Master of Whitestorm

by Janny Wurts

  Korendir stood alone on the knoll that overlooked Erdmire. He surveyed the army that spread like jewelled cord across the flats below. The ranks were close-packed to allow passage between the sand hills and the sea. From plumes and feathered bows to studded caparisons and spangled breast-straps, the war host out of Datha was a sight to inspire dread. Yet the mercenary made no move to hide his presence. He waited on the crest in the open; sweat dripped down the neck of his tunic, and his face stayed fixed as a mask. All had proceeded as he anticipated. He had only to stand and observe the fruits of his sowing.

  "Ahail, ahail!" The cry trembled on the brittle air, and light tingled in reflection off a needlepoint row of raised scimitars. The Datha cavalry prepared for their charge with a ritual that had terrorized and disheartened many a defender before the killing strike. "To our brave Captain General, ahail!"

  Banners waved in salute of the Datha commander. Korendir's archers drew their linen-tipped shafts from pots of oil and reached for tinder and flint. "To His Excellency, the sultan, ahail, ahail!" Sabers dipped as honor was paid to Datha's reigning lord. Pale flame blossomed behind the defenseworks that bordered the dunes, and fifty hand-picked archers from South Englas nocked arrows and bent their bows to full draw. The approaching lines of warriors shimmered as men sighted through smoke-heated air.

  "To Irdhu, who claims all life, ahail, ahail, ahail!"

  Bowstrings sang, and arrows arched up. Smoke streaked in wisps from heads that blazed with the flames held most sacred to the deity the Dathei saluted. The shafts rose high across the sky, then plunged, crackling to earth ahead of the sultan's lines. Fires licked the stems of desert fern. Fanned in the grip of the sea breeze, small blazes caught well and swiftly. The archers nocked shafts a second time. They fired another volley, and a third; beyond that, no more were necessary.

  In the act of sounding the charge, the Captain General's crier found himself confronted by a wall of snapping flame. He had time to wheel his horse before the conflagration overtook him. His scream rent air above the boom of drums as his oiled flesh touched off like a torch.

  The desert made perfect tinder. Dry, greasy fronds exploded with zealous violence and hurled drifts of wind- born sparks. These caught and fiercely ignited the manes and tails of the horses. Fire lapped from plant to plant. Whirled up into crackling curtains, it closed over the glossy, fat-smeared contours of the riders. Within minutes, Datha's finest became embraced in a fatal holocaust. Mares screamed and plunged and reared, to no avail. The proud host of ten thousand transformed to a living pyre from end to end. In vain the rear ranks broke formation and fled for their lives; no man among them had a mount whose legs could outrun the wind.

  Behind the breastworks, Korendir's archers gazed with deadened eyes at the disaster; their ears were pierced by screams that destroyed the very memory of silence. Although the killer winds bore the smoke from the carnage away from them, it seemed the stench of seared flesh would never clear from their nostrils. Horses and men rolled in dying agony upon charred and blackened ground, while the remains of the sultan's banners drifted on the breeze, immolated to wisps of ash.

  Korendir left his position on the hill. He roved the length of the breastworks and roused South Englas's men from stunned and horrified stupor. With shouts and blows and imprecations, he forced them to harness the oxen.

  "Your task is done," he snapped to any who were slow to respond. When the last man settled in his place on the sledges, the mercenary mounted his horse and moved on, a dark figure against a horizon dirtied with smoke haze. He harried his following forward with fast and merciless order, while across the flats at his heels, the fire he had arranged in cold blood finished its murdering work.

  Though entitled to spoils, no one under Whitestorm's command dared to question his order. The Datha dead were left smouldering where they lay, while the fifty archers responsible turned their stunned faces toward home. Mechanically they moved feet and legs on the three-day march to South Englas.

  * * *

  Every citizen in the City of Kings turned out for a hero's welcome. The streets by the gates stood lined by crowds who threw coins and luck charms and flowers. Few smiles of triumph brightened the faces in the archers' ranks. Korendir swore viciously at a child who tossed him a victory wreath, and he interrupted the king's speech of honor with a flat demand for his fee.

  "Your daughter sits safe at your side. The sultan is ruined, and Telssina is yours for the taking, if you stir your men at arms before the Arhagai." Amid shocked and spreading silence, the mercenary bowed with impatience. "My work is done, Your Grace. I require nothing but my gold, and your leave to depart."

  The king magnanimously forgave discourtesy and summoned his seneschal on the spot. The draft for the mercenary's pay was signed amid awkward stillness. Korendir made no effort to smooth feelings, but with dangerous, quick-strided grace, took his leave. While the crowds with their flowers and tokens dispersed from the city's main square, the Master of Whitestorm presented himself at the treasury vault. With a frown locked immovably on his features, he set about collecting his due.

  He secured a berth on board a brig bound for Fairhaven within the hour. The king watched the ship weigh anchor off the point, short-tempered as a man with a grievance. Not until sundown did he send for his captain of archers and ask for account of the battle. The telling left a knot in the royal gut that no glow of victory could loosen.

  "Neth have mercy," the sovereign murmured when he recovered enough presence to speak. His voice shook with appalled and cruel shock. "I'd not have the Master of Whitestorm's conscience for any sum in gold, nor his heart of ice. Pray South Englas is spared the need to hire his kind again, even to vanquish a race as fiendishly cruel as the Dathei."

  XV. Summons from Tir Amindel

  Korendir returned on the edge of autumn, aboard the same ship that brought in the new iron Haldeth had ordered to replenish his depleted forge. That day the clouds lay in raked gray sheets, warning of killing frosts to come; in Thornforest the leaves showed edges of red like dipped blood. Alone in chambers that turned chill at eventide, and weary of footsteps that echoed down empty, unfurnished halls, the smith met the trader brig's arrival with a soaring lift of spirits. At low tide he descended to the beach to greet the longboat, a whiskey flask tucked under one arm, and new bread left cooling in readiness on Whitestorm's spotless trestles.

  The boat made slow progress, laden as it was with crated ingots and Korendir's chests of bullion; the oarsmen were poorly teamed. They battled a headwind, and each mistimed stroke spat spray over the bow to drench the cloaked occupant in the sternseat. By the time the craft gained shore, Haldeth's impatience had reached the point where he willingly wet his boots to speed the landing.

  "Welcome home," he called, as a familiar, black-clad figure arose and leaped the gunwale into the shallows. Haldeth had time to notice that his friend's face seemed more haggard than usual. Then a wave slewed the longboat bruisingly into his groin, and he was forced to redirect his attention toward muscling the wayward craft straight.

  "Why not give a hand, you lazy louts," he snarled to the crewmen who had yet to ship their oars.

  A model of graceless coordination, the sailhands groused and eventually sorted themselves into order.

  By then, Korendir had left the beach. Haldeth forgave the precipitous departure. If the incompetence demonstrated by the oarsmen was typical of seamanship aboard the brig, the voyage had likely been a shambles. Doubtless the Master of Whitestorm craved dry clothing and shoes that did not chafe from a crust of ingrained salt. Haldeth dumped the wet from his own boots, then regarded his crates of new ingots; Korendir's chests of gold easily doubled their cargo weight. Rather than strain his back, the smith elected to winch the load over the battlements.

  Minutes later he cursed his impatient plunge into the surf. His feet weighed like lead, and his socks rucked soggily around his heels as he climbed the stair to the upper fortress. Worse, Korendir was not in the hall when Ha
ldeth stamped through to check; still hopeful, the smith climbed more stairs in the north tower to reach his friend's private chambers. The rooms there all remained empty; even the clothes chests lay undisturbed under a season's layer of dust.

  Puzzled, Haldeth let himself onto the windswept terrace of the watch tower, where a ship's glass rested always in a niche by the postern. The smith set cold brass to his eye and scanned the clifftop and at first pass spotted a black-clad figure walking the crags above the sea.

  "Damn your miserable mood, anyway," Haldeth grumbled into the wind. Belatedly he remembered the flask which hung at his hip; as he retraced his steps to man the winch, he unslung the thong, yanked the stopper, and consoled himself mightily with spirits.

  By the time the last crates and bullion chests lay stacked in the keep's inner bailey, Haldeth had forgotten wet feet; five months of unremitting solitude had left him starved for company. Loosened from exercise, and expansive with strong drink, he forgave the sailors their incompetence and descended again to the beach head to invite them for beer and sausage.

  Their refusal was immediate, which surprised him.

  "Your-captain must be a fair task master," Haldeth sympathized.

  His sarcasm seemed lost on the sailors, who exchanged glances.

  "Not exactly." The larger of the four tipped his head, as unofficial spokesman for the group. "Just we don't fancy hospitality with your Master of Whitestorm about.

  Got eyes like death, he has. Puts the living shivers on a man."

  "Korendir?" Wind tumbled hair in Haldeth's face. He shook it back in annoyance. "His Lordship's off on the cliffs somewhere, brooding. Bound to be gone for hours, if that's all you're worried about."

  "Well," said a sailor with a squint. "I'd watch yourself, were I in your berth. The crew who gave yon master passage from South Englas swore on their beer he'd gone insane. We thought they were drunk and telling tales, in port. At sea we found out different. Your Lord of Whitestorm drew steel on anyone who stepped too near his back. Through the nights and the storms, he paced the deck. Sometimes he took a turn at watch in the cross trees. He must've napped then, but our captain never caught him. Not for want of seeing, mind. The master o' yon brig's got an eye like the devil for slackers."

  Haldeth became suddenly still. The whiskey in his belly no longer made him warm; reluctantly he said, "I think someone should tell me what happened with Korendir's contract in the south."

  The question unnerved the sailors. Not a man would meet the smith's eyes, and the rearmost pair edged toward the longboat. Worried by their discomfort, Haldeth could not let the brig's oarsmen depart without explanation.

  Quickly, the smith revised his earlier offer. "At least stay for a meal. I can let down a cask and bring victuals. We can eat here, sheltered in the lee of the longboat. Korendir won't bother you, and should your captain complain, I'll smooth his inconvenience with silver."

  The tall man muttered, uncertain, but the opinion of his companions prevailed. The promise of beer and an idle hour beyond reach of shipboard discipline was too good a chance to turn down.

  Overhead, the clouds had thickened to a featureless blanket. Gusts off the sea carried an edge which threatened rain. Concerned that more than weather might change against his favor, Haldeth cast an eye to the tide line; full ebb was already past, and the beach would become flooded before midafternoon. He had perhaps three hours to get four hard-living sailhands into their cups enough to talk.

  The next round trip of the stair revealed that he suffered an early hangover; the pangs left by the whiskey compounded discomfort as his balled up socks galled his heels. Haldeth revised his priorities to wish Korendir and his troubles back at sea. Better, the smith might ship out with the brig for a port that had women and taverns, and leave one madman turned mercenary to suffer alone with his woes.

  Except the thought of leaving Whitestorm keep somehow was not possible. Haldeth paused in a cornice cut for crossbowmen and angrily raked up his hose. For some stupid reason he regarded this Neth forsaken rock heap as home; that and misguided obligation for the freedom recovered from the Mhurgai kept him stubborn past the time a wiser man should have quit.

  Never at ease with logic, the smith rolled two casks into the winch sling and lugged sausages, fresh cheese, and bread back down to the beach. By the turn of the tide, he had drunk more beer than he wished to see in a tenday of carefree celebration. Worse, the moment he stood up, he discovered himself in no condition to walk. His thoughts, in contrary obstinacy, remained disturbingly sober. The sailors had related Korendir's decimation of the Dathei; at flood tide, as Haldeth reeled his way up the stair, he desperately wished back their silence.

  Only one conclusion could be drawn from the event at Erdmire Flats: Korendir had turned his addiction to risk and violence toward murder. Neth take pity on any soul who stood in his path, for in all the Eleven Kingdoms, there lived no more perilous man to cross.

  * * *

  Day dimmed early under drizzling veils of rain. Haldeth built a huge blaze in the hearth and nursed a headache that threatened to sear out his eyeballs from behind. He did not hear Korendir come in. His first indication of the mercenary's presence was the scrape of a softly closing door, and later, a light that burned from the upper window of the library, discovered on a routine trip to haul firewood. Haldeth stood in the open and considered, while rain slowly wet his fresh clothes. He cradled his pounding head and in the end decided to go up, but after he had brewed a tisane for his pains. In fact the remedy was an excuse. Not until after midnight did the smith finally muster up his nerve.

  The entry to the keep which housed the library was neither bolted nor locked. The outside door swung easily at Haldeth's touch. The staircase beyond spiraled upward into shadow, still as the inside of a conch; the Master of Whitestorm had not troubled with lanterns. Haldeth owned no such affinity for the dark. To spare his blistered feet the added affront of stubbed toes, he fumbled the striker from his pocket and brightened the lamp on the landing.

  Aside from the smith's own quarters, the library keep at Whitestorm was the only comfortably appointed suite. The stairs were laid of polished agate from Torresdyr. Oaken hand rails were chased with brass, and ended in scrolls before double doors: panels carved of ash wood, and inlaid with ebony and abalone. Haldeth raised the latch with caution. He eased the portal open and gazed into a circular chamber carpeted in scarlet and gold. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling; these were not the spell tomes inherited from Anthei's library, but other volumes acquired between commissions and catalogued by Korendir's own hand. At a heavy table, seated between rinds of burned candles, the Master of Whitestorm lay asleep with his bronze hair spilled across a pillow of opened pages.

  Haldeth crept close. Korendir's eyelids were bruised and twitching with exhaustion. The fingers curled on the chair arm were tense even in sleep. The nails were dirty, the knuckles stained dark with the tar from rope and rigging, but surprisingly fine boned beneath. Haldeth hesitated between steps. As long and as well as he knew the man, this detail had escaped him. In a strange way the oversight troubled him as much as the summary execution of the sultan's army.

  When the smith observed that the print under Korendir's cheek was an illuminated stanza of verse, he seriously questioned whether the sailors' account held truth. The singlehanded slaughter of ten thousand warriors seemed impossible to attribute to a man who dreamed like any other mortal overtaken by too much care.

  The mercenary and he were closer than most brothers, Haldeth would have sworn; the hardships shared at the bench had forged bonds as strong as blood kinship. The smith reached past a snarl of salt-tangled hair. In a gesture of spontaneous sympathy, he straightened crumpled cloth across a shoulder muscled like gristle. ' Korendir roused screaming.

  The transition happened fast, from sleep to waking nightmare. Only fatigue stayed the Master of Whitestorm's reflexes. His outcry of uninhibited terror choked back to silence in less than a fraction of a heartbeat;
his surge to rend the intruder who handled his person escaped his control altogether.

  Haldeth flung back. Spurred by fright, he dove in a roll for refuge under the table. Sword steel clanged and bit splinters only inches from his retreating back. The smith rammed his shoulder into a support strut. Cornered, weaponless, he twisted at bay and looked up into the face of madness.

  "Korendir!" Panic split Haldeth's voice as the sword flashed again in descent.

  The shout spared him.

  Korendir flinched. His body shuddered in a violent spasm, then went frighteningly still. The lips drawn back into a snarl relaxed, and the mask he habitually presented to strangers twitched into place on his features.

  The Master of Whitestorm drew breath after a moment, but did not sheath his steel. Instead, he regarded the gouge his stroke had left in the table leg. Hoarsely he said, "Don't ever try that again."

  Haldeth sank back. Trembling himself, he uttered a dozen phrases, every one of them rude.

  Korendir said nothing. Dangerously expressionless, he settled himself crosslegged on the carpet, laid the sword flat by his side, then closed his eyes and massaged his temples.

  Haldeth stared at the blade, narrowed and razor thin from repeated sharpening; the edge showed inward curves where chips had been filed out, legacy of Ellgol and the wereleopards. With a pang of unwarranted regret, he recalled he had promised Korendir a new blade; yet although the smith had fashioned all manner of wrought-iron for the stables, and bolt rings and fittings for doors, not one of his creations had been weaponry. The Mhurgai had forever spoiled his concept of honorable war. Reminded that the silent man by his side was equally scarred in spirit, Haldeth said gently, "Do you want to talk?"

  Korendir's head snapped up and his eyes showed a smothered flare of rage. "Not ever."