Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  ‘All right!’ Eyes red from exhaustion, and chapped by harsh wear, Parrien embraced the inevitable. ‘We’ll assault the bolt-hole in the crab shallows to the leeside of Lugger’s Islet. If we strike fast, and risk a few casualties, we can board what’s afloat. Take a few officers hostage for ransom and ransack their holds for provender.’

  The purser gaped over his pen in astonishment. ‘Have we sunk to the morals of forest-bred clansmen? Or fallen to justified piracy?’

  ‘Yes!’ Parrien shot off the locker. Shivering in his stockings, he slammed back the lid and fetched out his helm and bracers, and the cutlass preferred for close combat. ‘Because if Alestron’s citadel falls, and my brother is forced to defeat, we’ll be stuck begging for sanctuary with our barbaric cousins in Atwood! Or would you rather kiss arse with their sea-going brethren, and prey on the slave-trade that’s poisoning Tysan?’

  No seasoned retainer stuck out his neck with a s’Brydion hell-bent on battle. The steward scuttled to oil his master’s dropped boots. The purser ducked fast and rolled up his accounts, while Parrien’s bellow to the ship’s mate ordered the desperate course change.

  If Alestron’s crack seamen were taxed by privation, their discipline remained as adamant as iron. The five galleys formed up on his relayed command and struck their last stitch of reefed canvas. Under oar, they sheared into the teeth of the storm, against gusts that ripped the seas into spume and hurled opaque sheets of rain. Four helmsmen muscled the buck of the rudder, their corded wrists cuffed to the whipstaff. The steersman called off the bearing from below, his compass dial lit by a candle-lamp, while the quartermaster howled over the gale and verified the new headings.

  Parrien rode the toss of the deck, tied in to the flagship’s stern-rail. Every man not streaming sweat at the bench worked the pumps, battling the green gush let in as each thudding wave deluged the oar-ports.

  No ship’s hand was fooled. Their hard labour could not subdue the raw elements. Above, the stripped yard reeled against tattered scud. Shrieking wind punched through the rigging. No galley could withstand the relentless punishment. She might pound and roll against such a sea until her crew dropped from exhaustion, or until the working strain burst a seam, or a crest broke over and broached her. The weather might snap the men’s courage before they reached land, or drew steel on the enemy.

  No use to pretend that their straits were not dire. Hungry, storm-battered, and shivering, they rounded the north point of Lugger’s Islet and threaded the narrows that guarded the anchorage. Drove in at attack speed, despite wallowing hulls and sinews nigh crippled by weariness. They prepared to do battle against suicide odds, with frozen fingers clenched numb to their weapon hilts.

  Parrien braced his stance at the stern, moved to pride by the fight in the men. None would be starving at sea like chased wolves. Battle would meet them, unvanquished. If the sousing rain spoiled the aim of his archers, the surprise shock would do damage, ram a few Sunwheel hulls to the bottom on the sheer force of momentum.

  The five galleys rounded the spit at the headland. They shot into the lee side, beaked prows knifing into the billow of shoaling waters. The steersmen squinted through short visibility. Storm in their eyes, they saw little beyond the flare of the lanterns, pocked amid the blurred shadows of anchored ships.

  ‘Stroke, you weasels!’ screamed Parrien. ‘No one’s belly gets filled till we’ve torn out the throats of the pullets before us!’

  Oars bit and spray flew. Iron-shod prows sheared down on their prey, primed for ruin and havoc. Leading the wedge, the flagship struck first. The ram crushed into timber. Water gouted and splinters exploded. The rocking, hard impacts slammed at each side, as the s’Brydion ships pounded into their targets. Men loosed their grip upon rigging and rails. They swarmed over the bows in a berserk attack, steel raised to grapple the enemy.

  No blade met their rush. No yelling watch officers or armed defenders. Over the surging heave of the deck, and the judder of rain-wet, shocked planking, the oar benches yawned, dark and empty of life. No voices called, and no bells clanged alarm. No boatswain’s whistle shrilled to roust up laggards from berths belowdecks. Right and left, as the adjacent hulls shuddered under the brunt of invasion, the s’Brydion rush met no resistance.

  The Light’s galleys wallowed on pebbled grey waters, deserted of human life.

  Parrien snapped out of stunned incredulity. He bellowed for caution, too late. His first mate sounded an instant retreat, every nerve jabbed by suspicion. This unlucky foray surely had run them into an Alliance trap. Fallen back, shrill with panic, men stumbled in recoil. They crowded in distraught confusion. Frayed edgy by danger, they milled to regroup, while the overhead look-outs peered into the murk.

  The storm yielded its secrets with eerie reluctance. Ahead, past the anchored hulls they had rammed, the harbour held flotsam and splintered timber. Here, floated the gleam of an overturned tender, and there, a smashed spar, or sunk wreck, with its canted mast pricked through heaving, black waters. The dotted flare of lit lanterns still blazed from the wrack of uncounted, smashed hulks.

  ‘Dharkaron Avenger!’ Parrien swore. ‘Looks like the hammer of Sithaer has fallen and kicked the Light’s faithful ahead of us.’

  That discovery barely sank in, when another light flashed from the wooded shore-line.

  The look-out’s confounded cry from the crow’s nest exclaimed, ‘That’s our own coded signal!’

  Translation was swift, that s’Brydion forces occupied the inlet and anchorage.

  Parrien shuddered, nipped into awed gooseflesh, as the next winking sequence identified the field-captain whose prowess commanded the beach. ‘Vhandon! Come here? Sweet tits on a bull! How did he know that our straits were pressed beyond desperate?’

  The bellow to sway out the flagship’s tender was belayed over the pound of the rainfall. Apparently the empty, rammed hulls had been secured by ropes to barricade the hazards that had beset their Alliance counterparts.

  ‘Take a close look!’ The boatswain’s excitable shout cut through Parrien’s roaring displeasure. ‘Past the rafted vessels blocking our bow, everything else in the water has been either stove in or sunk!’

  The vicious truth registered, with the stalled oarsmen wretchedly shivering. Men and ship’s boy shared the strain of delay as Parrien snatched out the ship’s glass. His survey swept the shadowed curves of holed keels, then the glints of reflection nicked off burst timbers and snarls of drifting cordage. Ruin had left no vessel afloat, nor any living survivor.

  Voices died, as battle-brash courage went cold. One man, then another sheathed weapons before the impact of utter catastrophe. Mollified, stunned, or subdued by bone chill, they shrank to grapple the vista unveiled through the sheeting rainfall.

  ‘We’re being hailed,’ the sobered boatswain observed.

  Parrien swung the ship’s glass. He picked out the small boat on approach, then the upright, soaked form, draped in a field officer’s surcoat. ‘Have a welcoming party at the rail, amidships, and ascertain a loyal identity before you take on any boarders.’

  Inside a short interval, Vhandon drew alongside. His square-cut face had grown chiselled and gaunt, and his chin bristled silver with stubble. His greeting no more than a curt nod to Parrien, he said, ‘We’ve staked the harbour bed with cribs of stone and sharp logs to kill ships.’ Beyond terse, he added, ‘We had no other way to send warning, except to lash these few prizes in place as a barrier. Stand down your armed crews. I’ve come to guide you into safe waters.’

  Too exhausted to cheer, and worn ragged by hunger, the battered war fleet regrouped, then rowed limping towards shelter.

  Two hours passed. Sated on hot stew, with a draught of Sanshevas rum now warming the chill from his blood, Parrien s’Brydion sat in his steaming clothes inside the flagship’s stern cabin. Outside that haven, with its desk of spread charts and its lockers of varnished bright-work, the gale still lashed, unabated. It howled through the galley’s stripped masts, and ratt
led the winter-bare trees on the mainland.

  Amid the fusty glue of close air, with his clan braid crusted with salt, Parrien lacked the words to measure his gratitude. His weary crews were sheltered and fed. After a night of unbroken sleep, the damage to worn lines, and worked seams, and torn sail could be assessed and mended.

  Of the eighteen Alliance ships ambushed to grant his five galleys survival, Vhandon’s statement was bitter and brief.

  ‘We’ve been fugitives ourselves. Set too hot on the run from Lysaer’s foot-troops not to guess how sorely your fleet needed respite.’ He paused, his competent, blunt fingers clenched on his mug.

  Parrien weathered the interval, silent. Vhandon’s clipped speech and lined features often lent the misleading impression of gruffness. Without Talvish’s banter to strike the hidden spark, his taciturn humour and sensitive insight eluded most casual eyes. Yet Parrien s’Brydion had learned his every trick from the mentor, seated before him.

  Yet tonight, the veteran officer’s ferocious stillness was utterly new.

  ‘You’ve met him?’ Parrien pressed at last on brash impulse. No need to mention the name of s’Ilessid, self-styled as Prince of the Light.

  Vhandon’s flint regard flicked away, loath as he was to answer. ‘I did not understand the dynamic charisma that walks in the man’s living presence.’ A shiver raked him, not due to the cold. ‘What chance do those lost, blinded followers have? The logical fire of Lysaer’s convictions will admit to no creeping doubt. Mankind is born craving such absolute stability. Our mortal nature strives for a known order, though we tend to forget structured limits deliver stagnation that leads to sterility. Had we not met the s’Ffalenn half-brother first, would we ever have questioned? Dare we judge others who have fallen prey to the weakness that begs for a saviour?’

  ‘You don’t like killing men who flock to die like tame sheep,’ Parrien said with cut-glass acuity.

  ‘No.’ Vhandon looked up. ‘That’s too dangerously simple.’ The horror had eaten him down to the viscera. ‘The slaughter is ugly, but what lives is worse. I cannot stand by and allow this infectious dogma to grow entrenched. These are men, made as weapons that kill without conscience! Like the farmer who harvests his croft with the scythe, they raze down all that stands without quarter. Nothing is left to give voice to diversity. True freedom can’t thrive under one creed in conformity.’ Now shaking, he set down his mug before he slopped the hot contents. ‘Did you never see Lysaer unleash his royal gift?’

  ‘Not in his element,’ Parrien admitted. ‘Years ago, he once ventured out hunting with us. He’d arrived in petition for an alliance of war, which required my brother’s good graces. His silken tongue wooed us with reason, then caught us short by the fears underlying our drive for security.’ His mouth tightened, strained by a memory no belt of rum could erase.

  ‘Bransian swallowed the strategy, head first,’ Vhandon murmured, not without sympathy.

  ‘We all did!’ Parrien shot to his feet, jabbed to shame. ‘How do you withstand a statesman who leads his game with the cards of your wishful, self-serving agenda? You kiss his boots for saying what you’d like to hear, and before you think to examine the motive, you’ve sold yourself out! Bransian’s not wont to forgive that mistake. The humility’s not in him, to just walk away from the sting of being played by our whimpering short-falls!’

  Yet Vhandon’s rooted disquiet intensified. He covered his face, forced to stifle his impulse to weep. ‘You’ve never witnessed Lysaer’s destructive powers under sway of the Mistwraith’s directive.’

  Parrien sat. Tired frown and cold eyes, he measured the crisis that wracked his family’s most dependable field-captain. Vhandon was worse than shaken. The grief that distressed him, somewhere, somehow, had caused his matchless character to falter in stride. No care could approach what had crumbled his poise; yet the friend who observed had to try.

  ‘I’ve already heard the most damaging news,’ Parrien opened with heart-sore reluctance. ‘That Lysaer immolated our outlying troop, and that Keldmar died at the forefront.’ Since the hurt was too brutal, he asked the steward to fetch in the vintage brandy.

  ‘We stood witness to everything,’ Vhandon said through shut hands. ‘All ten of us, trapped on reconnaissance inside the s’Ilessid field camp. Keldmar sent us, I think, as a misguided effort to keep us this side of Fate’s Wheel.’

  The rocked swing of the gimballed lamp was not kind, as the tears escaped those clamped fingers. Vhandon held on through the loss of his privacy, while Parrien poured two restorative glasses. Yet alike as he seemed to the brother now dead, his vulnerability was not as Keldmar’s, which once had groped to find understanding through inept, but sincere camaraderie.

  ‘You’ll tell me exactly what happened,’ said Parrien s’Brydion with fixated attentiveness.

  No word, no touch, and no quickened breath moved his stillness throughout the dreadful report. By the end, he had heard every searing detail of Lysaer’s first assault on the citadel. Not to console for the ruin and lost lives, or to bolster shocked nerves, never that; presented the face of a curse-bound disaster, Parrien’s patience was as the adder’s, that coiled to strike back in cold blood.

  Late Autumn 5671

  Responses

  ‘I acknowledge our debt to Rathain and Alestron,’ King Eldir declares as he hands his horse off to a groom; then makes disposition to the sea-captain, braving her distrust of stable-yards to petition for aid: ‘The Crown of Havish will grant supply for the besieged citadel, on condition that you and your crew on the Evenstar will arrange the delivery on your own merits…’

  Caught while detailing the drills for green troops, Sulfin Evend stands frowning, as Lysaer’s hound-faced valet reports that the Divine Prince’s sleep has been broken by a feverish dream that carried the name of the Spinner of Darkness…

  Suffering a headache following his late rebuff by the Prince of Rathain, Bransian s’Brydion grinds frustrated teeth, until his overstrung duchess snaps first, and suggests the coercive option, ‘If his Grace has come here to safeguard Jeynsa s’Valerient, then she is the pawn in your fist, and your leverage to bring him to heel…’

  Late Autumn 5671

  VIII.

  First Turning

  The gale broke by sundown, blown out to feathered clouds, and a brisk change of wind that fore-promised new ice on the rain barrels. Cold to the bone, with her hands scoured raw from the handling of quicklime and mortar, Jeynsa left her mixing paddle and hand-cart to the relief at the change of the watch.

  ‘Enjoy your turn, butty,’ she said to the breathless boy arrived for his shift on the sea-wall. ‘No question, I’ve sanded my finger-tips raw!’

  Daylong, she had not questioned Talvish’s orders, or the call for brute labour that annexed her to his company. If the duke’s thwarted temper made him declare that the wharf-side embrasure required reinforcement, every hale person under s’Brydion protection was pressed forthwith to lay stone. Men cranked the winches and levered the cut blocks, while boys and strong women chipped facings and hauled in water and sand for the mixing troughs.

  Jeynsa never minded the rough, outdoor work. Despite sore hands, she would have stayed on, even welcomed the diversion to thwart Sidir’s overbearing attention. Public presence alone averted the brangles that sparked, as she clashed with his tender authority.

  Fionn Areth had less reason to make himself scarce, and no reservation against mouthing off his latest inflaming opinion. Crammed onto the lift with chilled sentries and bone-weary citizens, he declared, ‘I don’t see how more masonry can stave off the hour we die of starvation.’

  Talvish heard, slit-eyed, from his place by the seaward blocks. This pass, he chose not to silence the fool, but stood back and let his grizzled campaign sergeant slap down the offence.

  ‘That’s your grass-lander’s ignorance speaking!’ challenged Cortend, who still wore his gauntlets. ‘If directed activity gives anyone hope, we are all better off.’

  �
�Break our backs for a lie?’ Fionn Areth shot off, while the turn of the winches caught up the slack, and the freight lift crawled under load up the cliff-face. The Araethurian stayed undeterred by the rancourous stir on the crowded platform. He shouted over the grind of taut chains, ‘That’s the same hypocrisy played against the Light’s victims. Or so you lay claim as the cause for this war!’

  Now, more than one tired veteran bristled. Several muscular townsfolk rocked onto their toes, incensed enough to start fisticuffs. Talvish’s bark could have stalled the fresh fight.

  Yet the sergeant laced in, ahead of him. ‘Let our honest craftsman find their sound sleep in the belief they’ve protected their families. Keep everyone busy, we won’t get betrayed by some man’s helpless rage, as he tries for relief by defection!’

  ‘Defection?’ scoffed Fionn, ‘Or just honest good sense, to dump pride and admit our position’s untenable.’

  The sergeant settled by cocking his fist. His battering right hook clipped Fionn Areth on the jaw, snapped his head back, and reeled him into Jeynsa’s startled embrace.

  ‘Serves the damned idiot right!’ The sergeant flushed, unrepentant for blatant misconduct.

  Talvish chose to laugh off the infraction. ‘Spared my knuckles a bruising against Araethurian flint, though you won’t win my praise for the effort.’ Subjected to Jeynsa’s infuriated glower, he shrugged. Unsurprisingly, no one else moved to help her prop up the felled victim. The girl was left on her merits to choose whether to drop her unwitting charge in a half-conscious heap.

  Perversity won. Jeynsa elected to shoulder the load, if only to champion the brash underdog. Now hazed by the surly regard of the onlookers, she denounced, ‘Even the stupidest gripe deserves kindness.’