Goddess of the Ice Realm (46 page)

Ilna, waiting at the base of the mast with a wedge and
maul, thought again how much his voice reminded her of liquid gold, smooth and pure and perfectly beautiful. No sign of the effort—and she knew how much effort it was for seven men without pulleys to replace a mast—could be heard in the chantey. She called, “Once more!”

“A rider, she's a rider I know,”
Chalcus caroled, and the mast quivered straight according to the plumb line tacked into the side of the mast partner that would shortly hold it.

“Enough!” called Ilna and dropped her wedge into the slot. She stepped back and brought the maul around in a three-quarters circle to slam the tapered oak home.

Hutena had insisted—
insisted
—that Ilna should stand back and let one of the crewmen or Captain Chalcus himself set the wedge. Ilna didn't flatter herself that she could be of any real help on the line; she was strong for a woman, but she simply didn't weigh enough to matter with what was more a job of lifting than pulling. But the notion that she couldn't use a mallet—or a hatchet either one—as well as any man in Barca's Hamlet or this crew,
that
she would not have.

She wasn't sure she'd convinced the bosun, but she certainly convinced him that he should keep his opinions to himself when they clashed with hers. All the while Chalcus had stood with his back to the pair of them, whistling a merry tune called “I am a Noted Pirate,” and juggling the knives of all five crewmen while they pretended to watch him instead of the argument.

Ilna smiled wryly. She supposed she'd been better entertainment than the juggling, but the men hadn't wanted her to catch their eyes when she was in a temper like that.

Four men continued to brace the hawser while the others ran back to catch the stay ropes already hanging from the collars. Ilna moved to the rail, giving the sailors as much room to do their work as the
Bird
allowed. Chalcus ran the forestay to the bow, then set his foot against a bitt and tensioned the rope before he took a quick lashing through the deadeyes. Ilna heard the mast groan as it strained. Chalcus wasn't a big man, but she'd met few who were stronger.

With the stays temporarily fastened, the men on the dock returned, coiling the hawser as they came. Chalcus swaggered toward Ilna, adjusting his sash. He was proud of the
show he'd just put on and well aware that Ilna'd seen and understood how impressive it was.

She smiled wryly. She'd always felt it was wrong to boast, and maybe it was; but Chalcus wasn't any more proud than she was, of what she did and of what he did also. Maybe the willingness to flaunt what was fully worthy of pride was a more honest attitude than her own.

Anyway, she certainly wasn't going to change Chalcus. Nor would he change her, she suspected.

“I was beginning to worry about the good Commander,” he said. “If he simply let us go on about our business we'd be lost, wouldn't we? But he's not so subtle a man as that, I'm pleased to see.”

Chalcus nodded toward Cross Street, leading down from the castle, but the rattle of ironshod wheels on cobblestones would've drawn Ilna's attention anyway. A two-wheeled cart came around the corner, guided by four servants on the paired poles front and back. They must've struggled to keep the weight from running away from them on the slope, but now they got their footing properly and continued toward the
Bird of the Tide.

At a muttered command from Hutena, he and the men with him dropped the hawser on the dock and boarded the ship quickly. Hutena gestured to the deckhouse; Chalcus grinned and shook his head minusculely.

He sees no need for weapons,
Ilna thought. And—being Chalcus—he was certainly right when he answered that sort of question. Nevertheless Ilna leaned the maul against the railing and unobtrusively readied the silken noose around her waist.

The servants rolled their rumbling burden up the dock to the
Bird's
stern lines. “Captain Chalcus?” called one of the men on the forepoles doubtfully, looking from the bosun to Chalcus.

Hutena gestured to Chalcus, who said, “We've not purchased stores in this port, my man. Your goods are for another vessel.”

Ilna thought he was overacting the mincing innocent, but perhaps you couldn't do that so long as you played into the hopes of your audience. Certainly the servant looked relieved and said, “This isn't a purchase, sir, but a gift from
the Commander for your aid last night. It's not everybody who'd have taken the risks you did to come out and help.”

Ilna smiled grimly. The servant's last statement was as true as Chalcus's sword, of that she was certain. If Lusius had dreamed anybody'd dare row to the scene of a wizard's attack, he'd at least have posted sentries while he looted the
Queen of Heaven.

“A gift?” said Chalcus, still acting the babe in the woods. “Why, that looks like a jar of wine?”

“Yessir,” said the servant eagerly. “One of the best vintages from the Commander's cellars. Besides beef roast and boiled chicken, all for thanks.”

Chalcus laughed merrily. “Why, Commander Lusius is a gentleman beyond compare,” he said. “Speaking for myself, I've always found good wine to be as much of a meal as a sailor needs, but perhaps some of my men will find use for the meat as well.”

He looked around the crew. They watched, grim-faced and worried.

“Now there's only one thing. . .” Chalcus went on, facing the servants again. “I hope Commander Lusius won't take it amiss that I intend to move the
Bird
and settle near the harbor mouth tonight. I've a new anchor line and I want to see that she doesn't chafe when she's fully paid out. Eh?”

The servants looked at one another. Finally the leader said, “Well, sir, there's no traffic in the harbor during darkness. If you don't want to be tied up to the dock, I guess that's your business.”

“Aye, it is,” Chalcus said. “But assure the Commander that it isn't that I fear pilfering thieves might slip aboard in his harbor while my men and I are at our ease tonight, will you?”

He turned to his crewmen. “Bring our dinner, boys,” he said. “And then we'll unship the oars and shift the ship, as I said . . . before we eat, eh?”

Chalcus grinned. Ilna was the only one who smiled back at him, though the crew jumped to the dock without further direction. They began to unload the handcart.

Ilna trusted Chalcus, of course, but the men did as well. From her viewpoint, this was the opportunity she and Chalcus had been waiting for, the reason they'd kept Pointin
aboard and held him cowering out of sight in the hold: he was the bait to force Lusius and his henchmen to act.

If Lusius struck and they weren't able to parry—well, then he was the better man and deserved to kill them. The crew, brave men though they were, might feel otherwise, but Ilna had too keen an appreciation of justice to believe that the weaker and less skillful
should
survive.

She was also sure, though, that even if Lusius won, he'd know he'd been in a fight.

The trunk of the pond cypress looked as dead as white bone, but tiny, dark green leaves sprouted from its branches. The trunk just beyond it surely
was
dead, but an air plant growing from a crotch threw down sprays of much brighter foliage. Beyond were grasses, green mixed with the russet stems of last year's growth, spreading into the blurred gray blanket of air.

A shrill cry sounded. Cashel looked up. It sounded like a bird—a big bird—and might've come from overhead, but he couldn't see anything beyond the usual swirls of mist.

He stepped onto the meadow. It undulated away from his foot the way a slow swell trembles over the surface of the sea. By reflex Cashel held his staff out crosswise before him to spread his weight if he broke through. He'd had a great plenty of experience with bogs; sheep
would
go after juicy green morsels on soil where their pointy little feet couldn't possibly support them.

“I'm not sure this will hold me, Mistress Evne,” Cashel said. He didn't take another step for now, just made sure that he had his balance as the grasses continued to move.

“Oh, it would hold you, master,” the toad said. “But unless you turn back now, there's a creature who'll dine on your flesh for anything I can do to stop her.”

“I didn't come this far to turn back,” said Cashel, hearing his voice turn huskier with each syllable. “And I don't guess I ever asked you or any soul else to do my fighting for me.”

He stepped back into the scrub of turkey oaks, spaced well apart and none of them much taller than he was. He didn't doubt Evne when she said the meadow'd support him, but that didn't mean it was good footing in a fight.

The bird screamed again. It
was
a bird; he could see it now, fluttering toward him on wings that should've been too small to keep it in the air. It got bigger with every jerk of its wings. It wasn't
in
the air; it wasn't even in the same world as Cashel yet, but it was coming toward him quickly.

Very quickly.

He braced himself to strike, but he wasn't sure of the timing because he didn't know where the bird—

It stood before him and kicked a three-clawed foot. The bird was half again Cashel's height and probably outweighed him, though he knew how deceptively light birds were with their feathers and hollow bones. Maybe not this bird, though.

Cashel shifted left and brought his staff around sunwise, leading with his left hand. The kick slashed past him, snatching away a length of the whorled border Ilna had woven into the hem of his outer tunic.

The bird—leaped/flew/
shrank
upward; Cashel wasn't sure of the movement, only that his quarterstaff sliced the air and the bird was now dropping on him claws first. He jumped to his right, using the staff as a brace and a pivot to bring him back around.

The bird kicked a scrub oak to splinters and strings of bark. It turned its head and long beak over its stubby wing as Cashel drove the butt of his staff like a spear toward its mid-section. The bird hopped/flew/shrank away, but not quite quickly enough. The ferrule touched solid flesh in a flash and sizzle of blue wizardlight.

The bird jumped clear, leaving a stench of burned feathers in the air. It watched Cashel, turning its narrow head slightly so that first one eye, then the other, was on him. Cashel, gasping through his open mouth, stared back.

He'd thought the bird was golden as it came toward him, but now that it stood at rest its feathers seemed bronze or even black. Over them lay a rainbow sheen like that of oil on a sunlit pond. Its beak was long and hooked, but its nostrils were the simple ovals of a buzzard instead of complex shapes like eagles and falcons.

The bird's wings were shorter than Cashel's own arms. It couldn't have flown through the air with them.

“You've met your match, bird!” called Evne from a tuffet
of grass some distance out in the open meadow. Cashel guessed he must've thrown her off as he swung and dodged, because she was farther away than he thought a little toad could jump. “Let us pass or it'll be the worse for you!”

The bird cocked its head toward Cashel. It raised a crest of feathers so nearly colorless that they shimmered like a fish's fins, then lowered them again.

“Does the toad let or hinder the phoenix?” the bird said. “Creep through the muck and eat bugs, slimy one!”

Cashel stepped forward. The bird drew its head back and leaped, striking with both splayed feet. Cashel stabbed, holding one end of his staff with both hands. The bird flew/jumped/shrank over him. For an instant it seemed no more than sparrow sized, a spot in the heavens; then it was on the ground behind him and he recovered his staff, thrusting backward instead of trying to turn.

The buttcap slammed into the bird's keeled breastbone with a crash and azure flare that numbed Cashel's arms to the elbows. The bird screamed wordlessly and staggered back. The feathers of its breast were blackened like a chicken singed for plucking.

“Have you learned manners, bird?” Evne crowed. She clung awkwardly to the grass stems, her legs stretched in four separate directions. “Does the phoenix now know who is master in this—”

The bird spun and struck at the toad, its wings lifting. Cashel's staff caught it in the upper ribs; he felt bones crack under his iron.

The bird's feet left the ground, lifted by the impact rather than conscious evasion. It gave a strangled squawk as it tumbled sideways over the crouching toad. She'd tricked the bird, drawn its attention to her so that Cashel could strike. . . .

He staggered forward, wheezing and only half aware of his surroundings. The bird was at the far end of a tunnel, and even that view was through a red haze of fatigue. Cashel moved with the punctuated violence of a jagged rock rolling downhill, lurching from one side to the other but never changing its ultimate direction.

The bird eyed him. Its tongue quivered as it gave another
shrill scream. Its legs bunched, then straightened. Cashel thrust with his staff.

The bird shrank away into the heavens. For a moment it was a glitter in the mist; then it was gone, vanished like a rainbow when the air clears. Cashel sprawled forward as the meadow sloshed and rolled beneath him.

He didn't know how long he lay there. His first conscious thought was that breathing no longer felt like he was jabbing knives down into his lungs. He opened his eyes very carefully. Evne squatted within handsbreadth of his nose, rubbing her pale belly with a webbed forefoot.

“You've decided to rejoin me, I see,” the toad said.

“The bird's gone?” said Cashel. He didn't try to move. He wasn't sure he could move just now, and he sure didn't see a good reason to.

“I'll say she's gone!” Evne said complacently. “Gone and wishing she'd never come, if I'm any judge.”

“What do I do next?” Cashel said. It seemed a little funny to be carrying on a conversation with his cheek pressed down into boggy soil, but he'd been laughed at before.