The Godspeaker Trilogy (187 page)

Dalsyn, Slainta of Harbisland, sailed to starboard, his flagship so crowded with archers it was a wonder the long, sleek vessel didn't sink. The hulls of his fleet's needle-shaped warships were smothered in sealskin, and like seals they cut lithely through the waves. As each ship passed, Alasdair could smell the stink of pitch from the barrels stood waiting on the ships. Harbisland fought with fire, without mercy. He felt his heart lift, a little.

Perhaps Mijak won't have things all its own way.

The ships of the lesser trading nations followed close behind the dominant nations. As the last Harbisland warship passed their bow, Han snapped another command to his sailors. Captain Yanson, watching him closely, sent the Ilda's crew to work, one act and its reflection.

Han's ship and the Ilda leapt forward, their sails again set to drink deep of the wind, surging in the midst of Barbruish's biremes, Dev'karesh's triremes with their vicious ramming spikes, the deep-hulled warships of Slynt and Haisun. Surrounded by warships, Alasdair felt a sudden sorrow.

So much death. So much destruction. If they weren't all with us in this venture perhaps they'd be turning their weapons on each other. They have in the past. Their pasts are bloody tapestries of war. How lucky are we in Ethrea, to be spared such carnage.

Ludo, still beside him, as soaked with spray as he was, released a shuddering breath. “When I was a small boy,” his cousin said, subdued, “I used to dream of sea battles. The mighty nations of the world clashing on the waves. I used to think it romantic . Dear God. I was a fool.”

Alasdair shook his head. “You were a boy. And I doubt you were alone. Even now, back in Ethrea, I'll wager there are people wishing they were here with us. People who think this is some great adventure.”

“Adventure,” said Ludo, blotting salt water from his face with a damp linen sleeve. “Right.”

Looking ahead, where glimpses of the Arbenian fleet could still be caught between the crowding masts and hulls and sails of the armada, Alasdair allowed himself a grim little smile. “In the days leading up to this, I had some conversations with Ebrich and Dalsyn. They're treatied now, but in the past Arbenia and Harbisland have been bitter enemies. And do you know, they miss their warring? These are men who crave battle. They live to fight. These rulers…” He shook his head again, baffled. “They throw men at each other like rocks.”

“Would we be any different, if we weren't born Ethrean?” said Ludo. “I think our kingdom is the strange place. The rest of the world is like this.” He waved a hand at the armada surrounding them. “And I say thank God for our strangeness, cousin. We'd not stand a hope of defeating Mijak, else.”

Alasdair nodded. “Yes.” If they did stand a hope. If this wasn't a fool's errand. If they'd not been cozened into believing a lie.

Suddenly Helfred's stirring speech about faith wasn't as comforting as it had felt at the time.

Ludo was peering ahead, leaning dangerously over the Ilda's side. “I wonder how much closer we are to the Mijaki warfleet. I wonder how soon before the battle begins. I wonder if I want to know…perhaps ignorance is bliss…”

Alasdair grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him to safety before he upended over the side and was drowned, or crushed beneath the hull of Han's ship.

“Have a care, you fool! Must I explain your death to Henrik? Chairbound or not, he'd kick me from one side of the Eth river to the other.”

Paying no attention, Ludo pulled himself free of restraint and stood on the nearest coil of rope, seeking an advantage of height. “If only we knew what weapons Mijak will range against us,” he muttered. “Aside from the gauntlet Jones spoke of, that is.”

Alasdair, also looking ahead, felt his guts twist and his heart trip to a faster beat. “We'll know soon enough. We must be close by now.”

“Yes,” said Ludo, and stepped down off the rope as though he'd suddenly lost interest.

The deck of the Ilda thudded as the sailors followed her captain's curt orders, so that she and Han's vessel continued side by side. Without warning, Alasdair felt himself useless, a pointless decoration like brightwork or a posy of violets nailed to the mast. The least sailor on the Ilda had more value than he did. In the bow, Han's witch-men stood silent, as unnatural as men carved from stone. He stared at them, feeling sick.

The Ilda's not a warship. Are those three men enough to defend it? I have my sword. Ludo has his. Yanson and his sailors have their cudgels. And what use will they be if Zandakar's brother turns his gauntlet against us?

He started as Ludo took hold of his arm. “There's little point fretting, Alasdair. For good or for ill, we're here. It's best to believe we're here for a reason that will help Ethrea. They're saying their prayers for us, back home. Let's not disappoint them by succumbing to fear.”

Sensible advice. And from Ludo, no less. The world indeed was turned upon its head.

Now the salt-and-spray soaked air was threaded through with voices, singing. Songs of war and of courage, most likely, in a handful of different tongues, counterpoint to the rushing wind and the flapping canvas and the swift seething of water past wooden hulls. The sound might have been beautiful, if this were not such a deadly endeavour.

And under the voices, a stready throbbing of drums.

Ludo sucked in a sharp breath and pointed. “ Look .”

The vessels ahead of them had started to spread apart, seeking to make of the armada a more scattered target. And through the widening gaps, past Han's stone-still witch-men, at last could be seen the black warships of Mijak – as thick on the ocean as autumn leaves on a forest pond.

Alasdair felt his open mouth suck dry. He'd never felt so alone, so vulnerable, in all his life.

Rhian.

On the Tzhung flagship beside them, Han shouted another command. Some change came over his gathered witch-men, and the witch-men on the Ilda , and on every ship surrounding them. The air stirred…it whispered…and though the sun shone unhindered, suddenly the world was cold.

Captain Yanson approached. A grizzled man in his middle years, with skin as weathered as the wood of his ship, he offered a respectful nod. “Your Majesty, Your Grace, best gird yourselves for battle. Just in case those heathen crows in the bow can't save us, and every blessed ship between us and those Mijaki murderers gets sunk to the bottom.”

“A wise suggestion, Captain Yanson,” said Alasdair. “And may I say Godspeed to you now, sir, in case events should overtake us and the chance does not arise again.”

Yanson smiled, showing a mouth missing several teeth. “Godspeed to you too, Your Majesty. It's been a pleasure and an honour sailing with you, and the duke too. And I'll tell you, though maybe I oughtn't, that when I heard Eberg's daughter wanted the crown on her head I thought well, there's the end of Ethrea. But by God, I was wrong. And you can tell her I said so.”

Absurdly, the rough compliment throttled his rising fear. “Captain, Her Majesty will be pleased to know it.”

And then there was no time for compliments, or anything else. The drumbeat of the armada abruptly picked up speed, like a horse surging from canter to gallop. Turning, Alasdair felt his heart surge with it.

Mijak's warships were upon them. The time had come to fight.

Ebrich, Count of Arbenia, struck the first blow. The sound of fireballs hissing through the air was startling. Menacing. Even above the singing and the drumming and the noise of a fleet under sail, the flaming catapult stones could be heard ripping through the salt-wind in a fearsome bid to sink the front line of Mijaki warships.

“Rollin's mercy,” Ludo whispered. “It's started. Alasdair—”

What could they say to one another, that hadn't been said? Alasdair grasped his cousin's shoulder, briefly. “We'll tell our sons of this day, Ludo, I swear it. When we're grizzled like Yanson. We'll spin them tall tales.”

“Taller than this?” said Ludo, and tried to laugh. “Tall tales indeed.”

The Ilda had a kind of covered cabin built on the deck, three-quarters of the way towards her blunt stern. In tacit agreement they staggered their way to it, and hauled themselves up the wooden ladder on its port side until they stood high enough to see over the bow, and Han's witch-men, to the battle beyond.

There was nothing to hold on to. One pitch of the boat, one incautious bump from Han's vessel, or another, and they'd be thrown overboard like chewed apple-cores.

They looked at each other, and dropped to their knees.

Ahead they saw more fireballs flying, a burning hail to rain down upon the enemy. Then came a sighing hiss, as the archers of Harbisland added their fire to the fire of Arbenia, arrows wrapped in pitch-soaked cloth and set alight, to burn and burn the warships of Mijak.

And what warships they were. Long and lean and black as night, stretching in a solid wall across the horizon. Their prows were carved and painted into hideous figureheads: wicked-fanged snakes – cats' feet with claws extended, eager to slash – wild-eyed birds of prey with beaks desperate to tear flesh, talons grasping – and hideous scorpions, the sign of their god.

Not a single one of them was touched by fire.

“That's not right!” said Ludo, and risked clambering to his feet. “How is that possible?”

Though they were in range of the enemy, the fireballs and flaming arrows of Arbenia and Harbisland had fallen short into the ocean, did not touch the approaching warships of Mijak.

Alasdair shook his head. “I don't know. It's as though the fireballs and arrows strike an invisible wall .”

From the warships of Mijak rose a skin-chilling chant, a single voice from so many thousand throats: “ Chalava! Chalava! Chalava zho! ”

Alasdair looked over at Han and his witch-men. Standing at their boat's bow, like the Ilda's witch-men so tall and still and eerily silent, their bodies yielding to the moving deck so they seemed to stand on dry land, the Tzhung appeared to be doing nothing at all.

“I don't understand ,” said Ludo, as yet more fireballs and flaming arrows plunged harmless into the steaming ocean. “Why don't Han's witch-men do something?”

And then came a stream of scarlet fire from one Mijaki warship…and Ebrich of Arbenia's boat erupted into flames and flying splinters. Above the Mijaki chanting, high-pitched terrified screams and wails. All around them the sails of the Arbenian fleet were struck by burning spars and embers and caught fire. Men caught fire. The Count of Arbenia's flagship, what was left of it, sank beneath the ocean's surface. The water was littered with bodies and burning debris. Another scarlet stream of fire, and the Slainta of Harbisland's warship perished in flames.

Confusion and screaming among the armada. The drums ceased their beating. The world held its breath.

“This is madness!” said Ludo. “We're going to die here without striking a single blow.”

Alasdair didn't answer, he just looked at Han and his witch-men. A wind was stirring about them…and only them. Their hair whipped around their heads, their black silk tunics snapped and tugged. He swept his gaze over the vessels nearest to them, over the witch-men gathered in every bow. Like Han and his witch-men, each group stood in the centre of its own small windstorm.

And the wind was rising…rising…

“ Chalava! Chalava! Chalava zho !” came the chant from the Mijaki warships, easily filling the distance between them. “ Chalava! Chalava! Chalava zho! ”

“Look!” shouted Ludo. “Alasdair, look !”

Despite the mayhem at the front of the armada, despite the screams and the debris and the boats battling fire, not the enemy, the sailors on board those Arbenian and Harbisland vessels not sunk or burning had recovered their senses and were redoubling their efforts. The sky almost disappeared behind a fury of catapulted fireballs and flaming arrows.

This time the fireballs and arrows struck home.

A cheer went up from the armada as the first Mijaki warships were battered to oblivion. Mingled with the cheering, the screams of dying warriors. The screams of horses, trapped below decks in the burning, sinking ships of Mijak.

Alasdair, stomach heaving, spat bile down to the Ilda's deck.

“That stream of fire, that must be Dmitrak's gauntlet,” said Ludo. He was shaking, shuddering on his knees. “Has his warship been destroyed? Have we killed him?”

In reply to his desperate question, another lance of scarlet fire streamed into the armada. It began to travel sideways, scything through the front line of ships with horrifying ease.

“God's mercy, what is Han doing ?” demanded Ludo, close to weeping. “Why don't his witch-men stop this? It's slaughter!”

Whatever power the Mijaki called on, it protected the warship of Zandakar's brother. No fireball fell on it, every arrow aimed to kill it plummeted hissing into the ocean.

But at least other Mijaki warships suffered.

The wind whipping Han and his witch-men increased. Now it was howling around every witch-man Alasdair could see, it howled and raged and when he looked back at their enemy he saw their warships starting to plunge uneasily, like tethered horses scenting danger in the air.

The rain of fireballs was weakening. Fewer arrows flew over the water. The surviving ships of Arbenia and Harbisland were running out of things to throw.

Then came more shouting, the redoubled sound of pounding drums, and the knife-shaped triremes of Dev-karesh came flying through the fleet. Their prows weren't carved to figureheads, they were graced with iron spikes, long and lethal. The ships were driven by the witch-men's wind and by oars, by sailors trained their whole lives to row fast…row faster…to spit an enemy like a boar.

The witch-men's howling wind rose to a fever pitch. Alasdair could feel it plucking at him, even at the other end of the boat. The drums of Dev-karesh boomed louder, quicker, as their ramming vessels aimed for the floating heart of Mijak.

“ Chalava! Chalava! Chalava zho !” came the chant from its warships, almost loud enough now to drown the Dev'kareshi drums. “ Chalava! Chalava! Chalava zho! ”

Then the howling wind's note rose high and keening, and there were waterspouts forming among the warships of Mijak. Huge waves were rising, tall as mountains. And the triremes of Dev'karesh were flying like needles.