Stormed Fortress

by Janny Wurts

  Worse, the sensitive discussion could not stay private. Warned first by Ranne’s challenge, then the sound of an approaching tread from without, Sulfin Evend shifted his form of address on delivery of his ultimatum. ‘If you try, Blessed Lord, we have thrown away sense! Might just as well pin your bleeding heart on the gauntlet we throw to the enemy!’

  Lysaer inclined his fair head to the senior officer who entered, the dangerous, deep glitter roused in his blue eyes a threat that seized on distraction. ‘You have a recent development to report?’

  ‘I bring triumph, Divine Prince!’ The man bowed in worship, his soiled surcoat and gear arrived straight from the battle-front. ‘Alestron’s sea quarter bailey is ours. All resistance is routed, though our push for complete occupation is hampered. The s’Brydion defenders launch cross-fire from the upper citadel. They have set the harbourfront burning.’

  ‘Rise and sit.’ Lysaer flicked imperious, ringed fingers to summon his valet. ‘My servant will bring wine. Once you are comfortable, your Lord Commander will share your account.’

  The report that followed was mostly routine. While Lysaer paced to bridle frayed nerves, a list of casualties changed hands, followed by a detailed assessment of the numbers who could fight again after rest and refreshment. Sulfin Evend heard out the names. He asked after the performance of his squad sergeants, then pounced on the lapse, that one company was late in at the watch change.

  ‘That would be Gevard’s division, from Telzen,’ the staff captain disclosed, flushed. ‘Those squads stayed on to oversee transfer of the wounded, and help the Koriani enchantress whose hospice required moving to secure turf on the mainland.’

  ‘What?’ Sulfin Evend’s barked incredulity shocked Lysaer from midstride to standstill. With a gesture to forestall undue divine interest, the Lord Commander demanded, ‘What Koriathain? Why was I not informed? Since when have we had more witches sticking their noses into Alliance affairs?’

  ‘One sister, my lord, and her novice assistant.’ The staff captain cleared his throat, set aback. ‘She is most diligently tending our casualties. Unlike the ones with the gaudy pavilions, this healer does not put on airs. She flaunts no silk mantle and attaches no retinue beyond a male servant who runs menial errands. If you would judge her harshly, she’s saving our men. Her conjury has spared many injured we would have lost without her learned practice.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ snapped Sulfin Evend, shoved to his feet.

  ‘Adruin’s galley, my lord. The ship’s master agreed to bring her convalescent charges across. He had little choice, after the hospice she kept in the sail-loft was set ablaze. Since the rest of the harbourfront’s burning past salvage, she was offered safe passage and a tent shelter next to the war camp.’

  On one knee before thought, Sulfin Evend presented his rapid appeal to the white-and-gold majesty of the Blessed Prince. His request for leave was placed without pride, under the name of true service. ‘My Lord Regent of Tysan, let me intercept that galley before she makes landing among us.’

  For the thornier handling of Arithon’s demise had to wait. At least until he thwarted this bald-faced attempt to insinuate another Koriani presence in the teeth of the Alliance campaign.

  Early Winter 5671

  Dark Hour

  By sundown, a biting east wind razed the estuary, whipping gusts that hampered the loading of Adruin’s out-bound galley. With the sabotaged wharf left a mangle of sunk timber, and the upper-tier catapults busy hammering ruin on any ship caught within range, the craft lay tied in close to the battered stonewalls. A rough gangway lashed from loose planks and moored tenders boarded the assault troops due for leave from the harbourfront. Elaira attended her wounded, beleaguered, on the vessel’s exposed upper deck. If the freezing weather endangered her critical cases, the blaze in the sail-loft forestalled better handling. The Alliance captain’s offer of transport defrayed the certain destruction that swept through the sea-quarter streets.

  ‘That’s setting your crown prince, stunned helpless, within the cursed reach of his half-brother’s fury,’ Dakar accosted Talvish in a searing whisper. ‘Not to mention, we’ll be under the itching noses of the Light’s watch-dog priests!’ Dockside, the pair of them grunted to heft the locked chest that hid the Paravian sword and the heirloom lyranthe. While the enemy assisted the on-going task of hauling their litter-bound casualties across the heaving span from the ruined landing, any snatched conversation was risky.

  Yet the blond liegeman, who gimped with his sword-arm strapped up, only backed Elaira’s decision. ‘How else to challenge the Alliance’s cordon?’ He tipped his chin towards the lights of the patrol galleys raking to and fro across the closed harbour mouth. ‘We’re bang in the midst of those blood-feeding sharks! Bravado alone cannot jack a small boat, or slip past that accursed blockade! We will cross alive if we go under sanction by Lysaer’s officers.’

  But the persistent hunch to the Mad Prophet’s shoulders decried the logical option.

  ‘Trust Davien’s working!’ Talvish urged in clipped haste. ‘Our chances are sure to be better ashore, where our leaving won’t be as nakedly obvious.’

  Against Dakar’s steamed silence, and all better sense, Arithon’s wrapped form was bundled aboard by two Sunwheel soldiers, under Glendien’s rapacious oversight. Talvish perched atop the stowed trunk, strategically placed in close reach, as the galley’s crew raced the changed tide to cast off.

  The vessel embarked under cover of darkness. She surged into the icy race of black water to a blare of horns, and the crackling flutter of her Adruin registry and Sunwheel pennant. Errant danger increased as the oarsmen dug in, driven at double-stroke pace. As they pulled the ship clear of the looming cliff, only nightfall and speed could foil the defenders’ hurled shot. Under hot fire from the upper citadel, the galley ran, lanterns shuttered. Her zigzagged course dodging the whistle and splash of lofted boulders unleashed by the trebuchets.

  A glancing hit splintered the yardarm and topmast. Deck-hands sprang to jettison the entangled wreckage, while a luckless by-stander writhed underneath, screaming with a compound fracture. The bone-setting left Elaira too engrossed for worry, or Glendien’s shattering grief. The clanswoman mixed remedies without anyone’s prompting, while Dakar, reluctant, wound cantrips to ease the seaman’s piteous suffering. Throughout, Arithon lay senseless. Kept under Talvish’s tacit watch, his condition stayed changeless, while the galley bore off, and the tumult of battle fell away astern.

  Parrien also remained blessed by unconsciousness, while beyond the wake thrashed up by the oars, the stamped silhouette of the citadel brooded over a necklet of flame. The conflagration streamed from roof to roof, roaring throughout the tight streets of the sea-quarter bailey. The galley made steady headway through the fouled air, until the rolling billows of smoke chased away on the wind off the Cildein.

  Beyond range of the trebuchets, the deck-officer ordered the lamps kindled. Sailhands at work on the mangled rigging began whistling as the oar-stroke was relaxed, then suspended for the blockade challenge. Throughout the parade review for security, Rathain’s delegation stayed beneath notice, too obviously busy soothing the wretch with the fracture, and ministering to the line-up of others who sustained gashes and splinters. In deference to the critically wounded, Adruin’s galley was passed in brisk order. She rowed past the gutted keeps at the harbour mouth, and changed course for a shore-line entrenched with the Alliance war camp.

  ‘More lives stand in jeopardy than you can possibly imagine,’ Dakar snapped to Elaira, still flushed to sweat from restraint of the seaman just strapped into splints.

  The enchantress returned a nettled glance. ‘I prefer freezing chill and overzealous protection to the certainty of a roasting. You aren’t busy enough? We’ve run short of blankets. Glendien needs you to borrow spare cloaks from the rank-and-file men who are sheltered belowdecks.’

  She turned her back, forced the semblance of calm as she addressed the badgering pressure of too many
helpers. Since her talent tended Alliance men, now, every movement she made tripped over the hindrance, as soldiers with wounded comrades aboard crowded in to assist. She put them to work. Some fetched and carried, while others rigged makeshift sailcloth or strung hammocks to shelter the injured against the rough crossing. If Glendien was just as raggedly hand-tied attending the stricken, Talvish had contrived to position his body to shield his unconscious liege from the spray off the foredeck. The covert restraint galled him, that his masquerade in a Sunwheel surcoat permitted no more without risk of undue attention.

  That misery lasted, until Elaira made rounds to ascertain the prince’s stitched loin had withstood the trauma of loading. ‘You! Blond chap with the sword wounds! I don’t care blazes where you’ve placed your loyalty. Your sound arm is needed. Steady that grandfather’s hammock, forthwith. The gut wound he’s suffered fares ill, set to swinging. I won’t lose a life to your lazy comfort. Keep him under your charge till he’s brought to safe landfall, or believe this, you’ll answer to me!’

  Arithon’s exposure was not the sole pitfall to strain her inadequate resource: Parrien s’Brydion also languished among her prostrate wounded. The trump blow dealt by Dakar would not leave him harmless. Already his groggy awareness resurged in the sting of the freshening air. Elaira sensed his prideful rage at her back, as, stripped naked in blankets, he found himself hog-tied and bandaged on a galley flying the hated flag of Adruin. His curdling howl did little good. The poultice that packed his bludgeoned nape also bound his thick jaw-bone and gagged him.

  ‘You are hurting, dear man?’ Elaira knelt at his shoulder, called for a candle-lamp, and flared the light in his face. His murderous glower left her unfazed through a pitiless examination. ‘Awake, and past fortunate to be so,’ she murmured. ‘Head trauma is unpredictably dangerous!’

  The affront she tossed back into Parrien’s teeth stayed whetted beneath smiling honey. ‘Your life is thus far preserved, an astounding grace brought by unbiased compassion. You are nicely concussed, which makes it unsafe to dose you on soporifics. Therefore, your sad suffering must be endured. Do I have to warn? The unwise move on your part could prove fatal, with my sympathy stretched beyond snapping. Act the fool, and your get will be raised by your widow, for I will not stir to save you.’

  Since his clenched fists were chilled, she called for a hammock and a dry cloak. Then she took further pains to steer Glendien clear, and set Dakar to post sharp watch over him.

  In due time, the galley approached the far shore. The slap of the waves slackened as she neared the cove landing, and the glimmer of torch-light unveiled the teeming sprawl of the war camp. Raucous noise as the off-watch companies let off steam rebounded across the black water, wind-snatched talk cut by jubilant shouts, celebrating the day’s massive victory. Beyond the relief ranks, packed in wait on the strand for their turn to press the engagement, the cookfires warmed rowdy singers. Their infectious high spirits spurred shipboard morale. Sternwards, a sergeant was cracking a joke, while the deck-hands itched to lay hands on their beer, and romp with nubile harlots.

  ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, sweet,’ one ventured to Glendien with a lusty grin. ‘There’s whores like their play hot and rough, and some strumpets too bawdy to settle for a dullard husband.’

  ‘Has your itching male pucker replaced your runt brain?’ the clanswoman retorted, en route to empty a slop bucket. ‘Yap such to your mother, she’d flay your rank tongue. That’s if you’re not a pimp’s rut yourself, bred for naught but a swaggering jackal.’

  To whoops from his fellows, the seaman laughed back. ‘Virgin witch!’ he sniped, flagrantly ripe for a dousing. ‘What would you know of the wicked delights found in an evening’s dalliance?’

  ‘Enough to hobble your play in the sheets,’ Elaira cut in from the side-lines. Arrived from the shadows, just in time, she forestalled her posed novice’s folly.

  The men scattered to their posts, while Glendien paused at the leeward rail: not to break, despite her pale face, and the grief that fought welling tears. ‘I can handle them.’

  ‘You can’t,’ contradicted Elaira. ‘But where there’s no choice, we’ll bear up. Take a minute. We shall need iron nerves for the hazards on landing.’

  The weariness also sucked through her in waves, anxiety chafed by the effusive crew, and the relapses caused by the open-air passage. She also snatched refuge, aching and cold; beyond drained from the wearing hours of subterfuge, and sharp-focused use of strong magecraft. No sigils had buttressed her healing, throughout. Only the free use of crystal, as taught by Ath’s adepts.

  ‘You’re unwell,’ remarked Glendien. ‘Worn thin and pressed near to overextension.’

  ‘I will manage,’ Elaira insisted, a ruefully honest glance darted sidewards.

  ‘You couldn’t.’ The clanswoman flashed a bitter-sweet grin. ‘But since when does helplessness stop any woman whose beloved requires protection?’

  The moment was shattered by a brisk hail from the sloop, scudding in under sail from the shore-line. Shouted orders disrupted the inbound routine for a conference with the galley’s captain. While the drum changed beat to back-water the oars, the ship’s mate sprang to brighten the forward candle-lamp. His poised light unveiled the streaming pennant that declared the approach of a Light-sanctioned courier.

  ‘Dharkaron Avenger show mercy to idiots,’ the Mad Prophet huffed, arrived at Elaira’s right side. ‘Here’s the prickling gamut, no question.’

  For the array of the banners shouted ill luck, if not an outright disaster. The top-ranking officer of the Alliance had requisitioned this craft from her out-bound run down the strait. Commandeered here by that supreme authority, the impasse would place their tissue-thin ploy under gruelling examination.

  ‘Rinse that bucket clean,’ Elaira barked to move Glendien. ‘Stow it in my locked remedy trunk, now, though you’ll have to displace the fellow with the strapped forearm who’s parked on top!’

  Dakar spoke, near as swiftly. ‘You’ll be challenged by the Lord Commander at Arms, Sulfin Evend –’

  But Elaira cut off the untoward speech as she glanced in affront towards the on-coming vessel. ‘Only a heartless brute and a fool would obstruct my order’s mission to succour the wounded.’

  ‘No doubt you’ll endure nothing worse than formalities,’ declared the breathless fore-deck officer from Adruin. He had come up behind to oversee crew, sent pounding to run out the anchor. Dakar was forced silent. While the captain’s bawled orders had the oar banks run in, and the middle deck men deployed fenders, the sloop luffed her sails. Agleam with lamps, she grappled for boarding.

  ‘The man will be civil, whoever he is,’ Elaira cracked, annoyed, then shoved off with straight back to tackle the unnerving interview.

  Dakar pursued. Staggered over the wallowing deck, he let his inept footing fetch him into the enchantress’s elbow. Entangled in skirts, through effusive apologies, he demolished her resolute platitudes. ‘The creature’s outbred clan, of s’Gannley descent, a caithdein’s direct line that sees everything!’

  ‘Your flapped nerves are a bother!’ Elaira lashed back. In feigned fury to distance the curious, she added, ‘By all means, make yourself scarce if you’re cowed. Gold badges, or not, the man shouldn’t be hard to intimidate.’

  Yet the frantic, raced pulse in her wrist told the truth, as Dakar’s crushing grasp let her go. She did know, altogether too well, whom they faced in their effort to spirit off Arithon: the errant son of Hanshire’s conniving mayor was most expertly versed, and unafraid of the Koriathain.

  Amid shaken confidence, the stopped galley was seized by two dozen Sunwheel guardsmen. They were of first-rate caliber. Deployed on the main-deck, they already suspected her presence: the ordered detainment of the hospice wounded occurred with alarming speed. The uninvolved soldiers and onlooking deck crew were crowded well back from that firmly drawn line. More, the indignant complaint of Adruin’s sea-captain met drawn steel, a warning to cede his ship’s righ
ts and stand down before Sunwheel priority.

  ‘We’re here on account of your unsanctioned passengers, brought under the auspices of the Koriathain,’ the invading sergeant at arms told the disgruntled galley-men. ‘Hold your tongues and stay quiet! The sooner our Lord Commander is satisfied, the earlier your scheduled course resumes without fuss and delay.’

  While the overshadowing presence of Lysaer’s first war officer mounted the side battens behind, Elaira seized her last moment to take stock of the fugitives inside her quarantined company. Glendien, ensconced with the hurt children in plausibly protective dismay; she had dispatched the bucket, since Talvish was also safely displaced from his post at Prince Arithon’s side. His blond head just showed, where he crouched tucked in blankets, in shadow behind the remedy chest. Dakar also bowed to the sensible course, his technique used before to deflect Lysaer’s arcane examiners. His seer’s aura drawn down to an unremarkable muddle, he hunched at the side-lines, holding the hand of a delirious matron who suffered disfiguring burns.

  The hammock that held Arithon swayed unattended. Surely beneath notice: Davien’s disguise rendered him as a feeble old man, unobtrusive amid the savagely mauled and the fevered who languished, unconscious. Yet the desperate wild card lurked alongside, still triced up in wound linen and rage: Parrien s’Brydion watched with scorching grey eyes, when the Light’s Lord Commander strode under the candle-lamp on the deck.

  Apparently warned that no purple robe awaited his scouring survey, Sulfin Evend demanded, ‘Let the Koriani sister among you stand forward!’

  His predatory distrust strangled thought. Elaira knew not to try bluster as she rallied her poise and stepped towards him. The instant impression screamed self-assured power: from compact strength in full arms, which wore trappings of rank as inconsequential, to the unrelaxed hands, no stranger to steel, and campaign scars, unabashed in plain sight. Then surface appearances were swept aside by the glittering hatred that lurked in his tiercel’s eyes, raking her.