Master of Whitestorm (4 page)

* * *

Emarrcek, southernmost peninsula of Southengard, lay one hundred and fifty leagues to the north, a long, tortuous sail in an open boat, even for men seasoned to the hardship of the oar. Yet the first days of freedom passed pleasantly. Warm, southern winds pressed the cutter on a steady course, and dolphins danced in the swells. Haldeth scratched the scabbed-over sores left from the chafe of his leg irons. He spoke in wistful remembrance of two daughters and a wife, murdered by Mhurgai on the morning his village was raided.

“They must have landed to reprovision. Neth knows, we had nothing of worth to merit a sacking, and the boats they used for landing carried water casks. I was in the forge, heating stock to make horseshoes, when the shouting drew me out. Costermongers were being cut down in the market as they protested thefts from their stalls. Lindey and my girls were at the well. I ran there with no other weapon than the iron stock I had in my hand.” Immersed in the grip of ugly memories, Haldeth failed to notice: Korendir was no longer quietly listening, but had turned his back. His fists were clenched white on the rail, and the tension in his shoulders had little to do with keeping balance against the wave-driven pitch of the boat.

Haldeth bent his head, knuckles pressed to his temples. “You know,” he said bitterly, “they never screamed. They had no time. The Murgai with their butchering swords were that fast. Lindey first, and then the girls, all three were beheaded in a heartbeat. Just because they happened to be in the way. I was behind the hedgerow, close enough to strike, but Neth! For the one murdering animal I might have laid out, five others would have instantly skewered me.” The retelling broke off as Haldeth heaved in a tight breath. “I still remember how the blood plumed in the water of the filled buckets. When the pressgang came and set chains on me, I was too dazed with horror to even care.”

Haldeth spasmed in a violent shiver, and as if the shrug that followed held power to throw off past horrors, he forced a dry practicality. “I could not have saved my family. Any who resisted were killed. But each day I wake up wondering why I was left to survive. I have no home to return to. The people I cared for are dead.” His eyes turned, searching, toward Korendir. “What about you?”

No answer came back. The only movement about the braced figure at the rail was the slap of black cloak in the gusts.

Pressed by loneliness and the need for shared catharsis, Haldeth at length asked outright: “Did anyone you love escape slaughter?”

That caused Korendir to turn around. His face showed no expression. The glare which had unsettled his late Mhurgai masters focused for long minutes on Haldeth. With no more recognition than if the smith were a total stranger, the eyes stayed bereft of human warmth, while the hand clenched on the haft of the boat’s only rigging knife could at a stroke turn to violence. Unnerved afresh by the ruthless slaughter that had overcome
Nallga’s
crew, Haldeth offered diffident apology. He moved and spoke cautiously in his companion’s presence after that. But relations between them stayed edgy. Korendir perversely remained aloof. Sounds and sudden motions startled him to his feet, muscles braced taut against threats only he could perceive.

The weather turned cold, gray, and forbidding. In alternate shifts the two men slept and stood watch at the helm. If the demands of the winter ocean forestalled moments for idle companionship, the boat was too cramped for avoidance. Korendir kept to himself. During meals and off hours he maintained a brooding solitude, speaking only when necessary.

A fortnight later, the wind shifted and blew furiously from the north. Spray shot like needles of ice over the bow, drenching the boat and everything within. Korendir was forced to fall off on a northwest course lest both of them perish from exposure. Haldeth shook his fist at the sky, but the weather did not relent. The tiny craft drove haplessly through the Inlanic ocean, past Emarrcek and the haven of the south coast.

The days turned bitter, and the nights black and miserable, with the wind a tireless moan through the stays. Whipped by sleet, then snow, the boat pounded close-hauled through the northern latitudes, graced only fitfully by cloud-bleared glimmers of sun. Rimed with salt and ice crystals, Korendir’s beard whitened to match his companion’s. Unkempt as a fur trapper, Haldeth slapped raw knuckles on his knees and swore he would never again venture upon the sea.

The boat reached Karjir Head in the depths of a midwinter freeze. By then, the sail streamed in tatters, and water leaked through every seam in the hull. Both men were bone thin and exhausted from days of constant bailing, and landfall went badly. Wallowing and sluggish under a water-laden bilge,
Nallga’s
boat slewed in the surf. A rock punched through her starboard planking.

“Praise Neth for a favor,” gasped Haldeth. Still infected with sardonic humor, he leapt the gunwale and splashed into a churning moil of foam. Korendir dove for the forward locker. He managed to salvage the rigging knife before the craft rolled and tossed him head-long into the sea. He surfaced, swimming strongly. The refugees from Mhurgai captivity dragged themselves ashore, soaked, starved, and bleeding. The land which greeted them was untenanted; a wilderness of dark forest which stretched to the far horizon.

Korendir stood shivering on the sand, seemingly absorbed by the breakers that chewed their boat into splinters. “Do you know how to snare rabbits?” He sounded unconcerned, as if he offered conversation in a tap room.

“What?” Haldeth shook his wet hair like a dog, his earlier levity stripped by the bite of cruel wind. “No.”

Korendir managed a mangled smile. “You’ll cook, then.”

Haldeth whirled, one fist clenched to strike. His knuckles raked air as Korendir dodged and vanished into the brush beyond the dunes. Belatedly Haldeth recalled that they possessed no flints to make fire. The rabbits, if Korendir caught any, could hardly be eaten raw, and were they to have any warmth, the spark must be made by friction.

* * *

Four days later, in the coastal town of Dun Point a gem setter cleared his throat. Before him, two square-cut stones splashed highlights like blood across the white linen covering on his countertop.

“Rubies, you say?” He straightened with a depreciative sigh. “The ‘stones’ you brought are glass. Common cut glass.” He blinked myopically, and noticed his clients’ appearance for the first time.

Clad in filthy, ill-smelling rags, the ruffians exchanged a long glance. Starved as beggars, both were heavily muscled through the chest and shoulders; their skins were chapped from exposure to salt wind and weather. The gemsetter did not care to imagine what circumstance had brought them into his shop in Dun Point. Afraid that his word might be taken badly, he wished only for these strangers to depart.

“Glass,” he repeated. He poked the stones with chubby fingers. “Only glass. I’m sorry.”

The men exchanged no word, but acted with perfect timing. The white-bearded giant seized the gemsetter’s wrists, while his bronze-haired companion vaulted the counter and locked the stunned merchant in a wrestler’s grip from behind. The move was accomplished with such speed the victim caught no glimpse of drawn steel. Before he could think to react, he found himself pinioned with a dagger pressed to his throat. The hand which held the blade bore down with steady and merciless pressure.

“They’re glass, you insist,” an equally cold voice said in the merchant’s ear.

The gemsetter quivered in helpless outrage. “My trade is honest, unlike yours, thief. Take what you will and go. And may your neck get stretched in the hangman’s noose for your crime.”

A breath of air tickled the merchant’s collar; the chill of the knife disappeared. The bronze-haired man stepped back, and his white-haired companion opened his fists. Freed, the gemsetter spun to face the attacker with the dagger. He met eyes disturbingly gray.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Not a thief.” The barbarian’s accent was cultured, strangely in contrast to his dress and manners, and the coloring of his hair was something not seen among mortals. He sheathed his blade with a leopard’s easy grace. “Have you any market for glass jewels?”

The gem setter rubbed bruised wrists, a shaken expression on his face. “Travelling players sometimes want baubles for costume pieces. And of course, the east quarter trollops own chests of them. I’ll give four silvers. You won’t get a better offer.”

“Done,” said the bronze-haired man. No smile touched his lips as he extended a grimy hand.

The gemsetter shivered and counted coins into a palm welted with calluses. Silly with relief over the fact he had not been robbed, he stood and trembled as his strange clients left the shop.

The red glass remained, a bright glitter against the linen. Odd, the gemsetter thought as he scooped up the ornaments and wrapped them away in tissue. He had seen such a pair only once, glued to the eyes of a figurehead on board a Mhurga galley. He paused, one hand on the lock of his strongbox, then shook his head. Impossible; in all the Eleven Kingdoms no thief existed who could steal from the Mhurgai and survive.

* * *

Haldeth stopped squarely in the center of Craftsman’s Alley. “You’re mad as a dogfox!” Sea wind whipped his hair against reddened cheeks as heatedly, he continued. “Two silvers won’t buy passage as far as the next crossroads, and you claim you’re going to lift the Blight of Torresdyr! Neth! Tell me, with what? That quest has killed the best heeled men-at-arms in all the Eleven Kingdoms.”

“Watch me,” Korendir said. In a gesture unthinkingly casual, he tossed one of his silvers to a beggar who shivered in the gutter.

Haldeth shook his head. “I’d rather get drunk. Daft, that’s what you are. Escape the Mhurgai, and you think of nothing but risking your neck. Torresdyr lies
a hundred and sixty leagues
from here, over mountains, don’t forget. Be reasonable and wait till spring. I’ll find work at a smithy. If you’re still this keen when the weather breaks, I’ll go with you.”

“No.” Korendir met Haldeth’s glare with an expression as final as death.

A wagon rumbled into the alley. The carter cursed and brandished his whip at the two men blocking the roadway. Even then Korendir refused to relent.

“Go alone then!” shouted Haldeth. Out of patience, he whirled and jumped clear as the harness team jogged past. Iron-rimmed wheels rang over dirt rutted like stone by winter ice. By the time the wagon passed, Haldeth had disappeared into the tavern across the street. The signboard swung in the gusts, invitingly torchlit, its promise of warmth and comfort depicted in gilt letters and a brightly painted bullfrog with a tankard.

Alone in the windy alley, Korendir stood for a long moment, his face expressionless beneath tangled copper hair. Presently, he grimaced, turned his back on the lighted inn windows, and continued on his way. His last silver bought him worn but serviceable clothing. With the change, he acquired a tired black gelding with ruined lungs; but he had to include his rigging knife to complete the bargain.

The horse trader stroked the fine, Mhurgai steel and spat through broken teeth. “You’ll be getting no bridle with the nag, now.”

The gelding nibbled at the salty wool of his owner’s cloak, and received a mild slap on the muzzle. “I need none,” said Korendir.

On his way to the town gate, he begged a length of twine from a wagonmaster and braided it into a hackamore. Then, penniless, weaponless, and saddleless, he vaulted astride his sorry mount and turned north.

* * *

The horse made no speed on the road. Any gait beyond a walk made its flanks heave pitifully as it labored to draw air into scarred tissues. Resigned, Korendir named the animal Snail. Winter warmed into spring, and spring passed, turning the fields rich green at high summer. Korendir made his way across two kingdoms, working at farmsteads to earn lodging and meals; in the wilds between settlements, he hunted and slept in the open. From dusty, travel-worn boots to tangled hair, his appearance grew as unkempt as his mount. Yet no stranger dared refuse him passage. The stern set of his features silenced any ridicule; directions to Northengard were forthrightly given to speed him on his way.

But as his mount shambled out of earshot, heads shook, and laughter flourished. What could an honorless, nameless unknown on a broken-winded hack achieve that had not already been tried, and by heroes well sung into fame? Even the White Circle enchanters would not trifle with the Blight of Torresdyr, and they held more power than any mortal born.

Summer mellowed into autumn, and nights grew brisk with frost. Oak leaves crackled in drifts under the gelding’s hooves as Korendir climbed the passes which marked the far border of Northengard. Beyond lay the misted acres of Torresdyr, barren since blight had withered the land.

Korendir journeyed through hills smothered under pallid banks of fog. Thickets sheltered no wildlife. The vegetation hung sere and brown, as if ravaged by early winter. In the valleys, unmended fences bordered fields left fallow, and pastures grew snarls of nettle and thorn. Those few travelers who ventured on the roads turned unfriendly faces upon the stranger and his tired gelding; his coming and his quest offered no cause for hope.

Korendir continued undaunted. Seven nights before equinox, he drew rein beneath moss-caked arches in the courtyard of the royal palace.

* * *

The king granted the stranger’s request for audience, saddened by renewed despair. Torresdyr embraced poverty and ill luck indeed, if a rag-tag nobody dared shoulder the burden that had ruined the finest arms men in the Eleven Kingdoms.

“Let the wretched man in,” the king said to his sniggering chamber steward. “We’re beggars ourselves, and have nothing to lose but pride.”

The royal words were no understatement. In what had once been the richest land in Aerith, the visitor waited in a damp, unheated antechamber, and the servant who admitted him was gaunt beneath threadbare robes of state. Taken to the throne room, Korendir walked past a thousand sockets where gemstones had been pried out of fretwork and furnishings to fund a starving court. The carpet he knelt on was mildewed, and the king he saluted was toothless and hunched with ill health.