The Sea Peoples(15)

Deor frowned. “Why haven’t you taken Prince John up?” he said. “He’s injured!”

“Because we can’t bloody find him!” Pip snapped. “Can you?”

“But—”

She’d meant the question rhetorically and sarcastically, yet Deor was staring at a spot where two of the huge smoldering timbers lay crossed, leaving a space between them. The clutch of armored Montivallan crossbowmen—from something called the Protector’s Guard back in their home—had already been through there with fanatical thoroughness, and were spreading out around into less and less likely spots, while their commander Sergeant Fayard sat with his splinted leg outstretched cursing them on and cursing the local doctor who was finishing up on it.

“Oath-sister?” Deor said, in that rhythmic accent that made everyday speech sound a little like chanted poetry.

“I can’t see a thing,” Thora said, sheathing her sword. “But you can?”

He caught her right hand in his and—

“There—” he dropped to one knee, fumbled at something on the ground.

No, above it, as if someone was lying there, Pip thought with a chill mix of terror and hope.

She felt her vision blur as she glimpsed a ghostly shape beneath his hands. A helm came suddenly into focus as he eased it upward and tossed it aside, a flare-necked Montivallan visored sallet with the stubs of ostrich plumes still in the holders at either side that she recognized instantly. It was chrome steel and had been burnished like a mirror only a few hours ago . . . and had been on John’s head as they went up the scaling ladder. An instant later his four-foot kite-shaped shield was there too, lying as if it had been lying across his . . .

That’s John! He’s curled up under his shield!

Chills ran up her spine despite the damp heat and the sticky sweat that never dried here.

Something’s making me not see him. Bloody hell. It’s adventure if you’re reading about it back in Townsville. Here it’s . . . bloody hell.

Carcosa’s evil name wasn’t just because they and Baru Denpasar fought over this island. The Balinese conquerors who’d founded Baru Denpasar in the first year after the Blackout had been desperate and ruthless themselves and like so many others they’d been self-exiled and looking for a new home to feed their families. The passengers and crew of the sail-powered cruise ship turned corsair vessel South Sea Adventure had been perfectly ready to help them fall on the locals here with fire and slaughter and take some of the spoils in return, rather than face a voyage back across the Pacific to a homeland in even worse condition because it had more big cities and fewer peasants who knew how to grow food without machines.

With infinite local variations, things like that had happened all over the world in those years of chaos and blood, as nations died and new ones rose from the ruins and adventurers carved themselves kingdoms at the sword’s edge. The consequences were still echoing down the generations.

What had happened when the captain of the Adventure stumbled across . . . something . . . in the interior years later had been very different, by all accounts. He’d come back to his little pirate sub-kingdom as something very much other, and soon his followers were too. The Baru Denpasarans were much more numerous, but that . . . otherness . . . had more than compensated.

Back in Oz this sort of thing was rumors, mysterious happenings in mysterious places, people in the far Outback wandering into the Dreamtime, or exotic islands or some underground temple or the usual unverifiable miracles people had always talked about. I had to go and find out for myself, didn’t I just!

They called the former Captain the Yellow Raja now, from the color of the rags that always encased him in public. Nobody saw his face, or had for decades, if it was the same man . . . or, according to some speculations, if he still had a face. His chief henchman was called the Pallid Mask, from what he wore. They’d renamed their ship the Hastur and their stronghold as Carcosa. Things had gotten worse from there.

Deor eased back on his heels, stripped off the glove from his left hand and held it, palm down, a foot or so above the ground, then began to move it back and forth. As he shaped John’s invisible form, it began to solidify. Deor grasped Thora’s hand, pressed it downward.

“His skin is clammy,” she murmured, experienced fingers searching for wounds with her eyes slitted, almost closed. “But the pulse is there.”

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Pip, crouching opposite him. “When you touch him, I can see, but before . . . I saw rubble, and my eyes . . . just slid away. I can feel them trying to slide away now. It’s as if someone was saying nothing here, don’t look at the back of my mind.”

“A seeming, and a wicked one,” Deor said, sliding back into a sitting position and cradling his head in his hands. “Wicked and strong. Woden, lend me wisdom!”

Pip set her hands on either side of John’s face, smoothed back the sweat-soaked hair.

“He’s solid enough, but so cold!” Her fingers went to the throat under the jaw. “And his pulse is steady, but slow.”

“He’s not bleeding that I can tell,” murmured Thora. “Maybe a blow to the head?”

The sallet helm bore several dents and dings that had not been there before.

“A coma?” Thora went on. “I’ve seen them, from head injuries.”