Heritage of Fire Read online

  "The one in the robe," he said, and no more.

  She stared across the heaving water at the longship. "Not yet. I want to make sure I can hit him."

  Gerd nodded. "It'll be enough if you just drive him below and stop his antics." He had no idea how he knew that. As he said it, the certainty flowed into him, and from him into those around him. They made more room. Alissa shrugged out of her cloak, rested the blunt snout of her strange bow on the rail, and knelt, sighting along the stock.

  "I etched a dot on the arch, to aim with," she remarked, conversationally. "And set a pin exactly in line, behind the nock. The lines engraved on it tell me how much elevation to use at longer ranges. It's amazingly accurate. Mind you, the heave of the sea makes it harder. On dry land, I'm hitting a head-sized target on a tree four times out of five at a couple of hundred paces now. I don't think I'll do so well here."

  "Aim for the body," said Gerd. The pragmatic flatness of his voice surprised him.

  She nodded and watched the target, getting the rhythm of the swells set in her mind. Gerd thought that she was waiting for the man to come to the outstretched posture in his dance, too. A better target. And there was that wind. It might make a difference if it changed direction close to the longship.

  The longships were dividing now, one to port, two to starboard, to take them from both sides. Alissa still waited. They were aligning themselves, too, coming abreast, so as to range alongside at the same moment and overwhelm the merchantman in a double wave of warriors. Then would come the slaughter, and the plunder, and the burning...

  Alissa's bow thrummed. Gerd wasn't watching. He saw only the streak of the arrow - a bolt, she'd called it. He'd been expecting it, but the seamen gasped.

  Gerd ignored them. He'd lost sight of the bolt. Alissa grabbed for her tackle again. He could hear her muttering to herself, and in the fragment of time he had, he willed calmness on her. No time now for a broken pulley...

  The figure in the sky-blue robe flung its hands in the air. For a moment, Gerd thought it was a posture in the dance, but then it bent double, and its hands went to its belly. It staggered. Then it collapsed on the deck, curled in a ball.

  Instantly the longship heeled over. Its sails blew out in the wrong direction, flat to the mast, and the bows turned higher into the wind as the pressure on her raised afterdeck pushed her around.

  A shout from behind. "They've been taken flat-aback! She's in irons!"

  "They're not paying off. Steersman can't see it... there it goes." A cheer from the seamen.

  The sudden stir among the men crowded forward on the longship came too late. Her crew ran for the braces, but the mast of a longship was never made to stand such a suddenly reversing strain. It bent, split down its length, then snapped like a twig, a man's height above the rail. The whole structure, mast, yards, mainsail, topsail and rigging, went over the leeward side. The ship slewed violently downwind, heeling far over, her side going under. Her crew raced to cut away the wreckage before it capsized her.

  Alissa was cranking steadily. Gerd watched the steel arch of the bow bending, bending. She slipped the cord over the catch - a nock, she had called it - unhooked her winding-tackle, and brought the bow up. Another bolt was placed on the slide.

  She levelled it over the stern-rail again. "I wonder why they didn't set up a screen to protect the fellow," she remarked, evenly. "Too much top-hamper, I expect. It's bad enough as it is."

  "No. That’s not the reason. He has to work in the open air, without anything to block the breeze around him," said Gerd, and he knew it was true. He didn't know how he knew it, though.

  Alissa might have nodded. She sighted, waited, breathed in, out again slowly, and pressed the lever.

  This time Gerd was watching for it. The man in the sky-blue robe on the nearest longship grabbed at his thigh, then fell writhing to the deck. "Too low," muttered Alissa, and grabbed her tackle again. "Underestimated the range."

  Again the Kihreeans' made-to-order wind failed them. Again the longship's mainsail slatted frantically as she was caught aback, but this crew had been warned by the fate of the other. Someone must have been bellowing orders to the helmsman, below, and the mainyard was already moving as men tailed on the braces. She turned downwind, and only the topsail flattened to the mast, bulged, then blew out with a crack into flying ribbons of canvas.

  "She's paid off in time," someone remarked, at Gerd's elbow. The voice sounded a little disappointed.

  "Aye, but look at her now. She's going downwind like a paper boat, with that extra top-hamper." That was the captain. He addressed the steersman. "Wind's veering a little, thank the gods. Keep her up." The latter nodded, squinting up at the sails and the wind-vane on the after mast-head. The range to both the stricken Kihreeans was opening again. Alissa was steadily cranking once more.

  By the time she had the bow loaded again, the third longship had suffered a change in the wind as well. The robed figure on its afterdeck had disappeared, and that ship, too, had fallen off the breeze. The true wind was blowing them down to leeward, and Alissa's first victim was low in the water, its crew bailing frantically. Losing the mast like that would certainly have given the frames a brutal wrench. Even Gerd could see that the Wizard's Islander was walking away from them now.

  And its crew were cheering. They were cheering Alissa.

  Gerd felt the tension release. He stared out over the stern, as the Kihreeans dropped behind. He smiled. The ship rose and fell, a long corkscrew roll. A qualm seized him, and he leaned far out over the rail again.

  *

  The ship discharged at Vellend, at the entrance to Walse Bay. The cargo was transhipped into barges, and the passengers were offered the choice of road or water transport up to the city.

  "Why doesn't the ship just go on up to Walse?" asked Gerd. "It's a port, isn't it?"

  He was leaning on the hull-frame outside Alissa's cabin as she packed. The cabin itself was only canvas and lath. "Was, and still is," she replied, "for ships with oars. Like longships. But for these big traders, it's too deeply embayed."

  "Too deep? I thought a ship like this needed deep water."

  "It's not the depth of the water. I mean that the inlet is too long and too narrow. If the wind blows dead foul, any ship that relies on sails alone is going to be wind-bound, maybe for weeks." She spoke absently.

  Gerd considered this. Alissa put the last of her things into her pack, tied it, and swung it on her back. She picked up the bow in its case and scanned the little booth, briefly. "All right. Let's go."

  They climbed to the deck and walked across the gangplank. Gangs of labourers were unloading barrels of salted herrings and packs of carded wool, usually straight into stubby barges for the last stage to the city. There were also watermen, touting for trade.

  Gerd had assumed that they would hire horses, or maybe go in the common waggon, if there was one, but he simply followed Alissa. She walked towards the landward end of the stone pier, then down a set of steps to the water, and spoke to the stroke oarsman of a pair in a long boat.

  "Two for Walse, three packs," she said.

  The boatman grunted. "Two pennies each, and another for the packs."

  "Wind's with," she remarked, consideringly, looking up at the sky. "Tide's still making. Probably you won't have to pull at all."

  The boatman's face didn't change expression. "Still two each. But no charge for the packs."

  She nodded, stepped lightly down into the boat and seated herself on the stern-sheets. Gerd followed, not quite so deftly, as the bowman held the nose of the boat in, before slipping the painter. They shoved off.

  It was better, Gerd supposed, to have a view of the town from the water. It lent depth. From here, you could see that the waterfront was lined with warehouses and stores, mostly new, but the town on the slope behind was old at the core. There was an old wall, but new houses and shops had appeared outside it, spreading in streaks and dribbles along roadsides. The main road that led away crossed the point
ahead of them and disappeared over its crest. New houses were building up there.

  "Walse is that way?" Gerd asked, pointing. The stroke oarsman nodded. "How far?"

  "Just shy of nine mile, by water. Eleven by road, if you like to waste your money and get your teeth rattled on some sawblade of a nag." He boated his oars. "Eh, Andy, rouse out that sail."

  Gerd nodded. For all that, a horse would be faster. He suspected that Alissa couldn't ride.

  But in an hour or so, he would have reached the end of his journey. This part of his journey. He stared across the waters at the green hills. The Wizard's Isle was different to Loriso, that was plain. It was rolling and green, but it rose and fell, where Loriso had been a single long hill, the summit of a mountain in the sea. This was a whole land. The green was crops, covering the hills, wheat and barley, with the gold of high summer making a sheen over the dense green, and orchards just coming into fruit.

  It was a much bigger island, too. Beyond the hills that lined the inlet, mountains could be seen, snow on their summits even now, but blue with distance.

  He had been wondering for some time about the smoke staining the sky, but when Walse came into sight, Gerd blinked. He had never seen a town so large. It was a thousand reeking chimneys. As the shoulders of the last hill moved aside, the city could be seen spread around the confluence of the inlet and a lesser stream. Bridges sewed the city together like coarse stitches, and it had seeped outward, streaks of buildings spreading up the watercourses and the easiest slopes, a starfish made of timber and thatch, with a core of solid grey stone. Even on the opposite side of the inlet - which Gerd was beginning to realise was the estuary of a great river - there was a landing for a ferry and a knot of houses, with market gardens behind.

  Gerd turned his head to look at Alissa's face, as she watched the city. He could read only satisfaction there, as if matters had fallen out as she expected. After a moment, she nodded slightly to herself.

  She patted the awkward package that contained the bow she'd made, its tempered steel arch the proof of her craft. She sniffed the air. Then she glanced aside, at him. Her smile was a little crooked.

  "Charcoal fires," she said, after a pause. "Many of them."

  Gerd sniffed. Charcoal, yes, and general woodsmoke, and something else as well, the faint reek of privies and dunghills. The smaller stream that flowed into the estuary was brownish.

  The boat pulled in to a stone embankment, threading its way among other boats, the boatmen lying on their oars, pulling a few strokes, and waiting again. There was a wooden stage right on the water, and a set of slimy stone steps leading up. Gerd contributed two pennies towards the fare, and they shouldered their packs again.

  At the top of the steps, porters waited with barrows, but they avoided them, and also the touts for one inn or another. Gerd clamped one hand on his purse and kept an eye on Alissa's back, his wits about him, not allowing himself to stare up at the tall buildings - warehouses, it seemed - that crowded close to the waterfront. A narrow street ran along the embankment, but others joined it, running away at right angles from the water. They chose one at random, more or less, and walked up.

  "An inn?" asked Gerd.

  Alissa shook her head, not looking back. "Not near the docks. They're overpriced and dirty. Up towards Hillhead. You can walk down to Basden from there, and that's where a lot of the smithies are." She shouldered past a crowd that was gathered around a cook-shop. It was close to noon.

  "You seem to know your way about," said Gerd, tentatively. He wanted to ask how, but stopped himself.

  "I've been asking. Great-gran knew some people who moved here, a long time ago, and they wrote sometimes. Ships in from here came to Loriso in summer, and a sailor will always talk about the places he's been." She glanced up at him. The street was getting a little less crowded as they walked away from the river, and Gerd had moved up to her shoulder. "You've been a little busy, lately, for idle chit-chat. Marching around a square. Saving the company. Protecting Loriso from the Kihree. That sort of thing."

  "Don't forget spending most of my time on the boat spewing my heart up, except while watching you save my hide. Not much conversation out of me, lately, it's true. Plenty of puke, but little conversation."

  "Uh-huh. I thought that was biting at you." She shook her head. "What did you think it was, a sign of weakness? You were seasick. So? Didn't stop you from working out what to do."

  Gerd snorted. It had seemed obvious at the time. On reflection, he wondered why. What did he know of such things?

  They walked another ten strides, the street trending uphill. "So, what are your plans?" he asked. He asked it knowing that he had none, except to move on.

  The world's edge beckoned, and he was only indulging the urge to see what lay hidden beyond it, but he could as easily have headed south for Gleddis or Narboine. They were places that had a land connection with his old village. A couple of horses, a month's travel, and he could have been home again. Or he could have returned to the Carrine Pass, to see if the dragon was there.

  Instead he had headed west over sea, to the ultimate ends of the world. Or were they? Weren't the Outer Islands further west still? And did other lands lie beyond them again, on and on over a boundless ocean?

  Alissa was answering him. He had actually missed her first words. "... letter from Great-gran to this Mistress Nagle. She's the girl Gran saw off to the Wizard's Isle, married to a ship's purser, fifty years ago or more. They wrote sometimes, as I said. Seems to have done all right for herself, and her family can at least introduce me around. You?"

  Gerd couldn't answer. He heard Master Hawken's voice in his head again. Knight or mage, he had said, as if there were only two real choices. Well, what other choices were there? Back to his old trade as scullion in a pinchbeck inn? Or no, he could read and write and reckon up accounts now. He might be taken on as a clerk to a factor; perhaps buy himself into an apprenticeship to a merchant, or join the City Watch, if they had one. Or there might be a baron or someone who needed trained soldiers, men-at-arms.

  He felt the weight of the sword he wore. At least in the last two trades he could continue to wear it. Somehow that seemed important.

  But in answer to Alissa's question, he could only shrug. She darted a quick glance at his face, and said no more. They walked on.

  A broader street crossed the way they were following. Alissa stopped for a moment, looked up and down the cross-street, then turned to the right. Gerd followed. This one was quieter, with larger houses, more substantially built. Stalls on the street sold linens, woollens, silks, dyecloth. The stalls backed on to shops, fleetingly seen by those who passed, stacked with more bolts.

  "They sell only cloth here?" asked Gerd.

  "In this street. That's how I know which way to go. Ah! There's the Clothier's Guildhall. Look for an inn-sign, the Lamb."

  Gerd saw it next minute and pointed it out. Alissa nodded and walked on three more doors. The house she stopped at was no different to others - narrow, three stories tall, a shop on the ground floor, living quarters above. The door was open, and there was a window, through which could be seen a middle-aged woman cutting lengths of cloth on a counter. She was thin and sour in the face, someone who'd known enough disappointment to expect it now as a matter of course.

  Alissa glanced back over her shoulder before she stepped up from the street. It was something less than an invitation. Gerd hesitated by the doorway, where he could hear what was said.

  "Mistress Nagel?" Alissa asked.

  The other looked up, unsmiling: a quick, automatic assessment. "No. That's my mother-in-law."

  "I have a letter for her. From Loriso."

  The woman's face hardly changed. "Oh? To say her godmother's dead, I suppose. Well, you better give it to me. Mother wouldn't be able to read it."

  Alissa smiled, a little painfully. "No, no. Great-gran is still in good health, and she sends her good wishes to her goddaughter."

  The woman put her shears down on the co
unter and brushed her hands on her canvas apron. She held her hand out for the letter, and Alissa, after a fractional hesitation, brought it out from within her tunic. The other broke the seal without a pause, and scanned it rapidly.

  She shook her head, then looked up. "Well, I'll tell mother that old Harama Forster sent her a letter. She might recognise the name." She made an odd sound, something between a snort and a single, bitter cough of laughter. "It's from long enough ago."

  Alissa said nothing. Her face showed only pained enquiry. The woman ignored it.

  "And so you're the great-granddaughter," she said. "I seem to remember a letter saying that you'd been born. That was before my mother-in-law went daft, of course. It's no use you going to see her, incidentally. She'll only get more confused, if that's possible. Probably think that you're Harama. Why not? Most of the time she thinks she's a child herself. One that hasn't yet learned to use a pot." She smiled, except that it wasn't a smile. Gerd felt his skin go cold.