Read Online Wild Magic by Jude Fisher - Free Book Online

inner harbour. Here, they changed course so that the ship angled to hug the land ever more closely – though as far as Katla could see, the middle way into the docks was wide and clear – so closely that Katla could see the gleam of green weed, swathes of limpets and barnacles, splashes of white guano on the rocks. They rounded a small headland, and suddenly Halbo spread itself before them. The hills rose sharply from the water, so that street after street of little low-built stone houses seemed to have been piled one on top of the other. Candles glowed in windows. Curls of cooking smoke spun up into the night air. In the midst of all this domesticity and order rose the pale walls of Halbo’s fortress, the High Castle, home of the Eyran kings since they first made the mainland their home. Squat and bleak, it was not beautiful, to Katla’s eye at least: but there was no denying that it was imposing. Thick turrets rose at the corners of the building, and the walls were pierced through with eyelets so that archers might lay waste an approaching enemy from the safety of the interior. The battlements were crenellated, and a steep bank rose up to the foot of the castle walls: it looked a difficult stronghold to overcome. Rows of barracks led away from the castle down to the harbour where they met a jumble of wharves and jetties and a harbour full of vessels. On the far western strand a great bonfire had been constructed to light the work of a hundred men, all of whom were stripped to the waist and covered from head to toe in the sheeny red of something that must surely be blood. Before them on the beach lay a huge shape from which protruded great white staves amid dark and glistening slabs of meat. Even from here, the stench was appalling.
    ‘By Sur,’ Katla whispered, ‘they look like the goblins that brought down the Giant Halvi to end the Battle of the Sun.’
    Tam laughed. ‘Haven’t you seen men butcher a whale before, Katla Aransen?’
    ‘A whale? But it’s vast! No whale that I have seen has been a quarter the size of that monster!’
    ‘Ah, the Westman Isles, where even the whales are as minnows! Sur was not smiling on your ancestors when he blew their settlement ship in to Rockfall, my dear.’
    Katla shot him a furious look.
    ‘Towering cliffs, windy uplands and women bred between wildcats and trolls; Rockfall’s speciality. Just the way I like them.’
    Tam Fox grabbed her by the waist and crushed her against his chest. Katla promptly spat in his eye and at the same moment brought her knee up hard into his groin, but the mummers’ chief had been manhandling women all his life and knew himself an expert in such matters. Swivelling his hips, he evaded the main threat and took the wad of saliva on the cheek where it hung for a moment like cuckoo-spit, then bubbled off down his chin. Then he grinned from ear to ear.
    ‘They say that a bit of resistance gets the blood up,’ Tam said cheerfully. ‘But I’d rather you came to me of your own free will.’ When she started to struggle he said, ‘Hear me out!’ and imprisoned her arms in a time-honoured wrestling manoeuvre executed so neatly that Katla could not help but experience a brief moment of admiration. ‘I have a place close to the docks where we can go and get better acquainted,’ he added, nuzzling her neck. Katla’s teeth came close to catching his ear; but the mummer craned his head away with a laugh. ‘It’s not luxurious, but you’ll not notice once we’re started. I’ve been waiting all week for this, little troll. Did you not think I’d see through your disguise in seconds? I could spot you in a crowd of a thousand other women, all naked and with bags over their heads!’
    Katla stopped wriggling and stared at him. ‘You have a most bizarre imagination, Tam Fox,’ was all she could say.
    The mummers’ chief laughed. ‘Aye, it is quite creative. You should make the effort to discover its horizons for yourself . . .’
    ‘Take your