The Conqueror (27 page)

The figure at his side turned, a look
of exultation on his dark, wide face. He had small, very bright
blue eyes and the most engaging grin a relatively toothless man
could have. Pointed mustaches, black and grey now that he was in
his forties, framed a wide yet expressive mouth.

“
Vaeomon.” The small
contingent of Sicurri aboard
Cygnus
were an impressive sight in their padded black
leather strip-armor, polished black leggings, and all armed with a
medley of personal weapons. “Is everybody happy?”

Vaeomon nodded.

“
Yes—very much
so.”

Their beastly little black bows were
much in evidence.

Lowren himself wore his habitual
sea-going rig of helmet, fit snugly to his head but not strapped
on. This was for safety in any sea-borne operation. He wore a
breastplate, which would be easier to remove compared to the more
usual shirt of mail if he should fall in the water. That had two
simple buckles on the left side.

He wore a Heloi leather strip kilt this
time, his sandals were tied properly and his sword was girded at
his side.

“
It is an honor to be here,
Lowren. Very impressive. Thank you for thinking of us.” Vaeomon
turned and interpreted for his fellows.

One of the Sicurri
chieftain’s hulking sons, unable to speak the dialect, slapped
Lowren on the shoulder, giving him an earnest look. His brother
stood there grinning and nodding. They seemed to listen well, as if
straining to catch his inflections. Then again, some of the
words
must have been
unfamiliar. That was certainly true aboard the boat.

The Sicurri were not quite virgins to
the sea, but their imaginations had been fired upon seeing the
ships of the Heloi and especially Winderere up close. The small
ships of the Lemni didn’t stand up very well in comparison. Lowren
knew that well enough. With the taps now turned open on a river of
gold from a suddenly more attentive Emperor Kullin, there was the
possibility of putting some of his new knowledge into practice. The
Sicurri found the gold as welcome as he did, for they all had to be
fed after all, and so did their families back home.

Assuring the Sicurri that
this would be the place of most danger—and thereby the most
honor,
was a fairly
convincing argument once they’d seen his boats. But the Heloi
didn’t want or need them aboard, and speaking more privately, they
probably wouldn’t have them at any price. Even the Sicurri had
agreed they would be useless aboard the ships of Windermere, with
the blue-water mission they had been assigned.

More than anything, the Sicurri were
part of the alliance and wouldn’t be kept out of any good fight
once they’d made some new friends. They had given their word and
their oaths upon it. But the lure of gold and greater power over
their own destinies would no doubt have played a prominent role in
their thinking. Coming from the same forested steppes as the Lemni,
they’d had long canoes and sailing barks of their own, at least
historically speaking. The Sicurri, a related nation, had been
encamped on the borders of Lemnia for over a quarter of a century.
Lowren and Vaeomon had engaged in a few long talks over the years
and seemed to get on pretty well. Vaeomon didn’t have any
daughters, or the two nations might have been connected by marriage
before now.

“
You’ve got to promise not
to hog all of them Hordesmen to yourself, Lowren.”

“
Not at all, not at all.
There’s more than enough to go around.”

They spoke in hushed voices. All of the
oars were muffled, wrapped in rags at the steel pivots, each of
which had been well and truly greased. The sound of breathing
around them was like that of some gigantic and unknown
animal.

Lowren shivered against the chill, and
the gloom, and the sight of the Horde’s fleet dully illuminated
against the false glow of the pre-dawn hours. A thin ribbon of
cloud on the eastern horizon glowed salmon pink, backlit by the
sunrise.

A man on his left handed him a horn as
the sailors called it, and he drank some of the resinous stuff, a
dry and very rough red. A quick shudder went over his body. With a
nod, he indicated that Vaeomon must have a drink too.

Sniffing suspiciously, eyebrows raised,
he took a gulp.

“
Wow.”

“
You can say that again—but
please don’t.”

Vaeomon passed it off to the boys. They
appreciated the gesture judging by the reaction.

The Sicurri chattered quietly amongst
themselves as the joke was shared. There were eight or ten of them
on the aft section duckboards. Things clicked and rustled as they
unlimbered their weapons and notched arrows to
bowstrings.

With their low draft, and their masts
and rigging removed, the Lemni ships were little better than large
rowing boats—and that was exactly the intention of their design.
Hugging the shore as they were, the barren hills above would screen
them with their dark backdrop. They were three hundred yards out,
practically invisible. The shoreline was undulating, going back and
forth due to small bays and projecting headlands. They were coming
from the west and the sun was in the east. The Lemni ships were all
dark planks, heavily oiled on the inside and thoroughly caulked on
the bottoms. It was only the wet wood above water that could give
them away with the odd glimmer. There was enough noise up on the
land. They could hear the calls of men, the neighing of horses. The
crowing of cocks and the sounds of hoofs and wagons came distinctly
on the breeze, setting off from shore as it did.

Whether the Horde would attack Kthmarra
today was an unknown. A major attempt before the end of the season
was expected as a matter of course. But there would be some kind of
military operations set for the day, and like all such encampments,
the place could never really sleep. Simple routine would keep the
battle going, insofar as sieges were, typically, long periods of
total boredom punctuated by the occasional big push or brainstorm
on the part of the commanding generals.

The mental state of the attackers was
one of man and material superiority. Their troops all knew they
were backed up by a big fleet and an endless supply chain. Their
transports were still successfully running between Kthmarra and
Artesphihan, and numerous other ports.

His own force was considerable, without
being unmanageable in terms of a quick raid.

The real question was how quickly they
could get off under while under attack from the rear.

While the incentives were obvious, they
all knew they were going to take some dead and wounded.

Fifty-two ships, forty rowers per ship.
Each ship with thirty or more well-equipped troopers along for the
ride. With their cargo of small incendiaries, they were stuffed to
the gills with men, weapons and equipment. Even then, they drew a
bare eighteen inches or maybe two feet of water. On some kind of
inspiration, a suggestion from one of their naval engineers, they
had installed additional oar positions before and after the regular
stations. The joke was that they could get out of trouble just as
fast as they could get into it.

This morning there was to be
trouble.

Lowren leaned over to the
kid.

“
From quiet contemplation
comes chaos.”

The lad looked up.

“
Aye. I’ll remember that,
sire.”

Straightening, Lowren and the older
ones grinned.

They were in a large bay, with
highlands directly to the southwest, where the prevailing winds
blew from most regularly, and especially at this season. One would
have thought, in fact many a captain had argued, often over a glass
or two of something, that it would have made more sense for the
winds to come from the northwest, this late in the season, for that
was where winter ultimately came from.

People said the world
tilted over on its
axis,
and that it took a while for the air and the winds
to catch up as the world slowly toppled…this was what the
philosophers called a
theory.

But, just as no man could swear what
lay a few short miles over the horizon, and the west was truly
unknown, no one would ever be quite able to account for the
weather. In this case, it was sufficient to know what it was, what
it was likely to be, and to use it wisely.

The King of the Lemni had committed
every ship available for his part in what was more of a grand raid
as much as anything else.

Vaeomon hissed, more fearful now that
strong voices could be heard from their immediate right. Plunder
was one thing, glory and a name were another, but the enemy had
tens of thousands of troops right over there—and their full fleet
lay but a mile or so off the port bow.

“
Can they see
us?”

“
Yes—most likely.” Lowren
and the small party of Sicurri nobles were on the deck just ahead
of the poop aboard
Cygnus.
“
To them we’re just another supply
column—albeit one coming the wrong way.”

They stared at the shoreline, and
beyond that the anonymous pale bulk of the Horde’s fortress. The
dawn light and shadow revealed that it was all earthen embankments,
log revetments, stone bastions, formidable outer-works, stout low
towers at the corners and the gates, with the contrasting materials
of one type and another visible even from here.

As the light grew, men and guards with
weapons on their backs stood watching along the shoreline, their
tall spears just thin pale streaks, barely visible against the low
straggling underbrush behind and up-slope.

With a strange smile on his face,
Lowren looked right back.

Some wag on the boat behind them gave a
long, and very loud wolf whistle.

It was like everyone froze on deck,
except the rowers, who chuckled and muttered, even the more so when
the faint sound of laughter and what must have undoubtedly been a
rude response came from the people on the beach. They relaxed, and
breathed again.

“
Perfect.”

Captain Rollo spoke in a low
tone.

“
Here come the
Heloi.”

Mouth open, heart picking up to almost
an uncomfortable level, Lowren turned, just in time to see the
spectacle of the Grand Fleet’s deployment.

***

It wasn’t much at first. It was just a
couple of galleys, bristling with masts and sweeps, and behind
them, up through the fog stuck the flags and pennants of those
following.

The heavy bank of fog
across the mouth of Kthmarra Bay ensured that little could be seen,
but the first three or four ships were out in the clear as the men
in the long ship
Cygnus
began to talk and mutter amongst themselves.

“
Slow, slow.”

The boat was perceptibly picking up
speed as the rowers in some unspoken agreement leaned into it ever
harder. The bow went down as soldiers crowded forwards…

“
Stick to the cadence,
lads.” The captain addressed Lowren. “Their timing is good,
sire.”

Presumably he referred to the
Heloi.

There was a slight jerk and then they
were all on their stroke again. A man at the front set the pace
with a series of low grunts.

“
Huh.”

“
Huh.”

“
Huh.”

Cygnus
skimmed the waves. The helmsman was intent upon his mark and
his purpose.

The others watched in breathless quiet
as more ghostly ships came out of the fog-bank, bearing down on the
long, straggling line of vessels anchored against the vast, curving
sweep of the Kthmarra peninsula. They were still a good two miles
off, but under sail and oar. Their speed was remarkable.

The captain spoke, startling them with
its loudness and cutting through their sick fascination with events
to the northeast.

“
All right boys. Put your
backs into her.”

Voices, perhaps clustered round a stove
or breakfast fire in a brazier on deck, came from the first of the
anchored ships hard on their left as they steered for the main
landing stage.

In spite of the
Cygnus
being the flagship
and the presence of their sovereign, at least two other lean shapes
were close in on the right, cutting a tighter starboard curve.
Really moving, they kept stroking madly and soon swept out in
front.

Lowren laughed at the sheer impudence
of it and now the people on shore were really waking up.

Someone off to their stern port quarter
was shouting at the tops of his lungs, a solitary enemy sailor
aboard a ship out there, and sounding terribly futile as the rest
of the fleet was seemingly caught dead unawares…

“
Pull, lads,
pull.”

Pull.

Pull.

Pull.

They were only three or four hundred
feet out from their beach now, with small wavelets lapping on the
fine golden gravel. There were landing stages and piers straggling
out into the sea. They angled steadily inwards, and with a glance
over his shoulder, the captain made sure there was no one else
there.