Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

“Snuff and dash. If you know what card I have, that’s cheating.”

  “You could at least change things up by mouthing a different card than the one you draw and bluff me, but no. I don’t think you even know you do it.”

  “I just say a gentleman wouldn’t look, is all. Keep your eyes on your own cards, not my mouth. Even if I have lips that are the envy of half the women in Vyenn.”

  Dun Huss closed the tent flap and put his back to it.

  “Tell them what you told me. About Governor Raal and his request.”

  Dath Amrits sat back, with the air of a man expecting to hear an excellent joke and ready to laugh at it. The Borderlander, as always, waited with the same indifference to her he always displayed.

  Ileth told them, feeling as though she were confessing to a jury. But she’d always felt better after being honest with these men.

  “At least it’s for his wife and not him,” Dun Huss said.

  Amrits snorted. “Ha. I’ve been in club rooms with the man. Priest-in-the-parlor-and-a-whore-in-the-garret type, by rep—oh, I’m terribly sorry, Ileth.”

  Ileth shrugged. “He’s claimed me as his daughter. I never said he was my father.”

  “Well, I apologize regardless.”

  “Is it a crime for him to get dragon blood?” Ileth asked.

  “Not at all. All the risk is on your part,” Dun Huss said. “I imagine he knows that. It might have been wiser for you to refuse him and sit the campaign out with Lady Raal.”

  Amrits snorted. “Dun Huss, don’t be such a stick. I’d have robbed highways to get myself free of Stesside.”

  The Borderlander scratched his chin. “Forget the blood. There’s a priest here somewhere. Your idea about marrying her—”

  “That wasn’t serious,” Dun Huss said.

  Amrits’s bulging eyes bulged even more. “I should say not, Ileth. Don’t think—look, we were just talking about how to get you away from the Stesside kitchen and washtub. It wasn’t meant as a romantic gesture. All my dealings with women are lecherous. I just thought if all that was standing between your service was a seal on a piece of paper and a few words from a priest, well, I don’t mind getting dribbled and dusted.”

  Ileth laughed. “You just want that silver whistle back. I told you, Fespanarax ate it in the Baronies.”

  “That’s it, boys, she’s found me out. It was a very good whistle.” He fingered the replacement’s lanyard speculatively. “Never quite found another like it. The fellow who originally made it died. Damned impolite of him to do a thing like that to his customers.”

  “Ileth,” Dun Huss said, after a single chuckle for appearances’ sake, “what’s your estimate of the situation? Does your—errr . . . father mean to give dragon blood to help his wife? He’s telling the truth about that?”

  “I believe so. I can see the pain on her face, and on his face when he watches her struggle. He doesn’t want it as some sort of—” Ileth groped for a word fit for mixed company.

  “Good enough for me,” the Borderlander said.

  “I say we get her some blood, then,” Dath Amrits said. Dun Huss nodded.

  “You’re not going to—”

  Amrits cut her off. “The situation has come up before, Ileth. Somebody with influence over the Serpentine pressures us.”

  “Let’s see how things go with the Rari,” Dun Huss said. “We might all be dead in a month.”

  The Borderlander rubbed the back of his neck. “True enough. They have more aerial defenses than the Scab, even if they looked rusty. So where do we put Ileth?” the Borderlander asked.

  “Ileth, please take my tent. Bore, you don’t mind sleeping rough?” Amrits asked.

  “I can bed down by Catherix. Save my legs.”

  “Sir—” Ileth began. “It’s your tent.”

  “It smells like mold. You’re doing me a favor, Ileth. I can bunk up with Dun Huss. At least he has the courtesy not to look at my cards.”

  “Your mouth,” the Borderlander said.

  “I fail to see the difference.”

  “Sir, really, I can’t turn you out of your own tent,” Ileth said. “I just need a corner and a mat.”

  “No, wouldn’t be proper. Unless you want me to set up that marriage ceremony after all,” Amrits said, doing something with his tongue and cheek that might have been meant to be obscene.

  “You’ll sleep with me, Dath,” Dun Huss said. “Ileth’s not allowed hazardous duty on this campaign.”

  8

  Ileth’s first council of war took place the next night, outdoors. The dragons formed a tight circle around a dimple in the ground—there were no shortages of those in the Chalk Cuts, and this one wasn’t even that soggy—and the dragoneers assembled within. For this assembly, there were no wingmen or apprentices, save for Serena and Ileth, who sat together off to the side. Serena opened a secretary that fit even her smallish lap and scribbled notes on sheets of paper bound together by a horse harness ring.

  Serena represented the Charge and Ileth the Governor. When Dun Huss told her that she was, in effect, standing in for the entire civilian structure of the Republic, she wished she had found somewhere to bathe. The Chalk Cuts managed to be dusty, even with winter wet lingering everywhere.

  “Dragoneers,” Garamoff said, “this campaign will be one for the historians. So I suggest those of you with diaries commit a few pages to it. We want them to get it right.

  “The historians will want to know about it because this campaign will be as short as it is furious. We will finish the fighting before any foreign king and court hear of it. There is another reason. The Serpentine made a study of the relations with the Rari pirates. When the Vales took wing and ship against them in the past, it was an act of reprisal, the destruction of a single troublesome ship, or clearing a single inlet where the pirates brought their prize. After each reprisal, the Rari would send over their emissaries, offer proposals to make amends, restore a ship, or return a few mates to their families. Their goal was to always make peace when we had an advantage, and threaten when they saw their star ascendant. What happened when the dragon garrison in these straits was vacated? A brief season’s peace and then new outrages, and after each outrage, negotiations, assurances, demands for this in exchange for promises of that.

  “That was the past. We’ve planned a campaign of a sort of warfare the Rari have never experienced. We intend to use the natural advantages of dragons to bring the war to their coast and not give them an hour, a moment, to breathe.

  “As I speak, a three-ship convoy is being put together in the Freesand. The cargo was well guarded—wains protected by a company of professional soldiers. We know the Rari have eyes in the Freesand harbors; no doubt messengers are even now hurrying the Rari fishing boats, boats that do little fishing but a great deal of sniffing about for rich cargos. Soon the Rari coast will know that a fat, well-guarded prize is in the offing.”

  This was new to Ileth. There’d been nothing in the Annis Heem Strath plan for any sort of decoy.

  “Those ships will set out heavily laden, yes, but inside those heavy, well-guarded chests and barrels are weapons and armor. The merchant ships and their escort vessels will run the straits not with gems and silks and spices from the Azure islands, as the Rari are imagining right now, but soldiers.

  “The Rari will have to come out in force if they want them. That’s where we come in. We intend to catch as many Rari ships at sea as possible. They haven’t had to contend with dragons in a generation. We’ll teach them to remember why their fathers watched the sky in the direction of the Headlands.”

  Ileth liked the sound of that. How many times had she heard a widow wonder why the Assembly didn’t return with the dragons and burn the pirate ships?

  “For years,” Garamoff continued, “the Rari have had the advantage. Excellent position. Plenty of gold to buy aerial defenses and
professional soldiers to work them. Our latest spycraft says they’ve neglected their dragon defenses, but we won’t find out for certain until we are over their harbors. Highpoons, bombards, rockets, who knows what we’ll have to contend with. It is fortunate we have so many dragoneers with experience in the attacks on the Scab.”

  “It couldn’t be worse than the Scab,” a dragoneer said to the one next to him. “It just couldn’t.”

  Captain-General Garamoff gave no indication that he’d heard.

  “You’ve been divided into four groups and have been practicing in those groups in cold-weather flying over the Skylake and returning. We’ve heard the complaints from dragon and dragoneer, but there’s a reason for effort. Once battle is joined, one group will always be in the air or in battle with another approaching to take its place. Battle group, when it has loosed its fire and set the Rari on an uproar, will be replaced by Aerial Reserve group which will be replaced by Rested group which will be replaced by Resting group, with each Battle group returning to Resting and so on in rotation for the three days we estimate it will take to complete the campaign.”

  “Three days? A campaign of only three days?” Roben muttered to his wingman in disbelief. Falberrwrath just behind looked delighted.

  “Our duty role is destruction of Rari aerial defenses, pirate craft, fortresses, and shipyards in that order. While carrying this out, we will have the support of the Freesand militia and the Republic’s Auxiliaries in the recovery of as many Rari slaves as possible. Whatever the nationality. We have constructed a special ferry the likes of which the world has never seen to carry them back. Anyone: Daphines, Galantines, Hypatians, even Rari who wish to give themselves in surrender, even if they’re covered in blue-green ink from forehead to toes. One of the jobs of the dragoneers in each Battle group, after their dragons have loosed, will be to drop leaflets carrying a hopeful message to the slaves, and instructions on where to assemble so that they may be conveyed back to the Headlands. What was that you said, Amrits? ‘Newssheet hawkers’?”

  Amrits half rose. “A small joke, sir.”

  “You’re righter than you know. The newssheet publishers in Sammerdam have done wonders, in great secrecy, with next to no typesetters and inkers and other workmen, printing these for us.

  “Dragons and dragoneers! Eat hearty and rest well. As soon as weather serves we will depart for the Old Post to write our names into the Republic’s history. Dragoneer Dun Huss will stay to answer questions.”

  A few of the dragoneers asked questions about the Rari. Someone asked about how they would tell Rari ships from those of the Vales, and Dun Huss explained that they would have broad white stripes painted across the decks.

  Ileth looked at the cryptic notes Serena was taking.

  “What sort of writing is that?”

  “Asposis notehand. It’s a great time saver, if you’re trained to do it properly. You need to use a marking pencil, there’s no time to dip your quill.”

  “Hard to learn?”

  “It’s not a quick lesson or two. But it is worth it, Ileth. Being able to do this has saved lives. I mean that in a strict literal sense. I’ve brought my notes in front of a jury.”

  The address broke up and the dragons went off to a great meal prepared, a feast to fill their fire-bladders. They would relocate to the Old Post tomorrow, unless the weather prognosticators read the clouds and winds as turning unfavorable. Ileth didn’t think it would change; she’d grown up here and sensed spring warmth on the air with a change of the prevailing winds.

  Garamoff and a few key dragoneers, plus Serena and Ileth trailing behind as Governor Raal’s representative, went into the command tent. Much of it was taken up by an improvised table made out of what looked like an old shed roof with a map atop it.

  Ileth had seen the coastline before, but this was a new map on a larger scale than the old one she’d seen exploring the many sliding drawers of the Captain’s map chest. She knew from Annis Heem Strath’s report that back in the days when the Old Post had dragons and dragoneers, the pirates had been adept at hiding their ships in waters where you could hardly hide a rowboat—the Captain told her a story once of a small Rari two-master they’d somehow figured a way to haul up out of the water and under a cliff overhang to hide it from the dragons.

  Dun Huss reviewed the history of the fortifications that were to be the dragons’ first targets, for the fortifications protected the harbors. Hundreds of years ago the Rari lands had been an outpost of the Wurm, and they built fortifications to control the straits on their southern border. The Wurm faded as a great power and the Rari settled there, gradually taking over from the Wurm like spiders taking over a half-empty barn. At first they were mercenaries manning the forts and pulling oars on the ships, then they were running the docks and collecting taxes, and finally the tiny crust of Wurm society at the top either dwindled out or took on Rari culture themselves. Supposedly, there was still one Wurm regent in the throne room of the Citadel at Lengneek, a sort of figurehead where the last gold flag with black dragonhead still flew.

  It made the plan a daring one, for the Wurm could consider it an act of war. Their flag would remain unmolested, but the Lengneek Citadel would be cleared of the Rari soldiers, as it commanded the town and the Rari’s principal ship-harbor. It was the only place on the Rari coast with yards and fittings for the repair of oceangoing vessels. Lengneek had to be burned, reduced, or taken.

  “From a distance the fortifications look formidable,” Dun Huss said. “But they’re hollow as a dead tree. The Rari have fallen victim to their own success.”

  “How’s that?” an Auxiliary officer asked. He had a dragon-scale-decorated bandolier.

  “Nothing to pirate. Shipowners don’t see the point of the risk, and what little there is bribes the Rari potentates. When everyone else is poor, pirates will be too. The Rari are like parasites who killed their host and are now starving. They’ve lost some of those fine mercenary companies and gentleman adventurers and specialists in fighting dragons—I expect the Galantines hired them away, as we learned to our discomfort in the late war. They’ve resorted to grabbing fishermen and turning them into slaves. Not as lucrative as plundering merchant ships, but it hurts the families of this coast more than shipping losses.”

  Ileth remembered Astler saying something about a few captains seeking better plunder elsewhere.

  An officer in a militia uniform spoke next. “We’ve sent three missions in the past three months over to Lengneek to negotiate for the return of captives, but the real purpose has been counting Rari ships. Those with vessels suitable for long journeys are out on the Inland Ocean. Of course this could be completely wrong; all we know is their biggest ships aren’t in their usual places in Lengneek. Paid spies are unreliable, and the Rari are famous for paying spies bonuses to turn against their paymasters.”

  Garamoff studied the map.

  “Your friend from the Borderlands gave us an excellent close reconnaissance,” he told Dun Huss. “They’ve let their harbor defenses go to pot. Only one highpoon manned at night in the Harbor Fort. Unless they’re being very clever about it.”

  “I’m not yet at ease about the Sea Fort,” Dun Huss said, pointing to a fortification outside the main harbor. “No light shows at night—ever, it seems—but there are often boats about. If it is still manned, we have yet another target to reduce or the removal of the captives might be impossible.”

  Garamoff thought for a moment. “I will conduct a close reconnaissance myself and swim Nephalia in. I’d like a look at Lengneek myself before things get under way.”

  “Is that wise, sir?” Dun Huss asked. “It’s not 1550. We don’t need a warlord in the vanguard. A Captain-General’s place is at headquarters. Let me go.”

  “Give me this, Hael I’ve swum Nephalia more times than I care to think about. Just doesn’t feel right for me to go to war dry. For the rest of the campaign Ne
phalia and I will be conventional, in reserve on the ground or observing from the air.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Garamoff rolled up the map. “The plan is in place, the rosters are made. If I don’t come back, we just need to adjust to securing the Sea Fort, then the Harbor Fort, then the Citadel. My gut says it’s empty, or just has a few men unhappy in the cold and wet there to signal an emergency. I think I can find out by having Nephalia use her neck and elevate me to something wide enough for me to climb in.”

  The conference moved on to logistical matters of sleeping and feeding the dragons upon their return from the Rari coast, and Taskmaster Henn covered that. Ileth filed out at Dun Huss’s heels.

  “Sir, wait. I’ll go,” Ileth said.

  “Keep quiet, apprentice,” Dun Huss said.

  “Who’s that back there?” the Auxiliary officer asked.

  Ileth fought to get the words out. “Sir, do you know how cold the bay is in spring? I enjoy swimming in cold water; I was brought up on it. I’ve read maps; if he’s been around the Azures swimming his dragon, he’s not used to this.”

  “Ileth, I have to tell you no on this, just as he told me,” Dun Huss said. “Good of you, but part of the discipline at the Serpentine is following orders. You forget that we gave the Governor our word that you would remain at camp.”

  “Even when your superior is about to do something daft?”

  “Even then.”

  “Well, could I talk to him?”

  “He’s the Captain-General, you’re in his camp and one of his dragoneers. Of course you can speak to him.”

  She returned to Garamoff’s tent and found him studying the rosters. For once, Dun Huss trailed behind her.

  “Sir, I really must speak to you.”

  “I’m busy, uhhh . . . Ileth,” Garamoff said. “I remember you from Vyenn.”

  “Yes. I was the girl who didn’t order anything. The tablemaid didn’t care for that.”

  “It’s because she gets a share of what she sells. I’m too busy to—”