Yeah, some fucking chance.
He went back through to the bedchamber, found Barla fastening up his satchel and looking distinctly queasy. He manufactured an easy grin.
“Don’t worry, Doc. I’ll walk you out.”
“Is that, uh …” The doctor swallowed. “Really necessary?”
“No, probably not,” Egar lied. “But it’s best not to take any chances, tempers the way they are right now.”
Also best not to mention that for most of Shendanak’s crew, the ones who hadn’t been off the steppe longer than a couple of years, a doctor was just a shaman without the Sky Dwellers to call upon. And fail to deliver the magical goods without the gods at your back, you could end up in a ditch with a slit throat—he’d seen it happen more than once to itinerant doctors from the south in Ishlin-ichan.
“Yes, well, uhm.” Barla put both hands on the closed satchel and looked down at it, as if considering a rapid change of profession. “Thank you. But could not captain Rakan and his men, uh … ?”
“Better if it’s me.” Egar’s smile was starting to feel like smeared jam on his face. “Come on, let’s get you back aboard the Pride. Shanta could probably use another one of those stinking herbal infusions you make, and he won’t drink it if you’re not there to force it down.”
In the other chamber, Rakan heard the plan and nodded agreement with barely a word. He was a pretty shrewd lad for his age; he saw the sense in this. But as his men got the door, he beckoned Egar aside for a moment and the Dragonbane saw how his youth leaked through the façade of soldierly calm.
“When do you think my lord Ringil will return?” he asked quietly.
Egar shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine, Captain. A day there by boat, they said. A day back. That’s two, plus a day to do the digging and rest …”
“It’s been four days already. What if something’s wrong?”
“Well, they might have a hard time finding the grave marker, sure. Or, if the weather’s against them—”
“No.” Rakan’s voice grew tighter, lower. “Not that. What if this time he found the Illwrack Changeling?”
Near the opened door, Salbak Barla cleared his throat. Egar shot a glance that way, saw Rakan’s men hanging off their captain’s every word. He pitched his own voice loud and brisk.
“If that has happened, Captain, then pity the Changeling. Because Gil’s going to be bringing us his head on a spike and his balls wrapped around the haft.”
It raised weak grins among the men, which he counted a victory of sorts. He wagged a finger in salute at Rakan, led Barla out the door.
To his relief, both corridor and stairs outside were cleared of men. Durhan and Gart appeared to have followed their instructions to the letter. Downstairs in the tavern’s main bar, four Majak sat at a table, burning a blessing taper and playing halfheartedly at dice. Serving staff and a couple of local patrons aside, they were the bar’s only occupants. They grew quieter as the doctor and the Dragonbane came down the stairs, but they all lowered their eyes with appropriate respect. Egar paused at the table and sketched obeisance at the taper, nodded acknowledgment at the man he judged the eldest. Then he ushered Salbak Barla past, one proprietary hand on the doctor’s shoulder for all to see.
He felt their stares at his back, all the way to tavern’s front door.
Out in the street, it was still raining and the daylight had all but given up. A damp gray gloom hung over everything. Ornley had no formal street lighting, even here on League street, one of the town’s main thoroughfares. There was a local ordinance commanding residents to burn candles in their windows during the hours of darkness, but around here this kind of murk apparently didn’t count as dark, so—no candles yet. Egar and the doctor picked their way with care over rain-slick cobbles they could barely make out, and presently the street began to slope downward toward the harbor.
“What will you do if Shendanak does not waken in three days?” Barla asked him when they’d negotiated a hairpin curve that took them out of sight of the tavern.
“I’ll think of something.”
“That’s very reassuring.”
Egar shrugged. “Look on the bright side. Maybe he’ll be up and about day after tomorrow. I didn’t hit him that hard in the head.”
“No, but you did it repeatedly. Which makes it far more like …”
Volume soaking out of Barla’s voice like piss into sand. Then silence. Egar glanced over at him curiously.
Saw where the doctor was staring and followed his gaze, down League street to the next bend, over the low roofs of houses to the harbor waters beyond.
And the big, lean League man-of-war anchored there.
HE SPRINTED THE REST OF THE SLOPE DOWNWARD, LEAVING BARLA PUFFing in his wake. Skidded on greasy cobbles, stayed upright with the long habit of battlefield charges in his past. Around the final curve on League street, where it splayed wide to meet the wharf, down the broad cobbled mound it made, and so out onto the waterfront proper. He let his pace bleed down to a slow jog and came to a halt at the edge of the wharf, staring out at the new arrival.
Trying to calculate exactly how much bad news this might be.
The League ship was a little smaller than Pride of Yhelteth, but with that sole exception, she dominated the harbor. Her bulk dwarfed the few local fishing boats tied up along the southern quay, her lines rebuked the sturdy merchantman build of Pride and Sea Eagle’s Daughter, and she somehow gave the impression of having shunted the moored imperial vessels aside to make room for herself in the center of the little bay. Shielded archer’s platforms armored her railings fore and aft. The cumbersome snout of a war-fire tube poked over her bows like some huge sleeping serpent’s head.
She was anchored squarely across the harbor exit.
Her colors flapped wetly at stern and mainmast—he’d recognized them from that first glimpse up on the hill, had seen plenty like them on the ships in Lanatray harbor a few weeks back, while the expedition restocked provisions and waited on the diplomatic niceties. The eleven-star-and-band combination of the League topped the mainmast, above a bigger flag denoting city of origin—in this case some piece of nonsense involving a gate, a river, sacks of silver, and a couple of large buzzards; Trelayne itself, he recalled. The League flag was repeated at the stern, and dark reddish pennants flew off both secondary masts. He’d seen those before, too; couldn’t remember where. Couldn’t remember what they meant.
Footfalls behind him—he glanced round, saw Barla crossing the deserted wharf at a limping trot, lugging his bag from one hand to the other as he came.
“Sacred Mother of Revelation,” he panted. “What’s that doing here?”
Egar shook his head. “I’d love to believe it’s a standard patrol. But from what we heard in Lanatray, I don’t think they bother with that sort of thing up here. Fits with what Gil told me, too—no one in the League gives a shit about these islands.”
“Apparently they do now.”
“Yeah.”
Movement on Pride of Yhelteth’s main deck. Egar squinted in the failing light, made it for Mahmal Shanta, up out of his cabin for the first time in days, huddled in a heavy blanket and trailed by solicitous slaves. He stood at the starboard rail with a spyglass at his eye, scoping the League vessel. Egar saw him turn to one of his retinue and issue commands. The man bowed and went below again.
“All right, come on.” Egar jogged along the wharf to Pride’s gangplank, waited for Barla to catch him up, and then went aboard. The watchmen waved them through, clearly distracted. Which, Egar reflected grimly, wasn’t good to see in men supposedly trained to marine standard.
We’re all getting way too slack. This place is sapping us. We’re in no shape to …
To what?
He joined Mahmal Shanta at the starboard rail.
“Dragonbane.” The old naval engineer did not take the spyglass from his eye. His voice was hoarse with long bouts of coughing. “You’ve seen our new friends, I take it?”
>
Egar grunted. “Hard to miss.”
“Indeed. Hard to take as coincidence, too. One doubts such savage beauty graces Ornley harbor on a regular basis.”
“Beauty?”
“Beauty.” Reedy emphasis on the word. Shanta lowered the spyglass and looked at the Dragonbane. He’d grown gaunt with his illness, but his eyes still gleamed. “I don’t expect anyone from a horse tribe to appreciate it, but that’s a poem in timber floating out there, a veritable ode to maritime speed and maneuverability. There’s a reason the Empire always comes off worse in naval engagements with the League, and you’re looking at it. Superior design, borne of constant competition between city-states warring for an edge.”
“Right.” Egar gestured. “You know what those red pennants mean?”
“Indeed I do—”
Shanta stopped abruptly, caught and then creased over with a spasm of coughing. One of his retinue came forward to hold him up, but the engineer waved him violently away. He braced himself on the rail with one age-knobbed hand, got himself upright again by wheezing stages. Slaves fussed about, rearranging the blanket on Shanta’s trembling shoulders. The man Egar had seen Shanta order below returned with a steaming mug of something that reeked of mint and other less palatable herbs. The engineer tucked the spyglass under his arm and cupped the mug with both hands. He drank gingerly. Grimaced but forced the liquid down.
“My lord, this is madness.” Salbak Barla knew his patient well and was not crowding him, but his tone was urgent. “You should not be out in this weather. We must get you below, we must get you warm.”
“Yes, yes, all in good time. Here.” Shanta handed the mug to the doctor and took hold of his spyglass again. “It is unfortunate, but I am the expert here, and I am not done perusing. I must fix detail in my head, Doctor, and thus save myself the necessity of further sojourns on deck.”
“The pennants,” Egar persisted.
“Yes, the pennants.” Shanta pointed with the spyglass, schoolmasterish. “Heart’s blood red, snake’s tongue trim, at foremast and aft. Northern League naval convention. It signifies that the vessel is flagship to a flotilla.”
“A fucking flotilla?”
Shanta stifled another, weaker cough with his fist. “Three to five vessels, if my memory serves me correctly. More and the pennants would not be split tongued. Or they would have gold trim. Or is it both?”
The rain seemed abruptly to be falling that little bit harder. The gloom beyond the harbor exit grew that much more menacing. Egar scowled.
“So where are the rest of them?”
“There’d hardly be room for more vessels in the harbor anyway,” Barla offered. “Perhaps they anchored farther out.”
Egar tried to stave off a creeping sense of doom.
“How long have they been there?” he asked Shanta.
“Oh, not long. The watchmen called me as soon as they sighted the colors. It’s taken me some time to get up and dressed, and then I waited below to see if they’d come to us. When they didn’t, I came up on deck and I’ve been here awhile. Say half an hour since they anchored? A little longer?”
“And no landing party.” Egar squinted against the rain. “They’ve not even started lowering a boat.”
“No.”
“But … what would they be waiting for?” wondered Barla.
Shanta and the Dragonbane traded glances. Shanta nodded. Egar felt a sickly weight settling in his guts.
“Should I tell him?” wheezed the naval engineer. “Or will you?”
The doctor blinked in the rain. “What?”
“Encirclement,” said Egar grimly. “They’re not here to send anyone ashore, they’re here to plug up the harbor. Stop us getting out. While the rest of the flotilla lands an assault force somewhere up the coast, and they come overland to fence us in.”
“Then—but, then …” Salbak Barla gaped back and forth at the two of them. “Well, we have to warn captain Rakan. And the marines. We have to … to …”
“Forget it.” Egar gripped the rail in front of him, tightened his hands on it with crushing force as the anger swept through him. “Way too late now.”
Can’t believe we’ve been this fucking stupid.
But who would have looked for it, Eg? Here, at the damp arsehole end of the world? Why would they fucking bother?
“What do you mean too late?” The doctor’s voice, plaintive now, like a child tugging at his sleeve. It seemed to be coming from a long way off.
“He means,” explained Mahmal Shanta patiently, “that if they’ve chosen to show themselves in the harbor now, it’s because the land forces are already in place.”
Egar made an effort, reeled himself back in. He scanned the rise of the town where it backed up the hill above the bay, the briefly seen winding of streets and alleys between the dark stone houses, the crappy little watchtower on the ridge to the north. All harsh and alien now, and just to really crown it, a thick fog had settled in on the upper reaches of the hill. Half the fucking town was gone into it already.
Steep ground, hostile forces closing from all sides, and a local population we’ve just succeeded in pissing off.
“Gentlemen,” he said flatly, “we are royally fucked.”
CHAPTER 6
he house Tand’s men took her to was on the upper fringes of the town, just before Ornley thinned out into a scattering of isolated crofts. It was high ground, and there would have been a great view back down the slope of the bay to the harbor, if the air below hadn’t been quite so clogged with drifts of murky, low-lying cloud.
At least we’re out of the rain.
It was something Tand appeared to take comfort from as well. As they walked the last couple of turns in the street, he put back the hood on his cloak and nodded approvingly up at the sky. He was doing his best not to look smug.
“Seems to be clearing,” he said.
She tried not to sound too bad-tempered. “You really think we can trust this confession, Tand?”
“Oh, most certainly. Nalmur’s a good man, one of my best. He knows his work.”
Nalmur was leading the group. He glanced back at the mention of his name.
“I’d stake my life on it, my lady. We got at least three other squealers leading us to this bloke by name, and when he talked, well—you know it when a man cracks, you can almost hear it happen. Like a rotten tree branch going, it is.”
She masked a desire to bury one of her knives in his throat. “Right. And have you left this cracked man in any fit state to talk to us?”
“Oh, yes, my lady. Didn’t need to rough him up much past the usual.” An opened palm, explanatory. “He’s a family man, see. Good lady wife, a pair of strapping young sons. Plenty to work with.”
Smirks edged the expressions of the other men in the group.
“Yes, thank you Nalmur.” Perhaps Tand saw something in her face. “You can spare us the details, I think.”
“Just as you like, my lord. My lady. But that confession is rock solid. You could build a castle on it, sir.”
Tand tipped her a told-you-so look. She worked at not grinding her teeth.
They took the final turn in the street, found themselves facing a short row of cottages, dwellings more hunched and huddled than the buildings lower down the hill. A brace of Tand’s men were loitering outside an opened door about halfway along the row. They were guffawing about something, but when they saw the approaching party, they stiffened into quiet and an approximation of drilled military attention.
A curtain twitched in her peripheral vision. She didn’t bother to look around. You could feel the eyes on you all the way along the street. Gathered at the edges of the darkened windows and in the gap of doors cracked a bare inch open, waiting to slam. Watching, hating as the booted feet tramped by.
It was the postwar occupations all over again.
Greetings from the Emperor of All Lands—we come to you in peace and the universal brotherhood of the Holy Revelation.
But
if you don’t want those things, then we’re going to fuck you up.
Tand had taken the lead. He nodded at his saluting men and stepped between them, ducking in under the low lintel. Archeth followed, into the soft glow of a banked fire in the grate, and candles lit against the day’s end gloom. There was a pervasive smell of damp from the earthen floor and the whiff of voided bowels to go with it. A sustained, hopeless keening leaked in from the next room. Three more of Tand’s mercenaries stood guard over a man stripped to the waist and strapped to an upright chair.
Nalmur and the rest of the squad crowded in after her.
“Well then,” said Tand. “Nalmur, will you do the honors?”
Nalmur took a theatrical turn around the chair and its occupant. As Archeth’s eyes adjusted to the light, she made out bruising on the man’s face, crusted blood from the broken nose, a series of livid burn marks across chest and upper arms. His breeches were soaked through at the crotch. Nalmur dropped a friendly arm around his shoulders, and the man flinched violently against his bonds.
“My lord, my lady—meet Critlin Tilgeth, first warden of the Aldrain flame, Hironish chapter. Master Critlin here likes to get together with his pals a couple of times a year in stone circles and invoke the spirits of the Vanishing Folk. Which they do, apparently, by dancing around naked and fucking each other’s wives senseless. I guess you got to find something to fill your evenings with up here.”
Belly laughs from the men around her.
“Get on with it,” she said harshly.
“Yes, my lady.” Nalmur slapped the tied man amiably on one cheek. Straightened up. He switched to accented but serviceable Naomic. “Tell us about the grave again, Critlin. Tell us what you did.”
The Dark Defiles Page 6