The Rose of the World (10 page)

‘You,’ she said to the giant in the Old Tongue, looking him in the eye so as to impress her will upon him. It gave her a crick in the neck. ‘Give the keys to that woman there.’ She nodded towards her mother.

She had to repeat this request three times, as well as jabbing the little knife hard into her captive’s neck – enough to draw a very pleasing runnel of blood and a terrified yelp – before Casto Agen sufficiently grasped what he was supposed to do. The bunch of keys were back hanging from the other man’s belt; the giant had to go down on his knee to extract them from the hook there. After a lot of undignified fiddling he stood up, looking somewhat at a loss, while Gasto Costan hissed curses at him in their nasty southern language. Then off he went across the hold to Katla’s mother, like a half-trained and rather slow-witted dog.

A moment later, there came a thunder of feet and a barrage of shouting, and several raiders came pelting down into the hold. Casto Agen stopped a foot away from Bera Rolfsen with his hand extended, palm out, in the act of handing her the keys, as if someone had just turned him to stone. Then he turned slowly to survey the newcomers.

Baranguet was in the lead of the group. He had his favourite whip in one hand and a long curved sword in the other. He did not look as if he would be much concerned at the possibility of damaging the merchandise, but behind him came a short, wide man – Galo Bastido, also at full tilt. It took a moment for Baranguet’s eyes to become accustomed to the dingy light; then he came to a sudden halt and gazed into the obscurity of the hold at the women, who instead of appearing beaten and listless now seemed to be alert and engaged by something he could not quite fathom. Having no chance to check his pace, Bastido cannoned into the back of his deputy.

Katla dug the blade of the little knife deeper into the already sore-looking wound on Gasto Costan’s neck till he cried out and drew attention to his plight. Distracted by this noise, Baranguet and Bastido stared and stared at the bizarre scenario thus presented to them, and therefore did not notice the giant slowly complete his mission by handing over his clutch of keys to the Mistress of Rockfall. Bera’s fingers closed carefully around them, muffling all sound. Then she took a silent step backwards and subsided to the deck once more, into the shadows of the crossbeam.

Out of the corner of her eye, Katla saw this curious exchange. Her grin widened. Now
this
was becoming interesting! In her imagination, all sorts of possibilities played themselves out in glorious detail. All of them came to a delightful conclusion with the hanging of both captain and lieutenant from the yardarm of the ship while she, Katla Aransen, heroine of the isles, steered them safely home to Rockfall.

Galo Bastido started to swear: that much was clear, even if the words were not. He shoved Baranguet forward with a gesture which obviously meant:
you deal with her
. The whipman, matching her feral grin with his own, advanced, cutlass angled towards her.

‘Another step,’ Katla declared loudly in the Old Tongue, ‘and I’ll skewer your shipmate!’

Baranguet laughed. Insolently, as if to test her resolve – she was, after all, just a girl; and what girl would cold-bloodedly harm a man just to prove a point? – he took a huge step forward. Katla jabbed the knife deep into Gasto Costan’s neck, making the man squeal in pain and panic.

‘For Falla’s sake,’ he shrieked at Baranguet, when the pressure of the blade lessened, ‘she’s a crazy girl, a little witch! Don’t provoke her, or she’ll send me to the fires!’

‘Where you sent your pretty wife?’ Baranguet asked unpleasantly. ‘Just because she fucked your little brother, who was smarter and richer than you?’

‘Shut up! Shut up! How dare you speak of that sacrilegious pair! You know nothing of the sorrow it caused me to get my courage up enough to do my duty and go to the Sisters—’

‘Your duty,’ sneered the whipman. ‘I heard you went to the burning, then moved into your brother’s house a day later and hired yourself a brace of whores.’

‘I didn’t, I didn’t!’ cried Gasto Costan, horrified by the truth in all this. He squirmed desperately in Katla’s steady grasp, but his efforts resulted only in a tightening of the chain across his throat so that his eyes now bulged with more than outrage.

‘Unlock your chains, Mother,’ Katla called softly in Eyran across the hold. ‘Unlock them, and then pass the keys to Kitten.’

Bera looked unsure of the wisdom of this. ‘Surely it would be better to wait until they leave us, and then to free ourselves silently and secretly?’ she began.

‘If we are left locked and unarmed in this hold, we will be in no better position to escape than when they first brought us to the ship,’ Katla reminded her. ‘We need their weapons, and we need the hatch open.’

‘Be quiet!’ Bastido shouted. He shoved Baranguet out of the way and came at her. In the blink of an eye, Katla had twisted her wrist and tightened the chain: now the sneering man could not breathe, or even cry out; but still Bastido came on.

Katla waved the little knife at him. It was, she thought, pathetically small and blunt, but she reckoned she could still put an eye out with it if push came to shove.

‘Back off!’ she yelled. ‘Or he dies.’

Bastido laughed. ‘Do you think I care whether he lives’ – and at this Gasto Costan began to writhe and weep – ‘or dies? He’s a vile little runt with all the morals of a rabid fox and the fighting skills of a twelve-year-old girl!’

‘At twelve,’ Katla mused, ‘I won the Westman Isles wrestling contest for the first time.’

Galo Bastido cocked his head on one side and fixed her with his small beady eyes. ‘You really are a very annoying creature,’ he declared. For a moment, it looked as if he was considering his options; then fast as a biting dog he darted forward and stuck his hapless crewman through the guts with his cutlass. Gasto Costan sagged in Katla’s arms. Blood and fluid spread swiftly across his gaping tunic, followed by a sudden slippery outpouring of viscous tubing.

Katla gazed down at this horrible sight. ‘That’s sort of spoiled my plan.’

‘One less man to pay,’ the captain quipped cheerfully, and advanced on her.

She stepped quickly backwards, dragging her dying captive with her, then quickly extricated her chains from the groaning man and let him drop as a useful obstacle between her and the captain. Behind her, she could hear the click of a tumbler turning in a lock and chains clanking as her mother removed her shackles. She watched as Bastido’s eyes tracked the sound and widened in disbelief. Then he let off a barrage of abuse at the huge man who stood uselessly by watching the women.

At last, Casto Agen came to life. Bending, he grabbed Kitten Sorensen by the wrist and hauled her to her feet. Kitten, of course, took one look at her attacker and swooned. The keys fell noisily to the floor.

In the midst of all this, with the captain’s attention fatally distracted, Katla Aransen made her move. Scurrying in under the big man’s reach while he was caught up with the fainting girl, she retrieved both the keys and the sword from the scabbard hanging from his hip, and danced away, tucking the little knife into her belt. Then her fingers deftly worked the keys into place like a close-hand magician about to faze his audience with a dodgy trick.

Neither of them appeared to fit. ‘Sur’s arse!’ Katla swore furiously.

Galo Bastido was coming after her again.
No time for messing around with this blasted lock
, Katla thought. She waited a few seconds until he was within range, then whipped up the sword. An inch closer and she would have had him; as it was, she nicked his cheekbone. The keys went flying. They arced through the air and came down again, as neatly as if by design, in Casto Agen’s hands.

Blood jetted out of the wound. Bastido said something clearly obscene in his own language, then smeared a hand across his face, leaving a grotesque trail down cheek and neck. His eyes glittered murderously through the spattered gore.

Damn
, she thought, but there was no time for regret. She whirled the sword around her head.

He came at her too fast for caution, his cutlass raised for a barbarous downward chop. She felt the air part beside her ear and darted backwards. A quick glance ascertained her surroundings and she leapt behind a big timber support. A bare second later, Bastido’s weapon splintered the pillar, sending frayed chunks of oak spinning out into the dark air of the hold. Katla appeared around the other side of the post and jabbed her sword at his waist. But the captain was fast and well trained; the cutlass came down on her blade with a great clang, the force of his blow setting her arm-bones ajangle and sending tremors down into her fingers.

Katla ducked and weaved. She was a head taller than her opponent; lighter and quicker, too, but he was built like a prize bull, bursting with year upon year of hard-trained muscle. She parried another bone-shocker from him, then spun away on her toes and swept her own blade around low. Bastido took a step back, but it was not quite far enough. The edge of Katla’s purloined weapon sheared across the big muscle of his thigh, making her opponent roar with surprise and pain.
Damn
, Katla thought;
another inch and I’d have had his leg off.
This judgement brought suddenly to mind a conversation with Tor Leeson about the good edge on one of her swords—

Take a man’s leg off nicely, I’d say
. . .

That womanising bruiser, she thought fondly, though she had never been very fond of him in her life. He had had no gentle way with either swords or words; but he had died trying to save her from the burning. An Istrian blade in the back, they’d said. Fury filled her anew. Istrians were her enemies: and this man who faced her now more than any. He had murdered her friends and kin, burned her own grandmother in her family home. A nicked leg was barely a down-payment on the blood-debt he owed her.

Snarling like a mad dog, Katla ran at him, arms locked, sword extended. Galo Bastido threw his blade up to ward her off, but he had underestimated her pace and determination. The cutlass sheared off the Istrian sword with a shower of fiery sparks which lit the faces of both combatants for a few brief seconds. Then the cutlass described an elegant arc, gleaming silver like a leaping salmon, and spun uselessly out of the raider’s hands.

Something moved in her peripheral vision but Katla forced herself to ignore it and concentrate on her opponent. As Bastido staggered backwards, she went after him, sword raised to deliver a killing stroke.

The next thing she knew she was falling backwards and her arms felt as though they were being dragged out of their sockets. She stumbled, lost her footing, went down hard onto the deck, catching a cross-timber painfully in the small of her back. Something – somebody – had hold of her sword. She jerked her head sideways and saw that the thongs of a many-tongued whip had knotted themselves inextricably around the blade. She hauled fiercely, shearing through two of the thongs, but the man on the other end of it – Baranguet, of course – was not letting go.

‘Hell’s teeth,’ Katla groaned. She looked back. The raiders’ captain was coming at her now, empty-handed but furious, his face a gory mask. She could see the whites all around his eyes. He was definitely going to kill her if she stayed where she was. She went momentarily limp; and as she had hoped, Baranguet yanked hard on the whip. As he did so, she released the sword and flipped herself to her feet. She heard the whipman go down with a curse; heard the sword skitter across the deck. Then she ran at Bastido.

Her lowered head took him hard under the ribs in a time-honoured Eyran wrestling gambit. She heard the wind rush out of his lungs. A moment later, she was astraddle him, her knees pinning his shoulders to the floor. She had outpointed Simi’s brother, Gill Fallson, with a manoeuvre very similar to this, and he was built like a bull, as was this man. It was all in the speed; she could hardly match him for power or weight; but big men never expected a girl of Katla’s size to put them down. She watched the raiders’ chief’s face twist into a grimace of frustration when he found he could not move his arms; then she grabbed the little knife she had taken from the sneering man and plunged it to the hilt into his eye.

‘That’s for Gramma Rolfsen!’

Bull-like, Galo Bastido began to roar. He writhed in agony. Appalled that he had not simply and quietly died, Katla leapt backwards off him as if scalded. Slowly, deliberately, the captain levered himself to his feet, the hilt of the knife protruding obscenely. He fixed Katla with his one good eye blinking desperately and staggered two paces towards her, hands reaching like those of a sleepwalker. Katla took two steps back, hit a crossbeam and stumbled. A blast of pain shot through up her leg. ‘Sur’s bollocks!’

Twisted ankle. Very painful, but not fatal as long as she didn’t let it slow her down, for Galo Bastido was still advancing, lurching with all the horrible obstinacy of an afterwalker. Gritting her teeth against the agony, Katla pushed herself upright and skittered sideways.

A moment later, having come round in a panicky semicircle, there was nowhere left to run. The back of Katla’s head made audible contact with one of the starboard ribs, and when she reached back with a questing hand, all she found was splintering wood sticky with caulking-tar. She faced the raiders’ leader, her eye-teeth showing in a feral grin. She was quick, she was tough and she was very angry, she reminded herself. ‘Come on then, you bastard,’ she taunted him, putting up her hard little fists. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got left.’

Galo Bastido snarled. He made a vile gurgling noise that might have been a curse, a threat or a last breath. Then he took a huge, staggering step towards her, pitched forward like a hewn tree and fell face down between her spread feet. The hilt of the little knife hit the deck first with the unforgettable sound of metal forcibly striking bone and gristle. Katla grimaced. The raiders’ captain lay still; but Katla had already seen a man who should have been well dead return to life. She waited another few seconds, and when he was still unmoving, booted him hard in the head with her good foot. He didn’t stir at all.