The Huntsman's Amulet (30 page)

He allowed the connection to remain open a little longer this time, revelling in the way his body grew exponentially stronger, while all around him slowed at a similar rate. At the first hint of light-headedness he focussed on blocking off the Fount.

Rui’s crew were so focussed on getting at the group of
Typhon
s on the
Tear
’s deck, few even noticed Soren in their midst. Another pirate eventually did and attacked him with a wild sweep of his blade. Soren parried just in time to bring his sword back down to stop another attack from a second pirate. Now he was identified as an enemy in their midst, more pirates converged on him. The first pirate attacked. Soren knocked his blade aside and stabbed the pirate’s neck with his dagger.

He kicked the body free and turned his attention to the others. He spotted Rui standing behind his men, trying to urge them to drive the
Typhon
s from their deck. Soren cut down another pirate and rather than fight his way through to Rui, he dropped his shoulder and charged.

Soren had a big frame, which had once been well developed and muscular. The deprivations of his captivity had robbed him of some of this weight and natural strength, but he was still big and strong enough to barrel his way through a group of unsuspecting men. He drove forward with his legs until he stumbled out of the press of bodies and faced Rui.

Rui looked surprised, obviously not expecting to have to deal with an attacker himself. He reached for the hilt of his sword, which was still sheathed. It was Soren’s Telastrian steel sword, which both delighted and infuriated him. He had hoped that Rui would keep it, it being most likely the finest sword that would ever cross his path, rather than sell it on, but seeing it at his waist fuelled Soren’s anger.

‘You’ve something that belongs to me,’ Soren said.

‘Sancho Rui takes what he likes,’ he said as he finished drawing Soren’s sword. He squinted slightly. ‘I know you. You’ve been on this ship before.’ He dropped into a low fencer’s stance that looked very practiced as his eyes widened in recognition. ‘Ah, of course. The slave who helped Ramiro Qai in the jungle. I knew I should have killed you when you were my prisoner.’

Soren had no interest in bantering with Rui, so he said nothing.

‘I will put that mistake to rights now!’ Rui said. He lunged forward and Soren parried the attack with a grinding clash of steel. He cringed at the thought of damaging his beautiful sword, but knew it was the sword he was holding that was going to take any damage.

Rui mistook Soren’s hesitation for uncertainty and slashed left and right in a flamboyant but sloppy attack. Soren pushed the sword aside with his own vastly inferior blade and stepped forward quickly, punching his dagger into Rui’s throat.

Rui gasped, his eyes wide in disbelief. His mouth twitched as though he was about to say something, but the only sound was a bubbling hiss, and that came from his ruined throat rather than his mouth.

There was a sickening squelch followed by a crunch as Soren cut through Rui’s neck and spine.

‘Rui is dead!’ Soren shouted so loudly his words scratched at his throat. ‘Sancho Rui is dead.’

He could barely hear his own voice over the din of the fighting, so to emphasise his point, he held the head aloft, trying not to cover himself in gore in the process. As he pulled Rui’s head free from the body, something fell from around the stub of his neck and dropped at Soren’s feet. He trapped it with his foot to inspect when he was done advertising Rui’s death. He continued to display the head, its lifeless eyes staring out at the crew. Gradually they started to notice it, and the fighting waned.

When the noise had dropped to a manageable level, Soren shouted out again. ‘Sancho Rui is dead! Throw down your weapons and you’ll not be harmed.’

Varrisher had been fighting a group of Rui’s crew on the quarterdeck of the Typhon. In the heat of the battle, Soren hadn’t realised any had crossed over. Varrisher disarmed the men he was fighting and then hopped up on the bulwark where everyone could see him.

‘We came here to kill Sancho Rui and we’ve done that. I’ve no interest in your ship or anyone else. Throw down your arms and we can all go our separate ways with no more killing,’ he shouted.

The sound of grumbling started to grow from a low murmur to a confused discussion and was eventually joined by the sound of a sword hitting the deck. It was followed by many others, and then the sound of cheering coming from the
Typhon
s. With a nod and a smile to Varrisher, Soren lowered the head. Only then did he bend down to pick up whatever it was that had fallen from Rui’s neck. He moved his foot which had been covering it and gasped.

He recognised it straight away, but could barely believe his eyes.

It was a small silver amulet with a clear stone at its centre: a Ruripathian huntsman’s amulet, a good luck charm of which there had certainly been more than one made, but few enough even still. It was also the only gift of value that Soren had ever given Alessandra. He reached down to pick it up, his hand shaking, his heart racing. The sight of it filled him with desperate, dizzying need for it to be hers, but part of him could not accept that this could possibly be the one he had given her.

His heart sped to a frenzy as his fingers came in contact with the cool metal. He savoured the touch, wanting the feeling of hope that it brought to last as long as possible. He gathered it and the chain that was attached to it into his hand and brought it close to his face, his knuckles white as he clutched it. With a deep breath he opened his hand. Etched on one side in the long dead northern language was the prayer that Jarod, the royal huntsman who had given him the amulet, told him was meant to be for good luck and to bestow protection on the wearer. It hadn’t worked for Rui.

With another deep breath he flipped it over and there, in the neatly engraved letters placed on it by a silversmith in Ostenheim at Soren’s request, was Alessandra’s name.

The rush of joy he felt made him so lightheaded he had a moment of panic that the Fount was flooding into him. If the amulet was on board the
Tear
, Alessandra could not have been lost at sea. He swayed on his feet as a variety of emotions — hope, love, fear, desperation and others he couldn’t even identify — rushed in on him in a confused jumble.

It was joined by a wave of panic as he looked down at Sancho Rui’s headless corpse. Had he killed the only man who could tell him where she was, or if she was still alive?

Chapter 44

The Amulet

V
arrisher jumped down from
the bulwark and made his way over to Soren as the crew of the
Bayda’s Tear
were checked for weapons and herded to the front of the ship to be supervised.

‘Well done,’ he said. ‘That went as smoothly as we could have hoped.’ He noticed the expression on Soren’s face. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I feel as if I have,’ Soren said, holding the chain and amulet out in front of him and staring intently at it.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a Ruripathian huntsman’s amulet,’ Soren said.

‘Huh,’ Varrisher said. ‘That’s odd. Not something you expect to see in these parts. I wonder how it got all the way down here? I suppose Rui must have taken a Ruripathian vessel with a huntsman at some point. Plenty of refugees coming down to Valkdorf now. Must have made easy pickings for him.’

‘Not this one,’ Soren said. ‘It was mine.’

Varrisher was still bemused by the strength of Soren’s reaction to the small silver amulet. ‘Of course, I’d forgotten about your hunting adventures. He took it from you when you were his captive?’

‘No. I gave this to someone,’ Soren said. ‘She fled Ostenheim a few weeks before I did. I was looking for her in Auracia, but there was no trace of her ever having been there.’

‘You think this might explain what happened to her?’ Varrisher said.

‘I do. I hope I haven’t just killed the only person that can tell me how he came by this amulet,’ Soren said, his voice strained. He handed the head he still held to Varrisher who took it delicately and with an appropriate degree of disgust.

In an effort to put his mind to something else, he knelt down at the side of Rui’s corpse and began to prise the dead fingers from the hilt of his sword. Any joy he might have had in being reunited with it was tempered by the presence of the amulet. The matching dagger was still in its sheath on the belt around Rui’s waist, which also belonged to Soren. He pulled them free roughly, angry at Rui and himself.

‘If you know when Rui captured her, we might be able to work out where she is now,’ Varrisher said.

Soren stood and looked at him intensely, desperate for any suggestion. ‘How?’

‘Even a pirate is going to have to keep logs of some sort. They probably won’t reveal much, but it might be enough to work out where he next made landfall. It’s not much, but it’s a start, and gives you somewhere to begin your search. Also, we still have Blasco and a whole crew to question about what they might remember, the ships and prisoners they took and where they went to sell their plunder.’

It seemed so obvious Soren couldn’t understand how he had not thought of it himself, but his emotions were in turmoil, and he wasn’t thinking clearly, not to mention he was fighting off the after effects of the Gift. Varrisher’s suggestion went some way to settling his mind and giving him hope. Having a way to move forward allowed him to focus on something that would be useful, rather than dwelling on the worst outlook.

‘Get Blasco,’ Soren said. ‘I’m going to start looking through Rui’s stateroom to see if I can find anything.’

Soren knew that Alessandra had fled Ostenheim roughly seventeen weeks earlier. The voyage south to Auracia would have taken eight days or so, if it had been anything like his own voyage south several weeks later. Rui’s cruising waters had been in the south, which meant she would have been close to Auracia, a week or so into the voyage when he came upon the vessel taking her there, if that was what had happened. He couldn’t expect that a pirate would keep a detailed log, but even they would need to keep financial records of some sort. Knowing roughly when Alessandra had been taken would give him something to go on. If Blasco could fill in any more detail, all the better. He had proved cooperative enough so far and had no reason to dissemble if he hoped to take possession of the
Tear
.

The
Tear
’s stateroom was no larger than that on board the
Typhon
; the ships were roughly the same size. Soren looked around, wondering where to start. On the starboard side there was a small cot on gimbals where Rui must have slept. On the port side there was an escritoire, which seemed like Soren’s best hope.

He attempted to open the cover, but it was locked. After a cursory search for a key he pulled out his dagger and jammed it into the lock. It punched through the wood of the desk and he gouged out the metal lock. Barely able to contain his impatience he pulled the cover down into an extended desk.

There were some papers contained within, scrawled with clumsy script of the type he had produced when first learning to write, not all that long before. He scanned through them quickly, dropping each irrelevant document on the floor until the escritoire was empty and Soren still had no useful information.

He sat on the bench at the back of the stateroom and sighed. He felt rushed even though there was nothing for him to do. Varrisher entered with Blasco, who seemed very pleased with himself. Despite their agreement to give him the
Tear
when they had what they needed, he still had to win the support of the crew — which he had obviously been confident of doing. Now that they had the help that they’d needed, Blasco was once again in a precarious position. Soren had no qualms with threatening to go back on their deal about the
Tear
if Blasco refused to help him. In the mood that held him, there were few things, if any, that he would have qualms about doing to get the information he was looking for.

‘I need you to tell me everything you know about the movements of the
Tear
over the past few months,’ Soren said.

‘Not sure I can help you,’ Blasco said.

He was looking smug. Delighted no doubt about their victory and the ship that he thought was about to become his. Soren resisted the urge to punch him in the face.

Blasco saw the dark look on Soren’s face. ‘Now, see here. There’s only so much I can do before I’ll have lost the chance to get the lads to trust me again.’

Soren ignored him. ‘About fifteen weeks ago, maybe sixteen, you took a ship bound for Auracia. There was a woman on board. She was wearing this, and Rui took it from her.’ He held up the amulet. ‘I’m looking for her, and if you don’t tell me where she is I will kill you, every man on this ship, and I will burn the
Tear
to the water line.’

Blasco was shocked by the abruptness of the threat — but not nearly so much as Varrisher from the look on his face.

‘There’s no need for threats,’ Blasco said, ‘but you have to understand my point of view. Getting help to kill Rui is one thing; the crew respect me for that. Shows initiative. Ambition. They’re about to agree to appoint me as captain. If I tell you where the ship has been and what the crew’ve done, I’ll be peaching on them, and they’ll string me up for that. If they think I’m telling tales that could put them on the chopping block, I won’t last ten minutes after they find out, and they will. To tell the truth, you killing me will be quicker and less painful.’

They were at an impasse, and it seemed to Soren that threats of violence were not going to get him anywhere. He struggled to control the rage that was coursing through his veins. He didn’t know what alternatives were left open to him. Blasco stood sheepishly in the centre of the stateroom, afraid. He wasn’t trying to act tough or call Soren’s bluff to assert his authority. It appeared that he fully expected to die in the next few minutes unless he was extremely lucky. Varrisher looked equally awkward.

Soren wondered if the rest of the crew would be of the same opinion as Blasco. If shipboard justice for ‘peaching’, as Blasco had put it, was so harsh, Soren would have to shed a great deal of blood in a particularly brutal fashion before he would get anything that might even be potentially useful. He had to ask himself if he would be able to live with that, although there was something inside him that didn’t care, and that frightened him.

He felt his rage flare up again, but he took a deep breath to try to quell it. ‘And all the crew will feel the same? Even if I start cutting them up and throw them to the sharks?’ He managed to keep his voice calm and even.

Blasco nodded.

‘Hold him,’ Soren said.

Varrisher did as he was instructed, not quite sure what was going to happen next.

Soren took one of Blasco’s arms and pulled it over to the table, placing Blasco’s hand flat on it. Blasco resisted, but Soren was able to force it. He pressed his dagger down on the first knuckle of Blasco’s index finger.

‘Sure you’ve nothing to say?’

Blasco was breathing heavily through his nose and his mouth remained shut. He shook his head.

Soren pressed down harder, until a thin line of blood appeared on either side of the blade. Blasco began exhaling in sharp, staccato breaths, but still said nothing. Soren looked at him and held his gaze. He was not going to say anything. He slammed the point of his dagger down into the table. Blasco gasped in anticipation and sighed when he realised that his finger was still attached to his hand.

‘Fuck!’ Soren said. ‘Fuck!’

He was still assuming that the
Tear
had taken the ship that Alessandra was on. There was no real way to know for sure, unless they had taken the names of those they had captured. Rui could even have bought the amulet at a market somewhere. Despite his overwhelming desire to find her and to extract any useful information from the crew of the
Tear
, torture and murder was not something he could bring himself to do. It was too much.

‘Get out,’ he said to Blasco. Varrisher released him and Blasco was out the door almost before Soren had finished speaking. Soren dropped his head into his hands.

‘You really had me going there. I thought you were going to hack him to bits,’ Varrisher said, as he made his way over to the escritoire and kicked his boot through the pile of papers that Soren had dumped on the floor.

‘I nearly did,’ Soren said.

Varrisher bent down and picked up one of the pieces of paper, and then shuffled through the mess on the floor to find several others written in the same hand.

‘When did you say you thought your friend was taken?’ Varrisher said, as he went through the pages he had picked up.

‘I don’t know. Maybe fifteen or sixteen weeks ago, give or take. Maybe not at all.’ He walked over to the bench beneath the stern gallery window and slumped down on it.

‘Well,’ Varrisher said, ‘these are receipts for ship’s provisions. This is the most recent.’ He held up a piece of crinkled paper and pointed to something on it that Soren couldn’t make out from where he was sitting. ‘This mark means that it was issued from a ship’s provisioner in Caytown. This one is from about ten weeks ago. It’s from a provisioner in Galat, a city on the coast of Shandahar. This one is from another ten weeks before that, Caytown again. The
Gandawai
was taken eleven or twelve weeks ago if memory serves. It seems that after they took her they stopped at Galat and bought stocks of fresh food and water. Although it doesn’t say for sure, it stands to reason that they would have sold off any prisoners they had at the slave markets there. Prisoners take up space and cost money to feed. They also have a habit of dying when maltreated in cramped conditions and fed slop, so it makes sense to unload them and sell them off as soon as possible.’

The scenario that he painted was not one Soren was comfortable hearing but, as Varrisher said, it stood to reason. Slavery and gods only knew what else would have awaited her. He felt like he was going to throw up.

‘When I first agreed to sail with you,’ Soren said, ‘you said that you’d drop me off anywhere I wanted. I’d like to go to Galat.’

‘I did,’ Varrisher said, ‘and I intend to honour that agreement. Kirek is on the way to Galat, so it won’t delay us stopping there to collect the bounty on Rui’s head. I’d bring you directly, but you know how desperately I need to collect the money. Anyhow, I’m sure your share of the bounty will be of help when you go after your friend.’