Treason's Shore

by Sherwood Smith

  Erkric had not known about that.

  “The Norsundrian must be in command.” Erkric’s voice was husky with terror. “We must turn aside—the battle is here!”

  Durasnir said, “It’s a feint.”

  “What?” Erkric gasped.

  Durasnir paused again. This time the words he wished to utter were “Permit me to command,” but he knew they would only sound petulant.

  And in the larger sense, Erkric was in command—of the Venn kingdom. Durasnir’s power was strictly confined to the Oneli’s conduct of the battle.

  No one had even asked why the king was not among them as they engaged the enemy at last.

  Durasnir said, “While I find it difficult to believe that we were incompetent enough not to notice the approach of this force, I find it impossible to believe that we would not have perceived a larger one. We know what lies to the east and how many. Despite the surprising appearance of the Knife leading these Delfs, this is a feint, intended to send us into confusion by causing us to change course, so that their main line—what we know to be their main line—can strike on the flank. They want us sailing at our weakest, nearly up into the wind.”

  He saw comprehension in the sailors. Erkric was impossible to read, save the vein beating in his temple revealing that he was as angry as Durasnir. Maybe angrier.

  “We will be straitened now, but not unduly, for our discipline is the greater.” Durasnir said it loud enough for the entire deck to hear. And then he gave the command for two Battlegroups to detach, with all their raiders and cutters, to deal with the newcomers: the main force would stay on course.

  From the Vixen, hidden in the midst of the cluster of small boats and light schooners that had accumulated, Inda watched the Venn put helm down, rise tacks and sheets.

  How beautifully they stayed in their own length! Despite the lazy summer airs, the warships were as quick as their cutters.

  The entire fleet had staggered when they saw the Knife. Inda could almost feel the tremors through their command: the conviction that they had been tricked. I can’t believe Barend kept the Delfs completely unseen by the Venn, he thought. Either the Venn are incompetent or they’ve got their own command problems. Didn’t take much to guess which.

  As the sun slanted westward, the cluster of curious small craft on the extreme edge of the Delfs slid nearer to the Venn, Vixen among them. The detachment was clearer now and it was not the entire Oneli, but just a few Battlegroups.

  Well, Inda had not really expected to fool Durasnir so easily. He settled into Vixen’s bow, glass pressed to his eye, appreciating the beauty of ships sailing toward battle. He wondered if a charge across the plains looked as glorious as these graceful craft with studding sails extended like wings, as the arched prows plunged through the waters, sending white lace fans feathering down the sides. Inda’s memories of his single land battle were vivid, but included nothing of beauty, only the stink of sweat, the grunts from men laboring to kill, struggling to survive—the blood-splattering chaos of hand-to-hand fighting between sky-high cliffs.

  The blood and stink would come soon enough. The Venn and Delf ships closed and met, perfect order vanishing as they curved round one another, seeking the advantage to close, grapple, and board. From this distance it looked like a game, the ships and crew like dolls. You could not see blood at a distance, or hear cries of pain.

  The sun hung just above the water on the western horizon, creating a trail of golden spangles. Is that the image that lies behind the Venn Golden Path? The darkening east began to glow with the false dawn of burning ships: several Delfs. No Venn.

  Then the Venn horns blatted like a herd of attack beasts: in perfect line, red flags at the foremast, Fox’s fleet had begun to engage the main force.

  “All right, time for us to leave the fishers,” Inda said.

  Jeje rammed the tiller over, Loos shifted the mainsail. The Vixen nosed away from the relative safety of the watching fishers and headed straight for the Venn.

  Aboard the Cormorant, all hands stood at battle stations. Erkric prowled the windward rail of the captain’s deck, with Yatar and his nephew at either side. Erkric only waited for full dark, so he could transfer to the Cliffdiver and give the order for the dags to commence the magic attacks. He’d thought to wait for the height of battle, but he was already so confused that he knew he would not recognize the height, and Durasnir, watching the ting chart and receiving a constant stream of reports, was so detached Erkric could not call himself ignored. But Durasnir was making no effort whatsoever to translate the arcane military language into clarity.

  Erkric watched the west, waiting for the stars to appear, and brooded about the Knife. He’d tried several spells against it, each warded. Who was on that thing?

  Erkric gave a fleeting thought to the Yaga Krona below; Ulaffa and Byarin were sufficient to hold the Cormorant. Dull and slow both, but obedient.

  Though Erkric dismissed the Yaga Krona from his attention, they were very aware of him.

  As soon as the horns blew for the attack, Ulaffa and Byarin locked the cabin door, left a trusted young dag outside to give warning, and Ulaffa placed a transfer token on the deck.

  Moments later Valda appeared. Anchan crept out of hiding, practiced by now. Valda staggered from transfer-reaction, to be caught up by Byarin’s powerful grip. He guided her to a chair.

  “Never mind me. Go now, Byarin.”

  Anchan turned from one to the other. “Is there—may I help? I—”

  At the sudden bleakness in Byarin’s square, heavy face, she was taken aback. He opened a case, brought out a long knife with a dragon-head hilt, and then he took the token that Anchan had brought from Valda. And vanished in a faint glitter, sending a puff of air to ruffle overheated faces and damp hair.

  Ulaffa said, “Not all of them?”

  “All the ones who learned the Norsunder magic.”

  Anchan turned from one to the other. “What is it?”

  Valda and Ulaffa ignored her. Valda said, “They cannot be permitted to live with that knowledge. It must die. Now. Before it is used again. You saw how the temptation is impossible to resist.”

  Everyone remembered what had happened to Nanni Balandir. Ulaffa bowed, hands together, fingertips down in grief mode.

  Anchan thought, He’s going to kill the dags with that dagger. Those were the special tokens I laid down—identifying ships’ dags who had been trained in the Norsunder magic. Horror constricted her throat.

  Valda turned to Anchan, looking old and sad. “Now, prepare to help me spell the wards in your tokens. It’s time for you to bring up the ward against Dag Erkric’s magics we’ve lain on my tokens.”

  Anchan dared a question. “You do not want to do that?” It would seem the triumphant culmination of all their work.

  Valda’s smile was rueful—pained. “I have a ship to find and to ward as invisible, if I am right.” She added in a low, tired voice, “And if I am wrong, I want the blame to be only mine.”

  In the middle deck of the Cliffdiver, Halvir said, as he had a dozen times since the first horn, “Now?”

  And Rajnir finally said, “Now.”

  He rolled to the edge of the bunk. He was still dressed in his pure white silk and brocade garb, the kingly robes he’d worn to the coronation he did not remember. But no one had come for him: the people no longer expected him to appear, and the Yatars were apparently too busy to come and change him into more comfortable clothing.

  They would be suitable to die in.

  With an effort he sat, sustained the dizziness, and then he and the boy made their way to the door. He motioned to Halvir to check the Erama Krona with his wooden ball . . .

  And they did not move or blink.

  “This way to the deck,” Halvir whispered. “We’ll have to go slow.”

  Rajnir almost laughed. “Slow indeed,” he breathed.

  Gradually the Vixen drew closer and closer to the Venn ships.

  “Douse our lights.”

>   Jeje gave Loos the tiller; Inda took the mainsail.

  The scuttles below snapped shut. As Viac quietly snuffed the lanterns on deck, Loos guided by starlight.

  Jeje returned, after having satisfied herself with a peek at the mirror map in the light of a shaded candle. Loos took the main sail and Inda shifted position to scan. His fighting shirt rippled in the breeze, which made the locket thump against his chest. Locket!

  He set aside his glass to pull out the small roll of paper in his pocket, and the tiny steel quill that corked a little inkbottle. He tore off a piece and wrote, It’s started.

  He crammed it into the locket, the ink still wet, and sent it. Then he dove into the cabin and dug out his gear. He’d just finished pulling his fighting shirt over his strapped-on weapons when the tap of the locket alerted him. He thumbed out Evred’s message, which was largely blank. Surprised, he looked at the tiny writing at the bottom: I promised Tdor I would send this. She, Hadand, your mother, and the babies pressed kisses for you on this paper.

  Inda tucked the paper back into the locket and finished his last task: strapping on his wrist guard. He flexed his hand. Already his wrist ached clear up into his shoulder, and he hadn’t even lifted a weapon yet. He shook his head then ran up on deck.

  There he found his tiny crew gripping their weapons, silent and braced to fight to the death. Not one of them, including Inda, expected to survive this plan: Nugget wept silently on the masthead. Until this moment she’d been exhilarated, anticipating triumph, because now she was with Inda. She was following orders. But as she stared up at the looming ship, she thought for the very first time, We can’t win against one of these. And hard on that thought, Inda knows it.

  Tears burned her eyes as she peered down at Inda on the deck, one hand digging hard into the muscles of his shoulder as he so often did. He knows we can’t win. Grief made her chest hurt, and she held her breath so she wouldn’t sob. Grief gave way to anger as she turned her eyes up to that ship. All right. So Inda wouldn’t win. She clutched her knife and her belaying pin under her armpit. But they won’t get us easy.

  Jeje and the Fishers stood poised, ready to maneuver: they would have to be faster than the Venn to survive long enough to reach that flagship. What would happen then . . . the brothers whispered alternate plans, and Jeje gripped the tiller, sensing each minute change in water and wind.

  The first drakans drew closer and closer . . . and no challenge. No horns. No one ran along the rails waving weapons, no one in the tops so much as looked down. Inda and his crew could see the Venn crouched there, longbows strung, arrows slack in fingers ready to tighten at a moment’s notice, as a massive drakan drew ever nearer, then the prow arched overhead and . . . past, followed by the towering sails of the foremast, the mainsails, and the mizzen . . . until they gazed in blank amazement at the stern, with the ship’s name spelled in runes and a stylized seabird painted below the name.

  Inda did not want to say aloud the words they were all thinking. It was as if speaking would burst the peculiar bubble of invisibility that seemed to surround them.

  But as they passed between two more drakans, and again between another pair, and the vigilant Venn did not so much as look down, it gradually became clear that somehow the Vixen really had become invisible.

  There was no one to ask how. They had only to keep on, sailing past rank on rank, close-hauled as only the Vixen could sail, almost straight into the wind, Jeje brooding on the astonishment in Inda’s face. He thought we’d be dead by now.

  Past more and more until there was a space between ships, too deliberate to be accident—open water between the Oneli and a ring of raiders on guard, so the raiders had clear sight and room to maneuver.

  Inda swept his glass back and forth until he was sure. In the very center of the raiders he made out the taller masts of the command drakans. And central to those, a drakan slightly bigger than the others with a stylized cormorant painted on its stern. As the Vixen slanted toward that central formation, Inda and his crew gazed silently at the ships’ tops bristling with archers and at the rails, cut booms at the ready.

  The fiery rim of the sun sank behind them, leaving a dense blue sky that brought Joret Dei’s eyes to Inda’s mind, and from Joret his thoughts snapped to Tdor, and Signi. High across that pure blue sky drifted downy wisps of a startling pink.

  Peace above and war below. Inda swept the glass around the ocean, until he got dizzy; he looked more slowly, facing the fact that Rajnir’s navy was far more formidable than he had anticipated. Rich sunset color, gold and ruddy rose and deep blue, painted the two converging fleets with spectacular highlights.

  “Loos. Where are your weapons?” Inda murmured without taking his eye from the glass.

  “Right here. I’m sweatin’ so bad, don’t fit right. Figured I’d wait until they’re comin’ right at us.”

  Inda checked his own wrist straps. Yep. Sweaty. But snug anyway. They’d have to replace Loos’ gear. “Viac?”

  “Ready-o.”

  “Nugget?”

  “Ready.”

  Inda didn’t ask Jeje. He could hear her readiness in her breathing; she was thinking, You expected to die, or wanted to die, Inda? Then she shrugged irritably as the signal passed down the Venn to light up. That kind of question was for Tau.

  Swift darts of golden color winked across the horizon and gathered into patterns of golden running lights, a heart-lifting sight that reminded Inda of Signi saying sadly once, Why is it we cherish as beautiful so many deadly things?

  Behind them, the Delfs chewed into the drakans. Arrows arced back and forth, most of the high ones erupting in tongues of bright flame as each side tried to come at the others from the best angle for boarding and carrying. The light winds, intermittently strengthened by gusts from all directions—promising bad weather—rendered the pace of battle stately with deliberate cruelty. Over the water carried the groaning cracks of ships sliding alongside ships, the crashing topple of masts, and above all the shouts and cries of warriors swarming from ship to ship.

  Inda leaned out, trying to see how the Delfs were doing to the southwest, when Jeje called, “Inda!”

  A cold, wet gust of wind from the northeast ruffled their faces and belled the sail, sending the Vixen surging over the next wave.

  Viac Fisher said, “See that?” He stood at the jib sail lines in trousers, boots, vest, two knife sheaths strapped to his bare arms, weapons at his waist, as he pointed eastward into the night. The stars were vanishing slowly: gathering clouds. “That storm wind’s backing our line. Fox is raking their line with fire arrows.”

  “Make that halyard fast and take the tiller, Loos. I’m going back to that mirror chart,” Jeje said. “I want to see these stinkers on the paper.”

  Inda fingered out his note with his left hand as he swung his glass across the Venn fleet and then back. The others were all intent forward. Had Signi also kissed it? Inda pressed the paper to his lips, but all he tasted was the rice-rag of the paper and the salt in the air. He kissed it again, feeling the briefest sense of proximity of the people who loved him, whom he loved.

  Why wasn’t Signi’s name among the others? Inda suspected that was because he sailed to war, against her people. There was nothing either of them could say. Better no communication than false words.

  Grief, regret, cut cruelly. Inda thrust his kissed paper into a pocket and swung around, scanning the line of enemy ships.

  “Inda! You’ve got to see this,” Jeje called from her cabin.

  “What is it?”

  Jeje said in a low, urgent voice, “I saw it yesterday, but didn’t think it meant much: the tings aren’t random, they ring out from the center. Now I know that the center is the command ships.”

  “So?” Inda shrugged.

  “So nothing, I thought, just like you. But I checked again, because the closer we got, the more that center blurred. Thought it odd. Listen, Inda. The flagship isn’t the only one sending out the ting commands. I’ve got the flagsh
ip pegged by sight on the mirror chart.” She had poked up through the hatch. Visible only as a silhouette, she jabbed her finger toward the central defensive formation.

  “There can’t be two commands.” Inda frowned. Instinct insisted something was amiss, though he couldn’t define what. “Is the magic fading?”

  Inda turned his glass south. More ships on fire, under the peaceful glimmer of stars above.

  “The other command ship has to be there—three points off the weather bow.”

  “There’s nothing there. Just a lone raider,” Nugget called softly from the lookout.

  Inda sighed. So much for a miraculous occurrence, like on Andahi. “Probably just a backup for communication disaster.”

  Jeje said, disappointed, “Guess I was wrong.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “WHAT if the mers get us?” Halvir whispered. Rajnir leaned heavily on the boy’s shoulder. He tried not to—he could feel the boy’s light bones bending—but as soon as he shifted his weight to his own feet, his knees trembled. “If they get us, they get us,” he whispered, already out of breath. “But I don’t think they will. All this fire. Splinters. They must be far below, watching.”

  “Watching the battle? Like it’s a ballad act?” Halvir’s wide blue eyes showed twin reflections of fire from distant ship battles.

  Rajnir said bitterly, “If they’re human still, would they not love to watch a war?” He gripped the rail. “Now. Over, onto the mainchains—”

  It was dark enough.

  Erkric gestured to Yatar and his nephew, gathered his strength, and transferred. That left the two to perform their own transfers, which they did.

  When the three had recovered, Erkric had glanced quickly around the Cliffdiver’s deck. The Erama Krona stood like motionless pillars, given wide berth by the crew. Because all Venn grew up knowing that you never approach or address the Erama Krona on duty, no one had noticed they were shrouded.