It came without a sunrise, a gray illumination of ridged storm clouds. I was sleeping, my head on the gunwales, when I awakened to see Maeniel, as wolf, slip over the bow of the boat next to ours and vanish into the water. I had slept hard and drooled; it dried on the side of my face and left a damp spot on the wood near where my lips rested.
There was no color in anything and the sedges, reeds and cattails were a dark frieze reflected in the silvered water. Everyone else was asleep except Ure. He was sitting in the bow and his eyes met mine, green as slag glass and twice as hard. I opened my mouth to ask him where Maeniel was going. His hard gaze edged into contempt.
I reflected that I knew exactly where the Gray Watcher was headed. And Ure had no use at all for what he called senseless blather.
No sense waking half the boat to ask a question when I knew the answer already. I put my head back down on the gunwale. I didn’t think I could, but I drifted off to sleep.
When I awakened again, Maeniel was climbing back into the boat. He was dripping wet and wrapping one of Gray’s mantles around himself. I rose; pulling my stiffened body up was a painful effort. But I stepped to the deck and tiptoed around the sodden sleepers between the rowing benches until I reached the three standing in the bow, Gray, Maeniel and Ure.
“What?” I whispered.
“Nothing good,” Maeniel said. “The smartest thing might be to turn around and go back.”
Ure grunted.
Gray whispered, “Say on, Lord Maeniel.”
“I didn’t think their strong point would be this strong. The pirates have refitted an abandoned Roman fortress about ten miles upstream. There are seventy to a hundred men there, all mature, able-bodied warriors. Twice our force and more. Better armed, tried and tested in battle.”
“Ships?” Ure asked.
“I counted twenty careened and upside down on land. A few more in the water,” Maeniel said.
“We have what?” Gray said. “Forty boys, three men and eight women.” He shook his head. “We should look for easier pickings.”
I felt my failure and yes, the failure was mine. Though I sat on the Dragon Throne and it was acknowledged I had the right to be there, the sub-chiefs hadn’t fallen in with my plans to carry war to the Saxon raiders who harried our highland coasts and out islands. When I visited the villages recruiting among the war bands and coast watch, none were willing to chance such a hazardous endeavor as striking at the Saxons in their home ports.
Yes, they had hailed me wildly at my accession to the Dragon Throne, but in the cold light of morning, they had second thoughts. What did a woman, a child, as yet, know of warfare? I got the useless, the outcast, the weak, the orphaned, the despised among boys.
And as for girls, the ugly. One had a strawberry birthmark that covered one cheek and part of her mouth. Another was taken captive and left for dead by the same Saxon raiders. Another hid her hair-lip. The others, drudges, broken by hard labor before they were in their teens, without friends or kin, bearing the load of endless work by day and the weight of their owners’ bodies by night. Leading lives so filled with misery that they had come to believe any chance of freedom was better than their day-to-day existence. If they should fail and fall into death, why then … so be it. Nothing beyond death could be worse. “At least I can sleep,” one called Albe told me.
“At least we could burn their ships,” I said bitterly.
“As I said, there are some in the water,” Maeniel told me. “We would probably be run down in the open sea. The pirate craft are oared and also light and very fast. Not to mention much better manned.”
“Suicide!” Ure said.
“Over the wall by night and take them in their beds?” I suggested.
“Full of ideas!” Ure commented. “No! These are children, not blooded. I’m a corrupt old devil, but even I won’t be a party to the slaughter of innocents. For such tricks you need a group of experienced men.
“Any others?” he asked.
I hunkered down and looked up at the three men. “Yes,” I said.
Ure made a beckoning gesture. “Say!” he said.
“What’s inside that fortress? Is it stone or wood?” I asked.
“Wood,” Maeniel said. “But on that scale … you can’t.”
“I can,” I said between my teeth. “I can.”
Then I reached over the side and fished out a floating branch, narrow, maybe a foot long. Very waterlogged. I clamped my right hand around it. With a whistling hiss, steam erupted around it, erupted the way steam does when water is poured into a hot metal pot. Then from the top to the bottom, the dry stick burst into flame and was ash before it had time to heat my fingers.
“I’ll go over the wall while you and the rest strike at the gates and burn them out.”
Maeniel studied me. “The reason the Romans abandoned the fortress was the damp began to undermine the walls. Like as not, what’s in the fortress that isn’t wet, is at least damp.”
“There’s that,” Ure said.
I rose from my heels and stood looking the three of them in the face. “Bet your life, bet your patrimony, bet your hope of heirs, when I put my hand on something, it will burn.” I raised my scarred right hand and held it up before them.
“Yes,” Ure said, looking at Gray. “It’s a plum this place, and well worth the risk.
Gray looked uncertain.
Maeniel studied me sadly. “Very well,” he said at length.
“Nothing is sure, ever,” Ure said to Gray. “Nothing.”
When I turned, I saw the youngsters in the boats were awake, sitting up and staring at the four of us. Outcasts, I thought. Maybe this is the advantage of being in the company of the last and least. None of them looked afraid and most seemed ready to do anything.
The Dragon Queen Page 53