Spellbreakers (14 page)

Six days later, well after sunset, they reached
Enskala.

Perhaps it was reckless to ride so late in the evening
tired as they were, but they couldn’t conceive of sleeping on the hard ground
again with this wholly new town close at hand, feather beds in cozy inns, and
fine stables for their tired horses.

They had crossed into the Enskalan
island
that morning, riding over the glorious fortified bridge that spanned the
eastern branch of the river Yll. The bridge was the only access to the Enskalan
territory for those who could not walk over water, and it was as formidable as
a castle, four hundred fifty feet long, sixteen feet wide, with a barbican at
each hand and three towers with battlements and murder holes on top of its six
mighty stone arches. When crossing a bridge like that one could not fail to
take notice that one was leaving one nation and entering another.

It was a doorway to another world, in every sense.

They were finally out of Hassia, and one small step
away from the Narrows and the legendary northern kingdoms. So they pressed on
and on in the strange, flat, marshy countryside that surrounded the
northernmost Free Port of the western kingdoms.
 

The road ran straight and true across the fields, an
easy ride even in poor light. The ground was perfectly flat for miles all
round. It was hard to tell how this strange landscape had taken shape, whether
the fields and pastures divided by canals of salt water had been stolen from
the sea bed, or if the sea was trying to take the hated land away.

The weather had been hot and sultry since Treiström,
but now there was a chill in the air, which came as a relief to the sweaty
horses and their riders alike. Rags of mist veiled the landscape here and
there, whitened by a three-quarter moon and her attending stars. That was why
they did not see Enskala until they were almost on top of it. Then a puff of
breeze from the sea parted the fogs, and there it was at last, a dark smudge on
the flat, pale landscape, which grew closer and closer at every step, rising
ever higher as they approached.

The city of Enskala had been long at war with Hassia
at various times in the past, and its star-shaped walls were now so high and
strong that no army could ever take them by storm. Without the command of the
sea, it would be impossible to starve the people out, and despite the smallness
of their territory, the Enskalans owned many ships, and, more importantly, they
had the alliance of the dragon-fleet of Nevraan, just across the Narrows. So
the country had been long at peace now, and the countryside was tilled and
well-tended. As Leal and Daria approached the city, they crossed enclosed
vegetable gardens, then a few scattered cottages, and little villages, and then
they were at the walls of the town.

There were a moat and a colossal drawbridge and then a
huge iron gate in the great arch that let the road through the wall of yet
another formidable barbican, one of the three guarded entrances of the city. It
was closed at night, even in such peaceful times, but even the gate had a
smaller gate in it, one just large enough to let in a rider or a laden pony,
and before they even got as far as calling out, a man with a lantern came out
of a door under the archway, mumbling something barely intelligible, which
might have been a complaint about travelers and their abysmal sense of timing.

“Who are you?” he asked when he was at the gate.
“Where are you
from,
and what is your business here?”

It was his duty to ask such questions after nightfall,
and Leal didn’t take it personally.

“My name is Gabriel, and this is my brother, Lorenç,”
she said. Daria had chosen her father’s name for travelling, Leal her
grandfather’s. “We are travelers from Escarra, wishing to find passage across
the Narrows.”

“Well, well, Escarrans, eh?” said the man busying
himself with a huge iron key. He opened the smaller gate just enough to let a
single rider through. Leal and Daria led their mounts in and thanked him
heartily.

“What is the way to the harbor, please?” asked Leal.

The gatekeeper pointed to a well paved road that led
straight north.

“But you won’t find a ship at this time of night!” he
said, shaking his head.

They thanked him again cheerfully, and mounted back in
their saddles. As they did so they heard him muttering again to himself.
“Escarrans!
Just climbed down from the mountains, and want
to take ship, ah-ah, and don’t they hope to find a comfy bucket on-board, poor
sods.”

The horses’ hooves clattering on cobbled streets were
the strangest thing after so many miles of riding over country roads and grassy
towpaths. The city was odd in the fitful moonlight, the buildings tall and
strangely gaunt, built of stone at the ground floor, plaster and timber higher
up. It was a while before Leal realized that the gaunt appearance of the
buildings was due to the tall pointy arches that the Enskalans used instead of
the round arches used in the south. All their houses looked abnormally thin and
vertical to southern eyes. They rode steadily north, following the main street
towards the harbor, eager to see the sea, the sea!

But when they got to the water front the mist had
closed again.

There was a sense of a vast emptiness in front, the
end of the world they knew, and the strange creaking ships on the water,
sighing and bobbing gently at their moorings, like floating wooden horses
napping in their cross ties. Leal and Daria gawped at the ships as if
hypnotized.

“Let’s find a place for the night,” said Daria, when
it became clear that people around them were quite amused by their moon-struck
amazement. “We will come back tomorrow to find a ship anyway.”

Leal nodded. There were in fact many people on the
waterfront, even this late, men mostly, and quaintly dressed women whom Leal
watched curiously and Daria not at all.

“Five copper pieces for an hour,” said one of these
women catching Leal’s gaze, “twenty for the whole night. Maybe fifteen for a
pretty young smooth boy like you.”

Leal gasped and spurred on quickly. Daria grinned.

The inns at the waterfront had no stables. They were
wholly maritime establishments, and the innkeepers looked perfectly blank at
the mention of horses, so Leal and Daria rode back into the streets of Enskala
until, closer to the eastern walls, they came back to a more nearly
agricultural world where cattle were known and their needs were taken into due
account.

They left
 
their
horses in a clean good stable with a deep bed of straw and plenty of hay,
barley, and water, and without as much as a piece of bread and cheese in their
bellies they went up to sleep, too exhausted to do anything else. It had been
one of their longest riding days yet.

They made up for their missed dinner at breakfast.
This was a sumptuous meal in Enskala, they discovered, with fried bread, eggs
scrambled in bacon fat, a pile of rashers served at the side, sweet goat
cheese, sour and smoky kippered herrings, barely edible to an Escarran, tea and
cider, apple pie, honey and bilberry jam on pancakes. The sleepy hostler who
had let them in the night before was nowhere to be seen, and breakfast was
served by a cheerful blonde matron and her two equally blonde, equally round
and rosy-cheeked daughters, who stared at the fine southern boys with sheep
eyes, and lovingly piled yet another batch of pancakes on their dishes.

After this massive breakfast, a walk to the harbor
felt just like the thing they needed, and they set out in good spirits.

If the harbor had been crowded by night, it was
enormously more so by day.

“Wow, am I glad we didn’t bring the horses,” said
Daria, aghast at the uproar of trundling casks, wagons ponderously moving by,
pulled by stolid oxen or huge grey draft horses with docked tails, heavy loads
shifting on rollers, men calling, men shouting, men talking loudly in a dozen
different tongues, ship chandlers pushing hard bargains, shop owners hawking
their wares, women bawling, fishing boats auctioning their catch right on the
piers, and a million other noises they could not even identify.

The water was alive with ships, some moored hard
against the piers, busily loading or unloading all kinds of cargo known to man,
some standing out to sea, waiting for the tide to turn. Across the water, far
off, they could just make out the Hassian port of Weltmund, which for centuries
had tried to wrestle control of the Narrows from Enskala and Nevraan, always in
vain.

“Where do we even start looking for a ship?” asked
Leal, overwhelmed.

“Well, we ask somebody, I suppose. Hey, excuse me sir,
we seek passage for Kaleva! Do you know any ships bound for Nevraan?”
This to a man selling fried fish, hot and hot, from a minuscule
wooden hut on wheels.

“Sorry, boy, but I only talk to customers, if you get
my drift.”

At any other time the smell of fried fish would have
been deliciously inviting, but with such a breakfast in her belly, Daria just
shrugged, smiled and walked on.

After a few attempts of this kind, they finally
managed to extract some information from a cart driver whose traces had broken
when his horse had bucked, spooked by a yellow cur that had run right under his
belly carrying a rotten fish in his jaws. Daria held the horse speaking to him
soothingly, until the flustered man had his harness mended. After that he was
happy to repay the favor by something as cheap as talk. He told them that the
ships for Nevraan mostly sailed from the piers at the far northern end of the
harbor.

They walked on and on.

At the harbor’s far end the ships were different.

Neither Leal nor Daria knew a thing about boats, so
they could not put the thing into words, but the vessels here were smaller, and
lower in the water, and yet also more beautiful. The ships for and from the
southern ports had flat bottoms, high square sterns and stumpy, indignantly
upturned noses. The ships out of Nevraan were sharp at both ends, with high
stern posts and elegant curved prows, sometimes decorated by fantastic animal
heads, sometimes by elegant spiraling curls or intricate carved knot work.
There were long, low, fully decked warships with many oars and frightful dragon
figureheads, and there were beamier, more comfortable vessels with an open hold
amidships and vast brown sails. Some were unloading bales of furs and grey
wool, casks of walrus ivory and sea amber, jars of honey, nets of smoked salmon
and dried cod, timber and barrels of whale oil, but also spirited, high
stepping buckskin ponies with long white tails and crested manes, silky-coated
grey goats, small dark hogs with bristly backs, and even large, beautiful, pale
feathered gyrfalcons, worth a king’s ransom in Escarra, screaming and bating on
their perches as they were being moved about.

Leal and Daria walked slowly along the busy quay,
admiring this lively foretaste of the country they were sailing for, and
enquiring after departing ships whenever they found anybody willing to listen,
which in such a busy place was not easy. They didn’t get any luck for a while,
and they were almost ready to call it a day when a big booming voice called out
just behind them.

“Hey, you two, peach-cheeks!
Looking for passage to Nevraan, I hear, yes?”

They turned to see a tall, big-boned, brown-haired man
with a golden earring and gap-toothed smile standing with his arms akimbo,
staring at them. He spoke the lingua franca of the western kingdoms as well as
any Hassian, but with an easier, less harsh accent.

“Svarre Thorsen, mate of the
Neversinks
here. Best ride to Nevraan, as smooth as a well lubed
whore, sailing tomorrow on the noon tide. I can fit in two baby boys like you,
no trouble.
A silver piece each, and ordinary luggage for
free.”

Leal was rooted on the spot by the sailor language and
just gaped, but Daria didn’t turn a hair.

“Do horses count as ordinary luggage?” she asked
easily.

“Holy narwhals, what do you want to bring horses to
Kaleva for? My cousin, just outside Nevraan’s north gate, breeds the finest
ambling ponies of the northern kingdoms. You can sell your nags this side of the
sea, and I’ll put in a good word for you over there. You can have two ponies at
the price of one, most like, and saddles in the bargain. Eh? Eh?”

Daria shook her head. “We will keep our own horses,
thanks. If you can take them on-board well, else we will find some other ship.”

The mate of the
Neversinks
threw his hands in the air. “Oh, all right, all right, as you say, boss, I’ll
take your cattle on-board. But it’s a gold piece for every horse, mind, and I
have almost a full ship, so I can’t take more than two.”

“Two is enough,” said Daria, “But a gold piece each is
ridiculous. For two gold pieces I could buy that tub of yours and all the
sailors in it! Come on, mate, show me some love here!”

She launched into a lively, closely fought bout of
haggling, alternatively abusing the sailor and laughing heartily with him,
until it was settled that he would have his two golden coins, but only two
copper pieces, on account of the “boys being so underfed anyway that the barky
would not sink a hair-breadth under their weight”.