Frantic, Valdos peered at the place indicated by the small finger. “Enormous!” he shouted, and scooped Dyfrig up.
“Thank you,” said the little prince.
Induna appeared, pushing Rusgann back into the room and slamming the door behind her. “It’s going wrong, Val. Come close to me and we’ll make a run for it. I can probably shield you and the boy with my magic while still going unseen—”
“What’s happening?” Rusgann demanded.
“We’re rescuing the boy and the princess,” Induna snapped. “Stand aside, woman. There’s fighting in the corridor.”
“I won’t go without Rusgann!” Dyfrig shrieked. “I won’t!” And he began to squirm and flail his limbs like a mad thing, so that Valdos nearly dropped him.
“Stop it!” the armiger pleaded. “We’ll take her, we’ll take her!”
Dyfrig was instantly still in his arms. “Good.”
Induna cracked the heavy door open, then closed it again, cutting off the sound of a loud affray. Her expression was bleak. “There’s a shaman out there. He didn’t see me. He must have come down the stairs in the guards’ dormitory just across the hall. He’s creeping towards the armory, probably sent by those on the roof to investigate the fighting. A scrier wouldn’t make any sense of it— guard fighting guard. We’ve got to take down the magicker, Val. Give the boy to the maid and grab that big book. I’ll go invisible and trip him up, and you swat him with the book when he’s down.”
“Swat him? I’ll carve out his lights!” the squire blustered, fumbling for his dagger.
She slapped him roundly. “Do as I say,” she hissed.
Valdos took up the huge tome from its stand, muttering. A moment later he and Induna were out the door.
“Are we really being rescued, Rusgann?” Dyfrig was safe in her strong arms, an expression of keen interest on his face.
“God only knows. Hold on to my neck, Dyfi.”
The sound of a tremendous explosion rocked the room. Induna flung the door open. “Come with me! Go carefully and don’t trip over anything.”
The corridor was filling with smoke that poured from the armory. Shadowy figures moved about in it, yelling and cursing. Swords clanged. On the floor lay a man in a shabby brown gown, his head hidden beneath a book. Radd Falcontop, with a sinister black-iron sphere in one hand and a sword in the other, came running towards them. He cleared the fallen shaman with a single leap and darted into the dormitory, shouting at Rusgann. “Get the hell out of here, wench—down the stairs!”
“This way!” said Induna’s voice. The strapping maid felt an invisible person tugging at her apron, drawing her into the smoke. She clung tight to Dyfrig, was momentarily blinded by the swirling fumes, heard coughs and screams, stumbled over a guard’s bleeding body. Then she saw the small woman beckoning to her, pointing out the way of escape.
“Over here! The stairs. Go down. Go to the windmill turret. Take the boy to his mother!” The witch vanished again.
Another explosion shook the peel, coming from the dormitory. A thunderous voice called out in the murk, “It’s done! Both sets of steps to the roof gone. All you king’s men—fall back. Fall back and run!”
Rusgann said, “Hang on, Dyfi,” and plunged down the stairs.
“We’re within range of Skullbone Peel, my lord duke,” the captain said to Feribor.“You, wizard! Keep light airs blowing so we can maneuver. Quartermaster! Raise the colors of the Sovereignty and the duke’s pennon.”
Feribor used a spyglass to survey the peel from the quarterdeck of the frigate, which lay broadside to the shore. “They’ve finally got the catapult set up on the fort roof, and it’s loaded with a sizable tarnblaze shell. The silly damned fools! That engine couldn’t fling a bomb more than a hundred ells… I wonder what the two columns of smoke are all about? Think it might be a signal of some sort?”
The captain shrugged. “I can’t say, my lord. Shall we fire a dummy charge to attract their attention?”
“Not yet. But see that the guns are readied.”
“It’s already done.”
Feribor turned to his windvoice, a slope-shouldered older man with a long, sardonic face. “Vra-Colan, bespeak Shaman-Lord Ontel. Tell him who we are and present my personal compliments.”
The Brother pulled up his hood so that his face was shadowed, except for the mouth. After a few minutes had passed, he reported, “Ontel also conveys the usual sentiments of greeting to you, my lord. He asks what brings you to the Desolation Shore.”
“Say we have come to take away Princess Maudrayne Northkeep and her son, who are his unwilling guests. Have him be so good as to send them out to our ship in a small boat. He has exactly one half hour to comply.”
Vra-Colan spoke on the wind, paused, then gave the reply. “Ontel asks what you will do if he declines.”
“Tell him that my ship’s guns will pound his wretched little fort to rubble. And assure him that I care not whether the lady perishes along with him and his people, since she is already under sentence of death for having threatened grave harm to the Sovereign of Blenholme.”
The message was sent, and Feribor waited impatiently for the reply. When the minutes continued to drag by in silence, he finally barked, “Golan! Demand that they answer!”
Blind Bozuk sat slumped in a chair a few paces away from the duke, the windvoice, and the captain, close beside the helmsman at the wheel. He called out feebly. “They’re preparing their answer! One of them is lighting the fuse of the great bombshell in the catapult.”
The captain burst into derisive laughter. “Tarnian lunacy!”
“Let’s hope so,” Bozuk wheezed.
An instant later the arm of the engine threw the missile high into the air. As it soared to the top of its trajectory, Feribor sneered, “Far short! Even I can see that it—God’s Bones! Look! It can’t be!”
The shell was not falling, as all logic said it must, but instead continued on towards the ship as though it were an airborne balloon rather than a heavy ball of steel loaded with explosive chymicals.
“The three shamans.” Bozuk’s tone was oddly apologetic. “They’re pushing it with their overt talent. Quite an impressive meld of magical power. Who knew they had it in them?”
The captain shouted, “Helm, hard aport! Wizard, all the wind you can muster!”
“I have no strength left in me,” Bozuk admitted, “not even enough to lift a feather. Nor am I able to divert the projectile from its path. It may yet fall short or miss us.”
“She don’t answer the helm, cap’n!” cried the man at the wheel. “We’re flat becalmed.” His eyes were wide with terror, fixed on the rushing sphere that trailed sparks and a thin plume of smoke. It came at them a few ells above mast height, giving hope that it might indeed pass over the ship. But the magic of the shamans halted it in midair, where it paused and plummeted straight down.
The helmsman screeched, “Cap’n, it’s coming right at us! Cap’n!”
But that officer was already dragging Feribor forward towards the quarterdeck stairs. Both men tumbled down them as the hissing, smoking ball struck the ship’s wheel, causing it to disintegrate into a hail of lethal fragments that shredded the flesh of the helmsman and the ancient shaman cowering in his chair, killing both of them instantly. Vra-Colan was left moaning in a small pool of his blood, only slightly injured. The missile penetrated deck after deck as it fell, demolishing the ship’s steering mechanism and finally ending in the bilges of the afthold with all of its momentum spent.
There it exploded.
Bruised and battered, Duke Feribor felt the tremendous jolt and heard the smothered roar of the detonation as he lay on the upper deck beside the captain. A few seamen had fallen but most were on their feet, dashing about in response to orders screamed by the mates and petty officers. The guns of the starboard battery crashed out a single broadside. The captain stirred, groaning, and clutched at his left arm.
“Broken, curse it! Lord duke, can you haul me up?”
br />
But Feribor was still too shocked to move, and it was the quartermaster, leaking blood from a gash in his scalp, who pulled the captain to his feet and helped sling his broken arm inside his jerkin.
“Arlow! Belay firing the guns and get the pumps going,” he said. “Bendanan, find Chips and survey the damage to the hull.”
Other officers were crowding around the captain as he issued further orders. A seaman helped Feribor to arise, and at his request led him to the starboard rail where he might survey Skullbone Peel. The blocky white fort was undamaged, although two black columns of smoke still issued from its roof, where tiny figures seemed to be dancing on the battlements. Only a single cannonshell had found its mark: the windmill turret was a ragged stub, its top half missing save for twisted fragments of its spiral iron stairway.
“Well, that’s small loss,” Feribor said. He stumbled back to the captain. “Get me a small boat and a squad of marine warriors! I’ve got to go ashore and hunt out Princess Maudrayne.”
“You may eventually hunt your pathetic quarry, my lord,” the captain snarled, “but not until I’ve secured my ship from sinking—if that’s possible. Go to your cabin. Now! And don’t set foot outside it until you’re sent for.”
“My lord?” a weak voice inquired.
Crimson with rage, Feribor whirled to find Vra-Colan standing there, his robes ripped to shreds and his face a mass of small cuts. A youthful sailor supported the windvoice, who said, “I think she was in there. Princess Maudrayne, in the room atop the blasted turret. I oversaw her only briefly, then she eluded my windsight—a woman very beautiful, with auburn hair, amidst a group of other people. I said nothing to you at the time because I was unsure of her identity, and you were engrossed with your spyglass.”
Feribor clutched the windvoice’s upper arm, causing him to flinch in pain. “Scry the place now! See if you can find her!”
“Do it from the duke’s cabin,” ordered the captain tersely.
None of Feribor’s protests or threats availed, and so he and Golan went below. For hours the debilitated Brother did his utmost to see through the stone walls of the peel, hindered by smoke. He reported small fires and damage to two chambers on the upper level, and wounded men being cared for, and even numbers of dead bodies. Toward the end of his long surveillance, the persons trapped on the roof were finally rescued with ladders. But nowhere in any part of the fort was there a tall woman with auburn hair or a very small boy.
Finally Feribor permitted the exhausted Brother to abandon the wind-search and sleep. He sat brooding in a chair until well after midnight, when the captain came at last and told him that an improvised patch on the hull was holding, and they were not in immediate danger of sinking.
“But we’re a long way from home, my lord duke, in hostile waters, with our steering shot to hell. So if you know any good prayers, start saying them.”
Rusgann ran like a deer with Dyfrig in her arms when she finally reached the ground floor of the peel—through the kitchen and the scullery, along a covered passage to the annex building, past the half-enclosed animal shelters and the storerooms, and into the pump room below the turret. No one pursued them, nor did the young witch or her servant-lad confederate or any other person follow after.
“Let me catch my breath,” the maid gasped, setting Dyfrig down at the foot of the iron stairs leading up into the tower. “I’ve got a fierce stitch in my side.”
A woman’s voice called faintly from above. “Rusgann? Dyfi? Are you there?”
The boy squealed, “Mama!” And before Rusgann could stop him he was up the stairs and out of sight, and she heard people approaching through the barn rooms, their low conversation punctuated with coughs and an occasional moan. Hastily, she ducked out of sight behind a huge piece of wooden machinery, all cogs and shafts and lever arms shining with grease, but unmoving because a piece of it had been detached and lay on the floor along with scattered tools.
Three men dressed in the uniforms of peel guardsmen, with helmets and mail shirts missing, entered the pump room. All were filthy with soot and blood. A stocky youth and a tall skinny fellow half carried a much older man whose head lolled on his breast. Rusgann recognized him as the fighter who’d run at her carrying a tarnblaze grenade and sword, who had warned her to flee.
At the foot of the iron stairs, the skinny man yelled, “Deveron? Are you up there?”
“Gavlok!” The reply echoed off the turret walls. “Thank God. I tried to scry you but the smoke got too thick. The princess and her son are here, safe! And she’s agreed to the proposal.”
“Hanan and I have Radd with us,” the one named Gavlok called. “He’s badly bashed up but we’re fine. Poor old Hulo’s dead. We had a nasty fracas in the armory. I don’t know what’s become of Val… or Induna.” Laboriously, the uninjured pair began to pull their comrade up the narrow steps.
Rusgann waited until they reached the top, then climbed up herself. The small tower room seemed crowded wall to wall with people. Through the window on the seaward side she saw a three-masted man-o‘-war lying not far offshore.
“My lady!” she cried, pushing past the youth called Hanan, who was tending to the wounded man. “Have these knaves harmed you?”
“They’re friends. It’s all right.” Maudrayne held Dyfrig in her arms. Both of them had wet cheeks, but they were smiling. “Come sit beside us on the bench and I’ll explain.”
Snudge stood with Gavlok, staring at the frigate. “There’s some kind of a parley going on between the shamans on the peel roof and the warship. I can’t decipher it but the direction of the bespoken windthreads is plain.”
“The castle people had the catapult up at the battlements before we arrived at the armory,” Gavlok said. “We demolished both sets of stairs with small bombshells. It’ll be a while before Ontel and his wizards get down. We’re safe here for a while.”
Snudge turned his attention to the roof of the keep. “What the devil do they think they’re doing over there? Look—the pan of the catapult is loaded and they’re cranking down the arm. The ship’s far out of range.”
“Its starboard gunports are open,” Gavlok pointed out. “If the cannons let loose, we’re finished. But Feribor wouldn’t really dare endanger Maudrayne and the boy, would he? I mean, it has to be a bluff.”
“Does it?” Snudge gave an edgy little laugh. “Cathran naval gunners are well trained. They could pepper Skullbone with shells, putting the pressure on. Unfortunately, this windmill turret is a perfect target for a demonstration of marksmanship. We’ve got to get out of here soon, Gav. Let me try to scry Induna and Val again.”
He covered his eyes. After a few minutes, he gave a cry of distress. “I see them, just entering the kitchen. Val’s hurt. Looks like he’s senseless. Induna’s holding him up with her arms and her talent and moving him along, but the squire’s heavy and she’s tired.” He opened his eyes and flashed a look of desperation at his friend. His next words were delivered in a whisper. “I don’t dare leave here. If things fall apart, I’ll have to use the Gateway sigil to take these people away at once. Maude and her son must reach Donorvale safely, and the others deserve to go as well.”
“So many?” Gavlok was incredulous. “Has that been your plan from the beginning? You’ll kill yourself! Look what happened to you the last time! And with others as well—”
“But no heavy equipment. Donorvale’s only a hundred and fifty leagues away—a third of the distance we traveled before. I ought to be able to do it, even carrying seven adults and a child. But I’ll probably have only one go at it. The sigil will strike me down and I won’t be able to come back. So… will you try to fetch Induna and Val? I'll wait for you until the last minute.”
“Oh, shite,” said the lanky knight. “Of course I’ll go.” He spun about and vanished into the stairwell.
With a sinking heart, Snudge focused his windsight on the quarterdeck of the ship. Bozuk looked a complete wreck, the evil old bastard. It was his fault that Feribor
had come here. The sight of the duke, so debonair and merciless, almost choked Snudge with rage. Feribor seemed to be waiting now, glaring at his hooded windvoice and tapping his foot on the deck. Waiting—
Bozuk was pointing at something, speaking. His withered lips were hard to read. Answer… lighting fuse… catapult…
Snudge caught his breath. From the roof of the peel soared a missile that was surely fated to fall into the sea. Uncannily, it did not. At the top of its arc it seemed to hesitate, then continued onward in an unnaturally straight path towards the warship, moving much more slowly than before, gradually losing altitude as though it were rolling down a smooth incline.
The mad Tarnian buggers were pushing the thing along with sorcery.
“Look!” Rusgann cried. She’d seen the smoking shell—and an instant later most of the others did, too. All save prostrate Radd Falcontop rushed to the eastern side of the tower to watch, exclaiming in wonderment and morbid speculation.
When the shell made its dramatic halt above the ship and began to fall, Maude screamed, seized Dyfrig, and turned away with the boy howling his disappointment in her arms. The others cried out in horror at what happened next, so that Snudge almost missed hearing the sound of voices rising from the base of the tower.
He shouted down the stairs. “Gavlok? Induna? Hurry, for the love of God!”
Can I use my talent to help them up? he asked himself. It was not a type of magic he was good at, but the situation was desperate. He sent out a shout on the wind: Source, help me if you can!
He reached out to the slow-moving climbers, took hold, and pulled with all the soul-strength he could command.
The tall knight and the tiny woman and the collapsed squire shot upward and knocked Snudge over. They all skidded into Radd’s body, and he uttered a great groan. “All of you!” Snudge cried from the squirming heap. “Come quickly to me. Come close.” He pulled Subtle Gateway from his shirt and gripped it in his fist. Gavlok got to his knees and dragged Maudrayne and Dyfrig to him.
“Oh, look!” Rusgann said. “The ship’s cannons are firing back.”