The Ships of Merior

by Janny Wurts

  Unease ate at Lysaer like acid on a bum, until even waking reason felt like nightmare.

  The wind will shift,’ Diegan insisted. Helpless in his need to ease his liege lord’s distress, he scrounged a goblet and shared his mulled wine. “We’ve overcome our due share of setbacks.’

  Exhausted and thin as any one of his officers, the Prince of the West accepted the glass in distraction. He had no heart to add the point just argued in force by his fleet captains: that when the wind veered, the winter storms would rake the east coast with the change. If the blue-water ships could batten their hatches and ride out such gales in fair safety, the galleys could withstand no such punishment. Their lower freeboard and oar ports would take on water in high seas. Heavily loaded, rough conditions would force them to seek sheltered harbours, or run the high risk of foundering.

  ‘The supply shortage here is already critical. If our troops aren’t to starve, we must move them south with all speed.’ Lysaer swirled the dregs in his wine glass, driven in determination as Lord Diegan had never heard him. ‘This is our most critical hour. If we don’t put to sea within the next few days, the war host we have gathered against the Master of Shadow is a wasted cause, and every loss sustained at Valleygap gone for nothing. I’ve arranged to start loading tomorrow. The fleet captains aren’t happy, but I’ve forced their consent. The galleys will sail with the evening tide, whether we have to row against headwinds every league down the length of Minderl Bay.’

  Strike at Minded Bay

  While unfavourable weather and supply shortage preoccupied the war host’s ranking officers, in the wind-torn darkness of Werpoint’s outer harbour, a returning longboat’s crew shipped oars beneath the rolling hull of a merchant brig named the Savrid. The deck lantern swung cold on its ring. From a point halfway up the side battens, her captain cursed the duty-watch in dangerous, soft words, his breath a ghostly plume in the raw and salt-laden air. He vaulted over the rail, prepared to roust miscreants, then gasped, caught short by the prick of a knife.

  ‘Don’t shout,’ murmured a stranger from a point just behind his right ear. ‘Just step forward, quietly.’ The accent was crisp, vowels lilted in the dialect spoken by Rathain’s forest clansmen.

  Hooded against the wind, a packet of sealed dispatches snugged into his breast from the officers’ council with Prince Lysaer, the brig’s captain bristled.

  The knife prodded harder and sliced clear through his best woollen cloak.

  ‘Move on,’ the barbarian said, unreliably agreeable. ‘Or don’t. I can bleed you like a pig right here, and my archers in your crosstrees won’t even twinge against firing on unarmed oarsmen. You wish your bully boys to live? My liege would prefer they don’t suffer, but I’d as soon run them beneath the Wheel if you balk.’

  The captain shut his eyes, his clean-shaven jaw clamped in outrage. Mistakes could not be unmade. Likely his watch officer had been huddled by the galley stove sharing tales with the cook, instead of on patrol as he should have been. As a merchant’s command, Savrid’s hands were ill-suited to the rigorous demands of a war fleet. Three weeks standing dull rounds at anchor watch had undermined the best effort to maintain vigilance.

  Sorry, now, for his choice to secure his ship on the fringes to stay clear of tangled anchor lines and crowding, the brig captain gave clipped surrender.

  At once he was blinded under the stifling wool of his own cloak. Since his barbarian captor disliked foolish chances, his hands were expertly bound. Through muffling cloth, he scarcely noticed the scuffles while his oarsmen were captured and silenced one after another as they clambered over the rail.

  Common sea hands all, they were no match for raids and practised violence.

  Pricked by the knife, guided on by a shove, the captain could only let himself be bundled aft, through the companionway into his stem cabin. Against the squeal of the door hinge and the snick of the latch, he heard short words exchanged with someone else of uninflected speech. Then unfriendly hands spun him backwards. He toppled into an ignominious sprawl in the blankets of his own berth.

  His blindfold was whipped off with enough force to scuff his fair-skinned cheeks to a flush. Light-haired, blue-eyed, and burly enough to have worked his way up from a mate’s berth, the captain raised his square chin and glowered into a flare of lamplight fierce enough to make him squint. ‘Sure’s ebb tide, whoever you are, you’re going to be made to pay for this.’

  ‘How much is your dignity worth?’ quipped a voice with stinging, cool clarity. The speaker was small, compactly made, and mantled in plain-cut wool. The brassy spill of the oil flame played over black hair and eyes like summer leaves. A thin, chiselled mouth bent in dry irony at the flustered state of his captive.

  Whatever the shanghaied captain expected, that opening set him at a loss. ‘Who are you?’

  The stranger gave an elegant smile, reached out a limber hand and snatched the dispatch packet out of his prisoner’s tunic. ‘I’m the one wretch this lively war host has convened at Werpoint to eradicate.’ The beautiful fingers snapped through the wax seal, flicked open folded papers and tipped them in unbreathing steadiness toward the light.

  Savrid’s captain gave a galvanic heave in protest, then bellowed, his body slammed backward by the clansman’s reflexive restraint. Silenced by pain, he fought to sort meaning from insouciance. ‘The Master of Shadow? You?’

  His outburst was ignored. Allowed space to grapple his blind, staring fear, the brig captain gasped, ‘Ath have mercy, you’re here to close with the army at Werpoint!’

  Green eyes glanced in displeasure over the lit rim of parchment. ‘You’re nothing if not misled. War is exactly what I’m here to forestall.’

  ‘Lies!’ The captain spat at the feet of the sorcerer his ship had volunteered to help destroy.

  The broad-shouldered clansman returned the insult with a low burst of laughter and swiped his knife toward the harbour. ‘Did you see an attack fleet? No? Well, you wouldn’t. Because all we have with us are eight quick men, a cockleshell of a dory, and Arithon’s dinky pleasure sloop.’

  The companionway door creaked open to an icy flood of fresh air. Another rogue crammed into the stern cabin, planted as a wrestler beside the man self-proclaimed to be the fugitive Prince of Rathain. The deck lantern picked out details as the shadows slewed to the swell: a hooked nose and shifty eyes, then the shelf of a tattooed cheek, sliced by tangled, mud-brick hair.

  ‘Crew’s all stowed.’ The newcomer’s darted glance sheared over his sorcerer master with respect, then brushed off all else in contempt. A brass hoop glinted in one ear, and scratched gold rings looped over fingers toughly sinewed as grappling hooks. With his flat thumbs laced through his belt, the seaman had the same sleek grace as an unsheathed scimitar left propped to rest against the bulkhead. ‘When are you wanting to weigh anchor?’

  ‘Inside the hour.’ The Shadow Master tapped the dispatch. ‘As we hoped, Savrid’s assigned on patrol.’

  Resentful, the captain broke in, ‘What have you done with my men?’

  ‘They’re unharmed.’ The sorcerer scarcely paused in his reading, at ease with the brig’s rocking dance against her cable, except for a tension that suggested an attentive ear to the wind. Through the fitful, thumped footfalls as the prize crew on deck made thorough acquaintance with the brig, he added, ‘I doubt they’re pleased, trussed as they are in the forecastle. Short of taking their lives, that was the best I could do.’

  Don’t expect me to thank you,’ the captain snapped. ‘Why else are you here, but to kill?’

  Again, he was ignored. The black-haired prince cracked the dispatch into folds and perused the parchment chart beneath. ‘Jieret, your war captain’s gloomy hunch is justified. The Prince of the West knows all about my shipyard at Merior. I wonder who betrayed my happy plans?’

  As if that shuttered, flat tone signalled danger, the bearded clansman shifted stance. His knife hand started to a flash of sheared light.

  The other swarthy sco
undrel sidled straight from his slouch as the Shadow Master closed his edged musing. ‘Unless we want a war host down our throats and in our blankets, there’s no room left for half measures. Some risks will have to be shouldered.’

  ‘Ath’s Black Avenger! Haven’t we done that already?’ The clansman stared uneasily at the shifty-looking seaman, then swore afresh as the creature glared back like a felon. ‘My liege, you’re mad just to be here.’

  Unsettled enough to forget himself, he straightened, cracked his head on a deck beam, and ripped out in rife exasperation, Takes an underfed stripling to love seafaring!’

  Then, as the captive on the berth dared a move, he spun like a wolf, his knife poised to throw. ‘What do you wish done with this one? Jam him in up forward with the rest?’

  Disturbed beyond caution by the dispassionate gaze that swung from the dispatch and pinned him, the brig captain wrenched at his bonds. ‘Don’t think to get rid of me so easily.’

  A spark of vicious humour lit the Shadow Master’s mood. ‘Stay then. You’ll do just as well. Lysaer might fare better with a witness.’ To his clansman’s repressive dearth of comment, he added, ‘Jieret, your moping isn’t going to change my mind. If the prisoner’s complaints drive you to distraction, you’ve got my permission. Bind his mouth.’

  The brig captain tried an immediate protest.

  ‘No,’ rebuked the red-bearded clansman. ‘It’s quiet you’ll stay as my liege lord requires, or a good bit worse will befall you.’

  Trussed in his cloak, riled like a fighting cock bagged for the pit, the brig captain fumed while the Master of Shadow gave over his command to the mountebank.

  The slant-eyed seaman displayed an evil grin throughout his crisp orders to make sail. As wary as though he hazed a coiled snake, the Shadow Master clarified his wishes. ‘See that this vessel takes timely station in the channel. The lanterns you’ll need for running lights and signals are listed with the passwords for handing off the watch.’

  The dispatch changed ownership in bristling tension, as if the pair made uneasy allies.

  ‘Remember our bargain.’ The scruffy seaman gave a sly, parting chuckle. ‘If your move goes wrong, no loyalty. I’ll be sailing as I see fit.’

  Far and long after the brigand departed, the displaced captain worked and tugged at his bonds. He failed to loosen the rope or the wool by a hair’s-breadth; clan raiders were experts at knots. Yet as the rush of busy sailors swept across the deck topside, and commands rang out to haul anchor, the dread prince that Lysaer had raised armies to destroy did nothing more than to embark on a virulent round of pacing. Through the clack of the capstan’s pawls, the bearded barbarian watched his master cross and recross the tiny cabin, his restless touch roving from chart locker, to table, to blanket chest through a crisp and disquieting silence.

  Little else about the sorcerer seemed remarkable. The tunic he wore was patched at the hem, and a sailmaker’s stitch laced his scabbard. At each fresh change, while canvas was unbrailed and braced full, he held a tigerish pause as he measured the activity abovedecks. When the brig shouldered forward and heeled to the wind, he eased back into soft, balanced steps.

  Time passed. The lantern flame fluttered and failed. As if the clansman’s peace of mind frayed out with the light, he stirred in the shadows and rummaged through lockers until he found the striker and spare lamp. By touch, he filled the oil well, lit the fresh wick, then hunched in gloomy restraint at the table until the hot frame of the doused one cooled.

  Over the uneven jink of metal as he used his knife to dismantle the workings for cleaning, he offered in deep-voiced hesitation, There isn’t a damned thing I can say to talk you out of this.’

  ‘Merciful Ath!’ The smaller man whirled in an explosive ferocity that threw the bound captain to inadvertent recoil. Crammed in confinement, his backbone knuckled against the side ribs, he beheld an unalloyed agony stamped into the Shadow Master’s face.

  ‘Jieret,’ the criminal rebuked. ‘What choice do I have? If this war host isn’t stopped right here, right now, we’re going to see another bloodbath. Well, whoever comes to die for the wrong cause this time, I won’t sit back and let it happen. Not in my name, and not on Lysaer’s chosen battlefield!’

  The knife blade flashed. A crumble of carbon nicked off a tin screw and dulled the varnished surface of the table. Absorbed by blackened fingers and the fussy concentration required for threading a new wick against the jostling toss of the ship, Jieret set his jaw. No man to contest what could not be governed, he scrounged a rag to clean the lamp’s sooty glass, while canvas cracked and bellied above decks, and the brig changed to a northerly heading.

  ‘Steady as she goes,’ cried the helmsman; the screeling wail of gusts through the rigging subsided to eerie quiet as the vessel veered and lumbered downwind. Left the squeal of the yards in their trucks and the creak of burdened stays in place of conversation, Jieret Red-beard closed and latched the tidied lantern. Past the stem windows, distanced behind the roiled wake, the harbour of Werpoint spread like a whore’s gold-shot silk, the scalloped shores of the coves beaded with the lights of a thousand closely-anchored ships. The headland glittered also, limned from above by torches set streaming on the battlements; and from landlocked, sheltered hollows, a widespread glow of fires sowed the fields where the war host camped.

  The clansman’s bearded profile loomed a notch in the view like the anvil silhouette of a squall line. ‘Well if it’s possible to provoke a behemoth and survive, the least I can do, my prince, is back you with all of my heart.’ The assurance came measured and steady; and yet when Jieret arose to hang the lantern, the changed flare of light showed a face tinged chalky with fear.

  Hours crept by like slow torture, fretted out in nerves and apprehension. Minute to minute, the brig’s trussed captain suffered in sweating dread. His vessel sailed large, the breeze on her quarter, then hauled her wind, the enemy crewmen given orders to brace sharp up. Savrid swept the channel on the east leg of her patrol in faultless trim, the slit-eyed mate an able enough master despite his disreputable looks. Before the black shoals that fanged Crescent Isle, a leadsman was set in the chains. His precise, timed shouts as he called off the mark offered a morsel of reprieve. Whatever the Shadow Master’s intentions, the luckless brig would not be scuttled on the rocks.

  Gritty-eyed and aching, the captain jerked awake from an unquiet catnap. The swells beyond the stern counter heaved dull pewter under the advent of dawn. The wind still freshened. Stiff southeast gusts had the sailhands aloft to tie in a reef. In snatched bits of invective they maligned numb fingers and canvas turned unwieldy in the cold.

  If the lamp had been left to bum out, the aft cabin was not empty.

  Before the stem window, poised at the sill on propped forearms, the Master of Shadow waited against the foam raked off the brig’s rudder. He said gently, ‘It’s nearly time.’

  An oath lilted back from the gloom. Jieret Red-beard shouldered into view, a pair of fleece bracers in his hands. At Arithon’s swift query, he said, They’re mine. And yes, before you ask, they’ll fit you. I trimmed them down with my knife.’ Hardened against any protest, he added, ‘If you stay bull-stubborn and go through with this, I won’t have you tear yourself raw.’

  Arithon managed a smile, slicked with the grimness a condemned man might carry through his last march to the scaffold. Then he drew a sword of spectacular artistry from his scabbard and laid its black blade on the chart table. Disarmed, his expression of humility at odds with his killer’s reputation, he freed his laced cuffs and bared slender wrists to his liegeman.

  The barbarian showed no surprise at the marring white tracery of scars he tucked underneath the leather cuffs. He drew the ties firm then went on to lash his sovereign’s wrists with braided leather.

  ‘Jieret,’ Arithon said. ‘Thongs can break. I saw wire in the starboard locker. Forget about pity and use it.’

  The clansman drew a fast breath to argue; stopped. The corners of his mouth
flexed down until his moustache bristled into his beard. He accepted the bidding in dumb misery, drawing the wire tight in forceful jerks that had everything to do with a duty he found abhorrent.

  His prince endured in distanced stillness, his averted gaze turned to the brightening sky outside. On deck, orders passed to counterbrace the yards. The imprisoned captain shifted against the bulkhead, puzzled why his vessel should heave to in the middle of the channel.

  The barbarian finished trussing his prince, then positioned himself on the chart locker. ‘I’m ready,’ he announced in distaste.

  Arithon squared his shoulders. He made a last survey of the coves, cluttered with mismatched hulls, masts and spars and crosstrees packed in layered ranks like a forest denuded of foliage. Angles of tarred ratlines jagged scribbled ink above waters tinged silver and rose under daybreak. His stance stayed in balance despite the pull of tied wrists, while the brig bucked the crests and lost way under him, shuddered by the whitecaps that slapped her broadside from the south. ‘Make sure this ship keeps her station,’ he insisted, then added in cutting entreaty, ‘Jieret, by your oath as my liegeman, I charge you. Don’t let me give way, no matter how horribly I scream.’

  The clansman looked as hag-ridden as though he stared down the throat of a waking nightmare. ‘Ath’s mercy on us both! My liege, you don’t have to do this. Can sparing one seaside village be worth the price of such a risk?’

  A slim form limned against salted glass, the Master of Shadow gave stinging correction. ‘Merior’s folk aren’t my birthright. But a woman there holds my signet ring as pledge that her children shall stay safe.’