The Rose of the World (49 page)

Ravn Asharson, still trembling from shock and adrenalin, gazed with a breaking heart upon the devastation in his harbour. He took in the foundered and sinking ships, the strewn timbers and dead men of two continents. Beside him, Stormway leaned on his sword, breathing heavily. The leather wrapping had come unfurled from his stump. New blood dripped from it.

‘Not so mythical, as you see, sire.’

Ravn gave him a hard stare, then yelled with all his might, ‘Men of Eyra, back to the quays!’ The lust for battle had gone out of him, as it seemed to have from the other participants in this conflict, for everywhere men were sheathing their weapons, shaking their heads, binding up comrades’ wounds.

The order was picked up and passed along to other friendly vessels until there was a general movement towards the port.

Those Istrians not drowning or dying, or engaged with trying to right their own ships, watched them go with little regret. It had been a madman’s mission to bait the barbarian king in his own home; some resolved to pay more attention to the intuitions of their brethren from the Farem Hills in years to come.

Of the southern nobles who had sailed north with the invasion force, the Dukes of Cera and Calastrina had been killed in the initial engagement; the lords of Santorinvo, Tagur and Gibeon had lost their lives in the course of the battle which ensued; the Duke of Sestria had been thrown into the bay when the beast first erupted to life and no one had seen him resurface or hung around to save him if he did. Varyx, Lord of Ixta, lay wounded and raving on the foredeck of his vessel. No one knew what fate had overtaken Rui Finco, the Lord of Forent, last seen on the damaged flagship,
Falla’s Mystery
. None, that is, except Tycho Issian, Lord of Cantara, who stared over the top of the bowed head of the woman he had come all this way to rescue at a certain silver circlet holding back the long dark hair of the ruined man chained to the mast and knew with a sudden awful certainty that the King of the Eyrans was not, after all, the man he had in his mindless fury blinded and disembowelled. Swiftly, he slipped the circlet from Rui Finco’s ruined head and into his tunic. He did not think anyone else had yet stumbled to the same conclusion, and it would not be helpful if they did.

Then he stared back into the chaos of the harbour.

A proud fleet had left Forent the best part of a month before; now, only a ramshackle collection of battered, burned and broken vessels remained. But he had his prize; and the northerners had retreated.

When all was said and done, it was the most glorious victory.

Thirty

Aftermath

Falla’s Mystery
and the remnant of the Istrian fleet fled for home across the Northern Ocean, and with great good luck – for them – the weather held fair. In weeks to come, men would talk about the unseasonable calms that stilled those normally turbulent waters, and the stiff northerly wind which followed, filling the sails by day and by night, and many would give up their thanks to the Goddess, who had clearly intervened with the elements of the world on their behalf. Even so, the
Sea Lord
and the
White Lion
never made it home to any port in Istria, and none knew what had befallen them: whether they had foundered due to damage taken in the battle for Halbo, from construction defects which had not been apparent on the voyage out, or poor seamanship; none could say. There were later rumours of mutiny and a slave uprising, and some said ships similar to the two missing vessels had been sighted in the south of the continent, as far away as Gila and even Circesia, with new names and a motley crew; but by then greater events had overtaken all and no one had time to be concerned about the whereabouts of a handful of rich men and their officers.

The
Maid of Ixta
limped into Cera with a poorly repaired mast and half her crew; and still Varyx lived; but only because of the swift action of his chirurgeon in severing the arm that would otherwise have festered and killed him.

Many of the surviving vessels had found themselves masterless; of these, a number fell beneath the command of mercenary soldiers engaged by the Lord of Forent, and these men, seeing an opportunity, went harrying along the coast of the Eyran mainland. From Longfell and Langey they stole fifty-five women and girls; from Sharpnose and Blackness a further thirty-eight, for their husbands and sons had been called to Ravn Asharson’s muster in Halbo, and many of them now lay dead at the bottom of the sea, or wounded in the makeshift infirmaries set up in the fish sheds and warehouses on that city’s quays.

The
Man of Oak
, under the command of a black-coaster called Peto Iron-Arm, raided along the shores of Berthey and brought away the wives and daughters of Long Marsh, Hawkridge and Haddocks Chair; but not without a fight, for they were tough women and resourceful, and had no wish to be traded in the Istrian slavemarkets and made whores to their enemies. Many of Peto Iron-Arm’s crew came away from these violent sackings with broken bones, stab wounds and bruised faces; and not all of them survived their injuries.

The
Golden Lady of Skarn
met with a worse fate; for she was wrecked on the treacherous reefs off Oxfirth, and there the old men, women and children came out into the shallows and instead of rescuing the survivors, battered them to death with whatever farm implements had come to hand when the wrecking call went out.

Of those vessels still afloat, eleven of the invasion fleet were unable to make their way out of Halbo’s harbour as a result of broken rudders and burned masts; or because their crew had, in the heat of battle, smashed through their shackles with stolen swords and deserted. But Ravn Asharson, having discovered his wife and child gone, was in no mood for clemency.

When a search of the castle and grounds rendered no clue to the Rosa Eldi’s whereabouts, he questioned servants, retainers and courtiers – all to no avail. In the end, he went to seek advice from his mother, the Lady Auda, as to where his wife had hidden with little Ulf for the duration of the battle, for she had an information network concerning the comings and goings of all in the castle and its vicinity which was second to none.

But when he rapped on the door of her chamber there was a moment’s pregnant silence within as if the occupants had stopped whatever they were doing and held their breath; then the door creaked open a hand’s width and Lilja Mersen, his mother’s ancient bodyservant, stuck her nose through the gap.

When she saw who was knocking for admittance, she shut it again with a clang. Ravn stood there, mystified. It was true that he and his mother had not been on the best of terms these past months, but she had never shunned his company, however aggrieved she had been by his choice of wife. Besides, he was king! He rapped again, more loudly.

This time it was Auda herself who came to the door.

‘What do you want?’

It was not a friendly greeting. Ravn frowned. ‘Let me in, Mother, and I will tell you.’

The door inched open, but still the old woman blocked his way. ‘You may tell me here.’

Ravn looked over his shoulder to where a knot of courtiers were advancing along the corridor, their gossip suspended as they watched in fascination the King being denied entrance to his mother’s chamber. Determined now, he stuck a leg through the opening, pressed the door wider despite Auda’s resistance, forced himself inside and shut it again before the courtiers could snoop.

There was a scuffle of activity within the room and Lilja stood with her skirts spread to hide something on the bed. Ravn looked away, irritated. Let the old woman have her secrets, then: he had no time for such nonsense.

‘Don’t bleed on my carpet.’

He looked down and found that indeed blood was still dripping from a number of wounds on his arms and chest; he had not even noticed until now, such had been the concern for his family. He stepped onto the flagstones, noticing that the old woman made no move to attend to his injuries.

‘Where is my wife?’

Auda snorted. ‘You have mislaid her? How careless.’

Ravn glared at her. ‘Don’t play with me, Mother. You always know everything.’

‘Gone, my son, and good riddance, say I!’

‘Gone?’

Now the old woman cackled with unbridled glee. ‘You really didn’t know? Gone with the southern lords on their ships; taken the boy and the nurse with her, too, and sailed for Istria, whence she came. That’s how much she cares for you, my boy; but I can see that even though the witch is far away by now, you are still caught in her thrall!’

Ravn felt dizzy, then sick; and not from blood loss.

‘When?’ he croaked. ‘How long?’

The old woman shrugged. ‘If I know anything, she will have been on the first ship to flee, no doubt with its poor captain under her spell.’

The King of Eyra found many emotions battling within him; anger came foremost. He raised his hand as if to strike the old woman, but she matched it with a defiant face as if to will him to do it, and his rage subsided as swiftly as it had stirred, leaving him feeling empty and bereft. Then he turned on his heel, flung open the door so hard that the ironwork rang against the stones of the wall, and ran down the corridors bellowing for Stormway and Shepsey to attend him immediately.

The old king Ashar Stenson, the Grey Wolf, had been possessed of such towering rages that men had fled the country rather than bring him bad news; in his time he had killed messengers, roasted heralds, spitted emissaries and beheaded envoys. His captains and generals had learned to sweeten even the most evil tidings with carefully worded optimism and fair omens. His son, nevertheless, had always been a boy of a sunny disposition, given to easy laughter, casual banter and disarming charm; but when it took the best part of a week to clear the wreckage from Halbo’s harbour before the remnants of the northern fleet could begin its pursuit, Ravn Asharson displayed worse temper than even his legendary father had shown. News of abductions of women along the southern coast and from the outlying islands only served to heat it further.

The three hundred and seventeen Istrians who had been stranded in Halbo when the rest of their fleet sailed all perished by summary execution by hanging or, when the gibbets were full and no further trees could be spared to make more, simple stabbing – lords, officers or slaves, it made no difference: if they spoke no Eyran, Ravn had them killed with no recourse to the Were Law which had for centuries been invoked on behalf of all prisoners of war.

‘They came to steal my wife and your women,’ he declared. ‘This is not an act of war, but one of common thievery and thus shall they be punished.’

One evening while the King was pacing up and down the quays watching the ships being outfitted for the foray south, an old man and his companion, who seemed vaguely familiar, accosted him. Ravn was impatient, listless, uninterested in anything other than the pursuit. When the old man announced himself as a powerful mage who would offer his services to help the King regain the Rose of the World, he gave a sharp bark of a laugh and told him to be gone before he found a gibbet with some hanging-space left. The old man raised an eyebrow, then split the giant hawser-stone of the harbour mole in two. When the incinerated dust settled, it found Ravn Asharson stopped in his tracks, stroking his beard consideringly.

Only Aran Aranson was privy to the fact that when the King had left the scene, the hawser-stone was back in place, apparently untouched, though the air around it smelled strange. And only Aran Aranson was privy to the effort even this trick had cost the Master, since he was the one who had to carry the old man up into the castle to their temporary quarters that night, the mage being too weak to make his own way. Privately, Aran was becoming less than impressed by the old man’s vaunted powers: raising the monster seemed to have drained him so thoroughly that he fell asleep and snored through the hubbub which followed, rather significantly, the departure of this ‘goddess’ he had come to reclaim.

Word carried fast in Eyra: by runner, raven or rowing boat. There was now talk of a great sorcerer who would join their effort, who might even be Sur himself come back to them in their time of need. Their victory over the old enemy was surely guaranteed. When the muster began in earnest, there was no shortage of men to fill the ships; for many of those involved in the fight for Halbo had survived the battle and swum to shore, or had rowed themselves expertly out of the way of the worst dangers. Many more had lost wives, daughters, wards, nieces and cousins in the raids by the southerners on their coastal towns.

Three hundred years of bad blood simmered to the surface. Not one man aboard the Eyran fleet was untainted by desire for revenge, the craving to regain family honour, to make a name which would resound for centuries to come, to scour the world of his enemy.

For three hundred years the men of Istria had warred with the men of Eyra. It was more than a pattern: it was a birthright, a belief system; a law of nature: it ran in the blood and the bones and the brains. And surely there was nothing in the world which could challenge or dispel such an ingrained, unquestioned, fundamental ideology, a way of life and death in which every man was complicit? It would be like trying to change the path of a tempest or a ranging torrent; like standing in the way of a charging bull or an eruption of lava; like casting chaff into a storm . . .

Thirty-one

Travelling south

They travelled by night to avoid attracting attention; by day they slept under hedgerows, behind rocks and in copses while one or other of the mercenary band stood watch. Slung over a mule with his hands tied and a gag in his mouth, Saro Vingo felt like the poor cargo he was in the eyes of this tough troop of men and women: produce which would be traded for the best price when they reached his home town. The ignominy shamed him; but worst of all was Katla Aransen’s refusal to accept his apology for the death of her friend.

When he had tried to explain it was his only recourse to prevent Erno from revealing more information about the deathstone which would enable the Lord of Cantara to scour his enemies from the face of the earth, Katla had fixed him with a look of unremitting scepticism and then gagged him with her own ungentle hands. ‘Do you think I am such a fool that I will stand by and listen to such nonsense?’ she had sneered. ‘If you were truly concerned that Tycho Issian was such a threat to the world, why then did you not strike
him
dead with your little ball of glass, rather than my brave cousin, who risked himself to save my life?’