Packed around the chart table, in swift, whiplash dialogue, the escaped shipwrights and crewmen, and another man who proved to be a clanborn scout, exchanged viewpoints. The course and direction their strong words debated had nothing to do with Tideport as a first port of call.
“Dharkaron avenge!” the brig’s captain whispered in bleak fury. These devils can’t just spin us around and start gutting trade galleys for spoils!”
The iron-haired flag captain turned a face with sad eyes, his shrug strained by the pull of his bonds. “You think our last brig can fight past surprise and prevail?” His mouth flexed in resignation as he looked at his boots, worn at the toes from his distinguished record of crown service. “No. You’ll hear, if you listen. They’ve planned the last move. Our sister vessel will be attacked after sundown. She’ll surrender or burn, her fate to rely on the fight put up by her seamen.”
The beaten man’s tone shocked for its flat certainty.
“Why did you give in?” asked the captain, painfully aware that he addressed a colleague he had once respected as his senior commander. “When you suffered attack, you sent us no signal. What made you betray the Alliance?”
“They suborned the Koriani First Senior, Ath knows how. She called me below, and I walked straight into an ambush. Is it so hard?” The fleet captain coughed, eyes averted, while he shifted his shoulders to accommodate the splash of the wavecrests retreating beneath the stern counter. Concerning the proud ship he had relinquished to the marauding use of the enemy, he had disgracefully little to relate. “That fiend of a West Shandian gave me a choice. Leave this vessel intact to Lord Maenol’s barbarians and endure a five-day run into Caithwood, or else stay in chains and be bound over as hostage to the Master of Shadow. Better, I think, to survive as a traitor, than to risk death and Sithaer knows what sort of evil at the hand of that servant of Darkness.”
But the brig captain dared not say what he thought, that after the royal edict condemning clan prisoners to lifelong misery as galley slaves, he very much doubted Lord Maenol’s scouts would let any townsman walk free.
Much later, the conference in the chart room broke up. The brig drove east on her bearing, and the Alliance prisoners settled under tight guard, when a man tapped quietly at the door to the stern cabin. He awaited no answer, but slipped into the stillness within.
The one who kept vigil by the berth where Caolle lay arose, gave a nod, and departed. The newcomer settled down in his place, and without asking, volunteered all the news.
“Everything’s been decided as you wished, and no argument. The brig’s to be rechristened just Lance. She’ll sail as Arithon first planned at her launching, and take on a crew of Earl Maenol’s clansmen. We can’t speak for them, here. They’ll have to determine which course to take, whether to pick up the Shadow Master’s orders at Innish, or to sail west to Corith and bid against Lysaer for any of ours who may still be alive.”
Caolle lay with his eyes closed, his breaths fast and shallow and his skin like limp parchment with suffering. “The plan’s sound enough,” he whispered at long length. If the men chose the fight in the Isles, they would have the brig and the Koriani First Senior as bargaining chips, as well as a sea captain and the Etarran company to play for an exchange of hostages. “The First Senior’s jewel is well away?”
The man he could not see paused a moment to smile. “Aye, so. She let fly with unlovely language when she heard. If the brig’s crew wins through, they’ll do as you asked, and send her spelled quartz on to Prince Arithon with your compliments.”
For certain, Caolle knew, he himself would not live to see through the events he had used his last wits to enact. Still as he lay, he could feel the warm life seep from his limbs. This, his last campaign, was fought against an enemy no steel could conquer. Spellcraft had no remedy that his straightforward war strategy understood. In slow and insidious progression, his extremities were invaded by a crawling, unnatural numbness he could only presume was the backlash set loose when he had shattered the healer’s quartz crystal. No recourse remained as the Koriani seals which kept his body alive undid themselves through attrition.
In time, he asked if it were nightfall, the cabin seemed so cold and dark. The roll of high seas dissolved into the spiraling spin of blank vertigo. He could not feel his blankets. The breath in his lungs felt insubstantial and light, not like true air, but some vaporous drug which wafted his mind into dizziness.
“It’s afternoon,” the man said, never far from his side. His accent had the syrupy vowels of the southcoast, and his hands, a shipwright’s thick callus. “The curtains aren’t drawn. You can’t see the sunlight through the stern window?”
A pause came, through which the clansman said nothing, and upon which cold truth paid attendance like a vulture.
Then, in a tact striking for its compassionate acceptance, warm fingers closed over Caolle’s shoulder. That firmness he could feel distinctly, and the craftsman’s straightforward kindness as he spoke. “Never mind. Day or night, should it matter? Say whatever you want to Prince Arithon and your kin. One of us will see your thoughts reach him.”
Across a span of gluey distance, Caolle regrouped scattered wits. He had no words, then or now, to express what he felt in his heart. Gruff to the bone, no dabbler in niceties, he could not shed his flint-edged habit of honesty. Nor could he let go of life in false peace. He gave in, content to let his ornery nature have his last breath. For his final, most lacerating care and his need to release a friend’s burdened conscience, he assembled his thoughts as sparely as arrows to be shot in hard arcs toward the future.
“Let my people and my prince hear that I died in the assault to toss out the Koriani witches. No less than plain truth.” Caolle denied clutching fingers of pain just enough to wrench out a gritty, disparaging grin. “Tell the Teir’s’Ffalenn, too…every word I said to Dakar at Riverton is still binding. But add one thing more…I’ve survived many worse than the pinprick he gave me. His Grace has a puny sword arm, and may Dharkaron Avenger damn him for a weakling if he doesn’t choose another liegeman to stand at his shoulder in my place.”
Turning Points
Spring 5653
In the Isles of Min Pierens, where Corith’s ruined fortress notches a sunset sky, Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid reviews disposition of his troops, his war galleys, and the captured brig, Cariadwin, awaiting with keen anticipation for the hour when Arithon s’Ffalenn will be led by the Koriani witches to sail into his preset ambush…
In the mountain wilds of Taerlin, Maenol s’Gannley and his dwindled band of scouts meet the swords of Alliance forces, and while clan blood flows yet again to allow the threatened families to flee behind them, the caithdein whistles the retreat, too aware that no more time can be bought for his people; either King Eldir will grant his petition for sanctuary, or all will be lost on the wooded shores of Mainmere…
Stopped to water horses on the Middlecross road, the Hanshire captain, Sulfin Evend, straightens up from discussion with a dairymaid, and his sudden flush reveals his elation as he calls his armed troop to attention: “We’re onto him, now. The Shadow Master and his fat henchman passed yesterday, apparently driving an oxcart. There’s a company of sunwheel soldiers with Lysaer’s Crown Examiner ahead of us. If we move fast without springing the alarm, we could catch our quarry by nightfall…”
XI. Fire and Sword
Spring 5653
Rumpled, hungry, all but giddy with fatigue, the Mad Prophet reined his rackety oxcart alongside the wayside tavern’s stone wall. After a seven night of sleeping in thorn brakes, he smelled little better than his draft animals. The beasts stood with lowered heads, tails switching to dislodge the black, biting flies which descended upon the Korias flats from the moment the sun thawed the soil.
“Ath, are you certain you’re up to this?” He filched a glance sidewards, not trusting appearances as the Masterbard stepped down, his lyranthe slung from a strap at his shoulder, and the silence like poured lead between them.
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The lacerating despondency settled since Riverton this morning seemed tightly leashed. Arithon had washed and shaved at a streamside. His torn shirtsleeves were mended in meticulous stitches; the tailored cuffs cleaned, old bloodstains bleached away by the lye soap begged from a dairymaid. His dark leathers had been brushed until the singed patches were scarcely noticeable. Gaunt from eight cold, wet days of foraged meals, the Master of Shadow looked more the part of a courier or light swordsman than a bard on itinerant sojourn; until he turned his head.
Then the light touched his face and revealed what he was: a self-haunted fugitive with exhaustion etched down to each fitted angle of bone.
“You’re unwise to try music in public so soon,” Dakar berated, concerned for the exposure an honest performance must demand.
“We have to eat. We haven’t got a coin between the two of us, and I’m up to this because it’s safer than risking my fingers trying to skin coneys with a main gauche.” The gathered, black brows let go of their frown and tipped up in acidic inquiry. “Unless you prefer snaring songbirds? I thought not.”
“Sithaer’s dark furies,” Dakar swore. “Why do I stay with you?”
“For maudlin entertainment, no doubt.” But against every precedent, Arithon s’Ffalenn was first to turn aside.
One charged moment led into another, an abrasive progression unbroken since the hour Caolle had fallen. Beyond the wall, a woman soothed a crying child, and a stableboy’s rush broom scraped rhythmically through the lazy spring warmth.
Standoff, while the Mad Prophet held his mutinous seat on the buckboard. Then the Shadow Master’s lips curled in sarcasm like a razor cut, at odds with his careful speech. “We haven’t seen a patrol in two days. Stop looking over your shoulder and fretting, or I’ll have to mix goose grease and wintergreen to treat you for cricks in the neck.”
Dakar felt too heartsick to return the slight. “You aren’t up to this,” he insisted.
Arithon hitched up his lyranthe with hands that betrayed all his stress in fine tremors. “All right, I’m not up to this. That’s why we agreed. You’re staying to mind the wagon.” His departing stride held that tigerish poise which warned when his temper was rankled.
Dakar watched the sunlight fall like white ice over his trim shoulders and back, the sleek ends of black hair feathered into the drawstring ruffles of his collar. In the nerve-racking boldness which trademarked his style, Arithon refused a disguise. People, he insisted, were least observant of things left out in plain sight. He passed the inn’s gate, and the broom of the stablehand stilled to his clear call of inquiry.
Abandoned in the company of cud-chewing oxen, Dakar crossed his arms to muffle his yowling stomach. Unease scraped his nerves, though the road stretched empty north and south. The ruts carved up by recent thaw lay hemmed in puddles, tinted lapis and moonstone under a sky sliced by diving black swifts. Brisk trade moved by sea on the southcoast of Tysan until spring dried the mud and the grass offered fodder for caravans. Midmorning was too late for the farm-girls bearing spring eggs to the Middlecross markets, and too early for the afternoon relays of post couriers to clatter in asking for remounts.
An early breeze riffled the blossoming apple trees. The droning industry of bees cut the air, and the thin bleats of lambs, grazing at large with their dams on the flats.
Dakar sulked. His natural penchant for long naps in bright sunlight seemed permanently displaced. He had small taste for idle lurking in a rattletrap cart that made him a creeping target for sunwheel guardsmen and headhunters’ arrows.
Nor did he like stringy game eaten cold in the brush, a practice now likely to continue. From inside the wall, Arithon’s mild speech raised a howl of vehement distress.
“Another bard? Here? Spare us all, send him packing!” A heavy door slammed. Then a hail of agitated footsteps slapped across the cobbled yard, and a voice of indignant propriety cut off Arithon’s next question. “I’m sorry. You mustn’t stay, times aren’t safe. An herb witch got herself stoned last week. She only sold a girl a love simple, but that was enough to raise trouble. Tysan’s Crown Examiner came with a half company of sunwheel soldiers who could ride back any moment and clap you in irons for singing the wrong sort of ballad.”
“Fiends eat my liver and lights!” The Mad Prophet snapped up straight, shot off the buckboard, and raced to the heads of the oxen. “Back! Hup!” He grabbed at their headstalls, snatched green-slobbered bits, and gave an almighty jerk. “You splay-footed whoresons, move now! Or by Ath, I’ll singe your hairy rumps to blisters! We’ll have roast tongue for supper. While I think of it, we’ll hack the rest piecemeal and string out your entrails for fly bait.”
The oxen rolled reproachful brown eyes. They shook their capped horns, bawled through whiskered nostrils, and begrudged him a lumbering half step. The shaft groaned, jackknifed, and the wain squealed to a chorus of gapped boards and stressed pegs. While the Mad Prophet yowled epithets, all four misfitted wheels rocked askew on warped axles and jammed.
Dakar clenched his teeth in forbearance. “For mercy,” he pleaded into four tureen ears. “For Daelion’s sake, save your miserable hides!” The fact he could hear no oncoming hoofbeats offered him small reassurance; a dozen crown mercenaries could be taking their ease unseen in the innkeeper’s taproom. Still hauling rein leather, he sized up the merits of hazing the beasts with his drover’s cape.
Then another cool hand slipped over his hot ones. Arithon’s voice said, “Desist. We’re not followed.”
“I should believe you?” Dakar cranked his head around like a turtle who suffered a pinched tail. A bay, muscled shoulder filled his whole view.
The Master of Shadow pried the spellbinder’s fingers off the lines and replaced them with a supple length of bridle rein. “Leave the cart. We’re going astride.”
“What?” Dakar gawped at the post horse attached to his fist. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”
A fine-boned, race-bred mare snorted behind the bay, ears rammed flat, as a barefoot horseboy hauled in her girth with indecorous haste. The horse nipped in protest, caught short by an elbow as Arithon looped his lyranthe to her saddlebow. Dakar’s urgent questions were ignored. Back turned, the Shadow Master scrounged underneath the cart’s filthy cargo of sacking, then straightened, buckling on his baldric with its sheathed burden of sword and dagger.
From the innyard, the fussy infant wailed on through commotion, while some unseen servant shouted to a scullion, “Hurry up and fetch that satchel from the loft!”
“Damn you! What’s afoot?” Dakar shoved between stamping horseflesh, his cloak wadded up in the crook of his elbow, and his feet in grave threat of maceration. “No innkeeper in his right mind trades prize post mounts for two bone-skinny oxen and a wain overdue to be hacked up for kindling.”
Arithon flipped the mare’s reins over her high neck and mounted. “There’s a free singer in trouble.” His fingers, flying, adjusted the hang of a stirrup. “Time’s short. You’ll hear as we ride.”
Dakar stuck his toes in to argue, while the horseboy disappeared. A potbellied graybeard scurried from the yard, burly arms clutched round a saddlebag. Slung across his shoulder was a fleece-wrapped bundle that looked to contain a second lyranthe.
“Here.” The man wheezed to a stop and unloaded his burden into Dakar’s already taxed charge. “The singer naturally couldn’t take his belongings. Left here in irons, poor wretch.” A coin sack teetered onto the top of the load, forcing Dakar to bobble sidewards to avert a spill.
“There’s his silver, as well,” the innkeeper explained. “Mine’s an honest house. Won’t take advantage of a man caught aback by misfortune.”
“What misfortune?” Dakar ejected through the horse-reeking leather of the saddlebags.
“You didn’t hear?” The landlord scrubbed moist hands on his apron. “Sunwheel soldiers and a weasel-faced examiner arrested the minstrel I had quartered here. Condemned him to burn. They said that the singing of legends threate
ns innocents. I tell you, what’s happened to good sense? Unkempt louts drew cold steel in my taproom and bedamned to any grace of hospitality. Never mind it’s my inn will suffer the blame and the satires.”
“This has nothing to do with us,” Dakar insisted. He juggled his load, and ineffectively tried to return the unwieldy collection. The lyranthe slipped and banged his knee with a ringing, hollow clunk, and a harness buckle snagged in his mustache. “Will you listen?” he cried in breaking, fresh temper. “My companion and I are not interested. ”
But the landlord only shouted to roust up some laggard from the tavern. “Wenj! Jump on it! They need those provisions now, not next week!”
The prospect of victuals deflated Dakar’s protests. He stood, breathing hard, while the innkeeper narrowed incensed, dark eyes, saying, “Dharkaron’s Spear strike the unsavory brutes! My reputation’s in ruins. Better I ask for the Fate Wheel’s turning than see a free singer take harm during his stay in my tavern. There’s curse and misfortune in the breach of a bard’s right to shelter.”
“You’ll have no such bad luck,” Arithon assured, then beckoned for haste as the horseboy trotted out with a third mount, this one a fancy iron gray gelding with snowflake dapples, and a bridle which trilled, sewn with bells and flamboyant red tassels.
“The singer’s own palfrey,” the landlord explained through Dakar’s flabbergasted glare of mutiny. “Bless you both! If you can spare that poor wretch from the fire, the horses are yours with my compliments. That’s the best I can do. Grain-fed mounts aren’t easy to come by, not since the season’s been harsh. But you’ll need the advantage to outrun the sunwheel guardsmen.”
“Guardsmen?” The sidling horse trod on Dakar’s toe. Before he fell over in an avalanche of goods, the horseboy stepped in, hooked the lyranthe and packed saddlebags from his wobbling grasp, and secured them onto the palfrey.