The Warrior's Tale

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  'What would I do,' I wondered, 'if I did come back with you?'

  'I'll show you,' she said, and her fingers tweaked my nipple, and it rose erect. 'As often as we can.'

  'No,' I said. 'I meant...' but let my words trail off. How odd. Mosdy I'd been the person in charge, if that's the right word, of my love affairs. Yet here was this eighteen-year-old starting to plan my future. I didn't know if I liked that. I guessed that was the way royalty reasoned. At least I was being consulted in the matter, I thought wryly. But the idea of being a lapkitten didn't call to me, although I'm sure Xia would find a position for me commanding soldiers if I wished. Noble folk always need a sword to keep their power. But still... but still...

  I took refuge in the old soldier's way of dealing with the morrow: the hell with it. We'll never make it off this battlefield alive anyway.

  Not that there was much left to think with anyway. Xia had found the knotted silk cord, and was coiling it into place as her other hand swept across and across, smoothing oil on my stomach.

  A day or so later, just at dawn, I was on deck, letting my body wake up very slowly. Sergeant Ismet was a few feet away, doing a series of muscle-stretching exercises. She finished, and joined me at the rail. The day was gorgeous, the sky offering the deepest of blue, the sun bright and welcoming. A breeze touched the crests of the low waves as our galley sped through the waters. Behind us, in our spreading wake, was the rest of our forward element and behind them, bare dots on the horizon, the main fleet.

  'Odd,' I mused aloud, 'here we are, in romantic seas on a day made for a holiday, and we're sailing into battle.'

  'I don't know about a holiday,' Ismet said. 'I could never relax seeing that haze ahead of us on the horizon, and not knowing what might be hidden in it.'

  'If you weren't a soldier?'

  'If I weren't a soldier,' she returned, 'I'd never be here, now would I?'

  Without waiting for a response, she went on, 'If the Captain will excuse me, I've some lazy slatterns to roust out of their hammocks who need their exercise.' And she was gone.

  I was reminded once more what a puzzlement Ismet was. She may, in my tales, sound as if she were stupid, as if she were no more than a beede-browed goon. But this was far from the case - I'd seen her on occasion match verse with verse with poets when they recited the old lays of battle. But when it came to love-songs, or tales of the giants and fairies who supposedly walked our land before man, she knew, and wished to know, nothing at all.

  Even now, I wish I could say I understood her. But I didn't. None of us did. Perhaps Ismet was one facet of Maranonia incarnate as I'd once fancifully wondered.

  The next morning Gamelan sent for me and I found him at his favourite fishing spot positively glowing with excitement.

  'Watch,' he said, as soon as I arrived. He squatted on the deck, and if it wasn't for his robes he might've been any old fisherman, scowling at the knotted and tangled net piled in front of him.

  He reached his hand out, palm down, and touched the net strings, then raised his hand about three inches above the net. He moved it in circles, his fingers twining, like a cuttlefish. I found it hard to watch them as they moved, then my attention was ripped away, as I saw the net-strands move of their own volition, nothing touching them, and the net itself curled and dipped, and then lay motionless, still a mass, but now with all its skeins untangled.

  The handful of sailors and Guardswomen watching cheered, but Gamelan didn't need that to know what had happened. He was smiling.

  'I did it as a child,' he said softly, 'and I can do it now... My Talent is returning.'

  Some days later I made another visit to the stronghold of our enemies. Knowing I needed to get closer, I created a safeguard - if I was forced to flee, it wouldn't be as a comfortable flock of terns. I would be a swifter and more cunning creature. I'd constructed my new unguent in the proximity of two talismans - first I'd taken a bit of The Sarzana's robe Corais had torn off and still wore as a token of her hatred, and second that awful charm that was the heart of the last Archon's brother. Gamelan had protested mightily, but I'd not let him sway me. The mission was important, and I felt, if I moved softly, just like a tern, wary of man and jaeger, I could slip in and out without notice.

  I gave myself a full extra hour before dawn for my snooping, and there was no stirring as I swept closer to Ticino. Three times I swept over The Sarzana's fortress-harbour. But each time I saw no more than the others; except I now realized that the 'fog' obscuring my view was magical. Although I could make nothing of the ships close inshore, I could see more of the city itself. It was huge, as I'd thought. It had few streets, but rather canals connecting buildings, villas and squares. In the centre of the city, I saw a large squat tower. It was actually a round castle, its rim jagged with turrets and bartizans. The city squares around it were clear except for statuary, and access to the castle was via four causeways that stretched over the walls. This would be a hard fortification to storm, and I hoped we could catch both The Sarzana, and the Archon in whatever form he was in, at sea, and end the long war.

  I had to see more, and the only way was to increase the power of the spell - knowing if I did so that the danger would increase as well. But it was a risk I had to take. Gathering my strength I formed an image in my mind of The Sarzana as I'd last seen him - petulant in his silks on the deck of our galley. Wary, I began the incantation. But just as I did so the mind-portrait slipped and I thought of the real and greater enemy.

  I lost hold and the image smashed into my mind of the Archon in volcano-ripped seas, blood foaming on his lips and staining his yellowing beard, and then the world spun, spun from under me. I was caught in a maelstrom and I was falling towards that castle.

  Then all was calm. I was in a vast, shadowed room, hung with tapestries and lit by tapers. I was no longer a tern, nor my flock of terns, nor was I even a woman. I was a spirit, just a presence, and I was staring at the one man in that room, just as he became aware of me. It was The Sarzana, and he sat at a table, the top of which was a large pool that shone like mercury.

  The Sarzana's eyes gleamed. 'Antero,' he hissed, but it wasn't his voice I heard. Instead, it was that hiss I'd heard from black clouds when we first attempted a feint against Lycanth's sea-castle. It was a serpent-hiss, and I thought I could smell the same foul breath, the reek of the grave and beyond. The Sarzana stood. He walked towards me, but his motion was strange and unfamiliar. He moved not like the small man we'd rescued from Tristan, but with the long strides of another. And I knew the flesh before me was inhabited by my greatest enemy - the Archon.

  The Sarzana spoke again, with a croak. But I knew it wasn't he who moved those lips and used that throat. He said: 'You haven't finished with Lycanth yet, Antero.'

  And then The Sarzana laughed the laugh of the Archon. 'I've learned much,' he said, 'and had I known what treasures I'd find I would have taken that journey long ago. There are worlds and worlds beyond, Antero. My brother and I could've seized their fruit and brought it back, and made Lycanth a power greater than it ever was, greater than either the real world of the Far Kingdoms or those child's fables we heard before we came on them.

  'Even now, the time and the chance may be seized again,' he said. The Archon came closer towards me, and again he howled, as he had on the deck of Symeon's ship, his voice screeching in rage, 'The blood is paid and the battle yet joined, and his claws taloned, as had his brother's, but this time there was no armour of steel nor flesh between us.

  There was a moment, a bare moment, as the two monsters, for I can't call either the Archon nor his now-slave The Sarzana men, seemed to hesitate, as if gathering strength, and in that moment I found my own and cast myself, cast my spirit away and was beyond the walls of the castle, spinning free, with a whirl of images ripping through my mind, a ferret, Gamelan's face, the reliquary holding the Archon's brother's heart, even a flash of Amalric's face, and my mother, my dear mother. As I spun away I could feel the Archon's tentacles stretch out for me
.

  But for just an instant I was beyond them, and in that instant my mind found the words and cast them forth:

  Fly free

  Fly fast

  To sea

  Away Beyond.

  My spirit fingers 'remembered' that peregrine's feather I'd stroked back aboard ship, and I became that falcon, darting low over the canals, wings flurrying, away, beyond, to sea. My peregrine's soul wanted me to climb, to soar high into the sky above danger, but I, the I that was Rali Emilie Antero, knew better, and so I shot through a field of bowmen, hard across the harbour, darting this way and that as I went. I was but seconds beyond the galleys, and I could sense the wrath behind me, and the rage boiling forth, like hunting hounds on the scent, but I was gone. I had taken that one moment the Archon and The Sarzana had been too slow to seize.

  Near the mouth of the bay I allowed my normal spell to revert, and I was the wind, a wind blowing fast off the island, a sharp gale that was there and then gone. I thought I 'saw', far behind me, high in the heavens, a great eagle, the eagle that was the mortal enemy of the peregrine, sweeping, searching, but perhaps not. I could chance neither the energy nor the possibility of leaving a trail to pay it any mind.

  I'd taken the one instant away from the Archon. He would not give me that luxury again.

  Gamelan was angry when I reported what had happened. 'The Archon's marked you yet again, Rali,' he said. 'When we come to grips with him once more, you'll be his first target.'

  'He can but try,' I said, and immediately felt ashamed of such a subaltern's bravado, especially when I saw Gamelan's blind eyes fix me, and his lip lift scornfully. Before he could tell me what I already knew, that each encounter decreased my odds, I apologized for my foolishness.

  'The question now becomes,' he went on, 'what sort of shield we might be able to give you so that you can meet him on equal ground, at least for a moment. I must think,' he said. 'I must think.'

  He may have been the only one interested in thinking, though, after I made my report personally to Admiral Trahern. He ignored any mention I made of the Archon, as if he still had trouble believing magic existed.

  'Now we have him trapped,' was Trahern's hearty response, and he ordered all sail clapped on and the oars manned. 'We'll not let The Sarzana escape us this time.'

  From our scouting I knew The Sarzana's ships hadn't made any effort to sail out and I had to wonder who was being trapped. I also had to wonder why Trahern had sent the oarsmen to the sweeps. All that would accomplish would be to exhaust his sailors before the day ofbattle.

  But I wasn't consulted, and so held my tongue.

  A week later, we closed on the Alastors. The sail had taken an eternity, even though I was deathly afraid of the battle that would be mounted when we reached them. Was it possible, I dreamed for an instant, that all women and men could learn sorcery, and be able to send their spirits flying wherever they wished? It was an idle thought, but at least a cheerful one amid the grimness surrounding us.

  I'd tried twice more to send my spirit forward, but each time had only stood there naked, dripping oil, and feeling a bit of a fool. The Archon, for so I thought of him regardless of his physical envelope, had firmly bolted that door.

  But there was always another way. We took our galley close in, using night and bad weather to shroud us, then I went into the gut with a hand-picked team of sailors in a longboat, past the two portal cities, far enough to be able to see The Sarzana's ships as they waited for battle. No. The Sarzana wasn't running.

  Finally the fleet arrived off the islands, and assembled into its three battle wings. Fleet Admiral Trahern ordered all ship's captains to assemble on his flagship, the biggest and, I thought the clumsiest, of all the Konyan galleys.

  I went across with Gamelan and Cholla Yi. Cholla Yi was already stewing. 'I wonder just how,' he growled, 'that pussel-gutted old man will make sure we'll be denied our fair share of glory?'

  I agreed with him that no doubt Trahern would do something stupid. And indeed he did.

  He'd had one of his pet aides, who evidently had an artistic bent, draw up a wall-size sketch of the way he proposed to fight the battle. It was quite beautiful, and the aide had had time to add froth-blowing dragons, mermaids and even a sea demon or two along the borders, so as not to obscure our complete understanding of Admiral Trahern's brilliance. It fitted right in with the gold and imperial velvet decorations of the flag cabin, and with Trahern's ship itself, which made the galley I'd rescued Xia from look like a paragon of subtle decoration and design, with its polished metal and white-clayed knotwork everywhere, and the sideboys and on-deck watch perfect in blue-striped long-sleeved tunics, white pantaloons, bare feet and white gloves.

  Briefly, Trahern proposed to divide the fleet into three striking elements. One would hold to the left (west) as we entered the gut and be commanded by Admiral Bhzana, who'd wanted my head when we were captured by the Konyans. He was, at least, a fighter. The wing on the right, the east, would be led by Admiral Bornu, who I'd heard was a complete waste, more concerned with who was rogering his roundheeled but rich wife than the ships under him. The centre wing, and command of the entire fleet, would be under the command of Trahern himself.

  Trahern's plan was simple - which was its only good point. Our fleet would sail into the bay. It would, somewhere before it reached Ticino find The Sarzana's fleet. Then all of the Konyan ships would close frontally with The Sarzana's, board, and victory could only be a few hours away. That was the sum total of his 'strategy'.

  I was seething already, having noted there was no mention of our role in the battle. Instead, I forced calm, and asked.

  Admiral Trahern, a little nervously, said, 'Well, Captain, and damme but I wish we'd arranged to give you a proper title, harder than all blazes realizin' you're more than just a ship's officer, we thought you and your, uh, men, I mean, command, would be our reserve, ready to fling yourselves into the fray at the proper moment.'

  There'd been a few snickers when he said 'men', not only because of my Guards, but because of Nor's unfortunates. I ignored them. 'Which will be?' I asked.

  'Well,' Trahern hedged, 'at my signal, of course. Or, once their fleet is broken, perhaps you'll be useful in the mopping up. Yes, that'll be your role.'

  I was about to explode, and all at once everything came to me, precisely and as crystalline as if I were looking down on a battle-miniature under glass. I knew what we must do, and, more importantly, realized Admiral Trahern had given us the opportunity. It was just then Cholla Yi boiled to his feet, sending his chair crashing. I spun, and time froze, just for an instant. Cholla Yi had his mouth open, ready to bellow his frenzy at being left out yet again, and I looked him straight in the eye. I make no claim for working magic at that moment. No spell came, I swear. But somehow what was in my mind must've signalled, because he clamped his mouth shut, and, without saying anything, turned and stamped out.

  Admiral Trahern was red, about to shout an order for this unruly pirate to be hurled into irons, then regained control. 'My apologies for my compatriot,' I said smoothly. 'He's merely caught up in the desire to destroy this evil, as are we all. Isn't that correct?'

  Trahern nodded jerkily, accepting what I'd said.

  'As long as I'm on my feet,' I went on, 'I have a question about your strategy. You seem to be forgetting the curse that surrounds those who kill their rulers here in Konya. One of the reasons the Council of Purity listened to me,' and I put emphasis into my voice for this latter, 'and Princess Xia, was because of their wish for me, or my forces, to keep the blood from their hands. Are you saying you propose to defy that curse?'

  There were mutters from the other captains, and I saw fear on the faces of more than a few. Trahern harrumphed.

  'As to the curse, well, I must say I've never been entirely comfortable with certain beliefs the masses hold true. I mean, whatever happened to the man, whoever he was, who actually cut the throat of our late King, or however he died? I haven't seen any such ghost b
eing pursued through the streets of Isolde by demons.'

  He forced a laugh, and was the only one in the room to do so.

  'But, in fact, Captain Antero, I have taken the curse into account. We have every intent of using your forces to the fullest at the proper time, and have no intent of violating the Council's wishes in any way.' Trahern looked a little nervous at that thought. 'But to be realistic, I must say that if The Sarzana happens to fall in battle at the hands of an unknown soldier or archer, well, whatever penalties might be put on that wight's soul will be balanced by the honour in which we Konyans hold his memory.

  'But I do not think that will happen, which is why I've designated your galleys as our reserve. Once we've isolated The Sarzana on his flagship, and boarded it, I will signal, either by flag or by magical sign from one of my own wizards, for you and your women to administer the final stroke that will free our lands.

  'I'm glad you had the question, Captain, and enabled me to clear up this small misunderstanding.'

  Misunderstanding, indeed. Trahern was an even bigger ass than I'd dreamed. It was clear he intended all glory from the death of The Sarzana would cling to him, and would doom all around to make that so. Again, I was reminded of General Jinnah - another man who'd rather lose a war than face reality.

  I kept a stony face, however, bowed and excused myself, saying I had to order my galleys, and I'd be paying close attention to his signals. Trahern knew - or thought he knew - what I was thinking, and was glad to see me leave. I took Gamelan's arm and we left the cabin.

  As we came on deck, I saw Cholla Yi, pacing back and forth by the railing. He was alone on the deck - none of the Konyans had courage enough to approach this great bear of a man with his spiked hair and face black with rage.

  I was about to go to him when Gamelan stopped me. 'Rali,' he said softly. 'Is there anything close at hand that reflects?'

  I thought for a moment he had gone mad, then recovered. 'Almost everything,' I told him. 'Admiral Trahern evidently believes that if something moves it's to be saluted, and if it doesn't, it's to be polished.'