The Starfollowers of Coramonde (22 page)

The Sending
subsided. Andre took his hand from his eyes. Cynosure was quiet, and
Blazetongue dark. Angorman cried, “See!”

In the sky
hung an awesome Sign, a comet stretched down through the firmament like a
sword, the fiery head for its pommel, its tail aimed directly down where
Shardishku-Salamá wove its spells. It outshone the moon, planets and stars,
making night more like day.

They rushed
out onto the balcony. Angorman and Blacktarget offered up thanks to the sky;
Andre and his mother hung back. “What visitation is that?” voices called from
the streets. Others answered, “The Trailingsword! It is as in days of long
ago!”

“You see?”
inquired the Trustee. “The old stories survive. Everywhere, there will be those
who know the tale. Seven times seven days after the first Trailingsword
appeared, our decisive battle was fought, where its tail pointed us.”

“Did Bey know
this would happen?” Andre asked.

“Suspected
it, I should think. Still, he ignored it in his plotting to get the thing he
sought at Ladentree; that disquiets me. Now the sword has rendered the second
of the two great services for which it was created, and they are complete,
though Blazetongue may render a final aid in its unmaking.”

“I will
remember,” he promised. She was sharing what knowledge she could with him
because all lives would soon be in danger again.

“Your prowess
has increased, Andre,” she remarked, “but that is a mixed gift. It says more
arduous burdens shall be laid upon you.”

“I welcome
that. I owe Salamá no less than does Gil MacDonald. This Omen suits me well.”

Across the
Crescent Lands, men and women peered at the sky. The Trailingsword gleamed, and
timeless tales came to mind, of the Great Blow and the last defense that was
made there where it bid its supporters to rally. At every latitude it appeared
the same, urging them toward Salamá. Seven times seven days was the measure of
its time. There would be those who would ignore it, and those who would oppose
it. But for many, it was a morsel of hope in desperately hungry days.

Children of the
Wind-Roads

But pleasures are like poppies
spread—

You seize the flower, its bloom
is shed…

Robert Burns

“Tarn o’ Shanter”

YARDIFF Bey was making for Death’s
Hold. His trail, read by astute Glyffan trackers, made no secret of that.

Swan shook
her head in perplexity. “The Mariners gutted his fortress with their
sea-and-land assault. There is only smoking rubble there; how can Bey hope to
profit?”

A woodcutter,
dwelling near the roadside, said she’d heard riders gallop by in the night. Gil
tried to guess how much lead that gave the sorcerer, as Swan stepped up the
pace. Stopping the occasional traveler, they met no one who’d seen Bey.

They’d
covered twenty-five miles on rutted roads, much tougher going than the Western
Tangent, when darkness forced them to halt, the trail no fresher than when
they’d taken it up. Swan considered going on by torchlight, but feared that the
way would be lost or their pursuit misdirected somehow by the Hand of Salamá.
He might use such minor magic, though it chanced detection if the Trustee were
near, and tricks like that were far more likely at night. Too, the horses must
rest.

When he’d
unsaddled Jeb, Gil made his way to Swan’s spot in the bivouac. She’d dispensed
with her tent, making do with a tarp set up as a crude lean-to. He found her in
a huddle with subordinates, naming relief commanders for the night’s guard.
Maps were spread before her in a lamp’s glow. All faces turned to Gil, then
Swan.

“Yes?” she
asked in neutral tones. She was all High Constable now, intent on her work. He
saw he’d intruded, remembering how he’d hated people looking over his own
shoulder. He excused himself and went off to sleep, curling at the base of a
tree some distance from the Sisters of the Line.

The first
relief had yielded to replacements when he woke to find her by his side. She
slid into the warm cocoon of his cloak, adding her blue cape to their covers.
They made wordless, exigent love unconnected, he knew now, with what they might
do or whom they might be by daylight. He was, as she had called him, her
exemption; in a way not wholly different, she was his.

Lounging
afterward in the tangled clothing, the mingled aromas, the sudden heat that
left them with less regard for that warmth mere cloaks and capes provide, he
apprehended that areas of mutual consent had been defined. They slept in each
other’s arms, and just after the last relief came on, she rose and went off,
picking her way surely among recumbent cavalrywomen. The squadron departed in
first light.

On the second
day of the chase, they had word from two men, cowled Sages on their way to
Ladentree, that confirmed their route. The Sages said ten mounted men had
passed them the preceding day, bearing westward in haste. The savants had been
surprised, but assumed them to be outland allies. The gap between hunters and
hunted hadn’t closed at all.

“Squadron’s
too slow,” Gil opined. “If we drop the heavy cavalry we could catch him.”

“With less
than a company of light horse,” Swan pointed out. “We are going into unpoliced
territory, where he may have arranged for reinforcements; my instructions
direct me not to be drawn out headlong. There will likely be traps; so says the
Trustee.”

Though they
were south of her own Region, her blue cape and flashing, winged bascinet gave
Swan clout. Despite that, there were no fresh mounts to be had, the country
having been stripped of every worthwhile horse for the Trustee’s army. The fact
cut both ways; the sorcerer wouldn’t be able to obtain remounts either.

The chase
stretched into grueling days and exhausted nights. They strained their eyes in
dazzling sun and saturating, dispiriting rain, hoping the next hill would bring
sight of the Hand of Salamá. It never did. Gil didn’t see how the horses of the
sorcerer’s party could endure it. Jeb Stuart and the Glyffans’ were close to
the limits of their means to comply. Swan thought magic might be involved.
Wolfing rations, sleeping and other amenities became major luxuries,
infrequently enjoyed. But the merciless pursuit didn’t keep Swan from coming to
him when responsibilities permitted. Both were amazed at how little fatigue
mattered when, together, they were enfolded by the night. If Swan’s
subordinates knew of the affair, none gave any sign.

But after a
time they began to narrow the southerners’ lead. The spoor grew fresher, Bey’s
brief campsites more recently abandoned. The day came when the hunters followed
the Wheywater River around a bend to see Final Graces, once a trading port,
deserted when Death’s Hold, downriver, had revived its menacing activity. No
Glyffans had yet re-entered it. The tracks veered that way, rather than on
along the river bank road toward Bey’s onetime stronghold.

Swan had
expected to find no one there, but over the little cluster of rooftops inside
its wooden stockade, they saw two masts, sails furled. The gates were closed;
the trumpeter blew a fanfare while the squadron deployed itself along the wall.
There was no reply; the High Constable had the call repeated.

A face
appeared at the wall. Gil had the Browning out, hoping it would be Bey or one
of his men. He was disappointed; he gradually recognized Gale-Baiter, the
Mariner captain who’d intervened to rescue Brodur and himself in Earthfast.

“What would
you?” demanded the captain.

“Open those
gates,” the trumpeter directed. “The High Constable of Region Blue will enter.”

Gale-Baiter
hefted a cutlass. Other Mariners appeared on the wall, with bows and javelins.
Among them were Wavewatcher, the giant red-haired harpooner and Skewerskean,
his smaller partner. “Be you gone,” the captain told the Sisters of the Line,
“for we know you to be no true Glyffans.”

Some cavalry
women had bows out, nocking arrows; others shook lances, hollering angry
denials. Gil dismounted, a sure sign that a cavalryman wanted no trouble and
offered none. He swept off his battered hat with its bobbing quill.

“Gale-Baiter,
it’s me, Gil MacDonald, remember? I swear, these are really Glyffans. We’re
dogging Yardiff Bey. You’ll let us in, right?”

The Mariner
was taken off guard. He swapped uncertain looks with Wavewatcher and
Skewerskean. “’Tis assuredly he,” the harpooner admitted. Gale-Baiter ordered
the gates opened. Swan was pondering the American.

“You have friends
in unlooked-for quarters,” she remarked. He bowed.

“We had been
told you would be enemies,” Gale-Baiter explained when they’d joined him
inside. There were twenty or so seafarers. They were swaggerers, dashing
figures. They wore embroidered shirts and brocaded tunics, bibs of coins at
their necks, chains of them at their wrists. Thick armlets and bracelets
glittered, and on their buckles gemstones sparkled. But their cutlasses, bows
and javelins were unadorned and well-used. Wavewatcher and Skewerskean stood
warily to either side of their captain. The harpooner wore a sealskin shirt and
a big scrimshawed whale’s tooth on a thong against his hairy chest, and his
barbed throwing-iron was in his hand. His smaller friend’s sleeves were sewn
with tiny bells that jingled as Skewerskean moved. “It was said impostors were
abroad,” the captain said.

“By whom?”
Swan rapped.

“Our Prince’s
special ambassador, who set sail this morning, after arriving in great
hurly-burly.”

Gil
blasphemed, clenching his fist in the air. Soon, it was established what had
happened. The Mariners’ fleet had shattered Southwastelander sea power in a
two-day engagement in the Central Sea, then pursued remnants to this area. The
seafarers had laid waste to Death’s Hold, to deny the southerners future
sanctuary and erase their foothold in Glyffa. Afterward, the bulk of the
Mariners had sailed northward after their surviving foes, leaving several ships
on patrol in local waters. Gale-Baiter, remembering what Gil had said in
Earthfast, had mentioned to his Prince that travelers from Coramonde might be
coming to the ruined fortress. The Prince of the Mariners had assigned him to
the patrol, ordering him to check upriver at Final Graces periodically, where
wayfarers would logically stop first, to gather any recent news. Gale-Baiter
had done so once, a week before. Three days ago he’d returned, but his ship had
been damaged by a submerged rock, barely making Final Graces.

He and his
men had hove down their ship, the
Long-Dock Gal,
for repairs. The
following day, another craft had appeared flying Mariner colors, bearing the
ensign of an ambassador extraordinary. Her master’s papers showed she was on a
mission for the Prince of the Mariners, awaiting a diplomatic entourage from
the Glyffans and Veganáns. The newcomer’s crew couldn’t even aid Gale-Baiter’s
in repairing the
Gal;
their orders were to stand ready for instant
departure.

Only hours
before Swan’s squadron arrived, the expected party had appeared, worn from
strenuous riding, and ducked aboard their ship. Hooded and cloaked, they hadn’t
been seen by Gale-Baiter’s men. Their horses, used up, had died at their
tethers within minutes. Before their summary departure, the entourage had
dispatched word that they might have been trailed by Southwastelanders
masquerading as Glyffans.

It had to
have been Bey and his men, using a contingency plan. But in leaving Gale-Baiter
to cover his withdrawal, Bey had been unaware that Gil had met the captain, and
could dissuade him from a bloodletting.

Gale-Baiter testified,
“I had seen the papers they bore. Their ring-seal proved their mission was of
highest priority. I was angry they would not assist our repairs, but could make
no objection. Unhappy am I that I cannot go on their wake right this moment.”

“’Tis well-sent
that you were repairing damage,” Swan observed, “or they might have worked some
ill to stave off pursuit.”

“Rot him! I
shall set sail on that liar’s course. The body of the fleet is overdue to
return, and there are other ships patrolling. We will take him; the Prince
boasts vessels swifter still than mine.”

Gil pounced
on that. “You’ll be ready that soon?”

“Aye, and if
those were Occhlon scum, they can set only one course. North of here Mariners
still scour the oceans. There is but unending water to the west. South will
they voyage; the first hospitable landfall they can make is Veganá.”

“Uh-uh,” Gil
told him, “Veganá’s no good anymore. The Occhlon got whipped by the Crescent
Landers.”

“Then, to be
safe, they can make no nearer port than the Isle of Keys. We shall catch them
in open seas.”

“But where
would Yardiff Bey have gotten Mariners’ safe-passage letters and seals?” Swan
mused.

“There is
only one place I wot of,” Gale-Baiter said darkly. “The Inner Hub, whose
destruction started this war.”

Gil concurred.
He himself had fooled enemies during the thronal war with phonied dispatches.
That the scam had been turned around proved how fast Bey learned.

“’Tis to be
sea chase,” the captain was telling Wavewatcher. The hulking redbeard nodded
happily, scratching the tangle of rust-red curls on his chest. “See the repairs
finished,” Gale-Baiter continued, “with all speed.” The harpooner went off,
Skewerskean by his side.

Gil took the
captain’s elbow. “Hey, hey; I’ve gotta go along.”

Gale-Baiter
sized him up. Gil avoided meeting Swan’s gaze, proceeding: “You’re headed south
and the seas belong to the Mariners, right? You’ll overhaul Bey, most likely;
if you don’t, you’ll still get me south a lot faster than I could get there on
land. The Crescent Landers have a whole load of real estate yet to take back
from the southerners. I can’t wait that long; you promised me passage whenever
I wanted.”