by David Drake
Sea air had painted a tinge of rust over the quarterstaff's black iron buttcaps, but that could wait till they were on land again. If Cashel wiped them now, they'd rust over again in less time than it'd taken him to clean them. He'd have liked to rub the hickory, though, but doing that would've meant taking his arm from around Sharina's waist. The quarterstaff, trusty companion though it was, didn't need his attentionthat bad.
Cashel looked past the girl nestled against his shoulder. Their ship-Garric's ship-was two full lengths ahead of the rest of the warships. Following them was a second line, of light craft like the one Ilna travelled on with her beau Chalcus and also of triremes used for transport. Those had only one bank of oarsmen with the rest of the space in the narrow hulls given over to cargo and soldiers who hadn't been trained to pull an oar-another kind of cargo so far as the sailors were concerned.
To count the ships Cashel would've needed a bag of dried peas, like he'd have used to tally a flock of sheep. There were many times more ships than he had fingers, though. Sharina was right: if Garric said jump, Count Lascarg would ask "How high?"
He felt his skin prickle; an itchy feeling like the first hint of sunburn after a day's plowing. Cashel's brows knitted in a frown. It wasn't sunburn today; and the other thing that gave him that sort of feeling was wizardry close by.
"Tenoctris?" he said, disengaging himself from Sharina without bothering to explain. "Are you working a…?"
But he could see that she wasn't, so he didn't bother to finish the question. If not Tenoctris, then…?
The wizard sat down cross-legged more forcefully than could've been good for her old bones. She had a satchel of books and the paraphernalia of her art-Cashel carried it for her when the two of them were together-but she didn't bother with it now. Instead, she took a split of bamboo from the sleeve of her court robe and drew a pentacle with it on the soft pine deck between her knees.
Using the bamboo where a less-cautious wizard would use a specially-forged athame, she tapped the flats of the pentacle murmuring, "Cbesi niapha amara…" in time with her beat. A spark of crimson wizardlight winked into existence in the center of the symbol, waxing and waning as she spoke.
Cashel shifted his body slightly to hide Tenoctris as much as possible from the sight of nearby sailors. He trusted the old woman's skill and instincts both; but for most people, wizardry was as surely to be avoided as the plague. Nobody'd object aloud to what a friend of Prince Garric was doing, but the business would make people who saw it uncomfortable or worse. Cashel didn't want that if he could help it.
Sharina spread her court robe with both hands, providing an even better screen than Cashel's bulk. Her eyes looked questions, but she didn't speak. She knew that Cashel or Tenoctris would tell her if there was something she needed to know, and she didn't want to distract them from what might mean everybody's life or death.
"I don't see anything," Cashel said quietly. "It just doesn't feel right."
"Ialada…," Tenoctris said. "Iale."
The spark suddenly cascaded into a shape or series of shapes, like a wall of damp sand shivering to repose; an instant later it blinked out. Tenoctris dropped her wand and swayed, her frail body drained by practicing her art. Cashel steadied her with his left hand.
Some people believed that wizards merely waved their wands and their wishes took form effortlessly; those folk had never seen real wizardry. Cashel's muscles allowed him to lift weights that few other men could manage, but his feats didn't become easy simply because they were possible. Similarly, a truly powerful wizard could move mountains or tear chasms in time-but that work had a cost.
Tenoctris looked up. "Garric's in danger," she said, forcing the words out in a whisper. "I can't see what-there's a wall my art can't penetrate. But it's something terrible, rushing toward Garric."
"Sound the alarm!" Sharina called. Her clear voice rang over the grunt of hundreds of oarsmen and thethump of their bodies slamming down on their benches at the end of each stroke. "We're being attacked !"
"Watch her!" Cashel said, releasing Tenoctris so that he could grip his quarterstaff in both hands. Sharina would hold the old wizard if she still needed help to keep upright. As for Cashel himself He stepped past the women and leaped outward to the long wale supporting the rowlocks for the uppermost banks of oars. The narrow deck was clogged with Blood Eagles slipping the gilt balls from their spearpoints, turning them back from ceremonial staffs into weapons. Rather than force his way through the soldiers, Cashel was going around.
"Keep clear!" he bellowed, running like a healthy young ox heading for water after a day of plowing. The wale creaked, and the quinquereme itself wobbled as Cashel's weight pounded along so far outboard.
The young aide at Garric's side began to hammer on the rectangular alarm gong set in a framework on the stern railing. The boy's eyes were open and staring.
"Keep clear!"
Chapter 2
"Sound the alarm!" Garric said. He didn't know what was going on, but he drew his sword with no more than a whisper against the iron lip of the scabbard.
Cashel was running sternward, so the danger wasn't in the bow. Garric turned, looking past the high, curving sternpost. The hundred and twenty-seven ships of the royal fleet were arrayed behind theShepherd in order as good as that of so many soldiers at drill. He didn't see any danger, neither in the water foaming past in the oar-thresh nor in the sea to the horizon or the clouds above it. Rain perhaps, but from this sky it would be warm and slow, not gusts with lightning slashes.
There was danger somewhere. The warning must have come from Tenoctris, and she didn't make mistakes.
The trumpet and coiled horn on Admiral Zettin'sQueen of Ornifal blew together, the raucous call that signaled fleet action. Zettin was commander of the fleet just as Lord Waldron commanded the royal army: Garric could give orders to either man and expect them to be obeyed before they were fully out of his mouth, but the prince didn't get involved in the mechanics of maneuvering ships or battalions.
The prince had other matters to take care of. At the moment, the most important was learning what was the matter.
"Clear the yards, you stupid scuts!" Master Lobon shouted to the sailors who'd gone aloft for show. "Action stations, don't you hear!"
Wiping his face with the end of his red sash-of-office, he snarled-to the gods, not to any of the humans nearby, " Sister take me, the mast's raised! Won't that be a fine thing if we have to ram?"
King Carus took in the world through Garric's eyes, but he analyzed what he saw with the mind of the foremost man of war who'd ever ruled the Isles. A glint on a hilltop that Garric assumed was merely a quartz outcrop was to Carus a possible ambush; the tension in a courtier's posture might precede an assassination attempt. Carus had personal experience of those threats and a thousand more But he saw nothing of concern in the surrounding seascape.
"Your majesty-" Zettin called through a speaking horn from the stern of his flagship. Water spewed up as his oarsmen laid into their looms with renewed vigor, trying to close the gap they'd allowed to open between them and Garric's ship.
"Your majesty?" called the captain of the Blood Eagles aboard theShepherd. He held his men in a double rank facing both sides of the ship. Their spears slanted forward, the points winking, and their left arms advanced their shields slightly.
Lerdain was saying something also, though Garric couldn't hear him through the racket of the gong he hammered. Garric pointed at the youth and bellowed, "Enough! Let me think!"
Lerdain froze. Garric knew he wasn't being fair-the lad was only doing what he was supposed to-but there wasn't time to worry about that. The gong continued to vibrate on a note that drilled all the way to Garric's marrow. He tore it from its mountings with his left hand and hurled it into the sea. Water danced briefly as the bronze block sank through the waves.
Cashel hopped onto the quarterdeck, brushing the end of the rail as he went past; it broke. "Tenoctris says you're in danger but she doesn't know what
from!" he said, turning to face outward. His hands were on either side of his quarterstaff's balance, ready to swing or stab, whichever the situation called for.
"Well, at least I know where I stand!" Garric said, turning so his back was to Cashel's.
With my friends, and with a sword in my hand. What better place was there?
He and the warrior king in his mind laughed amid the shouts and the horn signals.
***
The gong's rich note echoed between sea and sky. They could hear it in Barca's Hamlet, Ilna thought, and didn't chide herself for exaggerating as she usually would've done.
As the first note sounded, Chalcus began to survey the horizon. He didn't unsheathe his sword or razor-sharp dagger, but he was as tautly poised as a drawn bowstring.
"Ilna, what's the bell?" Merota said, only a child again as she tugged on Ilna's outer tunic. Merota had seen a great deal of horror in her short life. She'd come through it, and given a moment to compose herself she'd come through this as well; but the sudden clanging shocked her into panic. "What's going to happen?"
Chalcus spun and pointed his left index finger at the child's face. "You!" he said. "Crouch under the sternpost behind Glomer, that's as safe a place as there is. Now!"
"Yes, Chalcus," Merota said, scuttling past the frozen helmsman to obey. When she'd huddled behind the flutist who blew time for the oarsmen, she began bawling her eyes out.
"Mistress?" Chalcus said softly; his eyes on Ilna's, his muscles rigid as iron but not moving, not yet. Trumpets and horns called; the oarsmen looked up through the ventilators in frightened surmise, and half the sailors on deck were shouting something to someone or everyone. Captain Rhamis tugged Chalcus' tunic much as Merota had done Ilna's, and for much the same reason.
Ilna looked down at the cords she'd been knotting and in their pattern saw the answer to the question Chalcus hadn't put in words. Even strangers could have read the coarse fabric, though they'd have called it a feeling, an impression. To Ilna there was no more doubt than there was in the direction of dawn.
"From there," Ilna said, pointing northwest with her outstretched left arm. She hadn't woven the pattern consciously, but a part of her mind had provided the information she was going to need. "An enemy, coming for Garric. Fast!"
Chalcus' gaze followed her arm. Ilna herself could see only swells and troughs; the sea was a little rougher than earlier this morning before the clouds darkened. The sailor shaded his eyes with his hands stacked, looking through the narrow slit between left palm and the back of his right hand.
Chalcus turned to the helmsman. "Bring us along theShepherd 's side," he ordered crisply. Then, loud even against the clamor all around them, he shouted, "Glomer, play a sprint!"
Glomer was the flutist. Ilna had marveled to see that within a day of boarding theFlying Fish in Donelle, Chalcus had known the name of every sailor aboard the vessel. Indeed, she was sure he could give an appraisal of each man's strengths and weaknesses as clear as she herself could've done about the folk of Barca's Hamlet where she'd lived all her life.
"Hawsom-"
The stroke oar, a swarthy man with huge shoulders and an opal the size of Ilna's thumbnail in the septum of his nose.
"-every man of you on the benches, put your backs into it like never before! We're going to save our prince, that's what we're going to do!"
He pointed to Glomer, seated where the upper bank of oarsmen could see him. The men down in the belly of the ship had little enough air, let alone a glimpse of the outside world; they took their cue from the men above them. "Play, I said!"
The flutist had been sounding a dirge as the fleet proper marked time while Garric's ship drew ahead. Now he swung into a jig; the high notes from the double-flute's short right-hand pipe syncopated the lower tones of the left. Together the rowers breathed deeply, then drew back on their oars with the deliberate motion of men well used to hard work and willing to continue till they dropped.
The ship moved ahead. It didn't leap like a kid in springitme, for though small compared to the quinqueremes it was still a massive object, but it accelerated noticeably.
"No!" cried Rhamis, reaching out to grab the flute. "Our orders are to keep back from-"
Chalcus caught the captain by throat and swordbelt. Rhamis barely had time to squawk before Chalcus flung him over the side.
"Row!" Chalcus cried to the oarsmen. "It's not your lousy lives you're saving, it's Prince Garric's!"
A coil of rope hung from a post on the afterdeck; it had something to do with the sails, now furled, Ilna supposed. She lifted it, judged her distance, and made sure one end of the rope was still attached to a cleat. Finally she spun the coil toward the floundering captain. It opened as it flew through the air, then splashed in the water in front of Rhamis; he had just enough presence of mind to seize it before it and he both sank.
Ilna turned again. The captain would've been no great loss; but small goodnesses were worth doing, if they didn't get in the way of larger ones… like saving Garric.
"Pull, you sailormen!" Chalcus called over the flute's skirl. "There's a devil from Hell after your prince, but we'll have something to say about that!"
Ilna stepped into the far stern, behind Glomer's stool, and offered her left hand to Merota huddling there. By squinting to the northwest she could see but a seeming oiliness on the surface, the track of something moving swiftly underwater toward Garric's huge vessel. TheFlying Fish continued to accelerate, but the other thing would be there ahead of them.
"Pull!" and the men pulled with the strength of the damned grasping for salvation; but it would not be enough…
***
Cashel waited, ready but not really tense. If there'd been more room on theShepherd 's stern, he'd have given his quarterstaff a few trial spins to loosen his joints; there wasn't, so he'd make do when the time came.
The helmsman at the port steering oar looked seaward instead of keeping his eyes on the sailing master for orders the way he should've done. He suddenly screamed and lunged away from the railing, slamming into Cashel and bouncing back as though he'd run into the mainmast.
"Here we go!" warned Cashel, bringing his staff around in front of him despite tight space. He clipped the shoulder of the helmsman, now scrambling away on all fours. The fellow yelped, but the contact didn't slow the staff's motion-which was all that mattered to Cashel at the moment.
The creature came straight up from the water with its huge jaws open. The pointed head was two double-paces long, ten feet as city folks would put it. The teeth were longer than Cashel's middle fingers. Those at the front of the jaw were pointed, while teeth farther back became broadly saw-edged.
"A seawolf!" Master Lobon cried, but Cashel had seen seawolves, great marine lizards, when they came ashore on Barca's Hamlet to snatch his grazing sheep. This creature had a smooth hide instead of a reptile's pebbled skin; and besides, this thing's head was as long as a big seawolf's whole body.
This was a whale, but not one of the sluggish, comb-toothed monsters which browsed on shrimp at the edge of the Ice Capes. This was a meateater like the seawolves, only much, much bigger.
Still rising, the whale twisted to angle its gaping jaws toward Garric. The railing splintered. Instead of striking as he'd have done with a smaller opponent, Cashel stuck his staff vertically into the beast's maw.
He acted by instinct, but his instinct was correct-as it generally was in a fight. The whale's jaws slammed down but not shut, because the thick hickory didn't flex at the creature's bite. Its bunched jaw muscles only drove the staff's iron ferrules deeper into its own tongue and palate. From its throat came a hiss like a geyser preparing to vent.
The whale started to slip back into the sea, dragging Cashel with it. He wrapped his legs around the stanchion to which the steering oar was attached, continuing to grip the staff with both hands.
The quinquereme listed, dragged over by the weight of the whale. Blue fire rippled through Cashel's muscles; he wasn't sure whether h
uman strength or the wizardry that sometimes filled him allowed him to keep his grip, but he knew that if he let go the monster would find another, better way to attack. Cashel would anchor the whale so long as his staff held and his strength held, and neither one had ever failed him yet.
Garric hacked twice, leaving bone-deep cuts in the whale's jaw, but the creature's head was so large that a sword couldn't do it real damage. Instead of a third cut he stabbed, slanting his long blade through the underjaw and out through the black-veined tongue. Cashel saw the tip of pattern-welded steel glittering in a spray of blood, but even the blade's full length was unable to reach the monster's vitals.
A Blood Eagle hurled his spear into the whale's skull, just behind the eye. It was a good cast, but the point stuck less than a finger's length into dense bone; the spear fell into the sea. Three more spears drove uselessly into the whale's shoulder.
The whale's nostrils were on the top of its head, in front of the rear-set eyes. They voided a miasma of stale air and rotten flesh, then drew in a fresh breath with the roar of a windstorm.
Cashel was hanging over the sea as the oak stanchion creaked between his legs. Huge as the whale's head seemed, it was small in comparison to the snake-slim body. Far in the depths, Cashel saw the creature's flukes lashing in an attempt to pull itself away from the staff it couldn't spit out.
Very soon the quarterstaff would break, or Cashel would lose his grip on it, or the post would tear loose from the ship's hull. Whatever happened after that would no longer be the concern of Cashel or-Kenset.
***
Sharina let go of Tenoctris and rose to her feet. The old wizard still sat cross-legged, but she'd reached up to grip the bow railing to steady herself. Now that Sharina's hands were free, she reached under her loose-fitting court robes and drew the Pewle knife she wore concealed under the silk.