‘Wading? You’ll be sinking with all that ringmail on.’ After that the boat was quiet for a while, silent except for the creaking of the oars and the splash as they dipped into the water. High overhead, seagulls called up the dawn to wake the river.
‘Shit!’
‘Khrozus’ Blood!’ The boat rocked violently.
‘Shields!’
‘What was that? Was that an arrow?’
‘I said shields!’ The boat rocked again. Somebody roared with rage.
‘Holy Kelm! That nearly took my head off!’
‘Arrows! Arrows! Raise your shields!’ The cry echoed between the boats. Berren shifted, trying to peer out from under his tarpaulin to see what was happening. Except as he lifted up the oiled canvas to peep outside, someone was staring right back at him.
‘Gotcha.’ Hands grabbed hold of him and pulled him out and then forced him down. In a blink there was a knife at his throat and several angry faces glaring down at him. Justicar Kol’s soldiers, when you came to see them up close, were an ugly lot.
‘Who the flying beggar’s luck are you?’
‘Shields, you witless rats!’ shouted someone further back.
‘I’m with Master Syannis,’ Berren squeaked. ‘I’m his apprentice.’ Most of the soldiers were at the oars, eight of them, four on each side. The others, the ones that held Berren, were haphazardly waving shields in the air. Even as Berren looked up, he saw an arrow streak over the top of the boat, missing them by a few strides.
‘Keep rowing, you dolts! And keep your shields up.’
‘Let him go!’ shouted Master Sy. ‘He’s mine. He shouldn’t be here but he is.’ The look he gave Berren was one of sheer fury. ‘Boy, if you get stabbed out here today, it’ll be bliss next to what’s waiting for you when we get back to Deephaven.’ His eyes flicked back to the horizon. ‘Now row! Row with all your strength! The quicker you get there the less time they’ll have shooting arrows at us. Hold your shields up and hold them together and hold your nerve. There’s only a few of them.’ The thief-taker picked up a crossbow and cranked it back. ‘Make yourself useful, boy. Load another one for me.’ He stood up and fired, then ducked back behind the shields. ‘Swing a touch to the port, lads. Another hundred yards is all.’
‘Aye, and then the fun really starts,’ growled an oarsman. Berren peeked around the shields. The boat was coming up quickly on a scattering of wooden huts, rising from the water on stilts. Wooden gangways ran around each of the huts and a maze of bridges, some of them made of wood, some of them nothing more than a pair of ropes strung between two posts, linked them together. The huts seemed to go on forever. There must have been hundreds of them. At least on the nearest ones, no one was shooting at them, although he could see a few men gathered there, waving clubs and some sort of harpoon.
‘When we get off, we have to be quick, lads,’ snapped Master Sy. ‘Lightning fast. Else they’ll cut the bridges and then it’s back to making our way about on the water, except they’ll be shooting at us from the sides as well as the front. The Bloody Dag’s not far from here if he’s at home, and he’s not the sort to run. And I want him alive, lads, and so does the Justicar. You hear me? Alive and squealing. Doesn’t bother me if he’s got one or two bits missing, as long as his tongue can still cluck.’ A hand grabbed Berren’s head and yanked him back into the middle of the boat. ‘Crossbow, boy!’
Berren handed the thief-taker another crossbow and took the one he’d fired. He looked at it, helpless. The handle Master Sy had used to cock it had fallen out somewhere and he had no idea what he was even looking for.
‘Here.’ Berren assumed it was the crank, but Master Sy was pressing a dagger into his hand. ‘Tell me you at least had the sense to wear the mail I gave you.’
Berren looked sheepishly at the bottom of the boat. The truth was that the mail shirt chafed and was uncomfortable, and after the Barrow of Beer he’d only ever put it on once and then taken it off again. It was on the floor of his room, back in Deephaven.
Master Sy rolled his eyes. ‘Well it won’t protect you from an arrow anyway.’ He stood up and then quickly sat down again. ‘Twenty yards, lads. Keep those shields up!’ He cocked a crossbow himself. ‘Hold this,’ he said, and then started working on another. ‘Once we’re ashore, keep out of the way. If any trouble comes after you, run. If you can’t run, stick your knife in them. Stick it in good and hard. And listen, lad, listen good. You get into a fight, the most important things are your eyes and your feet. In a fight, people tend to look away at the last second. Don’t. When someone takes a swing at you, don’t take your eyes off them. When you stick a knife in them, you watch it all the way. Got that?’
Berren nodded. At the front of the boat, one of the men staggered and swore as an arrow hit his shield.
‘Five yards,’ shouted the thief-taker. ‘Ship your oars, lads! Grab your swords! Grapples ready!’ There was a scream and a string of shouts from the boat behind. An arrow had found its mark at last. ‘Two yards! Grapples!’ Two of the soldiers heaved coils of rope and grappling hooks over the wall of shields and began to pull. ‘Brace!’
A heavy jolt knocked Berren off his feet as the boat ran into the walkway around the nearest hut. The soldiers staggered, but the thief-taker was already running. ‘On, lads! On!’
24
SILTSIDE
Men roared and screamed at each other. The boat shook as though in a storm as the soldiers hurled themselves out and met the first mudlark defenders. One of the men holding the grappling ropes passed them to Berren. ‘Make yourself useful boy! Tie this off!’ Then he was gone. By the time Berren had tied the first rope around one of the rowing benches, the commotion of fighting had died down. By the time he’d tied off the second and clambered ashore, the soldiers had already moved on. He could hear where they were from the shouting, and always over the top of it all, Master Sy’s voice. ‘On, lads! Fast now!’
There were bodies. Fallen off the walkway, lying in the mud under three feet of water, waiting to be rolled away up the river with the rising tide. Berren had to squint and peer at them to see who they were through the lapping waves. Two soldiers, almost lost in a haze of swirling silt. One of them had the harpoon that Berren had seen in him. The spear was buried so deeply that the point poked out the other side. The second one had an arrow in his neck. As Berren watched, a slow string of bubbles popped out of his mouth and climbed their way to the surface. Then a crab scuttled up from out of the murk and started crawling across his face. Berren shuddered. Fifty, maybe sixty yards away, the second boat full of Justicar Kol’s soldiers thumped in against another hut. These ones had an easy ride. The mudlarks who’d been waiting to meet it had already run.
Berren glanced into the hut. There was another body there, a mudlark, cut down from behind. Not much else. Nets and fishing lines hung out to dry, that was all.
Something thunked into the wood not more that two feet away from his head, the noise so sharp and sudden that he almost fell into the water in surprise. When he turned to look, he saw an arrow, quivering there. He looked back the way the arrow had come, but all he saw was water and huts and more water and more huts, all jumbled together. Whoever the archer was, they’d ducked into hiding. With a gulp, he ran off, around the walkways, racing for Master Sy and the soldiers.
He caught up with them rampaging through a collection of larger huts. Most of the mudlarks who’d lived there had obviously run away before the soldiers had come, but that wasn’t stopping the Justicar’s men from smashing everything that would break. Master Sy was in the middle of a shouting match with one of them. In another corner of the hut, one of the soldiers had carefully made a pile of rags and quietly dropped his torch onto it. Master Sy didn’t seem to have noticed.
‘Master! Master!’ Berren waved frantically. The thief-taker dropped whatever argument he had with the solider and ran to try and put the fire out. Except he didn’t make it, because one of the soldiers stepped in front of him.
‘You get paid for getting your man,’ said the soldier. ‘We get paid for every hut that burns.’
The thief-taker snapped something back in a language Berren didn’t know and strode away again. He grabbed
