Heirs of the Fallen: Book 03 - Shadow and Steel (6 page)

“Put out that damned fire,” Halan roared.

Leitos spun to find that while the flames had begun to die, they were far from out. As Brothers rushed to stamp out the fire, Leitos looked past them to the second Kelren ship, now aglow with lanterns, and teeming with movement. Even as he watched, the mainsail began to unfurl.

“It’s too late,” Daris said. “They must have seen saw the fire.”

“Surely they are not foolish enough to sail in this weather….” Sumahn trailed off. The ship was already setting out, nearly obscured by sheeting rain. “The cowards are leaving half their men behind.”

“Search below for our Brothers!” Halan ordered.

Leitos scrambled down the ladder to the rowing deck. Nothing moved, but the rank smell was worse below decks. Struggling not to gag, Leitos waited for the others to join him.

The light of a single firemoss lantern, hanging on a peg driven into an overhead beam, cast all in ugly yellow hues. Rainwater dripped onto rows of benches lining either side of the deck. Hull-side racks held stacks of long oars. The portholes through which those oars drove the ship were shuttered against the storm. Piles of crates and barrels, secured with webs of rope, nearly hid two closed doors set in the bulkheads on either end of the deck. On Kelren vessels, Ulmek had told them, the shipmaster’s cabin lay aft of the galley, and the crew’s quarters dominated the area beyond the forward bulkhead.

In the center of the rowing deck waited another large hatch that led down to the hold. The source of the ship’s stench—tar, salt fish, caged animals, unwashed men, rancid bilge water—wafted through the hatch’s wooden grating. That was where the slavers kept prisoners. Before venturing there, Leitos knew they must secure the rest of the ship, or risk getting trapped below. It took every bit of his will not to hurl caution aside, and seek out his father.

“Get Ke’uld onto the ship,” Ulmek called back over his shoulder, as he descended the ladder. Once his feet hit the deck, he pointed at Leitos, Sumahn, and Daris. “You three secure the shipmaster’s cabin. The rest of us will see to the crew’s quarters.” He frowned then. “We need to take any remaining sea-wolves alive.”

“One would do for information,” Sumahn said.

“We need them all alive,” Ulmek said, his tone brooking no argument.

Daris moved to the aft bulkhead. Leitos came next, with Sumahn last. Each held two blades ready. After reaching the door, Daris opened it a crack, then shoved it wide. The galley was a cramped, narrow space with three walls of cabinets, a small iron stove, and reeked of strong spices.

Daris led them through the galley, squeezed through another doorway, and led them into a short passage. To one side, a ladder climbed up a bulkhead to a leaky hatch in the main deck, and next to this stood an open doorway. Beyond it lay a small cabin, the floor scattered with clothes. A large rumpled bed was tucked into a recess in the rearmost section, and a table was set with a half-eaten meal.

“Seems this ship is without a master,” Sumahn said.

Daris opened his mouth to respond, but a sudden commotion cut him off.

The three turned and ran back the way they had come, and found Ulmek standing over a score of kneeling Kelrens, men and women all bleary-eyed from sleep and too much drink. Some were naked, others wore breechclouts, still more were garbed in voluminous trousers that looked as if they had never suffered a cleaning. All bore signs of quick, violent abuses—bloody cuts, broken noses, a few shattered limbs. Some few lay near the open door to the crew’s quarters, sprawled in unconsciousness. Bindings secured every pair of wrists and ankles.

“Check the hold,” Ulmek ordered, his flinty eyes locked on the slavers. He tested the edge of his dagger on a thumb, the slowly twisting blade throwing shimmers of light.

“You’ll find naught but rats and supplies in the belly of the
Bloody Whore’s
,” one man said, his hostile grin showing a mouthful of rotten teeth. Like his shipmates, his hair hung long and matted, his weathered skin dark, leathery, and covered in entwined brandings.

Ulmek’s flat stare did not change when he booted the man’s face, driving him to the deck. Chuckling wetly, the Kelren gathered himself, struggled back to a kneeling position. He spat blood and two shattered teeth at Ulmek’s feet.

Eager to see if his father and Ba’Sel were aboard, Leitos hurried into the murky hold, only to find it packed with supplies. “Send down a light,” he called, refusing to accept his eyes, or the Kelren’s word.

Sumahn passed him down a lantern, and Leitos held it high. Rats scurried over barrels, crates, timbers and tools, rolls of canvas and coils of rope, and all else that the slavers might need on their voyages. There were no men, no chains. Disheartened, Leitos climbed back to the rowing deck, and shook his head at Ulmek’s questioning look.

“Telmon does not lie,” the prisoner said with a shrug.

Ulmek kicked him again. This time, Telmon was slower getting back to his knees. Nose shattered and pouring blood, he looked at Ulmek with an expression that spoke not of anger, but something darker and far more dangerous. When his eyes found Leitos, his face changed to a greedy curiosity.

“You have the look of an Izutarian.”

“Do not speak to him,” Ulmek said to Leitos.

“Haven’t seen your kind in years,” Telmon said. “A pity. I miss the sweet tears that your women weep when they spread their legs for me and my fellows.”

A prickly heat flashed over Leitos’s skin. His sword flashed in a deadly stroke, but Ulmek caught his wrist.

“The other ship is almost out of sight,” Halan said through the hatch.

Ulmek cursed under his breath. “Sumahn, make sure these animals stay put.”

Telmon’s abrupt laughter filled the rowing deck, and the other slavers added their voices to his. Ulmek twined his fingers through sea-wolf’s ratty hair, then dragged him to the ladder up to the main deck. “Climb.”

Telmon spat again. “May a bloody pox infect your mother’s festering—”

Ulmek rammed Telmon’s face against a rung, ending his insult. “Climb, or I will shove this dagger through your spine. You’ll twitch and cry, but you won’t die … at least not quickly.”

Telmon’s face writhed with something beyond hate, but he went up the ladder, clumsily, for the ropes binding his hands and feet. Before he was halfway through the hatch, Halan snatched him out of sight.

“With me,” Ulmek said, pointing to Leitos and Daris.

The trio climbed into the storm. They joined Halan and a kneeling Telmon at the starboard rail, looking south. Lightning clawed at the black of night, highlighting the other ship’s ghostly outline.

“Where do they go?” Ulmek shouted above the wind.

Telmon laughed riotously. Ulmek clubbed him across the mouth, and asked again. Still laughing, Telmon said, “My mates sail for the hunting grounds.”

Those words sent a nervous flutter through Leitos’s belly, and he offered up a silent prayer for his father, Ba’Sel, and all the others.

Ulmek seemed unperturbed. “Then we will follow.”

“We do not know how to sail a ship!” Halan protested.

“No,” Ulmek agreed, “but our captives do.”

Telmon laughed all the harder. “I’d not help you if—”

Ulmek caught Telmon’s ear and wrenched his head to the side. His dagger flashed, and Telmon fell screaming to the rain-washed deck.

“You will help us!” Ulmek bellowed, flinging the severed ear into the Kelren’s face. “By the gods good and wise, you will sail this wallowing tub, even if I have to cut pieces off you until you do.”

As Telmon blubbered his newfound willingness, Leitos watched a foaming wave take the Kelren’s ear across the deck and over the side. What little pity he retained in his heart went with that bit of bloody meat. He let it go. For the sake of his Brothers and his father, he could not suffer any such feelings to stain his conscience.

Chapter 8

For two sleepless days and nights, the gale blew and raged. By day, under leaden skies, the
Night Blade
always sailed ahead of the
Bloody Whore
, a misty shape at the edge of sight. At dawn of the third day, the Brothers found that the ship had vanished.

Now nearing sunset, the swells still wore foaming white crowns, and the rain came sporadically in pounding sheets, but the worst of the storm had passed. In the time since the night of the raid, four more Kelrens had lost their ears to Ulmek’s blade, before the rest decided that sailing the ship without objection was the better option.

“I still believe they yielded too easily,” Leitos said, looking down the deck. From this vantage, they could keep an eye on the sea-wolves busy sailing the
Bloody Whore
.

“Perhaps,” Ulmek allowed, haggard of face and eye. A wave boomed against the hull, sending up a curtain of salty spray. He caught a rope tied about the foremast to keep his balance.

“They cannot be trusted,” Halan said.

“Of course not,” Ulmek snapped. “I suffer them to live out of need alone.”

“And after our brothers are with us again, what then?” Halan asked, his bluff features drawn, accentuating the dark circles under his eyes.

Ulmek scrubbed a hand over his face. “When we have rescued Ba’Sel and the others, I will strike off the heads of these sea-wolves until my sword breaks.”

Halan looked to a rosy slash of clouds hanging low over the southern horizon. By the coming dawn, the storm would be a memory. “We are not seafarers,” he said slowly. “We are far from home, and getting farther by the hour. Kill the sea-wolves, and we will remain far from home.”

“Then I suggest you learn from them,” Ulmek said. “Make them believe we mean them no harm.”

Leitos turned his eyes on the five slavers who wore bloodstained bandages around their heads, those who had lost their ears. He doubted they would ever make the mistake of believing they were safe in the hands of the Brothers of the Crimson Shield.

Telmon glanced at Leitos, bared his rotten teeth in a grin. Sumahn, standing nearby, slapped the back of the slaver’s head. Telmon flinched, looking like a feral animal about to lash out, then abruptly bent back to coiling rope.

“What if we do not find the
Night Blade
?” Halan ventured.

“We have no choice but to trust that we will find her where Telmon promised,” Ulmek said.

After discovering the disappearance of the
Night blade
, Ulmek had threatened to chop off a few more precious pieces of Telmon if he failed to explain how a ship could disappear. The slaver admitted that his comrades had likely dumped their cargo to make better speed. “To the south, there is nowhere else to go. I tell you true, they sail for the hunting grounds,” the slaver asserted, all the more believable because Ulmek had been a hair’s width from blinding the sea-wolf with the tip of his dagger.

“As do we?” Ulmek asked. The
Bloody Whore
sailed south, to be sure, but as none of the Brothers had ever ventured beyond sight of land, there was no way to know for certain if the Kelrens were sailing them where they claimed.

Telmon leered. “Soon, you’ll know Telmon does not lie. By midnight, unless the
Whore
strikes a reef and founders, she’ll be riding anchor beside the
Night Blade
….”

Ulmek interrupted Leitos’s grim study. “The storm is letting up. You, Halan, and two others go and get some sleep.”

“What of you?” Halan asked. “As our leader, you can ill-afford to neglect yourself.”

Ulmek’s fierce expression left no room for argument. “I will take rest when our men are safe among us.”

More than food, the opportunity of rest pushed Leitos below decks to collapse into a smelly hammock in the crew’s quarters. The night of his testing, the battle against the Kelrens, and the many long hours standing on the deck of the
Bloody Whore
, all seemed distant, memories so vague as to be someone else’s.

As soon as he closed his eyes, Zera materialized before him, clad in snug leathers. The scorching heat of her green eyes dwindled to reveal a glow of sorrow. She seemed smaller, childlike, vulnerable in a way that he never could have imagined when she strode at his side across Geldain. He reached for her, hands dripping the cooling scarlet life that had once flowed through her veins. When he touched her, she became as smoke and ash, and drifted away….

Leitos startled awake and stared up into the gloom. It was not the first time he had dreamed of Zera, but each time it was as if it were the first. He feared his grief for her loss would always remain as fresh and raw as an unhealing wound.

Gradually, he became aware that the ship rode the sea more smoothly. They had passed through the storm. The door to the crew’s quarters stood ajar, letting in murmured voices and a little light. He thought it might be the handful of slavers Ulmek had ordered chained to the rowing benches, until he made out the voices of Sumahn and Daris. Leitos clambered out of the hammock and strode from the crew’s quarters.

He found Sumahn and Daris sitting on a pair of upended casks, swords out. They cut off talking when he came into sight, as if caught saying something they should not. Sumahn grunted in greeting, then went back to using the tip of his sword to scratch some figure into the deck.