Off Armageddon Reef (101 page)

Some instinct warned the Corisandian soldier at the top of
Royal Charis
' starboard aftercastle ladder. His head turned, and he had one instant to gape at the blood-soaked apparition which had suddenly vaulted all the way from the deck below to the bulwark beside him. Then he died as a battle steel katana went through his neck in a fan of blood.

“
Charis!
”

Merlin's deep voice boomed the battle cry, cutting through all of the other noises, and then he was onto the aftercastle itself. One or two of the men facing him managed to launch defensive blows of their own. He ignored them, letting them rebound from his armor as he hacked his way towards the king.

“
Charis!
”

He carved a corridor of bodies through the Corisandians, sapphire eyes merciless, katana and wakazashi trailing sprays of blood, and panic spread from him like a plague.

And then, somehow, he was through the final barrier between him and Haarahld. He whirled, facing back the way he'd come, and for a long, breathless moment, not one of the forty or fifty Corisandians still on the aftercastle dared to attack.

Behind him, Haarahld went to his left knee, sword drooping, and Aplyn thrust himself in front of the king.

“Take him, you fools!” a voice shouted, and the Duke of Black Water shouldered through the frozen ranks of his surviving boarders.

His armor was hacked and battered, and he bled from half a dozen shallow cuts of his own. His sword's point dribbled tears of blood, and his eye were mad, but his hoarse voice crackled with passion.

“
Take him!
” he bellowed again, and charged.

His men howled and followed him, hammering straight at Merlin, and Merlin met them with a storm of steel. He never moved. His feet might have been bolted to the bloody planking, and his eyes never blinked.

Black Water had one instant to realize he faced something totally beyond his experience, and then he, too, went down under Merlin's merciless steel. At least a dozen more of his men fell to the same blades. Most of them never even had the chance to scream. They were like a stream of water, hurling itself against a boulder only to splash from its unyielding strength.

No man could enter Merlin's reach and live, and after ten shrieking seconds of slaughter, the survivors drew back in terror from the breastwork of bodies he'd built before the wounded King of Charis.

Hektor Aplyn felt something touch the back of his leg.

He whirled, cutlass raised, then froze. It had been the king's hand, and Aplyn's eyes widened in horror as he saw the steadily spreading pool of blood around him.

“Your Majesty!”

The boy fell to his knees, eyes searching frantically for the king's wound, but Haarahld shook his head. The motion was terrifyingly weak.

“I'm sorry, Your Majesty,” the bleeding young midshipman sobbed. “
I'm sorry!
You shouldn't have pulled me out of the way!”

“Nonsense,” the king said. His voice was weak as his life flowed out of him with the blood still pumping from the deep wound in his thigh. “It's a king's duty to die for his subjects, Master Aplyn.”

“
No!
” Aplyn shook his head.

“Yes,” Haarahld said. It was amazing, a distant corner of his mind thought. There was no pain anymore, not even from his knee. Not physical pain, at any rate, and he reached out an arm which had become impossibly heavy and put it around the weeping boy rocking on his knees beside him. About the child who had become so important to him…and for whom he might yet do one more service, as a king should.

“Yes,” he whispered, leaning forward until his forehead touched Aplyn's. “Yes, it is. And it's a subject's duty to serve his new king, Hektor. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes,” the boy whispered back through his tears. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“It's been…an honor…Master Aplyn,” Haarahld Ahrmahk murmured, and then his eyes closed. He slumped forward against Aplyn, and the boy wrapped his arms around him, put his face down on his armored shoulder, and sobbed.

King Gorjah III's expression was stony as Edymynd Rustmyn, the Baron of Stonekeep, stepped into the council chamber.

“You sent for me, Your Majesty?” Stonekeep said calmly, keeping his face expressionless, despite the other two men already waiting with the king. Baron White Ford sat on Gorjah's left, but the Earl of Thirsk sat to the king's right, in the place of honor.

“Yes, I did,” Gorjah said, and his voice was much colder than Stonekeep's had been. “Be seated.”

The king pointed at the chair at the far end of the council table, and the tall, silver-haired Stonekeep seated himself in it, then cocked his head interrogatively.

“How may I serve you, Your Majesty?” he asked.

Gorjah glowered at the man who was both his first councillor and the man in charge of his own spies. Under normal circumstances, Stonekeep was one of the very few men who enjoyed the king's near total confidence, which made him far too valuable to sacrifice. But these circumstances were far from normal, and Gorjah wondered just how clearly the baron understood that.

“I've just been discussing certain matters with Earl Thirsk,” the king said coolly. “In particular, he's been kind enough to share with me what Prince Cayleb had to say to him. Just before he put him ashore on Armageddon Reef.”

Stonekeep simply nodded silently, but his eyes were intent. Thirsk's arrival in Tranjyr was hardly a secret from him, although the rest of the court had yet to discover it. King Gorjah's senior councillors had known for almost two five-days, ever since White Ford's
King Gorjah II
had limped back into port, that Cayleb had managed to intercept the combined fleet off Armageddon Reef with disastrous consequences. Stonekeep had argued successfully in favor of keeping that news to themselves until they knew precisely
how
disastrous those consequences might have been.

Apparently, they'd been even more disastrous than Stonekeep had feared from White Ford's initial reports.

“Cayleb,” Gorjah continued, pronouncing the name as if it were a curse, “took and destroyed every ship remaining under Earl Thirsk's command. It would seem the six galleys which have so far returned, and the single store ship upon which Earl Thirsk sailed to Tranjyr, are the only survivors of the entire combined fleet.”

This time, despite all of Stonekeep's formidable self-control, he blanched.

“The question which exercises my mind at this particular moment,” the king said, “is precisely how Cayleb and Haarahld managed this miraculous interception of theirs. Would you have any thoughts on that subject, Edymynd?”

White Ford simply looked at the first councilor thoughtfully, but Thirsk's eyes could have bored holes in a block of stone. Which, coupled with the fact that the Dohlaran was present at all for what was becoming an increasingly unpleasant conversation, warned Stonekeep that things were about to get ugly. Or, perhaps,
more
ugly.

“Your Majesty,” he said reasonably, “I'm not a naval man. The deployment and utilization of fleets is far beyond my own area of competence. I'm sure Baron White Ford or Earl Thirsk is far better qualified than I am to suggest answers to your question.”

A slight flicker in White Ford's eyes, and the tightening of Thirsk's mouth, suggested he might have chosen a better response.

“Interestingly enough,” Gorjah said, smiling thinly, “Gahvyn, the Earl, and I have already discussed that point. According to them, Cayleb couldn't possibly have done it.”

Stonekeep considered that for a moment, then looked Gorjah straight in the eye.

“Your Majesty, I can only assume from what you've said, and the fact that you've said it to
me
, that you believe I may have been in some way responsible for what happened. So far as I know, however, I had virtually nothing to do with any of the decisions about the fleet's organization or movement. I'm afraid I'm at something of a loss to understand how I might have contributed to this disaster.”

What might almost have been a shadow of grudging respect flickered across Thirsk's face. Gorjah, however, only regarded Stonekeep coldly for several seconds. Then the king gestured at the Dohlaran admiral.

“According to Prince Cayleb,” he said, “Haarahld's known our plans for months. His ‘failure' to mobilize his reserve galleys, his ‘assistance request' under the treaty, were both ruses. In fact, Cayleb must have already sailed by the time Haarahld's messages arrived here in Tranjyr. Both Baron White Ford and Earl Thirsk have confirmed to me that Cayleb couldn't possibly have reached Armageddon Reef when he did unless that were true, so I think we must assume Cayleb knew what he was talking about. Wouldn't you agree, Edymynd?”

“It certainly sounds that way, Your Majesty,” Stonekeep said cautiously. “Of course, as I said, my own familiarity with such matters is limited.”

“I'm sure it is.” The king's smile was even thinner than before. “The problem, however, is just how Haarahld came by that information. And according to Cayleb, he got it from
us
.”

Stonekeep's belly seemed to tie itself into a knot, and he felt sweat breaking out under his kercheef.

“Your Majesty,” he said, after a mouth-drying second or two, “I don't see how that could be possible.”

“I'm sure you don't,” Gorjah said.

“I understand now why you summoned me,” the baron said, speaking as calmly as he could, despite the king's tone, “and I also understand why Earl Thirsk is as angry as he appears to be. But I literally don't see how it could be possible.”

“Why not?” Gorjah asked coldly.

“Because so far as I'm aware, no one outside this council chamber at this very moment, aside from one or two of Baron White Ford's subordinates, knew where the fleets were to rendezvous, or what route they would follow from the rendezvous to Charis. For that matter,
I
didn't know the route.”

Gorjah's eyes flickered, and Stonekeep permitted himself a tiny sliver of relief. But Thirsk shook his head.

“Baron Stonekeep,” he said, “
someone
must have known and passed that information on to Charis. As a foreigner here in Tarot, I have no idea who that someone might have been. But the timing indicates that Tarot is the only possible source. No one else could have told them in time for them to get their fleet into position to intercept us.”

“Forgive me, My Lord,” Stonekeep replied, “but unless I'm very much mistaken, King Rahnyld and his court knew about this proposed operation long before anyone here in Tarot did.”

“But we didn't know the rendezvous point or the course we were to steer after it until just before our fleet actually departed,” Thirsk said. “And there wasn't time for that information to reach Haarahld from Dohlar early enough for him to respond this way.”

“I see.” Stonekeep managed to maintain his outward aplomb, but it wasn't easy.

“As for the exact route we followed after the rendezvous,” White Ford said, speaking for the first time, and sounding as if he truly wished he didn't have to, “I'm afraid someone as experienced as Haarahld wouldn't have needed exact information. In fact, we didn't follow the course laid down in our original orders. The one we did follow was dictated by sailing conditions, and Haarahld is fully capable of predicting what changes sea and wind would be likely to force upon us. And of dispatching Cayleb's fleet accordingly.”

“So, you see, Edymynd,” Gorjah said, drawing the baron's eyes back to him, “all the available evidence suggests Haarahld did get the information from us.”

Stonekeep might have debated the use of the word “evidence” to describe what they had to go on, but he knew better than to make that point just now.

“And if he did get it from us,” Gorjah continued, “Vicar Zahmsyn and Vicar Zhaspyr are going to be
most
displeased. And if they're displeased with
me
, I'm going to be…displeased with whoever allowed that to happen.”

He held Stonekeep's eyes levelly, and for once, the baron could think of absolutely nothing to say.