Sayri's Whisper: The Great Link Book 1

by Daniel J. Rothery

  Sayri nodded. “Okay,” she breathed. But—leave, just like that? So suddenly?

  She hurled her arms around her old mentor then, and for a brief, yet timeless, instant she held her tight, wishing that she could again stop time, and make the moment last forever.

  Then she released Ooji, bent to kiss her on the cheek, and turned to go.

  “Girl,” Ooji said quietly, drawing her attention back for a fleeting moment.

  “Yes, Ooji Elder?”

  “Find wagon pack full, driver ready. You say only twenty silver leave now.”

  Sayri nodded, ready to turn away again, but Ooji wasn’t done.

  Solemnly, the old woman reached out to cup the side of her face with her open hand. “Try stop noise, girl. Everything easier, for you. In tough time coming.” She paused a brief moment with her hand there, her eyes warm. Then she drew it reluctantly away. “We see soon, Say-ree,” Ooji finished, and her face broke into a grin, all red cheeks and crooked teeth.

  “Yes, Ooji Elder,” Sayri replied, trying to smile back, but finding it difficult with the body in the dirt clearly visible behind the old woman.

  Finally she tore her gaze away and went to the corner of the building. She peered around cautiously, checking for other warders, and saw none. Then she brought up a hand to cover her face from the dust in the wind, and starting moving across the open road toward the wagons lined up on the other side.

  33 GALLORD-SMIT

  There was a certain comfort standing in sight of the sea. Across that endless expanse of translucent blue-green water lay Benn’s Harbour, and the Lords’ Lands. His home, to where return would be doubtful. Gallord-Smit held no hopes for it, not this time; he had fought many far-off battles and always looked forward to going home, but this time was different. Success would mean defeating Sherzi’s force on the South Island and returning to Rena. Failure would mean death.

  But even in success, could he truly expect to be permitted free roam again in Somria? If he led the resistance on the island to victory, would he not be branded an enemy of the state, and arrested on sight if he sought to travel there?

  Rena had assured him that this was not the way of things in her homeland. If he was captured in battle, he would again be sold into slavery, or executed. As a victor, however, and a free man—he had been legally granted his freedom in Somria—he would be afforded the same protections that any visitor would, enemy or not. Somria was a land of trade and negotiation, of profit and advantage. Arresting legal visitors would not sit well with trade partners. The Overlord would not allow it.

  It was, Rena said, a certainty, but Gallord-Smit remained uneasy of the prospect of going back.

  Was he so confident? Turning away from the sea and toward the docks where ships rested awaiting departure, he shook his head and chuckled at himself. Victory was far from being assured, with the resistance outnumbered and outgunned, and he hadn’t even left Somria yet. Would the island defenders even accept him as their leader? He couldn’t imagine why not, being a decorated war hero of the Lands and well known among the people, but one could never be certain.

  For now, however, he was a free man in Somria, about to board a cargo ship bound for Benn’s Harbour. He had initially thought to take a more indirect route, but when he heard that merchant ships left the eastern port of Quilome for the Lords’ Lands regularly, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. After a quick trip back across the country—in a mere two days, without Rena’s stops at every town to meet local patricians—he had located a ship that would serve him well, a small merchant longboat hailing from the Coastlands and carrying tea. A discrete conversation with the master of one of those vessels, followed by the exchange of a substantially heavy pouch of coin (compliments of Rena), and it was all arranged; the master would navigate further south than he normally would go, and Gallord-Smit would be dropped off in a lifeboat off the north coast of the island.

  It all seemed simple enough, leaving him with a sense of having missed something. Would the Somrian navy refuse to allow the merchant ship passage? Of course not, they couldn’t stop trade. Would they be patrolling the seas around the South Island, looking for landing parties? Not likely, and in any case they would have no interest in a vessel as small as a lifeboat.

  So Gallord-Smit scratched his head once more, and wandered down onto the docks to board his ship. Was Somria so confident in her ability to defeat all threats that they wouldn’t concern themselves at all with smaller scale enemy movements? It seemed so, at least from what he had seen. It was disconcerting and he couldn’t stop waiting for a thunderbolt to strike him down, but he had no choice other than to keep moving.

  Keep moving then, soldier. He found his vessel—nameless, oddly enough; the Coastlanders didn’t seem to follow the tradition of naming a vessel, leaving him to wonder how they kept track of them—and climbed aboard. As expected, they had finished loading the cargo (mostly Somrian teas) and were preparing to get under way. The master noted Gallord-Smit’s return and gave him a quick nod, then turned to bellow at his men to make way.

  The master was a typical Coastlander, with a well balanced frame, wiry musculature, and medium brown hair. Generally good-looking men, Coastlanders were, and he was no exception; Gallord-Smit expected he had a girl waiting in every port. The sailors were a finer-looking sort in general than one would expect on a merchant ship, and Gallord-Smit couldn’t help but wonder if stories circulated about them; a noble crew of fine young men out to see the world, and pocket a few coin along the way. Certainly he had read stories of such adventurers in his youth, and these men looked the part.

  They were not, however, imbued with the same care in hygiene that Somrians generally were, as Gallord-Smit noted by the smell. He hoped that they cleaned up better when visiting their home port, though he supposed most tavern girls would not much care about the musky, sweaty scent when presented with a strapping, handsome adventurer of a man. Certainly he had discovered that benefit himself on return from many a campaign. A hero was a hero, no matter how he smelled, and men who survived a battle—or the raging foreign seas—were heroes in the eyes of young ladies who had never traveled more than a thousand paces from their homes.

  Gallord-Smit found himself a place near the bow and leaned against the rail, watched the rocky hills begin to slip by as the ship drew out from the docks. The oars splattered gently on the calm waters of the inlet, their rhythm both relaxing and haunting at the same time. That rhythm would draw him inexorably away from Rena, and towards his fate, whatever it might be.

  He sighed, and allowed his eyes to once again drift out to the distant sea. Soon, he would know.

  ・

  The weather could only have been described as perfect. As the days passed and the ship’s prow sliced a path southeast, Gallord-Smit continued to be amazed at his good fortune. He had hardly seen a cloud since they left port and the wind had been almost always from the north; after a short run west, the master had drawn oar, unfurled the sails, and raced straight in the direction of the southern islands. The swells were long and low, and the merchant ship, lightly encumbered as she was with tea and spice, nearly flew as she carried him to his destination.

  Far more swiftly than he had anticipated, the master was at his side warning him that they would make north soon. The lifeboat would be launched and towed on a long lead, with Gallord-Smit board. When the lookout spied the island, they would come about and he would be cut free to sail south.

  He thanked the master and made his way to the stern. Netting was already out; Gallord-Smit checked his supplies and gear, then turned his back to the sea and climbed down into the boat. Moments later he was drifting away from the longboat, a handsome Coastlander sailor waving at him as he played the line out, then tied it off once Gallord-Smit was about twenty paces behind.

  At that, he waited. The great billowing square sail continued to draw the Coastlander vessel southeast at racing speed, his tiny lifeboat with it, and he could see the sailors buzzing about on dec
k as they prepared to change course, though he couldn’t hear the master’s commands over the wind.

  Somria had been warm, being not only further south than the Lords’ Lands, but also the recipient of warm south trade winds. As far south as Gallord-Smit now was, however, the season seemed to slip back from autumn to late summer. It wasn’t particularly hot, and he was comfortable in the jacket he had bought from the ship’s master—which didn’t fit well, but was Coastlander style and thus less likely to see him shot when he first encountered resistance scouts—but there was a wet heaviness to the air, one that he expected would not fade much after the sun went down.

  Bathed in warm wind and surrounded by blue sky, fluffy white clouds and deep blue-green sea, he could not have imagined himself in a more serene environment.

  Perfect fighting weather, he found himself thinking.

  There wasn’t any warning; the sailor on the stern shouted at him, and threw the rope into the water, then pointed south. A quick wave, then the man vanished, and Gallord-Smit was on his own. He quickly pulled the rope into the boat.

  He was no sailor, but no young man from Promontory worth his weight in fish didn’t know his way around a lifeboat. He loosed the mainsheet, and adjusted course into the wind. Then he pulled the halyard down to raise the sail and tied it tight, backed the main, and turned to sail southwards.

  From the north, the South Island looked like a wall of rock, spotted with myriad tiny clumps of green brush at its base. They weren’t cliffs, precisely, but more like rocky bluffs that tumbled from jungle-covered pinnacles into the sea, leaving a treacherous, daunting coastline.

  Gallord-Smit hadn’t been to the island, but he knew from maps that the north coast was filled with tiny bays, inlets in the rock disguised in thick foliage. He imagined the resistance kept supplied through those gaps, where the Somrian naval vessels could not venture. Controlling the seas was one thing, but preventing every tiny vessel from approaching—before it disappeared into the labyrinth he now approached—was impossible.

  The trick for him was to find them when the Somrians couldn’t, but he had a plan for that.

  With the sail down he brought the small boat about so that the port side faced the bluffs at a range of about a hundred paces. Then, examining the shoreline to make certain there were no Somrian vessels scouting along it, he stood up, braced his feet against the mast, and began to sing The Beast’s Lament.

  It was an old song, one every child learned growing up, typically from old fisherman along the waterfront who fished for the pleasure and drank for the pain. It told the saga of a young man named Krif who saw a mighty fish off the shore of the wild lands across the White River, and set out on his rowboat to hunt it down, never to return.

  Gallord-Smit was not a good singer, but he was loud—any officer was. His voice echoed the cliffs and resonated into the jungles above and beyond, sending birds to flight. His quarries were there, he knew, watching and listening.

  He tried to get all the words right.

  A short time later, when Krif was dead and the beast rolled up on the rocky shore to expire, a boat emerged from a thicket between two rocky fingers stretching out from the shore. Gallord-Smit sat quietly as it approached, propelled at a leisurely pace by two men at oar, while a woman sat in the bow looking forward.

  When they came alongside he reached out for the rail of their boat and pulled it to his.

  “I haven’t heard that rendition,” the woman said. Gallord-Smit would have placed her in her thirties; her heavy forearms and short, reddish hair identified her as a rare fighting woman, and her lilt as a Northern Islander. She was pretty, in a harsh way. “In every one I’ve heard, Krif either drowns or hack’s off the beast’s head and drags it home as proof of his prowess.”

  Gallord-Smit shrugged. “I suppose we aren’t quite so optimistic in Promontory,” he replied.

  “I am Charese,” she said, grinned. “Well met, young man.” She offered her forearm.

  Gallord-Smit took it. No sense wasting time. “I am Front-Captain Pilaeos Gallord-Smit, of the Lordsguard. Addressed with honour,” he added politely, nodding to her and the two men behind her.

  All three sat there for several heartbeats, their mouths half open.

  Finally Charese released his arm. “Really?” she asked. She glanced back at the other two.

  The man in the back was heavy across the shoulder, with a thick nose and only a crown of curly brown hair encircling his bare, reddish scalp. “I heard he was dead,” he said, not skeptically, but in uncertainty.

  “It was a close shave,” Gallord-Smit admitted. “But in the end, it only took my moustache.” He stroked his upper lip sadly.

  There was momentary pause, then all three burst into laughter.

  “I am Util. Well met,” the large man said. “That’s Losly.” He nodded at the younger fellow in front; Gallord-Smit guessed him to be no more than fourteen summers. The lad affected a short bow, but didn’t speak. “The Somrians took his tongue when he refused to identify our commander. They were stupid enough to let him go, after that.”

  Gallord-Smit frowned, but Losly smiled. He mumbled something.

  “He says he doesn’t have to worry about burning it now, and he was lousy with the ladies before anyway,” Util translated. “He’s gotten better with his fingers now, I hear.” Losly swatted at him playfully for the latter comment; the older man grinned.

  Charese climbed aboard Gallord-Smit’s boat, and pushed off the other. The two men took up oar again, and turned their craft back toward shore.

  “You a good sailor, Front-Captain?” she asked, looking over the lifeboat.

  “I’m still alive, though it wasn’t much of a voyage,” he admitted. “But if you know your way around the steerboard, I’d much rather you try to navigate that than I,” he added, pointing at the rocky shoreline where the rowboat was headed.

  Charese nodded and took up the steering, leaving Gallord-Smit to handle the sail. “Front-Captain,” she started, then paused before continuing. “Are you here to convince us to abandon the island?” Gallord-Smit glanced back at her; she didn’t appear pleased with the idea.

  He turned back around to face the approaching bluff. He could see now that between the rocky fingers was a mess of foliage that filled the gap, but there was nothing below it; a small boat would be able to pass through the bushes, but a larger vessel would be blocked. The rowboat had already reached them, and the men ducked their heads and continued rowing as they vanished into the thicket.

  “I’m here to lead you into battle, if you’ll have me,” he said quietly.

  He didn’t need to turn around to sense the change in Charese’s mood; he could hear her sharp intake of breath.

  “That’s good news,” she said finally, her smile audible.

  Gallord-Smit didn’t reply. He hoped it was good news, but he feared that it would only mean a quicker death for them all.

  ・・

  The resistance had set up a base for themselves in the most defensible of positions imaginable; the summit of one of the jungle-covered hills, where the rocks poked out and gave them a view of the entire island. The terrain was steep and thick; after paddling their way into a private inlet, it had taken them half the afternoon to climb to the summit, though it wasn’t far off. Where the bush was not too thick to slow them to a crawl, the rocks were steep and easily shifted, being half torn apart already by thick roots and unrelenting moss.

  When they cleared the jungle and emerged onto what Charese and the others called their ‘Tower’, Gallord-Smit was astounded by the view. If he had not been here to fight a war, he would have thought himself to be in paradise.

  Thick jungle lay across half the island, mostly the northern half, and had almost completely engulfed the sharp row of hills upon which they stood (he might have called them mountains, if Gallord-Smit had not already witnessed the sheer rocky pinnacles of Titan’s Thumb and the other mountains north of the Foothills).

  Beyond, the jungle s
tretched out flat, gradually thinning until it dispersed entirely, giving way to a wide plain of green. That stretched far into the distance, where he could make out the blue line connecting the sea on his left with that on his right. The island was longer north-south than it was wide by a fair margin, and the hills upon which they stood capped it like a soldier’s helmet.

  On the plains beyond the jungle he could just make out groups of moving black dots, here and there individuals. He looked over at Charese, then motioned out at them. “Somrian soldiers?” he asked.

  She laughed—a sharp, bright, cackle. In a pub, it would have grated on his nerves; here, it was a welcome luxury that he hoped to hear much more of. “Swine,” she corrected. Then, on further thought; “Much more dangerous than the enemy. They have—” she held both hands up to her temples, pointing two fingers out from her head, “—nasty embellishments.”

  Gallord-Smit laughed. He was already liking this Charese. And, he realized sadly, already missing Rena.

  “As always, our Charese has understated severely,” a voice spoke out behind them. Gallord-Smit turned to see a middle-aged fellow with grey hair and a short, thick moustache. He was nearly as wide as he was tall, which was a full two hands below Gallord-Smit.

  The man stopped two paces from him, and looked at him expectantly. Gallord-Smit frowned for a moment, then his eyes widened slowly.

  “Hellrack!” he exclaimed suddenly, stepped forward to slap the other man on the shoulders with both hands. “Hellrack, you blind gazer, is it you?” He was treated to a wide lop-sided grin from the the shorter man, who held him by the elbows, nodding. “Rot, man, I had completely forgotten—you were posted to command of the southern islands two years ago. How could I forget?”

  Charese was looking at both of them dubiously. “Right-Precept Hellamer? You know the Front-Captain?”