The Iron Ship (51 page)

O
N A BRIGHT
but freezing early afternoon they rode into the village of Alu-mal, if such a place were worthy of the term ‘village’. A rough collection of hovels made of dry stacked stones and low, turfed roofs. Bones and sun-bleached wood were the rafters. There were few trees in these mountains, and the dark forests of the valleys were haunted by demons, so Zorolotsev said.

Snow lay thick upon the peaks all around the village, but even at the altitude of Alu-mal it was limited to a thin crust, frozen hard. In many places wind had scoured the snow clean away, exposing close-cropped turf of a vibrant green, speckled with goat droppings.

The majority of the huts were in two irregular lines, either side of what Rel generously chose to call a road. Those houses not lining the road were set haphazardly on knolls of stone. They clustered together, half-built into one another. Flimsy ladders led to upper entrances. Many remnants of older dwellings lay further out. Whether they were empty due to depopulation or some cultural practice Rel could not tell.

Dark faced men stared at the troop as they rode in. They were subjects of Khushashia, but they were not Khusiaks. Their skin was a deeper shade than Zhinsky’s, almost red. They were short, with narrow brown eyes hooded by folds of skin, and solemn expressions. As different to Zhalak Zhinsky and Zorolotsev as Zhinsky and Zorolotsev were different to Rel. They watched the dracons with faces devoid of curiosity, turning silently on the spot as the troopers rode up the track.

Some of the huts were recently tumbled, stones still scratched white where they had been pushed apart. By these veiled women kneeled. They bowed repeatedly from the waist, beating the frozen ground three times with their fists every time their foreheads touched the ground.

On the slopes around Alu-mal, brown and white goats with clanking bells about their necks watched disinterestedly, their yellow eyes blank as those of the human inhabitants, mouths always working.

Few children hid behind their mother’s skirts. There were far more women than children, and they guarded each child in small phalanxes.

“This is where it happened,” said Rel. If he had any doubts about the old man’s story, they were gone and buried.

“This is where it happened,” agreed Zhinsky grimly. They pulled up in the middle of the village. A large slab of rock, almost flat, bordered the road. A shrine of flat stones was stacked at its centre around a crooked pole holding up five lines of triangular flags which snapped in the freezing wind. There was no other sound. Rel looked about uneasily. Zhinsky dismounted and walked toward a hut Rel could not tell apart from the others. He waited respectfully outside. A small woman pushed aside the goatskin across the door. A few moments later, an incredibly ancient woman emerged. Her face was so heavily lined her eyes were near-invisible in the folds. Her lips had vanished, her mouth a slit in leather. She was bent almost double, but the other villagers touched their breasts when she emerged and bowed. They murmured as they did so; the sudden noise, though quiet, startled Aramaz and Rel patted his neck to soothe him.

The elder leaned on a stick of bone-white wood as crooked as all the other timber in the village, and festooned with fluttering feathers and small bones that clicked.

Zhinsky haltingly exchanged a few words her, then beckoned Rel.

“Captain, with me. The rest of you, stay here.”

Rel handed his reins to Merreas and dismounted. He winced at the stiffness of his limbs.

There was room only for Rel, Zhinsky, the woman and her servant in the hut. A low cot took up a good quarter of it, clay cooking pots in neat piles occupied another quarter. Wizened bird and dracon-bird claws hung from the rafters amid bunches of herbs. Sunlight shone in through gaps in the turves of the roof and its smokehole, netting the blue fumes of a low dung fire in shafts of light. The hut smelled of smoke and hard, marginal lives. Rel’s eyes watered.

In broken Low Maceriyan, the old woman spoke. “I tell you, I say what happened.” She looked at Zhinsky, he nodded.

She settled back, took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and began a chant in her hard-edged tongue, rocking back and forth all the whole. Zhinsky leaned in close to Rel, and whispered a translation close by his ear.

“In the mountains, there was a shepherd. He was young, he was lonely. He watched in the mountains. His flock was scattered, his work was hard. He came to the village at doublemoon for food, for company. But for him there was only the mountain, only the flock. He yearned for a wife. He yearned for a son. But there was none for him, Erdgi the Lame. His flock was scattered, his work was hard.”

Zhinsky was concentrating hard on the woman, so hard his accent almost completely disappeared from the Low Maceriyan he rendered the chant into.

“He sat alone upon the mountain. He was young, he was lonely. He asked for the hand of Guhanki. She refused. For him there was only the mountain, only the flock. He yearned for a wife. He yearned for a son. But there was none for him, Erdgi the Lame. His flock was scattered, his work was hard.

“One night he sat, upon the mountain. A voice called from the dark. A woman’s voice, soft and sweet. ‘You yearn for a wife, you yearn for a son. Let me come to you and give of myself.’ Erdgi was frightened, and did not sleep. He stayed on the mountain. His flock was scattered, his work was hard.

“He sat upon the mountain. He was young, he was scared. The voice returned by doublemoon’s light. ‘I will be yours, you will be mine. Do not be lonely, upon the mountain. Let me warm your bed, let me warm your heart.’

“For nine nights this occurred, as the skies were lit with the gods’ green veils. He stayed on the mountain, he listened to the voice. It came with a shadow. Then it came with a shape. On the tenth night he saw her, well-rounded and sleek. ‘Let me be yours,’ she said. ‘You are young, you are lonely, as am I, as am I.’

“Her face was beautiful. More lovely than silver to the miser, more lovely than the baby to the mother. Erdgi’s dogs barked and whined. He did not heed them, only his heart, only his loins. Erdgi’s soul was caught. He went to her. ‘Why should I not?’ he said to the night. ‘I am young,’ he said the mountain. ‘I am lonely. My flock is scattered, my work is hard.’

“Into her arms he fell. He found no woman’s eyes, no woman’s love, Erdgi the lame. He is young no longer, he is alone no longer. He stays not on the mountain. None watch his flock, they are scattered and dead. Erdgi has gone, and his work is slaughter.”

The old woman’s eyes appeared in the wrinkles of her skin, shiny as beads. She breathed out a ragged breath. Zhinsky’s face was hard.

“Changelings,” he said to Rel, although he did not take his eyes off the woman. “They come out of the desert in the form of lithe women or beautiful youths. They arouse the lust of the young, and through their lovemaking plant a seed of change within them. If they are caught in time, then that is fine, they are killed and laid to rest. A big shame, but better than what happens if not.”

“Not a skinturner,” said Rel. The back of his neck prickled. Bannord, Guis’s friend, had once told him of Skinturners in the southern forests, at the top of the Sotherwinter, that had kept him awake for a week.

“These are worse. They change you, captain merchant boy. They shift. Their victims stop being men, they stop being women. They become monsters, and then they feast upon the flesh of their kin. This is not a fairy story for little rich boys in comfortable cities, this is real. Old magic, and terrible.”

He said some words to the woman. She closed her eyes and nodded gratefully.

“You told her we would kill it.”

Zhinsky bowed his head in respect to the elder. “Of course I did, little merchant boy,” he said under his breath. “What the fucking hells else do you think was going to happen?”

“Fair enough.”

Zhinsky’s grin flashed bright in the dimness and he punched Rel on the shoulder. “That is the
right
attitude!”

O
UTSIDE THE HUT
seemed even colder than before.

“Mount!” said Zhinsky. “We go to fight.”

“We just got here,” said Merreas.

“Now is the time. We stop, we need to feed the dracons. We feed the dracons, they fight very badly. We will need them to fight, so we go now.”

Merreas looked around at the villagers, the fear gripping him showing itself in contempt. “This lot of savages wouldn’t have a bread roll to spare anyway. Waste of time, if you ask me. We’ve lost a good man already. Let’s go home.”

Zhinsky moved fast. Merreas did not see him coming, and found himself flat on his back with Zhinsky’s boot on his chest.

“These people are not my people.” He leaned hard on his foot. “But they are my countrymen. Citizens of Khushashia, citizens of the Hundred Kingdoms of Ruthnia. Citizens you are bound to protect. So, you get up and onto your mount, or I not feed it and let it chase you all the way back to the Glass Fort. I do not like cowards, trooper. Do you understand?”

Merreas nodded. “Yes major,” he said breathlessly.

“Good good.” Zhinsky removed his foot, held out his hand and hauled Merreas up. At the last moment he yanked Merreas toward him, unbalancing him again. “You start thinking hard, trooper. This will not be an easy battle. It will be easier if you hold your heart and strength, and not lose them. You wish to live?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then be brave.”

They fitted the sickle-swords to the fighting claws of their dracons. Understanding well what this meant their mounts grew restive. They croaked and called to one another as the men took water from the village well; a spring protected by a conical pile of rocks a little way above the huts and festooned like the shrine with long strings of flags.

Zhinsky asked where Erdgi might be found.

The villagers pointed upwards. The track wound its way through ever-larger crags, past the snowline.

“He is up the mountain,” they said. “He is in the old tower.”

T
HE WAY QUICKLY
abandoned all pretence at being a track and turned into a goat path—narrow, icy, precipitous and strewn with boulders from the higher slopes. But every now and then paving stones exposed by the rain or by landslips hinted at a grander past.

Rel and Deamaathani rode together, and speculated on the road’s origin.

“Morfaan, some other race, creatures from beyond the fences of our world? Who knows? In truth I do not know, nobody does. Nobody probably ever will. This world has buried wonders to fill a million philosophs’ life-times. Who cares for such ragged paths and supposedly Tyn-haunted ruins when the artefacts of the Morfaan and Old Maceriyans can be dug from easier soils?” said Deamaathani.

Rel’s face became numb from the wind. The day grew old early. It was no later than three of the clock and the sun had already hidden its face behind the mountains. Orange and red snowfields suggested it had not given up day’s fight just yet, but they grew more rugose with every second. The Twin was already in the sky, its circle emerging from the dimming day like a ship come out of the fog. Dusk smeared the snow blue and the first stars were out by the time they saw the tower: broken turrets rising over a ridge. They rode through a gap, and came into the glen that housed it. On the far side was the simple fortress, built of drystone courses. Four turrets grouped together into one, giving it the semblance of a stone ants’ nest, or a tall tree stump fluted with buttress roots. Two of the turrets had collapsed, their squared-off blocks mingling with scree frozen off the scarps around the glen. Blackness haunted the open interior, darker than any night.

The wind shifted round, blowing from the northeast where the tower was situated. A carrion stench came to them, rank and pungent, even in the deep chill of winter.

Dramion covered his nose. Merreas blanched, his eyes wide in his face. Their mounts caught the smell and grew eager to feast, and hard to handle.

“He will know we are here soon. Dramion, hobble Wiatra’s dracon and leave it here, well back. Then everyone spread out!” shouted Zhinsky. “Hit and run, no frontal assault. We attack from all sides at once, it is the only way. Do not get too close!”

Zorolotsev and Rel split right, Deamaathani following. Merreas and Veremond formed up in a wide arrowhead with Zhinsky. Dramion was sent far out to the left, Olb at his side.

“Goad him! Bring him into the centre!” shouted Zhinsky. “Deamaathani, prepare your magic.”

Deamaathani tugged off his long gloves with his teeth and stuffed them into his belt. His bronze armour glinted under his robes.

Rel unslung his carbine. He held the reins with one hand, the right gripping the gunstock. He controlled Aramaz with his knees. The creature recognised the shift in guidance, knowing it for a sign of imminent hostility. It dropped into hunting posture, lower to the ground, legs tensed, sickle claws flexing.

Olb leaned back in his saddle. He cupped one mouth to his hand, pointed with the other.

“It’s coming! Up there!”

The creature that had been Erdgi the Lame was not in its lair. It came over the brow of the hill, roaring out a challenge.

The creature was ten feet tall, huge across the shoulders, with a thick hide that was dull grey and lustreless. It had two arms like a man, the size of Rel’s torso and knotted with muscle. One held a small tree stripped of branches as a club. It was naked, its penis grotesquely large, the pink tip of it peeking from under a dark foreskin. The legs were those like a dracon’s or a dog’s, knees high and close to the hip, with the ankle held off the ground. On one foot it walked on its toes, of which there were only two, thickly nailed. The other was warty, a club foot twisted sideways, causing it to move with a shuffling gait. A remnant of the lame shepherd boy.

The changeling’s head was set low on its shoulders on a short neck. Eyes stared with unreasoning fury from beneath jutting brows. The jaw protruded almost as far, lips drawn back to reveal a broad mouth crammed with yellow teeth. A third eye, irregular and moist as a fried egg, was offset from the centre of its forehead. This part of its face was badly formed, the skull warped and skin slack like a half-melted wax bust. Yellow mucous streamed from this third eye. The ear on the left side of the head was lopsided, and hung low. The left arm was held awkwardly. A large tumescence, hairy and painful looking, could be glimpsed under it.