Ravens Shadow 02 - Tower Lord (54 page)

“What do you worship?”

For the first time the Seordah’s face showed some sign of amusement, a grin coming to his lips. “You are standing in what we worship, Beral Shak Ur. You call this place the great forest, we call it Seordah, for it is us and we are it.”

“To fight our enemy you’ll have to leave it.”

“I’ve done so before, when I went to see your land with the last Tower Lord. I saw many things there, all of them ugly.”

“What you’ll see this time will be uglier still.”

“Yes.” The Seordah put his club aside and rested back against the rock, closing his eyes. “It will.”

“I
t’s there again!” Murel said, pointing in alarm and making the boat pitch as she rushed to the bow. “Do you see?”

Lyrna looked at the sea, catching sight of the great fin before it slipped under the water once more.
They’re always hungry.

“Maybe it likes us,” the outlaw with scarred cheeks suggested. His name was Harvin and he claimed to have once commanded a band thirty men strong, his capture and imprisonment the result of betrayed love for a beautiful woman of noble birth, a story Iltis had greeted with open contempt.

“Sold out by some tavern doxy you forgot to pay, more like,” he had laughed.

They bickered constantly, often to the verge of violence and Lyrna had given up trying to placate their temper. If one killed the other, then at least the rations would last longer.

“Fell in love with the brother’s beautiful face when it rammed the hold,” Harvin continued. “Just couldn’t stay away.”

“You criminal scum!” Iltis bridled.

Lyrna turned away as the argument began its inevitable escalation, eyes scanning the waves for sign of the shark. Four days adrift on the ocean and their only companion a red shark. She wondered why it didn’t simply tip the boat over and eat them at its leisure. If it could sink a ship, what challenge did their boat represent? Her thoughts kept returning to Fermin’s last smile, his bloody teeth.
Given all I have to give . . .

Next to her Murel stiffened as the fin reappeared, her scabbed fingertips going to her mouth. It was closer this time, tracking an arcing course towards them through the swell. Murel closed her eyes and began reciting the Catechism of Faith. Lyrna put an arm around her shoulders as the fin grew ever larger, Iltis and Harvin abruptly forgetting their argument. The fin veered away some twenty yards short of the boat, the red-striped body of the shark rising from the water, a huge black eye gleaming above the waves for a moment. Murel opened her eyes, whimpered and closed them again. The shark gave a brief thrash of its tail and disappeared under the surface.

“It’s gone,” Lyrna told a sobbing Murel. “See?”

The girl could only shake her head and slump down in exhausted fear, her head resting in Lyrna’s lap.

Lyrna surveyed her small wooden kingdom of five hungry souls and wondered again if it might have been kinder to abandon them to the hold. They had managed to scavenge some supplies from barrels found bobbing in the water the morning after the ship went down, mostly pickled fish that made her gag the first time she tried it, however hunger had soon overcome such qualms. Her biggest fear had been the lack of freshwater but this soon disappeared under the weight of rain that threatened to swamp the boat on a daily basis, forcing them to bail continually, albeit untroubled by thirst. Their oars consisted of two short splintered planks from the ship’s deck, the outlaw and Iltis spending much of the first day paddling a westward course until a quiet youth named Benten, a fisherman from Varinshold and the only sailor amongst them, pointed to the early evening stars and judged them fifty miles east of where they had started the night before.

“Means we’re a good ways south of Varinshold,” he said. “The Boraelin currents flow east at these climes. Paddle all you want, won’t make any difference.”

East.
Which meant Volaria, in the unlikely event their food held out that long. Lyrna had read enough sea stories to know the extremes to which hunger could force desperate people, the tale of the
Sea Wraith
looming largest in her mind. She had been one of her father’s first warships, built at considerable expense and some said the finest ever to sail from a Realm port. She had disappeared in a storm off the northern coast sometime in the second decade of Janus’s reign, presumed lost for months but eventually found drifting south by Renfaelin fishermen. They had discovered only one crewman on board, a gibbering loon gnawing on the thigh-bone of one of his crew-mates, a pile of skulls stacked neatly on the deck. On her father’s orders the
Sea Wraith
had been burned and sunk for no sailor would set foot on her again.

Murel’s head shifted on her lap and Lyrna saw that she was sleeping, faint groans of pain coming from her half-open lips as the dreams made her relive the torments she had suffered on the ship. Lyrna resisted the impulse to caress her hair, knowing any touch was like to provoke a flurry of screams.
I’m sorry,
she thought as Murel’s eyelids fluttered and she jerked in her sleep.
Seems I won’t be bringing down their empire after all.

The boat pitched again and Lyrna looked up to see Benten standing in the stern, hand shielding his eyes against the sun as he gazed east.

“The shark?” Lyrna asked him.

The young fisherman maintained his vigil for a moment more then stiffened, turning to her with a grave face. “A sail.”

The others all turned, the boat threatening to tip over with the movement. “Volarian?” Iltis asked.

“Worse,” Benten said. “Meldenean.”

◆ ◆ ◆

The Meldenean captain rested his arms on the rail and stared down at them with faint curiosity and no small amount of contempt. “I think I prefer you land-bound enslaved, it seems fitting somehow.”

Iltis brandished the chains he had kept at his side, probably, Lyrna suspected, for killing Harvin should it become necessary. “Slaves no longer, freed by our own hand.”

“And the ship?” the captain enquired.

“Sunk, along with our captors.”

“And anything of value they may have carried.” His gaze roamed the boat, lingering first on Murel then finding Lyrna’s scars. “And what use did they have for you, my beauty?” he asked with a grin.

Lyrna forced her anger away, knowing if they sailed on it meant death for everyone in this boat. “I am well learned,” she replied, knowing the true reason would only provoke more laughter. “And speak many languages. The master wanted a tutor for his daughters.”

“Really?” the captain asked, continuing in Alpiran, “Have you read
The
Cantos of Gold and Dust
?”

“I have.”
And very nearly once met the author.

“Where does the heart of reason lie?”

“In knowledge, but only when married to compassion.”
A word I hope holds some meaning for you,
she added silently.

The captain’s gaze narrowed a little. “And Volarian?” he asked slipping back into Realm Tongue.

“Yes.”

“Read it as well as speak it?”

“I do.”

He waved at his crew. “Bring her aboard. Leave the others.”

“No!” Lyrna shouted. “All of us. Whatever you need my skills for, I’ll only help if you take all of us.”

“You’re in no position to bargain, my burnt beauty,” he replied with a laugh. “But, just to demonstrate my generosity, we’ll take the pretty one too.”

One of the crewmen at the rail suddenly straightened, finger shooting out with a shout of alarm. Lyrna turned, seeing the shark’s head break the surface no more than fifty yards away. It rolled onto its side, jaws wide, teeth gleaming. The Meldeneans immediately began to work their rigging as the captain barked orders, glaring down at Lyrna in consternation. She placed a foot on the edge of the boat. “All of us,” she called to him. “Or I jump.”

◆ ◆ ◆

They took the others to the hold, Iltis and Harvin reluctantly surrendering their chains at the sight of so many bared sabres. The captain pushed Lyrna into his cabin, a cramped space of rolled maps and locked chests, one of which he hefted onto a squat nailed-down desk, turning a key in the heavy lock and lifting the lid. He extracted a scroll with a broken seal and handed it to her. “Read.”

She unfurled the scroll and scanned it, absorbing the contents in barely a few seconds, but deciding it would be best to delay her translation. This man had far too keen an eye for her liking. “From Council-man Arklev Entril to General Reklar Tokrev,” she began in a slow laboured voice. “Officer commanding the Twentieth Corps of the Volarian Imperial Host. Greetings, honoured brother-in-law. I assume congratulations are in order though of course a full account of your inevitable victory has yet to reach us. Please extend my warmest affection to my honoured sister . . .”

“Enough,” the captain said. He took a small leather-bound book from the chest, exchanging it for the scroll. “This one.”

Lyrna turned the first few pages and suppressed a wry smile as she placed a puzzled frown on her brow. “This . . . makes no sense.”

His gaze narrowed further. “Why?”

“The letters are all jumbled, mixed up with numbers. Perhaps some kind of code.”

“You know of such things?”

“My father used codes in his business. He was a merchant, always worried his competitors would discover his prices . . .”

“Can you solve it?” he interrupted.

She shrugged. “Given time, it may be possible . . .”

The captain took a step closer, assailing her with his breath. “Believe me, land-bound, you do not have the luxury of time.”

“I would need to discover the key.”

“Key?”

“All codes require a key, the basis for the cypher. Likely to be known only to a few . . .”

He took her by the arm and pushed her from the cabin, across the deck towards the hold, still clutching the book. She was led past the others, crouched in the shadows and surrounded by crewmen, Murel looking up at her with fearful eyes. The captain stopped at a locked door near the stern, a crewman standing guard. “Open it,” the captain ordered.

The door swung open releasing a powerful stench, her senses assailed by a blend of excrement, urine and stale sweat. She fought down her gorge as the captain pushed her inside. A man was huddled in the dark corner of the cabin, hair long and greasy, his clothes the ragged remnants of a uniform, stained with his own filth. Heavy manacles were fastened to his wrists and ankles. From the stench Lyrna surmised he had been here for several days.

“If he moves, beat him down,” the captain growled at the crewman who drew a cudgel and stepped closer. “Moves like a snake this one. Stuck a hidden stiletto through the eye of the only man in my crew who spoke his pig tongue.” The captain jabbed the toe of his boot into the stinking man’s ribs, drawing a pained gasp. He stepped back, jerking his head at her. “If there’s anyone alive knows this key, it’s him.”

Lyrna crouched down and edged closer to the captive, all too aware of the guard’s proximity, the brass handle of the dagger jutting from his boot gleaming in the half-light. The man squinted at her as she drew closer and she had the impression of a handsome face under the filth and dried blood. “Sending monsters to plague me now,” he muttered.

“How do you come to this?” Lyrna asked him in his own language.

“So they’ve found a clever monster,” he replied. “Tell this pirate dog he’d best kill me soon for when our fleet finds him . . .”

“If you want to live, shut your mouth and do what I tell you,” Lyrna said in as placid a tone as she could manage. “Believe me when I say your life is of no worth to me and I’ll laugh when they throw you to the sharks. However, if I can’t convince the pirate you’re being cooperative, they’re likely to throw me in after you. Now, how do you come to be here?”

He angled his head at her in calculation and Lyrna detected a keen mind behind the arrogant sneer.
Like Darnel but with brains,
she thought.
Not a pleasant prospect.

“Betrayal,” he said. “Deceit. The lies of a slave, for only a fool ever trusts a slave. An island of riches, he promised me. Stolen by the greatest Meldenean pirate ever to live, long thought a legend but he had a map and was willing to trade it for freedom. It was only a few days’ diversion from our route, I didn’t see the harm.”

“But when you get to the island you find this lot waiting instead of the fabled treasure.”

He gave a weary nod.

“You’re right,” she said. “You are a fool.”

He thrashed at her, chains jangling, becoming still when the guard stepped closer and placed his cudgel under his chin.

“I’ll tell them nothing,” the Volarian stated, glaring at her above the cudgel.

“He says he wants passage to an Alpiran port,” she told the captain in Realm Tongue. “In return for the key.”

The captain nudged the guard who removed the cudgel and stepped back. “Well I’m feeling generous,” he said stroking his beard. “So I’ll start with his left hand, one knuckle at a time. Tell him that’s the only payment he’ll get.”

“You don’t have to tell them anything,” she told the Volarian. “Just make them think you have.” She shuffled closer, holding up the leather-bound book. “They want the key to this code. If they think you’ve shared it, I can pretend I’m able to decipher it. But it’ll take time, maybe long enough for your fleet to find us.”

“Keen to be a slave are we?”

“Did it once, wasn’t so bad compared to this lot. The Volarians wouldn’t come near me because of my face, these dogs aren’t so discerning.”

“What’s to stop them killing me when I’ve played this little farce?”

“I’ll tell them they need to keep you alive, that the code is complex and I’ll need more help with it.”