There, not three hundred yards from shore, a white ship lay amid a tangle of trees, looking as if some vast giant had just lifted it out of the sea and set it there.
It is too whole to be a wreck, Borenson thought. Someone has beached it.
“Hallooo aboard!” he cried. “Halloo in there!” He waved his arms and stood on the hill for a long moment, waiting for someone to come topside and give answer.
The wind was still, the water as calm and flat as a pond.
Perhaps they’re scavenging, he thought.
Borenson took off his armor and clothes, and then laid them on the bank. He swam through the water until he reached the pile of flotsam. He climbed up on the logs, fully expecting that at any moment someone from the ship would pop a head up and find him standing there naked.
But as he neared the ship, he called again, and no answer came.
His prize was just dancing on the water, light as a swan. The prow had beached upon some logs, but other than that, the ship looked whole. There were no sails, but that could be fixed. The Walkins had been sleeping beneath a bit of sail just up the beach.
Borenson climbed over the railing, walked around. The vessel was small indeed, no more than thirty-five feet in length.
It was a small trader by the looks of it, or perhaps a large fishing vessel, the kind used for plying the waters along the coast—not one of the big ships meant for crossing the ocean. It looked odd, for the ship was all gleaming white, reflecting the sunlight.
Borenson appraised it.
This ship is new-made! It hasn’t even been painted properly. There is only an undercoat!
He could not believe that his fortune would hold.
He climbed down belowdecks.
The ship had two cabins—one for a captain, the other for a crew of four—but Borenson found that the captain’s quarters were not made for a man of his proportions. With only a six-foot ceiling, he could not enter without crouching. He would never have fit on the slat of board that made the bed.
Much better was the hold. The entry was wide enough so that he could climb in easily. The ship had a deep belly, with a wide berth for cargo, and Borenson imagined that he and a dozen more people could make do inside.
But the vessel hadn’t escaped the flood completely free of damage. He found water seeping into the hull, and the wood was warped. The ship had been cast into a rock perhaps, or hurled into a tree.
He studied the breach. The seep was not bad, he decided. The ship had apparently been in dry dock when the flood hit, probably up on a cradle, waiting for a new coat of paint. Because it was so light, without crew or cargo, it must have floated high in the water, rising above the flood.
The interior of the vessel had been pitched, and that stopped most of the leakage, but the truth was that when any ship took its maiden voyage, it always had a few cracks. Given a couple of days the wood would swell, and most likely the hull would seal itself. If it didn’t, Borenson decided, it wouldn’t take much work to pass a few buckets of water topside each day, to drain the bilge.
When he was done inspecting, Borenson felt so moved that he dropped to his knees to thank the Powers.
I have a ship! he told himself. I have a ship!
5
A Night in the City of the Dead
The Great Wyrm provides for all your wants: meat to cure the pangs of hunger, ale to ease a troubled mind, the wine of violence in the arena to entertain. All of these are found in the city. There is no need to ever leave.
Crull-maldor peered down from a spy hole in the wyrmling’s citadel at the Fortress of the Northern Wastes. A band of human warriors two hundred strong had encircled her watchtower, and now they stood below, blowing battle horns, bellowing war cries, and shaking their fists at the tower as they encouraged themselves for battle.
These were small men by wyrmling standards. They were not the well bred warriors of Caer Luciare that she’d known in her world. These small folk wore armor made of seal skins, gray with white speckles, and had bright hair that was braided and slung over their backs. They bore axes and spears for battle, and carried crude wooden shields. They had dyed their faces with pig’s blood, hoping to look frightening.
Crull-maldor fought back the urge to laugh. No doubt they thought they looked fierce. Perhaps they even were fierce. But they were small, like the feral humans that had gone to war with the wyrmlings three thousand years ago.
She admired their fortitude. No doubt they had seen the giant footprints of the wyrmlings and had some inkling as to what they were up against.
But none of the wyrmlings had shown themselves. Sundown was long hours away. It was late afternoon, and the dust particles in the air dyed the world in shades of blood. The sun cut like a rapier, leaving stark shadows upon the world.
The enormous stone pinnacle of the fortress’s watchtower, standing three hundred feet tall and crafted from slabs of rock forty feet thick, drew the small humans like flies to a carcass.
They had been coming all morning—first children eager to explore this strange new landmark, then worried parents and siblings who were wondering what had befallen the children. Now an angry mob of warriors prepared for battle.
Human settlements surrounded the towers. No doubt by nightfall the small folk would begin to muster a huge army.
Still, the warriors below did not want to wait for reinforcements. So they sang their war songs, gave their cheers, lit their torches, and rushed into the entrance.
At Crull-maldor’s back, the wyrmling Lord Aggrez asked, “What is your will, milady?”
Wyrmling tactics in this instance had been established thousands of years ago. The tunnels at the mouth of the cave wound down and down. No doubt the humans imagined that it led straight up to the citadel, but they would have to travel miles into the wyrmling labyrinth to find the passage that led up.
Along the way, they would have to pass numerous spy holes and kill holes, ranging through darkness that was nearly complete, down long rocky tunnels lit only by glow worms.
“Let them get a mile into the labyrinth,” Crull-maldor said, “until they find the bones and offal from their children. While they are stricken with fear and rage, drop the portcullises behind them, so that none may ever return. I myself will lead the attack.”
Crull-maldor peered at the lord. Aggrez was a huge wyrmling—nine feet in height and more than four feet across the shoulder. His skin was as white as chalk, and his pupils were like pits gouged into ice. He frowned, his lips hiding his overlarge canines, and Crull-maldor felt surprised to see disappointment on his face. “What troubles you?”
“It has been long since my troops have engaged the humans. They were hoping for better sport.”
Twenty thousand warriors Crull-maldor had under her command, and it had been too long since they had fought real battles, and too long since they had eaten anything but walrus and seal meat.
“You want them for the arena?” Crull-maldor asked.
“A few.”
“Very well,” Crull-maldor said. “Let us test their best and bravest.”
Though Crull-maldor did not lead the way, she followed. This would be her people’s first real battle against a new enemy, and though the humans were small, she knew that even something as small as a wolverine could be astonishingly vicious.
So she went down into the tunnels, to the ambush site. The metal tang of blood was strong in the air, and filled the hallway. Dozens of the small folk had already been carried down to this point, deep under the fortress. Their offal lay on the floor—piles of gut and stomachs, kidneys and lungs, hair and skulls.
The humans had been harvested, their glands taken for elixirs, the meat for food, the skins as trophies. Not much was left.