Scorpion Mountain (11 page)

chapter
seventeen

T
he entrance to Al Shabah's harbor was narrow and there was a tricky crosscurrent running along the coast, so Hal chose to enter harbor under oars.

Heron
slipped smoothly between the moles on either side of the harbor entrance.
Gerbil,
whose captain was familiar with the conditions, was under sail some forty meters in her wake. As they came to the wider, calmer waters within the breakwater,
Gerbil
's skipper signaled for his sail handlers to sheet home more firmly and accelerated to come alongside the
Heron.

He pointed to the long wharf directly opposite the harbor mouth. A green flag stirred lazily in the breeze on a tall flagpole set back from the wharf.

“Go alongside the wharf, captain,” he called. “Seley el'then's men will meet you there.”

Then he waved farewell, leaned on his tiller and sheered off, heading for a side channel in the harbor.

Gilan looked around the busy little port. There were trading ships of all shapes and sizes crammed inside the protective breakwaters. The long government wharf, however, had been left free for the
Heron.

“Look familiar?” Thorn asked him, noticing the Ranger's gaze wandering round the harbor. Gilan, of course, had visited Al Shabah before, as part of the delegation that had come to ransom Oberjarl Erak from the Arridi.

“Pretty much,” Gilan replied. Then he frowned slightly. “There's a good many more ships here than last time.”

Thorn shrugged. “Maybe trade is good at the moment.”

Hal brought the ship neatly alongside. The mooring lines were passed to men on the stone wharf and fenders tossed over the side of the ship to protect the timbers and paintwork from the rough stone. The
Heron
's deck lay well below the level of the wharf. A ladder was passed down and lashed into place.

Hal turned to Gilan and gestured to the ladder. “This is your show,” he said. “Who do you want with you?”

Gilan considered for a second or two. “For the moment, I think you and Thorn will be enough,” he said. Hal glanced round to see if Thorn had heard.

The one-armed sea wolf nodded. “Wouldn't want to overwhelm them.”

Hal turned to Stig, who was supervising the crew as they stowed oars, yardarm and sail.

“Take charge here, Stig,” he said. “We're going ashore.”

Stig nodded briefly, then turned back to the task of furling the sail tightly. When they had lowered it before entering harbor, the sail handlers had simply bundled it up and thrown a line around it to secure it.

The crew paused briefly in their various tasks as Gilan mounted the ladder, followed by Hal and Thorn. Then a curt command from Stig brought them back to their duties. As first mate, he was the jealous guardian of
Heron
's appearance. It wouldn't do to have her looking untidy or slipshod in front of a bunch of foreigners. He demanded that everything be neat and shipshape when they moored in a new port.

Gilan stepped onto the crushed stone that covered the surface of the wharf and moved to one side, waiting for Thorn and Hal to join him. He raised his eyebrows as he saw a tall, thin figure striding across the wharf to greet them. A file of ten soldiers stood at ease behind him, their armor and accoutrements highly polished and gleaming in the bright sun.

“Here's an honor for you, Thorn,” he said quietly. “You're about to be greeted by Seley el'then himself.”

The tall Arridi nobleman reached them and bowed slightly at the waist, touching his hand to lips, brow and lips in the traditional manner. Then he straightened and his narrow, swarthy face and dark beard were split by a wide smile of genuine pleasure.

“Friend Gilan,” he said. “It's good to see you again.”

“And you, Selethen,” Gilan replied and, stepping forward, he embraced the Arridan. Although Gilan was relatively tall for a Ranger, Selethen towered over him. They released each other and stepped back.

“Selethen, let me introduce Hal Mikkelson, the captain of our ship, and his battle leader, Thorn.”

Selethen bowed gravely to them, appraising them keenly.

“Welcome to Al Shabah, gentlemen,” he said.

“Good day,
Wakir
Selethen,” Hal replied. Gilan had coached them in the correct greeting for Selethen, which, in recognition of Skandian custom, consisted of his title and name. Skandians were not big on addressing people as “your honor” or “your lordship.”

“Morning,
Wakir,
” Thorn said cheerfully.

Selethen eyed him closely. One hand missing, but a hearty and confident manner. There was no sense of self-pity about the man. He obviously wasn't one to sit around bemoaning his loss. And the polished wood gripping hook that replaced his right hand was a fascinating object, obviously fashioned by a master craftsman.

“Thorn,” Selethen mused. “Is it just Thorn, northman? Or do you have a second name?”

Thorn's grin widened. “Some call me Hookyhand, your
Wakirship.
”

Selethen found his own severe features creasing into a grin in response. There was something essentially likeable about this shabby, shaggy warrior.

“Behave yourself, Thorn,” the young captain said and, instantly, the older man nodded deferentially.

“Whatever you say, Hal,” Thorn replied.

Selethen nodded. That was interesting. The younger man was barely more than a boy, yet he obviously had the respect and loyalty of the one-handed Thorn. He looked at Gilan again.

“As ever, friend Gilan, you are surrounded by interesting people,” he said.

Gilan smiled in return. “You have no idea how interesting, Selethen.”

“I've arranged for you to be quartered in the guesthouse you used last time you were here.”

Gilan nodded his thanks. “That will be most suitable. Is there room for the entire crew?” On his previous visit, the crew of
Wolfwind
were kept confined on board ship. But times had changed and the Arridans no longer viewed Skandians as enemies.

“That will pose no problem,” Selethen said. “I'll have one of my officers escort you there. You can bathe and change and I'll have food brought to the house. Then we'll meet to discuss matters. There's been a development that I think you'll find significant. Iqbal is quite close to hand.”

He clicked his fingers and a young officer stepped forward from the squad behind him, his boots grating on the crushed stone.

“Lieutenant Samur, please see our friends and their crew to the guesthouse and make sure they have everything they need.”

The young officer slapped his right palm across the silver breastplate he wore with a resounding smack. “Yes, my lord.”

Selethen nodded to Gilan. “Rest, relax and refresh yourselves. Then we'll talk. The lieutenant will bring you to the
khadif
in two hours.”

• • • • •

Rested, relaxed and refreshed, the
Heron
's party presented themselves at the
khadif,
Selethen's official residence, the equivalent of a customshouse in Araluen or Erak's Great Hall in Skandia.

It was a graceful two-story building, with a wide colonnaded front that provided shade from the hot Arridan sun. Lieutenant Samur led them through the massive front doors, then through a large anteroom and into the vast official hall itself. Their soft boots whispered on the blue tiled floor. The room was long and high ceilinged, with the second story consisting of galleries around three sides, where the town's officials worked. Al Shabah was the capital of the province and Selethen was the
Wakir,
or local ruler, answerable to the
Emrikir,
Arrida's paramount ruler.

Halfway down the hall, Samur directed them to one of the many rooms that lined either side, set beneath the upper galleries.

“Lord Selethen will meet with you in his private office,” he explained. The four visitors, for this time Hal had suggested that Stig should join them, followed him as he led the way to an ornately carved door and knocked. Selethen's voice bade them enter and Samur held the door open, deferring to them as they went in, with Gilan leading the way.

It was a comfortable room, with a breeze coming through large windows screened by stone latticework that kept out the glare of the sun. There was a low table, with plump, soft cushions around it and a brass coffeepot and tiny cups set on it.

Selethen rose easily from his seat on one of the cushions and gestured for them to make themselves comfortable. Then, after Samur had poured them all coffee—and excellent coffee it was, Gilan thought—Selethen came straight to the point.

“Good news and bad news,” he said. “The renegade Iqbal is currently in the town of Tabork, a fortified town some forty kilometers down the coast.”

“I take it that's the good news. What's the bad?” Gilan said.

“The bad news is that it
is
a fortified town. It's secured by a wall and he has several hundred soldiers with him. The
Emrikir
has tasked me with winkling him out.”

“The
em-who-rir
?” Thorn asked, frowning.

Selethen shifted his gaze to the old sea wolf. “My immediate superior. Similar to your Oberjarl.”

“Then we'd best go and start winkling,” Stig said. “If it's forty kilometers away, we can be there in half a day.”

“It's not so simple,” Selethen said. “As I said, it's a walled town and I have only cavalry at my disposal. I have no heavy siege weapons, nor enough men to lay siege to Tabork.”

“I take it the harbor itself is well defended?” Hal said.

“Very well defended. And besides, your little ship couldn't carry enough men to stage a surprise raid, if that's what you were thinking.”

Hal nodded. “The idea had crossed my mind.”

“Well, it gets worse. Iqbal has joined forces with a Hellenese corsair named Philip the Bloodyhand. He has a large war galley in the harbor. As a matter of fact, they've been disrupting coastal traffic for some weeks now, dashing out to snap up any trader foolish enough to pass by.” He spread his hands. “You may have noticed how many ships are in our harbor. Their captains are unwilling to go farther east until the situation is resolved.”

“Why don't they just go farther out to sea and bypass Tabork?” Hal asked.

“There's a problem with that.” Selethen rose and moved to where a large chart of the Constant Sea was displayed on one wall. “This is Tabork,” he said, indicating a town set on the coast. “To the north, there's a relatively narrow passage of clear water, close to the coast. Then there's a huge range of small islands, reefs and shallow water, reaching almost a hundred kilometers to the north. It's a dangerous, treacherous stretch of water, known as the Lion's Teeth.”

“Very poetic. We've had our share of shoals and reefs recently, thank you,” said Thorn. During their recent voyage to Socorro, they had blundered into shoal water off the Araluen coast, nearly losing the
Heron
in the process.

“To make matters even more difficult,” Selethen continued, “the prevailing wind is from the north. If a merchant ship tries to beat into it to work its way round the shoals, Philip's galley can easily run them down and capture them. That's why he and Iqbal took the town in the first place. It's an ideal base of operations for them. They've taken over fifty ships in the past few months.”

“Tell us about this galley,” Hal said.

Selethen paused. He wasn't a sailor and he needed to muster his thoughts before he described the galley to the Skandians.

“She's called the
Ishtfana
—that means Sea Leopard. She's big, probably three times the size of your ship, and she has twenty oars a side. She has a small mast and she can mount a sail, but her main motive power comes from her oars. She's long and very narrow. And the captains of ships in harbor here say she's very fast.”

“But probably not very seaworthy in bad weather,” Thorn said. Long, narrow galleys rarely were.

Selethen shrugged. “That I couldn't say. In addition to her rowers, she usually carries a fighting crew of about twenty men.”

“What about the oarsmen? Will they fight?” Stig asked. But the
Wakir
shook his head.

“They're slaves. They're kept chained to the oars.”

“That's a relief,” said Thorn. “We'll only be outnumbered two to one.”

The three Skandians exchanged glances.

“Sounds like a tough nut to crack,” Stig said.

“Tough, but not impossible,” Thorn replied.

Hal said nothing. He was deep in thought. Gilan watched him closely. He had an idea that the young skirl was hatching a plan.

“You're thinking you can fight
Ishtfana
?” Selethen asked.

Hal looked up at him. “I'm thinking we might be able to use her.”

chapter
eighteen

T
he others pressed him for details but Hal begged off saying more.

“It's just a rough idea at the moment,” he said. “Let me sort out the details and I'll tell you. Give me an hour or so.”

Hal requested a copy of the map of the Arridan coast, and another of Tabork, if one was available. Selethen sent a servant to fetch both charts, and when they arrived, the visitors drained the last drops of their coffee. Selethen noticed Gilan's longing gaze on the coffeepot, which was still a quarter full.

“There is coffee at the guesthouse, friend Gilan,” he said with a smile and Gilan nodded his thanks.

They made their farewells to Selethen and rose to leave, with Lieutenant Samur ready to escort them back to the guesthouse. As they left the room, Hal glanced back and saw that the
Wakir
was already engrossed in a series of reports and lists of figures. There was a lot of detail work in being a
Wakir,
he thought.

Back at the guesthouse, Hal went to his room and shut himself in. The others made themselves comfortable in the large sitting room, recounting to the rest of the crew what had taken place at the
khadif.

“What's this Selethen like, Gilan?” Lydia asked. She knew little of the inhabitants of the countries that ringed the Constant Sea and, knowing nothing, she had deep suspicions of them. Gilan paused before answering.

“Brave, loyal and a man of his word. Absolutely trustworthy. And he's an excellent warrior and leader. Quite frankly, we couldn't ask for a better man to be helping us.”

Lydia was surprised at his unstinting praise of the Arridan nobleman. But she knew Gilan well enough to trust his opinion. He wasn't a man who was easily fooled. Nor was he the type to praise someone for the sake of being polite. If he said Selethen was a man to be trusted, Lydia knew she could believe him.

Around the middle of the day, the house servants set up a charcoal grill in the inner courtyard of the house and began grilling skewers of seasoned lamb meat. The delicious smell permeated the house, even drawing Hal out from behind his closed door to join them. The Herons sat on low benches in the courtyard, shaded from the sun by striped canvas awnings, while the servants passed around plates of sizzling lamb, topped with soft fried onions that had been prepared on a hot plate over the coals. There were also bowls of a green, leafy salad, dressed with a mixture of olive oil, pepper and lemon juice, and another salad, which consisted of cracked wheat, chopped parsley, mint, and finely diced tomatoes. Stig tasted it on a piece of warmed flat bread and nodded his approval.

“That's great!” he said enthusiastically. “What's it called?” he asked one of the serving staff.

“It's called tabouleh, lord,” the man told him, and Stig filed that information away for future reference.

If the tabouleh was good, the lamb was positively heavenly. Marinated in lemon juice and oil, it was pink and tender and delicious, particularly when sprinkled with more lemon juice. There were platters of flat Arridan bread that had been warmed over the coals. The Herons slid the lamb off the skewers and onto a round of bread, then heaped piles of tabouleh and green salad onto it, rolled it into a cylinder and ate. And if some of the delicious lamb juice happened to run down their hands and arms during this process, nobody really cared. It was a simple matter to lick one's hands to clean them.

For the most part, the crew had been silent while they ate. The food was too good to waste time in idle chitchat. But now, sitting back and patting his stomach, Thorn emitted a low burp and addressed his skirl.

“Got the plan sorted out yet?” he asked.

Hal nodded, slipping a last chunk of lamb from a skewer and placing it in his mouth. He chewed for a few seconds, unable or unwilling to talk. Then he swallowed, sighed contentedly and replied.

“Pretty much. There may be a few details I've missed,” he added quickly. He had a reputation for occasionally missing the odd important detail in a plan and he wasn't about to let Thorn remind everyone about it. Instead, he decided to place the onus on his old friend. “I'll rely on you to see where I've missed something and point it out.”

“So, let's hear it,” Stig said eagerly. He admired his friend's ability to see an opportunity that everyone else had overlooked, and create a plan to take advantage of it. What really fascinated Stig was, once the opportunity or idea was pointed out, it was so blindingly obvious that one had to wonder how everyone else had missed it in the first place.

But Hal shook his head. “We'll wait for Selethen,” he said. “In the meantime, let's have coffee.”

They applied themselves enthusiastically to the coffee. It had become a favorite drink among the
Heron
crew and it was usually in short supply as a result. It made a welcome change to have it available in such liberal amounts. With the coffee, they enjoyed a dessert of a delicate pastry, cut in small squares, whose pastry layers were filled with a concoction of crushed walnuts and pine nuts, and soaked in honey.

“This is a great cake,” Ulf said contentedly. “After you've eaten it, you can keep enjoying it by licking the honey off your fingers.”

For once, Wulf didn't automatically disagree with his brother. But that could have been because he was too busy licking honey off his fingers. Instead, he made several contented grunting sounds.

More servants entered, bearing copper bowls of warm, scented, clear liquid and clean linen towels. Stefan eyed the bowl set in front of him with suspicion.

“Isn't it a bit late to serve soup?” he asked.

“It's water,” Gilan told him. “It's a finger bowl to clean your hands—although in your case, you could possibly keep going until you reach your armpits.”

And indeed, most of them were busily wiping honey and pastry flakes from their hands, their mouths, their cheeks and, in some cases, their foreheads. They were young men and they had enjoyed the food with the gusto and enthusiasm that young men so often display.

Thorn disdained using the finger bowl, cleaning his one hand by the simple expedient of wiping it on the front of his tunic and the leg of his breeches. His hook was also liberally smeared with honey and he licked that clean, then wiped it with the linen napkin the servants had provided.

Lydia looked at him, shaking her head. “Are you always so disgusting, old man?”

He gave her a beatific smile. “No. I'm doing this solely for your benefit. I'm usually very civilized.”

They were saved from further discussion along these lines by one of the servants, who now appeared in the doorway and addressed Gilan.

“Lord Gilan, the
Wakir
is here for you,” he said.

Gilan glanced at Hal. “Ready to talk?”

When Hal nodded, the Ranger heaved himself to his feet with a small groan. He had eaten one too many lamb skewers, he realized. Lamb grilled over coals was always his weakness.

Selethen was waiting for them in the large sitting room. As they all trooped in, he rose and made his usual greeting. Hal indicated the rest of the brotherband.

“I thought the crew should sit in on this,” he said. “It'll save me having to brief them separately, and they might see a few spots where we can improve the plan.” He introduced the other crew members to Selethen. Predictably, the
Wakir
was particularly interested in Lydia, noting the long dirk at her waist and her no-nonsense style of dress. Seeing his interest, Hal expanded a little on her introduction.

“Lydia joined us last year,” he said. “She's an expert hunter and tracker. And she's a dead shot with her dart-casting atlatl.”

Selethen inclined his head, looking impressed. “You Skandians and Araluens seem to have a tradition of warlike women,” he said. “I recall that the Araluen princess was also a deadly shot—but with a sling.”

Hal thought they'd spent enough time on small talk. He cleared his throat meaningfully and looked down at the chart he'd spread on the table. Selethen made a graceful gesture for him to proceed.

“All right,” the young skirl said. “This is the chart of the coast you showed me.” The others moved forward slightly to see more clearly. He indicated Al Shabah, then Tabork, farther to the east.

“We're here, and Iqbal is here, with”—he paused and looked up at Selethen—“how many men?”

“Perhaps two hundred,” the
Wakir
said. Hal made a note.

“Very well. You have one hundred and fifty cavalrymen, but no siege equipment.” He glanced round the other Herons, who hadn't been present at the earlier meeting. Then he unrolled the second chart, which was a more detailed map of Tabork itself. “The town is fortified, with a high wall around it. The main gate is on the landward side.”

“What about the harbor?” Edvin asked. “How strongly is that defended?” Being a sailor, he thought in terms of attacking from the sea, and the harbor was a potential weak point.

“There's a boom—a heavy chain that can shut off the entrance. And the two moles are manned with troops. The entrance is narrow and any ship passing through is within bow and javelin range of the moles.” The chart Selethen had provided had been accompanied by detailed notes on the town and its defenses.

“So we can't get in that way,” Stefan said. Hal looked up at him.

“We can't
force
our way in,” He said. “But there might be another way.”

He felt a stirring of interest in his crew. Selethen remained impassive. Unlike the Herons, he hadn't been privy to Hal's previous successful plans and stratagems. But he saw the reaction in the others, particularly Thorn, who nodded expectantly, waiting for Hal to reveal his idea. This is a young man worth watching, Selethen thought.

“Iqbal is in league with a Hellenese corsair called Philip Bloodyhand,” Hal continued.

Jesper gave a scornful snort. “Bit overdramatic, isn't it?”

“Hellenes are like that,” Lydia replied. “Besides, you'd hardly expect a corsair to call himself Philip Pussyfoot, would you?”

Jesper grinned at her. She had said the words with a perfectly deadpan expression.

“I suppose not. I would guess a corsair would want a more warlike . . .” Jesper became conscious that Hal was regarding him with his head slightly to one side, waiting for him to be quiet. “Sorry, Hal,” he said. “Please continue.”

“Thank you,” Hal said, with just a hint of irony. “Philip has a war galley, the
Ishtfana,
” he said. “When trading ships pass by Tabork, he's ideally positioned to dash out and capture them. That's the main reason he and Iqbal have occupied the town.”

He placed one foot on the low table and rested his elbow on his knee, leaning forward to address them all.

“Now, my idea is this. We'll rig
Heron
to look like a trader. We still have the square sail we used in Socorro. We'll sail along the coast and lure the galley out. Then we retreat to the northwest, with old Philip Pussyfoot following us.” He drew his saxe and lightly traced a path on the map, tapping a spot some ten kilometers out to sea. “Once we're out of sight of the town, we'll lose the square sail and re-rig with our own sail. Then we'll turn on the
Ishtfana.
”

Thorn pursed his lips, staring at the chart as if he could actually see the two ships there, twisting and turning about each other. “She carries twenty men, right?”

“She has a fighting crew of twenty,” Hal replied. “And forty slaves on the oars.”

“Hmmm. Twenty fighting men. Twice our numbers. We'll need to whittle them down.”

Selethen glanced quickly around the line of Skandian faces, all intent on the chart and their leaders. None of them, he noticed, seemed daunted by the prospect of taking on a larger ship with twice as many crew members as their own. Then he remembered, Skandians were born fighters.

Hal was nodding agreement. “That'll be up to Stig and Ingvar on the Mangler,” he said. “And Lydia and Gilan. We'll have surprise on our side. And these corsairs rarely find themselves facing a real fighting crew.”

Selethen nodded quietly at that point. But all the same, he had raised a hand and was frowning curiously. Hal looked at him.

“Yes,
Wakir
?”

“What is this . . . Mangle . . . you mentioned?”

He saw the smiles lighting up the faces of the young crew.

“The Mangler,” Hal corrected him. “It's our equalizer. It's a giant crossbow we've mounted in the bow of our ship. It shoots a heavy bolt about this big.” He held his hands about a meter apart. “It'll smash through the bulwarks of the galley—and its men.” He glanced at Stig. “I want you, Stig, to concentrate your shots on the helmsman and the tiller. Try to smash and disable it. Then we can slip behind her and board her over the stern.”

Selethen raised an eyebrow. It was a day of surprises and revelations, he thought.