The Grey Road had been built, or at
least begun, by her grandfather on his ascension to the throne. It
wove hundreds of miles through the rough foothills of the Whitewalls
from the Lock all the way to the steep, twisting road that made the
brutal climb to the high pass of the South Brother.
Which, at
this time of year, was snowed solid, impassible until spring.
Hence
the long way around, south from her father's seat to the Lock, then
west along the border between Montan and Deltan territory, and north
as the mountains turned until they reached the bank of the Thread
river. The Thread ran almost due west - and never entered Deltan
territory - until it joined the Pendant, the flowing sea, which they
could follow upstream to their, her, destination, the city called The
Setting, on the shore where the Pendant drained from the freshwater
Dazule Sea.
Where her future husband waited.
The
thought was... intimidating.
What it would mean politically,
she was ready for. The alliance she and her brother-in-law would
eventually inherit would have the power and the influence to squash
every bandit and toll-gouging petty-lord on in the hundreds of tiny
baronies that seperated the high country of Montan, with its mines
and endless forests, from the endless farmlands and cities that
spread out from the shores of the Dazul. Once those barriers to trade
were removed, and proper roads built from the cities and rivers to
the two high Whitewall passes, the increase in taxable volume of
trade would give either of the two powers deep enough coffers to
outright crush the greatest gougers of all - the Deltan lords.
With
them gone, and free travel throughout the Pendant's watershed - the
entire continent, for all intents and purposes - and the two most
powerful nations wedded...
Literally, and the thought made her
stomach flip.
...wedded together in firm alliance if not
outright union, the only real competing power would be the united
Riding Clans, and however deadly their swift cavalry and all-knowing
eyes might be on the battlefield they were ultimately too few and too
divided to face up to the kind of forces her children...
Children.
She was going to have children, and not just in a decade or so, but
soon.
...her children and their people would have
available.
Whether by military conquest or economic pressure,
the greater Empire woudl subsume the Riders, either as a whole or
more likely clan by clan, probably with each clan as a
semi-autonomous vassal like the Montan Passwardens or the lesser
Dazuli city-states. Her grandchildren...
She shivered as the
unfamiliar timescale of the thought whispered along her
spine.
...her grandchildren would probably be better off
consolidating than expanding further, solidifying the world's
civilization into the blood and bone of society as 'how things have
always been' rather than forcing military adventures along the coasts
and at sea to the Islands.
And there would be peace, if not in
that generation than in the next, or the next. Not complete
peace, people being people and factions being factions, but an end to
constant raiding and invasions and banditry... real peace.
But
first this marriage - her marriage - and the alliance it would
be key to had to work.
"Her Highness is fretting, again,"
said a voice from beside her. The phrasing - the choice of pronouns
and conjugation - was respectful enough, and the lack of the
expected Western accent was still perpetually startling after nearly
a month of acquaintance, but the really curious thing about the
statement was, well, that its speaker would make it to one of Royal
Blood.
Squadron Blade Barshir Kayanzda was, to all
appearances, simply a junior officer of the Setting's cavalry arm, a
leanly fit youth a couple of years younger than she was and a
centimeter or two taller, obviously of noble or at least moneyed
background from his education and arms-skill, but dressed in the same
sturdy but ill-fitting armor and tunic as his men.
His
footmen, three files of tough, quiet professionals, every
single one of the forty-five men carrying the black-painted shield
awarded to a nine-year veteran... Under the command of a noble
charioteer who couldn't have been serving for as many as three.
Not
that that was the only puzzling thing.
Hm. Asking might make a
good distraction, to keep him from bringing up the whole 'blushing
maiden' thing. Again.
"You know," she said,
with a teasing lilt in her voice and a predatory glint in her
sidelong glance at her 'escort', "it occurs to me, not for the
first time, how strange it is that a bodyguard or guide would say
such a thing."
"You're not offended," he
observed in return, with perfect calmness.
Excellent. The game
began.
"Not in the slightest," she admitted. "And
yet, though you might forbear such impertinence if I were, I cannot
help but think that you wouldn't feel the slightest bit of actual
concern over the matter... which is oh, so
interesting."
Strike.
"I should fail in my
duty did I not ward Her Highness from her troubles, even those, like
tedium or trepidation, too ethereal for any blade."
And
counterstrike.
"Ah? Shall I indulge my speculations,
then?"
Feint.
"I am, of course, at Her
Highness's service."
Guard, and now where to land the
first real blow? The thoroughness of his knowledge of the Setting and
its Palace's intrigues? The size and nature of his detachment, and
how they did not match the usual manner of their deployment?
Or perhaps...
A shift in the tempo of their vanguard's march
brought Asima out of her speculation. They were tenser, now, and not
just by the amount to be expected of meeting an ordinary traveler.
She turned and caught her aide's eye. Kathim had heard it too, and he
double-timed ahead to investigate with only a slight head-tilt as
instruction - they had, after all, known each other for years, ever
since her instruction had expanded from simple arms to true
war.
When she turned back, Barshir's usual thoughtful
expression was still in place, as peaceful and ever, but when she
asked him if he had heard what she had, there was a tension in his
answer. "Air is heavy, a little. Chill like battle, but not
soon, yet."
Interesting, she thought as the men of her
bodyguard began to check the fit of their armor or shift their
weapons for readier use. His accent showed up when he was
worried.
Kathim returned with company, a short, wiry man of
middle years and dark complexion, dressed in good fashion for a
Deltan lord of minor status, with a harness of straps for six
smokebows and one of the heavy Deltan sabres, and a leather helmet.
He wasn't mounted, which was a bad sign - if Kathim had thought him
trustworthy then the envoy would have stayed mounted, perhaps with a
muzzle for his horse, and if he'd been uncertain then there certainly
would have been one, with a guard or two pacing beside with blades
ready to draw.
That his weapons were peacebonded and his
horse's claws and fangs held politely at the head of the now-stopped
column said that this meeting took place under the protocol for a
hostile parley - that it was, at heart, the delivery of an
ultimatum.
"Your Highness the Dynasty's Princess Heir
Asima din Dhasam, I beg leave to present to you Zodasu of the Golden
Pillar, petty-baron in service to the King of the Delta." The
lordling's eyes flashed with quick fury at being so-titled by an
underling, but his bow - one hand on the sabre's pommel, the other on
the breastbone, and deep enough for precedence's sake - was smooth
and polite in spite of it.
So and so and so. A courtier, as
well as a man of his hands. In truth, she'd half-expected to have
this trip come to 'incident'. If an untried girl could see where her
trip would lead within a generation then anyone of vision in the
fullness of his years could likewise predict such, and while the
Delta had never been noted for its shortage of arrogant fools, it
would be too much to expect that King and Dukes alike should be
numbered one and all among them.
"I see you, Zodasu,"
she said in the Deltan dialect, with a bit of glacier chill in her
voice and the constructions for one lord to a lesser such.
"I
am seen, King's Daughter," he answered in turn, this time not
quite able to keep his affront from his voice. Probably he'd never
been addressed so by one without what he and his would have called
the 'touch of Divine Mastery'...
But that was hardly her
problem.
"You have a message for me," she observed,
and the man withdrew a leather tube from his coat and slid out a
sealed roll of parchment to offer on both palms. She took it,
forbearing her usual courteous nod or acknowledgment, and noted the
Prince-in-Waiting's seal.
It made sense; her opposite number
among the marshmen was a fool, and inclined to fancy himself a
stallion, while his father was clever enough to see a need to send
someone and dumb enough to think her sex made her just a
figurehead.
She broke the wax and read; bad poetry with worse
penmanship, arrogant assumptions with ugly threats backing them and
all the subtlety of a horse after a squirrel. "In his own hand,
is it?" she asked, then indulged in a nasty snicker and passed
the note to her guide. "He'd've been better leaving it to a
professional."
Barshir was a very quick reader, which fit
- fit what, she wasn't sure, but it was in line with the rest of the
man. "The Song of Silver Bees, is it?" he said. "His
taste is nearly as bad as his paraphrase."
Zodasu's voice
wavered like he was being strangled, but he nevertheless managed to
force out a measured reply. "Shall there be a note in reply to
my liege, King's Daughter?"
She held his eyes until the
choler faded into first a wary caution, then a chilling awareness of
how many of her sworn men surrounded their little confrontation. "In
plainest terms, Zodasu, not only shall I not surrender to be raped as
your prince's plaything, nor give up my duties to my people, but I
shall see his head picked by crows for the presumption."
Finally
the Deltan's ego eclipsed his control. "You shall regret that,
serf-girl."
"'This being done,'" Asima quoted
darkly, "'I cannot run.'"
* * * * * * *
The country was opening out from the
endless marshes her employers called home, in lockstep with the way
the rocks of the foothills lifted away from the sea-plain. The trees
weren't different, yet, but there was a visible line on the slopes of
the looming crags ahead, where vivid summer-green changed to the
cooler, bluer shades that were so common at home, both new and old.
Aimue's fellow mercenary commander shivered whenever she thought no
one was looking, being one of a people her Brotherhood's translator
said lived south of even the green-choked swamp of smothering misery
they'd already crossed.
Fortunately, with their employer's
handfast troops already offloaded from the transport ships that had
finally grounded on the bottom of this narrow river, there wasn't
much for the tattooed woman to do. Aimue's own followers were already
ashore, laughing and joking, staining their furs and leathers with
dropped flecks of facepaint as they readied for battle. The
swamp-men's leaders flowed around the group, keeping their distance
like wolves watching a campfire, while the underlings simply gathered
in clumps and waited leaning on their shabby spears.
It was
good that they didn't try to approach; the broken blankness in their
eyes was chilling.
Despite being far more decent than the last
couple of weeks had been, it was still a warm day, with the sun high
and the moon a long narrow crescent of gold across a quarter of the
sky. Simply standing out of the shade was enough to make her sweat,
and the rich men's horses were panting, long pink tongues lolling out
of drooping faces and dribbling slobber over everything that held
still long enough, even the ones that were still soaked from
splashing out of the river to claw their way up the green bank where
the host was massing.
The boats rocked in the current, sails
stowed, held in place by lines run ashore. Most were high and fat as
a waterfowl, painted in loud shades or left the pale grey of seasoned
wood, but here and there a long narrow crocodile-shape lay close to
the water, sides pierced by hundreds of oars and crammed full of the
crews who would guard the expedition's supplies while it
deployed.
She took a moment to double-check her own gear, yet
again. Heavy boots of stiff leather, with much-scored steel caps over
the toes and heavy hobnails in their soles - those had belonged to
her father. The plainest of the three pairs of trousers she'd
brought, their soft tan deerhide leather much patched in the same
crude stitches that had originally shaped them - but if her work was
ugly, it was also sturdy, and that'd be more important than fetching
looks. Soft sheepfur unders, a gift from sister Owkeuv, who'd hoped -
correctly, the busybody - that if she made them comfortable enough
then Aimue wouldn't care that they were cut for mancatching rather
than warmth. A heavy buff tabard of layered soft leather, stitched
together in triangles nine layers thick and perfectly fitted to her
frame, sleeveless for tradition and quick reaction and, in this hot
place, the cooling comfort of open air. Long strips of still more
soft leather, woven tightly around the palms of her hands for grip,
pale hide stained dark by the sweat of practice.
Finally the
mantle of her Fallen One, symbol and source of her priesthood, dark
claws and stained fangs strung together with bright gold and amber at
neck and shoulders, anchoring the still-pelted likeness worked into
her helm and capelet.
Her own war-paint was already on, a
palmprint across the mouth with thumb on one cheekbone on one side
and fingers splayed from eyebrow to jaw on the other, so she simply
turned to pick up her weapon and join her men.
It wasn't lying
propped where she'd set it down, but held in the ship's captain's
hands, offered grip-first. Despite the five-stone weight, the only
obvious sign of stress was the way the muscles and tendons of her
arms stood out beneath sun-bronzed skin and tattoo-stained sucker
scars - but then, Aimue had already known that any of these sailors
was as strong as any Sworn man.
"Thank you," she
said, with the coughing monotone of their paymaster's language still
awkward on her tongue. "Need something?" Which was probably
wrong, of course, but should get the idea - that she was wondering
why the sailor had come over - across anyway.
"Welcome,"
the captain answered - in the language of the Departed. Her brow was
furrowed over sunset-pink eyes as she concentrated on getting the
sounds right. "Saying... be careful. Job is potato."
...Potato?
"Is root?"
The captain stopped, and blinked, then
swore by the private parts of... a spirit? An explictly female
being, anyway... and shook her head with a flash of earrings in
sunlight, then pulled off the band that held her hair back and tucked
the dark strands out of the way with the same hand. "No,"
she said, then another word Aimue didn't know - and expanded on it
when the priestess could only give her a helpless look in return.
"It's a part of... of a fight for rank between great lords. This
is big, and we're small. Easy t' get-" something "-like a
bug."
"Politics," the priestess guessed in her
own language, emphasizing the flat tone in the first syllable and the
falling one in the second.
"Loud," answered... her
name was something in ordinary words... Watch Fisher? White Whaler?
Something to do with fish, anyway... then made a face and corrected
herself. "Yes. Watch out."
"I will,"
Ah! that was it. She smiled. "Thank you, Witch Fisher."
"Good
luck," the sailor told her, then turned away to answer a call
from one of her own men.
Aimue waved a blessing at her back
anyway, then turned and gauged the distance over the rail to the bank
- close enough, and only a little up. Three quick steps of run-up and
she landed easily on the living green grass of the riverside. Witch
Fisher's galley could have pulled up on the landing easily, of
course, but that space was full of dedicated transports unloading
more human beings than she'd ever seen in one place at one time
before. The few Departed mercenaries who'd been crammed into the
small spare corners of the force's already cramped galleys could get
to shore on their own easily enough, even those whose rites of
passage had gone more ordinarily.
As a Priest of Bear, Aimue
was in theory the senior and leader of the Departed who had followed
the Deltan's banner, but she was ten years younger than the chief of
the Hawk Brothers, and him the youngest of the five men who'd
gathered together for a quick huddle in a proper language before the
enterprise moved out.
One, who was Boar at this place and
time, glowered at her, eyes beady and narrow over silver-bristled
jowls and inlaid regailia. He was of the northern lineage,
originally, and his pride rankled taking orders from a female nearly
as much as it did from a child barely into her courses. His Sworn, a
lean, gristly man, who'd already bristled his hair up in Boar's
crimson warpaint, took the Spirit's will regarding her more
seriously, at times uncomfortably so.
Wolf, whose drab
features went oddly with their green striping, seemed slow and
colorless here in waiting - but she had seen the man fight, when his
Fallen One came alive at the hunt. Hawk, tall and lean and handsome,
with his golden paint and feather-woven hair, could have made any
young girl's heart flutter in her chest like a dove, but she
would...
...rot, who was she kidding. The man was
gorgeous.
Fortunately, he was too old for her and knew it,
only flirting enough for the sake of his 'honor as a man' rather than
outright destroying her composure.
Her Sworn nodded as she
joined the group. "Bear," he said, "all is ready for
the blessing."
Three years since meeting her Fallen One
had polished already-familiar rituals into a perfect dance, as Hawk
and Wolf brought the sacrifice forward and held it in place under the
waiting black glass knives in her either hand as the entreaties and
blessings were spoken and respoken, the chant echoed back by the
basso rumble of the warriors standing witness before she brought the
stroke home.
The first blade's keen edge fit neatly between
the sheep's vertebra, shearing through the spine and easily free to
the second cut across the blood vessels of the throat - a good omen,
that the creature didn't squeal or claw, and better one that the
entire thing was done by the same blade, without breaking or
shattering. Her Fallen's strength made the killing easy, of course -
if need be she could have torn its head free in her hands - but
gauging the angle and the force right to keep the brittle rock intact
were beyond difficult even for priests many decades her senior.
Boar
caught the sacrifice's blood in a bowl, then bent the body over
backwards to bear its furred chest and belly. She opened the stomach
in a single grip-deep stroke up towards the ribcage, then paused just
short of the breastbone before the second cut in and down, opening
the diaphragm. The unused second knife was laid carefully in the bowl
of blood as the Boar Sworn took it away to be shared among the first
ranks of unblooded oathtaken, and with that hand she reached into the
warmth of it and closed her fingers about the heart.
When she
pulled it free and held it up, all could see how it still beat. "As
we partake of this your strength, you who ran well and long, so we
run in our turn at the sides of the greater spirits of this world,
and ready the strength you nurture within us for their glory - in
battle!"
The iron tang of blood and the priest's portion
filled her mouth as the men cheered.
* * * * * * *
Because they were Deltans, the enemy
sent the first wave of the trap in as light infantry, half-naked men
in dirt-stained peasant rages of any age from first beard to
tottering oldster, swarming forward in a wave of wicker shields and
crude spears.
Facing them were the elite warriors of the
Dynasty's Royal Guard, the personal troops of the oldest and
wealthiest single kingly line in the world. His own people's
Blackshields were, man for man, the only force in the world that
could come close to their abilities, and his file leaders, proud men
all, who had faced the Guard in the past, had quietly admitted
during the march to the Key that they would just as soon avoid
testing the matter again.
The column had been marching in four
sections, a detachment of the Royal Guard as vanguard, then the core
bodyguard, then his own men, and finally another detachment of
Guardsmen are rearguard. After Her Highness had sent the Deltan's
'envoy' packing with his ears roundly boxed, a quick flurry of orders
had split the main force of Guardsmen off to either side of the road,
pulling the vanguard and rearguards in to fill the gaps between their
lines. One line in the torrent had directed his own men, without so
much as a by-your-leave-dear-ally, to form at the center as a reserve
for the entire force.
He'd complied, of course, and smartly,
too. Even leaving aside the question of its being merely a matter of
time 'till she was his Queen in fact, Barshir was not the sort of
fool to quibble over petty pride when a fight for their lives was in
the offing.
He'd hardly have been tapped as the Princess's
guide if he were, after all.
Two hundred armed peasants
stormed at a hundred swordsmen from the uphill side of the road,
sliding and slipping in a torrent of soil and leaf litter. The line
of soldiers facing them recoiled slightly, as any human would when
faced with foes who simply threw themselves in with no fear of death,
then recovered as the crude spear points scraped across
white-enameled steel plate and finely-honed skills severed the lives
of every single attacker in two quick ripples of flashing
sword-strokes.
"Well, now they know your guards are not
fakes," Barshir observed.
Her Highness gave him what he
thought might well have been the first seriously displeased glare
he'd ever seen on her face. "What kind of cack-handed idiot
butcher..."
Pointing out that they'd known their opponent
was a fool anyway didn't seem wise. "Either distraction, probe,
or simply effort to wear us down," he said instead, and pulled
out the parchment sheet holding the notes he'd taken for this section
of the trip, including a sketched map. "There was river nearby,
so paramour could have brought quite considerable force. Ahort
cross-country hike over hill could let them bring a blocking force in
behind us, or up above on hillside. Probably main force will be
below," and he pointed, describing an arc, "so, on flat
ground where their cavalry will be able to move better."
The
young woman leaned over his shoulder to examine the map, a weight of
presence looming close so that even with her armor and his, he
could feel his hair trying to stand on end.
It was, to think a
dangerous thought of which his father would certainly have
dissaproved, quite pleasant... Easily enough so to distract from the
crashing and cracking of sticks and leaves as the next wave of
attackers piled out of the woods.
"So if they're..."
she said slowly, thinking aloud as she fixed the positions in her
mind, "And the river is... and upwind."
Upwin-...
oh. "My men won't be as fresh as yours," he said, "But
we should still be in condition to be of some use." This time
the sudden outbreak of violence included a hoarse scream from one of
the Montans as well as the involuntary hisses and cries of the
falling horse-fodder. No disparity in skill or equipment could
entirely prevent a lucky or unlucky break, particularly from a foe
as... desperate... as they faced.
He turned and met brilliant
green eyes, and then they both nodded and turned to their troops.
"Well, my fellow gentlemen of leisure," he told his own men
in wry, comfortable Western, "it seems likely that there are a
great number of uncouth sorts about desirous of our company. Speaking
just for myself, I'd as soon disappoint them. You?"
That
won a laugh, and one man, safely hidden among his fellows, made a
fairly good impression of a man losing the previous night's wild
indulgence.
"Really? I can't imagine why, handsome
fellows that they must be. Eunuch of a scholar that I am, I've been
asked to carry the lady's things while she hails a gondola - those of
you who recall this ground may perhaps remember a certain river
nearby?"
"I fell in when a bird crapped on my head,"
a voice answered, from a different section of the clump than the last
wag.
"I can see that that might be memorable,"
Barshir allowed. "So, it being reasonable to guess that our
sudden admirers have had their carriers wait, I come to my point -
that being that we shall, very shortly, need to move quite quickly
indeed. Shall there be any problems to advise the beautiful lady of
before we begin our placid constitutional?"
There were
not - nor were there any illusions in the veterans answering gazes.
These shouting mobs of madmen were hardly going to be the only
component of any force sent after a target as important as a member
of the Dynasty's main line - there would be hired mercenaries, also,
hardened professionals from all across the civilized world, and
waiting behind them, Deltan knights with their armor-piercing
smokebows and white-fanged horses...
And there would not be
just a few of them, but enough to be sure of overwhelming the
Royal Guard detachment - probably enough to be a literal army in its
own right.
Stealing a ship - that might not be there - and
taking it down a river - that might be blocked - to sail up the
Pendant - that might be blockaded - was a risk, and a reckless one...
but without surrendering into the hands of a foe not known for being
bound by their word to 'mere feral serfs', there were no better ones
available.
With shocking suddenness, and before the next wave
of attackers could arrive, the Blackshields and Royal Guard alike
fell into a rough marching order and began to quicktime down the
slope and, hopefully, towards safety.
* * * * * * *
"So much for an easy paycheck,"
Witch Fisher grumbled, ducking behind a gunwale and listening glumly
to the axe-blows of crossbow bolts going home in the protecting wood.
Fortunately enough the Royal Guard's weapons didn't seem to be
powerful enough to put a shot through Krakenhook's side, at
least at this range, but there'd been men on shore wearing
Dazuli-make lobster-banded gear, too, and their halfbows were nearly
as bad as smokebows for penetration, with more range and accuracy.
"'Just a few personal retainers,' yeah, sure, just like
summer's a little windy! 'Cause, hey, what's a fucking hurricane
between friends?"
"That puffed-up cockhead of a
prince lied," remarked the rower hiding next to her - one
of the new men, called Two Joints after the missing tip of one of his
index fingers - in a tone that was probably supposed to imply shock
and horror. The other benches hiding with them at the stern laughed,
so at least they were in high spirits.
"He couldn't have
just shorted our pay or something?" his captain complained in
return, winning another laugh, then poked her head up into view for a
moment and ducked back down before she could get it shot off.
"How
many?" asked Carpenter.
"Call it a triple-twin's
worth of the whiteshells and a single of blackshields." A triple
twin - a war galley with three levels of benches and two men per
bench - carried between two hundred and forty and three hundred and
sixty oars and rowers, while a single - one set of benches, with one
man each - typically topped out at sixty. Krakenhook, a
double-twin, carried a crew of two hundred and twenty-four, plus
however many soldiers her current paymasters assigned.
Red Lip
was a constant problem at sea, always simmering with enough wrath at
the universe in general that it was rare to have ten days go by
without his coming to blows with someone. For a mercenary
galley there was usually either a storm or an enemy to absorb his
belligerence, but the rest of the time Fisher just beat the twit up
herself. "Us and Lockjaw and Stormborne... we
could take 'em, easy."
Big Whip, whose shoulders and
scar-seamed back left him with nothing to prove to anyone, snorted.
"Yeah, sure. Like a kraken takin' a witch squid. Those
milk-shell bastards don't get their shiny suits just 'cause they kiss
up t' the great and the good so pretty. Me, I ain't getting paid that
much short of the Silver and Azure saying they're lonely one fine
night while the Nightlord's away."
"Mmmm,"
Witch Fisher said, thinking while her men argued. None of the galleys
had been beached, just the transports for the serfs - the nobles had
gone ashore in small boats, and let their horses swim. Given the
force that'd been landed... "All right!" she shouted, loud
enough to be heard a hundred and twenty feet away at the stern-post.
"To your oars! I want us ready to move at three beats!"
Granted
that turning around would be entirely too much of a challenge given
how much sea room they didn't have on this stream, but one of the
reasons this point had been picked was that it was wide and deep
enough for maneuvering. "Are we going to run?" Night Eyes,
the bow watchman asked as most of the crew scurried to their
benches.
"No," she told him, "No, no need. They
want to escape - and they'll need to go past us to do it. We'll be
able to close for javelins or ramming without needing to board
whatever transport they take - or we can simply shadow them easily
enough, and strike when they tangle with the Deltans. And if they
don't, then the jaws will just close on them here rather than at the
road."
He nodded, understanding. "There were several
keeps right on the river that we passed."
"Exactly.
We-" Fisher cut her reply off and risked another peek at a
sudden tremendous noise from the riverbank. Wolf-howl and bear-roar
and hawk-scream mingled as the ragged wave of ice-sea mercenaries
poured out of the woods and piled into the Montans and Dazuli, but
what she'd heard had been the shower of outright cobbles slamming
home. She swore at length, staring at the results. She'd seen the
invaders practicing with their slings, but hadn't really appreciated
that any of their shock fighters could hit nearly as hard as a
skilled stone-hurler...
And the accuracy of their scouts was
eerie. Not as bad as the occasional Rider mercenary she'd seen at
work, but enough to put a lead bullet into the few vulnerable points
of the Montan armor. At slingstone speeds, even a few ounces of
weight could ruin a joint for hours if not permanently.
There
was a shudder, passing like a ripple in water through the Montan
force as, for the first time that Fisher had ever heard of, the Royal
Guard fought a foe their famous armor couldn't give them an advantage
against. Deltan smokebows and rebel or bandit crossbows had always
been able to pierce even their thick plate, of course, but in close
combat their protection had always made them uniquely deadly.
For
a moment, it probably seemed to the parties in the actual fight that
the mercenaries would carry the field in a rush, but looking at the
action from a little outside was enough to convince Fisher that there
would never have been a chance of that. Even the men going down were
doing so stubbornly, wounding or killing a foe or two and more
importantly delaying while their comrades rallied. There one
Guardsman held back three barbarians in wolf-fur with threatening
sweeps of his sword, while elsewhere a bear-bannered warrior batted
aside a sword as long as he was to crush his attacker's chest with a
club ten times the bladed weapon's weight, and elsewhere still a pair
of white-armored soldiers feinted and split up and reinforced each
other without even trading glances, and carved apart every enemy who
came close enough solely through the power of superior teamwork.
A
solid plug of black wood bullied its way into and around the enemy
flank in a dense, deadly mass of stabbing blades and faceless force,
while elsewhere a single familiar bear-headed figure sent hundreds of
bits of armor and dozens of pieces of men tumbling and flying like
straw fluttering in the air after a swordsman cut through a
scarecrow.
At equal numbers, Fisher thought, calling on years
at sea and the occasional bit of on-shore hired skullduggery, the
Guardsmen would have won fairly easily. One on one, they weren't as
dangerous as the bear warriors, but they worked together much better.
The true-boars might have had a larger margin over the blackshields,
but were actually having less luck given the higher degree of
reinforcement in the Dazuli shield-wall. The wolves and hawks and
'unhallowed' initiates were barely able to compete...
Though
they'd've been ugly in their own right in a boarding action against
her people. Those so-called 'targets' were dangerous, dangerous
men.
The numbers weren't equal, though, with nearly half-again
as many furbacks in sight and more coming out of the trees at every
moment, along with the first few scraps of half-exhausted Deltan
rabble.
"Helllooo, what's this, now?" Night
Eyes murmured under his breath, and she turned to follow his gaze. A
quintet of figures - three in Guardsman white, one in plain steel
torso rig, and a fifth whose armor had a patch over its right arm and
shoulder the color of dry dirt - were sliding out onto the water in
one of the nobles' landing boats.
The Dynasy's colors were a
tan block in the upper right of a white field. "Leavin' 'er men
to buy time. Didn't think they did that..." the watchman
continued, obviously on the same reasoning she'd made.
"Any
family gets cowards... But I'll bet you this is just taking the only
chance she's got."
"Looks like Stormborne's
got them either way." And, indeed, the smaller galley was
backing water on one side and forwards on the other, spinning in
place to point its cruel bronze beak at the tiny dinghy.
Witch
Fisher would have commented about it being a bit of a pity to miss
that bonus, when four of the figures on the boat threw themselves
down and the last - the Dazulian - turned to face the threatening
warship squarely.
And lightning struck.
Not from the
clear sky but from the standing man's hand, reaching out to
play along Stormborne's length from bow to stern, leaving a
trail of smoking corpses, smoldering boards - and flaming pitch.
Probably a quarter of their crew was dead in that single strike, the
rest stunned senseless by the flash and a report that made Fisher
about jump out of her skin from hundreds of feet away - at close
range the noise would have been a physical impact in its own
right.
Even with all the crew alive and awake the number of
fires she saw aboard the other vessel would have been difficult,
maybe impossible, to fight. With seconds, probably minutes going by
while they grew unchecked, the Stormborne was doomed.
"Black,
blue, and grey," Night Eyes swore. "A mage."
His
captain had not attained her rank, or even survived as long as she
had, by thinking slowly. Every magister she'd ever heard of, from her
home islands' stone-hurlers and witches to Montan enchanters to
Deltan nobles and Dazuli mages, had some kind of limit to their
endurance - and the more spectacular their work, the sooner they'd
hit that. But this fellow hadn't fallen over yet, so he probably had
at least one more thunderbolt left - or, more likely, enough to torch
half the fleet if not the same proportion of infantry.
And
Krakenhook was one of the only two actual warships
remaining.
"ABANDON SHIP!" Witch Fisher
roared, and her crew did, bolting out of their benches and up over
the sides and into the water. A second jag of lightning licked out
and played across Lockjaw's midships, turning half its rigging
into a flaming mass as Stormborne's blaze spread enough to
drive its crew to wakefulness and - in several cases screaming and
themselves alight - into the water.
The Fisher dove into the
river's murky brown herself and flutter-kicked through the dimness
towards the shore.
Opposite the fighting, of course. She still
wasn't getting paid enough to pile into those Guardsmen.
* * * * * * *
Asima managed to catch the Dazulian
before he could finish falling. He hung on weakly, like a runner
being helped up after the end of a race, and muttered something that
sounded like it might have been a question.
"Yes,"
she said, looking at the spreading inferno that had started as a
respectably sized fleet, "You got them all. We're
clear."
"Good," Barshir sighed as she set him
down on one of the boat's rowing benches. "Will pass out
now."
"Sleep tight," she said, and left him
there as she shifted to check their course. She pointedly didn't look
at the three retainers sharing the boat with her and the foreigner;
they might not have been much happier at having been ordered to force
her away from the battle than she was, but they'd still carried out
the order.
Damn him! She wouldn't shame her father like this!
She couldn't. "I ran," she whispered, and with
thori, the pronoun used by washerwomen or nuns, not not the
noblewoman's dhara.
"Highness..." began one
of the guardsmen, but she waved him down, watching the battle on the
shore.
"Do lots for the first rowing shift. I'll take the
second. We'll keep going until nightfall, then stop and
plan."
"...Yes, Highness."
They'd need
to put as much distance behind them as possible. A small boat, and
the lack of numbers, would require changing their plans
significantly; three hundred and fifty fighting men with the supplies
in one or two transports would have been able to move quite quickly
downriver, but with only five, a small boat, and no food or ready
coin, they wouldn't be able to sustain anywhere near the same
speed... Nor intimidate or cut their way past any real opposition at
all.
But that could wait a few minutes, an hour or two.
For
now, she had to watch her men die. She owed them at least
that.
Captain Kanag had called it a 'rearguard', but that was
a lie in the only way that mattered. A rearguard didn't sacrifice
three hundred to save one.
Those men - her people -
were dying... to save her skin.
This is a day you'll
regret, Prince of the Delta, she thought as the boat pulled
around a bend in the river.
* * * * * * *
It was a constant effort not to
try and run - but that wouldn't accomplish anything, given how tired
she was and the panting horses she could hear tracking her. There
were three of them, sniffing and padding through the leaf-litter
she'd stirred up, plus the men bantering from their backs.
The
men she could have handled easily, even with three of them and only
one of her - if nothing else she could always just play along with
what they wanted then knife them in their sleep - but the horses had
no interest in anything she could offer them and were more than smart
enough to recognize an attempt to hurt their masters.
And they
were five times her size rather than only half-again, of
course.
"Hey, lemme take another look at that sketch,
Zado," said one of them.
"No way, you had your
turn!" another answered.
"If she hears you
idiots, then that picture's a close as we'll get," a
third snapped.
"Yeah, shut up! She'll hea-" the
second voice again.
"You too!"
"Eep!"
Well,
at least that confirmed they were looking for her. Leaving aside how
many runaways were male, most serfcatchers didn't bother to pay that
much attention to what their target actually looked like - much less
treat the 'Lost' bulletin like a brothel ad.
The padding feet
moved closer. A voice out of memory reminded her, 'Even when hunters
do look up, they usually can't see much if you're careful
about where you put yourself. Don't try and huddle up like a knot
unless there's a boll of something - you want to try and make
yourself look like branches, to blend in with the shapes they won't
be able to see well.'
His name had been... she had to think a
moment. Rapek. Another serf, lean and sort of knobby-kneed but very
sweet. He'd been an Eater, of course, but hadn't tried to play
up the 'mighty freedom fighter' aspect or any such - he'd at least
attempted to hide it, even from her.
He'd had gentle hands -
and talented, too.
The horse sniffed at the place where she'd
leaned against her chosen tree on the first pass through.
She
held very still, and tried not to sweat too much.
"Nice
boots," said the first voice, with the expected leer.
That
one, I'm biting off, she decided.
"Clever girl,"
said the third. "But why don't you come down from there?"
She'd
need to think of a way to deal with the horses...
"All
right," she called. "Give me a moment to climb down."
With
the sticks she'd used to help for the first part kicked away into the
leaves, she had to take it carefully, stretching to reach the next
stable branch and always cautious of her balance. The serfcatchers,
of course, were more conscious of the the way her tunic road up as
she made the needed reaches.
Eventually, she crouched on the
last branch before the bottom and looked down at them; one was
leering, another trying for suave except for the too-intent eyes, and
the last was literally drooling. She sighed internally.
"I
don' s'pose you're lookin' for someone other'n Zara?" she asked,
not with much hope.
"'Fraid not, pretty thing," said
the one with his composure holding - the third speaker, as she'd
figured - and leaned over to snatch a sheet of paper from the leering
one, which he then held up at an angle she could see.
It was
her face and figure, pretty unmistakably, even with the new, less
ostentatious outfit she'd found before making her attempt.
"Damn,"
she said, snapping her fingers, then shifted to sit on the branch and
kicked her legs a little. "No way you'd just let me keep goin'
on my own way? I'd be real grateful."
What the hell,
she'd even keep the bargain if they took it. They weren't that
ugly.
"I imagine we could work somethin' out," said
Number Three, and he was lying through his teeth. Really, it was
practically insulting - how dumb did he think she was?
Then
an arrow sprouted from his chest, and another from the drooling
one's, and a third from the last one's throat, all within a split
second of each other.
Zara lost her balance on the branch and
fell the last eight feet or so to the ground.
* * * * * * *
It was hard not to panic.
More
than ever Shoru regretted the delay her lack of recognition had cost
her. If she'd had even a week longer, she'd've been able to catch an
earlier ship, better winds, and sliced another full week off of her
travel time. Those two weeks could have been used for groundwork,
preparation... She could have contacted the Eaters, could have had a
second force ready to pin Prince Sarad's army against the anvil of
the Royal Guard...
For that matter, she could have warned the
Dynast away and averted the entire war, though that would have
been a bad idea.
The odds of reaching the Pendant successfully
with Asima's life and sanity intact were no more than even even in
the best case; without a native guide of some sort to provide both
verisimilitude and fluidity they were much worse.
Why it was
necessary for it to be this girl, she didn't know.
The
horses of the men she'd shot sniffed at the corpses that had fallen -
one nuzzling the body in grief, another wandering off as though
relieved of a problem, and the third turning to threaten the girl
trying to pull her wits together a few feet away. Its floppy ears
could lay back properly, but the head was low and its lips drawn back
away from its fangs in a snarl.
Rodogun answered her
mistress's intention in the same instant that it formed, as always.
She and Shoru had grown up together, very literally, and the horse's
ability to read her thoughts and body language bordered on magic in
their own right. Paws the size of pond-lilies sent broad-leafed
little scattering as she accelerated explosively, reaching a full run
in the space of three strides, and her tempo and balance shifted in
perfect time as her rider lifted her torso out of the basic crouch to
free both her hands for the bow, holding on with only her knees and
her feet through the harness-loops.
The long arrow came free
of the quivery and fitted to the string, left hand at the great
warbow's neutral node, right on the arrow, thumb-patch fitted and
draw to the ear and past...
Honed by long practice as a child,
and hard effort on the true school of the tundra in the shadow the
Icefather, the entire procedure took barely a moment, and the
adjustment to see the correct instant, the correct course, no
longer than that.
The arrow flew... and the growling horse
took one slow pace forwards as the too-beautiful girl in the
now-stained tunic collected her scattered thoughts enough to
recognize the threat and begin to flinch away. The arrow's narrow
armor-piercing head punched cleanly through the bone at the back of
its eye socket, and the beast stumbled and dropped where it stood
with barely a yelp.
Not being able to see any arrows falling
might have confused the horses once, but this time, alert, they
spotted its fall - and then her own form, and Rodogun's, and
recognized a threat... and one they thought they could deal
with.
The horses spread out slightly as they bolted past the
Deltan girl, long raw bones and muscles working under loose,
short-furred skin. A second arrow killed another, hissing softly
across and into its throat to bury itself deep inside the collarbone
and lungs, severing the one of great blood vessels of the brain on
its way in, and then there wasn't time for a third shot as Rodogun
danced away from snapping jaws, with the stiff fur of her ruff
standing up against Shoru's legs as her own head angled for a
counter-bite.
The sword at her hip swept from its sheath and
around and down before the other animal could react to the
dual threat, and just like that the fight was over.
A quick
whistle brought the pack-horses trotting close, including the
good-tempered one she'd fitted with her spare harness, and the weight
of possibilities was enough to make it a fight not to hold her breath
as she slid off of Rodogun's back and offered her hand to the girl
staring up at her.
If only she'd paid more attention to the
difference between Deltan and Montan dialects - and the
self-recrimination was almost entirely a cover to keep from
acknowledging how plain, how unworthy, those gleaming eyes and
perfect features made her feel.
"Come with me if you want
to live," Shoru told her.
Unfortunately, this is likely to be all that's in the offing until December sometime - I have a class paper to write that I hadn't planned on when I got myself into NaNo, and that necessarily comes first.
===========
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
