So negotiate.
“Viac. Ease enough to let him talk.” Inda’s right hand had gone numb, so he pawed the air with his left. “I want the war to end.”
Rajnir’s chin lifted. In the beating firelight, his gaze was steady. “So do I. But I don’t know how much control I have over calling a halt.” His voice was hoarse as Viac’s grip was murderously tight.
“I can help with that,” Valda said briskly.
Inda cut his eyes toward Viac and lifted his chin.
Viac relaxed his grip on Rajnir, who sagged to the deck. “I do not want this war,” Rajnir repeated, then lifted his head, giving Valda a long, somber stare. “End it. If you can.”
Viac put away his knife and turned his back to them all. He staggered; only then did his mates realize he’d taken several bad wounds in fighting the Erama Krona who had killed his brother.
As Viac bent to straighten his brother’s limbs, Jeje said to Nugget, “Nice work.”
Inda flicked a look at Nugget, whose eyes were too wide, her cheeks flushed. He knew that state, the weird, unreal hilarity after a battle—and how suddenly reality, and grief, would sink in the invisible knife. “Not bad for one hand, eh?”
Nugget beamed. “I saved you both, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.”
Nugget turned to Viac, bent over Loos, and her triumph faltered, but she squared up and followed Jeje’s lead in retrieving their blades.
Valda knelt by Rajnir, reassured herself that he was materially unhurt, then spotted Halvir still huddled in the bow.
“Bandages,” Jeje said and ducked below, hand pressed to her bleeding neck.
Valda turned back to Inda, her hands on her knees, as Inda waved his knife toward the battle fires scattered all around the horizon. He had promised Signi to limit the slaughter. Now he had to try to keep his word. “Let’s end it.”
Valda cleared her throat, tightening her body in an effort to gather her dwindling strength. “Here comes the Cormorant. Durasnir is on his way.”
Inda peered under one hand. The flagship’s fires had been doused, the sails shifted. The drakan began its turn, and catching one of the rising eastern gusts, picked up speed with each surge.
“If you will permit, we need to agree on a story,” Valda went on. “Everyone saves face, and you, Indevan Algara-Vayir, gain enough moral advantage so that Durasnir is not forced to order you all put to death.” Her voice thinned with grief. “There has been enough killing. Not just against your armada, but right here, Venn versus Venn.” She passed tense fingers over her face. “And so. We will all claim that you fought the halmgac with Dag Erkric, just after he treacherously turned on King Rajnir. In return, King Rajnir promised a truce, and granted you safe passage. Does that agree with you, O my king?”
Rajnir’s voice rasped. “Better words have not been put in my mouth.”
Valda’s breath hissed sharply.
Inda tapped his numb arm. “Will anyone believe that? Me, against a mage? Even an old one?”
“You forget your reputation,” Valda said. “They will believe it. Perhaps some are less credulous than others, but those latter will see how it is to everyone’s advantage to cooperate.”
Halvir had ventured cautiously forward. Now that the threat was over, thrill and curiosity replaced fear and dread. He was still weak from days of darkness and little exercise followed by that horrible struggle in the water when he fought to keep the king from sinking, but natural ebullience caused him to turn to Inda—after a long, fascinated gaze at poor Loos’s head. “Are you really Elgar the Fox?” he asked in passable Sartoran.
“Well, one of ’em,” Inda said, then looked up. “Jeje? You all right?”
Jeje paused as she wrapped some bandage cloth carefully around her throat. “Probably looks worse than it is. He wasn’t strong enough to cut deep, the old shit.” She pointed at the dead Venn. “Those fellows were fast.”
Valda said, “They had just emerged from two magical spells, not just one. Or they would have been faster.”
Inda half raised a hand, about to protest this slight against his crew, but the expressions in the king’s and boy’s faces made him pause. Maybe there was some kind of reassurance going on here—a restoring of balance, of self-worth. He remembered what he’d felt like when he’d escaped Wafri, and Fox saying something like, You and I are the two most wanted fighting men in this half of the world . . . Fox ordinarily never talked flash. But Inda had remembered that, over and over, in the bad days directly after his escape from Limros Palace.
Then the drakan flagship bore up, the enormous prow arching overhead. Despite the scorch marks and sails being replaced by crew in the rigging, the rail was lined with archers, at their head Oneli Stalna Durasnir, whom Inda instantly recognized.
Brit Valda walked forward, hands raised. “The king has declared a truce,” she called, her old voice quavering and thin, but carrying.
Durasnir spoke a word, and all the arrows lifted skyward. Still nocked, but not aimed.
Durasnir stared down, amazed to recognize the young Marlovan Harskialdna from the cliffs above Andahi Pass. Then his heart flooded with visible relief when he saw his son, alive and unhurt.
“Came to fight your Dag in a duel,” Inda called up.
“Dag Erkric is dead, after turning his hand against me,” Rajnir said, hoarse but clear. Sentient. “Norsunder claimed him after he lost the halmgac.”
A swift murmur hummed through the Venn, and Durasnir motioned for a bosun’s chair to be lowered to the Vixen as Jeje kept the tiller steady on the scout.
The king was soon aboard his flagship again, a sorry figure with his loose flesh ill-concealed in his sodden white silk and brocade. But his eyes, for the first time in years, were clear and aware.
“We could win it,” Durasnir said, amazed to see comprehension in Rajnir’s gaze. Uncertain how to proceed. “It’s tight, but we could win. Their discipline will break, and—”
“And what then, Oneli Stalna my commander?” Rajnir said, in a private voice. “And then eternal vigilance, while the likes of Count Wafri plot behind our backs? Where is the glory in killing other people to take their land, then having to fight more when they try to defend their livelihood?”
Durasnir wondered if he dreamed, to hear his most secret thoughts spoken aloud, and by Rajnir, of all the people in the world. He said with care, “It has always been our way.”
“As I lay there waiting for Erkric to use my body to enforce his actions, and my voice to speak his words, I began to wonder what it might be like if others came to take our homeland away because they had need of fish and cold weather and stone. No longer do I find Wafri so very wrong.”
Durasnir pressed his hands together in peace mode.
Rajnir lifted his voice. “I declare this war at an end. We will return and rebuild our homeland.”
Durasnir paced to his signal ensign. White, gold, white, the flags jerked up and up on the fire-scarred mast. Another ensign, his puffed cheeks purple, blew steadily on his horn, “Blaaap, blaaap, blaaap . . . blaaap, blaaap, blaaap!” which caused ships to disengage where they could, and draw together into the great arrowhead, as the signal radiated outward from ship to ship.
The bosun’s chair was lowered for Halvir. Durasnir called to Inda, “Is the man called Ramis aboard the Sinna-Drakan? The ship you call the Knife?”
“I don’t think so.” Once again, Durasnir looked down into that scarred face, the wide brown eyes narrowed and alert, as the young man added, “Did he take it from you people?”
“I do not believe there is a simple answer to that,” Durasnir responded, as if they were not at opposing sides in a battle, one in a scout, the other in a half-burned flagship with nine-and-ninety arrows aimed down from the mastheads. It seemed important: Durasnir intuited presence, as if more listened than were in view.
Durasnir had once seen the drakan the southerners called the Knife, at the very end of the pirate battle at The Narrows, on the other side of
the world. Ghosts had prowled that deck, ghosts with long tangled hair, and long mustaches, old short swords and battle-axes to hand. Yet the ghost of the fabled king who had built the Sun Dragon had not been among them. Instead, Ramis stood before the whipstaff where the golden-torced ghost should have been . . . “It sailed away. Our skalts insist it sailed out of time,” Durasnir said when the two ships began to draw apart.
Indevan Algara-Vayir did not betray surprise, or doubt, or the smirk of secret knowledge. Just a sober tip of the head, then he turned away, the pain in his step unmistakable.
Halvir was set on the deck. He ran down the companionway, and now he reached his father at last, and lifted his arms. Durasnir gathered him up, and thin as the boy was—no more than flesh-covered bones—crushed him heart to heart.
Valda transferred herself to the deck just behind him. When she’d recovered, Durasnir said over Halvir’s head, “Cliffdiver?”
“They are all dead,” she said softly. “Erkric must have ordered the Erama Krona to murder the entire crew, including the Yatars. Then they turned their blades on themselves.” She gestured to her middle. “For they had lost the king. I think we should burn it as is, let no hand further desecrate those murdered by Erkric’s evil will, for they kept faith as best they could with their vows.”
“It will be done,” Durasnir said, gesturing to the duty officer to relay the order.
And so, Yatar, you regain honor in your death. You will have to decide if it is justice or mercy. Valda paced behind the ensigns helping the king into the cabin. The healer came forward, but when the king made a dismissive gesture, the healer turned Valda’s way. “My cuts are superficial,” she said.
Rajnir said, “Clear out.” The healer flushed, but it had been so long since the king had addressed him, he did not know how to respond except to make a full obeisance and withdraw.
It was so strange to hear the king speaking again, strange and almost unnerving—everyone felt that way, and saw their own reaction in the others. The ensigns filed out, closing the cabin door behind them, leaving Rajnir in his throne, and Valda standing before him.
“I need to know.” He made no attempt to hide his bitterness. “Are you now my voice?”
“No,” she stated. “No. If you wish an adviser until you regain the present day, you should ask someone you trust. I recommend Fulla Durasnir, who is not a dag. I recommend—but do not tell you—to place Dag Ulaffa in charge of the dags. It’s probably a forlorn hope that the terrible magic Erkric discovered can all be destroyed. Knowledge of any kind, once it’s loose, is difficult to contain.”
Rajnir sighed, leaning back. “Thank you for that. But is there some reward you want? Everyone wants something.”
“I want peace.” Her voice shook. “I would love an end to war, and the craving for war. We have already taken steps to make it more difficult for any more invasions: you should know this, O my king, there are some of us who sent a dag to share our navigation secrets with Sartor. So I think the Death Spells could be lifted from our sea dags. But again, I recommend. It is your decision.”
“If giving our navigation to the world is not a betrayal, it is at least a judgment against us. But I accept it as our due. What about your reward? I keep hearing a ‘but’ in your voice.”
Valda clasped her hands. “I do not want riches, and you cannot give me youth. If you were to give me a reward, it must be large, or none at all. So large . . . that you might not be able to compass it.”
“Speak your mind.”
“It is no less than this: that we set aside one of our oldest customs, the born thrall.”
To Valda’s surprise, Rajnir began to laugh. He shook all over, shading his eyes with one hand, and she frowned in affront until she realized that he was weeping.
“Oh, yes,” he said finally. “Oh, yes.”
As dawn’s light smeared the east under the incoming oppression of heavy cloud, Inda’s mood was low.
The Vixen emerged into the widening gap between the Venn and the alliance. Viac stayed at his post, but his tight breathing prickled Inda’s nerves. They’d Disappeared Loos as soon as the last Venn ship vanished hull down, all of them together while the sail flapped and the scout rocked on the increasing waves.
Then Jeje passed out her small store of bandages—and ripped cloth when she ran out. They set sail again in the strengthening wind, heading straight toward the faint gray in the east under a cloud-blackened sky as to the north, the Venn pulled together into an arrowhead, also sailing east.
Not all ships disengaged from battle. Inda spotted distant clusters of winking lights emphasized by tiny glimmers of arcing flame as embattled ships fought to take the other ship, or to kill, or just to see the enemy burn.
But most of the hard-pressed alliance moved in a mass southward, some in formation as they paralleled the Venn, others in chaotic swarms as their captains tried to figure out what was happening. Why had the Venn abandoned their lines of attack and pulled back into the arrow? Was it time for the terrible magic attacks everyone had warned about?
Vixen was alone—and when the capital ships saw it, with its white flag at the foremast, signals flew out: commander in view.
When Vixen rounded to under Death’s lee, Fox himself appeared at the rail, his expression changing from a hard expectancy to relief, and then amazement. “Why are they back in the . . . You did it?” Then, in blatant disbelief, “You did it!” He gestured for hands to leap down to the Vixen’s aid.
“No, no, let me be,” Jeje snarled. “Take Viac. He’s covered with cuts. No, Loos died. Yes. Nugget? You go aboard Death, so I can get Vixen cleaned up.”
Fox shut them out. “Inda, want a lift?”
“Of course not.” Inda made himself leap up the side at something like his old pace, though he could only hang on with his left hand.
It took all his remaining strength to walk into the cabin, stared at by the entire crew. Somewhere in the distance he was briefly aware of Nugget talking rapidly. Fox lingered behind Inda, listening to the gist of things, practiced after years at sorting Nugget’s enthusiastic embellishments.
Inda flopped onto the bed, arms out, one leg hanging over the side.
“You really fought hand-to-hand with Erkric?” Fox asked as he took a seat where he could keep an eye down the deck through the open door.
“Naw. But that’s what we’re telling everyone.” Inda grimaced. “Did Nugget say she bopped Erkric on the head?”
“She claims that you defeated him, after a terrific one-handed battle, one of the twenty or thirty Erama Krona having buried his ax in your back first. The ax, I gather, is true.” He pointed to Jeje’s good cotton-silk ship visiting shirt, ripped and twisted around Inda’s chest and shoulder.
Inda gave a short but succinct report.
Fox listened in silence, then said, “Brit Valda . . . and your Dag Signi. It never ceases to amaze me, how you manage to find just the right person at the right time, always sympathetic to your cause.”
“I didn’t plan for any of that. I just . . .”
“Just went on a suicide mission, because it was the only way out of an impossible situation. I know. It seems to me you’ve done that before. At Andahi, from what I hear. At The Narrows, from what I saw. The day we took Cocodu from Gaffer Walic. Each time you were the means of change, yet you would have failed but for these other people who saw in you their salvation.”
“It’s not me, it’s them.” Inda sighed. “They do what they’re going to. I didn’t have anything to do with Dag Valda. Never saw her before in my life. Ramis, same thing, at The Narrows. And at Andahi Erkric and Durasnir called the cease. No friends to me.”
“The day you took Dag Signi, you set this day up. I would have kept her a prisoner, you set her free. Made her a partisan. And she made this Valda a partisan. Erkric’s action at Andahi is tougher to explain, but do you see how it all connects?”
“Tdor would have it all humans are connected—now and through time—though we don’
t see the knots. What we did today is important to something going on in, say, Colend, though none of us know it. We might never. And that will be important to somebody in Toar . . .” Inda was taken by a fierce yawn.
“Yes, everything will matter later.” Fox looked amused. “Go to sleep. No, stay there. I’d have to change the bedding anyway, I can smell you from here. Sleep, and I’ll deal with the detritus. There’s bound to be plenty.”
Inda could not have moved if all the Venn had charged the ship with fire and sword. Every bone and sinew loosened. Even his right arm had ceased to ache—had ceased to feel. With each breath he sank down and down, past scraps of memory, and down farther into infinitely yielding oblivion.
Fox tossed the blanket over Inda. He could feel the roll and pitch of the ship changing. That storm was near and would probably bring cold air.
He went out on deck, fighting his own fatigue. Despite the rain he did a sweep, and was not surprised to spot one of the Ymaran ships’ stern boats skipping over the waves, its sail quivering in the rising wind, Taumad at the tiller.
Tau rounded to abaft the Vixen and leaped across to reunite with Jeje. Fox shifted his attention elsewhere, dismissing them from his mind; when he turned away from his attempt to descry the Chwahir and the eastern flotillas in the thick slant of gray rain to the southeast, he was surprised to find Tau on the companionway.
“Ymar is in a panic.” Tau gestured northward, to where distant, fading twinkles indicated the Fleet Guild ships. He continued in Marlovan, “I promised to get a report. Saw Vixen. Where’s Inda?”
“Asleep. Report? As you can see, we took little damage.”
Tau’s station aboard Deliyeth’s flagship at the alliance’s northern wing, closest to their homeland, had prevented him from seeing anything southward.
“Delfs engaged hard on the south flank, driving the Venn back toward their own force,” Fox said, leaning on the rail. “As for us, we had the wind, and the speed, so we harassed their front lines with fire arrows, trying to draw their lines apart enough for the Chwahir to engage ship to ship . . .”
Treason's Shore Page 70
