Brotherband 4: Slaves of Socorro (4 page)

H
al left Anders to continue working on
Wolftail.
The shipwright, after his initial doubts, had eventually come round to his way of thinking and was considering the best way to fit an extension to the mast support, so that the mast could be stepped further back in the hull.

Bjarni hovered anxiously over Anders’s shoulder, watching the craftsman at work and constantly querying what he was doing. Eventually, Anders turned to him, his patience exhausted.

‘Bjarni, don’t you have anything else to do?’

Bjarni shook his head, a blank expression on his face. ‘Not really.’

With great deliberation, Anders persisted. ‘What would you normally be doing on a day like this?’ he asked.

Bjarni gestured towards the stripped hull below them. ‘Normally, I’d be at sea, on board my ship. But that’s not really an option now that you’ve torn it to pieces.’

Anders thought about that for a second or two. There was really no argument with Bjarni’s logic.

‘Why don’t you go fishing?’ he suggested, adding quickly, ‘Off the harbour wall. You don’t need a ship for that.’

Bjarni looked blankly at him. ‘I don’t like fish,’ he said. ‘My mam made me eat it all the time when I was a boy and I just don’t like it now.’

‘Well, there’s no need to eat them,’ Anders told him. ‘You could just catch them and throw them back.’

‘What’s the point of that?’ Bjarni said. ‘Why throw them back if I catch them?’

‘Because,’ Anders said, with grim determination in his voice, ‘you don’t like eating them.’

‘Then there hardly seems any reason to catch them in the first place,’ Bjarni said, somewhat puzzled. He was beginning to wonder whether Anders was the right person to entrust his beloved
Wolftail
to. There seemed to be a definite lack of logic in the shipwright’s thinking, and Bjarni assumed that a person who worked with tools and wood and precise measurements might need to be logical.

‘There is a very good reason,’ Anders told him, stepping closer so that they were chest to chest. Unconsciously, Bjarni gave way, but Anders followed him, maintaining his invasive position. ‘If you stay here and keep driving me crazy by asking “What are you doing now?” and “Why are you doing it that way?” and “What’s that for?”, there is an excellent chance that I will brain you with a mallet.’

He gestured with a heavy wooden mallet that he used to drive his chisel. Bjarni regarded the mallet, and the shipwright’s well-muscled right arm.

‘Well, you only had to say,’ he said in a slightly aggrieved tone. He backed away, casting one last look at his beloved wolfship. ‘Be careful with her, won’t you?’

Normally, Anders would be incensed at the suggestion that he wouldn’t take care of any ship left in his hands. He was a meticulous craftsman. But the tactless question seemed a small price to pay for getting rid of Bjarni’s hovering presence.

‘I will treat her as if she were my own,’ he said, with a smile that tried to be reassuring – and failed miserably.

Bjarni noted the strained expression and wondered whether Anders might be suffering from indigestion. But wisely, he elected not to comment.

‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I’ll be on my way.’

Hal’s home, and the restaurant run by his mother, lay on the far side of Hallasholm. Rather than take the long, looping path home from the shipyard through the town, he chose a short cut that went up into the hills, cutting across a ridge, through the woodland above the town itself. It was peaceful and quiet in the woods and he enjoyed the patterns of light and shade thrown by the trees. This close to the coast, there was a mixture of growth, although pine trees predominated. As a result, there was a pleasant smell of pine needles in the air. He wondered what Erak wanted to see him about. He hoped there was some sort of mission in the offing. He and his crew were becoming stale and bored with short patrols.

Maybe we should go back to raiding, he thought, although he wasn’t serious.

For years, the Skandians had raided coastal settlements along the Stormwhite Sea and down into the Narrow and Constant Seas. Hal’s own mother had been captured in such a raid, in Araluen.

But the treaty Erak had struck some years back with King Duncan of Araluen had included a proviso that the Skandians should desist from that particular pastime, diverting as they might have found it. With their primary activity curtailed, Erak had searched for something else to occupy his restless men. It soon became evident that neighbouring countries would pay, and pay well, for ships and men who might protect their own trading and fishing fleets from predators. As a result, the Skandians had become a de facto naval police force, hiring out their ships to other countries to protect them from raiders and pirates from Sonderland and Magyara, among other less amenable countries. It had proven to be a good decision, with the revenue they received far exceeding the amount that they had made from raiding.

Of course, that had all happened when Hal was a mere child. But there were many older Skandians who remembered those old raiding days – some with a certain amount of nostalgia, it had to be admitted.

He spotted a bunch of yellow wildflowers growing beside the track and he paused, stooping to pick them for his mother. Karina loved having flowers in the house. As he stopped, he heard a rustling noise in the bushes behind him. He paused, his hand on the stems of the flowers.

‘Who’s there?’ he called. The thought occurred that it might be Stig or one of the other crew members, playing a joke on him. It was the sort of thing Jesper would do. The former thief loved to practise his old craft, sneaking around without being seen or heard.

Hal straightened up, half turning to look at the thick bushes where the sound had originated.

‘I can hear you, Jesper,’ he called, a trace of irritation in his voice.

The only answer was a rumbling growl from the shadows beneath the trees. The hairs on the back of Hal’s head stood on end. That definitely wasn’t Jesper, he thought. His hand dropped to the hilt of his saxe knife. As it did, he realised how insignificant that weapon would be if the sound was what he thought it was.

Namely, a bear’s snarl.

He had never heard a bear. But he assumed that a bear’s growl would be pretty much what he had just heard – deep, resonant and threatening. He began to back away along the path, stumbling on a protruding tree root and hastily regaining his balance, his heart in his mouth. Instinct told him that it would be best to move slowly. Yet every nerve in his body was screaming for him to run.

The bushes moved, as whatever was in there kept pace with him. Or was that why they moved, he wondered. It could be he was imagining things and it was simply the wind moving the branches.

Except there was no wind.

Kloof!

The sound was short, abrupt and threatening. He stopped, peering into the shadowy spaces between the thick bushes, trying to get some sight of what was following him. Nothing moved. He took another step backwards. Then another. Now fear was winning over instinct and he began to move faster, putting as much distance as possible between him and this growling,
kloofing
bear.

Kloof!

There it was again. Peremptory. Commanding. The bear obviously didn’t want him to get away. He stopped, and now he could see the bushes moving again. He could hear the passage of a heavy body shoving the undergrowth aside. It seemed to be moving at about waist height, and he estimated that a bear moving on all fours would be about that high.

He saw eyes glowing in the shadows beneath the bushes, then a face pushed through into the open.

Not a bear, he sighed with relief. A dog. But a dog bigger than any he had ever seen. So big, in fact, that it might well have been a small bear.

It was black, with a white muzzle and a white blaze that ran up between its eyes, so that it looked as if it were wearing a black mask. The body was black, with a white chest and a white underbody. The legs were black to about halfway down their length, where the black fur gave way to tan socks and white feet. There were tan markings on its jowls as well, and a tan spot above each eye. With its eyes evenly bisected by that white strip, and the two identical markings above them, there was a pleasing symmetry to the dog’s looks. Everything seemed to be just right, correctly in place. Its ears were floppy and black, again with tan highlights at the tips.

Kloof!

The dog spoke again and Hal sensed that it was hesitating about coming any closer. He dropped to one knee and held out his right hand, palm down and fingers loosely curled, towards the animal.

‘Kloof yourself,’ he said in a gentle, welcoming tone. ‘Come and say hello.’

The dog edged out from the bushes, then retreated half a pace, eyes fixed on Hal. He remained unmoving, still with his hand outstretched. The dog took another pace and emerged fully from the bushes. The big, heavy tail wagged tentatively. No, it didn’t wag, Hal corrected himself. It waved. Back and forth, back and forth, gaining conviction as it did so.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said, thinking how ironic that was. When he’d thought it was a bear, the dog had nearly caused him to lose control of his basic functions.

The dog shook its head.
Kloof!
it said again.

Hal nodded approvingly. ‘That’s quite a bark you have there,’ he told it. He wriggled his fingers and the dog moved a pace closer. Then two more.

It stopped just out of reach of his outstretched hand.

‘Don’t know what you’re scared of,’ he told it, speaking in a low voice. ‘You could bite my arm off at the elbow if you had a mind to.’

The dog moved closer still. He could feel its warm breath huffing onto his knuckles. Then the tongue came out and licked his fingers. The tail wagged more convincingly as the dog decided it couldn’t taste any threat on his hands.

‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘my knees are killing me. I might have to stand up.’

He opened his fingers, touching the dog lightly under its chin, rubbing the soft hair there. Its eyes half closed and he reached further, to fondle it under the neck. The dog tilted its head to enjoy the touch.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m going to stand up now.’

Slowly, he rose from his crouching position. As he began to move, the dog’s eyes snapped open and its ears pricked up in alarm as it reared back half a pace, both its forepaws coming off the ground as it did so. He kept his hand extended, and continued speaking softly to the dog as he stood.

‘Nothing to worry about. Nothing to be afraid of. It’s still just me.’

The dog eyed him warily, then its ears went down and it sidled forward again to be patted. It let out a low-pitched gurgle of pleasure as Hal fondled its ears, then turned and rammed its heavy body against his lower legs, nearly throwing him to the ground. It sat on Hal’s foot, trapping him, and held its chin up for more fondling. He obliged.

‘You’re a big one, aren’t you?’ he told it. ‘What’s your name?’ He put a little playful urgency in his tone as he repeated the question, ruffling the fur on its head and ears. ‘What’s your name, eh? What’s your name?’

The dog stood abruptly, tail lashing back and forth.

Kloof!
it said. He considered the sound.

‘Well, I suppose that’s as good a name as any,’ he told it.

O
n closer inspection, Hal determined that Kloof, as he now called the dog, was a female. She led the way back to his house, or rather, she pranced ahead of him, turning back from time to time to make sure she was heading in the same direction he was, wagging her tail to encourage him to keep up.

They approached the side door to the restaurant kitchen, where Hal would normally expect to find his mother, preparing for the evening’s trade. He gestured to Kloof to sit and, somewhat to his surprise, she did.

‘Wait here,’ he told her. She thumped her tail once on the ground. Some instinct told him that it might be unwise to let such a large animal come into the restaurant – particularly the part where his mother did the cooking. He mounted the steps to the side door and pushed it open, peering inside.

‘Mam?’ he called tentatively, rehearsing his next words. He wasn’t sure whether to start with ‘Look what I found’ or ‘Can I keep it?’. Either choice was a risk. ‘Look what I found’ left itself open to a reply along the lines of, ‘Fascinating. Now go and lose it,’ while ‘Can I keep it?’ invited the terse rejoinder, ‘No.’