Goddess of the Ice Realm Page 3

  Sharina felt a surge of pride: in her brother, in her friends, and in the Kingdom of the Isles that they and she were bringing back to life, so that there would be peace and justice for people like the ones cheering them on; peace and justice for the first time in a thousand years.

  No matter what wizards or usurpers tried to do to stop them!

  “Prince Garric of Haft!” the crowd called.

  ***

  Cashel stood by the forecastle rail, careful not to rest his weight on it. The hoardings were canvas over a wicker backing, and salt had dried the wood of the frame timbers, leaving long splits. The structure was meant to keep head seas from combing over the prow, not to support the weight of a man Cashel’s size.

  Cashel could no more swim than he could fly. If he fell overboard he’d try to grab an oar as the ship drove past him, but he’d just as soon not put the question to the test.

  For display when they entered Carcosa, the fighting tower was set up in the bow. Its walls were canvas-covered wicker—they were painted to look like stone—but the cross-braced frame was of timbers as sturdy as any to be found on the ship. It had to be to take the recoil of the balista mounted on top.

  Today the weapon wasn’t cocked, of course. Instead of serviceable iron the head of the bolt in the weapon’s trough was of brass polished to look like gold. The four crewmen wore plumes on their helmets and dangled silver gorgets across their linen corselets. The padded linen gave them some protection but was flexible enough they could crank the windlass to draw back the balista’s arms.

  Sharina seemed cheerful again. Her hand was on Cashel’s left shoulder as she stood in companionable silence, which suited him fine. Until he’d left Barca’s Hamlet less than a year ago, he’d spent more time with sheep than with humans. Since then he’d learned that many folks thought that unless people were talking there was something the matter. For the life of him, Cashel couldn’t understand that.

  Cashel was pretty much pleased with the world and with his part in it. That was mostly the case with him. He supposed that was because he didn’t have big problems like Garric, who had to keep the kingdom from crashing into ruin and taking everybody’s lives and hopes with it.

  All Cashel needed to do were simple things like keeping safe whatever he’d been told to take care of. Once that’d meant sheep; now as apt as not it was a person, and that was all right too. He squeezed Sharina gently with his left hand, just reassuring himself that she really was there.

  The only trouble that Cashel’d ever found too big for him was when he’d fallen in love with Sharina os-Kenset. She was beautiful, a scholar like her brother, and she’d inherit half the inn—making her by the standards of the borough a wealthy woman. Cashel had known that she was far too good for him.

  And so she was: he remained sure of that, as sure as he was that she loved him anyway. Cashel couldn’t imagine why, but when he woke every morning he thanked the Shepherd for granting him a gift greater than any he would have dared to ask.

  Sharina leaned forward slightly, lost in her own reverie; the railing creaked. Wicker alone would be strong enough to support her weight—though tall, wasn’t a blocky mass like Cashel—but his grip tightened reflexively. She patted his hand reassuringly and eased back to humor him.

  Thought of the way salt dried wood made Cashel glance at his quarterstaff, a wrist-thick shaft of hickory, seven feet long and as straight as a sunbeam. He’d made the staff himself as a boy, taking one perfect limb as his payment for felling the tree for a neighbor. He’d shaved and polished the wood, and in the years since he’d continued to wipe it down with wads of raw, lanolin-rich wool whenever he had the opportunity. The staff had taken hard knocks and given harder ones; but today its surface remained as ripplingly smooth as a wheel-turned jug.

  Sea air had painted a tinge of rust over the quarterstaff’s black iron buttcaps, but that could wait till they were on land again. If Cashel wiped them now, they’d rust over again in less time than it’d taken him to clean them. He’d have liked to rub the hickory, though, but doing that would’ve meant taking his arm from around Sharina’s waist. The quarterstaff, trusty companion though it was, didn’t need his attention that bad.

  Cashel looked past the girl nestled against his shoulder. Their ship—Garric’s ship—was two full lengths ahead of the rest of the warships. Following them was a second line, of light craft like the one Ilna travelled on with her beau Chalcus and also of triremes used for transport. Those had only one bank of oarsmen with the rest of the space in the narrow hulls given over to cargo and soldiers who hadn’t been trained to pull an oar—another kind of cargo so far as the sailors were concerned.

  To count the ships Cashel would’ve needed a bag of dried peas, like he’d have used to tally a flock of sheep. There were many times more ships than he had fingers, though. Sharina was right: if Garric said jump, Count Lascarg would ask “How high?”

  He felt his skin prickle; an itchy feeling like the first hint of sunburn after a day’s plowing. Cashel’s brows knitted in a frown. It wasn’t sunburn today; and the other thing that gave him that sort of feeling was wizardry close by.

  “Tenoctris?” he said, disengaging himself from Sharina without bothering to explain. “Are you working a...?”

  But he could see that she wasn’t, so he didn’t bother to finish the question. If not Tenoctris, then...?

  The wizard sat down cross-legged more forcefully than could’ve been good for her old bones. She had a satchel of books and the paraphernalia of her art—Cashel carried it for her when the two of them were together—but she didn’t bother with it now. Instead, she took a split of bamboo from the sleeve of her court robe and drew a pentacle with it on the soft pine deck between her knees.

  Using the bamboo where a less-cautious wizard would use a specially-forged athame, she tapped the flats of the pentacle murmuring, “Cbesi niapha amara....” in time with her beat. A spark of crimson wizardlight winked into existence in the center of the symbol, waxing and waning as she spoke.

  Cashel shifted his body slightly to hide Tenoctris as much as possible from the sight of nearby sailors. He trusted the old woman’s skill and instincts both; but for most people, wizardry was as surely to be avoided as the plague. Nobody’d object aloud to what a friend of Prince Garric was doing, but the business would make people who saw it uncomfortable or worse. Cashel didn’t want that if he could help it.

  Sharina spread her court robe with both hands, providing an even better screen than Cashel’s bulk. Her eyes looked questions, but she didn’t speak. She knew that Cashel or Tenoctris would tell her if there was something she needed to know, and she didn’t want to distract them from what might mean everybody’s life or death.

  “I don’t see anything,” Cashel said quietly. “It just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Ialada...,” Tenoctris said. “Iale.”

  The spark suddenly cascaded into a shape or series of shapes, like a wall of damp sand shivering to repose; an instant later it blinked out. Tenoctris dropped her wand and swayed, her frail body drained by practicing her art. Cashel steadied her with his left hand.

  Some people believed that wizards merely waved their wands and their wishes took form effortlessly; those folk had never seen real wizardry. Cashel’s muscles allowed him to lift weights that few other men could manage, but his feats didn’t become easy simply because they were possible. Similarly, a truly powerful wizard could move mountains or tear chasms in time—but that work had a cost.

  Tenoctris looked up. “Garric’s in danger,” she said, forcing the words out in a whisper. “I can’t see what—there’s a wall my art can’t penetrate. But it’s something terrible, rushing toward Garric.”

  “Sound the alarm!” Sharina called. Her clear voice rang over the grunt of hundreds of oarsmen and the thump of their bodies slamming down on their benches at the end of each stroke. “We’re being attacked!”

  “Watch her!” Cashel said, releasing Tenoctris so that he could
grip his quarterstaff in both hands. Sharina would hold the old wizard if she still needed help to keep upright. As for Cashel himself—

  He stepped past the women and leaped outward to the long wale supporting the rowlocks for the uppermost banks of oars. The narrow deck was clogged with Blood Eagles slipping the gilt balls from their spearpoints, turning them back from ceremonial staffs into weapons. Rather than force his way through the soldiers, Cashel was going around.

  “Keep clear!” he bellowed, running like a healthy young ox heading for water after a day of plowing. The wale creaked, and the quinquereme itself wobbled as Cashel’s weight pounded along so far outboard.

  The young aide at Garric’s side began to hammer on the rectangular alarm gong set in a framework on the stern railing. The boy’s eyes were open and staring.

  “Keep clear!”

  Chapter 2

  “Sound the alarm!” Garric said. He didn’t know what was going on, but he drew his sword with no more than a whisper against the iron lip of the scabbard.

  Cashel was running sternward, so the danger wasn’t in the bow. Garric turned, looking past the high, curving sternpost. The hundred and twenty-seven ships of the royal fleet were arrayed behind the Shepherd in order as good as that of so many soldiers at drill. He didn’t see any danger, neither in the water foaming past in the oar-thresh nor in the sea to the horizon or the clouds above it. Rain perhaps, but from this sky it would be warm and slow, not gusts with lightning slashes.

  There was danger somewhere. The warning must have come from Tenoctris, and she didn’t make mistakes.

  The trumpet and coiled horn on Admiral Zettin’s Queen of Ornifal blew together, the raucous call that signaled fleet action. Zettin was commander of the fleet just as Lord Waldron commanded the royal army: Garric could give orders to either man and expect them to be obeyed before they were fully out of his mouth, but the prince didn’t get involved in the mechanics of maneuvering ships or battalions.

  The prince had other matters to take care of. At the moment, the most important was learning what was the matter.

  “Clear the yards, you stupid scuts!” Master Lobon shouted to the sailors who’d gone aloft for show. “Action stations, don’t you hear!”

  Wiping his face with the end of his red sash-of-office, he snarled—to the gods, not to any of the humans nearby, “Sister take me, the mast’s raised! Won’t that be a fine thing if we have to ram?”

  King Carus took in the world through Garric’s eyes, but he analyzed what he saw with the mind of the foremost man of war who’d ever ruled the Isles. A glint on a hilltop that Garric assumed was merely a quartz outcrop was to Carus a possible ambush; the tension in a courtier’s posture might precede an assassination attempt. Carus had personal experience of those threats and a thousand more—

  But he saw nothing of concern in the surrounding seascape.

  “Your majesty—” Zettin called through a speaking horn from the stern of his flagship. Water spewed up as his oarsmen laid into their looms with renewed vigor, trying to close the gap they’d allowed to open between them and Garric’s ship.

  “Your majesty?” called the captain of the Blood Eagles aboard the Shepherd. He held his men in a double rank facing both sides of the ship. Their spears slanted forward, the points winking, and their left arms advanced their shields slightly.

  Lerdain was saying something also, though Garric couldn’t hear him through the racket of the gong he hammered. Garric pointed at the youth and bellowed, “Enough! Let me think!”

  Lerdain froze. Garric knew he wasn’t being fair—the lad was only doing what he was supposed to—but there wasn’t time to worry about that. The gong continued to vibrate on a note that drilled all the way to Garric’s marrow. He tore it from its mountings with his left hand and hurled it into the sea. Water danced briefly as the bronze block sank through the waves.

  Cashel hopped onto the quarterdeck, brushing the end of the rail as he went past; it broke. “Tenoctris says you’re in danger but she doesn’t know what from!” he said, turning to face outward. His hands were on either side of his quarterstaff’s balance, ready to swing or stab, whichever the situation called for.

  “Well, at least I know where I stand!” Garric said, turning so his back was to Cashel’s.

  With my friends, and with a sword in my hand. What better place was there?

  He and the warrior king in his mind laughed amid the shouts and the horn signals.

  ***

  The gong’s rich note echoed between sea and sky. They could hear it in Barca’s Hamlet, Ilna thought, and didn’t chide herself for exaggerating as she usually would’ve done.

  As the first note sounded, Chalcus began to survey the horizon. He didn’t unsheathe his sword or razor-sharp dagger, but he was as tautly poised as a drawn bowstring.

  “Ilna, what’s the bell?” Merota said, only a child again as she tugged on Ilna’s outer tunic. Merota had seen a great deal of horror in her short life. She’d come through it, and given a moment to compose herself she’d come through this as well; but the sudden clanging shocked her into panic. “What’s going to happen?”

  Chalcus spun and pointed his left index finger at the child’s face. “You!” he said. “Crouch under the sternpost behind Glomer, that’s as safe a place as there is. Now!”

  “Yes, Chalcus,” Merota said, scuttling past the frozen helmsman to obey. When she’d huddled behind the flutist who blew time for the oarsmen, she began bawling her eyes out.

  “Mistress?” Chalcus said softly; his eyes on Ilna’s, his muscles rigid as iron but not moving, not yet. Trumpets and horns called; the oarsmen looked up through the ventilators in frightened surmise, and half the sailors on deck were shouting something to someone or everyone. Captain Rhamis tugged Chalcus’ tunic much as Merota had done Ilna’s, and for much the same reason.

  Ilna looked down at the cords she’d been knotting and in their pattern saw the answer to the question Chalcus hadn’t put in words. Even strangers could have read the coarse fabric, though they’d have called it a feeling, an impression. To Ilna there was no more doubt than there was in the direction of dawn.

  “From there,” Ilna said, pointing northwest with her outstretched left arm. She hadn’t woven the pattern consciously, but a part of her mind had provided the information she was going to need. “An enemy, coming for Garric. Fast!”

  Chalcus’ gaze followed her arm. Ilna herself could see only swells and troughs; the sea was a little rougher than earlier this morning before the clouds darkened. The sailor shaded his eyes with his hands stacked, looking through the narrow slit between left palm and the back of his right hand.

  Chalcus turned to the helmsman. “Bring us along the Shepherd’s side,” he ordered crisply. Then, loud even against the clamor all around them, he shouted, “Glomer, play a sprint!”

  Glomer was the flutist. Ilna had marveled to see that within a day of boarding the Flying Fish in Donelle, Chalcus had known the name of every sailor aboard the vessel. Indeed, she was sure he could give an appraisal of each man’s strengths and weaknesses as clear as she herself could’ve done about the folk of Barca’s Hamlet where she’d lived all her life.

  “Hawsom—”

  The stroke oar, a swarthy man with huge shoulders and an opal the size of Ilna’s thumbnail in the septum of his nose.

  “—every man of you on the benches, put your backs into it like never before! We’re going to save our prince, that’s what we’re going to do!”

  He pointed to Glomer, seated where the upper bank of oarsmen could see him. The men down in the belly of the ship had little enough air, let alone a glimpse of the outside world; they took their cue from the men above them. “Play, I said!”

  The flutist had been sounding a dirge as the fleet proper marked time while Garric’s ship drew ahead. Now he swung into a jig; the high notes from the double-flute’s short right-hand pipe syncopated the lower tones of the left. Together the rowers breathed deeply, then drew bac
k on their oars with the deliberate motion of men well used to hard work and willing to continue till they dropped.

  The ship moved ahead. It didn’t leap like a kid in springitme, for though small compared to the quinqueremes it was still a massive object, but it accelerated noticeably.

  “No!” cried Rhamis, reaching out to grab the flute. “Our orders are to keep back from—”

  Chalcus caught the captain by throat and swordbelt. Rhamis barely had time to squawk before Chalcus flung him over the side.

  “Row!” Chalcus cried to the oarsmen. “It’s not your lousy lives you’re saving, it’s Prince Garric’s!”

  A coil of rope hung from a post on the afterdeck; it had something to do with the sails, now furled, Ilna supposed. She lifted it, judged her distance, and made sure one end of the rope was still attached to a cleat. Finally she spun the coil toward the floundering captain. It opened as it flew through the air, then splashed in the water in front of Rhamis; he had just enough presence of mind to seize it before it and he both sank.

  Ilna turned again. The captain would’ve been no great loss; but small goodnesses were worth doing, if they didn’t get in the way of larger ones... like saving Garric.

  “Pull, you sailormen!” Chalcus called over the flute’s skirl. “There’s a devil from Hell after your prince, but we’ll have something to say about that!”

  Ilna stepped into the far stern, behind Glomer’s stool, and offered her left hand to Merota huddling there. By squinting to the northwest she could see but a seeming oiliness on the surface, the track of something moving swiftly underwater toward Garric’s huge vessel. The Flying Fish continued to accelerate, but the other thing would be there ahead of them.

  “Pull!” and the men pulled with the strength of the damned grasping for salvation; but it would not be enough....

  ***

  Cashel waited, ready but not really tense. If there’d been more room on the Shepherd’s stern, he’d have given his quarterstaff a few trial spins to loosen his joints; there wasn’t, so he’d make do when the time came.