King's Shield (80 page)

A short time later Fox faced the captains, with Fangras attending silently, as spokesperson for the loose confederation of former Sarendan privateers.

“We’re not far from Freedom Islands.” Fox held up his position chart so that all the captains gathered in his cabin could see the islands and their fleet a finger’s width apart. “There’s been no message since Fangras joined us, so Khanerenth is probably coming to attack Freeport Harbor. Now, we know Dhalshev. Once the king’s friend, as well as former high admiral. He won’t let us take any Khanerenth ships, despite this attack, which may only be a test foray. There’s no reward in risking our lives boarding and carrying any of ’em.”

The captains all signified agreement.

“So we want to damage them enough to make them feel their test has failed for a generation or more. How? Sail right through their midst, and let ’em chase us. Then we shoot ’em up. If they board, we’ll board them, make as much damage as we can, then leave.”

Eflis chortled, and Gillor sat back in her chair, arms crossed. “Schooner ruse, I’m guessing?”

“Right.” Fox drummed his fingers on the chart. “Fangras, if you or one of your fastest craft want to be our chase, that’s fine. Be aware they might not let you through unscathed.”

Fangras grinned. “I’ll take that position meself, then there’s no arguing.”

Fox lifted a hand in acknowledgment. “Here’s the twist. Those of us on the chase are going to be running the red sails.”

“Red sails?”

“
Brotherhood
sails?”

“But those are
pirate
sails!”

Fox waited for the noise to die down. When no one got an answer, they shut up. “I hope most of you have your red sails in storage.”

“We turned the red storm sails into hammocks,” Dasta said.

“Then unstitch them and make them sails again. The rest of you, dye some of your older summer sails with red paint. They just have to get through this one ruse. Now, we’re all going to be trailing smoke, hunters as well as prey. The red sails behind me. What I want Khanerenth to see as they start their battle line is this ship, the
Death,
at the head of the chase, and behind that a gray cloud full of fire and red sails.”

Gillor hooted. “I see where you’re going.” She hooked her thumb out at the weather deck. “We’ve got a bad enough rep on this tub to look like ten sails all by ourselves, especially in smoke.”

Fox grinned. “Right. They won’t know if this is a separate attack or a defense by Freedom’s confederation. Throw them into confusion and fear. Above all fear.”

Eflis chortled. “Red sails. No wonder we been prinking and prettying!”

“But if we’re all smoking, how do we maneuver?” Tcholan asked. “We don’t want to risk ramming one another.”

“We’ll sail straight through them, fire arrows both sides only at targets you can see. Then continue on straight north. Dhalshev and the Federation can deal with the mess.”

Thoughtful looks, then Eflis said, “Why are we going north?”

“Thought it was time to investigate the strait. See if the Venn are back, or gone, or who thinks they rule the waters.”

Eflis whistled on her way out.

Dasta, Tcholan, and Gillor waited until everyone else was gone. Then Dasta shut the door. “That’s an Inda kind of plan,” he observed. “The strait, I mean.”

Fox tipped his chair back on two legs. “So no one else would think of sailing up the strait but Inda?”

Gillor and Dasta turned questioning gazes to each other. Tcholan just scowled down at the deck. No one knew who was in control of the strait anymore. No one had thought Fox would care one way or another.

“Sounds all right to me,” Dasta said, and the other two signified agreement.

Chapter Thirty

CAMA and his front riders reined up.

None of them had believed the war was over, just like that. But following the Venn through the silent canyons day after day gradually brought them to think of it as true.

The pass was a long, narrow, twisting canyon of ever-changing shadow. Over the echoing rumble of a departing army rose the closer rustlings of brush as some unseen animal passed, the distant scream of the gliding raptors, and all around them the steady hiss, drip, and trickle of water after the frequent, short thunderstorms.

The Venn did not dispatch skirmishers to cover their retreat, though they guarded their tail. Venn occasionally caught glimpses of Cama’s force and the other way around. As long as the Venn kept moving, the Marlovans would remain at a respectful distance.

The Venn fires at night beat with a ruddy reflected glow all the way up the cliffs. Prudently the dragoons made no campfires except once, when one of Cama’s scouts discovered a curiously scooped-looking cave as if a gigantic hand had reached down and poked into the stone with a knuckle.

Morning poured warm light on water-smoothed walls, highlighting stripes in the stone. Once, unimaginably long ago, this pass had been the bed of a river. Cama frequently eyed the enormous cliffs overhead, aware of the silent power of stone, and water, and time. He tried to guess at the scale of the cataclysm that had caused a river to change its pattern of flow.

When the gradually widening bluffs gave a glimpse of the sea, the Marlovans ranged up. They’d been told that the castle lay two or three bends below that prospect.

There had been no letters from Inda in the magical gold case since the one informing Cama that he was now a Jarl—with his new orders—so Cama knew the Venn hadn’t come back for a second try in the south.

“We’ll wait here,” he said in a low voice.

It was going to take a long time for the Venn to get through the tunnel. Cama surveyed the scene, then said to his dragoon captain, “We’ll camp. Cold. Send scouts to watch ’em go.”

Fists thumped scruffy travel-worn coats. They wheeled the horses and started a slow walk back, looking for a good spot to camp. The pair starting a perimeter inspection reacted, and Cama heard why a moment later: distant, faint cries.

Those were not birds.

One of the men said, “Up there.”

The sun was dipping toward the western side of the pass, which lit up the eastern side with rare clarity. The seemingly solid cliffs had more cracks and crags than one assumed; just visible in an old crevasse a little figure waved.

Cama’s dragoon captain exclaimed, “It’s a girl.”

A thin, filthy child of ten or so slid carefully around a water-carved rocky spire on a crag about castle-tower height. “You’re Marlovans?” she called down.

Her voice was so thin and high Cama decided against a joking, “No, we’re Venn.” Despite the distance the sinking sun shone clearly on her filthy face and clothes, her thin limbs. So he lifted his voice. “I’m Camarend Tya-Vayir, sent by the king.” And waited while she took in the riding coats, the Nelkereth horses, the tear-shaped shields. Runners in blue. The horsetails, the curved swords. Not Venn.

The time it took her to check everything, her head jerking birdlike, wiped every smile away.

She vanished behind the spire.

That released the men to action, amid the rough jokes that had become habitual as they followed the enemy along the pass, camping when they did.

The Runners carried around journey bread and jugs of water filled at the last waterfall. The men were just beginning their meal when the perimeter guard gave a shout. Everyone set aside their bowls to fetch weapons, lowering their hands when a line of dirty, gaunt children emerged from a barely discernable trail beyond a rockfall. The two tallest girls bore on their shoulders small children barely out of babyhood. Two other children carried a small one in a makeshift sling made of two packs tied together.

Cama said, “We’ve got food.”

“Food.” The word whispered along the line. The men offered their journey bread. Most of the children grabbed it and stuffed their faces. Two or three just stood, staring downward, and a couple of very small ones sucked in air and sobbed, a quiet, helpless, broken crying as if they’d been doing it for a very long time.

Every father and brother there ached to comfort them. But one look at the distraught faces, and they waited, distraught themselves, for the children to make the first move.

One girl silently surrendered the smallest to offered hands. Two of the babies—they really were scarcely more than babies—went willingly to strong arms, quiet voices. The third clutched a girl’s trousers with one hand, thumb in mouth.

“I’m Han—that is, I’m really Hadand Tlen,” the first girl said. “Rider-family, cousin to Liet-Jarlan. They call me Han.” She wiped her nose on her dirt-gritty sleeve. Her face was smeared with snot and mud and moss stains. Cama realized the dirt was purposeful—camouflaging—as the child said, “Liet-Jarlan put me in charge. We were to wait for—” She clamped her mouth shut.

“Sit down.” Cama made a sign to his Runner in charge of meals. “Find a cave that will smother most of the light. Start a fire.” To Han, in a calm voice, “Eat. You drink coffee? We have just a few beans left in the bag. We were saving it for—well.” He didn’t usually yap, but the silent struggle this girl made to keep control rattled him.

She stared down at the bread in her hands, her mouth working, for what seemed a long time. Then Cama said, “You can report after you eat.”

She crammed the bread into her mouth with both hands.

Cama went around and spoke a little to each child. Most of the very smallest were frightened by him, and shrank near the one with the baby clutching her. “I’m Lnand,” she said, and made a little business of fussing and petting them.

The two nine-year-old girls were too exhausted to speak, but the freckle-faced one smiled at the men, her relief at rescue clear to them all.

Cama paused when he came to Hal, whose thin face was familiar. Cama ruffled his hair. “Name?”

“Hal.” Hal did not know why he was whispering. He was safe now. Maybe it was just being hungry. “Haldred. Mondavar.” He cleared his throat and said in a stronger voice, “I ran as scout. Me and Dvar.” Pointing at one of the girls.

“He was a good scout. He was the best scout I ever saw,” Han said thickly, around a bite of bread.

Cama smiled down at Hal. “I know your brother. He was just a scrub when I was a horsetail. He fought in my army a couple of times, on banner games. Name’s Moon, right?” And then, “Know what I think? I think you should join him next year.”

Hal blushed furiously at having someone say right out the thing he’d wanted most, and had been told (with sympathy and understanding, but firmly) that he couldn’t have. “But da’s just a Rider captain. They said only one son could go.”

Cama laughed. “You’ll see. Now eat that journey bread. If you get any skinnier your trousers will fall off, and they’ll all be calling you Moon Two.”

Hal grinned, dizzy with happiness.

When the children were done eating, many took a child or two into their tents and tucked them up into their bedrolls. The smallest ones were slumbering within a couple of heartbeats. The older ones sat up, listening through the open flaps of the tents as Cama said, “Han. Are you ready to give me a report?”

“Yes.” Han squared her shoulders.

Her report was disjointed at first, as she jumped back and forth in time. When she got to the name Gdir she hunched up, face distorted in a rictus of pain.

Cama’s Runner scorched the last of his precious coffee beans—all the way from Sartor—then pressed them into powder with a spoon. He poured boiling water over them and handed her the fresh coffee before Han spoke again.

She held the mug in her hands, her light eyes glimmering with firelight from the low fire in the cave fifty paces away as she said in a dull monotone, “We—some—thought we were cowards if we didn’t go back and check. But there were our orders to stay put, fight only if they discovered us. Gdir got mad.” She turned her head, sent a long look at the other girl, who sat with a slumbering three-year-old on her lap, firelight glinting in the little one’s red curls.

Cama sensed dire significance in that long look.

Han turned around again. “Gdir went anyway. With her brother and cousins. I went to bring them back. We saw Venn on the walls. Then a line of Idayagans came down the landslide. Gdir yelled to let her help, let her help. Then some Idayagan yelled little Marlovan shits! And shot Gdir dead. Her brother ran. To help. And her cousins. They killed them all. Left them lying right there.” Han’s skinny chest heaved. She took a big swallow of the coffee, and choked, then swigged down some more. “I didn’t-I couldn’t—”

“Hold hard.” Cama leaned forward, his one eye steady in the distant firelight. “The Idayagans shot those children out of hand? Were your friends armed?”

“Gdir had her bow. So did I. But hers wasn’t even strung, and mine was loose-strung, and I was doggo. I mudded up, see.”

“Good,” Cama said. “They didn’t?”

“No. I don’t think Gdir thought there would be anyone. Her brother didn’t have anything—he’s six. Was.” A hiss of indrawn breath. Her lips trembled, her knuckles whitened.

Cama rubbed his jaw, trying to get control of the rage her words caused. Rage made one issue stupid orders.

But he was aware of the listeners behind him, so he said, “You gave Gdir orders—the same orders you were given—and she disobeyed?”

The child shaped a protest, clearly intending to loyally defend her dead friends, but obedience to orders was the first concept drilled into them all.

She hesitated, then finally flicked her thumb up. “Yes.”

“So the Idayagans began searching for you?”

“Yes.” Han opened her dirty, rock-scratched palm. “The Idayagans came back. They spread out. Searching. They came down to the landslide from higher on the Twisted Pine Path. It was night, see. But we kept watch. Venn didn’t patrol the landslide. So me’n Lnand and Freckles and Dvar, we went out and shot ’em. Outside in. So they wouldn’t get Gdir and the others. I wanted revenge, too.”