TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Sethvir shared that optimism. 'It's the self-blinding belief in the absence of grace that seeds our cold measure of despair.'

  Kharadmon snorted, a self-contained tempest that snapped towards the casement. 'I don't care horse apples what might go wrong, when we've got a dragon at large, flying down the throat of disaster! I am gone,' he declared, 'to reap the tame whirlwind, flip skirts, and prod insolent Koriathain.'

  Early Winter 5671

  Evenstar

  Wind thrummed through three courses of sails and taut rigging, and salt air wore spray like the dazzle of diamonds. The brig Evenstar frisked through the waves of the Cildein. Above, thin clouds streamed like white feathers on a sky of deep blue. For Feylind, no finer pleasure existed than the rushing course carved by a deepwater keel. Her exuberant laughter, then the fond quip from the sailhand who spliced a chafed line by the mizzenmast reached Teive, where he stood taking sights by the stern-rail.

  Smiling, he watched the rejoinder: the flippant swish of his woman's yellow braid, as she tossed her head, so, then gave the sailor a playful cuff and capped it with a pithy remark. The hoots of the men bending on the repaired mainsail blew aft, with the roll, as the brig knifed over a crest.

  Froth flew on the wind. Even the clamp-jawed old quartermaster cracked a grin. Such moments were like perfect jewels, unremarked until they were threatened. Almost, the azure brilliance of day could eclipse anxious thought of the heading just changed at the turn of the watch.

  The Evenstar breasted the whipped seas of winter, cleaving a churned silver wake for the fortified port of Adruin. The run she attempted had no safe precedent. A Sunwheel flag snapped above the streamed pendant proclaiming her Innish registry, and her manifest listed resupply for the army, encamped on the field at Alestron. Teive sucked in a breath, unwilling to examine what awaited beyond the blockade's outer check-point. His cherished captain would not reconsider her course. Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn had enabled her heart's desire. His friendship acknowledged the bold exuberance that took after her fisherman father, who had died young on the raging sea. For the masterful gift that acknowledged her calling, and placed the keys to navigation in her eager hands, Feylind would not stint the loyalty given since childhood back in Merior.

  Neither would Teive relinquish his place as first mate on the deck at her side.

  'This brig is Feylind's bulwark,' he told the staid helmsman, whose frown bespoke shared concern for the rumours flying downcoast. The war host besieging Alestron was said to be fifty thousand strong. 'Whatever comes, we stand behind her. Arithon gave all he had to preserve our independence when we were beset by Koriathain. To do less in return is not in Feylind's nature.' Nor could anyone who loved her diminish that genuine quality.

  The same pranking gusts that gave her delight also hastened the Evenstar's passage to relieve the beset s'Brydion garrison. Tide and wind were in favour. The brig would breach the mouth of the inlet by mid-afternoon, where the bristling bother of war-time inspection would stall them in port through the ebb. Teive's pent frustration almost relished the prospect of baiting the officials to enliven the delay.

  'Ran over us last time like scrabbling cockroaches, poking in crannies and corners.' Since the Evenstar never ran contraband goods, such tireless exploration and knocking taps against bulkheads uncovered no secret hidey-holes. The commerce she carried lay stacked, roped, and netted in plain sight, no boon to the prying of suspicious customs men. They'll leave us gnashing their teeth in frustration.'

  Teive would give anything to watch their squawking peeve, once the brig unveiled her true colours. Down to the racy, sleek line of her keel, she had never been the douce vessel presented by Fiark's documents, and sea-going trade was not a safe calling for the tame of heart, too stuffy to thrive on the intoxicant fire of freedom.

  The mate rubbed his chapped fingers, wicked with anticipation. 'We'll have a night on the town to remember, before we slip our cable and flip off the authorities for gawping post turtles and thieves.'

  The brisk wind held fair throughout the day, then backed as a cloud front loomed eastward. When Evenstar bowled past the headland for landfall, with sailhands aloft to strike topgallants, the turmoil that choked Adruin's harbour exceeded the mate's scathing prediction.

  'Will you look at that mess!' Feylind declared, awed. Come aft from the foredeck, she joined Teive by the helm, a sharp eye on the beacons that range-marked the channel. Since Evenstar had sailed these close waters before, the captain disdained to hire a pilot. Her vexed snort deplored the taints of tarred pilings and the slop-bucket reek blown off the slave-bearing galleys. 'It's a gossiping conclave, just made to foul tempers and cause constipation.'

  No one answered, at once. The quartermaster minded his heading, while the leadsman placed in the martingale stays sounded the mark each half minute. Abreast of the estuary, Evenstar tacked. While the sail crew hauled taut, she passed the outer buoy, stripped of her netting and trimmed up for port. The ring shank and stock lashings were cleared, and the anchor off the bow. While the hands at the cat-head bent on the chain-cable, Teive surveyed the harbour-side, hove into view as the brig gybed and rounded the cliff head. Beneath Admin's blunt battlements, the clutter of masts obscured the roofs of the sea quarter. More crowded at wharf-side: hulls packed and jostled inside of the breakwater close as seined fish. From cod-smacks, to lean war galleys, to merchant vessels built beamy and broad, with chafing gear blackened with mildew, every deck appeared bundled with cargo. Lashed luggage vied with crowding passengers, live-stock, and families tending their squalling young.

  'Dharkaron's backside!' groused the brig's quartermaster, his creased fists turning the spokes without gloves, and the set to his mouth a hazed mastiff's. 'You'll feel your way in under topsails through that?'

  'Surely not' Feylind flipped back her braid, sign enough that she leaped for the challenge. 'Teive?'

  'We're set to let go.' The forward crew at the capstan stayed steady, although the jammed anchorage would have daunted a master galley-man under full banks of oars. A crisp glance at the number and size of the vessels crammed chock-a-block between moorings, with a slacking tide and the wind blowing aft, and the mate gave his considered opinion. "The chain's sound enough. Love, are you feeling cheeky?'

  Feylind whooped. 'Aye! So I am! We'll be coming head-on.' If the brig's copper took damage, they would have ample time, not to mention the use of Cattrick's deft skills, once into safe port at Alestron. 'Just watch that new boy with the check stoppers, and advise the hands. We'll double bitt, and I'll have their bollocks if we're paid cheap!'

  "What, smash against our own flukes and rake down wind on some mad-as-hornets war galley?' The mate snorted. 'Ours would die, first.' He left the capstan, still grinning. His captain's aggressive style would grey the hair of the poor salts caught riding alee. Pitched to enjoy their invective, he bounded up the forward companion-way, ready to relay smart orders.

  'All hands!' called Feylind. 'Bring ship to anchor! Stand by to shorten sail!'

  On deck and aloft, the brig's crew manned braces, hauled taut, and clewed up billowing canvas. Evenstar trampled in, wind and tide running aft, towards the last slice of open water.

  'Let go!' Feylind shouted. The cock-billed anchor splashed, and the clatter of iron through the hawse hammered over the mate's yell to man the port capstan.

  Well-braced as the range on her cable ran out, the Evenstar caught. Water snapped from taut rope as she swung beam to, brought up short with a rattle of spars. The anchor bit deep, and held, and she settled, neatly snugged between moorings.

  Feylind's glance swept the mismatched flotilla poised to depart on the ebb.

  'Want to place bets? Which tubs're most likely to foul their tackle, on tending. We may as well sit on our buttocks and watch.' The curl to her lip promised trouble for the entourage putting out from the customs shack.

  The brig's partridge-neat purser appeared, the ship's papers in hand, and his tailored broadcloth like a preened raven among g
ulls, where the idle hands lined the portside rail to ogle. Their gossips' tongues already chewed over the massive, oared barge that approached, festooned with white bunting. Scrolls of gilt bright-work shone like flash jewellery as her rowers threaded the maze between rocking hulls and striped anchor buoys.

  'Look there!' carped the boatswain. 'Carve me for a mark! That's how the racketing dastards are spending the fees they collect for mooring and wharfage?'

  'That's the excisemen's infernal new toy?' The mate's outrage gained heat. 'Is the harbour-master bonked out of his head? They'll be bleeding us just to meet damages.'

  Sure enough, the ungainly vessel caught an eddy and veered. Oars flashed, to a volley of curses. Crews on two Sunwheel galleys scrambled to sheer their vessels to windward in avoidance. In fact, the tub bearing in was flying Adruin's colours, above the port-master's fluttering orange ensign.

  'Fools,' Teive declared. 'Fur and silk! And those hats! Ath! You'd think all that prinked-out officialdom would tempt the Light's archers to play them for pincushions. Humping mother o'joy!' That, as the craft's starboard oar bank nearly capsized a lighterman. 'Dharkaron's Five Horses and Chariot would be handier in sixteen fathoms than that rig.'

  Then, as the barge slewed again, and sideswiped a hapless courier, Teive's lively glance crossed with Feylind's, whose amusement had vanished like scud over sunlight. 'Midships!' she barked. Tetch out the dock fenders! Lively! Bedamned if I'll sashay into Alestron and face Cattrick with yon lubber's gold leaf scarring our strakes!'

  Since the mate's choice vernacular was fit to scale fish, the customhouse vessel straightened her course and pulled alongside without mishap. Four men in uniformed braid came aboard to assist Adruin's pouch-faced exciseman. That overdressed worthy required a hoist, since his tinselled cloth and ermine were much too fine to risk to salt-water stains. While Teive watched the proceedings with open, round eyes, the ship's bursar presented the Evenstar's lists, and Feylind told over a barrel of lies, her manner as always irascible.

  'Resupply for the war host?' The balding exciseman stroked his jowls with a jewelled glove. He yawned. 'Seems routine. Though the limes from Southshire, now, they should warrant a luxury tax.' He winked, and cleared his throat. 'That's if they weren't bound to support the Light's campaign at Alestron.' His nudge appeared affable. Yet the cold, weighing eye behind his spectacles probed for the salacious temptation: the same fruit would command more than premium price, sold into the winter black market.

  Feylind gave back her narrow-eyed stare. 'You covet those limes, mister?

  Then count them, or confiscate the bothersome lot!' Her shrug implied insult. 'Alliance didn't deal square, understand? Refused to pay near what those beauties are worth! Damned well you know the port towns up and down here are all sweating blood under embargo. Nothing moves, these days. Not unless there's a troop destination and a spotless white bow with a puckering Sunwheel seal on it!'

  'Not like you have problems with smugglers,' the mate sniped. 'Even if tide-currents in these parts weren't Sithaer's gift to a gouging pilot, damned estuary's clapped up tight in blockade as the slew on a westshore virgin.'

  Feylind snapped again, before the official could stiffen his back at Teive's cheek. 'You planning to crawl all over us on forced inspection? Then, fancy man, I suggest you jump to it. I'm wanting my crew out with buckets and holy-stones to scour the decks where you stand!'

  Set on notice for their fine furs and swank finery, the officials demanded due oversight nonetheless. Whistling sailhands enacted Teive's order to unbatten the hatches. Since the hold's contents matched the lading list that changed hands, the brig suffered through the invasion and received the requisite port stamps. Mooring fees paid, she was cleared to weigh anchor on the flood-tide.

  'Don't let your crew linger town-side past midnight,' the exciseman warned as he filed the discharge documents in his case, then tucked his sweetening pay inside his glittering waistcoat. 'Short-handed galleys are likely to press them. The Light's captains'll snatch anyone hale if they're drunk, or up to no good, hanging idle.'

  'No problem.' Teive flashed his most affable smile. 'Any's not rousted from port, then good riddance. Late for the tide, late forever on Evenstar. Laggard hands scrounge themselves a new berth without their quit pay and their sea chest.' The smile turned arch. 'Sir! Such expensive furs, I declare. And those boots! You'll want a hoist in the bosun's chair, surely?'

  The portly peacock was off-loaded, and the barge shoved off to a warbling fanfare of trumpets. Teive stood, bemused, and even the quartermaster chuckled over the erratic departure that bumped from moored vessel, to anchor buoy, to snagged cable, with the oarsmen straining their brass-buttoned doublets in the roil as the ebb gained force in the channel. 'Enough to give honest rowers the gripes. Didn't the pudding-faced chap with the badges look like a fat whore who'd sat hard aground on her tackle? And wasn't yon warning of press-gangs a shocking kindness, since we last ran a cargo through here?'

  'We're feeding the fanatics who're making them rich,' Feylind surmised with dour humour. 'And the bung-hole they're spit-licking for favour'd be Lysaer's. Praise his false Light, such convenience is useful. Before the sun sets, I want a glass in a tavern that hasn't been scoured in brine.'

  * * *

  Night fell, under cloud cold and dense as a blanket. Evenstar's crew set sail under lanterns, pitching before a following wind, with the flood in the estuary pulling five knots, the race under the keel sucking into swift eddies. The gusts breathed of ice, harbinger of a fresh storm inbound off the Cildein.

  'We'll have a fast passage,' Teive remarked from the dark. His arm circled Feylind's cloaked shoulder, where she huddled alee of the wheel mount. 'Too fast, maybe. More than a merchant craft warrants.'

  The rocky channel became a white froth in the rip, with the war-time patrol in tight force, and the light buoys and torch towers marking the shore-line unlit to discourage smuggling. As the fire-pans at Adruin's harbour fell astern, and the crew aloft unbrailed the topsails to gain headway, the black hills of East Halla scalloped the sky's edge, looming on the port side. Inside the narrows, the hazard of the opposite shore lay scarcely two leagues off the starboard rail. The quartermaster obeyed the command to head off, bearing westward down the tight estuary. Evenstar curtseyed, and ran with the elements, laced foam splashed off her bobstays drenching the leadsman who sounded the mark.

  'Not fast enough,' Feylind declared, almost reckless. The hand under her mantle stayed clasped to the chain that hung the signet ring of Rathain: Arithon's token to honour an oath made to comfort her grieving mother. Every inch the brash captain, Feylind flinched from the thought of her own children, safe back at Innish. 'I don't like posturing under a Sunwheel banner, even out of necessity.'

  The shoreside news had unsettled her nerves: a horrific revenge wrought by Parrien's fleet, and an uncanny event no one's words could describe, but which had incited the refugee waves of desertion from both sides of the entrenched campaign. If no one had witnessed the usage of Shadow, the Spinner of Darkness was said to be active, supporting Alestron in arcane liaison. Past question, starvation threatened the citadel. The defenders remained hemmed in without recourse, drawn critically low on supplies.

  Now the hour was ripe to deliver King Eldir's relief. Feylind let go of Prince Arithon's ring and regarded the mate at her side. A solid form, sensibly muffled, his face was obscured by the night. Always, his warmth allowed her to lean on the comfort of his close presence. 'Regrets, Teive?'

  'No.' Evenstar's first officer grinned. 'In fact, never.' Head tipped to mark the hands' progress aloft, he called for the crew at the braces to trim the main-yards and haul taut. 'This brig's our home, love. If we're going to pile her onto a shoal, I'd rather be pushing the odds for a friend. Not smashed to ruin by wretched luck, or a random bout of bad weather.' He added, content, 'Everything won't be stage dressing, besides. I'd have the relieving tackles set on the tiller under conditions tonight.'

  Weather thrummed t
hrough the stays. The fore-sails cracked, shadowed out by the main in the swooping veer of the gusts. Back-up gear would be needed to surmount the strain on the ship's steerage as the bucking tide scoured the channel.

  'Speed us on, then.' Feylind laughed. 'Give me the thrill of the careening run before riding a blizzard at anchor inside this bottle-neck. We'd have three cables out, and be tending for tide, chased by plagues of fiends on a storm charge.'

  * * *

  Inside the s'Brydion stronghold, the state of scant supply became critical. The added provender from Parrien's galley could not alleviate the relentless shortfall. Since the stores drawn to support the refugee exodus, the granary echoed, near empty. While the barrels of ship's biscuit, salt meat, and ground barley were raised by hoist from the Sea Gate, and the flag galley was berthed in the caverns, the duke's council-men convened for consultation. Two of them coughed with green colds. The others twiddled with their useless quill pens, or sat idle-handed, their mood grave, as they heard through Alestron's Lord Seneschal.

  Standing, his robes belted to his gaunt waist, and his whey-face pushed beyond haggard, that staunch worthy had no hopeful news. 'We already face weakness. Famine will claim the first lives before the turn of the year.'

  Outside the closed chamber, with the chilly gloom a pervasive lead overlay, the watch paced the walls above nearly deserted town streets. Gulls soared and called, forlorn flecks of white buffeted by the stiffening breeze. Against the atmosphere of sullen resistance, and a garrison braced to resignation, one restless spirit's pursuit stayed unfazed by desperate hardship.

  Fionn Areth was left with loose time on his hands after Jeynsa's departure. Freed also from the cold eye of Sidir, and excused from troop chores since Talvish's change of allegiance, the Araethurian ducked under Vhandon's oversight in hot pursuit of Parrien's oarsmen. Seafarers talked. Cooped up for months on end with their fellows, they fed like sharks on the blood of past scandal. Given Parrien s'Brydion's outspoken grudge against Rathain's prince, his beached crew might divulge the man's criminal history in full-blown, scurrilous detail.