Sadly, she hadn’t been the only one. When Berrol rounded the Emerald Horn, he’d spotted two double-masted swift merchantmen lying at anchor off his starboard bow, sitting with sails furled and not more than three ells from each other. They were sitting side-to, and safe enough from collision, Berrol supposed, despite the occasional swells this part of the North Sea was famed for. Some distance up the shore he could see fallen blocks of stone and the remains of a seawall, part of a ruin called Tirgarni, the remains of a city that had fallen to reavers a century before. He’d walked through the ruins once a few years earlier, just out of curiosity, and seen trees growing up out of the remains of what had once been homes.
A lengthy exchange of signals told him that both ship’s captains were on board the Brazen Maid, lying to starboard of the Emerald Rose. They invited him to join them, but he did not want to waste the time involved in launching the ship’s boat, nor did he wish to chance being caught out in it should an Aulig canoe appear. Instead he dropped anchor about fifteen ells from the Maid, close enough for conversation with the two captains.
Introductions revealed the men to be captain Littletower of the Brazen Maid and Captain O’Dassin for the Emerald Rose.
“Why are you at anchor, captains?”
It was Littletower who replied. “I’ve perishables, bound for the Duke of Northcraven. There’s a blockade and I can’t deliver. But I’m carrying cattle, and we’re nearly out of feed. If I turn back, by the time I get to Tarnanvolle I’ll be hauling naught but rotten meat and manure.”
“And I’ve got fifteen of the king’s men-at-arms below, assigned to strengthen the keeps. Their captain says that if I turn back, I’ll have a mutiny on my hands.” O’Dassin added.
“It’s a pretty pickle.” Littletower said. “I’m not afraid to run the blockade. It’s naught but five ships, and only the frigate fast enough to catch us, but the harbor chain is up and they aren’t answering our flags. If I run the blockade and wind up caught against the chain, even those pathetic Aulig scows will be able to trap us. The harbor is too narrow to escape them.”
“Likely the Harbormaster wants his bit afore he’ll let us through.” O’Dassin said, echoing Meade’s theory. “The stupid fornicator. If we can’t land a’port, nobody gets nothing and they all starve.”
“And nobody in the port can read flags?” Berrol asked. He was astounded. Half the boys in Kancro could read flags, and they weren’t even sailors yet.
“Can’t get close enough for long enough to argue with them. We had about enough time to signal them to open the harbor, then that frigate was moving up on us. She moves out pretty quick, even with an Aulig crew.” O’Dassin said.
“I’ve heard enough.” Berrol said at last. “You fellows weigh anchor and fall in behind me, but keep close. I’ve witchfire, and I’m going to put an end to this blockade once and for all. I’ve a contract to fulfill, and I intend to do so. Also, there are at least four ships coming out of Torth to relieve this city, and we need to see that they get through.”
“And what of the harbor chain?” Demanded O’Dassin.
“I’ll deal with that.” Meade replied. “You’ll have that chain down, I promise you.”
The water through which the Sally’s High Touch sailed gradually changed color, from the bluish green of the North Sea to brownish red as the ship began to encounter the effluent of the mighty Redwater River. Always sensitive to the least change in the motion of his ship, Captain Berrol fancied he could feel when she encountered the main current of the river, even though they were still miles from Northcraven Deep at the river’s mouth.
They kept their ships to the middle of the sound, for the best wind was there, a fine westerly breeze that had the telltales flapping happily against the sails. Jemms and Orris Dardle, his two most agile men, were high in the rigging, each with two buckets of sea water at hand in case of flaming arrows. Jemms had a bucket of sand also, on the off chance the Auligs put burning oil or pitch into his sails. Some captains insisted that wet sails would slow down a vessel, but Berrol had never noticed a difference. Wet or dry, the sails of the Sally’s High Touch always seemed to pull about the same.
All of the men were armed, a precaution Meade had insisted on from the first burned village they had seen. “It will make the men feel better, if’n we get boarded or not.” The man had said, and Berrol agreed.
They came around an island covered in tall pines in the middle of the sound, passing it on their starboard side as they proceeded up the main channel toward the city. Meade called down from his place in the watchbasket. “I see the sails of the frigate.” His voice was calm. “She’s laying for us around this next bend.”
“Take her wide to port, Brinn.” Berrol told his second pilot, D’barran Brinn. The grinning seaman turned the wheel sharply, positioning the Sally’s High Touch so that Berrol would have a clear line of fire with the ballista in the stern. He climbed up the short ladder and took his place at the controls of the marvelous instrument, for he was the only person on the ship he trusted with its operation. When the Sally’s High Touch rounded the southernmost tip of the island, he saw the frigate. She was a typical large sloop, single-masted with an enormous lateen-rigged sail, and she was very fast. Her deck was about fifty ells out of Berrol’s comfortable range with the ballista, and he didn’t want to chance a miss by firing into the rigging of the smaller ship, so he waited and let the Sally’s High Touch drop from the main shipping lane and closer to the eastern shore, but it was still several miles off.
The little frigate was swift in the water, but Berrol could tell that her Aulig crew were inexperienced, for when she tried to come about the maneuver was sloppily done. Even with a standard rig it took experience to turn a sloop quickly, and with the lateen sail it was made more difficult by the many lines that were prone to tangle. In the distance, perhaps a mile or so to the the west, Berrol could see the poorly sewn tan sails that were typical of Aulig ships, and nothing to worry about.
Overeager bowmen shot flaming arrows from the frigate toward the Sally’s High Touch, but these fell far short, hissing briefly when they hit the water.
Berrol replied. His first shot was a trifle low, and instead of landing amid the Auligs on deck, the javelin stuck into the frigate’s prow. The little pot of Brizaki fire burst against the vessel in a dramatic flash of white hot flame, but did little real damage.
The Auligs in the frigate took definite notice, however, and while Berrol calmly reloaded and cranked back the wire bowstring for his second shot, they began to attempt an escape, turning sharply to starboard. Their inexperience showed in the long period of time it took to complete the falling off tack, and while the ship turned sideways to the Sally’s High Touch and then began to fall off, the entire deck was exposed to Berrol’s ballista. He could hardly miss, but he took the time to make sure of his second shot.
The witchfire burst into the middle of their main deck, setting both rigging and crew aflame instantly, and the panicked Auligs who weren’t immediately killed began jumping overboard, taking the flames with them under the water. The witchfire burned them even in the water, and many who had thought to escape the flames by swimming toward shore were killed.
“That’s done it.” Berrol said calmly while several of his crew cheered aloud. “Brinn, put us on a heading due south.”
From his place in the rigging, Coril Jemms watched a ship destroyed by witchfire for the third time. After seeing what the Auligs had done to at least a dozen towns and villages along the coast of the Emerald Peninsula, he no longer felt revulsion at the sight of the witchfire, in fact he hoped to see more of it.
He was a bit sorry to see the frigate destroyed, not because of the men on it, but because it was a good Mortentian craft, painstakingly built in a shipyard by the skilled hand of a master shipwright, probably in Kancro or in the Regency.
It was a far superior vessel to the flat-bottomed, lateen-sailed sea pigs the Auligs usually sailed in. Everyone called them scows, but h
e suspected they were really classed as cogs. Either way, they were poorly built and leaky things, usually so thickly greased with whale oil that when they caught fire they practically exploded.
He could see three such ships now, but they had all changed course away from the Sally’s High Touch, their captains wisely giving the witchfire ship a wide berth after witnessing the annihilation of the frigate.
Close behind the Touch sailed the Emerald Rose and the Brazen Maid, and they were not again challenged as they approached the Northcraven seawall.
Northcraven put its name on everything. There was Northcraven Duchy, Northcraven Sound, Northcraven Bay, Northcraven Channel and Northcraven Deep, what they called their harbor. In the city, called unimaginatively Northcraven, Coril had been on Northcraven Street, Northcraven Trail, Northcraven Road and he had walked down Northcraven Way to the Northcraven Market, which was next to the Northcraven Common. Both market and cattle common stood midway between Northcraven Cathedral and Northcraven Keep where resided, as you might expect, the Duke of Northcraven.
All of these names dated back centuries, Coril had been told, to the time of the Hundred Kingdoms, when undoubtedly the city had been the capitol of the Kingdom of Northcraven.
Last summer, at the very end of the sailing season, Coril had spent a happy week in Northcraven, and the sight of the city under siege was heartrending.
The Redwater River flowed to the west of the city between high banks carved from layers of pale rock. Horizontal bands of dripping rust and blood-colored mineral marked the stone like stacks of flensed whale blubber.
There had been another city there on the west bank, a city of noble houses and fine churches protected by a stout fortress on a grass covered hill. Now only the hill and the grass remained, for the Auligs had demolished the fortress and taken it apart stone by stone. Houses and churches they had burned to the foundations, one and all. The rage of the Cthochi had been thorough and irresistible on their side of the river, and Coril’s eyes watered to think of it. The Cthochi now camped in the ruins of western Northcraven, in over a thousand hide tents that were a poor substitute for the homes that they had destroyed.
East of the river the city looked much like it had last summer, although both the high bridge across the Redwater and the low bridge across the tidal flats on the east side of the city had been demolished, probably by the city’s defenders. It looked much the same, but different, like someone had come along and kicked the life out of it.
Some of the buildings nearest the walls had been gutted by fire and looked mournfully over the stricken city, burned out windows like the eye-sockets of fire-blackened skulls. Few of the trees that had once lined her proud promenades remained, undoubtedly cut down to feed night fires or cook fires or watchfires or to make arrows. The hedges and the grass were unkempt, the streets were dirty with trash, bits of ruin and detritus, and the whole city had a gaunt and desperate look, like a starving beggar in the poorest King’s Town slum.
Northcraven had been two months under siege and midsummer was past. Coril shuddered to imagine what would happen if the siege was not lifted before winter, and winter came early this far north.
He thought of Levin, marooned to die on Damrek Island, and he wondered if Northcraven, too, was an island of the damned.
The city had not one keep, but four, if you counted the great cathedral that rose from its center. You had to count the cathedral, Coril supposed, for it had originally been the city’s sole fortification, and if pressed, would serve as a good place to make a final stand. It had high walls of solid rock, carved from a hill that had once stood there, and it could resist any siege for a long time. The other three fortresses defined the city’s triangular shape, well-built moated castles in the classic Tolrissan diamond shape, with round towers above rounded corners to deflect the missiles from siege engines and provide archers and mangonels a full field of fire. These ‘new’ keeps had been built after the conquest of the hundred kingdoms, one in the eastern marsh and two along the river. It was to the nearest river keep, the castle of the Duke of Northcraven, that they were bound on contract to deliver their five tons of flour and many weapons. This castle was a trifle larger than the other two diamond keeps, and it had its own stand-alone pier, a spike of stone jutting out into the harbor.
Two large stone towers set on the harbor’s seawall defined the entrance to that harbor, called Northcraven Deep of course, for it was a fine harbor miraculously situated so that the river swept out the muck that made so many river mouths impassable to ships. Between the two towers stretched a strong chain forged of iron links, each of which was as large as Parry Meade’s head, if not so dense.
The Touch lay at anchor before the larger of the two towers, and a group of hungry looking men in chainmail, armed with long bows and swords stood on top of it. Their leader, a thickly muscled man with a dirty red beard and a poorly fitted half-helm was speaking.
“You can unload your cargo here, captain.” The man said to Meade.
“I’m not the captain, I’m the mate.” Meade replied. “And I can’t unload here. I’ve a contract with the king, and the contract says we unload on the duke’s pier, and no place else.”
“The people are starving, mate.” The man replied. “The duke can have his share once we’ve fed the people.”
“Who are you exactly, and where is Harbor Master Tanis?”
“Master Tanis is dead. I am Akamen O’Liostown, and I’ve taken his position. We represent the harbor folk and the people of the city. We control the harbor, we control the harbor chain, and we aren’t about to lower it. The Auligs threaten to sail in if we do.”
“Listen here, O’Liostown.” Meade’s voice took on the tone he generally took with his newest hands. “You are a blasted fool. Three ships full of food have come here and turned back because you’re too stupid to lower the chains and let them into the harbor. Ships aren’t going to sit here and unload for hours with Auligs sitting right across the bay.”
“You cannot bully me, first mate.” O’Liostown replied. “The fact remains that we control the harbor, and we need to be fed.”
“That may be so, fool, but we don’t need to feed you. We got a contract, and it specifies delivery to that pier, right there.” He pointed to the Duke’s pier, less than a hundred paces on the other side of the chain. “If the Duke wants to feed you, that’s up to him. Burning hells, you don’t even have a flagman here. How’s the captains supposed to know where to put in their goods?”
“You can bluster all you want, mate.” O’Liostown replied. “Or you can put your goods where I told you, or you can sail away.” Several men with him muttered aloud at this remark, for plainly they were not in agreement with his last statement. Meade took notice.
“Jemms!” He shouted. “Go to the galley and get me a barrel of flour.”
“Aye, Mate.” Coril replied, climbing down from the rigging and running to the galley. When he told Eldrian Cane what he wanted, the cook looked at him twice, but he handed him a twenty weight barrel. Jemms hefted it two-armed, and ran it out to Meade.
Parry took the barrel and set it on the ship’s rail. Then he turned to the men standing behind the erstwhile Harbor Master. “You lads look hungry.” He began. “Here’s yer choices. You can listen to your Harbor Master here, and we sail away, and these two ships with us. That means no more ships and no more food coming. Here’s yer other choice. I got twenty weight of fine sifted flour From Arker, and that’s biscuits for the lot of you for five, six days. You throw this stupid son of a pig into the bay and open up the harbor, and it’s yours.”
“You can’t bribe loyal men, mate.” O’Liostown’s tone was contemptuous, but Coril could see several of the men looking at him speculatively.
“I’m not. I’m bribing hungry men. Twenty weight of flour, and you get it open in the next two minutes, I’ll throw in a rasher of bacon.”
Coril figured it was the bacon that decided them, for who doesn’t like bacon? A loud splash follow
ed an undignified squeal from O’Liostown. A few moments later the great drum in the chain tower began to turn, and the harbor was open. Once the Touch, the Maid and the Rose sailed through, they raised the chain again. Meade delivered the flour and bacon as promised, and they sailed the short distance to the Duke’s pier. From a postern door protected by a narrow tower a twin column of twelve soldiers in full plate walked down the pier, led by a burly man in his fifties in chainmail. All thirteen wore dark blue tabards with gold shoulder covers and with a golden swan at the center of each man’s chest. They looked haggard and hungry despite their fine clothing.
Captain Berrol ordered the sails furled, the gangplank lowered and the ship tied off, then he walked down the gangplank and shook hands with the burly man in chain, who turned out to be the Duke of Northcraven himself. Together they walked up the pier and into the duke’s castle, while Coril and the rest of the hands unloaded five tons of flour and various barrels and chests of arms under the supervision of the duke’s men. Coril was busy for several hours.
Endam Berrol sat at a long table with the Duke of Northcraven, and they shared a small dinner of oysters and thin soup. The table was rough-hewn pine, but clean and polished from much use. Duke Andam D’Cadmouth looked like a man who had lost a lot of weight recently, and from the poor quality of the meal before him, Berrol little wondered why. Food must be scarce indeed for the gentry to go hungry, and this explained the unusual courtesy shown to a common ship’s captain by such an august personage as the Duke of Northcraven. Prior to the siege, Northcraven was considered a city to rival Brenwater or Arker, if nothing like the King’s Town.
“You cannot know how grateful we are for your assistance.” The duke said. “But I want to talk to you about how you broke through the blockade.” A tall and gaunt man in the silver-white robes of a bishop of Lio had just entered the room.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 67
