“I am not a student of history,” said Tarantio, “but I know how to fight. The Duke has commissioned new weapons, powerful crossbows that can put a bolt through six inches of teak. We will kill a lot of Daroth.”
“Sadly, that is probably true. There will be a lot more killing,” said Duvodas, “but I shall not wait to see it. Shira and I will be leaving as soon as the snow melts. I will take her to the islands, far away from the war.”
“One day the Daroth might reach them,” said Tarantio. “What will you do then?”
“I shall die,” replied Duvo. “I am not a killer. I am a Singer.”
“Like the Oltor? A race that will not fight does not deserve to live. It is against nature.”
Duvodas rose. “I was taught that evil always carries the seeds of its own downfall. One can only hope that it is true. When your friend awakes, feed him no meat and give him no wine. Give him bread, hot oats or dried fruit. And plenty of water.”
“Meat makes a man strong,” observed Tarantio.
“It will make him vomit,” said Duvodas.
“What is it that you are not telling me?” Tarantio asked.
“If I knew for certain, I would tell you. I will call again when he is awake.”
“Again!” shouted Karis, and began to count slowly. The fifty crossbow-men placed the heads of their black bows on the icy ground and began to turn the iron handles on both sides of the stock. By the time Karis had reached the count of twelve, they had notched the thick rope. Sliding bolts into place, they hefted the heavy weapons, rested them on the long support tripod and took up their positions. The last man was ready as Karis reached fifteen. “Shoot!” she called.
Fifty black bolts flashed through the air to hammer home into targets of solid oak set thirty paces from the bowmen. Karis loped across the target field. The bolts had all struck home, but not deeply.
Vint strolled across to where she stood. “The accuracy is fine,” he said.
“The penetration is not,” she told him. “At twenty paces the bolts smash through the wood. At thirty they barely scratch it.”
“Then we wait until the Daroth are within twenty paces.”
“Gods, man! Is your imagination dead? Yes, we will cut them down. Then, as the reloading takes fifteen seconds, they will be upon us before a second volley can be loosed. The Duke believes we can have five hundred crossbow-men ready by spring. We will need to kill more than five hundred Daroth.”
Vint shook his head. “That presupposes we will be facing them on open ground. Surely the majority of our crossbow-men will be shooting from the walls?”
“The bows are too heavy for accurate use upon the battlements,” said Karis wearily. “And shooting downwards lessens the target area. Two-thirds of the bolts would miss. We need something more. There must be another weakness we can exploit.”
Strolling back to the waiting bowmen, she signalled them to load again and to shoot without the tripod support. Half the bolts missed the target. She kept them hard at work for another hour, then dismissed them.
Back in the barracks building she studied the reports of the massacres at Morgallis and Prentuis. Sirano had destroyed his own palace, killing scores of Daroth in the process. The Duke of The Marches had been less successful. Reliable reports claimed that no more than fifty Daroth were killed in the battle. Several thousand trained men had been slain, and scores of thousands of civilians.
A servant brought her a meal of black bread and soft cheese. She ate swiftly then donned a sheepskin jerkin and made her way to the stables. Saddling Warain, she rode the grey out through the northern gates and across the open ground before the walls. Pausing a hundred paces from the walls, she looked back, picturing the line of crossbow-men. Heeling Warain into a run, she began to count once more. Three times she made the run at the wall, watched by perplexed soldiers on the ramparts. Then she turned away from the city and rode into the hills.
It was past dusk when she returned. Leading Warain to his stall, she rubbed him down with fresh straw, filled his feedbox with grain and covered his grey back with a thick woollen blanket.
Returning to her rooms, she found Vint waiting for her. “Did you clear your head, Karis?” he asked, offering her a goblet of mulled wine. She drained it in a single swallow.
There was a log fire blazing in the hearth. Karis moved to it and removed her wet, cold clothing. Vint crossed the room and began to massage her shoulders and neck. “You are very cold,” he said, his voice husky.
“Then warm me,” she told him.
Later, as they lay naked beneath satin sheets and heavy blankets, Karis waited until Vint’s breathing deepened, then slid silently from the bed and returned to the fire. It had died down and she placed two fresh logs upon it.
In order to use the crossbows to maximum effect, the Daroth charge would have to be slowed. Three volleys would cause carnage in their ranks, but that would involve holding up the Daroth for almost a minute within a twenty-pace range. Karis drank two goblets of wine, and still felt no drowsiness. She thought of waking Vint for another session of love-making, but decided against it. He was a caring and thoughtful lover, taking his time and making the moments last. At this moment Karis did not need such drawn-out intensity. Instead, she donned fresh leggings and a white woollen shirt, buckskin boots and her hooded jerkin, and walked from the palace into the night.
The streets were deserted and a bitter wind was blowing down from the north. Karis pulled her hood over her long dark hair, and turned down a side alley towards the Barracks tavern. Golden lantern light glowed from the windows and a rush of welcome heat enveloped her as she pushed open the door. There were two log fires burning, one at each end of the long room within, and the tavern was packed with soldiers. Karis scanned the room, spotting the red-bearded giant Forin sitting in a corner with a young whore perched upon his knee.
Karis eased her way through the crowd and removed her jerkin, draping it over the back of the chair opposite the giant. “We need to talk,” she said.
“Will it take long?” he asked. “I have plans for the evening.” He grinned up at the young whore, who forced a laugh and stared at Karis with open hostility.
“I want you to tell me everything you can remember of your father’s stories concerning the Daroth. Everything!”
“Can this not wait until the morning?”
“No, it cannot,” said Karis. The young whore, sensing her payment receding, leaned forward, her face showing her anger. But before the girl could speak Karis drew her dagger and slammed it point first into the table. “One wrong word from you and I shall cut your tongue out,” she said, her voice icy. The whore’s painted mouth dropped open, fear replacing her anger. “Now go away and find another client,” said Karis. “There are plenty to choose from.”
The girl slid from Forin’s lap and moved away into the crowd. Forin drained his tankard. “You have lost me a night’s pleasure,” he said.
“And saved you a dose of the pox, in all probability.”
Forin was about to reply when she saw him glance over her shoulder, his green eyes narrowing. Instantly alert to danger, Karis pushed back her chair and spun round. The young whore was approaching with two men. “That’s her! Pulled a knife on me, she did!”
“That was a mistake, bitch,” said the first of the two, a broad-shouldered young man with pockmarked features.
“Not as bad as the mistake you are about to make,” Karis told him, noting that the second man held a short iron club.
“Is that right?” he countered, lunging forward, his fist flashing towards Karis’s face. She side-stepped suddenly and, thrown off balance, the man stumbled forward—to be met with a head butt that smashed his nose to pulp. He dropped like a stone. The second man grabbed Karis by the arm, hauling her towards him, but she spun and rammed her elbow into his chin. He staggered to his right, dropping the club. Karis took a step back, then leapt high, her booted foot cannoning against his face to catapult him back into the crowd. He fe
ll heavily and did not rise.
Forin moved alongside Karis. “Perhaps we should continue our conversation somewhere private?” he offered.
“Why not?” she told him. Forin took a candle from the table and led her through to the rear of the tavern and up a flight of rickety steps. There was a narrow corridor leading to three doors. Forin opened the first and stepped aside for Karis to enter. The room was small, gloomy and cold. There were no chairs, only a roughly crafted double bed with a thin mattress. Using the flickering candle, Forin lit a lantern which hung on a hook above the bed, then moved to the small hearth where a fire had been laid; this he also lit. “It will be warm soon enough,” he said.
She squatted down beside him, watching the firelight reflected in his green eyes. He was not a handsome man, she thought, but he had a quality that transcended good looks. Is it his strength, his size? she wondered. In the firelight he looked somehow larger, more impressive. Primal, perhaps? “What are you thinking?” he asked her.
“I was wondering what you looked like naked,” she said.
“Wonder for a little longer,” he told her, with a broad smile. “The room’s not warm enough yet.”
“Then tell me of the Daroth, for I need to find a weakness.”
Forin sat back. “There are none that I recall. You already know they do not like the cold, nor high places where the air is thin. They will not cross water if they can avoid it. But these things will not help us in Corduin. We are in low-lying land, the weather is clement in the spring and there is no moat.”
“Even so, I believe there is something else.”
“Wishful thinking, perhaps?”
“I do not believe so. It is something I have seen, and yet not recognized. Something that is perhaps too obvious.”
“I am afraid you have lost me there.”
“Tell me a simple story of how they live.”
“You saw the city. They cluster together in domed dwellings. They cannot sit as we do, for their spines are thicker and less supple. They procreate without touching, the female laying an egg which the male fertilizes. There is no obvious difference between male and female. Both are equally strong, and—as we have observed—equally ugly. There are no children as such; the young emerge from their pods and grow within days to full-size adults, sharing the memories of whichever parent has died—if that is the term—beside the pod. They eat flesh, and require great amounts of salt.” He paused. “Is this helping you?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. The heat in the small room was growing, and Forin peeled off his shirt; his upper body bore many scars. As he rose and stripped off his leggings, Karis pushed the thoughts of the Daroth from her mind.
His love-making was exactly what she needed—crude and powerful, animalistic and passionate—and Karis felt her body echoing his need. His arms slid under her shoulders, pulling her hard against him; his body smelt of wood-smoke and sweat. It was not unpleasant, as she had feared. As her body tensed and moved in rhythm with the man upon her, her mind relaxed, as if she was floating free of the carnal. In this curiously detached state her body drew strength from the massive figure above her, while the problems that haunted her faded from her consciousness. She was free. Nothing else existed. The world had shrunk to a grimy, firelit room above a noisy tavern. There were no problems to solve, no logistics to calculate, no plans to study. And she did not even need to consider the pleasure of the man, for he, she knew, was oblivious to her as an individual. It was the only true freedom Karis ever knew.
Her legs locked about his hips, her nails raking his back, Karis found herself rising towards orgasm, which, when it came, sent her body into an almost painful series of spasms. Her head sank back onto the pillow and she closed her eyes, enjoying the small aftershocks that rippled through her system. Forin rolled from her and lay back with a sigh. For a long moment neither of them spoke, then Forin rose from the bed and moved to the fire. Karis watched him dress. “I’ll get us both a drink,” he said, and left the room.
After he had gone Karis also dressed. The room was warm now, the fire blazing. She moved to the small window and tried to open it, but the hinges were rusted and it would not budge.
Not waiting for him to return, Karis made her way down the stairs and out into the night.
Vint was still asleep when she returned, but she had no wish to climb in beside him.
Stretching out on a couch, she dreamt of a green-eyed giant with a forked red beard.
Tarantio rose with the dawn and moved through the silent house, as always enjoying the solitude, these brief moments without Dace. The kitchen was bitterly cold, the remains of yesterday’s milk frozen in the jug. With a saw-edged knife he cut two thick slices of bread from a loaf, and carried them through to the living room. He had banked up the fire the night before, and the coals were still glowing. Tarantio toasted the bread and covered it with thick, creamy butter.
I ought to be making plans, he thought. Corduin will not resist the Daroth. But where to go? The islands? What would I do there? He ate the toast and, still hungry, went back to the kitchen to cut more bread. The loaf was gone.
Puzzled, Tarantio walked to the rear of the house, opening the door to Brune’s bedroom. The bed was empty, and there was no sign of the young man. Retracing his steps he returned to the kitchen. The back door was still locked from the inside, the windows shuttered. Pulling back the bolts Tarantio opened the door. A blast of icy air struck him as he stepped out into the garden.
Brune was sitting, naked, on the wooden bench. All around him birds were fluttering, landing on his arms, and head and hands, pecking at the bread he offered them. A wide circle of grass was all around the bench, without a flake of snow upon it, though the rest of the garden still lay beneath a thick white blanket. Tarantio pulled on his boots and walked out across the garden. The birds ignored him, continuing to fly around Brune. As Tarantio sat down he felt suddenly warm, as if Brune was radiating heat in defiance of the elements.
The golden-skinned young man continued to feed the birds until all the bread was gone. Most of them flew away but several remained, sitting on his shoulders or on the back of the bench. They were, as was Tarantio, enjoying the warmth.
Reaching out, Tarantio laid his hand on Brune’s shoulder. “You should come in,” he said softly.
“I heard them call to me,” said Brune, his voice melodic and low.
“Who called you?”
“The birds. Up to two-thirds of their body weight can be lost on a cold night. They die in their thousands in the winter.”
Suddenly Brune shivered and the cold swept in, bitter and deadly. He cried out, and the birds around him panicked and flew away. Tarantio helped him back into the house, taking him to the fire. “What is happening to me?” came the true voice of Brune. “Why was I in the garden?”
“You were feeding the birds,” Tarantio told him.
“I am really frightened. I can’t think. It’s like there’s someone else in me.” He was shivering, and Tarantio fetched a blanket which he wrapped around Brune’s shoulders. “I feel like I’m dying,” said Brune.
“You are not dying. It’s the magic that cured your eye. It’s spreading somehow.”
“I don’t want this anymore, Tarantio. I want to be what I was. Can’t we get the magic taken out?”
“I don’t know. Tell me what you remember about feeding the birds.”
“I don’t remember nothing. I was asleep, and I had this dream. Can’t remember much now. But I was in a forest, and there were lots of people—no, not people. They were all golden-skinned; they were . . . dying. Oh yes . . . there was Daroth there. Killing them. It was horrible. And then . . . there was nothing until I was sitting in the garden.”
“How are you feeling now? Is there any pain?” asked Tarantio.
“No. No pain. But . . .” Brune’s voice trailed away.
“What? Tell me!”
“I’m not alone in here. I’m not alone.”
“Of course
you are not alone. I am here,” said Tarantio soothingly.
“No, you don’t understand. I’m not alone in my head.” Brune began to weep and Tarantio’s anger flared, remembering the surprised look on the face of the magicker as he had entered the room.
The sudden anger woke Dace. “What is happening?” he asked.
Tarantio told him. “Someone else in his head? Sounds familiar,” said Dace. “I knew Brune would be an entertaining companion. Perhaps what you and I have, brother, is contagious.”
“It is not funny,” said Tarantio sternly. “Brune is frightened. He thinks he is dying.”
“Everybody dies sometime,” said Dace.
“I think the Singer knows more than he is saying,” said Tarantio. “He is coming back today. I’ll ask him.”
“Let me ask him,” Dace urged.
“Perhaps that will be necessary,” Tarantio agreed. Taking Brune by the arm, he led him back to the bedroom. “Get some rest, my friend. You will feel better for it, I promise you.” Brune climbed back into the bed, drawing the blanket over him and resting his head on the pillow.
“Look at his ear,” said Dace. Tarantio had seen it at the same time: the lobe was no longer smooth, but ridged like a seashell.
“If I ever find that magicker I’ll cut his heart out,” hissed Dace.
The councillor Pooris stood shivering by the southern gate, counting the wagons as the oxen slowly hauled them into the city. The War of the Pearl had been a ruinous venture, disrupting trade, destroying farms and taking young men from the fields and turning them into mercenaries.
Even without the threat of the Daroth, Corduin was slowly starving to death. Corn was five times last year’s price, and the city treasury was emptying fast. A census ordered by the Duke showed that almost 70,000 people were now resident in Corduin. Many were now starving, and crimes against individuals and property were soaring.
As the last of the twenty-two wagons rumbled through the gate, Pooris ran alongside it and clambered up to sit alongside the driver. “I expected forty wagons,” said Pooris. “That is what was promised.”