The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) (25 page)

A thought occurred to Arla.

“We found a room at Delantic’s house,” she said. ”His servant tried to kill me to keep me out, but there was nothing inside. Magic, I think. It felt wrong. Do you think the mage lord…?”

“I suppose so,” Ella replied. “But he will want to see the blue crystal first. Sam said you had it locked away somewhere.”

“Aye, I do.” She would rather have thrown the thing into the sea. But there was a chance that it held the secret of freeing the chief, and so she had wrapped it in wool and locked it in a box where it could be neither seen nor touched. She had been careful not to touch it herself. Who knows what it might do?

“You were at Samara plain,” Ulric said. “We’ve all heard tales, but you were there.”

“There’s not much to tell,” Ella said. She looked a little uncomfortable, but Arla had never heard the tale first hand.

“They say he destroyed the army with a wave of his hand,” Arla said.

Ella shook her head. “It wasn’t like that.”

Ulric leaned forwards. Ella sighed. “Well, if you must have the story you shall have all of it,” she said. “It will take a while.” She picked up one of Ulric’s snacks, examined it and put it down again. “It began with a book buyer,” she said.

Gilan was given a fresh set of clothes before he ate with the captain of this new ship. The others, too. A sailor took care of this chore, made sure that he had a decent set of cottons that fitted him, and led him to the captain’s table.

It was by no means as grand a spread as that on the Red Fox, but it seemed more familiar. The food was simple and of the kind a guard officer recognised. He was there ahead of the others and the captain poured him a cup of wine.

“You’re certain the killer is dead?” Captain Parl asked.

“Aye. He’s at the bottom of the sea, and his head, too, though I’ll wager there’s some distance between them.”

“I heard there was some magic in him, in all of them,” Parl said.

“Nothing a sharp blade can’t cure,” Gilan said. “But you have to take the head.”

Parl nodded. “You think this brigand captain might be another such?”

The thought had not occurred to Gilan. He examined it briefly, but it didn’t fit with what he knew. The killers behaved like wealthy, urbane men. A pirate captain hardly fit the description. “I doubt it,” he said. “I’d guess he’s just a hired man, but we can know for sure if we catch him. They bear a mark, a tattoo on the chest.”

“We’ll see soon enough.”

Diara was ushered in, dressed like Gilan in cottons and with her hair tied back severely. She looked a little uneasy. Gilan put that down to the last time – probably the only time – she had dined in a captain’s cabin. That hadn’t ended well.

Captain Parl made polite conversation, not pressing them on what had taken place aboard the Red Fox, until Corban Saine joined them. Somehow Saine had found something rather better to wear, and appeared in a blue jacket with silk panels and a pair of woollen trousers. He looked almost prosperous.

The questioning began. Parl watched all three of them as they answered, and Gilan knew he was looking for evasion or lies, but all three told the truth as they knew it, and eventually it seemed that Parl was satisfied.

“You will forgive my curiosity,” he apologised. “But I am tasked with this mission by the Do-Regana herself, and it is to her that I must report. I am anxious that I should have the details clear in my own mind.”

But it was more than that, Gilan thought. Parl was a cautious man. If there was something to know then he wanted to know it before he committed his ship and men to a fight. Gilan admired him for that. He would have made a good guard officer.

Gilan ate well. He had the soldier’s habit of filling his belly whenever the opportunity arose. It was a way of living in the moment. It did not serve a soldier to dwell too much upon his uncertain future. He had seen too many friends fall.

The meal ended abruptly when one of Parl’s men came below decks and informed him that they were a few minutes shy of bowshot from the other vessel. They all went up on deck.

The pirate ship was now clearly visible before them. It had grown from a distant sail to the point where Gilan could make out the planking on the stern.

“Have you named her?” the captain asked a deck officer.

“Aye captain, she’s the Falcon.”

“That one? She’s been a thorn long enough. We’ll pluck her now.” He walked over to starboard. “Raise shields,” he said.

Men sprang to winches and wooden walls rose out of the deck. Gilan watched the preparations with great interest. He had never seen a sea battle before.

Other sailors appeared carrying crossbows, but these were bows the like of which he had never seen. It took three men to carry each, and there were four of them. They were mounted on posts on the starboard side before narrow gaps in the wooden wall that now rose seven feet above the deck. The bolts placed upon them were four foot long, steel and barbed. They looked positively wicked, and Gilan thought them somewhat excessive for killing men. Each bolt ended in a ring, and ropes were tied there and each rope was drawn from a windlass that stood in the middle of the deck.

“Stand ready,” the captain called.

There was a general movement towards the shields. Parl turned to his guests.

“It will get quite busy up here for a while. You will be safer if you go below.”

Gilan shook his head. He was fascinated by what was taking place all around him. “I’ll stay, if it’s all the same,” he said.

Diara stayed, too, but Corban Saine retreated, and that was right, Gilan thought. Saine was a merchant and had no interest in bloodshed, maritime or otherwise.

Arrows began to fall on them, biting at their wooden shield and striking the port side of the deck, cutting the sails and sticking in the masts. The crew of the Sword did not shoot back, but crouched and waited. Gilan watched them and found them unafraid. They knew what was coming.

The brigands shot fire at the sails – arrows dipped in tar and set ablaze – but the Sword’s sails did not burn, and in a short space of time they drew alongside the pirate. Parl raised his hand, peering through the gap by one of the great crossbows.

“Now!” he cried.

The crossbows let go, and Gilan realised for the first time that they were not pointed at the brigand’s deck, but down at her hull. He heard the splintering of wood as they struck home.

“Haul her in,” the captain called.

Men jumped to the windlass behind each bow and began to turn them. The ropes creaked under the strain, but inch by inch they hauled the pirate closer. Gilan heard the whisper of drawn steel. He drew his own borrowed blade and wondered how the battle would proceed. He did not fancy the idea of jumping across between ships.

Now the men aboard the Sword began to fight back. From behind their shield they shot a hail of arrows that quickly took a toll of the enemy. The pirates had nowhere to hide. Foot by foot the ships came together until a shudder told Gilan that they had touched.

An order from Parl revealed yet another surprise. The shields that had protected them were hinged, and at the order they were dropped so that what had served as a shield the moment before became a highway spanning the gap between the ships. Gilan was so taken aback by this sudden transformation that he was far from the first to cross this new bridge, but he gathered himself and sprang across the gap into the melee.

It was not an even battle. Parl’s men were trained. They had some skill with their weapons, and that put the pirates at an immediate disadvantage. Gilan found himself searching for a chance to use his blade. He found a man armed with an axe who swung it at his head. Gilan dodged the blow with ease and had all the time in the world to kill the man as he struggled to bring the heavy weapon back under control. It was almost embarrassingly easy.

He pushed and cut his way through the struggling mass of men and jumped up onto the captain’s deck. There were four men here, and none of them his allies. One of the men was the one who had called across to their small boat.

“Lay down your blades,” he told them.

One of them raised a bow, only to be cut down by an arrow himself. Gilan glanced back over his shoulder and there was Diara, back on the captain’s deck of the Sword of Samara, already fitting another shaft. He had no idea where she’d found another bow, but he was grateful that she had.

“Surrender,” he called again.

“I choose a quick death over a slow one,” the captain said. “You won’t hang me.”

The remaining three men attacked, but again Gilan was impressed by their lack of skill. It was almost as though they took turns, and he fended them off with ease. His problem, if it could be said that he had one, was that they made up for each other’s poor timing, and it was a little like fighting one skilled man. But Gilan knew that Diara was simply waiting for one of them to step away from him.

Inevitably one of them made that mistake and Diara’s arrow took him in the shoulder. His sword rattled across the deck and he fell backwards. Gilan took advantage of the moment to skewer the pirate captain’s last remaining companion and now they were one on one. It was as uneven a match as any Gilan had enjoyed. The only handicap he now had was that he wanted the man more or less intact. It wasn’t an outcome that the guard had trained him for.

Gilan backed away, giving himself space to move. The captain was cautious, too, circling round towards the back of the ship, but it was desperation that made the first move. He lunged at Gilan, but the blow was slow and clumsy. Gilan batted the blade away and punched the captain in the face with his sword hand. It was a good blow, and it rocked the man back on his heels, drew blood, but the captain was a hard man and he didn’t go down. He attacked again.

This time Gilan was ready. He sidestepped the blade, caught the captain’s wrist with his free hand and turned, ramming the elbow of his sword arm into the man’s gut. He heard a whoosh of breath as the captain’s lungs emptied, and finally brought the hilt if his blade down on his opponent’s wrist.

The captain’s sword fell to the deck.

Gilan spun the man around and put his arm across his throat, pinning his remaining good hand.

The fight was over. On the main deck, too, the battle had finished and Parl’s men were in control. There were only a few bodies, and most of those were pierced with arrows. It seemed that the brigands had been quite easily overwhelmed.

Gilan handed his captive over to the victorious Samarans. He would question the man later. Now he wanted to search his cabin to see if he could find anything that would prove a link – a letter, perhaps. He went down onto the main deck and met Diara there.

“That was good work,” he said to her. She nodded, neither embarrassed nor surprised. “We’ll search the cabin,” he said.

They walked to the top of the companionway and descended. Gilan took a good look around. There was a quantity of cargo stowed here, all lashed down, but nothing caught his eye. Most of it seemed to be food or drink, and he supposed that more valuable booty would have been stored elsewhere.

The captain’s cabin lay behind a plain door, and lacked either the opulence of the Red Fox or the neatness of the Sword of Samara. There was nothing with the appearance of a desk, but a box beside a chair seemed to contain an untidy mass of papers. Gilan sat down and picked up a handful.

The ship shuddered. It was like nothing Gilan had ever felt. He was thrown forwards in the chair and had to grab at the arms to stop himself being pitched across the floor. Papers scattered across the room. He looked at Diara. She’d gone down on her hands and knees to avoid falling.

“What was that?” he asked.

Diara shrugged. “We hit something?” she ventured.

There were disturbing noises from up on deck. Men shouting, feet running, and Gilan realised that the gentle rolling motion of the ship had ceased. He decided that the captain’s papers could wait.

Back up in the open air it was apparent that something was very wrong. Gilan grabbed a sailor running past.

“What happened? Did we hit a reef?”

“A reef? There’s no reefs out here.” The man looked scared.

“Then what?”

The man just shook his head. He clearly had no idea, and Gilan let him go. Striding to the bow of the captured ship he looked over the rail, but there was nothing there, just the endless blue of the sea going down to depths he could not imagine.

“Gilan.”

He turned at Diara’s voice, which was half a warning and half something else.

The ship was on fire. Smoke boiled up from the centre of the deck, thick and black, but he could see no flames, and the smoke looked wrong. It looked organised.

“Black door,” Diara said. Of course she was right. He’d seen the Faer Karan create black doors a hundred times. He’d stepped through them. It was how the demons travelled – one step covering a hundred miles or more. As he watched the smoke settled, ignoring the wind, until it formed a smooth rectangle about seven feet high and three wide. It was the last thing he’d expected to see on a ship.

The door stood there for a moment, perfectly still, and then a man stepped through. He paused, looked around him, and seemingly satisfied with what he saw he gestured and the door dissolved, wisps of darkness drifting away on the sea breeze. The new arrival walked up to where Gilan stood, rooted to the deck, which chose this moment to resume its natural motion.

“You must be Gilan,” the man said. “You’re a hard man to find.”

Gilan just gaped. The man held out his hand and said the words that Gilan knew he was going to say.

“Cal Serhan,” he said.