Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series (22 page)

Hugging the sea at that point, John got his
first look at the Claws: massive scimitars of glittering water cut
into the Malachite plain. One. Two. Three. Three, hooking inlets
nestled together ... a sparkle of others in the distance.

Trees lined the sides of each of the sweeping
bays, tie-up docks thrust out into the water from their inland
points, ships tied along the moles: a few naval ships, many more
merchantmen.

Even crowded with boats, the arcing bays
looked like talons. Or to be more accurate, like scratches a giant,
three-toed water bird might have "clawed" into the land, the sea
rushing in to make sickle-shaped estuaries.

The guard continuing to lead, they threaded
their way through the noisy press, passing the first of the three
sea arms, the landward end of the waterway crowded with a full
compliment of docked ships, other boats floating farther out,
fastened to the wharfs with ropes.

Pushing their way past the second inlet, they
left the crowded waterfront, John's party marched up a slant of
ground toward a hilltop inn, the building a three story structure
with a thatch-topped roof and walls of mud-daubed logs.

Coming to the inn's split-trunk porch, the
officer halted the party. Leaving his fellow soldiers to watch
John's group, the military man clopped up on the porch to push
through a line of orange-clad loiterers leaning on the porch rails,
the soldier opening the door to women's voices and the expectant
mumble of pre-dinner talk.

Back of him, John heard the tired thud of
packs slung to the ground.

Minutes later, the trooper clattered out
again. "Come with me," Whar said, as he hopped down from the porch,
his hobnailed boots digging solidly into the turf. "He's at tie-up.
Will be 'til near down-light, most likely. Likes to look at the
ships."

"I think, if its all right, I'll let the
others get settled," John said.

Eyeing the tired old man and the women, the
soldier nodded, signaling his comrades to stay with the group.

"Pretty crowded inside but I've spread the
word to make room for you."

"Thank you." As always in this less than
democratic place, even phony Mages got undeserved respect.

"Oh," the soldier said to John as John's
people bent down painfully to drag up their carryalls, "as you can
see, everyone around here is armed."

John got the message. As John approached the
Admiral, NO SUDDEN MOVES, John nodding, at the same time hoping
Coluth didn't have memory lapses about old friends.

The remaining soldiers helping, Platinia and
the others hoisted themselves on the board porch to stumble through
the heavy, vertical log, doorway -- Zwicia grumbling for them
all.

The soldier leading, they went down a gradual
slope leading to the bay, having to weave around tents, military
personnel, and jerry-built wood structures hastily constructed as
quarters.

Approaching the harbor, they threaded their
way through gangs of sailors packing supplies on their backs or
hauling barrels in three-wheeled carts. Whatever the military
situation, the ships were prudently being resupplied for their next
mission. No doubt, Coluth's doing.

Others were engaged in fitting oars or in
crafting ship parts, sawhorses set up for that purpose, workers
shaping wood with simple tools: hammers, saws, bow-driven drills.
Navy men, John thought, though merchant seamen looked about the
same as enlisted personnel.

At the ship-crowded quay, John was led past
sweaty stevedores who, as the workday came to an end, were
stripping off their leather jerkins and jumping off the dock into
the bay's tangerine-colored water, the men sputtering, calling to
one another, making crude jokes, and splashing like children. High
above like giraffes in the veldt, wooden dock cranes looked down on
the chaotic scene with remote disdain.

And there was Coluth, the large, raw-boned
man standing by himself at wharfs-end, looking out to sea, dressed
in an unpretentious naval tunic.

"See anything out there as
seaworthy as the
Roamer
?" John called by way of announcing himself.

Coluth turned; shaded his eyes with a big,
blunt-fingered hand as John came up.

"John-Lyon-Pfnaravin!" the Captain cried,
recognizing John at last, Coluth clasping John on the shoulder.

Remembering that John was the Mage, Coluth
quickly removed his hand. But not his grin!

Seeing the Head receive John as a friend, the
soldier's duty done, Whar saluted both John and the Navy Head in
turn, pivoted, and marched back down the dock. One soldier, at
least, on whom Stil-de-grain could still rely.

"Good to see you old friend," John said,
saluting in the Stil-de-grain style, getting a broader, battered
grin and a salute in return, Coluth's rough, square hand clinched
at an angle before his chest. And John was glad to see the naval
Head. Of all the people John had met in this other reality, Coluth
was the most likable and reliable. Looking closer, there was also
no denying that Coluth had aged. Even in the dying, orange light,
John could see gray streaks in the navy man's short, brown
hair.

"John-Lyon-Pfnaravin," the Head said again,
as if he had to speak the name to believe it. "Now that you have
come, all is well." Just blast 'em with crystal power like you did
the white civilian army, was what Coluth meant. Everybody's
solution to any problem. Mage power.

"There are reasons I can't use my power ...
just yet," John cautioned.

Now that the greeting was
over, both John and Coluth automatically turned to look out over
the gently lapping, sky-orange waters of the ship crowded bay, the
men standing side by side as they'd done so often in more peaceful
times at the deck rail of the
Roamer
.

"There is little but your power to save us,"
the Head said, resuming the conversation. Coluth shrugged. "The
army ... is no more."

"The Army Head?"

"Etexin was killed at Carotene."

"I heard about that disaster from
Golden."

"Golden escaped?"

"Yes. Just how, I'm not sure." Golden had
told John, of course. It was that John was never willing to take
Golden at face value. "He's with me here," John continued, nodding
toward land, "along with Platinia. The old team back together
again." Hearing that, the weather-loosened skin of Coluth's
seaman's face tightened into a smile of remembrance. "Your navy
transported the army to Carotene?"

"Yes." Coluth's face looked sad again.
"Off-loaded 'em just this side 'a Sea Throat."

"I waited at tie-up. After some days, five
messenger birds flew in as a single flock, none trained to speak."
Messenger birds were this world's method of long-range
communication. A kind of parrot, taught to repeat a piece of news
before being released. "It was then that we knew the worst; no time
to school the birds, Gagar said, only time enough to release 'em as
a silent warnin'."

"Even then, I waited. 'Til I had to gave the
order to go or risk the ships."

"And Gagar?" Gagar was the messenger bird
handler for Stil-de-grain, as much a bird himself as a human.

"He's here."

"Good." Birdie looking as the parrot man was,
John had been impressed with Gagar's intelligence gathering
skills.

"Some soldiers got away. They're still comin'
-- in twos and threes." Too few to do any good, said Coluth's
inflection. "And 'a course, the king is here."

"Yarro?"

"Yes."

"He was in the capital." Hearing Coluth's
simple telling of the disaster, John was beginning to feel that
John's return to his own world had come perilously close to
desertion! "On the way here, I stopped at Xanthin. Thought it wise
to bring young Yarro here to safety." A child-king in exile -- a
pathetic definition of safety.

"You can level with me Coluth," John said
quietly, no one on the mole close enough to hear, the mariners
apparently under orders to give the Admiral his privacy. "Is this,"
John waved his hand to include not only this 'Claw' but the others,
"all that's left of Stil-de-grain?"

"Looks like. Gagar says the birds from
beak-ward have been discouraging." Beak-ward -- the opposite end of
Stil-de-grain's circular band. What John always thought of as
"North."

The worst of the bad news delivered, the two
men stood side by side for a moment, looking seaward from which the
Malachite attack would likely come.

Quiet had come to the dock by this time, as
workers, sailors, and camp followers drifted off toward supper and
sleep.

"Now that you are here to lead us ...."
Coluth didn't have to finish that thought. It was John Lyon, Mage
of Stil-de-grain, whose magic must save them.

John knew better, of course, but couldn't
tell Coluth the truth: that John was afraid to don the genuine
crystal.

On the other hand, John had been able to work
a kind of magic the last time he was Mage. The "magic" of John's
world -- technology. It was John's idea, after all, to mount the
rams that gave Stil-de-grain ships some "punch."

It wasn't John's fault ... at least, not
entirely his fault ... that the rams had been improperly used.

Given time, it was conceivable that John
could come up with other military gems to stave off a Stil-de-grain
defeat.

On that mental note, the ubiquitous evening
fog thickening to haze out the harbor, down-light coming fast, the
two men quit the mole, nothing else needing to be said.

* * * * *

The next day. The first council of war. The
place: the inn.

John, Coluth, Philelph (Coluth's Second)
Gagar (master of messenger birds) and two officers John hadn't met
-- the new Army Head flanked by his Second.

Entering the pine tar smelling war room by
ones and twos, they were seated around the splintered,
food-stained, rectangular dining table appropriated from the common
room below.

John, dressed in the best white robe he could
find on short notice, sat at table's end, in the place of honor.
Platinia sat to John's right -- because he still felt uneasy
without the girl beside him. These seven, plus old man Robin to
John's immediate left, Mr. Robin practically begging to be
included, the old guy pathetically eager to understand his
situation in this confusing world, a desire with which John could
sympathize.

Coluth, underdressed in a frayed officer's
tunic, was at the far end of the bare, rough-sawn, trestle
table.

The room itself (a cow shed by Xanthin
standards) had been designed for post-hunt parties rather than for
military planning sessions, mounted deer heads on the room's white
plaster walls serving as decoration, the animal trophies adding the
"perfume" of damp hair and hide to the room's pine-pitch smell.

Everyone expectantly in place about the
thickly planked table, Coluth stood to bring the meeting to order.
"Now, there is hope," Coluth said, coming as close to an expression
of optimism as he ever got. "I wish to introduce Army Head, Nator,
and his Head Second, Forsk." Indicating each man as he spoke his
name, Coluth bowed deeply in John's direction.

The Army Head was the elder of the two.
Middle-aged with steely eyes under a fringe of close cut, dappled
gray hair, stocky body, strong-fingered hands, wide gold sash
slanted from shoulder to waist of his military tunic. Nator had
replaced Etexin -- recently deceased.

Forsk, the Army Second, was taller. More
slender. A junior officer with a heart-shaped face and pale blue
eyes. Same uniform; narrower sash.

"This is ..." Coluth's voice fell to a
dramatic whisper as he indicated John at the table's other end,
"John-Lyon-Pfnaravin, Mage of Stil-de-grain."

John's return being noised about last night,
Coluth's announcement could not be much of a surprise to the new
men, the soldiers saluting smartly nonetheless. Curiously, this
non-news enlisted a choking sound and strangled look from Robin. An
odd response. Unless the old man was remembering how he'd been
caged after being misidentified as Pfnaravin, that memory still
haunting him.

The introductions over, Coluth sat down;
scraped his straight-backed chair forward so he could rest his
forearms on the table.

Now was the time for John to strut his
stuff.

Rising majestically, all eyes upon him, John
pulled up the chain around his neck until the fake-crystal cleared
his tunic top. Just a peek, then back under the robe the filter
went.

Seeing what they'd been conditioned to think
was a Mage-crystal, the two army men saluted again, nothing like
the display of power to impress the military. "As some of you know,
even the magic of a Mage is limited," John said, resuming his seat,
leaning back comfortably, everyone else at the table sitting at
attention.

On the grounds that nasty surprises should be
aired as soon as possible, John continued. "I must disappoint you
by saying that, for the time being, there is nothing I can
contribute to the war effort. You must see to your own
defense."

Around the table, faces fell.

Truth, yes. But told in a way that maintained
morale. "Rather, I should say that we must look to our
defense."

Relief! The Mage was still with them!

No doubt about it, John was, once again, the
defacto leader of Stil-de-grain. As soon as possible, as befit his
station, he must locate a pointed Wizard hat and several,
gold-trimmed robes of Cinnabar silk ....

John pulled himself up short.

Was exercising power the reason he'd come
back to this alternate "reality?" ........ Perhaps. ...... Even if
it was, however, John as Mage could be nothing but beneficial to a
defeated Stil-de-grain.

Clearly, with a boy-king on a non-throne,
what was needed was not only John's guidance, but also a little
"old-fashioned," 20th Century know-how.