Ian Esslemont - Assail

Fisher noted a lad lingering about the back door. He was biting his lip and shifting his weight from foot to foot, obviously anxious. He crossed to him. ‘Is something wrong, lad?’

The boy jumped, rather surprised. ‘You don’t talk funny.’

Fisher cursed his mistake, muttered, ‘I’ve travelled a lot. So, what’s troubling you?’

‘Father sent me to give a message — but I don’t know who to talk to.’

‘Can you tell it to me? I’ll pass it along.’

The boy brightened; clearly this was what he’d hoped to hear. He gestured to the north. ‘We found another of you foreigners washed up on the shore. We brought him here but don’t know what to do with him. The Countess’s men won’t take him.’

Iren, Countess of Holly. And north of here was a good part of the Wreckers’ Coast. The gods alone knew how many of the ships making for this region had their bottoms ripped out along that length of treacherous rocks and shoals. To its inhabitants anyone not local was free game to rob and murder. It was, in point of fact, the only industry they had. ‘Why bring him here?’ Fisher asked, now wondering why the lad’s father hadn’t robbed this fellow and pushed him under as he had probably done countless times before.

The boy now got a strange look in his eyes, wary, and touched with fear. ‘He’s a strange one, sir.’

A strange one? ‘Well, let’s take a look.’

The lad bobbed his head, grateful and relieved. He motioned to the rear. ‘We’d best go this way.’

‘The back? Why?’

The boy now squinted to the front. ‘Ah … reasons, sir.’

One of Enguf’s men appeared from the kitchens. ‘Can’t find the innkeep anywhere,’ he bellowed.

Fisher eyed the sturdy hewn planks of the front door. Come to think of it, no one had come or gone for some time. He motioned the lad onward. ‘After you.’

The boy took him out of the canted ill-fitting rear door, then immediately ducked behind a tall stack of firewood and crouched. Fisher joined him. ‘Company?’ he whispered.

‘The Countess’s men have closed the roads round the inn.’

‘Didn’t consider sharing that information?’

The lad studied him as if he was a fool. ‘Not my errand.’ He dashed for a rear outbuilding. Keeping low, Fisher followed. Entering a field of tall stubble the lad suddenly halted and Fisher saw that he faced one of the Countess’s men-at-arms. This fellow wore a loose oversized leather jack covered in iron studs that winked as they caught the moonlight. He had a crossbow levelled upon them.

‘Back inside,’ he growled through a ragged beard.

Fisher motioned to the lad. ‘He’s not with us.’

‘Doan’ care. Back inside. We’re arrestin’ you lot.’

‘What for?’ Fisher asked, almost smiling at the conceit.

But the question didn’t buy any time at all as the man spat to one side and smiled behind his beard. ‘For bein’ a damned foreigner.’

Fisher slowly raised his hands, and as he did so a coin appeared in each. Large ones that gleamed something other than silver in the moonlight. The man-at-arms’ tongue emerged to wet his lips and he peered about. He took his hand from the crossbow’s trigger bar and motioned for the coins to be tossed. Fisher threw them one after the other, then urged the lad onward with a hand pressed at his back. The man-at-arm ignored them as he held the coins up to the moon, squinting at them first through one eye then through the other.

The lad stumbled onward and kept slowing to peek back. ‘Keep going,’ Fisher whispered. Once the man was left behind, the lad scowled and hunched his shoulders.

‘I didn’t ask you to spend no coin,’ he finally complained.

Fisher understood the lad was worried he would press the debt upon his family. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he answered, quite untroubled. ‘The coins are from the Lether and worthless. The gold plating their brass is thinner than Letherii generosity — which is non-existent.’

The lad frowned, still uncertain. ‘Well …’ he finally judged. ‘All right.’

Fisher peered ahead into the night where the land fell to the coast. ‘You’re taking me to the harbour.’

‘Aye. We have him in our boat.’

‘I see.’

He was led, not to one of the fishing docks, but onward, past the built-up shore to where the waves surged among black rocks and the footing became sodden and treacherous. Here, almost invisible from shore, a tiny boat, a skiff, bobbed with the sullen gleaming waters. As they closed, a pale face rose over the worn and gouged gunwale. It was a lad even younger than the first one, fear quite plain in his wide eyes.

‘Just the two of you?’ Fisher grunted, surprised.

‘Aye.’

He was amazed they’d brought the man all this way and didn’t simply toss him overboard and call the errand finished. Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face for the lad bristled and thrust out his chin. ‘We was told to bring him!’ Then he shrugged, his outrage melting. ‘Besides, Father said he doan’t want his ghost hauntin’ us in the night.’

His ghost? Intrigued, Fisher edged down the slippery rocks to where the younger brother kept a handhold. The moon and clear night’s starlight revealed a tall form wrapped in burlap and rags in the skiff’s bottom.

‘He’s a tall one,’ Fisher observed.

‘That’s not all,’ said the lad, and he nodded to his brother, who knelt down and pulled the covering from the figure’s head.

Fisher almost plunged into the cold waves as the night revealed the black elongated features of a Tiste Andii.

How long Fisher squatted awkwardly on the rocks staring at that face he knew not. All he knew was that he lost the feeling in his feet and had to gingerly adjust his seating to work the blood back into them. Jesting gods! An Andii here on these shores! What could be this one’s purpose for being here? Not the hunt for gold, that was certain.

Then he saw how mist wafted from the figure, and how hoar frost limned the burlap. He pointed, hardly able to speak.

‘That?’ said the older lad. ‘That’s nothing. Covered in ice he was when we dropped him in. And the water in the scupper froze solid beneath him.’

Fisher could hardly credit it. ‘Ice, you say? And what of the ship — the wreck?’

The boys exchanged wondering glances and the elder stroked his chin in a gesture out of place in one so young. ‘Was none that night. Now as you say it. Maybe he fell overboard.’

Fisher did not think so. The lads, he noted, had been studying him for some time now, sullen and still fearful, though covering this with a brittle truculence. ‘Well?’ the older one demanded.

‘Well what?’

‘Will you take him from us?’

Fisher almost gaped. ‘Oh — aye. That is, yes. Certainly.’

The lads let out long pent up breaths and even shared quick smiles of success. Clearly they were in dread of the curse of this black-skinned demon out of foreign lands. Fisher motioned that he would take him from the skiff. Together, the lads awkwardly eased the bundled body up to Fisher, who set it over his shoulder. At that instant he almost tumbled all of them into the waves as from within the rag cowl at the Andii’s head a great mass of billowing hair tumbled free to lash in the contrary winds: a long mane of straight black hair shot through by streaks of white.

Andii — with streaks of silver! Fisher almost staggered. Jesting gods indeed! Could this be … him ? Surely not. It must be another. He was not alone in his silvering hair, was he?

The lads pushed him on his way, grateful now to be free of any death-curse from this eerie demon thrust upon them by the water and the night. Though Fisher was an unusually strong man he staggered beneath his burden back to town; this Andii was an unusually solid fellow. He selected a modest outbuilding, a small barn, and kicked open the door to lay his burden within. Then he went to find means to start a fire to warm him.