If Valari had any inclination to refuse to answer, it fled when Roo produced the dagger and showed it to him. “Weapons! He buys weapons.”
“What weapons?”
“Swords, shields, pikes, and bows. Arrows, crossbows, and bolts. Catapults and ballistae. And fire oil.”
“And it’s being shipped here?”
“No, it is already delivered, to Ylith. But the gold was here and Fadawah arranged for it to be secretly stored on this ship.”
“Why wasn’t it guarded better?” asked one of the smugglers nearby. “I mean, if we had known, we’d have taken this ship ourselves, days ago!”
“Because guards would have called attention,”
said Roo. “They circulated a rumor it was a blockade ship, to be sunk in the harbor mouth.” He grinned.
“Lads, you’re going farther than we thought. We’re not going down the coast to the cove and then ashore to meet the army. We’re heading down to Krondor itself.”
“Why?” asked one of the smugglers.
“Because I’m claiming this gold for the crown, and the crown owes me gold beyond imagining, so I’m taking this cargo in partial payment of my debt, and because all of you will be paid a month’s wages for each day we’re at sea.”
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One of the men got a calculating look and said,
“Why shouldn’t we just split it up? We don’t work for you, Avery.”
Suddenly Roo’s sword was out of its scabbard before the man could react. The point touched the man in the throat and Roo said, “Because I’m the only real soldier on this ship, and you copper-grub-bing thugs are getting a chance for some real gold.
Why die so a few of you can share this, when you can live and get enough to keep you drunk for the rest of your life?”
“Just asking,” said the man, backing away.
“Besides,” said Roo, “Vinci knows each of you, and if I don’t make it alive back to Krondor and you show up anywhere in the West with gold, he’ll know to send assassins after you.”
That was a bluff, but Roo didn’t think any of these smugglers were smart enough to suspect it was. He turned and shouted, “Get as much sail on as you can once we’re out of the harbor! And find a Kingdom banner if there’s one in the Captain’s cabin and hoist it aloft! I don’t want to get sunk by one of Reeve’s attack ships before we can explain we’re on their side.”
As they exited the harbor, the lookout shouted,
“Galley off the starboard bow!”
Roo raced to the fore of the ship and looked where the lookout indicated. Sure enough, heaving out of the morning mist came a Quegan war galley.
Roo didn’t hesitate, but dashed back to where the Captain of the ship still stood under guard. “How tight to the southern headland can you turn this ship without killing us all?”
The Captain said, “At this speed, not very.”
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“So we either slow down and get overtaken, or we turn south and shoal out.”
“Yes,” said the Captain with a smile.
Roo looked toward the canvas and saw the luff of the sail. He was not a true sailor, but he had served aboard ship on two long voyages down to Novindus.
To those sailors aloft, he said, “I’ll give every man here a thousand pieces of gold if we get away from that galley!”
Quegan sailors were often pressed into service, and none were known particularly for deep loyalty to their Emperor. Suddenly the activity above increased to a frenzied pace as Roo shouted orders. The Captain realized he was in the presence of a man who knew his way around a ship and said, “We can heel hard to port in a few moments and if we hold tight into the wind, make it clear of rocks, Mr.
Avery.”
Roo looked at the Captain and said, “Switching sides?”
“For twelve years I’ve sailed for my Lord Vasarius, and if I’ve made a thousand gold pieces in that time, it was barely.”
“Good,” said Roo. “For the Captain, two thousand. Now get us out of here.”
The Captain shouted orders, and turned to take the tiller away from the man Roo had assigned to the job. Valari said, “What about me?”
Roo said, “Can you swim?”
“Yes, but—”
Roo nodded to the powerful-looking smuggler who had just released the tiller, and the man grabbed Valari by the collar and the seat of the pants, and with two steps pitched him over the side of the ship.
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As the man came to the surface, Roo called down,
“Perhaps your employer will stop and pick you up!”
The galley bore down on them, and Roo stood on the quarterdeck, watching as it came straight at them, then to the side, and then to the stern, as the Captain turned southward. The men on the bow of the galley could be clearly seen, astonished expressions on their faces as the ship they were sent to escort seemed to be turning in the wrong direction.
A few moments later, the galley turned to pursue.
“Can we lose her?” asked Roo.
The Captain said, “If we run out of wind before they run out of slaves, no. If they run out of slaves first, yes.”
Roo said, “I hate to do it to the slaves, but let’s pray for wind.”
The Captain nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Nardini,” said the Captain.
“Well, Captain Nardini, I used to have a fleet, and I expect to have one again. If we live through this, not only will you get your gold, I’ll give you a job.”
“That would be nice,” said the Captain, a balding man of middle years. “I’ve never been farther into Krondor than the docks. I was last there about three years ago.”
“It’s changed since you were there,” said Roo.
“So I hear,” replied the Captain.
Roo looked rearward and saw the galley was holding steady about two hundred yards off their stern. They had come around the thumb, as Roo thought of it, and the coast fell away to the east, leaving them in relatively open water.
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at noon, and hoped they reached it before Vasarius’s war galley reached them.
Arutha whispered, “Try the latch.”
The soldier nearest him quietly moved the latch up and the door opened. There was a faint squeak, but no one inside the room seemed to notice. He followed the first man into the room and glanced around in the dim light. A single candle burned on a table halfway across the long wall, opposite the stairway leading upward to the next level. The floor was littered with a dozen empty sleeping pallets, while another six were occupied. With a hand signal, Captain Subai indicated they were to be subdued and they were. Solders entered from the second door and Arutha smiled as he whispered, “Well, it seems I owe those soldiers an apology; that was a lot of stair climbing for no good reason.”
Subai said, “They understand.”
Arutha turned to locate Brother Dominic. The cleric wore a helm and breastplate, but carried no sword. He only sported a dull cudgel. He had said that his order would not permit him to spill blood.
Breaking heads, Arutha had observed dryly, was permitted, however.
“What now?”
Dominic said, “There is something . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t know. A presence . . .”
Arutha said, “A presence?”
“It’s something I’ve felt before, but fainter, more distant.”
“What?” urged Arutha.
“I don’t know,” whispered the cleric. “But what-
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ever it is, it is not good. I should lead the soldiers up the stairs. If it is magical or mystic, I may be able to protect us.”
Arutha nodded, frowning. Since the death of the Pantathian Serpent Priests and Pug’s destruction of the demon Jakan, there had been no reports of any magical activity among the enemy. The possibility that some agency of darkness had hidden among them and was now about to manifest itself bothered him. But there was no turning back.
Dominic mounted the stairs and Arutha, Subai, and the soldiers followed. They entered a long hallway with doorways on either side, each leading into a large storage room, used to house books just a year earlier. Each doorway was open, and through the portals they could see more sleeping men. Arutha did a quick estimation and judged a hundred men between the two rooms. He signaled, and Subai placed archers at each end of the hall.
He then set about waking the invaders, quietly, and one at a time, so that each man awoke to the sight of a naked blade before his face and archers behind drawing a bead. In less than a half hour, all one hundred mercenaries were herded down to the lowest chamber, to join the first six men captured.
“This can’t last,” said Subai quietly.
As if his words were prophetic, at the top of the next flight of stairs they were spied by two men walking down the corridor. As soon as they saw the black uniforms, the mercenaries knew there were Kingdom soldiers in the building. They raised alarm, and Arutha shouted, “Every man to his position!”
Each man knew his assignment. There were a dozen key positions throughout the abbey, and if the 52893_~1.QXD 8/30/2002 10:02 AM Page 289
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Kingdom forces could secure them, the invaders would be isolated from the town below. While Arutha and his men might be forced to eventually withdraw back down the stairs into the lower chambers of the abbey, they could keep the garrison up here from mounting a counterattack down the mountain to relieve the garrison at Sarth.
Sleepy mercenaries came stumbling through doors on both sides of the hall, and Arutha found himself fighting for his life. He had never fought in combat before, and until this moment had harbored a deep fear he would not be up to the task. He anticipated shame that he could not serve his King the way his father and sons already had. Yet now, without hesitation, he was coolly engaging a man intent on killing him. He had no time to think about his previous doubts, and without conscious effort, years of practice and drill took over and he began laying about him, using the sword once carried by his namesake, Prince Arutha.
Slowly they moved along the corridor, driving the forces of General Nordan before them. At the end of the corridor, another flight of stairs led upward. By the time Arutha reached them, the hall was littered with bodies, most of them invaders, and a trio of men stood at the bottom of the stairs. Fighting up the stairs would be difficult, as the advantage of height would make this a difficult contest.
From behind a voice shouted, “Down!”
Without hesitation, Arutha fell to the floor, ignoring the pool of blood in which he lay. A flight of arrows sped by overhead, and the three men upon the first step of the stairway fell. Before Arutha could rise to his feet, men were racing past him, their boots 52893_~1.QXD 8/30/2002 10:02 AM Page 290
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pounding on the stones of the steps as they hurried up to engage the enemy on the next level.
Arutha knew he was one flight below ground level. Above them stood the abbey, the stable, the outbuilding, and the walls. If they could get to the tower above the abbey, and command positions atop the walls, they could win the day.
Arutha took a deep breath and charged after the soldiers in front of him.
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Thirteen
Calamity
ERIK CHARGED.
His company was second through the barricade, following hard on the heels of a unit of the Royal Krondorian Lancers led by Owen Greylock. The heavy cavalry rolled through the defenders effortlessly, driving a wedge through the invaders’ line.
Erik’s unit was on Owen’s right, following a hundred yards behind, and struck a deeply dug-in series of trenches supported by bow-fire from a clump of trees a dozen yards behind the last trench.
Erik had chosen this particular spot for himself and his men, for it was the sort of emplacement that was better attacked by mounted infantry rather than cavalry. As his men reached a point just beyond the enemy’s bow-fire, Erik ordered a halt. The men reined in and dismounted, one man in five taking the horses to the rear. The rest formed up on Erik’s command and ran the last hundred yards to attack the enemy lines.
Erik knew the key to taking this side of the line was to strike hard and fast at the upper portion that abutted the hillside. It was a series of shallow trench-291
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es and offered little protection for the defenders.
Once they were in those trenches it would be easy to get behind the rest of the enemy line, root out the bowmen in the trees, and surround the men in the other trench locations.
As he had anticipated, it took his men less than an hour to completely subdue the defenders on the right flank. Seeing things were in hand, Erik returned to get his mount and ordered the rest of his men forward while a handful remained behind to escort prisoners back to the stockades being erected for holding captives.
Everywhere the first phase of battle was moving along without a hitch. Erik had expected stronger resistance on the left flank, the section of the defensive line between the road and the sea cliffs, but the rapidily advancing Kingdom forces had totally demoralized the advance position of Fadawah’s army.
Realizing that things were in hand, Erik sent word back to bring up the second elements of Greylock’s army, the heavy infantry that had been hiding in Krondor for the last week. They were a half-day down the coast and would be needed tomorrow morning if they had to dig out defenders at the gap or the southern boundary of Sarth.
As he motioned for his mounted infantry to form up to advance, Erik gave thanks that Sarth wasn’t a walled town like some of the others in the Kingdom.
He impatiently waited for his command to reform, as the standing order was to move as fast into Sarth as possible. When they were mounted, he gave the order and they advanced.
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flank, their orders to flush out snipers in the woods.
They were supported by squads of swordsmen.
Heavy pikemen, who would be critical to break any counterattacks, were hurrying along the road, and Erik had to order them to halt, so that his horsemen wouldn’t be stuck behind the slower-moving footmen. When everyone was assembled, Erik signaled the advance, and the men moved out. The pikemen fell in behind the horses, and the march was resumed.
The hillsides echoed with the sounds of shouts and screams, the hum of arrows through the air and the sound of steel clashing. But it was obviously a mopping-up action here, and the heavy fighting would be ahead.
Erik motioned for his men to advance at a canter, and they began leaving the infantry behind.
Erik had reached Krondor without incident, he and John Vinci having slipped through the gap to the smuggler’s cove, then by boat to a fast ship heading down to Krondor. They had reached the city in time to give Greylock the detailed layout he had needed.
The next morning advance scouting and infiltration units had been sent out to destroy Nordan’s forward positions. The units Greylock had brought into Krondor under cover of darkness the previous night left two hours after and rode throughout the day, taking up positions a half-day’s ride south of Sarth.
At dawn they had advanced on the city.
Erik glanced to wher
e the sun hung in the sky and considered they were possibly an hour ahead of schedule. Any time gained in the first stage of the assault would be to their benefit. They would need as many men as possible in the town should Lord 52893_~1.QXD 8/30/2002 10:02 AM Page 294
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Arutha’s infiltration of the abbey fail and Nordan launch a counteroffensive from up that road.
Glancing toward the sea, Erik saw sails in the distance, two ships heading south. He wondered if they might be invaders’ ships or Quegans. Either way, they were about to run headlong into a fleet of ships from Port Vykor heading to Sarth to support the land advance.
Erik returned his attention to the matter at hand.
Roo said, “They’re gaining.”
Captain Nardini said, “Morning breeze is fresh-ening, but whoever’s in command of that galley is willing to kill slaves, that’s the truth.”
Roo said, “Any weapons aboard this ship?”
“Only what you brought with you. The plan always was to just look harmless and slip out of the harbor without anyone suspecting we had all that gold aboard.” The Captain glanced backward and then returned his attention to the sails above. “We certainly have no ballistae or other war engines, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s what I was asking,” said Roo.
Slowly the galley pulled nearer Roo’s ship.
“Sails ahead!” shouted the lookout.
“Where away?” questioned the Captain.
“Two quarters! Dead ahead and five points off the starboard bow!”
Roo hurried forward and squinted against the glare from the mist burning off in the morning light.
Directly ahead he saw a dozen tiny dots of white, the sails of the fleet heading north from Port Vykor, while off to the right larger sails showed a fleet closer still.
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Roo hurried back to the Captain. “We’ve got trouble.”
“I know,” said Nardini. “We need a much stronger wind, or that galley’s going to catch us in less than an hour.”