Paul Kearney: This Forsaken Earth

“Artimion, there are thousands in the city. If the ships can take off seven or eight hundred, we’ll be lucky. What of the rest?”

“I will lead them across the hills into the Goliad,” Artimion said. He peered into his empty cup, and nodded as though reassuring himself.

“Across the Gorthor Flats? That’s madness.”

“Have you other suggestions, Cortishane?”

They looked at each other. Artimion’s question was genuine.

“No, I suppose I haven’t. But they’ll die there, Artimion; I know.”

“Some will make it. The hardiest. Many will die. But if they stay where they are, all will die. Simple choices, Rol, make for simple decisions.”

“That much is true. What if I told you that I may know of another place, a sanctuary where we can all be safe?”

“I would say, lead me to it-what do you think? We’ve no time for rhetoric.” Artimion raised his voice. “Generro! Pass the word for the bosun!”

Young Generro, he of the pretty face and long arms, put his head in at the door, said, “Aye, sir,” grinned at Rol, and then withdrew. A minute later Fell Amertaz’s sinister, competent face took his place. “Sir?”

“Set course for the Ka, all plain sail. Drop anchor outside the seawall and then set down all boats.”

Amertaz hesitated, looked at Rol, then nodded. “Aye aye, sir, course for Ganesh Ka, set down boats.”

“My last order as theRevenant ’s captain, I promise you,” Artimion said with a battered smile.

“It’s all right. I’m not as precious as I once was.”

“You spoke of a sanctuary. Was that wishful thinking, a play with words, or is there something to it? We don’t have the time to-”

Rol raised his left hand, palm toward Artimion’s face. “What do you see?”

“A scar, a mark. Some call it the Mark of Ran. Superstition.”

“It is a map.”

“I see no map.”

“I do. This is a sea-course, based on the stars. I see Quintillion there, as plain as I see your face. Artimion, I believe this mark was made on me for a purpose. I intend to follow it with this ship, and any other ship that’ll come with me.”

Artimion grasped Rol’s hand in his own blunt fingers and stared intently at the lines and whorls that were etched thereon. “I see nothing,” he said.

“Trust me, it’s there.”

“What in hell are you, Cortishane? What are you doing among us?”

“I’m going to try and save these people.”

“There was a time when you didn’t give a damn about these people.”

Rol nodded. “That was true, once. But no longer. As I said, you will have to trust me.”

Artimion dropped Rol’s hand. “It was bad, in Bionar. I can see it on your face, and not just in the scars.”

“It was bad. It was war, as it is fought by great nations, without pity or honor. Great wheels rolling, and the little people crushed beneath them. Canker can keep his kingdom. I will never go back.”

“How did this rebel Queen meet her end-your sister?”

“Half sister,” Rol corrected quickly. Orders were being shouted up on deck, and within the stern cabin the light moved round as the ship fell off before the wind, prior to coming round. Shadow grew in the space about them, and beyond the stern-windows the sunset was red on the surface of the sea.

“I did not see her die. Gallico, he watched. He saw it.” Rol’s face burned at the memory.

“Canker was right,” Artimion said. “You did love her.”

“I loved an idea, a memory.” Rol was unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “When it came to it, I was glad enough just to get away from her alive.”

Artimion gestured to the scarred hand he had scrutinized a moment before. “Perhaps you are being saved for greater things.”

“I hope not, Artimion.” Then Rol turned on his heel and left the cabin. He stumbled along the dark companionway to the waist of the ship, wiping his eyes in angry bafflement.

TheRevenant took the wind on the larboard beam. Rol assumed his accustomed place by the ship’s wheel. Old Morcam, the quartermaster, was steering, along with one of his mates. His eyes gave Rol a rare flicker of goodwill.

“Nice to have you back, skipper,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, and tilted the spokes a tad, keeping the sharply braced yards just this side of shivering.

“It’s good to be back, Morcam,” Rol said.

A ship’s gun fired, faint in the teeth of the wind. Rol stared aft.

“Signal gun,” Morcam said. “They do it every time they change tack. Not bad sailing, for a Bionese bunch of bastards.”

Rol wondered what Morcam would make of the Bionese bastards he had brought over the mountains. He intended to have them board this very ship. They were his responsibility, after all.

The quarterdeck became somewhat crowded as Gallico, Creed, and Giffon joined him about the wheel. Artimion came on deck as they were preparing to anchor two cables from the tawny seawalls of Ganesh Ka. He bore a canvas seabag, and had buckled a rapier at his waist. It was almost dark by then, and a heavy blueness had settled over the water, broken by the flash of foam on the wave crests. They dropped anchor in fifteen fathoms. TheRevenant slowed and her stern began to come around as the wind worked on her, but the anchor held. Rol looked up at the yards. All sails had been furled in the bunt, and the topmen were clambering down the shrouds, more subdued than he had ever seen them.

“All hands,” he called. “Prepare to lower boats from the yardarms. Gallico, take command.” He turned to Artimion. “I’ll come ashore with you in the cutter.”

The inner harbor of the Ka was crowded with small-craft. Fishing smacks, longboats, open-decked cutters and launches-every vessel, great and humble, that could float. Skiffs and rowboats were ferrying folk out to them, so overcrowded there was barely space to man the oars. As night swooped down on them from the mountains, torches flared and flickered in the boats, their light shattered in the choppy water of the harbor.

Creed was at the tiller of the cutter, eight good men at the oars. In the darkness his face was unreadable. “Elias,” Rol said. “Once we dock, take a couple of the crew and start loading the folk from Myconn on theRevenant. Then the slaves we took out of theAstraros, as many as you can track down. Pile them in. We’ll worry about provisioning later.”

“We may as well grab some provisions while we’re at it,” Creed said. “Look at the stuff on those vessels; they’ve broken open the foodstores.”

“Bad news travels fast.”

Inside the ship-cavern there was a roaring chaos. Crowds milled about the wharves by torchlight, pleading for spaces on the boats, fighting for a place at an oar, scrambling for casks of provisions. Many were already drunk. The crew of the cutter had to physically beat people from the gunwales of their craft. Splashes as people were pushed into the water. Women screaming.

“Issue pistols,” Rol said.

The cutter thumped against the stone of the wharf, and Artimion leaped over the side onto the docks. He punched a man flat, and his roar echoed off the roof of the cavern.

“Back away there, you miserable bastards!” His eyes gleamed bright as glass beads, reminding Rol that in Artimion, too, there was some of the Blood. Men retreated from his face, angry and ashamed and afraid.

“It’s every man for himself now!” a wild-eyed fellow shrieked.

Artimion drew his rapier and ran the man through, then raised the bloody blade and brandished it at the crowd. “Get back from the wharves, or by Ussa’s mane, I’ll start killing you. We will have order here, by the gods!”

Creed spat over the stern of the cutter. “That spell at sea really did him a power of good,” he said to Rol.