Assail (20 page)

She found Lean and Sept taking their turn at the tiller arm, following Havvin’s commands yelled above the crashing of waves. K’azz was also above decks, an arm round the mainmast, staring forward into the roiling cloud cover. She climbed the stern to the pilot’s side, noting the length of line that secured him to the tiller arm. The old man, his long white hair a plastered layer upon his knobbly skull, sent her another of his intimate winks.

She planted her legs wide, lowered her head against the blowing spray, and offered him an uncertain frown.

The old man laughed his amusement. ‘Know you why Master Ghelath named her
Mael’s Greetings
?’ he called.

‘No,’ she shouted back.

‘Because Mael, having sent his greetings, need not send them again!’ and he cackled anew.

Sailors, she thought. The oddest sense of humour.

The pilot sliced an arm forward, yelling, ‘That one! Straight on!’ Lean heaved her considerable bulk against the arm while Sept pulled. ‘Further!’ Havvin urged. ‘Hard o’ port!’

‘I don’t remember volunteering for this,’ Lean gasped as she strained.

‘Beats marching,’ Sept grinned.

Lean, her jaws set, shook her head. ‘Never the right weather, is it? Always too hot or too cold. Too wet or too dry.’

Shimmer saluted them and headed back below. If they could still joke, then things were in hand. She descended the steep ladder to find Bars and Blues awaiting her at the bottom. Water poured down over her shoulders in one last chilling wash. ‘I’m beginning to hate these journeys,’ she told Bars.

‘I’m with you, Shimmer. Only way to get anywhere, though.’

They braced themselves on nearby timbers in the darkness of the low deck. Water sloshed about their boots. ‘And you, Bars,’ she asked. ‘Where were you in Assail lands?’

The man grimaced at the memory. ‘Exile Keep. On the shores of the Dread Sea. Turned out to be two inbred families of mages battling each other for control of the coast.’ He paused and ran a thumb along a scar on his chin. Blues’ eyes glittered in the dark as he waited and watched, just as Shimmer did. ‘Somehow they got it into their crazy paranoid heads that we were plotting to take the keep, or some damned fool thing like that. Both the families turned on us. Every last one of them. Anyway …’ Bars cleared his throat. ‘Cal an’ the rest withdrew. Pulled ’em all off so me and my Blade could escape in a local’s fishing skiff. That was the last I saw of them. Headed north along the Anguish Coast.’ He lowered his head to study the knuckles of one hand.

‘That was Cal’s plan, wasn’t it?’ Blues said gently. Bars nodded. ‘So stop beating yourself up about it. The plan worked. Now we’re back because of it.’

Bars curled the hand into a tight fist, lowered it. ‘Right.’

Ah, Bars, Shimmer thought. Always feeling everything so keenly. Like a raw exposed nerve. The man’s emotions were like a storm; it would be attractive if it were not so exhausting.

‘Where’s K’azz?’ Blues asked.

‘Up top. Watching the storm.’ Shimmer shook her head, mystified. ‘It’s like he’s not afraid one whit. Just curious. As if he wants to experience it.’

Blues snorted. ‘Well I’m damned afraid, if he’s not. Don’t like being out of sight of shore. Too far to swim.’

Of course, Shimmer reflected, being a mage of D’riss Blues wouldn’t like being out of sight of land. ‘We’re none of us happy sailors,’ she said.

The two chuckled their appreciation. ‘That’s for damned certain,’ Blues agreed, and he peered up nervously through the open hatch to the black churning mass of clouds above.

The next day the storm passed to the north and
Mael’s Greetings
, sails tattered and seams leaking, limped under oar to the south-east. Havvin was aiming for an island he had sketched into his personal rudder from descriptions and stories he’d heard over the years in sailors’ taverns in Delanss, Strike, and the Isle of Malaz.

Ghelath and K’azz ordered head-counts and were relieved to find that no one had been lost during the four days and nights of the storm. All the Avowed and ship’s crew not rowing were then pressed into labouring at the pumps and buckets in a continuous struggle to keep Mael from delivering his final greetings to his namesake. Shimmer was too busy to return to questioning K’azz regarding their destination. Indeed, she welcomed the distraction of exhausting physical work and threw herself to the task; she found ocean crossings, when not terrifying, damnably boring.

Three days later the call went out from the crow’s nest: land to the south-east. At first no one else could see it as what had been glimpsed were the merest tops of what proved to be tall mountains that seemed to rise straight out of the sea.

Havvin nodded as if expecting this and explained that such were the accounts he’d heard: an island of mountains nearly free of any land a person could stand upon. It was therefore often referred to as the Pillars. He skirted the island’s coast, circling to the north-east. Soon a narrow ribbon of beach, or strand, came into view and he threw over the tiller. Approaching, they saw numerous plumes of smoke, and presently spotted the long dark shapes of four oceangoing vessels anchored close to the shore. Their cut was unfamiliar to Shimmer. They appeared to be broad-beamed merchant ships adapted into war-vessels, with archers’ platforms added fore and aft.

‘Do you know those ships?’ she asked Ghelath, who shook his nearly bald head.

‘K’azz?’ she asked her commander, who was standing with Ghelath. He also shook a negative.

Bars came climbing the short stairs to the quarterdeck and joined them; he looked unaccountably grim. ‘I know them,’ he said. ‘And I wish I didn’t. They’re Letherii.’

Shimmer was impressed. Lether? She’d heard much of them but had never met any. ‘Accomplished merchants and businessmen and women, I hear.’

Bars gave her a strange look, then muttered beneath his breath: ‘That’s one thing you can say about them.’

‘Four vessels armed for war …’ Ghelath pointed out.

‘We have no choice,’ K’azz said flatly. ‘Put in and we’ll go ashore to see about repairs.’ Another might have taken offence at K’azz’s now belatedly stepping in to give commands, but all Shimmer could think was:
about damned time
.

Ghelath shook his head, dubious, but signalled Havvin.

The pilot took them to the stretch of the narrow shore farthest away from the Letherii vessels and ordered the anchor dropped. An informal landing party of Ghelath, K’azz, Shimmer and Gwynn drew together. Others could have joined, but with K’azz and Shimmer departing Blues elected to remain, and no other Avowed expressed an interest in negotiating with the Letherii. At the last moment, however, Bars slid down the rope ladder to join them in the launch. He looked ill-tempered already, and Shimmer wondered just what the man was expecting. They would merely be foraging for supplies and water, or, if necessary, purchasing them from the Letherii.

They drew the launch up the strand and headed towards a stand of tents. The narrow strip of flat land proved to be something of an armed camp. Troops were in the process of erecting a palisade of timbers that had possibly been salvaged from a fifth, wrecked, ship. The palisade, Shimmer noted, faced inland, where precipitous cliffs of a chalky white stone rose like walls themselves.

A party came down to greet them; one far larger than theirs, she noted.

‘Welcome.’ The party’s spokesman hailed them. He was bearded and wore banded iron armour that was polished to a bright gleam. Closer now, Shimmer saw that his armour was engraved with intaglio swirls and that the trimmings of his mantle and collar were of silk and white fur. ‘I am Luthal Canar, of the Canar trading house, of Lether.’

‘Greetings,’ Ghelath answered. ‘Ghelath Keer, Master of
Mael’s Greetings
.’

‘K’azz, of the Crimson Guard.’

Luthal nodded cheerily to them, while his party of some forty soldiers spread out around them. All were armed with crossbows. ‘Yes. Welcome to my island.’

‘
Your
island?’ Bars spoke up sharply, and he sent Shimmer a significant glance.

The man opened his hands in a sort of shrug of apology. ‘Well. The private property of the trading house of which I am the appointed representative.’

‘I see,’ K’azz murmured.

Luthal’s answering smile was wide, but hard, rather like the blade of a knife. ‘So I am sorry to say you are trespassing on a private commercial establishment. Luckily, we of Lether are not barbarians. We have not attacked you. We are enlightened. Our laws contain provisions for the peaceable restitution of crimes against property.’

‘Here we go,’ Bars grumbled to Shimmer beneath his breath.

Ghelath had been blinking rather confusedly for a few minutes and now he gazed about, his face reddening. ‘
Establishment?
’ he burst out. ‘What by Mael’s breath do you mean, an
establishment
? This is an island!’

Luthal nodded his pleasant agreement. His men, now ordered in double ranks, raised their crossbows. The front rank sank to one knee. ‘I agree that on the surface this piece of property might resemble an island. But it is in fact a mine.’

‘A mine,’ Ghelath mimicked mockingly. ‘A bloody mine?’

‘Indeed.’

‘And what by Hood’s dead grasping hand could you possibly mine here?’

‘Shit.’

Ghelath blinked anew, startled. Shimmer frowned at Bars. K’azz, for his part, was eyeing the distant cliffs as if studying them for climbing.

‘What was that?’ Ghelath asked, obviously completely lost.

Luthal had not lost his convivial façade, which Shimmer now recognized as the Lether way of conducting business. It was the bland merchant’s mask that covered chicanery, deceit, chiselling, theft, slavery and murder. The man gestured to the ground. ‘Bird shit, to be exact,’ he explained. ‘You are standing on it. This entire shore is made up of layer upon layer of bird shit. And it is really quite valuable.’

Ghelath waved that aside. ‘Well, we have no interest in your damned shit. We just want to purchase supplies for repairs.’

It seemed to Shimmer that Luthal’s smile became even more smooth. ‘Purchase, you say? That is not necessary. Because, you see, the penalty for trespassing is confiscation of your vessel.’

‘Confisca—
What?
’ Ghelath grunted, appalled. He lunged for the man but K’azz caught him by the back of his shirt. The forty crossbowmen tensed, adjusting their aim.

K’azz slowly raised his open hands. ‘I understand. We broke your laws – and this your price.’

‘We didn’t know you’d claimed the entire damned island,’ Bars ground out.

‘Ignorance is no defence before the law,’ Luthal observed. ‘Surely you are not such a complete barbarian that you are unaware of this concept?’

To the Letherii, K’azz may have appeared unmoved. But Shimmer read his anger in his fixed expression and the deep lines bracketing his mouth. ‘We are not unaware,’ he answered. ‘Seeing then that we require a ship … may we purchase one of yours?’

It was Luthal’s turn to appear confused. The man lowered his chin to study K’azz from beneath his brows. ‘I believe in truth you do not understand. The confiscation of your ship includes all cargo, chattels and equipment on board. Considering this, I do not see what you could possibly possess as collateral to guarantee such a purchase.’

‘None the less, I wish to enter into a contract with you for the purchase of one of these vessels.’

‘And do you accept the price for default upon such a debt?’

‘I do.’

Shimmer grasped his shoulder, hissing, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I know what I am doing, Shimmer,’ he answered firmly.

Luthal crossed an arm over his chest and propped his other elbow upon it to tap a finger to his chin. ‘I set that price at one hundred peaks.’

‘One hundred!’ Ghelath burst out. ‘That’s absurd! That must be half the coin in all of Lether!’

‘One tenth, I estimate,’ Luthal answered, his gaze fixed upon K’azz, one eyebrow arched.

‘I accept your price.’

‘Very well.’ Luthal held out his hands as if such a mass of coin could fit within them. ‘Produce it.’

K’azz dug in a pouch at his side then dropped a single coin into the merchant’s hand. Luthal examined it, nonplussed. ‘A Quon quarter-moon? What jest is this?’

‘A tip above the asking price. I believe you set the price at the sum this entire beach would fetch at current rates on the market in Lether. I assure you that I could take this beach from you should I wish. However, I have restrained myself, thereby giving it back to you. Price paid by anyone’s measure.’

Luthal lost his smile; he glanced to his crossbowmen then returned his narrowed gaze to K’azz. ‘I do not accept your assurances. I consider you forfeit of the amount and you and your crew indebted to me.’ He raised a hand to his archers.

‘What of a trial of payment?’ K’azz asked sharply.

The merchant paused, then lowered his hand. He studied K’azz. ‘A trial?’

‘Is that not in keeping with the laws of Lether?’

‘Well, yes …’

‘And the debt is considered discharged should I succeed?’

Luthal chuckled, but his eyes remained flat and hard. ‘
If
you should succeed … yes.’