Wild Magic (52 page)

Mam laughed. ‘Joz saw you with her at the Allfair,’ she said at last. ‘Watched you watching her; saw the pair of you kissing outside the Gathering. He’s soft like that, is Joz.’

Erno felt the blush engulf him, starting with a terrible heat in his chest, which then rushed up into his neck and ended by making beacons of his ears. The embarrassment of being spied on like this was one thing; but the shame of Katla discovering him to be in possession of a love-charm which had persuaded her into his arms was another entirely. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he protested. ‘I— She— It meant nothing.’

The mercenary leader put her hand on his arm. ‘She’s a great girl, but an unforgiving one, Katla Aransen,’ she said. ‘Best show her your tough side when you see her: she’ll not lie down for a soft man.’ And then she guffawed loudly, leaving him wondering exactly what definition of the word she had meant by this.

Later that night he lay there in the dark, wrapped in a sheepskin bag against the cold, and listened to the sell-swords talking in low voices, in their carefully contrived codes, which were designed to keep eavesdroppers none the wiser. He knew enough to follow the gist of their discussion, if not the more intricate details. It transpired they had managed to gull the money for the expedition – including the ship, the crew’s wages and the cargo – out of two entirely separate sources – the Earl of Stormway and Erol Bardson – for two entirely different reasons. Bardson was under the false impression that they would sail to Fair Isles and Wolf’s Ness and there raise a muster among his malcontents, whom they would arm with the weaponry they carried in their grain sacks. These rebels would then return with them, put in down the coast and from there trek overland to enter Halbo from the northern gate when the moon was hidden in nine nights’ time. He grinned, despite himself, imagining the unpleasant Bardson waiting in vain in the depths of that black night, planning his incipient kingship. With luck, Erno thought, he’d be caught bloody-handed at the gate and despatched as the traitor he was.

The Earl of Stormway was more likely to see some return on his investment, since his scheme sat rather better with the sell-swords’ own plans; or rather with Mam’s whim to reunite Erno with Katla Aransen, and gain a sackful of cantari into the bargain. Their task? To deliver up to Stormway the shipmaker, Morten Danson, whom the Rockfallers had abducted from under the King’s very nose. If Ravn Asharson – who had seen too little of the world – had no interest in the war Istria had declared, then Stormway – who had seen too much – was determined to take matters into his own hands, it seemed. The old man had already set about bolstering the northern fleet: with Danson overseeing the building of new ships, they could not only defend themselves from attack, but carry fire and fear into the heart of the Istrian Empire.

It was, he considered, ironic that their plans should coincide with Eyra’s best weal, for by the standards of those by whom he had been raised, the mercenaries were unprincipled, unpatriotic, untrustworthy ruffians. Yet he felt strangely comfortable in their company: they asked little of him that he could not willingly give and had found in the time he had spent among them more peace and pleasure with them than he could ever have imagined possible. It was true that their tasks in that time had been less nefarious than usual, but he could not help but like them, even so.

He propped himself up on an elbow and withdrew a long piece of red cord from the small pack he had been using to pillow his head. This he held for a few quiet minutes, and then began to knot the following making:

He paused, then:

Doc proved more difficult, for Erno had spent less time in his company, and found him alternatively dour and unforthcoming, or ponderously drunk and appallingly garrulous about all manner of inconsequential information. He could not find a pattern he liked, but in the end settled for:

He came to a stop at this point, for he felt someone’s eyes upon him like a tangible touch, and when he looked up it was to find that the hillman, Persoa, was watching him intently, his head on one side, like a bird of prey watching a mouse. Then the hillman dropped one heavy eyelid in a slow and deliberate wink and lifted the reed-pipe he held to his lips. Sitting there crosslegged, illuminated by the flickering light from the tub-fire, he looked exactly like the drawing of the goat-man in the bound parchment book he had got from a trader in Hrossey Market, called
The Song of the Flame
, which recounted many ancient southern tales and legends.

Suddenly his fingers were busy again.

He looked down at the cord and frowned. He had no idea why he had tied these last knots – they seemed to have come from somewhere other than his own fingers. Hastily, he wrapped the cord around his hand and stowed it in the sack, then laid his head down on it as if to contain the knowledge he had stumbled upon.

Sleep came slowly that night. When it did, he dreamed of Katla Aransen, though he had promised himself he would not.

Twenty-four

Ghosts

They managed to pull Pol Garson’s arm back into its socket, but his cries were so loud the albatrosses fled shrieking from the topmast, and when they bound and splinted the broken bone below the elbow, he fainted clean away.

‘He’ll be no further use to you,’ Urse One-Ear said quietly, wiping the sweat from his hands onto his huge, leatherclad thighs.

Aran Aranson nodded abstractedly. They had lost five men to the storm in all – Haki Ulfson, Marit Fennson, a blond man whose name he had never fully committed to memory, and two young brothers from the southern part of the island, Vigli and Jarn Forson. What he would tell their mother when – if – they ever returned to Rockfall, he did not know. Men were lost at sea all the time; but to lose two sons at once was hard. He watched the rest of the crew moving busily around the ship, mending the lines, securing the sail, bailing out the slopping water from the bilges, and made a mental count of those who had survived. Tor Bolson and Fall Ranson at the prow; Emer Bretison, Gar Felinson and Flint Hakason hauling up the sodden sail to let it dry in what little breeze the day granted them; the men from Black Isle running an efficient chain of buckets from midships to stern; Erl Fostison and a couple of the Rockfall lads retying the halyards. He watched Mag Snaketongue and a boy from the east shore making an inventory of the supplies to ascertain what – if anything – had been washed overboard during the storm and experienced another bright flash of memory from the height of the tempest. Haki, arms flailing, disappearing over the side. His death was a loss to them all, for the Westman Islander had more knowledge of arctic sailing than the rest put together; Aran had been counting on his skill with pack-ice and leads to navigate them safely through the shifting, treacherous regions they must surely negotiate between here and Sanctuary. Without Haki, their survival was likely to depend solely on their captain’s judgement and whatever the map might choose to divulge.

The map.

He touched the weatherproof pouch inside his shirt briefly for reassurance, though he knew from the constant warmth it gave out against his skin that the map was still intact inside. His fingers throbbed and burned as they rested upon it, generating a current of heat which travelled the length of his arm and eased the aching muscles in his neck so that for a moment it was as if the summer sun had made an unseasonal appearance and blessed him with its caress. Feeling unwontedly optimistic, the Master scanned the horizon for any sign of land, suddenly sure the world was about to yield a secret to him. To the north and east the skies were as mottled as a broken egg, all bright, yolky yellow and scarlet-blotched. It was not the good clear sky a sailor would hope to see after a blow, a sky washed clean by the storm, suggesting fine weather and good winds to come, but a sky which promised further difficulties in store. It was like glancing into the bloodshot eye of a mad bull. Aran looked away again, disturbed, and wondered suddenly where his son might be. It occurred to him with a sharp stab of foreboding that he had not actually seen Fent through the events of the night before; had no memory of seeing him tied to gunwale, brace or thwart, or baling with the others in the aftermath.

Turning in circles, he stared around the
Long Serpent
: in vain. Of his only surviving son there was no sign at all. Gritting his teeth against rising panic, he walked grimly down towards the stern casting glances about him all the way. Men who found his eye upon them looked away again swiftly and busied themselves about their tasks, for there was something fearful about his aspect that brought to mind grandmothers’ tales of trolls and tree-sprites.

Amidships, Mag Snaketongue – a man either more courageous or more foolhardy than the rest – stopped the Master of Rockfall by a hand on his arm.

‘We lost some of the watercasks, sir.’

Aran stopped dead as if registering this new nightmare.

‘Two out of the four.’ Mag grimaced. ‘Thought they were tied in safe, but the rope got caught on a sharp edge somewhere and frayed through—’ He held up the ragged ends for his captain’s inspection.

Aran’s eyes darted over the evidence. He took a deep breath and the cook winced, quailing from the tirade that was sure to follow. But the Master passed him by, merely looking distracted.

The boy from the east shore slipped out from behind the cook and watched Aran Aranson make his way down the ship. ‘Did he hear you?’ he asked anxiously. It was his first voyage and he felt at fault, even though no one could have foreseen the way the rope had frayed.

Mag Snaketongue shrugged. ‘If he does not order Urse to turn the ship around and head back for the nearest island we’ll know he didn’t.’

But the Master of Rockfall, instead of stopping to speak to the big lieutenant, stationed as he always was at the steerboard, carried on up to the stern without even turning his head.

‘Sur’s nuts!’ Mag firmed his jaw as if preparing it for a blow, and set out after his captain.

In the depths of the storm he had hit his head hard on one of the upturned thwarts, and as the world became soft and dark around him he thought he had heard a voice calling to him from the heart of the maelstrom,
Death is coming, but not for you. I am coming for you, or you for me. All shall be well, all things shall be well
. And then it had told him more, much more than he wished to hear, until he thought he was losing his wits, or wished he was.

The giant, the madman and the fool, to me, bring them to me.

This last pronouncement tumbled around and around his skull just as he tumbled around beneath the faering in the throes of the gale, disabling and distorting everything he had believed to be true and right, just as his limbs and back, his shoulders and head were bruised and damaged by his rough contact with the wood.

When the light suddenly fell upon him, it was like a physical pain in the centre of his head. He shut his eyes tight and cried out—

‘Babbling away about death and madmen and fools,’ Mag reported to the knot of men gathered around the cookpot that night. ‘Don’t ask me why. Hit his head hard, that’s all I know: he’s got a lump the size of a goose egg above one eye.’

‘Serves him right,’ Tor Bolson growled. ‘Skiving off like that. Fancy hiding himself under the ship’s boat when we needed all hands. Captain’s son, and all. Fool of a boy.’

‘Seems to me we’re the fools, for not throwing him overboard when we had the chance,’ Erl offered, licking the wound on his arm where Fent had bitten him. ‘Before his da noticed we’d found him.’

‘Aye, he’s a vicious little weasel, that one,’ Flint agreed. ‘And crazy as a snake now.’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Emer said anxiously, looking back over his shoulder to where the Master of Rockfall knelt over his son in the stern of the ship. ‘They say the Rockfall clan have strange powers.’

Flint Hakason snorted. ‘Don’t be daft.’

But Erl persisted. ‘Katla Aransen got roasted at the Allfair, her arm was all withered and burned as black as the branch of a lightning tree, is what I heard; but then there she is right as rain in no time. You can’t tell me that’s natural.’

‘That was down to the seither who visited, though,’ Tor said sagely.

Erl Fostison made the sign of Sur’s anchor. ‘Safe haven,’ he muttered superstitiously. ‘Seithers are unlucky at the best of times. It’s my belief she washed the keel of the
Long Serpent
in blood, like Ashar Stenson did with the
Troll of Narth
.’

‘Aye, well if she did, I’ll not complain,’ Flint said cheerfully. ‘Since the
Troll
came through all its sailings in one piece.’

‘Besides,’ added one of the Rockfallers matter-of-factly, ‘the seither disappeared well before the keel was carved.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Erl said darkly. ‘But you have to ask yourself just where it was exactly she vanished to!’

If they had hoped the Master would turn the ship and head for supplies and safety, they were to be disappointed. Obstinate as a dog with a bone, Aran Aranson cut the water rations to a single cup a day. ‘You can drink your own piss if things get bad,’ he’d roared at Flint Hakason when the man protested the lack of wisdom in this decision. ‘That or jump overboard and catch a passing whale to carry you home.’