Now that Ash had run out of keesh to throw them, the gulls screeched in protest. The ship turned, its crew scurrying to readjust the scull sails, and headed towards a beach on the southern edge of the harbour, where a windsock flew from a high tower mounted on the rocks. Mooring masts were fixed along the shore, and a rotting skyship lay on the sand, without its envelope.
'Stay close,' Ash instructed Nico. 'We will be stopping in the city for only a few hours, but the tales you may have heard of this place are not without truth. Cheem Port is a den of dogs. We will be safe enough in daylight, but even so, do not stray from my side.'
'And after that, how long will our journey into the mountains take us?'
'Long enough, but it is good country, if you know the trails. Peaceful, too. Few people live in the interior, save for religious orders in their hermitages.'
'And schools of assassins?'
Ash stiffened by his side. 'We are not entirely assassins, boy.'
Puffs of grey smoke erupted along the ship's right side. Anchors were dropped, dragging through the water and then up on to the beach, with clumps of seaweed now snared in them. Lines followed, and men on the beach grabbed hold of them and ran them to the mooring masts. Skittish in the vagrant breezes, the Falcon descended slowly.
Trench approached as his men vaulted overboard to secure the lines, his kerido hanging from his neck. The captain still walked with a limp gained in the battle.
'I got you home,' he said to Ash.
'Yes. My thanks.'
Trench shook Ash's hand, then Nico's. On his shoulder the kerido chattered its own farewell. Berl was not there to say goodbye, unfortunately. The boy was confined below, sweating feverishly in his bunk. He had lost a foot in the action.
Nico rocked as the flat-bottomed hull settled in the sand. He hoisted his pack onto his shoulder. Strange. Now that the Falcon was rested on land, he was almost sorry to be leaving it.
'Come,' said Ash, and stepped down the bouncing gangplank.
*
In the end, after all the warnings, Cheem Port was something of a disappointment.
Ash strode along with such speed and purpose that it was hard for Nico to take in much of the town at all. They stayed there only long enough to procure light provisions and two mules to carry them on their journey to the south of the island.
It was the stench of the place that initially appalled Nico the most. The streets were churned into mud after a recent rainfall, and sewage ran freely along their sides or down the middle, in fetid ditches, the overwhelming smell made even worse by the corpses of dogs and cats and at one point, ignored entirely by those who passed by, the body of a young woman stripped of her clothes.
Outside a store, Nico helped lash the newly bought provisions to the sides of each mule. Just as he was finishing this work, he was forced to jump out of the path of the city guards, a brigade of swarthy Alhazii mercenaries in harlequin armour, who moved quickly down the street, chanting something foreign and frightening. A short time later he and Ash passed the same guards in the process of breaking up a taverna riot. It was a melee, nothing less: men lay hollering in the mud outside while, within, steel clashed over the sound of numerous raised voices.
They hurried away from the scene, heading south through the city. Ash shouted in Trade at the grimy street urchins, scattering them from his path with the help of a few tossed coins. The children tugged at Nico's sleeves, pleading for food, for pennies, for tarweed, for dross. Prostitutes stood about everywhere; each was naked, and covered from head to toenails in golden paint. They flounced their breasts at Nico as he strained to look back at their bright nipples, the only parts not painted.
The slave markets were harder to bear. Through wooden gates he caught glimpses of men, women and children huddled together in rags while they were auctioned like so many cattle.
'Embrace the flesh!' shouted a street preacher, perched close by one such auction. 'Embrace the flesh or you shall be enslaved, as all the weak are justly enslaved!'
'What is he preaching?' asked Nico.
Ash spat at the preacher's feet as they rode by.
'Mann,' he eventually replied.
*
Unlike Bar-Khos, Cheem Port boasted no walls, and Nico was surprised when the dwellings either side of the road dwindled to outlying shacks and then to nothing, and then they were clear of the city entirely. He swayed rhythmically on the back of his mule, feeling his tension begin to fade.
The road wound its way between the foothills bordering the coast, never straying from sight of the sea and the ships that tacked across it. Cheem was an island composed of mountains and very little else, and most of its arable land was ranged along the coast or in the many narrow valleys that rose up towards the heavily forested peaks. For most of the day they followed the same road, passing a few hamlets and lonely cottages, where folk eyed them suspiciously and without greeting. By late afternoon they turned west into one such valley and rode upwards through sparse farmland until it gave way to heather and wild grasses suitable only for grazing hill sheep. On the slopes to either side, the trees began to cluster into silent forests of black pine.
A change came upon Ash as they rode into the high country, a softening of mood that went beyond even his usual calm countenance. His eyes mellowed. His lips pursed with satisfaction as he inhaled the fresh, still air.
'You seem happy to be back,' observed Nico.
A grunt was all that he got for his interest. The old man rode on in silence, and Nico had thought his comment forgotten when, ten or fifteen minutes later – as the setting sun ahead intensified the last of the day's colours, and all around them the cooling evening air hung with the scent of resin – the old farlander spoke.
'These mountains… they are home to me now.'
They made camp in a lofty clearing surrounded by aging jupes, their silvered leaves tinged red and golden by the setting sun. Nico's back was stiff after their long ride, his backside bruised. He watched Ash take one of the green leaves he always carried in a pouch and stuff it into his mouth; another headache. The old man set about spreading out blankets and some provisions for the night, then rubbed the mules down with handfuls of grass as they stood pulling wildberries from a bush. Nico cut some resinous bark from a nearby cicado tree to light a fire, and then gathered dead wood to feed it.
At last Ash settled himself down in a display of evident relief. He watched the darkening sky and drank from a wooden gourd as Nico prepared the fire. The boy used his flint and a piece of steel to strike sparks into the bark he had already ground into powder, then blew gently until flames took hold. The damp wood tossed white smoke into the air, contrasting vividly with the black mountain peaks that surrounded them.
'It's getting cold,' said Nico, rubbing his hands and holding them out to the newborn flames. He had regained some weight since setting out from Bar-Khos, but he was still thin enough to feel the cold keenly.
The old man barked a laugh. 'I will tell you about cold sometime.'
'Your vendetta that took you to the southern ice, you mean?'
Ash nodded, but said no more.
He had merely nodded the same way the last time it had been raised, before they left Bar-Khos, Nico asking one thing after another about the old man's previous vendetta, and receiving only the briefest answers. It had caused Nico to grind his teeth together in frustration, and he did so again now, desperate to hear more of these legendary far-off lands he had only ever heard of in stories and song.
'Is it true that they eat their own kind?' Nico tried.
'No, they only eat their enemies. They leave them to freeze overnight then pluck the meat from their corpses.'
Oddly, that awful image caused Nico's stomach to rumble. He was starving after their long ride. He tossed a fresh stick into the fire, then another.
'You still haven't told me how you ever made it back to the coast. You said you had already lost your dogs by then.'
A hiss of breath through clenched teeth. 'Another time, boy,' Ash said. 'For now let us just sit here a while and enjoy the silence.'
