She smashed the heels of her hands against the underside of a shelf, and the plank lifted and clattered onto the one beneath it. Using both hands, she tugged at the right edge of the second shelf, and it tilted up, then slipped off its supports to the floor.
Rowan stumbled over the shelves, tripping, and fell against the back wall. It was wood.
She regained her feet, pulled out her sword, and put all her strength into a two-handed underhand stab. A half-inch of the point wedged into the wood. She twisted it as she pulled, then checked the result with her fingers: a shallow gouge.
“Bel!” Rowan came out of the closet and gripped Bel’s shoulder. “The back wall is wood. We have to break through!” Bel stared at
Rowan blindly, her face that of a warrior’s during battle. Then her expression changed, and she understood. She pulled away and scrambled over the scattered linens into the closet. She was stronger than Rowan; her sword was heavier. Shorter, she had room to swing overhand.
The burly man was standing against a wall, one of his women clinging and sobbing, the other standing free and watching Rowan with desperate alertness.
The man was huge. Rowan extended her sword hilt to him. “Take this. Help Bel.”
He extricated himself, stepped to the closet, and pulled out the planks of the fallen shelves. Lifting one, he tested its heft. He said to Rowan, “You keep the sword,” and pointed past her with his chin.
She turned and saw the shattered chandelier, and on it, three dragons. They crawled over it and over each other, indiscriminately, heads weaving and searching, tails writhing. The largest was as big as a dog.
Behind her, Rowan could hear the thumps as Bel and the man set to work. She stood with her back to the closet, knowing it was only a matter of time before the dragons sighted her. Wondering if, like frogs, they could only see moving objects, she stood as still as she could.
She sensed a presence beside her. Glancing to the side, she half expected to see Bel, but found instead one of the two other women, the self-possessed one. The woman was holding another plank in her hands, dividing her attention between the chandelier and Rowan’s face.
One of the dragons sent a random gout of flame splashing against the center of the fireplace.
Rowan searched her knowledge, seeking information about dragons. She found little, next to nothing. She had only her eyes and her reason.
She watched for a few moments, then spoke to the woman beside her. “The larger they are, the slower they move. They’ll cover ground quickly, because of the length of their stride, but these don’t react as fast as the tiny ones. Those flat heads have no room for much brain; they’re not very smart. Their eyes are set on the sides of their heads, but the flame comes from their snouts. So, if they’re looking at us, they can’t burn us; when they’re trying to burn, they can’t see us well.”
The woman nodded; one of the dragons froze, studying her with its right eye.
Rowan said, “I think they’re attracted by motion,” and then the dragon swung to face them. Rowan shoved the woman to the left and moved to the right. The flame spouted to where the woman had stood.
Rowan was up against the fireplace. The woman had fallen against one of the pillars supporting the balcony overhead; the closed door of the room behind her began to burn.
Rowan found herself pinned in the gaze of another dragon. She prepared herself to dodge, but a falling piece of timber in its opposite field of vision distracted it. It sent white flame in that direction, then pulled itself off the chandelier to investigate. Rowan hoped it would find enough to occupy itself.
Two remained: the dog-sized dragon on the left, and one slightly smaller on the right. Rowan realized that the woman by the pillar would shortly be trapped between the dragons on the chandelier and dragons that would emerge from the room behind her.
The two beasts were weaving again, searching. The larger shrieked in frustration, tilted back its head, and spat a fountain of fire straight up. Rowan watched the second, and at the instant its weaving brought its face toward her, she ran straight at it.
She brought her sword down on its flat head. The blow drove its head against the stone floor, and it was like striking an iron bar.
The larger creature noticed the movement, took an instant to study Rowan with its left eye, then the edge of a wooden board was driven against its throat. Aim ruined, the flame it spat caught the left side of Rowan’s cloak.
The dragon beneath Rowan’s sword twisted free, uninjured, and began spitting at random. Rowan dropped to the ground, writhed out of her burning cloak, rolled to the right, and froze. The flames on her cloak snuffed against the stone floor.
The woman’s plank had splintered down its length. She flung one half overhead past the dragons, one half to the left. She stood motionless, as the dog-sized dragon cocked its gaze left toward the clattering board.
She was standing some three feet in front of its blind snout. Her face was an agony of terror, but she did not move.
The smaller dragon had sent its flames at waist level, passing over Rowan’s head. It subsided and began searching again.
Rowan knew that the tableau could not last. When the dragon on the right was facing her again, she moved forward, in full view of the larger one, and with a sweeping blow, she struck the smaller creature across the neck. Her sword skidded harmlessly up its length, then caught the edge of one garnet eye. The eye shattered with a weird merry sound, like breaking china. The dragon did not cry out but twisted, trying to find her with its remaining eye.
In the moment the larger beast turned its snout toward Rowan, the woman in front of it took three steps back, then broke and ran. The dragon turned back and swept her with fire. Her nightshift flared like a lamp wick.
Rowan scuttled back, grabbed her cloak, dashed to the left and threw the cloak around the burning woman. Then she moved right again, distracting the dragons as the woman rolled on the ground.
Her feint was not sufficient. The dog-sized dragon heaved itself off the chandelier toward the cloaked figure.
“Damn you!” Rowan rushed it, struck at one eye, and shattered it.
The east wall collapsed inward from ceiling to floor, settling like a dropped curtain. Heated air struck Rowan like a blow, and she was thrown back against the wall and to the ground.
Someone was tugging on her arm. She could not breathe. She felt herself pulled to her feet, opened her eyes, then closed them against searing smoke. “This way!” a voice shouted. It was Bel. The Outskirter pulled her along.
Rowan fought. “No, wait!” She stumbled and fell. Bel pulled her up again. “That woman,” Rowan cried. “Is she all right?”
Bel pushed her forward. “There’s no one.”
In blurred vision, Rowan saw the closet door and found the presence of mind to make her way into it. Out of the back wall, two huge hands grabbed her under the arms and pulled. Wood splinters scored her scalp and her back; then she was through and into a pitch-dark room. The man released her and turned back to help Bel.
Rowan groped and found shelves of crockery. Plates crashed to the floor. Bel was behind her again. “Out. Straight ahead.”
They were in the kitchen. Rowan regained her bearings and hurried through into the dining room. There, orange light from the courtyard led them to the open double doors.
Two lines of people were passing buckets to and from the well. The water was being poured not on the inn but on the walls and roofs of adjacent houses. Rowan and Bel were pushed aside by the man who had helped them. He broke through the bucket line and ran to the edge of the crowd surrounding the courtyard, and into the arms of his surviving woman.
As Rowan and Bel reached the crowd, there was a shout, and a milling motion off to the left. A word was being passed from person to person. “J ann ik I”
“Look, there’s Jannik!”
“About time,” Rowan muttered, wiping soot from her face. She and Bel moved deeper into the crowd.
On the left, the mass of p
eople parted, and a small man emerged and walked across the courtyard. He was no taller than Bel and somewhat round, dressed in silver and green. His hair was white and short, his beard a trim white point. He had the face of a habitually cheerful man.
Halfway across, he paused and looked up at the disaster with an expression of vast annoyance. He raised his hands, and the crowd hushed.
Rowan slipped farther back among the people, urging Bel with a hand on her arm.
Bel resisted. “Don’t you want to see this?”
“I want to get out of here.”
They left the crowd behind and found their way out and down a twisting street that ended by the lamp-lit docks. Rowan heard a voice exhorting, “Move, man, or Morgan’ll skin us.” She followed the sound.
They came to a heavily loaded barge where a narrow blond man was cursing at a pair of dockhands, who were viewing the glow above the buildings with interest.
“You’re going to Morgan’s Chance?” Rowan asked.
He eyed her. “Passengers? Come later, there’s a barge at dawn.” Rowan indicated Bel with a tilt of her head. “She’s crew.”
“What, her?” The crewman examined Bel. “Don’t know her.”
Bel spoke up. “I’m the cook’s new assistant. And she’s a steerswoman.”
He conceded a bit grudgingly. “All right then, get in. But don’t rock, mind. We’re riding low.”
6
It took the better part of an hour to cross the shallows from the loading docks to the Morgan’s Chance. Their boatmates were all members of the ship’s crew, returning before the onslaught of passengers due at sunrise. Most were silent, watching the subsiding glow above the buildings that lined the shore. One tipsy fellow, oblivious to the chaos they were leaving behind, was singing a crude song, most of the words of which seemed to have escaped him. He improvised.
The barge was crowded with crates. Additionally, there were three goats and two wooden cages of ducks. The ducks showed great interest in the proceedings, extending their necks out through the slats as far as possible. The cages, abristle with yellow beaks, emitted a constant natter of avian complaint.
The barge rode low on the water. Where Rowan and Bel sat in the gunwales, Rowan brooding, Bel looking at the surroundings, the calm surface of the water was a handsbreadth away from swamping aboard. Bel leaned over and trailed one hand into the cold, starlit darkness. Then she pulled it out and tasted. “I heard it was salt,” she said to Rowan. Then she affected Reeder’s condescending tone. “Tell me, lady, why is the sea salt?”
The Outskirter seemed remarkably resilient; for her own part, Rowan found it impossible to take her mind off the disaster they were leaving behind. “No one knows,” she answered, half-indifferently.
“Ha?” Bel returned to her own voice. “I can tell you. A wizard had a magical box that delivered him salt whenever he called for it. But while he was out, his apprentice tried to impress some friends by demonstrating its magic. The apprentice forgot the words that halted the spell, and the box kept spewing out salt, until the whole house was filled. In desperation, the friends dragged the box to a cliff and tossed it into the sea. And there it lies, to this day.”
Rowan looked at her friend and smiled despite herself. “A possible explanation.”
Eventually the barge sidled up to the ship. Cables were tossed down for the cargo. Meanwhile, the returning sailors dragged themselves wearily up rope ladders.
Rowan noticed Bel watching the technique with a grim studiousness and realized that the barbarian had no intention of letting unfamiliarity slow her down again. When her turn came, Bel pulled herself up carefully, clearly considering every step. Rowan followed close behind, with complete ease, keeping an eye on her friend. At one point, a small swell caused the ship to tilt; for a moment, the ladder swung away to one side, hanging unsupported save at the top. Bel looked up in startlement, then down at Rowan and the dark water, then at the ladder itself. Recognizing her safety, she laughed in delight, then ascended faster.
Morgan was at the railing, shouting questions to the arriving crew. “What’s the problem ashore?”
Reaching the top, Rowan answered him herself. “Dragonfire.”
“What!”
“Saranna’s Inn was attacked by nestlings. It’s destroyed.”
He leaned farther past the rail’s edge, gazing out at the shore. A reddish orange glow marked the former location of the inn. “Gods below,” he muttered. He turned away, then came storming back. “It’s ridiculous, the dragons haven’t got out of hand for years. And the breeding grounds aren’t even near there. Where was Jannik, fast asleep? Are those fools ashore afraid to wake a wizard?” He cursed again, viciously.
“He came,” a crew member answered. “A bit too late, but he came.”
A voice spoke from behind Rowan. “You look as though you were in it yourselves.” She turned and found the officer they had seen at the Tea Shop with Morgan. “Tyson, ship’s navigator,” he introduced himself. “We’ll talk later.” It was customary for any sea-traveling steers-woman to consult with the navigator, to update the ship’s charts. “But, you’re not injured?”
“No.” She brushed her hair away from her forehead. The hand came back sooty. “Singed, perhaps.”
Bel spoke up. “But we lost our possessions in the fire. Our traveling packs. We have our clothes and my sword, that’s all.”
“I’ll have the provisions I brought for the voyage,” Rowan pointed out. “I arranged yesterday for a crate that I left at the cargo docks.” Tyson looked distressed. “But your notes and your charts?”
“All gone.”
His brow furrowed. “I have some chart paper you can have. I’ll buy some new at Wulfshaven. And some old pens I don’t use. Some ink powder ...”
“You’re very kind.”
“And look at you, you haven’t even got a cloak. Can’t have you catching a chill; I’ve a spare you can use.”
Rowan was taken aback. “You’re too generous.”
“Nonsense, you’re one of us, and we take care of our own.” Tyson was referring to the solidarity of spirit that sailors shared with the steerswomen. He stopped a passing crewman and directed him to bring the items from the navigator’s cabin, then excused himself to oversee some of the preparations at hand.
“A pleasant fellow,” Bel commented. “Perhaps I’ll become a steers-woman, so that everyone will be nice to me.”
“Then you’d have to deal with the Reeders of the world.” Bel made a face. “True. It’s hardly worth it.”
When the crewman returned with Tyson’s donations, Bel asked for directions to the galley. Unable to explain clearly enough for the Outskirter, he finally led her personally. Rowan remained on deck and presently noticed her crate of provisions being hauled aboard. A few questions to the purser determined the best place to stow it; Rowan made sure she knew how to find it again. Then she wandered forward, keeping out of the way of the work being done.
A handful of crewwomen jogged past her to clamber up the rigging. They tugged at the mainsail halyards, readying them for the command to set the sails. The women waited at their ease, chatting softly to themselves, calling up to a pair of men working the main sky-sail, all of them visible to Rowan only as distant forms blocking starlight, shifting against the sky as the ship rocked slowly.
Rowan went back amidships, where the passenger barge was expected.
The ship’s activities slowly came to a standstill, and crew members became idle. Morgan regained his composure and sauntered about the deck, exuding a carefully assumed nonchalance. Tyson watched him with something like amusement. Eventually the east brightened.
The light revealed a vertical line of smoke onshore where the glow had been. Rowan was standing at the starboard railing, facing shore. Looking around her, she saw that most of the people on deck were on or near the starboard side: deckhands, a few officers, and three early-boarded passengers.
Presently a barge separated itself from the general
harbor traffic and poled along toward the Morgan’s Chance. The sun had cleared the horizon by the time it came alongside.
The passengers took their time negotiating the rope ladders. Morgan approached when a purser’s mate clambered aboard; Rowan moved nearer and joined them.
“A whole bloody swarm of them dragons, they say,” the purser’s mate was complaining. “About fifty, tall as your waist, and smaller. Spitting and hissing, sending fire all over. Never heard of anything like it.”
“The passengers,” Morgan prompted.
“Oh. Yes, sir. None lost, sir, just all of them upset, especially the ones who’d been staying at the inn.”
The witnesses were easy to identify; they were quiet, and the purser and purser’s mates had trouble getting their attention. They tended to gaze around them as if a sailing ship were the strangest wonder in existence, and death by dragonfire were the usual human fate, escaped from only by luck. They were filled with what they had seen. Rowan decided to wait to ask them for the details she wanted—perhaps several days, until they were past their shock.
She stopped the chief purser as he hurried by. “You’d do best to tend to the people from Saranna’s Inn first. Get them into their cabins and comfortable, and most of all, away from each other. They’re standing in a clot together here, do you see? They’re just feeding each other’s distress. People can become hysterical in situations like this.”
He paused, annoyed. Morgan forestalled his protest. “She’s a steers-woman, and she’s making sense. Do as she says.” The purser hurried off.
Rowan eyed the mate who had been ashore. The man threw up his hands. “Not me, lady, I’m fine. Of course, I didn’t watch anyone die, either.”
Morgan dismissed the man, who went back to the still-boarding passengers. The captain and the steerswoman watched the activity for a while. Then Morgan regarded her a moment, looked off to shore, out to sea, and gazed up at the rigging. He said reluctantly, “If you have any more suggestions, lady, I’ll be glad to hear them.”
The Steerswoman's Road Page 6