Stormwarden (41 page)

XXIII
Elrinfaer

Tathagres engaged the powers of the Gierj-demons and Kisburn's private chamber dissolved in a shower of light. Red-orange sparks streaked across Emien's vision and vanished in a scorching blast of wind. Unlike the earlier transfer from the ice cliffs, the boy felt a bucking lurch. Sorcery whipped his hair into snarls as he tumbled through air and darkness. He landed gasping beside his mistress on a beach laced with stinking strands of kelp.

Emien looked up, disappointed. A glance showed them still on Cliffhaven; but outside the fortress walls just a stone's throw from the dockside. Bruised and winded, Emien struggled to his feet. Sand dribbled out of his cuffs as he straightened his swordbelt and extended his hand to Tathagres.

She accepted his help with none of the acid unpleasantness he remembered from Skane's Edge. The sorcery of the transfer had taxed her. Her delicate features were drawn and pale under a light sheen of sweat. Tremors of fatigue passed through her as she gripped Emien's arm. She stumbled to her feet as if the demon's powers had left her slightly dazed.

Emien watched like a starved cat, fingers inching toward his sword. Yet Tathagres rallied before he gathered the nerve to exploit her weakness. She swept a rapacious glance across strand, warehouses and the line of the horizon beyond the boom which closed the harbor, and thought rapidly.

"Find a boat quickly and get us to sea." She flicked sand from her hair with an arrogant toss of her wrist. "To transfer to Elrinfaer I must merge again with the Gierj. This cannot be attempted within reach of men at arms."

Whether she referred to Kisburn's men or the Kielmark's pirates made no difference; both sides would carry steel. Emien complied without argument. Outgoing tide creamed over a breakwater fifty paces to the south. Beyond, the shore lifted into rugged bastions of rock too steep for safe anchorage. Northward past the untenanted jumble of dockside taverns and shops a wharf extended beyond the corner of a warehouse. Black against leaden clouds, an angular assembly of spars and rigging reared above the shingled roofs.

Emien pointed. "There."

Tathagres nodded. Together they ran over sand still packed from the tide. The beach ended, shored up by a breakwater of granite. Emien caught Tathagres' elbow, steadying her as she climbed over rocks crusted with barnacles. A push would tumble her onto the jagged stones below. Since she intended a transfer to Elrinfaer, Emien chose patience. Pressed flat against weather-beaten boards, he hurried past the warehouse. The boat lay tied thirty feet out on the pier. She appeared unguarded. After a hasty glance at her lines Emien saw why, and swore under his breath. The boat was aged and ungainly. Yet her planking showed signs of recent repair and she still looked fit to sail.

Tathagres shared none of the boy's annoyance. Although she appeared peaked and tired, she spoke before he managed any complaint. "The boat must serve. The Kielmark has cleared his harbor of everything else."

"Let's hope he was thorough." Emien grimaced. "If that relic sails at all, she'll go clunky as a farmer's wooden bucket."

Suddenly a shout rang from the alley behind the warehouse. Steel clanged, announcing a rapid exchange of swordplay. Out of time to seek options, Emien caught his mistress's elbow and bolted for the dock. The foolish old fishing craft was surely preferable to getting trapped like rats on the shore.

Emien leaped across three feet of water onto the port gunwale; an engraved plaque beneath his boot named the craft
Callinde.
Leaving the docklines for Tathagres, Emien dove for the mess of rope at the base of the mast and uncleated the main halyard.

Callinde
rocked sharply as Tathagres followed him on board. Without looking around, Emien hoisted. The heavy yard rattled up the mast, unfurling a patched square of sail. "Cast off," he said tersely, and whipped the line onto a cleat. "Let the stern off last."

Tathagres ducked forward, shadowed by canvas as Emien raised the jib. Wind caught the clew, snaking lines across the deck. The boy dug aft beneath bunched acres of spanker for the knots which lashed the tiller. His hand slammed into floor boards and he cursed. Antique to her last fitting,
Callinde
came equipped with a steering oar.

Line splashed into water and the high curved prow swung free. Tathagres raised the spanker as Emien slashed the stern line with his sword.
Callinde
drifted from the wharf, sails flogging aloft. Emien dove for the sheets, dragged them hissing through the blocks. Canvas fell taut with a whump; the old craft shouldered on starboard tack across the bay.

Emien hauled on the steering oar, eyes trained forward. Kisburn's two ships lay moored to leeward; water stretched ahead in an open line to the sea. Emien felt his hair prickle at the base of his neck.

"Mistress!" He bent to see past the spanker and discovered her kneeling by the mast. "The boom is gone from the entrance of the harbor."

Tathagres hurried to the gunwale and looked out. Her voice came back above the crash of spray beneath the keel. "
Kielm
ark's work. The flag-bearer must have turned coat again."

A deep rumble sounded across the bay. Emien glanced aft, distressed. The entire seaward side of a warehouse slid open to reveal stone crenelations inside. Two catapults reared behind and the barbed bolts of four loaded arbalests glittered through notches cut in the wall.

"Sail!" Tathagres' voice broke. "If they loose any bolts on us, I can manage."

Emien dragged
Callinde
straight-and shouted. One of Kisburn's ships had launched a longboat. Drawn by the frosty gleam of Tathagres' hair, six seamen bent over the looms, driving their craft straight across his path. Emien adjusted lines and tried frantically to coax more speed from his sails.

The first of the arbalests released. But
Callinde
was not the target; the bolt whined overhead and drove with a plume of spray into the waves off
Morra's
stern.

"They aim to disable the Gierj!" Tathagres leaned over
Callinde'
s thwart and shouted to the officer in the approaching longboat. "Return to your ship and man your weapons. Defend the demons from steel!"

The officer saluted. His oarsmen reversed stroke, turning the longboat aside. Emien corrected
Callinde's
course. Another quarrel tore through the air, followed by a third which grazed through
Morra's
mooring ropes. The men at the arbalests would shortly perfect their aim, and over the splash of
Callinde's
passage Emien heard the sour clank of the winch which cocked a catapult.

Tathagres crouched beneath the gunwale. "I'm going to summon the Gierj and pull us out before the enemy spoil their powers with steel. Make for the open sea. Whatever befalls, I must reach Elrinfaer with all speed."

Tathagres settled against the mast. She bowed her head on crossed arms, her hands in light contact with her neckband, and slipped gradually into rapport with the demons. Emien steered against rising gusts, irritated to discover how soft he had grown during his months at court.
Callinde
tossed like a wayward horse over the crests, wrenching his shoulders without mercy. Emien hauled her straight and bitterly cursed her designer.
Morra
fell slowly astern. Carried downwind, the keening chant of the Gierj-demons pierced through the rush of the wake. In a moment, his mistress would focus enough power for transfer. Frustrated by the speed of her magic, Emien hoped
Callinde
would end on a reef.

That instant the first catapult launched with a crack. Emien whirled, saw a dark line writhe in an arc across the sky. His joy abruptly disintegrated. The enemy fired chain shot. Steel links wailed through the air and splashed with a geyser of spray a scant yard shy of
Morra's
bowsprit. Disturbed by the brief proximity of the steel, the Gierj chant dipped and leveled. Emien cursed in earnest. Iron in any form disrupted their powers; one strike to
Morra's
rigging would cripple both flagship and demons.

* * *

Screened by the brush at the lip of the cave, the Kielmark sprawled on his belly, a brass-banded ship's glass focused on the harbor. Glad not to rely on Taen's talents for information, he watched soldiers delivered ashore by enemy longboats as they rushed in black lines for the warehouse. In a moment the men who manned the embrasure would be under attack. The whistle of the Gierj-demons shrilled across the harbor, eerily ascending in pitch. Unmoved as a boulder, the Kielmark counted attackers and calculated. The catapults had maybe three minutes to set their range.

An arbalest released. Steel rushed through the air, banged soundly into wood. The Gierj wavered and fell off pitch. The Kielmark lowered his glass and grinned boyishly at Jaric. "They'll have her," he said. "Quit sulking."

Jaric did not answer. Tense and still by the Kielmark's side, he fingered the blade of his unsheathed sword and tried not to think while Mathieson's boat drove steadily seaward, her sails curved taut to the wind. Taen had tried vainly to ease Jaric's discomfort since the moment Emien had slashed the docklines. The possibility the Keys to Elrinfaer might slip beyond reach troubled the boy less than his oath to Keldric that
Callinde
would be treasured and kept safe.

"Well, don't rust your fittings with tears," said the
Kielm
ark. But his harsh face reflected sympathy and the Firelord's heir did not weep. "If we don't get flamed by Gierj in the next minute and a half I'll loan you
Troessa.
She's faster than
Callinde
and rigged for quick handling."

A catapult cracked from the warehouse. The Kielmark jerked the glass to his eye in time to see a sharpened length of chain snag
Morra's
headstay. Steel whipped in an arc, slashing among tarred line, and the foretopmast jerked, angled brokenly forward. Chain slithered to the deck; and the Gierj chant unravelled into dissonance.

* * *

Tathagres cried out sharply from her trance. Sparks crackled across her knuckles and winked out. Flung back against the mast, she lay still, her throat bared to the sky and her hands slack by her sides. Emien could not tell whether she had died or was only unconscious. He dared not leave the helm to check.

Ragged shouting broke out astern. The roof of the warehouse which housed the weaponry burst into flame, smudging the sky with smoke. But the catapults launched still, their aim corrected and deadly. More chain shot scythed through rigging, leaving a trail of wreckage. Sailors died trying to clear the steel from
Morra's
gear, while quarrels from the arbalests pocked her paint with scars. The Gierj were crippled; their chant rose into ragged wails of pain and tailed off into silence. By the time the men at arms overran the warehouse and fought the crew who manned the arbalests to a standstill, the entire forward section of the ship stood riddled with bolts. To remove the steel and deliver the demons from agony would require a crew and tools and hours of time.

Emien looked away from the harbor, his face a mask of disgust. The deckhands feared the Gierj; the confusion set loose by the Kielmark's ruse would grant them excuse enough to upset discipline.
Tide against a sand castle,
Emien thought, reminded of a bitter expression from boyhood. Kisburn's officers would never set
Morra
to rights. He had no choice but sail for Elrinfaer alone.

Callinde
breasted the waves, steady despite her mulish lines. She reached the headlands of Cliffhaven's harbor faster than the boy expected. He glanced toward Tathagres. Sprawled like a porcelain doll on the floorboards, she showed no sign of consciousness. Emien licked salty lips. He might easily knife her as she lay helpless. Once he stole the necklace, he could at last bring vengeance on Anskiere.

Confident of his plan, Emien turned
Callinde
into the wind. The boat wallowed, jostling Tathagres' limp form. Emien ignored her, rummaging in a locker until he located a ship's glass. This time he would not be balked by carelessness. Bracing his foot on the thwart, he lifted the glass to his eye and swept it across the sea to check whether Kisburn's patrol ship lay in his path.

But the horizon was not empty as he expected. Etched like scrimshaw against a taut band of sky stood a line of masts, each flying the sea wolf blazon of the Kielmark. A wave lifted
Callinde's
prow. Water broke with a hiss of foam beneath her keel as Emien crossed to the opposite thwart and trained his glass to the south. Ships approached from that quarter also, nearer still, and with the wind behind them. Carrying every stitch of canvas, the Kielmark's fleet returned to defend their island.

Emien collapsed the glass with a snap and sprang back to the helm.
Morra
and her sister ship were doomed. Caught in the path of two fleets, Emien's sole chance was to turn west on a reach and sail for the open sea.

The boy flung his weight against the oar.
Callinde
answered and headed off; wind filled the sails with a bang, jerked her into thirty degrees of heel. The cant of the deck tossed Tathagres limply into the bilge. Emien had no time to drag her clear. To port a brigantine peeled away from the pack and steered northwest to intercept him.

Unlike a tiller, a steering oar could not be lashed to hold a fixed course. Emien cursed the fact while the sky off the bow darkened under an angry rim of cloud. Squalls threatened. A prudent sailor would shorten sail. But to heave to, even to reef canvas, would cause him fatal delay. Gusts whistled through
Callinde's
rigging. Spray rushed in sheets over the bow and the steering oar clunked and twisted under Emien's hands, difficult to control with so much sail aloft. He clenched his teeth, watching through slitted eyes as the brigantine closed on
Callinde's
port quarter. Raindrops slashed his face. Emien hoped the storm would hide him. He raised his head and shouted crazily at the sky. Clouds opened and
Callinde
drove, reeling, into the opaque flood of a downpour.

Emien laughed and threw his shoulder into the oar. From where he stood at the helm the headsails where lost in murk. He headed off, saved from pursuit by gray curtains of rain. Rope burned through his fingers as he eased the lines, setting
Callinde
downwind to run with the squall. The Kielmark's fleet could never locate so small a quarry in such poor visibility; once the weather eased, he could put about to Elrinfaer where the power he ached to possess waited to be claimed.