‘Almost there!’ he called back over his shoulder. The comber had carried a big rock down to one side of the crescent beach, where he’d left it lodged right where the waves thrashed the shore. Now he had walked back to await them, his sheep-skin cloak flapping about in the wind. ‘He’s old, this one. Was a big man once, probably trouble, but that was decades past. Still, let’s keep an eye on him. We’re too close to see it all go awry now.’
They had pursued the Suncurl since Toll’s Landing. Left to drown only a rope’s throw from the ship, they had seen their comrades, Birds Mottle, Gust Hubb and Heck Urse, looking back on them from the rail, doing nothing, just standing there watching them drown.
But we didn’t drown, did we? No, we don’t drown easily. We stole the Chanter’s hoard together, with Sater running the plan, only to be betrayed, and now we want our take, and damn me, but we’re going to get it.
Glancing to his left, he studied the wreckage of the Suncurl. He and his companions weren’t the only ones chasing that doomed, cursed ship. There’d been a clash with the Chanters, but the storm had broken them apart and if the gods were smiling, those Chanters had all gone down to the black world of mud and bones, a thousand fathoms below. In any case, they’d seen no sign of the wretched bastards since the first night of the storm.
The longboat ground heavily into the sand, jolting them all.
Sordid rose, sweeping back her flaxen hair, and arched her back before turning round and eyeing the comber. She snorted. ‘Nice hat. I want that hat.’
‘Later,’ Bisk Fatter said, pitching himself over the side and wading ashore.
Wormlick followed.
Walking towards the comber, Bisk drew out his two-handed sword.
The man backed up. ‘Please, I’ve done nothing!’
‘This is simple,’ Bisk said. ‘So simple you might even live. Heck Urse. Birds Mottle. Gust Hubb. Where are they?’
‘Ah.’ The comber gestured to where a trail was cut into the sloped bank above the beach, near a shack. ‘Off to the village, I would think. Spendrugle, upon the mouth of the Blear and beneath Wurms Keep. It is likely they are warming themselves at the King’s Heel, on the High Street.’
Bisk sheathed his sword and turned to Wormlick and Sordid. ‘We’re back on land,’ he said, ‘and I’m corporal again. I give the orders, understood?’
Wormlick eyed his companion. Bisk was barely the height of his sword, but he had the build of a rock-ape, and a face to match. Those small eyes so deep in their shadowy, ringed sockets were like the blunted fingernails of a corpse from a man who’d been buried alive in a coffin. When he smiled, which was mercifully infrequently, he revealed thick pointy teeth, stained blue by urlit leaves. In his life he had killed thirty-one men, seven women and one child who’d spat on his boot and then laughed and said, ‘You can’t touch me! It’s the law!’
Bisk was a man pushed into military service, but then, so were they all, in the days when Toll and most of Stratem were waiting for the invasion. But the Crimson Guard landed only to leave again; and then the Chanters decided to take over everything, and life turned sour.
All behind them now.
‘All right, sir,’ Sordid said with a shrug, standing loose the way she did when she was thinking of stabbing someone in the back. It was a miracle they’d not killed each other, but the deal was a sure one. Get back the loot, and then the blades could clash. But not until then.
‘Let’s go,’ said Bisk. He pointed at the comber. ‘Good answers. You live.’
‘Thank you, good people! Bless you!’
The three ex-guards of Toll’s City made for the trail.
Whuffine Gaggs watched the three walk past his shack, leaving it undisturbed. At that, the comber sighed. ‘That could have been trouble, that’s for sure.’ He eyed the fine longboat rocking on the beach, and went to collect up its bowline. The big blow was coming back, like a whore finding a wooden coin, and he wanted to batten things down and be sitting warm and cosy in his shack by the time the furies arrived. This boat was worth a lot, after all, and he wasn’t expecting to see those three fools again.
But the boat wasn’t the only task awaiting him. Indeed, he had plenty to do before nightfall.
Whistling under his breath, he tied the bow rope around his chest, looped his right arm under it and then leaned forward. A boat built for twelve was a heavy beast, and this one was solidly constructed besides. Back in his younger days, he’d have no trouble dragging the thing high onto the beach. Now, he had to dig his feet deep into the sand and heave with all his strength.
Age was a demon, a haunting that slipped into the bones whispering weakness and frailty. It stole his muscles, his agility, and the quickness of his wit. It seemed a miserable reward for surviving, all things told, which was proof enough that life was a fool’s bargain.
Maybe there was a god out there, somewhere, who’d decided that life was a good thing, and so made it real, like blowing on a spark to keep it going until it was nothing but ash, then sitting back and thinking, Why, that was a worthy thing, wasn’t it? Here, let’s make lots more! But a man’s spark, or a woman’s for that matter, had to be worth more than just a brief flicker of light in the darkness.
Behind him, as he pushed forward step by step, the boat ground its way up from the waves.
The muscles remembered younger, bolder days, and the bones could mutter all they wanted to, and if the haunting aches returned on the morrow, well, he would damn that day when it came.
His back to the sea, working as he was, Whuffine did not see the bloodred sail appear on the southern horizon.
‘The challenges of governance,’ said Bauchelain, studying the wine in the crystal goblet he held up to candelight, ‘pose unique travails that few common folk have the intelligence to understand. Would you not agree to this, sir?’
‘I have said as much many times,’ Fangatooth replied, glancing over at Coingood. ‘As you have noted in my Tome of Tyranny, Scribe. Do you see, Bauchelain, how he writes down all that we say? I am assembling a book, you see, a work of many parts, and now, with this night, you yourself enter the narrative of my rise to power.’
‘How congenial, sir,’ Bauchelain said, raising the goblet in a toast.
‘And if your companion would deign to speak, then he too would be rewarded with immortality, there upon the vellum of my virtues – Coingood, note that one! My vellum of virtues! It’s my gift for the turn of phrase, you see, which I am adamant in preserving for posterity. “Preserving for posterity!” Write that, Scribe!’
‘Alas,’ said Bauchelain, ‘Korbal Broach’s talents lie elsewhere, and as a dinner guest he is often noted for his modesty, and his evident appreciation of fine food. Is that not so, my friend?’
Korbal Broach glanced up from his plate. He licked his greasy lips and said, ‘Those bodies I left outside should be frozen by now, don’t you think, Bauchelain?’
‘I imagine so,’ Bauchelain replied.
Grunting, Korbal returned to his meal.
Fangatooth gestured and a servant refilled his goblet. ‘It always astonishes me,’ he said, ‘that so many common people look with horror and revulsion upon a corpse, when I admit to seeing in its lifeless pose a certain eloquence.’
‘A singular statement, yes.’
‘Precisely. Flesh in its most artless expression.’
‘Which transcends the mundane and becomes art itself, when one considers its ongoing potential.’
‘Potential, yes.’ Fangatooth then frowned. ‘What potential do you mean, Bauchelain?’
‘Well, take those bodies you suspend upon hooks on your keep wall. Are they not symbolic? Else, why display them at all? The corpse is the purest symbol of authority there is, I would assert. Proof of the power of life over death, and in the face of that, defiance loses all meaning. Resistance becomes a pointless plunge into the lime pit of lost causes.’