Assail (6 page)

* * *

Of the countless freebooters, hijackers, and outright pirates of the south Genabackan coast and the archipelago of the Free Confederacy, Burl Tardin knew he wasn’t the first to hear word of a rich gold strike in the legendary north Assail lands. He knew also that he was not the first to set out south to dare the stormy Galatan Sweep and from there pass onward, entering the semi-mythical Sea of Hate as it was known in the old lays. And he knew that though he was not even the first to succeed in said crossings, at great risk and cost, it was an achievement worthy of song all the same.

This he became certain of as he passed the shattered hulls of Genabackan vessels lying strewn along what those self-same old songs and stories named the ‘Wreckers’ Coast.’

He did, however, suspect that he was among the first to reach the gauntlet of rocks known as the Guardians. These rocks, and the twisted course between, choked Fear Narrows, the entrance to the inland Dread Sea – which some also called the Sea of Dread. He did believe he was the first of his compatriots to manage this particular miracle of seamanship.

And now he, his vessel – the
Sea Strike
– and his crew lay becalmed somewhere on the pale milky waters of the Dread Sea. His crew manned the oars, of course, though progress was hard to determine among the near constant mists and fogs that shrouded the stars at night and obscured the unfamiliar coast by day. Many were for putting in until the damned fogs abated, but he suspected that such conditions were unavoidable here in these strange lands and waters. Besides, each time they’d put in for water, or to hunt, hostile locals had met them and they’d put spears through four of his crew.

Banks of the thick mists drifted by like smoke to enmesh them in their clinging arms. Dark shapes seemed to loom through the fogs. Other ships, perhaps, just as lost. His lookouts shouted but only their own calls echoed back across the waters. Or so Burl assumed, as the returning shouts sounded eerily like voices in other languages calling their warning. Perhaps even crying their panic.

‘Sea-monster!’ a lookout warned one morning and Burl almost ordered the poor fellow to come down as his eyes were playing tricks upon him. But others called now, pointing to port, where a dark shape closed upon them. Long and tall it was in the fog. By the great sea-god himself, Burl swore, amazed: a sea-dragon.

The fog parted in swirling wafts and the lookout voiced a panicked: ’Ware! Ice!’

‘Stave it off!’ Burl bellowed.

The crew on the starboard side jumped to unship their oars while those on the port raised theirs and braced themselves. The huge shard of emerald ice came brushing up against the slim wooden poles. Wood shattered and crewmen grunted and shouted their pain as the oars lashed among them. Hernen went down with a shattered skull as one slammed him on the side of the head in a sickening wet crack.

The
Sea Strike
lurched under a side-swiping blow. Its planks groaned, and all aboard were thrown from their feet. Ice clattered in a gleaming shower to the decking where the shards lay steaming.

‘Check the hull!’ Burl ordered and clambered to his feet. ‘Clear that ice.’

‘Aye,’ First Mate Whellen answered.

The great ice behemoth coursed on, not even scarred by its encounter. Burl watched it go, eerily silent, once more merging into the bank of hanging fog. ‘Hull’s still sound,’ his master carpenter reported and Burl nodded his relief.

A scream of pain snapped their attention to amidships. Whellen stood staring at his hands. Burl ran to him. ‘Gods, what is it?’

The mate stood gazing at his hands, wordless. Burl yanked on his shoulder. ‘Speak, man!’

The mate raised his eyes and Burl flinched away: they seemed utterly empty of awareness. ‘It burns,’ the mate whispered, awed. ‘The ice burns.’ Then he collapsed to the wet planking.

Burl ordered the man wrapped in blankets and thought nothing more of it – he had a ship to check for soundness and an entire crew to handle. He had spare oars drawn and those that could be repaired kept. Yet they were now short of a full complement and when the crew returned to rowing they made even less progress than before.

The next day they sighted a vessel. It was a vague motionless silhouette in the mists at first. Oaring closer they hailed it, but no answer came. Burl ordered a cautious approach. The half of the crew not rowing hurried to ready weapons. As they closed the gap, the lines of the vessel revealed themselves in a form never before seen by him or his crew.

Long and narrow it was, a galley just like the
Strike
, but larger, and closed, not open-hulled. It lay becalmed, the sails of its one mast limp. To Burl it looked abandoned, like some sort of ghost ship. ‘Hello, vessel!’ he shouted again.

When no one answered he ordered the
Strike
closer and a small boarding party readied, led by the second mate, Gaff. Whellen still lay abed, stricken with whatever ailment it was that had hold of him.

The
Strike
bumped up amidships and the party clambered aboard. Burl and the crew waited and watched, weapons in hand. They did not have long to wait. Immediately, it seemed to him, the boarding party returned. They swung legs out over the taller side and jumped or eased themselves down. Burl searched among them for Gaff. Quiet they were, pale even. He found the man and looked him up and down. ‘Well?’

His second mate just shook his head, unable to speak. Unnervingly, Burl was reminded of Whellen’s reaction to holding the ice. The man shakily drew a sleeve across his sweaty glistening brow and swallowed as if pushing back bile. ‘Gone,’ he managed. ‘All gone.’

Burl scanned the rocking vessel. Its waterline foamed heavy with weeds and barnacles, as if it had lain becalmed in the water for years. ‘Dead? How?’

‘No, not dead, sir. Gone. She’s empty of all crew. Not one soul, living or dead. A ghost ship.’

‘Cut loose? An accident?’

The second mate rubbed his arms as if chilled, his gaze lingering on the silent vessel. ‘No sir. ’Tis as if the crew up and walked off during a voyage. Ropes lay half coiled. Meals still on the table. Still fresh.’

‘Fresh? How could that be? Any ship’s rudder?’

Gaff shook his head. ‘Didn’t look, sir.’

‘Didn’t look? Gods and demons, man! Get back on board and find the pilot’s rudder.’

Gaff jerked a negative. ‘Nay, sir. The vessel’s cursed. We must push off.’

Burl had been about to send the men back aboard to gather supplies and any potable water, but he noted the fierce nods that the second mate’s words collected. He saw the signs raised against evil and a kind of atavistic fear in the gazes of all. And as a sailor himself he knew how deep-rooted such superstitions could lie. He also knew he led by support of these men and so he merely gestured his contempt, muttering, ‘Very well. If you must.’

Gaff’s nod of acknowledgement was firm. He turned to the boarding party. ‘You brought nothing, yes? Good. Can’t risk the curse.’ Then he shouted to the rest of the crew: ‘Now cast off! Back oars!’

‘And just what curse is this, Gaff?’ Burl enquired, as the foreign vessel slid phantom-like into the fogs.

‘Sea of Dread, sir. Drives men insane, they say.’

Burl had heard such stories and songs. Tales of ships mysteriously abandoned. Floating hulks empty of all crew. He’d only half believed them before now. Why would a crew abandon a perfectly seaworthy vessel? It must have come from some nearby port. Slipped free of its mooring lines, surely. The crew wouldn’t just up and jump into the water!

Burl now became aware of his men murmuring among themselves. Even as they pulled strongly on the oars they spoke to one another under their breath. He heard much re-telling and re-sorting of all the hoary old tales of such ghost ships and curses. And repeated among the men he heard the name whispered like a curse itself:
Dread Sea
.
Sea of Dread. The Dreadful Sea
.

And now like the thick choking fog itself he felt that selfsame dread coiling about the entire ship. And he thought, perhaps it was too late. Perhaps all it took was some chance encounter with strangeness to taint the mind and the imagination – and this was the curse itself.

* * *

Orman Bregin’s son considered himself lucky to be alive. He’d grown up outside Curl beneath the cold shadow of the Iceblood Holdings. Hardscrabble farming on rocky land was the sum of what he knew. He and all his relatives and neighbours, all the Curl townsfolk. Lowlanders, he knew he and his neighbours were called among the tall Greathalls of the high slopes, as they in turn scornfully named the coastal kingdoms. Those high forests and mountain valleys leading up to the Salt range were forbidden; the Iceblood clans guarded their holdings jealously and warred constantly among themselves over their boundaries. All trespassers, lowlanders such as he, were simply killed out of hand.

Of course, for generations he and his had been at war as well, trying to oust the damned Icebloods and wipe them from the face of the land.

And he and his were winning. Leastways that was what he heard from the benches of the White Hart. The townships were all steadily growing, and their local baron, P’tar Longarm, Baron Longarm, sat strong in his long hall.

At least, that was so before the last raid. Orman had almost joined that one. Most of his friends had. Longarm himself had led it. Nearly fifty armed men and women had set out to track down the Icebloods and burn their Greathalls to the ground.

Only twelve returned. Longarm was among them, though sorely wounded. None of Orman’s friends returned. There was much muted talk then round the White Hart of Iceblood magic. How they moved like ghosts through the woods and fought like cowards, attacking out of the night only to flee and disappear like will-o’-the-wisps.

The baron kept to his hall now and people named him Shortarm. Orman figured there’d be a new ruler soon enough. So it always was. Once the local king, or queen, or baron, weakened and could no longer hold what he had taken, others arose to take it from him.

Maybe King Ronal the Bastard out of Mantle town. Orman had heard Ronal crossed Hangman creek and cut a new settlement out of the tall pines of the Bain Holding. He also heard that Ronal kept the head of the Iceblood Shia Bain pickled in a jar at his table.

Once more, Orman congratulated himself on still being alive. Then over these last few seasons word had come spreading from town to town of rich gold strikes high up the river valleys of the Salt range – far into the Iceblood Holdings.

At first everyone he knew had been dismissive of it all. The lake to the south was called the Gold Sea and no doubt that was the cause of all the stir. The oldsters claimed it had happened before: some idiotic foreigner caught sight of that name on some old dusty map somewhere and before you knew it damned fools arrived thinking they just had to reach out to gather up great handfuls of the stuff.

But then came tales of foreigners arriving in the south. Just a trickle at first. A few tow-headed ignoramuses easily done away with. Then bands of them. Some even pushing upland, ignoring all the warnings. A few of them reappeared only as heads tossed across streams or left on stakes next to forest trails.

Now word was of shiploads arriving in the lowlander kingdoms. Two new towns had sprung up overnight along the shores of the Sea of Gold. He heard rumours of real warfare where the Bone Peninsula had been closed to these invaders.

Then late one night Gerrun Shortshanks came and sat down next to him among the benches of the Hart and started talking of this news of gold. Orman let him blather on for a time – too fond of his ale was Gerrun Shortshanks, with his gold earrings and felt shirts bought from traders up from the coastal kingdoms. So dismissive of the man was he that it took a while for the full significance of what he was whispering to sink in. He and the Reddin brothers heading out with Old Bear. And would he throw his lot in with them?

Any other night he would have brushed the fool’s talk aside. But the name of Old Bear gave him pause. One of the last of the high valley hunters. Seemed to come and go as he pleased from Blood Holdings. Rumours were that he’d served as a hired spear for the Heel clan years ago – back when he had both eyes. And the Reddin brothers, Keth and Kasson. They’d been among the eleven who’d returned with Longarm. Serious and quiet both of them. So quiet few knew which brother was which.

‘Why me?’ was Orman’s short answer, his forearms on the table, one to either side of his leather tankard.

Gerrun jerked his head, agreeing with the question. He took a quick sip, wiped his mouth. ‘Old Bear says he knew your father. That’s why. Says he even met you.’

Orman nodded. It was years ago. His father had been a sworn man to Longarm’s predecessor, Eusta. Eusta the Ill, she’d been known, as she’d always been sick with this or that. His father had been a borderman, had even slipped into the Blood Holdings now and then – and had taken Orman along a few times.

And had told him about the ghosts. The Iceblood Holdings were haunted, his father had explained the first night as they pressed close to their small fire. Haunted, he said, by the spirits of all the dead ancestors of the various clans: the Heel, the Bain, the Sayer, and all the others. And sometimes, his father whispered, leaning close, his great spear Boarstooth across his lap, if you listened very carefully you could hear them too.

And later he did hear them – or thought he did. Voices calling. It seemed as if the very land itself, the Iceblood Holding, was speaking to him. Now, thinking back some five years, he wondered whether he’d imagined it all. That perhaps he’d only heard things because his father had suggested it.