by Джеффри Лорд
There were four of the sentries, looking glum, weary, and chilled to the bone. Blade nodded casually to them as he climbed up on the level, but was rewarded by a stiff nod from the leader.
«Hold, sirs.»
«Eh?» Pretend to be drunk, and hope they’ll, think it too much trouble to start an interrogation.
«The alarm’s gone. Nobody gets past here without the word of a Captain.»
«Ah-um?»
«Sorry, sirs. Don’t know what’s happened, probably nothing, but-«breaking off suddenly as Alixa’s hood slipped off her face. He wasted a fatal second staring, just long enough for Blade and Brora to whip out sword and cutlass and ram both into his chest. He crumpled, rolled over the top step, and kept on rolling.
Blade and Brora were too busy disposing of the other three to watch his progress down into the darkness. Two they chopped down with little effort; the third defended himself for a moment, then dropped his weapon and ran screaming off into the darkness. By the mercy of Drukor whoever was watching over them-he ran away from the Mountain and its guardposts. If he had run the other way-Blade shuddered at the notion of trying to climb over the bare rock ridges of the Mountain to avoid squads of alerted sentries at the passes.
Now the thing to do was to make as much noise as possible, but try to make it the sort of noise the guards would be expecting. Blade threw his hood back and broke into a run, Brora and Alixa at his heels, all three shouting at the top of their lungs, «Haro, hallo, hi! Guard, guard, turn out the guard!»
It was a good mile and a half, mostly uphill, to the gate at the first pass. All three of them were half-winded by the time they reached it. Blade saw as they approached that the guard had certainly turned out. But they held their pikes and cutlasses casually, hardly imagining that these three figures running plainly up to them and bellowing like bulls could be trying to avoid them.
The guard commander recognized Blade, but merely greeted him.
«What trouble, Master Blahyd?»
«Great trouble! Some villains have slain all four of the guards at the top of the main stairs!»
«Druk be merciful.»
«Yes, there’s deadly work a-foot tonight. I’ve been ordered to head through the pass and set up a guard on that side with the sentries from the northern posts.»
«Wise.» The guard commander paused for a moment, then said, «Would you like to take three of our horses? We keep them for the quick sending of messages. This seems full as important.»
Blade almost laughed out loud at the notion of their getting, literally, a free ride over the pass, then nodded. Two of the horses were already saddled and bridled. Blade ordered Brora and Alixa to mount and be ready to move at his signal, while he himself waited, showing impatience and continuously expecting somebody to come yelling up the road to tell the guard commander the truth.
Two small figures indeed had appeared at the far end of the road by the time the third horse was ready. Blade sailed into the saddle without touching the stirrups and threw the guard captain a gold piece. «For you and your men, for your service to the Brotherhood tonight!»
«Thank you, Master Blahyd. And may Druk be with you tonight!»
As they cantered off toward the pass, Brora turned in his saddle and grinned to Blade as he said, «Druk had better be w’him, Master, when they finds out who he’ve let through and e’en sped on their way!» Blade nodded, then turned to concentrate on keeping his horse moving along the road.
Although twisting and narrow, the road was well surfaced, and in less than an hour they were eight good miles north of the pass and entering the forest belt. Blade led the others off the road into the forest to let the horses breathe and told them of their situation.
«We’re ill-equipped, compared to what I had planned. What’s worse, we’re going to have to risk the voyage to Royth in the teeth of the winter gales. But we should be able to raid a villa or two for food and clothing, then head for the coast and trust to Druk.»
«Aye, trust that he’ll make us a miracle! Have ye thought, Master Blahyd, that all the yachts most likely be pulled up out o’ t’ sea for the winter? And if we be lucky and get to sea, whyfore make for Royth? W’ the winds at our backs, we might reach Mardha in half the time and w’ half the danger.»
Blade had considered and rejected that very idea. «Because we also have to warn somebody in Royth about what the pirates are planning.»
Brora nodded and Alixa nodded too, but also frowned.
«Well and good. But if that is what you plan to do when you reach Royth, remember that you will find Count Indhios almost as deadly an enemy as the pirates.»
«We’ll worry about that when we land in Royth,» said Blade. He had learned that one of the surest roads to disaster in a tough situation was exhausting yourself with premature worrying. «And Indhios at least is only one man, not fifty thousand.» He dug his heels into his horse and led his companions back onto the road.
They were not challenged once during the night, by a miracle. In fact, they might have been riding across an island of the dead, except for the lights they saw gleaming in occasional slave buts. Toward morning, and toward the far northern end of the island, they sought out the deepest and gloomiest patch of forest they could find, tethered the horses, rolled themselves up as warmly as possible in their cloaks, and slept for a few hours.
Blade was awakened by the sound of horses passing on the road. Although he knew the hard-frozen ground would retain little or no trace of their own passage, still he gripped his sword and lay motionless, listening until he heard the horses move on. There was no need to tell his companions what that sound meant. The hunt was on. They would have to abandon their own horses and from here on rely on stealth.
If there were any yachts in the water now, they would most likely be on the eastern or leeward side of Neral, sheltered from the westerly gales that could move boulders the size of houses and leave frozen spray on rocks three hundred feet above the water. As soon as it was dark, they moved out, all three muffled to the eyes, Blade and Brora with their hands never far from their weapons.
Twice they had to scuttle hastily for cover as mounted patrols clattered past. Once they nearly blundered into view of the sentries walking a slow beat around a cluster of slave huts almost concealed in a grove. Several times they stumbled over roots or dead branches and fell painfully on the frozen ground. Never did they find a boat that was both in the water and in Brora’s opinion sturdy enough to have any hope of carrying them to Royth.
Toward morning it began to snow. Blade realized that they would have to get food before they could resume the search. The long hours in the cold had Alixa worn and pale, and both Blade and Brora were feeling the strain also. But approaching any inhabited place meant risking discovery and proclaiming their presence to the searching patrols. Yet they had no choice. With rumbling bellies they fell to the ground and wrapped themselves up once more for their day’s fitful sleep.
Night again. The lights from the windows of the slave huts squatting by the frost-covered beach looked almost cheerful to the three half-frozen figures gliding toward them, their eyes on the storehouse at the end of the row. A bluff to their left hid most of the little bay from Blade’s view, but as far as he could see toward the open ocean, it was clear of patrolling ships within easy hail. He drew his sword and motioned the other two to follow him.
He was so intent on moving quietly and thinking so much of the bread and dried fish that filled the storehouse ahead, that he failed to catch the first warning crack of twigs behind him. Then he heard Alixa start to scream, gasp, and squeal in panic as a hand clamped down over her mouth. He spun ground to see two large men in shaggy coats jerking Alixa into the air until her feet kicked frantically. Brora sprawled face down in the needles, his sword lying a foot beyond his outflung hand.
An ambush! Blade whipped his sword up to the guard position and sprang backward, seeking a tree to protect his rear. As he did so more footsteps crackled behind him. Before he could
complete another quick turn, something heavy and hard smashed down on his head. He felt his knees giving, but blackness swallowed him up before he could feel his face slamming down on the ground.
CHAPTER 13
When Blade awoke, his first reaction was one of surprise that there was a soft, comfortable bed under him, and not the damp stone floor of a prison cell with perhaps a little moldy straw thrown down on it. Then he looked about him and realized that he was in the Captain’s cabin of Thunderbolt. From the steady rolling motion under him and the creak of timbers, he knew the ship was at sea. Then the door opened, admitting first a blast of icy wind, then Tuabir. The sailor was grinning broadly.
«The surgeon said you’d be with us soon, so I came by to answer all the questions I knew you’d be asking.»
Blade nodded, then decided that wasn’t such a good idea. He found enough of his voice to ask, «Are we-prisoners?»
Tuabir looked indignant. «I-haul you back to face Cayla’s bravos? The caretaker my lads were helping bag you thinks so, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him-or you.» He seemed to take it for granted that no further answer was needed. And for the moment Blade agreed with him. But there were other questions.
«Where are we going?»
«Thunderbolt’s following a course due west. We’re hoping to make landfall at Cape Xera, Druk willing, in about three weeks’ time.»
So they were going to Royth after all. But:
«What about you-and the crew? Won’t-?»
«All of the crew yet living are with me in this» That remark, Blade felt, left out a few details. «King Pelthros has a name for being easy with pardons to pirates who come to him of their own will, giving up the pirate life and swearing by Druk to be peaceable and honest to the end of their days.» Tuabir almost managed to say that with a straight face. Then he sobered and went on.
«I’m not feeling any great joy at giving up the Brotherhood. But now that Cayla has them eating out of her filthy white hand, there’ll be no justice for any who go against her. Perhaps you should have stayed and fought her in the Council, for it was your running off that made her story believed as much as anything else. But no matter-you did what you thought was the best. It would have been a chancy thing to speak out anyway.» He shrugged.
«Has she revealed some of her-her other plans?»
«For the moment, no. There are many in her camp having no wish to strike a blow for the Serpent Priestesses of Mardha, who’d yet strike mighty blows against the Kingdom of Royth.»
«Yes, and she’ll rebuild the Serpent shrines on the Kingdom’s ruins. We must stop her!» Blade stopped, realizing that the blow on his head must still be addling his wits, to make him say such a foolishly obvious thing.
But Tuabir only grinned and said, «And after me just telling you why fourscore good men are forswearing the Brotherhood to take you to Royth… Ah well, you’re needing more sleep, I think.»
Blade slept another twelve full hours, and when he awoke after that he was calm, clear-headed, and ravenously hungry. Alixa came in to bring him a tray of food and stayed afterwards for conversation and other things. They lay curled against each other in the bed while Thunderbolt beat her way westward, mile by mile.
As he paced the deck and looked out at the heaving gray sea, Tuabir expected that it would be some days before anyone even thought of hunting for them, assuming that he had been driven out to sea by bad weather. And it would be more days yet before they decided whether to send out ships to search, and even then they would probably decide against it. And then he thought of the risks he was running for the man who lay below in the Captain’s cabin, risks that would keep Captains older and more experienced than he was in port. Most of Tuabir’s nearly fifty years had been spent learning other things than philosophy, but he sometimes wondered now whether this Blahyd was not a man sent by Druk to influence many other men’s destinies. And when he had finished that thought, he would shrug and grin and go stamping aft, calling for hot wine.
Whether by Druk’s favor, Tuabir’s and Brora’s good seamanship, the stout hull of Thunderbolt, or merely common garden-variety luck, they made Tuabir’s intended landfall only two days beyond his intended three weeks. Watching Cape Xera loom out above the gray feathers of mist that spread across the gently heaving swells, Blade had a feeling of relief that he quickly reined in. It was a case of «so far, so good.»
«Now we need to find ourselves a port,» he said. «One where Indhios isn’t likely to be in control. And one where the garrison isn’t going to be so nervous that they sound the alarm and call out the fleet before we can explain ourselves.»
«Srodki is the nearest,» put in Tuabir, looking at the chart.
«Aye, and part of the Chancellor’s personal holdin’ too. We’d be a flea leapin’ into a furnace if we went in there,» said Brora shortly.
«Then what of Pyreira?» said Tuabir. «It’s next beyond Srodki. We’ll be in more danger of storms than of men if we go on cruising hither and yon offshore.»
«True indeed,» replied Brora. «Aye, Pyreira it must be, then. But I little like passin’ north about the Ayesh Islands this time o’ the year. Be we get a norwester and we’ve a good chance o’ bein’ driven straight among’em.»
The northwester that Brora had feared was already beginning to rise by nightfall when they rounded the northern tip of Grand Ayesh. Thunderbolt pitched with a steadily fiercer motion that forced Blade to hang on to the railing as he walked back and forth with Tuabir, inspecting the rigging. By midnight, they had to abandon any attempt to use the oars. The rowers could hardly sit on their benches, the oars as often as not flailed uselessly in the air, and the pumps were hard at work to throw out the water that poured in the oar ports every time Thunderbolt stuck her nose in deep. If they had been in no haste, they would long since have turned and run before the gale. As it was, it was nearly two in the morning before Tuabir came up to Blade and suggested that course of action.
Blade agreed. For all the small-boat sailing he had done in Home Dimension and his crash course in seamanship here, he was still an amateur where Tuabir and Brora were professionals.
To run before the gale, Thunderbolt first had to be turned broadside to the rising sea, an operation even Blade knew to be dangerous. The tiller was triple-manned and the rowers took their places. One side’s rowers were ready to push, the others to pull, in order to swing the ship around before the waves could capsize her.
The darkness was now almost total. The wind blew sheets of spray out of a blackness as deep as that of the Pit itself. Only by judging the motion of the ship could Tuabir tell the best moment to turn. Blade saw him standing spraddle-legged as the deck heaved under him. Then he cupped both hands over his mouth and bellowed into the gale, «Coming about!»
Blade felt the motion of the ship change from a pitch to a roll and clung to the railing as the deck tilted over to a fifty-degree angle and green water sluiced over the leeward railing. For a long moment Thunderbolt hung there, tilted over at a preposterous angle and lurching slowly around onto her new course. The deck was just beginning to tilt back to something more normal when with a tremendous boom and crash a wave larger than any before roared out of the night. Thunderbolt heaved herself up in a wicked corkscrewing motion. From aft Blade heard a tremendous smashing and splintering sound.
As the wave passed away under them and the water poured off the decks, Blade saw Tuabir coming rapidly forward. «The rudder’s gone!» he gasped.
Blade had a short moment’s we’re-doomed feeling, then said, «We’ll have to steer with the oars. Thank Druk this is a galley.»
«Aye. A sailing ship would be finished here. And if we can’t keep off the rocks, we’ll be finished too. Druk grant us a beach for a landing place.»
For the next three hours, there was nothing but the whistle of the wind, the hiss and boom of the waves, the monotonous clanking of the pumps, and the occasional thumpings of the oars. Tuabir and Brora made no effort to keep the men continuously rowing.
Only when Thunderbolt threatened to swing round again broadside to the waves did Brora bellow orders, in a voice that was beginning to crack with fatigue and strain, to keep the oars moving until the ship was safe again.
Tuabir hoped the gale might drive them far enough east to let them clear the northern tip of Grand Ayesh. Once clear of the land, they could ride out the gale at sea and then when it subsided row back to the first convenient landing place. But when a miserable gray dawn crept tentatively over the sea, the long, dark line of Grand Ayesh’s north coast was clearly visible, stretching too far to leave them with any hope of clearing it.
There were nowhere near enough boats for all the men aboard, and even if there had been, no boat could live in the boiling surf that thundered around the approaching rocks. Their only hope was to cling to Thunderbolt herself until she took the ground, then swim for it, unless by some miracle they drove ashore on sand, in which case the ship might stay in one piece long enough for the gale to subside.
Except for a handful of men at the oars to keep the ship end to waves that were getting shorter and more jumbled as the water shoaled, the whole crew was up on deck now. Brora was busily making ready a long rope, with which he hoped to swim to shore. At Tuabir’s orders, most of the crew discarded seaboots, long coats, and everything else that might weigh them down in the water. Most of them, like Blade, stripped to shirt and trousers, a dagger, and a pouch on their belt. Blade’s pouch, apart from a flint-and-steel lighter, held Duke Khystros’ signet ring and the notes on the pirate conspiracy, securely wrapped in oiled leather.
The seas were steep and ragged now. The wind blew the spray from their tops in a continuous sheet. The men aboard Thunderbolt were as wet as if they had already been in the water. A jagged black slab of rock reared itself out of the water to port, the waves geysering spray in fifty-foot sheets as they beat against it. The water was shoaling fast now. Blade and Tuabir stood in the very bow, trying to pierce the gloom and spray and make out what kind of land lay dead ahead.
