TWOLAS - 05 - Grand Conspiracy

  Her six retainers knew better than to smile over her irascible independence. Dame Dawr was tough as old boot leather, and even more stubbornly set in her ways. She traveled nowhere in sedan chairs, not when she could still manage a saddle; and she never rode when brisk walking was more sensible. Here in Tysan, a livery mount cost a coin tax for the Light, which offended her belief in Ath's natural order, as well as her ingrained ancestral respect for dumb beasts.

  'No horse I know would become willing party to the backstabbing stupidities of town politics.' The black stick jabbed air to nail home her point, driving an inadvertent trio of bystanders to leap with a splash of dismay into the gutter. Dawr bade them good morning in frosty clan accents, then resumed her diatribe in the same breath. Lysaer s'Ilessid's pretty fortress of Avenor, she insisted, was small enough that an insolent boy could spit from one wall and strike the sunwheel surcoats of the garrison sentries who stood rounds of duty on the other.

  The old lady reached the harborside, her prickly high spirits undimmed. The early air warmed, thick and tepid as new milk, as the mist thinned and broke off the waterfront. Sweating, bare-chested stevedores ferried the piled boxes and bales to the docked trade galleys before the burgeoning heat steamed the last dew off the cobbles. Dying embers from the festival fires painted the smoky scent of ash and carbon through the seaside taints of drying fishnets and tide wrack. The crushed garlands dropped by the dancers and celebrants wilted, the perfume of bruised blossoms mingled with the damp oak miasma of salt barrels bound for the stockyards.

  Dame Dawr waded into the bustle, undaunted. She thumped her stick on the boards of the dock as though testing for rot or unsoundness. Her shrewd glance took note of the quantity and quality of the trade goods and provisions awaiting transport. Only her guard respected her whetted acumen enough to realize her mental survey missed nothing. She might learn more on a short, morning stroll than Avenor's ranking guildsmen could glean from their closeted ledgers. Men respected Grandame Dawr, as wary in her presence as unarmed boys who faced a berserker gone amok with naked steel. Experience branded that caution into them. Duke Bransian's grandmother saw like a hawk, and played deaf as a post anytime she saw fit to indulge in her scathing, inimical temperament.

  That her vicious moods marched hand in glove with keen wits gave the s'Brydion retainers sharp reason to humor her.

  Another five strides, and the petulant twist to her lips warned them of pending trouble.

  'Dharkaron's immortal bollocks!' Dawr snapped under her breath. A virulent rap of her stick punctuated her abrupt stop. 'Will you look at that fool, yapping lapdog?'

  Several yards down the wharf, where the deepwater ships berthed, half-hitched to the gray, weathered bollards, the target of her insult stood unsuspecting, his sunwheel robe a scream of bright white against the sun-faded red tunics of two stolid s'Brydion men-at-arms. These had planted themselves in determination across the gangway to the Duke of Alestron's state galley.

  Dame Dawr straightened frail shoulders. 'We'll just see what sort of mannerless numskull seeks to board our decks uninvited.'

  "That's an ally,' the hard-bitten captain of her escort reminded in a low voice.

  'Aye, an ally, you insist.' A brimstone glint of joy lit Dawr's dark eyes. 'Then we agree. We'll have to leave weapons out of this.' She tipped up her chin and bored in with a swirl of silk skirts straight down the throat of the argument.

  Arrived like a pestering black gnat, she placed a hand on the arm of the sunwheel acolyte. 'Young man,' she announced in grandmotherly sympathy, 'you must be misguided or lost. This galley takes no paying passengers.'

  The victim spun and glared. His jaw clenched tight with renewed irritation as he realized he could not dismiss the mistress of the duke's ship or brush off her senseless nattering.

  Dawr smiled. 'I see you're distressed.' She patted his hand, all pearl teeth and daft kindness. 'Will you accept my assistance? One of the duke's men would be pleased to take you to the harbormaster's, where a list will be kept of those vessels prepared to sell transport.'

  The man flushed to his eyebrows. His combed, satin hair wisped in the breeze as he curbed bursting temper and mastered his first impulse to snatch back his arm. 'I seek no paid passage, madam.' All icy civility, he made introductions. 'I'm Acolyte Cowill, sent here by appointment of Cerebeld, High Priest of the Light, to return as ambassador to your duke.'

  Dawr's pity melted into concern. 'No coin, did you say? How misfortunate.' She turned, craned her neck, then beckoned to the closest man of her guard and told him to empty her purse of small silver. 'Clan custom,' she piped, cheerful as she returned her bright, sparrow's gaze to her victim. 'We refuse no one alms. Brings in ill luck if beggars are slighted, and the needy are left to go hungry.'

  The acolyte glanced in flustered appeal to Dawr's escort. 'Tell your mistress her silver's not asked. Please explain. Avenor has appointed me to serve the Light's glory in the duke's court at Alestron.'

  Dame Dawr observed this exchange, eyebrows raised in obstructive epiphany. 'You want guest passage to appeal to my grandson, Bransian Teir's'Brydion?' A doddering step marched her into the acolyte's face, where, nonplussed, she reached out and gave his biceps a testing, firm pinch. 'Scrawny, I'd say. Definitely too weak, if you're asking to train for the field troops. That's nothing a few shifts at the oar won't set right. But I'd advise you, throw out that doublet. We're bound south through Havish. King Eldir's officials have no love of priests. White-and-gold cloth with that upstart blazon will certainly set you on the wrong foot with the locals.'

  While the grandame regarded him with benign expectation, the acolyte shrugged, then drew breath to restate his request to her guardsmen.

  He managed no words.

  Dame Dawr banged her stick on the wharf timbers with a thunderous report that startled every uninvolved party within earshot. 'Well, what under sky are you waiting for, young man? Do you ask for guest passage to Alestron, or not?' Not content with waspish railing, Dawr prodded him square in the chest with her stick. 'If you're coming along, then by Dharkaron's Black Chariot and Spear, I'm too frail to carry you aboard! March yourself onto the galley at once. Ath's tide won't wait while we stand here.'

  Dealt the unceremonious choice of being left flat-footed on the dock, the acolyte fled up the gangway.

  The s'Brydion matriarch and her escort crowded onto the deck at his heels. The last pair of men-at-arms hauled in the gangway with a speed that suggested they forestalled his last means of escape.

  Dawr snapped the ship's master a curt nod of greeting. 'Cast off. Then see the new recruit settled.'

  When the old woman departed for the privacy of her cabin, the young priest addressed the nearest captain at arms. 'Is the lady always this difficult?'

  The man's bearded face split into a grin. 'Oh, aye. There's times when you humor her, no questions asked.'

  A horn blast cut off further chance for conversation. Given cracking strings of orders to see the galley under way, Duke Bransian's crews reacted with war-tuned efficiency. Every man, including the ones who had served as Dawr's escort, appeared to have something important to do. In breathtakingly short order, Alestron's sleek vessel was set under oars and beating a steady, swift stroke from the harbor.

  As the work seemed to slacken, no crewman fell idle. The sunwheel acolyte politely awaited his moment to request a guest envoy's accommodation. To his dumbfounded outrage, the chance never came to seek civilized words with the captain. The galley's bare-chested mountain of a mate stepped up and collared him first. 'Ye're to be assigned a shift at the oar, and a berth in forward quarters with the crew.' He laughed at the acolyte's steamed spate of protest. 'Old lady's orders. Nobody crosses her, it's that or swim. And she says that white tunic's to go also.'

  The priest spat scalded outrage.

  The mate folded his massive arms and just shrugged, the puckered white scars inscribed by past wars glistening sweat in the sunlight. 'Small difference, whether the old bat's gone daft
or not. She's dead set on the notion you want a place in the guard. You'd risk both of your bollocks and even your life trying to change her mind. If you were dismissed from her presence alive and ungelded, Duke Bransian still won't allow us to haul deadweight. His policy forbids paying passengers, since our enemies would likely use such an opening to saddle us with spies. Envoy or recruit, you'll row, or you'll swim. Your choice. Which is it to be?'

  A glance right and left showed a gathered ring of deckhands, every one of them muscled and welted with the calluses of a veteran field mercenary. Since Cerebeld's acolyte was an indifferent swimmer, and the tide in the channel ran full ebb, he yielded to sense. The white tunic, perforce, was surrendered. The fine fabric was no sooner snatched from his grasp, when some whooping barbarian appeared with a ballast rock. To jokes and rough laughter, the sunwheel emblem of Lysaer's brave order was bundled and knotted, then cast off to sink under the thrashed froth of the wake.

  A credit to his staunch determination to carry out his mission for the Light, the priest acolyte blistered his hands at the bench, rowing down Tysan's west coastline. He shared meals with the crew, suffered their ribald chaffing of greenhorns, and fell into dreamless, exhausted sleep in the salt-musty twine of a hammock. The work in the slow, turgid air of high summer could wear even a seasoned man surly. When the galley's beet-faced quartermaster insisted that he also turn out for weapon drill, none were surprised when Alestron's guest acolyte jumped ship in the sailor's stews of Tideport. His desertion was timely, since the docks there offered the last port of call before the duke's ship left the crown territory of Tysan.

  No man to bemoan the loss of a whiner, the ship's captain ordered the vessel's oar ports sealed off. On experienced guesswork and instinct, he judged his best run of weather and cast off for a risky, offshore passage to Cheivalt.

  Dame Dawr was informed of the acolyte's defection over the brown bread, butter, and jam she preferred for her breakfasts at sea. By then, the men had lashed the stowed oars inboard. A following wind rammed the galley through the swell, to smoking bursts of spray off the prow beak.

  'No loss,' she admitted to the mate who delivered the report. Her pursed lips unpleated to a cackle of delight as she invited him to strip off his baldric and cutlass and eat. 'We gave Cerebeld's whelp his brief taste of the fate the s'Ilessid pretender decreed for the clanborn forced captive in Tysan. He can now run home to his kennel and yap. Whatever amends are demanded through state recourse, I say the fool's gotten off kindly with a sore back and a healthy few blisters. Suppose he'd survived the course of this voyage and arrived to set foot in Alestron? One canting spiel on the Light of true justice, and Bransian would likely have lopped off his misguided head.'

  * * *

  While the sunwheel acolyte made his disgruntled way back to complain to his high priest at Avenor, and the s'Brydion galley sped downcoast to exchange courtesy with King's Eldir's court at Telmandir, the dust kicked up by the Alliance summer muster cast ocher haze over the encampments spread beneath the squat towers of Etarra. There, each year, boys just sprouting beards and young men of ambition and prowess gathered to enter their names as candidates for service to the Light. As equals, they stripped to the skin. Those found in sound health, without flaw or deformity, were issued saffron-dyed hose, a hemp sash, and a coarse linen tunic. Sorted by age, they were assigned to a drill sergeant and given a cot in a stifling barracks tent.

  Through the long, hot days, tinder blazing sun, they would train and be tested for fitness: trials of strength, of coordination and fast reflex, of endurance; other exercises challenged them for mental acuity. The contests were unforgiving. Some applicants shattered bones, others broke nerves; a few misfortunates lost their lives, and so earned their place on the Light's list of fallen, with a stipend sent to placate their grieving families. By season's end, no longer equal, but ranked according to merit, the candidates might swear their oath to the Light and sign for a term of Alliance service.

  No applicant who completed the month's screening was turned away. The brawny but dull could drive carts or cook bread, and do menial tasks in a war camp. The bright who were clumsy could keep tallies and scribe. The middle-rank competent trained at arms for two years and wore the badge of the Alliance garrison, assigned by company to bolster the ranks in those towns who paid tribute for the privilege of Lysaer s'Ilessid's defense.

  The better, the brighter, were offered choice training as officers. They enrolled in the school for tactical warfare Lysaer had endowed at Etarra. Graduates served three years on campaign in the field with the Northern League of Headhunters, then entered paid service for tours of duty renewed by choice every decade.

  Only the cream of each summer's muster earned the chance to swear for life service. Enrolled for seven demanding years of advance training, then seasoned in arduous field trials, these alone might vie for the right to wear the white surcoat and gold sunwheel of the Divine Prince's elite guard. Those who succeeded in winning that accolade were the bone and sinew of champions. They became the very mainstay of the Light, sworn by oath to fight and to die until the last shadow of sorcery was expunged from the land. Nor would their ranks be disbanded until the hour the Spinner of Darkness was cast down in final defeat.

  The families of such chosen men were listed among the most fortunate. Their aging mothers, their fathers, their wives and young children became eligible for an Alliance pension; if misfortune struck, and their kin passed the Wheel, coin from Lysaer's coffers ensured that they never saw want.

  While the raw blaze of sunrise dissolved the night mist off the broad plain spread under the high walls of Etarra, the sons of farmers and poor tradesmen flocked in from all quarters of the land to vie for the honor of armed service. Their earnest endeavors were not delegated to second-rate officers or lame veterans retired from the field. Lord Commander Sulfin Evend handpicked each year's roster of captains, and the Blessed Prince personally oversaw every facet of testing. While the morning fog thinned over the practice fields, he might be seen astride his cream war-horse. His white surcoat and diamonds shone, pure frost and light, through the trammeling haze of stirred grit as young candidates sparred and cracked through their drills with wooden weapons. Noontide, in the close, panting labor of tearing down field tents, while a company of archers pelted an assault with blunted shafts, a man might glance sidewards and discover the comrade who sweated at his shoulder was none else than Divinity Incarnate.

  Whether silted in dust, or mud-splashed from a squall line, or stripped of his surcoat and shirt, Lysaer's presence could not be mistaken. His pale, gold-shot hair and candid blue eyes were as distinctive as his sunwheel banner; the attentiveness he granted to each man's small needs uplifted morale and engendered spellbinding awe. His inherent majesty was not cast off with fine clothes or an absence of jeweled trappings. He had a quick laugh, and an incandescent smile, and a kindness through hardship that welded men's hearts in devotion. Where he passed, humor flourished. Though the hazards of each exercise were difficult enough to break hearts and strip tempers, even fell the stoutest man, body and spirit, no rough circumstance seemed to outstrip his ability to inspire hopeful applicants to renewed effort and dedication.

  That gift of exalted leadership made Lysaer s'Ilessid a trial to locate on those days when he surrendered to impulse and joined ranks with his green recruits. His fine horse, his sunwheel banner, and his liveried retinue might often be found idle and dozing under some shade oak, or else soaked and morose in the rain. They might have left their divine charge with the scullions in the field kitchen or with some wagoneer hauling new spear shafts. A search of the quarter where his train was dismissed infallibly ended in failure. His Divine Grace's previous choice of close company would regretfully relate he had left and gone visiting someplace else.

  'Sulfin Evend dogs his heels,' offered the white charger's groom. The latest balked messenger had been dispatched in full panoply from Etarra by the Lord Governor's house steward. Overheated himself in the clo
gged, humid air, he took pity on the man's sweat-ringed livery and fresh flush. 'Look for the crow's nephew. He'll be the one bearing sheathed steel, grimly watchful, while everyone else grunts and swears.'

  Like others before him, this latest messenger must run the dusty gamut of the practice fields in a goose chase that might well exhaust the whole morning.

  The Lord Governor's pampered servant trudged off, resigned. He edged past the boys set sparring with quarterstaves, and narrowly missed getting brained. He peered at each face on the archers' lines, inciting oaths and a rash of wild volleys.

  The lance captain cursed him for getting underfoot. When he paused to scrape manure from his quilted velvet shoe, someone's loose mount all but kicked him. Smeared with grass stains from crossing a drain ditch where other men assembled footbridges out of twine and hacked branches, he collided with a hurrying lackey, who thrust a tray of new-risen dough into his unwilling hands.

  'Hold this.' The bald cook turned his rump and bent over a field oven. Words emerged, muffled, haranguing the brainless recruit who had forgotten to remove the preceding batch of baked bread. The spoiled loaves were dragged out, black and smoking as bricks, to some outspoken bystander's hoots of laughter.

  Relieved of the tray, the disgruntled messenger picked his way across the packed, dusty ground where boys sparred with oak sticks to a swordmaster's bellowed instruction. He ran the gamut unscathed and reached the far side. Paused, panting, in the shadow of a siege engine, he had scarcely recovered his wind when a yelling, half-naked troop of men sprang out of the grass. Brandishing billets wound with lint soaked in oil, they commenced a determined exercise in demolition by fire.