Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(84)

Cartheron actually laughed, albeit without breath. ‘Ain’t this just the funniest comeuppance, hey? You drop your guard for a moment and … there you go. Damnedest thing.’

Jute wrapped the wound as tightly as he could. ‘Quiet, now. We’ll take you to the sorceress. Maybe she can heal you.’

‘Don’t you bother, lad. Bound to happen sooner or later. Long past time, in my case.’

‘Don’t even think of it.’

They tied him into a makeshift rope seat and lowered him into the launch. From the Sea Strike they oared straight across to the Supplicant.

This time the sorceress herself appeared at the side. Jute shouted up that Cartheron was wounded. She gestured for a rope to be thrown up, and after a moment the seat, with the unconscious man secured within, began rising steadily up the tall ship’s side. A rope ladder came banging down. Jute climbed alongside the rope seat, attempting to steady it. On deck, he and Velmar struggled to raise Cartheron over the side until the lady herself took a hand and easily lifted him across.

‘I will take him to my cabin,’ she told Jute, and carried him within.

‘You should all just turn round,’ Velmar grumbled, and he glared as if all their troubles were Jute’s fault. Jute ignored him.

They stood silently for some time. The launch from the Rag-stopper bumped the side below. The lines creaked and stretched. Velmar glowered sullenly, as if the very heat of his disapproval could drive Jute from the deck.

The captain sat on the edge of a raised hatch leading to the cargo hold. Curious, he glanced down through the wood grating. It may have been a trick of the shifting light, but he thought he glimpsed figures below, standing crowded together, motionless. He turned to the priest to ask him about them but the wolfish mocking grin that now climbed the man’s lips somehow stilled his tongue.

‘You’re sure you wouldn’t care to have a look below?’ the man asked, and the downturned smile widened.

Jute had no idea what the priest was hinting at, but didn’t think it sounded healthy. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Aren’t you curious?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Later perhaps,’ Velmar said, thoughtfully tapping a finger to his lips.

‘Certainly – later.’

The priest was nodding now. ‘Yes, I think so. Definitely later.’

Jute merely bunched his brow. Such games were of no interest to him.

Movement among the shadows of the stern brought him to his feet. The sorceress emerged. She still wore her headdress and veil. Jute peered up at her; all he could see were her eyes, and these appeared worried and saddened.

‘I have done what I can. He will not die. But neither is he certain to recover. Many organs were damaged. And he is old, and very tired.’ She glanced back to the stern. ‘Then again … he is an extraordinary fellow. He may just recover.’

Jute bowed to her. ‘Our thanks, Lady Orosenn.’

‘It is nothing. I am glad to be of help.’

Jute crossed to the side. ‘I’ll tell the crew. He is to remain here, then?’

‘Yes. He mustn’t be moved.’

‘Very well.’ He took hold of the rope ladder, swung his legs out over the side and climbed down.

Velmar’s shaggy head appeared above him at the side. ‘Later, Captain Jute,’ the man called down in his enigmatic tone. Jute just shook his head, while below the rowers from the Ragstopper steadied the launch.

In the days that followed they met fewer and fewer abandoned becalmed ships until the outlook was again clear of all other vessels. The sea was improbably calm, as was the wind. No breeze ruffled the air; no ripple disturbed the iron-grey surface. To Jute it was as if they sailed a sheet of misty glass.

Yet they were not entirely alone. Now and then crew members shouted their surprise and dismay, pointing down at the astonishingly clear water. Rotting vessels lay beneath them, in various stages of decomposition. And all, it seemed to Jute, from differing epochs or periods of history. Older-style galleys lay stacked upon even more archaic open-hulled longboats, which in turn appeared to rest upon even cruder hulls, some perhaps nothing more than dugouts. It was as if the Sea of Dread were one great graveyard of vessels, all heaped upon one another, each slowly settling into, and adding to, the mud and mire of the sea floor.

So too would they have ended, he imagined, were it not for the guidance, and shielding, of the sorceress with them.

For the next few days a dense mist enshrouded them. It clung to the masts in scarves and tatters. Jute found it almost hard to breathe the stuff. The noises of their passage returned to them distorted, even unrecognizable. It was almost as if the sounds were from other vessels hidden in the miasma, calling to them.

Then, slowly, the light ahead began to brighten ever so slightly. Took on a pale sapphire glint. The vapours thinned and they emerged as if through parting veils to find themselves once more behind the Supplicant, only now approaching a forested rocky coast bearing the last patches of winter’s snow. Great jagged spires of ice floated in the waters between them and the coast.

The fog thinned even more, revealing that beyond the shore the land climbed to rocky jagged ridges. Behind these, distant and tall, reared the white gleaming peaks of mountains. Jute gazed, entranced. Could those be their destination? The near-mythical Salt range?

A breath caught behind him and he turned, surprised. There stood Ieleen, gripping the doorway, walking stick in hand. He went to her. ‘Lass! You’re up!’