Return of the Crimson Guard (46 page)

‘Man overboard!’ came a shout.

‘Man overboard!’
a distant echo sounded. Shimmer looked to port, where the
Gedrand
wallowed, one mast split a third from the top and tangled among its rigging.

‘The
Kestral?’
she called across.

A voice responded, faint, ‘Here also!’

Yes. Wherever
here
was. ‘Smoky!’

‘Overboard,’ a Guardsman answered.

Shimmer went to the side. Men and women foundered splashing on a surface of wreckage and pale driftwood. So dense was the debris that the ropes thrown to them hardly even got wet. Shimmer spotted the kinky-haired mage clinging to a log. Something about the waters and the horizon was strange but she didn't have the time to give over to that just then. ‘Captain!’ The Kurzani captain and the first mate came to her. ‘Report.’

‘Seams sprung,’ said the first mate, pulling at his full black beard. ‘Taking on water.’

‘Can you re-caulk?’

A resigned shrug. ‘Have to try.’

‘Very well. Take all you need for pumping and bailing. Dismissed.’ Shimmer went to help the old tillerman, Jhep, to his feet. He seemed to have taken a blow from the broad wood handle. ‘Send the mage to me!’ she shouted as loud as she could.

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ someone responded from the deck.

She sat the man next to the tiller, which stood motionless though no one controlled it. Frowning, Shimmer rested a hand upon it, feeling for any sensation of motion or pull. Nothing. They were dead in the water.
Not what she was expecting.

‘Commander.’

Water dripping to the deck planking next to Shimmer announced Smoky's presence. Shimmer studied the tillerman's eyes: both looking
forward, pupils matching. She knew what to look for, the danger signs; years in the battlefield would teach anyone the basic treatment of wounded. ‘Take over here, Smoky.’

‘Yes, Commander. Have you seen?’

‘Seen what? I've been busy.’

Smoky waved an arm in a broad sweep all around. The mage was looking off to the distance. His gaze seemed stricken. ‘Well,’ he said, his voice tight. ‘Better take a look.’

Shimmer straightened and went to the side. Glancing out she stopped, her hands frozen at the shoulders of her mail coat. What she had taken to be distant islands – the source of the driftwood and jetsam – were not. Ships surrounded them, or rather they rested in the midst of a sea of motionless vessels stretching from horizon to horizon.

Complete silence oppressed Shimmer with its weight. A sea of ghost ships. Most of those nearby appeared to be galleys, though more distant vessels looked to be far larger, tiered sailing vessels. One such leagues out among the grey timber expanse must be enormous to stand so tall. All the crew on deck, she now saw, lined the sides motionless, staring. Some kind of enchantment? But no, probably the sight alone sufficed. ‘Smoky,’ she managed. ‘What is this?’

‘You're asking me?’

‘The Shoals,’ said a voice in Kurzan, lifeless and flat.

Shimmer turned. It was Jhep, his eyes dead of emotion. ‘The Shoals? Explain.’

A weak shrug. ‘Legend. Old myth. Place where the god of the sea sends those he curses. Or those who trespass against him. Maybe this is where all those who try to use Ruse end up, hey? No wonder we heard nothing.’ And he laughed, coughing.

The blow to the head – must be.
The alternative … Gods! No wonder there had been no resistance; you were always welcome to enter. But exiting, well, there was none.

There must be another explanation. Currents … a backwater …’

‘There's no current,’ said Smoky.

‘Well – any ship would sink in time.’

‘No. No sinking in this sea.’

Exasperated, Shimmer faced Smoky. ‘Explain yourself, Hood take you!’

Grinning, the Cawn mage touched a finger to his tongue. ‘Salt. The saltiest sea I've ever tasted. Nothing can sink here. Even I floated and I can't swim.’

Shimmer threw herself to the gunwale, gripped it in both hands.

Damn Mael! Damn these fool mages whose arrogance had brought them to such an end. Damn Cowl! How Hood must be laughing now; he need not trouble himself to take them away – they had just up and taken themselves!

Thinking of that, she allowed herself a fey grin, sharing the amusement. The poetic justice of it! She drew off her helmet. It all supported a private conviction of hers; that there existed a persistent balance in creation that in the end somehow always asserted itself. Usually in the manner least anticipated by everyone involved.

She turned to Smoky. ‘What now, mage?’ She waved to the horizon-spanning fields of marooned vessels. ‘You might burn an awful conflagration here to teach Mael a lesson, hey?’

But the wild-haired mage, resembling a drowned rat in his sodden robes already drying leaving a rime of salt flakes, was peering aside, pensive. ‘Something's up with the
KestraL’

Shimmer spun. Through the jumbled rigging of the
Gedrand
she could make out the tall masts of the
Kestral.
Flags waved from the tallest. ‘Captain! Smoky!’

‘Aye.’

She sensed Smoky at her side, questing, but he shrugged.
Nothing.
The captain was called up from below. He arrived drying his hands, soaked to his waist. He studied the signals. ‘Get a man up high!’

Sailors scrambled up the rigging.

Atop the main-mast a sailor scanned the horizons, gestured a direction. ‘Light! A glow far off. Like the magery.’

‘What bearing!’ the captain bellowed.

Arms held out wide in hopeless ignorance.

Yes. What bearing?
Shimmer glanced about the pale, almost colourless sky, the monotonous horizon all around.
Who can say in such a place as this?

‘Show direction!’ the captain called. ‘Pilot – mark it.’ The Kurzani mate squinted up at the sailor, turned and raised a bronze disk to an eye that he peered through – slit with thin needle-fine holes Shimmer knew from studying it. He nodded to the captain. ‘Marked.’

The captain clapped his hands together. ‘Very good, Pilot. Men!’ he roared. ‘Lower launches! Ready oarsmen!’

‘Aye!’

Shimmer began unbuckling her belt. She looked to the
Gedrand;
they too had reached the same decision as sailors clambered over the launches readying them. So, becalmed we must oar to the gate – if that is what the glow promises. She imagined what a trial must await them. Rowing through a millennia of debris! Pushing rotting vessels
from their path. Who knew how long it would take. But they were Avowed. They would win their way through … eventually. No task could daunt them; what was time to them? It was a perspective natural to Shimmer now, but one she knew others, mortals, could not possibly understand or share. She suspected it made the Avowed something of an alien kind apart.

She peered back to the swath of wreckage the entrance of their three vessels had cut. So, Mael. You strand us here then dangle escape in the distance. Why? To what purpose?

A lesson perhaps, yes? Pass through, Avowed. But do not return.
This
awaits. Now go. And I won't make it easy either.

* * *

Reaching the coast, they turned south, keeping to the screening cover of the treeline. Badlands and Coots scouted and hunted game while Stalker walked with Kyle who fumed, feeling useless, his swordarm in a sling. Now that the pressing rush to flee for his life had passed, the plains youth had begun to wonder now about his circumstances and these worried him. In fact, they struck him as damned mysterious. What had the Avowed mage, and the shaman meant about his having some sort of protection? Who could that be? Or what? And, though he did not want to be ungrateful, why were these three men taking such trouble to help him? Their desertion seemed real; but why now and with him? But could this not have been their best chance? Four do stand a better chance than three. And Stalker did say the Guard were quitting the land for Quon in any case …

Kyle stopped. Stalker continued on for a moment then stopped himself, resting a hand on the bole of a pine. ‘What is it?’

Shrugging, Kyle adjusted the folds of his sling. ‘I was just wondering – you said the Guard were leaving when you volunteered to track me down. But how then did they plan for you to link up with them?’

Stalker pushed up his helmet, wiped the sweat from his brow. Only now you've worked your way through to that? I thought it would be obvious …’ The scout took out a waterskin, squeezed a stream into his mouth. He offered it to Kyle who shook his head. He waved to the sea shimmering in the west. ‘We'd bring you to the coast, take a small boat and sail for Quon.’

‘Not funny, Stalker.’

The scout brushed droplets from his moustache, smiled, then looked around for a place to sit. He selected a moss-covered rock.

‘Apologies.’ He pulled off his helmet and rubbed his sweat-slick hair. ‘Don't worry, lad. Just a joke.’ He invited Kyle to sit. ‘Naw. We've left the Guard for sure. No future in it.’

Kyle sat. ‘What do you mean?’

‘No chance for advancement, hey? And they're crippled anyway. Doomed to rot unless something big happens to shake them up.’

‘The Avowed don't strike me as rotting. They're strong.’

The scout waved that aside. ‘Not what I mean. I mean they're blind to the present. Stuck in the past.’ He rubbed the pouch hanging from his neck. ‘It's as if they're walking backwards into the future – you know what I mean?’

How much Kyle understood must have shown on his face for the scout took a deep breath and tried again. ‘You asked about Badlands and Coots. Well, we
are
related. Some might call them my cousins, distant cousins.
You
might say brothers. We're all of the Lost back where we come from. Well, back there, it's just the same. Stuck in the past. We left because we'd had enough of it. Imagine our disgust when we found more of the same in the Guard.’

Kyle nodded. ‘I see – I think.’

A thin, wintry smile. ‘Never mind. Let's see what we got left to eat.’

They sat in the shade of tall cedars, chewed on smoked rabbit then ate wild berries of a kind unknown to either of them. Kyle thought maybe it was the berries that had been giving him the runs. While he sat letting the cool breeze dry his back and hair, Coots lumbered up.

‘Ain't disturbing your Hood-damned dinner party, am I?’

‘Nope,’ said Stalker. ‘Have some berries?’

‘No, They twist up my guts awful.’

‘Is that why you're here,’ said Stalker, ‘to tell us all about your digestion?’

Coots pushed a hand through his curly grey hair. ‘Since you asked, my digestion's been the shits since you dragged us on this Poliel-damned expedition. It's a damned disgrace.’ He winked to Kyle. ‘This fellow's got the organizational skills of a squirrel in a cyclone.’

‘That your digestion acting up, Coots?’

‘No. You'll know it when
that
happens.’

‘So what's the news then?’

Coots knelt to his haunches. The plain leather vest he wore made his arms look enormous while leather bands strapped them above and below the elbow. He took up a handful of branches that he broke in his wide blunt hands. ‘We've found a pitiful little fishing
village on the coast. As rundown as you can imagine. But they've got a sweet-looking new boat just sitting there ready to be pushed down the strand. It's like a damned gift from the Gods.’

‘And that's what worries you.’