36
To Each a Calling
Madorra led them from the beach and up the incline of the island toward the place where the windshorn said the island’s “big caves” could be accessed. It took them on a different, more winding path, and it felt to Joron as if the route not only twisted physically, but wrung them up within as well. Twisting the emotions of each of them into a tightness, tight like the wings of a ship under howling winds and ready to tear at any moment. When Madorra told them they were near the caves Meas took only Joron, Coughlin and Berhof forward to a place above where they could look down on them.
The entrance to the caves punctured a crumbling cliff face about halfway up the island, it was not big; a dark hole maybe just over the height of Coughlin. The rock of the cliff face around it had been white once, now it was stained with green algae from runoff water, brown ichor where the dying canopy had dripped onto it and webbed with climbing plants and vines. The opening was guarded by two seaguard, who stood beneath a lintel of ancient-looking cured varisk, and a group of about twenty deckchilder, sat about in the circular clearing before it.
“We can take them,” said Meas.
“May I borrow your nearglass, shipwife,” said Coughlin. Meas nodded and passed it over. Coughlin scanned the clearing. “I do not gainsay you,” he said. “But two good fighters could hold that entrance for long enough that we would be vulnerable from the rear. Twenty will be sure to, and the noise will attract every deckchild on the island.”
“Hag curse them all,” she spat. “Well, we must get them away from there then,” she said as Coughlin handed the nearglass to Berhof, who stared through it.
“That entrance, Shipwife,” he said, “looks like it was designed to come down easily. It was a thing we often did with caves for Cahanny, but I think this one was done a long time ago.” He paused, still staring. “Usually you’d hammer out one end of the lintel but it looks jammed up with rock, I am not sure it could be brought down easily now.”
“Well,” she said, “at least they cannot keep us out, ey?” Coughlin nodded and Meas pointed back to where the rest of crew waited. Once they had re-joined them she crouched down with all around her.
“We cannot get to their ship just yet, my girls and boys, but here is what we shall do. Joron, you and half our number will take the gullaime to the windspire and hide there as long as you can. Once the gullaime is awake we have a weapon they cannot know about or prepare for. I will take the rest of our forces and we will light a fire, that should bring them all upon us, then we will double back once we have drawn them away from the cave. Joron, how long do you think the gullaime will need to lie within the spire?”
“I do not know. It does not seem dead, like it did before, but . . .”
“Hour,” said Madorra.
“Not hour. Need longer,” said Shorn, and snapped at Madorra.
“Not longer,” snapped Madorra back. “Foul lazy creature. Hour do. Not true windsick.”
“Longer,” snapped Shorn. “Be sick again.”
“Windshorn,” said Meas. “We will take the gullaime from here to the first island we find with a windspire, but we must live to do that.”
The windshorn studied Meas then nodded its head.
“Hour may do. Hour may do,” it said.
“It will have to,” said Coughlin. “We will be lucky if we can remain undiscovered for that long.”
“Then we leave now,” said Meas. “Coughlin, you will go with Joron and build what defences you can around the spire.”
“Berhof is better for that,” he said. “He used to build houses.”
“Aye,” said Berhof, “I’m more use on the land than off it.” Smiles were exchanged between the deckchilder, who no doubt agreed.
“Very well, Berhof it is. Once the gullaime is awake, we will want to be found and I want to draw as many of them as possible to us. We’ll fall back to Berhof’s defences at the windspire. It’ll be hard and bloody work for a while but we only have to hold them. Then we break from the fight and we come back here. Kill whoever remains outside the cave and we take their ship. It’s a simple plan, and I am sure I can trust you to carry it out, ey?” All around there were nods and smiles, for if it was Lucky Meas’s plan then how could it fail? She was the witch of Keelhulme Sounding, the greatest shipwife who ever lived, and what a tale they would have to tell. Not only that they escaped a trap, but that they stole their enemy’s ship right from under them and flew away in triumph to save their people.
There was no way of masking their tracks through the dying forest as they set off. But Meas’s group would take a longer, winding path in the hope of leading off anyone who might come across their tracks. Before leaving, Meas picked out a particularly tall and robust-looking gion stalk, made sure all memorised it as a place to meet, and one from where they could find their way back to the right cave.
Joron led his crew up the island in a raggedy line that stretched out behind him. Though his women and men may have seemed slovenly and lackadaisical, Joron knew that each of them was as alert as it was possible to be, and twice as fierce. A good thing, as he was distracted. Ever since he had set foot on the island he had heard it singing to him, heard the sound of the island as an alien melody in his mind, already louder than he was used to. As they ascended toward the windspire the song increased in volume, and he was sure he felt the gullaime move against his back, followed by a low purr near his ear. When he turned his head the gullaime appeared asleep, though behind it Shorn was hopping from foot to foot as if impatient, and Madorra plodded on as if uninterested.
The higher they went the louder the song became, an impossible volume contained within him, a vibration of his organs, a heat on his skin and he wanted to sing out, but it was as if his throat was blocked. As if his vocal cords, damaged by the garrotte, had been tied in a knot that restricted the flow of the music through him. The nearer they came to the windspire the more he felt like he would burst.
Ahead of him Berhof was so covered in the brown sap of dying plants that he appeared to be part of the forest. He raised his hand and signalled them to stop. Then beckoned Joron forward.
Before them was the windspire. Like the first one he had seen, and all others since, it sat in a clearing of its own, as if the forest had no wish to intrude upon its space. And like each windspire it followed a similar form – a wide base with a rising spine that bent forward to make a hook – and like every windspire it was subtly different from all those he had seen before. The carving was deeper on this one, the filigree of holes more pronounced, making it an intricate web of off-white bonework. He scanned the clearing.
“Seems clear. Do you see anything?”
Berhof shook his head. “No, but I will take Jasp and Kenrin and circle round in case they hide. Wait for me to appear over there.” He pointed toward the far edge of the clearing and then turned to gather his men. Joron waited, and as he waited the song of the spire continued within him, increasing in depth and complexity. He glanced to his left and found Shorn staring up at him through its mask. On the other side was Madorra, staring up at him with one good eye.
“Do you hear it?” he said.
“Hear?” said Shorn.
Joron turned to Madorra. “Do you hear it?”
“Hear nothing.”
“What hear?” said Shorn. As he turned back the windshorn shrank from him.
“The song,” Joron said, and pointed at the windspire, “of that.” Shorn made a sound, something in the gullaime’s trilling language, then shook its head. When he turned back to Madorra it was studying him, the one eye rolling.
“Bad human,” it said. Before he could ask anything else Berhof appeared on the far side of the clearing and motioned them forward. Joron gathered his crew and led them to the windspire.
“Help Berhof set up defences,” he said to Jennil. “Find as much solid material as you can in the forest, make us barricades.”
“Ey Deckkeeper,” she said and drew her curnow, leading the rest of the crew out to forage as he approached the windspire. The song was even louder here, not the vicious gale of the first windspire he had approached – did this mean it was less powerful? – but more like approaching a giant tolling bell, a sound that drowned out all else to the point of pain. As he neared it he felt the gullaime stir on his back. It moved again as Shorn helped him take off the harness that held it, fussing and clicking and cooing as he lowered the gullaime to the ground.
“Careful. Careful. Not hurt windseer.” Did Madorra, so carefully not being part of this, hear that word? Did it react? Did its one eye focus on them?
“We must get it into the spire’s cave, Shorn,” said Joron. All around the clearing was action, women and men dragging thick, wet stalks of gion into a rough square around the spire. He knew it must all be loud and noisy, but he could not hear them until he focused on their industry. His hearing had become oddly selective. What he fixed his attention on he heard, but all else was just the song. The beautiful, ugly, climbing, melodic, screeching, ascending and falling song, and it caught in his throat, scratching and biting as if it wanted to be free, making him cough.
“Come, Joron Twiner,” said Shorn. “Come. Make gullaime well.”
“Lazy bad bird,” said Madorra, but when Joron picked up the gullaime, light as ever in his arms, Madorra hopped along beside him as he struggled over to the windspire’s cave – head ringing, ears throbbing, throat full of spikes – to place the windtalker within the bottom of the spine. As ever, once he had it settled, and Shorn had finished fussing and messing with the cloths and clothes it had brought, stuffed into its robes, to make the gullaime comfortable, he stood back and felt only disappointment. Always he expected some reaction, some immediate change. But that was not the way of it. Something buzzed around his ear, a fly or something similar, and he turned. Found Cwell behind him.
“You should stay here,” she said.
Shorn moved slightly, coming in front of him as if to protect him from her.
“What?” he said, standing.
“You should stay here, when they come.” She looked at the ground so as not to meet his eye. “Deckkeeper.”
“Why, do you think I am not able to fight?”
“You are able,” she said. “But I am to protect you. And.” She pointed at the gullaime. “We need that. It answers best to you, so it is best you stay near it. I will protect you and I will protect it.” He realised it was the most Cwell had ever said to him without there being some obvious threat. Still he searched for some trick, and though her words made sense it rankled within him to simply follow her orders.
“We have twenty here, that is all, Cwell. Even with the defences I will be needed if they find us.”
She stared at him, then nodded.
“Then I will protect you wherever you are,” she said. Then added: “But you should stay here,” before she stepped away and he wondered how he should react. Should he thank her? He could not bring himself to, so instead he went to look at how the defences were going. Gion stalks had been piled, then lashed together with what varisk vines they had found that still had enough substance.
“It is flimsy,” said Berhof, wiping brown slime from his hands onto his clothes, “but it will disrupt a charge and it will stop an arrow.”
“How long do you think until they find us?”
Berhof shrugged.
“Meas and Coughlin headed down the island, to turn circles about it. If we are lucky they will be found first and they will lead whoever finds them a merry dance,” he said. “If we are really lucky they will not be found and she will light her fire and that will draw them all away.”
“And if not?”
“Then the shipwife may wish we had attacked them on the beach.”
“Well, let us wish for luck then,” said Joron.
“The Hag seldom grants wishes, and the Maiden loves a trick,” replied Berhof. “I have stationed people around us as lookouts. If they see the enemy in ones or twos they will kill them. If they see more they will alert us.”
“So now we must wait.” said Joron.
“Aye,” said Berhof, “though if you will allow me, Deckkeeper, I will have the deckchilder and my seaguard keep looking for good gion. It will keep them busy and a few sharpened spikes in the ground around us would not go amiss.”
“A good idea, Seaguard. Set them to it.”
Berhof brought his hand to his breast in salute and went to work.
After that, just as Berhof had said, all was waiting. Joron walked, his feet displacing the mud, leaving furrows in the oozing brown floor to show where he had been. He stooped at the edge of the clearing, far enough away that the windspire’s song did not overwhelm him completely, and he watched as his footsteps behind him filled with water. Almost as if something was displacing the water within the island, pushing it out. He thought of how Aelerin had described the island as a sponge.
“I hope it is not our blood it soaks up,” he said to himself. Then he settled in to listen for any enemy, separating out the many sounds around him: the dripping of the dying plants. The chirp of insects. The screeches and growls and cries of the birds, and the song within him. He wondered if there were firash, angry and dangerous. He had always feared the fierce birds when he was younger, but no longer. He knew there were far more dangerous things – tunir, for one, and a shudder ran through him at the thought of them. If one came then he could not sing himself safe as he had before. Had that even happened? It felt like a dream, and no one had asked him of it, or even mentioned it. He put the thought aside and concentrated, as he knew far worse than imagined tunir lurked in the forest – the enemy. He had learned there was nothing more dangerous than his own kind. And nothing more likely to want to kill him. Even the myriad toothed and tentacled creatures of the sea’s hatred were not as bad. At least their anger made a kind sense to him, for women and men invaded their domain, or pulled them from it, and killed them to eat, or just because they could. He took off his hat and ran a hand over the sweaty braids of his hair. Glanced at Skearith’s Eye, beginning to sink behind the crest of the hill. If anything was to happen, he thought, best it happen now. To fight in the dark was the worst kind of fight. As easy to kill your own as to kill the enemy. He put his hat back on.
Sometimes it all seemed so pointless. The killing, for what?
For their people.
He knew that.
In the end, the politics, the ideas, they were not what fired him, what drove him. Peace sounded like a wonderful dream, and right enough he longed for it, mostly. Though this place and what they did here felt far from it. On a lonely island, ready to die in a desperate bid to find their people. But that desperation did not matter. He would weather it for Meas. Because he believed in her, and she had believed in him, even when she should not have. And if he died here? Then he died and he would go to join his father at the Sea Hag’s bonefire and he would enjoy telling his father stories of his time as a fleet officer. Of his time with Lucky Meas, the witch of Keelhulme Sounding.
“Hoy!” The call came from the forest. Joron stood, turned toward the wall of dripping leaves and stalks and the darkness between them. The call came again. “Hoy! They come!”
“Positions!” shouted Joron and he was still not used to that voice, the harsh croak that came from his mouth. Loud, right enough, but he sounded more like Black Orris than himself. “Take your positions!” he shouted again and the lookouts were breaking from the forest, running for the defences. Joron leaped over the gion and ran to the windspire, the song growing once more within him. The gullaime still lay within it, inert. Joron turned just as Meas broke from the forest, followed by her crew. He could not tell if any had been lost. Behind Meas came the enemy, and he did not need to count Meas’s troops or add in his own to know that they were heavily outnumbered. He glanced once more over his shoulder at the windspire.
“Gullaime,” he said under his breath, “now would be a good time to wake.”
But the windtalker did not, and then he had no time to think about anything but the familiar weight of the curnow in his hand.