Goddess of the Ice Realm (4 page)

He gestured clumsily with the arm that encircled Sharina, indicating the pomp and glitter of the royal fleet: flags and bunting, soldiers in gleaming armor; a hundred bronze rams glinting across the western horizon as the ships approached the harbor, and the sea running in jeweled droplets from the blades of thousands of feathering oars. The commander of the
Shepherd'
s, Blood Eagles was trying to array them, though the deck even of a quinquereme was so narrow that only two could stand abreast. Sailors hopped over the ventilator gratings above the oarsmen, cursing the soldiers but going on about their tasks regardless.

The spectators started to cheer while the fleet was still a quarter mile from the mole. The sound was faint at first, from only a few throats and attenuated by distance; but it built, and soon the whole crowd was cheering. Scarves and sashes waved, improvised flags to greet the prince.

“I wasn't sure they'd be glad to see us,” Cashel said. “An army coming, after all; an army from Ornifal.”

“They're cheering for Prince Garric of
Haft,”
Sharina reminded him. “The people who've held power in Carcosa, Count Lascarg and his cronies, may not be happy to see us, but the common people are proud that a man from Haft rules the kingdom for the first time in a thousand years.”

“I guess the count'll keep his mouth shut if he has a problem,” Cashel said. He spoke with a hint of quiet anticipation. Cashel was for the most part a gentle man; Sharina didn't remember him ever having started a fight. But he'd never quit one either while there was an opponent left who wanted to keep going.

“Yes,” said Sharina, thrilled to be reminded of the other side of her fiancé, the part that was never directed at her. “I think he'll be
very
quiet.”

She cleared her throat, then added, “And I think that the people cheering know that even if Garric were a tyrant, they're better off ruled by a bully who's in Valles most of the time than they are with the gang right in their midst.”

“Prince Garric . . .” called the crowd on the mole. They were shouting in unison now so that Sharina could make out their words. “Prince Garric . . .”

“Garric's not a bully,” Cashel said, his voice a soft rumble. His muscles had stiffened, and his thick hickory quarterstaff quivered slightly in his right hand. “And if the people running Carcosa
are
bullies, well, so much the worse for them now.”

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-Reise. 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, she 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 traveled 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!”

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 127 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.