The raiders admired the burned remnants of Renda Bay. “You made your mark here already. We have left many villages like that ourselves.”
One snickered, “You may have Norukai blood in you after all.”
Utros snapped, “Just row us out to the ship!”
The landing boat reached the lead vessel, where a group of brash Norukai greeted them on the deck above. King Grieve crossed his arms over his chest and received them. “So, our armies have joined together after all! I am eager for this war you promised me.”
Utros climbed aboard. “We need to plan the best strategy for victory. Bring a meal, and we will talk in your cabin.”
Grieve sniffed the air, relishing the stench of smoke that hung like a black fog over the harbor. “I enjoy the smell of a successful raid, and the destruction of a weak town. I hope you plundered Renda Bay of everything those people had before you burned it to the ground.”
Utros was annoyed. “I did not burn it—I wouldn’t have been so foolish as to destroy such a valuable asset. The people laid traps before they evacuated and turned the town into an inferno as soon as we arrived.”
The Norukai king guffawed. “Then your men must still be very hungry!”
Utros clenched his fist at his side. He ground his teeth together so hard he could feel his half mask shifting.
The Norukai ships had full stores of salted and smoked fish, seaweed cakes, hard breads, and barrels of ale they had brought from the main islands. Utros wished he could distribute all that food to his soldiers, but he had already made such a request once, and if he asked King Grieve again, he would appear weak.
“It is merely a setback. My army can keep moving. Tell us about the other cities we will find up the coast. Which ones have the best plunder?” Utros said as they entered the king’s cabin. “We need to pillage more. My soldiers must eat.”
Sitting on a sturdy bench, Grieve gnawed on a haunch of some smoked meat. The animal didn’t seem familiar. He didn’t answer the question, preoccupied with eating.
Utros and Ruva each received a block of smoked fish on a pewter plate, which they found satisfactory. The sorceress chewed in silence until she finally asked, “Where is your shaman? Doesn’t Chalk guide your decisions?”
“Chalk is dead.” The expression on the king’s horribly scarred face seemed to fall. “Now they all need to die. They all need to grieve.”
“We still have to plan,” Utros said, impatient. How could the loss of that simpering albino ape come close to the pain he felt upon losing Ava, his precious and beautiful sorceress? “Renda Bay was a disappointment. We need to march and resupply.”
Through the half-open door to the cabin, they could hear the boisterous shouts and angry grumbles of the other Norukai on deck. A squarish, ugly woman named Atta entered the cabin as if she belonged there. She carried another meaty bone, which Utros thought resembled part of a human arm. She ripped off a hunk of flesh and chewed with wet sounds.
The hard bench squeaked under the big king’s weight as he shifted his position. “My warriors are more than ready. Lars has already raided several towns and villages up there, and he can tell you which ones he left intact. There’ll be little to scavenge from the ones he destroyed.”
“The more he destroys, the more we will have to rebuild afterward. Tell him to restrain himself.”
Grieve laughed as if the general had made a grand joke. “We will work together to conquer the Old World, but I still don’t know how we share the land afterward.”
“Let us see what remains,” Utros said, “and then we divide it.”
“Or we fight over it.” The Norukai king focused his attention on the bone in his hand, gnawing another scrap of red meat and gristle.
Utros was glad that the gold mask hid half of his expression, and he struggled to keep his face blank. He set down his fork still bearing a hunk of smoked fish. “There is no need for that.”
All the Norukai disgusted him, and he considered King Grieve to be even more foul than Emperor Kurgan. He planned on enfolding the entire Old World into his new empire, and in doing so he could use the Norukai for their strength and their penchant for destruction, but his mind and his honor could not encompass an empire that included such subjects as these. After the war was won, he would find a way to destroy King Grieve.
Ruva glanced at him with a hard smile, as if she read his thoughts.
“No need,” Atta said, sitting her wide hips on the bench beside Grieve, “but it might be invigorating.” She reached over to touch the gash across the king’s cheek. “I am trying to decide whether I should be your queen, Grieve, or if I should have an empire of my own.”
“You will have whatever I give you,” he grunted.
She blew softly into his face. “I can get what I want from you, my Grieve.”
With his iron-plated fist he punched her in the center of the chest. The blow rocked her off the bench, but she grabbed the edge of the table and kept her balance. She laughed and bashed him on the chin in return. Grieve lurched to his feet, dropping the bone as he spread his shoulders to flare the spiked spurs. He held Atta’s gaze for a long moment, then relaxed. “Later. When I bed down for the night, we will continue our wrestling.”
She laughed. “It will have to be in your cabin, my Grieve. We broke my bunk last night!” With an unsettling flirtatious glance, the Norukai woman sauntered out of the king’s cabin, still carrying her bone.
Utros was impatient, grim and serious. He would make his careful plans every step of the way, but this loathsome oaf did not seem to think ahead. “My army is ready to march. Renda Bay is burned, and we must move soon. With our forces united, King Grieve, we could accomplish exactly what we need.”
Grieve scoffed. “I have more than one hundred forty ships. That’s more than the coast can handle. Your army can march inland along the old imperial roads, while the Norukai prey upon the coastal towns.”
“We need more of a plan than that!” Utros said. “This is a war, not a game.”
Grieve tossed down his bone, which was now stripped of meat. He drained a tankard of ale while looking with displeasure at the general. “All war is a game, or else why bother?”
Utros tried to control his impatience. “We must agree on a target. Our main goal should be Tanimura, the heart of the Old World. That is the best way we can destroy the enemy.”
Grieve crossed his massive arms over his chest. “Is there much to plunder in Tanimura? I’ve barely heard of it.”
Utros’s information was more than a thousand years out of date, but he remained confident. “Tanimura is filled with wealth and potential slaves, as many women as you want. Once we capture and destroy that city, we will have won the war.”
King Grieve grunted. “That is all the plan I need. We will each make our way north. After we strike Tanimura, we can take our time and pick clean the carcass of the Old World.”
CHAPTER 66
When Nicci left the ruins of Effren, she directed the fast military ship to stop at Serrimundi so she could check on their defense preparations. From the tension in the air, she knew they all took the threat seriously. Harborlord Otto had dispatched swift patrol ships beyond the rocky mouth of the harbor, and lookouts remained on top of the bluff above the Sea Mother carving. Inside its sheltered harbor, the city remained watchful and safe.
The lookouts had developed a simple but effective means of signaling at great distance, to spread any warning more swiftly. If any patrol ship spotted the Norukai fleet, they could drop and ignite rafts piled high with kindling, pitch, and green wood. The floating fires would produce greasy smoke visible from far away, and the watchers on the bluff could sound the alarm to the city. Norukai raiders would never surprise Serrimundi again.
When her expedition returned from Effren, they brought more refugees to join the crowds that already strained Serrimundi’s resources. Nicci intended to head back up to Tanimura as soon as possible, but she would verify that Serrimundi was secure before she left
.
The sheltered harbor remained a blur of activity. By now many of the sunken wrecks had been dismantled to clear a passage for larger trading ships. Rowboats and fishing vessels dodged the burned masts that still protruded from the water. Salvage crews continued to restore the docks while also building up the city’s defenses.
Nicci walked along the harborside in a new black dress, since her old one had been patched and cleaned so many times it had fallen to tatters. The dress fit her well, and she drew the attention of observers as she walked past. Now that her blond hair was growing out again, the strands tickled her neck.
On the new wharf, she found Otto talking with Captain Ganley of the Mist Maiden, which had been too large to sail out safely through the sunken ships. Five other large ships remained at anchor, waiting for their chance to leave, but they were not idle. Salvage crews affixed sheets of beaten metal to the hulls as armor.
The harborlord and Ganley stood beside a stack of crates taller than their heads. Both men turned as Nicci approached. “Thanks to you, Sorceress, my Mist Maiden will be a warship now,” said Ganley, “though I prefer peaceful trading from port to port.”
“Every ship needs to be a warship until the war is over,” Nicci said.
Otto tugged on his wide-brimmed hat, shading his eyes. “By the end of the day, we’ll have a passage clear so the larger ships can leave the harbor.” He sighed. “Part of me just wants Ganley to take my daughter and her children away to safety, so I can focus on guarding my city.”
“They might be safe, but the rest of you wouldn’t be,” Ganley said. “I have my part to play, as do we all.”
“The Mist Maiden is too useful as a warship,” Nicci said. “It will serve as an important defense at the mouth of the harbor if the Norukai make their way past the protective reefs.”
She was pleased to see that hundreds of the initial Effren refugees were now armed and practicing maneuvers in an open area where two warehouses had burned down during Kor’s raid. The men and women, still dressed in rags, wore hodgepodge armor, chain mail, leather, even some plate. They fumbled through their training, clumsily wielding swords, but getting better, hour by hour.
Nicci nodded toward the recruits. “Their sheer numbers will help build a defense force if the Norukai come ashore here again.”
“I intend to stop that from happening in the first place,” Harborlord Otto said. “With our new armored warships we will block the mouth of the harbor. They will never get past the Sea Mother into the city proper.”
Ganley set his jaw. “A line of five large vessels will prevent any invaders from entering the harbor.”
Nicci was impressed. “A significant improvement from how lax you were when I brought my first warning.”
Leaving the two men, she walked to the next pier, where she saw an old man in a loincloth, his head shaved clean and his skin so tanned it looked like hardened leather. With unexpected flexibility, he sat cross-legged on the end of the dock. Four young men dove underwater in front of him. Stone weights of various sizes rested on the dock beside the old man, and the young divers each took one and plunged deep, as if they were intentionally drowning themselves. After a remarkably long time, they would swim back up to the surface, struggling to carry the weights. The old man gave a nod of appreciation when they returned the stones to the dock, but he offered little praise as their teacher.
Nicci saw that his bare chest was covered with line after line of tattooed circles, more than she could count. Her lips twisted in an instinctive frown. “You are wishpearl divers.”
When he raised his head, ropelike tendons stood out on the old man’s neck. “I am the best wishpearl diver. My name is Loren, and it is my burden to train these whelps and find out which ones have the lungs to follow in my path. Some of them die.” He shrugged. “Then I have to go down to retrieve the stone weights myself so the next trainees can use them. It’s quite a bother.”
With an outburst of exhaled air, a young diver splashed back to the surface and slammed the stone weight on the boards in front of the old teacher. Loren said, “Obviously that was too easy. Try a heavy one next.” He handed the young diver an impossibly large stone, which instantly dragged him under.
Nicci frowned at the rippling water. “I have had dealings with wishpearl divers before, not all of them positive. I am Nicci.”
Loren snorted. “Everyone in Serrimundi knows who you are, Sorceress. Not all of my dealings with the divers are pleasant either. None of the trainees comes close to my ability yet, so they have no reason to be arrogant.”
“You sound overly proud of your own achievements,” she said.
“Pride is perfectly acceptable when it is based on true accomplishment.”
All five divers pulled themselves to the surface and hung on the end of the dock, looking at their trainer. “We did every task you set for us, Loren,” said a broad-faced young man. He looked up at Nicci with a predatory grin that reminded her of a shark. She gave him a similar grin in return, and he flinched.
“Then I will set you more tasks,” Loren said. “You aren’t exhausted enough.”
Nicci turned to the old trainer. “Why don’t you tell them to work on the sunken wrecks? Have them do something useful for their city.”
One of the young men treading water said, “Wishpearl divers don’t do menial labor!”
Loren’s darkening expression instantly showed that the young man had given the wrong answer. “You will do whatever labor I tell you!” He pointed to his tattooed chest. “You are not wishpearl divers until I say you are. You still have baby lungs! Inhale a bit of humility.”
During the previous Norukai attack on Serrimundi, Nicci had shamed four wishpearl divers into helping her. They had carried shielded bottles of wizard’s fire, which sank several serpent ships. It almost made up for her despicable first encounter with the arrogant men aboard the Wavewalker, when they had poisoned her and tried to rape her.
Loren leaned over the end of the pier and barked down at his students, “Listen to the sorceress. Go help with the work in the harbor. You will serve Serrimundi.”
“Why should we do that?” sneered the arrogant diver. He kept glancing hungrily at Nicci.
She said, “Because you will receive something better than riches. You will prove you are useful.” The trainees scowled at her as if that were the last thing that interested them. “And if the Norukai overwhelm Serrimundi, they will not be inclined to buy wishpearls … if any of you survive.”
“Go, clear the sunken wrecks!” Loren commanded. “And when you are finished, I may let you have women again.”
Treading water, the divers scoffed at their trainer, “We are wishpearl divers! Women throw themselves at us.”
Loren glared back. “Not if I spread the word that you all have the scabby disease.”
Appalled, the divers swam off toward the nearest sunken wreck in a rush to join the dismantling crews.
The brass alarm gong rang out from the bluff above the Sea Mother, cutting through the harbor activity. Even with the pounding of wooden mallets and the clang of armor plate, a hush fell across the waterfront. Nicci stared toward the lookout on the top of the bluff, who was waving his arms. “Is it the Norukai? Do we have to fight again?”
“No, not Norukai.” Loren cocked his head to listen. A percussive beat rang out three times, then paused, then three times more. “Just cargo ships. Three of them.”
“Three? Why would merchants sail together?” Nicci asked. “They are competitors.”
Loren still sat cross-legged on the dock, baking in the sun. “I have not seen it before. This must be something unusual.”
Before long, as the ships sailed through the narrow mouth into the sheltered harbor, Nicci learned that they had come up the Phantom Coast all the way from Renda Bay.
And that they carried Nathan, Bannon, and others from Ildakar.
* * *
Captains Mills, Straker, and Donell anchored the ships near the tall carving of the
Sea Mother and dispatched rowboats to bring representatives to the docks.
Though she covered it well, Nicci felt as astonished as a little girl when she saw the erudite wizard with long white hair aboard the first boat. He wore a ruffled shirt, long cape, and vest. Behind him sat the ginger-haired swordsman Bannon Farmer and the morazeth Lila in her distinctive black leather. Nicci had never expected to see them again. She couldn’t guess how they had come to Serrimundi, on the other side of the Old World from where she had last seen them.
Nicci could see that Nathan had never expected to see her either. As the rowboat pulled up to the dock, Bannon lurched to his feet, rocking the boat and waving vigorously. “Nicci! I can’t believe you’re here.”
Lila grabbed the young man’s wrist to steady him. “I would be angry if you fell overboard and drowned now, boy. I’ve worked too hard to keep you alive.”
When the boat was tied up, Bannon sprang onto the dock, unable to stop himself from giving her an enthusiastic hug. “I missed you, Nicci! We’ve been through so much. I know you were worried about me.”
“Not overmuch.” Despite her words, Nicci was glad to see him, too. Her voice caught in her throat, and then she let herself embrace him, a hug that he gladly returned. “I am pleased that you’re alive, but I’ve been otherwise occupied building defenses, fighting Norukai, even clashing with General Utros.”
She extricated herself from the hug, but had only a moment of relief before Nathan also swept her into an embrace. “So have we!” the wizard said. “Much has happened, and the war is right on our heels! I am so glad we’re reunited. We have a world to save.”
“And with all of us together again, we have a much better chance of doing it!” Bannon said.
Nicci’s stern resolve melted with relief, and she stopped fighting it. “I was indeed concerned about you both. I thought we were separated forever. I was sure you must be dead by now, or at least trapped beneath the shroud of eternity.”
Heart of Black Ice Page 39