King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  Inda said, “So we’ve never depended on numbers.”

  “No. Speed and skill. Sudden strikes, hard, so the Idayagans find it easier to surrender and walk away with their lives.”

  Inda thought of pirate fighting, and thumped his fist on the table, bump, bump, bump. “That many men squeezed down into a trail in the pass, that won’t be any hit and ride.”

  “I know. What do we do?”

  Inda scowled at the map. “We’ve got to throw everyone we can at the north, because we have got to hold that pass.”

  Evred stared down at the map, hardly seeming to breathe. Then, “Tell me what you expect.”

  “They have to get a hold on the north coast. That means take Idayago, then they have all the resources of Idayago at hand.”

  “I perceive that much.”

  “Well, that’s the first stage. They grab the north, push as far south as they can, then dig in over winter. Their king sends more men. They land fresh occupation forces along the north coast over fall and winter, ready themselves for next spring’s big launch into the Marlovan homeland. Then they not only come down the pass like thunder, they can send the entire fleet against our coast. They hammer the harbors in force, land, and march up from the south and the west. Three fronts, not just two.”

  Evred said slowly, “I am already near the end of the oath-levies. My father called four times for a decade’s one out of nine, and last year I called for one from all the northern Jarls. We used second decade men in rotation to the harbors when the pirate attacks were the worst.”

  Inda reached back into childhood, remembered the decade system: each Jarl, when called, owed the king one of nine Riders between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. Second decade was for men between thirty-five and forty-five. A Jarl could choose to send men, or ride himself. When a Jarl had been called four times, it meant four out of every nine of his younger men was away serving the king.

  “Though the treasury is nearly empty, I will do what must be done. But Inda, when you say ‘everyone,’ I can only realistically raise all men once.”

  Inda felt like someone had gripped his skull in a vise. For the first time, he considered what raising an army meant in human terms. Out on the ocean, he’d always had more volunteers than he needed or wanted, for whatever reason. They were usually pirates, or independents who sailed mighty close to outright piracy. They weren’t Marlovans with homes, families, and land to take care of.

  He’d always thought of a newly hired sailor killed on board as a sailor replaced at the next hiring. A Marlovan killed left a hole in the work of home, to say nothing of the hole in his family. He could be replaced only with the gradual reweaving of time.

  Evred spoke to the map. “We cannot get the south up there fast enough, not for the start of summer. It’s going to be difficult enough to raise the north.”

  Inda said, “I thought our people were supposed to be fast? Cherry-Stripe mentioned something about your Runner making it all the way to the north in a couple of weeks? Said the fellow’s become a legend.”

  Evred smiled. “Vedrid nearly killed himself doing it. But he was one Runner, with access to fresh horses along his route, and the ability—and determination—to sleep in the saddle. He slept for a week after that ride. You cannot raise and race an army like that. Even if the roads were good, which they won’t be, how can you expect them to fight at the end of such a journey?”

  Inda whistled, and Evred’s smile vanished. “I will have to call for a double decade out of the north. Heretofore I’ve avoided pressing Ola-Vayir, which is by far the largest jarlate. He had dispensation due to some leftover treaty business with my grandfather, and I said nothing last year. He thinks this is because I’m weak, but I’ve been holding them in reserve. I can raise his entire land if I must. Nine for nine.”

  Inda rubbed his scar. “But that still won’t give us numbers to match theirs?”

  “No, but it’s as close as we can come short of raising the entire kingdom. That must be only a final resort.”

  A bleak image: fields and castles abandoned except for women, the old, children, left to defend if the enemy smashed through the men. “Right,” Inda said, his throat constricted.

  “Will that suffice?”

  “We’ll make it suffice.”

  “Done,” Evred said.

  An almost sickening thrill buzzed through Inda’s nerves. Done, just like that. Evred was the king, he said Done and people’s lives changed. Inda struggled against the instinct to shout, Wait! Wait! What if I am wrong?

  Evred straightened up and crossed his arms. “I’d first planned to make you my commander at the celebration. Mark the transfer of power for the coming battle to every Jarl we could draw within a month. Let the word spread. But when I consider the distances, and what you say, we don’t have time. I’m going to strip this city of warriors, a double decade. I’ll handle the other levies in person on the way north. We’ll ride out at dawn.”

  “ ‘Celebration’?” Inda asked. There it was again, that sense that he’d missed something obvious and important.

  Evred opened his hand toward Tdor, standing so straight at the opposite wall as he said gently, “Taking your place formally as heir to Choraed Elgaer—and getting married.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  TINY flakes of snow stippled the little scene in the middle of Five Points Parade, the broad flagged expanse below Pirate Island’s chalky cliffs where the isle’s only five roads came together.

  “I’ve had a very bad couple of years,” Captain Scarf said to the three islanders kneeling before her, as a circle of pirates waited for the fun to begin. “Very bad,” she repeated, though no one had moved or spoken.

  A rising wind fretted with clothing, hair, and the long silken fringes of Scarf’s beautiful embroidered kerchief. Pirates did not have gray hair, but she dared not land where there was a healer-mage who changed hair color, so she’d become Captain Scarf.

  Pirates circled the three, some with weapons readied.

  The harbormaster, who’d been a privateer before one wound too many kept him off ships, stared forward with an air of stolid stupidity. It had been his best weapon when the island was taken by surprise almost fifteen years ago, by the previous set of pirates.

  At his right, Captain Swift, another grizzled middle-aged privateer, tried to hide the lancing pain in his knees that kept him from hearing much of what the pirate was saying.

  “If any of you were with that soul-sucker Elgar the Fox two winters ago,” she added, “you are going to wish you weren’t.” Scarf’d been past forty when Khanerenth had lost its former king, and she’d lost land and rank and power with her royal brother. She’d been taking revenge on the world ever since.

  “Why are people so impossible?” Scarf mourned, turning toward the third victim, the only woman.

  Mistress Svanith was the youngest, at forty. She owned one of Pirate Island’s two chief inns, and a great deal of the waterfront besides. She did not make the mistake of thinking that Scarf actually wanted her question answered—she just waited patiently.

  Scarf waved a negligent hand toward the small scout craft moored along the dock. Several of her crew were busy cleaning blood off the sides and deck. “I hate rules,” she said. “Never obeyed ’em when I was growing up. Princesses make rules for others to obey.”

  She frowned down at three impassive faces. “You’re probably thinking that I’m no longer a princess.”

  Her pirates laughed appreciatively. None of them had ever been within a month’s journey of any royal court, but they’d managed to learn the primary survival skill of the successful courtier: laugh at the royal jokes.

  “I know I’m no longer a princess,” she said, with another of her languid, courtly gestures. She felt a speech coming on: why not educate them about power? She had a good quote ready, from none other than Elian Dei of Sartor, who (if you read closely) had apparently been a bit of a pirate herself.

  But first: “I’m reasonable
, so I try to give out as few rules as possible. My single rule was that you people give us what we want. We just want a modicum of comfort after a long, starving year on that damn coast off that damned Iascan land. So why are you sending messengers?”

  The harbormaster couldn’t resist. He knew he was in trouble anyway, so he said, “Wasn’t against your rule.”

  She sighed, half turned, then lashed out with her iron-shod boot, kicking him in the face. He fell back, hands over his mashed, bleeding nose. “Now, that’s just common sense. I guess I have to teach you common sense. You don’t like to see your girls and boys dead? Then—”

  Scarf was just settling in for her lecture when the sound of laughter echoed from the old warehouses on the quay.

  Annoyed, she peered at the rowdy crew on the dock. Leading them was her only remaining nephew, young Falthum. She smiled at the sight of him—tall, strong, mean, handsome, and none too smart. Her sister’s smart ones were all dead. She’d kindly taken and raised them after her sister died in that damned revolution. The result? The smart, educated one tried to lead a mutiny. The stupid, educated one had tried earnestly to talk her pirates into going back and turning themselves over to the law. She hadn’t made the mistake of educating the youngest one. The result? He loved his work. She contemplated that sometimes, mourning that no one around her had the wit to discourse on the irony.

  “Ho, Auntie,” he called. “Running battle comin’ in on the wind. Betting is already up in the hundreds. Come see!”

  She lifted her gaze to the skyline behind the warehouses and shops along the strand. Indeed, smoke billowed and tumbled on the wintry wind; the current through the Bridge was still a southward flow. Which was good. Let her get a tight hold on this damn island before the seasonal shift in current. No one besides her (and she’d taken three weeks) was crazy enough to come south with the ice still breaking up. And it had been a bad journey, damaging several of her fleet.

  So where did these ships come from?

  She vaulted over the harbormaster, leaving behind Mistress Svanith and Captain Swift, who bent to help him.

  Despite her years, and the bulk she’d put on since her abduction of a royal chef during a raid on a Damondaen prince’s yacht, she was in good shape; she ran to the dock where she could see past the warehouses, grabbed her glass from her coat pocket, snapped it out, and pressed it to her eye.

  The wind had tangled the smoke into an uneven white bar across the green and choppy seas, but just above it she could make out the tiny pinpoints of fire arrows arcing back and forth. A heavy gust of wind cleared the smoke just long enough for her to descry two schooners running side-by-side. Behind, ghostly and tenuous, the predator: a bigger, beautifully lean and elegant schooner—

  She laughed. So someone was behind the times. How fun! Both hunter and quarry obviously thought Pirate Island open. Well, she could use all three ships.

  Another brief flaw in the wind revealed more detail, but smoke billowed from one of the smaller schooners, hiding them again. That must be some fight! “The big schooner has a hand on the foresail—no, I think it was a leaf.” She turned to her crew in question. “Anyone familiar with that?”

  Falthum just shrugged, but she expected nothing out of him. She sifted the crowd for the balding head of her efficient first mate, remembered he was on watch aboard the flag. “Damn.”

  “Oh, I know who that is,” exclaimed one of the younger pirates, new crew just before they’d sailed east to join Marshig for the disastrous Brotherhood of Blood battle. “That’s the Sable, once out of Khanerenth.”

  Another refugee-turned-pirate from home! Scarf gave a snort of amusement. Then—quick to suspect a trick—“Not part of Elgar the Fox’s rabble?”

  “No.” Shake of the head. “Captain Eflis wanted to join the Brotherhood, but she never pulled off any raids good enough.”

  “Won’t now, either,” Scarf said, and the others laughed, some of them resuming the betting.

  The embattled ships were coming in fast, both predator and prey. Her own fleet lined the narrow harbor. Old habit made Scarf wary, but what could one ship do? Even two, supposing the little schooners started fighting everybody? Damn the smoke anyway, couldn’t those idiots even put out their own—

  Pause, and her heart quickened its beat.

  “Fires?” she said aloud, and the anomaly resolved: all three ships afire, but no pumps going? “Signal the fleet, fighting stations.”

  Falthum gaped, then ran, the others stampeding after him. Her signal boy pounded down the dock to the harbormaster’s to use the flagpole there. She held her breath as the ships came on, faster and faster—she cursed the snow—

  A bigger gust of wind thinned the smoke into swirling ribbons of mist just long enough for her to make out the three fighting ships.

  And they were followed by launches full of—

  “Blood and death! It’s an attack!” she screamed, leaping down into her gig. “Row, row! I’ll flay the backs off every one of you soul-eating . . .”

  Her voice was the faintest screech, no louder than the raucous cry of a seabird to those crouched along the rail of the Skimit and the Rippler, weapons to hand.

  “Fox is cutting it close,” one muttered to another, gripping his cutlass tightly.

  His mate returned with mordant humor, “Guess he wants to sail us right up the dock—”

  A screamer arrow whirtled weirdly overhead, and teenage Mutt, commanding the first schooner, howled, “Hard over!” His voice cracked into a squeak. He flushed, but nothing could long diminish the excitement of his first command in battle. Gripping the wheel, he hopped on his toes, his brown sailor braid thumping his bony back as he trembled with anticipation and fierce joy.

  Drift, drift, and then they were in the middle of the pirates, and what had begun as a brisk, entertaining ruse through the quiet, snow-stippled seas turned into a fast, hard battle against far too many ships—but they had taken the pirates utterly by surprise.

  Arrows hissed across Mutt’s deck. A pirate schooner slanted round, boarding crew ready to leap over. Mutt swept his glass across those faces, the ready weapons, the puffs of breath as the pirates laughed in anticipation.

  “Fox? Where are you?” he breathed through clenched teeth.

  The plan was simple. Gillor and Dasta said they’d used it when Fox and Inda were in Ymar.

  Fox hated whatever-it-was that kept him from seeing battle on a large scale the way Inda could. This plan was already more complicated than he liked, and the attack had yet to begin.

  Smoke swirled, some of it damped down by the snow turning to sleet on the rising wind.

  Ahead of him, Eflis brought her big schooner hard over, aiming straight between two raffees—the entire bay was converging on the schooners, just as they’d hoped.

  Time for the surprise.

  “Signal fleet attack,” Fox called. Adding to his motionless crew, “Fighting sail. Let’s not miss the fun.”

  Scarf smashed one of her own small craft in her determination to get clear of the smoke and the battle—only three ships, but they were fierce, driving skillfully between hers, maneuvering brilliantly as they shot from both sides. She had to get upwind of the schooner so she could—

  “Arrrrrrah!” the wail rose to a pitch that caused her neck to prickle.

  “What? What?”

  That was her first mate, the toughest man on her crew, pointing, his eyes distended.

  She whirled, peering through the dissipating smoke, scarcely aware of the numbing sting of sleet as—impossible, impossible. From the ghostly gray vapors emerged a sinister black trysail, masts raked back, sails flashing in thrilling precision. That knife-lean predator was famous the world over as the flagship of Boruin Death-Hand.

  Who was burned to death by Elgar the Fox.

  Scarf’s crew erupted into a frenzy of anger, accusation, shouts screamed at one another—demands that no one heard, all of it the result of gut-gnawing fear.

  She pounded down the leng
th of her deck, whacking people with her sword. Her first mate pulled himself together to follow and deal out similar blows, as she screamed for their attention. But even while screaming, she watched—they all watched—the trysail begin its running attack.

  Impossible, her brain wailed, but there it was, Elgar’s flagship, last seen two years ago, riding in the middle of the sea of burning wreckage of Marshig’s fleet. Though she outnumbered Elgar, she knew her crew was already falling apart. The single thing all pirates agreed on was that no one could beat Elgar the Fox on the sea. Even Norsunder obeyed his command—they’d all seen that rip between sky and sea at the end of the battle just as the sun was coming up, a sky-high rift opening onto an eternal night into which Marshig and his favorites had sailed, and vanished.

  All right, when battle doesn’t work, treachery does.

  “Signal for a parley,” she bellowed. “Every ship—truce and parley flags. Now!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  AFTER his castle tour, Tau decided to explore the city. He had to ask directions to get out of the castle. Every person he approached regarded him with puzzlement until he added, “I am Indevan Algara-Vayir’s First Runner, and I’m lost.” Inda’s real name cleared their faces like sunshine through clouds, and their manner was invariably interested, often friendly, as they offered detailed directions.

  When the sunset watch change bells tolled in all the towers, the massive, brassy bongs echoing along the stone streets and off the heavy walls, he fumbled his way back to the guest chambers.

  His shipmates were gathered in Inda’s room, Jeje at one end staring out the window at one of the many courtyards, and Inda and Signi huddled together near the fire, intent on a low-voiced conversation.

  Biscuits, wine, and ale had been set out in shallow ceramic bowls. Tau poured wine into the strange flat cup that one had to use with two hands, then Jeje summoned Tau with a jerk of her chin. “We’re waiting for the king to finish kinging, then we’re to have dinner with them.”