Hannan Mosag’s voice seemed to issue from directly beside Trull. He started, then reached down, along with everyone else, for a paddle. Rose to plant his hip against the gunnel, then chopped down into the water.
The longboat surged forward.
In moments they were holding blades firm in the water, halting their craft alongside the hull of one of the ships.
Shadow wraiths swarmed up its red-stained side.
And Trull saw that the waterline on the hull had changed. Its hold was, he realized, now empty.
‘Fear,’ he hissed. ‘What is going on? What has happened?’
His brother turned, and Trull was shocked by Fear’s pallid visage. ‘It is not for us, Trull,’ he said, then swung round once more.
It is not for us. What does he mean by that? What isn’t?
Dead sharks rolled in the waves around them. Their carcasses were split open, as if they had exploded from within. The water was streaked with viscid froth.
‘We return now,’ Hannan Mosag said. ‘Man the sails, my warriors. We have witnessed. Now we must leave.’
Witnessed – in the name of Father Shadow, what?
Aboard the Letherii ships, canvas snapped and billowed.
The wraiths will deliver them. By the Dusk, this is no simple show of power. This – this is a challenge . A challenge, of such profound arrogance that it far surpassed that of these Letherii hunters and their foolish, suicidal harvest of the tusked seals. At that realization, a new thought came to Trull as he watched other warriors tending to the sails. Who among the Letherii would knowingly send the crews of nineteen ships to their deaths? And why would those crews even agree to it?
It was said gold was all that mattered to the Letherii. But who, in their right mind, would seek wealth when it meant certain death? They had to have known there would be no escape. Then again, what if I had not stumbled upon them? What if I had not chosen the Calach strand to look for jade? But no, now he was the one being arrogant. If not Trull, then another. The crime would never have gone unnoticed. The crime was never intended to go unnoticed.
He shared the confusion of his fellow warriors. Something was awry here. With both the Letherii and with… us. With Hannan Mosag. Our Warlock King.
Our shadows are dancing. Letherii and Edur, dancing out a ritual – but these are not steps I can recognize. Father Shadow forgive me, I am frightened.
Nineteen ships of death sailed south, while four K’orthan raiders cut eastward. Four hundred Edur warriors, once more riding a hard silence.
It fell to the slaves to attend to the preparations. The Beneda corpse was laid out on a bed of sand on the floor of a large stone outbuilding adjoining the citadel, and left to drain.
The eye sockets, ears, nostrils and gaping mouth were all cleaned and evened out with soft wax. Chewed holes in its flesh were packed with a mixture of clay and oil.
With six Edur widows overseeing, a huge iron tray was set atop a trench filled with coals that had been prepared alongside the corpse. Copper coins rested on the tray, snapping and popping as the droplets of condensation on them sizzled and hissed then vanished.
Udinaas crouched beside the trench, staying far enough back to ensure that his sweat did not drip onto the coins – a blasphemy that meant instant death for the careless slave – and watched the coins, seeing them darken, becoming smoky black. Then, as the first glowing spot emerged in each coin’s centre, he used pincers to pluck it from the tray and set it down on one of a row of fired-clay plates – one plate for each widow.
The widow, kneeling before the plate, employed a finer set of pincers to pick up the coin. And then pivoted to lean over the corpse.
First placement was the left eye socket. A crackling hiss, worms of smoke rising upward as the woman pressed down with the pincers, keeping the coin firmly in place, until it melded with the flesh and would thereafter resist being dislodged. Right eye socket followed. Nose, then forehead and cheeks, every coin touching its neighbours.
When the body’s front and sides, including all the limbs, were done, melted wax was poured over the coin-sheathed corpse. And, when that had cooled, it was then turned over. More coins, until the entire body was covered, excepting the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. Another layer of melted wax followed.
The task of sheathing consumed most of the day, and it was near dusk when Udinaas finally stumbled from the outbuilding and stood, head bowed, while the cool air plucked at the sweat on his skin. He spat in an effort to get the foul stench out of his mouth. Burnt, rotting flesh in the building’s turgid, oven-hot confines. The reek of scorched hair. No amount of scented oil and skin-combing could defeat what had seeped into his pores. It would be days before Udinaas had rid himself of that cloying, dreadful taste.