He found his dock at the far end of the wharf, as far away from the ominous vessels as he could. Even as they were tying up to the broad bollards along the dockside, Oleander was already engaged in conversations with other captains who had congregated nearby. Cabal, who was leaning on the rail, was able to make out the gist of the news, and it did not make comforting hearing. The scuttlebutt – a marine term for ‘gossip’ that might amuse or bemuse the casual listener depending on personal interpretation – was that Dylath-Leen was in serious trouble. The council, which had always maintained at least a cosmetic distrust of the black galleys, had suffered a reversal when all its leading members disappeared in a single night. The lesser members, all men of luxuriant tastes and representative of the city’s trading guilds, had slid into the senior executive roles aboard a carpet of greased palms and their first act had been to revoke the limitations upon the black galleys, imposed some years earlier after a previous slavery scandal. There had been little surprise among the citizenry that the councillors’ luxurious tastes had subsequently been gratified to a disgusting level by nameless benefactors. Many people were finding excuses to leave the city, but since the captains of the guard had all been replaced with foreign mercenaries, it was becoming more and more difficult to get through the gates.
Oleander walked back up the gangplank, scowling. He saw Cabal and said, ‘You mayn’t want to be leaving the ship at this place after all, Master Cabal.’
‘It doesn’t seem very friendly here, Captain,’ agreed Cabal. He was thinking of what inevitably lay ahead: there would be a slow erosion of liberties within Dylath-Leen, and then, when the inhabitants were prepared to accept anything because they were permitted to do nothing, the patrons of the black galleys would regard this little patch of ground as safe enough for them to visit from their lunar cities. They would bring with them their unholy appetites and exercise them upon an unwilling populace. After that, it could only be a matter of months at most before Dylath-Leen joined the Dreamlands’ slowly growing list of abandoned and shunned places.
By this point, the Fear Institute contingent had appeared on deck, carrying their small bags of belongings and eager to disembark. The captain and Cabal’s sour expressions gave them some small inkling that they were going to be missing out on hugs and lei. ‘Is there something awry, Cabal?’ asked Corde.
‘Oh, I say! Look at all those black boats!’ cried Bose, inadvertently answering the question. ‘And look! There are more coming!’
Swearing an oath salty enough to make Dagon purse his lips, Oleander ran aft and looked to the harbour mouth. Bose had spoken nothing more than the truth. Perhaps two miles off, three black galleys in line astern were heading implacably towards Dylath-Leen. ‘What are they doing?’ he demanded of nobody in particular. ‘That’s madness! They’ll never get by the gates beam to beam like that.’ Then he understood, and his face grew pale beneath the tan. He ran to the rail and shouted down to the gossiping captains there gathered, ‘To your ships! To your ships! The devils mean to blockade the harbour!’
Abruptly all the serious standing around and muttering ominously at one another turned into a mad and undignified dash back to their vessels. Even as they did so, Cabal saw that the city guard, in full mail and faceless behind their helmets, was approaching the docks at a lumbering charge. They ran oddly, as if their knees weren’t in quite the right places for their greaves. Not for the first time, he wished he had access to something with rather more range than a rapier. ‘Captain—’ he began.
‘I see ’em, Master Cabal,’ snapped Oleander. ‘Cast off, fore and aft! Cut the lines, damn you!’
Axes thudded and the mooring ropes parted. The gangplank, forgotten in the frenzy of intent, fell into the water between the ship’s side and the dock as she started to move away, pushed back fiercely by crewmen wielding poles.
‘Herr Corde,’ said Cabal. He was watching several of the guards still heading straight for them, despite the widening gap between the ship and the quay. ‘Draw your sword.’ He drew his own, his eyes never leaving the charging guards.
Corde frowned at him, followed his gaze and scoffed. ‘You’re joking, Cabal. The gap’s twenty feet if it’s an inch. They couldn’t make it even if they weren’t weighed down in armour. Relax. They’ll end up drowning themselves.’
‘If they were men, I would agree,’ said Cabal, as the first guard reached the quayside and, without hesitation, threw himself towards the Audaine.
In a cool, rational world, the guardsman would have described a graceless parabola into the harbour waters and – wrapped in steel knitting as he was – made swift progress to the sea bed. The Dreamlands, however, do not present a cool, rational world, instead favouring a sequence of events such as the guard leaping the gap as if catapulted, crashing heavily into the rail without even a grunt, and then hurdling it easily, drawing its – we can no longer dignify such a creature with his – longsword, and looking for somebody to carve up with it.
Cabal backed away as the guard swung its helmeted head this way and that. ‘Herr Corde? How much provocation do you need?’ Corde said nothing, but let his cloak fall from his shoulders to reveal the leather armour beneath. The sound of his sword sliding from its scabbard was enough to engage the guard’s attention.
There was another dull, gruntless thump against the rail, and then another, but this one was followed by a splash: the Audaine was finally out of jumping distance for even these inhuman creatures.
The first guard spoke, but it was an unconvincing attempt, full of gurglings and basso profundo boomings from deep within. It tried again, and this time managed to produce something like human speech, although it was as convincing a rendition as a dog saying, ‘Sausages.’
‘Ship . . . impounded . . . by authority of . . . impounded . . .’ It swung its head from side to side, a poor impersonation of a man looking around. Cabal’s misgivings deepened: however the guard was sensing them, it was not through eyes.
‘Ye’ll step off my ship, sir!’ demanded Oleander. He carried a polished falchion that Cabal had assumed uncharitably was for show. Now drawn and glinting in the weak sunlight, it looked far more like a device for creative hacking.
‘Ship impounded . . . order of . . . council . . . Dylath-Leen . . .’ Without allowing even the shortest moment for a reply, it launched into the attack.
Oleander met the slashing blow with a fast parry of his falchion that struck sparks. He thrust the guard’s sword arm to one side and shoved it back with his free hand to gain a little space. Cabal, meanwhile, was weighing up the wider situation. All along the dock, the other manned ships were trying to cut loose while their crews engaged the wave of bestial guards. A swift glance over his shoulder showed that the three galleys were close by the mole and all had their tillers hard over, swinging across to block the harbour mouth. Then, to add to his rapidly populating list of concerns, he saw that some of the black galleys already in dock were moving out to engage the ships that had managed to cast off. They were in a rat trap and, his mind whirling through alternative plans, Cabal could see no way out of it. Then he noticed the second guard who had jumped, painfully hauling itself on to the rail, and noted with satisfaction that there was at least one small victory he could achieve.
‘Corde! Help the captain, you idiot!’ he shouted, as he ran for the second guard. ‘You don’t need to be invited!’