The Red Wolf Conspiracy Part 41

The voice was silk-smooth, and somehow all the more chilling for its gentleness. The men aiming crossbows at Pazel and Neeps glanced at each other in distress.

Finally, one said: "There's a loose slat in the roof of the pigpen, sir. But I never dreamed it was possible to escape that way! The little one's cut his shoulder. He must have squeezed through--somehow--and then pried the slat open wider for his friend."

"Nail it fast."

"Oppo, sir."

"And inform them all: henceforth you shoot to kill."

The mage cleared his throat, violently. The boys could see nothing but the glow of his pipe, which came and went under the dark canopy. Then they heard a soft chuckle.

"You wanted a little food to see you back to Ormael, eh?"

Pazel and Neeps shot each other a furtive look. They nodded.

"Idiots," said the voice. "You would not have survived the night. There are creatures in the Fens that thirst for living souls and gulp them down like wine. Stray but a little in the dark, and they have you. How lucky you are that my little dog heard your whispers. Oh, he is not a woken dog--not yet. But he is clever. He knows I do not like just anyone speaking my name. And he has very very sharp ears." sharp ears."

The glowing pipe made a swift motion. "Get them back in the pigpen."

He didn't recognize us, Pazel thought, and then: Of course! We're caked with mud! Of course! We're caked with mud!

The door of the "pigpen" was opened and the two boys hurled inside, where the other youths backed away in fear--they at least knew quite well that Pazel and Neeps had not come from among them. A moment later the wagons began to roll.

By the light of the bog-lamps (which went on pestering them) Pazel saw some two dozen filthy, frightened captives. He and Neeps tried befriending them, asking their names, where they came from, if the Flikkermen had caught them, too. But for nearly an hour not one replied to their questions.

Finally, a girl with bright round eyes asked, "Are you ghosts?"

Then Pazel understood: this was the Haunted Coast, after all, and he and Neeps had seemingly appeared from nowhere. "Of course we're not ghosts!" he said. "I'm an Ormali, f'Rin's sake! Arun--Ah, that man, what do you call him?"

"The Customer," said a small frightened boy.

"The Devil," said the girl.

"Well, the man who bought us from the Flikkers works for him, too," said Pazel. "We gave him the slip. If he ever catches up we'll be in trouble all over again."

Eventually the others had to concede that Pazel and Neeps were human. Then everyone began to whisper at once. The prisoners were from Ormael and Etrej, and nearly half, including all the girls, came from a distant Tholja.s.san town famous for its sponge-divers.

"But shipwrecks are different," they said. "What do we know about wreck diving? And this is the Haunted Coast."

Pazel leaned forward and whispered, "What are we looking for?"

Twenty voices replied in unison: "The Red Wolf!"

On this matter Arunis had already addressed them. Many treasures might be found on the Lythra Lythra, and he would take them. But he didn't care about anything so much as a red iron statue of a wolf with its left forepaw raised. They were to seek this artifact above all things. No one would go home until it was found.

Pazel and Neeps were fools, it was agreed, to get themselves caught over a few wormy biscuits.

"We weren't after biscuits," said Neeps. "But I'm a fool anyway. Ket bought that dog off a bloke at Tressek Tarn. I watched him bring it aboard. If only I'd remembered!"

"What does he mean, not woken yet yet?" asked the girl. "Can sorcerers wake up an animal, just like that?"

"No," said Pazel firmly. "My mother used to talk about woken creatures. She said they were a great mystery. No one could force a waking, she said, and no one knew why the number of woken animals was increasing."

"And my mother talked about four-legged ducks," put in someone.

"Hush, you!" growled Neeps. "My mate's the son of a mighty conjurer. If she says it can't be done, it can't, even by a mage who's returned from the--"

"Neeps!" Pazel hissed, grabbing his arm. The others were frightened enough.

A silence. The girl trained her unreadable eyes on Pazel.

"Too bad your mother's not here," she said.

All through the night the wagons rolled. Fallen trees blocked the road several times again, making the Volpeks grumble and peer nervously into the Fens. Dazzled by the eerie lights, Pazel could see almost nothing of the Fens, but strange cries of birds and animals echoed in their depths, and often the horses started and pranced with fear. He wondered where the ixchel were now.

It was nearly impossible to sleep, for there was nowhere to lie down except on top of someone else. Still Pazel must have dozed off, and this time he dreamed of thirst--terrible thirst--as he dragged himself out of an unspeakably violent ocean upon a beach of black sand. Thasha crawled beside him, half drowned. Far along the beach huge creatures like woolly elephants were wading placidly toward them, heedless of the breakers that shattered on their flanks, and he wondered if the beasts would offer help when they arrived, or merely grind them into the sand ...

The wagon bounced to a halt. Pazel opened his eyes. A pale dawn was beginning, and he really could hear waves. The trees had shrunk to bushes, separated by wastes of sand. Timid now, the bog-lamps hugged the wagons, as if the salt-laced breeze might blow them away.

"Stuck again!" someone was saying. "A night full of spooks and specters, and a downed tree every mile, and now these blary sinkholes! Are we cursed?"

The lead wagon had indeed fallen into a hole--a wet cavity in the sand nearly six feet deep and apparently hidden from view. Neeps and Pazel exchanged a look. This was no accident. Someone was trying to slow them down.

Arunis gave a sharp hiss. The bog-lamps, like hounds unleashed, darted back into the shadows of the Fens.

"Take the divers ahead on foot," he said. "But first let them eat a little."

Pazel gripped the bars of the wagon. Two Volpeks were moving toward the food sacks in Thasha's wagon. Run! Run! he wanted to shout--but then he recalled Arunis' warning: the men would shoot to kill. It was too late, they would find her. And "Mr. Ket" could hardly fail to recognize the Mzithrin Bride-to-Be. he wanted to shout--but then he recalled Arunis' warning: the men would shoot to kill. It was too late, they would find her. And "Mr. Ket" could hardly fail to recognize the Mzithrin Bride-to-Be.

The men unlaced the tarp and threw it back. There was no one in the wagon. Pazel and Neeps sat back with a sigh. Thasha at least was no fool. She had slipped away in the night.

The wagon was opened, the prisoners ordered out. Biscuits were placed in their hands, and a waterskin carried from prisoner to prisoner. It was foul water, but Pazel's thirst had been more than a dream: he felt instantly better when he drank.

A quarter mile beyond the stream the brush ended in a wall of dunes. The sound of waves was quite close now. The path wriggled up the dunes through stands of yellow sea oats, and Pazel could see by a gouge in the sand that something had been dragged seaward here not long ago: something wide, smooth and ma.s.sive.

The day promised to be hot. Up the dune they slogged, among the popping of sand-crickets the same bright yellow as the wild oats. Then down the far slope, and up and down again, and now the sand began to burn their feet a bit.

Neeps looked back over his shoulder. "Where do you suppose our little friends are now?" he asked softly.

"Who knows?" said Pazel. "But they'll be back. They came all this way to learn what Arunis is up to, and they won't quit now. Thasha's the one I'm worried about. She can't pa.s.s for a sponge-diver girl with three feet of golden hair."

"Maybe she's just heading north, away from Simja and her blood-drinking prince."

Pazel shook his head. "I wish she would. But she'll never leave us in such a fix."

They were nearing the top of the highest dune yet. Pazel saw that the boys ahead of them were holding still, gazing wordlessly at something below. He scrambled up the last few yards, and stopped dead himself. There at his feet lay the Haunted Coast.

He had never seen anything like it: a pale beach two miles wide, stretching south to Cape Coristel, north as far as the eye could see, and broken everywhere by dark tooth-like rocks, some no larger than carts, others tall as castles and snagged with mist. There were long, finger-like islands thick with brush, and pale sandbars winking above the foam, and a great oblong area of darkness beneath the water like a sunken forest. The patches of mist were low and extremely dense, cotton wool sliding among the rocks. Yet between them the air was clear, the sun brilliant: Pazel could see for miles. And all along that terrible coast lay shipwrecks.

They lay on dry sand, and in the breakers, and in the deeper sea. The closest was a mere skeleton, eighty feet long or so, its encrusted ribs combing each wave like a woman's hair. Farther out, an ancient merchantman lay wedged between rocks, her hull burst open at the waist by the endlessly pounding surf. Black hulks like stranded whales littered the beach in the distance. Leagues from sh.o.r.e, old masts tilted like gravestones.

But not every ship was a wreck. Close to sh.o.r.e a broad, clumsy two-master stood at anchor, very much alive. Men were busy on her deck--more Volpeks, to judge by their size. Some four miles out stood a much larger ship, a mighty brig, her double row of guns on full display.

Between these, in the center of the dark patch of water, stood the oddest vessel of all. It was something like a river barge: flat, squared off, free of guns or rigging. She was crowded with men and surrounded by smaller craft.

Mounted at one end of her deck was a ma.s.sive cargo crane. And dangling from a chain beneath it, directly over the main hatch, was a gigantic bra.s.s ball. In the midday sun it dazzled their eyes. The sphere looked to be twelve or fourteen feet in diameter, and impossibly heavy. A row of porthole-like windows ran around its midline.

But there was more to the scene. At the other end of the barge from the crane, a st.u.r.dy scaffolding of iron rose from the deck. Attached to this little tower was a pair of ropes that ran taut above the waves all the way to the mainmast of the cargo ship, and from the latter right over the breaking surf to a great rock outcropping on the beach, where they entered some sort of pulley apparatus. Wagons, tents and horses cl.u.s.tered at the foot of the rock. Two men with telescopes kept watch at its summit.

A whisper pa.s.sed among the youths. Bathysphere Bathysphere. That was what the bra.s.s ball was called; someone had heard of such things. But no one knew what they were for.

Lying still in the sea oats at the crest of a dune, Thasha watched the Volpeks march their prisoners onto the beach. She was seething with frustration. Escaping from the wagon had been easy. Tagging along in darkness had been far worse: the Fens mist shaped itself into wraiths that groped at her, trying to drag her from the road. She had fought them with her bare hands and with a Lorg Academy chant ("My heart is sunlit, my soul is the Tree, my dance is forever: I fear not thee!"). If she attacked them head-on they dispersed like smoke. But they always came back, and their touch was deadly cold: it turned the sweat in her hair to beads of ice. Thasha knew she could not face a whole night of them alone.

Nor could she take on fifty Volpeks and a sorcerer. And now the tarboys were crossing the wide-open sand. If Thasha followed she would be seen in an instant.

There were even more fighting men at the camp by the sh.o.r.e. And nowhere to turn for help. As far as she could see in any direction it was the same. Dunes, fens, rocks, ruined ships. They were in the heart of a wilderness, and she still didn't know why.

She slid down the back side of the dune. Every time Pazel got near her something terrible happened to him. Blast those tarboys anyway! I ran off to prevent this sort of thing from happening again Blast those tarboys anyway! I ran off to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

As she lay there, raging, a flicker of movement caught her eye. She looked left--and froze in astonishment. Men were crossing the dunes. They moved in single file, crouched low, appearing to her sight for just an instant through a gap between two higher dunes. They wore black leggings and short black tabithet tabithet cloaks, and carried long swords strapped to their backs. Thasha caught her breath. She had never seen such men--and yet she had, a hundred times. They were the soldiers in countless "victory paintings" in the military households of Etherhorde. The dead soldiers. Mzithrinis. cloaks, and carried long swords strapped to their backs. Thasha caught her breath. She had never seen such men--and yet she had, a hundred times. They were the soldiers in countless "victory paintings" in the military households of Etherhorde. The dead soldiers. Mzithrinis.

It took just seconds for the figures to pa.s.s. Thasha scrambled headlong up the side of a dune to where it looked as if she might catch sight of them again--but when she reached the top she saw only a few snapped sea oats and dimples in the sand. She threw herself down the dune's far side and clawed up the next. There they were. Five men lying flat below her, raising their heads just enough to study the Volpeks and their prisoners. She could see their neck tattoos--a small symbol for their kingdom, a calligraphic letter for their tribe.

What were they doing here? How had they come? Surely they wouldn't dare to attack so many Volpeks?

If I could just talk to them. And suddenly she thought what a fool she had been, what an unforgivable fool, not to learn Mzithrini when she had the chance.

Yet she had learned a little, despite herself. She could still hear Pazel's exasperated voice, reciting: I enjoy, you enjoyed, we would have enjoyed I enjoy, you enjoyed, we would have enjoyed.

Oh, Pazel.

She squirmed backward down the dune until she was out of sight. Then she rolled over--and found herself inches from a sword-tip.

A Mzithrini stood over her, sword in one hand and knife in another. He was gaping at her blond hair. Above the black dabs of kohl on his cheekbones his eyes were wide.

He spat out a word--nothing she was meant to answer, she thought. Then he flicked his knife sharply: Get up Get up. Thasha stood. The man whistled softly, and in seconds a pair of his comrades stood beside him. All three stared at her wordlessly. Then they began to talk. She heard "Arquali girl" "Arquali girl" and a few other familiar words, but she could not piece them together into any sort of meaning. She tried gestures, pointing toward the sh.o.r.e and shaking her head: and a few other familiar words, but she could not piece them together into any sort of meaning. She tried gestures, pointing toward the sh.o.r.e and shaking her head: I'm not with them I'm not with them. The men paid no attention.

At last the one who had found her sheathed his sword--but not his knife--stepped forward, and took her roughly by the arm.

To a thojmele-trained thojmele-trained fighter like Thasha, his moves (sheathed weapon, casual grab) told her all she needed to know. He expected nothing from her but weakness and fear. She let him pull her a few steps. Then she whimpered, planted her feet. She gave a little tug of protest, blinking as if on the point of tears. fighter like Thasha, his moves (sheathed weapon, casual grab) told her all she needed to know. He expected nothing from her but weakness and fear. She let him pull her a few steps. Then she whimpered, planted her feet. She gave a little tug of protest, blinking as if on the point of tears.

The other two men had not moved. The one who held her scowled and released her briefly--long enough to strike her backhanded across the face. Thasha cringed, penitent, and followed him weeping down the rest of the dune.

She could taste her own forced tears. No, that was her blood. Wrong! Wrong! Hercol would have shouted. Hercol would have shouted. That is distraction! What matters now, girl? That is distraction! What matters now, girl? Her foe's impatience. The slide of his feet. The way he fingered the knife. Her foe's impatience. The slide of his feet. The way he fingered the knife.

When a good twenty feet separated them from the men above, she blundered into him as if by accident. She floundered and cried out--still the frightened little girl. The man turned, perhaps to hit her again, but in that instant Thasha leaned back into an elbow-thrust that snapped his head sideways with the force of a wooden club.

He was enough of a fighter to stab at her even in his shock, but not enough of one to land the blow. Her right hand caught his wrist; her right knee drove up into his now-exposed belly, and as his own knees buckled her left fist smashed down against his jaw. Then she s.n.a.t.c.hed the knife from his hand.

He could not even gasp. His eyes rolled, astonished. Before he fell she had the sword off his back and turned to face the others, her mouth blood-smeared and furious, a blade raised in challenge in each hand.

Plunder on the Haunted Coast

4 Teala 941

82nd day from Etherhorde

The guards drove the prisoners on. As they neared the base camp, another facet of the operation came into view. Iron cages dangled from the ropes between the land, the cargo ship and the sea barge with its bathysphere. Shielding his eyes, Pazel saw that the ropes were threaded through a gear-and-pulley network in an enormous loop, and that the dangling cages were moving between the vessels and the sh.o.r.e. On the towering rock beside the sh.o.r.e camp, Volpeks were turning a heavy crank like a ship's capstan.

Even now a cage was making its jerky way out to sea. And inside the cage, he saw with another start, were a dozen prisoners.

"So that's how we get to the wreck," said Neeps.

"I want to go home!" sobbed the small boy. The round-eyed Tholja.s.san girl held him by the shoulders, then bent and whispered in his ear. The boy sniffed but cried no more.

At least twenty well-armed Volpeks were at work in the camp. Besides the gear-turners and the lookouts, a great many were cl.u.s.tered about a heap of what at first glance looked like no more than slimy, vaguely colorful rocks. Using picks, chisels or their bare hands, the men attacked the objects: tearing out weeds, cracking coral deposits, stripping barnacles. In most cases they found nothing but stone. In a few, however, the objects' true forms came suddenly to light: here a sea chest, there a broken amphora, elsewhere a bust of some forgotten prince. There was a birdbath fashioned from a giant clamsh.e.l.l, a stone eagle with a broken wing, a curling elephant's tusk banded with gold. The men pushed these treasures aside with hardly a glance. They were clearly after something quite different.

"Is it the Red Wolf they're seeking?" Pazel asked a guard.

"Of course! Now step back!"

Another cage was nearing the sh.o.r.e, also heaped with plunder. It pa.s.sed above a tall mound of freshly dug sand.

"Hold!" shouted someone. The gears stopped; men scrambled up the mound with nets and poles. One pulled a latch and the bottom of the cage swung open like a trapdoor. Out tumbled the salvaged artifacts, into the waiting nets. A guard-captain looked around until his eyes settled on the newly arrived youths.

"Ten divers!" he shouted.

Quite at random, the Volpeks seized ten, among them Pazel and Neeps, the round-eyed girl and little boy. All were marched up the sand mound, then lifted one by one into the air.