Paul Kearney - The Mark of Ran

“Yes,” Rol told him. “The storm dismasted her, but we’ve a jury-rig up. As soon as this onshore blow dies down a little, we’re going to put to sea. But we need water.”

Gallico nodded grimly. He was still peering out at the horizon. “You’d best be careful. There are two Bionese men-of-war out there sniffing for blood. They chased us down the wind, and by the time they had drawn off it was too late for us to claw clear of the rocks.”

“We’ve a Mercanter commission. I doubt they’d trouble us,” Rol said, remembering now the half-fancied line of lights he had seen out to sea. He wondered why Gallico’s vessel had been fleeing the Bionese but was not sure how to ask. The halftroll looked down on him kindly.

“Our ship, the Adder, was a privateer, Rol Cortishane. You had best know that right off.”

“You’re a pirate?”

Gallico grinned horribly. “For my sins.”

“Were you a pirate in Ascari?”

“Not strictly speaking, but times change. Now, would you rather I wandered off into the Goliad, or will you tolerate my kind in your company? You owe me nothing, whereas I owe you a life. I’ll take myself off if you do not want to befriend my sort, and think none the worse of you for it.”

Rol looked at Creed, but the ex-privateer’s face was closed.

“Stay with us. If it comes to it, we’ll find a space for you to hide belowdecks. I would not turn someone adrift in a desolation such as this.”

Gallico set a paw on Rol’s shoulder. “Then you have my thanks again. I will not forget it. I am your man now to the death.”

Despite his injuries, Gallico could keep pace with them with ease. They made their way back down to the base of the headland and moved inland. The night sky was entirely clear, awash with constellations. There was no moon, but the starlight was powerful enough to cast faint shadows. The shore party tramped steadily inland, their ears cocked for the telltale trickle of water. They were parched, and had only a cupful left in their skins. The heat of the day had evaporated and it was bitterly cold on the plateau. Their breath steamed out before them in gray clouds.

“A cold desert,” Rol said. “I did not think there were such things.”

“Only at night,” Gallico told him. “The heat is lost to the sky, sucked up by the stars to keep them bright.”

“Have you been to the Goliad before?”

“Not to speak of. But I have walked in Tukelar and Padrass, and I would surmise most deserts are alike.”

“Why did you turn pirate?”

Gallico paused a long time before answering, and watched his huge splayed feet as they stirred up the dust.

“The Mercanters are becoming too greedy for their own good. They want a complete monopoly for their ships on some of the major trade routes of the world. You know the Free Cities?”

“Some.”

“They are independent, hence the name; city-states existing only for the purpose of commerce, and hence ideal bases for the Mercanters. But I have learned that the Mercanters actually control the Free Cities. Osmer, Spokehaven, Perigord, Graillor, even great Urbonetto of the Wharves. In any case, Urbonetto and Spokehaven have barred ships from taking on cargo at their docks who do not have a Mercanter commission, and it is rumored the others will soon follow suit.”

“They’ll bankrupt themselves.”

“You underestimate the volume of Mercanter-commissioned trade, my friend. No, what is happening is that up and down the Twelve Seas, captains are scrambling for that red pennant, and paying tidy sums for the privilege of flying it. After that, they sail where they are told to sail, take on what cargoes are set out for them. There is no freedom, even for a shipowner, anymore. He is merely an employee of the Mercanters-and who are they anyway, to be set on taking over all the free trade of the world? Does anyone know?”

“I have met their agents, ordinary men for the most part.”

“Yes, but who are their leaders? No one can name them, and so long as everyone is growing rich, no one has thought to ask-it is not as though they have standing armies, or defended borders. They do not need them-other states will do the fighting for them, if that is called for. The Bionari love nothing more than to come crashing down on some small country with the complaints of the Mercanters to redress.”

“You still have not told me why you turned pirate.”

Gallico nodded, and the bone ridge of his brows came down almost to meet his jutting cheekbones so that his eyes glared green out of a crevice.

“We traded illegally in Spokehaven, and our ship was forfeit. They took it on the very docks, and half the crew. Woodrin, a few others, and myself took off inland, and walked all the way to the southern tip of Osmer. There we worked as fishermen for a few months, until one day a gull-winged xebec put in for water flying the Black Flag. The fisherfolk fled, but we remained. It was the Adder, and her captain, Harun Secharis, agreed to take us on. Initially, all we wanted was passage off Osmer, but the privateers told us that we were blacklisted up and down the Westerease Sea. No captain would employ us-and it must be said that for me at least it is not simply a question of changing my name.” Here Gallico chuckled bitterly. “I have a tendency to stand out from the crowd. The others took their chances elsewhere, but Woodrin stayed with me, and I stayed with the Adder for want of a better alternative. That is how I became a pirate.”

“And have you raped and pillaged and murdered, as sea lore has it?” Rol asked.

Gallico looked at him. “Yes. Yes, I have murdered and pillaged. The Adder took fourteen ships before they ran us to earth here on the rocks of the Goliad, and every one of them was a Mercanter. We killed only those who resisted us, set the crews adrift in ship’s boats, took the cargoes, and burned the ships. That is how privateers do business.”

“Where did you get rid of the cargoes?”

Gallico paused, looked away. “Anywhere we could. The Mercanters may be controlling trade, but there will always be goods of dubious ownership to be bought and sold. Some cities have black markets for the Black Ships.”

They walked on in silence after that. Rol’s shipmates kept their distance from the halftroll-especially now they knew he was a privateer. Only Creed seemed unfazed, as might be expected. Rol caught Elias staring at him as if wanting to say something, but whatever it was, the ex-convict thought better of it. They trudged along without further talk, their tongues sticking to the roofs of their mouths, and the air burning cold on their sunburnt faces.

Gallico stopped and they straggled to a halt around him. They had been walking for well over two hours and were perhaps two leagues inland. The Goliad was a barren, sandblasted plain strewn with formations of brindled rock, the only vegetation low-growing plants with leaves like knives. Here and there odd piles of rubble were heaped in lines, and gullies spoke of a time when there had been heavy rains to carve the parched dirt of the land.

“Water,” Gallico said, tongue rasping over his lips.

“Where?”

“Nearby.” His nostrils flared, snorted. “I smell it.”

He traced the elusive scent to the side of one of those gullies, a deeper blade of shadow under the stars. While the others stood about sceptically, Gallico went to his knees and, with his huge talon-tipped paws, began to dig.

Rol and Creed climbed up to the lip of the draw and looked north, to where the mountains rose dark against the sky. The Myconians, greatest heights of the northern world. Some great convulsion of the earth’s heart had punched them up in sliding shelves of tilted stone, fifteen thousand feet from foundation to peak. They were sheer as a wall here, though Rol knew that they grew less fearsome as one went farther north and west. Myconn, the Imperial City, stood in a highland vale in their heart, reachable only by a few passes, considered so impregnable that for centuries she had never built walls to protect herself. And Rowen was out there in those heights-for a moment he thought he could almost touch her sleeping mind. Rowen, fighting to become one of the powers of the world-and she would succeed, or die trying. The demons that gnawed at her heart would never let her do otherwise.