The Sword of the South - eARC

by David Weber

  His tone made his opinion of that particular claim abundantly clear.

  “She’s all sugar to Fallona since Faltho died, but I’m thinking she’s only biding her time. They say Fallona trusts her, but Altho’s not one to be fooled by her promises to be ‘helping’ Fallona with sorcery. But what’s he to do? Here’s Fallona, desperate for friends amongst the nobles, and here’s Wulfra, always prating about her loyalty to the throne. Aye, and Phrobus was after being loyal to Orr, too, wasn’t he just?! She’s after being loyal to the throne, right enough, as long as it’s in her mind she can ease her own backside onto it! And Altho knows it, too. He and the Queen had a rare set-to in public when he was after wondering—in a formal audience, mind you!—about Faltho’s illness. It seems he mentioned the fact that the same strange illness carried off Wulfra’s father…that and the matter of her older sister’s mysterious disappearance long before that. I’m thinking it must’ve been a rare set out when Fallona took Wulfra’s side! Phrobus to pay and no pitch hot, and no mistake about it! Altho only said what needed saying, mind you, but there’s no denying as how his timing might’ve been a mite impolitic. And it’s after adding another problem, you see, for Fallona and her consort—who’s also her most powerful vassal—don’t agree on what to do about their worst enemy. Tomanāk! They’re not even after agreeing she is an enemy!”

  “I begin to question the wisdom of this trip,” Kenhodan sighed.

  “Wisdom?” Wencit turned his head and spoke suddenly, though he’d seemed unaware of their conversation. “It was never wise. Only necessary.”

  Bahzell grinned and wiggled his ears at Kenhodan as the old man turned back to the street. Kenhodan chuckled at the hradani’s expression, but he couldn’t shake a sense of unease as he considered what he’d just heard. There’d been moments during Bahzell’s explanation when he’d felt as if he were watching a play he’d seen entirely too many times, which was absurd—wasn’t it?—in a man who couldn’t remember even his own name!

  He shrugged his sword belt more comfortably into place and made himself step back from the problem of the future before it could spoil his walk. After a moment, he even managed to begin whistling through his teeth as they turned a bend at the foot of the hill and fresh-washed cobbles glistened in the light, mocking his qualms while the vast Bay of Belhadan opened wide before him.

  It seemed even vaster seen at its own level, dancing in the spring morning. White wave crests chased themselves across the broad bay on a northwesterly breeze that fingered his hair and tightened his throat with an inarticulate longing. Did his hunger mean he’d known deep waters before his memory was stolen? Or was this indeed his first glimpse of tidewater? He stared out over the crinkled blue mirror and smelled the salt—rich as wine and wood smoke—as he searched for his past.

  “This way.”

  Bahzell’s voice broke his thoughts as the hradani pointed out a large square rigged ship. She towered above the coasting schooners, her yards proud with the furled yellow sails of Belhadan. A banner snapped briskly at her foremast, displaying a crossed black axe and fouled anchor on a blue field, and the crossed axes and crown of the Empire floated from her mizzen, the banner’s red field blood-bright in the morning light.

  “Wave Mistress,” Bahzell said. “Brandark’s pride and joy. The axe and anchor’s after being his house banner.”

  “He’s a good friend of yours?” Kenhodan asked.

  “Well now,” Bahzell smiled slowly, “I’m thinking that depends a mite on just exactly what it is you might be meaning by ‘friend.’ I’ve a bone or two to pick with the little man, and he’s the sort of sense of humor as needs a ready sword to keep its owner alive. But it’s a long time the two of us’ve known each other, and there’s not a man alive I’d sooner have at my back in a fight. Aye, and I’m thinking he’s the finest ship handler you’ll ever meet. He was after captaining Sword of Tomanāk for me before he ordered Wave Mistress built right here in Belhadan.”

  “He was your captain?” Kenhodan couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. Gwynna had said something about “Poppa’s ship,” but he hadn’t actually paid it that much attention. After all, what sort of hradani owned his own ship? He flushed ever so slightly as he considered the implications of his own assumptions, and Bahzell’s eyes glinted with laughter.

  “Aye, so he was. That’s after surprising you, is it?”

  “Well…”

  “Last count, I had ten captains,” Bahzell told him affably, “not counting the Belhadan ships of the Order, but it might be I’ve fewer. The corsairs’ve been wicked this past year, curse them, and I’m thinking they’ve forgotten to leave my ships alone. It won’t be so very long before the King Emperor’s after having to deal with them, and if he doesn’t, I’m thinking as the Order will. Tomanāk knows they’re a plague on the sea, and they’ll be starting shore raids again if they’re not re-taught manners soon. Maybe when we return you and I might take the Sword and one or two of the Order’s other ships to reeducate them, eh?”

  Kenhodan glanced at him, decided he was serious, and filed that thought away with all the other indications that Bahzell was nothing if not direct…and far more powerful than his tavern keeping role suggested. In fact, it suddenly occurred to the red-haired man that as a champion and the local chapter’s swordmaster, Bahzell commanded all of the Order of Tomanāk’s armed forces in Belhadan, and he reminded himself once more to take nothing for granted where this particular hradani was concerned.

  He chewed on that thought while he turned his attention to Wave Mistress, and as he studied her, he understood her master’s pride. Though she loomed above her smaller neighbors, she had the sleek lines of a greyhound—broad enough in the beam to carry profitable cargoes, but also with the elegant sheer, raked stem, and graceful run of a thoroughbred. Her masts raked sharply, her tall yards and great spread of sail spoke eloquently of her speed and, unlike many smaller ships, her black hull boasted no oar ports, for sweeps would have been little use to a ship her size. Her arrogant masts disdained the strength of anything less mighty than the wind itself, and two large, tarpaulin-shrouded shapes bulked on her decks, one well forward and one aft. Kenhodan suspected the canvas hid powerful ballistae—heavy armament for a merchantman, but certainly in keeping with the bulwark mountings for dart throwers. Wave Mistress was a direcat of the deep, and only the heartiest—or most foolish—of pirates would cross the path of a vessel as heavily armed as most imperial cruisers.

  His mouth curved wryly as he pondered the ship and his fragments of assessing memory proved this wasn’t the first time he’d seen the sea after all.

  “There’s Brandark,” Bahzell said, and Kenhodan blinked, recalling his earlier thoughts about hradani ship-owners.

  You really do have to work on that, he told himself. Of course, no one ever said he wasn’t a hradani, but still…

  “Never a hradani went willingly to sea before Brandark and I did,” Bahzell continued. “Not that we were after going willing just at first! All the swords of the Purple Lords were nipping and our backsides, they were, and it was only a ready tide and a schooner crew we could…convince to be giving us room aboard as took us out of their reach. But here we are now, and while I’ve not so much seawater in my veins as Brandark, I’ll not deny there’s little in the world to equal the feel of a deck under my feet. I’m thinking it may be the tales are true and we hradani were after swimming all the way from Kontovar because no one would give us room aboard ship!

  “Brandark, now, he went for a sailor years before ever I did. Old Kilthan—Kilthandahknarthas of Silver Cavern, that would be—was after taking him on as one of his ship captains, and truth to tell, he’d reason to be seeking a home elsewhere at the time. It wasn’t so very long before that that my Da’d gone and—”

  “Bahzell!” Brandark’s lungs were clearly equal to Bahzell’s, Kenhodan thought. “About time you showed your face down here! Come aboard! Or has the salt gone out of your blood?”

  Bahze
ll bounded up the gangway, his weight sending the stout plank into wild gyrations. Wencit and Kenhodan waited for the vibrations to die down before following him more sedately, and Brandark met him at the entry port in an exchange of insults, arm clasps, and back-slapping blows fit to shatter lesser spines. They took the time to do it properly. In fact, they were only getting well started when Kenhodan stepped around them onto the spotless deck.

  Brandark was considerably shorter than Bahzell. In fact, he was shorter than Kenhodan, no more than an inch or two over six feet. But his shoulders were far broader and more powerful than the human’s, and Kenhodan sighed. He knew he was tall, for a human, but next to Bahzell and Brandark he felt half-grown.

  Yet that wasn’t the thought foremost in his mind as he studied the shipmaster with a certain degree of resignation, for Brandark was every bit as atypical for a hradani as Bahzell himself.

  He bore the marks of his trade—his left cheek was seamed with an age-smoothed scar that drew that corner of his mouth into a slight, perpetual grin, his right ear was shorter than his left, where some long-ago sword had claimed its tip, and he lacked the last two fingers on his left hand—but that wasn’t what struck the eye most forcefully. No, that was left to his exquisite tailoring.

  Kenhodan shook his head. The thought of a hradani dandy, he’d just discovered, was even more outré, somehow, than the thought of a hradani champion of Tomanāk. Yet outré or not, “dandy” was the only word fit to describe Brandark of Belhadan. He was perfectly groomed, from the soles of his brilliantly polished, hand tooled boots, with their silver tassels and repeating motif of lotus flowers, to the top of his jauntily plumed velvet, and the heavy golden chain of a pocket watch, draped across his magnificently embroidered waistcoat, boasted a handsome, sapphire-set fob. He should have looked like some sort of parody, standing on a ship’s deck beside Bahzell’s plain hauberk and unornamented steel breastplate, but instead he only managed to look inevitable.

  And not all the fine fabric, embroidery, and stylish tailoring in the world could have hidden the toughness they were wrapped about. The scars, the missing fingers, did more than proclaim his violent past; they made him look indestructible, like an ancient tree which had lost limbs without losing an ounce of strength, and Kenhodan saw why one might not trifle with a ship he commanded.

  Bahzell interrupted his greetings to introduce his friends.

  “My fellow passengers, Brandark. You’re after knowing Wencit, of course.”

  “Of course.” Brandark clasped forearms with the wizard. “It’s good to see you again, Wencit.”

  “And you,” Wencit agreed, clasping Brandark’s forearm in return and simultaneously drawing Kenhodan forward with his free hand. “And this is Kenhodan.”

  Brandark gripped Kenhodan’s arm in turn, and smiled as he saw the sword he wore.

  “Kenhodan,” Bahzell said, “Brandark was after carrying that blade once, and a mercy he didn’t lose fingers to it. Bloody Sword or no, it’s in my mind as a proper blade…overtaxed him, just a mite. An axe is more his speed, I’m thinking. No sharp edges near the hilt.”

  “Bilge water!” Brandark’s laughed. “Welcome aboard, then, Kenhodan! Does me good to see that old sword again.”

  “And it’ll be do you even better when you’ve once seen it used properly for a change,” Bahzell assured him solemnly.

  “Maybe I will, since someone besides you will be using it!”

  “Hah!” Bahzell reached up to slap the hilt of the huge sword across his back and smiled benignly down on the lesser beings clustered about his ankles.

  “Well, come below. We’ve an hour before slack water, so let’s find some whiskey while you tell me what in Korthrala’s name you’re up to this time.”

  “I don’t think old Wave Beard wants to know,” Wencit said with a grin.

  “Oh ho! It ought to be good, then.” Brandark paused in the open hatch to yell at one of his men. “Tobian! Tell Hornos to break out that Old Halahrn—the Grand Reserve, mind you—from Silver Cavern!”

  “Aye, Captain!” the crewman acknowledged.

  “I think we’ll need something special for this explanation,” Brandark said more quietly to his guests, and waved them below with a toothy grin.

  * * *

  “Angthyr?” Brandark sipped from a carved crystal tumbler of whiskey as he considered. “Not the spot I’d fancy for a visit just now, Wencit.”

  “Agreed.”

  Wencit’s eyes glowed in the dim light, sparkles dancing before them as he nodded, and Kenhodan leaned back comfortably and gazed about the cabin while he listened. Racked books lined the bulkheads and thick carpet covered the deck. Intricately-paned stern and quarter windows flashed with sun on the seaward side, flooding half the cabin with brilliance, but dark shadows covered the larboard side where the wharf blocked the light. Wrought silver lamps hung from the deckhead on chains, and there were at least three cased musical instruments tucked away in various corners.

  “Bahzell’s right,” Brandark said. “You’ll do better overland from Man Home, but I can cut your trip forty leagues shorter if I detour up the White Water as far as Korun.”

  “You could,” Wencit agreed, “but that takes you far out of your way, and the White Water isn’t safe so early in the spring.”

  “Wizards have their art, and seamen have theirs,” Brandark replied. “If I say I can take you up White Water, then I can take you up White Water.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but it still takes you out of your way.”

  “Don’t compound the insult,” Brandark said cheerfully. “You’re daft to go into Angthyr at all. You know it. Kenhodan knows it. Korthrala, Wencit, even Bahzell knows it! But if you have to go to Angthyr, you’re more likely to get there intact if you stay away from tidewater ports. If you’ve got enemies in Belhadan, let them know you’ve sailed for Man Home in Wave Mistress. Let them search there while you go elsewhere. And, Wencit—” he overrode the wizard’s attempted interruption “—do me the courtesy of letting me get you there in one piece as quickly as possible. I suspect there’s more to this than you’re ready to say, and that’s your business. But if you think it’s important—and if Tomanāk and this overgrown lump think it’s important—it’s my business, too.”

  “Very well, but you leave me deep in your debt.”

  “Oh, please!” Brandark rolled his eyes and flattened his ears. “Do you really think Bahzell or I are keeping score?” He snorted. “I could do you favors for the rest of my life without coming close to matching the ones you’ve done for other people. For that matter, I can think of the few ‘favors’ you’ve done for me upon occasion. And, come to that, I suppose I owe the Mountain a favor or two, as well.”

  “Aye, so you might,” Bahzell acknowledged, holding out his empty glass suggestively, and Brandark laughed and poured again.

  “To Korun, then.” He raised his own glass.

  “To Korun, and our thanks,” Wencit responded, and all four of them drained their glasses.

  “Then if you’ll excuse me,” Brandark said, setting his glass back down on his deck, “I’ve got the last of the cargo to stow. You’re in luck there, too. Duke Lainton’s chartered me to deliver a shipment of bullion, so we’ll have the better part of a company of Axe Brothers on board to keep an eye on it.”

  “Bullion?” Wencit frowned. “Why send it just now, I wonder?”

  “Ask Axe Hallow.” Brandark shrugged. “When the King Emperor says send bullion, Vonderland sends it. And when the Gut’s frozen, they send it overland to Belhadan, then someone has to take it to Man Home so they can send it to Axe Hallow so someone can make coins out of it and send it back to Belhadan. A wonderful thing, high finance.”

  “The Axe Brothers won’t mind your detour?”

  “All they worry about is their chests.” Brandark chuckled. “How they reach their destination’s up to me—and so it should be! Until later, then.”

  He waved a cheerful hand and left.

  “I
don’t like this bullion,” Wencit said thoughtfully.

  “Why not?” Bahzell asked. “As Brandark says, when the King Emperor commands, folk tend to be doing as he asks. And if I were after being the Duke, there’s no captain I’d sooner trust with my bullion shipment.”

  “True, Brandark does have a habit of getting where he sets out to go. But it offers an unfortunate pretext, Bahzell.”

  “Pretext?” Kenhodan was puzzled.

  “For a traceless disappearance he means, I’m thinking,” Bahzell murmured.

  “Exactly. If someone—with command of the art, let’s say—discovers where we are, we may bring Brandark more trouble than he’s reckoned for. It would surprise everyone if Brandark failed to complete a normal voyage…but if we don’t arrive now, people will simply assume we met more corsairs than even he could handle. And the bullion offers a perfect bait for an ill-intentioned wizard to inspire the corsairs to make the attempt.”

  “And be helping us to the bottom by unnatural means with no one the wiser,” Bahzell grunted.

  “But why?” Kenhodan asked. “I mean, why should anyone need a ‘pretext’? You’re a wizard—a white wizard—and you’ve spent the gods only know how long dealing with one rogue wizard after another. Surely no one would be surprised if one of those rogue wizards used sorcery against you.”

  “Surprised, no,” Wencit agreed. “But angry? Yes.”

  “If they’re worried about making someone angry, then why did they use sorcery last night?”

  “As far as last night goes, that was very carefully chosen sorcery,” Wencit replied. “Shadow chill is lethal, but they also carried swords. The shadowmage was a last-ditch weapon they didn’t want to use, because what he would’ve done would have been unmistakable sorcery. But if we’d been cut down by blades, who could prove they hadn’t been honest steel?”

  “But why would it matter? Let’s face it, Wencit. If they’d succeeded in killing you, who’d be in a position to do anything about it?”