Hardway

by David Pilling

  “Beyond the bounds of celestial light,

  “and the darkest dreams of mortals,

  “Beneath the bone room's eternal night,

  “Nearby The Void's dread portal.

  “A freezing watery lair there waits,

  “Black nothing its ceiling and walls,

  “In a slumber as old as the foetid gate,

  “The Kraken hears my call.”

  As Liss' wailing voice finished its eerie summons, Limpet realised everyone was watching her, even their ragged would-be assailants. He even found himself staring at her in disbelief. The wind had disappeared and all was still. Both ships were becalmed in a sea of deafening silence. Even the ocean seemed to hold its breath.

  Strongarm snorted, “The what hears your call?” He got his answer just as the pirates roared their battle cry and made to board, and Storn's men braced themselves for the onslaught.

  Silently, a long, grey-green tentacle rose from the waves beyond the Hell's Wind, like a vast snake, shield-sized suckers studded with serrated hooks lining its pale belly. It wavered in the air above them for a heartbeat, the tapered tip over-hanging like a hand hovering over a box of chocolates, then plucked a pirate from the deck. His battle-cry turned to blood-curdling shriek as the hooks impaled him, then he disappeared into the mirror flat blue.

  For a moment the crew of the Hell's Wind hesitated, bewildered looks on their craggy faces, as four more tentacles rose from the water around them. A tall, broad-shouldered man with a silver beard and a scimitar, who Limpet took to be their captain, raised his weapon and bellowed for them to board. The cry went up again, and all hell broke loose. Their captain’s cry had stirred the pirates and their brief hesitation ended in the blink of an eye.

  Limpet edged along the larboard rail, looking for a place he could hide Liss away from the fighting. As he did he felt the deck shudder as the corsairs leapt across the gap. More tentacles appeared silently from beneath the surface and snatched away screaming pirates. Storn's troopers had briefly looked uncertain at the sudden appearance of the long arms covered in grasping suckers, but with a roar from Storn, they got to work, chopping down their attackers with practised skill, and yet more slimy arms came over the side to drag men down. But eventually the Hell's Wind's greater numbers pushed the soldiers back.

  Storn blew a single note on a bugle and his men fell back to let the pirates spill onto the deck of the Salt Queen. Now Runaway Rollo's assortment of murderous misfits went to bloody work.

  And what work.

  The pirates surged on the deck of the Salt Queen, howling and whooping. Though whether it was an eagerness to murder and pillage or a pressing desire to escape the nightmarish tentacles picking them off in threes and fours, it was anybody's guess. Whatever the reason, Rollo and his hired villains welcomed them with open arms and promptly set about slaying them.

  Maddened by the ravenous beast beneath the Hell's Wind, harried from either side by Storn's soldiers, they were lambs to the slaughter. In their desperation they put up a fight, and the sound of clashing steel, the bellows of Strongarm, and the shrieks of dying men soon filled the air. As ever, Rollo fought silently, though the shrieks of his opponents made enough noise for two.

  Limpet propped Liss against the larboard rail and drew his sword, ready to protect her or die trying. The fighting had not reached that side of the ship, hemmed in as their attackers were to starboard, the deck beneath them slick and shiny red. Slippers fought nearby. Shorter than the rest of his rag-tag fellowship and lithe as a stoat, he wielded a pair of falchions in a blurring, mesmerising dance, each movement flowing into the next, everywhere and nowhere at once.

  Eventually, through sheer weight of numbers, the pirates began to push the defenders back, though they stumbled over their fallen comrades and were still being systematically devoured by the relentless, hungry arms sliding from the ocean on all sides. As Hardway's unlikely fellowship spread out to form a wider circle the numbers were beginning to even out, though the gaps meant their assailants had more room to move, and Limpet felt more exposed.

  The battle spread across the deck, men staggered to and fro, ducking and wheeling. The battle cries had turned to panting and cursing, the cries of pain to moans and whimpers. Limpet heard a high-pitched yelp and turned to see the monk, until now motionless, leap spinning in the air and knock a black-bearded brute overboard with his staff. A shimmering tentacle rushed from the water, caught the pirate before he hit the water, and hoisted him screaming into the air before taking him down again.

  The twins Maressa and Celees fought back to back, a constant stream of insults issuing from their mouths, just as if they were back in Marco's gambling den. Wherever they were, they looked at home in a brawl. Strongarm's hatchets quaffed their share of claret too. The man didn't appear to be moving fast, yet he remained standing while so many fell at his feet. The green-cloaked stranger who Limpet had not recognised grunted as he swung and stabbed, piercing ice-blue eyes twinkling within his steel helm.

  Slippers was surrounded now. Three of the raggedy pirates attacked him as he turned to parry two blades. A third slashed downwards at his back. Limpet cried out as he brought his sword up with all his strength to stop the blow. As the blades kissed, a jolt of pain ran up his arm. The man turned, a sneering grimace displaying a ruin of smashed, bloody teeth, and aimed an elbow at Limpet's nose. Limpet ducked and span, brought his sword around to chop the back of the pirate's knee and sent him down screaming onto the bloody deck. Limpet stamped, completing the destruction of his opponent's teeth, and stamped again, again, until the body lay still.

  Though the fight had seemed to take an eternity to begin, it seemed to end in a heartbeat. Suddenly there were just two pirates left standing, surrounded by their dead and dying shipmates. The survivors looked exhausted. One propped himself up on his sword, the other swayed unsteadily, right arm hanging useless, blood streaming from his armpit. Silence returned, punctuated by the occasional groan of man and ship.

  Slowly, silently, tentacles slid over the rail and wrapped themselves around the two defeated pirates. These two did not scream or plead for their lives, they just froze, staring helplessly about them, eyes wide open as though savouring the last light they would see, as they were dragged down beneath the surface. Nobody moved as more tentacles came quietly over the side of the Salt Queen. Men muttered prayers and gripped their weapons tightly as the long, slimy arms groped about on the deck and, one by one, dragged away the bodies of the pirates. Some were still alive but badly wounded, and begged to be saved as they were taken back to the sea.

  When the last pirate disappeared over the rail, the wind slowly returned and the World Apparent seemed to exhale. The sea came back to life, its surface rising and falling as if nothing had happened, and the ship rocked once more.

  The only bodies that remained were those of five of Storn's soldiers. Three were dead; another two lay wounded. Limpet sheathed his sword and lifted his little sister from the deck. He looked at her, sick with relief that she was unharmed. Hearing more pitiful groaning towards the stern, he looked and saw the artist, lying on his face at the end of a trail of vomit, somehow having contrived to suffer more than anyone.

  He couldn't say why, but the sight of that hapless fool lying there made him laugh. As the shouts of the crew rose around him and the wind caught the sails once more, he gripped Liss tight in his arms and laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks. He laughed until his knees were weak and he had to lean against the rail to hold himself up. He laughed until he thought he would piss himself. Then he turned to see the monk standing there smiling at him.

  “Well done,” said the monk. “You made it. All three of you.”

  12.

  “Look at this,” barked General Dusek, holding up the tattered bit of rag on a pole, “and mark it well. This is all that remains of the Fifteenth.”

  The rag was a piece of red canvas, moth-eaten and frayed at the edges. Time and water damage had done their work, but
the sigil of a rearing white bull in the centre was still intact. For the past sixty years or so it had laid in a chest in a damp strong-room under the governor’s palace.

  Dusek had asked—no, demanded—for the banner to be dug out and given to him.

  Just another bit of mouldering junk, he thought, the rubbish of the past. Like me. But rubbish can have its uses.

  One of the company of raw recruits gathered before him raised a hand. “Please, sir,” asked the youth, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, “what were the Fifteenth?”

  Dusek grinned at the question. “They were the best, lad,” he replied. “The best fighting company in the Old Kingdom, back in the days when it really was a united kingdom, not a bunch of squabbling little fiefdoms ruled over by petty chiefs. Kings, these latter-day jackanapes call themselves! Kings! Nothing but a pack of roosters fighting over the biggest dunghill.”

  He paused for breath. The gaggle of young men and women standing in front of him, some little more than children, knew little of history, and would benefit even less from his ranting.

  “Yes, the Fifteenth,” he went on in a calmer voice. “The Fifteenth Legion, they were. Not the biggest legion in the old royal army corps, never more than a thousand men, but the best. To get in you had to be a veteran of at least fifteen years’ front-line combat experience. In battle they formed the last line of defence. If all went to shit, the Fifteenth would stand firm while everyone else hooked it.”

  If he still had eyes, they would have taken on a misty look, nostalgic for a past he had never known, and only heard of in tales recited by old men in his youth. “Ever heard the expression ‘going down to the Fifteenth’?” he asked dreamily. “No, I can see you haven’t. It means, to carry on to the bitter end.”

  He stared grimly at the rows of pale faces. Every one of them was a mask of barely suppressed terror. General Dusek, with his empty eye-sockets and wild mood swings, scared the hell out of them. Good.

  “Why have I dug out this old thing?” he said, giving the ancient banner a shake. “Partly out of sentiment, but not just that. We can learn something from the history of the Fifteenth. Or rather, you can. I learned it years ago, while your parents were still fouling their nappies.”

  He raised a finger. “And I tell you, you had better learn it pretty damned quickly. The enemy will soon be outside our walls. If we’re lucky, we have a few weeks to get ready for them. Weeks, to turn you”—he stabbed the finger at them like a spear—“possibly the worst, most inept, bone-headed rabble I have ever had the misfortune to command, into a force capable of throwing the bastards back. Into an army.

  “An army,” he repeated, blowing out his sallow cheeks, “a few hundred ragged volunteers. Just look at yourselves. The scrapings of the gutter. Beardless boys. Girls. Girls, for fuck’s sake! What are you going to do, my lovelies? Flap your skirts at the enemy and hope the gust knocks them over?”

  Many of the recruits looked suitably ashamed, hanging their heads and shuffling their feet. A few of the youngest and most impressionable started to sob.

  Dusek forced himself not to smile. This was the life. The life he remembered. In spite of his words, he had moulded far worse raw material than these into fighting soldiers.

  The first step was to break them. He was good at that.

  “Still,” he allowed, “at least you did volunteer. Give me volunteers over conscripts any day. You want to fight, or think you do. That’s a start. Any of you served in the militia?”

  A hesitant chorus of ‘Yes, sir’ rippled down the line. Dusek nodded.

  “Right. Well, at least I won’t have to teach most of you cunts how to march or stand in line. And you should know which end of a spear to point at the enemy.”

  He folded his hands behind his back and marched slowly up and down the front row, eyeballing—so to speak—each recruit in turn.

  They were assembled on the training ground immediately below Fort Alex, looming above them on its high crag. This was where the regular garrison of Hardway, itself a ragbag of part-time militia and petty criminals given military service instead of prison, gathered to drill once a week.

  Most of the garrison, which usually numbered no more than two hundred men, were on guard duty on the city walls. A few loafers lounged outside the barrack-huts, watching Dusek put his volunteers through their paces. They found the spectacle highly amusing, and the sound of their coarse laughter and witty remarks carried on the stiff breeze blowing in from the sea.

  “Don’t listen to those clowns,” said Dusek. “What they haven’t realised yet is that I’ve been given the rank of Commander. Which means I’m in charge of all the troops on this island. Their turn will come. I’ll make them bloody dance, don’t you worry.”

  A few of the recruits dared to laugh. Their mirth instantly died away when he stopped, spinning on his heel to glare at one quivering specimen, a lad of fifteen or thereabouts. The lad’s watery blue eyes bulged, and the makeshift spear in his right hand trembled violently as Dusek pushed his face just inches from his.

  “What,” said Dusek, in a quiet, deliberate tone, jabbing his lethal finger at the spear, “the fuck is that supposed to be? It’s a fucking carving knife strapped to a fucking stick,” he added before the other could stammer out a reply. “I suppose your mummy made it for you, did she?”

  “And where the hell did you get this bit of rusting ironmongery from?” He poked the boy’s ill-fitting breastplate, forged in the shape of an absurdly muscular chest and abdomen, complete with protruding nipples. “Your mummy kill a giant or something? It’s far too big.”

  “It…it belonged to my grandfather, sir,” the boy quavered, blinking in fright. “He was a soldier. A cavalryman.”

  “A cavalryman. On an island of mountains. Some bloody use he must have been.”

  “He…he served on the mainland, sir. For the rebels in Calisse, against the Grey Queen.”

  Dusek took a step back. “Did he, now? Then he will have known the lesson of the Fifteenth.”

  He thrust the banner in the boy’s face. “What is the lesson of this piece of old cloth, lad? What does it teach us?”

  The watery eyes threatened to pop from their sockets. “I…I…I…I…”

  Dusek sighed. “The lesson is simple,” he said, raising his voice so all could hear. “Never give in. Never surrender. Fight to the last, even if all hope of victory has gone. If you refuse to accept you’re beaten, you won’t be.”

  Sometimes, he added silently.

  He looked down at the canvas. How old was the thing? How many times had it been carried to war? How often had the famous white bull of the Fifteenth reared in defiance, fluttering over the bloodied heads of a few stubborn, iron-willed survivors, daring the enemy to come on and make an end of them?

  “You won’t be beaten,” he repeated, “if the Gods are good. No, not good. The Gods aren’t good. They’re complete bastards. And like all bastards, if you give them a show, they might throw you a bone or two. That’s it. That’s what we have to do. Give the Gods a show. Kill as many of the other lot as possible.”

  He squared his bony shoulders. “Right. Let’s do some fucking drill.”

  The drill went rather better than he hoped, though his recruits wouldn’t have known it from the way he bullied and bawled until the sun started to dip below the western sea.

  For an old man, Dusek’s energy was apparently inexhaustible. Theirs wasn’t. Long before darkness fell, even the youngest and fittest of the recruits were dead on their feet. Those who couldn’t stand the pace were sent to what he sneeringly termed ‘Invalid’s Corner’—a section of wall near one of the barrack-huts, where they rested, gulping down watered wine and talking in low voices of their hatred for Dusek.

  He knew what they were saying about him, and revelled in it. “I know you don’t like me, boys and girls,” he shouted merrily as he oversaw yet another sword-and-buckler exercise. “That’s just fine. Store it all up for Vazul and the Grey Queen. When their troops com
e knocking at our door, you can vent it all on them. The poor sods.”

  To his relief, many of the recruits knew the basics of drill. All of them knew how to defend themselves—no-one survived for long on the streets of Hardway otherwise—and the rudiments of spear and dagger. Those from the poorest quarter of town knew rather more than that, and would have done serious damage during the unarmed combat exercises if Dusek hadn’t intervened.

  “If I catch you, or anyone else, using one of these things,” he warned, leaning down to address one scowling, grubby-faced little girl, “I’ll melt it down and make you bloody eat it. Understand?”

  He weighed the set of iron knuckledusters in his palm. “Don’t see why,” she mumbled. “It’s a weapon, ain’t it? Only nobs know how to use swords. We use stuff like this.”

  Dusek patted her on the head. “Why, the dear little mite,” he said, absentmindedly wiping his hand on his tunic. “Gods bless the little children, so innocent and pure. You can’t use knuckledusters because knuckledusters are not a soldier’s weapon, and I am trying to turn you into soldiers.”

  He turned to address the rest of the poorest recruits. These were the real scum of Hardway: beggars, dock workers and labourers, thieves and cutpurses and petty criminals of every stamp— white-faced and misshapen from their dreadful diet, ignorant, superstitious, resentful and unthinkingly cruel.

  Dusek met the eye of the biggest of them, a tall, lanky youth with a greasy mop of black hair. His mates called him Skypole due to his height. He was about sixteen years old and at least three times that in terms of sadistic villainy and general hard-faced cynicism.

  Even an Emperor couldn’t make this lot stand to attention, he thought, grimacing at their sullen, slouching demeanour. Skypole kept trying to eyeball him, a lost cause if ever there was one.