The Huntsman's Amulet (15 page)

It was with a sense of frustration that Soren and the rest of the crew leaned against the bulwark and watched the predatory vessel tack its way up to them, too tired to do anything else and no longer caring about the bilge that was rapidly filling with water. The pirate was sleek and of finer lines than the
Honest Christophe
, having clearly been built for speed and agility rather than cargo capacity. As she grew closer they could see that her deck was crowded with men. Even had the crew of the
Honest Christophe
been in perfect health, they would have had little chance in repelling so many men.

It was a new experience for Soren, waiting for an enemy to come to him in the knowledge that surrender was his only option for survival. It felt strange, emasculating. Even as a youth living on the streets of Ostenheim, he had fought for every scrap in the belief that he would win out in the end. Now he didn’t know what the next few hours would hold. It reminded him of the despair and isolation of the dungeon in Ostenheim. He had realised then that no matter how many friends you have, or how many people you have around you, you always face death alone — and it was no different now.

The other vessel drew up a short distance away, close enough to make out the individual features of the men on board. Its crew scrambled to furl sails and make the ship ready for combat. Others stood by the rail, all armed, watching their prey.

Grappling hooks were fired from small arbalests mounted along the bulwark. The hooks arched gracefully through the air towing ropes behind them. One of the crew had to dive out of the way to avoid being struck by one. The lines were pulled tight, and once the grapnels had gripped the wood of the
Honest Christophe
firmly, the pirates began to draw the vessels toward each other.

Captain Joris made his way slowly to the back of the
Honest Christophe
and pulled her pennant down from the broom handle that had been serving as a flagpole since the storm. He did not want the pirates to be under any misapprehension; the crew of the
Honest Christophe
would not be resisting.

Chapter 21

The Pirate

T
he two vessels bumped
together with a muted thud. The pump had not been operating for some time now, and Soren wondered how long it would be before the
Honest Christophe
foundered. It amused to him think of the possibility of the
Honest Christophe
sinking and dragging the pirate ship down with her. That seemed too much to hope for, and would in a sense be cutting off his nose to spite his face. If the pirate ship sank Soren would almost certainly drown, for he couldn’t swim. The Fount conferred many benefits, but he didn’t believe breathing underwater was one of them. At least if the pirate vessel remained afloat, there was a chance he would be taken prisoner, brought to land and have a chance to escape at a later time. Captain Joris hoped that their early surrender would earn them this mercy from their attackers.

The pirates did not swarm aboard immediately, as Soren expected. For several moments after the two vessels came into contact with one another, they continued to scrutinise the
Honest Christophe
and her crew. It looked as though they were weighing up the possibility of there being a horde of armed soldiers waiting below deck to ambush them. She lay low in the sea and they were not to know that was because she had taken on a large quantity of water. They were clearly not stupid. However, they must have been aware of the storm, and Soren thought it like as not that they were out searching for ships just like the
Honest Christophe
, that had been crippled by the bad weather and would make an easy prize.

Eventually their caution gave way to necessity, and several of the pirates clambered aboard. One of them, brandishing a broad bladed sword, stepped forward. He was tall and slender with jet-black hair tied back into a ponytail. He had a narrow, pencil moustache that made his mouth seem thinner than it actually was, and wore a ruffled white shirt and a wide brimmed hat with a white plume, giving him a dashing, albeit sinister look.

‘Who is master of this vessel?’ he said, his voice gravelly and authoritative.

‘I am,’ Captain Joris said.

The pirate smiled and stepped toward Captain Joris, who made to hand the pirate his sword. Without warning or provocation the pirate hacked his sword into Captain Joris’s neck and then again as the already dying Ventishman fell to the deck of his ship. Soren looked on with a mixture of shock and horror, too surprised, too weak and too late to do anything about it.

‘Well,’ the pirate said, ‘now that we have that confusion cleared up, I am Sancho Rui, captain of the
Bayda’s Tear
, and master of this vessel also. What is this ship called?’

‘The
Honest Christophe
, sir,’ one of Joris’s sailors said.

‘I see. The
Honest Christophe
. A Ventish vessel is she?’ Rui said.

‘Yes, sir, that she is,’ the sailor said, his voice wavering with fear.

‘What is it with Ventish merchants and calling their ships “honest” or “trusty” or “reliable”? You’re hardly likely to call it “schemer” or “swindler” now are you? Am I supposed to believe it is an honest ship because it is so called?’ Rui said.

Soren wasn’t sure if he intended to be rhetorical, but the sailor answered nonetheless.

‘I don’t rightly know, sir,’ he said.

‘Don’t rightly know, sir,’ Rui said. ‘Not much use, are you. Still, at least you have manners. The Code of the Sea demands that I spare your lives for not having resisted my attack. I think I’ve properly acquainted your former captain with my personal view on that code. Blasco!’ He turned to one of the other pirates. ‘Have the brave men of the
Honest Christophe
line up by the main mast, if it can be called that.’

The man Rui had called Blasco was shorter than Soren, but had the characteristically lean, developed physique of a well-fed mariner. He sheathed his sword and picked up a belaying pin, using it to goad the crew, including Soren, into a line by the jury-rigged mast.

When Blasco was done, Rui walked along the line, inspecting each one of them.

‘When I stepped aboard this ship, it and everything on it became my property by right of conquest. You, the crew, ceased to be people, and became instead property. My property,’ he said. ‘This one and that one are too far gone. Throw them over the side.’

Blasco followed his captain’s orders without hesitation or question. He drew a dagger and had the throats of both men cut before anyone could react. Soren had not known the men well, but a bond of comradeship had developed in the hours of hardship they had suffered, and he had grown fond of Captain Joris’s decency. They had showed their character in returning to Vellin-Ilora, overcoming their genuine fears to keep their word. They were good men who did not deserve to die like that. Rage flushed through Soren, but he was too weak and exhausted to do anything about it.

Rui must have spotted the anger in Soren’s eyes, for he had stopped close by and was staring at Soren intently.

‘You look healthier than the rest,’ Rui said. ‘A once fat passenger? Or perhaps you were hiding food from your starving comrades. It matters not which, I can see that you are more interesting than the others. I shall be watching you.’ He smiled in a cold, predatory way.

He turned back to his crew. ‘By the looks of it this wreck won’t be afloat for much longer. I want it stripped of everything of value that we can fit on the
Tear
before next bell. Feed these five and then put them in the brig. If they live we may be able to sell them for a few florins.’

As they were bundled over the side and onto the
Bayda’s Tear
, Soren saw one of the pirates carrying the leather travelling case that he kept his Telastrian steel sword and dagger in. One part of him was angered by the thought of the pirate putting his grubby hands on it, but he was mainly relieved that they would not be lost when the
Honest Christophe
sank. He would have the opportunity to get them back, of that he was sure.

Chapter 22

The Brig

S
oren had already spent
far more of his life in confinement than he would have liked. On this occasion he had to share it with four other men, and there would have been little enough space for two. Two of the men brought on board the
Bayda’s Tear
had not improved at all, even with the food and rest they had since being captured. The struggle to keep the
Honest Christophe
afloat had pushed them past the point of recovery. Soren didn’t expect them to last more than a day or two, if Sancho Rui allowed them to live that long. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the thought of hastening a couple of dying men to their death if it saved him the expense of feeding them.

The door to the brig was opened and a bucket of porridge was pushed in. The door was slammed shut again and Soren pulled the bucket into the central space between the captives. He loaded the ladle with the thick, gluey porridge contained within and handed it to the man to his left. He wasn’t sure why he was seeing to the needs of the other men first, but he felt some sense of obligation. He had recovered quickly since arriving on the
Tear
. His body showed the signs of insufficient food, but the Fount had returned him to a level of health he could not have hoped for otherwise. The same could not be said for the other survivors from the
Honest Christophe
. The food was not enough, and they continued to waste away. Even if they weren’t going to last much longer, Soren would try to do as much as he could to make their final hours more comfortable. He owed them that.

They were allowed out of the brig for a few minutes each day to use the heads, but after a very brief respite of fresh air they were bundled back into the darkness of the brig. There was little to do but to try and practice with the Fount. With five of them stuffed in the brig and a large number of men outside, based on Berengarius’s logic there would be enough Fount there to work with. Berengarius had also said that objects like walls would dampen his connection to an accumulation on the other side, but Soren reasoned that as wood was organic it might prove to be less of an obstacle than stone or brick and allow him to sense or connect to what was on the other side.

It was all speculation, but he had nothing else to do and no reason not to try. He had called on the Fount intentionally on previous occasions, but in a clumsy way that had exposed him to danger. The Fount would have been strong on those previous occasions, and he realised now how lucky he was that he had not allowed himself to be overwhelmed and burned out. He had held his focus on it for only a fraction of a second, all that the circumstances of a duel had allowed, but in that blink of an eye it flooded him with energy. It had not been enough to push him into the Moment, but it was far more than he had needed, and caused his actions to go far beyond what he had intended. He was not able to control them and that bothered him more than he would care to admit.

While sitting in their tiny prison, his mind frequently drifted to Alessandra. It was painful to think of her, of the time they shared and the wonderful future he had hoped awaited them both. He forced his thoughts to those that might be of some use. In the past, stress or danger had opened his connection with the Fount without him knowing. It was this mechanism that he hoped to exploit. Having to focus all of his attention on the Fount was going to get him killed sooner rather than later, so he had to learn to control this method of connection as soon as he could.

Berengarius had led him to think about the Fount in a different way. Initially it had been a mysterious blue glow that caused him to question his sanity. As he saw it more frequently he came to accept that it was real, if completely unexplainable. The idea of being aware of it as a leap of faith rather than a process seemed to dictate against the approach he had been taking. Instead of trying to force his mind to see it as he had been doing he merely accepted that it was there and waited for it to appear. It had not worked thus far, but he felt it was worth persevering with. Each day, he fought against the tendency of his mind to wander and tried to relax, in the hope of making drawing on the Fount as effortless as breathing.

As the days passed in the hot, stuffy darkness of the brig he found his way back to the Fount. It was weak, but where before there had been nothing but darkness, Soren could now make out the shapes of each of his companions, outlined in the faintest of blue glows. On the previous occasions when he had connected to the Fount, the connection had ceased as soon as his concentration had broken. Now however, it was there when he looked for it. Rather than feel himself fill with its energy, he was aware of its presence.

That was the problem. It was not rushing in on him, but equally he didn’t seem to be able to attract it. He began to grow frustrated. Although he had found a new and less involved way to see the Fount, he still felt as though he was as far from controlling the Gift as he had been when he set off from Auracia.

More days passed, each blending into one long, hot waking nightmare, and despite his best efforts he could not make the Fount bend to his will.