CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

BUKHAM SAT ON the prow of the Shelliac ferry and watched the slow passage of the banks. They were moving through hills crowded with woody vegetation, not large enough to be a forest, not small enough to be much else. Here and there where the river curved, broad mud and sand banks stretched down to the water in crescents, pockmarked by the hooves and paws of animals coming to drink. The mist of earlier in the afternoon had passed off and the strip of sky above them was clear. Multiple globes of midges whirled around beneath every overhanging bough. Bukham was plaiting a fistful of long reeds together to make a whisk to keep them off as he kept watch.

Bukham liked the Shelliac, even though they were somewhat hard to look at with their mouths full of moving fur-like strands and their multifaceted eyes which never blinked and shone like fancy buttons. The Shelliac and the Oerni shared a fondness for Wanderer as their Guardian of choice, so Murti was now deep in conversation with them and Horse, who was forced to take her place at the only point she was secure, amidships, near the back of the boat.

Beside him one of the small Shelliac women was squatting, demonstrating how they had taught their otters to do different tasks in the water. She was distinguished from the men only by the upper part of her dress which covered the part Bukham found hardest to look at on any of them because, through their tough, shell-like skin, their hearts and other organs were visible. It made him feel almost sick with vulnerability on their behalf although he was by far the less armoured. The lower half of this particular woman’s body was swathed in a practical skirt which all Shelliac wore, embroidered with clan sign and little pictograms of moments from their lives. Her otter was sleek and well-fed, skimming easily on its back as it watched for her signal. She told it to check the bottom of the boat for clearance on the riverbed and it flipped and was gone in an instant, leaving only rings on the water. At Bukham’s other side Kula quivered with excitement and thumped the deck with her hand. She could seemingly hardly contain her excitement at seeing the otters work. Lysandra peered over her shoulder. Of Deffo and Celestaine there was no sign and he guessed they were napping below.

The Shelliac were a quiet, efficient background on their boat. They communicated by sign and whistles, a language in which he was fluent thanks to some mutually beneficial trade alliances between Taib and several of the Shelliac clans. This particular one was of the highest cadre, with an ancient lineage whose history was painted in every detail upon its panels and stanchions. With the most favourable routes on the widest passages they had the means to build a grand boat. It was broader than most and boasted a welcoming space for passengers besides its cargo holds. Even the resident otters wore barding of coloured leathers and necklaces of shell and half-pollys. They had their own cubbies on the deck for when they were not fishing, checking the waterways for dangers or maintaining the underwater sections of the craft. They became acquainted as the boat passed smoothly along midstream using only the current to make its way towards Ilkand.

Once the business niceties were over the Shelliac sign and chatter was less reassuring as they told Bukham in detail of the river-dragon’s wrecking of large parts of the country all around them. He had translated for the others.

“Sounds like one of the many warbeasts let loose to roam,” Celestaine had said but the Shelliac seemed doubtful. They showed where they had placed harpoons on the boat and where there was a water butt with multiple buckets available for putting out fires. Over its gunwales the boat had been cladded in temporary defences. The wooden sides of this armouring were solid, slitted for arrows and charred in places. At first they hadn’t wanted to go to shore when they saw Deffo signalling them from the bank, but they had sent a reluctant patriarch over to see if there was a negotiation worth the risk and the story of their narrow escape from the beast had secured them a place, though the jewels Celestaine offered didn’t hurt any either.

Only Lysandra and Kula remained oblivious. Bukham’s gladness for their safety had begun to pass into a mild panic at the thought of their imminent danger. The boat was not so short that he couldn’t hear enough words coming towards him about the terrible happenings at the Freeport. Phrases about Templars clashing, city burghers, tradesmen in riot, a host of horrors descending unexpectedly from the south west, suspected at first to be a plague of some kind of bat left over from the Kinslayer’s cache but turning out to be more like malicious leaves blown on a wind of their own sorcery. Monsters were one thing but bodiless entities were worse. Of all the things to end their reign, it was a snowstorm coming in off the sea that finished the plague: the melting flakes stuck to their filmlike bodies and the water melted them into a nasty sludge. Apparently, fish and rats liked to eat it though everyone had lost the taste for fish for a couple of days, and the rats had a brief surge in fortune. Then, however the talk returned to dragonish matters: where it was, what it was doing, why it was there, how to get rid of it, the fact it didn’t much like a sharp pointy thing brandished in its face, though fire was no deterrent. They were not sure if fire attracted it.

Bukham made sure to watch carefully but it was Lysandra who was worrying him—she was so much sharper today than she had been yesterday and so much more alert this afternoon than this morning, although the others were too wrapped up in their own business to notice. Now she and Kula were busy at the prow, making the otter cots more luxurious and learning how to offer treats, as if there was no trouble in the world.

“Mind if I join you?” It was Heno. There was hardly room for another big body on the planking at the ship’s side but Bukham shuffled over and the boat tilted very slightly as the big, grey form of the Yorughan sat down. He folded his long, dark coat around him so it didn’t drag into the water. They were riding very low thanks to the extra passengers and the armouring that had been hastily applied to the deck roofs. Water passed by only inches from their feet.

He felt nervous. Heno had a lined, canny face with a heavy battering ram of a forehead and tusks which made him seem doubly beastlike. In addition he had the fabled magic, and Bukham wanted nothing to do with that. It frightened him but he was too big to show it. He tried to console himself by remembering Taib Post and that it was still there, but then he didn’t know if it was there or not. Celestaine liked Heno. He tried to stick that notion to the person sitting beside him. He found he trusted Celestaine.

Out on the water some expanding rings showed where trout were surfacing and he put down his spear and reached instead for the small fishing pole that had been secured beside him to a slot in the hull. He brought in the line, attached a lure, and twitched it out over the water in their direction. The ferry was moving slowly, almost silent except for the steady wash of wavelets from the tiller oar. There was a chance of a fish.

Heno watched him closely. “This is the fishing?”

“Mmn,” Bukham nodded. Without thinking he held out the rod and Heno took it. There was an awkwardness to the movement, quickly covered. “The boat is doing the work. After we pass, pull in the line and we can cast it again.”

He made some show of looking up and around to make it clear that he was doing his job on watch, but there was no sign of any flying horrors or wisps of smoke. The river was broad and they were skilfully weaving down between fast flowing currents, far out of reach of the banks. It was peaceful. Only the bite of the midges spoiled an idyllic journey. That and what lay at the end. He liked Ilkand but he was terrified of Templars, especially the Termagent Phylactery whose strict codes cast suspicion on everything they saw. Thinking about them made him more glad to be with the Yoggs, strangely enough, as if they would be his allies when the Termagent discovered something they didn’t like about him and selected him for sentencing and death. He pushed the image away and concentrated on helping Heno attach bait from the pot. They cast a few times, one then the other, until Bukham was sure that Heno could feel the play of the line. “If it catches, give it a good yank. Either you will free it from the weeds or get the fish hooked on. Either’s good.”

Heno grunted and they both watched the greenish water.

“You never fished before?”

“We lived in the mines, mostly,” Heno said. “No fishing there. No sky. No rivers.”

“No soft beds, no nights under the stars, no sun, no wind, no nothing.” It was Nedlam, who had come up behind them, very quietly for a woman of such scale. She had a slingshot in one hand and was turning over a few stones in the other. She glanced at Bukham and his face became hot.

“You have a lot of catching up to do,” he said, carefully, in case they took offence at being so close to someone soft who had done nothing in the war but drop the price of grain when he should have put it up for scarcity. Up close their scars were terrible to see—they had them everywhere. Bukham had only one, on his foot, from stepping on a cowbite thorn when he was little.

“You never had a weapon in your hands?” Nedlam asked, scratching her nose with a finger before gesturing out before them at a low hanging branch. “Think you can hit that?” She held out the sling.

“I… no… it will disturb the fish,” Bukham said, but then had a thought. “May I borrow it?”

He took it from her and dropped a few bits of old bread from the bait pot into the cup and then briefly whirred the sling around before releasing one end. The bread pellets flew out over the gloom beneath the shade of the overarching trees where Heno’s fishing line was slowly being dragged behind them. Within moments the surface of the water rippled and then suddenly there was splashing and vigorous movement. Heno yanked the line with a sudden, almost girlish, exclamation of surprise.

“A fish! Did I get it?”

“Let me help with the line…” Bukham was reaching, reeling. Heno was gripping the rod as if it was the last straw in a fearsome ocean and he unable to swim.

“Ooh,” Nedlam said, stepping forwards to see what was happening.

The combined weight of the three of them concentrated in one spot caused the boat to dip a little—only a fraction because she was a big vessel and well loaded—but it was enough for Bukham who was already off balance, and who dare not grab onto Heno or Nedlam. His foot slid off the side and then he was falling into the river, rotating, his last sight two comically surprised grey and white faces gawping at him like giant fishes, a tiny fish flapping between them on a thin line.

After that there was coughing and flailing and the sad memory that it had been a long time since his boyhood on the banks of the Tularesi during which there had been something of a large mass gain and a skill loss. But his skin felt the cool grip of the river and his leg hairs twitched with old memories of the currents and somehow he kicked to the surface without bashing his head on the hull to find a huge grey hand reaching down for his wrist.

Nedlam lifted him out of the water with one arm and he laid on the boards of the deck coughing and flapping, the little fish beside him in the same spasms of life searching for breath. The Yorughan were laughing and he heard the conversation had died and others were merry behind him. He reached out and found the fish, took it off the hook. It wriggled but he had its measure. In his hand it was like liquid metal. He held it up towards Heno as he sat up.

“Your call. Eat it or throw it back.”

A rainbow of colour flashed on the trout’s side, its scales bright, its eye glaring.

“No eating Bukbuk here. He cooks good,” Nedlam said, clapping Bukham’s shoulder with a force that almost had him over the side again.

Everyone was laughing. Even the little one had her head out of the otter cabin to goggle at him. Lysandra stared, mouth half open, looking like any young mother, if she had lately been at a fancy human ball and run away through the woods for a week to live feral by her wits.

Heno stared at the fish. He stared, and licked his tusks, and then he grinned. “Throw it back,” he said.

“Ahh!” Kula said and jumped with joy, clicking her fingers together. It was the first time he had ever heard her voice try to say something. It was raspy and high pitched and raw but its delight was clear.

Bukham tossed it. The fish landed with a rich plop in the swirling current and was lost to sight immediately.

After that even Lysandra smiled and there was a brief sense of oneness among the crew, even the Shelliac, bound by that moment of the fish’s fate under the falling sun. Bukham, pulling off his wet shirt to dry it, saw Murti nodding quietly.

Later as they were watching the river, halberd at hand in case of dragons, he said to Bukham, “You see, only a holy man can do such a thing as has been done. You have united disunited things.”

“Keep your ambitions,” Bukham replied, but without any of the resentment he’d had before. “I’m just a fool who sells vegetables and I don’t even have any of them.” A strange happiness had engulfed him and he wanted it to stay.

Dusk had started to come on and a mist had begun to form as the air cooled. Their progress remained stately within the river’s broad meander. Fisherbirds darted into the water and out again, catching rising moth larvae as they came up to feed in the shadows. Aboard the ferry he could smell dinner on the make and hear voices, quiet. Murti was lost in thought, or asleep, as the water rippled nearby and a few bubbles rose to the top and burst one after the other.

Bukham found he was watching those bubbles. They made a line of steady progress and then he realised why it was odd. They matched the boat’s speed and position. He was suddenly aware of how close Murti was to the edge of the boat as he lay carelessly in his half-sleep, and moved, halberd tightly gripped, gunwale held fast for safety, to position himself as a guard for anything rising from the water.

Horse called from the boat’s centre at the same moment, his name or something like it, her voice a warning note that went through him from head to toe although it was quiet, barely above the plash of the ripples against the hull. Right in front of him the water domed upwards for a moment and he saw the curling foil of a large fin and the silvered flash of a large, sinuous body rolling away beneath them at an angle that would take it beneath the boat. He grabbed the old man’s ankle, dragging him backwards to the safety of the centre. Murti woke up and flailed about in protest.

The Shelliac were pushing past him, the rudimentary nature of their faces become quite blank with anxiety as they scouted, javelins and harpoons in hand. They swarmed over the boat, their unblinking, faceted gaze on the furls and strands of the river. They were talking about dragons again and poling the craft over into the fastest part of the current. Celestaine came up, buckling her breastplate on, but was beaten to a view by the shadowy slip of Kula, one moment not there, the next hanging out over the water to stretch her thin fingers down into the flow.

Bukham released Murti and shouted at her before remembering it could do no good. He threw himself flat in an effort to reach her before anything could pull her over the side.

 

 

KULA FELT THE beast much more clearly when she touched the water. It had an age beyond most she’d encountered. When she’d first sensed its slow circling of them she’d been afraid but her curiosity had drawn her closer and closer to the water’s edge. When the big man fell in she’d been terrified for a second but surprised more than anything. His face was so funny as he tumbled over that she couldn’t help laughing. The splash he made had caused the creature to come closer, though it was used to boats and especially this kind. It came to taste the newcomer, as she came closer now to discover more about it.

She was fairly certain that it wasn’t Bukham that it cared for. It was drawn to the deeper, more complex flavours of Wanderer’s dark flame and the weak pulses of the Undefeated’s signature. Now it was hunting the source of that rare scent which stirred ancient memories inside it, but weakly. It searched to remember something that had happened generations past, to river creatures that had swum and hunted here before the ages of men.

Kula told it that humans didn’t see these things. They were so blind that they thought this creature was the same as the one that had flown in the air earlier that day but this was only a river beast. She warned it off as it turned in the muddy depths and felt a sluggish notion stir within it as the otters came to see what she was doing, whiskers tickling her cheek.

Though the idea was slow the giant dragon-fish was not. It skimmed away across a bed full of stones and silt, heading upstream to put distance between itself and the dangerous, predatory things-from-above. In its wake it left her the memory of the winged one. It was downriver a way and had built a nest there. The dragonfish knew to keep away from it.

She was about to turn and look for her mother to discuss it when she was seized. Everything she’d been thinking and her quietness was lost in a sudden, violent surge of rage and struggle. Then she realised it was Bukham holding her and that she was being set down. She whirled and glared at him, rubbing her arms where she’d been grabbed. Beside her the otters chittered crossly and one bit him on the ankle.

He yelped in pain and was making apologetic gestures and pointing at the water. She scowled and told him he didn’t know what he was talking about, but then, seeing how baffled he was and that he didn’t understand her signs anyway, she sighed and shook her fist at him. He’d intended to save her, but that didn’t make her feel better.

He pulled a sad face, very sad. She smiled and then he smiled back. She helped him to dress the otter bite with some salve from Celestaine’s pack and then she took her otter friends to visit Horse, who was all by herself at the back of the boat swishing midges off Lysandra as she dozed on Horse’s broad back.

Kula loved Horse. Vast and strange, wild and ancient, she was. She was before Kula and the people. She was almost before everything, just like the dragon that Kula wanted to talk to her about. There were traces of memory so old in her that touching them made Kula feel that she could see almost to the beginning of things. She was the opposite of Kula herself, in whom nothing stuck. Horse was an old, old book and Kula was a blank page. Kula knew that this is why she could see as she did, as far as she did, as completely. Because nothing stuck. She remembered that she had been part of a people, in a place, her family, her life and that between them there was not a single thing from the origins of the world that had not been remembered, but for her it had already faded to the point that it was like a distant dream. Now there was only the one the others called Lysandra, her mother. She knew they had a journey to go on, for a reason. Horse was coming because of the reason so it must be important and if it was important to Horse then she ought to make sure there was no trouble. The dragon was a big trouble.

She sneaked up on the centaur who was pointedly looking the other way and pulled her hair.

“What little bat is that?” asked Horse, looking the other way as Kula hopped over her broad back, waking Lysandra. Kula heard her as clearly as if she had spoken, though not in words, and flapped her arms and fingers like bat wings as she went for another tug.

“What little bug is that?”

They played on, Kula talking about the dragon, as at the boat’s foredeck the others ate the evening meal and talked so serious, full of memories. They carried the past like stone in their faces and hearts because they couldn’t let it go. She felt sad for them. They were difficult to be around. Even when it was peaceful they couldn’t stop. She undid them a little, loosened a few things here and there, explained to the Shelliac and the otters that the dragon was ahead of them still, not far away.

 

 

BUKHAM SPENT THE evening swatting biting flies and fighting an urge to slip away and go home. The Shelliac lit smoky torches and handed out cool pachi fruit, stowed carefully enough to keep it cool and sweet as they made a show of talking emphatically it in hugely exaggerated gestures like a travelling theatre group—what a shame such good fruit would all go to waste because of a dragon. The land hereabouts was already wasted and the people driven off by the thing. Plus with the Kinslayer’s armies now devolved to roving bands of witless thugs it was too much to suffer a monster when the boat was full of legendary monster-slaying figures. Surely, for the sake of the good fruit and the safety of law-abiding, peaceful folk, the mighty warriors could get up off their arses and take a punt at dislodging the thing before it spawned.

Finally, just as he thought he was about to leap up and go it was Nedlam beside him who moved first. Only understanding a bit of what they said but all of what they meant, she threw down the last rind into the slop bucket and snapped, “Fine. Fine. I will do it. I will get the beast!” just to shut them up and because Heno’s fish had been put back and now there was only fruit to eat and she was grumpy. Bukham slumped with relief. He wouldn’t have known what to do after the standing up bit.

“You’re the salt of the earth,” Celestaine said, approvingly and as a preamble to some plan or other but a plan she never got to. A second later she looked as shocked as Bukham felt to find herself hauled up by the front of her jerkin, an inch from Nedlam’s blunt nose. He felt a sudden palpable menace, the barge far too small and confined.

“Ned,” he said quietly. “She didn’t mean it literally. Let go. She was saying thank you.” He put his hand out and touched Nedlam’s arm, the muscle there as solid as rock.

He felt her quiver and then she said decisively, “I only salted it because I had to, not because I wanted to!”

The declaration was loud and after it the silence was intense, broken only by the relentless lap of water against the boat. Nedlam herself looked surprised. She let go slowly and dusted off Celestaine, holding out her hands to show she was sorry. Bukham patted Nedlam on the back.

“It’s a saying. It means good,” Celestaine said, relaxing back cautiously, a what-the-hell expression on her face. “What’s the matter, Ned? You’re never upset.”

“How can it mean good?” Nedlam said quietly. She glared at Heno as if it were his fault, her voice full of hurt. “Tell your woman to keep a straight mouth. Who says things like that and it’s good?” She pushed her way around the group and out of the door onto the deck. Bukham heard her boots on the gangplank and then the splash of her walking onto the islet’s swampy sanctuary. A second later a bestial roar of rage and misery split the evening’s froggy murk and the otters came rushing in, hurtling around in wet, muddy streaks until they found their cots.

The air was so tense even Kula didn’t move a muscle. The Shelliac looked thunderous, and frightened, their gaze flitting between Heno and Celestaine as they tried to decide which of them was the more dangerous, waiting for some kind of retribution to fall, a doom they had expected, betrayal already trying to leak into their expressions, fingers slowly moving towards weapons.

“You people are such weak materials.” From the darkness behind Horse’s massive bulk a smallish figure in a multi-coloured dress stood up and turned to face them. In the dimness of the night and the oil lamps they could see her only by the reflection on her eyes and the whiteness of her teeth. “No wonder he came to kill you all. And still, it didn’t do a bit of good to you.”

“What would you know?” Deffo said, from his position in the most inaccessible corner, but he was suddenly cramped out of style by the addition of everyone else as they gave a lot of space to Horse and the woman standing beside her: Lysandra.

Bukham couldn’t believe what he was hearing. That Lysandra spoke wasn’t entirely new. That she had an opinion of her own was unexpected. That it was this condemnation was devastating. He felt crushed. As Kula’s mother, Lysandra had been so caring, so joyful, dutiful he would have said. As she stood now, her words had seemed to destroy all of that. She was siding with the Kinslayer. How could it be that anyone would have a good thing to say about him and, above all, that it should be this? How could she dare say it, knowing what they thought and how they felt and what had happened? He felt scared of her and scared for her at the same time, his limbs urging him to run away before things turned bad, as they surely must any second now.

Celestaine’s hand was on the hilt of her sword. Heno was frozen, staring as if he could discover the truth by concentration.

“So much killing and still we kill it kill it kill it and salt the earth,” she said to the Shelliac trade-patriarch. She was contemptuous, and angry, Bukham thought; a contained anger that was coming out in a considered way. She was disappointed.

“Monsters kill people,” Celestaine said firmly. “What other way is there? They don’t talk.”

“Yes, the talking,” Lysandra said. “Very successful. But even your greatest friend can’t survive the beast ahead, nor any of you. It is time-lost, like Horse here. An army won’t dispatch it. But don’t worry. You—” she turned to the Shelliac leader and swept him up and down with a scathing gaze. “I will get the terrible, terrifying dragon out of the way.” She turned to look at those of her own company and bowed her head once, then walked out, down the plank and onto the islet.

“Oh dear,” said Murti with that glee of his that Bukham was starting to dislike even more as it presaged trouble.

“What the ever-living fuck?” Celestaine said, looking at the space Lysandra had stood in.

Bukham rubbed his palms against his tunic but there was no getting the damp and discomfort off them. He looked at Murti. “Now how good a priest am I?”

“Not everything’s about you,” Murti said impatiently as Heno got up and passed him on his way down the gangplank. Celestaine followed him. Bukham looked back and saw Horse holding a sleeping Kula in her arms. Well, at least that was all right, he thought as he found himself alone by the firepit. Beside him one of the Shelliac, internal lights pulsating rapidly, signalled to him—what? What was that? Who was this strange person they had brought to endanger the boat?

He tried to explain but a commotion of voices from the islet cut him short. Without hesitation he hurried with the crew to go see for himself what was going on.

He found everyone, even Deffo, lining up on the islet’s shallow beachline. Nedlam, resolute with her hammer over her shoulder, was apart, a few feet into the water. Lysandra was much further out on the sandbar where it reached into midstream. The water, lit by the moon, broke around her ankles and tugged at the trailing hems of her gown. She had one arm upraised and was looking directly up into the moon’s large face. Clouds scudded across the stars in rags, brief blots on the broad V of the sky that was visible to them between the sharp rise of the land on either side.

A breeze rippled their hair and clothing. Against the rush of the water in its uneven bed, the sound of leaves sighing, filled their ears to the brim, heightening the fear in Bukham because he hated the wind and the way it masked all other, much more important sound. Their sense of expectation rose, rose, then began to subside, but Lysandra remained still and so they waited.

Down in the sharp point of the V something flitted across the visible stars moving from left to right. Bukham felt the air cold all over his back, aware of its exposure, his height, the space at the back of his head where the shirt hung off his neck. He found Murti nudging him with a grunt, the old man’s thinner form looking even more like a bag of bones than usual.

“I feel we are about to get our arses kicked,” he muttered.

“You’re enjoying this,” Bukham realised.

“Who doesn’t love a good turnabout?”

Celestaine turned and looked back at them. “Where’s Deffo?” She spotted him then, standing close to the boat and almost invisible in its moonshadow. She turned back scowling to face whatever was coming towards them.

A giant bird with a long, whip-like tail flew over the river’s course. Its silhouette seemed feathered, elongated, the tail trailing a vertical diamond which Bukham recognised suddenly as the downward fin that had cut through the clouds earlier on in the day. Compared to the size of the creature itself, the fin was large.

Then with a speed and suddenness that surprised them all there it was, landing in the river’s shallows with a small splash of white water, just ahead of Lysandra’s station. The long wings folded down and it used the knuckles as forelimbs. The brilliance of the moon made all shadows as black as the abyss. The thing was a collection of mismatched, ugly angles to Bukham, a nightmare with two vividly glowing red eyes. He wanted to run but nobody else was leaving. Streamers of blackness seemed to ripple off the creature, and Bukham could feel a vibration in the tissues just beneath his skin as if it were emitting a constant, inaudible tone.

It wasn’t a dragon. He realised that now. He knew them by story: huge, bejewelled, ancient, venomous—the list of their features was as long as it was unlikely.

A commotion broke out among the Shelliac, a clank and clattering and subdued but urgent whistles. The thock of a bow being shot startled Bukham even as the hiss of the arrow and its splash into riverwater was already there with him. He stepped back and found himself treading on Heno’s foot. He moved aside and stood shoulder to shoulder with the Yorughan.

The creature made a complaining, stuttering sort of sound ending on a hiss and Lysandra turned around with a violent gesture. “You will not shoot it!”

The beast sprang back into the air and the downdraft washed over them in a strange, dry stink of things they couldn’t name or place, animal but at the same time alien in a way that Bukham felt give even his bones pause for concern. They all must have felt it because there was a moment of near panic as the thing went sailing overhead and then on, down the river towards the shallow bend and beyond in the direction of the Port.

Lysandra spun around, her hands in fists, arms straight at her side as she came towards them. Bukham took a few steps back.

“What did you do that for?” She pointed at the archer, a Shelliac with shortbow drawn, a harpoon arrow in place. “Why? Why?” She was angry and as she came at them there was a sense of presence about her that went far beyond the ordinary, as though her every step pulled something unseen and terrible behind her so that you could feel the ripples of it spreading out from her in a gigantic train.

“What the hell?” Nedlam was there, moving forwards, putting herself firmly in all their way.

Lysandra stopped as she reached Ned and threw up her hands in the air in a gesture of exasperation. “Now it has gone back to its nest.”

The Shelliac captain broke in to say they would not be going anywhere until the beast was dispatched and all danger to the countryside removed.

“I hardly think you’re going to turn around with a full load and take it back where it came from,” Celestaine replied. “And now we’ve all seen it’s some kind of big wyvixen. It’s not a dragon, not any of the Kinslayer’s creatures, it’s just a monster from the wilds upset by the war. There were plenty of them in the wars to the south. It’s just an outlier. We’ll sort it out in the morning.” She sounded like she was making a pitch rather than stating a fact. Bukham didn’t buy it. He believed Lysandra, who stood alone, having left a sleeping Kula with Horse.

Neither Celest nor the captain seemed to notice that where Lysandra stood at the shore her feet were surrounded by white water, bubbling and popping as if it were on the boil although it didn’t look right for that. Still, it was bad in Bukham’s eyes, like the bottom of a non-existent waterfall. Then he thought that perhaps Celestaine did know because she went to intercept the Shelliac and make a foray across the islet with them in the throes of planning a hunt in quite a loud voice. Silently Nedlam and Heno fell in to back up her reassertion of leadership. He was left with Murti and Deffo in the van and that suddenly felt bad.

He watched Deffo cast a long, thoughtful look at Lysandra and then decide that it wasn’t his problem. They shared a glance and Bukham gave a sheepish shrug. Deffo tried to sidle up to Murti who was already walking back to the boat but Murti ignored him; although it looked like he was just too quick, his old man shuffle one step ahead of the other old man shuffle. Bukham, alone, looked at Lysandra reluctantly.

The water was calming down. She had folded her skinny arms across her chest and her chin was down. She looked thoughtful but not angry and came forwards the last few steps out of the river to dig her toes into the sandy mud. After a moment or two this distracted her completely and he watched her loosen her arms and look down, then pause and start to play, dabbing marks with her feet that filled quickly with water and became tiny, five-toe mirrors in the steady moonlight.

“Is that what you really think he was doing?” He had no idea he was going to ask it until he did. “The Kinslayer came to kill us all because we were too weak? That we failed the gods’ plan? Was that part of the plan all along, to make us stand up to him?” He didn’t expect an answer but he was surprised.

“I wanted to make you all stop.” Lysandra caught Bukham’s eye and smiled. Then she passed them and went back aboard the ferry. “I wanted to make you think differently about what has happened. Stop attacking everything. Doesn’t the dragon have the right to the land, as much as you?”

Bukham swallowed. “I don’t know. It’s very dangerous. I think that when something is dangerous you plan to be rid of it.”

She seemed to think about this as she stirred the mud and sand with her toe. “Yes. I am confused about this because I have no fear of it. Thank you. Even so, I will not let you kill it. I will find another way. Kula would not see it die. She would like it to eat everyone who did not help, who is not kind, who cannot escape their—what is this thing that stops you all? Their…?”

Bukham thought of his uncle, their careful progress, their lack of action. But they had kept trade going, they had supplied the people as best they could, and fighters twice as much. They didn’t fight but they had done their part. Someone had to supply. But Uncle had said Kula must go. What did he do that for? “I don’t know,” he said, because he wasn’t sure that Uncle’s actions could be put down to anything other than simple impatience in the end.

He found Lysandra studying him, a smile on her face, slight but definite. “It’s all right. She doesn’t want it to eat you.” Then she passed him by and went up into the boat and on her way past she whispered, “But something will be eaten.”

In the morning his worst fears were realised. After the briefest of breakfasts in the dawn the Shelliac set themselves up with gear—harpoons, nets, torches—and poled off from the islet while the mist was still clinging to the banks. Celestaine, Heno and Nedlam, always ready, remained on watch. Lysandra and Kula came up on deck. The boat moved with steady progress around a long curve and then back the other way, the river broadening. Either side the woodland proved too thick to show any signs of habitation but on the third bend they came to the pathetic remains of a wooden jetty, and the Shelliac insisted that it had been a fishing spot and trading point until the dragon had taken over this whole stretch of the waters. Bukham recognised the tone. It was grievances aired to fuel the fire of a fight.

Then came the sight of the midstream island they were expecting and a hush fell, broken only by the scrape of a pole as it fended them off a mudbank below the waterline. The only movement on board suddenly was Kula playing with the otters. She had made some little balls out of knotted rag and gleaned some dried fish from the supplies and they were racing about in pursuit of one or the other at a great rate, oblivious to the interests of the adults on board. Lysandra was nearby, sitting quietly, and it felt to Bukham like they were cruising to the end of the world. He wiped his sweaty hands down his clothes, feeling how dirty they were, how tired he was, how frightened he was feeling for no reason other than that they were approaching the hunt of a monster and there was something off about everything, like a tilt that would see them all sliding helplessly into an abyss…

The quiet was broken by the hunting splash of a fishermartin plunging down from one of the trees overhanging the river near them and vanishing into the frog-rich depths. Then quiet again. They drew alongside the first island.

The soft plash of the poles, the ripples of the water, the breaking slurp of wavelet on shingle—no animal sounds at all. They slid past its mud shore, ferns trailing in the water like tiny green fingers feathering the current. Beside them, black feathers.

Half hidden by the deep grass the ‘dragon’ lay in a motionless lump, its true size clear in the bleak grey light. Skinny claws and awkward joints were piled like discarded wood. Its head, long and ugly by any standard, lay with the wide, toothy beak half open, sifting the water without tasting. The eyes were blank and dry. It was quite unmistakably dead.

The ferry was brought to a halt, grounded and two Shelliac sent to investigate. Morosely the others gathered at the railside to look down on the proceedings. They prodded the beast with poles until its stiffened carcass rocked. At the edge of the group Lysandra and Kula looked on, their faces impassive. Bukham saw Heno watching them both with all his attention. Lysandra sighed but all the anger and menace of the previous evening was nowhere to be seen. Heno nudged Celestaine and she turned to look at them too. Words were exchanged too low for Bukham to hear. He watched the tall, blonde warrior scratch her head and then she was calling for them to go. For the Shelliac’s part it seemed they were satisfied with the outcome. They forayed into the island interior and there was some sound of crushing—eggs were broken, a nest trampled it turned out—before they returned to loot the corpse for feathers and claws, bone and teeth. Then they were back aboard and casting off, all the talk about what could have happened—had it died of old age or was it too far from home, all that kind of speculation that could never be answered and left a lingering unease in its wake.

Later, as they sat and played a game of chase and fetch with the otters, Bukham saw Kula quietly stroking a small black feather as though consoling a little animal. He didn’t interrupt her but she looked up directly into his face and smiled a small, sad smile before putting the feather away in her vest pocket. Lysandra helped the Shelliac with their food preparations and later took a pole to learn how to angle the boat at the right points to take advantage of the current. There was a new kind of purpose to her, he thought, something keen and sharp as a knife point that hadn’t existed before. Where she had passively followed and peacefully accepted whatever happened, now she was alert. She didn’t speak or attempt to initiate anything. She just paid attention and as the day passed she wove herself silently and seamlessly into whatever went on around her.

He was sitting with Horse, weaving a basket to pass the time, when he overheard Heno and Celestaine talking. They must have been outside on the gunwales.

“You’re sure it was Lysandra?”

“I saw the girl at the front of the boat. The mother was away in the night,” Heno said, barely audible as more than a low grumble.

Horse was also listening, her tall ears twitching.

“And you saw magic?”

“I felt it,” he said.

They moved along out of earshot. Lysandra and Kula had killed the dragon after all they had said? He didn’t understand. And how could they have done it? What did it mean?

A holler a few moments later put them within sight of the Freeport.