Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Thasha had no time to answer, for at that moment Rose climbed out from the hatch, and the cheering doubled. Hysteria, thought Neeps. Most of them don’t even like him. Rose twitched irritably at the commotion, but no one quite believed he was angry. The men chanted his name, brandishing weapons and tools above their heads. Plapps and Burnscoves cheered shoulder to shoulder. Somewhere the stomp-stomp-clap, stomp-stomp-hey! of an Etherhorde flagball game began, and soon nearly everyone on deck had joined in. The men wanted something to celebrate, some victory of will over reason. For the moment Rose was it.

They would have lifted him onto their shoulders if he had not suddenly lurched forward. His face changed; all at once his outrage was very sincere indeed. Shoving his way through a dozen men, Rose pointed at a figure some thirty yards away by the No. 2 hatch.

“Who in the entrails of the blackest blary fiend is that?” he exploded.

“Him, Captain?” laughed a joyful Mr. Fegin. “Why that’s just Mr. Bolutu, he-Oh Pitfire!”

It was not Bolutu. The cheers turned to roars of challenge. The figure was quite obviously a dlomu, as tall and strong as any of those who had attacked the ship. He stood straight and proud, although he wore only tattered breeches, a white shirt missing all its buttons and a fortnight’s beard. His thick hair hung in tangles to his elbows. He had a lean face and a hawk-like nose, and his eyes were full of bright intelligence. As the sailors charged he raised his hands in surrender.

The men were less than calm. They fell on him, howling threats and curses, and dragged him all the way to the gunwale. There they lifted him half over the rail, so that his torso dangled above the sea.

“Hold!” shouted Rose, lumbering forward.

“On your guard, Captain, there may be more!” cried Alyash.

“There are,” said the strange dlomu.

“Knew it!” said Alyash. “They’re on the lower decks with the crawlies! They must be!”

“Your knife, Mr. Fegin.” Rose squeezed in among his men. Burying his hand in the stranger’s hair, he pulled downward, until the man was looking right at the sun. The dlomu winced and closed his eyes. Rose laid the edge of Fegin’s knife against his throat.

“How many?” he said.

“Six or eight, I should say.”

“You should say exactly. You should give me a reason to spare your life.”

“They are not my comrades,” said the stranger. “Indeed, they wish to kill me. I have been running from them this last month and more.”

“You’re the fugitive? The one those madmen attacked us for?”

“I fear so.”

“Aye, you fear it-because for that alone I should slit your throat. How in blazes did you get aboard?”

“You’re human beings, aren’t you?” said the stranger. “Amazing. I never thought I’d live to see this day.”

His words sent a ripple of alarm through the sailors: He’s never seen a human, did ye hear? We’re alone, marooned with them monsters, alone!

Taliktrum appeared on the shoulder of a reluctant main-topman. He urged the sailor forward impatiently. Then Neeps saw Bolutu and Ibjen at the back of the crowd. The young dlomu stared at the newcomer, and Neeps saw recognition in the look.

Bolutu cried out: “By the Dawn Star, brother, don’t provoke him!”

“Provoke him?” said the stranger. “In this position? Why, I haven’t even learned his name. Nor he mine.”

“The captain asked you a question, blacky!” snapped Alyash.

“Did he? Would you kindly repeat it, sir?”

Neeps caught his breath. He had never heard anyone but Lady Oggosk take a tone of levity with Nilus Rose, the man who flogged tarboys for hiccups. The stranger did not know the peril he was in.

Captain Rose slid his hand to the knife-blade, pinched it between two fingers and a thumb. A few sailors winced, as if from bitter memory.

“I’ll repeat it,” said Rose.

He set the point of the knife on the man’s chest, directly over the heart. With a slow and merciless movement, he began to cut, scoring the flesh in a semicircular pattern. The man twisted and writhed in the sailors’ grasp. He bit his lips, tears starting from his eyes.

“Stop, stop!” cried Ibjen in distress. “Captain Rose, you’re in Bali Adro! You can’t draw his blood!”

“You mucking animal!” shouted Neeps at the captain’s back. “Taliktrum, make him stop!”

“Why should I?” said Taliktrum. “Those savages tried to sink us. Proceed, Rose-go further, if you must.”

Rose glared at Taliktrum over his shoulder: Give me permission, will you? Then he turned back to his torture. The cut was now some eight inches long. Suddenly Neeps realized that Rose was carving a symbol in the man’s flesh. A question mark. He finished it with a deep prick that made the stranger gasp.

“You nearly took my ship,” he said. “And in fleeing you, we damaged her, fatally for all I can tell. Now you dare to make sport of her commander. I wish you to understand that to do so again will be fatal.”

“I make no sport of you,” said the stranger, as his blood trickled into the sea. “It’s just that I should have died so long ago that I find humor in my own survival.”

“The joke may have run its course,” said Taliktrum.

“I came aboard in a water cask,” said the stranger. “I kicked it open just minutes ago, to warn you about the others. I waited on the lower decks until the stair was clear.”

Rose was outraged anew. “Are you saying we smuggled you aboard ourselves?”

“You did, Captain. The villagers were rather clever-I think smuggling is not an infrequent practice in Narybir. They secured stones and water-sacks inside the cask with me, so that you should detect no difference by weight or sound.”

“I was pledged to help him, Captain!” shouted Ibjen suddenly. “To be certain he reached the mainland. I gave my word.”

Taliktrum laughed. “And then tried to jump ship on two occasions,” he said.

The stranger looked at Ibjen sharply, and the boy dropped his head in shame.

“Why would the villagers help you in this way?” asked Rose.

“Because I was in great need, sir. Your scratch is nothing compared with what the Karysk Expeditionaries would have done, if they had laid hands on me.”

“Karyskans!” cried Bolutu. “Is it true, then-there is war between the Empires, that were once fast friends?”

“War is too glorious a name for it,” said the stranger, “but there is a great deal of mindless killing. I was in Karysk to warn them of the impending attack.”

“Warn them?” said Rose. “If you were delivering such a helpful message, why did they pursue you like their most hated enemy?”

“Because,” gasped the stranger, “I bear a striking resemblance to their most hated enemy-the man who pushed hardest for the attack.”

“Mistaken identity on such a gigantic scale?” said Taliktrum. “That is hard to credit.”

“We are of the same family, he and I,” said the stranger. He paused, then added, “The Karyskans, I think, are hiding among your cattle.”

Rose’s hand moved with startling speed. The knife cut a short gash in the stranger’s cheek. Ibjen stifled another cry.

Ibjen was wailing: “Captain Rose! Captain Rose! Make him stop, Thashiziq, for your own sake, for the ship’s!”

Thasha started forward, and Neeps and Marila with her, but the mob of frightened sailors stood with Rose now, and held them back. Thasha put a hand on each friend’s arm and shook her head: Not this way.

“We have no cattle,” said the captain. “Our livestock are dead. And you will be next, for your mouth is full of lies.”

“No livestock at all?” said the man, sounding genuinely perplexed.