As soon as the boat was lowered, Draken dropped into it. His mother shot him an angry look, but he stared her in the eye. “You can’t ask me to stay,” he said.
Myrrima hesitated, as if to voice some argument. “Will you follow my orders?” she demanded.
“Yes,” Draken said.
“Then I order you to get out of this boat and take care of your sister.”
“Perhaps in going with you, I would take better care of my sister. We don’t know what kind of trouble you might be walking into.”
His mother stared hard at him, and at last sighed. The truth was that neither of them knew what was right. “You’ll keep your head down.”
Myrrima gave Sage some final instructions. “If Draken and I don’t come back by dawn, take the ship south to Toom or Haversind. Don’t come looking for us.”
“I won’t leave you,” Sage said, as if by will alone she might hope to save them.
“Promise me you won’t try to come for us,” Myrrima said. “If we get in trouble, then I doubt that you could help, Sage. You have a long life ahead of you. If we don’t return, know that we love you—and know that above all, I want you to make the best life for yourself that you can.”
Sage jutted her chin and refused to promise.
I suppose that I should not be surprised if my little sister is hardheaded, Draken told himself, considering who we have as parents.
Draken took the oars. Myrrima drew some runes upon the water to ease their way, and Draken began to row.
He could smell the smoke of cooking fires on the water, and as he drew near to shore, he spotted a large village rising upon a nearby hill; he was surprised by its size. It sprawled north and south along the shoreline for as far as he could see.
Internook always did have an excess of people, he thought.
A pair of beacons had been lit on the arms of the bay. The fires themselves burned in censers held by statues of men with the heads of bulls, carved from white stone. The firelight gleamed upon the surface of the stone, turning the monstrous statues orange-yellow, so that they could be seen from afar. Their horns looked to be covered in gold, and they spread wide and nearly circled the pyre like bloody crowns.
Draken recalled hearing once that each port had its own symbol, its own effigy at the mouth of the bay, so that ships passing by night might better navigate.
He knew that the word vagr was old Internookish for port. But he could not guess at the word for bull.
“Do you know where we are?” Draken asked.
Myrrima shook her head no.
Draken made his way by starlight toward the docks, pulling his cloak up to hide his face. As he drew nearer the village, he studied the rocky beach. He could see no wreckage as there had been in Landesfallen.
Internook, it appeared, had actually risen a bit, rather than sinking into into the sea.
What a shame, Draken thought. The world would have been better off without the barbarians.
He silently rowed up into the bay, and the reek of a town grew strong. He could smell fish guts and dead crabs, the leftover of the day’s catch. Sea lions barked somewhere among the rocks along the shore, and that surprised him, given the warlords’ penchant for wearing boiled sealskins as armor when they went to war.
Lights shone all through town—wan lights that only yellowed the thin hides that the barbarians used for windows. There were no lanterns placed upon the darkened streets, as he would have seen in Mystarria. The houses looked strange and widely spread. There were huge long houses upon the hill; each was a dark, monolithic fortress with forty or fifty acres of farmland surrounding it. Dozens of families might live in a long house.
It made the village seem surprisingly . . . desolate, Draken decided. It was spread over a broad area, and each long house squatted like a small keep, an island in its own private wilderness.
No one walked the streets that he could see. There were no rich travelers with torchbearers, as you might notice in more civilized countries. There were clean bright houses down near the docks, but he could not hear any travelers at the inns, raising their voices in song.
The entire village was preternaturally quiet.
This is not the Internook of legend, Draken thought, where warlords drink and gamble through the long nights, while their dogs are made to fight bears for sport.
He pulled up to the docks in the starlight, climbed from the boat, and pulled his hood low over his face. His mother took the lead.
They climbed onto the wooden decks, which creaked and trembled under the onslaught of small waves, and made their way up toward a steep ridge, where he could see stairs climbing into town.
Hundreds of small fishing boats were moored at the docks, and as Myrrima passed one, she grabbed an empty sack, stuffed in some rope, and slung it over her back, as if hoping that in the darkness she might pass for some fisherwoman, bringing her catch home from the sea.
The ruse worked with the cats at least. A dozen hungry dock cats came rushing up to greet her, tails raised high and twitching in excitement. Some of them mewed sweetly, eager for fish. But when Draken peered down at one orange tom in the moonlight, he saw that its face had been clawed by other cats until it was swollen and disfigured. One eye was closed with pussy wounds, and as it mewed, it sounded vicious and threatening, as if it was accustomed to demanding fish rather than begging.
Myrrima stomped her foot, shooing the monstrosities away, and climbed the stairs into town, with Draken at her back. They came out of the darkness onto a deserted street, and peered both ways. The cold wind gusted suddenly at Draken’s back, and once again he felt that odd chill creeping up his spine, like the touch of the dead.
It seemed early for the streets to be so barren. No one walked them, not a solitary man.
Sailor folk live here, Draken told himself. That’s why the streets are barren. They’ll need to be up at dawn, to sail with the tide.
Yet that answer didn’t entirely satisfy him. He’d seen the docks at the Courts of Tide in Mystarria, where sailors caroused to all hours.
Perhaps it is unsafe to walk the streets at night here, he wondered.
Myrrima halted, and spoke, her voice shaking. “This is odd. It’s almost as if the town is deserted.”
Then Draken heard something, a bit of music carried on the wind, the distant sound of singing, like men carousing in an ale house.
“That way!” he said. “I hear something.”
Myrrima looked baffled, but followed his lead.
There was a sort of wooden porch that ran the length of the streets—made from rough planks laid over the mud. Draken crept to the side of a building and stood in its shadow, then padded along quickly toward the inn. The walkway let him travel in complete silence.
As he drew closer, the noise of the place became louder. There was roaring and cheering from men, as if a great celebration was going on. Drums and pipes pounded a steady rhythm while drunken men sang some folk song in the ancient tongue of Internook that had long ago fallen into disuse. A bear roared, mastiffs woofed, and the cheers became frenzied.
Perhaps it is a holiday, Draken reasoned. That’s why the town is abandoned. Everyone has gone to the celebration.
He considered how best to keep a low profile.
I’ll find a dark corner or nook, and then crawl deep into it, he told himself. I’ll keep my ears open and my mouth shut. Surely someone will mention Aaath Ulber. It is not every day that a giant wanders into town.
Soon he reached an ale house, but it was unlike any that he had ever seen. In his home country of Landesfallen an ale house or an inn was seldom much larger than a cottage. Indeed, most ale houses simply were cottages owned by some widow who made her living by brewing ale. At night, when a batch was ready, she’d open her doors, throw a keg on the table, and let folks come and enjoy a mug at her hearth. If she had talent and could sing, all the better. If she was fair to look upon, finer still.