The Cerulean Queen

by Sarah Kozloff

  Cerúlia questioned the gull and learned that the Weir cavalry companies had positioned themselves to waylay the enemy soldiers on the dunes and then to lure them into an ambush.

  “Halt!” cried Shield Pontole’s voice from the crest of SeaWidow Cliff, where he and Shield Gatana stood guard.

  “It’s me! It’s Tilim!”

  Tilim was allowed to proceed; he gave the queen Thalen’s message about the third group of cavalry.

  Ciellō had been remarkably silent, even for him, as the battle raged below them. Now he spoke. “Damselle, you must use that last cavalry company as escort for your escape.”

  “What?” The queen wheeled on him.

  “You need to flee the city. You have your horse.” He pointed at Smoke. “Staying is foolishness. The enemy, she does not have horses. You on the fast horse—a company of cavalry as shields—you could get to safety.”

  “And leave my city and people to be sacked? And leave everyone I love to be killed or captured?”

  Ciellō shrugged. “Lots of people are dying today.”

  A horrible thought passed through Cerúlia’s mind: Is Ciellō hoping that Thalen will die?

  She stared at him aghast. As if reading her suspicion, a shadow passed over his face and he shifted his gaze to the side.

  A pelican, its large wings making a breeze that scattered papers, interrupted their confrontation by flying right on top of the map table. It had something attached to its leg. Darzner detached it and handed the note to the queen.

  Shrimpella! Sorry we missed the festival! Could pelicans drop grenadoes? We captured crates full.

  Heart soaring, Cerúlia knew that no Oro could mimic her uncle’s tone. She pondered the issue he raised: could pelicans carry and release those explosive missiles?

  Pelican, can you carry a heavy thing in your beak?

  One carries big mackerel.

  But these balls are not good to eat. What I mean is: could you carry it, not swallow it, drop it where I tell you, and fly away quickly?

  The pelican turned its head this way and that, looking at her with his small black eyes. She sensed his reluctance and she knew that delivering grenadoes would be dangerous for the birds.

  But every moment, people on the quay below her perished.

  Pelicans within range of my thought, I Command you to come to this cliff top for instructions.

  While she waited for the birds to gather, she looked down on the struggle on the quay.

  “Oh!” she cried. “No! Thalen! What are you doing!”

  Following her gaze, Ciellō also stared intently at the scene below. Then, without a word, he sprinted from her side, mounted Smoke in a single vault, and headed down the path at a gallop.

  The queen closed her eyes and desperately cast about, trying to think of what additional help her Talent could provide.

  * * *

  Hoping that the horses would just intimidate men into dodging, Thalen refused to engage with any of the skirmishes between himself and the red plumed helmets; he, Naven, and the brave squad of pikemen just weaved, pushed, and butted a path toward their objective. They succeeded in getting close enough to the Oro command post to discern that a score of elite men-at-arms formed a protective knot around a cluster of high-ranking officers, flagmen, and a trumpeter standing on the land end of a wharf.

  Now Thalen and his followers had no choice but to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Standing up in the stirrups of his horse, he used his rapier to slash necks or pierce the small opening at the men’s elbows. The Weir pikemen accompanying him flung themselves at the line of halberds, their spears thrusting, crossing with pikes of their enemies, being beaten back.

  From his perch high on the horse, out of the corner of his eye, Thalen thought he saw a rider dashing toward the same wharf at a speed so fantastic that hardened soldiers from both armies dived to get out of the way. But before he could focus on the horse and rider, the general’s guard began a charge to drive away these pesky attackers. An Oro blade succeeded in slashing the throat of Thalen’s own mount, and he had to jump off and scramble just to stay on his feet. The Weir infantryman to the left of him was decapitated by the axe of a pike, while just to his right another Weir took a point deep into his groin. While the Oro tried to pull his weapon out of the dying Weir pikeman, Thalen’s rapier flashed, opening the artery in the back of his leg.

  The head of an Oro’s halberd had broken off but refusing to give in, the soldier wielded what was left like a quarterstaff. He struck Thalen’s arm with the wooden handle so smartly Thalen lost sensation. His rapier went flying and disappeared from view. He fell back a few steps, cradling his numbed forearm.

  “Weirs!” Thalen shouted. “We must get through; we must try again! Men, follow me!!”

  Duke Naven, who was still ahorse, echoed, “Forward! Forward!” as he led the third sortie. Just as the Weirs charged the line, a flock of seagulls swooped down from the sky, shrieking, clawing, and pecking at the faces of the ring of Oro Protectors. In the chaos of beating wings and cursing men throwing up their arms to ward off the birds, Thalen managed to slip between two enemies.

  Their attention drawn by the unexpected bird attack, the Oro command officers standing on the pier all stared open-mouthed in his direction, their swords already gripped in their hands.

  Although he’d managed to reach his objective, Thalen had no weapon but his mind.

  In his loudest, most commander-like voice, he called out, “Who is in charge here?”

  Six Oro officers, with tall red plumes on their helmets, just looked at him as if he were a madman.

  Facing shoreward, these Oros did not notice what Thalen saw: the queen’s bodyguard, Ciellō, dripping, had climbed from the water onto the seaward end of the wharf, his dagger in his teeth. At all costs, Thalen had to keep these men focused on himself.

  General Sumroth could not stop himself from taking credit for this daring, brilliant invasion—an invasion on the verge of success.

  “I am!” he barked. “You address Sumroth the First, the new king of Oromondo. I will take your queen’s blue scalp back to the Land. All her evil witch tricks with whales and these fucking birds will amount to nothing.”

  Although the clamor of the battlefield rose all around them, Thalen concentrated so intently on the tall man in front of him, it seemed as if they stood alone in a cone of silence. With a great effort, Thalen steadied his voice. “Are you really a king?” he asked, looking the general straight in the eyes. “You look vaguely familiar to me. Actually, yes!—I know you! That scar near your chin! That was me. You’re the coward who hid in a Magi’s cloak and played games with sick wolves, are you not? That worked out very well for the Land of Asswipes, didn’t it?”

  “YOU!!!” roared Sumroth, in his fury not noticing that the fifth-flamer to his left had fallen to Ciellō’s dagger across his throat. Simultaneously, dozens of birds had massed upon his two flagmen, who tried to bat them away with their flags and, when that didn’t work, dropped their flags and crouched down on the pier in an attempt to protect their faces with their hands. The trumpeter, similarly besieged, swiped at the birds with his instrument.

  “You invaded the Land and burned our Worship Citadels?” Faster than Thalen anticipated, Sumroth’s giant two-handed sword cleaved the air. It would have cleaved his head if Thalen hadn’t shrunk back just in time. He couldn’t retreat far; as it was, he had bumped into the back of an Oro pikeman preoccupied with holding off the determined Weir foot soldiers who persevered, despite their heavy losses, with Naven urging them forward. Thalen sidled a few steps to his left. He longed for a weapon. Anything to hold in his hands. Desperately, he took off his fancy hat and held it in front of himself.

  Sumroth recovered from his swing in a flash and kept his eyes glued on Thalen, who purposely did not break the connection. Thalen continued moving, edging a touch forward, moving left, then moving right. He waved the hat about. The general watched him as a snake watches a mouse. A seagull dared to perch on
Sumroth’s shoulder; he shook it off like a fly.

  In the intensity of his concentration on his prey, Sumroth didn’t pay heed to the fact that the birds now mobbed the fourth-flamer beside him on the pier, beating their wings in his face, trying to peck his eyes, and biting at the back of his bare legs. The Oro swept them off his legs and mangled several with sword slashes. But the more he killed, the more flew, cawing, into his face. Two perched on his helmet, fiercely gripping the metal with their claws, their open wings covering his eyes, despite his attempts to shake them off.

  And outside the cordon of elite guards, the Weir infantrymen pressed one more attack on soldiers distracted by vicious birds.

  “Who are you?” the general bellowed over the caws and shrieks around them.

  “Who am I?” answered Thalen, shifting to the right a step, his hands outstretched, balancing his weight on both feet, ready to spring in any direction. “A Free Stater. A student.” He waved his hat about in a pitiful attempt at distraction. “The Oros killed my mother, Jerinda, and my brother Harthen. They were heroes. But me? I am nobody.” He moved a step to the left, crouching. “Truly, I am nobody.”

  “How did a nobody sneak into the Land?” Sumroth’s body effortlessly followed Thalen’s little movements. “How did you escape? Did you burn down Femturan?”

  “General Some Rot, did you say? Really, it’s a long story,” Thalen answered. He paused his weaving to airily wave his hand holding the hat, trying to copy Adair’s insouciance. Then he stood still and tall, keeping his eyes far from Ciellō, trying to show only bravado. “Now, if you’ll surrender, I promise to satisfy your curiosity and relate every detail.”

  “You will burn in the Eternal Flames, heathen,” said Sumroth, “and in moments I will kill the blue-haired witch on the cliff top.” He settled himself into an attack stance, one knee braced forward, the great sword held high above his head, with the tip pointed backward. Several birds fluttered to land on that sword, but he shook them off. Thalen prepared himself to die. He surely would have died from Sumroth’s tremendous blow … except that in the last instant before the sword slashed forward, Ciellō’s knife buried itself deep in the back of Sumroth’s bare muscular neck with enough force to sever his spine.

  Sumroth’s sword fell with a crash from his paralyzed arms, and the man tumbled down after it.

  Light-headed at his near escape, Thalen braced his hands on his knees and put his head down.

  “Foolishness, to risk your own life thus,” Ciellō hissed at his ear, “but clever. You give me the glory of killing all her enemies?”

  It took Thalen a moment to straighten up and glance at the dead littering the pier. “There’s no glory in killing, Ciellō. Sometimes it is necessary, but it is never glorious.”

  Sumroth had fallen to the boards of the wooden wharf. He could not move his chest to breathe. But with the little air he had left in his brain, his last thoughts flew to Zea.

  Ciellō and Thalen returned to the battle; the bodyguard drew his sword from his scabbard and attacked the nearest enemy with lightning speed, barely halting as he took on new combatants. Thalen picked up the great sword that the Oro general had dropped. It was too heavy for him; he was untrained in its use; and he felt as if he moved through molasses. So he put his back against Ciellō’s and just used the weapon to block strikes from Oro halberds—his only aim to keep Ciellō safe from attacks from his rear. Occasionally, Ciellō’s back recoiled into his, but the Zellishman fought on.

  An explosion and then a chorus of yells made everyone look out into the water. One of the anchored troop ships had a cloud of white smoke and sparks billowing above it, and the Pellish sailors aboard were jumping into the water in frantic haste. A flock of five pelicans flew over another of these vessels and dropped small, dark balls. In an instant, that ship too had thin white ribbons sparking from it.

  And then … the battle shifted, as if all the playing pieces were suddenly in new positions, or rather, as if the whole board had been kicked over.

  Certainly, seeing their ships destroyed would strike fear into the hearts of the Oro soldiers. Certainly, when they looked to Command, the pikemen would be worried by the missing flags. Certainly, the birds joining the fray contributed: by the minute hundreds more seagulls attacked Oro soldiers, getting in their way, obscuring their vision, frightening them with their bewitched single-mindedness. But the instantaneous sapping of the will to fight affected all the Oro Protectors so thoroughly and so instantaneously, Thalen wondered if there could be a magical explanation.

  Heartened, the exhausted, blood-soaked Weirs gathered their last reserves of strength.

  Three Pellish ships began scrambling with their large oars to turn around and flee the harbor. One of these had special lanterns shining in the front, and particularly large Pellish flags of the Crossed Oars flew from its mast. Again, pelicans hovered over a ship and dropped their deadly cargo.

  Seeing their admiral’s ship try to flee and end up exploding was too much. Oro soldiers began throwing down their weapons and surrendering. First just a few, and then hundreds. Only the general’s elite guard fought on.

  Thalen was revolted by the blood and death around him. With the last reserves of his strength he jumped onto a crate, raised the great sword high in the air on a trembling arm, and shouted, “Halt this loss of life! Lay down your weapons and surrender!”

  The nearby fighters took stock of their situation. Then, one by one, their swords clattered on the stone quay.

  Breathing hard, Thalen climbed down from the crate. Ciellō, a few paces away, had slumped to his knees. Thalen thought he was just winded and walked over to give him a hand up. That was when he saw the multiple wounds Ciellō had sustained—thigh, chest, arms. Blood gushed out of the Zellishman’s skin everywhere. Thalen groped with his fingers to find the arteries to press them closed. But Ciellō fell over on his side.

  Thalen leaned close. “Hold on, just a little while. Healers—”

  “Tell her…” Ciellō said, his voice surprisingly forceful. “Tell her … I wish her … never to be lonely. And you, Commander … May the wind always be at your back.”

  Ciellō struggled to cup his own hands close to his mouth. He blew his last breath into them, his hands falling empty to the blood-slicked stone.

  * * *

  Wareth left Marcot and the Catamount Cavalry officers to deal with the wounded and their Oro captives from the battle north of the city. Accompanied by two riders, he rode back to tell Thalen that they’d vanquished the contingent they had faced. His broken fingers, which had had a rough day, hurt like blazes, and he tried to rest them on his shoulder.

  When he reached the harbor, he could read at a glance that the Weirs had prevailed here too and were in the early stages of caring for the wounded and rounding up captives.

  Looking about, he recognized the messenger boy on a nice horse. “Hey! Tilim! Where’s the commander?”

  “He’s in the Harbormaster Hut. Follow me.”

  When they dismounted they had to wait a moment while Thalen finished giving instructions to a man in the uniform of the palace guard. Finally, the man saluted and left to carry out his duties.

  “’Mander,” said Tilim, “the queen says that the last two boats—see those, flying the Lorther flag?” The boy pointed. “They are truly Lorthers. She wants to make sure that you don’t attack them and they are clear to dock.”

  Thalen raised his head to gaze over the water in surprise. “Ah. Good.” He shook his head, trying to clear his muddled mind. “Look, you take all the messengers hereabouts and spread the word. Decide on which two piers they should use and set men to clearing and securing them.”

  “Me?” said Tilim, shocked to receive such an important assignment.

  “Yes, you. Get along now.”

  Thalen turned to Wareth, who opened his lips, but whose words Thalen forestalled. “Sorry, Wareth. I already heard the news. Her birds, you know, watched the whole battle. The archers hiding in the dunes
was a nice touch, and then enticing the foot forward into that ambush.”

  “I should have known,” said Wareth, glum at not being able to relay his triumph. “We might have lost more men if the enemy hadn’t all suddenly lost heart. Here too?”

  “Yes.”

  “You hurt?”

  “No,” said Thalen. “Once again, we survived.”

  He took a step out of the hut to motion at all the bodies on the quay. “Why do some live while others perish? It’s so unfair. Even to them.” He meant the enemy. “Young men, most of them…” He staggered, and his eyes filled with tears.

  Wareth grabbed him to keep him from falling. “Come on, ’Mander,” he said. “Plenty of capable Weirs about to do the mopping up. You’re all in. Neither of us has really slept in I-don’t-know-when.”

  Wareth called to the Weir riders who had accompanied him. “I’m taking the commander back to the Rare Talents Inn. That’s where he’ll be if anyone needs him, but if you bother him about nonsense I’ll cut out your gizzard and toast it for fastbreak.”

  * * *

  Smoke trotted back up to SeaWidow Cliff because that’s where She was. The trot cooled him off a little from his full-speed sprint. She was kneeling on the ground. He nuzzled the back of her neck to tell her he had returned, but She paid no attention to him.

  The smallest canine stalked forward with her face turned up; Smoke touched her tiny black nose with his muzzle.

  She is busy now, said the tiny canine. She is thanking the airborne ones and the marine ones.

  Smoke didn’t know anything about those other beasts, but since canines often seemed to be in the queen’s confidence, he accepted the explanation. He snorted through his nose.

  A man who smelled of metal patted Smoke and looked him over. Smoke suffered the attention because the man had a familiar scent. Besides, She kept him near her.

  “That was some dash, Smoke,” the man said. “Never dreamt that even you could go so fast. How about some water?”

  The man filled a bucket with water, and Smoke drank thankfully, because his throat felt raw from his sprint and irritated by a whiff of something sharp and burning in the air. The water was soft, wet, and so soothing. By pushing his nose deep in the bucket he washed the bad air out of his nostrils.