Lord of the Isles (57 page)

Read Lord of the Isles Online

Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
5.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
C
ashel awakened. It was past dawn and the Serian crew was taking in sail with a great deal of enthusiastic chattering. Cashel raised his head and saw that the
Golden Dragon
was well up the channel of a broad river; they floated in brown water, and marshes spread to the horizon on either side.
He jumped to his feet. “Mellie?” he called, suddenly afraid that the sprite was all part of a dream.
Mellie swung down on a lock of Cashel's hair, deliberately swishing past his eyes before releasing. She did an aerial
somersault, then landed on his shoulder and stood on her hands.
“Did you sleep well, Cashel?” she asked him, upside down.
Cashel let out his breath at shuddering length. His tunic was dry on the underside and only slightly damp over his shoulders where spray had settled while he slept. He hadn't been swimming, that was certain.
“I don't know how I slept through all this,” he said, looking around at the crew bustling over the ship's crowded deck. Men must have been almost stepping on him to spread the sail when light allowed and now to take it in as traffic on the river required a more cautious pace. Two grinning sailors began turning the horizontal capstan they'd been unable to use to adjust the yard while Cashel slept against it.
“They should have got me up,” he said. The Serians were either too polite or too frightened of him to give him the kick in the ribs he'd deserved. He was ashamed of himself.
Jen and Frasa stood together on one wing of the quarterdeck. When they saw Cashel looking toward the stern they tented their hands and bowed to him. He blushed and nodded back.
It'd be time to get out the sweeps shortly. He'd be useful then.
“I've never seen Erdin,” Mellie said, “though I suppose it's just a city. I haven't been on Sandrakkan in a thousand years. It rains a lot, and there's a kind of spotted cat that's way quicker than a fox.”
She giggled and dropped into a normal seated posture, looking up at Cashel. “Of course maybe you humans caught all of them to make clothes out of. You're always doing something.”
“I had a dream last night, Mellie,” Cashel said slowly.
“No, no, Cashel,” the sprite said in a laughing tone. “You didn't dream. Don't you remember? You were too busy helping your friend Garric.”
T
he procurator swayed in the sedan chair she'd hired as the four bearers lifted the poles to their shoulders and began trotting toward the bor-Dahliman mansion in the heart of Erdin. City regulations forbade wheeled vehicles during daylight hours, and it was still three hours to sunset. Asera hadn't been willing to wait, so she'd hired the chair waiting in front of the inn on the northern outskirts of the city.
Sharina clasped her hands and wondered whether she should feel relief that they'd reached the city. Bor-Dahliman was a Sandrakkan noble who supported the king—more likely, a noble who opposed the Earl of Sandrakkan; all the procurator and her contact had in common might be enmity for the earl, but that was good enough for the purpose.
Asera would arrange for all four of them to be fed, clothed, and given lodging until she could arrange passage to Valles. Political rivalry between Sandrakkan and Ornifal didn't prevent normal trade by the islands' own vessels and by merchants from other isles carrying cargoes between the two.
Sharina didn't remember whether she'd even known that Sandrakkan was ruled by an earl during that past lifetime when she was a girl in Barca's Hamlet. Sandrakkan was a barbarous place during the Old Kingdom, mentioned by the epic poets only as a rocky shore or a home to savages who threatened the heroes.
She turned to Nonnus. “I've been thinking about the old epics, Nonnus,” she said. “We've seen the rocky shore of Sandrakkan. I wonder when we'll meet the savages they always talked about?”
The hermit smiled, though it would be a hard question whether his expression could better be described as “wan”
or “grim.” “Trust a civilized man to think of Sandrakkan as either a bad shore or a land of savages,” he said. “Your poets should have come to Pewle Island to find the real things.”
This was a government coaching inn, like those they'd stayed in each of the past four nights they'd been driving south. They'd had no choice even if they'd wanted to do otherwise: Callin's coach bore the seal of the Earl of Sandrakkan and to stay elsewhere would have aroused even more suspicion than their motley appearance already did.
The coach was here in the inn yard with two others, one a rich landowner's private conveyance. The postilion, a young lout who looked like a robin in his russet tunic, was washing down the vehicle's lacquered paneling while the driver—an altogether higher form of servant—drank in the common room.
The postilion rode at the back of the coach, taking the worst of the pounding and all the dust the wheels turned up. He was there to add to the grandeur of his master's passage, like the plumes on the horses' brows. Apart from that the postilion opened doors for the coach's passengers and cleaned the coach at halts.
Those weren't the sort of duties that ought to give a man airs, but the postilion thought better of himself than Sharina did. In fact, he seemed to think better of himself than Sharina thought of the king in Valles. She would have been washing their coach now, except that she knew she'd meet the postilion at the water trough.
Nonnus looked over the situation. “Why don't you go inside, child?” he said. “I'll thank the Lady and join you shortly.”
Sharina hesitated. She would have offered to go with the hermit, but she knew he preferred privacy for his prayers. He'd suggested she go inside because she wouldn't be bothered there. The stable staff, two ostlers and a boy, were cut from the same cloth as the postilion; it would be certain trouble for a lone woman to stand in their vicinity.
But Meder had entered the inn with the procurator and
stayed after she rode off. Besides, Sharina liked the open air after a day of jouncing in the coach. The vehicle's body was slung from leather straps rather than being mounted directly on the axletrees. That turned fore-and-aft shocks into swaying motions, but it didn't cushion the up and down impacts when the wheels hit a high stone or dropped into a rut.
“I'll go over by the kitchen,” Sharina said, nodding to the rear of the main building. As she spoke, a girl backed out the kitchen door and swung, carrying a wooden platter on her head and another in her arms. Beneath muslin drapes to keep the flies off were risen loaves; the girl was taking them to bake in the outdoor oven.
Nonnus nodded that he understood. There'd be enough traffic from the kitchen to the oven and well that the men from the stables on the other side of the compound wouldn't try to trap Sharina alone.
“I won't be far,” he said. “Or long.”
The hermit still looked doubtful. Sharina patted his hand and strode briskly toward the kitchen door before he could change his mind about leaving her.
Nonnus paused a further moment before walking to the gate into the alley. The stableboy had left it open when he returned from wheeling a barrowload of manure to the pile there. Stable refuse collected at a busy inn like this would be a valuable commodity for sale to neighboring farmers.
Meder came out of the side door of the inn just in time to see Sharina going toward the back. He immediately turned to join her.
The wizard had ably driven the coach from Gonalia, something none of the others could have managed. A nobleman learned as a matter of course to control four horses in a hitch, as complicated a task as baking bread or skinning a seal. Sharina could count on her fingers the number of times she'd seen four horses in Barca's Hamlet at the same time, and she didn't imagine that there'd ever been a horse on Pewle Island.
If it hadn't been for Meder's skill, the nobles would have used the soldiers' riding horses while Sharina and Nonnus
walked. There was no way the two commoners could have ridden cavalry mounts on a thoroughfare without breaking their collarbones or worse.
That didn't make Sharina like the wizard or want to be around him, however. He'd changed in the dungeons of Gonalia, but he hadn't changed in a way she found attractive. She met Meder's eyes with a cold look, then deliberately turned her back.
He came up to her anyway. “Mistress Sharina,” he said, projecting a false brightness. “You must be thankful that we'll be in civilized surroundings again soon. The bor-Dahlimans are an ancient family. I'm sure their town house will be comfortable.”
Sharina turned to him again. Meder probably wouldn't describe as “civilized” any place he'd been since he left Valles. The inns the four of them stayed in south of Gonalia were comfortable by Sharina's standards, though none were as clean as Reise saw to it his house was kept.
The only thing
really
wrong with the inns here on Sandrakkan was that they weren't home. The thought that she'd never see home again made Sharina wish that the sea had drunk her down when the great turtle dived.
Meder blinked at Sharina's silence. His expression looked as though it had been fitted together in mosaic; it moved in a jerky fashion, and the pieces didn't join one another perfectly.
“There's still the voyage to Valles,” Meder said. He was trying desperately to force her to accept him as a human being. “But I'm sure that a proper merchant vessel will be far more comfortable than the warships Asera insisted on traveling on.”
If nobody attacks us at sea,
Sharina thought, though material enemies hadn't been the major threats they'd faced thus far. She wasn't angry at Meder, just disgusted and a little sick every time she thought of him standing in a pool of blood.
“Master Meder—” she began.
She'd intended to tell the wizard bluntly that she didn't
want his company; not now, not ever. Over his shoulder she saw the boy coming out of the stables with a gleeful expression.
Has he been peering at Nonnus through a gap in the gate panels?
The two ostlers were behind the boy; one of them carried a manure fork. They were going to the alley gate.
Sharina walked toward the gate, brushing past Meder as if he'd been a stake sunk in the inn yard. She knew that she couldn't reach the alley ahead of the men even if she ran.
The hermit's javelin was in the coach; Erdin was a city where ordinary folk didn't carry spears in public. He'd have his Pewle knife, of course.
He'd have taken off the knife while he prayed.
“Nonnus!” Sharina shouted, ten feet short of the gate as the ostlers flung it open together. Both were big men. One had black hair, a beard, and a limp, while the man with the pitchfork was tall and gangly; his joints seemed oversized for his limbs.
The stableboy turned to face Sharina, then lurched back with a gawp of fear when he saw the dagger she brought out from beneath her cloak. He was missing his upper front teeth, and patches of eczema blotched the scalp beneath his dirty blond hair.
The postilion caught Sharina by both elbows from behind. She kicked but she couldn't raise her heel high enough to do any good with bare feet. The postilion rushed her forward and hammered her right hand against the brick wall till she dropped the dagger.
He carried her into the alley; the stableboy entered behind them and closed the gate. He flourished the dagger as he gave Sharina a spiteful glance.
The Pewle knife hung from the gatepost. Nonnus stood against the board fence on the opposite side of the alley, smiling vaguely until he saw Sharina in the postilion's grip. Then his face went perfectly blank.
She understood her mistake at once. The alley was open in both directions, though the large pile of straw and horse manure
to the right would be an odorous escape route; the fence itself was no barrier to a man as athletic as the hermit. If Sharina hadn't gotten involved, the only risk would have been loss of the Pewle knife.
Nonnus didn't care about property, not even for a knife he'd probably carried for as long as he'd been a man. All he really cared about were the Lady and the girl who'd just turned an unpleasant incident into catastrophe.
Nonnus had been kneeling before the Lady's image that he'd scratched on the fence. The tall ostler poked his pitchfork toward the hermit's face; Nonnus backed without flinching.
“Guess you'd be enemies of the earl since you're praying to the Lady, huh?” the man with the pitchfork said. “We're loyal folk around here.”
“Think we didn't hear how your mistress talks?” the other ostler said. He reached back and took the Pewle knife; drawing it, he tossed the belt and sheath onto the manure pile. “She's from Ornifal. It's all well for rich folks to say it don't matter, but I lost my daddy at the Stone Wall!”
The stableboy picked up manure with his free hand and rubbed it deliberately over the simple image of the Lady. He made a whistling sound through the gap in his teeth.
“I'm no enemy to your earl,” Nonnus said. “I didn't mean to offend anyone. I'll willingly pray with you to the Shepherd, friends.”
The postilion laughed. “One of you hold this filly's legs apart for me. You can fight over seconds.”
Sharina kicked the postilion's knee. He grunted and swore. The ostlers and stableboy glanced toward the motion.
Nonnus gripped the manure fork just back of the tines and rammed the end of the handle into the diaphragm of the man holding it. The ostler fell over, unable to cry out or cling to the fork.
Nonnus rotated the shaft and thrust the fork into the stableboy's face. One of the wooden tines broke in an eyesocket; the boy dropped without a sound.
The remaining ostler jumped back and crashed into the wall around the inn yard. He spread his hands in front of his face, apparently forgetting that he still had the Pewle knife in one of them.
“Say hello to your father!” Nonnus said as he stabbed the ostler in the throat. A tine struck the wall to either side of his neck; the tine in the middle was through the windpipe as well as major blood vessels, because the man made only a croaking sound as he fell to his knees. Nonnus jerked the fork clear. Pulmonary blood frothed down the front of the victim's tunic.
Nonnus looked at the postilion and laughed. The postilion screamed, lifting Sharina as a shield for his face and torso. Sharina kicked him in the crotch.
The postilion doubled up with a horrified gasp. She broke his grip and rolled free, hearing the
thunk!
of the fork thrusting home for the last time.
Sharina got to her knees. The gate swung back. Meder stood in the opening with a blank expression.
Nonnus lifted the first ostler by the hair and cut his throat with the Pewle knife. The victim's legs thrashed violently.
Just like a chicken, but with much more blood …
Sharina worked the fork sideways to pull it from the postilion's back. “Get out of here!” she said to Meder. She was crying. “You'll only be in the way while we bury them!”
She began to turn over manure. The pile wouldn't be collected for a week, especially with the disruption to the inn's routine caused when its stable staff absconded with Asera's jewelry from the luggage in the coach. The story would pass without question till the bodies showed up.

Other books

Caligula: A Biography by Aloys Winterling
Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A Heinlein
India by V. S. Naipaul
The Book Club Murders by Leslie Nagel
Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen
Arctic Fire by Frey, Stephen W.
SurviRal by Ken Benton
A Woman Clothed in Words by Anne Szumigalski