Shallows of Night - 02 (34 page)

And she had followed him north from Sha’angh’sei in pursuit of the Makkon, to Kamado, to the forest of the Hart of Darkness, waiting patiently, mysteriously for him, riding with him across the burning continent of man, to the port of Khiyan while, behind them, the last battle of mankind raged before the high walls of Kamado. Dumb Moeru, who could not speak yet now could form words in his mind. She was not from Sha’angh’sei or its environs, her features had not the characteristic cast. And although he had discovered her among the refugees of the fighting in the north who daily streamed into the streets of Sha’angh’sei, she was hardly a peasant for her hands were delicate and uncallused.

She could tell him nothing for her memory had fled her, whether from a direct blow or from shock and extreme exposure or from something else entirely he had no way of knowing. She remembered only Tenchō, Kiri, Matsu—and Ronin. Who she was and where she had come from remained a mystery. Yet there seemed time now, while the
Kioku
plowed the vastness of the ocean in search of the isle of the fabulous Bujun, on this long voyage to the end of his quest, to discover Moeru’s past.

It was an enigma he wished to unlock, yet, too, he longed to know the fate of those locked within the great stone citadel of Kamado; whether the forces of man were holding their own against the rising tide of the human and unhuman hordes of The Dolman. Had Kiri as yet returned from her mission in Sha’angh’sei to unite the feuding Greens and Reds? But, above all, had the four Makkon at last appeared on the continent of man. Two he already knew had been together. When all four united, they would summon The Dolman again to the world of man. Then surely Kamado would fall.

The bronze bell chimed the mid-watch and he was brought breakfast: strips of raw white fish, skinned and cleaned, and a portion of dried seaweed.

He turned at a sound, saw Moeru reach the poop via the aft companionway. She wore wide cobalt blue silk pants and a quilted jacket, bottle green, embroidered with leaping fish. As she moved across the deck to join him, illumined by the morning sun, he marvelled once more at her satin beauty. Her high cheekbones, accented by a rather sharp chin and large blue-green eyes, the colour of a far-off soundless sea, almond-shaped and tilted, were veiled by her long dark hair as the salt breeze filmed it about her like a fine rain. She seemed strong and fit. How different she was now from the frail mud-soaked woman he had lifted from the rutted streets of Sha’angh’sei. As she stopped before him he saw that she wore the slender silver chain with its centre flower—what was that blossom called?—which he had given her last night. A Bujun artifact that he had plucked from a dying man in a dismal alley in Sha’angh’sei, and which, later, amongst the Greens, had almost cost him his life. He was unaccountably pleased that she wore it.

‘Hungry?’

Yes,
came the sound in his mind and he started in spite of himself.

He called to a sailor who brought her a plate of food. For a time he watched her eat.

‘Tell me again what happened,’ he said abruptly.

She lifted her golden face to him, her eyes catching the sun, turning white, then black as her hair caught up with the motion, shadowing her.

When I called to you in the night.

‘Not before.’ He wondered if this was a question.

She drew a wisp of hair from in front of one eye with her first two fingers and he thought: Matsu, a wild uneasy cry in the night.

Moeru stared at him for a moment, a blank, curiously opaque look. Then she blinked as if she were trying to remember a stray thought that had just crossed her mind. She steadied herself against the roll and pitch of the ship.

What did you say?

‘Not before.’

No. Otherwise I would have called to you sooner. Surely.

‘I expect so.’ Turning from her to throw the scraps of his meal over the side. He did not turn back but continued to stare into the glinting enigmatic face of the water.

Moeru went back to her breakfast but now her eyes studied him with some deliberation.

For’ard, the bosun ordered men into the shrouds to unfurl every centimeter of canvas to the stiffening wind. The sun went behind a cloud and the air turned abruptly chill. Then its white face emerged and the heat returned. Farther off, patches of shadow stained the sea, mirroring the passage of the clouds racing across the sky.

I cannot read your mind, if that is what you are thinking.

‘I did not really—’

No. Of course not.
She devoured the last slice of fish.

‘All right. It
did
cross my mind.’

I saw Moichi kill that thing that the men caught.

‘The devilfish.’ Noted her change of subject.

He slit its belly, did you see? Because they are viviparous. He made certain that the babies died too.

‘How would you know that?’ He was genuinely curious.

I—do not know.

‘Have you ever been to sea?’

It seems that I have, yes.

‘Perhaps then your people are sailors.’

Oh no. I do not think so.
She put the plate aside and, as she bent, her hair slid across her eyes, a swiftly flowing river of darkness. She stood up.

‘What then?’ He dissected her silence. ‘Try not to think. Watch the sea. What do you feel?’

Her eyes traced the endless movement of the waves hurling themselves against the hull of the ship far below them. Up here, in the protection of their eyrie. Leaning on the stern rail, her chin on the backs of her slender white hands, she sighed, a red and gold leaf in an autumn storm.

Perhaps merely a peasant from the north, a refugee of the war. As you first saw me.

‘Now I must tell you no.’

A tear glistened in the corner of one eye and she blinked. It rolled down her cheek. He put his arm around her and she came against his hard body, giving in at last.

I am adrift in the unknown and it terrifies me. Who am I, Ronin? What am I doing here? I feel as if I must not leave your side. I feel—a little like a corpse, drowned on a tide, thrown up onto an alien shore. I must—

‘What?’

She threw her head, her hair flying, and wiped at her eyes.

Tell me what happened in the forest near Kamado. When you emerged, you were so white that I feared you had lost blood from a severe wound.

Ronin smiled bleakly.

‘Wounded? No. At least not in the sense you mean.’ He held the warmth of her body against him like a cloak. ‘I encountered a bizarre creature and it has been much on my mind of late.’ He shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘It was a man, Moeru, a man with a hart’s great head, black-furred, crowned by enormous treed antlers.’ His voice lowered and a hard edge crept into it. ‘I drew my sword but my fingers would not hold it. It came at me and my legs would not support me. It lifted a great black onyx sword over its head and then a strange thing occurred. It stared into my face and I saw within its very human eyes fear. We were locked together, neither able to act.’

Aloft, the yards swung to and the canvas groaned as it caught the following wind, hurtling the schooner across the limitless sea. Muscles rippling, sailors sprang to the lines, securing the new set of the rigging. A man shouted, seeming far away, and Ronin heard the peculiar, dark voice of the first mate like hot pitch on a wound, recalling—

This Hart of Darkness.
Her blue-green eyes moved.
Why does he disturb you so?

‘I—do not know. I faced him and felt as if—’

Patiently, she waited for him to finish.

‘As if I was drowning.’

And he? What do you suppose he felt?

He looked at her curiously.

‘What an extraordinary thing to say. How would I know what he felt?’

She shrugged.

I thought you might know.

He shook his head.

What did you see in his face, Ronin?

The Hart of Darkness swam before him, that strange mixture of man and beast. He saw the sleekly furred snout, the wide, blunt herbivorous teeth, the black, flaring nostrils, quivering as they sampled scents, the oval, human eyes, and abruptly he felt a chill at the center of his being, heard the cool click of Bonneduce the Last’s Bones, rolling over the patterned rug in the house in the City of Ten Thousand Paths so long ago.
You do not fear death,
the little man had said,
and that is good. Yet you fear—

‘Stop!’ cried Ronin.

What is it?
Moeru gripped his arm, the long fingers firm and supple.

He passed a hand across his eyes.

‘Nothing. Just the ghost of a dream.’

You know him, Ronin.

The fear rose inside him, unbidden.

‘Now you speak nonsense.’

A sky dark with vultures; the stiff rustle of their circling flight.

I see it in your eyes.

Irrationally, he turned on her, away from himself.
A stench worse than putrefaction.

‘Chill take you, bitch! Shut up! You—’

‘Captain!’

Ronin swung away, saw Moichi racing up the aft companionway.

‘What is it?’

Moeru moved away from him, her eyes bleak and as opaque as stones.

‘Lookouts report sails to port.’ The big man approached them. He pointed. ‘Just visible now over the horizon.’

‘What manner of vessels?’ Ronin asked, shading his eyes as he looked out over the water.

‘Too far away as yet, Captain.’ His hazel eyes were chilled. ‘But this far out I would hardly expect them to be merchantmen.’

‘Very well. Swing away from them.’ Moichi nodded assent. ‘But mark you, I do not wish to waste valuable time. A swift landfall at Ama-no-mori is imperative.’

‘Aye, Captain,’ said Moichi, already swinging away, calling to the bosun in his deep voice. The bosun, at midships, relayed the order to the first.

Slowly, the schooner heeled, beginning its wide arc to starboard. Spray flew up into their faces, rich and cool and fragrant with life.

And they began their run from the oncoming ships.

The seas rose as they plunged ahead, the men constantly in the shrouds now to take advantage of the shifting wind. The ocean turned a deep green, then a hard, flat gray as banks of rippling thunderheads climbed into the western skies.

‘They are gaining on us,’ said Moichi, on the poop with Ronin and the helmsman. ‘The sails are tetrahedral, an unfamiliar configuration to me.’

‘Have they seen us?’ asked Ronin.

‘Seen us? I think,’ said the navigator, ‘that they have been searching for us.’

‘How could that be?’

His shoulders lifted, fell. ‘Captain, my expertise is in guiding ships like this to safe ports.’

The rain began then a good distance away, a strange sight, the downpour a dark oblique brush flailing harshly at the sea with such furious intensity that it appeared as if the sea water were actually flowing upward.

‘Hard to port!’ called Moichi, and the
Kioku
returned eastward with the black rain and the odd sails in full pursuit.

Moeru left her spot at the aft rail and came and stood beside Ronin.

Who knows of your voyage?

Ronin watched the shrouds straining their lines. He had been thinking along a similar path. Futilely.

‘To my knowledge, only Bonneduce the Last.’

Moichi was too involved with the helmsman and the sails to question the seemingly one-sided conversation.

Still, another may know.

Perhaps he was only half-listening then. Certainly he did not understand her remark, part of their previous conversation.

Moichi left the helmsman, went across the deck, stood at the poop’s port railing.

‘Captain,’ he said. ‘I do not think that these are natural ships.’

Ronin went to stand beside him, Moeru in his wake. He saw lines creasing the navigator’s face.

‘What do you mean?’ Ronin asked.

‘These ships, Captain. Well, look for yourself.’

The trio peered into the west. The rain there had slackened, yet still the purple skies were dark. Out there, the sea was gray and white like the wings of a seagull. Purple-tinged.

Moeru’s fingers gripped Moichi’s arm.

‘Yes.’

Three ships, dark with high prows, their silhouettes slender and swift, sped toward them. They were still far away but now they were close enough to make out several important details.

Their sails were black and obviously not of conventional canvas, for they shone in the wan light of the dismal afternoon. Emblazoned across the center of each sail was the image of a grinning armored bird. They gleamed and flickered as if they were on fire.

‘Look below,’ said Moichi deliberately.

They saw that the hulls of the ships were completely dry as they ran, keelless, across the sea, above the waves. Nevertheless, the sea furrowed beneath them and white spray flew in their wakes.

‘You have sorcerous foes, Captain,’ said Moichi flatly. ‘The crew will not like that.’

‘They do not have to like it,’ answered Ronin. ‘They merely have to fight.’ He turned. ‘And what of you, Moichi. Where do you stand?’

‘As I have said, Captain, I have beheld many strange sights, even as you have. There is nothing on land nor sea which frightens me.’ He slapped the port rail. ‘I have a good ship under my feet even if it is no match for those sorcerous ships out there.’ He shrugged. ‘There have ever been battles in my life.’

‘Then I have no cause for worry. Have the first mate break out the arms and prepare for boarding.’

‘Aye, Captain.’ The white teeth shone wolfishly. ‘A pleasure.’

What of me?

‘Get below.’

But I wish to fight.

He turned to her and watched her eyes for a moment.

‘Have the bosun get you a sword, then.’

There is no choice but to fight.

He looked seaward.

‘We cannot outrun them. Moichi understood that immediately. They mean to take us.’ His right hand had drifted unconsciously to the hilt of his blade and his left hand clenched inside the Makkon gauntlet. He felt the adrenalin surging through his chest and arms. He breathed deeply, oxygenating his system to help forestall muscle fatigue in the battle to come. He longed for battle now, the warrior within him aching for release. ‘And I—’ he said thickly, ‘I wish to destroy them.’