by Janny Wurts
Beyond range of the trebuchets, the deck-officer ordered the lamps kindled. Sailhands at work on the mangled rigging began whistling as the oar-stroke was relaxed, then suspended for the blockade challenge. Throughout the parade review for security, Rathain's delegation stayed beneath notice, too obviously busy soothing the wretch with the fracture, and ministering to the line-up of others who sustained gashes and splinters. In deference to the critically wounded, Admin's galley was passed in brisk order. She rowed past the gutted keeps at the harbour mouth, and changed course for a shore-line entrenched with the Alliance war camp.
'More lives stand in jeopardy than you can possibly imagine,' Dakar snapped to Elaira, still flushed to sweat from restraint of the seaman just strapped into splints.
The enchantress returned a nettled glance. 'I prefer freezing chill and overzealous protection to the certainty of a roasting. You aren't busy enough? We've run short of blankets. Glendien needs you to borrow spare cloaks from the rank-and-file men who are sheltered below decks.'
She turned her back, forced the semblance of calm as she addressed the badgering pressure of too many helpers. Since her talent tended Alliance men, now, every movement she made tripped over the hindrance, as soldiers with wounded comrades aboard crowded in to assist. She put them to work. Some fetched and carried, while others rigged makeshift sailcloth or strung hammocks to shelter the injured against the rough crossing. If Glendien was just as raggedly hand-tied attending the stricken, Talvish had contrived to position his body to shield his unconscious liege from the spray off the foredeck. The covert restraint galled him, that his masquerade in a Sunwheel surcoat permitted no more without risk of undue attention.
That misery lasted, until Elaira made rounds to ascertain the prince's stitched loin had withstood the trauma of loading. 'You! Blond chap with the sword wounds! I don't care blazes where you've placed your loyalty. Your sound arm is needed. Steady that grandfather's hammock, forthwith. The gut wound he's suffered fares ill, set to swinging. I won't lose a life to your lazy comfort. Keep him under your charge till he's brought to safe landfall, or believe this, you'll answer to me!'
Arithon's exposure was not the sole pitfall to strain her inadequate resource: Parrien s'Brydion also languished among her prostrate wounded. The trump blow dealt by Dakar would not leave him harmless. Already his groggy awareness resurged in the sting of the freshening air. Elaira sensed his prideful rage at her back, as, stripped naked in blankets, he found himself hog-tied and bandaged on a galley flying the hated flag of Adruin. His curdling howl did little good. The poultice that packed his bludgeoned nape also bound his thick jawbone and gagged him.
'You are hurting, dear man?' Elaira knelt at his shoulder, called for a candle-lamp, and flared the light in his face. His murderous glower left her unfazed through a pitiless examination. 'Awake, and past fortunate to be so,' she murmured. 'Head trauma is unpredictably dangerous!'
The affront she tossed back into Parrien's teeth stayed whetted beneath smiling honey. 'Your life is thus far preserved, an astounding grace brought by unbiased compassion. You are nicely concussed, which makes it unsafe to dose you on soporifics. Therefore, your sad suffering must be endured. Do I have to warn? The unwise move on your part could prove fatal, with my sympathy stretched beyond snapping. Act the fool, and your get will be raised by your widow, for I will not stir to save you.'
Since his clenched fists were chilled, she called for a hammock and a dry cloak. Then she took further pains to steer Glendien clear, and set Dakar to post sharp watch over him.
In due time, the galley approached the far shore. The slap of the waves slackened as she neared the cove landing, and the glimmer of torch-light unveiled the teeming sprawl of the war camp. Raucous noise as the off-watch companies let off steam rebounded across the black water, wind-snatched talk cut by jubilant shouts, celebrating the day's massive victory. Beyond the relief ranks, packed in wait on the strand for their turn to press the engagement, the cookfires warmed rowdy singers. Their infectious high spirits spurred shipboard morale. Sternwards, a sergeant was cracking a joke, while the deck-hands itched to lay hands on their beer, and romp with nubile harlots.
'Beggin' yer pardon, sweet,' one ventured to Glendien with a lusty grin. "There's whores like their play hot and rough, and some strumpets too bawdy to settle for a dullard husband.'
'Has your itching male pucker replaced your runt brain?' the clanswoman retorted, en route to empty a slop bucket. 'Yap such to your mother, she'd flay your rank tongue. That's if you're not a pimp's rut yourself, bred for naught but a swaggering jackal.'
To whoops from his fellows, the seaman laughed back. 'Virgin witch!' he sniped, flagrantly ripe for a dousing. 'What would you know of the wicked delights found in an evening's dalliance?'
'Enough to hobble your play in the sheets,' Elaira cut in from the sidelines. Arrived from the shadows, just in time, she forestalled her posed novice's folly.
The men scattered to their posts, while Glendien paused at the leeward rail: not to break, despite her pale face, and the grief that fought welling tears. 'I can handle them.'
'You can't,' contradicted Elaira. 'But where there's no choice, we'll bear up. Take a minute. We shall need iron nerves for the hazards on landing.'
The weariness also sucked through her in waves, anxiety chafed by the effusive crew, and the relapses caused by the open-air passage. She also snatched refuge, aching and cold; beyond drained from the wearing hours of subterfuge, and sharp-focused use of strong magecraft. No sigils had buttressed her healing, throughout. Only the free use of crystal, as taught by Ath's adepts.
'You're unwell,' remarked Glendien. 'Worn thin and pressed near to overextension.'
'I will manage,' Elaira insisted, a ruefully honest glance darted sidewards.
'You couldn't.' The clanswoman flashed a bitter-sweet grin. 'But since when does helplessness stop any woman whose beloved requires protection?'
The moment was shattered by a brisk hail from the sloop, scudding in under sail from the shore-line. Shouted orders disrupted the inbound routine for a conference with the galley's captain. While the drum changed beat to backwater the oars, the ship's mate sprang to brighten the forward candle-lamp. His poised light unveiled the streaming pennant that declared the approach of a Light-sanctioned courier.
'Dharkaron Avenger show mercy to idiots,' the Mad Prophet huffed, arrived at Elaira's right side. 'Here's the prickling gamut, no question.'
For the array of the banners shouted ill luck, if not an outright disaster. The top-ranking officer of the Alliance had requisitioned this craft from her out-bound run down the strait. Commandeered here by that supreme authority, the impasse would place their tissue-thin ploy under gruelling examination.
'Rinse that bucket clean,' Elaira barked to move Glendien. 'Stow it in my locked remedy trunk, now, though you'll have to displace the fellow with the strapped forearm who's parked on top!'
Dakar spoke, near as swiftly. 'You'll be challenged by the Lord Commander at Arms, Sulfin Evend -'
But Elaira cut off the untoward speech as she glanced in affront towards the on-coming vessel. 'Only a heartless brute and a fool would obstruct my order's mission to succour the wounded.'
'No doubt you'll endure nothing worse than formalities,' declared the breathless fore-deck officer from Adruin. He had come up behind to oversee crew, sent pounding to run out the anchor. Dakar was forced silent. While the captain's bawled orders had the oar banks run in, and the middle deck men deployed fenders, the sloop luffed her sails. Agleam with lamps, she grappled for boarding.
'The man will be civil, whoever he is,' Elaira cracked, annoyed, then shoved off with straight back to tackle the unnerving interview.
Dakar pursued. Staggered over the wallowing deck, he let his inept footing fetch him into the enchantress's elbow. Entangled in skirts, through effusive apologies, he demolished her resolute platitudes. 'The creature's outbred clan, of s'Gannley descent, a caithdein's direct line that sees ev
erything!'
'Your flapped nerves are a bother!' Elaira lashed back. In feigned fury to distance the curious, she added, 'By all means, make yourself scarce if you're cowed. Gold badges, or not, the man shouldn't be hard to intimidate.'
Yet the frantic, raced pulse in her wrist told the truth, as Dakar's crushing grasp let her go. She did know, altogether too well, whom they faced in their effort to spirit off Arithon: the errant son of Hanshire's conniving mayor was most expertly versed, and unafraid of the Koriathain.
Amid shaken confidence, the stopped galley was seized by two dozen Sunwheel guardsmen. They were of first-rate caliber. Deployed on the main-deck, they already suspected her presence: the ordered detainment of the hospice wounded occurred with alarming speed. The uninvolved soldiers and onlooking deck crew were crowded well back from that firmly drawn line. More, the indignant complaint of Adruin's sea-captain met drawn steel, a warning to cede his ship's rights and stand down before Sunwheel priority.
'We're here on account of your unsanctioned passengers, brought under the auspices of the Koriathain,' the invading sergeant at arms told the disgruntled galley-men. 'Hold your tongues and stay quiet! The sooner our Lord Commander is satisfied, the earlier your scheduled course resumes without fuss and delay'
While the overshadowing presence of Lysaer's first war officer mounted the side battens behind, Elaira seized her last moment to take stock of the fugitives inside her quarantined company. Glendien, ensconced with the hurt children in plausibly protective dismay; she had dispatched the bucket, since Talvish was also safely displaced from his post at Prince Arithon's side. His blond head just showed, where he crouched tucked in blankets, in shadow behind the remedy chest. Dakar also bowed to the sensible course, his technique used before to deflect Lysaer's arcane examiners. His seer's aura drawn down to an unremarkable muddle, he hunched at the side-lines, holding the hand of a delirious matron who suffered disfiguring burns.
The hammock that held Arithon swayed unattended. Surely beneath notice: Davien's disguise rendered him as a feeble old man, unobtrusive amid the savagely mauled and the fevered who languished, unconscious. Yet the desperate wild card lurked alongside, still triced up in wound linen and rage: Parrien s'Brydion watched with scorching grey eyes, when the Light's Lord Commander strode under the candle-lamp on the deck.
Apparently warned that no purple robe awaited his scouring survey, Sulfin Evend demanded, 'Let the Koriani sister among you stand forward!'
His predatory distrust strangled thought. Elaira knew not to try bluster as she rallied her poise and stepped towards him. The instant impression screamed self-assured power: from compact strength in full arms, which wore trappings of rank as inconsequential, to the unrelaxed hands, no stranger to steel, and campaign scars, unabashed in plain sight. Then surface appearances were swept aside by the glittering hatred that lurked in his tiercel's eyes, raking her.
'What do you fear?' she asked, soft as moonlight, and backed by a healer's conviction.
His weathered skin drained, a shock that did nothing to blunt his ferocity. 'You were not invited!' Dark hair and hard stance, he still carried the stamp of his privileged origins. 'Everywhere your accursed order appears, they bring the scourge of their hidden purposes.'
'I have known that unpleasantness,' Elaira agreed. Work-worn, too tired, she sensed his sharp talent beating at her innate balance. 'I am not in regalia, or wearing white ribbons of rank. As you seem familiar with some of our ways, the lack of attire should tell you my practice is not attached to a sisterhouse.'
He was not without courtesy. A stiff word to his sergeant fetched a chair from the stern cabin, placed underneath the hung lamp. She accepted the grace. Chapped hands folded, she observed, while Sulfin Evend contained his sultry impatience before her. Such unease, wrapped in stillness, was too well controlled. The night breeze and the riffling flame rebounded off his spotless accoutrements. Confrontational, silent, he allowed her to read him, the cynical slant to his glance quite aware that her talent would plumb his aura. The exposure amused him. While this ceded the truth, that he did in fact carry an oath-bound tie to the Fellowship, the gift was not free. His rapacious alertness did not miss, in turn, that the groans of her wounded spurred her own vulnerability.
Nonetheless, she had enough brazen nerve not to volunteer information.
The order's wandering independents were a tough breed. They did not visit Hanshire. If he asked, she would cite him the reason.
But instead, Sulfin Evend waved his men back. His inquiry claimed the semblance of privacy, as much to limit the risk she posed him, through bloodletting exposure. At close quarters, Elaira grasped that, like her, he was unmanageable: the same dogged perception guided his honesty.
When he took up her thrown gauntlet at last, the sting was not pulled from his challenge. 'I have just rid myself of three pavilions' worth of your viciously meddling sisters.'
'They are not my concern,' Elaira said carefully. 'You see here the extent of my charitable service. If meddling saves lives, then that has been my calling. The wounded and sick suffer for your delay. Some might die of neglect, while you hamper me.'
'Charitable service? Your protestations ache my back teeth!' Sulfin Evend bore in, Don't offend me, with caring. You've insinuated yourself a free passage to bring who knows what within reach of my war camp.'
Which woke rage, that his hazing implied a Prime Matriarch's hand, plying intrigues. 'You are here to serve Lysaer with steadfast defence, defined by a love that won't waver?' Shown his angry surprise, Elaira attacked. 'Then take off the blindfold of your past resentment. Look again! My purpose and yours are not set at odds. Your distrust here harms only the innocent.'
'But are they innocent?' Sulfin Evend glared back, uncowed. 'Some will be, I warrant. But all of them?'
'The distrustful commander must see for himself?' Elaira denounced, peeled to acid. "Then why not be less thorough? You could choose to get us all out of the cold. Send me packing straight off with an escort. I won't need more than a cart for the stricken. Just leave me those few the camp's healers don't have the trained skill to keep on the mend.'
'Sly vixen!' exclaimed Sulfin Evend, amazed, while the cold-blooded strategist that never slept sized up her bold offer for tactics. 'Maybe you're telling me half of the truth. Shall we test your sincerity first? Since I'm versed with war injuries, your offer's accepted if I'm left to choose. Who goes and who stays damned well ought to pose us a shockingly riveting chess match!'
Elaira measured his adamant will. Met those focused, hawk's eyes, and gauged his amusement: he dared lure her on. Against the unknown stake she withheld, he would match ploy for ploy until he uncovered her secret.
'Soonest started,' she snapped, and stood for the contest, cornered at last by his stature.
The commitment he kept was too ruthlessly sure, the past grievance he held against the order's seniors, quite likely a just call of honour. Yet that history lay above her rank to question. She would risk her oath if she tried. Therefore, she must rise to call this man's bluff. Ride the chance, that event would not force her hand. Rather than seal her Prime's clever entrapment, with sigils invoked to shield Arithon, Elaira played the least damaging card and bid for disarming subterfuge.
'I would have you stay clear,' Sulfin Evend declared, disallowing the arcane distraction that might tip the scales in her favour. He unhooked the glass lamp. Beckoned two men to cover his back, then commenced with the harrowing tour of her wounded.
Elaira held firm, torn ragged by fear. Sulfin Evend analyzed all his details with adversarial intensity. Everything now relied on the others to withstand his ruthless inspection. She was Koriathain, disciplined to school the least nuance of expression and bearing. Dakar could rely on initiate practice to stay ignored as a servant. Yet the trained eye could scarcely miss Talvish's tension, crouched beyond the remedy trunk. Or the sullen, trapped blaze of Parrien's resentment, although he had the sense to lie back with shut eyes, feigning unconsciousness.
Sulfin Evend peeled back blankets, unreservedly thorough. He searched faces, and with unsurprising, skilled knowledge, probed the wounds beneath neatly strapped bandages. His explorative touch caused no harm. He was polite towards the hurt women, and unthreatening to the tearful child. Yet his fixated search was not going to be satisfied. Never, before he ascertained the afflicted did not harbour fugitives in prime health.
Elaira endured, despite screaming nerves. Forthright evidence must exonerate her character. As Sulfin Evend made rounds, she had to admire: his choices were just as he winnowed the superficially hurt from the dangerously infirm. For the wagon, he singled out two women with burns. Then a child with a crippling fracture. Next, a soldier whose leg threatened sepsis, and another whose chest cut progressed to filled lungs. Arithon ought to be passed as he seemed: an old man with a near-fatal gut wound. If Parrien was recognized, the dilated eye of a genuine head injury should remand him to non-partisan Koriani protection. Glendien's talent was real enough. The claim of a sisterhood novitiate ought to shield her forest-bred origins from the persecution; and Talvish wore a Sunwheel surcoat, over gashes won fair, by the sword.
All would be well, if no one cracked under pressure, or gave way to needless stupidity.
Nonetheless, Elaira closed a damp hand on her crystal. She aligned her inner awareness, prepared, as Sulfin Evend dismissed a young girl with a crossbolt puncture. Neat on his feet, despite the heaving deck, his progress reached Arithon's hammock. There, he took pause, his rapt focus resharpened. Something snagged his rapacious attention. The icy chill followed, as Elaira recalled Arithon mentioning that this man's uncle, Raiett, had detected Davien's wrought disguise during an interrogation by Kralovir necromancers. Disastrously late, she grasped Dakar's frantic warning: a caithdein's direct line would see everything!
Sulfin Evend possessed the gifted heritage of a teir's'Gannley, awakened through Fellowship auspices. Intuition arisen from hand-picked descent surely might recognize the attuned binding borne by a sanctioned crown prince. Even if only subliminal awareness picked up the unconscious connection.