thought he wasn’t moving fast enough to be taken by it, but then he felt his body lift, and with the last few strokes left in him he made one last surge.
The wave caught his legs, pulling them upwards behind him. He pointed his arms straight ahead, raised his chin free from the water as the wave-front rose and curled and carried him towards the beach.
Ash rode it all the way in with a grimace stretching his face, and the blood in his veins singing with exhilaration.
The wave dumped him onto the wet sand, left him there gasping in its hissing retreat back to the sea. Ash coughed to clear his lungs.
He was alive.
Captain Jute, commander of Pashereme’s coastal fort, peered from the battlements through the lashing rain of the storm and waited for another flash of lightning to illuminate the sea.
‘Are you certain?’ he asked again of his second-in-command, Sergeant Boson, a shiftless rogue of an individual whom Jute had come to distrust in all things, save for those matters which concerned his own skin.
‘As certain as day and night. They’re there all right. We’d better be clearing out of here right sharpish too.’
Thunder split overhead, and a bolt of lightning struck the sea out in the boiling bay. The captain hunched forward, clearing his eyes of rain, felt a punch of fear in his stomach as he saw them: ships, hundreds of ships, bobbing through the swells towards the beaches.
‘Sweet merciful Fool,’ he uttered, and gripped the stone battlements to steady himself. An invasion, he thought, suddenly giddy. A bloody full-on invasion!
‘Captain?’ came Boson’s voice through the fog of his shock.
The captain nodded, trying to think straight. He turned to the sergeant, and he couldn’t help that his voice trembled a little as he spoke. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Light the signal fire, and get a bird in the air. We haven’t much time, lads.’
‘In this weather they might not see the fire, Captain. Better if we head to Olson’s fort and pass on the word there, I’d say.’
‘Just do it!’ bawled Captain Jute.
He turned back to the water of Whittle Bay, which was a smaller, sheltered inlet within Pearl Bay itself. On the slopes on the far side of this natural harbourage, the buildings of the fishing village were dark at this late hour. Jute prayed that someone in the village would spot the signal fire and get them all out in time.
Another flash, and the captain saw that boats had already landed on the beach below, and dark figures were scurrying through the dunes towards the hill upon which the fort stood.
Sweet Mercy, he thought to himself. There’re too many of them. All this time requesting more men for the fort, and now it’s too damned late.
‘No way we’re holding that many off.’ It was Sergeant Boson who spoke, returned from passing out the orders to the men. Jute looked to him, keen for once to hear what he had to say. ‘We need to evacuate now, Captain, or we’ll be under siege in no time, and with no way of holding them back. You know, don’t you, what they do to their prisoners?’
Jute’s wide-eyed stare darted towards his men. They had armed themselves with burning brands from the guardroom hearth, and were poking life into the signal fire that stood in an iron dish upon the battlements. Soaked with spirits, the wood caught well enough despite the wind and the rain. In moments it was blazing tall.
‘Has the bird been sent yet?’
‘Just now.’
‘And the logs? We must burn them too.’
‘In the fire, captain.’
‘Very well,’ said Jute, and took one last glance at the advancing figures below. Commandos, he saw, faces blackened for night work. ‘Let’s damn well get out here then, shall we?’
But when he turned to leave, the sergeant and the rest of the men were already gone.
‘You feckless bastards,’ he muttered to himself, and hurried after them.
When Ash came to, he was still lying where he had washed up on the beach, and crystals of sand caked his lips and face. It seemed he had passed out momentarily. The storm continued to rage, and the sea washed against his legs.
Ash’s body was a dead thing sprawled on the sand; limp, detached from his will, shaking from coldness and shock. His throat was raw from the seawater he had swallowed, and he turned his open mouth towards the rain to catch some of it against his tongue.
It came to him slowly, vaguely, that he would die of exposure if he stayed here.
Ash groaned as he pushed himself to his knees. Standing was a deliberate process, moving one muscle after the other until at last he swayed on his feet. His legs trembled, ready to buckle at any moment.
When our legs are spent we must walk on our will, he recited in his mind, as the rainbow flicker of exhaustion played around the edges of his vision, and he stumbled onwards.
Other shipwrecked survivors were dotted along the beach; sailors, soldiers and camp followers. They walked to and fro as though in a daze, with their feet leaving confused, meandering trails in the sand. Wails of grief added to the high keen of the storm. They were all wretchedly exposed here, from the wind and rain that lashed so thickly it felt as though Ash was breathing water again. He wiped a hand across his face, blinked to see clearly. On his right, people huddled together amongst the dunes; ahead, others were setting off towards the bay.
Once more he wiped the rain from his eyes. The rainbow colours were expanding, creating a tunnel in his vision. He was aware of staggering into the dunes to seek some place to lie down out of the wind. Lightning sheeted overhead – he saw the sloping sand beyond his feet studded with pits from the impacts of rain.
Ahead a woman’s voice shouted out in anger, and others joined her. A scream. The laughter of men. The wind shifted and carried away the sounds, and Ash sniffed. His nostrils caught the lingering scent of woodsmoke.
A fire!
On all fours he struggled up the slope of a dune, panting ragged like a dog. At the top he righted himself. His eyes narrowed, taking in the scene below – a group of men, short glints of steel in their fists; a group of women being set upon before a fire.
The hope of warmth and shelter revived Ash momentarily. He focused on what he was seeing, and made out an older woman, wild-haired and defiant, shouting at the men and fighting them off with a length of driftwood. The men – sailors, he thought – seemed only to be sporting with her.
‘ Ho!’ Ash shouted, and every face turned to look up at him.
Lightning flashed again. He thought it an apt moment to sweep his blade from its sheath.
With a sudden nervousness the sailors eyed each other and backed away from the women. The older woman dropped the length of wood and gathered her girls around her.
Run, you bastards. I have not the strength for this.
They were waiting to see what he would do next. Ash took a step down from the dune, was hardly surprised to feel his legs buckle beneath him. He was quick enough to get his other foot out in front in time, and to turn his fall into something that approximated a downward rush. In his plummet he held his blade out for balance.
When he collapsed in front of the fire he was relieved to see the backs of the sailors fleeing into the night. He was shivering hard, and another gust flattened the flames across the wood, causing the embers to glow brightly. When the wind subsided, the flames crackled with renewed effort. The heat warmed Ash’s soul.
‘You,’ he croaked to the older woman. ‘Have you water?’
The woman ignored him. As he sat up she fussed over her girls, setting them around the fire beneath a stretch of canvas. There were five of them in all, and she talked to them curtly, businesslike, as though she was an old aunt to them. Satisfied, she wrapped a shawl over her head and shoulders and came across to join him. He saw a flask in her hand, which she offered freely.
Her eyes took in the colour of his skin.
‘Only rhulika,’ she said, settling down next to him and readjusting her dress. ‘Good for starting fires and warming the belly. Drink, old farlander. It’s the least I can offer you.’
He would have preferred freshwater just then but he drank it down anyway, his teeth chattering against the wooden spout. He swallowed the whole lot in one go, and the alcohol flared in his stomach, sent tendrils of heat
