by Hilari Bell
Edoran, who’d become thoroughly familiar with them even before he’d had to carry them over the countryside, saw only a couple of battered antiques. He’d grown up in a palace full of antiques, most of which were in better condition.
The fishermen of Caerfalas gazed at them in awe. Except for Togger, who folded his arms and snapped, “Come now, it’s not having the sword and shield that makes the king; it’s him knowing them. You all know that, whatever the townsmen have forgotten. So stop gawking, and give me some thoughts about how we can salvage the most from this mess.”
“Salvage?” one of the other boat captains said bitterly. “We’ll have time to get home and get our families out—the One God and the Lady be thanked for that! But we can’t carry our homes or our boats with us, and if they caught us at sea…”
“Well,” said Togger, “it occurs to me that not every man needs to go running inland. If there’s anyone who’d be willing to stay here with his boat, and trust the rest of us to see his family safe, we could at least save some of them. Is anyone willing to stay here, while the rest of us return to Caerfalas?”
The silence stretched.
“Come now,” said Togger. “Surely there’s someone you’d trust to watch over your family, along with his own.”
“Then why aren’t you volunteering?” one of the other men asked.
“Now that’s not fair. My children are young, and a handful! I… Oh, you’re right, you’re right. It wouldn’t matter how old they were. Even if it was only my wife at risk, I couldn’t stand to wait here, knowing they were in danger. It was foolish to think you wouldn’t feel the same. But if we all go back, all our ships will be lost. We can find places in other villages, on other men’s boats, but Caerfalas will be gone, even if the pirates don’t burn it to the ground.”
Edoran took a deep breath. “Not necessarily. I’ve been thinking. It’s almost impossible to attack people who have stout walls to defend them. That’s why there are so many old fortresses, from the warring time before Deor.”
“We know that, lad,” said Togger. “But Caerfalas is too big to build a wall around even if we had years, much less twelve hours.”
“I can’t think of any way to protect the houses,” Edoran admitted. His heart was pounding. He wasn’t sure if he was more afraid that they’d reject his plan, or that they’d accept it. “But the walls of that abandoned fortress behind the village are still intact, and the space inside is pretty empty. If you could drag the ships in… Well, it’s a defensible position. You could send all the children and old folks to safety—anyone who couldn’t fight. They’d be safe before you started working on the fortress. And if the pirates came before you were ready, since there’d be no one left but young, fit men, you’d be able to outrun them. Especially since you know the countryside around there, and they don’t.”
They were all staring at him in astonishment. Even Arisa. Edoran felt his face grow warm, and knew he was blushing.
“We’ve got the logs we use as rollers when we want to beach a boat really high,” said one of the men. “It’d take some work to clear the ground between the beach and the fortress, but… is that old gate wide enough?”
Togger was rubbing his chin furiously. “If I remember right, it is. But it won’t do, lad. Behind those walls we might be able to hold them off for several days, maybe even a few weeks, but then what? There’d always be more of them than of us. It might work in the short run, but we couldn’t hold them off for long.”
He sounded as if he regretted that, and hope flared in Edoran’s heart. “You wouldn’t have to hold them long. Just long enough for us to get them talking. If we showed them the sword and shield, and told them we wanted to trade them for our freedom, and the release of the Falcon’s hostage…”
A babble of voices broke out. “They’d just swarm over the walls and take us! ’Specially with the shield and sword as a prize.”
“Not if we threaten to break the sword and shield to bits if they continue their attack,” said Edoran firmly. Horror dawned in the faces around him, but he didn’t care. The sword and shield were only hunks of metal and wood—it was Weasel, and the people of Caerfalas, who mattered. “They know how much the Falcon wants the sword and shield,” he went on. “If we drag out an ax and start chopping bits off the shield, they’d have to break off their attack and send for the Falcon. I’m sure of that.”
Almost sure.
“You can’t give the sword and shield back to my mother.” Arisa looked as aghast as the fishermen. “I stole them to keep them out of her hands!”
“If I can trade them for Weasel, I don’t care who has them,” Edoran said.
“Hold up here,” said Togger. “Who’s this Weasel you’re talking about? What hostage?”
Arisa explained why she’d left the palace in the first place, and who Weasel was. And wasn’t. “The shareholders, they’ll just write him off,” she finished. “A lowborn clerk, with no family. Even Regent Holis, who loves him, wouldn’t put the realm in danger for his sake.”
“I think…” Edoran choked down the rest of the sentence. I think he wanted to was something Ron the fisherboy had no way of knowing. “I don’t think it matters,” he said. “Because if the pirates were captured, and it was proved that the Falcon was behind them, no one would ever accept her as ruler, whether she had the sword and shield or not.”
Togger snorted. “That’s certainly true. If folk learned she was behind those pirates, she’d be lucky to escape Deorthas alive.” Arisa flinched, and he laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, lass, but it’s the truth. And I can’t see it matters much, because even if we could hold the pirates off for a time, there’s no way in the world we could capture them! Not to mention the navy sailors with ’em. There are too many of them and too few of us. You’re dreaming, Ron.”
“Of course you can’t capture them,” said Edoran. “That’s what the guard is for.”
There was a moment of silence.
“What guard?” Togger was beginning to sound rattled.
“The guardsmen to whom the people here in Boralee are going to take our letter, explaining that this attack was a diversion, and where the pirates are going next. Look at the timing. The outlying farms will already have sent men to tell the guard about the attack on Boralee. All the troops in the area will be heading this way in a day or so, right?”
“Aye,” said Togger. “And they’ll get here in just a few more days, which is right when the pirates will be raiding Caerfalas. That’s what they’re counting on.”
“Exactly,” Edoran said. “If the Boralee townsfolk sent out messengers to the guard, telling them what was really going on, they’d head for Caerfalas instead. In fact, if they saw a chance to set up an ambush for the pirates, to get ahead of them for once, I bet they’d get to Caerfalas pretty quickly.”
They were all listening now. Some were frowning, but hope was beginning to dawn.
“While the guards are gathering,” Edoran went on, “we stand off that first attack just long enough to convince the pirates that they have to send for the Falcon and Weasel. They know she wants the sword and shield, so they’ll have to send word and get her orders. And I bet she’ll come herself. She’s like that.”
He didn’t dare look at Arisa.
“It will take them several more days, maybe a week, to get her and Weasel and come back to Caerfalas. That would give the guards time to arrive. Maybe even bring in reinforcements, and set up a real ambush.”
The fishermen’s voices rose in such a babble that Edoran couldn’t hear what they said, but they seemed to like the idea. Only Togger was scowling.
“There’s not enough guards,” he said. “Not that could be gathered in time. If the Falcon wants the sword and shield as bad as you say, she’ll bring more men with her when she comes for it. Maybe even her whole fleet. And it won’t be only the sword and shield she’s coming for.” He glanced at Arisa, then looked away. “The guards who could come would, and they�
��d set up their ambush and fight. They might even win. But in a battle where neither side has a clear advantage… the death toll would be terrible, lad.”
But he hadn’t refused outright.
Edoran wiped sweating palms on his britches. “Not if the Falcon surrendered.”
“Which she won’t! Not as long as she has any chance of winning, or even a chance to fight free. And the odds will likely be in her favor.”
“But if her ships were gone, if while she was ashore negotiating with us a handful of men swam out to her ships with slow matches and set fuses to her powder magazines… Even if she could outfight the guard, it wouldn’t do her any good. Because then she and her men would have to escape on foot, through half the width of Deorthas, with every carter, farmer, and townsman looking for a chance to bring them to justice. They’d never make it. She’d know that. And then, if someone offered the pirates prison instead of the noose, and the Falcon herself exile…”
The war between hope and dread in Arisa’s face was so terrible, he had to look away.
“She’d have to surrender,” he finished. “She’d have no choice, if her ships were gone.”
The noise that broke out then was more than liking—it sounded almost like cheers.
“Wait!” Togger shouted. “We have to think about this, rot you! Don’t they leave a guard on their ships, when they go raiding ashore?”
“Not on the ship I escaped from.” Arisa’s face was alight now. “There were two men on deck, but they were both hanging over the rail, watching the shore. It wasn’t hard to climb down. I don’t think it would be any harder to climb up, if you came up on them from behind.”
“Could someone swim out to the ships without being seen?” Edoran asked. That was the part of his plan he had the most doubts about.
“Depends on the light,” said Togger. “If it’s night, there’d be no trouble, even with a moon. If there’s rain or fog, probably. If it’s bright day, and the lookouts are at all alert, it’d be impossible.”
Edoran extended his weather sensing. It would rain the day after tomorrow, but then turn fair again for the next few days. So unless the pirates arrived at night, his plan would fail.
“Not impossible,” another man protested. “Just… Oh, all right, if the lookouts were watching, they’d get caught.”
“So we’ll have to make sure everyone’s watching the shore,” another put in. “Like they were when Arisa here went over the side.”
The discussion that broke out then was about “how” and “when” and “first we’ll have to.” No one asked, Should we? Not even Togger or Arisa. But the dread lingered in Edoran’s heart. They’d all agreed to this plan, but if anything went wrong and someone died, it would be his fault. And if he hadn’t put forward his plan, and they’d lost everything, would that have been his fault too? Edoran sighed.
The letters to the guard, the explanations to Boralee’s townsfolk, were complicated enough that the fishermen were several hours late launching the boats, though the launching went far more swiftly with all of Boralee’s citizens on the ropes.
Walking into the town to talk to the council had been like walking into a fog of grief and fury, so intense that Edoran had to struggle to act normally. Arisa turned pale and silent once more. The bodies had been removed, but their blood still stained the stones. Edoran, trying to pay attention to a discussion between Togger, the head councilman, and a stable master who owned several fast horses, stepped into one such puddle and almost fell as the shock of recent death reverberated from the earth.
The stable master volunteered his horses to carry the messages and offered to ride one himself. All of Boralee was ready to do anything they could to get back at the men who’d taken so much from them. The boats were launched with their crews aboard—only a handful of fishermen even got their feet wet.
It was better at sea, for the water held no lingering trauma, and the fresh wind might have been designed to blow away doubts. Still, Edoran volunteered to take the first night shift, since he didn’t think he could sleep.
Judging by the worried faces around him, no one was going to sleep well that night. But it was Arisa who came up to him as he stared out over the rolling waves, hoping he could spot a halfsubmerged log in time to warn the helmsman about it. Even in the moonlight, it didn’t seem likely.
Arisa settled her arms on the railing beside him, gazing at the sea. “It’s too risky. It’s probably my mother’s best chance to get out of this alive, but it’s too complicated. It depends on perfect timing by everyone involved—most of whom are your enemies! There’s just too much that can go wrong.”
“I know,” said Edoran. “But we have to do something. This is the only way I can think of to get Weasel out of your mother’s hands, and to save both the people of Caerfalas and their village.”
“The village will almost certainly burn,” Arisa told him. “Before the pirates even find the fortress.”
“The village is their boats, not their houses,” said Edoran. “I’ve been here long enough to know that much.”
This plan was also his best chance to keep the Falcon alive, for her daughter’s sake. If the Falcon surrendered, Arisa would go into exile with her. Edoran would miss her more than he’d have believed possible a few months ago. He’d learned to rely on Weasel’s judgment, but her fiery desire to make things right challenged him to do the same. Or at least to modify her plans so that they might work, instead of heading straight for disaster. And she must be influencing him more than he’d realized, for he’d come up with this plan all on his own.
If the Falcon did choose to fight and die, at least he could keep her daughter safe. She would heal, eventually. But even knowing how much he’d miss Arisa, he really hoped the Falcon chose to surrender. She’d have to surrender if her ships were destroyed. Wouldn’t she? Edoran sighed.
“There’s another problem you may not have considered,” Arisa went on. “Suppose she lights a fuse and throws a couple of kegs of gunpowder into the fortress. Then she could storm the walls and pull the sword and shield out of the wreckage. They might well survive that kind of damage, but your fishermen won’t.”
He could see how much it cost her to admit that her mother might do such a thing, but she’d found the courage to warn him. The least he could do was offer her the whole truth in return.
“If she brings up kegs of gunpowder, I’ll step in myself,” said Edoran. “Once she knows I’m behind those walls, there won’t be any powder kegs going over them.”
“I thought about that,” said Arisa. “But once she knows you’re there, she has to take you. You, alive in her hands, is her only chance to come out on top of this mess. That’s what Weasel got himself kidnapped to prevent!”
She slammed her fists on the railing in frustration. Edoran was grateful that she so seldom cried.
“Preventing her from taking the fortress is what the guards are for,” Edoran reminded her.
“If they get there in time. Too risky. Too complex. Something is bound to go wrong.”
It was time. “I’m counting on complex,” said Edoran. “I’m counting on chaos, and confusion, and nobody knowing what’s going on. Because somewhere in all that confusion, I’m going to find a way for Prince Edoran to die.”
He’d hoped to startle her with that statement, but she didn’t even look away from the waves. “So that’s it. I wondered what you were up to. Why you wouldn’t let me tell people who you are. You’re going to stay here, aren’t you? To run away from your duty to your people. From the debt you owe Justice Holis. You plan to take the coward’s way out.”
“You were just accusing me of taking too much risk!” He’d known she’d think that, but it still stung.
“That’s different. That’s risking yourself for the people of Caerfalas, and it’s kind of noble even if it is a stupid plan. This is just running.”
“You’re right,” said Edoran. He couldn’t even claim he was choosing a more dangerous life, for the palace had
never held safety for him. Pettibone had murdered a king to make himself regent. Ron the fisherboy would be safer than Prince Edoran had ever been. Well, except for pirates. And storms. And the kind of accidents that could always happen when men worked with ropes, and swinging booms, and sharp knives. Weasel’s father had been killed by a falling crate.
“It’s not about safety,” Edoran told her. “It’s not even about cowardice, really. It’s about…” Happiness. The freedom to make a life for himself, where he could be happy. Was that so wrong? “Never mind.”
“Well, I don’t want my mother blamed for your death,” Arisa told him. “That would get her hanged for sure.”
“Agreed,” said Edoran. “If anyone was going to hang for it, of course I’d step forward. But surely there will be a chance for some accident. I could simply vanish. You could swear you saw me fall off the wall, or… or something.”
It was hard to think of a plausible accident. He could always be killed in battle, but he was hoping there wouldn’t be any battle. And if he was slain in the fighting, or fell off the wall, then where was his corpse? This dying thing was harder than it sounded. Still…
“I never wanted to be king,” Edoran said. “Pettibone made it pretty clear I never would be, but even when I imagined proving my father’s murder and seeing him hang, I didn’t want to become king at the end of it. I’d be bad at it too. Whoever Holis chooses will do better, and be happier with the job. Maybe you could say you saw me drown? That’d explain why there’s no body.”
Arisa snorted. “I could say I saw you run mad—and that would be true!”
“But I’d be a terrible king. And you know it.”
“Actually, I’m not sure about that,” Arisa said. “Though I have to admit, I’m kind of surprised by it.”
It was Edoran’s turn to snort. “Name one thing I’ve done, in all my life, that makes you think I should be king.”
