The Caldera Read online

  But Ulf held up his hands in a gesture of refusal. “I never said I could,” he pointed out. “You were the one who said it looked easy.”

  “Well, it does . . . when he does it,” Wulf retorted, indicating Jesper with his thumb, and still holding the padlock with the two picks inserted into its innards.

  Jesper gave a short laugh. “I have had a bit of practice,” he said.

  Wulf handed him the lock and the tools and spread his hands in a defeated gesture. “Just what are you doing with all that jiggling and joggling?”

  Jesper shook his head gravely. “Jiggling, maybe. But never joggling. Joggling has connotations of violence to it and you need to be gentle when you’re persuading a lock to open.”

  “You have to jiggle gently,” Ulf said in a pontifical tone, and Wulf glared at him while Jesper responded with a smile.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Here, take a look.”

  While he had been talking, he had taken a small screwdriver from his tool wallet. There were four screws holding the side plate of the lock in place. He undid them and removed the plate, exposing the inner workings of the lock. The twins leaned forward eagerly to see, Wulf angrily pushing his brother’s head aside when he blocked his vision.

  “See?” said Jesper. “The tongue of the lock is held closed by these three small tumblers. When you turn the pick slightly—about one-eighth of a turn—you align them with three sockets. You turned it too far,” he told Wulf, looking up for a few seconds.

  Wulf, for once, didn’t argue when he was told he had done something wrong. He nodded, intent on Jesper’s demonstration.

  “Now,” Jesper continued, “once those little tumblers are aligned with the sockets, you slide the curved tool in . . .” He proceeded to do so.

  “Gently,” Ulf said in a lofty tone.

  “Shut up,” Wulf told him, eyes locked on what Jesper was doing.

  “You use the curved section to feel for each of the tumblers in turn . . .”

  He did so, gently moving the curved surface of the pick over the metal tumbler. As it came into position, there was a faint click and the tumbler slid home into its recess.

  “Then the second . . . ,” he said. Another click.

  “Then the third.” A final click and the lock sprang open. Both twins nodded. He removed the picks, closed the lock once more and handed lock and picks to Ulf.

  “Try it,” he said.

  Ulf took the lock and laid it in his lap, then he inserted the pick with the flattened end and began to twist.

  “Not too far,” Jesper warned him. “Now the curved pick.”

  With the tumblers and recesses aligned, Ulf slid the second pick into the lock and let it ride gently onto the first tumbler. He moved it slightly and the tumbler clicked into its recess. Repeating the action twice more, he had the lock open after twenty seconds of intense concentration.

  “I did it!” he said triumphantly.

  Wulf scowled. “I don’t know why you bother with it,” he said. “Why not just take the side plate off and open it that way?”

  Jesper regarded him tolerantly. “This is a demonstration lock I keep for practice,” he said. “Locks usually have the side plate riveted or welded in place. Not screwed.”

  “Oh,” said Wulf, chastened.

  Ulf, feeling a little superior about the fact that he had gotten the lock open in such a relatively short time, handed it to his brother. “Try it now,” he said. He was unable to resist adding: “Jiggle it gently.”

  Wulf took the lock and the picks and began to work on it as he had seen Ulf do. But he was angry and that made his movements clumsy. He jiggled wildly for some time with no result.

  “Take it easy,” Jesper said eventually.

  Wulf took a deep breath and slowed down. Within a few seconds, he had sprung the first tumbler. The other two followed in quick succession.

  “Got it!” he said triumphantly.

  “Took your time, didn’t you?” his brother said.

  Wulf scowled. There was no reply possible. It was obvious that he had taken far longer than his brother. Instead, he removed the picks, closed the lock and repeated his actions. This time, it took him less than thirty seconds to open the lock.

  “That’s pretty good,” Jesper told him. But Ulf had already snatched the lock back and opened it even more quickly.

  “D’you think this is such a good idea, Jes?” Hal asked. Fascinated by what was going on, he had left the tiller in Stig’s hands and walked for’ard to watch.

  Jesper looked up, a question on his face. “How’s that, Hal?”

  “You’re teaching these two irresponsible idiots how to open locks when they don’t have a key. Is that such a great idea?”

  Jesper considered the question. “You may be right,” he said. He took the lock back from Ulf and quickly reattached the side plate. “That might make things a little tougher,” he said, and for the next half hour, the twins struggled to repeat their achievement. But they found it considerably harder when they couldn’t see the workings of the lock. Ulf managed to open it once, with great difficulty. Wulf was still trying when Hal resumed the tiller and called them back to duty.

  “Bend in the river!” he called. “We’ll go about!”

  Wulf placed the padlock and picks down in a safe spot and moved to the halyards, ready to come about on Hal’s command. As one sail came down and the other soared up the mast to replace it, Hal muttered an aside to Stig, standing close by the steering platform.

  “That’s the first time I’ve seen one of them do something better than the other,” he said.

  Stig nodded. “Maybe they should have made lockpicking the tiebreaker in their Maktig contest,” he said.

  His friend grinned in agreement.

  Heron settled on course for the next leg of the river—a stretch of wide water several kilometers long. The twins went back to their lockpicking exercise. There was a cry of triumph from Wulf as he finally managed to unlock the padlock, working blind. Instantly, Ulf snatched lock and picks back from him and went to work himself. Edvin, watching them critically, made his way aft. He shared Hal’s reservations about having the twins learn how to open locked doors.

  “Are you planning on putting in at Amalon?” Edvin asked. Amalon was the next large town along the river, where trading convoys assembled for the run down to Drogha or the Constant Sea, past the notorious pirate haven of Raguza.

  “I thought I would,” Hal replied. “I’d like to have a word with Mannoc and check conditions on the lower part of the river.” Mannoc was the skipper of a fighting ship. He organized armed escorts for the convoys, and the Herons had worked with him on several occasions.

  “Do you need more supplies?” Hal added.

  Edvin shrugged. “I could manage without them, but I always like to restock when we have a chance. Particularly coffee. We’re always running low on that.”

  “That settles it,” Hal told him. “We’ll definitely put in.”

  From amidships, they heard another triumphant cry from Ulf as he sprung the lock.

  “Perhaps we could drop those two off,” Edvin said sourly.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Hal replied. “At least they’re too busy to bicker.”

  And as he said it, a spirited argument broke out between the two sail handlers, as Ulf declared his superiority over his brother once more.

  “Spoke too soon,” Hal said morosely.

  chapterfifteen

  The harbor at Amalon was a mass of ships. The constantly moving forest of masts and rigging made it difficult to single out any one ship, and as Heron was escorted to a berth by a harried guard boat, Hal looked in vain for a sight of Seahawk, Mannoc’s slender warship. Amalon was a large, busy river port, and he knew this was where Mannoc usually assembled his convoys for the trip downriver to Drogha.

  As they
finally made Heron secure at a berth between two traders, he hailed the guard boat’s helmsman.

  “Mannoc and Seahawk!” he called. “Are they in port?”

  The helmsman paused, his face twisted in thought. “He’s still here. He’s taking a convoy downriver later this week. Seahawk is moored on the far side of the harbor.” He waved a hand vaguely in the general direction. Then he gave an order to his oarsmen, and the boat pulled quickly away. There were more ships coming into the harbor, and secure berths had to be found for all of them.

  “We’ll catch up with him tomorrow,” Hal said to Thorn. “I’d like to get a briefing on the situation farther down river, toward Raguza. Mannoc’s always up-to-date on what the river pirates are up to.”

  The old sea wolf nodded. “Always a good idea to know what you’re sailing into.”

  Hal glanced around and saw the ship was moored properly, fenders were over the side to protect the hull and the oars and sails stowed. “We’ll go ashore,” he said. He grinned at Edvin. “No reflection on your cooking, but I fancy a meal in a nice inn for a change—where the table stays still.”

  Edvin smiled in return. “I agree,” he said. “Besides, food always tastes better when someone else cooks it for you.”

  “Whose turn is it to stand harbor watch?” Hal asked.

  Ingvar held up a massive hand. “That’d be me,” he said. “I’m happy to stay. And Kloof can keep me company.”

  “I’ll stay too,” Lydia said.

  Ingvar smiled widely. He and Lydia were close friends and he enjoyed her company. For her part, she tended to be uneasy in crowded, noisy places like inns and taverns. She had spent a good deal of her early life stalking and hunting in the silence of the forests of her homeland.

  Lydia indicated a food stall at the end of the jetty. “We can get a meal from there,” she said.

  Ingvar nodded. The stall was selling grilled meat on skewers, cooked over a charcoal fire. Even at a distance, the aroma was enough to set his stomach rumbling.

  “Good idea. I could manage two or three of those kebabs,” he said. Then he thought about it and added, “Or four or five, come to think of it.”

  As the sun sank below the western horizon, outlining the buildings of the town, the rest of the crew prepared to go ashore.

  “Stick together,” Hal cautioned them. Amalon wasn’t a particularly lawless town, but a harbor front was a harbor front and they had no time to go chasing after any crew members who might get into trouble. They trooped down the jetty, with Hal, Stig and Thorn in the lead and the others following, talking animatedly. The chance to get ashore and have a good meal had put everyone in good spirits. Everyone except Olaf. He walked alone, a few meters behind the leading group and in front of the rest of the crew.

  In spite of their earlier disagreement, Stig felt a surge of sympathy for Olaf, sensing the loneliness his father must be feeling. He nudged Hal with his elbow and jerked his head toward the lone figure. Hal turned and looked, frowned slightly, then stopped.

  “Come and join us,” he said. He really had no wish to make Olaf feel unwelcome. In fact, the sooner they established good relations between him and the rest of the crew, the better it would be. They were probably going to be facing some hard fighting in the near future and they would have to rely upon one another. Excluding him from the group didn’t make sense. He was a skilled warrior—Thorn had told him that much—and he’d be a valuable ally in a fight.

  But not if Olaf felt no loyalty or connection to the group as a whole.

  Olaf smiled, nodded to his son and increased his pace to make up the gap between him and the three companions. He settled between them.

  “So,” Thorn said, clapping his left hand on Olaf’s shoulder as the other man came level. “Tell us about the Emperor’s palace at Byzantos. Pretty fancy, is it?”

  “It’s more a fortress than a palace,” Olaf replied. “The whole thing is surrounded by massive stone walls—four meters thick at the base and two at the top. They run round three sides of the city, with the fourth side protected by the sea. There are towers and redoubts every forty meters, each one capable of covering its two neighbors with arrows and other missiles.”

  “How high are the walls?” Hal asked. He was always interested in tactical matters.

  “Five meters at most points. Sometimes they drop down to four. But the Empress,” he said, correcting Thorn’s reference to the Emperor’s palace, “maintains a large garrison and they can man the walls along their entire length.”

  “Sounds like a hard nut to crack,” Thorn observed.

  Olaf nodded. “Hasn’t been done in over a hundred years,” he said. “That’s why the corsairs waited until Constantus was outside the fortress before they snatched him.”

  “What about the Empress’s living quarters?” Hal asked. “I assume they’re not as stark as a fortress?”

  “No. She has a central building, with a huge meeting hall and suites of rooms. There’s a central tower as well—eight stories of it—which provides an outlook over the entire fortress complex. And the fittings and furnishing are as lavish as anything you’ll find anywhere. Beautiful wall hangings, satin and silk drapes and soft carpets. The servants are specially trained and the kitchen staff are all experts. All in all, it’s a wonderful place to live.” There was a note of sadness in his voice.

  “Except for the Empress,” Stig said.

  His father nodded glumly. “Except for the Empress. She’s prone to terrible fits of anger when things don’t go her way. She’s a hard woman to please and she’ll punish a clumsy servant at the drop of a hat. Or the drop of a plate,” he added, with a small smile.

  “I thought this boy, Constantus, was the Emperor,” Hal said. “Isn’t she the Regent in his place?”

  Olaf pursed his lips. “Technically, yes. But she chooses to call herself Empress. Nobody uses the term Regent in front of her.”

  “What would happen if they did?” Stig asked.

  His father frowned. “I’m not sure. She’s a very unpredictable woman and you don’t want to get on the wrong side of her. Life in the palace can be pretty tense. You’re always on tenterhooks waiting for her next outburst—and hoping it won’t concern you.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Hal commented.

  Olaf shrugged. “There are compensations. The pay is good—very good, in fact—and living conditions in the palace are quite luxurious. We enjoy the best of food and wine and ale. The rooms are beautifully appointed and far more comfortable than the normal soldier’s accommodation. It’s a big step up from Ragnak’s smoky old timber lodge in Hallasholm.”

  “It’s Erak’s now,” Thorn told him. “He replaced Ragnak as Oberjarl after the Temujai invasion.”

  Olaf nodded. “Of course. I’d forgotten that.”

  “Here we are,” Hal said, indicating a sign hanging above one of the buildings lining the wide main street. It depicted a side of beef being carved with a seaman’s cutlass, the slices appearing to fall off the bottom of the sign. Below the illustrative sign was a nameplate—THE CUT OF BEEF.

  They pushed open the doors and went inside. It was a big room, but it was crowded with customers and their noise. Hal looked around for an empty table and his face fell. He’d been looking forward to this meal, and now it appeared the inn was full.

  He needn’t have worried. The proprietor was a former trading captain whose ship had been saved from pirates by the Heron on a journey downriver. He saw the group standing uncertainly just inside the door and bellowed a greeting. He shoved his way through the crowded tables to embrace Hal and Thorn.

  “Welcome, friends! Welcome! You’re always welcome in Piko’s Cut of Beef!” he roared.

  Hal indicated the crowded tables around them. “You don’t seem to have room for us.”

  Piko threw his arms wide. “I’ll make room!” he declared. He looked around, saw a
table where the occupants had finished eating and advanced on them. “You lot! Clear the table! I have honored guests who need to sit here.”

  “But we were here first!” the leader of the other group protested. He looked angry at the thought that he was being ordered to move.

  Piko hesitated. He wanted to make room for Hal and his crew, but these men were regular customers and good spenders. He didn’t want to offend them too much. Finally, he hit upon a solution.

  “It’s a fine night,” he said. “I’ll put a table outside for you. And there’ll be a free cask of my best ale on it.”

  That swung the deal. The group evacuated the table swiftly, and two of Piko’s servers carried a spare table from the back room through the restaurant and set it outside the door, close up against the wall of the inn, much to the interest of curious passersby. A third servant followed with a cask of ale and a string of tankards, the sight of which evoked a loud cheer from the mollified patrons.

  “If you’re giving away ale, they can have our table!” cried a member of another group, and there was a general roar of laughter.

  Pleased that he had saved the situation, Piko beamed at his new customers. “You’ll be having beef, of course?”

  “Of course!” they all chorused in reply, and more laughter followed. Within a few minutes, a smoking joint of beef was carried to the table on a wooden platter, and the proprietor began to swiftly carve slices from it. The crew helped themselves, then dished up the fragrant vegetables that followed—potatoes and sweet potatoes, baked onions, green beans cooked with small chunks of bacon, and crusty fresh loaves of warm bread.

  Silence fell, broken only by the sounds of dedicated munching and the occasional sigh of pleasure as the hungry crew demolished the meal. When he was done, Thorn pushed back his chair and emitted a thunderous belch.

  “Better not do that at the Empress’s palace,” Hal said.

  Thorn waved the comment aside. “Belching is a high form of praise,” he said with great dignity.

  “Plus it could be handy for use as a foghorn,” said a familiar voice from behind Hal. The young skirl leapt to his feet, turning to face the tall, broad-shouldered warrior behind him.