TWOLAS - 08 - Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  'Daelion's black cock and my arm left for shark bait, here's a right fish's tit!' The observer ran on, thick with dock-side vernacular, in answer to Cattrick's piqued question. 'It's the goatherding doggo come snooping back to get himself fleeced for a gelding!'

  The master shipwright said, whetted by malice, 'He'd best have a sharp reason. I don't toss the prize to a mudclod who's hell-bent on crossing my bow for a second time.'

  Fionn Areth refused to be cowed. As more hecklers clustered, he demanded, 'Does Arithon know you're here scuttling this brig?'

  'Scuttle her? Us?' Another jab from his captor, then more grumbles, as rough fingers twisted his sword-belt and seized his prized weapon as forfeit.

  'Stripling may know how to butcher a billy,' someone sneered to a companion. 'Can't thole a fished mast from a gate-post!'

  'I haven't slaughtered a goat in two years,' Fionn Areth protested. 'Mind that steel carefully. It's made to hack flesh. Should honest ignorance make me an enemy?'

  The offensive grind of the boot-heel let up. Disarmed and permitted to scramble erect, the Araethurian dabbed scuffed blood from his chin. He glared, while the bullying shipwrights weighed over his fate.

  'Aren't proven our friend,' the most baleful declared. 'Don't say you're not poking your hayseedy snoot into what isn't your business.'

  Such guarded industry effected impressive repairs: already, new timber rose from the stump of the mainmast, the splice fastened by a girdling of spars and strapped iron. The supports had been nailed, then woolded in place with overlaid wrappings of hawser. Cattrick's barked order drove three sweating men back to their neglected labour. The boom of their mallets resounded, as wedges were hammered under the rope to tighten the coils.

  As others sauntered back to their work, Fionn Areth sighted another party, mounting a replacement rudder under the sterncounter.

  'Salvage?' he asked, not wholly convinced. 'Then what's in the casks you just dropped off the lift? Don't mistake my inexperience for stupidity. Nobody loads on dry lint and oil for caulking the seams in sprung planking!'

  'What's your stake?' challenged Cattrick, shouldered in to take charge. His jutted jaw and frowning squint forgave nothing of the bungled impression begun at the chandler's. Clad in tar-grimed motley, a spliced cluster of dead-eyes clutched in his massive fist, he declared, 'My take's no murky secret. If Sevrand's watch fails and the Sea Gate goes down, I won't be leaving a seaworthy prize for the enemy. Sweet keel that she is, the Evenstar's going back under sail. One last run to remember her slaughtered crew, my own blood cousin among them.'

  The belated truth dawned. 'Dharkaron Avenge!' Fionn Areth grinned. 'You'll launch her off and crash through the Light's water-borne siege towers as a tinder-box fire-ship?'

  No one answered. The round of furtive glances instead suggested a vengeful conspiracy: neither Duke Bransian nor Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn had issued these craftsmen with orders. The opportune chance, seized while Sevrand's crack sentries were fighting elsewhere, left Fionn Areth caught in predicament. These shipwrights dared not risk that his loose tongue might foil their free-booting sabotage.

  'Why not ask for my help?' the grass-lander suggested with cheerful humour. 'No question, you folk are doing what Teive and Feylind would have wanted.'

  The lantern-jawed joiner who had knocked him down turned in appeal towards his master. 'Could use the hand, truly. Don't need our skilled knowledge to run the waxed string we're threading for the slow-match fuses.'

  Cattrick's bunched scowl darkened. 'He's your trouble, then, and the nails in your coffin should aught go wrong. Mark me! If the blighted yokel yaps off, I'll club him senseless and drown him.'

  Despite the contempt for his back-country origin, a man born and raised on the downs knew how to shoulder hard work. Service with Alestron's veteran troops had thrashed out the habit of petty complaint. Fionn Areth bored holes and fed string with a will through the confines of sail-room and steerage. The craftsmen alongside of him shared his discomforts. They cursed the same banged shins and skinned knees, crawling over the grates in the bilges. Stressed under tight quarters, even their stiff, southcoast attitude must acknowledge his diligence.

  'Why did you come sniping after us, anyhow?' asked the bearded fellow who unreeled the waxed string past the stanchions to the starboard chain-locker. With cable removed, the rust-stained compartment reeked of mildew, damp with chill to numb ungloved fingers.

  Fionn Areth crawled in and accepted the passed ball of twine. Jammed against the gouged wood, working by glimmered light through the hawse-hole, he said cautiously, 'I wanted to consult with Cattrick.'

  'Did you now?' The ruddy caulker beside him squirmed sidewards, busy applying a brush of hot tar to stick the floss batting under the overhead deck-beams. 'Whatever for, butty? He's never passed griff for the asking before.'

  'You wanted to try a new trade besides goat sticking?' gibed the little sail-maker, crammed farthest forward.

  'No.' Fionn Areth disregarded the next round of laughter. He fed the treated string to the man, who stitched through the affixed tinder with a curved needle, grunting to the odd jab from his neighbour. 'I wanted to ask why you lot chose Alestron above the royal shipworks in Tysan.'

  By Parrien's word, Cattrick and his labourers were the only others who had seen paid service under both Lysaer s'Ilessid and Arithon s'Ffalenn. His portion completed, Fionn Areth squeezed out, stretching his kinked back as he finished his contentious point. "The s'Brydion duke had cause to turn, bound under a title that's tied to clan law.'

  The dangling puzzle remained: that Cattrick was a town citizen from Southshire, with family and kin ties in Shand. Since the coastal ports had declared for the Light, his choice to betray the Divine Prince had stranded him as an exile. If the sacrifice was made in Prince Arithon's behalf, there had been no reunion, and no warmth extended in fellowship.

  'You don't have to like a man to respect him,' the caulker remarked, head poked out of the chain-locker. Tar-brush clamped in his teeth, he emerged before granting his dour admission. 'Master o' Shadow worked the crews plenty hard. But his silver was timely. No one could say that his terms weren't fair.'

  'You sweated under his Grace, also?' Fionn Areth inquired, then caught the bundle of batt sacks he was thrown. Choked by puffed dust, he heard his answer through a paroxysm of sneezes.

  'Most of us did, son. Though make no mistake, we don't bow and scrape over titles. Mostly our loyalty's given to Cattrick, and Ath bear witness, the affray back in Tysan left him and us on raw terms with the Koriathain.'

  Since the reference applied to a past oath of debt, discharged against Arithon's interests, Fionn Areth wisely withheld from untoward comment. As the work progressed down the starboard decks, the laid fuses and oiled kindling made ready for reiving, the story was left to surface in unforced conversation: of the underhand plot that had placed the shipyard labourers under arraignment at Riverton, then the brutal ordeal that put them to the question by the order's coercive spellcraft.

  'Sisterhood used their trained seers with spelled crystals to break a man's mind!' the sail-maker said in cold anger.

  The caulker shuddered, and brandished his brush. 'Shrinks my gut to remember. No breathing human should suffer such horror, nor any creature born living in Ath's creation.'

  'Damned witches want the Teir's'Ffalenn taken down as their captive trophy,' the stout sail-maker ran on with fresh venom. 'For spite's sake, I'd thwart them. All here who survived their cruel handling would deny the Prime Matriarch's satisfaction.'

  'Nothing to what the bitches did to your face!' Unbent enough to show brutish sympathy, the caulker clapped Fionn Areth on the shoulder. 'Can't have liked being rigged out as their decoy'

  'Less than you know,' Fionn Areth allowed, beyond words for the depth of his rancour.

  The labour crept forward in the cold dark, by the trembling flame of the lantern. The very fact the activity passed unquestioned bespoke a garrison pressed hard by short numbers. No one me
ntioned the fear that the cavern might be cut off if the battle outside changed to rout. Now and again the force of the assault rumbled echoes beneath the stone vaulting. The massive, grilled gates of the tidal lock shuddered on their tracks, jostled by disturbed eddies of current as siege rams shocked the harbour-side wall. Othertimes, muffled shouts filtered in, or the distanced clangour of weapons, as the enemy galleys thrashed in at full stroke, and ploughed into bitter resistance.

  Fionn Areth blinked sweat from his eyes, galled to have been disbarred from the fight with the veterans in Vhandon's company. Ever and always, his spell-turned appearance placed his character under question. Few trusted his loyalties. No one he befriended asked for his thoughts. However he strove for a life of his own, wherever he wished to grant loyalty, his place was presumed, either hobbled or cast into bitter eclipse by the dictates of the Teir's'Ffalenn.

  Now masked in the shadow of the brig's lower hold, the young grass-lander served unstinting amid the rough company of the shipyard labourers: men well-respected for their independence, who argued with forthright opinions. Already, his stubborn grit earned their praise. His quaint quips prompted chaffing and laughter. When the fire-ship sailed, and he volunteered, he avowed that this time he might win an acceptance on the unbiased strength of his merits.

  His bold moment approached. The topside repairs now finished apace, the pounding of mallets replaced by loose talk. The splashing thump of oar strokes from outside the hull signalled the launch of the long-boats. At Cattrick's brusque order, the unreeled warp lines hissed down. Spliced ends slapped the water, to bumping scrapes as the men in the tenders made fast the tow cables to warp the brig into the lock.

  'Best wrap up here,' urged the sail-maker, while the last batt and wick string was tarred into place, and the joiner collected his tools.

  Fionn Areth followed the crowd at the hatch, using touch where the lantern's gleam faltered. Emerged on the main-deck, he brushed off his grimed clothes. Shoulders squared and chin raised, he lit off to appease Cattrick.

  The irascible master shipwright stood braced at the portside railing, the frizzled hair in a sailhand's queue set apart from the caps of his fellows. The Araethurian's confiscated sword had been shoved through a loop in his apron. His back stayed turned as he shouted praise over the dusty sacks bearing mill stamps, tossed up to the deck by his ankles.

  'Flour?' Fionn Areth said in puzzled inquiry.

  'Aye, lad.' The sail-maker flashed a blood-letting grin. 'Loft that stuff into the air down below, you'll witness one baleful explosion.'

  'Not our hold, peggy,' a bystander decried. 'We're sending the long-boats with picked crews, ahead. They'll scull in and grapple those Sunwheel galleys, then waft flour in pokes through the oar-ports. While everyone's folded double and coughing, our Evenstar slips in behind. She'll serve up our prearranged packet o' hell, and torch off Dharkaron's own vengeance.'

  'I want to go with them,' Fionn Areth announced, unable to check-rein his eagerness. 'Let me pull an oar. Or at the least, bide on Evenstar's hulk with a slow match.'

  Talk froze. Through the choked silence, Cattrick spun from the rail to dress down the impertinence. 'Why?' A step forward brought his narrowed stare closer. 'Why?' The stripped demand blistered. 'You've shared our company for less than one hour! What did you think? That the counterfeit mug of a prince gives you the born right to collaborate?'

  Fionn Areth burned scarlet. 'No! Like you and yours, I'm not sworn to Rathain, or reduced to a Koriani pawn dropped into the Teir's'Ffalenn's pocket!'

  Cattrick gave back his least civil smile. 'I'd say not,' he agreed.

  No warning was given, nor any kindly support from the craftsmen clustered behind. Fionn Areth never saw whose hand turned against him. He felt only the blow that hammered his nape, and dropped him straight down into darkness.

  * * *

  Awareness returned to a shattering headache and the misery of numbed extremities. Fionn Areth groaned. His shuddering breath brought the smell of damp wood, and his hearing, the slosh of salt water. Queasy with dizziness, and hounded by pain, he found that Cattrick's wrangling scoundrels had dumped him in the bilge of a long-boat. Spinning vision showed him that the craft was moored to a piling by the dry dock. His wrists were bound, hands in front of him. Another rope lashed his ankles. The deserted quiet meant the Evenstar had already embarked.

  'Motherless sons of a goat-humping dog!' Fionn Areth shivered, furious. If he laid eyes on the shipwrights again, he would carve that vile ancestry into their livers. But before retribution, he had to win free. His untoward bout of unconsciousness left him half-stunned by the cold.

  Most of the lamps he remembered were gone. By the fluttering light that remained, he discovered his long sword, jutted over the stern seat. The hilt was placed within easy reach, a reprieve that earned no forgiveness. Fionn Areth muttered another ripe curse, and awkwardly manoeuvred himself upright. As he suspected, the brig's berth was empty, the weir gates cranked shut and locked since the vessel's stealthy departure.

  Outraged as he wrestled to unsheathe his steel, Fionn Areth made out smatterings of muffled talk beyond the strapped grille and planking. His savage ignominy galled all the worse for the fact that some loudmouth still cracked jokes at his absent expense. 'Dharkaron spear those two-faced rats for the maggots!'

  Cattrick's covert foray had scarcely been launched: the primed hull was settled inside of the closed lock, forced to wait while the sluices let down the water. The sea-level egress, which accessed the harbour, had yet to draw clear of immersion.

  The Araethurian braced his blade and hacked rope with fever-pitched fury. Head down and back turned, he encountered changed fortune: the sturdy curve of the long-boat's thwart shielded him. He was not battered flat as a boom like trapped thunder blasted a breach through the weir gates behind him.

  Early Winter 5671

  Breach

  Entrained on the warfront from her distanced vantage, Prime Selidie ends her incantation, then bids Lirenda to cut the tie of compulsion forced onto a dying shipwright; while before her, a ship's ceremonial effigy burns, incited to premature explosion, she praises her Senior Circle: 'Out of set-back, we triumph! Alestron's sea-side defences are weakened for the Alliance attackers to seize fatal access . . .'

  Still thwarted by the ornery watch at the lift, the Mad Prophet cries warning, overcome as Seer 's vision shows the lower lock gateway torched into ruinous flame; the disaster he fears does not stem from Fionn Areth, but springs instead from a latent imprint in crystal, held over a shipwright since Riverton: a discarded pawn and an innocent man, until passage outside the Paravian defences left him prey to the wiles of Koriathain . . .

  Shocked by the unforeseen blast that demolishes the shipwork's lower weir gate, Vhandon and Talvish take pause on the wharf-side battlement, their search for Fionn Areth lapsed in the face of staring disaster: below their snatched vantage, white water thrashes out through the breached cut, while enemy war galleys equipped with siege platforms ram upstream for aggressive assault. . .

  Early Winter 5671

  XIV. Sortie

  The concussive force of the blast lurched the long-boat, and tossed Fionn Areth onto his side. Half-trussed and still helpless, he cringed under the pelt of exploded debris. Burst iron and flaming splinters raked overhead and splashed, hissing, extinguished to steam. Strong current spun the craft's keel as the gaping hole in the lock's upper gate flooded water in a violent gush from the cavern. His danger turned urgent. The boat where he languished had ferried the flour: for ease of unloading, her painter had been snubbed tight to the dockside. As the reservoir dropped, the shortened line would upend the bow and dangle the boat from the mooring cleat. Fionn Areth would be spilled from the stern. Unable to swim, or cut his bonds loose, he would drown in the fierce eddy sucked out through the weir.

  Frantic fear clutched him, that he would die here, victim of the master shipwright's betrayal.

  The canting floor-boards gave him no purchase. To
ppled over again, he sprawled, face-down on bruised wrists. Worse, the sword that might free his tied limbs had tumbled under the stern seat.

  'Damn your name, Cattrick!' he gasped through his teeth.

  'Aren't you short-sightedly quick to lay blame?' an irascible voice remarked from the catwalk above. The long-boat rocked sharply. The treacherous craftsman himself leaped aboard, returned like the fiend to bedevil him. Cattrick paused to wedge an oil cask in the prow, then drew his rigger's knife and cut the painter away from the bollard.

  Fionn Areth recoiled as the same blade licked towards him. Convinced a rife traitor had returned to finish him, he shouted. But the sharp steel that flashed down only nipped the frayed cords at his ankles and wrists.

  'Move!' Cattrick snapped. 'Shift your useless arse off those oars!' Hurled onto the bench seat as the drifting craft slewed, snatched by the rough ebb, he unshipped the looms. Shot the shafts through the rowlocks and dug a hard stroke against the roiling water.

  The jerk overset the goatherd again. Cracked into the thwart, he was reviled by the southcoaster's curses, then blistered for clumsiness.

  'Right yourself, ninny, and unsnag that sword!' Cattrick snarled, beset. The vicious current slapped waves at the bow, for each battled surge of seized headway. 'By Dharkaron's Black Spear, you'd best know your business at arms! I've no stomach for hauling deadweight.'

  Already pummelled to bleeding indignity, Fionn Areth snatched for his fallen weapon. Hilt clenched in hand, he whipped the blade free and turned on the rogue who tormented him. 'Give me one reason to keep you alive! That was a cowardly underhand blow you have dealt the s'Brydion garrison!'

  'Put up that steel, you blow-hard ram! I have not left the duke's service.' Gashed on his brow where a billet had grazed him, Cattrick showed teeth as he wrestled the oars by main strength. 'Rave on as you like! Just forget about killing. If my stroke lags for an instant, we're dead, threshed to rags in the weir gate.'