by Tim Stead
All the time he had men working on a ditch, a diversion channel for the stream that would take it away into an adjacent valley, out to the sea beyond the Seth Yarra walls, but not yet.
The Duranders had a Halith with them, a piper, and Narak sent him forward to play songs of death and despair to the Seth Yarra. He confined his own men to the valley when the mage played, and those few who stood with him on the slope wore copper amulets, and listened to the sound unaffected.
He forbade his officers from considering the walls of the camp. Any battle would be fought out in the open where cavalry would be decisive, and with that in mind he prepared the ground, studied the lay of it for miles in every direction, and developed his strategy for victory.
After two weeks he stood again with Jiddian looking over the walls at the Seth Yarra soldiers. His eyes wandered over the camp, picking out the small weaknesses, the blind spots, the places where they had failed to protect themselves. He had to admit that they had done a good job. It would be impossible for them to attack the place without great loss of life. If they failed to sally forth they had no sure route to victory. In the back of his mind he was working on a way to exploit the only two openings, which were either end of the ocean channel, but he did not like the odds.
“Jiddian, I have been a fool,” he said.
The Eagle god smiled. “It is most unlikely,” he said.
“How many men are behind those walls? How many did you see?”
“Twenty-five thousand. I did not count them to a man, but an eagle’s eyes are sharp. It is about the right number.”
“And how large is that island?”
“Twenty acres, give or take.”
“So how many men would such an island hold?”
“I do not know. A good many, I should think.”
“They would each have a space no more than two yards across,” Narak said. They would be stacked like wheat stalks in a sheaf, thick as flies on a week old kill.”
“Then they cannot retreat.” The implication shocked Jiddian. It was clear on his face.
“Not until nine tenths of their force has been slain,” Narak said. “It puts a new perspective on what they are doing here. They are prepared to hold this position to the last man.”
“And there is no water on the island.”
“They must believe that they can break us, and we would break our force against such walls. Any battle will take place out here on open ground, but I confess that I do not see the virtue in their strategy. We will force them out. They cannot avoid it.”
The revelation made Narak uneasy, and it was a discomfort piled upon extant doubts. They had pointed him here, they were waiting for him, it was all their game, and he could not see it. He felt that he was playing by rules he had not understood. He was doing what they expected, except that he would not attack their makeshift fortress. He grew increasingly uncomfortable as the days stretched into weeks.
It did not help that he worried about Elyas, Duke of Bas Erinor. The man was rarely seen outside his tent, and when he did make an appearance he generally stood, or walked slowly in the company of his son and one or two senior officers. He knew the man was sick, dying even, and he was concerned that the Avilian troops would be robbed of their morale should the Duke perish before battle was joined. Some would see it as a sign that their war was ill favoured.
But he could do nothing, so he stuck pins in the Seth Yarra army, dug the diversion for their water, and waited. Sometimes waiting was all that you could do.
31. Benafelas
Pascha woke early. It was a sudden thing, like childhood awakenings. She opened her eyes and was immediately alert, listening to the silence. A dim, grey light filtered through the thin cloths that screened the window, the room adopting the same grey tones. It was not quite dawn.
She sat up and put her feet on the floor, digging her toes into the thick rug, staring at the dim square of light. A spray of rain rattled against the glass. She sighed. It was going to be another wet, windy day. There had been too many of them recently. It made going to the market a chore, kept visitors away.
She stood and walked through to her dressing room. The fire was cold and unlit. Was she that early? She liked to dress by the fire’s heat, even if there was no real need of a fire during the day. It was a luxury that she insisted on. The chill of the morning made her feel sluggish, and the fire clothed her with warmth.
She would have words with Teean. It was the maid’s job to light the fire before Pascha awoke, before dawn.
She washed quickly, hating the feel of the cold water on her cold skin, and rubbed her body dry with a thick towel that lay beside the basin. She dressed quickly, thinking of the weather. She put on thick boots, trousers, a long tunic that could almost pass for a dress, and over that a thin leather coat, and belted it all at the waist. She pulled her hair back and imprisoned it with a leather thong.
She descended to the living area, finding it cold and dark, not a candle lit, not a fire burning. The light from the windows was brightening, so dawn was well on the way.
The girl must still be asleep. Well, she would be awake soon enough.
“Teean!” She called.
She took a step towards the back of the house, the room where Teean slept, but was stopped by a loud knocking on the front door.
At this hour?
If Teean was asleep she would have to answer it herself, which was annoying. She went to the door, drew the bolt and lifted the latch. She was surprised to see five men standing outside her door. Four of them were watchmen, nothing special, she had seen their like around town, leaning against things. They were generally poorly dressed, poorly armed, and poorly disciplined. The only uniform they bore was a blue sash to show that they represented the mayor, and through him, the king.
The fifth man was different. He was shorter, thinner, fitter looking. His clothes were of a better quality, and he wore a short blade at his hip. It looked like an expensive weapon. It was his face that she studied, however. He was pale; pale eyes that were almost blue and almost grey, pale, thin lips, and a skin as fair as her own, but which somehow seemed dusty. His nose was straight and narrow.
“Pascha Lammeling?” he asked. His voice was thin, too, and there was an accent there which she could not place.
“Yes?”
“I have some grave news,” he said. “May I come in?”
She recognised him, of course. He was the man she had seen talking to Teean just the other day, and Teean had been afraid of him.
“Of course.” Calling so early they would have expected to find her asleep, or at least in bed. On any other day she would have been. She led him through the door, but the watchmen did not attempt to follow. They stood in a clump and stared. They disliked him, she saw. They were here because they were commanded to be here.
“What is it?” she asked as soon as she had closed the door.
“You have a servant called Teean Sheleeth?”
“I do.” What had she done, Pascha wondered? Or what had been done to her?
“I regret to inform you that she has been found dead, not more than an hour ago, down by the docks.”
“Dead?” It explained the unlit fires and the quiet house, but dead? And down by the docks? Pascha knew that it was a lie. Teean was dead. She was prepared to believe that, but her maid would no more go to the docks than she would take ship for Afael.
Teean was a simple country girl. To her the small port of Benafelas was a city. She was a farm girl, and going to the bustling little market was an adventure for her. Sometimes she went to the square where the mummers and jugglers performed, where the story men told their stories, and always she came back flushed with excitement. Being sent to the market on her own with a small purse of coins to buy food was as much excitement as she could handle. Pascha had always assumed that one day there would be a simple country boy, and a garlanded wedding with a country priest, fat aunts and uncles at long trestle tables, and perhaps a farm and a family.
<
br /> Dead? Teean knew the docks were a bad area, if such a small town could be said to have one. It was nothing like the taverned south streets of Afael, nothing like the dark alleys of the low city of Bas Erinor.
But this man was unmoved by the death. Pascha suspected he may in some way be responsible for it.
“Would you like a glass of something to warm you?” she asked.
He shook his head, and she thought she detected a look of distaste on his face before it was replaced by a brief smile, but it was an unaccustomed use of facial muscles, almost a spasm on his grim face. This was not a man who smiled a great deal. How could you like a man who could not smile? How could you believe him?
She turned her back and walked across the room towards the table where she kept a few bottles. If she had not thought him responsible for Teean’s death she would not have watched his shadow from the corner of her eye, and she might not have heard the whisper of his blade leaving its sheath. Such small betrayals.
She twisted away with all the speed she had, and it was barely enough. She felt the blade cut though her coat, though her tunic and rip at her flesh. Blood silver. The blade was edged with blood silver, and that meant the man knew who she was.
She ignored the pain. It was her shoulder that was torn, a rip in the skin, and deeper. She felt the warmth of blood seeping into the cloth, but at the same time she was still turning, faster than any mortal man. Her hand seized his. She pushed with all her strength, driving the hilt of his sword back into his own face. She felt the impact, felt him thrust away from her by the blow. She watched as he hit the ground. Time had slowed, and she had time to realise that she had taken his sword. He lay stunned on the floor, and the blood silver sword was in her hand.
She spun it around, pointing the blade at the floor and drove it down through the man’s belly. She felt it glance off a bone and embed itself in the hard wood of the floor. The man convulsed. There was blood everywhere. His blood, her blood. It was a slaughterhouse.
Pascha felt angry. She felt betrayed. It was not so much that this one man, whoever he was, had tried to kill her. It was Telas that had turned on her. She liked Telas. She liked its people, its wine, its customs. The kings own men, even if once removed, had escorted this man here to kill her.
She knelt beside him. His pale eyes were full of pain and hatred. It was a hatred she had seen before.
“Seth Yarra assassin,” she said. “We are harder to kill than that.”
She reached out with both hands and gripped his head. She twisted, and his neck broke with a wet crunching sound.
Pascha collapsed into a sitting position on the floor next to him. With the relief of survival came the pain. She pulled the coat and tunic off the shoulder and inspected the damage. The blade had cut an inch into her shoulder, glanced off the bone. It was a serious wound, and she would have to stitch it if she did not want a scar. Her hand and arm still moved well, so no permanent damage had been done.
She pulled the blade free of the body and wiped it carefully on a clean patch of the dead man’s cloak. She took the scabbard and sheathed it. It was blood silver over steel, and she would not normally have touched such a weapon, but she had no blade of her own, and it would have to serve.
There were still four men outside her door, and she had no idea how much they had heard. She did not know if their brief, and deadly exchange had been enough to wake the neighbours, or if it had been silent. It had all seemed a rush of other senses; mostly pain. She climbed to her feet, favouring the injured arm, and stood close to the door, listening. They were talking. She heard a man laugh. They had not heard.
It would be a while before they realised that something was wrong, but not a great while. She would have to move quickly.
She went back upstairs to her dressing room and cleaned the wound. She tore up a shirt, wrapping the cloth in strips around her shoulder. Her tunic and coat were bloody, and she discarded them. The binding would have to serve until she had time to stitch the cut. She found another shirt and put it on, a tunic went over that, and then another coat, a heavier one. It would be colder where she was going. She picked out a thick cloak and fastened it around her shoulders.
Stuffing a few more items into a small bag she went downstairs to her room of secrets and unlocked the door. She looked for a moment at the rusted sword. She was loath to leave it, but she did not need it any more. There were other things now to remind her of her pain, and the blade had been a sort of talisman against Seth Yarra. It had failed.
She picked up her bow and the quiver of arrows and, after a moments hesitation, the carved silkwood box. The ring within it had unexpectedly become something that she might need.
Back down in the kitchen she sought out foods that would last, and foods that would nourish her; cheese, dried meats, flour, butter. She packed them into her bag.
Time was running out. In a few minutes the men outside would become anxious, and eventually they would break down the door and find their master bloody and broken on the floor. She must be elsewhere when that happened.
She found a quiet spot at the back of the house and sat on the floor, legs folded beneath her. She closed her eyes and drifted almost at once into the Sirash. This was her way out.
She sought sparrows, and found them almost at once, dozens, hundreds of them in the fields on the slopes above the town. It would be safer to look further, but not quicker, and she wanted to be gone as quickly as possible.
She translocated.
In all her centuries of life she had only done this once before, and the sensation was strange. It left her disoriented, sitting in a field, trying to adjust to the light and the feeling of vertigo. She kept her eyes closed and put her hands to the ground, waiting until the feeling passed. When she opened them she was close to the edge of a field and facing a stand of trees. She sat until everything felt normal again, and then she rose carefully, and turned to look back at the town.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her guts felt twisted within her, and she almost cried out aloud.
The sea was full of ships. In Benafelas bay she was used to three of four ships, seven on an exceptional day, but now they filled the ocean, as far as the eye could see they rolled at anchor, tall and dark, and the beaches were crowded with a sinister flotsam, long boats full of oars and men, thousands of men.
Seth Yarra. They were Seth Yarra ships. She knew them from Afael, from long ago.
She knew that she had to count them, to know the numbers that Narak would ask for, and so she began to count, beginning in the east and tracking around the bay, and all the time the boats plied between the tall ships and the shore, bring death and hate to the land.
Thirty-four, thirty-five. She has never seen so many ships, not even in Afael four hundred years ago. They had come in groups of five or six. Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four. Two hundred soldiers to a ship, or that’s what Narak had told her, or was it Narak. It might have been Alaran. It was someone who would know, someone she trusted. One hundred, one hundred and one.
As she counted she opened the box and took out the calling ring, slipping it onto her finger. It felt warm. It felt like it belonged there.
One hundred and thirty-four. One hundred and thirty-four ships crowded into Benafelas Bay, and Telan treachery to let them come ashore with no one to stand against them.
32. A Command
Quinnial wished that his father were still here. Each day it seemed that the trivial and mundane tried to crush his will with its sheer bulk. It was only when great matters arose that he had respite from the petty, and yet he feared great matters even more. There was great opportunity for error when the kingdom was at stake and men’s lives hung in the balance.
Now was one of those times. A messenger stood before him, his fingers chewing at the hat he clutched in his hands. He was full of nerves and the importance of his news.
“You are sure?” Quinnial asked. “No more than three?”
“No more, no less, my lord” the man sa
id. “We waited a full day and gathered news from up and down the coast.”
“And five hundred men?”
“Just so, my lord. We counted them many times.”
Three Seth Yarra wind ships and five hundred men was not an invasion, but they could do a lot of damage to undefended towns. Quinnial thanked whatever gods were responsible that the harvest was in. It was winter and the fields were immune from fire. Barns and people, however, were not. He would have to do something.
“You may go,” he told the messenger. “And send in my secretary, and tell one of the guards to find Harad. I need to see him.”
