‘You! You stopped them just now – can’t you do it again?’
The girl who was not a girl rolled her head back languidly and gazed up at me with opaque, sated dark eyes.
‘I’m weary,’ mumbled the old man, absently continuing his caresses. ‘Spent. And now they’re too far –’
Pierce crossed the deck in three clumping strides. ‘By’re leave, Master Stephen, we don’t want ’em stopped again! Why, why’d you think we were pounding at ’em so, but to make ’em cut and run? To show we’d be too costly to polish off, and best left be! But cross ’em again, maimed as we are, and finish us they surely will! Whatever it may cost – overrun us, or just beat about and hull us with their guns!’
My wrist ached with the weight of the sword. I slid it gingerly into my belt till it hung by the blunt upper edge, and rounded on the others. ‘But Christ, there must be something we can do! We can’t just give up like that – abandon her –’
‘Refitting needn’t take so long,’ said Jyp, chewing at his lip. ‘Then we can go after the Chorazin again. Maybe the Stryge’ll still get a line on her –’
‘Yeah! If it isn’t too late! And what’s the chance of that? God man –’ I choked again, clenched my fists, trying hard not to scream at him.
‘Be easy, Stephen,’ said Mall quietly. ‘We gave of our best – a good dozen at least with their lives, and who may give more? And you played the man past all expectance. No fault of yours or ours they’d so many aboard.’
I stamped on the deck, because there wasn’t a damn thing better I could do. ‘Christ, Jyp. I said we needed a bigger ship!’
Jyp shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t have overhauled the Wolves in anything bigger, Steve. Anyhow, there wasn’t a one to be found, not armed to match them. And sure as hell not able to carry four hundred men or more – if we could’ve found them in time. Because that’s about how many Wolves we ran into!’
‘A very army, who’d have expected it?’ agreed Mall, then touched finger to lips in puzzlement. ‘So many? But how? They’d scarce have room for supplies!’
‘Aye, I did hear they were layin’ ’em in heavy while they were in port,’ put in Pierce. ‘For long voyaging, said they, and nobody cared – longer the better, said we!’
‘While they must’ve been living just day-to-day,’ mused Jyp. ‘But on the inward voyage … Hell, they must’ve been starved for days – deliberately! Starved and dry! You don’t do that – even Wolves – ‘less you need to cram in the most bodies possible. Like for slaves – or maybe …’ He whistled softly. ‘Maybe soldiers. Maybe they were an army, right enough.’
‘Soldiery?’ Mall gave a little laugh. ‘Don’t be daft, man – for what? Looting the Port? A tenfold force wouldn’t serve, not even if they’d contrived to let loose that dupiah … oh!’
Hand to mouth, she stared – at me. Jyp nodded. ‘The Port, no – but elsewhere? Wolves alone’d never be able to do it – but with that critter to captain them?’
I stared, ‘Captain them? You mean lead them? That thing had a mind?’
‘Better’n yours or mine, maybe. Sure as hell different – sure as hell. With a thing like that to do the Wolves’ thinking for ’em, scare them on – well they just might risk it, mightn’t they? Take a real cunning mind to set up that kind of a team, cunning and nasty – which is just what I’m starting to see at work!’
‘What’re you saying?’ I demanded.
‘That maybe this foraying into the Core wasn’t so wild as we thought it. Maybe that’s where they were headed all along. Part of their plan.’
‘But … what could they do there? Against police – soldiers –’
‘Who’d have to find them first. Anyone see those Wolves coming to your office, either time? Or headed away? They’ve ways. They could make all kinds of hay, striking in the right places – robbery here, murder there, maybe a full-scale attack …’
For a moment it drove Clare from my mind, the effort to imagine it, a band of terrorists who could come and go under some cloak of invisibility, strike with fearful savagery – and unleashed by that awful devouring thing from the warehouse. I shivered. The terror they could spread – and more than terror; there would be hardly any limits …
‘And that’d be only the beginning,’ said Jyp quietly. ‘A bridgehead. For a real invasion. We of the Ports, we keep an eye open most times for any little tricks like this from Outside. The Wardens keep watch, and league and guild and warehouse master their guards; there’s barriers raised, barriers you never see, yet nothing can cross without alerting them. There’s other precautions, too, things I don’t pretend to understand; Stryge could tell you more, if he wanted to. We don’t like shadows at our backs, and damn little slips past. But with a route working, they might begin to – dark things, base and bad. Worse’n your dupiah by a long long chalk. You know, this all begins to look kind of big …’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘It does. Bigger than just saving Clare, that’s what you’re trying to tell me, right? Okay, it may be. But she’s still the centre of it! This rite they’re planning for her, it’s got to be connected somehow. So it doesn’t change a damn thing for us, does it – any of this? Except to make rescuing her more important than ever. If I have to bloody well swim after them –’
‘Bravo!’ said Mall softly.
‘Didn’t say otherwise, did I?’ said Jyp quietly. ‘If all else fails. But let’s try for that refit first, huh?’
Pierce was already at the rail, speaking-trumpet to mouth, directing a volley of orders at the crew. ‘Up, puppies! What, d’you think – it’s make-and-mend day? So you’ll all sit around on your arses louse-picking, will you? What kind of order d’you call this? I’ve seen better on a Brazil bumboat! These decks’ll be the better for a swilling and a swabbing and a lick o’holystone, and us none the worse for it either, I’m thinking …’ They took the barracking with weary good humour, perhaps because Pierce was croaking as exhaustedly as anyone. I had to swallow my bitter disappointment, and accept it; there really was nothing else to be done, and everyone was quietly getting on with it. Raging wouldn’t get me anywhere.
‘Well,’ I sighed, turning back to Jyp. ‘Just show me how I can help, then, and I’ll do it –’ The long sword swung between my legs and tripped me flat on the deck with a crash, ruining my gesture but luckily not much else.
‘If you’d cleave to that thing, best you learn the right use of it,’ Mall admonished me severely as she hoisted me to my feet. ‘Else you run the risk of most grievous hurt!’
‘… and practically useless on dates, huh?’ grinned Jyp, then, more critically ‘Looks well on him, though. We could teach him a trick or two, eh, Mall?’
She twitched the sword from my belt and slashed the air with graceful savagery. ‘Not Wolf work, this. A fine balance, but heavy – Bavarian, maybe, by the turn of the ornament. Not easy to handle – you wielded it better than I guessed.’
‘Just like playing squash,’ I grinned. ‘Good for the wrists.’ She raised an eyebrow, and Jyp chortled.
‘He means kind of a tennis game – not what you were thinking, lady. Okay, we’ll teach you, Steve – and heaven help your poor hide. Meantime, though, let’s us buckle to on these spars. Maybe we can salvage something …’