Master of the Cauldron Read online

  CHAPTER 2

  The conference table had been improvised out of ventilator gratings from the Shepherd set on column barrels and covered with a sparklingly white sail from the same ship. Only the vessels carrying Garric, Zettin, and Waldron, the three leaders of the Progress, had sails of bleached cloth; the yellow-gray color of natural wool wouldn't have had the same effect.

  Garric seated himself on a section of marble column. Troops had rolled it under the marquee, upended it, and created a throne by covering it with a fur-trimmed cloak of red velvet. He didn't have the slightest idea where the cloak came from.

  "For all that, lad," said Carus, "it's probably one of yours. No matter what I told my servants, they'd wind up packing what they thought was suitable clothing. Suitable for me!"

  Garric chuckled at the joke that nobody else had heard. So far as Carus was concerned, suitable clothing for a warrior—which he'd been, the greatest warrior of his age and perhaps ever in the history of the Isles—was boots, breeches, a sturdy tunic, and a cloak of raw wool that'd double as bedding in the cold and wet.

  Garric had similar tastes; indeed, he'd minded sheep on winter nights with less than that to wear. Palace functionaries, the servants and the officials who supervised them, had a very different notion of what a king should wear, though... and if a king was doing his job, he didn't have time to check his wardrobe to make sure it contained only the minimal kit he'd directed.

  Liane cleared her throat in polite question. She was seated on a folding stool at the Prince's right elbow, a respectful arm's length back from the conference table. Her travelling desk was on her lap; she'd laid out three wax notebooks and a small parchment scroll on its beechwood top.

  "I was remembering," Garric explained in a low voice, "that when I was a boy I thought that princes gave orders and everybody obeyed. Either I was wrong, or I'm a very ineffectual prince."

  "You're extremely effective," Liane murmured, her lips close to Garric's ear. "Not least because you see that's not how things happen."

  Lord Waldron sat in the place of honor to Garric's right. Organizing a camp for 20,000 men was an enormously complicated task, and Waldron was the final arbiter of arrangements. A middle-aged nobleman in cavalry boots knelt on his other side and spoke in urgent tones; several more officers bent close with the urgent expressions of little boys desperate to pee.

  A horse on shipboard takes up the space of ten men, Besides that problem, horses are likely to kick a vessel to pieces in a storm and then tread down men swimming in the water. The army which embarked on Ornifal carried no horses. Waldron had dismounted two cavalry regiments, however, to use as heavy infantry.

  That wasn't a choice Garric would've made, but he hadn't been willing to overrule his army commander. As Carus had pointed out, the cavalry regiments were recruited from the younger sons and retainers of northern Ornifal landowners, the class to which Waldron himself belonged. If the commander felt more comfortable in battle because he had a thousand of his own kind with him, then so much the better for the army and the kingdom.

  To Garric's left sat Lord Tadai, a wealthy financier from Valles who was as different from Waldron as either nobleman was from a Haft peasant like Garric. Tadai had general oversight of finance and the administrative adjustments—he and Garric both were careful never to use the word 'reforms'—which had to be made to fully integrate the governments of the separate islands into that of the Kingdom, for the first time in a thousand years. Tadai was fat and immaculately groomed; smiling, supercilious, and cold even in his passions.

  Despite the differences in their tastes and attitudes, Waldron and Tadai were were both intelligent enough to recognize the other's competence. They worked well together, though at a careful distance.

  For these negotiations, Tadai and Garric would do most of the talking, but the presence of a straight-backed, grizzled warrior like Waldron might be crucial to their success. Waldron had stood beside Valence III at the Stone Wall when Ornifal broke Sandrakkan twenty-two years before. Even silent, he reminded the delegates across the table of what had happened before and could easily happen again.

  Sharina sat behind the three principals, along with a score of military and civilian aides, people whose knowledge or expertise might be required. From beyond the marquee came the shouts of troops and sailors setting up camp, oblivious of the negotiations.

  "Everybody has his own priorities," Carus mused with a smile.

  A platoon of Blood Eagles ushered the Sandrakkan envoys up from the beach. Lord Attaper was at the head of his men; the guards must've spent the whole time since landing in polishing salt crust and verdigris from their armor. The guards divided as soon as they stepped under the marquee, lining up at either side and clashing their hobnails to a halt.

  According to Liane's direction, the royal officials rose to their feet when the delegation arrived. Only Garric remained on his throne. After a count of three he ordered, "You may all be seated!" in a parade-ground voice. His own subordinates sat down smoothly while the Sandrakkan officials shuffled to find places across the table.

  There were three men and a woman. "From the left," Liane muttered, "Lady Lelor, Chief Priestess of the temple of the Shepherd who Overwhelms; Marshal Renold, we've discussed him; Lord Morchan, he's a cousin of the Earl but he doesn't really have any power; and a palace official, I'll have his name in a few minutes."

  "Marshal Renold, I'm glad to meet you and your colleagues," Garric said calmly, his hands loosely crossed on the table before him. "Let me say at the outset that Earl Wildulf's loyalty to the kingdom is not in doubt, nor is my good will toward the Earl."

  "So long as you understand that Sandrakkan is independent, under a man whose lineage is senior to that of any other nobleman in the Isles," Marshal Renold grated. "If you've got that, then you can take your good will back to Valles with you and not worry yourself about our affairs any further!"

  "Well spoken, Renold!" Lord Morchan said, bobbing his wispy gray goatee. "That's it in a nutshell!"

  Ignoring the envoys—they weren't going to be the problem—Garric turned his head to the right and said, "Lord Waldron!" sharply enough to penetrate the sudden red rage that transfused the army commander. Quite apart from the deliberation of the insult, Waldron felt as an article of faith that no foreign noble was fit to be mentioned in the same breath as a Northern Ornifal gentleman.

  Waldron had started to rise, his hand reaching for the long cavalry sword hanging at his left side from a baldric. He eased back down and put his hands firmly on the sailcloth table before him. He was looking straight ahead, between Renold and Morchan rather than at either one of them; and certainly not at Prince Garric, to whom he knew he owed an apology which he wasn't calm enough yet to provide.

  Garric felt the image of Carus relax also. Flinging that sort of insult at men who'd spent their lives training to kill—and using their training—was certainly a way to get the conversation moving....

  Lord Tadai laughed like benevolent uncle. "Very droll, Lord Morchan," he said. "Oddly enough, Lord Waldron and I were just discussing that splendid estate of yours twelve miles down the coast. Sea View, isn't it? More olives and grapes than a man could ride around in a whole day. But Waldron and I wondered how you'd defend Sea View if two thousand... pirates, let us say, landed at dawn and began cutting down the trees that've taken so long to grow. Perhaps you could answer that for us, Marshal Renold?"

  Lord Morchan looked like he'd just sat nude in a nettle patch. His mouth dropped and he stared at Renold.

  The marshal banged his fist on the table—the grating on the Sandrakkan side tilted and would've fallen if the priestess hadn't caught it—and said, "Defend? Our cavalry would cut them all down, that's how we'd defend!"

  "Really?" Tadai said. "Just how many cavalrymen are there in Earl Wildulf's household? I ask because my specialty is finance, and I well know how expensive horsemen are."

  "That's none of your business," Renold said. His face had gone red, then white. "
That's none of your bloody business!"

  "He's got about five hundred troopers, Tadai," Lord Waldron said, leaning forward to look at the financier directly. He'd completely recovered his composure. "Lancers. And if he plans to send lancers against our skirmishers in an orchard—"

  "Pirates, please, Waldron," Lord Tadai said with an oily grin. "We're talking about an attack by pirates."

  "Right, pirates," Waldron agreed grimly. "Pirates with javelins, in an orchard. Well, all I can say is that I'd pay to watch it."

  "Somebody would pay, I'm sure," Tadai said. "But not any of us who are loyal to Valence III and his regent Prince Garric, here."

  "Thank you for that interesting digression, gentlemen," Garric said. "We need to get down to business, however. I propose that the first matter to be discussed is the confirmation of Lord Wildulf as Earl of Sandrakkan."

  Morchan and Renold were too busy with their own conversation, conducted in snarling undertones, to really absorb Garric's statement. The third male envoy—

  "Colchas or-Onail," Liane murmured, folding closed the limewood note that she'd just received from a nondescript man in the crowd. "Chief Clerk of the Office of the Privy Purse."

  —said nothing, but his expression hinted at a smile whenever his eyes flicked toward his disgruntled colleagues. The fact that they were nobles while Colchas was a commoner might have been part of that smile.

  The priestess, Lady Lelor, was probably the oldest member of the delegation, but she remained a strikingly handsome woman. Her black robe was well cut though severely plain, and her hair was piled high on subtly-carven ivory combs.

  "I'm not clear on what you mean about 'confirming Lord Wildulf,'" Lelor said in a tone of pleasant inquiry. "Since he's already Earl of Sandrakkan by right of descent."

  Garric smiled. At least two of the envoys weren't fools; or at any rate, hadn't yet proven themselves to be fools.

  "Her temple's across Market Square from the palace," Liane whispered in his ear. That information was probably written in one of her notebooks, but since Liane had been schooled at an academy of young ladies in Erdin, she'd have known it already. "It's on a high platform with an altar in the middle of the steps."

  "My thought, Lady Lelor," Garric said, "was that I'd crown Lord Wildulf on the platform of the Temple of the Shepherd Who Overwhelms, while you performed an Offering of Thanks. That permits the largest possible number of residents watch this evidence of King Valence's approval of his lordship."

  It would also explicitly demonstrate that the Earl of Sandrakkan wasn't independent of the government in Valles, let alone superior to it. A coronation made the point more politely than tearing a gap in the city walls and marching in at the head of the Royal Army, but even Lord Morchan—who seemed almost smart enough to come in out of the rain—could see that was a possible alternative.

  Marshal Renold looked from Morchan to Garric, then blinked. "I'm not sure that would be possible," he said. He'd lost the belligerance with which he'd opened the discussions.

  "I believe it would be," Lady Lelor said in a deliberate tone, her eyes on Renold. "I will certainly impress on Earl Wildulf my opinion that it would be a desirable way to display his authority."

  "I'm not sure—" Renold repeated, then clamped his mouth closed over the rest of whatever he might have said. The muscles at the back of his jaw were bunched. There was clearly no love lost between the two envoys.

  "I had more trouble with priesthoods than I did with usurpers," Carus said, shaking his head at the recollection. "I knew how to deal with a usurper, but I couldn't start looting the temple treasuries in loyal cities without having my own soldiers mutter that I was accursed of the gods."

  "Financial arrangements would remain unchanged following the coronation?" said Master Colchas. The clerk reminded Garric of a small dog: tense and ill-tempered, but well aware that if he snapped at the wrong person he was likely to be kicked into the next borough. "Quite frankly, the Earl's revenues don't fully cover expenses even now."

  "In the main, that's correct," Lord Tadai said easily. In contrast to Liane, who made a point of having relevant documents at hand though she almost never referred to them, the desk or table before Tadai was always perfectly clear. A squadron of clerks stood behind him, however, each with an open file box just in case. "That is, the assessment of the Third Indiction of Valence II won't be increased in the near future. You and I will discuss at another time a schedule for the payment of the arrears accrued during the past seven years."

  Colchas cringed. "I don't see...," he began, then covered his mouth with his hand as if in an access of grief. "Oh, dear," he muttered through his fingers. "Oh, dear."

  Garric permitted himself a smile. Valence III, his father by adoption, had lost control of everything outside of Ornifal—and indeed, almost everything outside of the walls of his palace—before a conspiracy of the most powerful men in the government forced him to accept Garric as regent and heir. The rulers of the western islands hadn't wanted to believe that anything was really different, but the arrival of the Royal Fleet and Army was changing their minds.

  "There's the matter of the upkeep of the three Sandrakkan regiments of the Royal Army as well, of course," Tadai continued. "That is—"

  The sky darkened. It had been a brilliant morning before the conference started, but Garric had been under the marquee long enough that clouds might've blown in from the sea. It wasn't until he heard the shouts of fear and anger from everybody who could see the sky that he realized something was wrong.

  He was up from his stone seat and running outside before he thought about what he was doing. That was partly a reflex of King Carus, but shepherds as well as warriors are faced with sudden crises. The reflex that drew the horseman's sword slung on his left side, that was from Carus alone.

  "Sister take him!" Lord Attaper bellowed. It was an improper thing to say about his prince, but understandable under the circumstances. "Don't let anybody knife his highness in this crowd!"

  There were men coming the other way, getting under cover of the marquee while they looked back over their shoulders. Garric shoved them aside. Before he reached the open air, there were Blood Eagles battering a path for him with their shields and breastplates.

  The shape of a filthy black giant hung over Erdin. It was a sooty mass rather than the slate gray of even the darkest rainclouds, covering the sun and perhaps a third of the sky. The air all the way around it remained bright. It was monstrously unnatural.

  As Garric stared up at the giant's eyes and gaping mouth, he understood why men had run beneath the marquee to avoid looking at the hideous thing. Logically a double layer of sailcloth wasn't much protection, and for all its unpleasantness the thing seemed to be only a cloud. Logic didn't have much to the feelings the image aroused, though.

  "Stand to!" Lord Waldron bellowed from the other end of the marquee. "Form on the standards, Ornifal! Cold steel's the remedy for all the kingdom's enemies, phantoms or not!"

  Garric wasn't sure how much good swords would be against a cloud, but the image was already breaking into tatters that drifted eastward like smutty spiderwebs. He looked around him.

  After the first frightened shouting, the troops had reacted pretty well. Squads were standing closely together, less formations than clumps but organized nonetheless. Most of the men wore only bits and pieces of armor, but they'd grabbed their shields and spears when the alarm came.

  You couldn't train soldiers to deal with everything that might happen, but men whose response to panic was to find weapons and stand with their buddies were going to survive the shocks of war a lot better than other people did. Their commander was likely to survive longer too....

  The image in the sky had completely dissipated. Had it blown in from the sea or just appeared in the clear sky like a meteor?

  Liane was beside him, holding her closed travelling desk against her chest. There were undoubtedly secret documents in it, but Garric suspected it was her equivalent of his bare sword:
the desk was a tool familiar from in other difficult situations, though inappropriate in this one.

  He looked toward the mast of the City of Valles; no signal flags were flying. He hadn't expected an answer there, but it'd been worth checking. A trireme was beached beside Zettin's flagship, though, between it and the Shepherd. When had that happened?

  "What Sister-cursed fool landed there?" snapped Admiral Zettin, who'd been with the support staff behind Garric during the negotiations. His sword was drawn, and at a quick glance he looked like any of the other officers looking into the sky or around at their fellows. Then in a different voice he added, "Say—isn't that the Spiteful?"

  Zettin was the former Deputy Commander of the Blood Eagles. He'd known nothing about naval affairs when Garric put him in charge of the fleet, but he understood training, discipline, and the unit pride that'll often carry a nominally weaker force through a stronger opponent. All those things had been in short supply in the force that Valence III had allow to decay. That'd changed abruptly under Zettin.

  "Is there a problem, milord?" Garric said, sliding his sword back into the scabbard. At times like this he always felt embarrassed to have drawn the blade, but the one time in a thousand he might need a sword was worth slight blushes the hundreds of times it hadn't been required.

  "What's that?" the admiral snapped before he turned his head enough to realize who'd spoken to him. "Ah! Ah, I'm not sure, your highness. You see, I left the Spiteful with the squadron on guard in Valles. If it's here—"

  "Sir?" said a junior officer with a sparkling helmet and gold-chased scabbard mountings. "The Spiteful's brought a courier to Lord Waldron personally. They're talking now."

  The young officer was one of the noblemen Zettin had brought into the Fleet to lead, rather than one of the mariners who were responsible for ship-handling. It'd disturbed Garric, raised a peasant even if his lineage did go back to the Old Kingdom monarchs, to think that sailors might perform better under the command of lisping young snots of the nobility than they would for professionals of their own class—