Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion) (24 page)

“True enough,” Rathe said, but he was not given to discounting the wiles of his enemies. Continuing his study, he asked, “How is it between you and Fira?”

Loro paused in testing the draw of his bow and dropped a lecherous wink. “I’ll tell you for sure on the morrow.”

“What of Liamas?” Rathe asked, wanting to change the subject before Loro could ask about him and Nesaea. For himself, Rathe was not sure what had occurred between them, but knew he didn’t like it.

Loro glanced toward the Prythian giant. “Truth of it is, I cannot blame the quartermaster for making a try at Fira—a blind man can see she’s a fine-looking woman. Now that I’ve cracked the bastard’s head, I expect he’ll prove to be a decent sort.”

Rathe stifled a chuckle. He had seen the same many times before, two men bitter enough to kill each other over one thing or another, only to become friendly after swapping blows. Women, though, seemed a more grudging breed. He thought Captain Ostre was right about letting Nesaea think she won more often than not in order to keep peace between them. The problem was, Rathe had never been one to surrender out of hand.

“Rider!” the watchman called from the crow’s nest.

All eyes turned. At first Rathe saw nothing out of place. Then, framed between two boulders perched high above, he saw a man sitting astride a horse.

“Seems he’s only enjoying the view,” Loro said.

Before Rathe could respond, the rider bent over. A moment later he sat up bearing a flaming torch. In the deepening gloom, it appeared he was holding a tiny sun aloft. Not just holding it, but waving it.

“What’s that fool doing?” Loro asked.

Rathe’s jaw tightened. “Sending a signal.”

Leaving Loro’s side, he ran to the poop deck and joined Captain Ostre, who was using a long eyeglass to look farther downriver.

“What do you see?” Rathe asked.

“Two more signal fires. There can be no doubt they’ve been watching us all along.”

“How far to Ruan Breach?”

“We’re nearly there, lad. In less than a quarter turn of the glass, we’ll be through.”

“The darkness will help,” Rathe said.

Ostre lowered the eyeglass. “I’m more a merchant than a fighter, so explain how battling in the dark helps?”

Rathe pointed at the first rider, now falling behind the
Lamprey
, then moved to a bright splinter of light rising off the second rider’s torch—the third, he still couldn’t see. “They can drop fire on us, as we feared all along, but we’ll see it coming.

“There’s a comfort,” Ostre said, sounding anything but comforted.

“Surprise is the key to a proper ambush,” Rathe explained. “They’ve lost that now. That they gave it up so easily tells me they’re not skilled fighters.”

Ostre tugged his beard, nodding. “I see what you mean … but I’m of a mind to teach these fools a lesson.”

“Such as?”

Instead of answering, Captain Ostre called to Liamas, “Bring up the ballistae—and be quick about it, or we’ll miss our chance.”

Rathe loosed a burst of wicked laughter. “You surprise me, captain.”

Ostre shrugged. “After battling the
Crimson Gull
, I decided the
Lamprey
would
always
fight, instead of run. Liamas, being a Prythian, has a head for the ways of war. Loading half a dozen ballistae into the hold was his idea—”

“Do you hear that?” Rathe interrupted, his head cocked toward a sound akin to drums. He had heard something like that before, but where escaped him.

“Sounds like battering rams hammering a gate,” Nesaea said, climbing the stairs to the poop deck. She had donned a northern warrior’s garb of dark leathers and furs. Her gloved hands caressed the hilts of the dagger and the sword hanging from either hip. Her eyes cut toward Rathe, as if challenging him to dispute her observation. He had no intention of doing so.

The
Lamprey
surged downriver, picking up speed the closer they came to the throat of Ruan Breach. High above, the second torchbearer flashed by, much faster than the previous one. As the ship climbed up and over a frothy swell, snow began to fall in earnest. Not much farther on, the ship was flying through a swirling white squall. The erratic drumming echoed through the gorge, falling on them from all sides, hastening the crewmen to set up the ballistae around the deck on three-footed pedestals.

“What do you make of that?” Ostre called, pointing past the jagged lips of Ruan Breach not a quarter mile distant. Father downstream, almost lost in the snowfall, a figure was running along the riverbank, frantically waving a torch.

“Something’s wrong,” Rathe said.

“For them, or us?” Nesaea asked.

Before Rathe could answer, a loud, popping crackle sounded through the gorge. The drumming abruptly ceased, replaced by a deep rumbling that vibrated his teeth and bones. The rest of the crew stood looking about in confusion. Rathe scanned the walls of the gorge, but saw only dark rock webbed in ice.

“We’re nearly through!” Ostre shouted. He jabbed a thick finger toward a pair of crewmen at the bow who were fitting a ballista with a spear-sized bolt. “You there, make ready!”

As one man used a crank to draw back the heavy bowstring, his companion carefully turned the weapon on its pedestal to take aim at the running man.

“Wait to fire till we’re through the gap!” Liamas bellowed, running in their direction over a deck that had begun to pitch and roll on the back of the surging river.

The drumming began again, the tempo increasing by the moment. There came another deep rumble, then a loud, thunderous boom that resonated through Ruan Breach.

“What was that?” Loro bellowed near the mainmast, his feet spread for balance.

“Gods!” Rathe gasped, remembering where he had heard such erratic hammering before—at the quarries south of Onareth, where workers drove wedges into faces of marble in order to break the rock.

Nesaea pressed close to him. “What is it?”

Rathe’s skin crawled, and his frozen tongue refused to speak.
It cannot be!

The next booming rumble was louder than all the rest, followed by the crackling roar of great stones grinding against one another. Heads turned and eyes flared wide, as the southern wall of Ruan Breach sagged almost imperceptibly, then began breaking apart along a thousand spreading fissures. Rocks and ice rained down into the river, quickly followed by tumbling slabs that churned the black waters into a gauntlet of leaping froth. Clouds of dust spurted from widening cracks in the wall, then the entire southern face of the breach shattered and slid into the river. The rushing current slammed into the obstacle, rolled back on itself, and heaved upstream like a mighty sea wave.

Rathe caught Nesaea with one hand and held the rail with the other. Loro turned toward Rathe, his mouth yawning around a shout lost under the crashing roar of surging water and falling rock. Crewmen scrambled like rats before a flood, but there was nowhere to go.

The
Lamprey
crashed against the colossal wave with a groaning shudder, throwing the sailors off their feet, and breaking the ties holding stacked crates and barrels. A huge comber boiled over the prow, the foaming waters swallowing men and cargo. Rathe saw Loro disappear a second before the wave exploded over the poop deck’s rail and knocked him off his feet. Nesaea’s grip tightened on him, then was gone. Deadly cold water tumbled him toward the stern and pinned him against the squat deck house.

The booming crunch of exploding timbers below deck kicked Rathe’s heart into a gallop. He was no sailor, but he understood that the keel had run aground. Now turning broadside to the river’s current, the
Lamprey
began heeling over, breaking apart on the rocks that, moments ago, had channeled the River Sedge through Ruan Breach. As the ship tipped over, water spilled off the deck, and the
Lamprey
shuddered like a beast in its death throes.

Rathe hauled himself up, saw Nesaea doing the same nearby, and raced to help. The two helmsmen had vanished, as had Captain Ostre. Another rumble drew Rathe’s startled gaze to a towering column of rock smashing through the starboard quarter of the
Lamprey’s
bow. Frigid water exploded through the shattered deck. Instead of screams and shouts, Rathe heard only the rushing river and breaking wood. The few crewmen remaining on deck fought to get free of tangled rope and debris, their movements stiff, ungainly. The others had either been knocked overboard, or had leaped into the false safety of the river. Rathe looked for Loro, but couldn’t distinguish one struggling man from another.

“We have to swim,” he said through chattering teeth, helping Nesaea up.

She shook her head, her face a pale smear in the snowy gloom. “The river will kill us.”

“We’ll die if we stay.”

Before she could respond, Loro cried out, “Rathe!” Casting wildly about, he found the portly man standing over the ruin of the hatch. He held a coughing Fira by the sodden hood of her cloak.

“Here!” Rathe shouted back.

Dragging Fira along, Loro turned and began slogging toward Rathe. They had almost reached the poop deck, when a yardarm broke loose and swung out of the collapsing rigging like a pendulum. It slammed into Loro, knocking him over the side. Kneeling on the disintegrating deck, Fira looked around in confusion.

“Loro!” Rathe ran to the rail and looked over. Roiling water and tangled debris met his eye, but not Loro.

“Can he swim?” Fira screamed, trying to reach Rathe and Nesaea.

Instead of answering, Rathe remembered Ostre saying to Loro
, “All those steel scales on your jerkin won’t help for swimming, and the Sedge is a fearsome cold bitch any time of year—
especially
now.”

Spluttering and splashing, the fat man popped up a few feet away, clawing at a pile of sharp rock and shattered timbers. As soon as he caught hold, he went under.

“Do something!” Fira wailed.

Torn, Rathe faced the two women.

Nesaea was already bustling Fira to what was left of the rail near the bow. Nesaea flashed him a grim smile. “We’ll meet you on the riverbank.”

She ended whatever argument he might have made when she flung herself and Fira over the side. The River Sedge churned and boiled around the spot they had disappeared. They popped up a second later, rapidly drawn downstream by the raging waters. Rathe watched in horror as they bobbed through the broken rocks now partially damming the river, and then passed out of sight.

Cursing, Rathe leaped overboard feet first. The river wrapped him in its frigid grip, squeezing the breath from his chest. The current tugged and pulled, spinning him, and then his head slammed against a rock. For a moment he drifted, stunned, points of light flaring before his slitted eyes. He drew an involuntary breath, allowing the river to pour into his chest.

Rathe’s eyes flared open on bubbling darkness, cold fire filling him. With a strangling exhalation, he purged the water from his lungs. With no air to take its place, he kicked hard, fighting to reach the surface. His limbs had already gone numb with cold, and he struggled against broken wood and stealthy skeins of rope trying to bind him to a watery grave—

Coughing and flailing, he broke the surface. The only warmth he felt was on the side of his head, a wide torrent of heat. Blood. Wreckage from the
Lamprey
drifted around him, more and more by the moment, as the river smashed the ship to pieces. Silent corpses slid across the remains of her deck and dropped into the churning river, the eddies dragging them down.

“Loro!” he called, the effort bringing on a bout of coughing. Finding the spot he had last seen the fat man, Rathe plunged below the surface and swam through the black, his arms almost useless as they slashed back and forth, seeking his friend.

He came up wheezing, his limbs stiff as boards. If he didn’t get out soon, he never would. The thought, sluggish though it was, chilled him more than the river.

Rathe took a great gulp of air that burned going down, and prepared to dive. Before he could, something tugged feebly at his leg. He reached down, and his fingers passed through wet fur—
Loro’s bearskin coat!

He caught hold of an arm and pulled. Loro didn’t budge. After a couple more sharp tugs, Rathe felt his burden shift and begin to rise. For a moment, the cold forgotten, Rathe kicked and heaved, until Loro broke the surface.

“Gods and demons!” Loro roared, spraying water into Rathe’s face. “Foot got hung after my last breath. Thought I was drowned!”

“We have to reach shore,” Rathe shouted.

“Shore? We’re in a frozen hell, brother. We’re going to die here!”

Rathe had no strength left for speaking, and barely enough for swimming. He reached for a shape bobbing nearby, but recoiled at the spongy softness of a dead sailor. He pushed the body away and watched it drift into a channel of whitewater rushing through the rocks.

“That way,” he gasped, and followed the dead man. Loro, looking about the darkness with bulging, half-mad eyes, struggled after Rathe.

The current battered them over rocks and splintered wood, but Rathe hardly felt a thing. Floating behind him, Loro spewed an unrelenting string of curses that became a fearful shout when they tumbled over the edge of the crude dam. They dropped a dozen feet before splashing into the thundering waters below Ruan Breach.