Their course, a northern line midway between Torth Island and the uninhabited wilderness that was Veldanin Island, was favored by a steady west wind, and so was a favorite of Berrol’s. The Sally’s High Touch was configured to carry a lot of sail, and could move faster tacking than before the wind, so although their route was less traveled than the Torth Island Waterway, which ran between Torth Island and the duchy of Zoric, it made for much better time and avoided the perpetual fogs and swampy air of that fetid duchy.
D’barran Brinn was the ship’s second pilot, and the only pilot the Captain trusted with night sailing. He was much friendlier with the crewmen than either Meade or Captain Berrol, and he confided in Levin that they would likely make port at Northcraven in two or two and a half weeks. “That’s counting on fair wind up to Corpse Island and crappy wind beating back west from there, of course. If the wind changes or goes foul on us, we could be a month at sea.”
It was more information than Levin had gotten from the mate or from Berrol, who despite the pleasant weather, seemed to be spending most of his time in his cabin.
As the days wore on, inevitably the talk turned to the war. Although the sailors had little enough information to go on, rumor in port had the city of Northcraven besieged on the landward side, and all supplies to the city were coming in by sea. Hankin O’Kundrell had heard that Auligs were raiding all across Northcraven, and that villages and towns had been sacked in various places.
“Aye, well, that’s how these things go.” Levin offered. “Comes of Northcraven being so far from the rest of Mortentia, separated by the Whitewood Forest and all that. The Auligs are right across the river, so these wars always start with them making free to raid and plunder until the king can get his armies north. Once the regulars start arriving in force, they’ll push the Auligs back to the Redwater. That’s the way it was the last two Aulig wars.”
“There’s supposed to be more Auligs this time, Levin.” Said D’barran. “I heard the island bands was in it, too. The king won’t have it so easy as he did last time.”
“Wasn’t anything easy about the last Aulig war.” Levin responded. “My dad was in that one, and he told us a lot of stories about it. The Auligs can fight like damn devils, and their bowmen are the best in the land.”
“Well, the king will do for them.” Coril Jemms said earnestly. “They were calling up a muster at Torth just as we were leaving, and I had half a mind to volunteer.”
“You got a half a mind, all right.” D’barran replied, shaking his head contemptuously. “Why in seven hells you want to go and be a soldier? The pay don’t come on time, you spend days marching one place, only to find out the battle’s back where you came from, and you got stupid officers telling you half a dozen ways to do things, all except the right way. I’d rather lose a foot than stand fer a soldier again.”
“You were a soldier?” Levin asked.
“Oh, aye. That I was. Five of the most useless years of my life. I was in the livery of the Duke of Dunwater, and the only fighting we ever done was against landholders who din’t wanna pay the Duke’s taxes. And meanwhile he’s living in a castle and riding around in a gold-plated coach. Got to where I couldn’t tell the difference between us and the highwaymen we was chasing.
“And never mind the ones we was told to turn a blind eye to. The Duke’s merry band of smugglers and the wee lords and churchmen makin’ free to take peasant girls. The whole thing turned my gut after a while. Gimme a good ship beneath my feet and clean air to breath, and I hope to never carry no lord’s spear ever again.” He turned to Coril, disgust in his face. “That’s what being a soldier comes to, Jemms.”
“Well, someone has to fight the Auligs.” Jemms replied.
“Aye, someone does. And Lio send that it ain’t me.” D’barran replied.
“Belay that language.” Parry Meade’s iron rasp of a voice carried across the deck from the forecastle. “And you chatterhens get back to work. You ain’t found nothing to do, I’ll find it fer ya.”
Three days out of Torth and they turned to the west, heading along the coast of Mortentia proper. The captain decided to bypass the city of Nevermind, for their provisions were still well-stocked and they had no need to make port. “Likely we could have picked up some goods fer trade there.” Eldrian complained in the galley. “And we could use some fresh beef.”
When they rounded the northernmost point of Torth Island, they turned west into the wind, and their progress was slow. Parry Meade rode the men hard, demanding that they get every last ounce of sail tight, and they tacked first northwest, then southwest, turning every three or four miles to keep from heading straight into the wind. For most of the day they tacked in and out of sight of a cluster of small islands to their starboard side, and Levin asked Hankin O’Kundrell what he knew about them.
The veteran seaman named them the Lost Ladies. “Belike a couple hundred years ago there was a castle on the largest of them, and they gets nice summer weather, so the Duke of Brenwater, he builds a nice summer estate there, hard up against the castle. Well, the lord he has running the place, he allows as how a great wooden house up against the stone walls makes the castle vulnerable to fire, but the duke, he pays no mind. He’s a duke, and so he’s smarter than some lowborn sodjer, right?
“So for mebbe fifty years Brenwaters use the castle, and they send their young ladies up to this summer house fer learning to be proper ladies and wear nice gowns and make their faces up and suchlike stuff. So then up in Thimenia they have a bad winter, or some lord gets killed or some youngling wants to go a-reaving or whatever, and up to this island sails a couple longboats. Seems they heard of these pretty young gals all dressed up pretty and walking on the beach half-dressed or whatever, and they decide it’s a nice spot for a raid.
“Well, they had them a lookout tower in the keep, of course, and they sees the longboats coming, with the big square sails and all, so they blow an alarum horn and all of them ladies in waiting come running inside the keep and they close up the gate all safe and sound, right?”
Levin nodded. The sailor continued, painting a picture with his hands as he spoke. “The Thimenians see that summer house perched all nice and right up against the walls of the keep, and they put their big round shields up above their heads and just invite themselves in.
“Now, the captain running the place, that was his chance. Alls he had to do was set that big house alight, and he’s either got the Thimenians cooked or he’s got them running back to their longboats with arrows falling all ‘round. Course, that’s not what he does. See, that house is the Duke’s house, and he’s not going to be answerable for burning the Duke’s property.
“Well, the Thimenians, they find a beam or a ram or big hammer or something, and they set to smashing a hole in the wall of the keep, and they’re tucked up inside that house, safe from any arrows or spears or whatever. Long and short of it is, they get in the keep, kill all the sodjers and take the girls off to Thimenia as slaves or wives or what have you. The captain gets his head on a pikestaff for his trouble. So that’s the story of the Lost Ladies islands. Nobody goes there anymore, but if we pass close enough, I’ll show you the ruins of that tower.”
“Sometimes we stop there for water.” D’barran added. “There’s still a good well.”
Meade found a good tack on the sixth day out from Torth, and the Sally’s High Touch began to move northward with a will, carried along by a good wind from the west. Occasionally the sailors caught the scent of smoke on the wind, and they could imagine Auligs setting homes alight far inland and out of their sight.
Near nightfall Coril was in the watchbasket and called down that he’d spotted a sail. Meade joined him in the rigging and announced that she was a Thimenian raider, but so far off their beam that only the shape of the sail could be seen. “No worries, lads. She’ll be away behind us come nightfall, and no Thimenian longboat’s gonna catch the Touch.”
Levin lay in his hammock that night thinking of Thimenian raiders
, war in Northcraven and a burning ship in Torth Harbor.
In the morning they changed course at first light, coming in close to the coast of Mortentia. The sailors could see the tall trees of Whitewood Forest lining the steep cliffs along the shore. “I dunno why we’re so close in.” D’barran complained. “We never come in like this before.” Parry Meade’s face was dark, and he glowered at the men as he issued the orders for the course change. Captain Berrol made a rare appearance on deck, and his face, too was a thunderhead.
“Weigh anchor here, mate.” He ordered Meade, and the puzzled sailors rushed to comply. Once the anchor had caught on the seabed, Berrol assembled the crew on the main deck.
Captain Berrol turned to the assembled men. His face was dark and angry, and he seemed to be looking at Coril Jemms in particular. Parry Meade was standing by, his great knuckles white on a heavy belaying pin. He, too, was looking at Jemms.
“You all know my rules.” The captain began. “This is an honest ship. No stealing, no lying, and all my other rules, right?”
“Aye, Captain.” The crew rejoined, looking about with puzzled faces.
“And I’ve paid you all plenty, good wages and always on time, right?”
“Aye, Captain.”
“There isn’t one of you who has a just reason to steal from me, isn’t that so?”
“Aye, Captain.”
“That’s the truth.” Elo added, scratching his big bald head and looking about wrathfully.
“Well, Mate Meade was looking about the ship, taking an inventory, and something come up missing. Something I well know he never misplaced. Something for my hands only.
“Now, there be some on this ship who disagree with some of the decisions I’ve made. There’ve been some who talk, maybe talk too much, saying I was wrong in how I dealt with the pirates south of the Bay Line, isn’t that right, Jemms?”
All eyes were on Coril, whose face had turned bright red. “Aye Captain, I said those things, but I never stole nothing…”
“Someone’s took from me a pot, boy. One of the pots of Brizaki fire. And probably went and told the magister in Torth about it. Ain’t that so, boy?”
Levin’s heart was racing as he heard Coril’s reply. “I never done that, Captain. I swear I never did.”
“A thing like that, Jemms, it puts the whole ship at risk, you understand? I never saw the need to have a rule against tale bearing, Jemms. Is that what you did?”
Levin stood up suddenly. His hands were shaking. “He didn’t do it, Captain.”
All of the crew were looking at Levin now. He swallowed hard and continued. “I did it, Captain. I took the pot.”
“Levin?” Berrol’s eyes were shocked, hurt. “Levin for the sake of the Light, man, why?”
“I took it and threw it into the rigging of the Wanderer. I burned that ship to the waterline.”
“Light damn ye, boy!” Parry Meade exclaimed. “What you want to go and do a thing like that for? Why, the Duke of Elderest, he gets word of this, he’ll have this ship and all of us in irons!” He looked on the verge of striking Levin while the rest of the crew looked on, aghast.
“He killed my father.” Levin explained. “The Duke of Elderest killed my father.”
“Then you go and you take it to the court, man.” Parry Meade said. “Or you take it to him man to man. You don’t go and risk the lives of all your mates, damn you. We should throw you over the side, and good riddance, you fool.”
Captain Berrol interrupted. “Who was your father, Levin, that the Duke of Elderest should have him killed?”
“My father was Hambar D’root.” Levin answered. “Maldiver D’Cadmouth had him killed to take our lands, and he’s meaning to kill me, too.”
For a long moment there was no sound on deck but the wind.
“Your father was Hambar D’root? Him as was the king’s captain? Lord of Root’s Bridge?” Berrol asked again. At Levin’s nod, he continued. “You’re a D’root, boy?”
“Aye.” Levin nodded. “I am.”
“It’s over the side with you, boy.” Meade said darkly, striding toward Levin, but Berrol raised a hand to stop him.
“No, Meade. We can’t do that. Let me think a moment.” He appeared to do just that, while the rest of crew waited, some of them staring at Levin like someone they’d never really known, and some of them watching the captain to see what his judgment would be. After a moment Berrol nodded, as if to some unspoken question within himself.
“Aye.” He said, nodding again. “Aye that’s it. Listen up, Meade. He’s a D’root. ‘You don’t tangle with the Black Duke’s get.’ That makes him noble, and it’s not for the likes of us to go laying hands on him. Plus, he’s got the curse in him. Everyone knows about that, right Levin?”
Levin stood silently and looked the Captain in the eye, saying nothing.
“Aye.” Berrol nodded again. “So we cannot stain our hands with his blood. And us with Damrek hard by, right?”
Meade nodded grimly. “Aye, Captain. Less than day with this following wind.”
“That’s it, then. That’s my judgment.” He turned to Levin. “I can’t lay hands on you, and I can’t throw you over the side, as is my right. Not with the blood of Duke Arouth in your veins. But I can’t have you on my ship, neither, and by rights you should be hanged for what you’ve done. So I’m going to put you off on the Island of the Damned, boy, and let their filthy king do for you what I cannot. Until then you’ll be confined to the hold, and chains on you, lest you think of jumping over the side on your own.
“And may Lio have mercy on your soul, boy. May Lio have mercy.”
Meade came and grabbed Levin by the upper arm, and together with D’barran they took him to the hold and threw him in, none to gently. He landed on top of several large bags of flour. He stared up at the square opening into the hold until they closed and dogged down the hatch, and he was plunged into the darkness.
As he lay there on the bags of flour, unmoving, he thought of his father’s advice. ‘Revenge is a two edged knife.’ Hambar D’root had told his younger son. ‘It hurts the avenger even as it hurts the one he does it to.’ Levin pondered the truth of those words, but he did not regret what he’d done. Lio willing, he’d live to see Maldiver D’Cadmouth pay the account in full.
The minutes passed slowly, and his thoughts moved away from the revenge that the trial had put fresh in his mind. He thought instead of Elo, Coril and D’barran, his friends and his crewmates. Now they would go on while he was marooned on Damrek Island, whatever that was. He would miss the time spent working with them, talking with them. The truth was, had he not been drunk and scared half to death from his encounter with Shelderim D’Cadmouth, he wouldn’t have done what he did. Berrol was right. He’d put the entire ship at risk to selfishly inflict some sort of half-revenge on Maldiver. It had not been an honorable action.
It was dark and quiet in the hold, and the air was musty with the scent of the five tons of flour the Touch carried to the hungry and besieged of Northcraven. After a time Levin shifted to a more comfortable position. After long days with always something that needed doing, it was strange to be suddenly still. To be alone with nothing but the darkness and his thoughts. His muscles slowly relaxed and the tension from the trial drained out of him.
His thoughts turned to his punishment. Who was the King of the Damned? What was the Island of the Damned that the sailors had paled hearing it named? Levin had never heard of it, and he supposed it was another ‘sailor’s thing,’ a mystery known only to the men who made their living in trade on the seas. It must be survivable, Levin thought, else how could the sailors know that it had a king? The mystery and fear of it occupied his thoughts while the Sally’s High Touch moved gently through the rocking waves on a lazy sailor’s long tack.
He thought of his brother Aelfric, and wondered if he lived. Strong and steady, Aelfric was the dutiful one, and if any D’root could survive in these perilous times, it was his brother. Then, oddly, an image fo
rmed in his mind of Elithea Britic. Ah, what a sweet piece she had been. He smiled in spite of his circumstances. A treacherous and passionate little vixen right up until the end. He supposed he would never see her again, either.
Levin awoke to sudden sunlight and the sound of sailors talking as the hatch was thrown back. For a moment he was sunblind, and he couldn’t make out anything, but a ladder was thrown down and he heard the mate ordering him up it. He climbed up slowly, his muscles just warming to use, blinking in the bright sun. As his feet hit the rough deck strong hands lifted him, and he stood with a ring of sailors around him. He saw Coril Jemms there, looking sad and serious. Elo O’Zoric seemed paler than usual in the bright light, and Eldrian Cane’s face looked rumpled and stressed.
The mate threw a canvas wrapped bundle at his feet. “Your things, Levin. Light knows you won’t need them, but nobody is going to say this isn’t an honest ship. Put your boots on. This is your port.”
Levin’s eyes adjusted, and off the port beam he saw the barnacle encrusted stone pilings of an ancient and rotted pier jutting into the sea. It was a long and ramshackle affair that looked to have been built in ages past for the docking of old dromonds or rowed galleys, he supposed. The pilings were stone, but the pier itself was shaped from ancient and enormous beams of sea-weathered wood, rotted through in many places, so that the surf could be seen slapping against the pilings below.
Perhaps two hundred paces from the end of the pier it grounded upon a neglected shore, choked with tall grass and heather, and rising behind it all was a gloomy and forbidding forest of twisted beech trees, their leaves almost black, even in the bright sun. Levin could not tell how large the island was, nor how deep the forest ran, but he could see at least a mile of mussel choked shoreline in either direction, interspersed with black stones rising from the green-white foam.
“The Island of the Damned.” Said Captain Berrol. “Also called Damrek Island. Welcome to your new home, Lord Levin D’root.” At the sound of his newly revealed last name and title, several of the sailors gave him bleak looks. He had sailed among them as a commoner, a free man, to be sure, but to learn that he was nobly born was a blow to them. Not a one of them had any use for Mortentian nobility.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 33
