by David Drake
He sees no need for weapons, Ilna thought. And—being Chalcus—he was certainly right when he answered that sort of question. Nevertheless Ilna leaned the maul against the railing and unobtrusively readied the silken noose around her waist.
The servants rolled their rumbling burden up the dock to the Bird’s stern lines. “Captain Chalcus?” called one of the men on the forepoles doubtfully, looking from the bosun to Chalcus.
Hutena gestured to Chalcus, who said, “We’ve not purchased stores in this port, my man. Your goods are for another vessel.”
Ilna thought he was overacting the mincing innocent, but perhaps you couldn’t do that so long as you played into the hopes of your audience. Certainly the servant looked relieved and said, “This isn’t a purchase, sir, but a gift from the Commander for your aid last night. It’s not everybody who’d have taken the risks you did to come out and help.”
Ilna smiled grimly. The servant’s last statement was as true as Chalcus’ sword, of that she was certain. If Lusius had dreamed anybody’d dare row to the scene of a wizard’s attack, he’d at least have posted sentries while he looted the Queen of Heaven.
“A gift?” said Chalcus, still acting the babe in the woods. “Why, that looks like a jar of wine?”
“Yessir,” said the servant eagerly. “One of the best vintages from the Commander’s cellars. Besides beef roast and boiled chicken, all for thanks.”
Chalcus laughed merrily. “Why, Commander Lusius is a gentleman beyond compare,” he said. “Speaking for myself, I’ve always found good wine to be as much of a meal as a sailor needs, but perhaps some of my men will find use for the meat as well.”
He looked around the crew. They watched, grim-faced and worried.
“Now there’s only one thing...,” Chalcus went on, facing the servants again. “I hope Commander Lusius won’t take it amiss that I intend to move the Bird and settle near the harbormouth tonight. I’ve a new anchor line and I want to see that she doesn’t chafe when she’s fully paid out. Eh?”
The servants looked at one another. Finally the leader said, “Well, sir, there’s no traffic in the harbor during darkness. If you don’t want to be tied up to the dock, I guess that’s your business.”
“Aye, it is,” Chalcus said. “But assure the Commander that it isn’t that I fear pilfering thieves might slip aboard in his harbor while my men and I are at our ease tonight, will you?”
He turned to his crewmen. “Bring our dinner, boys,” he said. “And then we’ll unship the oars and shift the ship, as I said... before we eat, eh?”
Chalcus grinned. Ilna was the only one who smiled back at him, though the crew jumped to the dock without further direction. They began to unload the handcart.
Ilna trusted Chalcus, of course, but the men did as well. From her viewpoint, this was the opportunity she and Chalcus had been waiting for, the reason they’d kept Pointin aboard and held him cowering out of sight in the hold: he was the bait to force Lusius and his henchmen to act.
If Lusius struck and they weren’t able to parry—well, then he was the better man and deserved to kill them. The crew, brave men though they were, might feel otherwise, but Ilna had too keen an appreciation of justice to believe that the weaker and less skillful should survive.
She was also sure, though, that even if Lusius won, he’d know he’d been in a fight.
***
The trunk of the pond cypress looked as dead as white bone, but tiny, dark green leaves sprouted from its branches. The trunk just beyond it surely was dead, but an air plant growing from a crotch threw down sprays of much brighter foliage. Beyond were grasses, green mixed with the russet stems of last year’s growth, spreading into the blurred gray blanket of air.
A shrill cry sounded. Cashel looked up. It sounded like a bird—a big bird—and might’ve come from overhead, but he couldn’t see anything beyond the usual swirls of mist.
He stepped onto the meadow. It undulated away from his foot the way a slow swell trembles over the surface of the sea. By reflex Cashel held his staff out crosswise before him to spread his weight if he broke through. He’d had a great plenty of experience with bogs; sheep would go after juicy green morsels on soil where their pointy little feet couldn’t possibly support them.
“I’m not sure this will hold me, Mistress Evne,” Cashel said. He didn’t take another step for now, just made sure that he had his balance as the grasses continued to move.
“Oh, it would hold you, master,” the toad said. “But unless you turn back now, there’s a creature who’ll dine on your flesh for anything I can do to stop her.”
“I didn’t come this far to turn back,” said Cashel, hearing his voice turn huskier with each syllable. “And I don’t guess I ever asked you or any soul else to do my fighting for me.”
He stepped back into the scrub of turkey oaks, spaced well apart and none of them much taller than he was. He didn’t doubt Evne when she said the meadow’d support him, but that didn’t mean it was good footing in a fight.
The bird screamed again. It was a bird; he could see it now, fluttering toward him on wings that should’ve been too small to keep it in the air. It got bigger with every jerk of its wings. It wasn’t in the air; it wasn’t even in the same world as Cashel yet, but it was coming toward him quickly.
Very quickly.
He braced himself to strike, but he wasn’t sure of the timing because he didn’t know where the bird—
It stood before him and kicked a three-clawed foot. The bird was half again Cashel’s height and probably outweighed him, though he knew how deceptively light birds were with their feathers and hollow bones. Maybe not this bird, though.
Cashel shifted left and brought his staff around sunwise, leading with his left hand. The kick slashed past him, snatching away a length of the whorled border Ilna had woven into the hem of his outer tunic.
The bird—leaped/flew/shrank upward; Cashel wasn’t sure of the movement, only that his quarterstaff sliced the air and the bird was now dropping on him claws first. He jumped to his right, using the staff as a brace and a pivot to bring him back around.
The bird kicked a scrub oak to splinters and strings of bark. It turned its head and long beak over its stubby wing as Cashel drove the butt of his staff like a spear toward its midsection. The bird hopped/flew/shrank away, but not quite quickly enough. The ferrule touched solid flesh in a flash and sizzle of blue wizardlight.
The bird jumped clear, leaving a stench of burned feathers in the air. It watched Cashel, turning its narrow head slightly so that first one eye, then the other, was on him. Cashel, gasping through his open mouth, stared back.
He’d thought the bird was golden as it came toward him, but now that it stood at rest its feathers seemed bronze or even black. Over them lay a rainbow sheen like that of oil on a sunlit pond. Its beak was long and hooked, but its nostrils were the simple ovals of a buzzard instead of complex shapes like eagles and falcons.
The bird’s wings were shorter than Cashel’s own arms. It couldn’t have flown through the air with them.
“You’ve met your match, bird!” called Evne from a tuffet of grass some distance out in the open meadow. Cashel guessed he must’ve thrown her off as he swung and dodged, because she was farther away than he thought a little toad could jump. “Let us pass or it’ll be the worse for you!”
The bird cocked its head toward Cashel. It raised a crest of feathers so nearly colorless that they shimmered like a fish’s fins, then lowered them again.
“Does the toad let or hinder the phoenix?” the bird said. “Creep through the muck and eat bugs, slimy one!”
Cashel stepped forward. The bird drew its head back and leaped, striking with both splayed feet. Cashel stabbed, holding one end of his staff with both hands. The bird flew/jumped/shrank over him. For an instant it seemed no more than sparrow sized, a spot in the heavens; then it was on the ground behind him and he recovered his staff, thrusting backward instead of trying to turn.
&nbs
p; The buttcap slammed into the bird’s keeled breastbone with a crash and azure flare that numbed Cashel’s arms to the elbows. The bird screamed wordlessly and staggered back. The feathers of its breast were blackened like a chicken singed for plucking.
“Have you learned manners, bird?” Evne crowed. She clung awkwardly to the grass stems, her legs stretched in four separate directions. “Does the phoenix now know who is master in this—”
The bird spun and struck at the toad, its wings lifting. Cashel’s staff caught it in the upper ribs; he felt bones crack under his iron.
The bird’s feet left the ground, lifted by the impact rather than conscious evasion. It gave a strangled squawk as it tumbled sideways over the crouching toad. She’d tricked the bird, drawn its attention to her so that Cashel could strike....
He staggered forward, wheezing and only half aware of his surroundings. The bird was at the far end of a tunnel, and even that view was through a red haze of fatigue. Cashel moved with the punctuated violence of a jagged rock rolling downhill, lurching from one side to the other but never changing its ultimate direction.
The bird eyed him. Its tongue quivered as gave another shrill scream. Its legs bunched, then straightened. Cashel thrust with his staff.
The bird shrank away into the heavens. For a moment it was a glitter in the mist; then it was gone, vanished like a rainbow when the air clears. Cashel sprawled forward as the meadow sloshed and rolled beneath him.
He didn’t know how long he lay there. His first conscious thought was that breathing no longer felt like he was jabbing knives down into his lungs. He opened his eyes very carefully. Evne squatted within hand’s breadth of his nose, rubbing her pale belly with a webbed forefoot.
“You’ve decided to rejoin me, I see,” the toad said.
“The bird’s gone?” said Cashel. He didn’t try to move. He wasn’t sure he could move just now, and he sure didn’t see a good reason to.
“I’ll say she’s gone!” Evne said complacently. “Gone and wishing she’d never come, if I’m any judge.”
“What do I do next?” Cashel said. It seemed a little funny to be carrying on a conversation with his cheek pressed down into boggy soil, but he’d been laughed at before.
“Next?” said the toad. “Next you try your luck against the Visitor himself, master. Unless you decide to turn and run instead.”
She laughed. “Which you won’t do,” she added, “because you’re very stupid, and very determined. Though it’s just possible that you’re even stronger than you’re stupid!”
Chapter 16
The Bird of the Tide was anchored near the harbor mouth, as far from the docks as was possible in the enclosed waters. The vessel undulated slowly as the current out of Terness Harbor tugged at the anchor line.
Commander Lusius, dressed in fur-trimmed velvet, stood in the shadows of the quay. With him hunched three men; their clothing would’ve been nondescript were it not for the swords they wore.
The Bird was as silent as death; there was no sound from aboard her save the creak of the line working against the scuttle as she moved. A lantern hung from the mast, arm’s length below the furled sail. It guttured on the last of its oil, but the faint glow showed what the men on the dock wanted to see.
One of the vessel’s crewmen sprawled in the bow with an arm over the railing. Three more lay amidships; two on their backs, the other face down. The man who’d begun the night on watch leaned against the sternpost, utterly motionless. The woman’s legs stuck out of the small deckhouse; she hadn’t moved either.
“There’s two I don’t see,” muttered one of the nondescript men. “And the fellow from the merchantman, he must be aboard too.”
“They’re in the hold, Rincip,” Lusius growled. “The supercargo is, at any rate. And they’re just as dead as the others. The poison doesn’t care whether you can see the bodies or not.”
“Let’s get it over with,” muttered another of the men as he climbed into the skiff tied to the stern of the nearest fishing vessel. “The moon’ll be up in an hour. I don’t want an audience of rube fishermen while I send corpses to the bottom of the harbor with their bellies filled with ballast.”
“Yeah, all right,” said Rincip. He and the third Sea Guard boarded the skiff and unshipped the oars. Lusius watched with his arms folded across his chest as his men rowed toward the Bird of the Tide.
The harbor was quiet. The fishermen couldn’t rake belemites from the shoals during darkness, and nothing about Terness—neither the Commander and his men, nor the Rua who now ruled the region’s skies—encouraged simple folk to be out at night. The water carried the slight thump of the skiff touching the larger vessel’s side to where Lusius stood.
Two of the Sea Guards gripped the Bird’s gunwale while the other scrambled aboard carrying the painter. He looped it to the rail. Rincip had just followed his man over the railing when the woman in the deckhouse sat up. There was a shimmer in the dim light; Rincip squawked and jerked forward, clawing at his neck.
The vessel’s crewmen were all moving—fast. The Sea Guard on deck got his hand to his swordhilt before the captain made a quick swipe with his own slim blade. Lusius swore as the Guard toppled backward over the rail in a spray of blood. His head hit the water some distance from the rest of the body.
“Don’t or I’ll—” the Bird’s bosun shouted as the Sea Guard in the skiff tried to cut the painter with his sword. The rest of the sentence probably would’ve been “—kill you!” but he didn’t bother finishing it after he thrust down with a boarding pike.
The Sea Guard went over the side and sank as soon as the bosun managed to jerk his pike free. The two-handed stroke had driven the spearhead the length of a tall man’s forearm through the Guard’s chest cavity.
Lusius swore in a monotone as he ran back toward the castle, trying to stay in the shadows. Oars scraped and squealed as the Bird of the Tide got under weigh.
He’d almost shouted to rouse the tower watch, but he caught himself in time. He’d seen what Captain Chalcus could do with a dagger and now a sword. Lusius didn’t intend to prove with his own body that the fellow was just as skilled with a bow.
And besides, there was a better way to deal with Prince Garric’s spies....
***
The faces of men, each announcing his own name, jostled one another through Garric’s mind as he lay in bed. He was tired, desperately tired, but he couldn’t sleep because the literal army of men he’d met and inspected today wouldn’t let him.
“It’s part of the job, lad,” Carus said in his mind. “Just like going over tax assessments is part of the job; though that one I never could do, not even to keep my officials honest.”
Iron clanged against stone in the garden below. Garric tensed, ready to leap for the sword hanging from the rack by the bed; glad at a chance for action but so tired that he was afraid he’d stumble over his own feet.
A soldier cursed; his officer snarled him to silence. Garric relaxed with a smile. A guard had dropped his spear; Prince Garric wasn’t the only tired person awake tonight in the palace.
Smiling, Garric dropped off into the sleep that frustration had denied him. When he realized that the dream had him again, it was too late to rouse himself... and he was so tired, he might not have wanted to return to that restless consciousness anyway.
He was in the garden as before. The moon must have been full; branches stood out against the sky even though it was drizzling. The air was cooler than on the previous times he’d been dragged into this place, though the blossoming pear trees meant it must be late spring.
Carus wasn’t with him. Garric was alone on a dank, chill night, and something waited for him beside the altar at the back of the garden. He walked forward because he had to: the great figures beyond the sky were again forcing him to.
The compulsion wasn’t necessary. There was no place to flee in this dream and besides—Garric was the descendent and successor of King Carus, the greatest warrior the Isles had
ever known. He wasn’t going to run from the thing that rose onto its hind legs and snarled at his approach.
He couldn’t get a good look at the creature. The diffused light hid as much as it displayed, but Garric also had the awareness that things didn’t always stay the same even while he looked at them.
The creature had a bestial head with great tusks jutting from the upper and lower jaws, but except for a bristly mane down the middle of the back its body was as hairless as a man’s. It had short legs and a long, broad torso; on its hind legs it stood as tall as Garric. Its arms were half again the length of his own.
Garric had been looking for a weapon from the moment he realized the situation. He saw fallen branches, but they were probably rotten and wouldn’t be effective clubs against so large a creature anyway.
The ape growled. He was going to call it an ape, though part of Garric’s mind feared that it was nothing of the sort.
The ape gave a rasping bellow and hunched onto the knuckles of its hands. Other beasts watched and waited in shadowed corners of the garden. They chittered quietly among themselves.
Garric grabbed the edge of a stone planter which roots had fractured. The ape grunted explosively and lunged forward. The slab resisted; the weight of dirt held it where it was. Garric screamed in frustration and tore the piece free, bringing it around in both hands. As the ape dug its clawed fingers into his shoulders, he smashed the stone into three fragments against its forehead.
The beast flung Garric away with a started cry. His right thigh slammed the trunk of pear tree, a numbing blow.
He got up, using his hands and left leg to raise his body. His right leg was barely able to hold him upright, but he didn’t think the bone was broken. The ape staggered backward, apparently dazed. It patted doubtfully at its forehead with its left hand. The pressure cut was bleeding freely; blood dripped from the deep brow ridges.
The fractured planter lay between Garric and the ape. He might have been able to lift the stone shell, three-quarters of the original object, if he had time to empty the dirt from it. He doubted the ape would give him the time, and anyway he wasn’t sure his leg was up to walking just yet. Much as he’d have liked to charge while the ape seemed dizzy, he guessed he was going to wait for it to come to him.
