In Heaven and Earth (22 page)

Mathilde was waiting for
him on the main deck. She linked her arm through his with a smile.
“He’s a good boy, really, young Celyn. He’s not had an easy life.
His mother was captain of the ship the Empire seized a couple of
years back.”

“
Executed her
and the ambassador, didn’t they?” Sjurd asked. He remembered the
incident, not least because it had finally brought the Ysians into
an alliance with the mainland.

“
Celyn’s like
her, from the stories I’ve heard. True-hearted. He just hasn’t
learned yet when not to talk.”

“
You think too
well of everyone,” Sjurd grumbled, although it was one of the
things he liked about her. She saw things clearly enough, but had a
gift for forgiving what Sjurd simply found irritating.

She tucked herself more
carefully against his side, discreetly taking some of the weight
off his bad leg, and he sighed in relief. She might be wearing all
her finery today, but she was almost as battle-hardened as he was,
and knew exactly how much he was hurting. She was a strong arm in a
fight as well, and he’d happily have her at his back in battle. At
least their respective kings had been kind enough to match two
friends together. He could have been landed with a far less
practical princess. He didn’t have the time or the patience for a
great romance, but they respected each other and would live well
together. They would have strong children.

Although, of course,
their children would need to be strong to survive when the Empire
came. At best, the Empire took royal children as hostages. More
often the children were enslaved or simply slaughtered.

“
Such a grim
face,” Mathilde commented.

Sjurd shrugged. “We live
in grim times.”

She sighed a little. “But
we cannot change that by dwelling on it. I refuse to live an
unhappy life, no matter what is coming. If we face our fate with
honor and courage, we have done enough. I will not let them make me
sad as well. So, look.” She waved a hand at the view. “Did you ever
see something so lovely?”

The morning sun was
catching on the mist below, washing it with gold. The swelling
sails above them caught the light as well, their white cloth
shining brightly. The sky around them was so clear a blue that
Sjurd was surprised they could breathe the air without tasting it,
and the wind was cool, crisp and fresh on his cheek.

The mountains were a very
long way down.

“
Just how high
up do you think we are?” he asked Mathilde, trying to keep his
voice light.

She wasn’t fooled. “You,
afraid of heights? I thought you were supposed to be
fearless.”

“
Heights
are
not
a
problem,” he protested. He was fine on even the highest mountain.
He just didn’t care for having nothing more than a flimsy bit of
wood between him and open air.

Mathilde continued to
tease him, and he grumbled at her and watched the sails rather than
the valleys, but her company and the bright sun were slowly
relieving the tension in his shoulders. He felt a long way from the
world, and he wondered if this was what made the Ysians pacifists.
It was hard to imagine the dank shadows of a morning ambush when
you were fluttering along like a mildly purposeful
cloud.

Then the ship lurched
suddenly beneath them, and he grabbed Mathilde’s arm a little
tighter than he’d meant to and, to his embarrassment, squeaked,
“What was that?”

She didn’t call him out
on it, bless her kind heart, but just said soothingly, “A contrary
wind, perhaps.”

Then it happened again,
the ship tipping slightly to the side before it righted itself with
a hard jerk. Sjurd locked one arm around the rail and the other
around Mathilde, and looked around for someone who could tell them
what in the name of Thunder was going on.

The brat prince was
racing up the deck towards them. Sjurd let go of Mathilde to grab
him and demand, “What’s happening?”

“
Let go of me!”
the brat yelped. “The ship’s in trouble and I need to
help!”

“
You’re not a
sailor,” Mathilde said. “Let them do their job.”

“
In an
emergency, everyone helps!” the brat stated indignantly.

Sjurd cut across him.
“What do you mean, in trouble?” His voice came out harsher than
he’d intended, and he swallowed hard. Dying in battle, fine.
Falling out of the sky to be smeared across the rocks below like
jellied prince, no, no, no. The ship jerked again, and he dug his
fingers into the brat’s shoulder, fighting back panic.

“
There’s no
need to leave bruises,” the brat complained, as if he wasn’t the
least bit concerned by their imminent and violent deaths. “The
ship’s not supposed to do this. She’s only three years old, and the
virtue shouldn’t have gone out of her wood yet.”

“
Yet?” Sjurd
repeated.

“
All ships drop
in the end,” the brat said philosophically. “Such is
life.”

“
This has
happened before?” Sjurd demanded. “And you people still let us
board this thing?”

That, finally,
riled the brat. “
Llinos
is not a thing. She’s a lady. And for your
information, it takes centuries, and there are plenty of warning
signs, and only an idiot would sail on a ship that was close to her
final voyage. Now, let me
go
.”

“
Not until you
tell me what’s wrong with this ship,” Sjurd demanded, as it bucked
again. His stomach rose, and he swallowed hard. Men were clearly
not supposed to fly.

It was Mathilde
who answered that question, though, probably because she was the
only one of the three of them still scanning the valley below.
Raising her arm, she pointed into the mist below and yelled,
“
Hound!
”

Her voice belled out
across the creaking tumult on deck, and Sjurd saw every one of his
people and hers go tense, even as the Ysians looked
confused.

Following her pointing
arm, he saw the shadow in the mist: a dark green smoky haze rising
out of the silver veil that hung across the forest, the
unmistakable sign of a misthound crouched on the ground below, its
bony jaws open and its miasma billowing out.

He turned back to the
brat, his head clearing now he knew the cause of all this. “Tell
the captain to swing away from that and make landing at the next
guard tower.”

“
Why?”

“
Because that’s
a misthound,” Mathilde said grimly, already reaching to twist her
loose hair up out of her face into something more suited for
battle. “They eat magic.”

Sjurd was already
striding towards his cabin, whistling his guard close. Out of the
corner of his eye, he saw the boy head for the quarterdeck again,
Mathilde close on his heels. Good. She could explain it to the
Ysians while he decided who to pull from the honor guard to deal
with this. Let her explain how the misthounds consumed and held
every scrap of magic they encountered, and how the Empire trained
them to bring it back to their masters to be siphoned into Imperial
caches. There was no free magic in the Empire— no ogres, but no
healing simples or flying ships, either. All magic belonged to the
Emperor, and was allocated out to his favorites as he decreed.
Mathilde knew as well as he did that the Empire’s first move
against its conquests was to send the misthounds into their
territory to consume any hint of magic. They excused it with
mealy-mouthed stories about wild beasts and natural migrations, but
Sjurd knew the difference between a wild dog and a trained hound as
well as anyone.

When their hounds had
sucked the soul from a land, their mage cohorts came next, the
Emperor’s puppets hanging off the strings of power he fed them. In
the wake of their destruction, the legions marched, ready to
garrison every town and offer the terrorized people the “mercy” of
Imperial law and order.

Every year, he fought
more hounds, and still they came slinking over the borders and
settling into lonely places to breed more young.

Before long, they were
anchoring off the top of a solid stone guard tower, causing much
excitement among the resident guards, most of whom came rushing out
to gawk at the rare sight of an Ysian ship this far inland. The
sailors let down a rope ladder, and Sjurd scrambled down as fast as
he dared, calling for the post’s commander.

He was not much more than
a boy, seventeen at most, but he met Sjurd’s greeting with a sharp
salute and a steady gaze.

“
Misthound,”
Sjurd said curtly. “League and a half, south-southwest.”

The boy’s shoulders
sagged a little, but he simply said, “I’ve got five men injured,
but we’ve got horses and weapons, and the other nine are fit to
ride.”

“
What
happened?” Mathilde demanded over Sjurd’s shoulder, and he saw the
moment when the boy looked at her properly and, as most of them
did, lost his heart. For the first time, he stuttered, “Er, six
hounds in the last week, ma’am. We’ve sent for reinforcements,
but…”

“
We’ll ride
with you,” Sjurd said, cutting him off. He trusted Mathilde, but
she was still the representative of a foreign government and didn’t
need to know about the increasing strain on their supply
lines.

When he and Mathilde rode
out, bows and modified boar spears slung from their saddles, he
glanced up at the ship as they rode below its shadow. Ivarr and
Hrolf were hanging over the rail, and they both saluted as he rode
by, but it was the brat prince who caught his eye. He was watching
very solemnly, the sun shining in his pale hair, and he waved
awkwardly to Mathilde, a little too late.

He looked afraid, and
Sjurd could think of nothing that would comfort him.