Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (54 page)

Brannis laid out a small spread of various salted
meats and cheeses for their meal, and everyone partook, though Juliana and
Faolen seemed skeptical, and Ruuglor seemed to be expecting there to be a bit more.
Iridan had grown accustomed to the meager field rations they had been eating in
Kelvie, and he and Brannis knew that the trail food the palace had stocked in
their saddlebags was a world better quality than the hardtack and stale bread
they had made do with in the forest.

“So what is our plan once we get to Raynesdark,
Brannis?” Juliana asked once they had settled in for their meal. She tore into
a strip of jerky as she awaited his reply.

“The true plan is to get there quickly,” Brannis said.
“I have no doubt the goblins are already a step ahead of us in planning the
siege. I will need to figure out as quickly as possible what they are planning
to surprise us with and then find a way to counter it.”

“Well, that is just what Rashan said at dinner last night.
What is the real plan?” Juliana countered. “Surely there was more to it than
that.”

“Not as such, no.”

“You mean that we are trekking across half the Empire
and crossing the Cloud Wall at whatever spot we find ourselves at, just to
figure it out when you get there?” Juliana seemed baffled.

“You have a better plan?” Brannis asked. “If you know
what the goblins have planned and a strategy to counter it, I am your attentive
servant.”

Brannis looked at her expectantly, with a carefully
crafted expression of naïve hopefulness painted on his face. He winced in his
head as he recalled having used this same annoying ploy on her countless times
when he was courting her—when he was just a boy, really. It had become an
almost reflexive response to her judgmental outbursts. If he had realized how
much more ridiculous that expression looked when wearing gold-and-quicksilver
armor with a demon-horned helm, he would have flushed with embarrassment.

“No, but if it had been my duty to put one together, I
would have come up with something better that ‘I shall figure it out later,’”
Juliana imitated Brannis in a fair approximation of his voice.

Faolen snickered.

“Truly, if any of you have a plan, I
am
willing
to listen,” Brannis said. “I cannot promise I will follow any set course of
action until we arrive at Raynesdark and I can assess the situation, but I will
give fair hearing to any thoughts you might have. It is a long road yet, and I
expect you will have plenty of time alone with your thoughts as the wind
carries our words off as we ride.”

“Um, actually, Brannis, it is just you,” Iridan said.
“The rest of us realized that it was that silly armor of yours making all the
noise, and that once we hung back a few paces, we could carry on conversation
rather easily. In fact, I won a hundred fifty lions for having best guessed
when you would finally let us stop for a rest.”

Brannis stowed his helm for the remainder of the day’s
ride and was able to partake in the general conversation as their horses blazed
a trail over the snow at a blurring pace, despite pushing the pace hardly at
all. As there were only so many practicalities to discuss and hours aplenty to
fill, they spoke of many other topics. Brannis felt better about taking men
into a war with him if they were less than strangers to one another.

They rode five abreast, with Brannis at the center.
They spoke of their backgrounds and families—though Brannis’s, and now
Iridan’s, family was already the subject of much gossip in the Empire—and of
what they thought of the future of the Empire now that the ruse of the false
emperor had been revealed. It was then that Brannis found out why Ruuglor and
Faolen had been chosen to “volunteer” for this assignment.

“Indeed, he gave us a choice, but it was Rashan’s
Bargain come to life,” Ruuglor said, laughing despite not finding it
particularly funny himself. “You know it is a trap from the outset, yet you are
desperate enough that you have to take the chance that it is not. It was
suggested that Faolen and I might begin to help make amends for our part in
perpetuating the ruse, if we were to go along and help defend Raynesdark.”

“So you both knew?” Brannis asked.

“Of course,” Ruuglor replied. “I helped to craft and
maintain the aether construct of the body. It truly is a masterwork. I cannot
claim credit for much of it; I was one of several involved in the crafting. I
would also occasionally repair bits where the construct started to fray.”

“What of you, Faolen? What was your role?” Brannis
asked.

“I was an occasional puppeteer. I also consulted on
matters of fashion and details of the face and jewelry,” Faolen said.

“Aye, and he had quite the eye for it,” Ruuglor said.
“Illusion is his specialty, and not many of them are to be had among the
Circle. Our Faolen is an artist of aether.”

“So you are telling me that you two are being sent
along as punishment?” Brannis asked.

“Not as such,” Ruuglor parroted Brannis’s own
equivocation back at him. “It was just strongly implied that it might forestall
some potential future repercussions that might befall us.”

“So he threatened you,” Brannis stated. It was not a
question.

“It was a privilege to watch a master at work!”
Ruuglor announced, employing grace about the situation when bitterness might
have been forgivable.

“And what threat hangs over your head, Juliana? How
did the old warlock convince you to come along?” Brannis asked.

“He asked. If you must attach a threat to it, then the
threat of never seeing my future husband again, should the battle go badly,”
she replied, as if there were no more to it than that.

Brannis had suspicions otherwise but kept them to
himself.

“And you, Iridan? I do not suppose you required much
to get you to come along,” Brannis suggested.

“Of course not. Rashan thinks I have it in me to
become a warlock. He gave me some insights into how I should conduct myself on
the battlefield, and I mean to put them into practice. If there is a chance I
could be the Empire’s next warlock, I
have
to try. High sorcerers get
portraits painted and busts carved and names written into the history books.
Warlocks
make
the history,” Iridan said.

Apparently he had overcome the initial shock of
Rashan’s suggestion that he might become a warlock, and had embraced the idea.
Brannis could not help but wonder if he was paying attention when Rashan
explained what had become of the other sons he had tried training as warlocks.

By evening, they found themselves too far from any
inhabited land to find proper beds for the night. The roads in the western half
of the Empire, between the capital and the Cloud Wall, were a tangle of mule
paths, old trade routes, and north-south routes that funneled goods to and from
the southern ports. Too few roads ran cleanly east-west for Brannis’s company
to make good use as a guide, and they got themselves stuck somewhere in between
Farfield and Marmet, smaller communities to be sure, but plenty large enough to
find five beds at the command of the Inner Circle and the commander of the
Imperial Army.

Instead they found themselves saddled with sleepy
horses who bore increasingly sleepy riders, with no roof to be had close enough
at hand to be of use. Brannis found them shelter near the Stoneflow River,
where the steep bank was set back away from the low waters with enough room for
a proper campsite. The bank was high enough that it shielded even the horses
from the worst of the frosty night winds.

Brannis saw to the horses after the others had all
dismounted in various states of physical distress. He found a root from a tree
along the bank where it had grown out through the surface, and used it to
tether the horses. He set about unpacking the small, individual-sized tents
that each horse carried, and turned to suggest someone start looking for
firewood.

He realized his folly immediately when he saw the
sorcerers he traveled with. They had already levitated dozens of medium-sized
stones from the riverbed to form a circle around the campfire, which they had
already lit. The fire was large enough to warm a feasting hall, and crackled
merrily away burning absolutely nothing.

I spent too much of the day remembering that I
traveled with a bunch of soft, complaining, useless fops, and forgot that I was
traveling with
sorcerers.
I may as
well have asked a town crier, “What news?” as asked sorcerers for fire.

The tent-setting went similarly. While Brannis had
initially resolved himself that he was not going to put up Juliana’s tent for
her—let Iridan be chivalrous if she needed the help—the four sorcerers each
managed their own in no time at all, using telekinesis to arrange the little
poles and ropes and jam the stakes into the cold hard ground. As Brannis went
about setting his own up the more traditional way, he felt it pulled from his
grasp.

“Sorry, Sir Brannis. I just could not watch that any
longer,” Ruuglor said, avoiding Brannis’s gaze as he set it up for the grand
marshal in one-tenth the time it would have taken Brannis by manual labor.

They took their evening meal hot. It was little
different from the midday meal, except they were able to add bread and melt the
cheese onto it, making the two hard foodstuffs each more palatable. There was
also wine to be had—Brannis truly wondered if the palace stewards had any idea
how to properly pack for the road—and there was a small, somber celebration of
the fact they made it through their first day on the road.

Upon retiring to their respective tents for the
evening, Brannis could not help but notice that Juliana, at some point, had
managed to set hers up right next to his own. He was too tired to do anything
about it that night but resolved that he would choose his tent site last at the
next place they stopped for the night. It was just one further thing he wished
he did not have to worry about, but he was hardly eager to get between Iridan
and Juliana.

Chapter 27 - Foreign Markets

Kyrus stood at the railing, seeing a foreign cityscape
for the first time. The day was warm and bright with sunshine, and the light
fog that had hung over the harbor on their approach in the early morning had
burned off, leaving a blue sky filled with a scattering of grey-white clouds
and the cries of thousands of seagulls.

The weather had warmed in the four days since they had
set their course south from Acardia. While the chill of late autumn was icing
the air above Kyrus’s homeland, it seemed much like a fine spring day in the
waters of Ganaad Bay, the gateway to the free city of Marker’s Point.

Marker’s Point was a small series of islands in the
shape of a crescent moon, with the open side facing to the east. The separation
of the islands varied with the tides, with interconnections between many of
them appearing at low tide only to disappear upon the tide’s return. Aside from
the main passage in from the east, there was no draft deep enough for seagoing
vessels between any of the islands. The whole of the landmass was populated
aside from the short, craggy volcanic mountains that predominated the outer
side of the crescent. Much had been built out into the shallow waters of Ganaad
Bay itself as well, with buildings supported on stilts to keep the floors above
the high tide.

In the early days of seafaring exploration, the
once-barren island formation had served as a waypoint for voyages across the
great expanses between continents. Initially used as a navigation aid—a
landmark in an otherwise sparse area of the Katamic—ships would occasionally
take shelter in the calm waters of the bay to anchor for repairs or to wait out
storms. Eventually the explorers of the early seafaring age gave way to the
second wave: merchants. It became apparent to anyone of a mercantile bent that
the island chain made an ideal trading post for the various nautically inclined
peoples whose shores touched the Katamic. It was not long before it was settled
by various shipping and trading concerns. Many were more than willing to cut
half the time off their journey to get paid for their wares at Marker’s Point
instead of their final destination, even if it meant taking a smaller cut; more
voyages in more familiar waters made profits quicker and safer than longer
voyages across open sea.

Thus the city of Marker’s Point had grown up to be
inhabited by moneychangers and warehouse owners, shippers and fishermen,
fugitives and itinerant sailors, tavern-keepers, pirates, and whores. Few were
born in the city—at least outside the brothels—and few spent their whole lives
in it. Those hardy few formed the backbone of the island’s society, though: the
Lord Pon-Aeric Halahari and his family, the Tide’s Watchmen who patrolled the
waters and kept order, and the Hwann family, whose bank financed most of the major
deals in the city.

Kyrus had never seen such a place before, and had only
heard it referred to in storybooks and tavern tales as a place of mystery and
intrigue, where deals were made in shady dockside saloons and pirates walked
the piers.

I suppose the latter is true at least, or will be once
they let us dock.

They had been under surveillance by one of the three
massive lighthouses that surrounded the islands ever since the fog had cleared.
Shortly thereafter, a small single-sailed harbor vessel had intercepted them,
and one of the Tide’s Watchmen had come aboard. Kyrus had been expecting
trouble, considering that they were, after all, pirates. However, the watchman
cleared them once he was satisfied that the ship was no longer a part of the
Acardian Navy. There were few rules that the Pointers enforced, but “no naval
vessels” was one they clung to dearly. It was an unpopular rule among the
kingdoms whose subjects might flee to the city, but they felt it was essential
to keep trade flowing freely—and they had enough cannons to enforce their
decree.

Once the watchman had Captain Zayne’s word on their
lack of affiliation with Acardia, they issued a reminder that open gun ports in
the bay were forbidden. After that, the small harbor ship merely escorted them
toward the docks.

Kyrus watched the shore as they neared the berth they
had been assigned. The city was vast, sprawling, built entirely around the
periphery of the bay and filling any surface that could conceivably support a
structure. It would only take a few minutes to walk from the inside beach to
the outside beach in most parts of Marker’s Point, yet to walk one end to the
other might require overnight accommodations. Ferries ran crisscross between
various docks along the inside face of the city at all hours of the day and
night. Kyrus’s eyes were drawn up as well, as many of the buildings were tall,
spindly affairs, made from imported stone and winding their way up into the sky
to make the most of the scant land available.

Kyrus could only begin to guess how many people lived
in the city. Golis was the largest city in Acardia and held over fifty
thousand. He might have supposed Marker’s Point was thrice that at the least.
Kyrus could recall the sights and sounds of Kadris from his dreams—a city the size
of Marker’s Point and Ganaad Bay combined—but the visceral feel of approaching
it was like nothing his dreams could prepare him for. They had not even reached
the dock when the clamor of the throngs on the dock reached them. Ships were
being loaded and unloaded, with longshoremen shouting at one another in a dozen
languages. Trading ships came and went in the harbor, with smaller boats
darting in and around them, containing fishermen, city officials, peddlers who
rowed from ship to ship pressing their wares on newcomers before they even
reached port, and countless others whose occupations Kyrus could not gather
upon cursory examination.

The men of Captain Zayne’s crew were nearly all on
deck, waiting for their chance at shore leave. Not all would be granted the
privilege, as men were needed to guard the ship—Kyrus could not
imagine
why—but most would be making for the city proper with all haste. Scar Harbor
was a large enough city by most standards, but the stuffy, parochial attitudes
of the locals kept much of interest from happening beyond the dock ward.

Kyrus expected that he would be allowed to leave and
take in the sights. Captain Zayne had granted him two full shares of loot, so
he was obviously not quite subject to the same rules as the rest of the crew.

After all, he knows my secret, and he saw what I did
on the docks at Acardia. It is not as if I would disappear into the city and
hide away.

Under Captain Zayne’s expert hand, the former
Harbinger
—which
had yet to be renamed—slid smoothly into its assigned berth. There was a flurry
of activity as sails were furled and lines pulled. Men down on the pier shouted
up and requested mooring lines be thrown down. Kyrus could hardly contain the
wide, childlike grin that was spreading itself over his face. He had never been
much of anywhere in his life, and now here he was in Marker’s Point.

*
* * * * * * *

Denrik steered the ship into port easily. Even with
years between him and the last time he had piloted a ship, and with the
unfamiliar feel of his new vessel, the mild waters of Ganaad Bay made for easy
practice.

“Welcome to freedom, lads!” Denrik called out to the
crew, to a general cheer.

Stalyart took over the details, directing the flow of
the frenzied work on the deck as experienced sailors made ship ready to moor.
The green ones had the sense at least to stay out of the way, even Andur, and
the work went quickly even with the short crew.

Eager to be ashore,
Denrik thought
. I suppose I can understand why. Were it up to me, I
would never set foot on dry land again. I did my time in the dirt on that
forsaken rock of Rellis Island. We need crew, though, and this is the place to
find them
.

Denrik made his way down to where his men were laying
the gangplank. Before any of his men made it down, though, first there was
someone who insisted upon coming up.

“Who is the captain here?” the man asked.

He was a man of perhaps thirty years by his lack of
grey hairs, but a hard thirty. He bore a pair of scars down the right side of
his face, yet had been spared the loss of that eye. He walked with a cane,
which thumped hollowly on the deck of the ship as he approached Denrik on a
hunch. The man was clad in the blue-and-green livery of the Tide’s Watch, but
the heavy gold medallion hanging from his neck marked him as a harbormaster.

“I am Captain Denrik Zayne. This is my ship,” Denrik
informed the harbormaster proudly. There were times to conceal one’s identity
as a pirate and other times to wear one’s name as a badge of honor. This
counted as the latter.

“Well, the rumors are true, I see. I had heard the
scuttlebutt that you had been among a group of escapees from the New Hope
colony. This is quite a fine vessel you have acquired. I must admit, we were
skeptical when we saw the
Harbinger
approach. Our records show that the
Harbinger
is registered to the Acardian Navy. When you did not fly your Acardian colors,
however, we suspected something amiss. I trust that this vessel and the
Acardian Navy are no longer associated …” the harbormaster left the implied
question hanging, waiting for Denrik to explain himself.

“That it says
‘Harbinger’
on the side is
clearly an error. I intend to see it corrected before we shove off,” Denrik
said, crossing his arms in front of him.

“It is now my duty to ask you: how long will that be?”
the harbormaster asked.

“Two days. Maybe four. Maybe a week. I am in need of
crew, and it will take how long it takes gathering a good one,” Denrik replied.

He would rather have gotten in and out of Marker’s
Point in a day or two, but he knew better than to take just any man who
volunteered. He would interview men and find out what ships they had served on,
who their captain had been, and what other skills they possessed. Sailing with
the Pirate King ought to carry some prestige, and he hoped to attract the best
crew he could lay hands on.

“Well, we will require an advance of a week’s berthing
fees. If you depart beforehand, one of the harbormasters will be sure to
reimburse you for the unused days remaining. The seven days will cost you
fifty-six thousand zimbals,” the harbormaster said.

Men nearby gasped in shock at the expense, but that
was mostly because they did not understand just how worthless a zimbal was.
Those who had been to Marker’s Point before, or who had traveled to Feru Maru
where zimbals were the legal tender, expected to pay as many as a hundred
zimbals for a pint of watery ale.

Denrik paid the man in trade bars equivalent to the
barrel of zimbals he had requested. He was not at all certain he had gotten a
good exchange rate on them, but this was port and he was a pirate. There was a
certain cachet attached to being able ignore the minor details in financial
transactions such as this. He was out to find himself a crew, and being found
to count zimbals was not going to help his reputation any. A captain hard on
his luck was not a man would-be pirates wanted to sail with.

When the harbormaster had been satisfied, the gangway
was clear and the men started pouring off the ship, jostling and shoving to get
down first. He noted with a lack of surprise that Mr. Hinterdale was off to the
side, waiting out the press of bodies.

“Mr. Stevin,” Denrik pulled the young man aside as he
brushed by his captain on the way to the gang plank.

“Aye, Captain?” the boy said, looking confused. He had
been just paces shy of total freedom before getting waylaid by Captain Zayne.

“I want you to stick by Mr. Hinterdale today and see
that he stays out of trouble,” Denrik ordered.

Stevin cocked his head and gave him a puzzled
expression. “Aye, sir. O’ course. Ya don’t mind me ask, but what trouble? I
hear he take half da crew off da old ship and burn another,” Stevin said.

Rumors had passed to every man on the ship about
Kyrus’s exploits on the night of the liberation of the
Harbinger
.
Accounts varied—as they always did—in the retelling, but all accounts gave the
very clear impression that Mr. Hinterdale was rather capable of looking after
himself.

“Oh, our wizard may be all that, but he is an easy
mark here nonetheless. You speak all the languages around here, true?” Denrik asked,
and Stevin nodded in the affirmative. “Well, that lad there speaks Acardian and
probably nothing else. He is going to lose all his money and very likely cross
someone with a short temper, a sharp blade, and poor social skills today. This
place is thick with them. By the waves, it is why we are here! I need those
sorts to make pirates of.

“Now you just stay close to him and be his guide for
today,” Denrik said, looking into Stevin’s eyes to make sure the boy knew he
was serious.

“What if he don’t want me with him?” Stevin asked. “I
gotta sneek ’n’ watch him?” The boy raised an eyebrow skeptically.

“I would not worry overmuch about that. The lad has
never been away from home before. I doubt very much he relishes being on his
own anyway,” Denrik said.

*
* * * * * * *

Kyrus had watched as Captain Zayne had negotiated some
sort of payment with the harbor officials, but could not understand a word of
it. The harbormaster was speaking something that he could only guess was the
language of Feru Maru. After that, the men stampeded for the gangplank, an
activity Kyrus saw no reason to put his life at risk for, with only the gain of
a minute or so to be had for it.