred to him for the first time that maybe she’d never seen anything like this before – if so, a slice of luck, she’d be numb with it and no bother to anyone. Now then, which way? Happily, even he knew the answer to that one. The sea is north, therefore left is west, just follow the coast to the border. As he hauled himself into the dead officer’s saddle his mind was buzzing with mental arithmetic; let x be the time it takes for the cart to get here, plus another x for it to go back, a third x for the soldiers to arrive—
Orderic handed him the reins of her horse. He didn’t look round. This was going to be hard enough as it was.
Maybe an hour later. The sun was going down. Orderic said, “We could lay up for the night in that stand of trees over there.”
Genseric shook his head. “Let’s keep going,” he said. “It can’t be much further, surely.”
“I don’t like riding at night without a lantern,” Orderic said. “And the horses need a rest, they’re dead beat.”
Genseric wasn’t listening. He was looking straight ahead, unable to be sure what he’d just seen in the failing light. “It can’t be,” he said. “How could they have got ahead of us?”