The Dark Defiles (45 page)

The smell was growing stronger, there even in the gaps between the bluster of the wind. He sneaked a glance at Archeth, wondering if it kicked her back as thoroughly to memories of her father.

But in the gray morning light, her face was as impassive as the flat of a blade.

They came over steeply piled mounds of rubble the size of hills, started a descent through isolated crags and outcrops of architecture that looked like the drowned upper levels of buildings once dizzying in height. And then, abruptly, they were looking down at the edge of the Kiriath earthworks from not much more than five hundred yards away. The holes gaped there, larger than some lakes he knew back on the steppe, but empty, shadowed, and dark. More than ever, it looked as if these were wounds the city had sustained, and the vast black iron protrusions that sprouted from them on all sides some kind of surgical clamps to prevent healing. As if the Kiriath had dropped something from a great height on their enemies here, and then left it in place to grow and sprout, just the way all those complex alloys were supposed to grow in the stacks at An-Monal.

The fire sprite came to a flickering halt just past a standing ruin a handful of stories high, paused there perhaps to give them time to take in the view down across the rubble. The air was warmer now. Even the occasional gusts of wind carried some stale-tasting heat along with the brewing stack odors. Egar fetched up at Archeth’s shoulder again.

“See a way down inside?”

She cupped both hands above her eyes to shade them, peered, and shook her head. “Not from here.”

“At Kaldan Cross, you got those things like big mason’s hods running on cables, but they’re sort of tucked away, under the lip.”

“Yeah, I know. I was there when they built it, remember? This is a fuck of a lot bigger than anything at Kaldan.”

“Well,” he shrugged. “Bigger hods and cables then. Maybe.”

The warm wind came and went, gusts and gaps, blowing directly across the open plain and the huge iron-clamped holes in it. The acrid chemical reek rolled in again, but it brought something else with it this time, another note to the mingled odors that—

Sandalwood … ?

Or not. He’d lost it again, in the buffet and gust of the wind. He turned his head, breathed deep trying to get it back. He cast about, a sliding sense of doom behind his eyes. Saw the fire sprite turned jumpy and irresolute, slipping back and forth in the air beside them. Archeth, lost in peering down at what her people had built here … 

Sudden, sharp spike of aniseed in his nostrils. The wind came banging back, brought with it the sandalwood again, stronger now, no room left for doubt. He heard comment murmur among the men, men too young or too lucky to know what it meant. He stared down at the gaping holes ahead of them. Felt the warmth in the air again, as if for the first time, and understanding fell on him like the ruin at his back.

Oh no
… 

But he knew it was.

And now the stealthy chill, waking and walking through his bones. The grinning skull of memory, the bony beckoning hand.

Well, well, Dragonbane. Here it comes, after all these years.

He grabbed Archeth by the shoulder. “Snap out of it, Archidi. We’ve got trouble.”

“Trouble?” She blinked, still lost in thought “What’s the …”

She caught the blast of spices on the breeze. Her eyes widened in shock. Egar was already unslinging his Warhelm-forged staff lance. He shed the soft fabric sheaths at either end, let them drift to the ground without attention. Plenty of time to chase them up later.

If there was a later.

“Clear your steel,” he snapped to the men at his back, as they gathered in around him. “And get back inside that ruin, find yourselves some cover, fast.”

“Is it the lizards again, my lord?” someone asked.

He had time to offer one tight grin. “I’m afraid not, no.”

“Then—”

Across the wind, out of Kiriath pits below them, it came and split the air. A shrieking, piercing cry he’d thought he’d never hear again outside of dreams. A cry like sheets of metal tearing apart, like the denial of some bereaved warrior goddess, vast, immortal grief tipping over into the insane fury of loss. Like the drawn-out, echoing rage of some immense, stooping bird of prey.

“It’s a dragon,” he told them simply. “Pretty big one, too, by the sound of it.”

he term
pirate
was one that gave the League a few semantic difficulties.

The word in current popular usage was in fact a corruption into the Parash dialect of an older term used in the southern cities, borrowed in when Parashal was the ascendant power in the region. The southern coastal states of Gergis had long been traders by sea, knew very well what the scourge of piracy looked like, and their descriptor was condemnatory in no uncertain terms. But Parashal was an inshore city, tucked away in the upland spine of Gergis and several hundred very safe miles from the nearest ocean. Its citizens had about as much chance of being carried off by a dwenda succubus as they did of suffering the predations of a real, live pirate, and so they leaned to a rather more romantic view of the profession. Colorful tales abounded of bold young men, invariably handsome and chivalrous, seeking their fortunes on the high seas, striking out heroically against corrupt port authorities and unjust maritime power. Thus resident in the Parash overculture, the word
pirate
collected all the selective drama and romance these narratives entailed, much the way a half-sucked sweet picks up a shielding layer of dust and lint from lying in a pocket untasted.

Subsequent cultural and political shifts—put more bluntly, war—brought regional ascendancy north to Trelayne, but by then the Parash dialect was the dominant form of Naomic throughout the Gergis peninsula, taught in schools and temples, used in treaties and legal contracts, seen as the civilized and sophisticated norm by which all truly educated men were measured. So the accepted form of the word
pirate
would retain all its attendant Parash ambiguity, along with a peacock tail of fanciful heroic narrative made up and written down by men who, had they ever been faced with the real thing, would doubtless have run screaming to hide in the nearest privy.

It didn’t hurt this trend that Trelayne was as much a military as a trading power, at least in aspiration, and that to a large degree the city depended on legalized piracy to enforce its influence at sea. Handing out letters of marque to known coastal raiders was a cheap and useful substitute for building a navy, not to mention a powerful stimulus to seagoing trade, since you ensured at the stroke of a quill not only that your own merchant shipping was left comfortably alone but that your competitors were severely hampered until they saw fit to pay you for protection.

Prosecuted over time, this privateer-based strategy allowed Trelayne to extend and consolidate dominance over every coastal city in the Gergis region and even a couple that had liked, sporadically, to think of themselves as belonging to the Empire in the south. And along with the dominance came a whole new crop of heroic tales, where the terms
pirate
and
privateer
grew more or less interchangeable and the bloody specifics of the work were glossed over in general celebration of the triumphant end result. Thus, pirates as warrior princes, as conquerors and standard bearers, as sober martial guardians of righteous commerce and selfless servants to the Greater Glory of Trelayne—eventually becoming the Greater Glory of the Trelayne League - in its tussles with the encroaching imperial might of Yhelteth.

Perhaps inspired by all this confused and confusing etymology, Shif Grepwyr began his career in piracy young. He was a privateer cabin boy at eleven years old, a boarding party bravo at fourteen. Was bossing his own boarding gang a month shy of his fifteenth birthday, rose to boarding party chief on the raiding caravel
Salt Lord’s Sanction
a year after that. Three years later, he killed
Sanction
’s skipper in a squabble over spoils, leveraged the murder into a full mutiny, and then showed up in Trelayne that winter, requesting a transfer of charter and willing to pay for it with a hold full of plunder. Always sensitive to commercial promise, the Trelayne Chancellery acquiesced.

The name on the new letter of marque was Sharkmaster Wyr.

“Oh, right, him.” Klithren poured himself another shot of rum, knocked it back, and wiped his mouth. “Yeah, back when I was a kid he used to winter at Hinerion sometimes, coming back up from raiding the Empire coast. But that ship wasn’t called
Salt Lord’s Sanction
, it was something else. Shorter than that.”

Ringil nodded. “
Sprayborne.
Wyr pulled in so much plunder those first couple of years, sank so much imperial shipping, they made him an honorary commander in the Shipmasters’ guild and gave him a new hull. Purpose-built raider, something to compete with the Yhelteth naval pickets. That’s the one you remember.”

Klithren poured again. Held it up to the gently tilting lantern over their heads and squinted through the liquor at the light. He was beginning to slur his words a little.

“Yeah, this is all really fascinating memory lane shit, fascinating,
but.
” The rum, down in one again. He banged the empty glass on the table. “Fuck’s it got to do with us?”

Ringil’s rum sat untouched before him. He picked it up delicately between finger and thumb. “Would you like to know where
Sprayborne
is now?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“It’s anchored at the delta mouth of the Trel, out by the mudflats. You probably sailed right past it when you shipped out for Ornley.
Sprayborne
is a prison hulk now. Masts sawn down to stumps, hull chained fore and aft into river silt. Sharkmaster Wyr is still aboard, along with those of his crew who weren’t punished by decimation.”

“Say
what
?”

“Yeah. Seems after the war our friend Wyr lost track of which side his bread was buttered and started taking ships pretty much at random. They say it was Liberalization that knocked him off the perch, that he lost some friends or family to the auction block, but who knows?” Ringil shrugged. “Maybe he just didn’t like the moratorium on attacking imperial traffic. Pretty lean times all around back then.”

“Fucking tell me about it.”

The war against the Scaled Folk had emptied the League’s coffers just as it had the Empire’s, devastated its productive workforce, laid waste once prosperous centers of population and whole tracts of once fertile land. And the speculative border skirmishing against the Empire that followed in the south once the Scaled Folk were safely defeated had not delivered any of the promised recompense, had in fact only sucked down more men and resources that neither side could afford to lose—hence an early, hastily brokered peace.

For the privateer fraternity, Gil guessed, the whole thing would have been an unmitigated disaster. No real fighting to be done at sea during the war itself, if you didn’t count a few early and abortive attempts to burn the incoming Scaled Folk rafts. Decently seaworthy vessels—and some not even decently—got commandeered and turned into troop transports or evacuation barges, or were put to running basic supplies, payment for all of which was scant to nonexistent. The privateer crews were pared back to a minimum, most of their fighting strength drafted into landing parties alongside more conventional forces, leaving the bare minimum needed to handle the sailing. And for those who survived to war’s end, no prospect of a return to the good old days of licensed raiding on the imperial main, because nobody could afford the fresh hostilities it might provoke.

Under the circumstances, what was any self-respecting privateer to do?

“He had a pretty good run, considering.” Ringil drank off a measured portion of his own rum and set it down again. “Started taking Empire merchantmen, regardless of the treaties. That got him loudly proclaimed an outlaw, because the League couldn’t very well be seen to do anything less, at which point he must have decided what the fuck, may as well have all the fish in the net while I’m trawling, and he starts hitting League shipping, too.”

“Makes sense. No imperial navy to worry about up here.”

“That may have been a factor, I suppose. In any case, it all went bad shortly after. I hear he cleaned out a ship flying Marsh Daisy pennants, and the Brotherhood took exception. They went to work chasing down some of Wyr’s shoreside collaborators, and someone taken in the net just happened to know where
Sprayborne
was laired up that season. Brotherhood sells the information on to the Chancellery and the League goes in heavy. Lots of dead pirates, but Wyr gets taken alive, to be made an example of and—”

“Still don’t see,” Klithren broke in, “what the blue fuck any of this has got to do with us.”

“That’s because you’re drunk.” Ringil took the rum bottle and placed it strategically on his side of the table. Finished his drink and set his glass down upended. “I need a diversion while I get into Trelayne and bring out my friends. I want the city in flames, and I can’t spare the men or the time to do it myself.”

“And you think some broken-down failure of a pirate’s going to do it for you?” Klithren wagged his head solemnly back and forth. “Uh-uh, no way. You find some way to cut Wyr free, you really think he’s going to pick up a cutlass for you and try to storm the city? Forget it. He’s going to shake your hand, pick your pocket, and then fuck off faster than a paid whore. He’ll head right into the marsh and disappear. That’s if he can still stand up, because from what I’ve heard, they don’t feed them all that well out there aboard the hulks.”

Ringil eyed the other man coldly. “You ever have a family, Klithren?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“Well, turns out Wyr did. Wife, daughter, couple of sons. None of them all that old. They got taken along with everybody else when the League forces stormed
Sprayborne
’s layup. And you know just how fucking good the scum up at the Chancellery is at meting out punishment to those who transgress.”

It went black and hammering through his heart and arteries as he spoke, the sudden-stirring memory of Jelim’s death, and perhaps Klithren saw something of it in his eyes, too, because the mercenary grew more soberly quiet.

“They get the cage?”

“The wife and eldest son did.” Ringil locked it down with an effort, but the same shuddering force went on pulsing behind his eyes with the metronome calm of his words. “Daughter and the other son got lucky. There’s an ordinance about executing children younger than twelve by impalement. Up at the law courts, they call it holding the spike.”

Klithren nodded. “They have that in Hinerion, too.”

“So. Sharkmaster Wyr is taken in the company of his five-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter to the Eastern Gate, where they all witness the impalement of Wyr’s wife and eldest son. They’re then taken to
Sprayborne,
whose masts are still intact at this point, and Wyr gets to watch his other son and his daughter hoisted up in cages onto the mainsail spar, where they will be left to die of thirst or exposure, whichever gets them first. And he’s imprisoned below, so he can hear them calling for their mother until they die.” Ringil built a shrug. It felt like he was wearing plate across his shoulders. “I imagine they would have liked to hang the mother and other son up there, too, so Wyr could hear their screams. But those cages are heavy and hard to move, and the Chancellery law lords, well, those fine nobles in their house of justice have always had a strong pragmatic streak.”

Klithren said nothing. Gil breathed in deep. Noticed his teeth were gritted, loosened his jaw, and breathed out. He gave the other man a tight smile.

“You say Sharkmaster Wyr, once freed, will turn tail and flee into the marsh. I beg to differ.”

T
HEY RAISED THE NORTH
G
ERGIS COAST NOT LONG AFTER NIGHTFALL.
Shortly after, the lookout aboard
Dragon’s Demise
spotted the faintest trace of a reddish glow against the sky forward to port. There was really only one thing that it could be. The call went up and signal lanterns flickered ship to ship—journey’s end sighted. Seemed Lal Nyanar had managed to plot and hold a pretty steady course after all.

Unless he missed by five hundred miles and that’s the lights of Lanatray we’re looking at.

But Ringil knew, as he stood on the foredeck and watched the smeared charcoal line at the horizon, that it wasn’t Lanatray, and that Nyanar was right on course. Lanatray was tiny by comparison to Trelayne, and shielded from the direct ocean by a long granite bluff—you wouldn’t spot the glow of her lights until you were nearly swimming distance out. And anyway—

You can feel it, can’t you, black mage.

That’s Home out there, sitting just under the horizon like grave dirt under your nails, and you can feel it calling.

Dragon’s Demise
came about a couple of degrees and pointed her prow at the glow on the sky. Behind him at the ship’s helm, he heard Nyanar calling the order to run colors. Gil put a krinzanz twig he’d rolled earlier to his lips, willed it absently to life with the sketch of a burning glyph drawn in the air. He drew the harsh-tasting smoke down and held it there while the krin stole icily from his lungs into his veins. He leaned on the rail, breathed the smoke back out, and waited for Trelayne to show herself.