Paul Kearney - The Mark of Ran

Creed rubbed his filthy hands over his face, and then trickled a few drops of water from the skin he carried onto Rol’s eyes. They opened, blinking at once, and Fleam came up defensively, halting a handspan from the convict’s nose. “Welcome back to the world,” he said quietly.

Rol sat up and seized the waterskin, squeezed a stream out of its nozzle into his mouth. He shut his eyes again and said, “Tell me what happened.”

“Mihal is gone-dead, I suppose. Rusaf is hurt, but will live if his wound does not go bad. Gallico…” He hesitated. “I do not think he will make it through the day.”

The eyes opened again. As they did, the first dawn light sprang swift as an arrow’s flight above the flat pan of the horizon, and kindled in them a luminosity, a brightness that had nothing human about it at all. Then the swift-rising sun rode up farther, and they were Rol Cortishane’s eyes again, striking, but those of a weary man, no more. Creed took back the skin, corked it, straightened with his own small hurts shouting for attention all about his arms and shoulders.

“We cut the spittle that burned out of Gallico, and bound up what we could, but they have carved his back to bloody rags. He lost more blood than I ever saw any creature lose and live, and they sucked it out of him too.”

“Take me to him,” Rol said, and he stood up, sheathing the marvelous scimitar. He set a hand on Creed’s shoulder and Elias had to make an effort not to cringe from that touch.

“You remember what you did last night?”

“Partly. It happened once before, or something like it.” Then he grinned weakly at the expression on Creed’s face. “I am not a ghost, Elias, nor a demon either. You need not fear me.”

“Well, you saved our lives, at any rate. They’d have slaughtered us all if you-if that hadn’t happened.”

They walked back to the dark knot of men huddled on the white blazing blankness of the Flats.

“Bartolomew and Rusaf want to turn back for the coast and make for Ordos. They say this place is cursed.”

“They are right,” Rol said mildly. “But no one will turn back.”

Creed studied him as discreetly as he could. It was the same Cortishane he had come to know and esteem in the past few weeks, but there was something different, all the same. Something in the Cormorant ’s first mate had hardened. Whatever had occurred in the night could happen again-would happen again. Would the white winged light always know friend from foe when it came burning out of this man’s eyes?

They murmured and backed away from him as he approached, Rusaf, Bartolomew, even Jude Mochran. Gallico lay at their feet, a felled giant. He turned his head and his eyes blinked on and off.

“We owe you our lives, I think.”

Rol knelt beside him, ignoring the others. “Can you walk?”

“I think so. How far is another matter.”

“We’ll help you.”

“Leave him here-there’s no way we can support the weight of a thing like that,” Bartolomew said hotly. “We must go south-this place is a cursed wilderness. He brought us here on purpose.”

“No,” Rol said quietly, not lifting his head.

Rusaf, Bartolomew, and Mochran backed away from Rol one step, two. In all their eyes the fear shone stark. Spittle had gathered white at the corners of their cracked mouths. They looked like horses about to bolt.

“You stay with him if you like-you’re both monsters together.” That was dark-faced Rusaf, voice shaking. “We want no more to do with any of you, or your goddamned pirate city. We’re men-decent men, not pirates, or… or… We’ll split the water. Fair’s fair.” He wiped a raw knuckle across his lower lip.

Rol stood up. He was very calm. “You are all going to do as I say. We will continue north, and Gallico is coming with us. We are going to Ganesh Ka.”

“Who or what in hell are you to command us?” Bartolomew exploded. “You’re not even the captain-a first mate is all you were. We’re not your chattels to be told where to go and when.”

Rol strode forward with a blurred swiftness that startled them all. He took Bartolomew by the collar. The youth’s eyes flashed white, like those of a calf caught by the slaughterman.

“That may be so, Geygan, but I promise you this: if you do not obey me in this thing I will kill you. Do you understand? I will kill you.” This last was said with such quiet intensity that even Creed backed away, hand on the hilt of his cutlass. “Now help Gallico to his feet. The night is gone, so we must march in the day. Elias, you lead. Our course is due north. Bartolomew and Mochran, you will help Gallico. Rusaf, you next. Carry the waterskins. I will be at the rear.”

Not another word was said. Gallico heaved himself up, leaving the ground dark where he had lain. Jude Mochran and Bartolomew Geygan supported him one to either side, and the party set off once more. Already the carcasses of the Ur-men were beginning to stink, and glass-blue flies the size of a man’s thumbnail were settling on them in clouds.

They stumbled through a baking purgatory of heat. It poured down relentlessly from a shadowless sky and beat up again in reflected waves from the ground. All about them the horizon became a ripple of swimming mirages. Creed fell back down the little column.

“Look,” he said, pointing.

Black beetlelike figures moving across the Flats. Impossible to tell how far away, with the torrid atmosphere rippling in between.

“They’ll leave us alone for a while, I think,” Rol said. He seemed dizzy, and swayed slightly as he walked. Creed’s own tongue felt too large for his mouth. He passed it over the cracked skin of his lips.

“We have two half-full skins of water.”

“Fourteen leagues, Gallico said the Flats were across. We must do it in two more marches at most.”

Creed looked at the trio of Mochran, Bartolomew, and Gallico. The halftroll was taking most of his own weight but his helpers were wearing down fast. “We’ll be lucky,” he said.

They halted to rest every hour, and Rol supervised the periodic rationing out of the water-a mouthful per man, and twice that for Gallico, no more. Then he and Creed took over from Mochran and Bartolomew, and they continued on their way.

It seemed impossible that the halftroll should still be alive. From the waist up, every inch of his torso seemed ripped and torn in some way, and though these wounds were drying in the sun, the deepest still oozed clear liquid. He spoke little, and his face was a granite clench of agonized determination. Occasionally he stumbled, and his weight bore down on Rol and Creed like that of a sinking hill.

The sun coursed across the sky, and finally approached the featureless horizon in the west. As it did so, it lit in stark silhouette the sharp-peaked ranges of the Myconians, bringing them to life out of dust and haze as though they had sprung fully formed over the brim of the world just that moment, and then it dipped behind them in a matter of minutes, leaving a roseate residue in the west, and the first glitter of the stars.

The cold deepened quickly, at first refreshing, and then debilitating. They kept walking. Rol and Creed had been counting paces for the first half of the day but had lost count in the afternoon as they labored under Gallico’s immense arms. Creed thought they might have made some five leagues, but it was wishful guesswork, no more.

Rol allowed the party to sleep for a couple of hours and they lay huddled together on the barren plain, shivering with closed eyes. Creed woke up toward the end of that time to find Rol standing with drawn sword looking south across the Flats. He hauled himself to his feet.

“What do you see?” He had realized by now that Cortishane could see in the dark, and Gallico too.