“Manderin, go with them.” Eskeriel commanded.
“My place is with you, commander.” Manderin found himself replying.
“I need you there.” Eskeriel replied curtly. “I need you to get those men to Northcraven. We will buy you the time you need.” Then he turned and called his swordsmen to him.
Manderin obeyed the order, if reluctantly, and soon found himself at the place where the canoes were piled up. He began issuing orders to the scouts, and at his direction they began breaking loose the canoes and trucking them to the river in some kind of organized fashion. He heard the crash of arms behind him where the swordsmen were, but he did not turn to look. Cthochi arrows had begun to fall around him, looking for the blood of men in the darkness. An occasional cry told him that not all of them missed.
Tuchek turned with his swordsmen and formed a skirmish line two ranks deep. They had neither shields nor armor, so he told the scouts that the swords would have to do for both. Arrows began falling into the snow around him, and he knew that as long as his men were standing apart from the Cthochi, they would be picked off one by one. On the broad and open field they were plainly visible to the Cthochi archers.
To his left lay the dense thicket, and he knew that if he could reach it, at least a few of his men might survive. “To the south, men. Form a line of battle and move south!” The scouts, well-trained veterans all, did as ordered, and as their front ranks closed with the enemy, scouts behind the front rank began to run close along that line, heading for the thicket. Tuchek found himself in the middle of a hot sword fight, with kilted Cthochi screaming their war cries as they danced the blades around him. He himself formed the rear guard of his retreating force, the number of which was rapidly dwindling. He had fewer than a hundred when the first of them managed to get into the wood, and a spear took the man next to him. It was too dark to tell who it had been. The snow was liberally decorated with the dark forms of fallen men, and far too many of them were Mortentians.
A short but determined Aulig came after him, swinging his spear like an axe, trying to catch him on its barbed tip. Tuchek brought his sword around and put all of his strength behind it, causing the wooden spear to snap. When the Aulig jumped back, Tuchek was forced to let him go, for he could not move out of his line.
Someone among the Cthochi must have discerned what he was doing, for a command rang out, and a large mass of kilted warriors came behind the Cthochi line of battle to his left, trying and then succeeding in breaking through the Mortentian line. Tuchek ordered his men to give ground, not that they had much choice, and they began falling back toward the river in a narrowing crescent, and as they retreated they left dead men behind them.
Still, his maneuver had bought enough time for almost all of the war canoes to be dragged into the water, and he knew that at least his archers had for the most part escaped. Some thirty or forty of his sword and spear men had made it into the forest, and in the dark they had a better than even chance of surviving this fight. Some might even make it back to the expanded fort to tell Aelfric what happened to his scouts.
With perhaps twenty five surviving swordsmen, the best that he had, Tuchek formed a ring and began working his way toward the river. The Cthochi saw what he was doing, and they swiftly moved to hem him in on all sides, cutting off escape. He was surrounded, and the lines of the Cthochi only grew thicker as more and more warriors came running from the camps, eager to spill Mortentian blood.
But their commander was wiser than his warriors. “Stand back!” He roared in Kirluni, and although Tuchek could not see the man, he could tell that he was in charge. The warriors milled about in some confusion, and the exhausted Mortentians caught their breath for a moment. “Stand back and let the archers have them. No need to die on their blades.”
“We’ll not stand to be butchered like hogs, men.” Tuchek said. “On my command we’ll cut a path to the woods.” He could see it was impossible, what he was ordering, and he knew that his men could see it too. Still, it was better to die trying than to stand and be shot full of arrows.
Another voice arose among the Cthochi, and it was an older man’s voice, but audible to all despite the fact that the voice did not seem particularly loud. “Hold, men of Mortentia.” The voice called out. “Hold and you shall live.” He then repeated what he had said in Kirluni, much to the consternation of the warriors, many of whom cried out in protest.
For a moment all was still. Tuchek held his command. He knew the voice, and although he trusted it not a whit, he knew that the lives of the few men left to him were held in the hands of the owner of that voice.
“Hello, Rakond.” An old man said, stepping lithely from between two spearmen who were ready to prevent the scouts’ escape.
“Hello father.” Tuchek said.
From his place at the head of the war canoe Manderin heard the sounds of the clash of steel on steel cease, and he knew that Eskeriel and the rest of the scouts were finished. He bowed his head briefly in farewell to his commander, who had given his life to save most of his men. “Which way?” The rowers called out to him, for they had found the paddles to the canoes tucked up under the gunwhales.
“South.” Manderin said to his men, although more than half of the canoes were already out the range of his voice, carried northward on the current toward Northcraven. Some of the canoes had had no more than one paddle, and they were bulky things, needing more than one rower to go against the current. Manderin’s and three other canoes began moving south toward Redwater Town, to tell the Privy Lord what had happened to his friend Eskeriel. Barring interception by the enemy, with heavy labor they could make it by dawn. The rest of the scouts would have to take their chances in Northcraven City.
Chapter 95: Crew of the Sally’s High Touch, Nevermind Town, Early to Mid-Arianis
Parry Meade shrugged against the cold and bitter wind and watched the captain negotiate for food and other supplies the Touch would need for her journey south from Nevermind. Against the stabbing fingers of the wind he wore a nice thick coat, black, made of densely woven sheep’s wool and covering him nicely from chin to mid-thigh. The buttons were brass and large so that it could be unfastened by fingers still wearing gloves, a fact he appreciated sometimes when he had to reach inside it for a tool or a weapon. The captain’s coat was the same, what they called a sailor’s coat, although somehow Endam Berrol made it look like a captain’s coat, or perhaps it was something in the set of the man’s shoulders or his bearing. No person seeing the two of them would have doubted who was in command, despite the fact that they were of an age, more or less.
Parry looked at the unsmiling honey-haired woman haggling for flour and bacon, and he had to smile a bit at the prices she was charging. No one knew better than a merchant sailor that scarcity drove prices, but a fifty weight barrel of rough-milled Arker flour at three silver pennies was steep under any circumstances. The problem was most of the flour was gone, as was most of the meat and fruit as well, due to a sudden crushing demand. Fifty battered warships, probably most of what was left of the royal fleet after the shattering blizzard two weeks ago, lay in Nevermind’s spacious harbor, beaten back south of the Whitewood in what would have been a devastating defeat had an enemy done the damage. It was some consolation that the tempest had probably wrecked more Aulig ships than it had Mortentian ones, although what that meant for the war was beyond Parry’s reckoning.
From what he’d been told, most of the Aulig warriors were already in Northcraven, and the destruction of their ships would only prevent them leaving. Parry imagined that it had been their intention to raid all summer and then go home, not to invade. Leath was early for the kind of snowstorm that this had been, although it was not unheard of for one to strike this early. It had been a bitter blizzard on land, but on the open sea it had been sheer hell. In the taverns there had been some talk from the sailors about saving Northcraven City, but the boys from the Touch had put that talk to bed. Belike there was precious little left worth saving, in
their opinion. Empty walls and empty houses, for Northcraven had been starved out, and what famine didn’t kill, pestilence did.
“She reminds me of a girl I knew once.” Parry said to the captain, apropos of nothing.
Their negotiations concluded, Captain Berrol looked at the retreating form of the hard-faced, wide-bottomed merchant who had gone to fetch the flour. “Who? The flour merchant?”
“Aye.” Meade replied. “T’was a long time agone. There was a girl in Orrville one time, a baker’s daughter. She drove a hard bargain, just like that one. Ah, but she could, Captain.” Parry paused to reflect a moment while Captain Berrol looked at him, somewhat perplexed to find his first mate in a mood both forthcoming and thoughtful.
“She was a true beauty. She had dark, proud eyes and flaxen hair, and I guess that’s what put me in mind of her, that hair the color of bee’s honey.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Meade, but that merchant’s no beauty.”
“No, but you could see the pride in her. Same as that girl I knew once. Same dark eyes, same proud step. This girl could cut you to nothing with naught but a glance, and back in them days she did plenty of that. Hearts were breaking for her all over Orrville, and every man jack of us come a courtin’. You may not believe it, Captain, but back then I weren’t too shabby to look upon, afore my nose got broke and I lost my front tooth.”
Berrol laughed. “Back then none of us were too shabby to look upon, Meade. It’s a gift given to the young to make up for how stupid we all were.”
Meade nodded and grinned. “So it is. Anyways, this baker’s daughter, she was the prettiest girl in town and knew it well. Her father knew it too. A hundred crafter’s sons come to call, and not a one of them good enough for papa. ‘She’s not for the likes of you. She’s my golden princess, and none to have her but a prince.’ That’s what the man said, and all of us come a calling, and all of us turned away. There was fighting amongst us, for though not one of us stood a chance, all of us dreamed of her.
“Lio’s breath, what a girl that was!” Meade concluded.
“Whatever became of her? Did you ever find out?”
“Well, I went to sea, and not many an Orrman ever does, you know. Being as I couldn’t have her, I decided I’d not settle for less, not in that town. I’d made some brags, you see, and when they didn’t work for me, I’d no wish to look foolish. I was a terrible proud lad.”
Berrol laughed. “You still are, Meade.”
“Aye, mebbe.” The man agreed, sticking his thick and calloused hands in his pockets. They’d been loading the barrel into a small hand wagon while they talked, and his fingers had gotten cold in the bitter wind. “Anyways, when I finally did come back, some five years on, I got the whole story from my old mates. Seems papa’d set the price too high, and no merchant prince nor kindly rich man come to take her off his hands, and sixteen turned to twenty and maiden to old maid. Like anything left on the shelf too long, she went bad. Her ass got fat, her face started to show the meanness that I guess was always there, and she wound up married to an old tanner who come calling when papa was desperate and reality set in.”
“That’s too bad. You ever see her again?”
“Aye, the one time. Her hands were all cracked and dyed and she had that tannery smell about her. I pretended not to see her and she pretended not to know me. We passed on the street without a word.” Meade had both hands under the handles of the wagon, and he’d wrapped them in cloth as he’d left his gloves on the Touch. He had to knee into the wagon a bit to get it moving among the muddy ruts of the unpaved alley, and he muscled the thing onto the main street.
“So did you find another lass?” Berrol asked his first mate, interested to see just how much the man would reveal in this rare moment of self-revelation.
Meade looked down toward Nevermind’s waterfront and nodded toward the sea. “Same as you, captain. That cold bitch out there, and she’s a jealous mistress indeed. I’m not a man to leave a woman walking the widow’s walk for me, captain. Mebbe when we’ve pulled shares I’ll go landward again some time, but not likely. Reckon I’ll stay with her ‘til she breaks me, like that poor sod.” They were passing a tavern, and a weary and decrepit panhandler of perhaps seventy sat in front of it. He was wearing a ragged sailor’s coat.
The wind was cold, but not freezing, and the sun on the tile roofs of the houses and shops had melted most of the snow, except for a few islands, white and wet, that lay in the cold shadows here and there. Runoff from the snow had flooded the streets, so that every place not covered in wet flag stones was at least a finger’s depth of loose and sticky mud. Parry Meade and Captain Berrol wore sheep’s leather boots, and although they were finely stitched and oiled, they weren’t watertight, and the two men had to be careful of where they put their feet, lest the boots be ruined.
Still, even in the wet, Nevermind was a pretty little place, more of a town than a city, and the shops and cottages were tidily kept by the wives of sailors and merchants who knew the value of putting things where they belonged and keeping them clean. The streets were wide enough for three horse-drawn wagons, and the city had a wall and a fortress by the waterfront, and only the eagle’s landing on a hill behind the town overtopped it. Meade didn’t doubt that there was a harbor chain, for there were towers to support one, and he doubted the neat and conscientious people of Nevermind would let such a thing rust or break, like they did sometimes around Zoric.
It was not a place to be easily taken or invaded, but invaded it had been, although not by any enemy. All along the raised wooden walks he saw sailors and marines, a rowdy bunch who, disheartened by their failure to break the siege of Northcraven City, were taking out their frustration on the wary and increasingly impatient population of Nevermind. This was a wealthy little burgh, and the usual collection of shabby waterfront haunts and whorehouses was conspicuously absent. With no such places in which to hide their crews away, the captains of the warships were forced to allow them to roam the streets, for they could hardly be kept on board their ships for the weeks it would take to reorganize and repair the devastated remains of Admiral Ismarin’s fleet.
From time to time Meade saw the admiral himself, a huge and limping man with a dark and tempestuous way about him, striding purposefully down the board walks with the lesser captains and lackeys and other such people hanging around him awaiting orders. Ismarins was a temperamental man, it was said, and one to be avoided. Berrol certainly avoided him, for he had a reputation of seizing independent vessels and adding them, willing or not and paid or not, to his fleet. Fortunately, the Touch had arrived in Nevermind before the admiral’s ship, the Firstkill, had come limping in with mainmast broken and only half of her oars. Berrol had already given a complete and truthful report on the situation in Northcraven to the city’s lord mayor, a fat but serious merchant prince named Aginom, whose son was a godsknight in the Privy Lord’s army.
Meade was a listener, if not a frequent talker, and the town of Nevermind was abuzz with rumors of all kinds. King Falante was dead, the queen had run off or been kidnapped, and several duchies and baronies were in rebellion against the new king. Arker, the barony which surrounded the little freehold of Nevermind on all sides but that facing the sea, had declared for Falante’s infant son, he heard, which meant they were fighting on behalf of the old queen as regent, and therefore were in rebellion. To his amusement, Meade often found himself listening to rumors that must have come from the men of the Touch, for they spoke of the situation in Northcraven City, and as far as he knew, the Sally’s High Touch was the only ship to have escaped from the Aulig siege of that city. It was a strange thing to hear repeated as news the things he had himself witnessed, although plague and famine made much better things to hear about than to experience.
For the first week since arriving here Meade had eaten his full and risen from the table only to find himself hungry again moments later. He knew this was an effect of having been hungry for so long, and many of the crew were the same.
Rumors reached his ears about the situation north of the Whitewood, and if southern Mortentia lived in an atmosphere of doubt and fear, northern Mortentia was much worse. Stories of towns and cities besieged and beset with the plague were on every man’s lips, and not one family in Nevermind had not been touched with death in some fashion or another. Goodwives walked the streets or waited with clasped hands where the north road came through, looking with desperate eyes at every new arrival, hoping against hope that some missing loved one might return. There had been a muster here in the summer, and nearly all of them, as far as Meade could tell, had lost their lives in the battle for Walcox. There were some who spoke of Walcox as a victory, but not in the hearing of any Neverminders.
The sailors and marines had silver, but Nevermind was down a long road from the barony of Arker, and the local supply of the things they wanted, mostly food, lumber for the repair of ships and a prodigious quantity of ale and spirits, were quickly exhausted. More were sent for, but the roads were full of melting snow and mud, and the wagons from the barony were slow in coming. Ismarins cursed, and his hangers-on, taking his example, followed suit. The surly mood soon spread to all of the men of the broken-down fleet, which was to say nothing of their anger and grief at the loss of so many of the ships that had left Torth with them and were now coming to shore in bits and pieces all along the coast of Northcraven Duchy and the Whitewood and wherever else they might cast up. Meade did not doubt that there could be as many as fifty ships that were simply blowed off course and crippled, and those might wind up anywhere, even on Damrek Island, which wasn’t too far off.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 126
