Goddess of the Ice Realm (31 page)

Besides, standing in the bow meant she breathed the sea air instead of the
Defender's
stench.

The fishing fleet was in sight, many handfuls of boats whose crews were a few men apiece. Though they were no more than half the size of the
Bird of the Tide,
they had
small central cabins; a skiff was tied to the stern of each one. The crews groped over the sides with long poles.

The Sea Guards rowed the
Defender,
cursing, sweating, and fouling one another, but moving the vessel forward nonetheless. Most people weren't very good at their jobs; Ilna wasn't surprised to find that was true of oarsmen as surely as it was plowmen or weavers. It was neither accident nor charity that caused other women to bring the yarn they'd spun to Ilna, who did the weaving for all Barca's Hamlet. For the most part people arranged things so that a lot of them did the same thing. That way it got done well enough that everybody survived; more or less, and for a time.

A crack crew of men chosen and trained by Chalcus could do much better than these Sea Guards managed, but they were good
enough.
There was only one Chalcus; and one Ilna, for that matter.

And one Prince Garric, Ilna was quite sure. They each had their place in the pattern Someone was weaving.

“The shallows are just ahead!” cried the lookout clinging to the masthead. Neither the spar nor the sail were aboard, but the
Defender's
mast was stepped to provide a vantage point. Lusius hadn't bothered to fit a platform, though. The sailor shinnied up unaided and clung to the stay rope with his legs wrapped around the pole. “We're entering the shallows!”

Chalcus and the Commander walked forward, Lusius in the lead because there wasn't room enough for two to walk abreast on the catwalk between the oar benches. He carried a light buckler in his left hand.

“The Commander says that the bottom rose into these shallows when the Rua appeared for the first time,” Chalcus called cheerfully, indicating the water with a wave of his hand. “I've seen such a shade only once, in a lagoon far to the south.”

The railing didn't extend to the far bow; Ilna touched a forestay and leaned over. Though clear, the sea had a violet cast and seemed to be no deeper than the height of a tall man. Pinkish sea lilies waved their jointed tentacles; holes for the breathing tubes of clams pocked the sand covering most of the bottom. She saw no fish.

“It doesn't look like the water I saw on the way north
from Donelle,” Ilna said, speaking for the sake of politeness rather than because she thought she had any useful knowledge to add. “I've never seen plants like these either.”

“Plants?” repeated Lusius. “Not a one of them, mistress! All these are animals, whatever they look like.”

Rincip, the one-eyed man who commanded the Sea Guards and acted as Lusius's chief lieutenant, snarled an order from the stern. Ilna couldn't understand the words, but the crew seemed to. The rowers of the upper bank brought their oars aboard and began arming themselves with weapons stored under the walkway. Most of them strung bows, short but stiff-looking.

“I've got Guards aboard the fishing boats too,” Lusius said, “but they're not much use—as you'll see, I shouldn't wonder. Sometimes they'll keep the Rua away till the
Defender
can come up, but mostly they're just there to make sure the men are really bringing up the shell. The bloody cowards are afraid that if they make a good haul, they'll be attacked!”

The
Defender
continued toward the fishing boats, driven by the lower bank of oarsmen. Though they were obviously trying to keep together, the boats had drifted some ways apart. A man couldn't shout from one side of the straggle and be understood on the other.

“What happens if the Rua attack before the
Defender
joins the fishing fleet?” Chalcus asked, his voice a little flatter than usual. He and Ilna had expected to go out at first light when the fishing fleet did, but the warship wasn't ready till mid-morning. If Chalcus hadn't been careful, his tone would've held a sneer for the indiscipline of the Commander's force.

“Oh, they never do that,” Lusius said, scanning the heavens. “They've no reason to attack till the boats have a good load of shell, so we sleep in ourselves.”

The sea had become even shallower than when Chalcus called Ilna's attention to it, and the bottom now was coral. She still didn't see fish, but there were any number of odd-looking creatures both crawling and attached to the rock. Among them were the little belemnites, walking on clumps of tentacles and dragging their brilliant shells behind.

The reason that patrol vessels wobbled so unpleasantly was that they drew very little water, but even so Ilna wondered if the
Defender
would grind a hole in her hull on the coral. As shallow as this was she could probably stand on the bottom and breathe even though she couldn't swim, but it would be a very long walk to dry land.

“I'd thought your Red Wizard might be with us today,” Chalcus said, blocking the sun with his left hand as he surveyed the upper sky. “Struggling with the wizard-demons as he assures us he does.”

The Commander looked at him sharply, though there'd been nothing of open mockery in Chalcus's tone. “Gaur has his sanctum in the castle,” he said, still frowning slightly. “He works there. Never fear, he's doing whatever he can.”

“When do the—” Ilna said, but she swallowed the remainder of the sentence“—Rua arrive.” She suddenly understood what the dots Chalcus was watching really were. “I see,” she corrected herself. “The Rua have been here all along.”

“Aye, the devils!” Lusius said with real venom in his voice. “They pick their time too. They must have eyes like hawks!”

The
Defender
passed within a stone's throw of a fishing boat, close enough that Ilna got a good look at what they were doing. Two men used small nets on the end of poles to scoop belemnites out of the coral. The little shellfish didn't move fast enough to evade the nets, but they were still hard to winkle out from between the coral and hard-shelled anemones. When a fisherman succeeded, he whisked the belemnite aboard and dropped it into a large wickerwork basket in front of the deckhouse.

The third man in the boat was a Sea Guard with a strung bow and three arrows stuck through his sash. He watched with a morose expression as the
Defender
sloshed past.

Now that Ilna had recognized the dots in the high heaven as winged men circling, it was she who noticed when their motion shifted. “Something's changed!” she said. “The Rua are diving, or. . .”

The Rua dipped, then rose instead of plunging down on the fishing fleet. They'd modified their ceaseless circling, but that didn't mean they were attacking.

“They're dropping something!” Chalcus cried. “They've each one let something go as they dived!”

Rincip shouted angry orders; the flutist blowing time for the rowers in the stern swung into a faster tempo. Both helmsmen leaned into their tillers; with only one bank of oars manned, the
Defender
didn't accelerate quickly enough to heel the outside—starboard—steering oar out of the water even in a sharp turn.

“They drop chunks of volcanic glass,” Lusius explained grimly. “Big chunks, some as long as your forearm, and the edges sharper'n knife blades. From that height, they can stave in the decking when they hit.”

“But can they hit?” Ilna said, frowning. “Surely the Rua can't really aim from that far up?”

“Can't they?” said Lusius. “They'll split your eyeball if you're fool enough to stand watching it come at you!”

With a curl of his lip he said to Chalcus, “Tell me, Captain—will you fill our demons up there with arrow fletching?”

“That I cannot,” Chalcus admitted easily. “And do your Rua reach down long nets and snare the shell from your boats, now?”

The crew—the two fisherman and the archer as well—jumped off the stern of a boat that'd drifted to the northern fringe of the fleet. The Sea Guard swam in a noisy crawl, keeping his head above water till he reached the skiff. The fishermen couldn't swim, so they pulled themselves hand over hand along the painter.

Four Rua dived like stooping hawks. The
Defender
continued to wallow forward, but Ilna could see that the Rua would reach the boat long before the patrol vessel came within bowshot.

The chunks of glass smashed into the vessel with the sharp crack of lightning bolts. Shards flew in all directions, catching the sun. A broken plank lifted and spun over the side. Ilna nodded, now understanding why the crew had abandoned the vessel before the missiles struck. Flying pieces would've badly gashed anybody on deck, and she was quite sure that each missile hit within a handsbreadth of where a man had been standing.

There was a stir behind her. The Sea Guards were lifting
wicker shields like siege mantlets out of the hull. Ilna eyed them critically. The woven willow-splits would stop missiles like the ones the Rua were dropping and cushion the impacts besides, but she didn't see how the men on the narrow deck expected to fight with all this defensive truck in the way.

Well, that was probably the answer: the Sea Guards
didn't
expect to fight, any more than the archer aboard the boat that'd been attacked did. Lusius and his men were putting on a show—for the fishermen as well as for her and Chalcus, the spies who Prince Garric had sent. The last thing Lusius really wanted was to defeat the winged men; they alone justified his continued power as Commander of the Strait.

The Rua came out of their dive by arching their chests as if they'd plunged into water, not air; their wings spread only after their bodies had started to curl upward. Quicksilver sunlight danced over the vanes which stiffened the wings' thin membranes.

“Beware to starboard!” Chalcus shouted toward the stem. Because the vessel being attacked was a little off the port bow, Ilna hadn't been paying attention to what was happening on the right side of the ship. Neither had the
Defender's
officers, apparently, because the fishing boat a stone's throw ahead of them couldn't possibly get clear despite the desperate efforts of the two fishermen on their oars and the Sea Guard who screamed and waved his arms toward the patrol vessel.

Rincip was gabbling something Ilna couldn't understand—she doubted anybody else could, either—and Lusius bellowed, “Sister eat your livers, you fools!” to the fishermen. The men clogging the
Defender's
deck raised their own racket, trying to see what was happening or just trying to learn from somebody else. None of that was going to help.

“Back port oars!” Chalcus called in a voice that could've doubled for a rock drill.

Only about half the rowers obeyed, and even those didn't all react at the same time. Nonetheless dragging blades and fouled oars pulled the
Defender
enough to the left that she didn't smash straight into the fishing boat A bow oar struck the boat's stern; the shaft broke just above the blade, and from the scream under Ilna's feet the loom must've slammed
into the oarsman's chest hard enough to break ribs. That was a cheap alternative to a crash that could've sunk both vessels.

A splinter of ash from the oar shaft spun into the air. Chalcus reached up without seeming to look and caught the piece. It was the length of a pick handle and sharp as a spear on either end. Lusius grunted in surprise. Chalcus grinned at him and tossed the splinter overboard.

“Well, Captain,” Lusius said. “Maybe I should hire you in Rincip's place, do you think? You saved us a bad knock when those fools got in the way.”

“Ah, I'm a terrible man when the drink's in me, Commander,” Chalcus said with a light laugh. “I'd not wish a scapegrace like me on so nice a fellow as yourself.”

Ilna wasn't sure which way the conversation might have gone then—she began knotting a pattern in case it went the wrong way—but the unexpected happened on the far side of the fishing fleet. The
Defender
was only just getting under way again and couldn't possibly reach the attacked vessel in time to take a hand, but several of the other boats were quite close to it. As the Rua flared to land like giant pigeons, the Sea Guard on a nearby boat drew his bow.

The crew of the attacked vessel had gotten aboard the skiff and cast off the painter. One of them—Ilna thought it was the soldier—screamed a horrified warning. The archer loosed nevertheless. Accuracy with a bow takes more training than the Sea Guards probably got, but it was a decent shot aided by the fact that the Rua's wings spread like blankets. The arrow snipped through one of them and thudded into the boat's far gunnel, leaving a neat hole in the wing membrane.

The fishermen on the second vessel immediately jumped over the side. The one who could swim thrashed toward the trailing skiff. The other couldn't and bobbed under the clear water. He got his foot on a coral head and jumped from it in the direction of the skiff as well.

The four Rua launched themselves from the boat on which they'd just landed. The one the arrow struck showed no sign of distress, flapping in a shallow curve that skimmed the calm water. The archer nocked a second arrow, then
turned in panic without loosing it; the winged men swooped on him from four directions, arriving simultaneously.

Their wings folded as they hacked at the Sea Guard, flinging bits of flesh into the sea. He continued to scream for a surprisingly long time.

“They've got glass knives,” Lusius muttered as he watched the business with a look of disgust. “Sister take them!”

The sea spouted around the fishermen in the water: missiles dropped from the cloudless sky had struck the men squarely. Their mangled bodies sank in spreading clouds of blood. One man's arm had separated.

The
Defender's
flutist leaned over the railing, staring in amazement at the slaughter. Rincip didn't order him back to his post even though the oarsmen were losing the stroke. Wood clattered as the shafts fouled one another and the patrol vessel began to wallow. The rest of the fishing fleet pulled eastward at the best rate the crews could manage on their oars.