“Good idea.”
Dorrin finds Tyrel again, and commandeers his apprentices. “We need all of these pieces from the wagon on the deck above the engine.”
“Sure as you’re not going to tear it apart?”
Dorrin sighs. “We’ll see about the condenser. But the bypass tubing and valve and the clutch replacements have to be done. We won’t clear the harbor otherwise.” He nods at Yarrl. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
“I’ll take care of it,” the older smith says.
Dorrin studies the half-finished stalls amidships, then looks at Pergun, who is carrying a barrel of grain from the shed. “Can you get those finished by midafternoon? We don’t have much time?”
Pergun scratches his head. “I can get ‘em usable-not finished good.”
“Do what you can, and load the horses. Probably blindfold them. Leave one stall for Meriwhen. The Whites are at the edge of the upper valley on the road from Kleth.” Dorrin rubs his forehead. “Tyrel’s people are going to load most everything except for a few smithing tools.”
“More of your wizardry?”
“I have a score or two to settle, and I think I know how.”
“I don’t like it when you look like that, master Dorrin.” Pergun shivers.
Dorrin frowns. How does he look when he thinks about applying his efforts to the White Wizard-is his name Jeslek?- who tortured Liedral.
He walks back across the plank and down to the shipwright’s shed, to the corner where the tub and the barrels are. There, he begins to measure. He would prefer to add water and make a cake he could grind, but he doubts that he has the time to dry the mixture. All he can do is ensure that the powders are well mixed before he pours them into his crude rocket shells and fuses them. He fills all three shells, ignoring the figure who stands in the shadows while he finishes.
“Going to be a hero, like Reisa?” asks Yarrl once Dorrin has finished.
“No. I am going out to do a job, hopefully as quietly and silently as possible.”
“That’s better. Not much, but better. Need help?”
“I need it, but I think it will work better if I do it alone. I couldn’t shield anyone else.” He slips the small rockets into one set of saddlebags and the compact launcher into the other. “How did you do on the clutch?”
“Think it’s right. Replacing the tubing and the condenser was easy.”
Dorrin shakes his head. Things would have been so much easier had he asked Yarrl for help.
“You’ll learn,” says Yarrl. “Take a look.”
Dorrin walks back across the shipwright’s yard and across the plank, skirting around Liedral and Petra, who are wrestling bags of herbs and other goods onto the ship. When he gets to the engine, he finds the work accomplished perhaps better than he could have.
“I should have let you do it from the beginning.” Dorrin’s tone is rueful.
“I wouldn’t have thought it up,” Yarrl admits. “Once you see it, it ought to work, but…” He shrugs.
Dorrin looks at the late midmorning sun. “Darkness! I need to be going.”
“Good luck.”
The smith and sometime engineer and infrequent healer waits until the plank is clear before walking back into the shed to find Meriwhen.
Is what he plans wise? Hardly. Does he have a chance of success? A slim one. Does he have any choice? Not after what Brede and Kadara and Liedral have given.
He walks Meriwhen outside, tying the mare to a thin pole by the bollard closest to the barricade. Then he waits until Liedral nears the wagon and steps forward.
Liedral’s eyes take in the saddled mare, the staff, and her shoulders slump. “What can you do now? Haven’t you given enough? Do you want to be blind the rest of your life, like Creslin?”
He puts his arms around her. “I won’t be blind if this works, not for long, anyway.”
“No, you’ll be dead.” Liedral steps back, not bothering to wipe the tears from her cheeks.
“I owe too many people.” He gestures toward the Black Diamond. “Too many lives paid for her.”
“Who else-?”
His fingers touch her lips. “Yarrl can duplicate what I’ve done, if need be. I have to pay my debts.”
“Men. You’ll pay your debts and leave me alone.”
Now Dorrin’s shoulders are the ones that slump. “I have to do this.”
“I know.” Her lips brush his cheek. “I don’t have to like it.”
They embrace again, but separate. Almost on cue, Tyrel and Yarrl appear.
“If I don’t make it back before the Whites do, I won’t. Take the ship to Recluce, and try to get them to accept it. If they won’t, I’d suggest Hamor.”
“That be a demonish long trip without you, ser,” observes Tyrel.
“I’ll try to make it.”
“Don’t try. Just take care of your job. We’ll wait.” Yarrl’s voice is gruff.
The three swing back the planks as Dorrin rides southward through the echoing empty streets once more. He hears nothing in either upper or lower Diev, although lines of smoke have appeared from a few chimneys, signifying that at least some hardy souls have arisen and are cooking-or something.
When he nears the bridge, he again struggles with the bending of the light around both Meriwhen and himself, but the patterns weave together, and, in time, he rides invisible in the early summer air that wafts past him, bearing faint hints of burning from the south.
He cannot see, not in any conventional sense, but he can sense the world around him, from the muted blackness of the objects in his saddlebags to the solidity of his staff. Ahead he can sense the white fog that seeps over the hills to the southeast.
The peasants or displaced farmers or herders who disputed their passage have gone on from the bridge, and Dorrin rides across as quietly as possible, even though he knows Meriwhen’s hoofs click on the stones. No one appears, and he continues onward, up past Honsard’s, past his own dwelling, until he can sense the rolling mist of white. He pauses in a shallow depression between two hills.
Three men, one stumbling, with blood splashed across his face, the other two running downhill toward the hill Dorrin has just descended, pass him as he nears the unseen heat of fire and chaos. But nothing pursues them.
For the moment, as he hoped and sensed, the White horde has paused for a mid-day break. Not much more than a short and a long hill separate him from the soldiers and the white-bannered tent on the crest.
In the depression between hills before him, there are several buildings, crushed meadows, and no people. There he dismounts and ties Meriwhen to a shrub behind an empty shed on the deserted herder’s holding. The herders who lived in the hut have since left, for one reason or another, although the smell of sheep lingers.
Dorrin takes a deep breath, wondering again what he has to prove, why he could not simply board the Diamond and leave.
His mouth frames a smile that neither his eyes nor thoughts reflect as he recalls Kadara’s words. “You aren’t a coward, Dorrin. You just never found anything worth fighting for. Not me, not Liedral, not Recluce…”
So what is he fighting for? Recluce will not like his machines any more than the White Wizards will.
His hands tighten around the simple tube mounted on the hand grip, around the black iron shell packed with fireworks powder. He places another shell in his pouch and closes the saddlebag. He leaves his staff in the lanceholder, and begins the climb up the first hill. He is still breathing easily after descending beside the road and climbing the second hill. He tries to keep his steps quiet as his feet carry him sideways along the side of the hill and through the vanguard of the White forces. Still cloaked in bended light, unseen, he steps around soldiers, many of whom, could he but see their eyes, would look blankly into the distance that is chaos, even as they would lift their swords to remove his head from the body beneath.
Click… click…
He pauses as he senses the concentration of chaos no more than a dozen rods b
efore him on the hilltop. He steps forward, and hearing the sounds of his boots upon the hard-packed mud and gravel, edges onto the trampled grass and weeds beside the road, still moving forward until he pauses outside the light fabric of the single tent pitched amid the White forces. He listens, standing almost within an arm’s length of the White command…
“… get ready to head out… not too far until we reach that homestead. Don’t fire it. The High Wizard wants to study it first-the one with the brush barricade around it and the charred cottage in front.”
Dorrin smiles at the thought of the White soldiers so highly valuing his establishment. After a few moments, his senses point him toward the swirl of white mounting nearly to the clouds that must be the wizard who embodies chaos incarnate. While there are other swirls of white, they are dwarfed by the sullen red-tinged whiteness that is Jeslek.
Slowly, he edges into the high-ceilinged tent, still amazed that he has gotten so close.
“… look over there…”
“… concealment… !”
Dorrin drops the shield and points his device at the white-haired man who jabs a finger in his direction.
WHHHsssttt! The firebolt singes Dorrin’s ear as he releases the striker, and the black steel rocket ignites.
Crack… thump… whummmmmmPPPPTTTTTTT…
EEEEEEEElIIIIIIIüü! As the black order-forged steel of the rocket shell and the red-tinged white meet, an incandescence sears through the tent, rending the walls and scattering the wizards and soldiers around the target like so many children’s toys swept aside by a householder’s broom.
Thurrrrrummmmmmmmmm… thuruummmmm…
Dorrin staggers against a tent pole, momentarily forgotten as the winds buffet the tent, and the thunderclaps shake the hillside.
“Jeslek! Jeslek!”
With the methodical nature he has cultivated, Dorrin forces himself to reknit his cloak of bended light even as he crawls across the fallen tent wall and through the lashing hail and rain that has appeared nearly instantaneously with the destruction of the white vortex of force that has to have been the master chaos wizard.
The sometime smith, sometime healer continues to crawl through the lashing winds, ice, and water for a time. Then, he stands and staggers downhill toward the west, dropping the illusion that has become too hard to maintain as he weaves toward the shed where he hopes Meriwhen waits. Inside, he is as cold as the occasional ice that pelts him, for he has no illusions about what he has done. He has built a tool of destruction, unloosed it from hiding, and exterminated a pest. And he has done so out of personal revenge, with no real hope of saving Spidlar or Diev.
He shakes his head as he unties the black and tries to mount, failing the first time because his legs are shaking. He tries again, using the strength in his arms to pull himself up. His head throbs, and occasional arrows of pain lash his skull.
No glorious battles… no honor in besting a skilled foe. No, Dorrin knows he is no warrior, no hero. He is a coward who has built a tool for killing at a distance, even if the killing were the most necessary thing of all.
With a sigh that is almost a shudder, he turns Meriwhen around on the road, urging her onward, knowing that the White soldiers will still overrun Diev, that all of Candar east of the Westhorns will belong to Fairhaven.
At the bridge where they had met the armed peasants, he pauses, noting absently that there is no sign of them, nor of anyone else. Should he toss the black iron tube into the swirling water that rises under the sheets of rain pouring from the all - too - suddenly dark gray skies? He shakes his head. More order-knit destruction may yet be necessary.
Once he crosses the bridge the rain falls away, as if it were confined to the area around the White horde, and the smell of burning is stronger, as if other fires have been lit.
They have. The Tankard is in flames. On the street dance what appear to be the same folk who had menaced him at the bridge. A row of barrels sits on the stones, and on the first sits a man with an arm bound in rags. Others use the Tankard’s mugs and dip beer from the barrels, their tops rudely smashed open. Dorrin guides Meriwhen down another street.
“… I saw him! The Black wizard…”
Dorrin urges Meriwhen into a trot, but no one follows, and he slows to a walk, casting his senses out as he nears the piers. But the piers remain empty, desolate. He looks seaward, seeing two ships flying white, circling beyond the breakwater-waiting.
The road before Tyrel’s is not empty. Half a hundred people stand around the burning shed.
“… frigging bastards…”
“Find the arrows…”
“Get a boat! We’ll make them take us!”
Dorrin recasts his cloak of light and walks Meriwhen down an alley he hopes leads to the other end of the channel. At the end of the alley, he turns back toward the water, where, for a, moment, he releases his concealment.
The Black Diamond floats perhaps two rods off the pier.
A half-dozen Spidlarian soldiers stand on the main deck of the Diamond. Another dozen seem trapped between the mob and the water.
Dorrin sees Kadara, hair mussed, face bruised, ropes cruelly wound around her splinted and shattered arm. Rylla carries Frisa, and the child cries. He continues to look for silky short brown hair and broad shoulders.
On the poop four others stand side to side-blades out- Yarrl, Reisa, Petra, and Liedral. Below them stand the soldiers. From what Dorrin can tell, Tyrel, or someone, has closed the hatch to the engine. A faint wisp of steam rises from the stack.
Dorrin takes a deep breath and studies the positions of the soldiers. An officer is arguing with Yarrl.
“Get this thing going…”
“I don’t know how. Only Master Dorrin knows how…” Yarrl keeps looking toward the shore.
Dorrin sighs, then urges Meriwhen forward at a gallop. They hit the water with a surge, and Dorrin uses every bit of effort to wrap the light around himself, even as Meriwhen swims toward the ship.
“… just a frigging horse…”
“… even it doesn’t want to be left to the Whites…”
Dorrin’s eyes burn as he stands in the stirrups and, one-handed, draws himself onto the narrow brace for the rudder. His desperate leap momentarily pushes Meriwhen deeper into the water. He clutches his staff with the other hand and struggles upward until he can lurch over the railing.
His eyes continue to burn as he listens to Meriwhen churn aimlessly around the stern, but he forces himself onward, still shielded, still blind, until he is on the main deck.
He steps behind the rearmost soldier and lifts the staff. His staff lifts and falls, as does the soldier-as does Dorrin’s cloaking from sight. Two soldiers whirl, and Dorrin strikes, once… twice.
The second time, he misses. The soldier does not, and a pain like white fire rips across his arm.
The soldier does not lift his sword again, cleft as he is almost in two by Yard’s blade.
Seven bodies lie on the deck, one of them Pergun’s. Dorrin clutches his arm, realizing that blood is also dripping into his eyes.
Rylla rips away his shirt, and begins to sprinkle powdered astra into the slash. “Sit down!” she snaps.
“Got to get clear.”
“They can handle that.”
As the Black Diamond bobs on the choppy water, the soldiers on the pier, dancing back from the mob, begin to jump into the channel.
“Take us… we’ll pay you…”
“… anything…”
Yarrl has persuaded Tyrel to open the engine space hatch, and the two men talk as Rylla continues to bind Dorrin’s arm. Yarrl steps down, and Tyrel hurries aft to the helm.
Dorrin grins in relief as he hears the fwwuuuphhh…fwuppp… of the engine as it begins to turn over. He senses the faint vibration of the black iron rods as they work.
Fwwwuuuppphhh… fwupp… fwuppp… The engine and the flywheel pick up more speed, settling into an even smoother rhythm than on the trials.
“You be taking
it easy…” warns Rylla, as Dorrin totters toward the engine space. He stands in the hatchway and looks down at Yarrl.
“We were all hoping you’d make it.” Yarrl continues to shovel coal into the firebox.
“We need the screw turning before we ground.”
“You take… care… of that…” puffs Yarrl.
Dorrin slowly eases the clutch into place, then lets out his breath as the piston and flywheel continue to pick up speed. As the Black Diamond eases seaward, he continues to watch until the pressure is well above the minimum operating level.
Then he wipes his forehead and struggles back on deck. Pergun lies on the deck, but on his back, and he breathes shallowly. Rylla looks up at Dorrin helplessly. So does Merga.
Dorrin takes another deep breath, then kneels, hands gently touching the forehead, reaching out with all the skill and strength he has left, chasing the encroaching whiteness away, pushing back the influx of chaos. But the deck swims before him, the rough planks rising against his chin, and he falls into the darkness.
CLV
THE RED-HAIRED wizard finishes binding her arm, then stoops and lifts the gold amulet from the pile of dust and clothes on the trampled and burned grass. Stepping around the body of a White guard, she dangles it toward the bearded White Wizard with the gash across his forehead.
“Would you like it, Fydel?”
“Darkness, no! Give it to Sterol.”
She turns to Cerryl. “Would you-”
“It’s past time for games, Anya. Sterol should have the amulet returned to him. Especially now.”
“Don’t tell me that you two brave and strong White brethren are afraid of a poor black smith and healer who must stoop to stealth and murder?”
Fydel looks away.
Cerryl does not, instead meeting Anya’s eyes. “He was rather effective, wouldn’t you say?” His arm takes in the pile of dust that had been Jeslek, the two bodies, and the missing side of the tent ringed with charred patches. “There were three of them-just three, according to Jeslek. Between them, they’ve destroyed more than half our forces, a half-dozen of the White brethren, and the High Wizard. Just what would happen if they had decided to send a few more-perhaps older and more experienced order-masters and Black warriors?” Cerryl’s smile is crooked. “For such reasons, I would prefer to defer to one of great experience, such as Sterol.”
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