Sholf said, “If they keep the treaty, then I think it right that we do, too. Well?” And he turned to the others. “Do I ride down to warn their prince?”
Mardric laughed. “That fool? Save yourself a trip. Send one of their patrol flunkies.” He waved toward the window, which was shuttered against listeners despite the still summer air. The resultant stuffiness did not help anyone’s temper.
Beyond that window a small contingent of Marlovans patrolled the harbor and the city, under strict orders from their prince not to interfere unless there was violence.
Their prince.
“A fool from whom you never did find out any information, ” Sholf retorted, and the others laughed.
They all knew the story, for the Marlovan prince (had he really believed he was unknown when he called himself Sponge?) had either from ignorance or arrogance made no pretense of hiding his infatuation with one of Mardric’s spies. Dallo, the spy, had been assigned to work his way among the Marlovan forces by whatever means, and unexpectedly attracted their leader himself with no more than a glance. But the very day after the spy declared he had only to snap his fingers and the prince would come to heel and give them whatever aid and information they demanded, the prince had as suddenly departed.
Sholf said, “If you have not noticed—I have—they don’t make decisions without his sanction. From everything I hear, young as he is, and foolish as he might have been when he was among us, they abide by his decisions.” He paused, and observed shrugs, nods, tipped heads of agreement or at least acceptance. The news coming up the peninsula from all their various contacts seemed to agree.
“Further, unlike his uncle and those his uncle appointed over us—” Their reactions varied, though the impetus was a universal disgust and anger at the cruelties of the Jarl Kepri-Davan and his son and heir. “Unlike them, this young prince appears to regard the treaty as binding. So far he has honored their promises in his judgments.”
“How can you blind yourself so willfully?” Mardric retorted. “Does it comfort you? Was it so easy to forget Nalma in the vinelands and her friends, much less everything done after?”
A murmur of protest, of uneasiness, rose.
Sholf said, “I have never forgotten Nalma. Or her friends. Or any of the other young women the Marlovan prince has murdered—except I still wonder, after all this time, why have no other names or towns have been named in this murderous rampage? Or why the king of Idayago himself never talked about it when he signed the treaty?”
“You deny that my own brother saw Nalma and the others in that house before they were Disappeared?” Mardric retorted.
“I do not,” Sholf answered. “I have heard, vividly, what that house looked like, all that blood. All the more peculiar that no word of other murders has reached me.”
“They don’t come out of fear, of course,” the old woman said, but Sholf heard the question in her voice.
So he said, “We are not going to answer those questions now. What we do have to answer is: what do we do to prepare for imminent attack? Choose, council. Do we stand to the last man or woman, or do we invoke the treaty and let the Marlovans stand in our place?”
Again he paused, again he saw subtle signs of concession.
“If the winds change soon, there will be no time for the back-and-forth of messengers. Are we agreed that if the Marlovan conquerors abide by the treaty and come in force to our defense, we will abide by it, too? However unwillingly?”
They all signified agreement. Mardric last, lounging there with his superior smile; Sholf waited in patient silence until Mardric said, “Aye.”
“Then I will leave today and ride down the coast to Ala Larkadhe.”
For Evred Montrei-Vayir, second son of the Marlovan king, his first command could be summed up as a frustrating series of travels back and forth along the Andahi Pass to hearings for petty crimes. Again and again he listened to accusations from both sides for crimes petty and not so petty, such as the wholesale burning of cotton fields just so the evil Marlovans would not get the profits.
He knew some of these burnings were the last protests against the harshness of the Kepri-Davans, who had been initially placed by the Harskialdna as the guards of the north end of the Andahi Pass. But that did not explain the bitterness in the eastern portion of Idayago in particular, the sullen, deliberate resistance. Something else was amiss, though as yet he had not discovered what. He knew this: his judgment, however fair, could not satisfy emotional reaction—either his or the Idayagans’—he had to wall away his feelings and strive to find a balance between the treaty stipulations and Marlovan law.
There was another mystery, perhaps connected, perhaps not. He was certain that, despite apparent evidence, the Idayagans had not ambushed and murdered his former commander, Tanrid-Laef Algara-Vayir, brother to his old academy mate Inda.
Hawkeye Yvana-Vayir, arriving as Tanrid’s replacement, had brought reports of attacks all the way down to the southern border of Iasca Leror. It was land warfare that they all understood, had been trained to understand. But the enemies now were in ships: pirates sent by the Venn.
As the summer sun slanted more northward each day Harbormaster Sholf traveled down from Olara’s mountainous peninsula to Ala Larkadhe.
There seemed to be an order for the troops to pass along everyone who wished to speak to the Marlovan prince, and so Sholf was handed off from patrol to patrol, scout to sentry, until he reached the enormous castle with the weird tower made of ancient snow-white material that was not quite stone. The wind from the mountains brought an almost subliminal hum. Wind harps. Testament to unimaginably different customs as lived by their ancestors.
Tired, thirsty, the harbormaster was conducted to the room the Marlovan prince had taken for his headquarters, the carved, gilded furnishings shoved to the walls and replaced by a massive table littered with papers.
The room was full of men, all facing the young prince whom Sholf recognized from his stay at the Nob last spring: tall, dark red hair pulled high on the back of his head and hanging down between his shoulder blades in the singular style all these warriors affected, watchful hazel eyes below an intelligent brow.
Sholf ignored the other men. His attention stayed on the prince, who stood before a great map covered with indecipherable marks. He wore a gray warrior’s coat no different from any of his men’s, tight through muscular shoulders and chest, tied at the waist with a knife thrust through the sash, wide-skirted for riding on the world-famous horses.
The young man, scarcely out of boyhood, looked tired and tense, but his manner was as courteous as it had been last spring.
Sholf said in his diffident Iascan, “We have received word from a Delfin Islander, relayed through our fishing fleet. A small fleet of Venn and many pirate allies were seen north of the strait. The Delfin Islanders say as soon as the wind changes the pirates are going to attack the Nob in force once again. They say that if the pirates take it, the Venn this time mean to hold it.”
The prince turned to the tall, long-faced man standing farthest from the center of the room—but from where he could observe it in its entirety. He was Captain Sindan, not just the king’s own Runner, but Captain of the Runners. Sholf had been told dismissively that Sindan had given up the military command he’d earned to remain a Runner— thus staying in the royal city at the king’s side.
Many thought that he’d thus given up influence, but the most far-sighted among Idayagan and Olaran councils had subsequently come to the conclusion that in fact, Sindan had far more influence and therefore more power than any single man, excepting only the king and his brother.
It was he who had written the Idayagan and Olaran treaty.
Sindan did not speak, but some minute change in his expression seemed to reassure Evred.
The prince said, “The treaty does require us to defend these lands.”
The middle-aged, grizzled warrior at the prince’s other side frowned down at the map. This man had to be the new Jarl,
called Dewlap Arveas, sent in to replace the horrible Kepri-Davan.
Arveas said, not hiding his skepticism, “Why attack and hold the end of a peninsula? It’s surrounded on three sides by nothing but ocean, and the fourth is solid mountain. They can’t possibly mount an invasion with any speed or secrecy along that narrow coast road.” He waved his hand in a circle. “No military value.”
Sholf said, “I cannot address questions of military value, for we are not military people.” He could not keep dryness from his tone, though the Marlovans did not react. “If the pirates destroy us once again and the Venn settle in, they can make of our harbor a port convenient to their long-range plans for your southern coast.”
Arveas said, “Ah! Yes. Repair, refit, resupply. But from the sea.”
Another young man, with bright yellow hair and a sharp-cut chin like the prince’s, made an impatient movement. This had to be Hawkeye Yvana-Vayir, whose mother had been sister to the Marlovan king and who as a youth had fought in the battle that the Idayagans had lost, the price their kingdom. If the rumors were true, he had been one of the older prince’s gang who went on a rampage killing unarmed girls.
The young man glanced at his cousin, then back at Sholf. “You want us to come in force to defend you.”
Sholf said, “It was in your treaty, signed by your king.”
Again silence, but of a different quality. They all felt the weight of decision, measured by the tension in the young prince’s face.
Evred could see in Arveas’ skeptical raised brows, in Hawkeye’s twisted mouth, they did not believe the man.
“Please, make yourself comfortable,” Evred responded, signing to one of the guards at the door. “I promise an answer as soon as possible.”
Sholf’s mouth tightened. “I shall depart on the morrow, answer or no.”
Evred couldn’t resist asking, “And?”
Sholf turned his way, the lines in his face deep. “We’ll try again to defend what’s ours.”
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.