Residency? Jute cast an uneasy glance to Lady Orosenn. The tall woman was shaking her head, her expression one of sad displeasure. Even Tyvar glanced back to share a rather stunned look. ‘I’m sorry, m’lady, but I’m not certain I understand …’ he offered, ever diplomatic.
Lady Mist opened her arms. ‘I should have thought my meaning was plain. You are now my subjects. You will surrender your weapons and armour and join the rest of the men and women here tilling the soil and building a settlement. You have until tomorrow to comply.’
Tyvar cocked his head, as if confronted by something bizarre. ‘And if we do not?’
The sorceress did not answer. She merely returned her arms to the throne’s thick armrests. The silence dragged on and Jute almost turned to whisper to Lady Orosenn, but something caught his eye down upon the stone flags and he flinched instead: scarves of mist now coiled about Tyvar’s feet and even as Jute watched they began writhing up his legs like winding sheets.
Tyvar hissed, sensing something, and glanced down to bat at his legs. The ropes cinched tight and he fell to the floor in a clatter of armour. His helmet skittered off into the dark.
‘Sorceress!’ Lady Orosenn suddenly called out, commandingly.
The ropes of mist fell away and dispersed like smoke. Tyvar was on his feet in one quick leap. A gauntleted hand went to the long grip of his greatsword. Lady Orosenn reached out to gently touch the man’s shoulder and he immediately released the weapon.
The sorceress was nodding through all this. ‘A very wise decision. For you see … I am not entirely unprotected.’ And she gestured, waving her hand forward.
Heavy thumping steps sounded from the dark corners behind the throne. Out stepped two giants, or so they appeared to Jute. Hoary shapes out of legend. Jaghut? Trell? Fabled Toblakai? Who was to know? Fully two fathoms tall they must have been. One wore a long heavy coat of bronze scales that hung to the floor in ragged lengths. He was bearded, his hair a thick nest, his jaw massive with pronounced tusk-like upwards-jutting canines. He carried an immensely wide two-headed axe; this he thumped to the flags before his sandalled feet in a blow that shook the floor. The other stood nearly identical but girt in armour of overlapping iron scales. Thrust through his belt was a greatsword fully as tall as any man, from its tip to its plain hexagonal pommel of bevelled iron.
Both favoured the party with hungry eager grins.
‘Allow me to introduce my sons,’ Mist continued. She extended a hand to the left. ‘Anger.’ She gestured to her right. ‘Wrath.’
Lady Orosenn lurched one step forward as if she would charge Mist. ‘You have not been kind to your sons,’ she grated.
Mist thrust a finger at her. ‘
You
I will allow to continue on to the north. All who come to pay tribute to our great ancestors are welcome.’
‘They are not my ancestors,’ Lady Orosenn growled, low and controlled, and Jute was shaken by the uncharacteristic ferocity in her voice. ‘They are more my great-nephews and nieces.’
Mist’s hands convulsed to claws on the armrests and she gaped. Then, recovering, she gave a girlish laugh and waved the words aside. ‘An outrageous claim. In any case, you have no stake in this. Stand aside.’ Her eyes moved to Tyvar, and she pointed to the entrance. ‘Go now, and convince your crews to cooperate. Any resistance or rebellion will be utterly crushed.’
Tyvar turned on his heel and marched from the hall. Jute glanced from the mercenary’s retreating back to Lady Orosenn, who had not moved, and chose to follow Tyvar. Leaving, he heard Lady Orosenn say, in a voice now touched with sadness: ‘It seems that we never learn, Mist.’ Then he heard her steps following in his wake.
The village, if it could be called that, was deserted. So too the slope down to the ships. Everyone knew to keep indoors. Jute noted with alarm the creeping banners of fog. They were coursing in towards them from all sides, as if they were streams of water sinking into a basin. Tyvar muttered to Lady Orosenn, ‘We cannot counter this sorcery. Togg is no longer with us.’
‘I will do my best. Push off immediately.’
‘I am not used to this crouching behind the cover of another.’
‘Think of me as your priestess, then.’
The big man barked a laugh. ‘Would that were so, m’lady.’
She urged him onwards. ‘Quickly, set the crew to work. No time for talking.’
‘Yes ma’am.’ Jute ran for the
Silver Dawn
. Drawing near, he waved, shouting: ‘Push off! All crew! Now!’
First Mate Buen appeared at the side. He shouted back, ‘What’s that?’
Jute came stumbling and slogging through the mud. ‘I said get the crew out, damn you!’
Buen gestured to the bay, now shrouded in dense mists. ‘It’s too foggy to set out. Can’t see a thing.’
Jute nearly screamed his frustration. He drew the shortsword at his side – the first time he could recall ever doing so – and pointed it at his mate. ‘Get everyone over the side now! We’re leaving or we’re dead!’
Buen raised his hands. ‘All right all right. What’s the big rush?’
‘
Just do it!
’
The mate turned away. ‘You heard the cap’n. Over the side.’
‘But it’s muddy out there,’ someone complained. Dulat, perhaps.
Jute leaned an arm against the slick planks and rested his head there in disbelief. He glanced across the flats: Lady Orosenn stood in the muck next to her launch, facing inland. Her oarsmen, stiff figures in rags, hardly stirred a muscle. Something about them made him jerk his gaze away to examine the
Resolute
. Tyvar was of course making far greater headway than he. His crew had jumped down and even now were crowding around the bows to push.
We’re going to die, he told himself.
Movement up the slope caught his eye. A lone figure, running, arms waving. It was a sailor by the rags he wore. ‘Take me!’ the man bellowed, his voice cracking. ‘By the merciful gods – take me with you!’
Buen appeared in the muck at Jute’s side. He pointed. ‘Who in the green Abyss is that?’
Jute glared, then shoved him to the planks. ‘Push, damn you!’ More of his crew came jumping reluctantly into the clinging mud. ‘Push, all of you! Push!’
‘Please take me wi—’ Something choked off the man’s call and Jute turned to look.
Coils of mist enmeshed the sailor. As Jute watched, those ropes and scarves lifted the man up into the air where he struggled in eerie silence. Then the ribbons of shifting gossamer fog about his middle yanked tight. The man vomited – but not the normal stomach contents. The very organs themselves came bursting from his mouth in a rain of escaping fluids to slap to the ground as a mess of pulped viscera. Jute fought his own gorge. The corpse, nearly cut in half now, a blood-red organ dangling from its mouth, jerked as the banners of mist yanked each limb clean off, one after the other, the arms first and then the legs.
One of Jute’s crew gagged and vomited.
The tendrils then lashed like whips and Jute ducked as the dismembered parts of the corpse came flying at the
Dawn
to bang against the hull. The torso thumped wetly to the deck.
‘
Fucking Abyss!
’ Buen yelled, ducking.
‘I told you to push,’ Jute observed. He was surprised by how calm he sounded.
The crew dashed themselves against the hull. Feet dug and slid frantically in the muck. Someone was whimpering and Jute couldn’t blame him.
A strange sort of pressure brushed against him then and he turned. Lady Orosenn had her arms out, as if pushing. Jute glanced about: the mist was rolling backwards as though in a stiff wind. Though no true wind ruffled any of them. It lashed and whipped on all sides yet was driven back – if only a short distance.
Two great bellows of rage sounded from the obscuring banks of fog. Jute’s head sank once again. Do these foreign gods never tire of their jokes? Two enormous shadowed silhouettes came lumbering down the slope.
As if this new threat were the key, the bows of the
Dawn
lurched backwards. The sailors followed, heaving. Water kicked up about them as they pushed into the weak surf. The hull lifted free of the flats. Jute could’ve kissed every one of the damned crew as those few left on board now reached down to help lift them up and in. He clung to the top rail, his feet dangling in the surf, and peered back. Lady Orosenn still had her arms outstretched yet even from this distance Jute could see them shuddering with effort. All about, in a clear semicircle around the ships, whips and tatters of fog lashed and writhed.
We are clear – but what of her? Jute wondered, horrified. How will she …
As he watched, the sorceress took one shaky step backwards into the launch then tumbled the rest of the way as if thrown. The stiff upright oarsmen started rowing; the launch surged out into the surf. The scarves of mist came unravelling down the slope just as the brothers, Anger and Wrath, emerged like two fiends out of myth. The brothers stopped on the shore and shook their fists, bellowing their rage. The mist, however, did not halt. It came on, brushing sinuously over the waves like a horde of sea-snakes, straight for him – or so it seemed.
‘Pull me up, damn you all!’ he roared.
Hands yanked at him, heaved him up. On deck he straightened to peer at everyone gaping at the shore, then turned as something crashed into the waves just short of the bow. It sent up a towering burst of spray that splashed everyone.
On shore, Anger stooped for another boulder.
Jute turned to his astonished crew. ‘Don’t just stand there!’ he roared. ‘Man the sweeps!’
The spell of fascination was broken; the crew scrambled for the oars.
Jute returned to studying the shore. Anger had a boulder raised over his head that wouldn’t shame any siege onager. This he heaved at the
Dawn
in a mighty throw. The rock came whistling down to splash to the port side. Spray from the impact doused the oarsmen.
A distant crash of timber snatched Jute’s attention to the
Resolute
. A boulder thrown by Wrath had struck the tall bow-stem, snapping it off. Their oarsmen kept heaving and the vessel kept its headway so Jute surmised the keel remained true.
As for Lady Orosenn; her silent crew pulled her out to the waiting
Supplicant
with breathtaking speed. They climbed rope ladders up the side.
All along the receding shore, the bank of fog thickened to a near opaque wall. It was as if Mist were sealing off her realm in an impenetrable barrier of cloud. Only the giant brothers remained: blurred twin shadows, roaring their namesake ire and heaving rocks that now fell short in tall towers of spray and haze.
Jute went to the stern. ‘Swing us round,’ he ordered Lurjen.
‘Heading?’ the man enquired, his gaze fixed on the rippling fist-waving shadows.
‘East. There’s a channel there or I’m a Letherii philanthropist.’
‘Hit it off with the locals?’ Ieleen enquired dryly, her hands resting on her walking stick and her chin atop them.
‘The usual miscommunication, dearest.’
‘The channel may be impassable,’ she pointed out.
‘We’ll take our time.’
‘We’re too low on supplies.’
‘Then we’ll send out launches to fish or hunt – there may be seals.’
‘You’re determined, then,’ she sighed.
Jute turned to her. ‘Why, of course. After all this?’
She pensively tapped her stick to the decking. ‘I was just thinking that perhaps we’ve gone about as far as we should. All things considered …’
He squatted next to her. Sensing his nearness, she gave him a smile, but it was a wistful one. ‘I’m worried, luv,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve about pushed our luck as far as we ought.’
‘We’re about,’ Lurjen said.
‘Ahead slow,’ he answered without turning from his wife. ‘Find open water.’
‘Aye, aye. Ahead slow, Buen,’ Lurjen shouted.
‘Aye,’ the first mate answered. ‘Get a man up that mast! Two at the bows! With poles!’
‘We’ve a sorceress with us, lass,’ Jute said. ‘And a mercenary army.’
She shook her head. ‘Leave it to them. Who are we? Just common people. We don’t belong in this land of ogres and powers. It’ll be the end of us. I feel it.’ He pressed a hand to her shoulder and she took it, squeezing tightly. ‘Not much farther, yes?’
‘All right, lass. I swear. If it looks too rough. Not much farther.
‘Too rough!’ She laughed. ‘Luv – what is it now, pray tell?’
‘We escaped.’
‘You may not the next time.’
‘I’ll be careful, love.’
‘See that you are,’ she snapped, then sighed and gave his hand a squeeze.
‘Ice ahead, captain,’ Buen called from amidships.
Jute straightened. ‘Very well.’ He faced the bows, squinted ahead where the light held a bluish glow from the thickening flow of great ice slabs. ‘More men on poles. And let’s have a touch more sail.’
‘Aye, aye.’
*
Neither Storval nor any of the hired swordsmen would admit it, but Reuth’s navigation saw the
Lady’s Luck
south through the Wreckers’ Coast. Only his uncle offered any acknowledgement of the feat, and this with mere cuffs across Reuth’s shoulder. Meagre fare, but more affection than the coarse, bluff fellow generally granted.