King's Shield (61 page)

He rousted the harassed stable hands to go through the diminished stock for the fastest, freshest horse they had left.

The Randviar had given them an impressive cache of arrows, but Inda had learned during his days dealing with pirates that you never had too many. So he loaded both saddlebags with wood to be planed and sharpened and fletched, and added a bag of feathers just brought in the day before by some of the Randviar’s girls.

He found Evred surrounded by a committee of city merchants; he made riding motions from behind one’s shoulders, saw Evred’s eyes flick his way and register the fact. He was surprised by the many salutes—fist to heart—he received, and further surprised by how the salute created a ball of warmth inside his chest. He still felt like he was pretending to be a Harskialdna, like it was a war game, except for the hammer inside his skull, the nightmares. His body knew a fight was coming.

The horse was frisky and wanted a good gallop. Inda’s ride was not particularly refreshing as they splashed through a brief hailstorm followed by steaming heat, but the intense green of the sloping countryside dotted with enormous elms, clusters of oak, and bisected by farm plots, it all looked so fresh and green and . . .
normal.
Was that it? He’d lost any sense of what normal meant, except as something akin to
home.

The quiet of the countryside wasn’t familiar. And the countryside wasn’t normal either, he thought as the horse slowed just as they topped a rise. He stared down at the bay, with the harbor city scattered like square blocks along the inner curve. It was too empty. No one worked in those fields up on the slope, no one was on the road, the puddles left from the big storm reflecting the sky as they steamed gently in the sun.

The haze off the coast was too strong to spot any masts on the sea, which was still a thin strip of silver just visible from the hillocks the road climbed and descended.

Each descent dipped lower, until the patchwork of farm plots below the mountains on the far side of the Andahi River ended abruptly in rocky ground. Beyond, white cliffs dropped toward the shore. The mountains continued onward into the distance, forming the southern base of the Olaran peninsula. Below the white cliffs the shoreline extended thin fingers of treacherous rock into the sea.

The horseshoe of Lindeth lay far to Inda’s left. Straight ahead was the north shore. Barend would have taken up position below the cliffs.

Inda turned off the road before it curved away left to the harbor. The horse took him to the cliffs. He stopped under the sheltering branches of some gnarled old firs so he wouldn’t create a silhouette, dismounted, and loosed the horse to crop at grass while he snapped out his glass and swept it over the harbor, then beyond to the sea.

And there were the Venn, tacking in at a slant. From a distance the ships were extraordinarily beautiful with their arched prows, the pyramid of wind-curved square sails. Inda’s heartbeat drummed as, with deceptive slowness, they shifted sail with skilled precision, came about and began to beat in toward land. He shifted his glass directly below him, at the rocky coast. There as he expected were Barend’s people, all crouched behind rocks, spread as far as he could see.

Inda snapped his glass to the breakers. The tide was nearly out. The waves were choppy, but was that all storm wrack? No, the water surged over hidden and not-so-hidden rocks. A deadly beach for a landing.

Now, where was Barend? No crimson flag planted, not for an ambush. Inda remembered his gold case, slapped his pocket—and then remembered that he’d taken it out of his pocket to check it—

—and then put it down somewhere. Damn.

Well, if he could find Barend, he could write to Evred, make certain there were no messages, right? He walked the horse down the chalky cliffs to an old stream bed below the rocky beach. Then he rode along the streambed. He could not see the ocean, but no one with a powerful glass would see a lone horseman, either.

The outer perimeter guard had already spotted him: a Runner met him, and before long he was sitting with Barend behind a jumble of glittering granite stones, his bags of arrows at hand. His men were all hidden behind rocks, effectively invisible unless you came directly up behind them, so uneven was the shore.

“Rotten ground for fighting, but equally rotten wind for them, eh?” Barend said, grinning.

“Might work for us.” Inda hunkered down. “Ground will be rotten for them, too. Give me your gold case.”

Barend tossed it to Inda, and the untouched paper and traveler pen he’d packed with it. Inda wrote to Evred, who promptly wrote back on a thin strip of paper saying only that he hadn’t received any messages from anyone.

Barend snorted when Inda read it before he ripped it to bits and buried it under rubble. “They won’t write to him, they know he hates these magic things. They’ll write to you.”

Inda glowered at the golden case. “Should I write to everyone to report in, or would that seem like I was breathing down their collars? We should have practiced with ’em, maybe. Set up some kind of protocol—”

He stopped, and Barend finished wryly, “Except Sponge wouldn’t have liked that, either.”

Inda was surprised and then displeased at his spurt of impatience. It was disloyal. If Evred distrusted magic, he probably had a reason to. He’d been reading about it while Inda was out at sea and hadn’t touched a book in years.

“Hai! Some kind of signal went out. They’re shifting sail again—”

Barend had been sailing master for Inda’s fleet. He peered through his glass, and though Inda watched as well, he couldn’t predict movements with square sail like he could with fore-and-aft rigged craft.

Barend had no problem. “Advance landing, only one. They must have seen those rocks. That and the wind freshening, they’d be crazy to come in.”

“Or they’d have some land commander above the navy in chain-of-command, doesn’t know bow from stern.” Inda spewed out his breath. “Give ’em a nice welcome. I’d better ride back.”

Barend grinned. “You don’t want to stay for the fun?”

Inda rubbed his scarred jaw. “I’m blind, here. I didn’t think about that until I reached the cliffs. I’m blind without that case. I thought I could come while my archers are getting the canoes—”

“Canoes?” Barend repeated.

“We have to ride down the river.”

“What river? No, don’t bother wasting your breath.” Barend shook his head. “This is even stranger than taking on Marshig and the Brotherhood. Here. An extra twenty or so.” He brandished the arrows he’d finished. “We won’t need ’em here. You take ’em wherever you’re going.”

“You’ll need ’em tomorrow.” Inda waved the arrows off. “Those rocks are going to do your business as well as your archers, but that’s just today. I don’t see any more storms coming. They’re going to land down south if they can’t here.”

“Soon’s we see ’em haul wind, we’ll be off to reinforce Rat and Buck.” Barend tipped his head.

“They probably sat out there during the storm making shields for their landing boats.”

Barend’s grin had vanished. “I know. I was thinking that last night. We bought ourselves a couple of days. Maybe that’ll make a difference.”

There was nothing useful to say to that. So Inda just picked up his arrows, backed downhill, and left.

 

 

 

There was no new flag over the gate, just the crimson-and-gold eagle banner indicating the king in residence, so Inda was surprised to find the castle swarming with men, a lot of them gray-haired or balding, mixed with loud, shoving young fellows who looked a year or so younger than Inda’s own age.

He didn’t waste time talking to any of them. They didn’t know who he was. So he just turned the horse over to a harassed stable hand and used his considerable strength to muscle his way inside, leaving behind a trail of “Who’s that?” “Hey, Scarface, who’s burning your butt?” and “Stop shoving, there are enough Venn for all of us!” protests. He finally emerged into free space when the duty guards spotted him and summarily cleared the way.

This time the commentary was more specific: “Who’s the strut with the earrings?” “Didya see the scars?” “Damn! That’s not the pirate boy they were talking about . . . ?”

He left the answers, if any, to the guards to make, vaulted up the stairs, and reached the office to find a flushed, grinning Evred talking rapidly to a big-shouldered fellow of Inda’s height, with butter-colored hair even more unruly than his own.

He knew that face, didn’t he? “Tuft?”

“Inda!” Tuft Sindan-An roared, bounding around the table and pounding Inda on the back with such enthusiasm that Inda coughed, eyes watering.

Inda spotted his case, untouched, where he had left it. He half listened to Tuft’s exclamations and questions as he grabbed the golden box and flipped it open. A paper lay inside. For how long? “It’s from Noddy.”

“What’s that?” Tuft asked, shoving his horsetail over one ear as he scratched vigorously at his sweat-salty scalp.

Inda didn’t hear him. He read Noddy’s short, succinct message, the relief at the prospect of reinforcement congealing to that sickening sense of being too late, of missing something.

“How many did you bring?” he asked Tuft, whose eyes narrowed, all the humor gone.

“Ten wings. All I could raise, after Dad gave in.” Tuft studied the floor.

Evred said reassuringly, “Your father and his clan allies have already given me two nines. No one has forgotten his great response to my father’s call for men.”

Tuft’s broad cheeks colored under the sun-brown, but his manner eased from the scout hound expecting the scold to one eager for the run.

Evred said to Inda, “Tuft seems to have done his best to bring his father to son-murder in his campaign to be released to join us.”

Tuft grinned. “Drunk every night. Let the colts out. Poured distilled rye into the watch’s water bucket. Every day, I did something new. My brother told Dad to either kill me or send me after Cherry-Stripe, and Dad said to go, but only with volunteers. I raised them in two days,” he said proudly, a thumb toward the window. “I kinda had my fellow spread the word, sort of, beforehand. And some are old, and some a bit on the young side, but after that ride north, they’re tough enough!”

Inda said, “How soon can you mount up again?”

Evred leaned forward. “Noddy sighted Venn?” He glanced toward the window, and the mountaintop, where no beacon burned.

Inda tossed Noddy’s note to the table. It fluttered through the air, and landed on the map like a crumpled butterfly. “They’re on the way, as we guessed. Ndand-Randviar rode over the pass. The castle fell, Flash was killed at the beacon site.” Evred’s wince hurt Inda on his behalf. His own memories of Flash were good ones; how much worse would it be for those who knew him well?

He turned to Tuft. “We meant Noddy and Hawkeye to be the advance scout, make sure we grabbed the top of the pass first. But they’re alone until Ola-Vayir gets here. Flash’s Randviar saw the Venn on the march. How fast can you get your men up to reinforce them?”

“We’ll get there,” Tuft said grimly. “We’ve gotten real good at the fast ride. And that gives us just the kind of odds I like.”

Evred touched hand to heart, Tuft thumped his fist to his chest. Another clump to Inda’s shoulder. “Good you’re back,” he said, and was gone in two steps, his strong voice roaring for his Runners.

Inda said, “Sponge, I rode down to see the Venn myself. Looks like an advance force. Listen. The important thing is, I forgot my case. I should have taken it with me. I lost Noddy a whole day by not reading that note until now.”

Evred made a vague, negating motion. “If he’d sent a Galloper, it would have taken two or three days. I hear what you say about your Venn dag, but Inda, a part of me is afraid that we’re supposed to rely on these things, find them so convenient we depend on them. And at the last moment, they cease to function. Like the lockets.”

Inda felt words piling up behind his tongue, but he kept his jaw shut. It was only in the last day or so that Evred would even discuss these things. “I think I’ve failed Noddy,” he said, reverting back to sure ground.

“Tuft just arrived. You didn’t even lose half a watch.”

“Well, then, that’s all right.” Inda shoved the case into his pocket. “Here’s the thing, we’re done here. Barend and Rat are set. If they aren’t busy sabotaging that beach as soon as the sun goes down, and Barend knows plenty of pirate tricks for that, then, well—” He halted, not wanting to finish that thought. Reality was bad enough. “There’s nothing more to be done except to get to the top and put our bows to work until the last arrow. I’m going to write a note to Noddy right now. Let him known what’s happened.”

“When should we go?” Evred asked.

“Dawn watch.”

“It will be cold.” Evred half lifted a hand, then dropped it. “Give the orders,” he said.

 

 

 

Hawkeye handed Inda’s paper back to Noddy.

The light was fading fast as it did in the mountains, the sun having disappeared beyond the western crags long ago. The horses had slowed on a steep switchback below a looming cliff. Water from the big storm sheeted down from the cliff, running across the road, and vanishing between rocks on the other side. Somewhere below the outcropping of rocks they could hear a gulley rushing, the sound thrown back by the dripping walls of rock.

When night fell, they would break out the lanterns and change mounts but keep going. Secrecy was no longer a possibility, if it ever had been. Each side knew the other was there, and approximately where. Speed was now the imperative. They galloped on the few declines and flat curves.

Noddy Toraca gave a long, low whistle. “Looks like we’re the practice dummies.”

Hawkeye’s heart had begun to drum. They knew what the news really meant: instead of being an advance force, it was far too likely they were it, unless Tuft Sindan-An’s ten wings could reach them in time. This was unlikely, unless they learned how to race. They were several days’ ride behind. The Venn might be a week ahead, but could be less.