Warhost of Vastmark. Janny Wurts
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officers in gold braid kicked past the downed corpse. They staggered across canted decking and barked into bulkheads, fumbling through the murky, coiled smoke to cut his bonds. Tharrick scarcely felt the hands that grasped and steadied him onto his feet. Cramped double and choking, he lost consciousness as they dragged him like a gutted fish up a reeling companion-way into clear air and rainfall.
Whether he lay in the hands of the duke’s officers or those of the Prince of the West, he had no awareness left to care.
Landfall
Lysaer s’Ilessid set foot on the damp sands of Merior, still dissatisfied over the report sent back from the galley which had run down the fugitive vessel. Of an unknown number of enemy crewmen, two had been slain in the melee of boarding. The sole survivor brought back for questioning was himself a prisoner of the Shadow Master, notched in scars from recent cruel handling, and unconscious from fresh burns and smoke poisoning.
Duke Bransian’s crack captains had been too busy sparing the one life to mount a search of the waters for longboats.
Thwarted from gaining the informant he required to dog his enemy’s trail, Lysaer clenched his jaw to rein back a savage bout of temper. Since the strike force under his personal banner was land-bound to close off the peninsula, Alestron’s mercenaries had done the boarding, a setback he lacked sovereignty to reverse. His own officers had been trained on no uncertain terms to expect the vicious style of Arithon’s pirate forebears. Seldom, if ever, had the men they commanded surrendered their vessels with crewmen still alive to be captured.
A salt-laden gust parted Lysaer’s fair hair as he trained his stormy regard up the beachhead. The rain had stopped. Mid-afternoon light shafted through broken clouds. The puddles wore a leaden sheen, and a shimmer of dipped silver played over the drenched crowns of the palm groves. Nestled in gloom as though uninhabited, the whitewashed cottages of Merior greeted his landing with wooden plank doors and pegged shutters shut fast.
The harbour stretched grey and empty as the land, choppy waters peppered with vacant moorings. The local fishing fleet would return with the dusk, as on any ordinary day. Up the strand, a sullen, black streamer of smoke spiralled on the wind from the site of Arithon’s shipyard. No fugitives had sought to cross the cordon of mercenaries that blocked Scimlade Tip from the mainland; the single lugger found setting fish traps in the bay had offered no hostilities when flagged down for questioning.
The name of the Master of Shadow had drawn a blank reaction from the crew. Also from every man and woman in the trade port of Shaddorn to the south, that advance scouts had waylaid for inquiry.
‘I wonder how long he prepared for our coming?’ Lysaer mused as Diegan strode up behind him.
The Lord Commander’s best boots were soaked from the landing, his demeanour as bleak as the surrounding landscape above chain mail and black-trimmed surcoat. ‘You know we won’t find anything. The shipworks will be a gutted ruin.’
A thorough search was conducted anyway, a party of foot troops sent to poke through the steaming embers of collapsed sheds under Diegan’s direction. Lysaer waited to one side, his royal finery concealed beneath a seaman’s borrowed oilskins, while the breakers rolled and boomed in sullen rhythm against the headland and the wind riffled wrinkles in the puddles.
‘The withdrawal was well planned,’ Avenor’s Lord Commander confirmed at length. ‘No tools were abandoned. These buildings were emptied before they were fired. We can send officers house to house through Merior all you like, but I’d lay sand to diamonds that Arithon left nothing to clue us of his intentions.’
Lysaer kicked the charred fragment of a corner post amid the rubble that remained of the sail loft. Scarcely audible, he said, ‘He left the village.’
‘You think he’ll be back?’ Prepared to disagree, Diegan pushed up his helm to scrape his damp hair off his brow.
‘No.’ Lysaer spun in a flapping storm of oilcloth and stalked to the edge of the tidemark. ‘The fugitive ship which burned before our eyes was the easiest chance we had to track him. Now that option’s lost, he’ll have the whole ocean in which to take cover. We’re balked, but not crippled. The stamp of his design can never be mistaken for merchant shipping. Wherever the Shadow Master plans to make landfall, I’ll find the means to be waiting.’
At twilight, when the fishing luggers sailed homeward to find their cove patrolled by war galleys and their shores cluttered with encampments of mercenaries, knots of shouting men and a congregation of goodwives converged upon the beaten earth of the fish market. A groomed contingent of Avenor’s senior officers turned out and met them to assure their prince would answer their complaints. By the fluttered, ruddy light of pitch torches, on a dais constructed of fish barrels and planks, the Prince of the West awaited in a surcoat edged in braided bullion. In token of royal rank he wore only a gold circlet. Against all advice, he was not armed. His bodyguard remained with the longboats, and only Alestron’s fleet admiral and two officers attended at his right hand.
Lord Diegan stood at the edge of the crowd. Surrounded by a plainly clad cadre of men-at-arms, his strict orders were to observe without interference. The restraint left him uneasy since the crowd showed defiance. Grumbles from the fringes held distinct, unfriendly overtones concerning the presumption of outsiders.
Lysaer gave such talk small chance to blossom into strife. ‘We are gathered here to begin a celebration,’ he announced.
The background buzz of speculation choked off in stiff outrage. ‘Yer war galleys scarcely be welcomed here!’ cried one of the elders from the boardinghouse.
Other men called gruff agreement. Lysaer waited them out in elegant stillness while the piped cry of a killdeer sliced the soughing snap of the torch flames, and the air pressed rain-laden gusts to flap sullen folds in the standards of Alestron and Avenor that flanked his commanding stance upon the dais. ‘The cask for the occasion shall be provided from my stores.’
‘We had peace before ye set foot here!’ called a good-wife. ‘When our fish wagon to Shaddorn’s turned back by armed troops, I’d say that’s muckle poor cause for dancing!’
Again Lysaer waited for the shouts to die down. ‘Your village has just been spared from the designs of great evil, and the grasp of a man of such resource and cunning, none here could know the extent of his ill intentions. I speak of the one you call Arithon, known in the north as Teir’s‘Ffalenn and the Master of Shadow.’
This time when hubbub arose, Lysaer cut clearly through the clamour. ‘During his years among you, he has exploited your trust, lured blameless craftsmen into dishonest service, and spent stolen funds to outfit a fleet designed and intended for piracy. I’m here tonight to expose his bloody history, and to dispel without question every doubt to be raised against the criminal intent he sought to hide.’
The quiet at this grew profound. Muscular men in patched oilskins and their goodwives in their aprons spangled with cod scales packed into a solid and threatening body. Before the ranks of inimical faces, Lysaer resumed unperturbed. In clear, magisterial elegance, he presented his case, beginning with the wrongs done his family on his homeworld of Dascen Elur. There, the s’Ffalenn bent for sea raids had been documented by royal magistrates for seven generations. The toll of damaged lives was impressive. Stirred to forceful resolve, the fair-haired prince related his eyewitness account of the slaughter at Deshir Forest. Other transgressions at Jaelot and Alestron were confirmed by Duke Bransian’s officer. He ended with the broad-scale act of destruction which had torched the trade fleet at Minderl Bay.
The villagers remained unconvinced.
A few in the front ranks crossed their arms in disgust, unimpressed with foreign news that held little bearing upon the daily concerns of their fishing fleet.
‘Is it possible you think the man who sheltered here was not one and the same person?’ Lysaer asked. ‘Let me say why that fails to surprise me.’ He went on to describe the Shadow Master’s appearance and habits