With fluid grace, she rose and twirled, veils of mist trailing in her wake. She blew toward him in a gust of soft breeze, pressed herself against his body, and kissed his neck. “They’re coming.”
Raker removed the patch over his hollowed out eye and fixed his gaze on the luminescent scars carved into Whitt’s skin. The boy-turned-man sat on a crate facing him, and the commander stood, smoke blowing from his pipe.
The goddess rose, drifted toward them, and snuffed the embers out. “Nasty contraptions, don’t you think?” she asked Raker. The commander sucked on the pipe, stared at the bowl, and tapped out the ashes. He dropped the pipe in his pocket and crossed his arms.
“What do I call her?” Whitt asked Raker, getting right to the point.
Raker raised an eyebrow at the goddess.
“Goddess works fine.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not particular.”
“Goddess,” Raker said.
Whitt nodded and the commander pursed his lips. “We need the goddess’s help,” Whitt said. “Today marks the turning point for Ellegeance, an end or a new beginning. The goal is balance, isn’t it?” He blinked up at the moon as if only then connecting the celestial balance to the topic at hand.
“A fortuitous time.” The goddess cooed in Raker’s ear. “I wonder who arranged that.”
Raker eyed her. “Your doing?”
Whitt leaned back, thinking the question intended for him. “We had a hand in the strife. Ellegeance has made mistakes, I’ll admit it, but we’re capable of learning. If balance is the goal, I know what that means, but I haven’t the power to negotiate it or enforce it.” He angled his head toward Jagur. “But Commander Jagur does.”
The goddess curled across the deck. A host of wraiths rose from the delta to press on the rail or drift across the bow, their curiosity piqued by the unfurling conversation. Her fingers walked up Jagur’s arm as she swirled behind him. She peeked at Raker over the commander’s shoulder. “Tell him I expect the end to all influence forever. No more dissecting and distilling the planet’s life. If they want to merge with the kari, they can slice themselves up and invite us in. Some might get lucky.” She melted to the deck and kissed Whitt’s scarred cheek. “Tell them.”
Raker repeated the message and resumed his whittling.
“That knowledge is already gone,” Whitt said.
The commander turned, rested his hands on the rail, and gazed into the fog. “I agree,” he said. “With few exceptions, I never trusted influencers or saw the advantages over the drawbacks.”
“Excellent.” The goddess clapped. “See how simple this is? Soon most of them will be dead anyway, and the rest will simply die off.” Raker frowned at her, and she widened her innocent eyes. “Why the dire looks?”
“You’re too flippant,” he replied, and the commander pivoted around to face him. “Not you,” Raker added.
Jagur grunted. “This goddess is taking her time.”
“Oh, fine.” She huffed out a sigh and draped herself on Raker’s back, arms around his neck. Her tongue flicked in his ear.
“Get to the point,” Raker warned her, swatting her away.
The commander growled. “The point is we have a blockade…” His voice trailed off. “Not me.”
“Not you.”
“Why don’t I begin?” Whitt spoke up. “The kari want respect for the land. In the Far Wolds, the clans define what that means. We don’t have their voice here, and Raker and the rafters won’t fill the void. How do we know what that means?”
“Ahhh, so here we meet.” The goddess blew through Raker’s body, and he swayed with the intensity of her presence. The fog leaned on the rail. She sat with her arms wrapping her knees, hair and gown spreading like spilled milk across the deck. “The kari are more than the land. We are the water and air, the creatures of the sea, forests, and mountains. We are the Farlanders, and as you imbibe us, chew us, and breathe us, you too become part of us. So, you see, my Ellegean brothers, we are, in fact, all a single organism. Respect must extend to the whole. For if one part festers, the whole planet dies.” She brushed an arm in Raker’s direction. “Let’s start with that.”
Raker repeated the words. Whitt glanced at the commander, who nodded. “Continue.”
She rested her chin on her knees. “How will you know you’ve failed the kari? Hmm. Well, you would be dead, for one.” She cast Raker a playful glance, and he frowned at her as he repeated her words.
“Before that point?” She arched her eyebrows. “You’ll know when the land spoils and refuses to grow, or when it feeds you your own poison. You’ll know when the water turns turbid and fetid and riddles you with disease, when smoke clogs your air and your children gasp for breath. You’ll know when the smallest creatures, not the largest, disappear. That’s how you will know.”
“That sounds a little late,” Jagur said when Raker finished.
“Not if we pay attention.” Whitt looked down at his scarred hands. “Not if we’re honest with ourselves… and not swayed by influence.”
“There,” the goddess whispered. “He understands how it all connects.”
“And if we fail,” Jagur said, “we destroy the planet.”
“Oh, no, not at all,” the goddess assured Raker. “The kari will kill you all first.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The barge bucked and rocked. The teapot and cups tumbled from the fixed table and shattered on the floor. Outside the window, the river roared and fog swirled. Catling’s back went rigid. Kadan shot her a worried grimace, and without a word, they broke for the door. She stumbled onto the deck as the barge lurched and spun.
“Out oars! Left standard rudder,” the captain shouted. Crewmen jogged across the deck, taking up the long oars of the river barges and pinning them in the locks. “Pressure on the port. Give way!”
The barge stopped spinning, but she moved with the surge of water. The Guardian fleet swept toward Elan-Sia and the blockade. The whole river picked up speed, gushing toward the sea.
“The anchor?” a crewman shouted.
“Leave her.” The captain climbed to the wheelhouse. “We’ll pray she catches, drags, and slows us.”
Catling clutched the rail. The fog raced downriver with the ships. Across a span of water, two Guardian ferries collided, their hulls scraping and oars snapping before they parted. She spun to find Whitt, and the barge lurched. Anything not secured flew toward the dipping bow. Her hands tore from the rail, and she slid across the planking into Raker. He hauled her up by the back of her jacket and sidestepped a pair of crates that careened through the gunwale with a splintering crack. Wood groaned; the bow heaved and splashed down into the streaming river.
“Anchor’s caught!” The captain shouted from the wheelhouse. “Make your plans and say your prayers.”
Catling found her feet and gulped a breath.
“Founders’ Hell,” the commander roared. He disentangled himself from Whitt and reared like a crag bear in Raker’s face. “Which side is she on?”
“Ours,” Whitt said, bulling between them. “Look.”
The river sped by them in a torrent down through the delta. The water level began to drop as if a stopper had been yanked from a tub. The Cull Sea sucked the water north, emptying the wet prairie and sawgrass marshes. Guardian’s fleet swept closer to the city, the two damaged vessels among them.
The surge of water caught the Cull Tarr’s ferries, carvirs, and a host of smaller craft unaware. The river heaved them toward the sea. Several smashed into the hulls of larger ships. For a short time, the way to the piers and docks was almost clear of the enemy fleet. The river shrank before Catling’s eyes, exposing banks of muck and raising tree islands. The slough drained into the sinuous runnels that poured into the Slipsilver’s main body.
“Get us to the city,” Jagur ordered, “before we’re stranded.”
The captain shouted orders to cut the anchor line.
“We won’t be,” Catling said. “We’re shallow enough and s
till on the river. But they’re not.” She pointed to the nearest galleass and a dragnet farther from the city.
“They’re hitting bottom,” Whitt said.
The galleasses had deep draughts, and their hulls sank into the muddy riverbed, the ships listing. The dragnets remained upright but couldn’t budge, and their crews tossed jetsam into the receding river. Skudders flew toward the approaching vessels, but their deep keels would soon carve a canyon through the silt.
The barge juddered forward. Without one stroke of the oars, the Slipsilver would carry them straight into Elan-Sia’s southern piers. Nordin bellowed orders to the warriors who amassed on deck. Jagur eyed Raker. “Tell her thank you.”
“She’ll bring the world to bear.” Raker pointed his knife tip at the city. “Elan-Sia is up to you.”
A Cull Tarr skudder veered toward them. “Commander!” Nordin shouted and thrust an arm in the ship’s direction.
“Bows!” Jagur ordered and strode toward his men.
Whitt spun to Catling. “Go inside. Take Kadan with you.”
“We can help out here.” She gazed beyond the guardians’ feverish preparations to the advancing skudder. “They’re not all immune, Whitt. We’ll stay out of the way. This isn’t going to be the worst of it.” She swung around to slip behind the salon wall, and he caught her arm, pulling her to the rail. The skudder closed in. Battle cries blended with the sound of the oars beating the river.
“Catling, I need to tell you—”
“After this is finished.” She caressed his face, felt the rough scars beneath her fingertips. Despite the chaos, his eyes gathered her dreams, and she kissed him. “When this is over. Tell me.”
He jerked into her, thumped from behind. His forehead twisted in confusion. Men shouted across the deck, and bows released. Warriors maneuvered for position, and the river churned.
“What?” she asked. “What happened?”
His mouth opened, and he blinked at her, turning. A steel bolt protruded from his back. She screamed, panic obliterating all reason. She yanked the bolt out and thrust her hands on his skin. Healing influence blasted deep into his body, seeking the wound. He choked, blood on his lips. She fought for focus, crying and gasping, the world roaring in her ears. Coughing up blood, he staggered along the rail to the smashed gap. She gripped his arm, trying to still him, to heal him.
Raker strode toward her. “Help me,” she screamed. Raker grabbed him, threw him into the river, and leapt in after him.
Catling couldn’t breathe, stood there with her mouth gaping. Horror petrified her into a pillar of anguish as they surged away in the gleaming water. Kadan touched her, and she swung at him, shrieking, striking him in the cheek. He caught her wrists, talking in her face, his soothing words more noise in her ears. “Don’t you dare influence me,” she yelled, struggling to break away. “Let me go, or I’ll kill you!” She blasted him with fear and reeled. The world fell dark.
***
The first volley of bolts from the skudder caught Jagur by surprise and dropped nearly a score of guardians. The deck switched from industrious preparations to frenzied upheaval. Ellegean arrows returned the barrage, raising anarchy in the enemy ship. A second Cull Tarr volley flickered above the deck, this time anticipated and the casualties fewer. The skudder swung away, and he didn’t doubt they’d be back.
Through the din, he heard Catling screaming and scanned the deck, expecting she’d taken a bolt. Yet, his eyes fixed on Whitt, blood on the boy’s lips and chin. The sight broke him. Tavor, Vianne, now Whitt, the closest thing he had to a friend, a lover, and son, all gone. If he guarded hope in a secret part of his life, it shuddered and died. He caught his fall on the salon wall. Whitt fell to the river, and Raker jumped in after him, but the man was dead. No one survived a bolt to the lung, not like that.
“Commander!” Nordin shouted. “The skudder!”
Jagur pulled himself together. An entire army of lives, Ellegeans to defend, a city to reclaim, all demanded his attention. He joined Nordin at the rail. The skudder banked around, new men at the oars, the dead ones floating by in the current. The river narrowed as the mud and peat rose. Small luminescent waterfalls emptied the land in shimmering veils. “Prepare bows,” he ordered. “Release on my order and duck for cover!”
Three times faster than the barge, the skudder sliced through the water, gaining on the slower vessel’s port side. The guardians stood like statues, recurve bows cocked and aimed. Separated by swirling fog, the crew on the skudder formed an eerie mirror. When the spell broke would be a matter of distance and who shouted the order first.
The skudder drew within range and bucked forward, tossing its crew. Crossbows released but flew in a wild, directionless hail. The ship leaned and spun. “Release at will!” Jagur shouted.
Men on the skudder scrambled for weapons and a perch, the ship dragging its keel and taking on water. The guardian’s picked them off. Jagur turned to the barge captain. “Can we plow them under?”
The man tugged on his beard. “Too hard to come about. But, how about that one?” He pointed with his chin toward the bow. Straight ahead, another skudder listed. “I figure we can ride right up her belly crush her ribs, and head straight into the piers without touching the rudder.”
“Any reason not to?”
“Won’t know until we try.” At Jagur’s nod, the captain ordered men to the oars. The barge picked up speed, adding manpower to the barreling current and hurling them toward the canted ship. “Toss the oars and brace yourselves!”
Oars clattered into the barge and crewmen grabbed hold of anything fixed. The Cull Tarr let out a roar as the ships met. Wood cracked, and the barge shuddered as its hull rammed the sleeker skip. The skudder broke apart as the barge ground over her.
“Damage?” the captain shouted.
A man yelled from the hold. “Nothing we can’t patch.”
Jagur glanced behind him at the crippled ship. Pieces of wreckage coursed downriver. Elan-Sia rose straight ahead. Other Guardian vessels had already found a berth. Some hadn’t fared as well, thrown to the muck of the eastern bank or swept into the Cull Tarr defenses.
Raker’s goddess had ripped boats from the piers, capsized others. No one would escape the city. One side would lose and one would win, and everyone would have to live or die by the outcome. Jagur planned to win this war, even if it killed him.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Catling rolled over when the hull grated and shuddered. She lay on the salon floor among other wounded. Guardians groaned softly, too serene for their injuries. Some lay still, muscles slack, bodies like sacks of sand, life’s spark snuffed from their eyes.
Her head pounded, the result of an influence-induced coma, but the terrible grief had lost its jagged edge. Focusing her thoughts, she perceived the threads of influence. There was nothing subtle about the aura suffusing the room or the broad net of tranquility Kadan cast over every soul within the walls, including hers. He knelt by a bench, bent over an injured warrior. Without a word, he glanced at her and returned to his task, healing the man before him.
She shielded herself, her grief her own, and silently cried as she spread a coverlet of contentment over the wounded guardians and crew. Lying on her side, she ignored the voices that crept in through the shuttered windows and latched door, sounds of men preparing for war. Her hand found the fingers of the man beside her, and she probed the wound in his shoulder, forcing the blood to cleanse, the vessels to close, the flesh to cool and reduce its swelling. When she knew the man would live, she rose to her knees and crawled to the next.
Blood smeared her jacket and hands, most of it Whitt’s. Kadan’s gaze found her again. “He may not be dead.”
“I know.” She hoped.
“He trusts the kari,” Kadan said. “Raker is with him.”
“He should have let us heal him.” She breathed her care into an old man’s gouged head and dispelled the pressure that weighed on his brain. His hand in hers, she stabilized his blo
od and softened his bruises.
“Perhaps we wouldn’t have been able to,” Kadan added.
She didn’t reply, the speculation pricking her ire. Kadan opted for silence, and she didn’t blame him. She would argue for the sake of argument, hope for the sake of hoping. The only choice she faced now was whether to help win this war.
The barge bumped into the pier none too gently, tipping her to her hands and knees. The noise outside the salon dwindled as the warriors climbed to the city. “Let’s finish here,” she said, and Kadan nodded.
No bells marked the passage of time, and when Catling rose stiffly to her feet, the rain returned. Kadan drew his knife and headed for the door. She caught his arm, pulling him into an embrace. “Thank you.”
He squeezed her. “If something happens to me, tell Minessa I love her.”
With a sigh, she nodded into his chest. “If something happens to me, find Rose and raise her as your own.”
He rested his chin on the top of her head. “I will. I promise. Shall we go?”
Three guardians remained on the barge with the crew. The vessel rocked on the depleted river. The piers no longer floated but hung from the pilings on thick chains. One of the ladders to the wheelhouse rested against the pier, providing a way up.
A healthy contingent of warriors patrolled the swaying docks, halting those who wished to flee and directing them back into the city. An influencer, her hood shielding her from the rain, helped maintain calm over the panicked citizens. She stared as Catling and Kadan hurried through the rain toward the ramp.
Broken furniture and glass littered the promenade and market. Warriors gathered out of the weather in the shadow of the above tier. Sergeants shouted orders and dispersed men, some jogging into the interior. Others charged up the spiral stairs to the upper levels.
“Get under here!” A guardian shouted. “They’re emptying the upper tiers.” Catling ran for the shelter, Kadan on her heels. Something shattered above, raining shards of glass.
Kari's Reckoning (The Rose Shield Book 4) Page 22
