Darkness Weaves (19 page)

Then suddenly, there were no more to fight. The Imperial flagship was taken.

Kane wiped the sweat and gore from his face and gasped for breath. He stood covered with blood, some of it his own. But around him he could see that the tide of battle was with him. The catapult attack had broken the Imperial formation, and the glancing-ramming tactics had disabled enough of the warships for the smaller rebel craft to swarm over them. Dismayed by the fall of their flagship, the survivors of Lages's fleet would fight for retreat, not victory.

Kane grinned. It began to look as if his efforts on Efrel's behalf had not been in vain.

Arbas came up, limping badly, a crude bandage soaked with blood decorating his thigh. "Come on, Kane! This ship is sinking! Oh, shit! Some son of a bitch damn near cut my leg off! Damn, was that a fight!"

"Damn!" Kane frowned at the assassin's crimson trouser leg. "Looks like someone cut you straight to the artery! Get a tighter bandage on that mess before you bleed to death! And we're not through this fight yet, Arbas."

Kane bellowed to his men. "Back to the Ara-Teving, men! Bring whatever of our wounded you see! Get the lead out, damn it! Hurry!"

Giving Arbas a hand, Kane left the sinking Mon-Ossa. The assassin was cursing with each step, but still game. Kane decided his femoral artery was spared--otherwise Arbas would have bled out by now. The Ara-Teving backed away from the wreck and moved to another quarter of the battle. A rebel bireme and an Imperial trireme were locked in combat nearby, and Kane gave the order to ram the enemy warship. As the Ara-Teving rowed away, no one gave a thought to a bleeding figure who floated on a piece of wreckage in their wake. The water was filled with such.
Lages clutched the broken timber and tried to paddle with his good arm. The salt water was like acid on his slashed arm, and he cursed with breath better saved for swimming. He could not die here now! Not with so much to live for! His fleet lay stricken about him--already assuming that their leader was dead, as the Mon-Ossa lifted her stern and sank. Had Lages not won free of his armor, he would be lying on the bottom a thousand fathoms below. Withal, at the moment there seemed small odds of escaping either drowning or capture. He desperately looked about him for aid.

At this point Lages caught sight of an Imperial trireme--by some miracle unscathed in the melee--rowing straight toward him. The trireme had dispatched the two rebel vessels that had tried to take it and was now steering for another quarter of the battle.

Lages waved with his good arm and shouted hoarsely. Rescue? In horror, he realized that he lay directly in the vessel's path. "By Horment, no!" he prayed. "Don't let me die, run down by my own men!"

But someone aboard the Imperial warship recognized the thrashing figure in the water--thanks to the scarlet cloak that Lages had flung across the broken timber as he struggled to cling to it. The trireme slowed under momentum and swerved before it could hit him. Lages caught the rope they threw to him and clambered aboard.

"Thank Horment!" he gasped. "And thanks to all of you here! You won't go unrewarded for this! Who's captain here?"

An officer ran up--Lages recognized him as one of his old comrades. "Oh, it's you, Gable!" Lages laughed shakily. "Your ship has saved me from becoming fish food, and I won't forget that!"

"I thought we were hauling a ghost on board, milord," Gable told him. "The Mon-Ossa lies on the bottom, and men say Kane sent you there to captain her."

Lages swore. "I'll settle with Kane another time. But what do you think of the battle? What's happened since I was given up for dead?"

"It goes against us, milord," Gable answered glumly. "Other than our ship, I can see only two biremes that are still moving freely. The fireballs hurt us bad. Now these damned rebels have us hemmed in--they're grappling and are overwhelming the rest of our fleet that is still afloat."

"I feared as much!" groaned Lages. "So it's hopeless, then. Kane is the devil that legend declares him to be! All right, signal the retreat. We'll try to get back to Thovnosten with what we can save."

The lone Imperial trireme moved away from the battle, and fled for Thovnosten. The two biremes and several other crippled warships tried to follow suit--but the rebel fleet closed .in, and only one bireme was able to escape. No chase was given--as the rebels were too busy massacring the survivors of the Imperial fleet.

And so out of twenty-four proud ships, two limped back to Thovnosten, leaving the rest to the victors and to the sea.

Meanwhile the rebel forces were inexorably overwhelming ship after ship of those trapped by their grappling irons. And as each craft was taken, the victorious rebels moved on to reinforce their comrades on board another stricken warship. The Imperial marines fought gallantly, but their position was hopeless, and the wise ones surrendered their ships for whatever mercy they might find in Prisarte. Having finished with her second opponent, the Ara-Teving drove on against another. In yet one area of the battle, the issue was going against the rebels. The Ara-Teving's sister ship, the Kelkin, was caught between two Imperial triremes, and the Imperial soldiers were slowly beating down the outmanned rebels. Despite his feelings about Alremas, Kane could not risk losing the best warship next to his own in Efrel's entire navy.

Kane ordered the attack, thinking by fighting to save Alremas he might at best achieve some stature among the aloof Pellinites. At his command, the Ara-Teving pulled alongside one Imperial trireme and quickly grappled. Leading his crew, Kane rushed over the rails to attack the Imperial marines from behind. Giving them little time to realize this new threat, Kane burst into the enemy ranks, hewing about him with his twin blades. The Imperial marines gave back and faltered under the renewed rebel strength. Their apparent victory now cruelly loomed as defeat. With the rage of a cornered beast, they fought to the death without regard for wounds or danger.

To his disgust, Kane saw that Oxfors Alremas was still fighting--Kane had hoped the Imperials would kill. the Pellin lord for him and save him from a thorny problem. Grudgingly, he admired the Pellinite's intricate swordplay. The man fenced with brilliance, and there was speed and endurance within that foppish frame. Kane had not thought Alremas tough enough for a melee such as this. If only the bastard weren't too popular a figure to murder, Kane mused with regret. Arbas would handle that matter most willingly. On Kane fought, striking death all about him. Alremas would wait until another day. For now there was the dirty, bloody work of mopping up the last of the stubborn resistance. At length the fighting ceased. The last Imperial soldier had fallen or surrendered.

A weary cheer went through the rebel ranks. Half their number lay dead or badly wounded, and half their warships were broken wreckage. But the captured Imperial warships would more than replace the loss of their fighting ships, and more soldiers could always be found. It had been a decisive victory over a more powerful, better-equipped enemy, and the men had a right to be jubilant.

Sensing the popular feeling, Kane presented himself upon the prow of his flagship. Kane was now an even more awe-inspiring figure--his mail hauberk torn, his bare arms and face gashed, his body splattered with blood from helm to toe. He raised his gory broadsword in salute to the men he had led to victory.

Amidst wild cheers of "Hail, Kane! Hail, Kane! Hail, Red Kane!" he led his fleet in a triumphant return to Prisarte. It was with secret satisfaction that Kane noted it was his name and not Efrel's that the men roared out in adulation.

Netisten Maril was in a volcanic temper--his most common mood when confronted by any obstacle. "Only two ships return! By Horment! By the thrice-damned Tloluvin! This is intolerable--impossible! How could Kane deal such a smashing defeat to the imperial navy! By Lato, I knew I should have commanded the expedition myself. You let a mob of rebels and pirates rout the finest warships on the Western Sea!"

Trying to keep his own temper in check, Lages stonily listened to his uncle's raging. His wounds were giving him pain, and each time he tried without success to break into Maril's stream of invective, his own temper flared. At length, Maril ran out of breath and lapsed into fitful silence, his livid face twisted in uncomprehending dismay.

Bitterly Lages began, "All right, so we took a beating. Well, a tantrum won't reverse things, and if you want to scream curses at anyone, then take your anger out on Kane. The men fought valiantly throughout the battle, and I doubt that you could have commanded them better yourself. We tried to take Efrel by surprise, and we made a mistake. Kane was waiting for us with a far stronger fleet than we had ever anticipated. He used a few ingenious tricks to offset our superior fleet, and we got hit bad. Now we've shown our hand, lost a significant portion of our total naval strength, and let Kane win a tremendous strategic victory as well. Okay, it was your idea to attempt a sudden attack--I'm not saying I wouldn't have ordered the same. The strategy failed, and let's leave it at that!"

Unappeased, Maril muttered an incoherent snarl as an attempt to reply, then subsided. He smoothed his black beard while he continued to glower at his nephew.

Hurriedly Lages continued. "So let's take stock of things. We know we have a major rebellion on our hands--a plot that has been taking shape for many months. Now we know where its center is, and who its leaders are. The battle will have drawn everything into the open. Now that open warfare has broken out, we can assume that Efrel will summon to Pellin all the aid that has been promised to her through secret alliances. Kane's victory is going to pull in a wave of support from those more cautious traitors who were undecided before-so the witch will probably have a considerable following once the news of our defeat tempts shaky loyalties. And with Kane as her general, Efrel's rebellion constitutes as deadly a threat to us and to our Empire as the Netisten blood has ever faced.

"Now then, we lost twenty-two ships and maybe five thousand men and slaves. But this only represents about half of Thovnos's navy, when you consider the warships that were out on patrol or otherwise unavailable at the time we sailed. Then, if we make a real effort, we can convert a good number of merchant vessels to warships and man them with freshly recruited troops. That was Kane's own game, so we know that it works. So much for Thovnos itself. Now, we can call upon the lords of all the islands in the Empire to render their support, since Efrel does pose a threat to the entire Empire. I doubt if her conspiracy can have netted too much support from among the great houses, so we can probably assume that Tresli, Fisitia, Josten, Quarnora, Raconos, and Parwi will remain loyal--along with many of the lesser islands. Counting their support, I'd estimate we can mobilize a fleet of maybe three hundred warships, plus around another hundred serviceable conversions and the like.
"The rebels took heavy losses, too. I'd be surprised if Kane can muster a hundred ships of all descriptions--and he'll be hard pressed to man them in any fashion. So we can probably count on outnumbering the rebels a good four to one, maybe better. That means this first defeat hasn't cost us the war by any means. We'll gather our forces, go back to Pellin with a real invasion fleet, and level that damned witch's fortress to the ground!

"But let's worry about that tomorrow. I've hardly slept for days. I'm exhausted and I ache all over. So if you'll forgive me, dear uncle, I'm going to my chambers.

Without waiting any further, Lages wheeled and stalked from the audience hall. Maril muttered a few dark thoughts about insolent youths and fell into gloomy thought.

Lages was painfully removing his battle-stained clothing when M'Cori burst into his chambers. "M'Cori!" he smiled. "Held it a second." He shrugged a clean, loose-fitting shirt across his grimy shoulders and started to shove the tails back under his belt.

Ignoring his efforts to look presentable, M'Cori hurried his bodyservant out of the room. "I had to come and see you right away. Oh, Lages--I thank all the gods that you've come back! Everyone is talking about the disaster--about Efrel's vow of revenge! I heard that Kane almost killed you--that they almost didn't see you in the water!" She fell into his arms, trembling violently.

Lages held her close, disregarding the pain in his arm. For a while they stood in a tight embrace, Lages murmuring soothingly in her ear. Eventually they kissed.

"And Kane," began M'Cori, in control of herself again, "they say that he truly is that Kane whose legendary pirate hordes almost conquered the Empire in the first years of our history. They say Efrel has brought him back from the dead to create an invincible army for her conspiracy."

"That I can believe, now that I've seen him!" Lages exclaimed. "The man isn't human! He looked like some sort of demon of death out there--all covered with blood, and with that insane light in his killer's eyes! He was slaughtering our men like sheep. In battle Kane was as much within his element as a shark in the sea we fought upon--and just as deadly."

M'Cori gasped, and Lages went on reassuringly, "But that's all nonsense about him. I know he's human enough. He was definitely wounded in several places. An incredible warrior he may be, with an uncanny resemblance to Red Kane the pirate, but this Kane is no supernatural demon from out of the past. I know his measure now, and when we meet again, I'll kill him--no matter who he really is. I'll make you a matched set of drinking mugs from his skull and from Efrel's:"

M'Cori seemed entranced at the thought. "Ugh! That's a gruesome present! You've been paying too much attention to those gory old sagas the minstrels wail. How could anyone drink out of a skull--even those wild heroes in the tales! It wouldn't hold water even. That's an awful idea, Lages. Give them to Father instead."

Her mind wasn't half on her words, Lages knew. He was very much aware of her thinly gowned figure pressing against his bare chest. Dreamily it seemed as though her heart beat in cadence with his own--possibly that was why his own pulse was throbbing. He thought about all the years he had known M'Cori, wondered when there had been a time that he had not loved her. He had been an utter fool to have let the tumultuous events of the past few years interfere with their relationship. Those years were lost forever now, he realized, and the future was uncertain. How many times had death come within a breath of costing him the years to come?