Rob Scott - The Larion Senators

The soldiers and sailors on deck stood silent, expecting to be struck dead, simply for witnessing such an act. A few backed away, and one frightened corporal slipped through a forward hatch and shouted an unintelligible warning to the soldiers massed below. Then no one moved or spoke. The Bellan creaked and snapped in the wind as Redrick stalked back into Captain Harwick’s cabin.

The hapless Captain Blackford nearly lost his breakfast when he heard the sailor’s voice echo from the companionway, calling, ‘Blackford!’

‘Oh goddamnit!’

‘What’s the matter?’ Gilmour pushed through the brush.

‘It’s nothing,’ Steven said. ‘I had forgotten about these two.’ He was standing beside the partially decomposed, partially frozen remains of the two Seron warriors Mark had killed near the fjord early the previous Twinmoon. ‘Christ, they look like roadkill someone’s been keeping in the freezer.’

Gilmour wrinkled his nose. ‘We should have burned the bodies.’

‘Come on; you’re not religious.’ Steven stepped around the corpses, careful not to come in contact with them.

‘No, I don’t suppose I am, but we should have burned them, anyway. This way, who knows what diseases they might be spreading?’

‘Don’t touch them,’ Steven warned, ‘they may still be moist inside and then we’ll have every hungry grettan in Falkan coming over for a midnight snack.’

‘I wonder why they haven’t been dragged off yet.’ Gilmour bent over the bodies, looking for evidence that they had already been nibbled by scavengers.

‘Nothing big enough down here to do it,’ Steven said. ‘When Mark killed them, it was still autumn; the grettans were in the mountains, except for the ones Prince Malagon sent south to find us. By the time the grettan packs came down to the Falkan plains, probably following the big herds, deer and elk, or whatever else you might have roaming around north of the border, these fellows were already frozen stiff.’

No aroma.’

‘Exactly,’ Steven said, ‘and that’s also why we don’t want to disturb them. Anything fluid left inside those skin cases will stink to high heaven, and we’ll have all kinds of company in our little camp this evening.’

‘I get your point,’ Gilmour said, and crossed to the sailboat, which was also right where they had left it. He brushed a covering of fallen leaves off the bow and started to scoop more out from beneath the gunwales. There were a handful of empty beer cans inside as well; he tossed these into the brush beside the Seron corpses.

‘And now you’re a litterbug,’ Steven joked wryly. ‘Still, it looks seaworthy enough, doesn’t it?’ he added, peering at the hull. ‘It’s the sail I’m worried about. If we stowed it wet, it might have rotted a bit in the past Twinmoon.’

‘Let’s hope not.’ Gilmour grabbed hold of the transom and began pulling. The wooden hull had frozen to the ground in several places, but a mumbled incantation melted the ice and soon Mark’s little catboat was crunching and sliding over the smooth rocks and into the fjord, making Steven wince every time the hull grated over a stone.

‘We never thought about tar or patch lumber,’ he muttered. ‘What if the damned thing leaks?’

‘Then we will have a significantly more damp and chilly journey than we expected, I imagine.’

They reached the water’s edge and Steven untied the bits of twine keeping the sail reefed and the dropped mast secure.

‘What are you doing?’ Gilmour asked. ‘We still have two days.’

‘We’re going to take her out, just to see if she’ll stay afloat.’

‘Ah, excellent idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait here. Enjoy yourself.’

‘Funny, but no.’

Later, with the sailboat running west along the fjord, Steven fixed the main sheet, checked and re-checked the tiller, then moved forward on his hands and knees, inspecting every inch of the hull for cracks, leaks or patches of rot. Gilmour huddled in the stern, swaddled in his cloak, smoking, content to watch as the grey and black granite walls rolled by.

‘Tell me about the archipelago,’ Steven said at last. ‘Do we stand any chance at all of reaching Pellia intact?’

‘Of course we do,’ Gilmour said, ‘With a northern Twinmoon, the high tides will give us ample depth. The main route through the islands will be busy; a few days either side of this Twinmoon is the only time a heavy ship with a deep draft can reach Pellia, so there’ll be plenty of traffic, merchant and navy. The rest of the time merchants make the long and more dangerous journey from Westport or Port Denis – when there was a Port Denis – and Northport, the closest major shipping centre to the Malakasian capital. Lots of small vessels move in and out of the archipelago any time they choose, but I do mean small – a tall person who knows the channels could just about walk from Pellia to Gorsk when the tides are low. Getting a big ship through there is dangerous, but luckily we’re going at just the right time.’

‘Assuming Garec and Kellin manage to hire us a boat,’ Steven said, still on his knees.

‘If they didn’t, then as this little boat has almost no draft at all we’d sail through without a scrape.’

‘Sure, if we don’t freeze to death or capsize on the way. Mark and I were in Estrad for the southern Twinmoon. It was our first day in Eldarn and I remember the winds vividly. If the northern Twinmoon is anything like that, I really don’t want to be out on the water in this bit of kindling.’

‘I do understand,’ Gilmour said, ‘but given the circumstances, we might not have a choice.’

Steven sighed. ‘So what’s the main passage like?’

‘Oh, it’s not that tricky,’ Gilmour said nonchalantly. ‘The only captains who lose their ships in the archipelago are those in a great hurry to reach Pellia. They spot what they believe to be a deep passage west and run aground a few avens later. It’s a maze of twists and turns in there, and many wrecks litter the shallows. There’s no place for them to sink, so they break apart, leaving bits jutting up above the water. It’s quite unnerving to see if you haven’t been through before. They look like skeletons, some wearing sheets, all crippled by the wind and the rocks.’

A waft of pipe smoke drifted past Steven; it smelled sweet, familiar. Gilmour said, ‘A safe, deep-water channel runs northeast during this Twinmoon, and if you know it, or you have a good chart, you can make it through, but it feels wrong because you have to run far east before you turn southwest and run downwind into Pellia.’

Steven watched the sail fill as they moved towards the next bend in the fjord’s serpentine passage. ‘If Mark left Orindale for Pellia, and with that wave he sent for us, we have to assume he did, but if he’s travelling in a heavy ship with a deep draft, he’ll have to take the long way through.’

‘The only way through.’ Gilmour punctuated this point with his pipe stem.

‘The only way for a deep-drafting ship, a frigate or maybe a galleon, certainly. But what if we did make the run up there in this thing, could we take a short-cut?’

‘In this? We could, but we’d never catch him. I can see where you’re going, but a frigate or a galleon, they’ve enough sail on them to capture a typhoon. They might be bigger and heavier, but they’re much too fast for us, even with our magic. We’d probably survive the crossing; I’m not worried about that. We have enough power between us to get there in one piece. But even conjuring up a Larion tailwind, we’d never overtake Mark.’

Steven looked downcast. ‘I guess you’re right. And if we use magic, we’re just inviting him to crush us with another surprise from the bowels of that spell table. It was just a thought. I’d have liked to get there before he does.’