The Fox (19 page)

They all knew how successful the Nob’s defense had been the first time.

But he said nothing more, just followed the guard out.

As soon as the door was closed, Evred said, “Well?”

“We don’t have enough men as it is,” Dewlap Arveas said.

No one had to point out the obvious, which the Marlovans were trying to keep from the people they had conquered. For the first time since they’d taken these lands, no reinforcements would be coming north at the end of the summer. Instead the Harskialdna was reinforcing the Iascan coast. Evred was going to have to make do with what men he had.

Hawkeye glared at the map. “It’s got to be a ruse. An obvious one. Look, we take everyone we have way out to the end of that soul-rotted peninsula, then we have to pull men off the harbors in the north to cover us here. It would be easy as damnation for the pirates to attack the northern harbors!”

Dewlap Arveas’ voice was husky from years of field command. “I have to agree. I don’t know about ships, but I do know about land. If we strip the three Idayagan harbors of all but token protection so we can cover this side of the Pass, all they’d have to do is send in a couple of rickety boats full of pirates to take those castles. The cost in lives to retake those harbors would be—” Another circle of his hand.

Evred glanced at Captain Sindan, who had, in his customary manner, listened without speaking. He regarded the prince with a steady, patient dark gaze.

But Evred had known him all his life, had grown up calling him Uncle Sindan. He knew his father’s Runner, so scrupulous about protocol, would never disagree with the military men unless asked.

His lack of expression was therefore enough of an answer, and Evred knew not just what Sindan wanted, but what his father would want.

“We made a promise,” he said. “We must abide by the treaty, therefore we will have to defend the Nob.”

When Evred called him back in to hear the decision, Sholf did not express his relief. His feelings about the conquerors were too mixed for that. He said, “Then we had better make haste. Because the winds are changing.”

The result was a brutal ride along the rocky peninsula into the teeth of the first storm of the season. The aging harbormaster rode grimly with them, perched on a sturdy pony.

Evred distrusted his instincts more each day they moved northward along the peninsula. It was only this man’s anxiousness to get on, despite his own discomfort at the brutal pace, that convinced him the threat was real.

“Judging the actions of the many by those of one is both human and dangerous.” He’d read that in one of the records written by an old Sartoran.
But if he speaks the truth, have they judged us by my own actions?

There was no one to ask.

Chapter Eleven

TWO men stood on a cliff overlooking the Nob, obscured by a sharp-scented shrub dotted with withering yellow trumpet-liss and curtained by a willow. They watched the long columns of Marlovans riding into the Nob, banners snapping in the winds off the sea, helms gleaming, the odd tear-shaped shields hanging aslant from their saddles like the folded wings of a raptor.

Skandar Mardric and his companion, a tall, languid innkeeper named Dalloran—also a spy for the Resistance— shifted their attention to the bareheaded young man at the head of the column riding beside the harbormaster.

“Well, Dallo. There’s your little prince again,” Mardric said, waving as though granting a gift. “Back with his pisshairs. ”

So obvious a statement was unanswerable. Dallo waited.

Mardric gave him a lazy glance that didn’t fool Dallo for a heartbeat. “Well? Are you going to go snap your fingers?”

Below the prince, whom Dallo had known only as Sponge, dismounted. He was promptly surrounded by people.

Dallo had come to the conclusion that Prince Evred Montrei-Vayir had not been foolish so much as inexperienced. He’d amended that fast. But Mardric would just scoff. “I still do not know why he left so abruptly,” Dallo said instead.

“Tired of your charms?” Mardric asked laughing softly. He paused, taking time to pick a fallen leaf from his black hair and flick it away. “These youths! Like fireflies—one day aglow, the next gone.”

“If he tired of my charms,” Dallo said, matching Mardric’s caustic tone, “I might not get another chance to speak to him, much less snap my fingers.”

“So?” Mardric stared down, for once unsmiling. “All you need to do is get close enough to get a knife between his ribs.”

Dallo looked up in surprise. “Why? Will they not send another—along with an extra army or two to exact retribution? ”

“Rumor has it they don’t have an extra army or two,” Mardric retorted.

“And that same rumor has it the older son is as bad as the Harskialdna.”

“Good,” Mardric said, unsmiling. “Then we don’t talk the obscenities of peace and cooperation with our enemies. If our people stay angry, we talk about getting our lands back again.”

“Hold. There’s Nangel.” They watched the harbormaster’s chief scribe run up the trail from the high street and elbow her way through the men surrounding the prince. “Do you know anything about that?”

“Tathrim of the fisher fleet sent a skimmer in on the morning tide,” Mardric said.

Dallo whistled. “Message. Has to be. You know what it was?”

“No.” Mardric admitted, “The scribes won’t talk to me anymore.”

They watched the men below listen to the scribe who spoke swiftly, brushing her hair impatiently off her forehead as the wind played with it. Then the Marlovans began moving fast and orderly as if in a drill.

“Hmm,” Mardric said. “Pirates, you think?”

“Let’s go find out.” They began sliding down a back trail to come around into the city the long way.

Below, one of Evred’s Runners came up to his side, and saluted. “The scouts riding on perimeter reported two men on the northeast promontory watching us. No bows.”

Evred winced inwardly, remembering—vividly—his personal encounter with the Resistance. “If they aren’t an immediate threat, ignore them. We have an attack to prepare for.”

The chief scribe had just reported: “A message came in this morning from the fisher fleet.” Then she drew a shuddering breath, adding, “East, about two days out. They are here.”

“Who?” Evred asked. “Pirates or Venn?”

“Both.”

The screamer arrow whirtled through the frigid night air, arcing high from the northeast into the west wind then vanishing over the water.

Evred stood on the rock-and-tree dotted hill above the half-built houses on the harbor’s high street. He peered down at the waiting men from the same place the spies had watched his arrival. Here and there around the well-positioned lines of his own forces crouched small groups of old sailors and harbor folk, silhouettes among the tumbled rocks and old hedges and the half-rebuilt foundations of houses. As if a wind soughed through them the men below whispered, briefly, then faced the northeast.

A local below Evred’s vantage commented to the man next to him, who, from the rhythmic sheering sound, kept honing a short, heavy sword, “Damned pony boys never believed us.”

“Well they sure as Norsunder do this time,” was the retort. “Waiting is shit in shoes. I keep needin’ to pee, and I say the spell, and nothin’ comes out.”

They spoke in Olaran, which Evred had learned last year. It was a lot like Idayagan. He gripped his sword hilt, bracing for the attack now closing on the Nob. Sholf had told the truth and Evred had made the right decision but there was no sense of triumph. He thought of the enormous forces gathered by his uncle and brother all along the western harbors, stretching southward to Elgaer and below. He was worried about the three northern harbors in Idayago that he’d stripped of men in order to reinforce Ala Larkadhe, whose entire force was with him here.

A heel crunched behind Evred, sending pebbles skittering down the rock face. The sharp smell of pine rose as the brown matt of needles was tramped underfoot. Evred turned his head. The silhouette’s familiar outline resolved into Captain Sindan, who said quietly, “I’ve had two Runners report that the orders to evacuate the coastal harbors were obeyed, leaving only our own people as defense. The locals are safely inland, though under enormous protest.” As usual, he seemed to know what Evred was thinking.

Evred grimaced. To Sindan he could risk speaking on this matter: “Any report of pirate attacks?”

Sindan lifted a shoulder as he peered between the gnarled, wind-bent tree branches. Strings of clouds drifted across the sky, low, shadow-gray, and thick, the ocean black, the intermittent blue starlight making it difficult to see. Moonlight was increasing slowly; he hoped it would be enough.

The Olarans shifted, a couple of them asking unanswerable questions of Sholf, who squatted uncomfortably below Evred, wishing he hadn’t eaten those two extra nut-cakes at dinner. It had seemed a fine idea at the time.

A dozen of his own cronies waited with him, most armed with building implements, a couple with old cutlasses that had newly honed edges.

The Marlovans stationed paces away on either side and above ignored them. They had no semblance of discipline and would be worthless as allies. But the prince wanted them to think themselves allies, so no one could order them out of the way.

The Marlovans watched northward: nothing more than pinpricks of light on the far horizon, impossible for land men to interpret.

“Too soon to know,” Sindan said. “I’ll expect a Runner in three days at the least.”

Sholf sent a look over his shoulder; despite the crowd around him, he was listening. He got to his feet and raised his glass.

Sindan thought about the locket at his neck and the king’s words, written the week before and transferred instantly by magic:
They are coming from the east. Rec’d report from Adranis.
It had been difficult not to reassure Evred, but word had to arrive either by the usual method or through the Olarans. It was the king’s will that the existence of the lockets never be revealed.

Out loud he said, “Even if smaller pirate forces have razed the northern ports on their way here, the damage will have been diminished by our foresight. And if we win a great battle here today, it will make next year easier. You know what Adamas Dei wrote about great battles.”

Evred’s lips quirked, though he did not take his eyes away from the horizon.
It’s people’s belief that great battles decide something that makes them decisive
. Evred and his father had discussed it until Evred comprehended that battles themselves decided little; it was what people decided about them that gave them meaning. How they were written down for history, how they were regarded as they faded into history. A battle could be regarded differently from either side.

So . . . how would this impending battle be viewed if the Marlovans won? Would they cease to be the enemy in the eyes of the locals at last?

Sholf was watching him—the brief pause had become a silence. Evred peered through the darkness, then said, “Twelve, thirteen, fourteen ships. More behind, I think. It’s hard to see them—you have to watch where the stars are blocked.”

Sholf put his glass to his eye. “I make out twenty-three, not counting the big Venn squares’ls. They’ll stand off and fend off any aid to us from seaward.”

And watch how we fight,
Evred thought, holding out his hand. “May I look?”

A glass was seldom useful for land war as cavalry did not fight on hills, nor could the best spyglass see over trees, hills, shrubs, fences, or dust; Marlovans relied on scouts, both human and canine. Evred peered at a strangely flattened world, the ships large, as if pressed onto a wall carving. He saw no difference between those ships, other than some were bigger than others and that might itself be an effect of relative distance. Except the Venn had white sails, all the others black. No, red.

He handed the glass back, blinking away vertigo.

Flash Arveas appeared, crouching down beside Evred. His breath was visible in the frigid air. “D’you want to signal it or should Hawkeye?”

Flash was a friend from their academy days, sent by his father and older brother as reinforcement while they themselves held the north end of the Pass. Hawkeye Yvana-Vayir had been one of Evred’s brother’s inner circle who had bullied the boys on the Sierlaef’s orders during their first year at the academy; distrust from those scrub days lingered, though Flash and Evred tried to pretend otherwise.

“I will,” Evred said.

Flash grinned, fist to heart.

Evred mentally dismissed the familiar annoyance with his uncle for favoring political over military expedience by sending the wild-riding, hard-drinking cousin Hawkeye as Tanrid’s replacement. He’d ridden north directly after the funeral fires for the death of his mother from a riding accident on ice. It had not taken five days in Hawkeye’s company to see that the reasons Hawkeye would have made a superlative dragoon-scout captain were same the reasons he would not command an army well.

Those who knew ships saw the sails loosened to spill wind.

“They’re sending boats,” Sholf said.

Evred raised his hand. Flash Arveas reappeared. “Shift the fire teams for close attack.” The ships were apparently not going to come close themselves.

Flash saluted then slid his way down the hillside; cavalry boots were not made for rock climbing.

“They know we’re here,” an Olaran said to Sholf, sending a glance up Evred’s way.

Evred wanted to say, “Of course they do! Someone in your own town probably made certain of it.” But he kept silent.

Below, Flash ran the last few steps to where Hawkeye sat on a flat rock above a stream that broke the seawall. Hawkeye figured the main attack would concentrate on these streams where the seawall broke, so here he was, more than ready, his bannermen and bugler behind him. Flash recognized some of the bannermen from their boyhood days at the academy. They were shifting about, keeping their hands busy, some smoothing triangular signal guidons and the big First Wing banner, others running their fingers in short, sharp swipes up and down wooden shafts as they cracked ever more obscene jokes about the pirates and the Venn. Their snickers did not quite hide their nervousness.