L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

Kharl pondered that. Guns that could fire four kays over the reefs and hit the shore?

Hagen cleared his throat. “Wouldn’t be taking that staff ashore, not in Swartheld. Folk here don’t take kindly to Recluce. Never have. One place that doesn’t fear the blacks. Don’t think Recluce even sends blackstaffers here any longer.”

“Do you know why?” asked Kharl.

“Something way back…the mage who founded Recluce…they say he destroyed a Hamorian war fleet with weather magery, except for a few ships that he refitted into his own fleet…and that he refused to pay the emperor a single copper…”

“A single mage went out and attacked the Hamorian fleet?”

“Doubtful mind you’ve got, cooper.” Hagen laughed. “Wasn’t like that. They and the white mages of Fairven were trying to squash Recluce before it got started. This mage-Creslin, that was his name-destroyed the invasion fleet. Emperors don’t like that.”

“That must have happened a long time ago, and they’re still upset?”

“No one in Hamor ever forgets anything,” the captain replied dryly. “They don’t learn much new, but they don’t forget. That’s why some captains aren’t welcome here. Tread lightly onshore.” Hagen laughed again and turned back toward the poop deck.

Kharl looked back toward the stone tower and the white cliffs. Were most people like that, never forgetting, and holding hard to hatred for generations, so long that most of the rest of the world had long since forgotten the cause?

Of all the ports the Seastag had visited while Kharl was aboard, Swartheld was the busiest. In the late afternoon, the harbor was filled with ships, some anchored in deeper waters offshore, others tied at the long and wide piers. Another set of piers ran along the far side of the bay, but all the vessels at those piers were the black-hulled warships of various sizes, all steam-powered, with iron hulls and a white superstructure and white gun turrets. Kharl had counted over thirty such vessels, and mooring space for at least triple that number, and he understood better Hagen’s wariness of a land with so many warships.

He had to wonder about all that iron and all that powder. Supposedly, a white mage could fire gunpowder or cammabark. Did all the iron-and the ocean itself-protect the ships? Or were there mages on board as well?

Kharl glanced out from the quarterdeck at the pier where the Seastag was tied. It was not only long, but a good hundred cubits wide, with wagons lined up for loading and off-loading, and vendors with handcarts pushing them from ship to ship. The voices of the vendors filled the air.

“Silks, silks…the finest silks from Atla…”

“…the finest wools from Recluce and Brysta…”

“Spices…brinn from Candar, brinn and astra…”

“Tools…iron tools, Hamor’s finest from the works at Luba…”

There were so many street and cart vendors that at times the teamsters driving the wagons being loaded and unloaded had to wait, or actually drive their teams into the crowds to force them away from the ships. While Brysta had peddlers and vendors, the numbers and variety were nothing compared to those on just the one pier where the Seastag was tied.

For once, Kharl did not have an evening watch, but the late-morning watch the next day. So he had decided to investigate Swartheld, despite limited coins. He had not drawn any of his pay recently, preferring to leave it on account with Hagen, suspecting he’d need all of it when the Seastag reached Austra.

“If you’re going ashore,” offered Ghart, “best be real careful. Any place said to be the wellspring of chaos, Hamor is. If you were one of the younger men, I’d caution you about the girls…never seen such lovelies, and you go with ’em, never will again. Probably end up working in the great ironworks at Luba, or lugging stone on that Great Highway the emperor’s building and rebuilding…”

Kharl hadn’t heard of the Great Highway, but he didn’t need an explanation, except perhaps why the Hamorians wanted to call everything “great.” “Drugged wine or ale?”

“Or just a cosh on the back of the head.” Ghart snorted. “No matter what we say, we’ll lose someone. Usually one of the younger crew. Always someone who knows better.”

“Anything else I should watch?”

“Watch everything,” Ghart suggested, his voice wry. “The captain does.”

Kharl nodded. “I’ll be back before dark.”

“That’s what they all say.” Ghart laughed good-naturedly.

Even before Kharl was halfway down the gangway, he felt a strangeness wash over him, a feeling that was both familiar and totally unfamiliar. What was the feeling? Why was it familiar? When he reached the end of the gangway and his boots rested on the wide stone wharf, he moved back, less than a body length from the hull of the Seastag . There, he took a deep breath and tried to recall where he had sensed that same feeling.

After a moment, he recalled. That feeling had been in Southport, when he had been at the site of the ancient ruins, with its deep-seated mixture of order and chaos. The port area of Swartheld felt similar, except there was more chaos swirling around, diffuse chaos, and that was what had felt both familiar and unfamiliar.

Carefully, Kharl began to walk down the pier, toward the buildings beyond the shoreward end of the pier. He kept his eyes moving, and his order-chaos senses alert. He passed a cart with an open grill, and the aroma of spiced roasted fowl made his mouth water.

“The best fowl in Swartheld…” Those words were followed by another set with the same intonation, but in a tongue unknown to Kharl. A third language followed before the vendor returned to the Candarian version of Brystan-although Kharl couldn’t honestly have said he knew whether Brystan was a version of Candarian or the other way around.

“Cottons…cottons…shirts for the summer heat…” That vendor also pitched his wares in several languages.

“Indentured slaves…young men, young women…in the best of health…”

Kharl glanced across the pier, where a young man and a girlish woman were displayed, standing on a wagon bed, chained to the frame, wearing little but cloths around their loins.

“…in the best of health and form…”

Turning away, Kharl stepped to his right, then stopped as a four-horse team slowly moved out toward the Seastag . After the wagon passed, he continued walking, keeping some distance between himself and the peddlers and others on the wharf. Ahead of him, somewhere near the end of the pier, Kharl could sense the unseen swirling whiteness that marked a chaos-wizard, although the whiteness was not as strong as that of the wizard he had confronted in Brysta.

He eased to the edge of the pier away from the chaos-wizard, closer to a three-masted clipper, an ancient vessel without steam power and with an ornate carved figure of a woman with extravagant physical charms under the bowsprit. He stopped beside a bollard and bent, as if to check his boot, his back shielded by the bulk of the bollard, as he let his own senses study the whiteness on the far side of the pier and inshore.

He could feel nothing except the whiteness. He straightened, then continued in along the pier on the side away from the white miasma of chaos.

Four darker-skinned men wearing short-sleeved shirts and trousers of a light khaki fabric marched onto the pier from the stone-paved causeway perpendicular to it. Each wore a khaki cap with a bronze starburst set in a blue oval. They also carried polished oak truncheons and wore shortswords at their belts-and pistols. Kharl had heard that the Hamorians used firearms, but he had never seen any closely. He almost could have reached out with his senses and touched the shells and the powder within, not that he could have touched off the powder, not with order, but a brush of chaos might have done so, even within the ordered metal shell casings.