The legate was trading his men for us. I suspected we were going to be used, that we were headed into something grimmer than we could imagine.
Several times during the wait I heard a distant howl. At first I thought it the song of the Pillar. But the air was not moving. When it came again I lost all doubt. My skin crawled.
The quartermaster, the Captain, the Lieutenant, Silent, Goblin, One-Eye, and I waited till the last boat. “I’m not going,” One-Eye announced as a boatswain beckoned us to board.
“Gel in,” the Captain told him. His voice was gentle.
That is when he is dangerous.
“I’m resigning. Going to head south. Been gone long enough, they should’ve forgotten me.”
The Captain jabbed a finger at the Lieutenant, Silent, Goblin, and me, jerked his thumb at the boat. One-Eye bellowed. “I’ll turn the lot of you into ostriches...” Silent’s hand sealed his mouth. We ran him to the boat. He wriggled like a snake in a firepit.
“You stay with the family,” the Captain said softly.
“On three,” Goblin squealed merrily, then quick-counted. The little black man arced into the boat, twisting in flight. He bobbed over the gunwale cursing, spraying us with saliva. We laughed to see him showing some spirit. Goblin led the charge that nailed him to a thwart.
Sailors pushed us off. The moment the oars bit water One-Eye subsided. He had the look of a man headed for the gallows.
The galley took form, a looming, indeterminate shape slightly darker than the surrounding darkness. I heard the fog-hollowed voices of seamen, timbers creaking, tackle working, long before I was sure of my eyes. Our boat nosed in to the fool of an accommodation ladder. The howl came again.
One-Eye tried to dive overboard. We restrained him. The Captain applied a bootheel to his butt. “You had your chance to talk us out of this. You wouldn’t. Live with it.”
One-Eye slouched as he followed the Lieutenant up the ladder, a man without hope. A man who had left a brother dead and now was being forced to approach that brother’s killer, upon which he was powerless to take revenge.
We found the Company on the maindeck, snuggled amongst mounds of gear. The sergeants threaded the mess toward us.
The legate appeared. I stared. This was the first I had seen him afoot, standing. He was short. For a moment I wondered if he were male at all. His voices were often otherwise.
He surveyed us with an intensity that suggested he was reading our souls. One of his officers asked the Captain to fall the men in the best he could on the crowded deck. The ship’s crew were taking up the center flats decking over the open well that ran from the bow almost to the stern, and from deck level down to the lower oar bank. Below, there was muttering, clanking, rattling, as the oarsmen wakened.
The legate reviewed us. He paused before each soldier, pinned a reproduction of the device on his sail over each heart. It was slow going. We were under way before he finished.
The nearer the envoy approached, the more One-Eye shook. He almost fainted when the legate pinned him. I was baffled. Why so much emotion?
I was nervous when my turn came, but not frightened. I glanced at the badge as delicate gloved fingers attached it to my jerkin. Skull and circle in silver, on jet, elegantly crafted. A valuable if grim piece of jewelry. Had he not been so rattled, I would have thought One-Eye to be considering how best to pawn it.
The device now seemed vaguely familiar. Outside the context of the sail, which I had taken as showmanship and ignored. Hadn’t I read or heard about a similar seal somewhere?
The legate said, “Welcome to the service of the Lady, physician.” His voice was distracting. It did not fit expectations, ever. This time it was musical, lilting, the voice, of a young woman putting something over on wiser heads.
The Lady? Where had I encountered that word used that way, emphasized as though it was the title of a goddess? A dark legend out of olden times...
A howl of outrage, pain, and despair filled the ship. Startled, I broke ranks and went to the lip of the air well.
The forvalaka was in a big iron cage at the foot of the mast. In the shadows it seemed to change subtly as it prowled, testing every bar. One moment it was an athletic woman of about thirty, but seconds later it had assumed the aspect of a black leopard on its hind legs, clawing the imprisoning iron. I recalled the legate saying he might have a use for the monster.
I faced him. And the memory came. A devil’s hammer drove spikes of ice into the belly of my soul. I knew why One-Eye did not want to cross the sea. The ancient evil of the north... “I thought you people died three hundred years ago.” The legate laughed. “You don’t know your history well enough. We weren’t destroyed. Just chained and buried alive.” His laughter had an hysterical edge. “Chained, buried, and eventually liberated by a fool named Bomanz, Croaker.”
I dropped to my haunches beside One-Eye, who buried his face in his hands.
