The Mark of Ran (26 page)

Another half hour brought them to the tip of the headland. Below them the boom of the surf was loud as the massed guns of a fleet action, and they could see white flashes of foam in a line to the southwest where a second reef ran alongside the shore. The wrecked ship had been trying to beat along this, fighting for leeway, but the wind had been too determined.

“Rope,” Rol said mechanically. “Who’s brought rope?”

One of the shore party began unwrapping a coil of one-inch cable from around his shoulder. “You’re not going down there?” Creed said.

“I am. Lower me down and I’ll have a look about.”

“Nothing could survive on those rocks.”

“If it were my ship wrecked, my crew cast into the sea, I would hope that fellow mariners would do more than wring their hands over me from a safe distance.”

With the rope tight under his armpits the men lowered Rol down the cliff-face. It was not sheer, and in many places he was able to take his own weight. The thunder of the breakers grew ever louder as he descended. When he had come down some ten fathoms the rope gave out. He untied it and coiled the end about a large boulder, then began scrambling the last few yards with the spray of the waves cool on his face. Elias had been right—there was nothing here, not even a shard of wreckage. The murderous waves had swept the rocks clear of any remnant of a wreck. He had wasted his time.

But now something was moving feebly in the white of the breakers, something huge and glistening. Were it not for his night-sight, Rol would never have seen it. It was not a man. Some great beached fish perhaps. Rol edged closer, until the waves were soaking him and the spray was exploding all about his knees.

Two green lights winked on, watching him. He thought he heard a voice in the tumult of the sea. Startled, he clambered and slithered over the black rocks and wiped seawater out of his eyes. Not a man, but manlike, huger than any man had a right to be.

The thing raised an arm and a white whirling mass of foam broke around it, tearing it from the rock. Rol saw the green lights shut off as it slid into the breakers. He clattered forward, and a club of water smote him about the head and shoulders, flattening him on the stones. He clung there as the wave receded, tasting blood, and when he was able to look up, the thing had hauled itself out of the water again. It was a fathom away, no more, and in its face—it had a face, after all—two great tusks glimmered and the emerald light of the eyes winked on and off as it blinked.

“Give me a goddamned hand, will you?” Its voice was hoarse and cracked, but deep as a well.

Rol reached out an arm and it was at once enveloped by the thing’s huge paw. Then the two of them lowered their heads as another wave broke about them. When it had passed the thing leaped up the rock convulsively, and Rol braced his boots on the stone, pulling with all his might. Its legs pumped and he could hear its talons ticking and scraping on the slick stone. When Rol thought his arm was about to leave its socket, one foot found purchase and the awful grip slackened. The creature boosted itself upward and slapped full length on the slimed stone. They lay side by side and watched a huge breaker come running at them in a slathering fury of white surf. As one, they turned and scrabbled up the rocks to the foot of the cliff. The wave sucked impotently at their feet and withdrew with a rattle of gravel and stone.

The thing Rol had rescued sat panting heavily. There were scraped and broken places all over its huge carcass where the blood shone black in the starlight.

“Thank you,” it said. “I’d held on there long enough.”

“You’re from the ship?”

“Where else?” It shut its perilous eyes and a dry black tongue licked about its tusks.

Light dawned on Rol at last. A night in Ascari, an episode from another life. “I know you. You’re a halftroll. Your name is Gallico.”

The thing’s head snapped round and the light in the eyes intensified. “What in the world—How could you know that?”

“We met once, a long time ago. I had saved your purser from footpads in Ascari. I forget his name.”

“Woodrin. By God, it’s the terrible youth, the one with the Blood in him. You have grown up, my lad—the name, now, the name would be Rol, I think.”

“It would.”

Gallico laughed, a barrel-deep, roaring laugh that rose even above the thunder of the breakers. “Here we are years later, met by chance upon the most desolate coast in the charted waters of the world. If there’s not some kind of fate involved in this, I’ll leave off beer for life. Boy, you are well met and very welcome.”

“Was there anyone else?”

Gallico’s good humor faded. “There were, but they could not hold on. The sea took them. Woodrin was one. He never did learn to swim.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s for later. For now we must get up onto drier land. I feel as though I’ve swallowed half the goddamned Inner Reach. I’m salt-blooded with the stuff. How did you get down?”

“My crew are on the headland with a rope. They’ll haul us up.”

It was approaching the middle of the night by the time they all stood on the clifftop, and when the shore party finally caught sight of the thing they had been sweating and groaning to haul up out of the breakers they stood shocked, like men who go fishing for trout and land a whale. They gave Gallico some of their precious water and Creed, who seemed less daunted by the halftroll than the others, helped bind up the creature’s wounds. Gallico had been scraped raw by barnacles, bloodied by the battering of the rocks, and generally smashed about for several hours as he fought the waves, but he was alert and upright. As soon as he was able, he limped to the brink of the cliff and peered out to sea.

“That’s your ship, down there in the bay?”

“Yes,” Rol told him. “The storm dismasted her, but we’ve a jury-rig up. As soon as this onshore blow dies down a little, we’re going to put to sea. But we need water.”

Gallico nodded grimly. He was still peering out at the horizon. “You’d best be careful. There are two Bionese men-of-war out there sniffing for blood. They chased us down the wind, and by the time they had drawn off it was too late for us to claw clear of the rocks.”

“We’ve a Mercanter commission. I doubt they’d trouble us,” Rol said, remembering now the half-fancied line of lights he had seen out to sea. He wondered why Gallico’s vessel had been fleeing the Bionese but was not sure how to ask. The halftroll looked down on him kindly.

“Our ship, the
Adder,
was a privateer, Rol Cortishane. You had best know that right off.”

“You’re a pirate?”

Gallico grinned horribly. “For my sins.”

“Were you a pirate in Ascari?”

“Not strictly speaking, but times change. Now, would you rather I wandered off into the Goliad, or will you tolerate my kind in your company? You owe me nothing, whereas I owe you a life. I’ll take myself off if you do not want to befriend my sort, and think none the worse of you for it.”

Rol looked at Creed, but the ex-privateer’s face was closed.

“Stay with us. If it comes to it, we’ll find a space for you to hide belowdecks. I would not turn someone adrift in a desolation such as this.”

Gallico set a paw on Rol’s shoulder. “Then you have my thanks again. I will not forget it. I am your man now to the death.”

Despite his injuries, Gallico could keep pace with them with ease. They made their way back down to the base of the headland and moved inland. The night sky was entirely clear, awash with constellations. There was no moon, but the starlight was powerful enough to cast faint shadows. The shore party tramped steadily inland, their ears cocked for the telltale trickle of water. They were parched, and had only a cupful left in their skins. The heat of the day had evaporated and it was bitterly cold on the plateau. Their breath steamed out before them in gray clouds.

“A cold desert,” Rol said. “I did not think there were such things.”

“Only at night,” Gallico told him. “The heat is lost to the sky, sucked up by the stars to keep them bright.”

“Have you been to the Goliad before?”

“Not to speak of. But I have walked in Tukelar and Padrass, and I would surmise most deserts are alike.”

“Why did you turn pirate?”

Gallico paused a long time before answering, and watched his huge splayed feet as they stirred up the dust.

“The Mercanters are becoming too greedy for their own good. They want a complete monopoly for their ships on some of the major trade routes of the world. You know the Free Cities?”

“Some.”

“They are independent, hence the name; city-states existing only for the purpose of commerce, and hence ideal bases for the Mercanters. But I have learned that the Mercanters actually control the Free Cities. Osmer, Spokehaven, Perigord, Graillor, even great Urbonetto of the Wharves. In any case, Urbonetto and Spokehaven have barred ships from taking on cargo at their docks who do not have a Mercanter commission, and it is rumored the others will soon follow suit.”

“They’ll bankrupt themselves.”

“You underestimate the volume of Mercanter-commissioned trade, my friend. No, what is happening is that up and down the Twelve Seas, captains are scrambling for that red pennant, and paying tidy sums for the privilege of flying it. After that, they sail where they are told to sail, take on what cargoes are set out for them. There is no freedom, even for a shipowner, anymore. He is merely an employee of the Mercanters—and who are they anyway, to be set on taking over all the free trade of the world? Does anyone know?”

“I have met their agents, ordinary men for the most part.”

“Yes, but who are their leaders? No one can name them, and so long as everyone is growing rich, no one has thought to ask—it is not as though they have standing armies, or defended borders. They do not need them—other states will do the fighting for them, if that is called for. The Bionari love nothing more than to come crashing down on some small country with the complaints of the Mercanters to redress.”

“You still have not told me why you turned pirate.”

Gallico nodded, and the bone ridge of his brows came down almost to meet his jutting cheekbones so that his eyes glared green out of a crevice.

“We traded illegally in Spokehaven, and our ship was forfeit. They took it on the very docks, and half the crew. Woodrin, a few others, and myself took off inland, and walked all the way to the southern tip of Osmer. There we worked as fishermen for a few months, until one day a gull-winged xebec put in for water flying the Black Flag. The fisherfolk fled, but we remained. It was the
Adder,
and her captain, Harun Secharis, agreed to take us on. Initially, all we wanted was passage off Osmer, but the privateers told us that we were blacklisted up and down the Westerease Sea. No captain would employ us—and it must be said that for me at least it is not simply a question of changing my name.” Here Gallico chuckled bitterly. “I have a tendency to stand out from the crowd. The others took their chances elsewhere, but Woodrin stayed with me, and I stayed with the
Adder
for want of a better alternative. That is how I became a pirate.”

“And have you raped and pillaged and murdered, as sea lore has it?” Rol asked.

Gallico looked at him. “Yes. Yes, I have murdered and pillaged. The
Adder
took fourteen ships before they ran us to earth here on the rocks of the Goliad, and every one of them was a Mercanter. We killed only those who resisted us, set the crews adrift in ship’s boats, took the cargoes, and burned the ships. That is how privateers do business.”

“Where did you get rid of the cargoes?”

Gallico paused, looked away. “Anywhere we could. The Mercanters may be controlling trade, but there will always be goods of dubious ownership to be bought and sold. Some cities have black markets for the Black Ships.”

They walked on in silence after that. Rol’s shipmates kept their distance from the halftroll—especially now they knew he was a privateer. Only Creed seemed unfazed, as might be expected. Rol caught Elias staring at him as if wanting to say something, but whatever it was, the ex-convict thought better of it. They trudged along without further talk, their tongues sticking to the roofs of their mouths, and the air burning cold on their sunburnt faces.

Gallico stopped and they straggled to a halt around him. They had been walking for well over two hours and were perhaps two leagues inland. The Goliad was a barren, sandblasted plain strewn with formations of brindled rock, the only vegetation low-growing plants with leaves like knives. Here and there odd piles of rubble were heaped in lines, and gullies spoke of a time when there had been heavy rains to carve the parched dirt of the land.

“Water,” Gallico said, tongue rasping over his lips.

“Where?”

“Nearby.” His nostrils flared, snorted. “I smell it.”

He traced the elusive scent to the side of one of those gullies, a deeper blade of shadow under the stars. While the others stood about sceptically, Gallico went to his knees and, with his huge talon-tipped paws, began to dig.

Rol and Creed climbed up to the lip of the draw and looked north, to where the mountains rose dark against the sky. The Myconians, greatest heights of the northern world. Some great convulsion of the earth’s heart had punched them up in sliding shelves of tilted stone, fifteen thousand feet from foundation to peak. They were sheer as a wall here, though Rol knew that they grew less fearsome as one went farther north and west. Myconn, the Imperial City, stood in a highland vale in their heart, reachable only by a few passes, considered so impregnable that for centuries she had never built walls to protect herself. And Rowen was out there in those heights—for a moment he thought he could almost touch her sleeping mind. Rowen, fighting to become one of the powers of the world—and she would succeed, or die trying. The demons that gnawed at her heart would never let her do otherwise.

There was a quiver at Rol’s hip, and he set his hand upon his sword-pommel. Fleam slept uneasily. Perhaps she sensed more violence to come.

There was a life in the sword; Rol knew that now. It was avid, savage, and it had a voice that he half understood. What sorcery had created the blade he could not guess, but it had long passed from this world of men.