TWOLAS - 03 - Warhost Of Vastmark by Janny Wurts

  'He won't be coming back?' Talith could scarcely contain her surprise.

  Ivel gave a teeth-licking grin. 'Now that's not a guess I'd set words on. The man's like the wind. In and out at his whim. The only engagement he's fixed on for sure is his plan to collect your ransom at Ostermere.'

  'That's not until midsummer.' Talith tapped her foot. 'He'll keep me immured here until then?'

  'Are you? I heard of no walls, no locks.' Ivel sucked the aftertaste of fish off his forefinger and rocked to a wicked, low cackle. 'I don't see,' he confessed with unnecessary relish, the shocking, white orbs in his eye sockets rolled up for her inspection. 'But say if I'm wrong. The young master didn't leave you any guards.'

  He had not. The fact had chafed against Talith's confidence through every waking minute of the morning. Equally plain, the Prince of Rathain had not departed in an unplanned rush. Down by the landing a longboat rocked, where men loading wood for the livestock stalls poked fun at somebody's lame joke. Sounds of industrious hammering rang from the anchorage beyond the masking point of the barrier isles. Talith had noted the packet left for Jinesse, set with Arithon's signature and seal, papers drawn up with proprieties observed to present Fiark to the trade factor at Innish. Tharrick had spoken of being awake in the dawn to see the Shadow Master away. The stolid second mate from the Khetienn had his orders and his sea duffel off-loaded and ready. He had bathed and scrounged up a new shirt for the honour to crew on the sloop when Feylind sailed her passage through the straits.

  In the dazzle of early sunlight, over odds and ends of lumber pegged in dovetailed joints by muscular, half-stripped men, Talith moved off to search for signs of slackening; of inactivity. But the industry in the yard lapsed not a beat for Arithon's glaring absence.

  'He's not human,' the handmaid ventured in a whisper, the rope-handled bucket she had borrowed to wash underthings clamped in her fretted, red fingers. She tipped her head toward the workers bent over the sawpit ripping out new planks. 'His men are trapped under spells, or why else should they sweat like slaves for an absent master?'

  'Discipline,' Talith said, annoyed enough by the obvious to snap to her captor's defence. Despite her unforgiving hours of observation, no evidence had she found of fell powers beyond the use of his birth gift at her capture.

  Behind her shoulder, she heard the splicer's rich chuckle. No doubt some clever repartee concerning her maid's beliefs would make rounds of the yard before noon. The old badger had a nose for dissent. His relentless, snide commentary on other people's problems kept half the yard in laughter, and the other half, fit to sling their chisels at him.

  Talith ordered her servant to retire and resumed her covert study of Arithon's labourers. What talk she overheard was illuminating. The men appeared dedicated.. They pursued their assigned tasks without complaint. The former guard, Tharrick, was no fool. Jinesse had confided, when asked of his ambivalence, the odd fact he had changed a lifelong allegiance in favour of loyalty to Arithon.

  The Princess of Avenor twitched her skirts clear of a puddle and inclined her bright head to the man who stepped aside to let her pass. These folk were not honourless, nor were they lacking self-constraint; but in any group society, there would be factions. As Etarrans lived for intrigue, she should have small difficulty finding a weakness to exploit.

  Two days passed. Talith bided in a stiff display of meekness until the sloop Talliarthe returned in due form with her dispatches. The paid captain who manned her disembarked, to reassume his former post aboard the Khetienn. Avenor's princess retired to her quarters while the graceful little pleasure craft was reprovisioned to set sail with Jinesse, Tharrick, and both twins, and the trustworthy seaman appointed for his strength, as guard against unforeseen weather. She embarked to Feylind's proud, shouted orders and vanished between combed, white reefs and black rock. The sloop's sister brigantine raised anchor at the crest of the same tide, three joiners on board still sawing timbers and banging pegs to refigure her hold.

  Left to herself amid a yard of common shipwrights, and provided no comforts to divert her, Lady Talith arranged her hair and her clothing. She hardened her heart like sugar stirred in hemlock to test the temper of the Shadow Master's loyal following. The challenge lay before her, to subvert his given trust and make his men hers if she could.

  In a dress cut down from its former state magnificence, unjewelled, but fitted at the waist, she ventured out as though to take the air. She gazed at the sky, the worked wood, and the workers' muscled bodies with all the sultry boredom she could muster, and was surprised.

  None of them gaped in smitten lust.

  What glances she received were not even curious, but snatched behind her back in irritation. Not every man was impervious; the rare few who were fidgety under her regard would redden and turn fumbling with their tools. One fled outright to take shelter in the privy. But even that fellow came back determined, and assiduously refused to look at her. Badger though she might with her stunning allure, like salt in a raw sore, if she lingered too long, or raised a skirt to rub her ankle, a tougher-willed companion invariably came to ask her victim for unnecessary help with a measurement.

  None returned her greeting by other than a nod. If she attempted conversation, she received a bobbing bow and some grumbled excuse or apology: that she was in the way, would she kindly move aside, her presence was a regrettable inconvenience. No one so much as met her eyes.

  At noon, while the sun blistered down, except in the defile by the cliff wall, she presented complaint to the splicer. The blind man grunted, but at least gave her answer where he sat on an upturned barrel, at work amid a snake's nest of cordage. 'These know what their lives are worth, surely.'

  His hands were like bear's paws, flat and short-fingered, but astoundingly deft at their craft. Talith watched his tacit touch on the tough, grey twine, half-mesmerized by the finish of a whip-smooth four-square sennit. 'Your master told his people to ignore me?'

  Ivel tipped up his chin to roll his eyes, an affectation he enjoyed to shock the squeamish. 'Arithon told them to ignore the pride o' manhood in their breeches. His fingers never faltered as he talked. 'You're a sight, so they say, to steal reason.'

  Talith gave a low, metallic laugh. 'That makes them afraid to speak? Or were they forbidden?'

  'Well now.' Ivel tilted his thatched, unkempt head and licked the pad of his thumb, then selected a new rope and twisted the plies open to begin work on a new hawser. 'Arithon said none was to touch you. It's the men, you see. They worried the issue amongst themselves.' The splicer twirled his marlinespike at the peaks which rimmed the sky all around. 'No whores here, you understand. Not even a pot-house to sell beer to numb the healthy itch. The men decided if they ignored you in a pack, they'd have a lighter time with the temptation.'

  Talith blinked, set aback. 'Are they men at all, and not animals, to so dread the loss of their manners? Or are they gelded by fear, to give over their male right to act as they please? Why should they cast off pride? It's for the whim of another they abstain from their basic human comforts.'

  'Philosophy is it?' Ivel flipped the yarns back and in expert speed began to whip an eye splice. 'We're not much bent on refinements. Where's the profit? Best to leave such pompous rhetoric for the lazy rich and the scholars to chew over. The men here all work because the pay's good. Some are rootless. Some want better lives for their families. Arithon won't forgive a slacker. His demands can be hard, but he's fair.'

  Talith gave a soft, scornful sigh. 'Is this paradise, that no one's discontent? I'm impressed. Will every living, unmanned one of you line up for his turn to lick a polish on Arithon's boots?' Her gaze fixed as a tiger's on Ivel's bent head, she took her chance and made her covert bid for subterfuge. 'I'd give every jewel I own, and all my gold braid, to escape such blissful false happiness.'

  If the blind splicer was the sole spirit in the yard who dared speak to her, he had a mind inquisitive enough to ferret out any whispers of dissent. Her seed planted, her bribe o
ffered, Talith turned on her heel. She walked on, her part now to wait and seem uninterested in case Ivel failed to take the bait. She would formulate a second strategy while she waited to see whether her effort bore fruit.

  Three nights later, wakeful and agonized by circling thoughts, she heard a faint scratch at the window across from her pallet. Through the snores of the handmaid asleep in an unkempt heap that seemed all elbows and knees, Talith heard a faint whisper.

  'Your Grace?'

  She arose in her shift. Her unbound hair drifted like snarled floss over her bare shoulders, she crept to crack open the shutter. The unsanded floorboards creaked like the call of Dharkaron's doom under her barefoot step. She froze, taut and listening, while her maid groaned and stirred to a rustle of bed linen.

  After a moment, the woman lay silent.

  Talith stalked forward again, her lip caught between her front teeth. In the cool darkness, she heard nothing at all but the white splash of wavelets against the shore. The whisper of her title might have been imagined, a wishful echo of her desperate need.

  She slipped the leather loop off the shutter peg anyway. A waning quarter moon drifted over the landing. The high, Vastmark cliffs sliced a line of sheared coal against summer's constellations, risen in a jewel-set tapestry as they had for three Ages to adorn the late hours of spring nights. Somewhere on the south coast, perhaps, Lysaer s'Ilessid regarded those very stars, and ached with the same loss that wore her heart.

  'Lady Talith,' came a hushed whisper from the shadow below the sill.

  The princess peered down, her breath sped by hope. She made out a furtive, crouched figure, then a nap of grey hair, and the raised, triangular features of Ivel the splicer, his blind eyes a glint of grey marble above the scooped hollows of his cheekbones. 'Lady, there are four men who have plans to leave the Cascains. They've decided to throw their lot with you. They've got a derelict fisherman's smack hove up in a cove behind an islet. She's being repaired in secret and made seaworthy as we speak. On the dark moon, she'll embark. The joiner who has the limp will come for you then. Have your jewels ready. If you can't keep your handmaid from making an outcry, don't fret if someone has to bind her. We all risk our lives. What Arithon would do if we're caught at your escape would drive a man witless to imagine.'

  Talith still held the stinging, fresh memory of her youthful guardsman with a crossbow bolt through his neck.

  Through the nerve-fired interval while the fishing smack was readied, she exerted her influence to improve on the plan. Her maid would stay behind and claim her mistress was indisposed, then pretend to look after an invalid.

  'I'll cut my hair and leave it sewn around a bolster,' the princess slipped to Ivel in passing on her habitual morning walks. 'That should buy a few days without pursuit. I agree the stakes are desperate. My servant has said she'll do her part.'

  Clandestine words blossomed into action more swiftly than hope had allowed. The cutting edge of competence so well enforced by the Shadow Master became strikingly effective, turned against him. The room in the shack grew confining as a cage. Talith and her maid purloined an eating knife and under cover of bland conversation, took surreptitious turns picking jewels and braid off the gowns and slippers in her clothes trunks. After that, Talith had nothing left to do but to pace and count the hours while the moon waned.

  Wakeful on the night Ivel's man came to fetch her, she let him see the hoard, crammed like stashed plunder in a knotted square cut from a petticoat. The reward was deemed acceptable. She would pay out in port. That last detail agreed, she shook hands with her conspirator. Then, her head oddly light, the hacked ends of her hair feathered around her nape and ears, she wrapped up in a cloak of undistinguished colour and boarded the waiting dory. The shifty, pigtailed seaman at the oars rowed from the landing, fast, silent, his timed stroke kicking the small craft ahead in sharp spurts. For all his haste, their progress was silent. The brass rowlocks had been muffled with strips of torn silk much too fine for their usage as rags.

  'The fancy shirt o' the Master's,' her conspirator supplied, his grin a bright nip of teeth against the dark. 'Fitting contribution, so Ivel says, the evil old louse.'

  Talith stifled an enlivened burst of laughter. As the blackened span of shoreline with its wood stacks and trestles fell astern and slipped beyond sight, her Etarran heart thrilled to savage joy. The escape she engineered held a righteous sting of justice. Not only would Arithon's pride be put down before King Eldir and the vaunted Fellowship; the loss of her ransom would renege his promised payment to his mercenaries. Lysaer's campaign would become a bloodless triumph. This last little joke lent a crowning fillip: that for the sake of stealth, the s'Ffalenn bastard's very men had robbed his best shirt off his back.

  'Fitting indeed,' she gasped back in low pleasure.

  Then the fishing smack loomed ahead, her worn rails and spars ghostly grey against the bulking, jagged cliffs. As the dory slipped past her rudder, Talith saw a plate of wood with crude, chiselled lettering nailed to the side of her transom.

  Her fellow conspirators had named their redoubtable little craft none else but the Royal Freedom.

  'You're fools!' Talith cried in a pleased whisper as rough, friendly hands grasped her wrists and pulled her on board. 'It's begging discovery.'

  But the four men who sealed their pact to betray the Master of Shadow emphatically refused to make a change.

  'It's all fitting,' they told the princess between abashed smiles, then ushered her on into a tiny, cramped cabin infused by the gagging stink of cod. There, by the glimmer of a shielded lantern, the ringleader sat her down on a lashed cask and revealed the gist of his plan.

  'The Freedom's intent is to make port in Eldir's kingdom and beg sanctuary in your behalf.' The fellow wore a rough jerkin, half-unlaced at his throat. Sweat gleamed on his skin like molten copper as he traced a finger over his sea chart. 'We daren't ply the South Strait north to Redburn, though that's closest. Khetienn's in the straits, and she can haul like Dharkaron's muckle Chariot, if things should come to a chase. Should wind of our passage reach Arithon, we'd see ourselves beached and flayed alive. Whole damned straits are a trap, too easily cornered and cut off.'

  Talith could see as much, but patience lent her grace. She waited for the man to quit his fidgeting and finish.

  'We've all thought it best to round the cape off West Shand and run due north to Los Mar,' he summed up. 'Mornos, as you see, lies too near to the border. We're too few to guard if an enemy caught our drift and snatched the chance to spirit you away.'

  Talith examined the chart, her excitement too high to be daunted, though the outlined voyage was a long one.

  'Won't be spit for comforts, your Grace,' the seaman finished in rough apology. 'Best we could do, given naught but a tub of an old smack. We've rigged quarters below in what used to be a fish hold. Smell won't air out. But if you can stand to wear canvas like a sailor, there's times we can let you pass on deck for a fisher's lad.'

  Talith raked her fingers through the shorn ends of her hair, her eyes sparked topaz in the needle-thin spill from the lantern. She inhaled the reek of hot oil and rancid cod, and gave the man's anxious peering the most dazzling smile she possessed. 'I'm sure I shall do very well. For my husband's honour and revenge for Arithon's effrontery, in fact, I would endure a great deal worse.'

  The sailhand gave her a roguish grin, gapped with missing teeth. 'That's it, then.' He winked a dark eye, leaned across the chart, and whispered into the night. 'Raise sail, lads. Our royalty's content.'

  On Manners

  While Lord Commander Diegan made port in Avenor to convene the high council and raise the ransom to redeem Princess Talith, on the distant shore of Shand, couriers mounted blooded horses and clattered through Southshire's land gates under a leaping flood of torchlight. Surrounded by a bristling armed escort to deter clan raiders out of Selkwood, they spurred north and west under the rippling silk of Lysaer's blazon. More often than not, the wax on the requisitions in
their saddlebags had scarcely cooled from the candle. Already the highborn city officials in Alland languished in recoil from the driving, persuasive brilliance of the s'Ilessid request to quarter portions of his warhost at Atchaz and Innish. His Grace's tireless dedication through the weeks since spring equinox had ensured that no citizen in Shand remained uninformed of the Shadow Master's murderous history.

  The prince, who had personally seen his cavalcade off, squared immaculately-attired shoulders and pushed open the grilled door that led from the gatehouse postern to the inner quiet of the palace gardens.

  On the gravel path hedged by the fragrance of primroses, his page met him. 'Your Grace, the galley bearing the delegation of ministers has arrived in the harbour from Innish.'

  'Let the mayor's house steward find them guest quarters,' Lysaer said, not so distracted that he failed to find a smile for the boy, who was new, and as yet uncertain of his duties. 'Did their herald seem anxious?'

  The child grinned and puffed his undersized chest to fill out the royal tabard. 'Your Grace, no. He said three were seasick. The rest were half-starved, the cook on the galley being unfit for his job. I told them to go ashore to the Marlin Tavern for dinner.'

  'Well done.' Lysaer ruffled the boy's dark hair. 'We'll have my secretary write them a note to say I'll welcome them in the morning. Then tell the poor man he's excused. You too. I've kept you both from your beds.'

  The page bowed and raced off to complete his last duty. Lysaer proceeded inside the palace, down wainscoted hallways to the Mayor of Southshire's cavernous study. There he anticipated a more difficult audience with an envoy who would wait upon nobody's pleasure.