14
Meetings and Partings
They locked their shields, making a wall between the two stout varisk gate posts; behind them two barrels of hagspit had been brought in and Joron wondered what Brekir had planned for them. A rut of half-buried varisk ran between the posts to stop the gates and Joron was curious as to why they did not form on that, use it as leverage for feet caked with mud and carbon. He found himself in the second row, as women and men boiled out of the night full of fury, eager to avenge the insult done to their ships. The time for thinking was over. Some brave but foolish souls ran straight at the wall of shields only to be skewered on spears that Brekir had the foresight to bring with her and her crew. After the first few fell those attacking stayed back, dim shapes in the mist. He heard a shout.
“Crossbows, get crossbows up here.”
The man heading Brekir’s seaguard yelled out: “Close the shields. If any fall to a bolt they’ll answer to me.”
The shields were brought closer together, overlapping, making a tent of treated gion that closed out the sky, concentrated the smell of humanity: sweat and bad breath and fear. A rattling on the shield wall, as if the shields were being repeatedly punched. In his mind Joron was thinking not of what was happening, not of the coming violence or the sharp bolts. He was thinking of tactics, of what to do, taking his mind into the future where he could have some effect on events, not in the now where he must simply stand with these women and men and weather the storm of crossbow bolts.
They were undisciplined, these deckchilder that attacked, not shooting from lines as Meas had told him you must. No concentrating their shot on one target. Instead an ill-timed and -aimed hail of bolts. This was angry women and men loosing off at random, furious, unthinking. This was not how fleet deckchilder behaved. This was not how Meas’s crew would behave.
And he knew these fighters could be beaten.
A thud against his shield, a shock against the aching forearm with which he held it up. A bolt sticking through. It had punctured his stinker coat, not his flesh. He was cold.
Behind him voices, the first of the prisoners coming out of the bothy, confused, not dressed for the night’s chill, wide eyed and blinking as deckchilder harried them on, started to push them toward the rear of the building, making them keep their heads down so they were not spotted.
“Going to be fun getting out of here for us,” said the woman beside him, and she spat into the mud.
“No one wants to live forever, Girtane,” said the man by her. “Weren’t you just complaining about how much that bad foot of yours aches this morran?”
“Ey, I suppose it’ll not ache at the Hag’s fire.”
“At them!” A roar, from outside the shield wall.
“Brace!” Brekir’s voice from behind them. Joron dropped his shield, holding it at a more comfortable height and crouching down a little. In front of him women and men were running from the mist, shields of their own held up, using them to push away the spears of Brekir’s deckchilder.
“Knives!” shouted Brekir. Short blades were drawn by those on the second rank and a moment later there was impact. Bodies hitting the shields. Screaming bodies, wishing the worst of the Hag on them. Swearing they would find no warm place to rest. Promising desecration of those they attacked.
“Hold them!” shouted Brekir, “we don’t need to beat them right now, just hold them!”
“Easy for you to say, glum sither,” hissed the man beside Joron, grunting as he pushed against his shield. Joron was frightened – madness not to be – but it was a strange fear, a blunted fear. Not like the first time he had fought, that fear had been sharp, cutting. But now he had experience. He knew he was unlikely to die in this first rush. Knew few of them were. Maybe one. Maybe two. But this was the first engagement, muscles were fresh, minds were working. The death came later, when you were tired, or worse, if the wall broke – but these were Brekir’s hand-picked seaguard and deckchilder, her finest. And Brekir served Meas.
They would not break.
Until they had to, of course, until they must leave. And Joron hoped Brekir had something planned for that because then he would be scared. Then he would be running with all his strength, because the fury of their attackers, currently contained by the shield wall, would be loosed on him and those around him.
All was shouting, anger. Someone screamed in pain. He could not see whether it was on his or the other side. He hoped it was them, they had more people. Behind him the prisoners were still coming out of the bothy.
“Move, move! Run, quick as you can.” Could he hear those whispers or were they in his imagination? They felt like they were carried to him on the song of the island.
Another scream, a space in the shields before him as someone fell and he moved into it, his bone knife gripped tightly in a sweaty hand, momentarily meeting the eyes of the woman – filled with triumph – who had felled one of the deckchilder.
One of his deckchilder.
And all was noise.
He punched the shield forward into the face of the woman, heard her screech. Drew back his shield as she brought her hands up to her injured face and the man beside him ran her through. A blade came at him and Joron pushed the shield forward again. Shouting as he did, unaware of the noise he made, unaware of anything but the need to protect and to fight and to live. His shield trapped the arm of the attacker and Davand by him hacked at it – blood and flesh and bone – and it was pulled back. He was in the heat and the passion and the pressure. Thrusting with his bone knife, not seeing a target, more often hitting a shield than anything. Pushing and pushing. And it seemed to happen forever and it seemed to take no time at all.
“—dy. . .”
“—eady . . .”
“—ready . . .”
“Be ready!”
Brekir’s voice – ready for what? He heard an axe against a barrel. Then smelled acrid stinging, pungent hagspit. Looked down, saw dark liquid running between his feet, pooling where it hit the line of buried varisk. Oh Brekir, he thought, I see why they made you shipwife.
“Be ready!”
He glanced behind him: no more were leaving the Bothy, only Brekir stood there now, with two deckchilder and an overturned barrel. In her hand a torch burned.
“Now!” she shouted. And they stepped backwards, the wall dissolving as they turned to run and those attacking them let out a great scream of triumph as their opponents seemed to retreat. One step, two steps, and the air behind lit up with purple and green fire. Triumph turned to agony as the hagspit ignited around those rushing forward, a cruel flame that could only be extinguished by sand, and there was none of that here. Then Joron and Brekir’s crew were running round the bothy. Brekir stopped at the broken fence – there stood Coult, and Farys, her face pale and drawn, her scars dark shadows. Behind them stood the gullaime and, far enough back from it to avoid its vicious beak, the windshorn.
“You still intend to free the island’s gullaime, Joron?”
“Ey,” he said.
Brekir put out her hand, clasped his arm. “Stay with Coult, he’ll not lead you far wrong and his deckchilder fight like the Hag watches them. I will wait as long as I can on the beach, but I’ll not endanger my boats or my ship.”
“I would not expect you to.”
“Mother’s Blessing, Joron Twiner,” she said.
“Mother’s Blessing, Shipwife Brekir,” he replied but she was already gone, vanishing into the brown and drooping gion.