Joel Shepherd - Tracato

Errollyn suggested variations, and Sasha complied with flashing attacks, complete sequences but for the killing blow. She found herself actually enjoying the shifting deck beneath their feet. All svaalverd fighters were obsessed with balance, and anything that challenged it was an intrigue to be explored at length.

“Keep bossing her about, lad,” said one bald, pot-bellied sailor in passing. “You can still teach her a thing or two, I’ll wager.”

Errollyn grinned, windmilling an arm, sweat dripping down his flexing chest and hard stomach. Sasha realised the sailor had mistaken Errollyn’s suggestions for commands. “She’s teaching me how not to die,” Errollyn corrected the man. “If she came at me with something I was not prepared for, I’d last two strokes.”

A few listeners laughed, as if thinking him joking. Or chivalrous, complimenting the girl. Watchers could not see what both Sasha and Errollyn could feel, in every flashing combination, in every clash of wood-on-wood. She was better. Not faster, and certainly not stronger. She simply translated thoughts and forms into actions faster and with greater cunning than he did. In fact, the ease with which she was coming to handle Errollyn in sparring sometimes bothered her. Errollyn was formidably good, by any standard. Perhaps, she sometimes thought, she was simply coming to know him too well. Perhaps she was not truly as superior as her results suggested. Perhaps she was only getting better at beating him. On mornings like this one, however, she doubted it. She could feel herself improving, and it was addictive. She wanted more. She wanted to know where the boundaries lay. And she wanted to know for certain that, the next time she met her enemies in battle, as many of them as drew steel against her would die for it, no matter what their numbers and standard.

Tracato announced its proximity approching with an increasing number of ships converging on the sea. At first one sail appeared on the afternoon horizon, then a couple more. All resolved into traders of one sort or another. Then came another pair, larger, twin-masted with huge, billowing sails. They came close, cutting the water with greater speed than Sasha had ever seen. Sailors lined their sides, and up in the rigging, most with bows. Amidships was a pair of ballista-huge things that no doubt fired flammable oils over a range many times further than a longbow.

Serrin warships. They flew no flag, for serrin had never yet agreed on the necessity of a single banner to represent their diversity. Neither was the hull painted, nor figures mounted on the bow, nor gold trim about the captain’s quarters. Simple, they were, and beautiful in their sleek lines. Only the sails bore decoration, a dark embroidery on canvas white, a swirling pattern that might have made the outlines of a square or a rectangle.

“Saalsi script,” said Errollyn, leaning at her side to watch them pass. Sasha took a closer look, and suddenly she could see it. Saalsi letters, overlaid and stylised.

“What do they say?”

Errollyn smiled, and shook his head. “Oh, a thousand things.” Sometimes, even Errollyn failed the translation.

Toward evening, they came upon another warship, towing a second, half-size vessel in its wake. The captive’s sails were blackened, some furled, others missing. Half the usual, tangled rigging seemed gone, and the masts were burned in places. As the Maiden heaved alongside the slower tandem, Sasha saw folk huddled on the deck in tight groups. Some appeared injured, others sooty. Yet others with swords stood over them, guarding, and even from this range Sasha could see that those were serrin. She could tell from the way they stood, and grasped the blades in their hands. And some appeared to be women.

This time, it was Kessligh at her side as she watched. “Elissian refugees,” he said grimly. “Nobility, by the look of them.”

Sasha nodded. Only nobility would have the money to pay such a passage. Trying to cross the Elissian Sea, only to be intercepted and captured. “Heading for Algrasse or Larosa,” she agreed. “They must have been scared. Perhaps they recall what happened in Enora.”

“I’m sure they do.”

The Maiden reached Tracato shortly before midnight. The place did not look like much from out to sea, not after the gleaming slopes of Petrodor. Two dancing lights burned brighter than the others, reflecting double off the dark water. Some smaller lights above burned, and the flickering glow of many boats bobbed on the water like firebugs upon a Lenayin lake. To either side fanned the tall, dark cliffs of the Rhodaani coast.

Only when the port city drew closer did the scale of those two fires become apparent. Each was a great bonfire, burning atop a huge, square-sided tower of stone. Sasha stood amidships as the Maiden passed beneath the port tower, and stared up at its walls in amazement. Never in her life had she seen a structure so large. The twin fires lit the harbour mouth to near-daytime glare, and cast unearthly shadows across the rigging. Protruding from each tower’s lower wall, Sasha could see the links of an impossibly huge steel chain. Within each tower would be winches, she knew, having heard tell of this particular defence. If under attack, the chain would be pulled tight, to keep invading ships out. To gain entrance to Tracato harbour, the towers would need to be captured first. From the sea, that didn’t seem likely.

Within the harbour mouth sheer cliff walls loomed above a wide circle of sheltered water. Here, as sailors scrambled to fill out the sails in the dying breeze, Sasha could see the city lights-the lanterns on the docks, the midslope lights from the occasional house window, and the dancing line of torches above the great wall of Ushal Fortress. Tracato was barely a quarter the size of Petrodor but, many said, considerably more beautiful. Houses climbed the hill from Dockside toward the fortress that loomed over all-save the spires of the Heleshon Temple, lower and to the right-from this harbour view. But the dark robbed her of the sight of flying banners and colourful commotion on the docks.

Tracato was known to be windy, yet so sheltered was the harbour that barely a breeze pushed at the Maiden ’s sails as she drifted slowly to an available mooring at the end of a long pier. There were many tall ships, lashed close together along the piers, frequently two abreast on either side. It made for a unique sight, so many masts and forests of tangling rope dimly lit from below by the nightwatch lights on deck. There seemed to be quite a few guards, Sasha noted, seeing the armed figures standing on the decks, or down on the piers.

The sailors worked fast, lashing sails and securing ropes. Sasha went below decks to fetch her small bag, and by the time she reemerged, a wide planking had been raised to the Maiden ’s side. The captain was already on the pier, talking to a man in a wide black hat and a long red coat flanked by a pair of equally important-looking guards, who Sasha took for the Tracato Blackboots. They wore blue coats over mail, and their boots were indeed tall and black. A separate militia, to keep order in the city. She’d never seen their like before either.

Kessligh disembarked first, walking staff-in-hand, his saddlebag of luggage over his shoulder. Then went the three Rhodaani soldiers, and Councilman Dhael with his retainers. Sasha looked about to find Alythia standing close, wearing a flowing green gown with a laced back.

“Where’s all your luggage?” Sasha asked. Alythia’s hair fell in rich, black folds down her back and shoulders, her lips painted red, her nails long and sharp. Who she thought she would be making such a grand entrance for at this hour, Sasha had no idea.

“Councilman Dhael has arranged for his servants to collect it for me,” she said mildly. Alythia, of course, had not come travelling with just a saddlebag. How she’d managed to accumulate so many possessions, after everything she’d brought from Lenayin had been lost in the fall of House Halmady was also a mystery.