Chapter Ten
The children, the noncombatant women and men, the few warriors who would remain behind, all were ranked on either side of the path leading down from the castle walls to the icy sea, Woroc’Il’Lod.
The sun shone brightly. The Golden Shield of IBF, polished, was slung to Alan Garrison’s left side as he walked. Swan had talked him into the magically enhanced axe carried in his right hand. He’d convinced her that this plus his two knives were sufficient edged weaponry. She asked to be allowed to give the knives magic, too. Relenting, he was now the only man in existence with magically endowed push-button opening knives.
All of the warriors, men and the few women, were afoot, no room for their horses aboard the ships. Only Swan was on horseback. Befitting her nobility as the Virgin Enchantress, Daughter Royal, Princess of Creath, this was expected. She rode sidesaddle aboard the finest horse from the Company of Mir, a great palomino stallion with a darkly flowing bronze mane and long swishing tail. Its saddle and bridle were gold mounted. Swan, too, was regally dressed for the part.
Her hair was pinned up beneath a crown of yellow flowers trailing golden ribbons. She wore a dress of deep maroon color, gold thread woven into its neckline, elbow-length sleeves and hem. Tiny gold spurs adorned shining black boots visible below the lace trimmed petticoats. Buckled round her little waist was a sword, its burnished hilt gleaming in the sun’s rays. Garrison knew Swan well enough to know that she had no intention of traveling over Woroc’Il’Lod to Edge Land so attired.
As Champion, Garrison had been told, he was to walk before her horse and lead its reins as they processed. Flanking him and a little behind him were Gar’Ath and Mitan. Erg’Ran limped along several paces ahead, wearing his finest scholarly robes, axe in hand.
The path led down past the cavern, beside the rails along which, earlier, Garrison had assisted in the launch of their five ships, now at anchor along the shore. Because of their structure—wide abeam and without a keel—and the manner in which the vessels were launched, they had shallow drafts and could be anchored close in along the surf.
The members and families of the Company of Mir who stayed behind followed in the procession’s train, down the path and onto the rocky coast itself. Cold spray blew off shallow pools on an otherwise warm breeze. It was slower going along the shore, and Garrison was careful to guide Swan’s mount around the deeper pools lest the animal break a leg. But the practicality of the royal personage riding horseback became abundantly clear as they turned out toward the vessels themselves. Everyone else, Garrison included, was forced to wade through the low breakers, getting drenched to the waist, while Swan, mounted, never got her dainty boots wet.
Erg’Ran was using his axe shaft as a staff to steady himself. The first to reach the vessel on which Swan would travel, he called out something Garrison could not hear. In a moment, a ladder was let down to him astern on the portside. Erg’Ran stood in the water, steadying the ladder.
Garrison had been rehearsed in this as well. As Champion, he was to take Swan from her saddle and set her feet upon the ladder. When he guessed that he was close enough to the centermost of the five ships, Garrison reined in Swan’s horse. On cue, Gar’Ath took the reins from Garrison and Mitan took Garrison’s axe and shield.
Garrison turned to face Swan. She smiled at him, then slipped one arm around his neck as he slid her from the saddle. Carrying her the few steps to the ladder, he was nearly seized with laughter, holding it back by sheer force of willpower. Swan’s face was close to his and she whispered to his ear, “What is it, Al’An?”
“Realize how stupid we’d look if I tripped?”
Swan’s laugh was almost a giggle. He held her more tightly, not from fear of dropping her, but because he liked to hold her. Erg’Ran steadying the ladder, Garrison positioned Swan so that her feet were on the ladder above the water.
In the next moment, Swan ascended the ladder. Two young teenagers, boys, came up from the crowd to lead Swan’s mount up from the waves. Garrison was handed his shield and axe, then clambered up the ladder (he felt rude leaving the much older Erg’Ran standing in the water, but this was the drill). Erg’Ran was next, then Gar’Ath, then Mitan. All of the ships began loading rapidly then, everyone eager, Garrison presumed, to get out of the numbing cold of the surf. Soaked to the skin below the waist, standing beside Swan in the little ship’s stern, the warm breeze felt nowhere near as warm as it had.
The ones staying behind waited along the shore. As soon as all who were coming aboard were to their ships, Swan raised her voice over the pounding of the surf—it had to be magic for her to be heard—and proclaimed, “My friends aship and ashore! With the courage of Mir as our inspiration and his wisdom as our guide, we go forth from this magical place to right the wrongs which have been done, to defeat the power of evil...” Garrison listened, the words different but the message very familiar.
Remember the Alamo!
Remember the Maine!
The war to end all wars!
Make the world safe for democracy!
Good versus evil. Alan Garrison pondered, as he supposed men and women had always pondered in his world and this world and whatever other worlds there might be, if the other guy, the enemy, actually saw himself as incarnate evil? We’re going off to do great good, while you’re going off to do great evil. Had Ghengis Khan encouraged his troops with pep talks about being better looters and pillagers? Probably not. Had the men of King Phillip of Spain’s Armada seen themselves as ruthlessly despicable wannabe invaders while Elizabeth I’s English privateers had viewed themselves as heroes reluctantly taking up the sword in defense of hearth and home? Probably not and probably so, the Spanish seeing the building of Spain’s empire and the destruction of England’s pirate fleet as intrinsic goods, while the British viewed both as intrinsic evils.
From what Alan Garrison had learned of Swan’s mother, the Queen Sorceress Eran, she might indeed start off each morning by asking herself, “What new rotten nasty thing can I do to some unsuspecting innocent person today?” She might feel deeply depressed when the occasional day passed without some great evil being perpetrated. From all that Garrison had heard concerning Eran, she was the small-dog-kicker type in spades.
We are good, Garrison told himself, and we fight for truth. They are bad, and they fight because they enjoy inflicting harm and pain and destruction. If we win, Creath will be a happy place (at least until the next lunatic dictator). If they win, darkness will cover the land (like it does). Had Alan Garrison not already appreciated the differences between warriors and philosophers, and why the two rarely mixed, he would have understood it here, beside Swan as she concluded her address to the faithful. “... must steel ourselves for what is to come, be it victory or defeat. And, if it is the latter, you who remain behind will rise up again, fight again, and the victory will someday come. Good will triumph always, no matter how long or bloody the battle. Good will triumph!” Those who really appreciated the difference between warriors and philosophers knew that the warriors were the ones who were dreamers...
With the second-sight, Eran saw them as if in a dream, the vision of five ships blurred and unreal. She gave the orders for the ceremony to be prepared, her mount saddled, then set about dressing. Her second-sight could not penetrate the magic surrounding the summer palace, but she had regularly used it to view Woroc’Il’Lod at the boundary where the aura surrounding the summer palace began to fade.
The Company of Mir was approaching, and Swan would be of its number, as would her Champion. And, so too would be Eran’s old nemesis, Erg’Ran. This time, when they met, nothing would stand in the way of her revenge—if Erg’Ran lived that long.
Eran rode her newest horse, a better mount than he had been a lieutenant. He was still in training, and she used the whip and an oversized bit to regulate his gait, but he showed promise of speed and endurance under her hand. A lack of speed had never been his problem, and the endurance he’d learn.
She cantered him across the Great Plain of Koth, his rich black mane stiff on brisk wind which swept Edge Land, the only sound other than the beating of his hooves the creak of the leather and the jingle of the steel which constrained him to her convenience. Eran gave him a little spur and he quickened his pace.
Eran’s troops were formed before her, encircling the craggy stones of the facelike rock formation at the very center of the plain which since time began had been known as the Great Visage of Koth.
Six companies of the Horde of Koth formed the outer ring through which she passed, the circle closing behind her. There was an inner ring, this consisting of six units of the black masked Sword of Koth, fireswords raised in salute. As Eran passed, their swords lowered and the ring closed. Within the concentric circles of her military power were six circles of magical power. Six Handmaidens of Koth, wind tossing their black headveils and black dresses, comprised each individual ring, each of the women hand-linked to the others on either side of her. The rings were interlocked, the clasped hands of two of the women passed round those of two others, so that six rings formed one.
Eran stayed her mount, stroking the side of his great head with the lash of her whip. She liked the way his eyes widened and his nostrils quivered. He was already coming to know the whip’s promise.
Eran dismounted, her black cape, her voluminous black skirts, her hair caught up in the wind. Already, Eran could feel the power building. Her own magic, almost fully restored, would be too precious to squander should the Company of Mir reach Edge Land. Using the witchery of the Handmaidens would be enough for her purpose.
Two of the Handmaidens, heads bowed and eyes lowered behind opaque black veils, raised their arms and formed an arch beneath which Eran passed. She paused for a moment within this small circle of six, feeling their energy. Swan could have been one of them, the most powerful of them.
Eran reached the far side of the small circle and two Handmaidens again raised their arms to form an archway. Eran passed through, into the circle, which was six by six.
There was a Handmaiden for each of the six directions in each circle, and a circle of six for each of the six. Six by six. Power.
“I command the wind!” Eran began, and a single Handmaiden from each of the six circles repeated the words after her. “I command the sea!”
“I command the elements!”
The fast-moving clouds above paused.
Eran raised her voice, arms limp at her sides. “I command the wind!” Two voices from each circle uttered the words. “I command the sea.”
“I command the elements!”
The wind ceased and there was calm.
Eighteen voices.
The horizon began to glow in all directions and the rock beneath their feet and the clouds above turned black.
Twenty-four voices.
From within the clouds, there emanated a glow like the light of the two moons.
Thirty voices.
Thunder rumbled and lightning bolts streaked from the clouds to the ground surrounding the six circles of six and the troops beyond, forming a curtain of power and light.
Thirty-six voices spoke as one.
Balls of light soared over them, danced within their midst over the blackened rock. Eran raised her arms high above her head, palms opened.
Thirty-seven voices spoke as one, crying out toward the sky, “I command the elements!”
Thunder roared and lightning crackled. A wind, pregnant with power, cold as death, shrieked across the plain. Eran’s cape was torn from her shoulders, a whirlwind swirling round her, grasping at her hair.
Eran screamed her command. “Rise up, Woroc’Il’Lod! Rise up as when the moons cross your face and they draw you to them and your icy waters are pillars soaring into the sky! Rise up and seek the five ships and those lives aboard them which defy me! Rise up! Obey me! Bring forth destruction and sorrow! Rise up and bring forth death, Woroc’Il’Lod! Rise up, I command thee!”
All around them was night, illuminated only by the lightning and the balls of light. Magnified, louder and louder, the wind shrieked beyond endurance. “I command thee!”
Where there had been an eye’s blink earlier the cacophony of the elements, there was quiet; where there had been black night, there was grey day.
Exhausted by the magical power which had flowed through her, Eran lowered her arms to her sides.
The Handmaidens, still circled six by six, knelt, heads bowed, black veils tented round them, trailing over the ground toward which they gazed.
Her young lieutenant’s steel-shod hooves clicked anxiously against the stone beneath them.
Eran willed her cape to her shoulders, willed her hair into place as it had been. The magic was at work.
As their five ships were still not quite out of the magical aura of the summer palace, the clothes and boots and scabbards of the warriors dried quickly enough that Swan did not need to employ any of her own magic to assist. There was a small tent erected on deck for her to use when she changed. The bodice of the elaborate dress she’d worn for the procession was laced closed beneath her breasts.
She untied the knot and began to loosen the cords. Out of necessity, Swan fabricated her clothes through the use of magic, but refused to use magic to dress herself (except with the style of dress which was laced up the back from waist to neckline and required magic or an attendant because it was otherwise impossible to close). She stepped out of the dress and the comparatively fragile lace petticoats beneath its skirt.
Quickly, using magic to help her, she redid her hair, dispensing with the circlet of flowers and ribbons, plaiting her hair instead after the fashion of what Al’An had so curiously called a “sports braid.”
Because of the gathering chill, despite the tent breaking the growing wind, Swan redressed quickly, donning sturdier petticoats and a dress of heavier, more densely woven fabric. It was dark green, round necked, long sleeved, laced closed at the front and devoid of any trim. A loop at the end of each sleeve allowed for her middle finger to be inserted through. Swan pulled on sturdier boots as well. There was no need of a sword, and her dagger was where it always was on her leg.
She donned a dark brown great cape, leaving its hood down. Lastly, she wound a long shawl of heavy brown-and-green yarn over her head and around her shoulders. It was a gift knitted by Bin’Ah’s young wife.
Swan left the tent. The spray, colder than it had been when she’d entered the tent, immediately assaulted her, making her grateful for her sensible choice of wardrobe. The motion of the deck beneath her feet, because she had the horizon reference of the sea, was more pronounced to her.
The ship’s prow plunged forward into each wave, as if the vessel were about to be engulfed, then rose again. Beyond the prow, there was nothing to see but the vast, whitecapped greyness of Woroc’Il’Lod stretching infinitely around them. All that there was to relieve Woroc’Il’Lod’s emptiness, to reassure her mind and spirit that this was a reality and not a terrifying dream, were the other four ships of what Al’An called “Swan’s Armada.”
Woroc’Il’Lod frightened her, as it frightened everyone who set sail upon it.
The magical aura of the summer palace was gone as well. She could feel the emptiness of its absence. No longer would her magical energy be instantly renewed. She would have to be more cautious in its use.
Everyone seemed to be busily, almost frantically about his or her appointed task, adjusting sail, rowing at the oars, fighting the sea to keep it from claiming their lives. Hunching her shoulders against the rapidly growing cold and beneath the weight of the greatcape she clutched close around her, Swan moved to the stern rail. She was well aware that one chapter of her life was closing behind her. Another, which might be the final chapter, was beginning.
It was the ultimate bitter irony, she thought, her eyes focusing on a lonely whitecap far off to port. She ached for Al’An to touch her, hold her, make her his in every way, ached in body and soul to lie with him in the night, their flesh touching. Yet in order that the prophecy might be fulfilled, she must not be other than a virgin until she found the origin of her seed: her father.
Tears filled her eyes; she told herself it was the wind.
The whitecap she had been watching seemed somehow larger. It was an optical illusion, Swan decided. She kept watching it, however, even more intently.
Larger, still larger.
Swan worked the second-sight, clutching at the handrail more tightly. “Al’An! Erg’Ran! Gar’Ath! Mitan! The Gle’Ur’Gya! The Gle’Ur’Gya are coming!” Swan shouted.
There was one obvious reason why the Gle’Ur’Gya had a reputation as always overtaking their prey on the high seas, one reason other than their considerably larger, better rigged, faster ships. The Gle’Ur’Gya were seafarers, and any other Creathan merely a landsman who happened to be caught woefully out of his element at the most impossibly wrong time.
Binoculars were unknown in Creath, as were telescopes, no requirement for advanced optics to be invented or even considered. If one needed to look at something far away, one merely second-sighted it. If one had no magic, the thing to do was ask someone who did to look. Alan Garrison had no magic. “What do you see?” Garrison asked. “What do you see?!” The size and rigging were all the detail that he could make out from his position along the stern rail, but Erg’Ran, Swan and Mitan could second-sight the rapidly approaching Gle’Ur’Gya vessel in perfect detail. Gar’Ath, whose face often read like a book for the visually impaired, had no magic either, except that which he needed for swordsmithing. And his face asked the same questions.
Mitan answered first. “It is clearly a single vessel only, Champion. That is the way the Gle’Ur’Gya usually hunt. I count as many as half our number visible on deck alone, and the Gle’Ur’Gya ships have spaces below the deck where weapons are cared for and food is cooked. There could be more Gle’Ur’Gya there.”
“What kind of weapons?” Garrison pressed.
Erg’Ran spoke. “There are large fixed crossbows, of the type which are mounted to tripods and used in siege. They are affixed to the deck. I see twelve of them. They are cranked to the cocked position. Champion, no man, nor any Gle’Ur’Gya, is powerful enough to bend such prods. Their bolts are the size of short spears. A few strikes from one of these against our mast and it will be down, Champion.”
Unaided by the second-sight, Garrison was still able to gauge the height of the Gle’Ur’Gya’s main deck as compared to their own. It was amply high enough that anyone aboard the Gle’Ur’Gya ship firing even conventional crossbows or longbows had a decided tactical advantage. “Those megacrossbows? How much elevation capability do they have, if they were firing downward?”
It took several seconds for a response. Gar’Ath answered even though he, like Garrison, could not have been able to see them. “I am familiar with such weapons, from the great siege of Kli’Il’Yer, where the Horde of Koth killed many of us, Champion. These weapons rotate upward easily, either freely moving at the will of the marksman or being capable of locking into position for repeated firings on the same target.”
“How far do they crank downward, Gar’Ath?” Garrison was thinking of Renaissance-period warfare on Earth’s high seas, positing that their five little ships might be able to stay under the Gle’Ur’Gya’s artillery, if they could get close enough without getting sunk, first. That was the only encouragement, the sinking part. These were pirates and a ship gone to the bottom with cargo and gear intact was a prize lost.
Frantically, Garrison was trying to construct a scenario which would allow them some chance to combat the Gle’Ur’Gya’s superior firepower. Gar’Ath spoke. “If your magic, Enchantress, can be used to shield us from the cold, a number of us can swim out from our ships and board the Gle’Ur’Gya vessel secretly, then fight them on their own deck.”
“If we teamed that with longbow and crossbow firepower from our own decks, we might have something,” Garrison remarked. “Trouble there is that we could hit our own guys just as easily as hitting them. If only we had something to use as an explosive. We could sink her.” He realized that it would take a few precious seconds for the concept of what an explosive actually did to register, since they had no explosives in all of Creath. Perhaps, he thought, Swan could make something magically which—
“My mother.” Swan spoke so calmly, so matter-of-factly that her simple words were suddenly terrifying.
Garrison looked away from the Gle’Ur’Gya vessel and stared at Swan. Her normally pale skin, her cheeks flushed with the cold, was now a deathly white. Garrison followed her gaze to the horizon off the port bow.
Erg’Ran, his voice almost a whisper, rasped, “The moons will not cross paths for—”
“It is not the moons doing this,” Mitan solemnly intoned, interrupting Erg’Ran.
“I fear that you are right,” Erg’Ran agreed.
Garrison still stared out toward the horizon. What he saw was miles away, but it gripped his soul. What he could not compel himself to look away from was one of the storms about which Erg’Ran had spoken, a tornado, but made of water rather than air. How rapidly it rotated Garrison could not guess. The velocity at its center would be even greater.
The cyclonic ocean wave was coming straight for them, as if it were hunting them. And Garrison knew that hunting them was exactly what it was doing. Swan’s mother had sent it, sent it to destroy them before they could reach Edge Land.
Alan Garrison almost laughed. Eran the Queen Sorceress couldn’t be all that all-knowing and all-powerful, despite sending this storm to annihilate them. She hadn’t realized that the Gle’Ur’Gya had been about to spare Eran all the trouble of a magical storm and kill her enemies the old-fashioned way. It was easy to forget that Swan—young, beautiful, willowy, feminine in every way—was, in reality, their leader. As she began to speak, Alan Garrison realized once again how fine a leader she was and he felt pride beyond measure to be with her. “We have few options,” Swan told them, speaking logically, yet almost sweetly. “If the storm is not natural, which it cannot be because the moons are not crossing, either my mother used an unbelievably great amount of her own magical energy to create it or did so through the assistance of the Handmaidens of Koth.” Garrison remembered them being mentioned as witches, an evil sisterhood serving Eran’s will.
“In either case, it is of little consequence now. If we survive, however, it may be of great importance,” Swan continued. “My mother wishes to win this struggle, whatever way she can. The Queen Sorceress would know full well that the only chance we might have to combat this storm is by the use of magic. If I use my magic directly against it, in an attempt to destroy it, even assuming that my magic would be powerful enough, my magical energy will be almost fully depleted. Even with my magic at full strength to use against hers at Barad’Il’Koth, we will have little chance of success. Without it, we cannot win against the Horde and we will die on the Plains of Koth. That is a certainty.”
Swan gestured toward the rapidly approaching wave, the swells through which their ships made way already increasing in height and strength. “We have one chance. We must turn the ships, retreating into the magical aura surrounding the summer palace. The evil magic of the storm my mother sends against us will have no effect there and what magic I will need to get us there can be rapidly replenished.” Swan looked toward the Gle’Ur’Gya pirate vessel. “The Gle’Ur’Gya are a powerful enemy, yet could prove a valuable ally. At any event, I cannot stand by and abandon them to my mother’s evil magic. Erg’Ran? Do you know their tongue well enough that you could offer them safe harbor inside the aura?”
Erg’Ran hesitated, then nodded thoughtfully. “I believe so, Enchantress.”
“Then do so now. Mitan, aid him with your magic that his voice may be heard over the crashing of the waves by the captain of the Gle’Ur’Gya vessel.”
“Yes, Enchantress.”
Swan looked at Gar’Ath. “See to it, Gar’Ath, that Bin’Ah orders our ship turned toward the summer palace. Signal the other four ships that they might do the same.”
“Yes, Enchantress!”
Swan turned her eyes to Alan Garrison. “Al’An, please accompany me to the prow of our ship where I will call forth the wind. I will need your strength to support and sustain me.”
Garrison nodded, honored. “Yes, Enchantress.”
Swan touched his cheek as he fell in beside her. They made their way rapidly forward along the rolling and pitching deck, steadying themselves as need be against the shoulders of the oarsmen. Raising her skirts, Swan took the three low steps to the small foredeck at the prow.
The cyclonic wave was getting nearer, a huge pillar of gray so dark it was almost black, flecked with white froth.
Gar’Ath’s voice rang out. “Captain! Order the oarsmen to ship oars. Trim the sail as needed. We turn for harbor in the aura of the summer palace. Then, raise full sail and order that the oarsmen row as if their lives depended upon it. They do.” Gar’Ath pointed toward the cyclonic wave.
The Company of Mir’s warriors were a brave lot, fighting against impossible odds. From what Garrison had seen of them, they did not complain. If they were rational, they feared, but they’d made no show of it until this moment. Stark terror etched itself in their eyes, across the sets of their brows and chins and downturned mouths.
Bin’Ah, who was the son of a riverwater fisherman and one of the Company of Mir’s principal talents when it came to shipwrights, gave the command. “Ship oars!” Immediately, the rolling of the deck beneath them increased, the growing swells hammering them broadside. “Hard left rudder and bring us about easy in the swells. Lower your sails until we find the wind. Oarsmen, be ready!”
Garrison looked at Swan.
Her greatcape open wide and fallen back, her arms were raised to maximum extension, palms outstretched. Over the din of the sea around them and the creak of ship’s planking, Garrison heard Erg’Ran’s voice, but the words he said were in a tongue totally unfamiliar. He was making the offer of a truce to the Gle’Ur’Gya.
Their own ship was coming about to port. The Creathan equivalent of a semaphore signalman worked his flags to the other ships. On either side of them, Garrison observed the other four ships of their tiny armada attempting to come about.
Garrison turned his eyes to Swan. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, he thought that he remembered the term for this part of a ship, the tip of the prow overlooking the water. It was called the pulpit. Swan stood there, as she had been, but now she was speaking in the Old Tongue. That much he recognized.
Garrison blinked. Balls of light were born from her palms, rolled over her hands; then, like lightning, the energy streaked from Swan’s fingertips, racing toward the sky. The clouds above them, rapidly scudding heavy masses of grey, became luminous as the energy from Swan’s hands penetrated them. And they began to change direction, to move toward the Land.
A wind rose up, strong and cold, Swan’s skirts billowing on it, the shawl which had been wrapped about her head blown back from her hair.
“All right, lads! Lower oars! Full sail and steady on the tiller, helmsman! Now, lads! Put your backs to those oars!” The rolling and pitching became almost instantly less pronounced, all lateral motion nearly ceased. The little ship was underway, back toward the magical aura which surrounded the summer palace. Garrison looked to port and starboard at the other four ships getting underway.
The Gle’Ur’Gya vessel was slowly coming about into their little armada’s wake, under the circumstances its size a hindrance rather than an advantage. The Gle’Ur’Gya had accepted the offer.
The column of furiously spinning water a quarter mile wide or better, so tall that it seemed to connect the water to the sky above, roared relentlessly toward them.
“Help me, Al’An!” Swan rapidly descended the bow pulpit, Garrison beside her.
Swan wedged herself against the stern rail. “Hold me fast, Al’An! Hold me fast!”
Garrison braced himself behind her, the wind’s force already buffeting them.
Swan raised her arms again, and the energy flowed from her fingertips, her hands beckoning the wind, like a symphony conductor summoning more from his orchestra, making the wind swell, rise to her demands.
Garrison understood why she’d needed him with her. The wind forced her body back against him, his own hands white-knuckle-locked on the stern rail; his body was all that kept Swan from being blown down by the wind’s force.
The cyclonic wave advanced inexorably, its speed seeming to increase.
Garrison looked behind him. The helmsman at the tiller—he’d lashed himself to its arm—shook with the force transmitted to him from the water through which their craft plunged. “Gar’Ath! Help the man at the tiller! The helmsman! Help him! Hurry!”
The helmsman’s legs buckled and he stumbled, fell, the tiller arm swaying frighteningly. “Swan! Hold on as tightly as you can for a second!”
Garrison didn’t know if she’d heard him, nor could he completely let go of her for fear that she’d be bowled over by the wind. But Garrison twisted round, bracing Swan with his back, one hand only clutched to the bow rail. He stretched his other arm as far as he could, at last fisting the tiller arm in his left hand. His body immediately began to shake from the force of the rudder. Garrison looked over his shoulder. Swan was not holding on, could not, he suddenly realized. She required both hands free in order to summon the howling wind to drive them on.
Garrison’s hearing was nearly gone, the wind’s shrieking wail filling his head, numbing his senses. He looked up. Gar’Ath clawed his way aft, hand over hand along the shoulders of the oarsmen. Gar’Ath’s long hair whipped across his face, his cloak blown off his shoulders. “Coming, Champion!” Garrison thought he heard those words, but could not be sure.
Garrison’s shoulder muscles ached with the strain from the tiller and his gloved hand was beginning to slip. The weight of the man lashed to the tiller arm pulled Garrison off balance. Garrison was hurtled to one knee as their ship crashed against a swell. He felt Swan’s body shifting behind him. His muscles were tensed and stretching to the point of agony, but he held on because there was no choice.
“Hurry, man!” Garrison cried out to Gar’Ath.
“On my way, Champion!” Gar’Ath threw himself against the force of the wind, his body crashing against the tiller arm. Garrison released, nodded his thanks. Garrison pulled himself to his feet and around, wedging his body more firmly against Swan’s.
Wind-hurtled spray blinded Garrison for an instant.
Struggling to reopen his eyes, what Garrison saw when he did was as frightening as the face of death. The cyclonic wave, obliterating all light above and behind it, was a wall of rushing blackness, bearing mercilessly down on their ships.
The Gle’Ur’Gya vessel had come about, was under full sail, and nearly passing them.
Garrison craned his neck to look forward and up. The square sail on their ship’s single mast was strained full. His eyes tracked along its edges to the lines securing it to the spars. If one of those lines should snap, they were done for.
Swan heightened the tempo of the gale force winds she commanded, winds orchestrating five tiny ships and the full-masted Gle’Ur’Gya pirate vessel to water surface speeds Garrison wouldn’t have thought possible. Her hands moved ever more furiously, the rush of air around Swan and Garrison tearing at clothing and the flesh beneath.
The deck planking under Garrison’s feet was beginning to tremble and the handrail shook. Garrison looked forward. Their solitary mast vibrated like a tuning fork.
Garrison cast a glance over the side. Their tiny ship’s wake was near tidal wave proportions, walls of white frothed water rising to port and starboard. He could imagine how it must have looked from the bow.
Faster and faster, the deck planking shuddering, starting to buckle. The roar of the wind was so intense that Garrison screamed against it, desperately trying to equalize pressure before his tortured eardrums burst.
Faster and faster, Swan’s hands flew, drawing the wind to them, to the sails.
The Gle’Ur’Gya vessel had passed them all. In the same instant that Garrison looked for it, the Gle’Ur’Gya’s aftmost mast snapped, flipping forward across the main deck, chopping down spars from the main mast, sails flapping wildly in the wind, tearing, blowing free.
Garrison wanted to cry out to Swan, call her attention to the plight of the crew of the Gle’Ur’Gya vessel. He shouted her name. If she heard him over the roaring air currents careening around them, she did not acknowledge it. Garrison looked to their own mast once more. It vibrated more pronouncedly.
The Gle’Ur’Gya vessel was slowing so dramatically that, within moments, it would be all but dead in the water, and precious few moments after that, the cyclonic wave would be upon it, consuming it.
Alan Garrison saw the thing more clearly than he wanted to. Around the base there was a trough, a plunging, white-capped chasm, the boundary between the cyclonic wave’s suction and Woroc’Il’Lod’s otherwise roiling surface.
The trough was perilously close.
But the trough was closer still to the Gle’Ur’Gya vessel, nearly even with it. Alan Garrison experienced an ironic, guilty happiness, engendered by the knowledge that he didn’t possess the magic of the second-sight, hence would remain mercifully blind to the agonized faces of the Gle’Ur’Gya as they met death beyond horrific imagining, their bodies thrashed and torn, broken limb from limb.
There was a moment when the Gle’Ur’Gya ship was all but motionless on the water’s surface, what momentum it still possessed from before the collapse of its masts was equalized by the reverse current forming and reforming at the trough’s outer boundary. Then the Gle’Ur’Gya were drawn inexorably back, into the advancing edge of the trough.
There were man-shapes, yet somehow different from men, hurtling themselves from the deck into the Woroc’Il’Lod, vainly, foolishly, heroically fighting for a last instant of life.
A lone figure, perhaps the vessel’s captain, perhaps its cook, stood on the high afterdeck, a sword raised in his right hand. It was possible that the Gle’Ur’Gya had lost his mind, yet even more likely that he was doing the only thing that he could do to keep his sanity. The figure began to execute a kata with his sword, ballet-like in its grace, the sword whirling in his hands as if it had a life of its own and it and the figure wielding it were in perfect harmony, communion.
In the end, as the crippled Gle’Ur’Gya vessel was about to slip off the edge and into the trough, to be devoured within the monstrous cyclonic wave, the Gle’Ur’Gya mariner manipulated his sword one last time. His right hand, which grasped the hilt, was almost beside his right ear, the sword’s pommel angled rearward and slightly upward, the point of the blade stabbing aggressively forward. His left palm was open, fingers extended, his hand—at once a target and a shield—was thrust toward this enemy which he could not kill.
The Gle’Ur’Gya ship careened over the trough’s edge and vanished. An instant afterward, fragmented portions of the vessel’s hull were visible along the leading edge of the cyclonic wave, then gone.
Alan Garrison didn’t know why his eyes sought out Gar’Ath’s face but when they found it, he saw the swordsman’s eyes swam with tears.
The Gle’Ur’Gya’s fate would be theirs in moments, Garrison realized.
Faster and faster, Swan’s hands flew with blinding rapidity, the speed of the wind which propelled their five craft increasing and increasing. Swan’s greatcape was ripped from her shoulders, blinding Garrison for a second, then jerked away from his face. Her braid began to loosen, came apart, her spray-drenched hair whipping across Garrison’s eyes. The sleeves of Swan’s dress sheared, her bodice, her skirt shredding nearly to rags.
There were loud cracking sounds, one after the other. Garrison twisted his neck around to look forward. Oars were snapping like matchsticks, wooden fragments caught up in the wind, firing along the deck. If enough holes were shot into their solitary sail, it would shred in microseconds.
Garrison turned his head, looking aft, his body wedged hard behind Swan’s. Garrison squinted against the wind, and his lips were set wide apart, rictus-like. Wave after wave of spray launched over them, Garrison choking with it.
The cyclonic wave was frighteningly nearer, the trough’s boundary readying its first kiss to their stern. Their wake was nearly eradicated by the reverse current into the trough.
Swan’s body went rigid against Garrison, her hands and arms thrusting upward in one last summoning. The wind pushing them rose to her command. Garrison lost his grip, stumbling back. Swan’s body hurtled past him. Garrison grabbed for her, caught her ankle. Her body slammed to the deck and both of them skidded along the spray-slicked planking. Garrison reached out with his other hand, clawing for a hold. He caught his fingers around a rail stanchion, his wrist breaking. He knew that he shouted with the pain, but he heard nothing but the roaring wind.
Garrison held on, wedging one foot against the ledge of an oarsman’s well.
At last, he heard something over the shriek of rushing air, the sound he’d anticipated and most feared hearing. It was the thunderous crack of their mast snapping in two. Their square-rigged sail held its integrity for an instant longer, the mast’s upper section rigidly suspended on the wind. The sail billowed outward, the broken segment of mast arcing backward, almost upright for a split second. Then, it snapped forward, like a thrown knife. Their little ship shuddered, the sail torn in two. Garrison looked aft. All light was obliterated, the cyclonic wave towering over them.
The wind which had driven them in their desperate gambit, simultaneously ally and enemy, began to subside.
A new roar, louder than the wind, replaced its sound.
Garrison stared into the cyclonic wave. It seemed to be on all sides of them at once.
In his peripheral vision, Garrison caught sight of some of the oarsmen, trying to clamber back to their positions. Gar’Ath was slumped over the tiller, dead or unconscious.
The cyclonic wave edged nearer, and Garrison knew that their ship was slipping back, the reverse current dragging them into the trough. Garrison turned his head forward, for one last glimpse of Swan. He truly loved her; and, if somehow some part of them went on, he would love her even after death, he realized.
Garrison looked up. The sky, still cloud impacted, seemed oddly bright. He looked over the starboard rail. The other four ships were motionless on the water, the nearest only a hundred yards or so out. The Company of Mir crewmen were waving their arms, their oars, their swords.
“Holy shit!” Garrison gasped.
He let go of Swan’s ankle, let go of the stanchion. Broken wrist or not, as he crawled forward on his knees, his eyes scanned the deck for something he could use as an oar. He found an actual oar, part of the shaft furthest from the blade broken away. Garrison plunged the oar into the water. He shouted, not knowing if anyone could hear him. “Row! We’re nearly inside the aura! Row!” It was futile, one man gouging an oar’s blade into the sea, but Alan Garrison did it anyway.
He thought he heard Swan’s voice, but it could have been his mind playing tricks on him. Garrison looked up from the water.
Her dress in tatters, left arm bleeding, hair plastered half across her face, Swan stood amidships, a broken piece of oar in her right hand, raised high over her head. She flung it into the air and it remained motionless. There was a flash of light, a vortex forming around the fragment.
And, oars, perfect and new, fell from the vortex, onto the deck. The Company of Mir oarsmen ran to them, picked them up, ran back to their positions, thrust them into their locks.
The little ship was moving, painfully slowly.
Pain consumed Alan Garrison, but also drove him on. Bone was visible through his skin, blood oozing down his hand from the puncture. With his armpit over the oar shaft, for added leverage, Garrison kept at it.
Lower.
Thrust.
Drag.
Raise.
Rotate.
Then again, and again, and again.
Garrison didn’t look back for what seemed to be several seconds, but time in Creath followed other rules, rules he did not understand. Perhaps Swan was somehow controlling it, using time itself to aid them.
Lower. Thrust. Drag. Raise. Rotate. Again. Again.
Alan Garrison looked back.
The cyclonic wave was only a little closer.
Lower. Thrust. Drag. Raise. Rotate. Faster! Again. Faster! Again...again...again...again—
Garrison looked back once more. The cyclonic wave had gotten no closer.
Lower. Thrust. Drag. Raise. Rotate. Faster! Again. Faster! Again...again...again—“Al'An!”
No time to talk, he wanted to say, but there was no time to say even that.
“Al’An. We are safe inside the summer palace’s aura. Evil magic cannot harm us here.”
Garrison started to laugh. Someone had once told him that the first thing anybody usually did when they thought they were having a heart attack was to try to drive to the hospital. It was a way of going into denial. Hearing Swan’s voice telling him that they were safe was his mind lying to him because his body hurt so much. He wouldn’t take his eyes off the oar that he still moved to lower, thrust, drag, raise and rotate. He couldn’t take his eyes off the oar or he would stop rowing and they’d die.
“Al’An, brave Al’An.”
Alan Garrison thought he felt Swan’s hand touch his brow, then darkness swept over him.