The Sword of the South - eARC

by David Weber

  “Aye?” Tolgrim spat over the side, scowling back at the vanishing Wave Mistress. “Your scummy friend’s cost the Islands dear this day! And I daresay you won’t be any too popular back home yourself.” He grinned sourly, obviously pleased by the thought.

  “No, I don’t suppose so. But when you condemn poor Thardon, recall that he shared the fate of your men. His mistake cost him as dearly as it did them.”

  “May the fish lick his bones!”

  Tolgrim hissed the traditional curse savagely and took a jerky turn about his quarterdeck to regain control. Harlich stood motionless, his attention seemingly on the swelling sails. His life hung on a thread, for his art couldn’t protect him from the baffled rage of Tolgrim’s survivors if they turned on him, yet nothing in his face or manner betrayed any awareness of his danger.

  “Well, Wizard,” Tolgrim said at last, “it seems we’ve both failed. At least I can tell the Council of Captains my precious allies let me down—but what will you tell your bitch mistress, hey?”

  “An excellent question.” Harlich took care to conceal his relief at Tolgrim’s implication that he still had a future in which to report.

  “Aye, she won’t be any too pleased, I’ll wager.” Tolgrim seemed to find grim satisfaction in the thought. “Well, we’ll set you ashore near Belhadan as we promised, and it’s glad I’ll be to see the back of you!”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Harlich said carefully, “but I feel we’ve let you down badly. I’d rather see you all safely home with the wizard wind, lest more difficulties befall you. After all, your captains and the Baroness have been good friends for many years. I’d like to do what I can to preserve that friendship.”

  “You would, would you?” Tolgrim’s eyes gleamed. “I’m not so sure that would be wise. The Council might not be so understanding as I am. They might be almost as dangerous as yonder wizard.”

  His thumb jerked at their wake.

  “Of course the Council will need an explanation. That’s why it might be to your advantage to take me along. My word that you were misled—by mistake, of course!—and that you did all any man could do to save the day, might bolster your own position, I should think.”

  “Might it now? And in return?”

  “You might extend hospitality to a poor weary wizard for the next…shall we say four months?”

  “Four months, is it?” Tolgrim tugged his beard. “So you reckon it’ll all be over by then, do you?”

  “Over?” Harlich looked blank. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Of course not. Of course not.”

  Tolgrim tucked his thumbs into his sword belt and rocked on his heels, studying the wizard. He still didn’t care for this Harlich above half, but it was true another’s words might stand him in good stead before the Council.

  “All right, Wizard,” he said abruptly. “I’ll take you, and if I keep my head and you keep yours, I’ll put you up for four months. But not a day longer! And may Phrobus take me if ever I have dealings with you again!”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  Tolgrim stumped off to pass among his remaining men, and Harlich watched him exchange hand clasps with them, speak to the wounded, and generally set about shoring up his damaged prestige. He’d be busy at that throughout the voyage, for corsair captains depended upon their men’s acceptance for survival. If they lost the power of their reputations, they never commanded at sea again…if they were fortunate enough to reach home alive at all.

  And Harlich’s survival?

  He looked out over the sea. Wave Mistress had vanished, for which he was profoundly grateful. He still felt the terrible power of Wencit’s will, and it was nothing he ever wanted to feel again. Counterspells were one thing, but Wencit had shown him a new dimension of the art. It was impossible to invade another’s spell and seize control of it—every wizard knew that—yet Wencit had done it anyway. Harlich shivered in memory, for the wild wizard had done even more. Whatever had destroyed the Shark had been more than the madwind alone, and Harlich had no desire to face Wencit again, whatever Wulfra wanted.

  The Corsair Isles were far from Torfo—far enough to be safe from Wulfra’s vengeance. There was always the bothersome matter of her sponsor, of course, but Harlich suspected that he—whoever “he” was—wouldn’t bother to destroy one of Wulfra’s straying minions. After all, Harlich might prove useful to him one day…perhaps one day soon, if Wulfra was unfortunate enough to meet Wencit in arcane combat.

  Of course, Wulfra would feel he’d deserted her, but he could live with that. She wasn’t that much more powerful than he. Even if she managed to come within striking range, he had a better than even chance of surviving whatever she cared to attempt.

  And that, after all, was the point: survival. Harlich recalled Thardon’s eagerness and shook his head. Let Thardon and those like him believe the objective was power; Harlich knew better now. Power was secondary, useless unless a man survived to wield it.

  Three times Wulfra’s servants had clashed with Wencit, and Alwith and Thardon were dead. Harlich had no wish to offer Wencit a clean sweep. Oh, no! If Wulfra wanted the wild wizard dead, let her kill him. Harlich had had enough, and if Wulfra wanted to punish him for that, she could always look them up in the future.

  After four months, say…if she was still alive to do it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Cost of Love

  Brandark cradled his sextant in a bandaged hand and touched an index finger to the chart under the cabin skylight.

  “Right here,” he said confidently. “We’ll raise Cape Banark tomorrow and enter South Banark Bay on the flood.”

  “I’ll be relieved to rest my weary bones on something that doesn’t move constantly,” Wencit said.

  “Hah!” Bahzell’s derision was majestic. “You’ll change your tune soon enough, I’m betting. If it’s choose between a moving deck underfoot and a moving horse under your backside, there’s no doubt in my mind at all, at all, which you’ll be after preferring in a few days!”

  “No one made you come,” Wencit said pointedly, “but now that you have, you might at least show some respect for my old gray hairs.”

  “Come now, Wencit!” Brandark grinned and nudged Kenhodan in the ribs. “You really did invite him, you know.”

  “I did no such thing,” Wencit said tartly. “In fact, I told him he might get himself killed if he insisted on coming!”

  “That’s what I meant. You know champions of Tomanāk are disgraced if they die in bed—especially the feeble-witted hradani ones. Warning Bahzell he could get killed was like sending him an engraved invitation! Don’t begrudge him another chance to earn Scale Balancer’s favor.”

  “Aye,” Bahzell rumbled, eyes glinting at the wizard’s discomfiture. “Especially not when I’ll have to be accounting to him for having friends like this namby-pamby ship’s captain. Sure, and it’s a hard thing when a hradani’s after playing dress-up and wasting time on silly, addlepated things like books.”

  “You two are remarkable,” Wencit retorted. “You’re the only people I know with such thick skulls you don’t need helmets!”

  “Aye? Well then, I’ve no doubt that’s why we’re after being your friends!”

  Bahzell chuckled and slapped Brandark’s shoulder in appreciation of his own wit.

  “Out! Both of you—out!” Wencit clenched his fist and a blue glow danced on his knuckles. “Out! Or by Isvaria’s Axe, I’ll fry your hairy backsides over a slow fire! We’ll see who doesn’t like saddles then!”

  The two hradani beat a hasty retreat, still laughing, and Kenhodan grinned after them. But when he looked back at Wencit his smile died, for the wizard’s wildfire eyes were half-shut, his face wrung with pain, as he unclenched his fist and let the glow float above his seamed palm.

  “Wencit? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing!”

  The glow leapt and died as Wencit’s hand chopped the air sharply. His palm slapped down on the chart table with a sha
rp, explosive sound, and Kenhodan frowned in bafflement. Tension had hovered about the old man for days, screwing tighter and tighter with passing time. Kenhodan had no idea what its source might be, but his own fear of the rage hiding within him made him sensitive to the wizard’s mood, and it felt as if Wencit’s defenses had been eroded in some unfathomable manner. The wizard’s…vulnerability worried him, and not knowing its cause only made it worse.

  Silence hovered between them, framed in the sounds of a sailing ship underway—the steady creak of timbers, the rush of water, the distant voices of Wave Mistress’ crew, and the even more distant voices of the seagulls who’d swept out from the approaching land to greet them. Then, finally, Wencit sighed, propped his elbows on the chart, and leaned his face into his palms.

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Kenhodan,” he said into them, his voice weary. “I’ll ask your pardon for that.”

  “What’s bothering you, Wencit?” Kenhodan asked gently, his tone an acceptance of the wizard’s apology.

  “Many things.” Wencit lowered his hands, leaned back, and stared at the deckhead, his expression bleak, and his voice seemed to come from far away. “When you live a long time, you find too many things to regret, Kenhodan.”

  His suddenly desolate tone frightened Kenhodan, as if the sea had admitted an end to its strength. He’d come to share Bahzell’s unshakable faith in Wencit’s complete capability, but this strange depression had stripped away the veils of legend and reminded Kenhodan that for all his power, the last white wizard of Kontovar was but a man…a very old man.

  “What’s brought that on just now?” he asked finally, and Wencit hesitated, then shrugged.

  “Bahzell. Brandark. They’re so full of life—and they’re my friends.” The wildfire eyes lowered suddenly, stabbing Kenhodan. “It’s bad enough to lose friends,” he said softly, “but it’s worse to know you won’t be joining them. And worse yet to know your actions, your decisions, will cut their lives still shorter.”

  Kenhodan nodded slowly, suddenly aware that he and the wizard were two sides of a single coin. He couldn’t remember…but Wencit couldn’t forget, and he wondered, now, which was the heavier burden.

  “It’s terrible to be afraid to make friends, to love, because anyone you love will die…probably because they got too close to you, and it killed them,” Wencit went on. “You can accept the pattern of the world, of time…but not for those you love.”

  His voice was old, his face drawn, as he crossed his arms and rocked gently, cradling the memory of all his dead. Kenhodan shivered and strained to catch the last words he whispered to himself.

  “Love tears holes in you, and it happens over and over, until—after a time—you can’t even weep.…”

  * * *

  Night ruled Belhadan like a gentle tyrant. Stars burned bright, moon-silvered clouds drifted gently across a cobalt dome, and cool breeze blew through empty streets. Silence gripped the Iron Axe Tavern, broken only by the even breathing of its inhabitants, and Leeana Hanathafressa slept deeply, her dreams far away with her husband in the south.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, a tiny sound crept into those dreams. The sleeping mind tried to ignore it, but the sound persisted, hanging on the very edge of existence. Normal ears wouldn’t have heard it, but Leeana’s hearing was far from normal.

  The small sound continued, and her eyes opened. Like Bahzell, she woke fully, completely, with no lingering on the edge of sleep. She sat up and her brow furrowed as she listened intently.

  For one moment she sat; then confusion became knowledge…and fear. She vaulted up and fled the room, the hem of her gown flying as she sped down the darkened hall like the wind.

  She halted outside Gwynna’s room, and her face twisted with a fear no enemy had ever seen as her trembling hand opened the door slowly.

  Moonlight washed the bedroom through windows on three sides. It was a pleasant, blue-walled place with a thick rug, and the huge direcat slept on the rug, his black coat a slab of midnight in the moonlight. He lay almost motionless, but his forefeet moved slowly, scrabbling silently at an unseen barrier, and his breathing was quick and shallow. He didn’t even stir at her arrival, and Leeana’s heart quailed. No natural sleep would prevent Blanchrach from rousing at the quiet sound of that opening door.

  She glided to the edge of the bed. Gwynna lay very still, huge blue eyes staring blindly into the darkness. Her small fists were clenched at her sides, as if to nail down the coverlet, and her lips moved slowly. Leeana bent fearfully to the tiny, thready whisper which had drawn her here.

  “No, Poppa. No. It’s not safe, Poppa. No, Poppa, please.…”

  “Gwynna?”

  Leeana’s cool fingers brushed Gwynna’s forehead, but her daughter’s eyes were fixed and open. She never even blinked, and her lips only whispered their warning again. Leeana’s blood ran cold, and she shook the girl gently.

  “Gwynna! It’s Momma, Gwynna! Wake up!” she commanded, and the child rolled under her hand. But when Leeana released her, she lay still, her whispered litany unbroken, and Leeana Flame Hair, war maid of the Sothōii, daughter of the House of Bowmaster, victor in a score of battles, wife to a champion of Tomanāk, pressed her knuckles to her mouth and bit them bloody.

  “Lillinara, Friend of Women,” she whispered, and her voice was a bitter prayer, “must I lose my child so soon?”

  She bent over the bed a moment longer, tears glistening under the moon to splash Gwynna’s face, but the girl slept heedlessly on. Leeana’s finger traced one ivory-knuckled fists. Then she patted the small hand with infinite tenderness, turned, and left the room with a firm tread. Her face was composed, her shoulders squared, but she went down the hall with a deliberate stride unlike her normal gliding grace. She descended a flight of stairs to another door and struck the wood imperatively.

  “Farmah!” She pitched her voice low and knocked again. “Farmah!”

  After a long moment, someone stirred behind the door. The latch clicked, and the door swung quickly wide. A hradani woman looked out, her eyes bleary, her hair hanging unbraided, and her ears cocked in confusion.

  “Lady Leeana! W-What is it?”

  “Wake Frolach.” Leeana’s chin rose as if she faced an enemy. “Send him to the Academy. Tell him not to come back without Lentos himself.”

  “Lentos?” Farmah blinked away sleep. “It’s the middle of the night, My Lady! Why? What’s hap—” She broke off, eyes flying wide as the last trace of sleep departed, and her hand rose to her mouth. “No, Milady!”

  “I can’t wake her,” Leeana said bleakly. “We need Lentos.”

  Farmah’s brown eyes were suddenly strained. Her ears flattened and her own lips trembled.

  “But perhaps it’s only a dream, Milady! Perhaps—”

  “I tried to wake her!” An edge of desperation sharpened Leeana’s voice. “And Blanchrach won’t wake, either. It’s no dream. Send for Lentos now!”

  “At once, Milady!” Farmah gasped, bobbing a quick curtsy.

  “Good.” Leeana turned and walked away with the same slow, deliberate stride, and Sharmatha gazed after her in confusion and dread.

  “But, Milady, w-what should we do?” she whispered.

  “I’m going to my daughter,” Leeana said softly, without turning. “No childhood should die unwatched. Hurry, Farmah.”

  And Leeana Hanathafressa passed through the stillness of her home as silently as any ghost.

  * * *

  “That’s the mouth of the White Water.”

  Brandark pointed across the starboard bow in the morning light, and Kenhodan strained his eyes. The shore was still distant, but he saw a broad, tan stain on the blue bay where silt fanned outward.

  “I see it.”

  “It’s a wicked channel,” Brandark said idly, eyes on the dwarf perched on the bowsprit with a swinging leadline. “There’s a nasty shifting mud bank that reaches out like an underwater delta. I once saw a ship almost our size go to pieces on it right about here. We
’re lucky it still early spring—from the middle of Yienkonto to the beginning of Haniyean water boils out of there like the wrath of Korthrala. It’s the snowpack in the East Walls that does it. It takes a while to reach this far, but when it comes it brings trees the size of houses with it.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Not if you haven’t seen it,” Brandark said grimly.

  “Perhaps not,” Kenhodan admitted.

  “No offense,” Brandark said quickly. “I’m always nervous too near the White Water this time of year—especially with a crew understrength with dead and wounded. I’d rather face corsairs; at least I know they’re trying to kill me!” Then he shook himself and laughed. “Listen to me, will you? Carrying on like an old woman over a trip I’ve made dozens of times!” He clouted Kenhodan’s shoulder. “Come on, then. If it’s ships and the sea you want to learn, there’s no better school than this. Come watch a captain reap the true reward of command while he feels his way blindfolded up yonder creek!”

  And the two of them moved aft to the helmsman, laughing in the sunlight.

  * * *

  Leeana looked up as Lentos entered the room. The golden scepter of Semkirk gleamed on his blue tunic, and his face—normally smooth and unreasonably young looking for a man of his years—was taut. He was younger than Leeana, but no gods-granted bracelet encircled his wrist, and he’d seen eight decades. Now the weight of all of them seemed to crush his shoulders as he regarded her with compassionate gray eyes.

  “Well, Master Lentos?” Her voice was brittle in the sunlight.

  “The crisis is approaching, Leeana.”

  His voice sounded as if it had been planed down into something which could offer only truth, and he drew out a chair and sat with an almost painful economy of movement.

  “‘The crisis is approaching,’” Leeana repeated bitterly, and her hands tightened into fists in her lap. “How much longer?”

  “I can’t say. She’s young—very young for this.”

  “How well I know it.” Leeana averted her eyes, speaking with quiet difficulty. “All her life we’ve known she’d be ‘young’ for this, and we thought we understood. But I didn’t, Lentos. Not really. Now it’s here, and her father’s far from home. I-I’m not strong enough for this.”