TWOLAS - 02 - The Ships of Merior

  A scream, a shout, a fat splash, followed by a tangle of shrill curses; the boat rocked off, the occupants who remained less merry and reeking of chicken stock. The drunk one thrown overboard yelled and thrashed, halfgagged by the weeds of his finery. The cook gazed down at the fracas, intrigued. 'Should we wager how long he tries to swim before he thinks to jettison that platter of a hat?'

  Wound taut as wire in a half-crouch, Jieret said nothing as the prow of a lighter eclipsed the swimmer.

  'Ah, pox! We'll change terms,' the cook coaxed, reasonable in the face of setback as the passing boatman offered the victim a grip on his thwart. 'Let's say five silvers on whether yon lighter makes the quay without fouling an anchor chain and capsizing.'

  But again Jieret Red-beard did not answer. Over the receding clamour of scalded revellers, amid the warp through weft racket of voices that rebounded from the stews at the harbourside; his forest trained senses had picked out one whose singular timbre he recognized.

  Neither was the cook as engrossed in amusement as he seemed. 'Look smart. Our captain's back.'

  A longboat sliced across the weave of the lightermen's lamps, rowed to the reach of timed oars. Her crew reversed stroke and backwatered, and the craft glided into the shadow beneath the Black Drake's hull. The cook stowed his soup pot and tossed out a line. Seconds later, seamen scrambled up the battens, cursing skinned knuckles and bruises in scarcely suppressed tones of triumph.

  'Dear lady, a note sent ashore would have found me,' retorted a firm voice, but animated now, its inflection reschooled to sound townbred, and vastly more carefree than Jieret's past memories from his father's lodge in Strakewood Forest.

  Dhirken cracked into ripe laughter. 'Twere fair reckoning, prince, after the Kittiwake. I gave my men full leave to roust you by any means they saw fit.'

  'Yes, well,' said Arithon s'Ffaienn from a poised step on the side battens. Unaware of any listener above him, he added in laughing exuberance, 'My Innish patrons didn't fancy the Black Drake's crew. I kept my bargain despite them and left not a second before midnight, but more than one tavern in the upper city will never again be the same for it.' He reached the rail, arranged neat, ringless hands to vault over, and light from the halfshuttered lantern on deck washed black hair, then the spare, foxy angles of a face seven years had changed not at all.

  Jieret pressed through the crowding sail-hands, knelt, and bent his head to the man he had last seen over the grave cairn of his slaughtered parents. 'My Liege of Rathain.'

  Time stopped.

  Arithon's fingers locked on grained wood. The breath spun out of him as if impelled by a suffocating weight. The young man on the ship's deck before him might have been a ghost restored to flesh, for the grief that marked his blanched features. For one numbed second, dread for returned obligations made Arithon recoil in pain.

  Then his unbearable apprehension by itself forced the moment to snap.

  The Shadow Master hurled himself over the rail in a welcome that burst all restraints. 'Jieret!' He caught the young man by the wrists and raised him, stunned all over again as the earl last seen as a twelve-year-old boy arose to full height and dwarfed him. Arithon fell back a step, his joy overwhelmed by amazement. 'By Ath, man! Caolle must be proud. You've grown into the very image of your father.'

  Jieret blinked through a suspect brightness, flushed with pleasure and odd shock, that the neatly-made prince before him still fitted the mould of his memory. 'Your Grace, I'll come of age before winter. I ask your indulgence, that you accept my formal service now. The news that I carry won't wait.' In a doubled-hand grip, he offered the old quillon dagger carried off the bloody field in Strakewood.

  Exposed before Dhirken's curiosity, jostled by the press of Drake's crewmen, Arithon turned the blade over in recognition. Fine fingers still sensitized by the lyranthe string recorded the nicks of hard usage. As if the separate, belling vibrations of the blows the steel had staved off, and the life spilled from each opened wound stung his senses, he said, 'Mine the honour, Earl of the North.'

  In complete disregard that the moment was not private, to the speechless amazement of hard-bitten sailhands who knew nothing of customs kept by old high kings, blooded royalty knelt before his prospective vassal. With a clarity wiped to acid by his singer's trained diction, Arithon swore the traditional oath of sovereign prince to liegeman that sealed a pact of guardianship, and ended with the lines, 'For the gift of feal duty, Earl Jieret s'Valerient, my charge of protection; for your loyalty, my spirit shall answer, unto my last drop of blood, and until my final living breath. Dharkaron witness. Take back this blade as token of my trust, and with your true steel, my royal blessing.'

  Arithon arose, smiling and steady, unlike the past oath-taking to Jieret's father, that had taxed him beyond reach of all peace. Unknown to any present watcher, a bloodpact sworn under the full influence of his mage power had already forged a life tie to the grown boy before him, that bound their two fates more strongly still.

  The Master of Shadow commandeered the chartroom for his meeting, and in words that asked only friendship, requested Dhirken to attend.

  'What about the fat prophet?' the captain asked, cool as granite in the cramped companionway, despite her sharp desire to be away. 'My crew ran across him in a brothel. My mate could be sent to fetch him out.'

  Seated before the stem window, featureless in outline against panes of glass starred by the glide of passing lantems, Arithon gestured his refusal. 'Let Dakar bide. I was to leave the port of Innish in the morning, in any case. Dawn is soon enough to roust him out.'

  Dhirken's steward trimmed the gimballed lamps, then departed without sound and shut the door.

  His ambiguity banished with the shadows, Arithon looked not a whit older than in the hour he last left Strakewood. Haggard, then, beset as any of Deshir's clan survivors, he contained himself now in tight-reined calm that implied an unbreakable composure. Elegant in a bard's clothes trimmed in silver and onyx, his shirt of pale silk tailored close to narrow wrists, he folded hands that were callused only on the fingertips from an artistry confined to fret and string. The boy's knife accepted by the grave cairn in Deshir would have been used to trim lyranthe pegs, if the gift was remembered at all.

  No detail of this masterbard's mien suggested the unconscionable, merciless strategy once spun out of magecraft and shadow to spare the clans from decimation on the weapons of Etarra's garrison.

  Daunted by sudden uncertainty, that perhaps he did not know his prince at all, Earl Jieret assumed the seat opposite. By size and dress set apart, he wore his deerhide jerkin unadorned, laced with ties that would not catch stray sunlight, or betray him by chance-made noise. His flecked hazel eyes devoured the royal presence, while the red hair that matched his dead mother's spilled in wind-caught tangles over shoulders grown broad in new manhood.

  Dhirken slouched against the bulkhead. Discomposed as a cat flicked by raindrops, prepared in her way to be obstructive, she watched in still malice as the earl launched his case to press his prince to reclaim an abandoned sovereignty.

  Tysaer gathers forces to march a war host against you, even as we speak. Despite Caolle's best effort, word of your doings in Jaelot broke through and reached Etarra's mayor.'

  'No one could stop that,' Arithon said. His green eyes stayed wide, almost black in the lamplight, and his concentration harrowed as he said, Jieret, what price did you pay for those few months of silence? How many died?'

  He did not refer to fallen clansmen.

  Under that horrified, knife-point regard, Jieret remained as unflinching in the face of necessity as ever his father had before him. 'My war captain knows. I left before Jaelot's disaster became public, to seek your Grace and bring word. How many died is no issue, then or now. These armies mean death for my clans, and your liegemen. I would know whether to count on your help to see how many of our own we can save.' He paused, the large fists clenched beneath the table top half-braced for an explosion that never came.

&
nbsp; Arithon said in stifled quiet, 'You've come a long way for this audience. You have my attention. Go on.' Jieret swallowed, then forced a game shrug. 'By my father's memory, I should have guessed you wouldn't welcome this. Lady Maenalle sends warning. The force in training at Avenor is highly skilled and designed for swift expansion with mercenaries. Caolle has figured the muster from Rathain's allied cities could be thirty-five thousand strong.'

  Pale as if spun out of glass, Arithon threw off his impulse to give way to fury. 'When the war host closes, Lord Jieret, you have my promise here and now. Your clansmen need stand no ground for my sake. What bloodshed cannot be avoided shall happen far from the soil of Rathain.'

  'You would inflict your grand slaughter on the turf of uninvolved innocents?' Dhirken interrupted, despite herself drawn in. 'Merciful Ath, just to feed itself, a force of that size would strip the countryside like a howling plague of locusts!'

  Arithon scarcely glanced aside at her. 'Can an army march upon the sea? Can a fleet pursue me while blinded with shadow? Lysaer's backing comes from merchant trade. How long will the guilds pay him to waste their profits trying to chase and trap a fugitive who can elude them at will? If I can possibly arrange things, there shall be no pitched battle at all.'

  'You might escape, though not easily,' the captain admitted. 'The oceans can't hide you forever and I won't charter Black Drake to serve under Rathain's royal banner.'

  'There even I draw the line,' Arithon countered, whip crack fast. 'The vessels at risk shall be mine, built in a temporary shipyard at Merior.' A flick of amusement twitched his lips. 'I will need the Drake at the outset, but only to run messages and timber. And I offer an exceptional rate of pay.'

  The grip of Dhirken's fingers on her forearms warned of argument, if not an outright rejection. Arithon plunged ahead before she could speak and asked Jieret to detail all he knew of Etarra's build-up in the north.

  Laid out in detached recitation, the facts were unrelenting. Lysaer's skilled diplomacy had long since knit every city in Rathain into a unified alliance. The upset at Jaelot had renewed cause for fear and spurred old hatreds to a fresh fervour.

  'My liege,' Earl Jieret ended in stripped candour, 'your loyal clans have been hard pressed. To escape the summer forays by headhunters, chieftains as far south as Halwythwood have been forced to seek refuge deep in Daon Ramon Barrens. For fear of the old ruins and Paravian haunting, companies hesitate to track there. But such sanctuary cannot last.'

  A pause, while Jieret hooked his knuckles and waited. Dhirken used the interval to loosen the knots that tied her bracers, then pick out laced wires and draw them off. The uneasy spatter of lantern light traced long, shiny scars that marred the length of both wrists. As minutes marched by and Arithon s'Ffalenn withheld comment, the silence seemed to glaze the very air. The Drake swung at her anchorage, paired to the waltz of night winds, while the distant, happy roar of the festival crowds dinned in the background like a dream.

  Earl Jieret looked up at last. Locked to his sovereign lord's patent, knowing gaze, capitulation jarred through him like crossed steel. 'Yes, there is more, your Grace. At Alestron, Duke Bransian s'Brydionwould beggar his state treasury to have the head of the sorcerer who wrecked his armoury. The description on his writ for arrest fits your person so closely that Lysaer can play on the connection and gain armed support for the asking.'

  'And Alestron, when pressed, can present a force of fifteen thousand on the field,' Arithon sliced back without humour. The beaded silver tips on his cuff ties flashed in strangled movement, then held as if nailed by a spell. 'There's no secret. S'Brydion gold has staked the upkeep of enough mercenaries to repopulate most of East Halla.' Jieret coughed back the grin that arose despite his plucked nerves. 'I should have guessed yon by-play to be yours.' Intuitively bold as his mother before him, he challenged his liege's coiled patience. 'You have your royal reasons for close confidence, no doubt. But the s'Brydion line is clanblood. A canny prince in your predicament should have approached them as possible allies.'

  'I don't want allies!' Arithon bit back. 'This time, I'll have no clan following stand their ground to bleed in my name. I need ships and two years in which to build them.'

  'Your enemy's armies won't stall for that.' Dhirken weighed the razor-edged interplay, intrigued despite her better instincts. 'I've heard the talk in the seaports. Let me tell you, the s'Ffalenn name is anathema.'

  Arithon's head snapped around, his eyebrows arched first in an acid surprise that expanded to venomous delight. 'What did you think? That I did nothing better since Jaelot than play ditties in taverns for small coin? You've delivered the cargo sent by Maenalle of Tysan for my use to deplete this vaunted war host. Let me say how I plan to spend the proceeds.'

  The Master of Shadow began in measured phrases to speak. Long before he finished, Jieret's strained censure had dissolved into rapt attention. He did not ask, after all, what became of the signet ring with Rathain's blazon that he noticed its Teir's'Ffalenn no longer wore. Captain Dhirken seemed unable to tear her gaze from the clever, musician's hands, folded and quiet on her chart table. A coldness invaded the pit of her stomach, that she had ever dared to mishandle this man, or chain him like a miscreant to her taffrail.

  His mind worked level upon level with a subtlety that nipped her skin into gooseflesh. On his travels, Arithon had quartered his kingdom. What he noticed, he remembered, and all things he put to a singular and ruthless analysis. He had studied every turn of Rathain's roads, traversed in Halliron's pony cart. He knew each hollow in which an army could be ambushed, and each hill crest where its scouts would be exposed. He knew his cities; had read them, mayor and council and guildhall, and reduced their strengths and weaknesses to one or two pared phrases. That his touch for subversion and strategy had plotted the ruin of Etarra's forces in Strakewood was confirmed beyond equivocal doubt. Whether, as Lysaer s'Ilessid insisted, his person should be hunted down and killed, Dhirken lacked the moral will to say. But every maudlin and drunken warning the Mad Prophet had tried to deliver through an ill-advised passage to Farsee had been nothing less than honest truth.

  What the Shadow Master had done in his months as bard's apprentice was to arrange an information network of astonishing breadth and depth. The dispatches would collect in taverns and ports, to be picked up by an agent he would specify; and not a one of the contacts held the whole pattern, or knew to whom the letters would be passed.

  'If Captain Dhirken would consider running message packets for me there's no move Lysaer's army can make that I won't hear in advance,' Arithon summed up. 'If they march before time, Jieret, your clans can disrupt their supply lines with very little exposure. I can build my ships and be gone from known shores, and this dangerous, misguided war host will melt away under the weight of its own unwieldy upkeep.'

  Dhirken braced against the table, this once caught unbalanced by the drift of the ship underneath her. 'You bear no grudge toward these townsmen for this uprising raised in your name,' she forced out in gritty admiration. 'Ath forbid, and woe to us all, if that poor fact should ever alter.'

  'I agree.' Arithon stood in fraught impatience. 'Will you undertake this one task? I would pay any price you demand.'

  'I think I don't have much choice,' Dhirken said. 'The sooner you're off the continent, the better, I should say. Or everything afloat will be conscripted at the ports and forced into service for war transport.' She gave him a bargainer's grin. 'I'll have my fee in advance, though. If you fail, or get killed, or mishap fouls your rudder, I want to be rich enough to lay the Drake by until the bad times pass over.'

  'By all means.' Arithon stepped back and unlatched the companionway with a debonair flourish. 'Let's retire to your hold and see what sort of wealth strikes your fancy.'

  For the treasure was fully accounted for, the lading list accurate to the last crate and bale. Circled in musty lantern light, Arithon and Dhirken pressed between the packed cargo: the stacked crates of Falgaire crystal, wrapped and nested i
n straw; the iron-strapped bullion crates stamped with guild seals, and the carpets packed in lavender to discourage moths. Fine silks; exquisite tapestries; bronze lanterns paned with blown glass; the wine tuns and the rare brandies; the glazed pottery; to the last, breathtaking bolts of damascened silks and patterned linens.

  Pleased by her settlement, Dhirken braced her hip on a wine barrel and flicked back the wished end of her braid. 'What'll you do with the rest of this?'

  'Sell it in the markets here at Innish. The proceeds will fund my small fleet.' Arithon trailed his fingers along a bullion chest, his madcap inventiveness struck into sudden sobriety. 'The seals on this chest are Etarran.'

  'You didn't know?' Outside the glow of the lamp, Jieret stooped under the deck beams.

  'Know what?' Arithon spun to face him, his elegant silks marred with grime and a sharpened frown on his face. 'Lady Maenalle's letter said she wished to stake a fortune to undermine Lysaer's armed strength. I wouldn't see her clans suffer undue persecution at the hands of Avenor's war host, but if I wasn't desperate not to play for killing stakes, the donation would have been refused.'

  'Donation?' Earl Jieret elbowed past a bundled tier of carpets. 'Your Grace, when I saw Tysan's caithdein, she insisted she was returning what belonged to Rathain's crown in the first place.' A vindictive smile split his beard. 'Everything in this hold was hauled overland from Etarra by Lysaer s'Ilessid, then torn out of his hands in clan ambush atop the Pass of Orlan.'

  'Oh, that's rich!' Dhirken folded into helpless laughter over the rim of her barrel. 'Dharkaron drag you to the devil, prince! You'll do all you say and take to blue water, underwritten by your foe's stolen fortune!' In admiration tinged with regret, she regarded the man etched against the hold's murky darkness. 'A pity for you. The time you need to complete your grand plan is one year too much to expect.'