Master of the Cauldron

by David Drake

  The comment wasn't completely fair—there was a great deal of rivalry between infantry and the higher-paid cavalrymen, and the fact that these infantry were the royal bodyguard didn't change the ill-feeling for the better. On the other hand, it wasn't completely unfair either. The men climbing the gangplanks onto the ships were hampered by long cavalry swords, and many of them were in high horseman's boots as well. From what Sharina could see, most had more than the bare minimum of possessions with them also, which would further complicate the process of loading.

  "Well, I'm sorry, milord," said the man facing him, presumably Master Bedrin. He didn't sound in the least sorry. From his attitude it was obvious that Bedrin was a fleet officer and therefore not under the army commander's direct control. "If we can't set out within the hour, we'll have to wait till dawn tomorrow. Otherwise we're likely to be benighted in a stretch of shoals, which I'm unwilling to risk."

  It seemed to Sharina that Bedrin would've been wiser to keep the cheerful insouciance out of his voice. The chain of command was one thing, but the way Lord Waldron's hand rested on his sword pommel was quite another. The old warrior wasn't a man you wanted to goad into a rage.

  "You're not willing?" Waldron said. "We'll, you'd—"

  "Milord," Sharina said, close enough to Waldron's left ear to make him jump. "If Master Bedrin allows you to be drowned, the conspiracy on Ornifal will go unchecked with the Gods know what result for the kingdom. Please, humor him for Prince Garric's sake."

  "Ah!" said Waldron, turning to face Sharina and her companions. A series of emotions cascaded over his face. In a much milder tone he said, "Ah," again.

  "And not to sound selfish...," Sharina continued, smiling broadly. "But I'd rather not drown either."

  She respected and even liked Lord Waldron, because he was the best man he knew how to be under all circumstances. Waldron was narrow, choleric, and not infrequently stubborn to the point of being pig-headed—but he was always true to what he saw as his duty.

  "Ah," Waldron repeated. "But the thing is, your highness—time's short. Maybe too short already. If we get to Ornifal after this usurper's captured Valles, then there's no choice for anything but the whole army and full-scale war."

  "Milord, I can't keep the sun from setting," Master Bedrin said peevishly. "It—"

  Sharina pointed her left index finger at the naval officer's face. She'd dealt with angry, argumentative men on a regular basis at her father's inn, and at least neither of this pair was drunk.

  "Master Bedrin, your men can hold a stroke and a half rate for four hours, can't they?" she said. She'd learned a great deal about ships and sailors since she'd left Barca's Hamlet, not least by listening to the stories Chalcus told in the evenings Garric and his friends spent together on islets while crossing and recrossing the Inner Sea. "They've rested since we landed on Volita, and the run north from Carcosa wasn't a hard one either. Not so?"

  "Well, yes, four hours—but not tomorrow and the next day and the next besides!" Bedrin said with an expression somewhere between surprise and anger. He was unusually tall, red-haired, and from his accent a native of Cordin.

  "Nor will they have to," Sharina said. "And they'll be paid a third silver wheatsheaf for the run instead of the usual two per day. Lord Waldron, that gives you two hours to get your men aboard. Will that be sufficient?"

  "It will or I'll have broken some troop leaders down to the ranks!" Waldron growled, nodding approval. He noticed the Blood Eagles and scowled again. "Who're these?"

  "Under-captain Ascor," the squad commander said, striking a brace. He couldn't salute properly because he was loaded in marching array. "Prince Garric ordered us to accompany her highness the princess."

  Waldron grimaced. "Six more bodies to fit where there's not room for what we've got already," he grumbled. "All right, Ascor. Three of you go aboard the Star of Valles, the other three on the Victory of Ornifal. They're at the end of the row."

  He nodded toward the readying vessels farthest up the beach.

  "I'm sorry, milord," Ascor said, "but Prince Garric ordered we stay with her highness. I'm afraid that means we travel on the same ship as she does, whichever one that is."

  "Do you think that black lobster suit means you can order me around?" Lord Waldron shouted, tapping the knuckles of his right fist on Ascor's breastplate of blackened bronze. "Well, you can—"

  He stopped and guffawed. "No, you don't think that," he resumed in a wholly reasonable tone. "But Prince Garric thinks he can. And since there's one traitor in the bor-Warriman family already, there's no need for me to become one myself."

  Waldron bowed to Sharina. "Come aboard the Star of Valles with me, your highness," he said. "And we'll try to find room that we can all stand without becoming better friends that propriety would allow!"

  CHAPTER 5

  "This is my second visit to Erdin," Garric said to Liane in the stern of The Shepherd of the Isles as the big vessel stroked slowly across the strait. "The first time I was a peasant who'd never seen a gold coin."

  Unlike merchant vessels, warships couldn't remain tied up to quays while in harbor: their light hulls would become waterlogged. Erdin had no open beaches nor a drydock large enough to haul a five-banked monster like the Shepherd out of the water, so she'd return to Volita after delivering Garric with the pomp appropriate to a ruling prince.

  Garric grinned. "The city looks different now."

  The Shepherd's fighting towers of canvas-covered wicker were raised in the bow and stern. The balistas mounted on them had bolts in their troughs, and the only reason the weapons weren't cocked was that Garric had absolutely refused to chance one of them letting loose by accident.

  Attaper had thought the extra protection from having the artillery ready to shoot was worth the risk; Garric's other military officers simply weren't bothered at the possibility of a dozen or so Sandrakkan spectators being killed if a bronze-headed bolt ripped through the crowd. Garric did care.

  "You're right to worry about civilians, lad," King Carus noted with a broad grin. "But it's only because I saw where the other way of thinking led that I didn't argue with you myself."

  The triremes transporting the Blaise regiment were in line abreast to the Shepherd's starboard. They bucked the current between Volita and the mainland with more difficulty than the larger ship because they had only one bank of oars manned. Even so they kept station well. It was a short voyage, and Admiral Zettin had made sure the transports had picked crews.

  The admiral himself was aboard one of the ten fully-crewed triremes manuevering in the strait. Sections of five ships combed through one another, then reversed direction and did the same thing again. It was an impressive shiphandling demonstration, but it was also a warning to anybody who'd thought of putting out from the mainland with hostile intentions.

  Garric hadn't ordered him to put on that show of force, but Zettin didn't need orders to get him to act. If anything he was too zealous.

  "He's very able," Liane said, following the line of Garric's gaze and noting the slight frown. Her tone held the same doubt that he was feeling. "And intelligent, for that matter. But he doesn't always see that his duties are part of running the kingdom, instead of being the kingdom existing to support a fleet."

  "He probably wouldn't be as good a fleet commander if he weren't focused on that alone," Garric said. "But I have to watch him a little more carefully than I sometimes have time to do."

  "Right," said the image of Carus, nodding grim-faced agreement. "Just in case he decides to take a squadron into a fishing village by night and carry off all the able-bodied men to fill empty oar benches. And don't say it couldn't happen, because it did. And it was me who did it, I'm sorry to say."

  Garric chuckled, causing Liane to smile at his pleasure. He could imagine the effect kidnapping crews had on the kingdom in the longer run, though. The same was true of extortionate taxation, of course, but both Lord Tadai and—back in Valles—Chancellor Royhas showed more awareness of long-term co
nsiderations than Zettin did.

  Zettin's job was at its simplest level killing other people. It didn't encourage viewing things in the long term, and realities of the work led to the early death of soldiers who forgot the basics.

  The trireme manned by Blood Eagles under Lord Attaper's personal command slid up to the quay where soldiers in bright armor, courtiers, and in the center Earl Wildulf himself waited. The guards disembarked swiftly, setting helmets in place and hooking shield straps to the staples on their backplates to transfer some of the weight off their left arms.

  "How do they row wearing breastplates?" Liane asked wonderingly.

  "It can't be easy, even for the distance from here to Volita," Garric agreed. "I think Attaper's being excessive in demanding that his men be trained to row at all. But I suppose he'd say that it was his job to be excessive, and since the men themselves don't complain—"

  "They do complain!" Liane protested. "I've heard them."

  Garric grinned wider. "Love, they're soldiers," he said. "They breathe and they eat and they complain. But they're not real complaints, the kind that meant Attaper would need to worry more about his own men than the enemy in a melee."

  That was the sort of truth that a natural warrior like Carus probably knew before he was able to crawl. By now Garric had enough experience with armies to have learned it also.

  The Shepherd's officers, both those on deck and the others unseen among the oarsmen in the hold, shouted orders. The oars in the topmost three banks rose horizontal, dribbling strings of water like sunlit jewels back into the sea. The rowers of the lower banks backed their oars, though inertia kept the quinquereme sliding forward without seeming to slow.

  The Blood Eagles formed eight ranks deep in front of the Earl and his entourage. For most public functions the bodyguards stuck wooden balls onto their javelins, turning the weapons into batons suitable for pushing back spectators without injuring anybody. Garric noticed that this time the steel points were bare.

  He grimaced, but he wouldn't complain to Lord Attaper for making that choice. Attaper was already so uncomfortable about what Garric was doing that nothing short of dismissing him from his command would have any effect on his orders.

  "Besides which," Carus noted with approval, "his replacement'd do the same thing. At least he would if he was any good. Pretending this is a victory parade in Valles is likely to get you killed, lad."

  The six ships carrying Lord Rosen's regiment made for the quays to either side of the one where Garric would land. The Blood Eagle trireme rocked in the turbulence as the other ships backed water. From what Garric could see, there wasn't a soul aboard her. The vessel could scrape its sides off against the stone quay so far as Attaper was concerned. All he cared about was putting as many of his men as he could between Garric and people who generally wished Garric was dead.

  Erdin would've been an open roadstead, very dangerous in a storm, if Volita hadn't provided a windbreak. Six major canals and a network of lesser ones crossed the city, opening the River Erd to the Inner Sea some miles west of its natural mouth. All but the largest vessels could be towed into the river and docks which were even more sheltered, so the facilities on the seafront were less extensive than Erdin's size and commerce normally would merit.

  The Shepherd nosed into the slip; the captain and sailing master had judged matters well, particularly since warships almost never pulled up to a dock. The group of aides and officials were waiting near Garric in the stern—very near him, since with the fighting towers erected the quinquereme had even less than a warship's usual slight amount of deck space. They straightened, and Lord Lerdain—with a youth's impatience and the arrogance of a count's heir apparent—stared meaningfully at Garric.

  "Time we go forward," Garric said, smiling more at himself than at Lerdain. Had he ever been that young? And of course he had, only a few years ago.

  As they started up the narrow catwalk between the ventilator gratings, sailors in the bow began shouting angrily at the Blood Eagles. Soldiers in the rear rank looked around in puzzlement, then called for their own officers. The Shepherd was drifting outward, toward the quay on its port side.

  "Sorry, your highness, sorry!" said an officer—probably the sailing master—who turned from the sudden crowd on the foredeck. "Those bloody fool landsmen cleared all the dockers away, so there's nobody to grab a line to tie us up! Sorry, but we're getting it sorted."

  A sailor leaped to the quay, fifteen feet away and a very good jump even from the height of the Shepherd's deck. He grabbed a flung line and snubbed it to a bollard just as two Blood Eagles trotted back. The ship eased to starboard again as sailors in the bow hauled on their end of the line. The gangplank—a long grating covered with blue wool—thumped onto the dock even before the sternlines were set.

  Garric started forward with Liane a step behind. Over his shoulder, in a voice just loud enough for her to hear over the sailors' continued chatter, he said, "If we could foresee everything that was going to happen, then we'd be gods and not men. I'm not sure I'd want that; and anyway, it isn't going to happen."

  "No," said Liane, sounding surprisingly cheerful. It'd done both of them good to get away from the oddly tense atmosphere of Volita. "But the things that happen are getting fixed. That's what men do. The best kind of men."

  The signallers on the royal vessels blew another fanfare, and the Blood Eagles clashed to attention. Spectators filled the waterfront and the balconies of buildings facing it. Their mood was sullen, with little of the carnival atmosphere generated by every other parade Garric had seen since his first Tithe Procession in Barca's Hamlet.

  Attaper shouted an order from the front of the formation. The solid mass of Blood Eagles shifted like sand running into a mold, forming an aisle between black-armored spearmen. It was just wide enough for two people to pass down it abreast.

  The three Sandrakkan negotiators and half a dozen other courtiers stood with Wildulf. The Earl wore armor, a molded cuirass and a helmet crested with plumes that were violet or bronze depending on how the light struck them. The full-bodied natural blond at his side must be the Countess. She wore a tiara of blue stones.

  "Lord Tawnser isn't here," Liane murmured. "I've never met him, but he lost an eye at the Stone Wall, so he'd be conspicuous."

  "Right," said Garric. If the leader of the anti-Ornifal faction chose to absent himself from court while the royal delegation was present, so much the better. He started forward

  "Wait!" said Liane. "Attaper and I discussed this."

  "Your lordship," Attaper called to Wildulf. "His highness Prince Garric will receive you now."

  Marshal Renold spoke something into Wildulf's ear. The Earl grunted a reply, then gave his arm to Countess Balila and strode down the aisle. The Countess avoided looking to either side, keeping her gaze regally fixed on Garric. Her eyes were blue, matching the tiara, and they blazed with anger.

  "Your highness," Wildulf said. He was a big man, not fat but certainly going to be fat by the time he was fifty in another few years. His tone wasn't overtly belligerent, but Garric noticed he hadn't said, "Welcome," or offered his arm to clasp as one man greeting another.

  "Lord Wildulf," Garric replied with smiling reserve. "I'm pleased to have the opportunity to visit you in this fashion. I believe my associates have discussed matters of accommodation with you?"

  "There's rooms ready for you in the palace," said Wildulf. He eyed Liane and added, "We brought horses, though maybe the lady would like a sedan chair?"

  "Thank you," said Liane, speaking in the coolly aristocratic tone she used on those rare occasions when she wanted to emphasize that she was Lady Liane. "For the occasion I prefer to ride with the Countess and your advisors, Lord Wildulf, ahead of you and Prince Garric. The order of march which his highness has decided—"

  Carus guffawed in Garric's mind. This was obviously something else that Liane and Attaper must've decided without Garric's involvement. That was probably out of fear that he'd have a different
opinion....

  "—is for your cavalry to lead, followed by the members of your court and the Prince's advisors, along with the Countess and myself."

  The regiment of horsemen drawn up on the boulevard joining the waterfront from the north were working soldiers, not parade troops in gaudy trappings. Carus murmured, "They're not as pretty as some I've seen, but I shouldn't wonder if they wouldn't be more useful than an equal number of Waldron's kinsmen just for being better disciplined. Though Waldron'd have apoplexy if he heard you say so."

  "A section of Lord Attaper's troops will follow us—"

  She hadn't said, "the bodyguards" or "the Blood Eagles," but Lord Attaper's bleak-faced nod made that explicit.

  "—with the remainder of that unit following the Prince and yourself. Lord Rosen's regiment will bring up the rear. They'll be billeted in buildings adjacent to the palace, I understand."

  Lord Rosen himself appeared, accompanied by a senior noncom whom Garric had met before. He waited to the side while Garric was meeting with the Earl. His men were drawn up across the narrow slips to either side of this one.

  "We figured that—" Earl Wildulf began, scowling like a thundercloud.

  "Ornifal nancyboys!" somebody shouted from the crowd. The breeze carried the words clearly over the royal contingent.

  The noncom with Rosen—Serjeant Bastin, that was the man's name!—raised his shield up beside his face to form a sounding board. "I'm a Blaise armsman!" he bellowed back at the crowd. "And I'd rather prong one of my daddy's pigs than what passes for men in Erdin! Or women too!"

  Garric gasped to keep from laughing out loud. That would've been partly hysteria, he supposed, but the sudden relief of tension was a wonder and a delight.

  "Lord Wildulf," he said, ignoring what were probably going to be arguments over the order of march, "all that needs to be said here has been said. Let's get to your palace and we can continue matters there."

  He reached forward, offering Wildulf his arm. Wildulf, by reflex or perhaps out of equal relief, clasped it.