Brian Ruckley - Corsair

‘And you like to talk,’ he said to Lake.

‘There are few things I like, in truth. The Empire taught me that.’

Lake was edging closer. He left no simple openings for Yulan to punish. Yulan was willing to wait. Time was what he sought to purchase here, after all.

‘I thought I served something worthy of the service,’ Lake continued, ‘but it was not so. I thought I had ten thousand brothers and sisters, but it was not so. Pledge yourself to lies and liars and in time they will betray you.’

‘I believe it,’ Yulan said.

A thin, reedy whistle pierced the air. Yulan dared a snatched glance to the side. He was all but level with the wide, open doors at the back of the quay. Beyond them he glimpsed a broad ramp sloping up. That was where the distant whistle came from: Hamdan making an invitation.

‘We neither of us fight for our own cause here,’ Yulan said. He wanted respite as much as Lake now. A few breaths to gather himself, to think. ‘Seems folly for either of us to die today.’

The Orphanidon smiled coldly.

‘I doubt you believe that. I fight for a promise freely made, and that is the only thing I would die for today or any other day. It is the last vestige of honour I have left to me.

‘And you … you are of the Free. None but fools think the Free fight only for treasure. I have heard it said that you always find a way to make another’s cause your own. Wise or not, it is what you do.’

Yulan flailed his sword and arm through the water, sending up a sheet of spray into Lake’s face. He let the movement carry his body round and sprang, throwing a leg onto the quay and rolling. In the corner of his eye he saw Lake hunching behind his shield, the water breaking over its wooden surface. He saw the Orphanidon’s sword flashing yellow reflections of the lamps as it darted up and down.

The blade struck sparks from the edge of the quay a finger’s width from Yulan’s foot. He flowed into a crouch and swung his own sword round into the space where Lake would be if he tried to follow up out of the water. The Orphanidon was not so foolish. The shield was there instead, and it turned Yulan’s blow aside.

Yulan rose to his feet and stepped towards the open door. That saved him, for a spear spiralled in and passed across the back of his head, so close he felt it in his hair. It hit the wall and rebounded, quivering. Yulan thanked his luck and ran.

The Sorentines had cut a long and wide sloping passageway with a vaulted roof up from that subterranean harbour. Yulan sprinted up it into darkness, for there were no torches or oil lamps here. He almost turned his ankle over in a groove running down the length of the ramp. Cursing he ran on, ignoring the twinge of protest in that joint. Long, long ago, there must have been carts hauled up and down, their wheels riding in the grooves. Not now. Now there was only damp and the dark and silence.

A silence broken by a strange, trilling whistle from up ahead. It sounded vaguely familiar to Yulan, but he could not place it. Hamdan, he supposed, but what it meant he had no idea. An alarm? His stride faltered, skipped a beat.

And out of the gloom came a splinter of movement that sighed past his eyes. An arrow. He lurched to the side and pressed himself to the arching wall in time to avoid the second, and then the third that went straight and true as stooping falcons down the long slope towards the figures at the foot of the passageway. He heard at least once the distinctive thud of arrow meeting flesh, and a startled cry. After that, there was no more movement. No pursuit.

Yulan trotted on and up. His ankle ached, but not too much. The knife wound in his upper arm was throbbing, but distantly. He was alive when he could as easily – more easily – not have been. On another day, Lake would have had him. There was a unique kind of exhilaration to be had in knowing that this was not that other day. But then, it was still early.

Hamdan was waiting in the doorway of an old storage cellar. As Yulan passed through, the archer heaved the great oaken door closed behind him and hammered a wedge in beneath it with his foot.

The chamber was a mess. There was only the light of a couple of lanterns to see by, but it was enough to know this was where Kottren Malak had hoarded much of his loot. Barrels were stacked along half of one wall, rolls of cloth and heaps of fishing net strewn over and between them. There were tall clay jars with cork stoppers; oars leaning in one corner, boathooks and spears and pitchforks in another. A chest here and there, long loops of chain and boat tackle hanging on the walls. A neglected heap of clothes that smelled of rot and mould. A sorry and meagre treasury, all in all. Hardly worth a single death, let alone the many that had followed upon the Corsair King’s heels.

Corena was at the far end of the cellar with the children, peering through another doorway into a rising stairwell.

Yulan gave Hamdan a grateful pat on the shoulder.

‘I’m glad you waited.’

Hamdan shrugged.

‘What else would I do? We’re the Free, you and I. Unless we’re different from just about everyone else riding under that banner, it means we’re all we’ve got. We always wait. Until we can’t.’

Yulan nodded.

‘I’m impressed,’ Hamdan was saying. ‘Not many can say they’ve faced an Orphanidon and lived.’

‘Once an Orphanidon. He is good, but old. Probably not as sharp a blade as once he was.’

‘Oh, I know,’ Hamdan grunted. ‘I was just trying to be encouraging. If it’d been a young one, still in the Empire’s service, I might not have bothered waiting.’

They walked the length of the cellar. Yulan heard the skittering of rats behind some of the barrels. He thought – though this might be imagining – that he could hear the whispery scuttling of beetles in there too.

‘See anything?’ he asked Corena as he peered over her shoulder up the shadowy spiral of the stairway. ‘Hear anything?’

She did not have to answer. The castle above them provided its own response. A low howl of wind, then the crash and groan of something falling or moving. The cracking and creaking of stone that made Yulan think of fissures opening. None of it promising. None of it certain of provenance, but to Yulan’s ear it had the ominous sound of a young Clever, half-maddened by grief and anger. Raging, searching, wailing. Hurting.

‘It’s not easy shooting along a sloping passage, you know,’ Hamdan observed, as if they were taking their ease in an alehouse. ‘You’re supposed to get down when I give a grass-shrike whistle.’

‘That second whistle? I didn’t know what that meant.’

‘Did you never go hunting before you left the drylands?’ asked Hamdan incredulously.

‘Of course I did. Often. We used our hands for quiet talking, and if we needed calls it was a black plover to stay down and still.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. A black plover’ll sit on its nest so stubborn you can pick it up.’

‘Well, I know that.’ Hamdan looked thoughtful. ‘Makes sense. Don’t know why we used a grass-shrike.’

‘Are you two forgetting where we are?’ muttered Corena. ‘On a sinking ship is where, and I don’t hear anyone saying which way we should swim.’

‘Not forgetting it, no,’ said Hamdan.

‘So which way are we swimming?’ Corena demanded.

‘I’ve got half an idea about that,’ Yulan said.

And he did have an idea. He did not like it, and he did not think anyone else was going to like it much, but it was all he had.

‘We need to get up and out of here before we can do anything else,’ he said. ‘No other choice.’

‘Always wanted to meet an angry child-Clever,’ Hamdan sighed. ‘Help me block up that other door a little better first. At least we may be able to delay your Orphanidon long enough that we only need to have one nightmare at a time.’