Angelslayer: The Winnowing War (43 page)

“There is no more to tell, Captain. You warned Lothian, but we both know he must have found Euryathides and he went in alone. According to Satariel, they were not killed for their blood, instead they were taken as slaves. Oraculum has nearly been mined out, the mines still working are deep pit, the metal far underground. The dust and darkness kill mortals; they kill Etlantians, as well, but as long as there are slaves to be gathered, the Etlantians will continue to dig it out of the Earth.”

“Then he is your greatest enemy,” Hyacinth said. “And someone has spared you his destruction.”

“Aye,” said Storan, “and in no natural way.”

“Satariel has done you a favor, then?”

“Satariel has crushed Euryathides's ship,” answered Darke. “I doubt it was as a favor to us.”

“Yet it is curious.”

“And personal,” added Danwyar.

Darke dropped down the ladder and went into his cabin. He came out tying on the scabbard of the Daathan's sword. The pirates gathered about. “I will take a single ashore boat.”

He searched the faces of his men. He knew this time it would not be as the last. It was likely few of the men he picked would make it back; still, his choices were not much different.

“Taran,” he said, and the young pirate stepped forward, nodding, already equipped with sword, his buckler over his shoulder.

“Storan.”

“I am ready, Captain.” “Danwyar.”

Danwyar nodded. He had already gathered his weapons. Darke searched the others.

“Marsyas,” he said. As though he had known, Marsyas the Etlantian slid his arm through the strap of his heavy iron shield, dropping it over his back. The war hammer he carried was already hanging from his belt. He stared up through his mutilated face and nodded.

Darke searched further. Two more, at most.

“Gryn,” Darke said. Gryn nodded his shaggy head. He was an oarsman, built large, with massive shoulders. Gryn was not particularly adept at weapons, but he could move the ashore boat swifter than any man Darke had, and his strength left him capable with the heavy, black double-edged iron he carried.

Darke turned. He found Hyacinth standing beside him, wearing a small breastplate, her crossbows loaded and her belt of daggers all with moss-grown sheaths to keep their poison.

Darke shook his head. “No.”

“I am going.”

“It is a death trap, Hyacinth.”

“And I choose to die with you, Captain.”

“I cannot allow that.”

“Captain, I can go in your boat, or I can swim ashore, but I am going with you. Besides, I am not a Tarshian. I am not actually under your command. I will go where I wish.”

“Hyacinth …”

“You choose any one of your big men, muscles in their fingernails,” she shouted, eyes fired, “and I will lay him at your feet in a breath. I have more poisons than I have names for. If you die, Captain, I die!”

There was a moment's silence.

“Try backhanding the little bint up the side of her head,” Storan grunted.

“She is not giving you a choice, Captain.” Danwyar said. “As you knew she would not. You let your feeling get in the way of judgment; considering her particular talents it is foolish to leave her behind.”

“One more, then,” Darke said, searching. “The count should be seven.” Darke searched the decks, then glanced upward. The Rat was waiting in the nest. He was not even looking toward deck, but was searching the wreckage of the Etlantian ship, fascinated.

Ten years ago they had pulled him from the sea where he was found clinging half-dead to a splinter of ship's whaling. He had been burnt over most of his body. He still screamed at night.

“Fire Rat!” Darke called.

“That mindless lizard?” Storan complained.

At the mention of his name, Fire Rat perked up. His bones often seemed to have no flesh—his skin could have been a fabrication of scarred, tanned leathers, but one side of his head had long hair, tangled and yellow as gold. He wasn't pretty, but he could see a ship on the horizon before its masts had cleared the skyline, and he was good with fire. Amazingly good. In all battles, Fire Rat handled the siphons of the flame throwers like they were his children.

Rat slithered quickly down the mainmast, then dropped the last few feet and vanished into a hatchway. Belowdecks he set about rummaging and clanking as he picked through his things.

“We shall need the king in the angel's sackcloth,” Darke said. “Storan, Marsyas, you tend to that. Cut his cords and warn him the angel wants his skin. Give him a weapon and shield.”

“Are we giving him the sunblade?” Danwyar asked.

“I shall carry it for now. Give the king a double-edged iron.”

Storan grumbled. “And when we give the bastard a sword and shield, how do we stop him from killing us before we get him in the sack?”

“He will cooperate, Storan,” Hyacinth answered.

Storan glanced at her and grunted. He turned, Marsyas following.

Fire Rat emerged from the lower deck, his bare feet pounding across the wood. He crouched like a hunchback with a load of tightly wrapped, waxed goat's bags. Each bag was filled with flint and a mixture of sulfur powders and rock. He had learned to use fire from the Etlantians and was as good at it as any Darke had known. In fact, he lived for fire. Rat found all his materials on his own. They had scarcely reached landfall when the he was over the edge, returning past dark, laden with nets of seemingly worthless oddments. And for his skins, Rat could spot a goat on an island before most could see land.

It occurred to Darke that his shore party was something short of a circus. So be it. He was a pirate now. Once it had been different. Once men would have known him by different names, but those times had bled away, and the blood between then and now was deep enough to sail a longship through.

He turned to study the Etlantian ship. Darke knew Euryathides was far too cunning to have sailed into the bay of an uncharted island, which this was. It was an island that had not been here even days before. Even if he had been curious of it, Euryathides would have anchored offshore, sent in longboats. But the longboats still dangled from their davits.

“Where are the bodies?” Danwyar puzzled, also studying the ship. “I see no bodies.”

Darke had been wondering the same. An Etlantian war galley would carry nearly two hundred men full crew.

Loch was jerked out of a cold, dreamless sleep. Storan had thrown open the hatchway, eyed the king, then grabbed him by an ankle and wrenched him out of the hold.

“Here you come, you royal bastard! Watch your head!”

Loch's head thudded resoundingly on the deck.

Storan paused. “Ah, shame, Marsyas, we banged his head.”

Storan crouched, drew his dagger, and began cutting through the ropes. Loch glanced at Marsyas—noticing the eye with its lizard lash.

The ropes had been so tight, it was as though his skin was being sliced open to let him out.

“We be cutting you loose, boy!” Storan announced as he cut through the last ropes.

Loch slowly got to his feet. Pain was everywhere. He shook out his arms, but his joints and muscles were so stiff it was difficult at first to even stand. “I suppose I should thank you.”

“Do not thank me. None of this was ever my idea. Here.” Storan tossed him a leather belt with a heavy sword in its wooden scabbard. “Put that on. We are going to hold court with a godless angel who long ago forgot his mother's name and the captain says to arm you.”

“Then you have found the angel?” Loch said, pulling on the belt.

“Found an island that stinks of him, though he has not personally greeted us as yet. He knows your name, boy, now what you think of that? Asked specifically for you. Endlessly odd how things play out, is it not?”

Loch buckled his belt. They had sailed through to the center of the storm. Like the eye of a hurricane, the skies here were quiet. He still found it incredible the Tarshians were going to face an angel. It was like walking to their deaths, but they seemed to care little of it. Satariel. It came to him without thinking; the angel was Satariel, of the choir of the Melachim, but there was something else. The angel had turned; he had not only fallen, but he had begun to age. It made sense, it came to him—Satariel the angel had panicked and had hired a thief to bring him. Just as Azazel, he was going to attempt to sever the root of the Daath. Azazel was a high lord, the equivalent of an archangel, yet his assassins had failed. Now the Tarshians had walked into an angel's death trap, and Loch wondered if a fallen, weakened angel who was no more than a coward would succeed where a high lord of the choirs had failed. Satariel might be hurting, but he was easily capable of killing them all.

Storan threw a bronzed shield so hard Loch barely caught it before it hit his face.

“Shield for you.”

“You know, of course, you are all going to die,” Loch said.

“You have opinions, you can share them with the captain. You wish to know what I think, Daath—knowing we are all about to die is no news whatsoever. Now …” Storan motioned to Marsyas. The big monster lifted an ash-cloth sack from his shoulder, then held it open.

“Step in the sack,” Storan ordered.

“What?”

“In you go. Goddess be blessed, but it so turns out the angel has asked for you in sackcloth and we have not come all this way to disappoint the unholy bastard. Now, get in.”

Loch glanced at the monstrous Etlantian. There was little use in fighting; they were in the middle of nowhere and even if he killed every Tarshian and miscreant about the captain's ship, he would still be stranded on the angel's island. He stepped into the sack, and the Etlantian pulled it over this head, then tied off the top rope.

He felt Storan grab the weft. The pirate's dagger came close to Loch's face as two holes were cut, sawing out little circles. Through them, Loch saw Storan step back and tilt his head.

“See, I am not a bad person at all, I have cut some eye holes for you. You can thank me later. Pick him up, Marsyas, and let us go see what kind of party the angel has arranged for us.”

H
yacinth watched with a tingle as Loch was lowered into the longboat with her and the others. Storan had apparently cut holes for his eyes, and Hyacinth noticed a curl of night-black hair. The longboat shifted as Marsyas and Gryn pulled against the looms of the oars, pulling away from the ship. They began for the shore of the dark island. Men from the blackship's railing watched silently. Hyacinth knew the captain had chosen this small crew carefully. She wondered briefly why he hadn't taken more men, but that was his way. At high sea, all the crewmen were warriors; even the rowers became spearmen and archers. But any time he went ashore, he did so in small, handpicked groups.

She had always found Marsyas curious. She had never mind-walked him, but she had probed and all she found was pure anguish and what might be called a thirsting wait.

Next to him was Gryn, the rower, thick with muscle, weighted heavy and hard. On the looms he pulled the ship through the waters as though it were gliding.

Behind Gryn, in the stern, was Fire Rat. He squatted against the gunwale watching the water curl beneath the ship. He suddenly pulled a net, attached it to a short stick, and looped it over the side.

“Elyon's name,” said Storan, “we are not fishing here!”

The Fire Rat ignored him, but when he caught a wriggling fish, Storan slapped it, stick and all, out of his hands.

“Why did you do that?” Taran asked. “Maybe he was hungry.”

“It is sad, but we are not here for lunch.”

Taran set his hand on Hyacinth's thigh, to reassure her. He was big, he was good with the sword, and he would fight like heaven's fire for her, but she was little comforted. If not for the Angelslayer in his sackcloth, Hyacinth would be certain they faced nothing here but a quick death. Her only real hope was Loch. Though she knew he wasn't aware of any certain way to kill an angel, there was a power in him she had found in no other she had ever mind walked before. He was not only unique, he was gifted of heaven's light far more than even the seers and priests she had known.

“Tell me, priestess,” Danwyar said, “do you feel him—this bastard angel Satariel—there waiting for us?”

She turned, scanning the island. “I feel nothing here that lives, Danwyar.”

“Bring her hard about,” Darke said. “Keel her in the sand, in line with the pavilion.”

Hyacinth stood, searching. A red pavilion flapped in a light breeze, far up on the black dirt of the island. It was the only thing of color. Behind it, the high black spires looked like something they had seen in the Daathan city, or even in a high church of the followers of Enoch found in the western islands. It seemed an odd choice the angel had made in design. She wondered if one were able to travel stars and to visit whatever planets circled the seventh star of the Pleiades, if the same spires could also be found, if perhaps they were the spires of voyagers.