Rogues

by George R. R. Martin

  “Why is that moklek still following us?” asked Sir Hereward, who had narrowly avoided being crushed by the pachyderm’s leap.

  “I asked her to,” said Mister Fitz. “As I said, she could be very useful. Time for the declaration. We have a few minutes now, I doubt the godlet is aware of our presence, it being fixated on a swift exit from the harbor.”

  The starboard oars sank in and pushed again. The mooring ropes snapped with cracks like gunshots, and the hexareme wallowed far enough away from the jetty for the portside oars to come out, again propelled by energistic tendrils.

  Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz reached into pocket and pouch and brought out silk armbands, which they slipped over their arms, above the elbow. Sorcerous symbols began to shine upon the cloth, brighter than the moon. Then man and puppet spoke together:

  “In the name of the Council of the Treaty for the Safety of the World, acting under the authority granted by the Three Empires, the Seven Kingdoms, the Palatine Regency, the Jessar Republic, and the Forty Lesser Realms, we declare ourselves agents of the Council. We identify the godlet manifested … uh …”

  Sir Hereward paused and looked at Mister Fitz, who carried on, the man echoing the puppet’s words a moment later.

  “Aboard this vessel as an unknown, but listed entity under the Treaty, as proven by its dire actions upon innocents. Consequently, the said godlet and all those who assist it are deemed to be enemies of the World and the Council authorizes us to pursue any and all actions necessary to banish, repel, or exterminate the said godlet.”

  “You’re not insurance agents,” said Tira. Her hood had come slightly unstuck in the race to the ship and slipped backwards, showing more of her face. She looked even younger than she had previously.

  “You could say we are,” replied Mister Fitz. “After a fashion.”

  “In any case, you’ll get your share of the ivories,” said Hereward, thinking he correctly judged the fleeting expression that crossed Tira’s eyes and flattened her mouth. “Presuming we survive.”

  The ship lurched sternwards as the oars on both sides moved in unison, a clumsy, lurching progress that made the deck tilt one way and then the other, with every part of the old ship groaning and screeching in turn.

  “We won’t get far like this,” said Sir Hereward. “I doubt this tub has been out in anything but a dead calm for years, and going in the right direction at that. Where is the godlet? And what’s to stop its sucking the life out of us as we approach?”

  “It is underneath us,” said Mister Fitz. “In the center of the ship, on the middle deck. As long as it keeps rowing, it will have no energy to spare for dehydrative assaults.”

  “And if it stops rowing?” asked Tira.

  “The ship will probably sink,” said Sir Hereward, who didn’t like the feel of the deck under his feet. The planks were shifting sideways, the hull clearly lacked rigidity, and it was already down a foot or more at the stern, not so much piercing the small harbor waves as plowing into them. “It is moot whether it will turn turtle as soon as we pass the mole, or be driven under stern first.”

  “We must get the ivories before then,” said Mister Fitz. “If the ship does sink, the godlet will realize that it can simply walk on the floor of the sea. For the moment, it is still imprinted with Montaul’s view of the world and his human limitations.”

  “Is it weak enough for you to banish it with your needle?” asked Sir Hereward. “We distract it, while you get close enough?”

  “I fear not,” said Mister Fitz. “Rather we must secure the ivory figurine that anchors it, bring it up here, and have Moonray Pallidskin Helterskelter III step on it.”

  Sir Hereward followed the flick of the puppet’s eyeballs to the left, indicating their animal companion.

  “You mean the moklek?”

  “It is one sure means of destruction for such things,” said Mister Fitz. “To be trodden on by an albino moklek. That is why I said it was an opportunity. Considerably more convenient than our original plan to take the ivories to the fire pools of Shundalar, and cheaper than committing them to the priests of the Infallible Index to be stored without hope of retrieval. Though it would be even better if our friend here had silver shoes, that speeds the process—”

  “How do you do know her name?” interrupted Sir Hereward.

  “It is carved on her right tusk,” said the puppet. “That is her pedigree name. But there is a name on her left tusk, which I suspect she prefers. Rosie.”

  The moklek raised her trunk and gave a short, soft trumpet. Almost as if in answer, a red rocket suddenly shot up from the fort on the mole, followed by two cannon blasts.

  “Not so swift on the alarm,” said Sir Hereward, eyeing the rocket’s trajectory with professional interest. When not engaged directly in the elimination of inimical godlets, he was a mercenary officer of artillery. “And their powder is damp. That rocket should have gone twice as high.”

  “Even with damp powder, the idiots in the fort might hit us if they decide to shoot,” said Tira. “It is close enough.”

  “So how do we get to the ivories?” asked Sir Hereward, grabbing at a rail and wincing as the oars sank again to drive the ship backwards, and a particularly nasty groan came from the timbers below, the vessel shivering down its whole length as it was propelled too fast into the swell. They were already a good hundred yards out from the quay and heading into brisker waters away from the protection of the mole. “I presume it keeps them close, and even if the thing is rowing for dear life, I don’t fancy just strolling in on a desiccating inimical godlet.”

  “I suggest you and Tira climb over the sides and go in through the oar ports on the deck above it—”

  “There are huge oars going up and down in those ports,” interrupted Tira. “We would be crushed.”

  “It has already broken a number of oars, or they were broken before, so there are empty ports,” said Mister Fitz. “Choose carefully, climb down, swing in. I will cast a nimbus on your weapons that will allow them to engage the energistic tendrils of the godlet. As you hack and slash them away from the oars, it will disrupt the rowing, and the entity will have to fight back. While it is distracted fighting you on the upper deck, I will sneak in on the middle deck where it lies, gather the ivories, and bring them up here, where Rosie will stomp on them.”

  “The fourteen ivories you mentioned,” said Tira. “Not the others.”

  “Indeed,” said Mister Fitz, who did not lie but did not always tell the truth.

  “So there will be a few inches of rotten worm-eaten oak between us and the main presence of the godlet?” mused Sir Hereward. “That is better than I feared. Do you wish to take the port or starboard side, Tira?”

  “Neither,” said the thief. “But having come this far, and waiting a year already for my Fifth Circle testing—”

  “Fifth Circle?” asked Sir Hereward. “At this rate we will discover you were only apprenticed yesterday.”

  “Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, a haul such as these ivories will grant me rapid advancement,” said Tira nonchalantly. “I will take the port side.”

  “Hold out your weapons and look away,” said Mister Fitz.

  They did so. The sorcerous needle flared, a flash of light illuminating the deck as if lightning had struck the stumpy mast above them. When they looked back, the needle was once again closed in Fitz’s hand, and the blades of dagger and knives glowed with shimmering blue light, like a Wintertide pudding in burning brandy, only somewhat more impressive.

  “A word of advice,” said Sir Hereward to Tira. “Ikithan spider silk does not stick when subjected to seawater.”

  Tira looked surprised, but quickly schooled her face, and stripped the slippers from her feet. The nails of her big toes were clad in bronze, darkened at the tips with some kind of poison.

  “Watch the oars through at least two strokes before you choose your port,” added Sir Hereward. “Make sure you won’t be caught by those forr’ard or behind.”

 
Tira nodded. She looked scared, and Hereward though he heard her suppress a whimper.

  “You’re really just an apprentice, aren’t you?” asked Sir Hereward suddenly. “How old are you?”

  Tira shrugged, then nodded her head again.

  “Fifteen,” she whispered. “And a half.”

  “Gods help us,” muttered Sir Hereward, from the lofty height of his twenty-five years. “Stay here with the moklek. Please.”

  Hereward turned away from her and so did not see the smile that so briefly flickered across her face. He looked over the side, his head jerking back in momentary startlement at how low the hexareme was in the water, so low that the bottom tier of oar ports was only a handsbreadth above the sea, with the taller waves slopping in. If there had been any hope the ship would weather a turn past the protective mole, it was now extinguished.

  It was the matter of only a few seconds to find a suitable gap, where no oars extended. He briefly considered holding the dagger with its energistic flames in his teeth but instead put it through his belt, climbed swiftly over the side, and, wasting no time, went feetfirst through the port below.

  It was brighter belowdecks than above, the moonbeams through the ports faint beside the bright violet light of the energistic tendrils that worked the oars, tendrils that came up like a great trunk from below, through the gridded hatch in the lane between the empty benches, and then broke into branches extending to every oar.

  Sir Hereward slashed at the closest tendril, severing it from the oar, and had to duck and dodge as the iron-shod shaft kicked up. He stayed low, crawling forward to hack at the next tendril, with similar results, and this time that oar crossed with the one in front, with a rending and splintering that spread along the deck as the oars in motion tangled with those suddenly stopped. The hexareme yawed broadside to the wind, and almost immediately listed to port, the lowest oar ports two decks below now fully submerged, water cascading in with unstoppable force.

  Sir Hereward felt the list and heard the fateful gurgling. Leaping back from a tendril that came questing for him, not for an oar, he cut it in two and retreated to the port where’d he’d come in.

  “Fitz!” he roared, in full sea captain’s shout. “Do you have them?”

  More tendrils came towards him, from both sides and in the front, and many more were giving up their useless, broken oars and reorienting themselves to attack. Hereward cut and slashed at them while he hung half-out of the port. His bare foot touched the crest of a wave, and he felt the hexareme shudder with every wave. It was sinking, and sinking fast.

  “Fitz! Do you have them?”

  “Yes! Come up!”

  The puppet’s thin, reedy voice came clear and high through the bass groans of breaking timber and the drowning gurgles of the ship. Sir Hereward hacked at a tendril that was trying to grasp him by the throat, threw the dagger at another that almost had his ankle, and exited through the port faster than the monkey he had almost bought earlier had disappeared with his purse when demonstrating its abilities.

  He was none too soon. The sea poured in under him as he climbed, and there was already water washing halfway up the main deck, which was inclined at an angle of some twenty degrees, perhaps halfway to turning over. Rosie the albino pygmy moklek was leaning against the mainmast, one foot raised, and Mister Fitz was placing a wooden case with a bronze handle and reinforced edges under that foot. The case containing the ivories.

  Then the puppet was suddenly caught up in a glowing net of bright blue energistic spiracules and dragged away from the case, which was snatched up by Tira. Letting the netted puppet roll down the deck, she sprang to the port gunwale, the case in her right hand.

  Sir Hereward swarmed up the slanted deck on all fours. Tira held up the case, smiled at him, and shouted, “Asantra-Lurre may no longer be, but we Asantrans live on!”

  She turned to dive into the sea, just as Hereward drew his short, three-barreled pepperbox pistol from the secret pocket under his vest, cocked it, and shot her in one swift motion. Only two barrels fired, but at least one ball struck the thief, low on her right arm above the wrist. Blood and fragments of bone sprayed out. Tira dropped the case and fell over the side, her scream of anguish cut short by the green wave that caught her.

  The case slid down towards Hereward. He bent and grabbed it, swinging it over to the moklek even as lurid violet tendrils broke out through the deck in a dozen places and shot towards him, and a hulking, vaguely man-shaped mass of sickening energies erupted from the aft companionway, its inhuman voice shrieking in some incomprehensible language that hurt Hereward’s ears. The godlet staggered along the deck, and its furthermost tendrils reached with snakelike speed to grip Hereward around the bare ankles, his skin sizzling from the touch till he let himself slide down the deck to plunge into the great wash of sea that was roiling about above the already-submerged gunwales.

  As he fell, Sir Hereward cried out: “Crush the case, Rosie! Crush the case!”

  The pygmy moklek trumpeted in response and brought her foot down on the case. It splintered, but did not break. A wave crashed in, sending Hereward, struggling amidst tendrils, back up towards the mast. The wash caught the case and threatened to push it away, till Rosie gripped the handle with her trunk. The godlet, or that portion of it within the remnant body of Montaul, staggered towards the ivories, reaching out, only to be seized by an energistic lash, white as lightning, that emanated from a needle in the hand of Mister Fitz, who had escaped the blue net and was now some ten feet up the mainmast backstay.

  “Crush—” Sir Hereward called again, but a tendril closed around his throat, and his shout was curtailed, the breath stopped from his lungs. He tried to prize the noose open, but his fingers burned and could get no purchase, and more and more tendrils were wrapping themselves around every part of his body, squeezing and tugging, so that he was as like to be torn apart as strangled, or even drowned, as in their viciousness the tendrils kept shoving him underwater.

  Rosie the moklek, her broad rear wedged against the mainmast, did not need to be told again. She raised her foot and brought it down with all her strength, smashing the lid of the case. Treading down, she ground case and all the ivories within to dust, continuing to stomp and crush till there was nothing left larger than a tiny splinter.

  The energistic tendrils grew flaccid and shrank back from Hereward, who crawled coughing and spluttering up the slanted deck, emerging from the froth of broken water just in time to see the tendrils withdraw into the corpse of Montaul. There, they dimmed to become small lights that flickered within the cadaver’s eyes, mouth, and open ribs. Then there was a dull pop, a sudden rush of air against the wind, and the lights went out. The remnants of Montaul fell to the deck and were whisked away by the roiling sea, for the hexareme had now settled so far that only a small part of its deck was above the surface.

  “Abandon ship!” called out Hereward weakly. “She’s foundering!”

  Mister Fitz nodded, but instead of jumping to the sea from the backstay, he climbed up it, and then swung down on a rope to Rosie’s back, where he perched easily atop her head. The moklek raised her trunk, ready for use as a breathing tube, shifted away from the mast, and plunged into the sea.

  Hereward swam to them. Seeing that Rosie was at home even in the sea, and her broad back, though smaller than a regular moklek’s, offered considerable room, he pulled himself aboard with a little help from Mister Fitz. Though the moklek’s back offered only inches of freeboard, Rosie floated with the waves, and wind and tide were already carrying them back to the quay, aided by her four strong legs paddling vigorously below.

  “Well shot,” said Mister Fitz. “Somewhat making up for your misjudgment of the woman, though I should have come to expect that.”

  “She fooled you too,” said Sir Hereward, grimacing as he felt his burned throat. “You, to be caught like a novice in an Ikithan net.”

  “True,” mused the puppet. “It was fortunate she did not have one resistant to seawater.
But I suspected her from the first, for she had too much sorcerous gear for any thief of Kwakrosh, even she be the Thief-Mother herself.”

  “Then why did you not—” said Sir Hereward hotly before a great crack sounded behind them, and man and puppet turned to see a gout of flame leap up from the fortress on the mole.

  “Mortar bomb,” said Sir Hereward, watching fuse sparks trail across the sky. “They are poor aimers … if you have a needle left, Fitz …”

  “None to hand,” said the puppet. “My sewing desk is back at the inn.”

  “Or perhaps their aim is good,” said Sir Hereward, as the spark trail plummeted towards the almost-completely-submerged hulk of the hexareme, only its stumpy mast now visible above the white tops of the waves, a hundred yards behind them. “But if the fuse is too long, the bomb will be drowned …”

  A yellow-red flash lit the sky, followed a moment later by the shock of force through the water, and a moment later still by a great boom. As Hereward blinked to clear the flash from his eyes, he saw that there was no longer a mast or any other indication of the hexareme.

  “I thought they were shooting at us,” he said.

  “Perhaps they were,” said Mister Fitz.

  “In any case, it will take them some time to load another bomb,” said Sir Hereward, looking back again. “We will be ashore before then. It is a sad end for a famous vessel. One of the last surviving hexaremes of Ashagah, I believe. It will be difficult to explain to the worthies of the town, who I perceive are amongst the notable force gathering on the quay as our reception.”

  “Perhaps not so difficult, should we provide a suitable scapegoat,” said Mister Fitz. He stood up on Rosie’s head, held on to Hereward’s shoulder, and pointed ahead.

  Tira the thief, or priestess, or whatever she was, was floating on her back ahead of them, feebly kicking her legs. As the moklek drew closer, Hereward reached out and half slid her, half dragged her onto Rosie’s back.

  “Curse you,” she whispered. “May Pixalten-Qockril send—”