A Sign of Fire

 

Jaya smelled it on the wind long before they sighted land.  It was late afternoon, and the sun was blazing down behind clouds ahead of them.  Tatters of rain drifted above them, and the air was humid and dense.  The Ekwa were taxed to coax any speed at all from the sluggish breeze as it shifted restlessly from quarter to quarter, teasing them with the promise of cooler weather after dark.

At the prow, Jaya kept a watch ahead, looking out for the landfall she had been promised.  They had seen more ships the past few days, first as white specks against the deep blue, and then as shadows over the waters, close enough to see the men as they moved on deck.  It made her uneasy to see so many of the enemy ships, and she realized she was going to a place the giants had made for themselves, and the prospect did not please her.

The waters shallowed, and she saw it turn from deep midnight to a paler shade, and she could make out the flitting shapes of fish as they schooled in the Hunter’s shadow.  Reefs jutted up from the seamounts where the sun shone, and she signaled Bastar so he could steer around them.  Small islands dotted the far horizons, and she smelled green growing things and flowers again; she knew they were close to land.

The sweet smells of the jungle were not what warned her, it was a stink she had never tasted before – the smells of smoke and sweat and human shit all mixed together.  She flinched from smells of rot and strange perfumes, and she squinted to the southwest and saw there the dark blur of an island, and she knew they must be near to their goal.  The island called Rau.  It meant something like “scorched”, and so she did not think to find it an impressive place.

“Land!” she called back to Bastar, pointing the way, and she saw him wave in answer and then she felt the ship turn.  The Ekwa trimmed the sails as they shifted to a more northerly course.  He had told her they would pass the north shore of the island, and there find the harbor where the place called Arwan was to be found.  Rain spat down on the deck, and the winds shifted again, bringing another wash of that reek to her.  She coughed and went back to the afterdeck where the wheel stood, and she looked at Bastar, trying to imagine what kind of village men like this would build.

“I can already smell this place,” she said.  “It smells foul.”

“It does,” he said.  “It’s not a clean place, but what town is?”  He looked at her.  “I can go ashore and ask my questions, but you do not trust me, do you?”

“I will go with you,” she said.  “I do not fear.”

“I did not say you did.”  He smiled at that, and she found it irritating.  “But if you will come ashore with me, you will need to put on some clothes.”

Jaya looked down at herself.  Her skirt was in place, hung from her braided belt.  “Clothes like yours?  I will not.”

He looked at her, then away.  “As you like, but if you come ashore as uncovered as that, there will be trouble.”  He made a gesture at her breasts.  “Among my people, women do not go around naked like that.  They will think you are there for something else.”  He smiled again.  “You are welcome to try and cut your way through them all, but if you want answers to your questions, we will have to be more careful.”  He nodded forward.  “I know there are clothes in the trunks below.  Some of the things the boy wears will fit you, small as you are.”  He spun the wheel, the wind shifting again.  Your decision, lady.”

“You call me chieftain,” she said.

“You are of a line of kings,” he said.  “Shouldn’t you be called a princess?”

“Test me,” she said.  “You may find out.”

o0o

The smell of burning came stronger as they rounded the northern point, and Jaya stood on the deck feeling strange and awkward.  She was dressed as one of them, and it made her feel constrained, cut off from the wind and the breath of the sea.  The pants were coarse and ill-fitting, held up by a rope belt and a sash she hung her sword from.  The shirt was worse, as it was made of some rough, pale fabric that flapped about her like a sail.  She had never worn anything on her feet before, but Bastar had insisted she would want to wear these tight, awkward boots.  She did not want to wear them.

She bound her braided hair back under a red cloth and climbed up to the prow to watch as they came round the headland and in sight of Arwan.  Across from the island stood another one, towering up in a menacing cone, and Jaya knew the tell-tale shape of a volcano.  A trail of black smoke and ash drifted from the summit, turning the clouds to fire as the sun touched them.

Arwan was built on a natural harbor, ringed in by green hills.  There were a half-dozen ships in sight and more already at anchor.  She saw stone ruins built of monolithic stone dug into the hillsides, and around and among them wooden structures that looked like barnacles clinging to rocks on the shore.  A smear of smoke lay over all of it, and the smell was more immediate.  As Bastar steered them in she saw a stone fortress on the promontory above the harbor, and a flag hung there all of black with a skull painted upon it, teeth bared as it fluttered in the evening wind.

As they came in close, she saw the docks thick with people, ships loading and unloading with nets and great wooden spars that lifted them.  She saw lights begin to appear as the darkness came in, and she heard shouts and screams, singing in strange languages and sailors chanting as they worked.  It was like nothing she had ever encountered, and it was both fascinating and hideous.

The anchors dropped and the sails came in, and Jaya turned and walked back to the afterdeck, twisting her feet in the uncomfortable boots.  She already hated this place, and she liked it less when she saw Bastar smiling.  It made her want to take his head.  She knew once they were on land he would be able to escape her, and she did not know if he would try.  She could not read his intentions, his expressions and words.  His alien ways made him an enigma.

He held out one of the fire weapons to her.  “Here, it is ready.  Remember what I showed you.  Pull this back, and then pull this and it will fire.  The range is short – do not shoot at anything you could not hit with a rock thrown from your hand.”  He slipped the steel hook on the side into her sash, and she adjusted it, not liking the weight.

He looked her up and down and nodded.  “This will not be easy.  There is no law in Arwan, so you must protect yourself with fire and steel.  There is no one to call on.  Men here think little of your kind, or of women.  They will think you a slave – or ready to be made one.  Stay close to me and I will speak for you.  I will find the news you seek.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, sure there was treachery somewhere behind that easy manner.  No man would so easily remain her prisoner.  He would turn on her, and she swore she would not lower her guard.  She turned to Dhatun.  “If we do not come back by morning, come and seek me.  And if you must come, come with fire.”

Dhatun looked at Bastar with distaste, but he gave a sign of promise.  “I will do as you say.”  He looked at the town close to hand and sneered.  “It would give me pleasure to wipe this place away.  I will seek only for a sign.”

Jaya looked at the mountain almost vanished in the dusk.  In the deepening shadow she could see the glow of the earth’s blood at the summit, see the trail of red where it flowed down the slopes.  “If it comes, you shall have it.  That I know.  There will be a sign of fire.”

o0o

When she stepped off the longboat she entered another world, and she felt as though what she had known was torn away and something foul layered over it.  The wooden houses built in among the ancient ruins were rambling and poorly-made, and the pathways between them were covered with stones so they hurt to walk on.  There were so many people all crowded together that she could not walk without being jostled and bumped, and she went with her hand on her sword, ready to kill.

She heard languages like gibberish, and here and there snatches of a tongue she knew.  When she looked in among the towering giants she saw people like herself – small and dark and black-eyed – but they moved furtive through the crowds like vermin, without weapons or pride.  She saw some of them led in ranks with their ankles chained together so they clamored when they took a step.  The look on their faces was hollow and broken, and she knew they were slaves.

The stone paths were covered in slops and excrement, dry grasses scattered here and there to try and cover it up.  In some places streams of foul water flowed across the path, and in those places wood was laid down to walk on.  She understood why Bastar had insisted she wear the boots, for she would not have wished to put her bare feet in this mess.  Dogs and cats slunk through the crowds, and rats darted in the shadows.  The place smelled so heavily of human and animal filth it almost choked her.

Many of the places along the waterfront were alight from within, and even had oil lamps burning beside their doors.  She heard voices raised in song and the strains of music, and she smelled the tang of fermented fruit on the air, and then she knew what kinds of places these were.  They passed a place where she saw women of her race arrayed in windows, showing themselves to passerby, and they looked empty and despairing.  It came to her to look for some of the missing girls in such a place, but she almost did not want to.

Bastar led her up a slope, weaving in among shadows, and a strong hand grasped her arm.  Suddenly a man was there, hairy-faced and stinking, breathing drink-stained breath in her face as he groped at her.  She didn’t hesitate, slammed the heel of her hand into his nose so his head snapped back and blood spurted from the crushed bone.  He staggered and she drew her sword and hacked off his arm above the elbow.

He reeled away, screaming and gagging, and she stood for a trembling moment waiting for the rest of them to fall on her.  She gripped her sword and stared around her, but no one paid the dying man any attention, and he quickly sank down and lay against a wall, bleeding a great black pool as he sighed and shivered.

Jaya shook his hand from her arm and kicked it away.  She saw Bastar looking at her, and he nodded as if approving of her.  She looked away and spat on the filthy ground, then she wiped her blade on the hateful pants and sheathed it.  She left the body behind and followed Bastar up the hill.  She was alone in a sea of giants, and her only companion was as trustworthy as a sand-stinger.  The shadows grew deeper, and the night wind smelled of burning.

o0o

They came to another road, also covered in stones and filth, and he led her to a place that looked as if it had been made by hacked-up pieces of giant ships.  They came to the door where light spilled out and she shied away from the smells of bodies and ferment that washed over her.  She touched the wall and found it was stone, the signs etched on it familiar to her.  Looking, she saw many more sections of wall and obelisks that the giants had used that were clearly made by her own people.  The place called Arwan was a growth festering on the bones of her race.

Inside, it was thick with giants, all of them elbowing and shoving each other, speaking their harsh, barking languages and laughing the way they had – like monkeys, showing all their teeth and heek-heek-heeking so that they looked and sounded like animals.  The smell of them was close in here, and she tried not to breathe it.  The floor was wood covered with sawdust and stained by spilled drink and spilled blood.  She could smell both plainly.

Bastar shouted to some of them in greeting and Jaya firmed her grip on her sword.  She pictured the enslaved girls and swore she would never let that happen to her.  She would spill a river of blood before she fell, and he last stroke would be for herself.

She followed her guide to a back corner of the room and there she found an array of giants who looked fiercer and viler than the others.  They had scars on their faces, and more than one of them had a patch in place of an eye.  The one who held court at the center had a great burn that snaked across his face and where his eye should have been was a glinting jewel thrust into the socket.  He wore a crimson coat and had a beard so long she didn’t believe it was real, and so black it was almost blue.  His remaining eye was black as a stone and it gleamed when he looked at them, and at her.

He spoke to Bastar, who answered in the same tongue, and Jaya snarled and yanked his hair.  “You will speak so I can understand you, or you will not speak again.”

The other men seemed amused by her, and some of them laughed.  Bastar gave her a glance she could not read, and then he turned back to the big man and spoke in her language.  “As I said, Logor, I am looking for Lozonarre.  When did he last make port?”

The man Logor stroked his beard and looked her over.  He said something else in his own tongue, and some of the other men laughed.  Jaya bristled, feeling anger clenched between her back teeth.  Bastar swallowed and licked his teeth, then turned back to her.  “He asks why he should tell us.”

Jaya heard a tapping sound and looked to her right, saw a man there at the end of the table eyeing her.  He had gold teeth and a cloth tied around his head.  He had a dozen gold rings on his fingers and he held a wide-bladed knife.  She watched as he deftly wound it between his fingers, twirling it so the blade flashed, and every so often he would tap the pommel on the hard wood of the tabletop.  He saw her looking and kissed the air.

She drew her sword so quick it hissed and she chopped down, severing the hand just above his tattooed wrist.  Her blade bit into the wood and the man stared for a moment as blood sprayed out, then he jerked his arm back and clutched at the stump and he screamed.

Other men jumped to their feet, shouting and drawing steel.  Jaya watched the wounded man fall to the floor, wailing and bleeding.  Two men grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him away, and she shrugged and wrenched her sword from the table.  She looked at the men who faced her with swords, baring their teeth and yelling, and then she heard a slow, deliberate laughter.

She turned and saw the black-bearded Logor still seated, as easy as though he were at a feast.  He smiled and clapped slowly, slapping his hands together again and again.  She sighted down her blade at him, blood dripping from it.  “Tell me where Lozonarre can be found,” she said.  “Tell me or I will kill until the floor runs with blood, and I will burn away this filthy place until nothing is left.”

The smile faded from his face, and his eye gleamed hard as iron, even as the other gleamed red.  “I do not take threats from naji whores,” he said.  He gestured after the maimed man.  “I don’t like him, so you can go.  But keep your mouth shut, or put it to work.”  He grabbed his crotch and made a clicking sound with his cheek.  She could hardly bear to hear the way he spoke her tongue, the way he shamed it with every sound.

Bastar put his hand on her arm.  “Come, we should go.  There are others I can ask.”

Jaya looked at the smirking, black-bearded giant, glanced at Bastar, and then she shrugged him off.  “I want him to answer.”  She turned away so they would not see as she reached up and pulled back the lever on the fire weapon in her sash.  Then she drew it out as she turned back and pointed it at the jewel-eyed brigand.  There was a moment when his single eye widened in surprise, and then she pulled the trigger.

The lever snapped and there were sparks and a puff of smoke, and then the thing leaped in her hand like a fish and blew out a great cloud of black smoke and blazing embers.  The sound of it was huge in the closeness of the room, and Jaya flinched as a great bloody hole erupted from Logor’s belly, as though he had burst open from within.

Men all around her surged to their feet and she saw the flash of steel again.  Logor bellowed and clutched at his torn gut, and Bastar howled as though he had been stabbed.  Jaya flipped the fire weapon and caught it by the iron barrel, feeling the hot metal against her palm, and then the giants rushed her.  So close and so many, they tangled against one another and we more a hindrance to each other than a help.  Knives and curved sabers came for her, and she screamed a battle cry and met them.

Her sword cut and cut again, faster than they seemed able to counter.  She cut wrists and hands, ducked down and cut knees so the men went down, screaming.  The fire weapon was heavy and made a good bludgeon, useful for knocking aside their long knives so she could cut the cords of their arms and leave them helpless.  A man was on her, trying to force her back by his sheer mass, and she twisted away and chopped through his ankle.  He fell and she hacked off his head from the back, felt the blade bite the dirty floor.

Someone had knocked over a lamp, and the top of a table was burning sullenly, filling the air with blackened smoke.  Jaya slipped between the giants and struck left and right like an angry serpent.  Her sword was dripping and her arm was red to the shoulder.  There was blood on her face and in her mouth, and she tasted it.  The floor was slick, and the boots made it hard to keep her footing.

A curved sword slashed for her neck and she evaded it but lost her balance and slipped on the bloody floor, went on her back as the man came in and tried to bring his blade down from above.  She lashed out with her foot and his knee crumpled.  He fell on her and she met the edge of his sword on the makeshift club in her left hand and then braced her sword’s pommel against the floor as he fell on it and his own weight rammed it through him.

She kicked him off and wrenched her blade free, and then Logor was on her like an ape, trying to crush her down, red hands reaching for her throat.  She dropped the fire weapon and hit him across the nose with her elbow, bringing blood and a scream.  His hand clawed at her face and she ripped the edge of her sword along the inside of his wrist, cutting the tendons and leaving his hand slack and powerless.

He screamed and she used his distraction to shove him over onto his back.  Blood streamed from his split nose and he spat it out in a stream.  She put her knee in his gut wound and he howled, gagging when she put her hand in his beard and pulled to silence him.

A space cleared around them, and she looked up and saw some of the giants looking at her, weapons ready, but they held back.  Six or seven men lay wounded or dead on the boards, blood painting the wood and pouring out into black pools.  Smoke was filling the air and the other giants were scattering.  Bastar stood to her right, a fire weapon in one hand and a red sword in the other.  He was breathing hard, and when he looked at her she could not tell if he was angry or frightened.

“Now you answer me,” Jaya hissed, leaning down and digging her knee into Logor’s wound.  “Lozonarre.  Where have you seen him?”

“He sailed off the edge of the world!  Go and look for him!”  His accent was hideous, even worse now with blood running down his throat.  She saw men gathering around, and she knew she did not have long.

She pressed her blade against his throat up under his beard, and she dug her thumb against his single eye.  “You answer me or I will tear your eye out and leave you in darkness.  I will eat it so all your ghost can ever see will be my teeth!”  She gouged at it and he twisted, trying to get away from her, but she rammed her knee in and he choked on his words.

“North!  He went north!  He said there was a ship beached in the shallows beside the mountain, and he was going to plunder it before the fires took it!”  He clenched bloody teeth.  “Go and find him if you dare!  He’ll wear your skin for a cape and burn your innards with hot iron to hear you scream.  Go and find him, if you ever leave this place!”

Jaya glanced and saw more men gathering in a ring of steel around her, and she knew she had no more time.  She dragged the blade across Logor’s neck and blood sprayed out from beneath his heavy beard.  She pushed down as he gagged out his life and the blade chopped through the spine.  She took his thick hair and ripped his head free, stood with it hanging from her fist, pouring blood over the front of his red coat.

She looked at the ring of enemies closing in, steel gleaming through the smoke, and Bastar was there, back against her beck.  “I won’t say that was not a fine thing to see, but now we’re going to die sure enough.”

Jaya threw the head at the encroaching foes.  “Take that head back with you to your mothers!” she spat, not knowing if they understood.  “Tell the tale that you live because I spared you!  May all the gods call down curses on your race!  And may you all drown in a sea of fire!”

There was a low rumble, and then an onrushing sound as though something huge was coming upon them.  The lamps flickered, and the beams of the roof shivered in their sockets, and then something roared like thunder and struck through the room like a wave.  It knocked men off their feet and splintered the walls, ripped away the roof overhead.

The force of it drove Jaya to her knees, and when she opened her eyes she looked up at a night that had turned to red and trails of smoke were falling through the sky, glowing like the eyes of doom.  From across the waters the mountain roared again, and she saw a tower of smoke rising from it like a storm, violet lightning coursing down and illuminating the sea, arcing up to the sky and cracking beneath the stars.

Bastar caught her arm and pulled her up.  “You are mad, princess, but I think I like you.”

She shook him off.  “Do not touch me unless I command it,” she said.  The earth shook beneath them, and they both staggered.

“I don’t know how you did it, but we should take the moment,” Bastar said.  “Let us go.  Go now.”

Jaya looked at the headless corpse of Logor at her feet.  “Yes,” she said.  “I am done with this place.”  She spat on the smoldering floor and followed Bastar through the smoke, trusting he knew where to go.

o0o

The entire town was in chaos, people running and screaming through the heavy smoke and drifting ash.  Jaya pulled the cloth tied around her hair down to cover her face and waded through after Bastar, glad of hos tall he was even amongst the giants, for she could tell him apart from them even in the near-darkness.  There were fires everywhere as flaming stones fell from the sky and lit the dried timbers, and the burning gave the only light there was.

Jaya had to cut her way through, slashing at anyone who got in her way even for a moment.  The giants seemed mad, running and calling out in their ugly words, some of them already burned beyond surviving, the skin of their faces or arms sloughing away as they staggered blind through the darkness.

They came to the place where the girls were enslaved, and Jaya saw the building was burning, a tower of fire rising up and up.  A hard-faced woman had a dozen girls out in the street, and she struck them with a leather strap when they cried out in fear or tried to run.  She shouted at them in words Jaya could not understand, striking at their naked skin until she drew blood.

Jaya did not hesitate.  She caught the strap as it swung back, and she chopped off the arm that wielded it.  The woman staggered aside, feeling for her missing arm, and her ugly face contorted and she howled when she found nothing but a gushing stump.  Sick of the sound, Jaya slashed her throat and kicked her into the gutter to bleed away.

The girls stared at her, and several of them ran away into the night before she could speak.  “Stay and be slaves,” she said.  “Follow me and you will be free.  Come!”

She did not wait to see if any of them followed, there was not time.  Fire was falling from the sky, and the shaking of the earth made it hard to stand.  She ran after Bastar, following him down to the waterfront.  She heard explosions and the boom of the fire weapons on the ships.

Some men were trying to steal their longboat, and she and Bastar fell on them by surprise and cut them to pieces, threw their bodies into the water.  Ash was covering the surface, making a thick, roiling skin on top, and Jaya knew if they stayed and breathed the ash much longer it would kill them.  The mountain could blast forth an ash cloud so hot it would boil them alive where they stood.

She climbed into the boat and four of the slave girls squeezed in with them.  Bastar shook his hea dbut didn’t speak.  He only seized the oars and bent to them, pulling away into the flaming dark, light from the fires reflecting on the dirty water, red lightning illuminating the sky above as though giants walked the night.

o0o

The Hunter passed out of the ash cloud just as morning broke over the sea.  Jaya leaned on the rail and looked back toward the island, seeing the town of Arwan only as a glowing spot in the cloud where fires still burned.  On the water she saw the remnants of the black flag, tattered and scorched.  Ash dusted the deck and the spars of the ship.

Dhatun came and bowed to her.  “Did you find what you wished?”

She nodded.  “I gained information, we will find if it was truth.  The man who spoke it does not live to answer for a lie.”  She looked at the mountain, smoke still pouring up from the peak.  A trail of red fire ran down the side to the sea, and steam boiled up there in a cloud that hid the rocky shore.  She pointed.  “We go that way, around the far side of the mountain.  The man I seek may yet be there, if the fire god has not already slain him.”  She chewed her tongue at the thought.  The gods would not be so capricious.

“What of the women?” he said, gesturing to the four girls who sat huddled together on the deck, staring around them, trying to wipe away the ashes.

“They were slaves,” Jaya said.  “Now they are not.”

“They will be weak,” he said.  “Better to leave them behind.”

“We will teach them to be stronger,” she said.  “That is my command.”  The air stirred, and she tasted the welcome hint of rain on the burned wind.  “Do you doubt me?”

“I do not,” he said, touching his brow with respect.  “A sign of fire indeed.”  He turned away, and Jaya looked to the north as the sails began to catch the wind.  They followed the path across the sea, and lightning was a blaze to show the way.