The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [74]
He was running into a sheet of roaring flame. Above the dancing shimmer of heat that made him choke, Craer saw Hawkril and the boatmaster plying boathooks like madmen, sweeping or kicking blazing crockery overboard as arrows hissed out of the brightness to thud into the deck or send fresh and glistening showers of shards into the air. Flames burst into being in midair around some of those shards, spinning up into the dark air in a beautiful-and deadly-cloud.
Craer cursed, emptied the nearest dipper of drinking water over his head to make his hair wet and slower to catch afire, and sprinted to the cabin roof, where he bent to snatch long jugs up from their smoldering ropes and hurl them overboard.
Crewmen were racing up on deck, now, and gaping in astonishment at the flames. A few made straight for the rail, to dive into the river, but Craer noticed that arrows came hissing in pairs and volleys to strike at anyone seeking to leave the ship.
Sailors spun around and fell, decorated with shafts, or staggered back amidships; not a one, so far as he could see, managed to strike the water unscathed.
All the while, arrows kept whistling out of the trees, in a deadly rain that made the sailors shout in fear as they danced amid the flames with water buckets or sawed with their knives at the net of ropes that held the oil jugs in place.
Hawkril took an arrow in the shoulder and staggered back, driven against the mast by the force of the striking shaft. He roared out his pain as Embra came hurrying up the hatch steps with Sarasper close behind.
Gaping, they saw flaming ropes dangling and swaying in the trembling air, Hawkril reeling-and atop the cabins, Craer, his brows singed away and the hair on his forearms crisped to ash, flopping about like some sort of fish, kicking and shoving away blazing cargo while arrows thudded home on all sides.
Embra cried out and rushed across the pitching deck. More arrows struck, long jugs bursting apart all around her. A jagged shard spun the Lady's way as she ran-and skipped across her scalp.
Blood fountained in all directions through long and tangled hair. The Lady Silvertree staggered blindly forward through a swelling inferno, mewing in startled pain, straight into a solid collision with the mast.
Sarasper stared at her, and at the blaze and whistling arrows, in openmouthed horror. Then he dashed toward the crumpling sorceress, only to lose all sight of her in bright conflagration, as the ship exploded in front of him with a mighty roar!
The tapestry fell back into place behind Maershee, and several of the bards leaned forward to resume the talk they'd let trail away as the wine matron served them. One took a long, slim clay pipe out of a mouth framed by amber-hued whiskers and said, "Well, it's my firm belief that no matter how they died, Silvertree had a hand in it. He hates all bards."
"And anyone else who's not cowering under his gauntlet," a young but white-haired bard agreed bitterly. "I had to run from his armaragors once. He told them to whip me-to give me, he said, good reason for the high, shrill noise I was making!"
There were grunts of anger and disgust… and a few sounds that might have been suppressed chuckles. Flaeros sat very still, still hardly daring to believe he'd been accepted as a fellow bard and allowed to sit in this private room with half a dozen veterans of minstrelry. Outside its hushed and richly paneled privacy, the Gargoyle was crowded and noisy this night, but here, around a dying hearthfire, the men who made music all over Darsar were talking grimly of two dead colleagues.
"Helgrym taught me the thrumpipe," one of them said suddenly, "and introduced me to old Teshaera."
"By the Lady, but she could make strings!" another bard said sadly. "Gathered in and gone, like all the rest."
There