Goddess of the Ice Realm (35 page)

Scoggin cried out. He jumped down the slope, then turned to face upward with his spear raised.

“Mistress!” Beard shouted. “Mistress! We're—”

A line of men appeared on the seawall, looking down at Sharina and her companions. There were some twenty of them. Most carried bows with nocked arrows; several were already half-drawn.

“—attacked!”

“Good day, sirs!” Sharina called, holding the axe crosswise at waist level. Beard was no threat to the archers above them. “I'm Sharina os-Reise and these are my friends. May I ask who you are?”

Another man hobbled into sight, leaning on a staff of carved whalebone. He wore a short black cape and a peaked cap, both made of what looked like lustrous velvet. He gave
Sharina a look of satisfaction; his staff sizzled against the ground with scarlet wizardlight.

“Ask or not,” said the fellow, “I will tell you: I'm Alfdan the Great. Now, set the axe down and move away from it. Otherwise I'll have my men shoot you down and take it from your body.”

Alfdan gave a cackle of triumph. “I've been waiting under my Cape of Shadows for almost a day but it's worth the effort—now that I have the axe!”

“Shall we attack, mistress?” Beard whispered. “Mistress, what shall we do?”

The archers began drawing their bows.

“Sail!” called the lookout at the
Defender's
masthead. “She's a big one, she is!”

“Hey Lusius!” Rincip shouted from the stern. “The timing's right for the Valles ship that turned us down on Pandah. What d'ye want to do?”

“Bring us alongside so I can speak to her captain,” Lusius said. His glance fell on Chalcus. With a nod and a half smile, he went on, “No, by the Sister, I'll go aboard and see if I can talk sense into him. And perhaps—”

His smile broadened.

“—our guests would care to board with me?”

“Yes,” said Ilna before Chalcus could speak. Lusius was playing with them, pretending to conceal nothing about what was going on in the Strait. All Ilna was sure of was that the Commander was lying. She wasn't about to make the mistake of thinking he had nothing to hide in what he offered freely to show.

Petty officers relayed Rincip's shouted orders to the crew. The Sea Guards were manning both benches again, though their wicker shields cluttered the central aisle. You couldn't get between bow and stern except by walking on the rail itself—easy for Chalcus but probably beyond what most of this crew could manage. After watching the winged men attack, the ability to move around the vessel was less important to them—and their officers—than having protection immediately available.

“‘Turned you down at Pandah,' Master Rincip said?” Chalcus said with an eyebrow raised in question.

“That's right,” Lusius said with the falsely open expression Ilna had come to recognize. “I keep a detachment on Pandah so that the ships stopping there to buy supplies can take on Sea Guards as well if they're heading for the Strait. I have a boat meet them to take my men off when they're past the Calves and out of danger.”

The
Defender
was closing rapidly with the sailing vessel coming from the northeast. It wasn't as big as the hulks Sidras used as warehouses, but it was an impressively large ship nonetheless; it moved with the wallowing heaviness of a horse swimming. The men who lined the forward railing wore helmets and held spears.

“Lay to!” Lusius bellowed through his cupped hands. “The Commander of the Strait is coming aboard!”

“Will they obey?” Ilna asked.

“They'd best!” Lusius snarled. He must have thought his tone had been too open; he flashed his false smile again and added, “Not that any honest captain would refuse, you see?”

As he spoke, the freighter's huge square sail flapped loose, then began to flutter up to the spar. Horizontal wooden rods—battens—stiffened the fabric. The ship continued to slosh through the swell; it was far too heavy to do anything quickly.

“Why wouldn't a captain choose to have Sea Guards on board when he runs the Strait, Commander?” Chalcus said mildly. “If you don't mind my asking, of course.”

Lusius made a sound that was half grunt, half throat-clearing. “There's some that claim the charges are high,” he said while keeping his face toward the freighter so he didn't have to look at his guests. “They don't appreciate how much it costs to maintain the patrols.”

Suddenly belligerent, he glared at Chalcus. “I have to fund it all myself, you know!” he said. “Not a stiver comes from the Count's treasury. That is, from the Prince, as I now serve him directly.”

“Everything has a cost,” said Chalcus, nodding as though in agreement. “That's the way of the world, Commander.”

“You're bloody well right it is!” Lusius said. “And I'll tell
you something else—not one ship with my men aboard has been taken by the Rua! If they want to risk the run themselves, well, it's no fault of mine if they all get their throats slit by demons, is it?”

“None whatever,” Chalcus said. He laughed, a cheerful sound to someone who didn't know him as well as Ilna did; and cheerful to her as well, because it didn't bother her to learn that Chalcus viewed the Commander as prey.

The
Defender
turned to starboard, doubling back to match speed with the larger ship as they came alongside. One of the freighter's crewmen tossed down a ladder of rope with wooden rungs; Chalcus caught it and used his foot to lock the lowest rung to the
Defender's
railing. The freighter's deck was at least twice a man's height above the patrol vessel's, so boarding her without the crew's help—let alone against their resistance—would be extremely difficult.

“After you, Commander,” Chalcus said politely. Lusius grunted and scrambled up. He'd eaten and drunk too much for too long to be fit, but he remained a strong man despite his dissipation.

Ilna followed, knowing that Chalcus wouldn't release the bottom of the ladder until she was safely on deck. The side ropes were made of some coarse fiber, unfamiliar to her. As she climbed, gripping the ropes, she felt images of sunblasted badlands where the dust blew about plants whose leaves were clumps of daggers.

She clambered over the railing to find herself midway along the big vessel's deck. A forest of heavy ropes slanted upward to brace the single mast, and the boat in the chocks forward was larger than the vessels in the Terness fishing fleet.

Chalcus sprang to the deck beside her. He landed on the balls of his feet, then touched Ilna's elbow to warn of his presence.

Lusius was facing a middle-aged man in a serviceable tunic of blue wool and a younger, softer fellow wearing silk and a thick gold seal ring. The spearmen stood to either side of them, Blaise armsmen with hooked swords in belt scabbards and tattoos on their right forearms.

“I'm Ohert, captain of the
Queen of Heaven
,” said the
middle-aged man, “and this is Master Pointin. I've taken you aboard so I can tell you to your face that we neither want nor need your louse-ridden drunks aboard.”

“We wouldn't want them if they were free,” the silk-clad Pointin chimed in. “That we'd pay the fee you demand—well, the notion's absurd.”

The guards glared at Lusius, acting as hostile as they could without offering open threats. Much of the attitude was put on for the purpose, but Ilna didn't doubt that those fellows were willing to chop the Commander to fish bait if the captain told them to.

Lusius must also have recognized that. “Captain Ohert,” he said without the bluster and mocking superiority that had been general with him previously, “You're making a mistake, and I only pray to the Lady that your mistake not be fatal. You've not sailed these waters since the demon Rua came up from the Underworld to loot ships and slaughter sailors. You may think our charges high—”

“I think they're absurd!” said Pointin. “I told you that, my man!”

“—but it would be more expensive yet to let the Rua take the ship and your lives as well, would it not? What is it that you're carrying, Captain?”

“It's none of your business what our cargo is!” Pointin said. “Now, you've got your answer, so take yourself back to your own ship and let honest men be on with their business.”

“You're carrying tapestries,” Ilna said, scarcely aware that she was speaking until after the words had come out. The aura of the woven goods in the vessel's several holds had flooded her ever since she'd boarded the freighter. She didn't think she'd ever been around such a
mass
of fabric before.

“They had a spy in Valles!” the captain cried in distress. Lusius turned toward Ilna with a frown of amazement; Chalcus stepped between them with a vague, friendly smile.

Images cascaded through Ilna's mind:
armored heroes, women dressed in gold and silver threads, and animals from myth. Forests and gardens and cities with high walls and fanciful turrets. . . .

She shook her head, trying to return to her present surroundings. The tapestries' workmanship was generally mediocre and not infrequently poor, distorted figures on gapped, ill-woven grounds; but occasionally, burning through the trash like the sun on a hazy day, there was a piece—often a single panel or a cartoon in a hanging of slight merit otherwise—whose craftsmanship took Ilna's breath away.

And it was all in her mind, hidden from her eyes in burlap-covered bales beneath the freighter's thick deck timbers. All in her mind . . .

“All right, you know we're carrying tapestry!” the supercargo said. “With the Prince of Haft ruling the Isles, there's going to be a market for the best sort of furnishings in Carcosa.
Palace
furnishings very likely, and the Pollin family will be there with the goods to sell long before anybody else sees the opportunity. We'll not pay a third the cargo's value to put your thugs on board, either. We've got real soldiers to deal with anybody who thinks he can rob us!”

“The Strait isn't like the valleys of Blaise,” Lusius said, bobbing his bearded chin in acknowledgment of the leader of the freighter's guards. “My men understand the demons and know how to deal with them.”

From what Ilna had seen, the Sea Guards understood well enough to avoid fighting the Rua whenever it was possible to run away instead. But ships
were
being stripped, and she didn't see how Lusius could be responsible for that. This freighter's crew was probably equal in number to the Sea Guards; between the vessel's high decks and the Blaise armsmen—
real
soldiers, as the supercargo had said—they could beat off the
Defender
with ease.

“We've listened to you,” Ohert said. “Now get off my ship. And you needn't think half our crew'll be coming ashore in Terness when we anchor off the harbor tonight—everybody's staying aboard, and there'll be a proper watch kept, I promise you!”

“I've warned you and that's all I can do,” Lusius said with a sad shake of his head. “My guests and I will return to Terness.”

He started for the ladder, then looked back over his shoulder.
“I hope you and your crew have a good night, Captain Ohert,” Lusius added. “But I greatly doubt that you will.”

Ilna smiled minusculely. The first half of the Commander's statement was a lie, but she was inclined to believe the second part.

Do you think we can trust Kakoral?” Cashel said as he climbed the slope, stepping sideways because it was so steep. Every so often he switched so the other foot led; otherwise he'd likely get a cramp in the leg that'd been higher. Cashel figured this was a place he'd best be in good shape.

“Trust him?” said Evne, riding on Cashel's left shoulder. She could've been in his wallet or in a fold of his tunic, but he'd thought this way was most companionable; she'd seemed satisfied with the suggestion. “Trust him to use us and deceive us and cast us away when it suits him, the way males generally do? Is that what you mean?”

“Well, no,” said Cashel.
Companionable
wasn't the word everybody'd have used about Evne, but because he'd grown up with Ilna, the toad's manner made him feel right at home. “I meant, would this red line—”

The dots of wizardlight climbed the slope ahead of them, faint but as visible now against the bright sun as they'd been when they first appeared at night. Cashel'd found that the track the light plotted either sloped less or had firmer footing than any of the alternatives nearby.

“—take us to the nearest water, like he said?”

The toad snorted. Her hoarse voice was louder than Cashel would've expected from a little toad, but she seemed to talk normally from her lipless mouth. Her throat sack fluttered as she spoke.

“Oh, that he has no choice about,” she said. “You bested
him, didn't you? You're his master, just as you're mine. But he's not your friend, Cashel. The demon serves you because he must and because it suits him; don't ever imagine that he helps because it suits
you.”

Cashel thought about it. After a moment he said, “I guess that's true for most people, Evne. It's true for me, anyway. If I help somebody, it's because I feel better for doing it than I would if I didn't help.”

“Faugh!” said Evne. “It's nothing like that. You're a fool. Most men are fools; but they aren't most of them fools the way
you
are, master.”

Cashel chuckled. It really was like being home with his sister.

The track had actually been more down than up, but there'd been a lot of both. They'd hiked—well, Cashel had—from morning to mid-afternoon in getting from where Bossian put him out to where they were now. This was the steepest rise of the trek so far.

Evne didn't know how much farther they had to go either; Cashel figured they'd just keep on till they got there. It was pretty much the way he did most things in life, by putting one foot in front of the other till the job was done.