Everran's Bane (15 page)

Away from these sideshows, Beryx was visiting lords and guild-leaders and making useful talk. A grain lord does not like to hear how Hawge ravaged a Resh in a night, nor a weaver lord how his wool-stores would burn: “all that grease.” Nor does a weapon lord wish to consider how Estarian sarissas bent on Hawge like pins: “such a bad advertisement.” Guild-leaders melted for Everran's jobless, while both lords and guild-leaders winced at the thought of drinking no more Everran wine. “We'll go to assembly,” Beryx told me, “when we've won the assembly ground.”

Meanwhile I searched for a weapon, not among the potentates, but in the slum taverns where Estar's surviving harpers play. I liked the slums. They are ridden with thieves and violence, hatred, envy, hardship, dirt, and beggars who would wheedle a gold ingot out of Hawge, but they are human as newsworthy Estarians are not. Moreover, they liked harpers: especially the harper of “Thorgan Fenglos” himself.

It means, The Moon-faced King. It refers to the scar, and at first I disliked it, for Feng is the moon's bad aspect, the lamp of robbers, demons, and ghosts. But in truth it was a sign of liking. They saw Beryx as a fellow loser, and would have wished to see him win.

But the harpers had less lore than I, and even in the Confederacy's arsenal nobody knew of a notable weapon recently made. After a week I gave up, and went home to find Beryx's assembly assault prepared at last.

For three days shophets, delegates, and Beryx made speeches which the news-takers regurgitated for the people, while the wind-horns went hoarse and one news-taker scaled the shophet's bath-house window to eavesdrop on our talk and win “the inside news.” On the third day, when I was all but deaf and most orators voiceless, the assembly was near a vote—but then some wind-horn made an oration from the city wall on the moral outrage of a republic backing a monarchy, corrupt by definition, against an innocent beast only wanting love and understanding to make it sweet as mother's milk.

The news-takers were in ecstasy. The wind-horns went hoarse. The guild-leaders suddenly recalled they were against lords on principle, and Beryx was clearly a paramount lord. The lords, unnerved by the thought of Hawge led on a string into Estar, leant on the assembly, which voted Everran twelve ingots a month. At this the guild-leaders announced to the news-takers, “Any aid to Everran, and Estar will have a general strike.”

This is apparently more fearful than the plague. The lords bent, the shophets recalled the assembly, which obediently reversed its vote. Everran would get nothing at all.

Beryx came out of the assembly hall like a red-eyed arrow, clove a phalanx of news-takers, grabbed my arm, bellowed, “Get the gear!” bade our servants take the horses to the Isthmus, and whipped me straight down to the docks. Halfway along was a Hazghend whaler which had been discharging oil. Beryx yelled up at her captain, “Are you sailing? Yes? To Hazghend? Yes? No matter where! Will you take two passengers? Yes? We're coming aboard!” And we were out of Rustarra on that evening's ebb.

* * * * *

All through that I had not dared speak to him. His eyes were quite black, and the scar, which had been fading, stood out lividly. But when Rustarra was a mere yellow glow on the smirched horizon and an easterly was lifting the whaler with a horse's living roll and surge, so I was wondering if whale stink would make me sea-sick, he came swiftly across the after-deck to grip me by the arm.

“Four preserve me,” he said, “from news-takers, puppet assemblies, Yea-saying shophets, and all other word bungle-ists.” He broke into a laugh. “Except harpers, of course.”

It was a surprise to find the sun shone and the world had color, after Estar's murk. We ran the coast westerly, across Belphan Fer and past the huge forehead of Culphan Skos, athwart the path of the late summer storms, which would blot the uplands in tumors of lightning-livid cloud and buffet us madly as they passed. But the whaler was two years out, her crew sick for home, and though the skipper was happy to land us at Hazghend's capital in Hazruan, rather than his home port of Tyr Saeveryr, he was not yielding way to storms. He laid his course further seaward, cutting across the vast bay of Belphan Wyre, straight for Culphan Saeveryr, “the cape where the wind turns,” and shook out another reef as he went.

From the sea Hazghend is beautiful, a wild coast of cliff and cape with inlets so long their gores of tourmaline water dovetail straight into the mountains that draw snow in winter, are too rocky for anything but goats, and rise in their capricious splendor straight from the turbulent cobalt and emerald-shot sea. One moment it is eggshell blue, the next purple with thunder, then lost in white squalls of rain. There are no factories. The air is clear as polished crystal, and as cold. You pass fisher-boats, or whalers, or freighters out for hire, or the long low galleys in which Hazyx go raiding. Ship-building is Hazghend's fourth-favorite occupation, after drinking, fighting, and going to sea.

Hazruan lies in the longest narrowest inlet of all, with Culphan Saeveryr's black-cliffed peninsula stretching south, and the gray morose bulk of Culphan Morglis squatted to its north. The inlet is walled in sheer after sheer of midnight green pines mirrored a darker green in green-tinged sea, with tiny fish-villages, shipyards, laid-up galleys, and careened schooners in the coves between. At the inlet's head, the massif lifts straight to Asterne Brenx's snow-tipped fang, and beneath it Hazruan's stockade and timbered roofs crown the red and gray cliff, over a crescent of beach crammed with everything from fishing dories to the galleys of Ragnor's lords. Hazyx fight corsairs when they are raided and hunt them when others pay, and are otherwise indistinguishable, except to themselves.

We clambered into a whaleboat amid cries of, “No trouble! Good fishing!” and were rowed into the uproar of taverns and fishing nets, impromptu auctions and barterings of spoil. Threading the crowd of blonde, bellowing Hazyx who brandished cups, axes, women, and oars, we reached the steps that Ragnor calls his front door.

They are bare holes in the cliff where you mount in single file, and all the way the two mighty catapults above Hazruan's stockade stare silently down on you. They can throw clear to the opposite cliff. Ragnor, as he puts it, “does not like to be surprised.”

His hall tunes with Hazghend: ship timbers mostly, I suspect, high-treed and cavernous, hung with trophies more bizarre than Inyx's, above benches and trestle tables built to withstand Hazyk quarrels as well as their rumps. It is full of smoke from the huge rough-stone fireplace, with rushes on the floor and arm-thick tallow dips around the walls, a perfect corsairs' lair. But a hearthbard sat on the fire's right, and Ragnor himself, albeit on sealskins, occupied a king's chair. Already I felt at home.

As is the custom, we entered without ceremony. All friends are welcome, and if any enemy did get past the gate, the hall is full of Ragnor's blood-vowed warriors. When I let the hide door-curtain drop, Ragnor looked up sharply from his wine.

He is a golden bull of a man, red-faced, blue-eyed, burly as Gjarr, with a sword-cut across the nose to give him character. He pulled his head back as if struck. Then he almost shot out of his chair.

“By Rienvur's flaming steeds!” Hazyx do not follow the Sky-lords, but the Crimson Planet, master of war. “By the—it is!” That bellow shook the candle-flames. “Beryx! You skinny upland grape-squeezer, what have you done to your arm?”

I did not know whether to wince or curse. But to my utter amazement Beryx retorted, grinning, “You windy seaside octopus, a dragon dropped me on it.”

“Dragon, uh?” rumbled Ragnor when we were seated at his high table, behind ornate silver goblets of Everran wine and huge portions of spit-roasted sheep. “Courtesy of  Quarred,” said Ragnor briefly, and at Beryx's look his blue eyes twinkled yet more brilliantly. “Well, let's hear.”

“Courtesy of your hearthbard,” answered Beryx, “and if mine isn't sick of it, he can tell the tale.”

Hazyx are prodigal in appreciation as all else. Amid the thunder of beaten cups, two or three gold armrings came arching at my head, and Ragnor laughed and said, “Don't give those to Hawge.” Then he looked at Beryx with a glinting grin.

“Well, you upland fox, you didn't come here for sheep—or cattle. Did you?” Ragnor may look a beer-swilling pirate, but you do not make yourself Ruand of Hazghend, and hold together a country unsecured by inheritance and rotten with blood-feuds, unless your sword arm is bettered by your head.

Beryx spat in the fire. He related our reception in Holym, Quarred, and Estar. Ragnor spat too.

“I owe you,” he said, “for the corsairs. But then, you also owe me—yes?”

Beryx's grin was as glinting as his own. “Was it you who told me about the king and the yeldtars? Or did I tell you?”

The tale is hoary as harps: the tyrant asked by a green fellow tyrant for a ruler's recipe, who takes the messenger into his garden and silently uses his stick to lop the tallest yeldtar heads. Ragnor chuckled and slapped his thigh. “Ah, well, take that one. Gjarr's boots
were
getting a sight too big. We'll start even. What is it you want?”

“Seven gold ingots a month,” Beryx said bluntly, “and a weapon that hasn't been forged.”

In the next ten minutes he had every weapon in Hazruan at his feet or across his knees. Two-handed swords, curved lopping knives, double-headed axes, boot-top daggers, bows tall as a man or shorter than my arm, thrusting, throwing, fighting, hunting spears, maces and sling-throwers, jeweled, gold- and silver-chased, hafted or scabbarded in ivory, in blood-tinged wood or plain greasy iron. Beryx smiled at Ragnor across them, rather ruefully. “You know my Guard?” he said. “I took them to Coed Wrock.”

Ragnor whistled. Then he laughed. “A poxy great hedgehog that falls apart if one man gets out of step!”

“The dragon,” Beryx replied, “was very taken with Gjarr's axe.”

Ragnor frowned: then he sighed. Then he said, “So, Scarface.” To my wonder, Beryx looked quite pleased. “I can't give you a weapon. As for gold... You know how I am. I don't have these measly account books and fat scribes to sit about playing treasuries. If it's here I give it away, and if it's not I go out and get some more. No sea-lord worth a dipper of pitch does otherwise. ‘Open-handed'—you know how it goes.”

Beryx nodded. I knew too. It is the first epithet Hazyk bards apply to a great king, the first thing warriors seek after a champion's prowess, the keel of Hazghend government.

Ragnor looked down the hall. “You could try to take it back, but—” A gleeful chuckle. “It'd be a long day's work.”

Beryx nodded again. Ragnor shifted in his chair.

“Everran bad, uh?” he asked abruptly.

Beryx said, “Yes.”

Ragnor pondered. “I've ten galleys beached. A day or so'd crew them. Which do you fancy—sheep or goats?”

Beryx shook his head. “You'd reach Heshruan no more than half strength. You'd never get back. And Rustarra's armed the mole with catapults.”

“Flat-worms. No spirit of adventure,” Ragnor complained. He looked sideways. His face softened. “Rienvur, gimme a catapult before word-throwers, any day.”

Then, of a sudden, he began to strip off his gold arm-rings: flat, round, thick as thumbs, headed with boars and dragons, inlaid with enamel, running from wrist almost to shoulder on both arms. His golden torque followed, a couple of gold chains, his dagger with thillian-encrusted hilt. “Can't have the sword. I'll want that.” Then he rose and bellowed down the hall. “Hoy! Hoy! You beer-guzzling gut-fillers! I want your gear!”

“Melt it down,” he said across the heap. “I dunno what it'll make in ingots, but it ought to do one month. I'll send you more.”

Beryx looked up at him. He was smiling, in a way that reminded me how he had looked at his thousand volunteers.

“Thanks,” he said softly, “pirate.” His mouth-corners lifted. “Now all I need is a... ship.”

Ragnor flung both arms in the air and nearly snuffed the candle-flames. “You guzzling land-shark! Next time I'll take the dragon neat!”

He found us a ship, a low, lean schooner, “fastest thing with masts,” but not even Ragnor the open-hearted and open-handed could find us a wind. We woke to a ferocious southerly, blasting up from the ice with all its chill and twice its power, and Ragnor shook his head. “No, Scarface,” he said. “I'll give away gold, but not throw it. She'd never get round the cape.”

Beryx bit his lip. “I'm over the three months,” he said. “And new moon's in ten days.”

Ragnor was at a loss. Then his face cleared. “Come on,” he clapped Beryx's shoulder. “Best lore in the world: when you can't do anything else, get drunk.”

He must have had a head like Hawge's hide, for he was drunk all of seven nights afterward. And every night the southerly pounded Hazghend, and every morning he and Beryx clambered to the spy-post to come down salt-rimed and teary and grimmer than before.

Beryx wanted to take a galley. Ragnor said, “Give you one and welcome, but she won't weather Morglis either. You'll swamp in the open bay.” He stared out where Culphan Morglis humped gray and obdurate, with swathes of spray obscuring its crest as the fifteen-foot rollers came tearing in and blew up marbled and foaming and green as Hawge's eyes. “First of the season's busters. Thing must have the Eye on you, Scarface. Earliest one I've ever known.”