Crown of Earth

by Hilari Bell

  “You came up with this plan,” said Arisa. “It’s not perfect, but you’re trying to save everything that really matters. Your priorities are right.”

  “You said it was a stupid plan!”

  “It is. And it rests on all the fisherfolk being willing to trust the daughter of a traitor, which is downright crazy.”

  “But they can trust you,” Edoran said. “They are trusting you. Right now.”

  “Do you know why?” Arisa asked him.

  Edoran blinked. “Because you’re telling the truth.”

  “No, you blockhead! They’re trusting me because you told them they could! They’re trusting you. Your Highness.”

  She left him then, so he could think it over. So he could think about all that could fail, and the responsibility for that failure sitting squarely on his shoulders.

  This was what it meant to be king. Only all the time. And she thought he should want that job? She was crazy!

  The chaotic mess his so-clever plan was bound to produce was the best chance to vanish he was ever likely to get. By all the gods, he’d take it!

  CHAPTER 11

  The Tower: ultimate destruction, not of you, but of your world. The loss of all you hold dear.

  The wind was against them. They arrived at Caerfalas at midmorning of the day Togger had hoped to arrive before dawn—the day he thought the pirates would arrive at dusk. But the wind would be against the pirates, too, Edoran thought, as they rammed the boats up onto the shore and splashed through the surf. So the pirates might arrive late as well. Or tomorrow, if they wanted light for their raid on the village. Or even the next day, if their comrades were delayed.

  But now or later, they would come. He knew Arisa too well to doubt that—and the fisherfolk of Caerfalas were trusting his word for it.

  The men brought their families to the meeting hall. Then they left them to listen to Togger, Arisa, and Edoran, while they went home to pack up food and any small, valuable items the women and older children could carry.

  The women, who hadn’t seen Boralee burning, were less inclined to take the threat seriously. Arisa had to tell her whole story, in detail, before they were willing to believe her.

  Then Edoran told them his plan. At first they thought it was ridiculous, but the more he explained, the more thoughtful they became. He was talking about some of the ways they might keep the ships’ watchmen’s attention fixed on the shore when Moll held up a hand for silence.

  “I still think the lot of you might be spooking at shadows,” she said. “Though those pirates suddenly raiding ashore always seemed odd. Maybe the Falcon trying to make Holis look bad explains it. And maybe it doesn’t. But if you’re wrong, all it’ll cost us is a few days’ work. If the raid doesn’t come, that’s all we’ve lost. I’ve been planning to visit my cousin in Falter; now’s probably the time. And if you’re right and the raid does come, then your plan might save our boats. That’s worth some risk.”

  The women scattered then, to go home and repack the things their men had packed already.

  “Will they get our messages to the guard fast enough?” Edoran fretted. “We’re going to need all the troops we can get, not just the ones near Boralee. They don’t seem to be taking this seriously!”

  “I’m not worried about that,” said Togger. “There’s a handful of girls, a bit older than you are now, but when they were your age they were crazy for horses. We’ve nothing larger than donkeys here, but a lot of the nearby farms have plow horses, and they all learned to ride. If we give them a chance to play hero on horseback, they’ll take it seriously. Better than a boy that age, ’cause they’re less likely to break their necks showing off.

  “I wrote the letters while we were sailing,” Togger went on. “We can send them off right now. I want you two to examine that old fortress. Figure out what we need to do to make it defensible, and what tools and supplies we’ll need. And while you’re at it, take a string and measure that gate! No good pulling boats all the way up there if they can’t pass through when they arrive.”

  Arisa waited till he was out of sight before turning to Edoran. “I don’t know anything about defending a fortress. All I ever learned about was robbing coaches and avoiding the law.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Togger that?” Edoran asked.

  “Because these people need all the confidence they can get,” said Arisa. “If they think we know what we’re talking about, it might help almost as much as us actually knowing.”

  Edoran could feel the blood drain from his face. “I don’t know anything about any kind of fighting. I’ve never been in a real fight in my life. You know that!”

  “Well, I have,” said Arisa. “And you do know things about fighting in a fortress, because you’ve been telling us about it for the past three days!”

  “That’s just what I read in my father’s journals,” Edoran hissed. She was supposed to be the expert. “And he’d never done it either! He liked history, so he wrote about things like that. That’s all!”

  “Then maybe between us we can figure things out,” said Arisa. “Because one thing I know about real fights is that if people think they’re going to lose, they will lose. Let’s go look at this place, and try to find a way they can win!”

  For all her brave words, Edoran could tell she was worried. When they rounded the last of the low hills that lay between the fortress and the village, and she saw the walls, her eyes widened. “It’s a real fortress!”

  “You were expecting painted cloth, like the players use?” Edoran asked.

  “Well no, but… I’m going to walk around the walls. If they’re all in such good shape…”

  She went off, gazing first up at the walls, then at the landscape around them, and muttering to herself. Edoran found that encouraging.

  He had followed enough children on their games to know the terrain fairly well, so he went through the gate and stood looking around, with what his father had written about sieges in his mind. What he saw depressed him.

  “I can tell you one thing,” said Arisa when she finally followed him inside. “No one is getting over that wall without a rope or a ladder. And you can’t fight if you’re climbing. None of the nearby hills is taller than this, so they can’t shoot down on us either. If you had enough people to cut ropes and push down ladders, you could defend these walls forever!”

  “But they have to be able to reach them,” said Edoran glumly.

  “What?”

  “In order to push down ladders and things, people have to be standing on a walkway that lets them reach the top of the wall from the inside—and that walkway rotted a long time ago. We knew we’d have to build a new gate, but a walkway is going to be a lot more work.”

  Some of the enthusiasm faded from Arisa’s face, but she said firmly, “They’ll just have to build it.”

  “Will they have time?” Edoran asked.

  “Do I look like a carpenter? Let’s go tell Togger what we found, and maybe he’ll know.”

  The good news was that the gate was even wider than Edoran remembered.

  Togger had already thought of the need to build a walkway around the inside of the walls. “We’ve timber enough,” he said. “As to whether there’s time, that depends on how fast the pirates are. But first we have to get the ships inside, or there won’t be any reason to build anything.”

  The woman and children had already departed, all those who were going. Moll headed up a cadre of woman who were young and strong, or old and still strong—or at least too stubborn to flee.

  “I thought you were going to visit your cousin,” Togger grumbled at her. “You know my wife needs help controlling those boys.”

  Moll snorted. “Your wife could whip twice the number she’s got into line, and make them wash behind their ears besides. My cousin’s waited this long, she’ll wait a bit longer. And I’ll have a better tale to tell when I see her too.”

  Togger sighed. “I can’t make you go. But I’d rather you were safe.”
<
br />   “I’d like us all to stay safe,” said Moll tartly. “So we’d best set about it.”

  “I’ve read,” Edoran said cautiously, “that in the old days women helped in sieges. They threw stones, and heated pitch to pour down on the attackers.”

  “We don’t have much pitch,” Togger said. “We all caulked our hulls before we set sail, and we haven’t had time to replenish our supply.”

  Moll snorted. “And you thought you didn’t need us! Fish oil, you fool. Heat that to boiling, and it’ll scald a man’s hide right off. Which should do a pretty fair job of discouraging the folks around him too!”

  The image of sheets of searing oil descending onto a man’s skin flashed into Edoran’s mind. He prayed they wouldn’t have to use it, even on pirates.

  The next job, for the whole village, was to get their boats into the fortress. Togger said that the measurement Edoran and Arisa had reported would easily admit the smaller boats, and maybe the larger ones. Edoran had thought they’d start pulling the boats in immediately, but he soon learned that the preparations for dragging the boats to the fortress would take almost as long as the task itself. First they had to clear a path to the fortress gate. Even following the old roadbed, which was relatively flat, they had to deal with rocks that had tumbled down onto it, and centuries of plant growth. Few trees grew so near the sea, but some of the scrubby bushes were almost as tall, and their trunks were incredibly tough.

  The village already possessed the logs they needed for rollers, and having helped pull the boats over the sand, Edoran had assumed that dragging them around on rollers would be easier. It wasn’t.

  By the time the first boat approached the fortress gate his hands were blistered, his muscles ached, and sweat was pouring into his eyes. And worse, Togger had begun to eye the horizon for approaching sails.

  By the time they got the last of the boats inside it was full dark, his blisters had broken, and Edoran was so tired he didn’t care if the pirates came or not. Some of the boats were tall enough for a man standing on them to see over the wall, but they weren’t tall enough to form the walkway the fishermen needed. They hadn’t even built a new gate yet.

  He summoned the last of his strength and climbed the ladder to the tallest boat, which Togger was using as a scouting platform. “It’s still not defensible,” Edoran told the fisherman. “In fact, it’s… it’s…”

  “‘Death trap’ is the word you’re looking for,” said Arisa, following him up the ladder. She didn’t look nearly as tired as Edoran felt, curse her.

  “That makes no difference now,” said Togger. He had climbed onto the railing to get a better view. “The good news is that there’s enough moonlight that I’d be able to see their sails if they were coming. I think we’re safe till morning, and that’s a good thing, for we’ve none of us the energy to fight a kitten.”

  “So what do we do?” Edoran was almost too tired to care about the answer.

  “We set a watch,” said Togger. “If they show up tonight, we run. But I’m betting they won’t. They’ll want light, sailing up to a strange beach. After a night’s sleep we’ll build a gate, and then see what we can do to make this place a real fortress!”

  They rose at dawn and set about building a new gate and walkway around the inside wall. The men of the village were accustomed to working together on carpentry projects, building sheds or even a new house in a few days. And the need to repair their boats meant they had plenty of wood on hand. This was a task about which neither Edoran nor Arisa knew anything, so they helped Moll and the other women bring their larger valuables from their homes to store inside the boats—beginning with food stores, so they’d be able to eat if the siege lasted for more than a few days. And bedding so they could sleep warm, and fuel for cook fires and to heat pitch and fish oil.

  They all worked with the understanding that if the scouts who were watching for sails shouted a warning before the gate and walkway were completed, everyone would drop what they were doing and run for the low hills behind the village. Until those tasks were complete, the fortress was nothing but the death trap Arisa had called it.

  Edoran worked through the morning expecting that shout any minute. By afternoon he was looking for sails himself, whenever the sea was in his sight. Walking down the now well-trodden path to the fortress, he was looking over his shoulder when he tripped and almost dropped the spinning wheel he was carrying.

  “Watch what you’re about!” Moll snapped. “That was built by Aggie’s great-grandfather, and it’s got the smoothest spin I’ve ever seen. She’ll be right miffed if you break it.”

  “But where are they?” Edoran demanded.

  “I don’t know.” Moll’s voice was more gentle now. “We can’t know what might delay them, or for how long. Our task is to make use of all the time they give us, so leave the scouts to their job, and you get on with yours.”

  By nightfall the gate and walkway were finished, and the men had gathered everything in the village that could be used as a weapon. The women had prepared a meal, which everyone ate in near silence. Arisa was standing on the wall, staring out to sea, when Edoran went to sleep in a warm bedroll on a comfortable pallet. He slept badly.

  The next morning the men made pens for their livestock in one corner, and brought in the cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs, and their feed as well.

  The women worked out who would sleep in what boat if it rained. Edoran thought about what would happen if someone on the other side of the wall set fire to those boats, and soon all the men were down on the beach shoveling sand into any container that couldn’t hold water. The barrels, flasks, and kegs that could hold water were already full.

  “It took me two days to realize they could roast us like geese in an oven,” Edoran fretted to Arisa. “What else have I missed?”

  They worked with the young men who were to hide in the hills and ultimately swim out to blow up the pirate ships—though the burning slow match of Edoran’s imagining had been replaced with a striker.

  “How could I keep a slow match alight in the water?” Mouse had pointed out. He’d been chosen as one of the swimmers, and he hadn’t even tried to conceal his pride and excitement. He thought this was an adventure, and Edoran wanted to swear at him every time the subject came up. He could swim too! But Togger had refused to even consider Edoran swimming out to the ships.

  They’d also checked out how well the swimmers could see the fortress from their hiding places, and rejected any subtle signals such as scratching a nose or tugging an ear. The only things the swimmers were certain to see were big, obvious gestures, such as waving an arm back and forth—which would be obvious to the watching pirates as well. They’d finally settled for someone thrusting a fist into the air, one time for every half hour to be set on the fuses.

  Then Arisa had to explain to the swimmers how many feet per half hour, with the several different kinds of fuses they were likely to find, which didn’t reassure Edoran at all.

  But the amount of time they’d need to set on the fuses would depend on how the situation at the fortress developed—if nothing else, they didn’t dare risk blowing up the ships while Weasel was still aboard. And Edoran had been selected to give the signal, since Togger said that a man of his years waving his fists around like a schoolboy would look peculiar—particularly if it happened in the middle of negotiations.

  One thrust for each half hour of fuse, Edoran chanted to himself, wondering how he would have any idea how much time to ask for. Half an hour was the minimum, for they had to allow the swimmers time to escape. At least all the pirates would have plenty of powder and fuses, because they carried—

  “Cannons!” Edoran grabbed Arisa’s arm and lowered his voice from the near yelp he’d used. “What will happen if the pirates bring their cannons ashore to break the walls?”

  “We’ll probably die,” said Arisa. “Because this fortress wasn’t built to withstand cannon fire. But I doubt they’ll try that before your swimmers blow up the ships. Canno
ns are hard to take apart and reassemble, and it’s tricky to get them into a small boat to row ashore. And when they first land, they won’t know that they might need them.”

  If someone was rowing back to his ship to arrange for the cannons when the swimmers were in the water…

  “They’re not my swimmers,” Edoran snapped. “I wish I’d never thought about using the fortress. This is too cursed complicated!”

  “I told you that in the first place,” said Arisa. “But one thing is about to go right.”

  “What?”

  She pointed toward the village. “Unless I’m seeing things, that’s a guard troop!”

  Edoran spun, gazing eagerly into the distance at the green and white uniforms and the horses’ shining tack. He’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life, but…

  “There are only twenty of them!”

  Soon there were fewer. Once he’d heard the complete story, the troop’s captain sent half a dozen men galloping off to bring back reinforcements. Edoran eyed the remaining fourteen gloomily.

  “Needless to say, we can’t do much for you ourselves,” the captain apologized. “But any other troops your messengers find will soon be on their way, and my men know where to look for them! If your plan to delay the pirates in negotiation works, by the time they return with their leader we should be assembled in force.”

  He politely declined to bring the few men he had into the fortress, claiming that if the pirates encountered trained fighters on the walls, they might become suspicious.

  Accustomed to the language of courtiers, Edoran easily translated this to I think you’re going to get slaughtered the moment the pirates come at your silly wall.

  Judging by his scowl, Togger understood it as well, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Edoran went to sleep that night torn between praying that the pirates never came and realizing how furious the whole village would be with him if all of this had been for nothing.