Farlander (20 page)

The
Falcon
lurched, losing speed. They were caught like a fish on a hook.

‘All is lost!’ cried Nico, frightened out of his wits. He didn’t care that he sounded like some overripe actor exclaiming his woe to the crowd. This was madness.

Ash gazed down at his apprentice, as the pursuing ship closed the distance. Sailors began attacking the planking around the grapple with axes, trying to loosen its grip. For a spell, Ash said nothing, just stood there watching Nico, and gathering stillness about himself. Then he laughed, the sound of it rolling away with the wind, sharp mockery, yet with an underlying lightness.

‘You youngsters,’ he proclaimed, ‘you despair so easily.’

Nico clutched the kerido’s body close to him, both of them trembling.

‘Captain,’ snapped Ash, gaining Trench’s attention. ‘Turn us about.’

‘Turn about? Are you mad?’

Yes
, decided Nico,
he’s flying with the fishes. Whatever he says, sweet Er
s, don’t listen.

‘Turn us about,’ Ash repeated.

Trench took position at the wheel, spinning what remained of it to turn the ship about.

The
Falcon
heaved around, losing a good portion of her port rails as the chain scudded along her gunwales. Their pursuer turned with them, though not as sharply. The chain slackened.

‘Heave, you fellows!’ shouted the captain to his men. Dalas had by now regained his feet. He strained to lift the grapple, then he and six other men rushed over to the side with it and pitched it into thin air.

Trench spun the wheel again, regaining their original course. They had lost height during the engagement, and at this lower level the wind was with them. The sculls snapped full with it and the
Falcon
surged forwards.

‘Tend to the wounded,’ Trench yelled. ‘And get the stitchers up into the envelope. We’re venting gas from the cells.’

The crew knew then that they were safely through. They didn’t cheer like the heroes do in the sagas. Instead, as the imperial ships dropped behind, it was a stunned silence that fell across the decks.

‘I hope you do not consider that another debt to be repaid,’ Trench muttered over his shoulder to Ash.

The old R
shun said nothing.

Nico stared about him. Even now he could hear the cries of wounded men who would likely not make it to the end of the day.

I’m much too young for this
, he thought, with a sudden sobering clarity.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘We need those ships, Phrades,’ announced First Minister Chonas, leaning forward in his chair as though to add some much needed emphasis to his words. He held up a fist to the dozen ministers assembled before him for this cabinet of war, and squeezed it until the knuckles turned white. ‘Our people must eat.’

Phrades, Minister of Ship Building, glanced sidelong to his son, where the pair sat together at the great oval table of the assembly chamber, amid their fellow ministers. Most of the faces there were dusted white to mark them as members of the Michinè class born and bred, although there were a few notable exceptions. Phrades could not speak aloud these days, due to a cancer of the throat they said. Instead he whispered drily to his son, the young man’s face in stark contrast to the pallid complexion of his father, being tanned and without make-up, as many of the Michinè youth favoured these days. The young man listened carefully with a tilt of his head, then cleared his throat and stood.

‘We understand, First Minister, and you must believe us when we say we bend our wills to this task like no other. All resources that can be diverted from other projects have been appropriated so as to speed up the completion of the ships. We have even contributed a portion of our own family fortune to this task, in organizing the importation of raw materials. It pains me – us – to confess that we can do no more than we are doing now. It will take us one month more to finish the remaining merchanters under construction at the Al-Khos dockyards. In the meantime we must rely on the private longtraders to continue picking up the slack. The people, I fear, must tighten their belts further.’

A stomach gurgled loudly in the room just then, causing a few heads to turn in that direction.

First Minister Chonas was not the kind of man to acknowledge such a distraction, nor was he inclined to take no for an immediate answer.

‘And what did the Pincho have to say to our requests?’ he asked, referring to the main assembly on Minos, the seat of Mercian democracy.

‘They, too, build as fast as they can, but they are still hard pressed to refit the fleets after the spring storms. The new vessels will not be with us until the beginning of autumn.’

‘At least,’ offered Minister Memès, sitting with his equally tanned face resting on his clasped hands, ‘our food reserves should be restored to satisfactory levels in time for winter.’ The voice of the wealthy gala exporter sounded restrained in the huge dimensions of the chamber, the speaker doubtless conscious of what he represented to these other men around him, his great wealth and political position having been gained despite being born of the lower classes – another reflection of the changing times.

‘That is easy enough to say,’ countered First Minister Chonas, ‘since few of us here in this room look as though we have been going hungry.’ Yet Chonas himself looked lean enough, as though he at times did indeed go hungry. The First Minister held up a palm to silence any protest at this accusation, before continuing in a voice flat with resignation. ‘No, they are right to put the fleets first. It is better that our people tighten their belts a little further,’ – he ranged around the room glaring from beneath enormous, bushy eyebrows – ‘than we should lose our naval supremacy, and thus lose all.’

‘General Creed, you have a request for us?’

At this, Bahn’s hungry stomach grumbled loudly once again. He pulled his gaze away from the banquet of food waiting close to the main door of the chamber, and sat up in his chair next to the general. They sat at one end of the table, facing those opposite, and behind them the great sun-fattened windows of the south gallery. No reply came from his superior, nor did Bahn sense any shift in the man’s posture.

Glancing sideways at the old warrior, he saw that General Creed, Lord Protector of Khos, was now staring out through the same windows at the pale blue sea of the Bay of Squalls. From here they could not see the cliffs on which the building of the Congress stood, let alone the slum-town of the Shoals, which sprawled along the foot of the cliffs, half submerged in seawater during storm tides. Instead the vista revealed was a pleasant one: the air was especially clear today, everything crisp in detail so hat landmarks appeared closer than they really were. A squadron of triple-masted men-of-war roamed the waters, bearing the Khosian flag. They ranged beyond reach of the heavy Mannian guns positioned on the far shore, seen from here as a coastline of russet hills made pale by the sunlight and dotted with grey fortifications. From here the forts could be seen to cluster most thickly around the dark smudge of the Pathian town of Nomarl where, within the harbour walls, the hulks of a Mannian fleet were reported to still lie abandoned in the water, charred and sea-rotted after being burned at anchor by a Khosian raid three years earlier – the last offensive action the Khosians had mounted with any success.

General Creed seemed to be eyeing the faint image of the fortress town. He looked like a man who wished to return to it.

Daydreaming again, Bahn reckoned, and he gently nudged the general’s foot with his own.

‘Yes, First Minister,’ Creed replied smoothly, as though he had been listening attentively all along. His chair scraped as he stood up to address the room, his burnished armour reflecting the sunlight. The general pressed his palms against the polished tiq wood of the table, as his gaze took in the assembled ministers one by one. He did not look impressed by what he saw.

‘My request is that we return to the issue of the coastal forts. And you may groan all you like, gentlemen, for I mean to have this issue decided upon here, this very day.’

‘General Creed. We have been over this many times. We are aware that our eastern forts are undermanned. Yet what is it you believe we can do?’

‘First Minister, the forts are not
under
manned, as this council is so fond of suggesting. They are barely manned at all. That is my point: they contain skeleton crews merely to service and repair them, no more – certainly not enough to offer solid resistance. They have little blackpowder, even fewer cannon, for instead all has been drawn to the defence of Bar-Khos and our southern coastline. Therefore we still have no answer for a surprise attack on our eastern shores.’

‘That is to presume such a surprise attack would be possible, General. The third fleet has protected us thus far. We must pray it will continue to do so.’

Creed waved that comment away. ‘First Minister, that is a lot of sea for the third fleet to patrol. We have been lucky so far, that is all. Now that the insurrection on Lagos has finally been quelled and its great harbour secured, the Mannians have the perfect anchorage from which to strike against us. We can no longer rely on the navy for our protection. First Minister, we must man those forts.’

First Minister Chonas, philosopher as well as politician, took this demand with his usual good grace. He nodded to his old friend and opponent. ‘Truly, I understand, Marsalas. But we are overstretched as it is. You know as well as I, we have not the resources to equip and maintain more soldiery. Where can we find these extra fighters? You yourself have a solution, all of a sudden?’

‘We divide our reserves in two, and use one half to man the forts.’

There was an outcry of protest from around the table at this suggestion.

‘That is hardly a solution, General,’ spoke up one voice. It was Sinese, Minister of Defence, third most powerful man in all of Khos, who sat back with his legs folded and white-gloved hands resting on the ivory head of his walking cane. ‘This cabinet will not allow our reserves to be diminished any further than they already are. Even if we were to man the forts fully, it is doubtful they could hold off a full invasion. There is nothing new in what you propose here.’ He paused to turn in his seat and address the man next to him. ‘Minister Eliph, you have more pressing news from the diplomatic corps, I understand?’

‘I do,’ concurred Eliph, and avoided the general’s sudden glare as he took a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘Our ambassador in Zanzahar has arranged for further discussions with the Caliphate concerning their recent proposal. He believes they are sincere in their talk of extending the limit of their safe waters closer to us. There is real hope, it would seem.’

His words drew the scorn of half the chamber, evident in a general hiss of breath and the shaking of heads. Many believed that this recent proposal of the Caliphate was nothing more than empty words, amounting to simply another manoeuvre in the Caliphate’s latest trade dispute with Mann.

‘The Caliphate merely hopes to sustain this war for as long as it can,’ said Chonas, as though speaking to a child. ‘It profits too well in providing blackpowder to both sides.’

Some rapped their knuckles on the table in agreement with this. Others protested vocally and asked to be heard.

After that, the assembly broke down into a series of arguments. They could carry on this way for an hour or more, Bahn knew only too well.

It was hot in the huge room, with its windows facing the sun. Despite the hand-pulled ceiling fans and the cool sea breeze from those windows which stood open, a smell of sweat permeated the chamber, not quite concealed by the scents of sickly sweet perfumes. After a while Bahn’s interest faded to mere observance, and then shifted to other matters entirely.