The Stealers' War (20 page)

Off to the side the skipper and one of his cousins came running towards the vessel’s side, hauling something long, sharp and barbed. They were followed by four Weyland soldiers, grey-coats clutching their rifles close and shooting as they ran, putting bullets into the massive tentacle. It had experienced more than enough of the cog’s inhabitants, this tussle-tooth, and by whatever senses the limb commanded, it curled out contemptuously like a battering ram of wet flesh, knocking over the rice-eaters and Weylanders alike, sending them barrelling across the wet planking. Then it darted back towards Alexamir. He tried to vault over the tentacle, but the monstrous limb shifted angle at the last moment, slamming the wind out of his gut as it closed around him, pulling him off the decking. His dagger tumbled away across the deck, lost from fingers spasming in the bone-crushing pressure of the beast’s embrace. At last Alexamir was glad for the stupid, itching, over-hot clothes he had been made to wear, the fabric of his disguise tearing as the spiny suckers flowed around his body. The tentacle whipped him in an insane circuit around the air, as tight around his waist as being trapped beneath a rockfall.
Trying to disorient me before my drowning?
And drowned is what Alexamir would be if he fell into the Yarl. He could barely dog-paddle through a stream, let alone survive the wicked torrent below. He looked down dizzily and saw the hill of flesh rising out of the water again, a sharp evil beak opening and closing. On either side of the beak, he faced two beady eyes, far too small for such a river monster staring in loathing at him. They belonged to a bird of prey rather than this boat-cracking leviathan. Alexamir’s arms flailed free and he tried to prise apart the tentacle’s grip with his hand, but his gore-slicked fingers slipped off the greasy limb. He banged on its flesh fit to collapse the edge of a mountain, but the creature merely spun him faster in the air. He spat at Tussle-tooth and showed it his finest scornful grin, but this only served to make the monster begin lowering him towards its chattering maw.

‘Norbu!’

That ugly dog Nocks, running across the
Arrow
’s deck, below and to Alexamir’s side. He lugged the large spear-like thing previously borne by the cog’s master and crewman. Nocks hurled the black shaft towards Alexamir and the nomad caught it in his right hand. The Weylander was a squat little ball of muscle to have made the throw.
Heavy. Too thick for a decent spear.
Polished wood with a barbed metal tip, and something else. A fuse spitting flames at the back-end. Alexamir realized what this device was that the captain and his cousin had been manhandling towards the river’s edge.
A black-powder harpoon
.

‘Sword!’ choked Alexamir, just loud enough for the Weyland soldier to hear in-between the tentacle flailing him about.

Having hurled the harpoon, a sabre was an easy enough weapon for Nocks to pull out of its scabbard and pitch towards ‘Norbu’. His sword arced through the air, the blade’s knotted hilt nearly slipping out of Alexamir’s blood-covered fingers, but he held it fast enough to slide his fist below the curved hilt’s basket. He reached back with his other hand and cast the harpoon down as strong as any lightning bolt tossed by a storm-god, burying barb and sinking the harpoon straight into the monster’s left eye. For a second the tentacle mauling Alexamir froze and left him hanging in the air above the water, its grip easing just enough for him to breathe again.

‘There is your breakfast, Tussle-tooth,’ laughed Alexamir, fixing the remaining baleful eye with his warrior’s grimace. The tentacle curved violently out, obviously aiming to beat Alexamir against the mast and smash him like an egg. ‘And here comes your second serving.’ Alexamir slashed down with the sabre. He was the Prince of Thieves and while he might resemble some pasty-faced rice-eating lout of a goat herder, the blood of the Arinnbolds burned through his veins as his gift. The sharp Weyland cavalry sabre blade struck the tentacle and curved straight through the filthy thick flesh, just as a Nijumeti would decapitate a rival from horseback. What was left of the bleeding stump fell away just as the harpoon exploded. Alexamir didn’t see the black powder harpoon detonate, but he felt the heat of the blast as he tumbled down through the air towards the deck below, followed by a wet rain of flesh coming down across the
Arrow
. As he struck the planking he rolled into a trained saddle-tumble, and when he came to his feet, he saw the remains of a hill of flesh sinking below the waters.
Eat well, fish. Enjoy my gift today and remember well the name of Alexamir Arinnbold
.

‘It is very rare to encounter a Tusoteth this far west,’ spat the skipper, his chest heaving and face ruddy from exertion. The cog’s master limped to the vessel’s side and watched the dead beast follow the fishing boat to hell. The side of his face was black as coals from the bruising kiss of the monster’s tentacle. ‘They live in the deep marsh waters of Hellin, but sometimes their young swing upstream and enter the river, growing close to adult size. Always hungry and full of fury, with only fish to feed on rather than cattle and waders.’

‘Ain’t nearly rare enough for me,’ spat Nocks. Alexamir handed the Weylander back his sabre, and the ugly soldier wiped the dark blood off on the torn sail before pushing it back in its scabbard. Incredibly, the two sailors from the
Arrow
who had been thrown into the water were visible on the northern bank of the Yarl. Wet, bedraggled but alive. They had survived their dunking and the attentions of the creature.
You are kind to them, Atamva. But then, those two are crazy enough to make their living upon the water, and you oft protect the insane.

‘The
Arrow Jang
owes you a debt,’ said Shan to Alexamir and the group of Weylanders. ‘But I will still require you to stow your guns and swords inside my chest for the remainder of the voyage.’

‘We pay in lead and you pay in thanks,’ said Nocks. ‘A soldier can grow mighty poor fighting like that.’

‘Then it is lucky for us all that you fight for the honour of your foreign prince and his parliament.’ He laid a hand on Alexamir’s shoulder. ‘And you are a true scraper, Norbu, as hard and tough and strong as the high mountains which gave you life. You would not have to face such wicked creatures on most of our voyages.’

‘And in the capital, I’ll never face such evils,’ said Alexamir.
And if you knew what I truly was, you’d feed me to the next brother of Tussle-tooth to swim across your bow
.

The remainder of the voyage passed uneventfully enough, river traffic growing more frequent as their passage along the Yarl carried them through canyons and valleys towards Rodal’s capital. Wind harbours and villages dotted the waterside, many travellers and pilgrims and traders following the roads along both riverbanks. Wagons and caravans. Trains of merchants with ponies and yaks laden with bundles of cargo. Water from the river flowed into irrigation systems, feeding flooded paddy fields and carried off towards the slopes by wooden aqueducts. It seemed a remarkable folly to Alexamir, staying fixed somewhere long enough to grow crops, rather than freely following the steppes’ rich grasses with cattle and clan.
The spirits that inhabit Rodal are cruel. They deny the rice-eaters such a bounty. They keep their people pinned to the same ground so they always know where to find victims to torment.
Each stop drew Alexamir closer to his prize. Skyguard fighters occasionally skimmed down from their patrols and buzzed the canyons, bored pilots in the Rodalians’ wooden pigeons turning victory rolls for the amusement of the
Arrow
’s passengers and crew.
They would not be so pleased if they knew Temmell has given the clans the magic of their wings. These rice-eaters are due for a rude surprise when the horde rides again.

Two weeks after they had been attacked by the marsh creature, the
Arrow
came within sight of Hadra-Hareer, twin mountains rising high above the steep red-walled canyons that enveloped the Yarl River on both sides. White-walled buildings clung to the mountains, scarcely visible through a cloud mist clinging to the peaks, and Alexamir watched triangular flying wings swooping into hangar tunnels up there.
The crows have built their nest on high.
Similar structures to the mountain city’s clung to the canyon walls the
Arrow
sailed past. Alexamir noted what he saw with a professional raider’s eye. White stone oblongs dotted with uniformly narrow windows, able to be sealed by shutters against attackers and storms with equal ease. Narrow enough to pass rifle barrels and crossbows while keeping out any invader wider than a snake. Seventy feet off the ground, inaccessible to attackers who didn’t carry tall siege ladders or the taste for scaling heights by hand under heavy fire. The buildings clung on to the side of the canyon where the twin mountains towered. On the opposite bank he counted only a few sentry towers rising from the mesa top, the occasional wind harbour and hundreds of narrow entrances into the canyons, some arched like caves, others open gorges with lofty walls but barely wide enough for a laden pony to pass. He shivered at the thought of what it would be like for the horde to assault this dry, hard, grassless place. Trying to gallop through a maze of twisting canyon trails where one shepherd on high with a pile of rocks could make corpses of an entire clan. Then assaulting buildings high on the canyon walls.
And what would we find if we broke through? Dark passages leading into their foul tomb of a city. Temmell chose me well for this piece of thievery. Only Alexamir has the courage to enter Hadra-Hareer by guile and the skill to copy the spells the wizard needs.

The
Arrow
slid into a network of wooden piers, anchoring with trading cogs bobbing off either side. Hundreds of labourers moved across the piers, loading and unloading vessels, working pulleys on gantries filled with workers. There was a rare noise here. Loud with yelled orders and the calls of sailors, porters and riverside traders. A series of ferries pulled on ropes added to the crowds, carrying travellers and merchant caravans in from the opposite riverbank. Further down the canyon there was an airstrip where a plane looked like it was being prepared for launch. It was a lot bigger than the two-person flying wings of the Rodalian skyguard. Foreign, then. Unlike the
Arrow
’s previous layovers, no harbour town or crescent of warehouses and riverside buildings waited for them beyond the vessel. The piers serviced a single entrance carved into the canyon’s walls, but what an entrance. Stone steps rose up to pass below an arch that must have been at least a hundred feet wide and fifty feet tall, hundreds of people passing between forty sturdy crenellated columns that helped hold up the distant ceiling. A portcullis sat suspended high above the throng of Rodalians, spikes as sharp as spears and as welcoming as the teeth of a lion’s mouth, this gullet protected by a further fortune in metal in the form of two vault-like gates on rollers that could be drawn together, sealing the capital’s ground entrance off with all the finality of a rock-slide. A long line of statues gazed down on Alexamir, carved in the canyon wall above the gate, hideous crouching gargoyles with wincing faces from a nightmare.
The rice-eaters should know it takes more than stone sentries to scare the Prince of Thieves. I will need to teach them.

Alexamir rested his hands on the side of the ship and took in the scene. All of life was here outside the city entrance. Traders and merchants. Pilgrims and fishermen. Porters and hawkers. The day’s labours and even a little romance. Just down below the ship there was a small passenger carriage waiting on the port road enacting what looked like the concluding moments of a tender farewell. A young man and a woman saying goodbye to each other. The woman was pregnant, although Alexamir could only just tell, as she wore a thick green hooded cloak against the cold. The man left her in tears and mounted the carriage, joining a bored-looking female in a leather military-style aviator’s uniform and an old man with a thick white beard. Alexamir couldn’t see the cloaked woman’s face, but the aviator looked handsome enough. The young man’s second wife, perhaps? A trader of the air re-joining his aerial clan, leaving a pregnant girl behind? It was hard to tell. All Alexamir had seen of the great merchant carriers that crossed the skies were the plundered ruins of the aircraft that had run out of fuel trying to cross the steppes. Just before the carriage rattled away, its twin yaks pulling it towards the narrow airfield, Alexamir saw that the old man had noticed the nomad’s voyeuristic intrusion into his family affair, staring up at the ship and ‘Norbu’ with a puzzled gaze.
Is there something about that old fellow’s face that looks familiar?
He dismissed the thought.
I know nobody in this city.
Alexamir couldn’t help but grin. This old dog was probably the elder who had insisted the boy re-join the clan and leave his foreign dalliance behind.
The same reason the crew of the
Arrow Jang
think I’m really travelling here – a dishonoured girl left behind in my village and a disgraced Norbu off to seek his fortune.
When he looked again the cloaked girl was lost among the crowd and the carriage gone. Behind him, the cog’s skipper was busy supervising the emptying of his cargo hold and Alexamir gave the master a hasty wave as he swayed down the gangplank across to the harbour-side, eager to enter the capital city at last. His boots had just swapped the wood of the pier for the muddy ground of the canyon when the squat Weyland soldier, Nocks, caught up with him. The soldier had taken his time, collecting his belongings from the ship’s hold, but then there was a queue of passengers jostling for their baggage and eager to leave for the capital.

‘I know what you are, Norbu,’ said Nocks.

‘You should do, you threw me the steel to sever the monster’s tentacle. I’m the man who saved your hide on the river.’

‘Damned if I threw that blade to any Rodalian. I could melt me a thousand shepherds down and I still couldn’t pour them mountain boys into a decent battle. I’ve seen Rodalians fight and I’ve seen Nijumeti use their skills. You fight like a drunken madman, all fury and no fear. You’re kin of Artdan, all right. A steppes-raised rider. You even sound like Artdan. I don’t know what skin dyes you’re using to fool these river-rats, but it don’t fool old Nocks. I cut you, I reckon you’ll bleed as blue as the sky.’