Warhost of Vastmark

The fleet he had burned in Werpoint harbour to buy respite had won him precious little leeway. Alestron’s troops would be hounding his heels well ahead of the advent of spring.

Clad in a shirt for the first time in weeks, the light in his hair like spilled ink, Arithon stood to one side of the hull of his sole salvaged brigantine. Her new decking caulked and made watertight only that morning, she wore the strong reek of oakum and tar, and a linseed aroma of new paint. In sheer, smooth lines, an axe forged to cleave through deep waters, she seemed to strain toward the surface of the bay. The yard workers who crowded in excitement by the strand could not help but feel proud of their accomplishment. If any of them knew of the warhost days away, none broached the subject to Tharrick.

The man who replaced the master shipwright and another one chosen for fast reflexes knelt beneath a keel sheathed in gleaming copper. They pounded now to split out the blocks that braced the craft on her ways. The high cries of gulls, and the clangour of steel mauls marked the moment as the hull shifted, her birth pang a creak like the stretched joints of a wrestler.

Fiark’s shout rang down from his perch on the bowsprit. Content to hang in Arithon’s shadow, Feylind flung both arms around his waist in a hug of elfin delight.

Rankly sweating in a tunic too hot for the tropics, Dakar observed the proceedings in glowering sobriety. ‘Their faith is vast,’ he said, and sniffed down his nose, as the eighty-foot vessel shifted and squealed on her ways. Her quivering hesitancy marked the start of her plunge toward her first kiss of salt waters. ‘I wouldn’t be caught under that thing. Not drunken, insane, nor for the gold to founder a trade galley.’

From his place in deep shadow, arrested between mallet strokes, the shipwright cracked a dry laugh. ‘And well might you worry, at that! A fat sot like you, down here? First off, if you’d fit, the Fatemaster would as likely snatch at his chance to turn your lazy bones beneath the Wheel.’

Dakar’s outraged epithet became lost as the hull gave way into motion with a slide of wood on wood. She splashed onto the aquamarine breast of the shallows, adrift, to the twins’ paired shrieks of exuberance.

While sailhands recruited from the south shore taverns waded after, to catch lines and launch longboats to warp the floated hull to a mooring, Tharrick was among the first to approach and offer his congratulations. Arithon returned a quick, brilliant smile that faded as the former guardsman’s gaze shifted to encompass the smaller hull still poised forlorn on her ways.

Understanding flashed wordless between them. Of ten ships planned at the outset, one brigantine in the water might be all that Arithon’s best effort could garner. As fishermen said, his luck neared the shoals; the hour was too late to save the second.

Whatever awaited in the uncertain future, the workers were spared trepidation. A beer cask was rolled out and broached in the yard to celebrate the launching of Khetienn, named in the old tongue for the black-and-gold leopard renowned as the s’Ffalenn royal arms. While the mean schedule slackened and men made merry to the pipe of a sailor’s tin whistle, Arithon, and most notably, Dakar, were conspicuous for their early absence. If the new vessel’s master pleaded weariness, the Mad Prophet was parted from the beer cask in vociferous, howling disagreement. Too careful to drink in the company of men his earlier rancour had injured, Tharrick slipped away the moment he drained his first tankard.

The boom of winter breakers rolled like thunder down the sleepy village lanes. Slanted in afternoon shadows through the storm-stripped palms, he strode past the fishnets hung out to dry and entered the widow’s cottage. The day’s homey smell of fish stew and bacon was cut by a disquieting murmur of voices.

The twins were not in their place by the hob, shelling peas and squalling in argument. In a quiet unnatural for their absence, a meeting was in progress around the trestle in Jinesse’s kitchen.

‘Tonight,’ Arithon was saying, his tone subdued to regret, ‘I’ll slip Talliarthe’s mooring on the ebb tide and sail her straight offshore. No trace will be left to follow. The workers are paid through the next fortnight. Ones loyal to me will ship out one by one, the last out to scuttle the little hull. When the Prince of the West arrives with his galleys, he’ll find no sign of my presence, and no cause to engage bloody war.’

‘What of the Khetienn?’ the widow protested. ‘You can’t just abandon her. Not when she’s cost all you own to get launched.’

Arithon flipped her a sweet, patient smile. ‘We’ve made disposition.’ Across a glower of palpable venom from the Mad Prophet, he added, ‘Dakar held a dicing debt over a trader captain out of Innish. His galley lies off Shaddorn to slip in by night and take my new vessel under tow. Her sails, her mastcaps and chain are crated and packed in her hold along with the best of the yard’s tools. The riggers at Southshire will complete her on credit against a share of her first run’s cargo. With luck, I’ll stay free to redeem her.’

A board creaked to Tharrick’s shifted weight. Arithon started erect, noted whose presence blocked the doorway, then settled back in maddening complacence.

‘You dare much to trust me,’ said the exiled captain. ‘Should you not show alarm? It’s my own duke’s army inbound toward this village. A word from me and that hull could be impounded at Southshire.’

‘Will you speak, then?’ challenged Arithon. Coiled and still as the leopard his brigantine honoured, the calm he maintained as he waited for answer built to a frightening presence. In the widow’s cosy kitchen, the quiet felt isolate, a bubble blown out of glass. The sounds outside the window, of surf and crying gulls and the distant shouts of fishermen snatched by the wind from the decks of a lugger, assumed the unreality of a daydream.

Tharrick found himself unable to sustain the blank patience implied by those level, green eyes. ‘Why should you take such a risk?’

Arithon’s answer surprised him. ‘Because your master abandoned all faith in you. The least I can do as the cause of your exile is to leave you the chance to prove out your duke’s unfair judgment.’

‘You’d allow me to ruin you in truth,’ Tharrick said.

‘Once, that was everything you wanted.’ Motionless Arithon remained, while the widow at his shoulder held her breath.

The appeal in Jinesse’s regard made Tharrick speak out at last. ‘No.’ He had worked himself to blisters seeing that brigantine launched. Respect before trust tempered his final decision. ‘Dharkaron Avenger bear witness, you’ve treated me nothing but fairly. Betrayal of your interests will not be forthcoming from me.’

Arithon’s taut brows lifted. He smiled. The one word of thanks, the banal platitude he instinctively avoided served to sharpen the impact of his pleasure. His honest emotion struck and shattered the reserve of the guardsman who had set out to wrong him.

Tharrick straightened his shoulders, restored to dignity and manhood.

Then the widow’s shy nod of approval vaulted him on to rash impulse. ‘Don’t scuttle the other brigantine. I could stay on, see her launched. If Alestron’s galleys are delayed a few days, she could be jury-rigged out on a lugger’s gear.’

Arithon pushed to his feet in astonishment. ‘I would never on my life presume to ask so much!’ He embarked on a scrutiny that seemed to burn Tharrick through to the marrow, then finally shrugged, embarrassed and caught at a loss. ‘I need not give warning. You well know the odds you must face, and the risk.’

Tharrick agreed. ‘I could fail.’

Arithon was curt. ‘You could find yourself horribly compromised.’ Small need to imagine how Duke Bransian might punish what would be seen as a second betrayal.

‘Let me try,’ the former guardsman begged. He suddenly felt the recovery of his honour hung on the strength of the sacrifice. ‘I give you my oath, I’ll do all I can to save what my pride set in jeopardy.’

‘You’ll not swear to me,’ Arithon said, his rebuff fallen shy of the vehemence his cornered straits warranted. ‘I’ll be far offshore and beyond Lysaer’s reach. No. If you swear, you’ll bind your promise to the widow Jinesse. She’s the only friend I have in this village who’s chosen to stay with the risk of knowing my identity.’

‘Demon!’ Amazed to near anger by the trap that would hold him to the absolute letter of loyalty, Tharrick asked, ‘Have you always weighed hearts like the Fatemaster?’ For of all spirits living, he would not see the widow let down.

The white flash of a grin, as Arithon caught his hand in a firm clasp of amity. ‘I judge no one. Your duke in Alestron was a man blind to merit. If the labourers in the yard will support your mad plan, I’d bless my good luck and be grateful.’

Sealed to undertake the adventure on a handshake, Tharrick stepped back. The Master of Shadow gave a nod in salute to Jinesse, who hung back in mute anguish by the hob. With no more farewell than that, he turned in neat grace toward the doorway.

Dakar heaved to his feet and followed after, plaintive and resigned as a cur snapped on a short leash. ‘We could at least stay for supper,’ he lamented. ‘Jinesse spreads a much better table than you do.’

His entreaty raised no reply.

The last Merior saw of Rathain’s prince was his spare silhouette as he launched Talliarthe’s tiny dory against the silver-laced breakers on the strand. His bright, pealing laugh carried back through the rush of the tide’s ebb.

‘Very well, Dakar. I’ve laid in spirits to ease your sick stomach on the voyage. But you’ll broach the cask after we’ve rowed to the mooring. Once aboard the sloop, you can drink yourself senseless. But damned if I’ll strain myself hauling your deadweight over the rail on a halyard.’

Fugitives

The twins stowed away. No one discovered their absence until dawn, when the luggers sailed out to fish. By then, the bayside mooring that had secured the Khetienn bobbed empty. The line of the horizon cut the sea’s edge in an unbroken band, Arithon’s sloop Talliarthe long gone.

The widow’s tearful questions raised no answers. No one had seen the children slip into the water by moonlight the previous night. No small, dripping forms had been noticed, climbing the wet length of a mooring chain, and no dory was missed from the beach.

‘They could be anywhere,’ Jinesse cried, her thin shoulders cradled in Tharrick’s burly arms and her face pressed against his broad chest. Memories of Innish’s quayside impelled her to jagged edged grief. ‘Ten years of age is far too young to be out and about in the world.’

Tharrick stroked the blonde hair she had been too distraught to bind up. ‘They’re not alone,’ he assured her. ‘If they hid in the sloop, they’ll come to no harm. Arithon cares for them like an older brother.’

‘What if they stowed aboard the Khetienn?’ Jinesse’s voice split. ‘Ath preserve them, Southshire’s a sailor’s port! Even so young, Fiark could be snatched and sold to a trade galley! And Feylind -’ She ran out of nerve to voice her anxieties over brothels.

‘No.’ Tharrick grasped her tighter and gave her a gentle shake. ‘Arithon’s two most trusted hands sailed with that brigantine. Think soundly! His discipline’s forthright. His men fear his temper like Dharkaron himself, or believe this, I’d have found my throat slit on the first dark night since he freed me.’

Every labourer in the yard knew their master’s fondness for the twins. The measure of his censure when rules were transgressed, or a mob grew unruly with drink, was an experience never to be forgotten. Arithon’s response to Tharrick’s rough handling had been roundly unpleasant, had left joiners twice his size and strength cowed and cringing. It would be worth a man’s life to misuse the widow’s children, or allow any harm to befall them.

While Jinesse’s composure crumpled into sobs, Tharrick bundled her close and swept her out of the fog and back to the snug comfort of her cottage.

‘It’s eighty leagues overland to Southshire!’ he cried as she lunged to snatch her shawl and chase the fish wagon. ‘You won’t make it off the Scimlade peninsula before that army’s sealed the roads.’

Which facts held an unkindly truth. Made by plodding oxcart, such a journey would take weeks. A fishing lugger might reach the south-coast in a fortnight, but to seek out the Khetienn with an army infesting Alland was to jeopardize Arithon’s anonymity. Jinesse sank down at her kitchen table, her face muffled in her hands and her shoulders bowed in despair. If the twins were away with the Talliarthe, their position with the Shadow Master would become the more endangered through a search to attempt their recovery.

Tharrick’s large hands rubbed the nape of her neck. ‘I share your concern. You won’t be alone. Once the little brigantine’s launched, I’ll take it upon myself to sail to Southshire.’ The promise felt right, once made. ‘Whether your young ones have gone there with Khetienn, or if they’ve thrust their bothersome presence upon Arithon, I’ll track them both down and see them safe.’