As the news spread, the city of Orindale turned out in force to watch as frigates, barges, two more galleons, a massive carrack and a handful of sleek schooners were all sent to the bottom, ripped in half, punctured, blown to splintered bits or simply set ablaze and burned to the waterline. One sloop, a single-masted vessel from Strandson, was lifted from the water and those watching from the relative safety of the wharf talked for Twinmoons about seeing its keel clear the surface as it rolled lazily to port then back to starboard before wrenching itself in two, snapping like a handful of kindling and disappearing beneath the waves. Two barges were swept clean of their cargo by rogue waves and then broken into flotsam. The bits that remained afloat caught fire, looking like a string of macabre lanterns floating upstream.
A Falkan carrack, one of the largest ships currently making its stately way into the harbour, came about hastily, despite the tide, and endeavoured to tack into the open sea. Onlookers cheered – it was a local ship, after all – and when the captain ordered the top and main sails set, the waterfront erupted with an ovation Blackford could hear halfway across the harbour.
‘Stop cheering!’ he shouted, ‘don’t you understand? You’ll make it worse! Stop cheering!’
The cheering did stop when the carrack exploded. It was almost to the horizon, almost into the currents – almost free – when the proud giant simply blew apart. The concussion was massive, throwing Blackford and his men to the deck as the shockwaves passed by. He had never seen such a disaster, had never heard such an explosion – nothing in Eldarn exploded like that! This was the work of a god.
All manner of vessels set out on a mercy mission in hopes of rescuing the hundreds of sailors, soldiers and merchant seamen now drifting amongst the floating debris, though many had already drowned; either they couldn’t swim or they had succumbed to the cold.
Fathers and mothers, fat merchants, aged grandparents and children barely old enough to grasp an oar all rowed, hauled lines, gripped tillers and tied great loops into heavy rescue lines, a flotilla of venerable, chipped, rotting and battered family boats, making their way into the harbour to save what lives they could. Even the soldiers, the Malakasian brutes who periodically beat them, or hanged them for no reason on the common near the imperial palace, even they did not deserve to die like this.
Mark attacked them all, using five-foot waves to wipe the sea clean of the determined but irritating little boats. The more seaworthy craft, those that rode the five-foot swells, he set on fire or snapped into splinters. There was howling from everywhere as people burned to death, drowned or succumbed to hypothermia: everyone cried for mercy in the same miserable language.
When it was over, the galleon burned brightest, a signal fire warning all craft away from this place. With the chill snaking into their bones, many of the spectators, their lust for carnage sated, realised with a catch in their throats that perhaps the gods weren’t done with them yet; perhaps the devastation they had witnessed was just the beginning; perhaps the city itself was next. There was a moment of stunned silence, broken only by the crackle and snap of the flames and the piercing cries of the injured and dying, then panic blew through the crowd like a fogbank and, pushing, pulling, shoving, punching and kicking, the people of Orindale turned and fled as one.
Captain Hershaw offered a hand to Captain Blackford, still lying on the barge’s deck. They were both in shock, mute in disbelief.
‘Why?’ Blackford finally managed.
Hershaw gestured towards the southern wharf. Three ships remained intact, tied to a deepwater pier and facing north, as if they knew somehow that they would survive the morning. These were frigates, giants, capable of carrying massive cargoes to anywhere in Eldarn.
Hershaw said, ‘I don’t think she wants to be followed.’
‘So we’re going home in those?’
‘Not just us.’
Blackford tried for a moment to figure out who might be joining them when he heard a change in the low humming coming from Major Tavon’s quarters. It was slight but unmistakable as the pitch ratcheted up a tone or two, resonating with an extra pinch of mystical intensity.
He looked at Hershaw. ‘Rutters! She’s not yet done!’
As if hearing him, the harbour itself rose up. Swelling first in the middle, a hummock of smooth water bubbling up from below, it grew into a rounded hill, higher than the tallest buildings along the waterfront. Burning ships tumbled off its slopes and were extinguished in the waves. Bits of jetsam and floating debris slipped down its sides and scuttled across the surface. Still the hill grew until it was a tremendous liquid dome, dwarfing the waterfront like an alpine range.
‘Great rutting whores,’ Blackford said, ‘she’s going to destroy the city!’
‘Let’s go,’ Hershaw said, drawing his sword.
‘She’ll kill us both,’ Blackford argued, ‘we can’t-’
‘We have to.’
Trembling, Blackford followed, hoping he would get the chance to run Tavon through, especially if she was distracted, even for an instant, by the stone table. Or by killing Hershaw.
But before they had reached her, she struck, and the blast ripped the door from its leather hinges and sent much of it ripping through Captain Hershaw’s body in jagged splinters. He was dead before he stopped tumbling, somewhere amidships.
‘Blackford!’ Tavon screamed.
He approached warily. His face and arms were bleeding, and he feared he would spend the next aven picking splinters out of his skin, but he was still here, still alive. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said politely.
‘I want you to watch this, Blackford.’ Tavon was elbow-deep in what looked like a waist-high circular pool. Blackford knew better, though. It was the stone table, transformed somehow by magic into a fluid, unending cauldron of energy and power. He watched the colours change, flickering from hue to hue as the major’s wiry arms pulled and pressed spells and charms about inside. There was an animal, something that looked like a tadpole, and then a snake, and a hideous-looking fellow with a grim countenance, if that was possible. There was a creature Blackford guessed was an almor and then a blurry and indistinct image of a man, a South Coaster hiding in a stone temple with a rainbow-coloured serpent coiled at his feet.
‘Why are you doing this?’ he whispered. ‘Please, Major, enough.’
‘Oh, shut up, Blackford, your breath stinks. It’d stop my watch if I hadn’t given it to that Ronan slut.’ The pool changed again; this time, Blackford could see the outline of the Orindale waterfront. The northern and southern wharfs were on either side of the inlet. He saw the Medera and the stone bridge arching above it, connecting everything in the Falkan capital. The bridge looked different, though: cleaner, whiter, as if it had been carved from pristine marble. When the centre of the table rose up in an aquamarine hummock, Blackford understood what he was about to witness.
‘Please, Major,’ he repeated, shaking.
‘Watch this, Captain.’ She released her hold on the hill of magical energy she had called up beneath the waters of Orindale Harbour and, as the tiny hillock of blue careened through the imagined inlet and across the waterfront Blackford could see lining the circular edge of the stone table, he heard the deafening roar of the actual harbour rushing east to swallow the wharf and flood the Medera from Orindale to Wellham Ridge. Inside the spell table, Blackford saw the waters crash over the stone bridge, collapsing it like a bit of folded paper. Without looking towards the city, he knew that the bridge spanning the Medera had fallen as well. There had been hundreds of people on that bridge. They’d be dead now; there was no way they could have survived. Hearing the fading thunder as the great floodtide rolled east into Falkan, Blackford tasted something tangy and metallic in his throat. The dead would number in the thousands.