TWOLAS - 03 - Warhost Of Vastmark

by Janny Wurts

  'Sithaer, then, who's for telling her?' The injured party shook a calloused fist. 'The jack who tries'll taste my knuckles for his breakfast and his teeth the next week, to the lifelong wreck of his digestion.'

  'High drama and low comedy,' Arithon said, a pricking spark to his humour. 'We may not be refined, but you can't say you'll lack for entertainment.'

  'And which sort is this?' Lady Talith stabbed back.

  For as they crested the slope from the beachhead, one man had not moved on command. No sweat-drenched joiner, this one stood tall in a jerkin of thong-laced deer hide. He was armed with a bow, several bone-handled knives, and a deadly plain longsword with the handgrip wrapped in stained leather. The only flamboyance about him was the fox brush laced into the end of his braid. His eyes were alert and cool as dappled shade, and his body, a fit wild animal's. 'Your Grace of Rathain,' he greeted in the whip snap clean accents that tagged him immediately as clanborn. 'My Lord Erlien, High Earl of Alland and caithdein of Shand sends respects.'

  Arithon inclined his head in greeting. A token changed hands. Talith caught the impression of a royal device before the disc was returned. 'I'm pleased to extend my hospitality.' Angled s'Ffalenn features showed inquisitive speculation. 'Why the formality? You've brought more than horses and cattle?'

  'Fiends alive!' The clansman showed white teeth in a grimace. 'I've been in and out of every peat bog in these scarps, trying to soak that reek off me.' The barbarian softened to reproof as he fired back the gist of the question. 'The stock's your problem now, and a few other troubles along with them. Earl Jieret's cranky war captain, for one. He's got a temper like a stoat. But you know that since you asked for him, they said.'

  'A sweet touch will scarcely train my mercenaries.' In tacit awareness of how the sun striking down through the defiles must feel on dark velvets, Arithon guided Talith forward and let the clan courier fall into step. 'What else?'

  The scout hesitated, toyed with his fox brush, then shot a furtive glance toward the finery the prince wore like a townsman. A dubious brow twitched, for the slight, dapper figure seemed no match for the razor-tongued swordsman reputed to have bested his clanlord.

  'I have two others with me, by Erlien's choice,' the messenger said to close out his business. 'A widow from Merior and a guardsman, once captain to Alestron's duke.' This last drew a nod toward Talith and a pause of evident uncertainty.

  Arithon assured him, 'There's no secret. Jinesse and Tharrick are friends. Erlien expected some problem?'

  The scout shrugged, his footfalls preternaturally quiet as he picked through the wood scrolls silted across the path by the wind. 'That's yours to determine. My lord bade me warn you. Both have fallen hard for Lysaer s'Ilessid's opinion of your morals. The man's yours, despite his squeamish conscience. But the woman's a brittle, dry stick. She followed you only for her children.'

  'High drama,' Arithon quipped. At the scout's flick of puzzlement, he gave a bitter laugh that raised the fine hair at Talith's neck. 'The matron's outraged, blind to reason, and expecting to be corrupted by slow inches? You just got here? Well then, let's not keep her waiting. Where is she?'

  But there was only one place in his camp to quarter women that Talith could see. A ramshackle cabin perched at the cliff base, its unweathered wood a cry of light colour against rocks streaked by seeping, small springs.

  Arithon dismissed the scout, then dispatched a nearby craftsman to find the twins. To Talith, he invited, 'Come along, your Grace. You might as well enjoy the fun.' His hand on her arm too firm for refusal, he towed the princess toward the doorway.

  The hinges creaked open to reveal a room with a bare table and chairs. A blond, bearded man perched on the unglazed windowsill, his frame strapping and broad as a mercenary. He clasped the hand of a woman in a mousy brown dress who looked nervous and drawn, hair like fine flax tumbled in broken strands around her temples. She gave a timid start at the Master's forceful entry, reached her feet in a worried bound, then froze. Her eyes swept his person, plainly surprised by the rich sheen of silks that forced recognition of royal rank.

  Unwilling and unwanted observer, Talith felt pity for her discomfort as Arithon swept aside her stammered greeting. 'Here I am, black as night in Sithaer and shedding blight like last season's leaves. At least, Erlien's scout tells me you believe all the fashionable rumours.' Lightly as he stopped, his tense stance presaged unpleasantness. 'If I'm evil, then make me repent.'

  The male confidant in the window shot straight in protective shock. 'For pity, man! She's been worried sick for her children.'

  'They're her offspring, not yours, Tharrick,' Arithon corrected. He took another step and leaned on fine knuckles against the tabletop. The faintest ring of horror shuddered through as he added, 'In Ath's name, you know me. What harm did you think I would do them?'

  The pale woman swallowed. 'I don't care to survey the mire of your conscience. I came to fetch my twins clear of it.'

  'Fetch away,' Arithon quipped on a thin snap of anger. 'Your children aren't infants. Place your boy in service to s'Ilessid, and he'll spend his next years polishing guardsmen's boots and eating table scraps. He'll learn the art of war. Obedience will be his only trade. If he's quick, if he kills well, he may become an officer. If he's not, two shirts, a sword, and an early death will be his lot. Will you be proud to weep at his grave site?'

  He had managed to sting the mother to pale anger. She stiffened her spine; after all, she had never expected this confrontation to go easily. 'I had chosen an apprenticeship with a weaver in Shaddorn. That's honest, at least. My son would be free of your sorceries and no blind mark for your wiles.'

  Arithon moved, sidestepped, and leaned by the doorpost to lend Talith an untrammelled view. 'Ah, yes.

  Looms and shuttlecocks for Fiark, whose gift is numbers, and who throws stones and strikes everything he aims at. Let's consider Feylind. She's no good with her hands. In fact, if you've noticed, she's farsighted. Her brother threads her needles when she needs to patch her breeches. She would blood you with her knife if she felt she had the need to, and she thinks of skirts like suffocation. Her talent is sailing and her trade is the sea. Hold her ashore, and you force her to a life of mediocrity.'

  'Better that than see her claimed by Dharkaron for Sithaer,' Jinesse said in an obstinacy that won Talith's admiration.

  That moment the latch rattled. Arithon spun and prisoned the bar with long fingers. 'Your son, mistress.' And he flung wide the door.

  Fiark stood on the threshold, puzzled and motionless as he blinked to adjust to the gloom. The moment framed him, a gangling lad with overlarge fists and skinned knees, his spill of flaxen hair tumbled over a tanned, untroubled brow. Stronger and straighter than the day he left Merior, his direct blue eyes held a self-confidence as fresh as the sunlight at his back.

  'Mother?' he said, reverted in a breath to boyish astonishment. He stepped into the shack with a heart-tearing mixture of restraint and joyous abandon.

  Glad as he was to see Jinesse, he started as she knelt and swept him up, three months of worry compressed in an overpowering, tearful embrace. His high yelp of protest was smothered in brown muslin, and the wrestler's move he engaged to tear free was not at all couth or forgivable.

  'I'm eleven!' he declared, defiant at her reprimand, his face stamped to square-jawed disappointment. 'Do you have to treat me like a baby?'

  'She's your mother,' Tharrick chastened. 'You'll do as she directs.'

  Fiark's sunny nature chilled over in comprehension, his features rearranged to resentment beyond his years. 'You're here to take me away. You want to apprentice me to that weaver in Shaddorn.' Charged with the contempt, the young voice turned acid. 'Were father alive, he never would have allowed it.'

  Stunned by the accusation's cruel candour, Jinesse gasped. The boy drew up and faced her. He did not, as she had feared, appeal to Arithon for protection, but waited in strait patience for her answer. When she could not speak for grief, he spun back toward the
doorway. 'I won't go,' he threatened in a man's controlled rebuff, then bolted outside at a run. The panel banged shut in an unbridled blast of childish temper.

  'Will you hear the bare truth?' Arithon said with a gentleness that pleaded for the boy. 'Not mine. Not Lysaer's, but Fiark's. He wants to be a trade factor. There's an honest house in Innish I know would be overjoyed to train him. The family is ageing and has no offspring to inherit.'

  'You have no pity and all the answers,' Jinesse said through tight emotion. 'My son was always difficult, but Feylind was obedient. If she's changed, then you've warped her trusting disposition to your purpose. You turn the young, so they say. I saw you use my son against me now. I know your cause is bloody war. I am going to take my twins and leave this place, and never speak your name to them again.'

  Arithon regarded her, opaque, wholly still; chillingly unlike the fair Prince of the West, who once came honestly and openly to her cottage in Merior to offer his clear-eyed consolation. Black-haired and shadowed, Rathain's prince said, 'Blame whatever you like on me if you can keep your peace of mind. But if you dare to know your heart, I rather think you'll find I'm a damned convenient crutch as a criminal. Condemn me out of hand, and you have the perfect reason to keep your children tied to your petticoats.'

  He was right; even Talith as a stranger could see as much. The burly man by the window stared in anguish at clenched fists, while the widow stood erect in desperate anguish. 'Fiark at Innish would be safe. What do you ask for Feylind? Should she stay with you and suffer in the violence to come?'

  Arithon expelled a soundless breath. He made two salient points. 'I alone can teach her the arts of offshore navigation. She already does star and sun sights, and is well on her way with reading charts. Against the war-host, I'll be truthful, I'm still seeking answers. But should you leave her, never forget. You still hold my signet and my pledge.'

  The reminder hammered Jinesse like a visible impact. 'You know my twins were all that stopped me from sending Lysaer's galleys after you.'

  Arithon shrugged. 'As a brother can love, so can he hate. Lysaer, also, will use what falls to hand.' Her shocked expression snapped him to a rust-grained turn of irony. 'You didn't know? He's my half-brother, and fittingly legitimate. He finds the attachment annoying, but I see no point in hiding facts. The Prince of the West has his own soiled linen, but you won't find me parading in the public eye to gain an army.' With lancing sarcasm, he ended, 'As Dakar will surely snatch his chance to tell you, I snare children instead.'

  'That's enough!' Tharrick uncoiled from the sill and folded the widow into his arms. 'We came to fetch her twins. Why not decide their futures later? She's travelled three hundred leagues with a dusty herd of cattle. You don't have to tear out her heart!'

  'He's sure if he doesn't I won't give my twins space to grow.' Distraught but not witless, Jinesse pushed away the needed offer of protection. 'Let me be. I have to think.'

  'Feylind was out in the dory,' said Arithon on a startling break into tenderness. 'I asked a seaman to fetch her in. By now, she ought to be down at the landing.' He opened the door and allowed her to leave, her thin face bathed in tears, and her broken composure walled behind dignified silence.

  Tharrick saw her to the threshold, spared a nod to the princess, then closed the panel behind, leaving darkness.

  'I grant you the point about the children,' Talith said with quick contempt. 'What can we victims do but admire the diabolical cruelty of your lessons? You have no mercy in you. My husband is well justified to hound you to your death.'

  'Lysaer's opinion is your affair,' Arithon fired back, then gave her his insolent laughter. 'Is winning or losing all you understand? Then I pity you. Whether or not you'll cede the match is quite moot. I charge you instead. Learn by what you saw and take fair warning.'

  * * *

  The day as it progressed became no less settled, although Talith's chests of belongings were off-loaded ashore, and she was given private quarters in one of the shanty's two rooms. Arithon afforded neither company nor sport for her scathing, sharp wit. He closeted himself away all afternoon aboard his brigantine in counsel with the grizzled and quick-tempered war captain called to serve from the clans of Rathain. The scout sent from Shand's caithdein received close instructions and left. The master shipwright and his least-skilled joiners were dispatched to Khetienn's hold and asked to build stalls to confine livestock. The work would apparently be finished under way, to judge by the banty little cook's screeched invective as he bustled to reprovision the galley.

  Time weighed on the princess, left alone in the company of her handmaid. Mistress Jinesse spent an hour with her daughter that ended in a tempestuous argument, young Feylind's responses turned filthy with sailor's vernacular she took care not to call out too loud. The guardsman Tharrick's stifled laughter affirmed the apt guess, that Arithon would make things unpleasant for the girl if he heard her use such ugly language to her mother.

  Jinesse had no choice but to resign herself. Her twins had matured enough to have minds of their own. They held only scorn for the weaver's trade.

  'Too dull,' Feylind said, cryptic. 'I hate sitting still.'

  'The folk who have the fun trade the cloth,' Fiark added. 'I should rather count baled goods than threads.'

  The widow had nothing to say to this. She ruffled the paired, leaf-gold heads instead. Feylind spoiled the gesture by twitching back from her touch; Fiark endured, but looked offended.

  Jinesse also found herself at loose ends in a yard full of labourers. Wrapped in dense brooding since the Master of Shadow had so high-handedly intervened with her family, she had little to say to the princess. She looked to Tharrick for consolation and waited in pallid patience to demand the facts concerning the factor's family at Innish with interest in Fiark's future. On the topic of her daughter's wish to sign onto Khetienn as cabin girl, she pursed her lips in flat denial.

  The day wore away to her fretting.

  By dusk, the hammers fell silent, leaving the mingled sharps and flats of gulls skimming the tide line. The sea wind wafted the pungent resins of pitch pine, and the men ate boiled crabs from a pot, brought to smokeless heat by coal carried in on the brigantine. The small outpost embraced its evening routine with a certain rough tranquillity; except for the scouts sent in parties to sweep the rimrocks on patrol.

  The council on shipboard broke up. By the damp rocks at the landing, Dakar's tones complained of perishing hunger, bitten through by Caolle, more querulous still, expounding on the need for more caution. 'So who's fooling whom?' he badgered to whoever lay in earshot. 'His Grace of Rathain is a hunted man in four kingdoms, and the chit he holds hostage is one an army would burn cities to win back.'

  Feylind met the last dory, bearing Arithon. Oblivious to any need for tact, a swagger to her step meticulously copied from Captain Dhirken, she rushed through the falling dark and seized his hand. 'You said Talliarthe is due in with dispatches. Let me take her out when she arrives.' She tossed her head, insistent, the braid down her back like a glistening rope of oil in the flicker of freshly-lit torches. 'I must show my mother I can navigate and reef a sail. When she sees what I can do, she'll understand.'

  The Master of Shadow let her tug at his fingers, standing thoughtful by the shoreline. 'You aren't strong enough to man the sloop by yourself just yet.' As she heaved straight to protest, he touched her lips silent. 'But that can be overcome. Here's what I think. You can captain her. Give all the orders. Fiark will go, and Tharrick, and one of the Khetienn's sailhands for muscle in case a gale blows in out of season. If your mother gives consent, you can thread the mazes to the strait and come back. Fifteen days. After that, you understand, I can't do any more. What happens must become Jinesse's decision.'

  'She'll let me go,' Feylind declared, her young face determined.

  Arithon returned a grave shake of his head. 'She'll do what's best.' He worked himself free of her adoring grasp, a twist to his mouth that was wry and sadly tender.

 
A snag of light in a royal sapphire spun to sudden movement in the gloom; Lady Talith, as observer, whirled and fled. She had no desire, ever, to see this man vulnerable. He was her dedicated enemy, and Lysaer's bastard nemesis, a sorcerer born and bound to clever reiving. Her husband insisted he used children as a ploy.

  If his compassion for the feelings of the little ones stemmed from falsehood, Talith would avoid the temptation to let his wiles sap the bastions of her hatred.

  The princess invoked the privilege due her station and demanded her meal in the solitude of her cabin. She was not present to hear the widow consent to Feylind's trial aboard the sloop. Settled early in her bed of musty blankets, she lay wakeful to the brangle of the clansman, Caolle, and Tharrick, arguing over nuances of siege warfare. Interleaved through their gruff words and laughter, clear as the peal of flung coin, Arithon's meticulous, silver-tongued speech taught the twins the three-toned whistle used by the tribes at need to signal danger.

  When sleep finally claimed the Princess of Avenor, it came laced with dreams of her husband's anguished pain for the assault by an enemy upon a vulnerable flank he had trusted in her good sense to guard.

  The next day, Talith arose to find the Master of Shadow gone, and the yard in the moody care of his senior joiner. Astonished to be abandoned to her own devices, uneasy in hindsight for her flaunting show of jewels the day before, she stalked like a stork over the litter of shavings and asked imperious questions.

  The sour fellow answered her, laconic, between powerful strokes of his adze. 'Ask Ivel what you will. I'm busy.' He tipped the haft of his tool toward a barrel where a shrivelled old splicer hunkered, chewing his breakfast of smoked cod.

  Talith wrinkled her nose at the noisome stink borne downwind. Need for information overcame her distaste. The splicer, if blind, proved an addict for gossip, pleased to speak on any subject she wished.

  'Master's off into the uplands. The clan war captain from Rathain's gone with him. That one came, you must know, to train mercenaries.' Ivel spat a cod bone and tucked meaty fists around the napped knees of his breeches. 'Once Caolle's established with the recruits, Arithon's for the valley, where Shand's caithdein's sent horses. They'll cull the herd, and select thirty to ship out for sale. The brigantine's to bide here at anchorage until the sloop brings in dispatches. She'll sail on the tide and rejoin him downcoast for loading.'