13

"We'll pay our port duties in Erdin!" bellowed Aran, the captain of the two-masted trading vessel. His voice was louder than Garric would have thought a man's could be without aid of a megaphone. "Go play navy with somebody who's got the time to waste!"

"There's a wizard aboard her," Tenoctris said to Garric and Liane, who stood with her along the merchantman's lee rail. She grinned minutely and added, "He probably calls himself a wizard, at least."

The officer in the bow of the single-banked warship did use a megaphone. "Lay to," he thundered, "or we'll sink you and you can try your wit on the fishes!"

"It's a royal vessel from Ornifal," Liane said quietly. Her hands rested lightly on the railing, the fingers spread. "Do you see the eagle on the pennon? If they were from Sandrakkan they'd have a horse's head there instead."

"Fah!" Aran snarled. "The first time this year the wind's fair to take us up the River Erd without tacking and some nobleman's by-blow decides to hold us up. Till the tide turns, I shouldn't wonder."

He glared at his waiting crewmen and added, "Yes, drop the sails! The fool with the kettle on his head insists!"

Garric eyed the warship paralleling the merchantman's course fifty yards away. Its twenty-five oars per side moved with the rhythm of a millipede's legs. The stroke looked slow to Garric because he was used to the smaller, lighter equipment of a fishing dory, but he didn't doubt that it could drive the ship's bronze beak through the merchantman's hull with no difficulty.

"What's a royal ship doing here?" Garric asked. "Isn't the Earl of Sandrakkan an enemy of the king?"

"It's not open war," Liane said, "but the Earl of Sandrakkan is about the worst enemy the king has. Except perhaps for the queen."

Garric looked sharply at her to see if she was joking. There was nothing but polite interest on the surface of the girl's face, though the muscles below were hard as marble.

The mainspar clattered down. Sailors grabbed handfuls of the sail, furling it and cursing the breeze. It was fair for their destination, Erdin, and strong enough that it had bellied the canvas against the forestay. Sandrakkan sailors believed that a bulging sail held the wind like water in a pail, though the Haft fishermen Garric grew up with swore by board-flat canvas.

"Since there's a wizard aboard," Tenoctris said with her usual detachment, "I think we can assume they're looking for us. For your father at least, Liane."

Two sailors were drawing in the foresail and its spar. They couldn't let gravity do the work because the mast slanted like a bowsprit so that the yard was attached well forward of the hull. That was a necessary but awkward adaptation to the fact the mainsail bellied so far, though Garric admitted that the foresail's leverage meant the tubby merchantman was remarkably quick to change tacks.

"The king is looking for us?" Liane said.

"If this is a royal ship as you say," Tenoctris said, "then yes, I think he is."

Liane looked as though she were sucking something sour. "I wonder if my father was working for the queen," she said.

Tenoctris shrugged. "There're more parties than two involved," she said. "Though I'm afraid if you followed most of them back you'd find the same thing at the end of all the chains."

"The Hooded One?" Garric said, his eyes on the nearing warship. Only a few oarsmen in the bow and stern were rowing.

"No," Tenoctris said, "though he'd like to pretend otherwise. I mean Malkar."

The oarsmen sat on separate benches divided by a central runway so narrow that sailors would have to turn sideways to pass one another along it. There was a mast step at mid-keel, but the vessel didn't carry a mast and spar at present; probably they'd been landed on shore so as not to be in the way while the vessel patrolled under oar power. A small sail was furled against the jib boom projecting above the ram.

A single helmsman in the narrow stern handled the paired steering oars. Two belt-wearing officers, one in the bow and the other seated near the helmsman with a drum between his legs, were the only deck crew. Presumably rowers got up from their benches when it was necessary to adjust the sail.

The merchantman lost way, wallowing in the swell. Because the hull was short and the stern higher than the bow, the vessel began to rotate slowly counterclockwise. That complicated the task of coming alongside for the warship's captain.

"Toss us a line," he shouted. When Captain Aran ignored him he added, "Toss me a line or the Sister take me if I don't pull your rails off with a grappling iron!"

"Playing navy!" Aran sneered, but he stepped to the rail beside Garric and lifted the coil of one-inch docking hawser there. He threw it with a sidearm motion that spun the coil open as it flew through the air. The warship's captain caught the last of the coil with equal skill and took a turn around a jibsail bitt, binding the vessels as the oarsmen eased them the last of the way together.

The sheep in the merchantman's hold blatted. They'd been generally docile during the voyage, but the vessel's present nervous pitching would make a veteran sailor queasy. Garric thought of going below, but there wasn't much he could do to help their discomfort. Even with the hatch open the hold was dimly lit and the sheep were packed more tightly together than the warship's oarsmen. There wasn't any good reason to subject himself to that.

The warship carried three men in addition to the rowers. The military officer who'd hailed the merchantman wore a brass helmet and brass cuirass which mimicked a demigod's muscles. The fellow—more likely his servant—must polish the metal every morning to keep it so bright in the salt air.

The second soldier wore an iron helmet and a coat of mail. He looked glum, as he had every right to do. The armor must be terribly uncomfortable in the sunlight. Besides, the man probably realized as Garric did that the weight of the iron would carry him straight to the bottom of the sea if he managed to fall in.

Both men carried swords, and the line soldier had a spear besides. The weapons were merely for show: Aran's eight-man crew could easily have tossed both soldiers over the side and gone about their business if that had been the only constraint. It was the ram that provided the warship with its real authority.

The vessels' prows touched, the merchantman's starboard to the warship's port side. Even at the bow the merchantman was three feet higher than the other. The officer grimaced with distaste, but he and his subordinate clambered up without having to ask help from sailors who weren't going to volunteer it. They must have gotten plenty of experience in the recent past.

Garric's eyes were on the third member of the boarding party, a scrawny old man in deliberately outlandish costume. Instead of a tunic, he wore pinned at the throat a cape made from the skins of dozens of different wild birds and animals. He carried a staff carven intricately from wood so dark that it was almost black.

As soon as the fellow scrambled over the merchantman's rail he began to hop on one foot while snarling and gesturing at the sky. His staff had a knob on one end and a point on the other.

"Playacting," Tenoctris muttered with disdain. "The times being what they are, he has more power than he ever dreamed was possible. Unfortunately he's still a hedge wizard with no more understanding than he had when he was hunting for lost brooches and mixing love charms in some crossroads village."

Garric had brought out his weapons when the warship hailed them, but he hadn't strung the bow and the sword was still within the oilcloth wrapper where he'd packed it for the sea voyage. He was tense. He knew that he could hand the problems over to King Carus simply by grasping the sword hilt, but that was the wrong response here. Besides, Garric or-Reise would never be completely out of his depth in a place where sheep bleated nearby.

"Nasdir," the officer snapped to the wizard. "Quit jumping around and get to work."

The wizard raised his chin in an attempt to look imperious. His drooping mustache was white, though the sparse hair on his scalp was still black. "You don't understand my art," he said.

"I understand that the quicker we find this Benlo, the quicker we can leave a spit of rock that's baking when it's not wet," the officer said. "Get to work!"

"And leave off wondering whether what comes over the horizon next'll be a storm or couple hundred Sandrakkan troops to cut our throats," the line soldier said. He glared at Nasdir as if deciding where he'd stick his spear if the wizard gave him the slightest excuse. The warship's base off the shore of the duke's domains might not be quite as bad as the soldiers implied, but it was obviously bad enough that tempers had begun to fray during the time this search operation had gone on.

"You're not the duke's customs inspectors?" Captain Aran said. He shaved his black hair short, but he had a great bush of a beard that bristled as he considered the situation. "Just who are you then, you Sister-loving rats?"

"We're the representatives of your king," the officer said coldly. "We're looking for a man, Benlo bor-Benliman; and I'll tell you right now that if he's aboard your vessel you'll save yourself trouble and maybe worse to hand him over at once."

Liane stood a little straighter; her lips curled in a dismissive sneer. Garric couldn't imagine that anyone looking at the girl wouldn't realize that she was of noble birth. Mostly people didn't look, though. They saw and heard what they expected, and nobody expected a young noblewoman to be traveling from Carcosa to Erdin on a freighter full of sheep.

Aran grunted. "You're seeing everybody aboard," he said. "None of us is named Benlo as best I know, but if you see him you go ahead and take him off. And take yourselves off, so an honest man can get on with his business!"

"Let's see your palms," the officer said, tapping the back of Aran's right hand with his paired index and middle finger.

"And you two as well," he added, gesturing toward the pair of middle-aged sailors who'd taken in the foresail. Neither they nor their captain looked anything like Benlo, but they were close to the right age. The others were too young, except for the helmsman with brown skin, spiky hair, and no tongue.

The officer glanced at the three men's palms. Ropes and oarlooms give a sailor calluses like those of no other profession; a nobleman like Benlo couldn't possibly hope to pass for a seaman if his hands were examined.

"Now," Aran said, "do you want me to show you my bum too, or can I maybe raise sail with a prayer of making the tide?"

"Not yet," the officer snapped. He looked around to find the wizard; Nasdir squatted on the other side of the mainmast with several sailors staring intently at him. He'd drawn a six-pointed star on the deck planks with the tip of his hardwood staff.

The warship's captain slacked the line so that the vessels no longer rubbed in the swell. Four oarsmen kept up a slow stroke to hold the ships' relative positions.

The officer looked at Garric with narrowing eyes. "And what have you got there, boyo?" he demanded, pointing to the oilskin bundle. "Looks like a sword to me."

"It's a sword," Garric said, deliberately thickening his voice into the accent of the most rural of his neighbors in the borough. "And a bow, too, if you're as blind as you're daft and you can't see for yourself. And down below there's fifty sheep, the cargo I'm taking to Sandrakkan for Master Hakar or-Mulin."

He turned and spit over the side. With the wind favoring it, the gobbet splashed not far from the warship's oarblades. Sullen disrespect was the natural reaction of a peasant being troubled by authority, and it also served to hide Garric's fear.

"I don't guess any of the sheep're named Benlo," he continued, "but you'd better ask them."

Captain Aran guffawed and pounded Garric on the back. "Yeah, you do that, soldier boy!" he said. "Maybe you can find some recruits down in the hold, too. Baaaa! Baaaa!"

The officer flushed but he wasn't fool enough to start trouble he was sure to lose personally, even if the merchantman's crew came out of it badly as well. The line soldier grinned, though his face stiffened when his superior glanced around.

The wizard stood; he began a shuffling dance around his hexagram. Garric stepped back so that he had a better view of the proceedings. Everyone else aboard was also watching Nasdir.

"Salbathbal authgerotabal basuthateo!" Nasdir shouted. At every word he rapped the staff's black tip against the deck. Garric noticed that the wizard hadn't written the words around the hexagram, only marked a dimple between each pair of points. He wondered if Nasdir could read the Old Script. Was he literate at all?

"Aleo sambethor amuekarptir!" cried Nasdir, his motley cape flapping as he pranced. He was naked beneath it.

Tenoctris stared at the peak of the merchantman's foremast with the intensity of a judge passing sentence. Her face was set. Did she disapprove of Nasdir's technique or was there something more to her concentration?

"Benlo bor-Benliman erchonsoi razaabua!" Nasdir said, stabbing his staff down into the center of the hexagram. The two sailors nearest him gasped and jumped back, hiding their thumbs in their fists in a gesture to turn away evil.

A wraith resembling light on dustmotes rotated twinkling up from the hexagram. Its color shifted between red and blue, like the shimmering of a cat's-eye gem.

The wraith was a pale image of Benlo. It slowly raised its right arm, pointing toward the deckhouse which held the two passenger cabins.

"We've got him!" the officer cried. He drew his sword. "By the Lady we've got him at last!"

The warship's crew could hear the shouts but they were too low in the water to see what was happening on the merchantman's deck. The drummer put his right foot on the stern rail and bobbed up for a better view. His narrow vessel rocked alarmingly; the captain turned and shouted angrily.

Liane was as still as a winter sunrise. Tenoctris kept her back to the wraith but her lips moved silently. Garric thought he saw the hint of a smile on them.

The two doors of the deckhouse faced the bow. The wraith was pointing at the one on the right where Garric slept. The common soldier moved to it carefully. He held his spear waist-high at the balance, cocked back to thrust if anyone rushed through the doorway.

He jerked the door open. Red and blue sparks swirled in the small cabin, a combination Garric knew meant that Nasdir couldn't discriminate among the forces he put into motion.

"Benlo bor-Benliman!" the wizard repeated. "Erchonsoi razaabua!"

There was a loud crack. The lid of the burial jar sharing Garric's cabin rose. Part of the rim split and lifted also, gripped by the pitch seal.

Benlo's nude corpse stood up slowly. The torn body cavity had been sewn with coarse twine. The perfume of aromatic spices mixed with but could not hide the stench of rotting flesh.

The soldier bellowed, turned, and ran straight into the mainmast. He bounced back with a clang. His spear clattered to one side of the mast; his helmet fell off and landed behind him. He got up again and staggered off at an angle, still blind with fear.

Nasdir shrieked like a hog being gelded and crossed his arms in front of his face, still holding the heavy black staff. The officer backed into him; both men fell in a tangle of limbs and screaming terror.

The soldier started to throw himself over the rail. Liane caught the man's left hand in both of hers and dragged him sideways so that his elbow crooked over the line tethering the vessels together. The warship's captain was shouting questions, and the oarsmen, relaxed a moment before, settled into place on their benches to grip the oarlooms.

Sparks of blue and red light gouted from the open doorway like the last flare of a dying fire, then vanished to normal sunlight. Benlo's corpse sank back into the burial jar; one arm still dangled over the broken rim.

Nasdir and the officer scrambled to the railing on all fours. Drenching in the sea awakened the soldier at least to some degree of function: he'd slid into the belly of the line and was now climbing hand over hand to reach the warship's side.

The officer grabbed the line, shoving the wizard aside, and realized that he was still holding his sword. He dropped the weapon into the sea to get it out of his way. The ivory hilt and the gold inlays on the blade's ricasso gleamed for some while as the weapon sank through the clear water.

Nasdir rose screaming and slashed the air with his staff. Liane ducked from a blow that would have broken bones.

Garric felt the same revulsion he'd known the night he found a rat lapping the blood of the pigeon whose throat it had gnawed out. He stepped forward.

"Watch—" Liane called.

Garric raised his open left hand. The staff whistled into it with a smack. The textured heartwood had a greasy feel in Garric's grip. His palm stung, but he'd come by his calluses through hard work; pain was nothing new to him. He tossed the staff over the port rail as his right hand closed on the wizard's throat.

Nasdir bleated for an instant. Garric lifted him, caught one of his thrashing legs—spindly things with less muscle than an honest man's arms—and hurled the wizard so far that he landed among the shafts of the warship's extended oars.

The old man managed to hang on to an oar long enough for a sailor to pull him aboard. Garric was glad of that, but he hadn't worried much when he threw Nasdir over the side. He bent over and supported his body on the railing, breathing deeply.

Most of the merchantman's crew had backed into the bow, but the helmsman stared at his fellows in voiceless wonder. From his position on the roof of the deckhouse he'd only seen Nasdir's wraith. The following general terror puzzled him.

The warship's captain and the dripping military officer shouted into one another's faces. Tenoctris hadn't moved since the boarding party arrived; now she extended her right hand toward the warship. Blue fire as dense and pure as the heart of a sapphire quivered above her index finger.

The military officer flung himself down in the narrow aisle. The captain shouted a hoarse command. The oarsmen began to stroke, raggedly until the drummer took up the beat and brought them into rhythm.

The little vessel drew away at nearly the speed of a man running. Tenoctris lowered her arm, looking worn but still smiling.

"Sister take you all!" Captain Aran said to her in a voice like that of a wounded bear.

He pointed to the cabin. "That thing goes over the side now!" he added. "And you can count yourself lucky if I don't decide to do the same with the lot of you."

"No!" Liane said. "He's my father!"

Aran stepped toward the deckhouse. Four of his men followed him.

"No," said Garric. He knew what would happen if he snatched his sword from its oilskin wrapper. Instead he picked up the spear the soldier had lost when he collided with the mast. "No, you're going to land us and our belongings in Erdin as you contracted, so in a couple hours we none of us have to see the others ever again in our lives."

Aran gestured his men to either side. He pulled a hardwood belaying pin from its socket on the port railing.

Garric lifted the spear and spun it on the fingers of his right hand. The spear was sturdy but still slimmer than a quarterstaff. Garric wasn't as skillful as Cashel, but he could make this lighter weapon dance.

"Set your sails, Captain!" Garric shouted. "Or shall I call my friend out of the cabin to help me?"

Tenoctris made a minuscule gesture. Garric didn't know for sure what happened behind him, but Aran dropped the belaying pin as though he'd burned his fingers on it. The sailors stumbled back.

"Set your sails," Garric repeated, this time a plea rather than a challenge. He whirled the spear over his head; needs must he could give a good account of himself with it, though he didn't imagine he could stop the ship's whole crew if they rushed him.

Aran held his ground. He pointed past Garric. "You close that door," he said. "Then we'll go about our business. And by the Shepherd! you'll never set foot on this deck again once you leave it."

"Yes," said Liane as she walked into the cabin with her father's corpse. "That's what we'll do."

She slammed the door behind her. Sailors jumped to the mainspar's lifting tackle before Aran could even give the order. They'd accepted that the only way they'd be free of Benlo was to land him on shore.

Garric planted the spearbutt on the deck and leaned his weight onto it, utterly exhausted. A ewe bleated plaintively from belowdecks.

Garric felt just the same way.