by David Keck
The ship's master was roaring. "Hard on the steering oar! Bring that yard round!"
And Solan wallowed, stalling in her headlong drive for the rocks. Bleeding sailors hauled the sail round, and Durand tied off his line.
Solan bobbed once, coming about as the sail snapped tight once more, throwing the whole weight of the wind behind the master's will and snatching the bow round in a titanic jerk.
Durand struggled from the deck. Thirty or forty men looked back at him with one rattled expression. He searched the faces for Deorwen.
Then he felt a shadow moving in the storm.
They had been saved from falling backward into the cliff, but now, on her new tack, Solan shot along the foot of the vast wall.
They had no room.
The cliff wall rippled by, thundering full of jagged stone and breakers only yards away.
There was no room, and they could not claw off. While a square-rigger was handy—quick and easy to switch tacks— no square-rigged vessel could turn back into the wind now. They skimmed the exploding breakers, screaming toward the landing. The stone wharf loomed in a sliver of cliff-sheltered water.
They were coming on fast.
"Reef the sail, lads!" the master shouted. "For your lives!"
Solan shot past the rocks at the cliff's foot, heeling so hard the yardarm scrabbled over the cliff face like a blind man's stick. Then they were free. Free and gliding across the slender shelter of the cove.
"Hells ..." the master said, but it wasn't relief. The little man clutched the rail at the front of the aftercastle; his eyes were on the quay.
"Lean into it, steersman," he growled. "We've got too much speed." The wharf was coming on fast. "Get the fenders over. Anything you can find." Men scrambled to get bundled cordage between ship and bare stone. Durand caught hold of the rail.
Solan struck.
The whole vessel groaned like a beast, splintering planks through the forward quarter. The drag of rending timber bled off speed. Within a few heartbeats, Solan stopped, and the men were leaping ashore to loop lines over bollards and make the ship fast to the wharf, vowing the ropes would hold her even if she should sink where she lay.
Knights and sailors scrambled to their feet. Horses flipped and kicked, righting themselves. Durand found himself face-to-face with a sailor—maybe the man who should have been on the sheet—and the man shook his head.
"The Lord of the Deeps is great," he said, pawing lank hair from his face. "The wind switched. Just at the last. Veered straight off the sea." His voice hitched as he started to make the Eye of Heaven. Something had gone badly wrong with his shoulder.
"I have to find—" Durand began. He was about to say Deorwen. "—Someone. Did you see a woman?"
But the sailor was lost in the constricted world of unset bones. Durand started to pick his way through the tangle, hooking people to their feet and helping others calm horses. Finally, he let go one bridle and turned face-to-face with Deorwen, six inches from his nose. She had to look up.
He said nothing, but caught his breath like he'd been punched.
T am glad to see you well," she said.
Durand nodded, staring down into her eyes. "I must—the others. They'll need help," Durand said. Somehow, he managed not to catch hold of her, not to lift her from the deck— not even to touch her.
ON THE LANDING, the company took stock and began the difficult task of leading the horses up the long stair to the cliff top. They had lost one boy—a quiet one Durand did not particularly remember—and three others were badly hurt. Several took minor wounds to ribs and wrists and shoulders. None of the knights was even hurt as badly as that. And of the animals, two warhorses and four packhorses had to be put down—their life's blood given to the sea. A few of the men took the chance to punch Durand in the shoulder.
AT THE TOP of the winding stair, they came to a postern door with the Eye of Heaven in full red flood around them. Durand had been lugging a bag of someone's gear. Coensar took the last few steps alone. He lifted his hand to knock, then hesitated with his fist hanging, a long shadow on the door, and only then did Durand's memory come awake: Cassonel and the twenty-seven men. The Duke of Beoran. Coen at a postern door. He never imagined stairs or men with their backs to a forty-fathom fall.
Long before Durand could have steeled himself, Coensar knocked.
They slipped out of the light through a narrow passage and blinked into a stone courtyard. The storm had gone completely. As Durand's eyes adjusted, he realized they stood in the midst of a crowd. Light winked and slithered over a hundred jewels, darting in and out of the supple darkness of fur cuffs and linings. Durand had never seen so many nobles in one place.
"Durand, the helm!" Lamoric hissed, and, in a heartbeat,
Durand had the bag from his shoulder and Lamoric's five-pound iron bucket looping through the air.
A man stalked forth, wearing an expression of sympathy.
"My Lords, we see fallen men on the quay; don't we?"
Lamoric stepped from his men, his red helm magically in place, and put one knee in the sod before an active-looking man, clothed himself in rich but simple black.
"Your Highness."
Your Highness. Durand felt a stab of awe. Here, once more, the age-old blood of Atthian kings flowed in a living man. Durand joined the others in taking to their knees, and tried to determine which of the great men stood before them. A trim, dark beard marked out the blade of the man's jaw where the king's was fair—and more sturdy. The Prince of Windhover was meant to be a blond man and larger again. This one must be the youngest brother: Prince Biedin, Lord of Tern Gyre.
"We watched your vessel's arrival with considerable trepidation," Biedin confessed. "There was quite a crowd of us on the walls. Her master is to be commended."
"Yes, Highness."
"We will have men attend the injured at once. Now," said Biedin. "I am correct in concluding that you are the 'Knight in Red' they have all been talking of."
"I am, Highness."
"Please," Biedin said, "stand. Many were surprised, I think, that the Herald did not extend an invitation to you after your performance at Red Winding, and whispers have already reached us about High Ashes. A man might have thought such heroism a thing of another age."
"Your Highness."
"Sir Knight, you and your retinue are most welcome to Tern Gyre." He hesitated, lifting a hand to the walls confining the courtyard. "Sadly, space is in short supply at Tern Gyre on the eve of. the great event. If you agree, my seneschal will see that you and your pavilions are happily installed in the main encampment beyond the bridge." He set his hand on Lamoric's shoulder.
"That would suit us admirably, Your Highness."
"Good. I will make certain that my priest helps see to the unfortunate. And my man will send along a cask of wine to fortify your spirits." "Thank you, Highness."
"And we all look forward to great things on the morrow" said Bieden.
Lamoric and his men bowed low and followed the seneschal as the prince returned to the warmth of his hall.
Heremund ducked close to Durand.
"I'll see if there ain't room for one soul, anyway. I must see how the magnates are disposed." With a pointed strum on his mandora, the skald tramped off. Durand wished him good fortune.
While most of the entourage trailed after the prince, a part of the crowd detached itself to follow Lamoric's retainers. Waer was first among them.
He called to their backs: "That ship's master looked like a damned fool to me. What kind of madman lands his boat on a lee shore, eh? You might all have drowned, with the whole court, nearly, looking down as you wave your arms. But I suppose a ship was the only way."
A few of Lamoric's retainers turned as they walked.
Big Ouen glinted a few metal teeth at the man. "You're right clever behind the King's Peace, friend, but I wonder what you'll say when we're in the lists, eh?"
"It only gets worse," Waer sneered.
Berchard grinned a
t Ouen. "I had squirrels once at my old house. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Little buggers always on about their nuts."
As the two parties bantered, they walked under the gatehouse and stepped out onto the bridge: a natural stone arch forty fathoms over the surf. The back of the span was just broad enough to admit a single cart.
With the Eye gone beyond the Broken Crown, they might nearly have been walking in the empty sky.
The horses hated it.
The seneschal led them to a patch of open ground under the wheeling gulls, and Waer left them. A pavilion in Mornaway diamonds stood ahead of him.
LAMORIC'S MEN SUBSIDED around a bonfire of borrowed branches and huddled in the glow, getting something cold to eat, and doing a poor job of drinking the prince's wine.
Berchard was yawning, though his good eye glittered.
"The Marshal here. Whoever leads the company that wins the day. He's meant to get a boon, just like the old days. He asks a boon of the Marshal that's lost. It can be anything. Horses. Some fine tract for hunting. An heirloom blade. All the fish from his weirs for a season. Favors. Gerfalcons."
"I'd settle for a joint of beef in the hall," Badan groused. "Cold fare is right hard after chasing across Hellebore and Saerdana and sea voyages and a shipwreck." He tore off a hank of tough bread. "What I want is a joint roasted till the meat slides off the bone."
"Your teeth still giving you grief?" Berchard needled dryly.
Durand did not laugh. His skull was packed to the eyeballs with treasonous dukes and crashing ships and rooks and Deorwen and Tern Gyre. He left the others and went to look for his tent, but, beyond the firelight, Lamoric caught him by the shoulder.
"Durand," he said. "I want you to know. The hag. This business on the ship with that line. Even the damned helmet this evening. You've been a lucky stroke." The man glanced toward the gleaming slit windows of Tern Gyre. "And now we are here." He was smiling.
Durand nodded, feeling false as an adder. "Aye, Lordship."
"Whatever happens," Lamoric said, "I will not forget." The man's face shone.
"No, Lordship."
"No." He nodded. "Now go. You'll need rest. We all need rest." He jerked his chin toward a kneeling Sir Agryn. "That's Last Twilight, I think. The Eye is gone. The man's better than a bell."
"Good night, Lordship," Durand said, and left them all for the shelter of his tent. The canvas walls glowed and flickered with fires and passing shadows. As he lay down, music pressed in around him. He hadn't noticed it when he was outside. Someone was playing a fiddle. Drums thumped and rumbled. He heard tabor-pipes swirling. Women shrilled like birds. Men roared.
He pressed his head against the ground. Lamoric had bought the best men he could, and here was the chance he'd paid for. Now, everything was down to two days' work. Every man in Lamoric's fighting conroi gambled with him. He could hear it. in Berchard's talk about coming home. About old bones. He could see it when Coensar's knuckles stopped before the postern door, or when big Ouen dreamed at the campfire.
But they could lose.
Again, the music asserted itself. People brayed and lowed and shrieked, flickering against the canvas. He wondered how many of the tournament knights—brawling second sons and country sergeants—knew about the High Council and the vote. How many guessed that this might be the place that undid the kingdom and set the Banished howling and blood against blood.
Somewhere he heard a voice: Waer or a man like him bellowing a laugh.
As he lay with his head spinning, the campfires slowly burned down all across the headland. Mumbling souls close by found their beds.
Durand thought of Lamoric, taking him aside, talking debts and honor.
Abruptly, something touched his tent. Nails scrabbled at the canvas and a stubborn shadow spread over the wall, and, when he made no answer, a hand flapped, knocking.
"Durand." Deorwen.
"Host of Heaven," he said, but she slipped inside. "God's sake. You can't come here." Suddenly angry. "We must speak," she said. Durand wrestled himself to his feet. "There's nothing to say," he hissed. "You're his wife." The others could be anywhere. They could be right outside. "Yes."
"You could have told me," he protested.
"He was playing Knight in Red and I was playing lady's maid and then it was too late. I tried to keep away."
"Aye," Durand said and fought for a heartbeat to check his momentum. He remembered her ducking away at Red Winding and after. "You did.
"—But no," he said, as memory warmed. "No. You had chances. You had chance after chance. You could have said something. Any time we met."
"Durand—"
"Sure, you had to keep quiet when I pulled you out of that river. Then you had your secret, but, afterward, why hold your tongue? Why?"
"I knew about the Red Knight game that first night on the bluffs. Why didn't you put me off all those other times?" He couldn't look at her. His hands clenched and unclenched.
"It was a mistake, Durand. A mistake."
" Why didn't you just tell me? "
"All of it," she said.
"If you'd said you were married to anyone."
"I couldn't. I-just couldn't." She caught hold of him.
He felt her heart bearing. He tasted her breath. She was too close. They were right in the middle of her husband's camp— Lamoric's camp. But she was too close. They kissed—like drowning. And he felt her hands over him, pressing and darting under wool, under linen, soft as doves. Her body was hot and smooth under his fingers. He hadn't realized how cold he was. Cold through his bones.
People said that mad sailors lost at sea would slake their thirsts with great gulps of salt water. It was like that as they struggled together in that dark tent.
Afterward, they were alone and still.
Somehow, the tent's center pole had come between them. They curled around it, face-to-face, lying like shipwrecked travelers on a midnight sea.
"The marriage," she said. "My father. We had just come through so much, he and I. And I remembered Lamoric. We met once before. He had an easy smile. He had dark eyes, I thought. And so I listened to the wise women. 'Women weave peace with their bodies,' they say. I went and we swore our oaths under the Eye of Heaven and the Weaning Moon. And then he was off—that same moon. He was so wounded when his father sent Gireth to war without him. This Red Knight dream of his. So I took the road on his heels. I was his wife.
All of those vows I'd sworn. The wise women said as much. I had to go."
Lamoric had left her the same month they were married. She reached out, brushing black curls from Durand's forehead. Her pale cheeks blotched.
"Everything is in this, Durand," she said. "All the lands his father gave him. The quarries and quarrymen. The peasants and mills. Everything." Durand remembered the last pound of silver.
"He's a fool," Durand murmured.
"He—" She paused, her hand sliding to his shoulder. "All his life, he has lived on his father's gifts and his brother's leavings. Nothing earned. I think he gambles all of these things to prove whether he deserves any of it."
Even in the dark, Durand closed his eyes. He wanted to reach down and find rage. He wanted to despise Lamoric the fool. But his father's gifts and his brother's leavings. Durand remembered his own brother and his own father and all the leagues he had traveled. He could feel her breath stirring against his lips. His lidded eyes.
"And then there was you, charging from the reeds like a bull when he'd forgotten me. And you seeing me and knowing when my eyes were on you."
"This cannot be," Durand said.
"I know," she said.
"He does not deserve this."
She gathered herself up, curling her feet and skirts under her. He felt her hands slide from him. "What can we do?" he said.
"Nothing. We can do nothing. This is the way they talk, the wise women. There are things that must be done, it doesn't matter how. Hardships must be borne. The Queen of Heaven, She is never where Her husband is. The Eye and the moon
s. Because She came late to Creation, She lives not where She loves. Sometimes nothing is all there can be."
Durand climbed to his feet. She had stepped toward the door.
He kissed her.
"God be with you," she said and slipped away.
Durand stood where she left him. He stood still as a hanged man after the kicking's stopped. Beyond his thin walls, living people moved. Low voices. Fires. Laughter. God.
DURAND FELT LIKE a ghost.
The lonely Eye of Heaven returned with a storm of ragged gulls that swung over the headland and plunged from its cliffs, shrieking in the cool sea wind. Heremund flapped his hat to keep the things off as he tramped across the bridge from Tern Gyre.
"Durand!" he said, showing the gap between his teeth. The birds were all over him, swooping and pecking. Someone must have fed the things. "I’ll end up like Berchard before long." The skald closed one eye, still grinning.
"What've you learnt?" asked Durand. The two men hovered at the edge of the camp.
Heremund sobered. "They're having their Great Council right after the fighting, and runners have come already, saying King Ragnal's camped near Biding and will be here by noontide."
Durand looked around, as though he might see the battle shaping up in the pastures down the long Eldinor road south.
"As far as the rest is concerned, it's damned hard to read. I mean, there are some you can tell right off. They'll vote as a pack if there's any sign the Council will go against Ragnal. The boy from Cape Erne spends his time either sour as a man with a bug in his beer or gloating like he's just won a fat prize; Hellebore is a pig of a man who'd stick a knife in your back if you so much as filched a pigeon's leg from his platter; Beoran looks like a mad ship's master, daring the storm down upon him. And there are others I wouldn't trust: that Highshields couldn't walk a straight path if he shut one eye and bit his tongue, and old Maud of Saerdana. There ain't a man alive has a blind clue what she'll do next. Oh, and she's relishing every moment of it, trailing about like a merchantman in bunting and bows with half the magnates in the kingdom hanging off her gunnels."