Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

They went down through weeds and yielding mud, waded out to meet him.

“Not safe coming in like this,” he greeted them reprovingly. “There’s been a lot of commotion up there the last little while.”

“Yeah, tell us about it.” Egar hooked an elbow around the prow of the boat to hold it steady, shoveled the girl aboard with his other arm.

“And an extra passenger? Well, that will be… extra, of course.”

Harath heaved himself up over the side with a grunt. “One more word out of you, I’ll slit your fucking throat and row home myself.”

“Then you would be cursed,” said the boatman evenly. “And the unholy maraghan this place is named after would creep from the waters to avenge me, to track and drag and drown you and all your kin.”

Harath barked a laugh. “They’d have a long walk for my kin.”

“No one’s slitting anybody’s throat.” Egar got himself into the boat with an effort. The wound in his thigh was beginning to throb. “And we’re not paying extra for her, either, so settle down and row. Plus, they told me the maraghan were all driven out of this place centuries ago. Cleansed by the Revelation’s sacred word and fire, right?”

The boatman fiddled sulkily with his oars.

“They have been sighted in the river still,” he muttered. “And along the coast. They have an affinity with those who ply the water for their trade. They can be called upon.”

Egar grinned. “And there I was thinking you were a devout son of the Revelation. Bet you’re wearing an amulet under that shirt and everything.”

“What the fuck is a maraghan anyway?” Harath wanted to know.

“Sea demons,” Egar told him absently, squeezing some of the water out of his breeches. His hands came away bloody. “Like a waterhole lurker, but they’re always female. Supposed to sing to sailors sometimes, lure them out of the boat.”

The Ishlinak peered dubiously over the side. The boat was coasting on the current now, turning idly as it drifted downstream.

“Doesn’t sound like much to worry about. I had an uncle once, half Voronak, said he fucked a waterhole witch. Caught her on his line, dragged her up through a hole in the ice, and did her right there on the bank.”

“Yeah? Sounds to me like he fucked a fish.” Egar found the wound in his thigh and pressed experimentally at its sides. Grimaced. Shallow, and really fucking painful. “Then again, if he’s anything like the Voronak I know, that doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Harath coughed a laugh. Stopped it up abruptly, and gave the boatman an unfriendly stare. Switched back to Tethanne. “What are you looking at? You going to pull on those fucking oars, or what?”

“Yeah, come on, man.” Egar nodded at the boat’s lazy, swirling motion. “We’re not paying for the current to take us home. I can swim downstream faster than this.”

The boatman gave him a venomous look, but he bent to the oars. In the bottom of the little vessel, the girl picked herself up and crouched shivering. Her shift was drenched through, her legs were plastered with river mud.

Harath went back to Majak. “So, Dragonbane. You going to tell me what the fuck that was we were fighting in there tonight?”

Egar’s good humor guttered a little. He stared back upriver, to where the silent bulk of the Afa’marag temple crouched on the rise, like something that might spring after them at any moment, like something not yet unleashed.

“Different kind of demon altogether,” he said.

“But…” The Ishlinak gestured, at a loss. “I thought… Like you said. The invigilators. They chased all the demons and witches out with their book and incense and shit. What the fuck are they doing giving them house room?”

Something that had occurred to Egar as well a few times in the last half hour. Not in any worded or well-thought-out form, but still—it had been nagging at him, ever since they found the glirsht statues. A colossal lack of sense, building with every new piece that fell into place. And now he found, oddly, that he had an answer.

“I think they think they’re angels,” he said slowly.

“Angels?” Harath spat over the side. “Fucking twats.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it.”

Nothing in the known world reeks like this.

Ringil’s seen grown men piss themselves in terror at the smell, seen hardened soldiers turn pale beneath their campaign tans. It is unmistakable. Those who’ve faced it, never forget. Those who haven’t, feed on the handed-down tales, and misrepresent it as a foul stench, which it is not. At sufficient distance, in fact, it’s drowsily pleasant—a sunbaked summertime blend of spice and perfume on the wind, sharp notes of aniseed and cardamom rising through a backdrop of sandalwood and there, right there, the wavering but ever-present hint of scorching…

Dragon .

Slammed awake like a cheap tavern door.

He sat up with the force of it, instant cold sweat, hand groping after a sword hilt nowhere to be found. Breath locked up in his throat, staring around.

Where the fuck…?

The shape of his surroundings resolved—he lay in a bunk under a gently tilting ceiling lamp whose flame was turned down low. The fittings of a well-appointed ship’s cabin, painted back and forth with shadows from the tilting lamp. Shelves, a sea chest against one wall, a cramped desk and cushioned chair. The back of the door was hung with a Yhelteth ward against evil, the painted image of some saint or other bordered in tiny significant writings from the Revelation. Above him, he heard the hurrying thud of footfalls across planking, voices calling out. Soft squeaking punt of wood on wood somewhere, a steady rocking.

He was aboard a vessel, sure, but—

He hauled himself out of the bunk and sat, elbows on knees, face in hands, memories skipping off the surface of recollection like flung flat stones…

The fjord. The black-rigged caravel. Rowing out .

Hjel’s valedictory figure, there on the shore and not. Were there specks of rain in the air? In his eyes?

The caravel’s cabins had been musty and coffin-cramped. Narrow, unlit spaces supplied only with rough straw mattresses on the floor—retiring to them and trying to sleep was like being buried alive. He’d kept to the decks.

Crew of cerement-wrapped corpses on deck, all facing into the wind, eloquently silent in his presence. Only the captain speaks to him, and then only to deflect his questions in cold and cryptic monosyllables. What, after all, do the dead have to converse about with the living? He is cargo pure and simple .

Yeah—cargo to where, Gil?

A reflexive thought. He reached under the bunk and found his boots, stacked neatly side by side. The Ravensfriend lay scabbarded next to them.

Who…?

He was out of the Margins, that much was clear. The cabin around him had that same hard-edged feel he was used to on waking from time in the Gray Places. But…

More voices from up on deck, shouting. He tipped a glance toward the cabin ceiling as the feet came thumping back the other way. Someone was getting excited up there.

The reek of dragon washed in stronger. He felt a muscle twitch in his cheek.

Indistinct instructions called back and forth over his head, and abruptly the whole room tipped. Around the cabin, small items slid and toppled. The lamplight shifted crazily. The Ravensfriend crept out a few inches from under the bunk.

They were coming about.

Ringil was dressed and armed and through the door in what seemed like seconds. A broad companionway led up from just beside his cabin. He climbed it at speed, cleared the hatch at the top, spilled out onto the thinly bandlit deck with a little less elegance than he would, on reflection, have liked.