Brian Ruckley - Corsair

Yulan led the way up the spiral that would carry them once more into the castle, sword in one hand, lantern taken from the wall of the cellar in the other. He was beginning to feel cold. His clothes were sodden and heavy, sucking all the warmth from his limbs. The children, he knew, were shivering behind him. They had not been well dressed in the first place, and certainly not for thrashing about in the sea. He could hear someone’s teeth rattling.

It was not helped by the fact that the higher they rose, the closer they came to whatever awaited them above, the more restless the air grew. It shifted and gusted, blowing cold across the face. Where it should have been still, here in this tight stair deep in rock, it had life and movement.

Yulan could think of two possible reasons for that. Either the fabric of the fortress above them was so rent, so damaged, that the winds coming off the sea flowed through it without let or hindrance; or it was Enna, giving form and intent directly to the air. Neither was a comforting notion.

They emerged into a short corridor that ran off to both left and right. Yulan looked this way and that before stepping out from the stairwell. He struggled for a moment to orientate himself. The only windows were tiny slits high at each end of the corridor, each showing only a thin bar of featureless sky. The dim sound of waves told him which way the sea, and the back of the keep, lay. That was what he wanted.

He led the others to a corner and held them just short of it with a silent spreading of his fingers. From around that corner, the shifting air was bringing an unsettling sound: heavy, rasping breathing.

He edged forward and looked into the new stretch of passageway, into the glare of unexpected daylight. A hole had been torn open, right through the keep from top to bottom, admitting the glare of a sun now high in the sky. Yulan could hear the cries of seabirds, and beneath that harsh surface the rumbling, faltering breath of the beast that lay in the corridor. A great bear, a cave-dweller, was sprawled there, half crushed beneath great slabs of masonry that had plunged down from the roof and walls above.

Its hindquarters were pinned – and surely broken – by massive stonework. Its jowls were bloody and trailing strings of thick saliva. Its mangled tongue sprawled limply from its jaws. But it was not dead, and its eyes went to Yulan as soon as he emerged before it.

Beyond the crushed beast, he could see what he sought: an old and part-rotten door that by his reckoning must open onto one of the balconies at the rear of the keep.

‘Wait here,’ he whispered over his shoulder, and advanced cautiously upon the bear.

He had not gone more than a pace or two before he was startled into immobility by a shuddering that passed through the walls and floor, the very bones of the whole castle. It shook mortar and dust into little clouds that drifted in the sunlight streaming in from above.

He had no concept of what the creation of a Permanence would be like. He barely had a clear notion of what it really meant, if the little girl somewhere here was truly being consumed by the very forces she had called up. Would it sound like this? Would it be the ceaseless movement of air that should be still, the trembling of an entire castle?

There was nothing he could do about any of that right now, so he concentrated on that which he could affect. He stood by the bear, just out of reach of its huge paws and massive teeth. It rumbled and growled and tried to lift its boulder-like head. Tried to reach for him, he guessed. Following its instinct and its fear even in its crippled state.

Yulan planted his sword deep, straight down into the back of the bear’s neck just behind its head. It died without another sound.

The door that led out onto the balcony was jammed, so long had it been unused. Yulan kicked it out, splitting the soft and rot-riddled planks and knocking it off one of its rusted hinges. Its condition did not fill him with confidence about the state of the balcony. His first step was hesitant. The stonework of the platform and balustrade was pitted and corroded, crusted in places with salt. It felt solid, though.

He brought the rest of them out there. To face the immense expanse of the sea, rolling away to a vast arc of the horizon. A thousand thousand white-flecked waves, rank upon rank of them to the very limit of sight. It was dwarfing. But it was not what Yulan was interested in.

He looked down instead. Over the edge of the balcony and down to the still, quiet bay and its harbour directly below. One boat – the one that had carried Lake on his sweep around the island – was already easing its way out from the cove, butting into the larger waves beyond its shelter. Yulan could just make out a handful of figures on the deck, none he could really recognise. The four people they had left at the harbourside, perhaps, or some of Lake’s men deserting him. Not Lake himself, of that Yulan was sure.

Four boats remained, serenely resting in that little sanctuary. There was no one to be seen. As Yulan had hoped and assumed, Lake and whatever warriors had stayed at his side were on their trail, not guarding the anchorage.

The height made him uncomfortable. It seemed a great abyss, the straight drop from balcony to the crystalline waters away down there beneath castle and cliff. He steeled himself and turned to Corena.

‘Can we jump?’

He heard Hamdan groaning behind him, though he was sure the archer must have guessed his intent before now. He paid no heed to that, keeping his attention locked upon Corena. She leaned out and peered down at the glistening sea, at the boats in their quiet mooring.

‘Yes,’ she said with just enough confidence to make Yulan believe her. ‘It’s shallow, but it shouldn’t kill you if you stretch your arms out, bend your knees.’

‘Carrying a child?’ he asked her.

That put a flicker of doubt into her face. Her eyes slipped from his, searched out the children.

‘The girls should manage it on their own. The boy …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘That’s what I thought,’ Yulan said calmly. ‘You have to go first, and you need to take Tessunt with you.’

She thought about it for a moment and then nodded.

‘Choose us a boat and unmoor the others so that they drift, or break on the rocks or … anything, so that no one can quickly come after us,’ Yulan said. As if he were asking something easy of her, almost nothing.

‘Yes,’ Corena said. As if he was indeed asking something easy.

Because, Yulan wondered, she has already done harder things than she would once have thought possible? Or because she has already done the one and only thing she wanted to do – kill the Corsair King – and she cares nothing about what happens after? He did not know which, if either, was true. And he doubted it mattered. If she would attempt it, that was enough. Everything from this moment on was attempt. Nothing more.

He turned to the three children, who were watching him with fretful, frightened eyes. He sank down so that his face was on a level with theirs.

‘Corena here is going to jump down with Tessunt,’ he said. ‘She will ready a boat for us. You two girls, I need to ask something a bit harder of you. Can I do that?’

They nodded.

‘I need you two to wait here for Hamdan and me to come back. We have to go and do something, then we’ll come back to you and we’ll all jump down together. Is that all right?’

He did not know if it was trust he was seeing in their eyes, but he felt the burden of it settling upon him even so.

‘We’ll be back very soon. If anyone else comes before us, or if anything bad seems to be happening, you just jump. Don’t wait for us. Jump down to Corena and she’ll carry you away from here. Do you understand?’