The Starfollowers of Coramonde (30 page)

The sharp
iron ram bit into the timbers of the sea-gates with hungry, resounding impact.
The Prince ran forward under a pavise-shield.

Soldiers
began dropping from the wall. Many missed the deck, sinking into the sea in
their armor. Others were stunned by their fall and didn’t rise, but several
made the drop and assembled themselves. Wavewatcher and Skewerskean took shields
too, and charged after their Liege. They engaged the southerners, sounding a
harsh chord of blades. The Prince snatched a lighted lamp from a locker, threw
aside one corner of a tarp and dashed it against the casks. Fire caught; in
moments the bow of the galleass and the sea around it were burning. The forward
castle caught quickly, becoming a roaring chimney. No more Southwastelanders
jumped from the wall.

The Mariners
retreated astern, driven as much by heat as swords. The Occhlon broke off the fight.
Casks were exploding, flinging globs of burning jelly in all directions. The
water sizzled with them, and a stench of black smoke expanded. Landlorn had
arranged for the forward tower’s supports to be weakened. Now it leaned toward
the bow, spilling burning fluid, coating the gates, creating an inferno.

Hunched
behind their shields, partially screened by drifting smoke, the three stripped
off their armor. Casting aside cutlasses and shields, they dove. A dart took
the Prince as he launched himself; his clean dive became a flaccid splash. He
didn’t surface. The two partners plunged down after him. Behind them, the
sea-gates stood in a curtain of flame.

In a moment
they were up again, Wavewatcher’s python of an arm clamped across his Liege’s
chest. With Skewerskean’s aid, he struggled through the churning sea, racing
against spreading fire. There was no sign of the southerners who’d dropped to
the galleass. The larger ships had been ordered to keep distance, but a small
boat put out with shields and willing oarsmen. The wall’s defenses were hidden
in black clouds. Fed by the wind, held fast by her iron ram, the pyre-galleass
was inextinguishable.

From
Wind
Gatherer
there were cheers from men in the rigging and on deck. The boat
drew alongside, and the Prince of the Waves acknowledged them weakly. Caps flew
and cutlasses glittered. Men clashed weapons on shields or thumped the deck,
repeating the name of the Prince Who Sails Forever.

Serene
welcomed her lord back, helping staunch a wound not half so bad as she’d
feared. He and the harpooner and chanteyman sat, dripping, backs against the
mast, sharing a flask of rum. Serene sat by her mate, brushing away tears, the
brine soaking her skirt. She mussed his hair and hugged him.

He drew her
to him and planted a salty kiss. “’Twas my last deed, I trow. Never shall I
leave your side again.”

The inferno
blazed on, the gates’ hinges weakening while the attackers bided their time.
The Occhlon couldn’t man their primary defenses for the heat and smoke; the
galleass’ forward castle had collapsed completely. With no threat of answering
fire, Mariner ships moved up to lob huge stones and other projectiles.

Consumed,
bombarded, the gates gave way in the end, peeling back their hinges. With a
shrill hiss, still barred together, they were dragged down by the sinking
galleass. The deep channel there left way for ships to advance over the sunken
vessel and wreckage.

The
Southwastelanders, lacking ships, had made other preparations. The first craft
into the harbor was pierced by sharpened wooden piles emplaced with points
beneath the surface. Landlorn called a dead halt while the stricken vessel’s
crew transferred to other ships. The Prince had foreseen this; scores of
Mariners stripped off armor and clothing, took shipwright’s saws, and slid into
the water, lithe as eels. They tackled the piles, diving deep and working
feverishly. A safe route was cleared, marked by inflated bladders anchored to
the sunken stumps. By late morning the advance was underway again.

At the
quayside it was combat on foot, with Lord Blacktarget in the van. The Crescent
Landers didn’t have time or room to off-load horses, and the isolated
Southwastelanders had slaughtered theirs for food. The first ships at the docks
were those with high, fortified decks, giving the invaders equal height with
the hasty breastwork thrown up by defenders. Still, two ships were overrun and
set afire, hampering the rest.

Men and women
struggled and fought on the quays. The boarding pike and hooked bill, the
cutlass, axe and scimitar all had their hour. Iron argument met steel rebuttal.

Swan, first
among the Glyffans to land, was confronted by a willing Occhlon with a pike,
its blade already showing red. He came in a low line to cut her legs away and,
ideally, follow through with a stab from his weapon’s steel-pointed butt. The
High Constable pivoted away shield-side. She cut; the pike head came in parry
with a return stroke for her exposed side. She backstepped, counter-parrying.

Instead of
riposting, she slid her blade down the pikestaff and lodged it at the narrow
grip and vamplate, drawing the Occhlon forward off balance. She swung the edge
of her shield into his face. He fell back, but clung to his weapon. She swung
and scored, shearing flesh off blue-white bone. He moaned and clasped at his
wound; she dispatched him. Sisters of the Line poured past her.

Fighting
spilled into side streets and alleys; neither side knew restraint. Combat went
from house to house, the desert men retreated, flung back twice from new
positions. The invaders kept the initiative, as cavalry began to appear from
the quays.

By late
afternoon, stern men and women of the Crescent Lands stalked through the smoky
streets, going from clash to new clash. Where there had been no quarter asked
or given, battered and demoralized Southwastelanders now began to surrender,
first in small numbers when cut off, later in outnumbered companies. By sunset,
the city belonged to the northerners. Only the central Keep above it remained
unconquered.

Aboard
Wind
Gatherer,
the Trustee turned to Landlorn. “Prince of the Waves, your share
is well done. But the moment of sail and sword is past. One more enemy will be
waiting, in the Keep. Time is here to test my puissance against Yardiff Bey’s.”

Swan was
dubious. Andre challenged, “Is it wise? Here, your strength is not so
absolute.”

“Granted, but
it should suffice. In any case, the thing must be done. He has waited; I am
expected.”

“Then,” he
let her know, “I will go at your side.”

Landlorn
bowed deeply. The Trustee reciprocated, and squeezed Serene’s hand. Swan
thought there was too much of farewell in it all. Surrounded by warriors and
swordswomen, the old woman made her patient way up to the summit and its Keep.
They found its portals open.

Lord
Blacktarget was already there. “These doors swung wide on their own accord when
you came.” The Trustee, lifting her Crook, ordained that the rest must wait
while she and Andre went in. Lord Blacktarget took exception.

“Madam, I
will not linger behind. If Glyffans may go in, the Commander of Veganá will.”

Veganáns and
Glyffans muttered among themselves, eyeing one another. Blacktarget hadn’t said
as much, but suspected he’d be deprived of spoils and prestige.

Andre would
have objected; his mother stopped him, seeing that the alliance could fall
apart. “He has right, however unwise. But My Lord Blacktarget, your hardy
enthusiasm for war is too fulsome for me by half. You would be well advised to
be wary.”

Red-faced, he
blustered, “Madam, Blacktarget is well able to fend for himself.”

They entered,
and followed the long, unlit curve of a corridor. Behind them, the doors closed
up by themselves. Then there was light from the Trustee’s Crook. There was no
search, no delay. At the end of the corridor, in a high, torchlit hall, Yardiff
Bey waited. Andre motioned for Lord Blacktarget to stay back, but the general,
all in his pride, marched in, and they had no moment to prevent him.

The sorcerer
stood in a limestone pulpit far above the floor, his silver occular gleaming in
the crimson light. He was calm and supremely self-assured. “He is Increased,”
Andre discerned.

Bey chuckled
quietly. “You see aright, worm. My Masters, well pleased, rewarded their
servant.”

The Trustee
spoke. “Your mission is fulfilled? Then, why are you here? Why have you not flown
back to your Necropolis in the south?”

“In due
course. I knew your armies would win the Isle from those starvelings and you
would deem yourself victorious and come here. Of the garrison I care not; if
they cost time and sapped northern numbers they were well spent. I tarried to
let you pit yourself against me.”

“If your
assignment is complete, yet you may have gained less than you think. The war
goes against you.”

The Hand of
Salamá laughed, making that act ugly, his robes rippling his mirth. “Your last
hope is gone. Listen: There was a final limb of the Lifetree, though its parent
plant had been thrown down. Rydolomo knew whither it had been taken, and left
the fact in-hidden within
Arrivals Macabre.
That could have threatened Shardishku-Salamá,
but that limb’s fate is known to me now; it is unmade. No other thing can
interfere with the schedule of my Masters, not all the arms-bearers on earth. I
have seen that gulling Trailingsword; this time it only beckons you to
oblivion. There is no avail for you, you will go no farther. Not even a step.”

Yardiff Bey
gestured, and the floor surged up beneath them.

But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath past away a
glory from the earth.

William Wordsworth

Ode:
Intimations of Immortality

ANDRE and the Trustee made Signs
of protection against upheaval, but Lord Blacktarget had none. The general
clung to the quaking floor. His two companions had attention only for the
sorcerer.

The ruler of
Glyffa held up her cursive-lettered Crook. An aura crackled around it, magic of
the Bright Lady. Roof beams groaned, and dust sifted down. The Keep shivered to
unleashed enchantment. Blasts of superheated air and icy wind chased one
another through the chamber. Thunder cracked from wall to wall.

Yardiff Bey
threw down the counterattack, holding his own extreme efforts in reserve, until
they should exhaust themselves. Their assault was fierce, but not so much so
that it penetrated his wards. The Trustee was weary, and the sorcerer’s new
power given by the Five would, he was positive, give him the duel.

But as the
deCourteneys built their offensives, they began to reinforce each other, as
with Andre and his sister. They weren’t overwhelming, but the Hand of Salamá
began to consider employing the wiles he’d prepared.

As mystic
discharges washed around him, striving to topple him, he conceived another
tactic. Resisting the deCourteneys, he took aside a little of his energies and
hurled a quick spell at the vulnerable Lord Blacktarget. The general went
cartwheeling, long campaigner’s cloak gathering around him, constricting breath
from his body. Its drawstring sank into the flesh of his neck. He writhed on
the stone, kicking, struggling.

Andre saw his
plight. Sweat flowed from the squat wizard’s face, his arts extended beyond any
previous mark. Without looking, the Trustee knew what had happened. Bey’s
resources were in excess of what she’d expected; she was very much in need of
her son’s sustenance. Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to make Andre let another
innocent die, as she had compelled him to do a century before.

“Succor him,”
she encouraged, her stare never leaving the Hand of Salamá. Andre rushed to
Lord Black-target. The general’s face was darkening, eyes bulging, bloated
tongue swelling in his mouth. It was as the sorcerer had intended. He’d
withheld much of his prepotency; now he revealed it, lashing out at the
Trustee. To Amon’s gift of augmented energy, Yardiff Bey had added his own
ingredient of treachery.

The old woman
staggered. Flooring blocks ground together beneath her feet, and overhead a
wide section of roof was flung away by backlashing of competing incantations.
She mustered her fullest effort, surprising Bey; it was more than he’d
estimated. Almost, it was enough. She contained his attack and launched one of
her own with an explosion of blue radiance from her Crook, jolting the Hand
backward with vehemence. His defense faltered. Again the Crook flared, but less
brightly. Depleted, with her son’s support diverted, her endurance failed. The
light in the rune-written Crook flickered. Andre, toiling at Blacktarget’s
side, sensed it and turned to give a moment’s aid to her. In that instant her
will let go. She was smashed down by the spells of Yardiff Bey as by the waters
of a dam that had burst.

The Crook
fell from her thin hand, dimming. The sorcerer’s magic flashed triumphantly.
Before he could pour into her the support she’d needed, Andre had seen her life
torn from her. The symbol of her Trusteeship lay dark now. At the same time,
the cord tightened around Blacktarget’s neck, killing him.

From Andre’s
throat came a wail. From depths of instinct, he invoked a wizardry that crashed
black fury at Bey’s defenses. The sorcerer’s most trusted protections were in
jeopardy; his antagonist’s attack, more vicious than Yardiff Bey had thought
him capable of making, was barely turned. The Hand of Salamá had to shore up
his endangered wards.

Andre, in his
wrath, called down his curse in a voice of such volume that cracks shot along the
stone walls. His enmity beamed at the Hand, who was pounded backward a second
time, bewildered at this new ferocity.

Andre raised
up his left fist, and blue lightning spat and snapped. He cried a spell of
destruction so terrible that the roof beams began to split and pull themselves
down. Bey parried desperately, bracing them back by his arts. Andre lifted his
right fist up, howled again, and blue magic of the deCourteneys shone from it
like a beacon. The stone floor fissured open with a rumble, belching deep-earth
fumes, tossing Yardiff Bey to his knees. For the first time, the sorcerer
thought of opening the ocular, but wasn’t sure that even that extremity would
help.