by Ellyn, Court
Barely giving their Leanian allies time to rest, Kelyn summoned the commanders to the council room. Morach and Garrs, Davhin and Genna gathered round the map, too. To everyone’s surprise, the king joined them, pale and wrapped in a fur blanket, but alert and steady. He eased into a chair near the bright fireplace and sighed, taxed from the long walk from his chambers.
“Thorn let you come downstairs alone, sire?” Kelyn asked.
“Oh, he left two days ago. Did he not tell you?”
“Left? For where?”
“He didn’t say. Decided I was nearly recovered and said it wasn’t safe for him to stay in one place too long. I didn’t ask what he meant, but if assassins are on his trail, too, I sure as hell don’t want them here. So I let him go.”
Not accountable to anyone, not even to his brother. Kelyn pressed down the hurt and dived into the matter at hand. “We haven’t much time. Outriders returning from the Crossroads reported that the Fierans have amassed and are on the move. If we don’t act quickly, we’ll be fighting for the same space of ground we fought for last year. Rhogan, Va’eth, Lander, your job is to harass the hell out of Quelstorn and Athmar, keep them too occupied to turn their eyes south.
“Garrs has heard my plan for him and he agrees. He’s familiar with operation of the Dragons, so he will sneak through Fieran wine country east of Arwythe and take out the bridge at Ca’yndale. If all goes well, he’ll move on to Southyn, cutting off any supplies Shadryk may be receiving over land.”
Garrs held up the three fingers on his left hand. “Maybe I’ll find the ones I’m missing while I’m at it.”
The commanders chuckled.
“It’s the bridge at Southyn you’ll have to be wary of, Garrs,” Kelyn said. “Once the crossing at Ca’yndale falls, the Fierans will be onto our plan and protect Southyn fiercely.”
“We’ll come by way of Mahkah, from the south. They won’t see us coming till that bridge is laced with Dragon bile.”
“Good. In the meantime, Master Brugge leads the dwarves toward Leania. My Uncle Allaran escorts them with an honor guard, to make sure they get to Graynor safely.”
“Graynor?” asked Lander. “What are the dwarves doing in Graynor?”
Kelyn explained.
“Dwarves by sea!” Rhogan cried. “Now I’ve seen everything.”
“Must’ve taken some miracle to move them,” said Genna.
“No, just a promise of gold.”
“Well, no one will be expecting dwarves from the sea, that’s certain,” observed Davhin.
Kelyn pointed at the scalloped coastline of Brynlea Bay. “Once the dwarves arrive in Graynor, they will send messengers for our ships to pick them up. Honestly, I have no idea how long it will take those ships to carry them to Gildancove, but my uncle assured me that even with favorable winds and tides, it could be as long as a month. So we’ve got to dig in and hold our ground until we receive word that the dwarves have made landfall.”
“And then?” asked Morach like a bear belching.
“And then we push. We don’t stop pushing until we’re at Brynduvh’s gate. That’s why it’s critical that Athmar stay busy. We don’t want Lady Drona riding up our rear. Brengarra and Haezeldale are enough to keep us busy.”
“Timing,” Davhin mused, nodding while he surveyed the map. “What if we get bogged down between here and Brynduvh and can’t complete the pinch?”
“Then the dwarves are on their own. They’re fully aware of it. If they’re not annihilated before they reach Brynduvh, they’ll have a tunnel dug in no time, and Shadryk will be out of a large fortune.”
Genna cleared her throat. “And how will we know when the dwarves make landfall?”
What to tell her? Kelyn had counted on Thorn’s lightning fast methods of communication, but if he had abandoned them at last …
“That’s my job.” Thorn leant against the doorpost, arms crossed, as if he’d been there the whole time. Kelyn wasn’t fooled, however. His brother’s hair was windblown from a hasty ride, his robe dusty from the road.
Grateful that his brother hadn’t failed him after all, Kelyn said, “Lord Rhogan, Lady Va’eth, have you met Thorn Kingshield?”
Va’eth stared in unabashed wonder. Rhogan ducked his eyes, as if Thorn’s presence shamed him. Thorn pinned the man with a sly grin. Rhogan fairly squirmed. Tall and lanky with that uncannily black hair, despite his middling years, Rhogan of Mithlan appeared to have a secret or two.
Approaching the table, Thorn stuck to the matter at hand, “And remember, War Commander, the dwarves can hover offshore until the timing is right. They’ll be sick as wormy dogs by the time they land, but what else can you do? Once you’ve cleared the road to Brynduvh, I’ll send a second message telling the dwarves to carry through.”
Lander broke in, “How will you send this message?”
Deadpan, he confessed, “Fairies. How else?”
The commanders chuckled, these hard men and women who had little use for fairytales. Lander rolled his eyes, as he had at Kelyn. “You’re in league, the two of you.”
“Never make that mistake, my lord,” Thorn snapped.
Kelyn suppressed an urge to wince.
Undaunted, Lander planted a fist on his hip. “And what the hell have you done to yourself, lad?”
“Can we get back to business, please?” Kelyn asked. “We mobilize immediately. Tomorrow we conclude our preparations. Day after next, we move headquarters to Ulmarr Town. Are there relevant questions or comments? Lander?”
Turning from the avedra in blatant disgust, he shook his head. “Nope.”
“Good, then we’ll settle the finer points over wine.”
Laral and one of Garrs’ squires uncorked a couple of bottles and handed out goblets while the commanders found seats near the crackling hearth fire. “Is the plan amenable to you, sire?” Lander asked, assuming the chair closest to Rhorek.
Kelyn couldn’t hear the king’s reply; he didn’t care. Instead, he watched his brother lean over the map, squint at the little red X’s that marked the many battles and skirmishes, and set a finger on the large, angry X that covered Slaenhyll.
“Where were you the last couple of days?” Kelyn asked, a challenge, certainly, and one he did not expect to have answered.
But Thorn was not troubled by it. “I have to keep moving.”
“Rhorek told me. Why is that?”
“Shadows, Commander. Just shadows. So I went to see the stones. Some were fissured by the heat. Kin met me halfway.”
“Mother saw—?”
“I didn’t say it was Mother. Do you know what they used those stones for?”
Kelyn couldn’t care less.
“They were part of a device used to measure the seasons. Humans used to think those stones could tell the future.”
“The future …,” said Kelyn through his teeth. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to smash his fist into Thorn’s face; maybe it was the casual way he made irrelevant conversation all of a sudden.
“I tried to divine the future there,” he went on, “about many things. No use. Which reminds me …” He dug in a pocket set deep inside his robe, pulled out a small, lumpy object and tossed it onto the war map. Two black embroidered eyes stared up at Kelyn, lost and sad. It took Kelyn a moment to recognize a stuffed puppy dog.
Thorn’s conversational tone chilled. “This belongs to your son. I suggest you take it back to him. Pity the thing. He has poor breeding.” With a whirl, he strode from the council room.
Kelyn reached out tentative fingers, found that one of the floppy brown ears was crunchy with much chewing, and his heart seemed to rip loose and plummet into his gut.
“Commander, will you join us?” called Morach gruffly.
Kelyn whisked the toy from the table and out of sight. With a pang of shame, he saw Rhorek’s eyes dart away, disappointment etched on his brow.
~~~~
Lothiar waited only a couple of nights before contacting Paggon again. Speaking the ogre’
s name over the basin of marsh water, he watched a small, untidy room appear. Gouged roughly from the mountain, the walls shifted unsteadily in the light of guttering torches. A pair of naenion with bones through their earlobes shook rattles made of gourds. No, they were skulls. Squat-shaped ogreling skulls whose eye sockets and nasal cavities had been plugged with clay. Pebbles or seeds rattled inside while the two ogres chanted over a body lying on a pile of matted furs. Other ogres hovered in the shadowed corners, watching the prone figure closely.
Paggon Ironfist barely breathed. When he exhaled, blood bubbled at the corner of one nostril. Lothiar’s stomach sank uncomfortably. It was the feeling of hope teetering. Over the rhythmic shushing of the rattles, he whispered the ogre’s name. “What has happened to you?”
The rattles and chants silenced. The shamans or witch doctors or whatever they were, scurried away from the quivering image of the Elari. A broad youngster, roped with muscle, surged into view and swung an oversized fist at the ethereal window. The gray waters splashed over the rim of the basin, soaking Lothiar’s hands. “Dis naeni sire obey ‘Lari words,” accused the youngster. “Now dis naeni sire dies. We go to caves of dem clans, gives naenion Lot’iar words. Dragon Claw listen. Red Axe listen. Sky Rock listen. Den Sky Rock laugh at dis naeni sire. Dey take Ironfist. Take him! Break him wid clubs. Cut him wid tusk. Den dey t’row him away. Dis naeni sire will die because of ‘Lari words! You go stink up diff’rent cave, sweetmeat.”
Paggon stirred on his furs. Pressing a great hand over a wound in his belly, he reached for the youngster. “No, Ughan. Dis naeni die, but you … you fight wid dis ‘Lari. Fight short man, den tall man, like ‘Lari say. One army. Must be.”
Ughan shook his head. A scraggly braid whipped against his gray, warted face.
No good. If Paggon died, Lothiar would lose everything. “Order your clansmen out, Ironfist,” he requested.
Paggon waved a big hand as if it were the most laborious task he’d ever performed. The shamans seemed eager to flee, as did the rest of the ogres lurking in the corners, but Ughan backed from the room reluctantly. He and a dozen others lingered at the doorway, arguing and snarling.
Three hundred miles away, Lothiar sat back on his heels and said, “Maliel, fetch me the medicines.” When his lieutenant lay suffering infection after encountering the naenion of the Gloamheath, Lothiar decided it prudent to stock up on basic medical tools, salves, and herbs. Easy enough to cover himself inside the Veil and slip into one farmstead and another until he found what they needed.
Maliel handed Lothiar the wooden box of needles and powders, but not without questions. “What do you mean to do?”
“If they attack me before I can get out, dump the water and shut the tome.”
“Captain, let me go instead. We can find another ogre.”
“Maybe in another thousand years. I don’t fancy hiding in a cave that long.” Dipping his finger into the basin, he drew the toad-shaped sigil four times upon the cave wall. The doorway split the air, and the reek of the ogre dens assaulted Lothiar like a slap. A tingle in his skin, a bite of cold, were all he felt as he stepped from the marsh to the mountains. Paggon’s small red eyes widened like drops of blood feathering on stone. The ogres in the doorway grumbled in fear. Lothiar heard the baring of blades, but he ignored them, kneeling beside the wounded ogre. “Did you think this ‘Lari was a vision only?”
Astonished to silence, Paggon watched as Lothiar inspected the wounds. Tusks had opened his belly. Layers of fat and muscle had protected the vitals, but the gashes stank of infection. The rest were bruises, deep, bone-aching bruises from the clubs, a swollen eye, broken nose, cracked jaw, maybe some broken ribs. In all the years of guarding Linndun against ogres, Lothiar had never touched na’in flesh. Not easy reaching out, laying a hand upon the wounds of his age-old enemy. The skin resembled that of a toad’s underbelly, smooth but textured with small bumps. Fever turned it hot and clammy.
Lothiar drew his dagger.
Ughan shouldered into the room, a rust-bitten sword raised for the strike. Through the pulsing, unnatural doorway, Maliel half-drew the sword he wore and held one hand over the basin, ready to dump it.
“No! Wait, Ughan,” grunted his sire. “Let him …”
The youngster paused, lips pulled back to bare unscarred tusks. Slowly, he lowered the rusty blade, but hovered menacingly over Lothiar’s shoulder as he cut away the dead flesh. Orange blood seeped through his fingers. Paggon’s hands doubled into fists the size of catapult shot, and his eyes clenched against the pain, but he uttered no sound. While he worked, Lothiar asked, “Only the ogres of Sky Rock laughed? Did you have success with the others?”
Paggon’s left eye opened and considered his surgeon. “Lot’iar want dis vengeance bad.”
His hands paused, dug for a needle and thread in the wooden box. “Yes.” Steady fingers stitched the gashes closed. The procedure must’ve been a novelty to the ogres; even the two skittish shamans watched closely.
“Dem odders,” Paggon answered, “chiefs of Dragon Claw, chiefs of Red Axe, dey wants talks wid Lot’iar. Think Lot’iar not talks wid dem.”
“I will talk with them.” He felt himself smiling while he stitched. “When?”
“Next time moons rise togedder.” With effort, Paggon smashed his two fists together, one behind the other.
“In eclipse? That could be years.”
“ ‘Lari forget so much? Once, ‘Lari know dese t’ings. ‘Eclipse’ you say? Yes. One mont’.”
Lothiar suppressed a sigh of mourning. Surely the watchers in Linndun’s crystal-capped observatories knew an eclipse of the moons would occur next month, but what good did it do them? Had they bothered telling anyone but Aerdria? Had they bothered telling even her? “Very well. Where?”
“Moot Rock. You heal dis naeni, dis naeni show you. See, Ughan? One army.”
~~~~
68
Because Athna remained the youngest captain in the Leanian navy, she received her new ship after every other captain had received his. She had little doubt that losing her first ship in her first wartime battle swayed the Admiralty against her as well. Serving in the supply offices for a year and a half, watching the ships take shape in dry dock and wondering which of them, if any, was hers, had been as trying an undertaking as swimming against an undertow.
Only two weeks ago, she’d received her new commission. The Pirate’s Bane Two smelled of new oak, new pitch, and new paint. Deeper in the keel and narrower in the hull than Athna’s last ship, she cut through the sea as sharp as a saber. The king’s engineers, apparently, admired Evaronna’s brigs and had conducted a bit of redesign on the new galleons.
With a warming south wind against her, the Bane stretched her legs for the first time, tacking at last into Galdan Bay. The cliffs and coves of the Tempest headland reared up from the sea off the larboard rail, and the taut sails of an approaching vessel approached from the south.
“She’s one of our’n,” announced the young watchman in the crosstrees. “Or one of Evaronna’s really. One of them brigs, Cap’n.”
In her allotted space of the quarterdeck, Athna snapped open a brass spyglass, and the vessel drifted into the contorted circle of her lens. Crimson paint on each side of the busty seamaid announced the Aurion.
“Goddess spare us,” she muttered, pulse thudding in her throat. Athna had to admit to herself that since sailing from Graynor Harbor, she’d hoped for a glimpse of the pirate ship, for several reasons, but she’d had no inkling they would cross paths this soon.
“She’s bringing in her sails,” called the watchman, though Athna saw perfectly well for herself. “Figure they want a gam?”
Glancing toward her officers, she saw Wyllan lower his own spyglass and swallow hard. They met near the wheel. “Cap’n, my advise is be brief. We’ll see what he has to say then be on our way. He’s not to be trusted.”
“Believe me, I know, but neither am I.”
“Ma’am?”
; Athna refrained from answering. The sailing master was listening in, and she preferred that the details of her last voyage remain between her and Wyllan. And Rehaan.
She’d won the loyalty of her new crew before she met them. Wyllan made sure that the tale of Captain Athna sinking the Shadow of the Seas made its way into all the dockside taverns and naval barracks. As a result, the men assigned to the Bane watched her and obeyed her with a deference that her first crew hadn’t. Strange, really, to have a hero’s reputation among them when she viewed that day as a damn disaster. They didn’t need to know the details of the lies and dishonor that followed.
“I’m surprised, Wyllan, that Captain Rehaan will endure our company.”
“You sure he knows it’s us?”
She nodded reluctantly. “I told him what I’d name the ship. His suggestion, actually.”
“Aw, Cap’n,” groaned her first mate.
She sighed. “Well, there’s nothing for it. Furl sail, drop anchor.”
“Aye, ma’am.” Wyllan relayed the order.
When the brig drifted into range, a man in a faded red stocking cap called through bear-sized paws, “Captain Athna? Captain Rehaan invites you an’ your mate aboard for a spot o’ wine.”
“Wine, is it?” asked Wyllan, loose, freckled skin bunching up around his eyes in an expression of distrust. “How vengeful do you think he is?”
Through the spyglass, Athna watched a tall man in a red coat descend the quarterdeck and disappear down the hatch. “We’re even, he and I. That was understood when we parted ways. If we refuse, he will have cause to resent us. Lower a jolly.”
