Conflict and Courage (36 page)

Baby Alexander
watched them from his mother’s arms gurgling with delight and
itching to be let down to crawl amongst these exciting
playmates.

Emily wasn’t
keen. An adult Lind grew to at least fifteen hands in height, some
as big as seventeen hands and their young were correspondingly
large in human terms. They would not intend to hurt the little boy
but there was always the chance of an inadvertent accident, Lind
play tended to be rough.

There wasn’t a
chance of either Tara or Emily being melancholy about friends no
longer with them in life.

James Rybak
might be awkward, short sighted and correspondingly hopeless with
any sort of a weapon but he was extremely intelligent, perceptive
and deep thinking. He had arranged for some ‘uninvited
gate-crashers’ to arrive not long after Tara and the others. These
arrived in dribs and drabs, the humans carrying light alcoholic
beverages and more eats. The party was soon in full swing and the
strumming of guitars and voices singing could be heard some
distance away.

Janice and
Winston Randall arrived with their daughters, a smiling Violet
hanging on to the embarrassed Grant’s arm and bubbling with
excitement and pride.

Afanasei
appeared with Kolyei’s great friend Tarmsei.

Jim and Larya
got a raucous welcome, they arrived after a certain amount of
alcohol had been imbued, as did sundry others, some of whom James
couldn’t for the life of him remember if he’d invited or not.

It didn’t
matter.

A great time
was had by all and right in the middle of it all, sleeping among a
little puddle of tired ltsctas lay young Alexander Stanton-Randall
who, having got his way at last, had been having the time of his
life with his large furry playmates.

* * * * *

Lord Sam Baker
appeared at his wife’s bedside after the coronation and did so at
infrequent intervals over the last days of her confinement. He
spoke to her in a gentle voice. She had never realised he possessed
this more gentle side.

Doctor Arthur
thought uncharitably that because he knew Anne was dying he felt
free to express himself. He talked and Anne lay there, it took far
too much energy to try and speak. She heard of his plans for
Duchesne and the north. There was no way she could warn them and
found it had ceased to be important to her. All that mattered was
that she hang on until the bairn was born.

“The children,”
she whispered again and again to Doctor Arthur, “I want to say
goodbye.”

“Soon,” he
temporised.

Her breath
rasped in her throat, each one filled with pain as she forced her
lungs to expand and contract.

“Please, now,
not much time.”

Doctor Arthur
sent repeated messages to Lady Cocteau to ask that she send the
children, but they never came. He was not to know until later that
the Lord Regent had expressly refused permission, he never did
learn why.

Anne’s final
child, a daughter, was born three days later and bellowed her
protest as the women bathed and dried her and wrapped her in clean
linen.

Little
Ernestine’s mother was not aware of the activity around her. She
drifted in and out of consciousness for a day and a half then
lapsed into a coma from which she did not wake, dying quietly,
Doctor Arthur by her side, in the middle of the following
night.

* * * * *

Princess Ruth
stood, a solemn, slender child of eight as her mother’s body was
interred in the cemetery at Fort.

She was, the
mourners thought, her mother in miniature, her twin, the young king
more like his sire. He stood beside his stepfather; legs planted
wide in unconscious imitation, but there the similarity ended.

Lord Henri
Cocteau decided that Sam Baker would find the lad troublesome in
the years ahead and it was obvious that the boy held his stepfather
in no great esteem; he was edging surreptitiously away from him
when he thought no one was looking. It might be a shrewd move,
thought Henri, to cultivate Elliot. Sam Baker would not last
forever, he must be approaching sixty and how much longer would he
be able to hold on to the power he had been at such pains to
grasp?

Perhaps it was
time for a change. Henri Cocteau had grave doubts about Sam Baker’s
wisdom regarding the recent plans, not that he knew of the full
extent of Sam Baker’s pact with the Larg. He did know that, to
invite the Larg kohorts within their borders was establishing a
dangerous precedent and one which they might well rue in times to
come and what exactly, Henri mused as Anne’s body was lowered into
the ground, had Sam Baker promised the pirates in return for their
help? Had he, Henri Cocteau, been wrong to offer Sam Baker his
unreserved support during the last eight years?

The interment
over, Lord Henri Cocteau left with the other Lords lost in thought,
worried about the future for him and his children

Shortly after
the funeral, Sam Baker married again.

The person most
badly affected by it all was Princess Ruth, twin of the young king.
As well as a mother, the eight-year-old had lost her only friend
and companion. The bright and vivacious child turned almost
overnight into a sad and lonely one, one who harboured a great deal
of hatred for her stepfather. She never forgot the words spoken by
her ailing mother the last time she had been allowed to see
her.

* * * * *

“We have to get
out,” Pierre repeated. “The Larg are not attacking Argyll, they are
making for us!”

“What’s that?”
exclaimed Michael, rising from his chair in a hurry.

“Vadath are
sending boats, as many as they can get, in three nights time,
they’ll take off as many as they can. We have to get in touch with
our people, get them assembled.”

“They’re taking
everybody? Why? Are you sure? Even those who fought against
them?”

“Amazingly, yes
they are.” Pierre went over to the map on the wall, “we have work
to do.”

The two men
were in the middle of discussing the evacuation plan when Louis
returned having settled Ustinya down into an exhausted sleep.

When dawn
broke, Louis went back into the hidden room whilst Michael and
Pierre snatched a few hours rest before the emergency meeting of
Pierre’s most trusted adherents.

By mid-morning
runners had been sent to the east, west and south to warn the
inhabitants to make their way as fast as they could to the three
designated embarkation points on the Duchesne coastline. They were
to take with them only what they could carry.

There was still
no word from the missing patrol.

They had to
keep the Larg and any of Sam Baker’s spies from knowing what they
were up to. Louis thanked whatever deity was looking over them that
the Larg were not like the Lind and eager to bond with humankind.
As far as he was aware, the only links between Aoalvaldr and the
Lords was the unfortunate Andrew Snodgrass and two others at Fort.
Pierre Duchesne knew of no other such link within his Lordship,
which was not to say that the links were not there, but that it was
unlikely.

Alesei, the
Avuzdel Lind, had positioned himself just inside Duchesne’s borders
and would warn them when the Larg were about to move, if he could.
That afternoon he reported finding the missing patrol; what was
left of them.

This convinced
the majority of the unconvinced but still Pierre Duchesne was
forced to insist that all women and children go, even those married
or belonging to the men who wished to stay. If necessary, the women
and children were to be dragged away at sword-point. The days were
filled with rumour and frightening tales of the Larg.

“It’s
definitely us they’re after?” questioned Michael more than once;
even he was finding it hard to comprehend that Sam Baker had turned
on them.

“Sam Baker is
power crazy,” answered Pierre. “I do not fall into line, therefore
I must go, like Brentwood before me. I never imagined he would
stoop so low as to agree that the Larg should attack the entire
population. I thought it would be the assassin’s knife between my
shoulder-blades.”

“He knows your
people are loyal to you, that they love and respect you. He does
not want to take over a Lordship full of potential
troublemakers.”

* * * * *

“I can see the
boats” squeaked a young voice, that of Pierre’s eldest son Jacques,
a sturdy young lad of almost eight. The situation was a great
adventure for him and his younger brothers, they were not aware of
the danger they were in. He had never met a Larg.

Jacques face
when he had met Ustinya had been a sight to behold, one of
incredulous delight. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Louis he
regarded almost as avidly, hero-worship in his eyes.

Ustinya said
that he was a prime candidate for a pairing when he was old
enough.

Duchesne was
amused. He remembered his own first encounter with Ustinya and was
pleased to see his son so obviously taken with her, knowing that
where they were going, the colonists maintained close ties with
their non-human neighbours.

Indeed, Jacques
made such a nuisance of himself disappearing from his mother
Briony’s side at every available opportunity (she being more than
fully occupied with his brothers) that Louis had sighed with
exasperation and plonked the lad on to Ustinya’s back with strict
instructions to stay there.

Jacques, in a
seventh heaven of blissful content, was more than happy to do so
and spent the remainder of the wait for the evacuation boats like a
little rudtka perched on her back, watching the proceedings with a
lofty joy mixed with disdain for his brothers and friends on the
ground. Young Jean could hardly contain his jealousy and implored
his mother to ask if he could join Jacques but Louis felt that one
boisterous boy was all Ustinya could cope with.

The mothers at
the castle who had babies and young infants were already embarked
on the three fishing boats Duchesne possessed. These were smaller
than the northern boats, chunky and solid. The northern boats were
fast and reinforced with steelwood in an effort to withstand the
pirates that sailed the seas. The pirates had learned to their cost
that ramming the northern boats was only an option if one wanted an
early death by drowning and a watery grave.

Slowly, the
northern fleet emerged out of the evening haze and anchored as near
to the shore as they dared. Small dinghies were launched as the
crews began to row ashore to pick up their passengers.

The Vadath
fishermen helped the southerners with chilly courtesy. Many had
fought in the battle eight years ago and remembered that day, when
the men they were welcoming aboard had been trying to kill
them.

Justin Wright,
who had survived one of the first pirate attacks, was one. He was
curt almost to brusqueness as he aided the men, women and elder
children aboard, directing them where to sit with an unsmiling
nod.

His was the
last but one boat. It tilted as Ustinya clambered aboard, Louis
helping Jacques up the ladder before turning to aid Briony and the
boys. Duchesne followed.

“That
everyone?” asked Justin of Louis.

“All those we
could reach in time and those able and willing to make the journey.
The other two embarkation points?”

“Should be
loading as we speak,” was the terse reply, “the Larg?”

“They’re
moving, about a half-day’s run away. Alesei here is exhausted
trying to outrun them. Luckily they were unaware of his presence
and he managed to elude all but one of their advance scouts. He had
to kill him after a desperate fight. The Larg will reach the castle
by morning.”

“And discover
the birds have flown, eh? Lucky we made good time, otherwise you’d
have been in deep shit.”

“I thank you
from the bottom of my heart for coming to save my people,” Pierre
Duchesne said.

“You Pierre
Duchesne?” asked Justin. “Heard conflicting reports about you I
have; good
and
bad.”

“I’m a reformed
character,” Pierre answered in a bland voice.

Justin
chuckled, “better warn you that some of us are not happy about
giving you sanctuary.”

“I rather
expected that might be the case.”

Justin wasn’t
finished. “Word is the Larg and some of the convicts are about to
attack Argyll. What’ll you do then?”

“We fight,”
answered Pierre. “My men hate Lord Baker and his henchmen. That’s
why they stayed with me in my Lordship, well away from Fort. Yes,
we are ex-cons to a man but we’ve paid our debt. No man worth his
salt would give his loyalty to a regime that was going to
cold-bloodedly take us out, give us to the Larg to feed on. Would
you?”

“No, I
wouldn’t,” agreed Justin, “but you have to admit that you and your
people will have to work hard to gain acceptance, even in Vadath,
especially amongst those who had loved ones that were killed or
disappeared at Settlement. He pointed to one of his crew who was
giving out hot drinks to the refugees. He was one of your lot once.
Gave himself up after the battle eight years ago. He’s worked hard
and now he’s married to my sister and has bairns of his own. If you
fight with us that’ll help. Now we’d better be off before these
hairy monsters decide to put on a spurt of speed and surprise
us.”

Loud-hailer in
hand Justin directed the boats to set sail and the people of
Duchesne left the south of their endurance for the north of their
choosing.

The fleet made
good time. Out of sight of land the boats from the other two
departure points joined them.