Sir Stanley stared. The hounds had seen me appear as if by sorcery and came bounding back; they surrounded me in a rough, boisterous crowd, as if in admiration of the trick I’d played on their master. I am fond of dogs, and they of me, and I laughed and scratched their ears. Sir Stanley lashed at the dogs with his whip.
“Down!” he said. “Down, you bratchets!” He snarled. “Stop that fawning! Tear him, tear him! Ahoo! Ahoo!”
I danced away from the whip, the excited hounds still bounding around me. I pointed at the grooms who were starting to gather, themselves equipped rather ominously with whips, guns, or bright boar-spears. “These gentlemen are all witnesses!” I said. “And if they are not enough, I brought a witness of my own!” I brandished the satchel in the direction of Kevin, who—with what seemed a degree of embarrassment, or perhaps well-grounded reluctance—emerged from behind his tree.
One of the grooms blew on his brass horn to call the dogs but was ignored. Sir Stanley made a few more slashes with his whip before grooms rode into the melee and deftly separated me from my pack of admirers. I ghosted away from the trail, found a groom behind me, as if to cut me off, and ducked under the horse, which snorted and lashed out with its rear hooves. The hooves were no threat to me, but they kept the other horses clear.
“I have done my duty, Sir Stanley!” I said, backing. “I will forego the customary tip an it please you, and wish you good day.” I waved. “The Compassionate Pilgrim save you, Sir Stanley!”
“Damn your Pilgrim!” The knight shook his whip in the air. The staghounds bounded and gave excited voice. The groom blew another useless recheat.
“Good day, Sir Stanley!”
The knight propped his fist on his hip and glared after me.
“Who in hell art thou, thou impertinent louse?”
I left the question unanswered as I turned and made for the landing. Kevin joined me. We walked briskly.
Kevin adjusted his broad hat. “Dare I look over my shoulder to see if he’s taking aim with his gun?”
“It is a lovely gun,” I said. “I saw it in the hands of his bearer. Wheel-lock, the lock and barrel chased with silver. Rifled, I daresay. And we know he is a good hunter.”
“You offer no comfort.”
“There is no comfort till we are out of range.”
We left the shade of the grove and returned to the green, sunny domain of the sheep. Shepherds and sheepdogs watched us with professional interest. Another recheat sounded from the grove.
“They summon the dogs,” said Kevin. “Walk faster, thou impertinent louse.”
I said nothing but increased the pace. Then from the grove, instead of the barks of excitement and interest, came the baying of a hunting pack, and it was time to run.
Alarmed sheep gave their staccato bray and scattered before us. Sheepdogs barked warning. The sound of the baying pack came closer.
Surely, I thought, he does not mean to kill us. If he wanted that, he would have used his gun. A few ounces of flesh torn by the fangs of his staghounds should satisfy him.
Not wanting to be shredded, I ran and fumbled with the straps of the satchel. I heard oaths from the shepherds, who feared the dogs would savage their charges. I considered lunging for one of the shepherds and seizing his stick to use in my own defense, but decided that this was no time for the pack to catch me wrestling a herdsman.
My throat ached as the cool air froze my gullet. I dared to cast a glance over my shoulder and saw that the lead staghound was a mere twenty yards behind.
I reached into the satchel, retrieved a piece of ham, and hurled it into the air. I didn’t look back, but the tone of the yelping behind me changed: there was a short cry of interest as the lead bratchet saw the offering and changed direction, then a peremptory bark as she challenged another dog for possession of the treat. I heard a scuffle as a number of hounds disputed possession of the ham, and excited barking as other hounds stayed to watch. I was surprised how long it took the dogs to remember their business and begin their baying again.
Another slice of ham delayed the dogs a second time, and then a third; and after that, I was out of ham, and resorted to the sausages. After the sausages were gone, I broke off pieces of cheese and tossed them, and found they interested the dogs equally. By the time the pier was in sight, I was out of cheese. I began flinging bread.
“Run for the boat!” I gasped at Kevin. “I’ll keep them busy.”
Tossing bread over my shoulder, I ran straight into the water, the cold so shocking that I would have stopped dead if momentum hadn’t carried me on. A wave heaved me up, and I plunged in, the water a salt slap to my face. When I was chest-deep, I turned to face the pack of gray-brown staghounds baying at me from the shore. I reached into the satchel and heaved a chunk of waterlogged gingerbread into the midst of the pack. They were habituated to food flying to them by now, and the bread disappeared into a seething gray-brown mob.
I heard the brass hunting horn tootling closer, and the sound of horses. I tossed bread. The first of the grooms appeared just as I heard the crack of the filling lugsail.
“Behind you!” Kevin called.
I turned, saw the boat’s bow approaching, and tossed the satchel aboard. I seized the larboard gunwale as it went past, and rolled aboard as Kevin shifted his own weight to starboard to prevent capsize. Kevin shoved the tiller and the boat swung its nose to the sea.
On the shore, Sir Stanley Mattingly was cursing and whipping his dogs. I rose to my feet, dripping. I put a foot on the gunwale and grasped a shroud for balance.
“Sir Stanley, I thank you for your kind hospitality!” I called.
Vigorous obscenity pursued me across the water.
“Sir,” I said, “you asked my name, and now I am pleased to answer. I am Quillifer, son of Quillifer, the apprentice to Lawyer Dacket, and in two days’ time, I shall have the pleasure of seeing you at the Assizes!”
I offered an elaborate bow, and straightened in time to see Sir Stanley snatch his gun from his bearer. I decided it was time to take shelter below the gunwale, and to pull Kevin down likewise.
The shot put a neat hole in the sail. By the time the knight had reloaded, the boat was well out of range.
* * *
The lugsail rattled overhead. “Friend,” said Kevin. “May I trust you no longer to mock armed, violent men? At least till I am safe at home?”
“We were in no danger,” said I.
“Safe as long as the sausages held out, and Sir Stanley’s aim remained poor.”
I waved a hand. “He was aiming at the sail, not at us. He wouldn’t want to be hauled up on a charge of manslaughter.”
“You have more confidence in his moderation than I.”
“I’m hungry,” I said. “The orgulous Sir Stanley has deprived us of our dinner.”
“Orgulous?”
“A new word I invented. From the Lorettan, orguilio, pride.” I stared unhappily at the horizon. “I should invent a new word for hunger.”
“You are welcome to catch a fish.”
“And you left the cider behind! For shame, Master Spellman.”
I removed my soaked, chill clothing, and stretched naked across a thwart, in the sun. The brisk wind dusted my skin with gooseflesh, but I was comfortable enough. I had been far colder when I was hanging upside down from Master Greyson’s roofbeam.
“Pity you won’t be visiting the fair Ella tonight,” Kevin said.
I gave him a surprised look. “Why would I not?”
“What?” Kevin laughed. “You want another race against Sir Stanley’s pack? Or his bullets?”
“Sir Stanley is unlikely to march up and down his pier with his gun on his shoulder—he will be asleep in his bed, or in the hall, draining the wine and brandy of his brother-in-law. The dogs will be in their kennels, and the sheep in their pens.”
“And Ella in the creamery, screaming for help and earning a reward for catching you.”
I shook my head. “Friend, your skepticism is
alarming in its degree.”
“We’ve upset the whole household. Ella might be frantic in her desire to keep the others from knowing about your arrangement, and the best way to preserve her innocence will be to denounce you.”
“The lovely Ella? I can’t imagine such a thing.”
We argued the matter, and then found other matters to argue. By the time we arrived at the Ostra’s many mouths, the tide was rushing in, and carried us to the city with fine efficiency. The Lorettan pinnace was still aground, but the crew were heaving at the capstan, and the hawser leading to the kedge anchor was taut as a bowstring, tension shooting water from its fibers.
“Now,” I said, as I began to draw on my still-damp clothes, “I pray you go to my master Dacket’s office, and there sign a paper that you witnessed my delivery of the writ.”
“You won’t go yourself?”
“He’ll put me to copying documents, and I’ll miss the meeting with Ella. I’ve already promised tomorrow to the work, and I see no reason for an early start.”
Kevin was skeptical. “And what excuse will I give for your absence?”
I tugged my tunic over my head. “You may relate the tale of our escape from Mutton Island. Recount our heroism, the attack by dogs, the shot through your sail. And you may inform Dacket of my injuries—embroider them as you like, but tell him how manfully I am bearing up, even though the doctors have been called and my mother despairs of my life. You may then say how I expect to be early at the office tomorrow.”
“You are the expert in such embroidery, not I.”
“You underrate your ingenuity. Remember that story you told Professor Mitchell, when we were at grammar school and caught out of bounds.”
“We were caned,” Kevin said. “He didn’t believe us.”
I drew hose onto my legs. “But the story was a marvel! Were there not tritons, and some kind of monster from the Land of Chimerae that flew overhead and darkened the sun?”
“Very well,” Kevin said. “I will tell Lawyer Dacket you were taken by tritons.”
Kevin found a place near the quay, dropped the sail, and tied the boat. I jumped onto the quay and helped Kevin disembark.
“Are you truly mad enough to visit the maid tonight?”
“Oh, ay. ’Twill keep me out of trouble in town.”
“Ethlebight will take comfort from that, but I will rest uneasy.”
We marched beneath the great River Gate blazoned with the shield of Ethlebight, crenellated towers and ships supported by the hornèd rams that represented the wool that remained the foundation of the city’s wealth. Kevin departed for Lawyer Dacket’s office, while I carried my empty satchel home to Princess Street. I changed my clothes, got more bread, meat, cheese, and a few of the pearmains. Then I went to the buttery for a bottle of the moscatto, and another jug of cider for the journey.
On my return to the quay I tarried by a barber’s shop, and there sought a preventative for parturience. My last packet of sheaths I had left with Annabel Greyson, and I could but hope her father hadn’t found them, proof of her perfidy.
I returned to the boat, repaired the hole in the sail, and as soon as the tide shifted set out through the cane, past the handsome pinnace that had finally won free of its mud bank, and was now creeping up the channel under sweeps, with a leadsman in the chains calling out the soundings.
I am young, I thought, and a man; and whyfore should I not act the role of a young man? Enjoy my pleasures before age and care ruin them?
No guard marched along the Mutton Island pier. Ella I found in the shadow of the creamery door. We kissed for several long, fair moments, and then she took my hand and led me beneath rows of ghostly round forms that hung from the roof beams—pendulous muslin bags, filled with curd and dripping on the brick floor the last of the milky whey-drops. Beyond was a room with stalls intended for sick animals. No ailing sheep were in residence, but there was straw to make a bed.
Make a bed we did, and stretched out our cloaks to fashion an inviting couch. I opened the moscatto, with its flavor of sunnier, drier climes, and we drank and then licked drops of the sweet wine from each other’s lips. For some hours we dallied on the straw, sharing our pleasures, and then I kissed Ella good-bye, plucked straw from her hair, laughed, and kissed her again before wrapping myself in my cloak and setting off for the pier.
The fortified wine burned in my veins, and I felt a pleasant looseness in my loins. I found the boat, cast off, and raised the sail. The moon soon set, and I found myself alone on the dark water, where I nibbled bread and cheese, drank cider, and sang to myself as the brisk wind blew the boat along.
Youth will needs have dalliance,
Of good or ill, some pastance.
Company me thinketh the best
All thoughts and fancies to digest
For idleness
Is chief mistress
Of vices all;
Then who can say
But mirth and play
Is best of all?
I put on my apprentice cap and pulled the brim down over my ears against the cold wind. I would have an hour or two of sleep, I supposed, before reporting to Lawyer Dacket’s for my day of copying.
I judged the harbor entrance by the stars, turned the boat for Ethlebight, and only then noted the glow some distance inland. It wasn’t the moon, which had set; and the sun would rise east, not north. I had seen the aurora on cold winter nights, but the aurora was shifting color, massed spears of light that advanced and retreated, and this light was steady. I stood, but could see no detail over the sea of reeds that stretched between my boat and the city.
Fire, it was fire. Anxiety gnawed at my mind.
The tide was coming in: water gurgled beneath the counter as the boat flew toward home. The glow grew brighter as I neared the city, and I saw red reflected on the undersides of scattered clouds. In growing fear I sped from channel to channel. I thought that in the blustering wind I heard clattering, and screams, and I hoped the sounds were only my own fancies.
At last the reed curtain fell away, and I saw my city on fire, flames silhouetting the towers and battlements of Ethlebight’s wall, and the main channel of the Ostra black with an enemy fleet.
CHAPTER THREE
* * *
he ships of the invaders were black on the black water, with black flags and drooping lateen yards. The piers were black with enemy, and the black night rang with screams.
I stared in amazement so complete that it left no room for fear. I had been gone eight or ten hours, and in that time, a fleet had poured like the tide into the harbor and the city had fallen.
Screams. Shots. A sudden rising spout of fire so tall that it overtopped the walls, the flare as a roof fell in.
There was a hissing in the air, a splash beyond. I realized I’d come too close to the enemy, and someone on deck had loosed an arrow. The fear that had been delayed came rushing into my head, and I put the tiller over, and heard the lugsail bang overhead as the boat lost way.
Enemy ships crowded the piers, had grounded on the shore. There was no place where I could land.
Another arrow buzzed overhead and then skipped away over the water like a stone. I fumbled for the sheet, the sail filled with wind, and I raced back into darkness, away from the consuming red light.
My family. My city. On fire.
Panic flayed my nerves, and my mind seemed to chatter like a broken cog in a decrepit mill. I couldn’t imagine what to do. I had no weapons, no armor. Nothing but a small knife to cut bread and cheese, that and a boat I’d borrowed from a friend.
I looked more closely at the enemy ships. Chebecs, I thought, with two or three masts and a raking, jutting bowsprit, capable of traveling under oar or sail, small enough to get up the channel that guarded the city. I had seen chebecs come in and out of port all my life, most bringing wines and silks and spices from the old Empire of the Aekoi.
But never in these numbers. What was moored in the port was a pirate fleet, manned by gold
-skinned reivers from the edges of the empire, cities ruled by warlords and brigands, sometimes with the support of the emperor, sometimes without. Pirates such as these had raided the coasts of Duisland in the past, but not in years, not since well before I was born.
And never had Ethlebight fallen to a raid, nor had the city even been menaced in decades, not since the harbor had begun to silt and the entrance become too difficult for a stranger to navigate. Half the attacking fleet should have run aground within a quarter mile of the bight’s entrance.
Screams. Shots. Another gush of flame. I could not sit and watch, not while my family was in danger.
A passage opened in the reeds and I took it. I knew most of the channels, having boated and fished in them since I was a boy, and I was reasonably certain this one led to the salt marshes southeast of the city. The salt marshes were empty at night save for flocks of sheep and their shepherds, but they would also be empty of reivers.
I ran the boat aground on mud, threw out the anchor, and then slogged through reeds and calf-deep mud till I came to the boggy meadows south of the city. The effort had me straining for breath by the time I reached something like solid ground, and then I moved as fast as I could force my limbs. Ooze spurted from my shoes at every step. Urgency dragged me on. The air smelled of salt grass and smoke.
Red light winked through the South Gate, the smallest gatehouse on the wall, built for the convenience of the shepherds and fishermen who lived in or near the marsh. The gate was open, and I increased my pace.
I slowed again as I saw firelight glint on swords and pikes, and I realized that the gate had been opened from the inside by the reivers, who had gathered outside and hoped to tempt desperate citizens to run out and be captured.
Captured to be slaves. For the reivers were here for loot, certainly; but as far as they were concerned, most of the city’s wealth walked on two legs.
From somewhere in the city came the cry of shrill whistles. I retreated into the darkness, then began a circumnavigation of the walls, loping eastward in hopes of finding an unguarded rampart. Fantasies clawed at my brain: find a reiver alone, knock him on the head, take his weapons. Kill more reivers, free the captives, put together an army and retake the city . . . I knew perfectly well the fancies were absurd, but I couldn’t stop them from flooding my mind.
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