Just visible to the east was the dense huddle of Malmkrug, clinging to the cliffs that surrounded it. But something was wrong: whole sections of the city had been demolished or razed by fire; the ancient breakwaters that stood guard before the harbour had been broken and now protruded from the sea like the shattered tusks of a beached leviathan. As Silus watched, a vast plume of emerald smoke rose from the centre of the city, followed, moments later, by a thunderclap.
“That was sorcery,” Kelos said, coming to stand beside him. “What in the name of all the gods is going on?”
Silus increased the magnification on the telescope and he could now see the people crowding the city’s streets. Most were fleeing the destruction taking place all around them, hurrying inland now that a maelstrom of fire had begun to consume the harbour, but others were fighting. However, although the conflict was confined to the narrow alleys and thoroughfares of Malmkrug, this was no guerrilla assault. Silus recognised the livery of the Pontaine military and the distinctive red and blue stripes of the Vos National Army. And the battle was not confined to this one coastal settlement, for as Silus scanned along the peninsula, wherever he looked he could see flames and the clash of armies. It would seem that, just as had happened so many times in the past, the peninsula had gone to war, Vos and Pontaine once more fighting for dominance of Twilight.
“Silus,” Kelos said. “Look.”
Silus took the telescope away from his right eye, to see Kelos pointing to the sky, his own eyes raised. He looked up.
A new scarlet moon hung beside the vast sphere of Kerberos. It was about one-fifth the size of the azure deity and its surface was pitted and scarred, crowded with craters that resembled nothing so much as vast pools of blood. A hazy corona partly shrouded the sphere and from this, reaching towards Kerberos, snaked a host of thin red pseudopods. Where they touched the upper atmosphere of the god, bolts of lightning lanced down into the gas giant. Silus felt each strike as a pain, deep in his guts.
“That would be Hel’ss?” he said to Kelos.
The mage nodded, his face pale.
“Are we already too late?”
To this Kelos had no answer. Something seemed to have caught his attention to the east.
A galleon was heading towards them, its sails bearing the crossed circle of the Final Faith.
“Well, at least something is going as planned,” Silus said. “Katya and Zac, get below. There may be violence, and I don’t want you on deck if that happens. Dunsany, tell Keldren to bring the ship to a halt.”
Moments after Dunsany went below, the song came to an end and the sails fell limp, although a strong wind still howled in from the west.
“I must admit, I didn’t think to see the Faith quite so soon,” Silus said.
“They’ll have had mages scrying this area of the coast round the clock,” Kelos said, “ready to give the order to launch at the first sight of the Llothriall.”
“I just hope that Makennon is so delighted to have her ship back that she forgoes the torture,” Dunsany said, climbing back on deck, sword in hand.
When the galleon pulled in alongside, it was not the soldiers of the Final Faith that greeted them, but a ragtag crew of men and women, some dressed in leather cuirasses and wielding shields and swords, others appearing to be nothing more than civilians along for the ride.
A heavily bearded man, wearing a mismatched uniform — the helm of a commander in the Swords of Dawn and a tabard clearly filched from a soldier of the Pontaine army — leapt between the ships and thudded onto the deck in front of Silus.
“No civilian vessels are to be sailed in these waters. We’re commandeering this ship.”
“Hang on a moment,” Silus said, “you’re not Final Faith.”
The men on the deck of the Faith ship laughed at this.
The bearded man grunted and spat at Silus’s feet. “We are now.”
“But what’s happened to the soldiers of the Faith? Why are a bunch of mercenaries crewing one of their vessels?”
“There’s been something of a change of management, sunshine. The Red Chapter is now in charge. So, are you going to do the decent thing, climb over the side and attempt the swim back to shore, or are we going to take this ship by force?”
In reply, Silus unsheathed his sword and drove the point into the mercenary’s right eye and through into his brain. There was a stunned silence from the Faith ship as the bearded man slid from Silus’s blade and fell to the deck, before the hiss of unsheathed weapons filled the air and bodies hurled themselves across the gap between vessels.
The odds were hardly stacked in their favour — there were at least twenty mercenaries and only three of them — but Silus and Dunsany were skilled swordsmen and Kelos was a master of elemental magic, and the element he was most adept with was the one which currently surrounded them.
As Dunsany and Silus stood back to back, blades dancing amongst the mercenaries, occasionally lunging out to strike one of them dead, Kelos withdrew to a quiet part of the deck, closed his eyes and began to mutter to himself, weaving complex patterns with his hands.
When he opened his eyes, five mercenaries dropped their weapons and clutched at their throats, their faces turning purple as a flood of brackish seawater issued from their mouths. Another gesture from the mage brought four columns of water bursting up from the sea to either side of the ship. They stood for a moment, swaying like a snake caught by the music of a charmer’s flute, before they lunged at the deck, snatching up men and women and throwing them far from the ship. Kelos was still raising water elementals when he realised that the remaining mercenaries had all been accounted for, their blood soaking the deck around the feet of Dunsany and Silus.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Dunsany said. “Something must have gone seriously wrong at Scholten if mercenaries are now in charge of the Final Faith.”
“And, thus, getting to see Katherine Makennon is going to be rather trickier than we had imagined,” Kelos said. “What are we going to do?”
“If we take their ship, we’re less likely to be stopped again. Flying the colours of the Final Faith, we should be able to follow the river Anclas all the way to Scholten,” Silus said. “There… well, we’ll just have to think of something, won’t we?”
Keldren climbed onto the deck, his face paling when he saw the dead mercenaries.
“What about the song ship?” Kelos said. “We can’t just leave it here.”
“ This is the brave new world that you would have me inherit?” Keldren said, taking in the chaos that had gripped the peninsula. “Gods, where have you brought me?”
“Keldren, I’m sorry, but we don’t have much time. We have to board the mercenaries’ ship.” Silus said, attempting to guide him by the elbow.
“No, I don’t think so. I would die out there. I will stay with the ship. Perhaps find some quiet bay to anchor her in and wait for this conflict to blow over. This is not the world I was expecting.”
“I’m sorry,” Kelos said, though Silus didn’t entirely believe the regret in the mage’s voice. After all, the elf mage had held him against his will, conducted vile experiments on his friends. Now they no longer had any use for him, it was fitting that they should leave Keldren to fend for himself. They said their goodbyes and watched from the Final Faith ship as the song ship skirted the shore, Keldren’s song fading as it rode away on its tide of magic.
Silus took charge of the Final Faith ship, but it was horribly unresponsive. The boom came round arthritically slowly, and the ropes and masts screamed in protest as the wind pushed against them. The ship’s wheel was badly in need of oiling and as he turned it, Silus could have sworn that he heard something break deep within the vessel. He only hoped that the craft would hold together long enough for them to get to Scholten.
Soon the jagged banks of the river Anclas rose to either side, playing host to a vast colony of gulls, whose stench and clamour rolled over them in a heady tide. When the sails fell lifeless for no apparent reason and the ship keeled to port, Silus only just managed to prevent it running aground.