Return of the Crimson Guard

arms were raised as he communicated with his fellow mages. Any moment now. Shimmer wrapped one arm around the stern-mast. Ahead, the gate had stopped its backward sweep and now awaited them, fathoms tall. It resembled an enormous waterfall, appearing from empty air. Shimmer was assaulted by the disorienting impression that the gate that awaited them was in fact the surface of the sea and it was they who were racing uncontrollably down a chute to their destruction. Togg, Oponn, Burn and Fanderay protect us. But Hood… look on you who can never have us!

As the bow pierced the barrier Shimmer had one last impression of Smoky, arms raised as if to fend off some vision of ruin, Greymane, the Malazan renegade, knees bent in a ready stance, one arm stretched tight, a rope twisted around it, then the roaring — no, hissing, seething, gate was upon them and she was blinded…

A shuddering crash — an arm-wrenching blow threw Shimmer down as if hammered. The screech of wood cracking, the heavy slow creak of an enormous weight slamming into the deck — a split mast — and men shrieking. Water splashing and washing sullenly, turgid, followed by silence leaving only the groan of wounded. Shimmer pulled herself to her feet, rubbed her shoulder where she had collided with the mast.

‘Man overboard!’ came a shout.

‘Man overboard!’ a distant echo sounded. Shimmer looked to port, where the Gedrand wallowed, one mast split a third from the top and tangled among its rigging.

‘The Kestral?’ she called across.

A voice responded, faint, ‘Here also!’

Yes. Wherever here was. ‘Smoky!’

‘Overboard,’ a Guardsman answered.

Shimmer went to the side. Men and women foundered splashing on a surface of wreckage and pale driftwood. So dense was the debris that the ropes thrown to them hardly even got wet. Shimmer spotted the kinky-haired mage clinging to a log. Something about the waters and the horizon was strange but she didn't have the time to give over to that just then. ‘Captain!’ The Kurzani captain and the first mate came to her. ‘Report.’

‘Seams sprung,’ said the first mate, pulling at his full black beard. ‘Taking on water.’

‘Can you re-caulk?’

A resigned shrug. ‘Have to try.’

‘Very well. Take all you need for pumping and bailing. Dismissed.’ Shimmer went to help the old tillerman, Jhep, to his feet. He seemed to have taken a blow from the broad wood handle. ‘Send the mage to me!’ she shouted as loud as she could.

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ someone responded from the deck.

She sat the man next to the tiller, which stood motionless though no one controlled it. Frowning, Shimmer rested a hand upon it, feeling for any sensation of motion or pull. Nothing. They were dead in the water. Not what she was expecting.

‘Commander.’

Water dripping to the deck planking next to Shimmer announced Smoky's presence. Shimmer studied the tillerman's eyes: both looking forward, pupils matching. She knew what to look for, the danger signs; years in the battlefield would teach anyone the basic treatment of wounded. ‘Take over here, Smoky.’

‘Yes, Commander. Have you seen?’

‘Seen what? I've been busy.’

Smoky waved an arm in a broad sweep all around. The mage was looking off to the distance. His gaze seemed stricken. ‘Well,’ he said, his voice tight. ‘Better take a look.’

Shimmer straightened and went to the side. Glancing out she stopped, her hands frozen at the shoulders of her mail coat. What she had taken to be distant islands — the source of the driftwood and jetsam — were not. Ships surrounded them, or rather they rested in the midst of a sea of motionless vessels stretching from horizon to horizon.

Complete silence oppressed Shimmer with its weight. A sea of ghost ships. Most of those nearby appeared to be galleys, though more distant vessels looked to be far larger, tiered sailing vessels. One such leagues out among the grey timber expanse must be enormous to stand so tall. All the crew on deck, she now saw, lined the sides motionless, staring. Some kind of enchantment? But no, probably the sight alone sufficed. ‘Smoky,’ she managed. ‘What is this?’

‘You're asking me?’

‘The Shoals,’ said a voice in Kurzan, lifeless and flat.

Shimmer turned. It was Jhep, his eyes dead of emotion. ‘The Shoals? Explain.’

A weak shrug. ‘Legend. Old myth. Place where the god of the sea sends those he curses. Or those who trespass against him. Maybe this is where all those who try to use Ruse end up, hey? No wonder we heard nothing.’ And he laughed, coughing.

The blow to the head — must be. The alternative… Gods! No wonder there had been no resistance; you were always welcome to enter. But exiting, well, there was none.

There must be another explanation. Currents… a backwater…’

‘There's no current,’ said Smoky.

‘Well — any ship would sink in time.’

‘No. No sinking in this sea.’

Exasperated, Shimmer faced Smoky. ‘Explain yourself, Hood take you!’

Grinning, the Cawn mage touched a finger to his tongue. ‘Salt. The saltiest sea I've ever tasted. Nothing can sink here. Even I floated and I can't swim.’

Shimmer threw herself to the gunwale, gripped it in both hands.

Damn Mael! Damn these fool mages whose arrogance had brought them to such an end. Damn Cowl! How Hood must be laughing now; he need not trouble himself to take them away — they had just up and taken themselves!

Thinking of that, she allowed herself a fey grin, sharing the amusement. The poetic justice of it! She drew off her helmet. It all supported a private conviction of hers; that there existed a persistent balance in creation that in the end somehow always asserted itself. Usually in the manner least anticipated by everyone involved.

She turned to Smoky. ‘What now, mage?’ She waved to the horizon-spanning fields of marooned vessels. ‘You might burn an awful conflagration here to teach Mael a lesson, hey?’

But the wild-haired mage, resembling a drowned rat in his sodden robes already drying leaving a rime of salt flakes, was peering aside, pensive. ‘Something's up with the KestraL’

Shimmer spun. Through the jumbled rigging of the Gedrand she could make out the tall masts of the Kestral. Flags waved from the tallest. ‘Captain! Smoky!’

‘Aye.’

She sensed Smoky at her side, questing, but he shrugged. Nothing. The captain was called up from below. He arrived drying his hands, soaked to his waist. He studied the signals. ‘Get a man up high!’

Sailors scrambled up the rigging.

Atop the main-mast a sailor scanned the horizons, gestured a direction. ‘Light! A glow far off. Like the magery.’

‘What bearing!’ the captain bellowed.

Arms held out wide in hopeless ignorance.

Yes. What bearing? Shimmer glanced about the pale, almost colourless sky, the monotonous horizon all around. Who can say in such a place as this?

‘Show direction!’ the captain called. ‘Pilot — mark it.’ The Kurzani mate squinted up at the sailor, turned and raised a bronze disk to an eye that he peered through — slit with thin needle-fine holes Shimmer knew from studying it. He nodded to the captain. ‘Marked.’

The captain clapped his hands together. ‘Very good, Pilot. Men!’ he roared. ‘Lower launches! Ready oarsmen!’

‘Aye!’

Shimmer began unbuckling her belt. She looked to the Gedrand; they too had reached the same decision as sailors clambered over the launches readying them. So, becalmed we must oar to the