Captain Lenum joined me as I completed my circuit.
“Do you still think they will attack?” I asked.
“They will.”
“How many days, do you judge?”
“Six or seven. Your breastworks will confound them.”
“Then it will be twenty. Gather your officers when the pickets are built and manned and join me behind the breastworks.”
He went down, and I up to inspect progress. The breastworks had been completed to satisfaction. A shoulder-deep square of trenches had been dug around the top of the hill. The loamy earth from it had been thrown up and in to form a higher platform of earth. A hip-deep and narrow trench was in progress behind it. The auxiliaries were doing the digging while the veterans were up in the forest that crowded the top of the hill, cutting away the brush and trees for our camp. The underbrush was nearly cleared, and they worked with axes, ropes, and Fell Ponies to cut, strip, and stack the long pines. The work was well in hand.
The Tracian officers joined me there by the time my men were rigging block and pulley to hoist up the first trunk. Captain Lenum and his men had faced one of my palisades before. They could only watch with a bit of awe, while a first, second, and third long pine was raised and lashed together.
A contingent of the Raydau, half our number, give or take, appeared upon the next hill south of us but did little.
“Staff sergeant, do you know if Haton has cleaned himself up?”
“He could do to trim his beard, and he’s a bit sulky, perhaps, but otherwise fine.”
“Retrieve him for me, and bring down a thousand-weight of gold.”
He went and returned with the man and coin. The barkeep was as sullen as described. He’d grown out a salt and pepper beard to hide the gash and dark bruise upon his cheek and chin.
“What do you know of the goods produced in the Oreol?” I asked him, but he didn’t seem to understand the question. “I have business that needs to be tended to, and you are supposed to be here as Lord Barok’s commercial representative. Are you ready to join the effort, or would you prefer to head back and cry it off?”
“I … no. I’m here to help.”
“Then start.”
“Goods,” he said heavily and visibly worked himself up for the effort. “The Cynt have all you could want of wine, fish, and potatoes. The Raydau have ryegrasses, cloth, and cattle.”
“Good enough. Ride out to both and let them know you are buying. I’ll set up a pavilion below camp for you to conduct your business. Organize a feast to honor their families—the kind of event a proper merchant would attend. I’ll organize a troop to escort you.”
He woke, but slowly. A bit of color had returned to his cheeks. “The escort would only serve as a target and insult,” he said. “A single old man is rarely worth the ransom.”
“I leave the details to you. The gold is yours to use as you please. Propose whatever deals you believe our craftsmen’s consortium would approve—just get the Cynt and Raydau into the pavilion.”
I bid him farewell and went to see to my fortifications.
32
Boatswain Soma O’Nropeel
It was early in the morning when Heneur’s chief prelate sent word that he was ready to sail to Osburth. The people of Lindrig were ready as well. The Thorne and the Phalia were busy with preparations to get underway. The rest of the thin fishing vessels that would follow us were quiet but equally prepared. The town looked its sleepy self, despite the hundreds of sailors and soldiers holed up in the backrooms of those loyal to Heneur.
Lukan handed me a letter during those last moments of waiting. “Can you read it, please?” he asked. “It’s my third attempt, and I am quite incapable of another.”
It took me a moment to summon myself to the task with all that was going on around us, but I tried to give the mismatched sheets my full attention.
The 16th of Spring, 1196
* * *
Neighbor,
Please, with my compliments find aboard the ship that bore this message to you the nails you so require. I had half my retinue search every storeroom, cupboard, and shop in Wilgmuth. The wealth uncovered was extraordinary, as was the amount scavenged from the blight of our abandoned buildings. My many smithies, whose furnaces have been cold since Aderan cut our routes to Alsonvale, have come to life. New nail headers have been cast, and carts of good Heneuran iron are on the move once again. Very soon great spongy masses of red-hot wrought iron will be feeling the cut of our shears and will witness the sweet discordance and nine-blow rhythm of our Heneuran nail makers.
* * *
We have, sir, as many nails as you do trees. And I do hope you find this first gift of them very much to your liking.
* * *
And with this as recompense for your gift to us from Enhedu’s bountiful table, I must so ardently tell you how in debt we are also to your Admiral Mercanfur, whose actions off the coast of Trace in defense of the Phalia were beyond any requirement of friendship, kinship, or brotherhood. He sailed straight up the tail of a beast that could by any account take him handily, and with skill we will long recount on these shores, he crippled the corsair’s falcon and saw our good ship home.
* * *
I do very much look forward to our continued correspondence on these and all other matters between us. Please do also find enclosed a complete manifest of our fair ship Phalia, which also carries to you a small sampling of the other goods Heneur has to offer.
* * *
With greatest respects,
Arilas Lukan Vlek of Heneur
Manifest of the Phalia, Lindrig, 16th Spring, 1196
4 barrels nails, 50 weight, four-sided half-weight spar
16 barrels nails, 40 weight, four-sided third-weight spar
3 barrels nails, 50 weight, four-sided eighth-weight spar
23 barrels nails, mixed weight, mixed spar
1,300 weights pig iron ingots
1,200 weights copper ingots
200 weights lead ingots
530 weights wool, course
12 weights ginger
7 weights clove stock
4 weights rock candy
3 decanters divonte
“A fine letter, Lukan. I will be proud to deliver it to Prince Barok.”
“Do you think he will be insulted at the presumption of my sending other goods aboard the Phalia?”
“Lukan, this is a marvelous letter. Enhedu will smile from coast to coast.”
He clasped my hands, smiled at his wife, and worked out more of his anxieties by rechecking the bag he had packed for her. He kept stealing glances out the window. We all did, and none of us were very calm when his captain at last knocked on the door.
“The prelate has signaled that he is ready to go,” the captain said.
“Your men are ready?” Lukan asked.
“Every man knows what he is to do. We’ll be right behind them, my lord.”
“Come girls,” Earinne said. “Kiss your father. It is time to go.”
Pix and the pair hugged him all at once. Sevat shook his hand. Earinne, a tear in her eye, ended the long goodbye by taking hold of the bag and starting out. It was too painful to watch them part. I had to start moving to keep from crying. Lukan would be close behind, but a few boat lengths at sea was no small distance.
The Phalia was already underway when we boarded Mercanfur’s Thorne. The admiral and Lieutenant Kennculli joined my husband and I at the rail as we swung out into the harbor. On the far side, a single-masted trader emerged from the prelate’s private mooring sheltered behind a thrust of rock. It was similar to the Thorne in make, only longer, eleven oars to a side, and rigged with a tall lanteen. It was trim, well maintained, and well crewed. I’d thought we had reason enough already to hate the priest and his sermod, but found a new degree when I saw how low his ship sat in the water. They weren’t on a trip to visit Osburth’s priests. They were going to sell their crop of cocoa to the Raydau.
“I’ll kill
her myself,” someone said, and we were all startled to see that it was my husband.
“You noticed how low they are sitting as well?” I asked, pleased that he was at last becoming a bit of a mariner.
“What?” he replied. “Not sure what you mean. Don’t you see her? Wearing a red shawl and kerchief. There. As though she were anointed. Bayen will take her into the ice for sure for such an insult. The gall. A farmer, a sermod, a woman. Never have I seen such a craven affront to Bayen. A woman is not capable of such a holy honor. Just wait until we get to Osburth. I’ll have her in chains. I will, I swear it … Pix, dear … why are you crying?”
I’d never seen her cry so fiercely, and she tore off toward the companionway. Sevat looked at me for an explanation. He did not notice the mood of the crew around him. I turned away from him, hoping Mercanfur would throw him overboard, and went down after Pix.
I found her in the small wardroom clutching the edge of the thin cot.
“Get out, father. I hate you!” she screamed and looked up with such terrible eyes I knew that she meant it. The look softened as she saw me. She leapt up and raced into my arms. I just held her while the tears flowed. Deep, horrible sobs shook her. It seemed her sorrow had no end. I held her tight and wished her pain away.
“Pix, Pix, stop, darling. Please. I have something I must tell you.”
I wiped her eyes with my thumbs and brushed her hair away from her face. She calmed a bit then.
“Doesn’t he know what you are mother? Doesn’t he know?”
“You know?” I whispered. “How? It is a secret no one should have told you.”
“No one told me. I see it. Everyone treats you differently now. Special. You went away with the soldiers and came back so much stronger. And then the drums … you are like Geart now, right mother? A priest?”
“Like that, yes,” I said and hugged her. “I am sorry about your father. He didn’t mean what he said.”
“Yes, he did. He meant every word.”
“We’ll have to do what we can for him, dear. He is your father. The only one you will ever have.”
“What’s wrong with him? Doesn’t he love you? Can’t you make a potion that will turn him back the way he was before we moved onto that terrible old Yentif’s estate?”
“He wanted to own land, dear, so that we would be safe.”
“But he has that now, mother. What else does he want now that is making him so mean?”
“I am sure he wants his sons and daughters back.”
“Well, he can’t have them, mother,” she said, and the tears poured free once again.
I cried, too, and held her as tight as I could.
An unwelcome feeling pricked my flesh, and I lost my breath for a moment.
The Shadow had grown stronger in her.
I could feel Him there as I held her. Her pain called Him. Sorrow, misery, death. The Shadow loved these. His hold on my husband must be stronger, too.
“You just wait, dear. When we get back to Enhedu, I’ll make that potion. There is something I can do for us yet.”
She nodded, and all the fight went out of her. I laid her down upon the cot, curled up beside her, and we slept.
33
General Leger Mertone
The 18th of Spring, 1196
“Who is the man next to Detree?” I asked Haton as a group of Cynt nobles moved up toward the wide festival-ready pavilion we’d raised to the east of the palisade’s north gate.
Haton still could not make eye contact but replied quick enough. “Wine merchant. I bought the casks from his men. Name’s Cassin. He is the eldest of the Cynt cousins. A reasonable man.”
Cassin was very oddly shaped; his extra weight hung down from his shoulders in an unmanly triangular skirt. It and his bright freckles seemed not to match the pedigree of his line, though it did match the mirth of the man. He joked with his distracted cousins as they came, in a voice that bounced around the Oreol’s hills. They were paying all their attention to the long palisade wall that overlooked the scene.
I said to Haton, “And he’s a bastard, judging by the freckles.”
“Huh. You might be right there,” he whispered back as Cassin and the rest arrived before us.
“The Raydau have disappointed me,” I said to Cassin and shook his hand.
“Me as well,” he said. “It is a shame to not see Chad or Olum after all these years.”
“I thought there were three Raydau brothers.”
“Sadly, no longer. Chad and Olum did away with Moren last autumn. But where are my manners? Please allow me to introduce my family. I imagine you have not met any of them.”
“I have, actually. I met Detree the day we descended from the pass.”
“Detree, you make me worry for the things you fail to tell us,” Cassin said with a parental tone. “General Mertone, I pray that it was a pleasant meeting?”
“He rode out as steward of his district,” I said. “So not a formal introduction.”
The lad looked ready to be offended but could find no reason to be and so had nothing to say. Cassin and the rest all seemed wise to his temperament. Their spokesman moved on. He introduced the rest of the cousins, oldest to youngest, but their mountain names blurred together. I’d expected just three of them—and was perhaps proven a fool for trusting men such as these to be understood so simply. The Cynt were as fractious as the Yentif. Each was a fisherman or wine maker, longhaired, and unfreckled. Each was also a lesser version of Detree, and Cassin did not let the greeting get in the way of what mattered to him.
“Let’s eat,” he said, and I led them all inside.
The pavilion Haton had organized was suitable. Cassin complimented him on its size, the aromas, and the many ready casks of wine. Each man found a plate, a glass, and a place at the long table. As we sat, Haton and Cassin chatted away like vacationing ladies about vintages and tannins.
“Can we move this along, cousin?” Detree asked. Haton looked ready to object until he saw the agreement upon my face.
“Oh, very well,” Cassin said. “I suppose an airing of our reasons for being here is called for. It should be a matter easily discussed. The Pormes abandoned their claim over the Oreol, and the Chancellery has backed our standing alone. You have wasted your time coming.”
“You mean to declare the Oreol a new province? What a fantastic political endeavor. Has the Chancellor promised to sponsor the Oreol for a new seat upon the Council?”
“No,” he said, his tone souring. “We are sheltered here. We do not need the Council’s protection or meddling. We do not fear the influence of our neighbors—no offense, General Mertone. Your wooden fort is impressive, but the Oreol will not bend a knee to such a small band. And I dare say that your motive for calling this gathering is rather naive. The Raydau didn’t come, and we are here only out of respect for your patronage. It is time, I think, for you to bid us farewell and take your leave of our lands.”
Haton nodded his head as if this all made sense to him, and he looked ready to say it. I stood up, cutting off whatever uninvited comment he might have made, and retrieved a decanter of wine.
I walked around the table and filled each of their glasses. I poured one for myself and raised it toward them.
“What do we toast to?” Cassin asked me skeptically.
“To your health, sirs, and the health and security of your vineyards, to the roads and seaways your wine travels upon, and the loyalty of the customers who buy it.”
The Cynt lowered their glasses. Cassin looked to them once before turning back to me. All trace of his humor was gone when he asked, “And so we know, can you tell us what Prince Barok is offering?”
“There is no offer. Those who use his lands will pay two standards per season per acre, same as everyone else in Enhedu. I am here to take a tally, collect your loyalties, and the rents you owe.”
“General, this is not Enhedu.”
“I do not think you will like what happens if that remains your view.”
>
Detree pointed at me, “A matter to be settled upon the field, sir.”
A commotion beyond the front entrance drew all eyes. I smiled a touch, having expected it. The Raydau had not accepted our invitation but were watching from their hill. Men like these were too petty to be left out.
My staff sergeant was the first in and managed to introduce Chad Raydau before the broad-shouldered man and his retinue stomped their way through the heavy flaps.
“Already toasting to it are you?”
Cassin set down his cup as if it were going to bite him. He said, “We’ve struck no deal.”
“Right,” Chad said. “You let the prince’s men squat upon your land, sold them your wine, and met them without us. How perfectly social of you.”
“It did not seem that you would be attending,” Cassin protested. “You were delayed?”
Chad Raydau did not respond. He stepped toward me, instead. “You’d be the broken old man come to tame us, I suppose? Would you drink to me as well?”
My staff sergeant had not withdrawn. He stood in the entrance and signaled “enemy close” and “4,000.”
“Yes,” I told Chad and took hold of a wine bottle while he put his sword arm low along his side and turned his hand to catch the dagger sliding from his sleeve. “I am the old man that is going to kill you and take your family’s land.”
Thrall's Wine Page 2
