Stormed Fortress (47 page)

There, in a not-quite-quenched ring of sound, the blade stood upright and quivering. The rune inlay shimmered, still active, a sheen of opalescent illumination playing down the length of the steel.

'
A
'
liessiad,
'
said Arithon Teir
'
s
'
Ffalenn in lyric Paravian.
'
Let peace bide between us, regardless of differences.
'

He stirred then, recovered the uncanny sword from the table-top. Alone in the room, he seemed able to move as he sheathed the blade and silenced its uncanny vibration. The will in that choice shook the air like scribed fire and left behind shocking, dimmed silence.

Loss swept the onlookers, which wrenched like blind pain; pitched them reeling across an abyss of dark separation. Through their helpless tears, they watched Arithon walk out with no hand in the room raised to stop him.

Late Autumn 5671

Refuge

Parrien s
'
Brydion was fed up with fighting heated engagements to seize a safe harbour to shelter his fleet. The deadly bother was not going to ease, while the autumn squalls built towards winter. Each storm that roared in off the Cildein crammed the coves that pocketed the coast of Melhalla. Oared ships were forced to jockey for space, or else battle outright for anchorage. Unlike peaceful years, the seafaring captains abroad were not mercantile, eastshore galley-men.

Today, the blazons that streamed from their mastheads might hail from the northernmost ports. Crews used to rough waters, and determined fishers whose encounters with icebergs and rock shoals bred iron resolve and an unflinching stare. The stout vessels beneath their commands braved the chop that broke hissing in whitecaps. They rode the stiff winds that foreran the wrecks which claimed human lives in gale season.

'
Rot their confounded hardihood, timbers and flesh!
'
the duke
'
s brother fumed in the lamp-lit darkness. He peeled off his oilskins. Tossed their soaked bulk to his hovering steward, while his flustered arrival fogged the latched casements, and rove the taint of wet wool through the warmth belowdecks.
'
Every damned bolt-hole we
'
ve picked to snug down in is stuffed full of their wallowing tubs!
'

Oared hulls as viciously guarded as a silk guildsman
'
s prime bales, and as handsomely paid, to move the resupply for the enemy war host.

'
Opportunistic toadies
'
Parrien ran on in distemper,
'
the lot of them teeming like curs with the lice, and burdened a yard past their load lines.
'
To the steward
'
s prim silence, he jabbed,
'
One gets tired of sticking a sword in the guts of their wall-eyed, fanatical officers. Not to mention the cowering, Light-blinded dupes just rounded up green from the ale shops!
'

Paused frowning, Parrien shook like a bear. More wet showered off him, hissing against the hot panes of the gimballed lamp, and spattering over the tally-sheets spread on the chart desk.
'
Dharkaron wept! We
'
d find cleaner sport chopping rabbits!
'

To the clamped mug of his long-suffering purser, he snapped,
'
You aren
'
t sick of the screams? Here
'
s a fresh blow, and no haven in sight without another bitch-bred stint of slaughter.
'

The prospect rankled, beyond hope of let-up. For months to come, the open coast would stay lashed to rampaging spindrift. Amid heaving seas, pebbled grey with cold rain, the fleet
'
s hard-bitten oarsmen were suffering. Too many had salt-water sores from the benches. Galls that swelled into festering malady.

Still snarling, Parrien heaved onto a locker, pried off his boots, and dumped out a brown stream of run-off.
'
It
'
s a goat-humping lash-up! Beats my good sense, why the mayors and their gabbling excisemen don
'
t levy new fines for stupidity. Like whoresons with clap, they
'
re all bent arse up for Lysaer
'
s milk-sucking religion!
'

The steward dutifully stowed the sopped oilskins, while the purser glowered in silence. Both men stayed loath to cross Parrien
'
s temper. The siege at Alestron left his fleet stranded outside of the blockaded estuary. His crews had no choice but to shoulder their forced tour of duty without respite.

Stalled at last by his officer
'
s jaundiced stare, Parrien exclaimed,
'
Well, spit out the sour news, man! We
'
re caught lean on stores again, aren
'
t we?
'

'
Not well-set, at all,
'
the purser admitted. He scratched beneath his fusty jacket, upset by his harried assessment.
'
Provisions are critical. The weakling ship
'
s boy
'
s got bleeding gums. We
'
re facing a spreading case of the cough. Our rowers can
'
t stay in fit strength on hard biscuit, and the village fishermen are learning to run before selling us contraband barrels of salt meat.
'

'
All
right!
'
Eyes red from exhaustion, and chapped by harsh wear, Parrien embraced the inevitable.
'
We
'
ll assault the bolt-hole in the crab shallows to the leeside of Lugger
'
s Islet. If we strike fast, and risk a few casualties, we can board what
'
s afloat. Take a few officers hostage for ransom and ransack their holds for provender.
'

The purser gaped over his pen in astonishment.
'
Have we sunk to the morals of forest-bred clansmen? Or fallen to justified piracy?
'

'
Yes!
'
Parrien shot off the locker. Shivering in his stockings, he slammed back the lid and fetched out his helm and bracers, and the cutlass preferred for close combat.
'
Because if Alestron
'
s citadel falls, and my brother is forced to defeat, we
'
ll be stuck begging for sanctuary with our barbaric cousins in Atwood! Or would you rather kiss arse with their sea-going brethren, and prey on the slave-trade that
'
s poisoning Tysan?
'

No seasoned retainer stuck out his neck with a s
'
Brydion hell-b
ent on battle. The steward scuttl
ed to oil his master
'
s dropped boots. The purser ducked fast and rolled up his accounts, while Parrien
'
s bellow to the ship
'
s mate ordered the desperate course change.

If Alestron
'
s crack seamen were taxed by privation, their discipline remained as adamant as iron. The five galleys formed up on his relayed command and struck their last stitch of reefed canvas. Under oar, they sheared into the teeth of the storm, against gusts that ripped the seas into spume and hurled opaque sheets of rain. Four helmsmen muscled the buck of the rudder, their corded wrists cuffed to the whipstaff. The steersman called off the bearing from below, his compass dial lit by a candle-lamp, while the quartermaster howled over the gale and verified the new headings.

Parrien rode the toss of the deck, tied in to the flagship
'
s stern-rail. Every man not streaming sweat at the bench worked the pumps, battling the green gush let in as each thudding wave deluged the oar-ports.

No ship
'
s hand was fooled. Their hard labour could not subdue the raw elements. Above, the stripped yard reeled against tattered scud. Shrieking wind punched through the rigging. No galley could withstand the relentless punishment. She might pound and roll against such a sea until her crew dropped from exhaustion, or until the working strain burst a seam, or a crest broke over and broached her. The weather might snap the men
'
s courage before they reached land, or drew steel on the enemy.

No use to pretend that their straits were not dire. Hungry, storm-battered, and shivering, they rounded the north point of Lugger
'
s Islet and threaded the narrows that guarded the anchorage. Drove in at attack speed, despite wallowing hulls and sinews nigh crippled by weariness. They prepared to do battle against suicide odds, with frozen fingers clenched numb to their weapon hilts.

Parrien braced his stance at the stern, moved to pride by the fight in the men. None would be starving at sea like chased wolves. Battle would meet them, unvanquished. If the sousing rain spoiled the aim of his archers, the surprise shock would do damage, ram a few Sunwheel hulls to the bottom on the sheer force of momentum.

The five galleys rounded the spit at the headland. They shot into the lee side, beaked prows knifing into the billow of shoaling waters. The steersmen squinted through short visibility. Storm in their eyes, they saw little beyond the flare of the lanterns, pocked amid the blurred shadows of anchored ships.

'
Stroke, you weasels!
'
screamed Parrien.
'
No one
'
s belly gets filled till we
'
ve torn out the throats of the pullets before us!
'

Oars bit and spray flew. Iron-shod prows sheared down on their prey, primed for ruin and havoc. Leading the wedge, the flagship struck first. The ram crushed into timber. Water gouted and splinters exploded. The rocking, hard impacts slammed at each side, as the s
'
Brydion ships pounded into their targets. Men loosed their grip upon rigging and rails. They swarmed over the bows in a berserk attack, steel raised to grapple the enemy.

No blade met their rush. No yelling watch officers or armed defenders. Over the surging heave of the deck, and the judder of rain-wet, shocked planking, the oar benches yawned, dark and empty of life. No voices called, and no bells clanged alarm. No boatswain
'
s whistle shrilled to roust up laggards from berths belowdecks. Right and left, as the adjacent hulls shuddered under the brunt of invasion, the s
'
Brydion rush met no resistance.

The Light
'
s galleys wallowed on pebbled grey waters, deserted of human life.

Parrien snapped out of stunned incredulity. He bellowed for caution, too late. His first mate sounded an instant retreat, every nerve jabbed by suspicion. This unlucky foray surely had run them into an Alliance trap. Fallen back, shrill with panic, men stumbled in recoil. They crowded in distraught confusion. Frayed edgy by danger, they milled to regroup, while the overhead look-outs peered into the murk.

The storm yielded its secrets with eerie reluctance. Ahead, past the anchored hulls they had rammed, the harbour held flotsam and splintered timber. Here, floated the gleam of an overturned tender, and there, a smashed spar, or sunk wreck, with its canted mast pricked through heaving, black waters. The dotted flare of lit lanterns still blazed from the wrack of uncounted, smashed hulks.

'
Dharkaron Avenger!
'
Parrien swore.
'
Looks like the hammer of Sithaer has fallen and kicked the Light
'
s faithful ahead of us.
'

That discovery barely sank in, when another light flashed from the wooded shore-line.

The look-out
'
s confounded cry from the crow
'
s nest exclaimed, That
'
s our own coded signal!
'

Translation was swift, that s
'
Brydion forces occupied the inlet and anchorage.

Parrien shuddered, nipped into awed gooseflesh, as the next winking sequence identified the field-captain whose prowess commanded the beach.
'
Vhandon! Come here? Sweet tits on a bull! How did he know that our straits were pressed beyond desperate?
'

The bellow to sway out the flagship
'
s tender was belayed over the pound of the rainfall. Apparently the empty, rammed hulls had been secured by ropes to barricade the hazards that had beset their Alliance counterparts.

Take a close look!
'
The boatswain
'
s excitable shout cut through Parrien
'
s roaring displeasure.
'
Past the rafted vessels blocking our bow, everything else in the water has been either stove in or sunk!
'

The vicious truth registered, with the stalled oarsmen wretchedly shivering. Men and ship
'
s boy shared the strain of delay as Parrien snatched out the ship
'
s glass. His survey swept the shadowed curves of holed keels, then the glints of reflection nicked off burst timbers and snarls of drifting cordage. Ruin had left no vessel afloat, nor any living survivor.

Voices died, as battle-brash courage went cold. One man, then another sheathed weapons before the impact of utter catastrophe. Mollified, stunned, or subdued by bone chill, they shrank to grapple the vista unveiled through the sheeting rainfall.

'
We
'
re being hailed,
'
the sobered boatswain observed.

Parrien swung the ship
'
s glass. He picked out the small boat on approach, then the upright, soaked form, draped in a field officer
'
s surcoat.
'
Have a welcoming party at the rail, amidships, and ascertain a loyal identity before you take on any boarders.
'