Authors: Jude Fisher
Urse shuddered. ‘It’s not natural,’ he said, framing the thoughts of every living man present. ‘Flies in such abundance, in such a place. By rights they should not be able to survive in such a northerly region.’
‘It’s been unseasonably warm,’ Aran returned flatly, knowing even as he said it it was not the entire truth. He had sensed something beyond nature there, something which had made the hairs on his neck rise in primal reaction. Ancient tales of necromancy, of seithers and blood-magic had made his spine prickle with every step he took on board the accursed vessel. But he would not speak of such to his crew: sailors were already more superstitious than old women. He fixed his eyes on Gar Felinson. ‘I’m sorry, lad,’ he said, and watched the boy’s face pale. ‘It’s your father’s ship, and he is no more.’ He raised his voice so that all might hear. ‘This is Fenil Soronson and Hopli Garson’s ship,’ he declared and waited for the shocked reaction to pass away. ‘It is the
White Wyrm
, which they commissioned from Morten Danson back in eighth-month—’ The men did not like this either; for they stood on the deck of her sister vessel, a ship with similarly elegant lines and an ice-breaker fashioned in the same manner, and if one such craft had come to grief in such a fateful manner, might their own not also betray them?
Ignoring the rising babble of voices, the Master continued: ‘They must have put their expedition together with too much haste, for they did not pay as much attention as they should to the quality of their supplies. Someone sold them spoiled meat. The flies you see came inside the carcasses as eggs, swelled into maggots and ate their way through everything – supplies, rigging, the sail – a tempting banquet with its sheep fat still fixed in it: judging by the condition of the ship, I’d say the sail was already eaten away before the storm hit us; or they were in other realms entirely when the blow struck—’ And here the men clutched their anchors and whispered prayers.
Aran Aranson indicated the strewn bodies. ‘Any of you with the courage to come aboard this place of death will notice that there’s not a single boot left on a single foot; and what good Eyran would voluntarily lose his boots? There’s no wind I have ever experienced which can suck the footwear off a man: maggots ate them; ate them right off their feet. The whole ship must have been swarming with them.’
Urse was awe-struck. ‘But how could that be? What man in his right mind would allow such a thing to occur?’
Aran shrugged. ‘The crew were probably already weakened from eating the spoiled meat. Many seem to have died in their sleep; others at their oars, as if they were feebly attempting to row themselves away from the fate that had them in its clutches. But their luck was bad: the eggs kept hatching, the maggots kept coming, and when they had swelled fat and healthy, they took their adult forms and cleaned away what was left.’
He imagined the state the
White Wyrm
must have been in: its decks crawling with maggots, a wriggling yellow-white carpet of them eating everything in their path. Too exhausted by ill-health and ill-luck, the crew had fallen prey to disease and madness, one by one, a sad, volitionless lapse into death; and then their dead flesh had made a new banquet for the greedy worms. Aran Aranson shuddered. He hoped the crew of Fenil Soronson’s ship had been dead before the creatures began their new round of feasting.
With Fenil’s choker in his pouch and Hopli Garson’s dagger tucked into his belt, he leaped from the death-ship back onto the decks of his own.
‘You and you!’ he called, addressing Fall Ranson and the lad from the east shore. ‘Make brands from the spare sailcloth and dip them in whale-oil. Fire the ship. Swiftly now: hurry!’
They ran to do his bidding, and were joined by Tor Bolson and Erl Fostison, all glad of something practical to do to break the awful tension of the waiting and the news.
By now, the flies were gathering on the
Long Serpent
. Men swore and cursed the unclean creatures, swatted them, thrashed at them, stamped upon them, reflexes full of primal revulsion, all the time trying not to think what scraps of their fellow sailors they might last have fed upon. It was, in any case, hard to credit that mere maggots and flies could wreak such chaos, could take a proud, powerful vessel like their own, similarly crewed by strong men like themselves and reduce it to this lifeless hulk, floating directionless in this misty limbo, out of sight and protection of the god.
Aran lit the brands from the brazier. ‘Push her off,’ he shouted, and the men pressed the
White Wyrm
away with their oars.
When they were clear, the Master of Rockfall hurled two flaming torches through the air, one with each hand. They turned end over end, scattered flaming droplets as they spun, then fell with a thud onto the deck of the other vessel. Immediately, he followed that pair with two more, taking no chances. For several moments nothing happened. Perhaps there was nothing flammable left upon the
White Wyrm
for the fire to feed upon. The crew of the
Long Serpent
held their breath. Then a line of red flowers ran out across the deck and up the mast and a great cheer went up. For half an hour they rowed away, tracking the whereabouts of the stricken vessel by a corona of crimson light which drifted slowly astern of them through the fog; then that too died away to nothing.
Twenty-five
Among the Nomads
They followed the great cat for the better part of three days through rocky brakes, down thorny tracks and dried-up streams. They skirted pine forests and olive groves, abandoned villages with tumbled-down walls covered in sand and creeper. At night the pungent scent of resin swept down out of the hills and enveloped them; during the day it was all dust and heat and the rank sweat of Night’s Harbinger as the stallion plodded along behind them, head down and mulish with the baggage he carried. They edged their way fearfully along narrow cliffside paths littered with pebbles which skittered down into the void below with any misplaced step; they clambered gingerly over piles of boulders and slid down scree slopes on the other side; they were bitten by mosquitoes where there was standing water and by dustflies where there was not; they got burned by the sun on their faces and necks, pricked by thorns and brambles, blistered by the sand in their shoes. All the while the big cat loped unconcernedly ahead, its vast paws floppy and relaxed, detouring every so often to examine the smell at the base of a tree or in the hollow of a limestone cave, before trotting off again as if assured of the rightness of its course.
As they went, Saro tried to engage his companion in conversation, but he seemed preoccupied and distracted. It was only when they came upon a songbird lying flapping on the ground, one wing savagely torn – by Bëte, or by some other predator? – that he showed any sign of emotion, bending to examine the small creature with genuine concern.
‘We should put it out of its misery,’ Saro said quietly.
Virelai turned his face up towards his companion. Such pain was etched upon those white contours, it was as if he felt the bird’s agony for himself. Saro handed him a large stone, but the sorcerer winced away from him and would not take it, so in the end Saro firmed his jaw and did the deed himself. They both stood staring down at the tiny corpse, and when they straightened up, the light fell on Virelai’s eyes, which Saro realised with a start were glistening with unshed tears. ‘It was better that way,’ he said softly. ‘We could not leave it like that: it would be cruel.’
The sorcerer hung his head. ‘I know you are right, but I could not bring myself to do it. I have suffered enough hurt myself to wish to avoid deliberately inflicting it on another, no matter how right the cause.’ He paused, as if remembering something. Then he declared, ‘Every creature has the right to its own life, no matter how it came into this world.’
Saro was not entirely sure what to make of this. He agreed with the sentiment, of course, but it was disturbing to find himself in sympathy with this strange, pale man.
‘How did you come into the world?’ he asked at last.
‘I have not the least memory of that.’
Saro laughed. ‘Neither do I!’
The sorcerer cheered visibly. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I doubt many do.’
Virelai pondered on this for a while. Then he said, ‘The Master told me he found me as a baby in the southern mountains, left out on a rocky promontory under the stars to survive or perish as the spirits willed it. By chance it was he who found me and took me to his stronghold to raise me as his own.’ It was more of a recitation than a revelation, using almost the exact phrasing the mage had employed for its repeated tellings. It might have been graven in his head, but still it felt hollow and sham, a mere collection of sounds, for he had no pictures in his mind to accompany the words. And he had never discovered why the Master had been wandering those desolate wastes in the first place: Rahe had been most evasive about that. ‘I was travelling north,’ was the most he would say; but always changed the subject if his apprentice asked where his starting point had been.
‘That was a cruel thing to do.’
Virelai nodded. ‘I often thought so, especially when he treated me hard. It would have been best he had left me where he stumbled upon me and let the wolves and eagles take me to feed their own.’
Saro was shocked. ‘No, no! It was the hill-people’s cruelty I meant.’ Though having Tycho Issian as his master must surely be the reason the sorcerer was fleeing from Jetra in the middle of the night.
‘Ah.’ Virelai gave that a moment’s consideration. ‘I am told that albino babies are considered unlucky.’ He stood up, dusting off his grey robes and gazing disconsolately around. ‘Certainly, I don’t feel I carry much luck with me.’
‘Do you believe in luck?’
‘The Master always said a man’s luck was what he made it; and if that is so, I have surely been a poor craftsman.’
The cat, Bëte, reappeared through the trees in front of them. She seemed impatient with them, as if they were errant cubs who had failed to keep up properly. When she came to a halt beside them, she looked from one to another as if trying to ascertain what had passed between them; then she looked down at the bird, sniffed it to see how long it had been dead. Then with a swift paw she tossed it into the air. Feathers scattered as her jaws closed around it, and then it was gone and she was on the move once more.
Saro and Virelai exchanged glances, then shouldered their packs and fetched the horse.
On the third night, they spied a spiral of campfire smoke drifting out of the valley below them, at which point Bëte sat down heavily and began to wash her face with intense self-absorption, licking a paw and rubbing it across her cheek and forehead until her fur gleamed with spit and her whiskers bristled. Every line of its body spoke to Saro without any need for the unspoken communication which seemed to pass between Bëte and the sorcerer. It looked both prideful and nonchalant, as if it had done to satisfaction the task it had set for itself and was now leaving the simpler remainder of the job to its two witless human companions.
‘Do you think it’s them?’ Saro asked Virelai as they made their way down the steep hillside as noiselessly as a dark night and an unmarked path would allow.
‘If it’s not,’ Virelai said moodily, ‘and the damned creature has led us three days out of our way out of some perversity of humour then I’ll skin it myself and sell its pelt at the first market we come to.’
It was, however, a nomad encampment: a ramshackle collection of carts and wagons were huddled together under some scant trees like a bunch of old women sheltering from a rainstorm. In the clearing, a group of yeka – the shaggy plains beasts who drew the vehicles – cropped uncomplainingly at a tiny patch of withered grass while the folk of the caravan sat clustered a little distance away around the remains of a fire whose embers glowed a dull bluish red.
‘They have tried to disguise their fire with magic,’ Virelai whispered. ‘But they could do nothing about the smoke. They must be exhausted, or weakened in some way.’
Even so, he approached warily: no one easily received unannounced visitors at such a late hour, and if they did have any magic defences in place he did not wish to run headlong into them. Before they had gone more than a few yards into the clearing, a figure detached itself from the group and came running towards them. It was a child, Saro noticed with a start; and then with an even greater shock recognised it as the child he had cannoned into at the Allfair when he had taken Tanto’s money to Guaya.
‘Falo!’ Virelai said, himself much surprised. ‘How did you—’
The little dark boy laughed. ‘I have been watching you for three days now. Nothing is hidden from me,’ he boasted. ‘Where is the cat?’
Virelai and Saro exchanged a glance, but before either of them could say a word Falo was looking past them and grinning from ear to ear, his eyes as round as plates. A huge black shape hove into view and a vast hum rumbled through the air like thunder.
‘Bëte!’ the child cried, falling to its knees to embrace the creature. ‘Bëte, you have come back!’
As the boy made this apparently mad and sacrificial gesture, a woman arrived, shrieking. ‘Falo, Falo, come away! By Elda what are you thinking of ?’
She managed somehow to insert herself between her child and the figure of the monstrous black beast, which made no move to eat either of them, but looked from one to the other with an apparently magnanimous golden gaze.
Falo squirmed clear of his mother. ‘It is Bëte,’ he insisted, as if she were being deliberately obtuse. ‘See, Bëte and Virelai are back.’
The woman gave the cat one more suspicious glance, then as if deciding there was no immediate harm to be had from it, turned to examine the newcomers.
‘Alisha,’ said the sorcerer, spreading his hands in supplication. ‘I’m sorry, we had nowhere else to go. The cat led us to you.’
The nomad woman regarded him expressionlessly as if assessing the veracity of this statement, but if she viewed any evasiveness therein, she decided not to pursue it. Instead, staring fearfully at the beast she asked the question Saro had been itching to ask for the past several days. ‘How can this great monster be the little black cat I knew as Bëte? What magic is this, Virelai?’