Hardway

by David Pilling

  As if in answer to his worst apprehensions, a grinning face appeared from one crumbling entrance in the stinking sandstone warren. He knew the face and its glazed eyes and shiny grey skin well. Sheepy, he was called. A harmless enough silt-head, normally a customer of his, now an unwanted interruption.

  Limpet’s mind raced. He was adept at remaining inconspicuous and could easily follow Eva and Benito unnoticed, but being led this way had made it much more difficult. If he could not deal with this interruption discreetly, he might be spotted, or worse—if his attention was distracted for too long he might let them get too far ahead and lose their trail.

  Sheepy's desperate grin greeted Limpet with unwelcome recognition. He opened his mouth to speak but the words did not come. His milky eyes grew wide and his jaw gaped as Limpet silently plunged a short knife into his heart with one hand and covered his lips with the other. Limpet gazed into those murky pools and watched the faint light fade as he relieved the man of his squalid life. Limpet pushed the lifeless body back into the darkness of the cave and walked on without breaking his stride. Liss continued to snore on his shoulder.

  They walked past that filthy refuge of the damned where Limpet and his sister had lived, and on over the dunes. Dusk was settling in now, and the two figures he followed picked up the pace. Limpet had to keep an even greater distance now they were out of the hustle and bustle of the town and in open space. The darkness would help him stay out of sight, but the darker it got the more he worried they would miss their ride altogether.

  Tall dunes loomed on either side, black against the fading, pale glow of the departed sun. He followed them along a winding path, into the darkness.

  * * * *

  Max couldn't concentrate. He'd never had a problem focusing on his work before—his vast portfolio was a testament to that—but since Eva had told him she was leaving he had thought of nothing else. He tried to paint but his mind wandered. He hadn't believed her when she first said she was leaving, a few nights earlier. And that afternoon, when she came to say goodbye, he still didn't truly believe she would leave. But for some reason, since she had turned and walked away, he couldn't stop thinking about her.

  He still hung in the same position he was in when she came, hours before. He realised he hadn't painted a thing since she left. He'd just hung there, staring at the drying paint before him, his brush now crusty and useless, his palette dry as a bone. The sun was going down and the light was fading. It was getting too dark to paint. He seemed to have wasted the whole afternoon totally preoccupied with Eva. This was not like him at all. He needed a drink.

  He placed his brush on the pallet and worked the pulleys on his contraption, manoeuvring himself over the half-finished mural.

  He had never painted without Eva. She was in all his paintings. She was his muse, his inspiration; she was the life in the art. She was many things. How could he ever paint without her? He couldn't imagine it. He looked at his mural and felt sick at the thought of painting another stroke. He felt numb.

  He went up to his room and poured himself a glass of wine. Even the Abbot's fine vintage tasted dull to him. He looked out the window. The sun was sinking. Half of it had already vanished beneath the horizon. Dusk approached. He felt suddenly claustrophobic, trapped, suffocated. He had to get out. He dropped the glass, shattering it on the floorboards, and ran from his room.

  He had no idea where he was going at first. He just ran, panicked, tears streaming down his cheeks. Eva had said the ship was leaving from a secret location. There were only a handful of secret ports on the island, away from the main harbour and Fort Alex. Thanks to his affiliation with Tulgan, he knew them all, and only one was big enough and deep enough to anchor a ship. He was going to have to run like hell to get there before dark.

  11.

  Her eyes gaped like toothless mouths. Her milky eyeballs were gone. Beyond them hung The Void. Vast, terrifying and irresistible.

  The still, unending emptiness was unbearable. Through it he saw the crushing distance of all time. He saw the world before men, before animals, before plants. Before life in its meaningful state. He saw The Void before The World Apparent. He saw aeons upon aeons, the mind-numbing expanse of all existence. He despaired. He longed for oblivion, but he had no eyes to close. He was doomed to witness the paralysing endlessness of infinity.

  The darkness beyond her eye sockets engulfed him, consumed him, and spread his essence across eternity. Visions of impossible beings squirming and writhing in the maddening depths of time and space filled him. Inconceivable states of alien consciousness brushed against him, probed him and swept over him. Myriad eyes gazed into him, tongues tasted him. Tendrils of gaseous minds groped at him.

  He saw the birth of the World Apparent. He saw the first men in all their primitive forms, and experienced their darkest fears and most base desires. Pride, hunger, lust and greed fuelled man's rage and drove him to unspeakable acts. Those selfish desires and fears spawned the first demons in the dank primeval swamps and on the wide, sweltering plains. And the acts of murder and rapine that followed scarred time itself, leaving behind wraiths, shades, not the ghosts of people but the manifestations of profound tragedy, treachery and grief. He wept in despair as the infernal caverns of hell congealed amidst the chaos.

  Then he saw man evolve into more recognisable forms. Man's unfettered, volatile psyche, in the harrowing bedlam of its own making, gave birth to necessities later labelled virtues. Altruism, faithfulness, loyalty, honour, mercy, generosity, forgiveness, compassion, these saved man from annihilation. And so these virtues germinated, manifesting as the equal and opposite of the demons. Gods were born, The Celestial Sphere rose, and The World Apparent found its precarious balance.

  Once again Liss' skeletal visage materialised before him. He cowered as it grew closer until her mouth opened to show two rows of slimy gums. He would have screamed, but he had no mouth of his own. A cold wind blew from her throat, freezing him.

  Whirlpools span in her empty sockets, forming eyeballs that stared into his naked soul, beyond his mental barriers. The eyes saw the real Limpet. The frightened child that exists, buried inside every man. They were Liss' eyes, only now they were not pale and blind, but hazel flecked with bright yellow like spring meadows, and all-seeing.

  * * * *

  Voices. Distant and muffled. Limpet woke huddled in the bilge where he had sneaked unnoticed the night before. Liss still slept wrapped in her fur, her head on his chest.

  He could feel the soft movement of the ship as it swayed from side to side but he could not see it. The darkness was complete down in the bilge, and all he could hear was the sound of the ocean, Liss breathing softly, and the occasional voice from above him, too far away to pick up any words. He had no idea how long the voyage would be. His only plan was to try and stay hidden until they reached land and he could slip away unnoticed, but if they were at sea more than a few days he knew he risked being discovered.

  He had woken with a start when his dream had ended. He hoped he hadn't cried out but he couldn't be sure. His mouth was parched. He took a swig from his waterskin, laid his head back again and closed his eyes. The rocking of the ship was soothing, and he was just drifting back to sleep when he heard someone groan.

  His eyes snapped open. A pointless reaction in the pitch darkness. He listened, not daring to breathe. There was someone else down there in the bilge. Surely not a member of the crew? No, the only person who spends the night in the bilge is a stowaway. Someone like me.

  The groaning continued, somewhere in the blackness, punctuated by muttering and cursing. Liss still slept. Limpet was grateful the little girl snored like a drunken sailor. She rarely spoke when she was awake, and her blind eyes did not close when she slept, so the snoring made it a lot easier to tell she was sleeping. He wondered if whoever they shared the bilge with had heard her, but he suspected their hapless fellow stowaway was too preoccupied with their own apparent suffering to notice, or care. He counted himself lucky that nei
ther he nor Liss had become seasick, and the bilge was no more uncomfortable than their squalid former dwelling in the Sandpit.

  There was silence for a few heartbeats, followed by the sound of retching. Limpet grimaced. The smell of vomit filled the air and he covered his nose and mouth with one hand. The pitiful sounds eventually lapsed into half snoring, half whimpering, and Limpet drifted into a mercifully black sleep.

  “Who is there?” a gravelly voice called out. “Show yourself!”

  A faint light permeated the dank atmosphere and dust danced before Limpet's sleepy eyes as air from the open hatch wafted across his face. Liss was no longer snoring. He looked down and saw her blank eyes staring into the dimness.

  “I know you’re there.” Limpet thought he sensed an edge of fear in the voice, though the man was doing his best to disguise it. “Don't make me come and find you.”

  Shit, he thought. We've been busted. He had hoped to remain undiscovered for longer than one night. He lay there, mind racing. He would have to reveal himself, and he knew there was no point in fighting.

  “Come out now, nice and easy, and no one needs to come to any harm!”

  Limpet shifted his numb legs, trying to get the blood flowing again as he prepared to emerge from his hiding place, when the voice spoke again.

  “A wise decision. Now, up the ladder. My gods, you smell like a tavern privy—don't get too close. I don't want the contents of your guts anywhere near me.”

  It must be the other stowaway who had been found. Perhaps Limpet would avoid discovery after all. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Stark against the steely sky, upon a tide from hell.”

  Limpet froze, breath held, as his sister’s loud voice echoed around the bilge.

  “Quarry trapped in a crystal eye,” she continued, heedless of their danger, “a black sail rides the swell.”

  “What the f...?” The guard's voice again. “How many more of you?”

  Limpet emerged slowly from his hiding place, cursing himself for not covering Liss' mouth with his hand. He recognised the other stowaway instantly. Even in the dim light, he looked rather worse for wear, though he often looked like that. The artist! What in the World Apparent was he doing here?

  “Black sail to starboard!” The shout came from above.

  “Shit,” the guard cursed. “First stowaways, now pirates.”

  The guard ushered Limpet into the sunlight with a sword at his back, the queasy artist staggering in front. The boat, a broad, fat-bellied cog called Salt Queen, was not a fast vessel by any means, which meant they wouldn't be outrunning any pirates today.

  As they emerged on deck, Limpet shielded his eyes with one hand. After hiding in the darkness below the bright sunlight was painful, though he was grateful for a lungful of fresh sea air. Maximilian lurched straight towards the rail and immediately puked over the side. Limpet blinked, his eyes slowly became accustomed to the sunlight and he was surprised to find he recognised several dubious characters amongst the motley crew assembled before him—people who belonged on the streets of Hardway, not aboard a ship.

  The Tickler lounged casually on the forecastle, idly balancing a throwing knife on the tip of an index finger. The sun glinted off the polished blades all across his black velvet jacket as the boat swayed. Tall and spindly, his sharp face always looked vaguely amused, as though he knew something no one else did. He had acquired his name by boasting how he could tickle a man's ribs from fifty paces. By “tickling” he meant filling his torso with sharp steel. It was not an empty boast, a fact to which many would testify, had they not become leaky corpses.

  A loud snort drew Limpet’s eyes to the larboard rail where Strongarm sat smoking a pipe and spitting a gobbet of phlegm over the side. A bear of a man with two hatchets in his belt, he was a former blacksmith, turned arm wrestler, turned street fighter, turned just plain fighter. His name was a remnant of his days at the forge, when the arm that wielded the hammer was considerably bigger than the other. Limpet couldn't see any difference now; both his arms looked like slaughtered pigs, hung on the butcher's hook, only hairier.

  Strongarm’s spittle sailed over the rail a hand’s breadth from another character Limpet knew. Slippers, the well-known thief, was perched lightly on the rail nearby, frowning as Strongarm’s release disappeared into the swell.

  Slippers had no visible weapons, but Limpet knew they were there—many of them. Slippers was a small, unassuming man but tricky as a weasel, sly and cunning. While his fellow rogues were throwing their weight about, he was likely to slip away silently and take most of their belongings with him. Needless to say, he was named for his choice of footwear, which was ideal for his particular line of work.

  Limpet turned on hearing a heavy Djanki accent and was surprised to see the ebony skinned twins Maressa and Celees, the bouncers from Marco's gambling den, a place frequented by some of the most unsavoury scum on the island. He had seen these two women make mincemeat of many a roughneck. Quite literally. They were only distinguishable by their weapons, which they had a habit of swapping.

  The twins were talking to a man Limpet had not seen before. A square-jawed man with a grey shadow on his cheeks and a greyer shadow in his eyes. His yellow hair was scraped back into a warrior's tail and he wore a dark green woollen cloak with a longsword poking from beneath. A steel helm was tucked under one arm.

  These thugs were but harmless flies compared with their chief, “Runaway” Rollo. Wider than Strongarm, Taller than The Tickler, more menacing than the pair of them put together. To Limpet, he had the air of a wild animal, every movement slow and deliberate, as though conserving every ounce of energy for the inevitable moment of explosive violence. His henchmen were proud of their fighting skills, and relished the opportunity to use them, their lives a daily routine of one-upmanship but Rollo showed no such weakness. Nor did he show emotion—none that Limpet had seen anyway—or seem to care about his reputation; that had a habit of taking care of itself. No pride, no ego, just an unnatural aptitude for killing, which he utilised with unquestionable efficiency. Rollo stood, arms folded, gazing towards the black sail on the horizon, as though he were watching a butterfly flutter towards a spider web.

  Limpet counted eight of Hardway's garrison so far, some he vaguely recognised. There were undoubtedly more aboard. Most were hurrying one way or another, following orders from a man on the forecastle. He'd seen the man perched precariously on a ladder in Preacher's Corner, ranting about salvation and hell-fire. Limpet was somewhat surprised now to hear the preacher addressed as Captain Storn.

  The soldiers scurried to and fro, following orders from Captain Storn, occasionally glancing to starboard at the growing black sails. Some wore stern purposeful expressions, some just looked frightened.

  The only person there who did not seem to be watching the approaching pirate ship was a monk who sat perfectly still against the main mast, his staff across his folding legs, his eyes closed. He looked almost as if he were a statue. The faintest smile played upon his lips.

  The soldier who had brought Limpet and Liss up from the bilge marched them over to Rollo—Limpet wasn’t sure what but guessed it was because he didn't know where else to put them—then strode towards the bowsprit to be barked at by Storn.

  Limpet and his little sister received little more than cursory glances from Rollo's assortment of ruffians. No one was even paying much attention to the artist, Maximilian Shackle, who continued to retch over the larboard rail. He seemed to have run out of innards now, and just made pitiful croaking, straining sounds.

  Instead, Storn's men were firmly focused on the danger at hand. They formed up in a line along the starboard rail, ready to meet their attackers, twelve in all. Disconcerted by their casual demeanour, Limpet was relieved to hear Rollo finally give the order for his rag-tag crew to ready themselves. In moments, Hardway's worst were ready, and armed to the nostrils. Storn bellowed orders at his soldiers.

  From his position by the larboard rail, Limpet could se
e faces on the other ship as it approached to starboard. Hard faces, scarred and weather beaten. Dark hungry eyes and bright thirsty steel twinkled and flashed as the black hull beneath them rose and fell. Their vessel was no bigger, yet they must have outnumbered the mismatched fellowship aboard the Salt Queen by three to one. The Salt Queen's crew, apparently paid to sail, not to fight, had vanished below decks.

  Now they were close enough for him to read the name painted in sharp, white letters on its side. Hell's Wind. The faster pirate ship slid alongside the Salt Queen until the faces of its surly passengers were within spitting distance.

  “Move!” Rollo ushered Limpet and Liss toward the Stern, away from where the Salt Queen was about to be boarded.

  “Stark against the steely sky,

  “upon a tide from hell,

  “Quarry trapped in a crystal eye,

  “a black sail rides the swell.”

  One or two of the soldiers momentarily turned their heads at the sound. The monk's eyes opened, though he made no other movement, and he stared straight at Liss.

  “Death's pale hands reach to embrace,” she continued, heedless,

  “The souls that sold their wings,

  “And the war god loves the bitter taste

  “of blood when the steel sings.”

  “But not all weapons are pinned to belts,

  “and sheathed in rotting hide,

  “Some wait hidden somewhere else,

  “in a place where worlds collide.”

  By now more of Captain Storn's men were looking at Liss than were watching the oncoming pirates, who were now surely within a few breaths of leaping aboard. Even The Tickler was eyeing her, still with his trademark expression of amusement. The world seemed to have gone very still, and Limpet felt as if things were suddenly happening in slow motion. Liss continued.