Master of Whitestorm (24 page)

“Get ye on, then!” snapped the officer in charge.

As the guards passed by, the camel goad straightened indolently. He shuffled off to drive beasts, while with silent but profuse prayers to heaven, Elshaid heaved back into his litter and clucked his sour beasts to their feet. In shambling disarray, his caravan crossed through the arched double gateway of Telssina, and entered the bustling main street.

The thoroughfare was packed with palanquins, foot slaves, hand carts, and camels in caparisons and twisted silk bridles bearing wealthy trade magnates. Elshaid’s packtrain jostled a path through the press, but his beast goad was given wide berth. In a city prided for cleanliness, where servants of the great lords burned incense on their balconies, the stink of bad furs stood out like a corpse in a flower bed. The caravan which included the bundle was shunned as if it carried leprosy. Embarrassed, and on edge lest he damage his reputation, Elshaid turned his pack train into a side street after the barest of prudent intervals. There, in the shadow of an alleyway, his camel goad shed his burden of pestilent furs.

“Let me be clear,” whispered Elshaid, his damp brow furrowed in aggravation. “I cannot get you out of this city, and I’ll not be responsible for your safety. If you’re caught, I’ll claim I never knew you.”

Korendir unwound his turban, which reeked pervasively of dead skins. He shook loose bronze hair more pleasantly scented by the desert fern that had pillowed his head during camp in the open. “We never were partners in any case.” He raked the camel trader with a gaze grim as granite, then tore a strip from the nearest bolt of brocade.

Elshaid winced, but dared not protest. He watched his contemptible camel goad bind his hair under cloth embroidered with peacocks that should have been sold to clothe a prince. Stung afresh by squandered profits, the merchant added, “I won’t be smuggling Princess Iloreth out, not if you threaten to kill me.”

Korendir’s quick hands tucked and knotted his headdress as he answered. “That task, I entrust to no one.”

Then, while Elshaid stood in straddle-legged defiance over a heap of spoiled furs, the mercenary commandeered two pack beasts in the king’s name, and with them four tuns of rare wines. After that he stepped back without apology and vanished into the depths of the alley.

“Neth!” Elshaid twisted his rings in red-faced, impotent fury. “The gods of the Dathei should punish such arrogance.” Murderously irritated, he kicked the furs left rucked at his feet. Flies buzzed; high overhead, a horn blew thrice from the timekeeper’s tower. Three hours remained before sundown. Then the sultan’s edict which forbade strong drink was relaxed, but Elshaid would not be easing his losses by sampling the contents of his wares. Thanks to one insufferable mercenary, Elshaid-the-NoLonger-Retired was required to deliver the rest of his precious spirits to the homes of unappreciative guardsmen.

* * *

The Princess of South Englas awoke with a start in the locked chamber where she spent those nights she was free to sleep alone. Roused by a touch on her cheek, her frenzied effort to rise was caught short by a grip on her shoulder. A fast, implacable hand stifled the scream that arose from her lips.

“Your Grace,” the man who held her whispered clearly. “Your royal father sends his love.”

Iloreth choked back a second more agonized cry. She stopped struggling and looked up into eyes touched luminously silver by the moonlight let in by the narrow window overhead. Her message had reached South Englas;
realization caused her to break her proud composure as she had not since she first lost her freedom. She wept, held lightly against the shoulder of the stranger sent by her father. Her tears soaked soundlessly into cloth spiced with the musk of desert ferns.

The man maintained his passionless embrace until she quieted. When her breathing steadied, he reached into his tunic and pulled forth a card marked with letters in the looped script of South Englas. This he laid at Iloreth’s knee, providing the tongueless a means for accurate communication. Almost, the Princess wept afresh; yet gratitude came mixed with fear that the Sultan’s guardsmen might snatch opportunity from her. Iloreth straightened and leaned into the moonlight that spilled in a square across her mat. Her greeting was nervously short.

Neth bless you,
she spelled.
You are the Scourge of the Dathei.

A brief, barely audible laugh answered her from the dark. “No,” whispered the stranger. “I’m Korendir, summoned south from Whitestorm to take you home.”

Iloreth’s hands tapped swiftly over the script.
Careful, guards.

Korendir nodded encouragement. “Tell me more of them. All that you know.”

Iloreth answered his questions until her eyes ached from following the letters by the moon’s wan light. Just when she thought Korendir would never be satisfied, he rose to his feet. Iloreth settled back on her mat. She followed with her eyes as he paced the breadth of her chamber. His demands had encompassed more details of the sultan’s city of Telssina than the princess realized she knew; some points had been phrased repeatedly for clarity, but the subjects reviewed in such depth seemed hardly worth interest and without descernible pattern.

Korendir had even demanded to know what sort of fitting fastened the scrollwork which railed the upper galleries of the merchant’s mansions. Iloreth had provided an accurate enough description; like most slaves, her hands were callused by polishing cloth and compound, and the aching hours of toil required to keep the wrought brass bright. Too weary for curiosity, the princess waited without questions for Korendir’s restlessness to end.

He paused finally beneath a window tinged pink with dawn. “Look for me at the dark of the next moon, Your Grace.”

A smooth leap gave him a grip on the sill. A kick and a slither, and he raised his body through the slit high above. The next instant he was gone so thoroughly that the narrow opening showed empty sky.

Only the musk of the desert fern lingered to affirm his existence. Iloreth subsided on her mat. She ached with the need to call out, to beg him on her knees to return. Speech being impossible, she fought an undermining tide of hopelessness. The dark of the moon lay a fortnight hence; if on that night some noble chose her for his bed, she would be helplessly unable to keep the rendezvous.

* * *

Korendir spent the day asleep underneath a trough behind a vintner’s shed. Next night, he skulked through alleys and byways until he learned every quarter of the city. He mapped the guard posts on the walls and noted the location of barracks and stables. Once his reconnaissance was complete, he left through the main gates, clinging to the underside of a wagon bound for Del Morga.

No one noticed him when he tumbled clear in the dust raised up by the wheels. He recrossed the desert on foot. Past the borders of South Englas, he engaged a post horse and rode north to the City of Kings. The wall sentries admitted him on sight. His hair gleamed like a brand in the sunlight, and his lithe, swordsman’s stride set him apart from the merchants, priests, and foot servants who fared on the royal road.

Upon his return, Korendir demanded immediate audience with the king. His request was passed on. Despite the chamber steward’s distaste for the dust which filmed his leathers, and the pervasive musk of the desert fern as yet unwashed from his skin, Korendir did not wait for admittance to the royal presence. The instant the great doors opened, he delivered word that Her Grace, Iloreth had retained both her health and good spirits.

“Have you a plan to storm the city and arrange for my daughter’s release?” Strained and hopeful on a throne studded with amethysts, the king thumbed at a hangnail while the mercenary completed proper courtesies.

“I ask use of your armor’s services, and a carpenter’s apprentice for one day,” Korendir said. “Also add a length of new rope. Then we’ll see.”

“No soldiers?” snapped the king, loudly enough that his bodyguards started at their posts. “Do you mock me?”

But Korendir declined to elaborate;

Unsatisfied by the modesty of the mercenary’s requests, and anxious for his daughter’s rescue, the king clapped his hands. A page fetched the official scribe and seal bearer, and the sovereign Lord of South Englas dictated an edict. In formal script, on finest parchment, Korendir, Master of Whitestorm was granted service from the royal smith, along with whatever resources he might require from any joiner and ropewalk in the kingdom.

Korendir accepted the writ without comment. To the transparent relief of the chamber steward and certain high-ranking nobles, he left court and proceeded to the smithy where his demands were a good deal stiffer.

The master armorer of South Englas braced muscled arms on his hips. Charged with forging two score throwing knives whose weight, balance, and spin were perfectly matched, he cursed long and vehemently over the seals which footed Korendir’s royal document. Assured in triplicate that the blazons were no forgery, he clamped his jaw and rubbed his bald head.

Until Korendir mentioned his deadline.

The armoror drew breath like a bellows and laughed. “You want your knives complete in six days?” He shrugged incredulously. “Impossible.”

Korendir folded the king’s document with fingers still grimed from the desert. He wasted no breath in protest, but added a list of further specifications that caused the smith’s apprentice to be rousted with an obscenely phrased order to split more wood for the forge.

Then the king’s over-priviledged mercenary became the recipient of the armorer’s temper in turn. “Leave me to my work, you!” The man presented his sweating back, and between rude words began hefting his stock of new steel. When he turned with his chosen bar in hand, the mercenary from Whitestorm had departed.

The joiner faced his task with better cheer. He spun the four-inch brass pin provided by Korendir between his fingers and squinted to estimate diameter. “As it happens, I do stock spicewood in my sheds. But just for ornamental scrollwork, understand? The wood lacks hardness. Dowels turned from such lumber will splinter under the slightest stress.” He tipped his head at an enquiring angle. Cedar shavings trickled from his hair as he studied the mercenary who confronted him.

Korendir returned a level stare.

“But you know that spicewood doesn’t endure already,” the joiner amended diffidently. Inquiry after the mercenary’s purpose met with an uninformative reply, and stung by the rebuff, the craftsman adjusted his lathe in faintly resentful silence.

Late day saw Korendir changed from riding attire into tunic and hose of unornamented black. He visited the chandler’s on Ships Street and returned with fifty feet of cordage. Settled by the fountain in the king’s private garden, he pulled out a marlin spike and displayed the skill of a trained seaman to the half dozen pages who gathered to watch. Afternoon passed as he spliced a set of loops at intervals along the length of rope. The fascination of the boys became shared when the king arrived with furtive lack of ceremony to observe behind the curtains of a second-storey casement. Believing himself unnoticed, the sovereign of South Englas was startled to receive the courtesy due his rank when Korendir finished working.

The mercenary knelt without fuss, ringed by admiring young boys. His eyes lifted unerringly toward the monarch who sat in concealment as he said, “Grant me the use of three horses. Your daughter will be restored to South Englas in a fortnight, and the ruin of Datha shall follow after.”

The king sprang erect and clapped his hands. No servants answered. Irked by his lapse, for he had forgotten where he was, His Grace dispatched his bodyguard to run his errand to the grooms. Then, embarrassed that a stranger should witness impatience unseemly for a ruler, the king looked askance at the courtyard. Korendir had already gone. The pages were absorbed in practice, weaving splices out of grass, and the shadows that slanted from the guard tower recalled the time. Dinner was nigh. Hungry as he had not been in ages, the king made his way toward the feasting hall.

* * *

Korendir rode from court at first light seven days later. The lengths of rope he had altered hung in coils across his shoulder, and the master armorer’s throwing knives gleamed, thrust through leather loops in his belt. A sack tied to his saddlebow bulged with the spicewood dowels made to demand by the joiner. Except for two riderless horses hooked to his wrist with braided cord, the mercenary rode unaccompanied. His final word to the king was his promise to return from Telssina with the princess.

* * *

But just before the appointed day of rendezvous, Iloreth’s fortune ran out. That afternoon Telssina’s gates had opened to admit an envoy from Arhaga, and a ranking official in the ambassador’s train had picked her to warm his bed.

This latest unkindness of fate brought Iloreth shattering despair. Delivered to the emmissary’s chambers at sundown, she paced fretfully, tormented by awareness that the dark of the moon was only one night hence. The last slave who displeased a palace guest had been slowly tortured to death; her screams remained vivid in Iloreth’s memory, but the risk of similar penalty mattered little by the time the envoy returned, drunken with overindulgence of the sultan’s hospitality. The princess resisted his advances as well as her thumbless condition allowed. She prayed through tears of frustration that brute Arhagai lust would sour and crave another in her stead before morning.

The official overpowered her before he succumbed to his liquor. Iloreth endured, as she had countless nights in the past; through the quiet hour that followed, she appealed to Neth’s mercy that the Arhagai as a race preferred submissive women. Her prayer went unanswered.