Ison of the Isles

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  “We’ll still do it,” he said softly. “We don’t need the Grey Folks’ power. We’ll do it, even if we’re just ordinary people, muddling along.”

  “That’s the Harg I know,” Tway said.

  They sat side by side, their arms entwined, looking out at the city. It seemed to Harg as if all he saw was doomed.

  *

  The island of Roah was shaped like a hairpin or a tuning fork; it had two long arms outstretched to the west. At their base, Lashnish lay, ringed behind with mountains. From the top of the ridge that formed the island’s southern arm, Harg could see the city on one side, nestled down in its watery cleft, the mist still hanging over it. On the other side he saw all the south coast of Roah. Everywhere along that coast were little bays with sandy beaches—perfect landing spots for an invading army.

  It hadn’t come to Harg all at once, in a flash—just in small increments, tiny details that added up to one damning conclusion: Lashnish would have been superbly defensible with an army large enough to man all the heights, but he had no such army. As it was, his forces would be spread dangerously thin. There were just too many potential routes of attack.

  Around him was a scene of manic activity. They had spent the last four days clearing trees along the ridgetop, and now were building ramparts and timber parapets to mount the big guns to be taken from the ships, when they arrived from Tornabay. Half the population of Lashnish had turned out to help, it seemed: stocky Torna shopkeepers, pimpled apprentices, maids, dockhands. The city must be deserted. A wagon was bumping up a makeshift road, piled with bread fresh from the ovens, and some elderly women were cooking up a huge pot of stew nearby. The dark forest soil had turned into a slippery mud with last night’s rain, and everyone was covered with it.

  The activity gave the townsfolk a sense of purposeful progress, but to Harg’s eyes it was inadequate. Admiral Talley might land anywhere along a six-mile coast, or he might attack from the west, by sea. Or worst of all, from the north, which was wholly undefended. The islanders’ artillery would be spread out in a perilously thin line, their firearms so scarce they would have to use old shotguns, their ships depleted of armaments. When the ships finally arrived. He turned west to scan the entrance to Roslip Firth, where the fleet would be stationed. He had been expecting them all week. It would leave Jearl with almost no force to keep Tornabay under control.

  If there had been nothing but tactics to consider, Harg would have retreated, then recaptured Lashnish as soon as Talley left it. But when he looked down on the city, where the campfires of the refugee town were beginning to haze the air, he knew that was impossible. To retreat was to leave all those people at Talley’s mercy. No Ison would do such a thing, and Harg couldn’t either.

  A ship was warping out of the harbour below. Harg squinted at it, then called Gill over. Gill had been unusually quiet since seeing his family, and Harg constantly felt he was bringing him back from other thoughts. “What ship is that, Gill?” he asked.

  “It’s that Rothur ship,” Gill said.

  “Leaving, rot them,” Harg said. The Rothurs had been so full of promises and encouragement, so totally lacking in concrete support. The ambassador bowed and smiled and said that all the islanders had to do was demonstrate resolve, and there would be arms, there would be ships—only the arms and ships never arrived. Just more promises.

  “I’m going down to talk to Tiarch,” Harg said. “You keep things moving here, all right?”

  “All right,” Gill said, but his mind already seemed far away.

  Harg looked at him closely. “Gill? You all right?”

  With an effort, Gill smiled at him. “Don’t worry, Harg. I’ll keep them moving.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “It’s nothing you can help, Harg. It’s not your fault, it’s mine.”

  Harg did not feel reassured.

  When he entered Tiarch’s office, the Governor was with her secretary, sorting papers and packing them in boxes. “Going somewhere?” Harg said.

  “There are a lot of names in these records I wouldn’t care to have the world see,” Tiarch said. She shooed the secretary away then, and closed the door. “How are the defences coming?”

  Harg looked at her broad, aging face and thought that they really made a remarkable team. Their minds worked at exactly the same speed, and in the same direction. When she said something would get done, it got done. Harg hadn’t always trusted her, but at least they had never lied to each other.

  “The defences are a joke,” he said. “Oh, we’ll be able to slow them down. We might even turn them back, if Talley’s afraid to take heavy casualties.”

  “Right,” Tiarch said. “Talley, afraid to take casualties. The kindest heart in all the Widewater.”

  Harg didn’t need to answer. “I saw your Rothur friends abandoning us just now,” he said.

  “Practical folk, the Rothurs.”

  “I’m glad you like them. They never gave us a firecracker or an old bullet, did they?”

  Tiarch hesitated. “Actually, they have given us something.”

  “Oh?”

  “The ship wasn’t leaving. It was moving around the coast to wait. The Rothurs have agreed to give us both refuge, if we want it.”

  Trust Tiarch to have her escape all planned out. It might have seemed funny to Harg, if there hadn’t been a whole city full of people out there who had no escape and no Rothur friends.

  The Governor was watching him sadly, as if she knew what he was thinking and wished she didn’t. “I haven’t given up yet, Harg. But there’s one thing we need to think of.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We don’t know Talley’s terms for surrender. They might be better than you would think. We’re in a stronger position than I ever thought we’d be. We’ve got Tornabay. It’s a powerful bargaining chip.”

  Harg had thought it was much more. How could they trade it back, as if it were just a shipment of oysters? And trade it for what? A South Chain depopulated by war? A marred and servile future?

  “We’re never going to have a whole victory,” Tiarch said. “We’ve got to settle for half of one. But we’ve got to do it now. Talley doesn’t know yet what we’re up against. If he can avoid a faceoff, he’ll deal.”

  Harg shook his head. “Talley wants a faceoff.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do. I know him.” He had begun to feel superstitious about it.

  “He still might bargain. Let me try, at least.”

  At last, slowly, he said, “It can’t do any harm, I suppose.”

  “Just leave this part to me,” Tiarch answered.

  *

  The next day the fleet still hadn’t arrived from Tornabay, so Harg sent a sloop out looking for them, to hurry them on. Up to now their absence hadn’t worried him; adverse winds could easily account for the delay. But he had begun to feel nervous about the Innings’ arrival. As he headed back up to the ridge to check on the defences, he saw the messenger boat heading out, and wished he could be on it. It was impossible; if he had left at this juncture, the morale of Lashnish would have left with him.

  At sunset the volunteers from the city began to go home, leaving the ridge to the professionals, who would work on into the night by bonfire and torchlight. They took a break as the stars began to come out, sitting around fires strung out along the ridge. Harg found himself with a group from the Windemon that had been with him throughout the campaign. He knew most of their faces, but not names. Weary, he stretched out his legs toward the fire and lay back, smelling the sweet tang of dreamweed on the cool air. Above him the stars looked like jewels scattered on velvet. The air was perfectly still except for the distant sound of breakers on the shore. It was a beautiful, peaceful evening; looking around the circle, he could see the awareness on all their faces that there m
ight not be another one for them.

  They were talking, but not about the war. The conversation ran toward the past, particularly the good times—holiday dinners, what the children of their villages did on the rare occasions when it snowed. Listening, silent, Harg knew that many of the homes they spoke of no longer existed.

  He thought of Gill. After all the effort, and all the fighting, Gill had realized that his family was really the most important thing to him. And there was no way to get it back now the way it had been.

  The mood had changed since they had begun to fight. There was an odd calmness around the campfire now. Harg said, “Isn’t anyone scared?”

  There was a pause. “Why should I be?” one man said. “My home is gone, I don’t know where my family is. What’s left to be afraid for?”

  “You know what I’ve figured out?” a woman said, knocking the ash from her pipe. “When I die, nothing is going to change. People who have known me will just pick up and turn back to whatever they were doing, the way I did when friends of mine died. They’ll marry and have kids, and forget. There will be a whole future without me, and the fact that I lived will make no difference.”

  There were nods all around the campfire. No one spoke for a long time.

  Looking at their firelit faces, it came to Harg that he had lost his taste for fighting. Not that he would stop; it was almost automatic now, he’d been at it so long. But it no longer brought him a sense of accomplishment. He had lost his faith that it was possible to win.

  *

  When they spotted the Inning fleet two days later, their own ships still hadn’t arrived. Harg stood on the fresh plank floor of one of the gunless gun towers, a spyglass pressed to his eye, counting ships. Every time he thought he’d gotten them all, another one appeared. Talley was holding nothing back now; he had his quarry cornered, and was going for the kill.

  Harg looked down at the entrance to Roslip Firth, where the missing warships would have guarded the city from the sea. There were four ships there—one that had fled here from Harbourdown, the two stationed here, and the one he had arrived in, the Windemon. There was also a collection of merchant ships and fishing cogs crewed by townsfolk with muskets and grenades. Talley would cut through them like a hot knife.

  All down the ridge the defenders were stationed and ready. Their faces looked grim as they, too, counted the odds. The cannons they had relied on were mostly on the ships. They would have to make do with a peculiar assortment of mortars, swivel-guns, and small arms.

  He watched tensely as the Inning armada came into the lee of the island, wondering which way they were going to go—by land, by sea, or the most likely, both. A small cutter with brown sails broke off from the rest of the fleet, tacking round the headland to the firth entrance. The warships were preparing to cast anchor.

  “By the horns,” Harg whispered. “They’re going to negotiate.” He had been wrong, Tiarch had been right. He handed his spyglass to Gill and said, “Send a messenger if there’s any change. I’ll be with Tiarch.”

  When Harg reached the Isonsquare, he looked down the Stonepath to the harbour. One of their own boats was landing, doubtless bearing some news or person exchanged at the blockade. Tiarch was already alert to the new development when he entered her office. “If he’s sent an Inning, let me do the talking,” she said.

  But when the three-man delegation from Admiral Talley arrived, all of them starched and pressed in their shining uniforms, the person at its head was not an Inning. It was Joffrey.

  Harg and Tiarch stood side by side as he entered the office, and neither of them could utter a word.

  Joffrey did not open with diplomatic pleasantries. “First, I need to inform you that your fleet will not be arriving tomorrow, or any time soon, at least not if Jearl has obeyed my orders, as he said he would.”

  Harg looked at Tiarch. Her face looked like it was made of stone.

  “However,” he went on, “Admiral Talley is prepared to be generous in his terms of surrender.”

  He laid it out then: all combatants were to cease hostilities at noon the next day. The Innings would occupy the city peacefully, and no civilians would be harmed. The only requirement was that Tiarch and Harg personally surrender to Admiral Talley aboard his flagship at noon, and become his prisoners.

  “To be tried, I suppose?” Tiarch asked. For the first time since he had known her, Harg saw a flicker of fear in her eyes.

  “That’s not included in the terms,” Joffrey answered. He waited a few moments, then said, “Shall I take back your answer?”

  “No,” Harg said. “We’ll send someone with our answer. Someone we trust.”

  Joffrey gave them both a cool, condescending look, then left.

  For a while, they said nothing to each other. Harg stood at the window, watching the Inning delegation leave. There was a group of people gathered outside, watching the door anxiously for news. Across the square the Pavilion gate stood open; beyond it the Isonstone lay, inert. Even it existed in an Inning world, now.

  At last Tiarch sighed and said, “Well, you were right about him.”

  “He was bluffing about the fleet,” Harg said. “Jearl would never turn traitor. I know him too well.”

  Tiarch gave a fatalistic shrug. “When Joffrey left here, he had with him enough money to pay the whole fleet.” She left the implications unspoken. It was just as well, for Harg would have bristled if she had said the word “bribe” aloud.

  “He must have used deceit to delay them,” Harg said.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now.”

  Harg tried to think of his options. He pictured all the refugees out there, all the townsfolk, all the people on the ridge and aboard the ships preparing to fight a hopeless defence with little better than kitchen knives, whose lives he could save simply by giving himself up. He looked at Tiarch. “What do you think?”

  “If we choose to fight, will we be any better off?” she said.

  He almost laughed. Was anyone ever better off for choosing to fight? He’d thought he knew the answer to that, once.

  “We can’t just accept his terms,” he said. “At the least, there’s got to be a general amnesty. No reprisals. And he’s got to rescind his declaration about Adaina lands. Property rights in the South Chain stay unchanged.”

  Tiarch said, “We could ask him to pledge us a civilian peace commission to determine the governance of the Isles after military law is lifted.”

  “With both Torna and Adaina representation,” Harg added.

  They went on for the better part of an hour, cobbling together a list of counterproposals. There was a weird unreality to it—just the two of them, sketching out a visionary blueprint for peace.

  At last, just before Tiarch was about to send for her secretary to write up their demands, Harg said, “Are we going to agree to his main condition?”

  They looked at each other. “Let’s just send him our proposals and see how he reacts,” Tiarch said. “We won’t promise or deny anything yet.”

  How canny she was.

  After the messenger left, Harg went back up to the ridge to wait for Talley’s reply. People gathered around him eagerly to learn what was going on, but all he would say was, “We’re negotiating.” He watched those words pass down the line like wind, raising ripples of hope wherever they went. As evening fell he walked from campfire to campfire, and the talk was animated again. He found Gill conscientiously overseeing things, but looking as if he was making mental lists of things to do before heading home.

  “What are we going to have to give up to get peace?” Gill asked him. When Harg didn’t answer, Gill said, “We all know it won’t come free. That’s not how these things work.”

  “We’re trying to make it as cheap as possible,” Harg said.

  The response didn’t come until dawn. Harg saw the cutter rou
nding the headland and commandeered a wagon to take him back to the city. He arrived before Tiarch had even risen from bed, and was waiting in her office when Joffrey came in. Harg sent a servant to tell the Governor, then turned to face Joffrey. “Well?” he said.

  With a stiff formality, Joffrey said, “Admiral Talley gives his word that all his actions will be regulated by justice, but he will agree to no specific terms or conditions. This is his final response. He requires an answer by noon, or the attack goes forward.”

  “He thinks we’re just stalling?” Harg asked.

  “Aren’t you?” Joffrey said.

  Harg gave him a look that would have made most men flinch. “Well, Tiarch and I will have to talk it over.” He looked to the door, wondering what was taking her so long.

  Joffrey had already left when the servant who had gone to find the Governor came back.

  “Sir, she’s not in her chamber,” the girl said. “I can’t find her anywhere. Her secretary’s gone, too.”

  Something cold seemed to have taken Harg by the throat. “Was her bed slept in?” he asked.

  “No, sir.”

  He stood motionless, scarcely able to believe it. All the lives in Lashnish depending on her, and she had slipped away to safety in the night.

  He sat down at Tiarch’s desk and pulled out a drawer, but it was cleaned out. He leaned back, thinking. There might still be time for him to make it to the Rothur ship as well, if he left quickly. They might wait to see if he was coming. He thought of taking the first step, but something seemed to be weighting his feet. It was the Isonstone, he thought—tied around his feet, dragging him down.

  It was an hour before Harg stirred again. He called in an aide to send a series of messages to Gill, Katri, and his other captains. Then he went to change his clothes. Something plain and utilitarian, he decided. Something unlike what an Inning would wear.

  There was a crowd gathered at the wharf by the time he got there, all anxious to know the news. He avoided their gazes. Gill met him at the dock, frowning darkly. When they climbed into the launch together, Gill said in an undertone, “Is this your idea of a cheap bargain?”