Paul Kearney: This Forsaken Earth

“Two men stay in the boat, Elias, pistols cocked. Don’t moor her; stay a few yards off the wharf. They’re to shoot anyone who tries to swim aboard.”

“It’s like that, is it?” Creed asked.

“It’s like that.” Rol gripped Creed’s shoulder and looked back at the sea gates. “The rest of the ship’s boats will be arriving soon. Same goes for them.”

“Poor bastards,” Elias said, surveying the mob at the seafront. Artimion had cleared them away from the water and was haranguing their ranks in a voice of brass. The blood had slid down the blade of his sword to stripe the back of his hand. He had them cowed; they were listening to him with desperate eagerness now, trying to squeeze any mote of hope they could out of his words. From their midst stepped a half dozen of Miriam’s musketeers, faces white with fear.

Rol took his master-at-arms, Quirion, and four other sailors ashore, all armed with pistols and cutlasses and capable of intimidating their way through the most truculent of crowds. Creed took two more with him. They nodded at each other, and then forged uphill, ignoring the questions and accusations that were flung at them. Rol drew Fleam, and the cold light of the scimitar’s blade was enough to clear a path for him, though his withered muscles were barely able to raise the weapon. He peered back once and saw that by some miracle Artimion had dispersed the crowds somewhat. The looting of the storehouses went on at the back of the ship-cavern, though, and it was galling to see all that precious gear strewn upon the quays and trampled underfoot. He hoped Miriam had put a strong guard on the powder-arsenal, or else Canker’s fleet might find its job done for it before it arrived.

“You know the tower you’re looking for?” Rol asked Creed.

“It’s not far off the square. Nearly all the slaves were billeted there.”

“Go to it, Elias, and don’t let them bring too much baggage. If anyone disputes your passage, shoot them.”

Creed raised the pistol-barrel to his temple in mock salute. He looked profoundly unhappy.

“And Elias, if you see Esmer, bring her with you. Get her on a boat.”

“I’ll try, Rol.” Face set, Creed stalked off briskly enough, accompanied by Gil Whistram and Harry Dade-good, sound men.

The square was full of quarreling and arguing people. The cooking-fires were burning low, and that added to the hellish unreality of the scene. The refugees who had followed him out of Myconn had drawn themselves up in a corner like a ragged band of fearful children. Strangers here, they did not know what to make of this rancorous uproar; perhaps it was a normal occurrence. Rol saw relief in their eyes as he strode up to them.

“On your feet,” he said brusquely. “There’s no time to talk. You have to come with me. We’re putting to sea.”

Incomprehension, panic. Rol turned to Quirion. “Get them up, and herd them down to the quays. Keep them together.” The master-at-arms looked both startled and dubious. Rol grasped his arm. “Do it, Quirion. Don’t fuck around.”

They herded the emaciated, ragged band together like wolves hounding sheep. There was no time for gentleness or explanation; that would have garnered too much attention from the others in the square. Blows were exchanged, people knocked to their knees. Rol saw blood glisten scarlet in the firelight. “What are you doing to us?” someone wailed.

“Get on your feet,” he snapped, and hauled a rail-thin woman off the floor. “Follow my shipmates. Trust me.”

Trust me. The ghost of Michal Psellos must be laughing now.

Someone at his elbow. So tense was he that he raised Fleam. Aveh, the carpenter. “Shouldn’t you be on theAstraros?” he asked the man irritably.

“I was off at the northern stores with a working-party. Miriam is handing out food and weapons. Captain, Bionese marines have been sighted up the coast, two or three full regiments. A shepherd-boy brought the news only an hour ago. Miriam sent me to find you.”

“Gods in heaven,” Rol said. “How far?”

“Five, six leagues. They’re marching in the dark, in unfamiliar country, but they’ll be here before morning.” Aveh looked at the brutal work in hand and asked, “Do you need some help?”

Rol lifted a crying teenage girl off the ground; even to his weakened muscles she felt light as a bundle of rags. He handed her to Aveh and she buried her face in the carpenter’s shoulder. “Yes. Help me. We must get these people down to the docks.”

Quirion, Rol’s hardened master-at-arms, had been a privateer most of his life, and before that a sell-sword for Augsmark, Auxierre, half the kingdoms in the Mamertine League. Now he held a skull-faced, sexless child to his breast with one arm and in the other he brandished a ship’s pistol. His eyes were full of incredulous rage. “What happened to these people?”

“Never mind,” Rol snapped. “Keep them moving.”

They made their tortuous way back down to the ship-cavern-a stop-start, infuriating, exhausting half-mile odyssey. Their progress was punctuated by bursts of violence, brandished pistols, Quirion kicking his way forward to the front of the line. Rol’s strength began to fail him, and his knees buckled. Aveh’s fingers fastened on his bicep and raised him up again. The carpenter was immensely strong, but he could not bear all of Rol’s weight on his one free arm. The press of bodies grew intense. Someone took Rol’s other arm and kept him from falling. It was Esmer, narrow-eyed and fierce as a cat. “Keep your damn feet on the floor!” she shouted at him, braids flying.

The wharves were packed again. Artimion had disappeared, and all order had vanished. The bigger ships of the Ka, theSkua, theOsprey -both flush-decked brigs-and theAstraros, had slipped their moorings and were being towed out to the open water of the harbor by their ship’s boats. Their decks were crammed with people and around them the water was stubbled with the bobbing heads of dozens more, desperate to climb aboard. TheRevenant ’s heavy cutter was still there, and all the other boats of the ship; light cutter, launch, and captain’s skiff. Their crews were clubbing people from the gunwales with their oars. Elias Creed stood on the lip of the quay with a naked cutlass, eyes blazing, blood trickling from a gash at the side of his mouth.

Rol struggled to his side through the mob. “Load the boats!” he yelled. There were bodies at his feet, but he did not look down. “Get as many as you can aboard without swamping them.”

The ex-convict nodded. “Rol, I only found a couple of dozen. The rest-” He gestured helplessly at the faces of the crowd.

“I know, Elias. We did our best. Get them aboard now.”

They filed the Bionese refugees aboard the boats through a gauntlet of the ship’s company, hardened mariners not afraid to use their weapons. Some had wives in the Ka, children lost somewhere beyond that howling mob, but they stood to their posts and held back the desperate throng at sword- and pistol-point. People spat in their faces, threw stones, cursed them, and vowed revenge.

Rol was the last to leave the quay. He clambered aboard the heavy cutter and pushed her off from the stone with his boot. Someone tried to leap past him and Fleam flicked up without his will to slash the unfortunate open from crotch to breastbone. The corpse splashed into the water. A cry went up. A stone swooped past his head. In his fist, Fleam quivered in pleasure, and he sheathed the scimitar with revulsion.

The cutter was low in the water, the crew barely able to ship their oars for the mass of people cowering within. The sailors used them like giant paddles instead, and slowly drew away from the wharves. Musket-shots, echoing off the cavern walls. People wailed and shouted and fell tumbling from the wharves and fought one another in the water. Some threw torches at the departing boats.