Birds Mottle, who’d had a much sweeter name back then, found herself-as she stared down at the lifeless face of her father, the expression all twisted by that last scream of outrage-contemplating a future comprised of the war that had killed Da. Her sole inheritance, this feud she could not hope to win. What kind of life was that?
Why, it was filtering shit, wasn’t it?
Fifteen years old at the time, she’d collected a small pack full of things from the shack that stood on rickety stilts on the mud-flats-home-and set out for Clamshell Track, walking one last time that desultory route into Toll’s City where they’d once hawked their harvest. Not much of a city, Toll’s. The inner wall marked the modest extent of the town of twenty years past, and as for all the new buildings that rose outside the fortifications, well, not one stood more than two storeys tall.
Take a stick and jam it deep into the mud, just up where the waves reach on an easy day. Come back a week or two later and there’s a mound of silts gathered round the stick on one side, and a faint shallow pit on the opposite side. Unless a storm arrives to drag the stick away, the mound grows, the hole slowly fills in.
That was Toll’s City. A stone keep in the middle for the stick, the slow even drift of people from the countryside, silting up round the keep the way people did. A decade or so of miserable warfare, forcing the building of defenses, and then a time of “the drudgery of peace,” as the soldiers said to describe all those bells of wasted training and standing sentinel over borderlands no one gave a damn about.
She didn’t mind becoming a soldier. She didn’t mind the half-mad fools she’d been squad-mates with. Gust Hubb, Bisk Flatter, Sordid and Wormlick. And, of course, Heck Urse, the one she’d ended up taking to bed, as much from boredom as lust-although, and this was indeed a truth-boredom’s best answer, every time, was flat-out rutting, grunting, frenzied lust. Why, there was a world of married or otherwise committed women bored out of their skulls, when the obvious solution was right there in front of them. Or the hut down the road.
Too bad they’d lost Bisk, Sordid and Wormlick that night. And now maybe it’d all been an accident, the way the other dory popped a knot belly-deep in the trough, sucking itself and its three wailing soldiers right down to the bottom, where the riptide grabbed all it could on its rush back to deeper water. And maybe it was just the Lady’s pull’ o’luck that the rest of ’em, Sater and Ably included, were in the bigger boat, the one with all the loot, that made it out to the Suncurl where it strained its fore and aft anchors in that churning tidal flow in the cut.
And maybe even Sater had been telling the truth about that haul. Toll’s own mintage, silver and gold not yet grimed by a single grubby hand, aye, in bound stacks-well, she’d seen those, hadn’t she? Seen and heaved up from the boat, o’er the rail and into Ably’s waiting arms, the weight of wealth, so much wealth. But what about that other stuff? The burlap-wrapped, bulky objects, massively heavy, with knobs protruding, stretching the ratty fabric? Big as idols, swear up’n down, not that Toll’s City had much in the way of stupid-rich temples, like the ones she’d heard about from Bisk-who’d lived up in Korel and only escaped time on the Wall by turning in his kid brother. Huge temples, with thousands of poor people coughing up their last coppers into the big bowls even as they reeled glass-eyed from any of a dozen plagues that seasonally tore through the shantytowns. Rich enough, oh yes, for bloody idols and inset gems on those collecting bowls, and stealing from those soul-eating oh-so-pious crooks was just fine by her, and would’ve been, too, if that’s what they’d done and if those were what those wrapped-up things were, which they weren’t.
Half the city’s coinage, aye, the hoarded loot of the Chanters-that nasty mob of tyrants ruling the roost-all to buy the services of that cursed mercenary company, them Crimson Guard, and why’d they needed ’em? The unification of all Stratem, oh yes, with Toll’s City as the blustery capital. An end to skirmishes and feuds, to trader wars between damned factors out in the bush, to ambushes of furbacks and caravans of pelts burnt to a crisp just to make someone’s neighbour starve, babes and old alike and all in between, too. Mercenaries, yes, to deliver the drudgery of peace.
Imagine, then, arriving at the coast where it was said the damned Crimson Guard had landed by the hundreds, only to find the fools gone. Shipped back out, on their way somewhere else, and in a hurry, too.
Well, turn round and take it all back home?
Sater had a better idea, aye.
Maybe better. Maybe Birds Mottle wasn’t so sure anymore, now that she was embedded, head, shoulders and at least one tit, within a nightmare blob of squishing, squelching, wheezing, twittering, gasping, blinking and mouthing and throbbing… thing.
Embedded, aye. And more. Merged. Melded. Each breath a slimy inhalation of bright, cool liquid-air? No, wasn’t that. Spit? Could be, but spit brimming with whatever was in air that kept people alive. Blood? No, too thin. Too cool.
Eyes open, seeing red, mostly, and some pulsing arteries or veins. Not even blinking any more, since more cool liquid, yellowy perhaps, but thin as the lid on a snake’s eyeball, kept everything from drying out.
Embedded, the monstrosity dragging itself forward and dragging her in its wake. She struggled to get to her feet, so she could stand-but that wasn’t possible, she suspected-she’d never be able to lift this damned thing, not even in her arms much less tottering above uncertain footing.
Oh, what a lousy way to die. What a lousy way to stay alive, in fact. Dead would be good, yes, good indeed.
Likely unnoticed by anyone, Bauchelain had emerged onto the mid-deck, found his sword jammed by one edge into the rail off to his left-another hand’s length and the precious weapon would have gone over the side. Blood gleamed on the reddish-black iron. Tugging it free, he paused, glanced astern.
Something…
Curious, Bauchelain ascended the aft steps to the wheel deck. No one had tied off, leaving the rudder to flap and swing, turning the huge wheel every which way. Frowning, indeed disappointed by such sloppy seamanship, he continued on to stand at the stern rail. Looked out over the gloomy Red Road of Laughter’s End.
Crimson swirl, crimson phosphorescence, the wake jagged and random. He saw a faint carved trough, then noted the fishing line looped and knotted at the rail. They were trailing bait, possibly an unwise notion given the circumstances. Likely Korbal Broach’s doing. He stroked his beard, musing.
Commotion from the bow. Turning, Bauchelain squinted. The lich had struck again, the Jhorligg’s mindless hunger staining every soul with its desperate need. Misapprehension was ever a curse among the undead, alas. Although, given the emboldened strain of raw power curling through the currents on these seas, even misapprehension could acquire a certain… corporeal truth.
The lich devoured. And so grew in mass, in strength. A most curious evolution, quite possibly unique. Without doubt worthy of further study.
A final shriek wavered up from the latest victim.
Thrumming, as of a bass lyre’s string being plucked, drew him round once more. The fishing line was sawing back and forth, proof that something had been caught on the hook. A shark? Perhaps.
The line suddenly went slack.
Snapped? Most likely.
He saw dorsal fins in their wake, cutting the red-black water, rushing fast, then out, sweeping round the ship. Scores and scores. One of the sharks broke the surface barely a knife’s throw from the rudder-a creature two-thirds the length of the Suncurl. It twisted to avoid colliding with the stern, then slid past, buffeting the hull, its shiny buckler-sized eye flashing. Then plunged from sight.
The sharks, Bauchelain realized, were fleeing.
Well, these waters were indeed thick with dhenrabi-and there was one of the gargantuan segmented behemoths, breaching a huge, rolling swell a thousand strokes to the east. Astonishingly fast, he observed. Outracing even the sharks…
Bauchelain finger-combed his beard some more.
Gauze swaddled gust Hubb’s face just below his eyes and wrapping round his head in a thick band, the sun- bleached white material marred by three dark red blooms, one centre, the other two flanking at more or less the same elevation.
Noises assailed him. Chittering, snapping of jaws from one side, swirling water from the other. This was manageable, or so he had just concluded when, from the watery side, there came a devastating crunch and then vast, unbearable pain. The sudden assault was of such force that he bit down on his tongue and now there was even more blood, spurting from his mouth.
