The Swordmaster, page 28
She turned to Impy: ‘Hey, small lad. You were able to tell when this sailor was spinning his sea-yarns. It seems that Karek is not the only one with interesting talents among your group.’
Impy blushed. As it was, he seemed overwhelmed whenever this woman with her inscrutable face and her pitch-black eyes was close by – and now she had even addressed him.
The ship swayed slightly as the seamen began to climb the shrouds.
They didn’t have much time.
‘Impy – give us a moment on our own,’ said Karek to his little friend.
The boy didn’t need to be asked twice and rushed out of the cabin.
Karek looked at her and frowned. ‘Sara is Forand’s daughter?’
‘Yes.’
‘That clarifies some things for me.’
‘Good.’
‘Will you deliver the chain and the message?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you stay on board for a while?’
‘No.’
‘I am even deeper in your debt.’
‘Yes.’
Karek blinked at her. ‘I am afraid and unsure. I cannot replace Forand.’
He knew that she would say neither yes nor no to that – and he was right.
‘You’ve done well. The way you took the captain apart – I almost found that amusing.’
‘What am I going to do?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Sob a little for me now.’ She crossed her arms. Then she uncrossed them. ‘Look at it like this – when I got to know you first, you had nothing – except for urine in your trousers.’
‘True. The perfect time to be reminding me of that.’
‘Prince Sensitivity – I haven’t finished yet, let me finish what I have to say. Especially, when I talk about matters that I have no affection for. Look at yourself. Now, only a few months later, you are in command of a ship. And – which is even harder to achieve – you have found friends, who are loyal to you. How you managed that is a mystery to me. Even a pretty girlfriend has joined the mix – if I read the glances of the young thing correctly. Within a short time, you have grown up a lot, you have taken on responsibilities, you are making decisions.’
‘That’s not how I see it at all. I’m constantly finding myself forced to do things that I don’t want to.’
She didn’t seem to be listening. ‘That trick with the seagulls, for example, is going to be the talk of Tanderheim for some time to come. How did you manage that – even getting the birds to attack?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe the seagulls were simply defending themselves when the mercenaries attacked them with their swords.’
‘Hm. You don’t even believe that yourself. Seagulls are not herd animals. One seagull would never share its food with another. They don’t normally perform as a collective – unlike shudder wasps. But I saw with my own eyes how they attacked everything that moved in front of you. It seems to me that they wanted to defend you once you were attacked.’
‘Whatever. I am completely at a loss at the moment.’
‘Stop whining. And once again – for the last time – for I hate dishing out praise: the way that you put the captain in his place deserves respect. The fear and uncertainty within you are not noticeable. People follow you.’
‘You don’t.’
‘Puh! I only follow myself.’
Brawl and Blinn came crashing into the cabin, carrying a cage. The Kabo chick with the golden beak was sitting in it. Karek had sent the two of them to the bird hawker to buy the animal.
I have the feeling that this remarkable little bird saved my life. Impossible to even think what the mercenaries would have done if they had found me on board the ship.
Brawl heaved the cage onto the table.
‘We haggled with the peddler over the price until we got him down to two large gold pieces. Still a lot of money for such a stupid little dicky bird.’
‘Yes – but the dicky bird warned us. I don’t how, but he did.’
The little bird made little cooing sounds. Karek opened the door of the cage and the chick stepped out.
She looked down at the bird and shook her head. ‘You know that they grow almost as big as a horse and are then more dangerous than tigers?’
‘Yes. I don’t want to keep him until he’s that big. I want to bring him back to his homeland. The same homeland that a good girl friend of mine comes from.’
She stared at him sulkily but said nothing.
‘And my mother too.’
The ship creaked as it began to move.
They then agreed that she would stay on board for the next few days and could disembark at a beach whenever she wanted to.
Karek gently pushed the Kabo back into his cage and closed the door. He needed peace and quiet to work out what to do next. Also, he wanted to eat until he was full. Not that he would return to his normal figure – his folds of fat had suffered considerably over the past while.
The prince stood on deck at the same spot where he had stood with Milafine two days earlier. It seemed to him as if months had passed by.
With the wind from the south, it would not take long until Fortress Beachperch – they would arrive in the afternoon. On the one hand he was anxious to get there, while on the other, he was filled with dread at the prospect of confronting Sergeant Karson. It was really proving difficult to know who he could truly rely on. The sergeant must really have felt terribly neglected once Forand had appeared on the scene for him to have been provoked into such a treacherous action. He remembered the look on the sergeant’s face in the bailey when Rogat had taken Forand and not him into the negotiations with Duke Schohtar.
This was surely not a good time to be returning to the fortress, now that Schohtar’s ultimatum had run out, but Karek had no other choice – he had to warn Rogat about the sergeant. Anyway, he wanted to bury Forand beside To Shyr Ban.
And then what? He no longer had the energy to search for the sand timer in the north of Soradar. Over the past few days, he had lost a lot of his zest for life. He remembered the moral lectures that his father and Rogat had given. It wasn’t always a question of black and white – there was also a considerable amount of grey. Maybe Rogat could advise him on the best thing to do now.
Karek reached into his belt bag and searched for something. He placed the downy white feather from the little box in his open palm again. He looked at it closely, taking care that the wind would not blow it away. Forand had clearly placed a great deal of value on this little treasure, for he had carried the little box with him until his death and had used his last words to bequeath it to Karek. Quite apart from that, the boy somehow felt that this had to be a very special feather. It seemed to radiate a mysterious warmth.
He placed the feather back into its box and put it away.
Blinn joined him. ‘You look wrecked. Why don’t you lie down for a couple of hours and sleep until we get to the fortress?’
The prince ignored the suggestion. ‘Blinn, what did Forand mean with the hand? When he said that we were the hand.’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘I want to hear it from you.’
‘We are five. Like the fingers on a hand. The most important, and the fattest by the way, is the thumb. That’s you. Fits perfectly.’
‘The important bit or the fat bit?’
‘Both. Impy is the little finger. The middle finger is the biggest one – that’s Brawl. That leaves the ring finger and the forefinger – Eduk and yours truly.’
‘We are the hand,’ said Karek dreamily. ‘Schohtar interpreted it differently. Because of this stupid prophecy, To Shyr Ban and Forand had to die – not to mention all the others.’
Blinn had nothing to say to that. But Karek felt comforted by the fact that his friend was standing beside him without saying a word. Their silent companionship shone a welcome light in a world darkened by violence and greed.
The coastal cliff appeared in the distance. The castle was like a looming shadow in the early afternoon light – defiant and truculent in the midst of those two powerful forces of nature – the wind and the water.
Karek was standing at the railing once more and the only thing that he wanted to do was to hide in his dormitory again with his four friends, pull the blanket over his head and wait for Captain Forand’s morning assembly.
She appeared beside him. She was rubbing vigorously at her black leather smock. When she noticed his look, she explained: ‘Seagull shite. White on a black background. Can hardly get it off. A beautiful reminder of your bird trick.’
‘Is this where you want to disembark?’
‘Anywhere where I can get a ship to Cragwater. I promised Garemalan that I would give Sara the chain and his message.’
Karek nodded.
My leather-clad murderess crow has changed, too. When I encountered her first, she had nothing. Except for her hatred. Now she has a friend and a mission that doesn’t even involve killing – a mission that is philanthropic and honourable. But how do I tell her? Better not.
He looked at the beach. What was that? The ebb tide had enabled several carts to drive very close to the entrance of the secret passage. Large wooden casks were being unladen and carried into the cave.
‘What are they doing there?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
The men on the beach were in a hurry. Their coming and going seemed hectic to him. They were certainly not bringing food or building supplies into the fortress. Something wasn’t right.
After a while, the men ran to their carts, jumped onto the planks at the front and whipped the horses. The beach emptied with astonishing speed.
‘If you want to get into the fortress this way, then go now, for the tide is coming in.’
‘That is only possible if I get a signal from above that the trapdoor is open. I nearly drowned once already.’
The memory caused a stab in his chest. It was Milafine who had saved him. The daughter of the man he intended sending to his doom today – and for very good reason.
A deep bang awakened him from his gloomy thoughts. This was followed by a second bang.
A loud cracking sound – like thunder. Then silence.
He took his hands from the railing, then touched it again. It was vibrating. Suddenly, and quite intuitively, he saw the book in the library in Tanderheim when he had asked her for help. The memory, which he had swept aside out of his concern for Forand, Eduk and Impy, suddenly came into his head again. Her stories at night on the beach in Tanderheim about clay pits, sewage and brimstone beneath the town of Star. Pieces of mosaic tumbled in front of his feet, rolled wildly along the deck, forming as of their own volition a mercilessly horrible picture.
It was written in one of his books ‘Magical Sense and Nonsense’ by Varazik Anorat. The manufacture of Black Powder.
The next mosaic pebble for the formula slipped into place. Charcoal from arrowwood, one part brimstone, seven parts saltpetre.
The saltpetre mosaic pebble joined the others, showing no mercy. Won from the excrement and urine of man and beast.
The mosaic, Schohtar’s pits, completed the picture.
This couldn’t be.
Yes, it could.
It was like a dream, a chimera, an illusion, an earthquake.
It creaked deafeningly. With an unreal gentleness, the cliff separated from the mainland and slipped down towards the beach. The walls of the fortress, along with screaming soldiers, collapsed into the abyss. The donjon grew ever shorter. It fell in on itself. More than half of the fortress thundered downwards with the enormous rocks. There was so much dust that Karek couldn’t see anything anymore. He didn’t want to. He closed his eyes.
The rumbling and cracking never wanted to stop. The ‘East Wind’ leaned in towards the shore, for all of the crew were standing on the landward side, staring at the coast in mute horror.
The dust slowly settled, and the cliff wall appeared. But it was a newly created cliff, a good thirty yards lower in the rock. Fortress Beachperch was no more – or at least, the majority of its walls and buildings, which had been destroyed in no time at all. Less than half of the ruin was still standing, the other half was scattered along the beach and in the sea.
It must have given Schohtar great pleasure to position the casks of Black Powder in the narrow passageways beneath the fortress and to have it lit beneath the backsides of his enemies.
His former home, the one he had lived in since he had left his father’s castle, was destroyed beyond repair. In all probability, it had taken Rogat with it. And many hundreds of others, loyal to the king.
Schohtar possessed a powerful weapon that had destroyed the centuries’ old walls in the blink of an eye. No doubt, he was already figuring out a way of using the Black Powder against Castle Cragwater. Still, it wouldn’t be quite as easy as there, for Schohtar had cleverly used the weak point of Fortress Beachperch.
She was still standing beside him. She spoke in a low voice: ‘War has well and truly broken out now.’
The prince turned to look at the people on the ship. Not only his four companions were waiting with bated breath.
Karek raised his fist and vowed calmly: ‘Schohtar – you have begun this war, and I will end it. Before that, I will bring you to justice for your treacherousness, your lust for power, your criminality.’
He said no more, but everyone present believed him completely -despite his tender years.
***so far so …***
The adventures of Karek and the crow continue
in Volume 3 “The Sand Timer”
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The Sandtimer
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