Assail (35 page)

Velmar raised a hand. ‘My lady! This is none of your affair.’

She regarded her attendant then offered Jute what he thought a dry chuckle. ‘We work at cross purposes, my priestly guardian and I. You must forgive him. His only concern is my safety. Whereas the safety of others concerns me.’

She turned back to the railing, gazing off towards the
Silver Dawn
. ‘I sense your pilot’s struggle, Jute. She is drowning. The Sea of Dread will swallow her … as it would you all. Unless I finally choose to announce myself.’ She raised a hand, gesturing. ‘So be it. It is done.’

‘My lady!’ Velmar hissed, uneasy. ‘We are not yet far enough north.’

She looked back at him. ‘We are now, Velmar. ‘The Dread Sea is far enough. Do you not feel it?’ She spread her arms, expanding her robes like sails. ‘Never have I sensed it so strongly.’ She shifted her attention to Jute. ‘I am a child of exile, Falaran. Yet I am returning home.’ She extended a long-fingered hand, inviting Jute to the side. ‘Return to your ship. You will find your pilot at ease. I shall take the lead in the
Supplicant
. You must secure your vessels to mine. On no account must you become separated. Spread the word, Jute of Delanss.’

Jute could not help it: he bowed to the sorceress. ‘I will. My thanks –
our
thanks.’ He climbed down the ladder, stepped into the rocking skiff. ‘Head across to the
Ragstopper
,’ he told the men at the oars.

After the
Ragstopper
, they crossed to Tyvar in the
Resolute
. Chase launches were lowered, lines were unwound, and the coming dawn saw them arranged in line: the
Supplicant
leading, followed by the
Silver Dawn
, the
Ragstopper
, and the
Resolute
.

When Jute, exhausted, finally climbed aboard the
Dawn
he found the stool next to the tiller arm empty and he peered about frantically. The steersman, Lurjen, pointed him to his cabin. He lurched within. Ieleen lay in bed. He sat gently and laid a hand to her cheek.

She was asleep, breathing gently. He let out a long breath of ease and rose from the bed. Good. Let her rest. She is in need of a long rest. He exited the cabin and eased the door shut. He needed a rest as well; everything was blurry. He looked to Lurjen, pressed his fingers to his sore eyes. ‘I’m going to find a hammock.’ He went below.

*

Three days later they encountered the first drifting vessel. It was a broad-beamed merchant caravel, dead in the water. Its sails hung limp. Jute hailed it from the
Dawn
’s side, but no one answered. A launch was sent across from the
Resolute
. It carried some ten Blue Shield mercenaries; more than enough to meet any danger. Word came back that they’d found the ship empty of all life, as if the crew had just up and abandoned it mid-voyage. Meals lay half eaten, ropes half coiled. All without signs of any violence. No corpses, no evidence of any struggle.

It made even Jute uneasy and he was the least superstitious person he knew. The crew began muttering of curses and becalmings, haunts and murder. Everyone was on edge. Buen reported to him the bizarre rumour that accused the sorceress, Lady Orosenn, of dragging them all to their doom.

He’d laughed out loud when Buen repeated it to him, yet the strange thing was that the man had actually appeared hurt, as if he’d half believed it himself.

Ieleen had been bedridden since Lady Orosenn’s intervention, and when he’d told her of the rumours she hadn’t laughed. She’d looked very worried, and murmured, ‘We have to get through here as quickly as we can.’

Every day they sighted more of the drifting, abandoned vessels. Seventeen so far. They stopped bothering to send out launches to investigate. That was until they came abreast of a two-masted galley that Jute recognized as a Genabackan vessel, a craft the pirates of the south preferred. And there, standing amidships, was a man.

Jute hailed him, waving. The man did not wave back. He stood immobile, as if staring in disbelief. Jute looked at his own crew and was unnerved to see that they, too, we’re not waving or hailing. Why in the name of Mael not?

‘Buen,’ he called, ‘lower a launch.’

The first mate stared back up at him, rubbed a hand over his jaws. ‘Why, sir?’

‘Why? How can you ask that? There’s a man on board that vessel, that’s why.’

Buen peered about among his fellow crewmen. ‘We saw no one, captain.’

‘No one? You saw no one?’ He snapped his gaze back to the vessel. The figure was gone. Had he been there at all? Had it been … a ghost?

Jute slammed a hand to the railing. No! No damned ghosts! A man. Nothing more.

‘Ship’s boat coming alongside!’ the watch announced. Jute hurried down to the side. It was the dilapidated launch from the
Ragstopper
. Half the oarsmen rowed while the other half bailed furiously. Cartheron sat within, his legs stretched out, his leather shoes wet in the swilling water. He hailed Jute: ‘Going to take a look. Interested?’

‘Yes I am!’ He turned to Dulat. ‘Lower the ladder.’

The rope ladder was thrown over the side and he climbed down to the launch. It took a while to settle down into the battered rowboat, as it was so low in the water he was afraid his added weight would swamp the thing. But it took him, although the freeboard was a bare hand’s breadth. The Malazan sailors, in their tattered shirts and trousers, scarves tied over their heads, looked more piratical than any pirate crew Jute had ever seen. They pushed off and started rowing.

‘Thought I saw someone,’ Cartheron said from the bow.

‘As did I. The crew claimed they didn’t, though.’

Cartheron sagely nodded his grey-bristled chin. ‘Beginning to think you see or don’t see what you want on this sea.’

Jute shook his head. All part of the curse. Tricks of the mind. Delusions became real while reality itself drifted away.

They came up beside the dead vessel, which they saw was called the
Sea Strike
. No one answered their hail; Jute hadn’t expected them to. Cartheron ordered one of his sailors to climb the side and the man impressed Jute mightily by clambering up the planking as agile and sure as a monkey. Shortly afterwards a rope ladder came clattering down.

The deck was empty and abandoned, just like all the others. This one was far worse for wear, however; bird-droppings covered the deck, and the lines and sails were faded and frayed. Still, like the others, there were no obvious signs of violence.

‘Hello!’ Cartheron called. No one answered. The Malazan captain went to the cabin door. ‘Let’s have a look.’

Jute had turned away, meaning to investigate the bows, when a shriek spun him round. A shrill voice, hardly recognizable as human, had screeched: ‘
At last!
’

Cartheron stood impaled on a sword that a man, lunging from the cabin, had thrust straight out.

The Malazan had his hands pressed to his stomach around the blade. While everyone stared, stunned, the sword’s owner shrank from them, hands raised, his face white and his eyes rolling in mad terror.

‘
Ghosts!
’ the man yelled, and charged the side, toppling straight over.

‘No!’ Jute yelled. He lunged, but there was no sign of the fellow. It was as if he’d simply allowed himself to sink.

A wet cough brought his attention back to Cartheron. The Malazan had yanked the blade free and fallen to his knees. Jute and the sailors blinked away their stunned confusion and went to him. Jute gathered up folds of the captain’s shirt and pressed it to the wound. ‘Make a seat,’ he shouted to the gathered crewmen. ‘We have to lower him.’

Cartheron actually laughed, albeit without breath. ‘Ain’t this just the funniest comeuppance, hey? You drop your guard for a moment and … there you go. Damnedest thing.’

Jute wrapped the wound as tightly as he could. ‘Quiet, now. We’ll take you to the sorceress. Maybe she can heal you.’

‘Don’t you bother, lad. Bound to happen sooner or later. Long past time, in my case.’

‘Don’t even think of it.’

They tied him into a makeshift rope seat and lowered him into the launch. From the
Sea Strike
they oared straight across to the
Supplicant
.

This time the sorceress herself appeared at the side. Jute shouted up that Cartheron was wounded. She gestured for a rope to be thrown up, and after a moment the seat, with the unconscious man secured within, began rising steadily up the tall ship’s side. A rope ladder came banging down. Jute climbed alongside the rope seat, attempting to steady it. On deck, he and Velmar struggled to raise Cartheron over the side until the lady herself took a hand and easily lifted him across.

‘I will take him to my cabin,’ she told Jute, and carried him within.

‘You should all just turn round,’ Velmar grumbled, and he glared as if all their troubles were Jute’s fault. Jute ignored him.

They stood silently for some time. The launch from the
Rag-stopper
bumped the side below. The lines creaked and stretched. Velmar glowered sullenly, as if the very heat of his disapproval could drive Jute from the deck.

The captain sat on the edge of a raised hatch leading to the cargo hold. Curious, he glanced down through the wood grating. It may have been a trick of the shifting light, but he thought he glimpsed figures below, standing crowded together, motionless. He turned to the priest to ask him about them but the wolfish mocking grin that now climbed the man’s lips somehow stilled his tongue.

‘You’re sure you wouldn’t care to have a look below?’ the man asked, and the downturned smile widened.

Jute had no idea what the priest was hinting at, but didn’t think it sounded healthy. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Aren’t you curious?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Later perhaps,’ Velmar said, thoughtfully tapping a finger to his lips.

‘Certainly – later.’

The priest was nodding now. ‘Yes, I think so. Definitely later.’

Jute merely bunched his brow. Such games were of no interest to him.

Movement among the shadows of the stern brought him to his feet. The sorceress emerged. She still wore her headdress and veil. Jute peered up at her; all he could see were her eyes, and these appeared worried and saddened.

‘I have done what I can. He will not die. But neither is he certain to recover. Many organs were damaged. And he is old, and very tired.’ She glanced back to the stern. ‘Then again … he is an extraordinary fellow. He may just recover.’

Jute bowed to her. ‘Our thanks, Lady Orosenn.’

‘It is nothing. I am glad to be of help.’

Jute crossed to the side. ‘I’ll tell the crew. He is to remain here, then?’

‘Yes. He mustn’t be moved.’

‘Very well.’ He took hold of the rope ladder, swung his legs out over the side and climbed down.

Velmar’s shaggy head appeared above him at the side. ‘Later, Captain Jute,’ the man called down in his enigmatic tone. Jute just shook his head, while below the rowers from the
Ragstopper
steadied the launch.

In the days that followed they met fewer and fewer abandoned becalmed ships until the outlook was again clear of all other vessels. The sea was improbably calm, as was the wind. No breeze ruffled the air; no ripple disturbed the iron-grey surface. To Jute it was as if they sailed a sheet of misty glass.

Yet they were not entirely alone. Now and then crew members shouted their surprise and dismay, pointing down at the astonishingly clear water. Rotting vessels lay beneath them, in various stages of decomposition. And all, it seemed to Jute, from differing epochs or periods of history. Older-style galleys lay stacked upon even more archaic open-hulled longboats, which in turn appeared to rest upon even cruder hulls, some perhaps nothing more than dugouts. It was as if the Sea of Dread were one great graveyard of vessels, all heaped upon one another, each slowly settling into, and adding to, the mud and mire of the sea floor.

So too would they have ended, he imagined, were it not for the guidance, and shielding, of the sorceress with them.

For the next few days a dense mist enshrouded them. It clung to the masts in scarves and tatters. Jute found it almost hard to breathe the stuff. The noises of their passage returned to them distorted, even unrecognizable. It was almost as if the sounds were from other vessels hidden in the miasma, calling to them.

Then, slowly, the light ahead began to brighten ever so slightly. Took on a pale sapphire glint. The vapours thinned and they emerged as if through parting veils to find themselves once more behind the
Supplicant
, only now approaching a forested rocky coast bearing the last patches of winter’s snow. Great jagged spires of ice floated in the waters between them and the coast.

The fog thinned even more, revealing that beyond the shore the land climbed to rocky jagged ridges. Behind these, distant and tall, reared the white gleaming peaks of mountains. Jute gazed, entranced. Could those be their destination? The near-mythical Salt range?

A breath caught behind him and he turned, surprised. There stood Ieleen, gripping the doorway, walking stick in hand. He went to her. ‘Lass! You’re up!’

‘Aye.’ She sounded deathly hoarse. He guided her to her stool and she sat heavily, sighing her gratitude. ‘Aye. At last.’ Her sightless clouded eyes darted about. ‘I dreamed … troubled dreams. Someone shielded me from their worst.’ Somehow, the eyes found him. ‘We know who, hey?’