The Mark of Ran (37 page)

“Well met, Rol. A hot day’s work.”

“Too damned hot by half.” Rol slashed out at an enemy sailor, opening up his bowels. The man shrieked despairingly as they poured steaming down his thighs. Gallico crushed his skull with one blow from a gnarled fist.

A wicked, vicious melee in which men hacked and clubbed one another to death and the deck of the barque ran slick and scarlet with their blood. Rol, Gallico, and Creed were in the forefront of the Revenants, battling their way aft to the barque’s quarterdeck. The enemy sailors streamed away but the armored soldiers in their midst gave a good account of themselves; they were Bionese marines, some of the finest professionals in the world. They asked no quarter and did not retreat, but gathered in knots and fought stubbornly, and Rol’s unprotected mariners were no match for them. The fighting swayed backwards again, and the Revenants began to waver. Though Rol, Gallico, and Creed fought on in one tight, unyielding triangle, the rest of the crew were retreating back to the fo’c’sle.

The enemy marines gave a shout and pressed home their advantage, slipping on the bloody deck, tripping over bodies in their haste to hack at the unprotected backs of the Revenants. Rol turned his head to shout, to rally his men, and the flat of a sword blade struck him just above his left eye. He fell to one knee, and the jubilant marine would have had his head off in the next second had not Gallico’s fist smashed the man backwards. Rol staggered, vision blurred, head ringing, and as he collected himself, he could
feel
something stirring inside him.

It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. He laughed out loud as raw bull-like strength flooded his limbs and a white rage began to rise behind his eyes. In his fist the new-moon length of Fleam began to shake and shine, bloody over the hilt.
“On me!”
he shrieked in a voice that did not sound like his own, and rising to his feet he powered forward alone.

One sweep of the scimitar’s wicked edge cut through the breastplate and ribs of an enemy marine and laid his heart bare. Rol reached in and plucked the beating muscle from the man’s chest, ripped it free and threw it at his comrades. The awful laughter continued to cackle out of his throat, and from his eyes now the smoking whiteness spilled out and Fleam began to glow white and the blood boiled off her hot steel. To those about him it seemed their captain grew in size, and looming white wings of flame rose from his shoulders. His sword arced back and forth in a brightness painful to look at, and the Bionese marines about him were cut to steaming pieces by the snick of the terrible blade.

The marines broke and began climbing over one another to get away from the terrifying light. Even the Revenants turned tail on their captain and began clambering back over the tangled wreckage to their own ship. Only Gallico and Creed remained at Rol’s shoulders. He pursued the fleeing enemy back to the quarterdeck rail, to the ship’s wheel, and finally to the very taffrail itself, where they crowded like sheep yammering before a wolf. They threw away their weapons and jumped over the barque’s stern, or stood slack-jawed with terror and were cut to shreds. Fleam came down on the back of the last as he was trying to clamber over the stern and sliced clear through him, burying herself in the wood of the taffrail. The marine toppled overboard in two pieces.

For a moment it seemed that the white, winged light would rise up over the ship’s stern and fly away. The wing-shapes, almost too bright to look at, seemed to curl and smoke in silver tendrils, feathered blades sharp as frost. Then they began to shrink again.

The light went out. Rol Cortishane stood breathing hard, staring at his scimitar buried to the hilt in hard oak. He tried to wrench her free, failed, finally succeeded on the third attempt. The radiance in his eyes dwindled. He tottered, would have fallen had not Gallico’s great paw steadied him.

“It’s done, skipper,” Elias said quietly, and set a hand on his arm. The Revenants were clustered about the fo’c’sle of the barque, their faces gray with fear and shock. Rol seemed to come back to himself with a physical effort. He blinked, glared disbelievingly at the carnage about his feet. The cracking boom as one of the
Revenant
’s sakers fired again, sending splinters flying from the barque’s hull at the waterline.

“Revenants, ’vast firing there!” Gallico shouted out across the bulwark to the gun-crews of their own ship.

The cannons went silent. Suddenly there was no noise but for the bubbling groans of a few wounded, and the creak of the two grappled vessels, the slap of the sea at their wounded hulls. Rol’s ears hissed and rang with the after-echoes of gunfire. In his eyes colored after-images swam as if he had been staring clear into the heart of the sun. Gallico stared into his face, searching there for the man he knew.

“Rol. Rol, come back.”

Cortishane blinked stupidly. Fleam slipped from his grasp to the deck. His eyes rolled back in his head.

“Gallico, we must be quick. This ship is sinking under us,” Elias Creed said, and the halftroll scooped Rol’s body up into his blood-smeared arms.

Twenty-two

THE BITERS BIT

A PATCHWORK OF IMAGES, BARELY FIT TO BE CALLED
memory. At some point he knew he was being carried, and he heard the urgent chorus of many axes working frantically on timber. Men and women were screaming in pain but they were at one remove. He knew that he was being stared at, and whispered about, and he heard Gallico’s voice raised in anger.

He was in his cot, and it was swaying with the pitch of his ship. Beside him Elias Creed sat methodically reloading his pistols. The
Revenant
was moving through the water about them with the graceless lunge of a crippled bird.

Rol drifted away again, and this time the
Revenant
was left far behind. There was a woman with him; they existed together in some indefinable space. She was beautiful and dark and rounded and her white flesh melted against his. She had eyes the color of Fleam’s gray-green steel, and her eyeteeth were long fangs of gleaming silver. She moved against him with a delicious building friction, her skin satin-soft. He wanted her more than anything else in the world, and set his mouth against hers, crushed her dark lips against the white fangs. When he drew breath their mouths peeled apart as if glued, and he saw that there was blood all over her lips and teeth and he could taste it in his own mouth.

“It’s all right, Orr-Diseyn,” she said. “Prince of Orr, Lord of Demons. You come into your own, day by day, and I will be here always to watch over you.”

“Rowen?” Rol asked softly.

The woman’s face changed; it grew hard, and he could see the bones beneath her flesh, the skull within its beautiful shell of meat. For a second she was no longer what she seemed, and Rol had a glimpse of some shambling angular beast. Then she was gone completely.

He stood on a high mountain; he could feel the rareness of the air as it sidled unwillingly in and out of his lungs. But it was hot and bright all the same, and he looked down onto a green country below, a riotous forest of trees and plants he did not know. Beneath their canopy there was a hidden world.

The violent jade-green of the forest was bisected by the wandering course of a mighty river, brown and slow. His eyes followed the meander of its sinuous turns and twists, and far out on the edge of the world he thought he saw a glimmer of what might have been the sea, great Tethis. This, he knew, was the land of Orr.

A thing stood beside him. It was manlike in many respects, but not a man in the remotest sense of the word. It stood shrouded in a dark cloak with a tall helm of iron on its head, and within the helm two green lights blinked.

“You have been sailing in ancient waters,” it said. “The first men launched their canoes upon the waves of the Inner Reach, and it was by sea that they spread to the far corners of the world, not over the mountains. For what remains of the One God is in the sea, and thus men listen to Tethis and are moved and know not why. The sea was here at the Beginning and shall be here at the End, when all things shall return to it.”

The iron helm turned and the lights within it burned brighter. “Now, feast your eyes on the jungle-brightness of Orr. One day you will find sanctuary here. You are the son of my blood, but not the child of my heart. For her it is too late, but for you there may yet be a chance.”

Rol shrank from the chill of his companion’s regard. It was like staring into an abyss without end.

“There is no need to be afraid of me. Be more afraid of what is festering in your own marrow. Orr-Diseyn, do you not feel it working within you?” The thing gestured at the wide jungle-hid land below. “Do you not know what you will find here?

“No. Of course you do not. You are yet young, a stripling. Ten thousand leagues of the sea have yet to go beneath your keel.” He paused. “Your vessel was well named. She will carry you far, your
Revenant.
”

“Sail ho!” a voice shouted.

Rol opened his eyes, sucking in air with a hoarse gasp.

“Welcome back,” Creed said, smiling. “I don’t know where you went, but you were gone deep.”

Memory flooding back, no longer a tattered patchwork thing, but a full-blooded torrent. “The ship, Elias—”

“She floats. It would seem—”

Rol leaped out of the hanging cot and ran along the companionway. He came out onto the sunlit quarterdeck, and found himself looking forward at a strange, disjointed mess of a vessel: scarred decks, broken wood, and a makeshift series of sails sheeted from the foremast to an ugly lumpen stump of bowsprit. All about the ship’s guns a great crowd of people gathered, cowering at his approach.

This ship. My ship. This, here, is my world. I want no other.

“Gallico!”

I want nothing more.

“Here, skipper.” The halftroll raised a hand.

Rol stood swaying, empty-eyed. It seemed to him that the world was not what it had been. As though some other place floated serenely behind the sun and he was now aware of it.

He knuckled his eyes. “What sail? Where away?”

“On the port beam, a small boat and some kind of jury-rig.” In a lower voice Gallico said, “Are you well?”

“Quite well,” Rol snapped, suddenly aware of the entire crew staring at him, their work forgotten. There were filthy-faced children on deck chewing ship’s biscuit, and a throng of the passengers who had importuned him for a passage back in Ganesh Ka.

“Gallico,” Rol said again, fainter this time. He mustered his feet under him and made it to the lee scuppers before throwing up. His vomit was blood-red. He leaned on the ship’s rail.

“Tell me, Gallico.” And in a stronger voice: “Damage report.”

“We’ve fished the mizzen and jury-rigged the foremast. There’s what’s left of the foretopmast serving as a sprit, though it’s too damn heavy and is pressing down the bow. We lost twenty-three men killed or wounded. The barque sank half a watch after we got ourselves cut free of her. We have no powder left, and we’re making water fast, but the pumps are keeping pace with it. The orlop is ankle-deep, so I brought the passengers up on deck. I set course back for Ganesh Ka, west-nor’west, the wind on the starboard bow.” He stopped, and seemed to grope for words. “Rol, we just sank a Bionese man-of-war.”

“So I understand.”

“You don’t understand. No single privateer has ever bested a man-of-war in even fight—never. And with a new ship and untried crew.”

Rol managed a smile. “You look like a bloodied cat who’s kept hold of the cream.”

“They mauled us, yes, but by God—” He thumped the quarterdeck rail in a gesture that Rol was coming to see as a habit. “Wait until Artimion hears about this. It was like something out of a goddamned song.”

“Deck there!” a lookout cried. “There’s people on the launch to larboard, waving and such. I believe they’re friendly.”

“Heave-to,” Rol said. He straightened and wiped his mouth. Many of the crew were still staring at him, but what he had first mistaken for fear now looked more like awe. He shook his buzzing head. “Heave-to, I say, and set down a cutter.”

“They’re all in splinters,” Gallico told him.

Rol sighed. “Gallico, close with the bloody boat and get them on board, will you?”

The halftroll grinned. “Aye aye, sir.”

It was Miriam in the launch, along with a dozen others who were slack-jawed with exhaustion, having pulled into the wind for some twenty-five miles. Artimion lay in the boat, his bloody head resting in her lap.

“The fleet is gone,” she said, having gulped cloudy water out of a scuttle-butt. There was a black bar of gunpowder darkening her face from the corner of her mouth down her chin. Her eyes were red-rimmed as cherries.

“Jan Timian ran for it, but the others piled in yardarm to yardarm. The brigs were sunk, and the transports scattered. I think a couple went aground in the surf. But they beat us up something terrible.
Albatross
and
Swallow
were dismasted and had to put about before the wind. They’re running south, trying to get new masts up or something.
Prosper
sank under us. We got the launch over the side and Artimion into it. I do not know if he will live. Where
Skua
is I do not know. There was too much smoke, too much confusion. But we beat them. The Ka is safe.”