David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Polus shrugged. "Folk in your land have different customs than ours," he said. "But please, it's getting dark. Won't you have bread and porridge with us?"

He gestured toward the central courtyard of the nearest house. Anga's wife had swung the infant over her shoulder to burp it. She trotted into the door in the left-hand wing, murmuring something like, "Not enough bowls!"

"Aye," said Chalcus, gesturing Ilna ahead of him into the open court. He smiled broadly. "If it won't offend you, though, we'll sit with our backs against the wall as we eat. I'd be pleased to be wrong, but I worry that your Friend is not necessarily our friend."

He laughed to make a joke of it; but it was no joke, as Ilna well knew.

TheStar of Valles rocked as water coalesced out of the glowing stars beneath her keel. Sharina gripped the railing with one hand and put the other around Tenoctris' shoulders, just for safety's sake.

The four remaining vessels of the squadron settled with faint slapping sounds behind the flagship. The nymphs who'd been guiding the sea worm now released the hawser. The great creature undulated toward the depths, growing faint and vanishing long before it could have drawn away in physical distance.

The eastern horizon-it was a shock to have a horizon again-was bright enough to hide the stars. Sharina thought the ship might be at the mouth of the River Val, but even in full daylight she wasn't enough of a pilot to be certain of one landfall against another.

"Come on, you lazy scuts!" Master Rincale shouted, dusting his palms together in enthusiasm as he strode sternward along the catwalk. "Oarsmen to your posts! We've got three leagues against the current before we dock in Valles! Move! Move! And you bloody landsmen, get your asses off the lower benches unless you're willing to pull oars!"

The sailors don't doubt where we are, Sharina thought.

The nymph rose toward them. At first she was only a glint in the water far below their keel, but she wriggled into full sight before Sharina had time to wonder what the object was. The nymph swam with her body and webbed feet, keeping her arms flattened back along her torso except when she wanted to turn abruptly in the water.

"This is as far as we will take you, missie," she called. Her eyes had the opalescence of pearl shell, and the pupils were slitted rather than round. "The water here hasn't enough salt for comfort, and going farther up the river's course would poison us. We have kept our bargain, missie, have we not?"

"You've kept your bargain," Sharina said, touching the hood covering her bare scalp instinctively. "Go with, with my blessing!"

She'd intended to say, "with the Lady's blessing," but she realized before the words left her tongue that these nymphs and the Goddess might be… not on the same side, say, even if they weren't enemies. The nymphs had helped Sharina and helped the kingdom; she didn't want to insult them.

"Perhaps we will sing to you some day, missie," the nymph called. She arrowed away, once waving back toward Sharina.

"We hope to sing for you, lovely missie," caroled the chorus of her sisters from invisibly far to seaward.

"Given who they are," said Tenoctris with a faint smile, "and where it is they sing, I rather hope that neither of us take them up on their offer. Though no doubt it was well-meant."

The soldiers and oarsmen were shifting places, the former with more enthusiasm than their relative clumsiness justified. TheStar of Valles rocked side to side; common sailors, not just the officers, shouted curses at the landsmen. When Sharina glanced over the railing, she saw that all the narrow-hulled triremes were wobbling similarly.

Lord Waldron walked forward, looking haggard. He hadn't hidden in the belly of the ship the way most of his men did, but neither had he cared to stand in the prow and watch the great worm swim through the waste of stars.

"Your highness," he said in a tired voice, nodding in a sketch of a bow. "Lady Tenoctris. Your highness, I, ah… I'm in your debt for the time you've saved us in returning to Ornifal."

"We're all acting in the interests of the kingdom, Lord Waldron," Sharina said, trying to sound as cheerful as she'd been when her mind had settled down. She could see in the old warrior's haunted eyes how little he liked the means by which they'd voyaged, but he was too much of a man not to acknowledge the debt regardless.

"The kingdom?" Waldron said with a snort. "Oh, the army could serve the kingdom's need without having to hurry. I'd have to resign, of course, but your brother wouldn't have to look far for a replacement. If he even bothered! He's got a real man-of-war's head on his shoulders, Prince Garric does."

No, thought Sharina, smiling. But he has a real man-of-war's ghost in his mind.

Aloud she said, "Garric's very pleased that you're willing to undertake this dangerous task with minimal force, milord. He doesn't want to rule the Isles with his sword."

Waldron snorted again, this time in bitter humor. "Willing?" he said. "I'm forced to by the fact my cousin Bolor is an idiot. An idiot or a knowing traitor, and I prefer to believe the former. We bor-Warrimans have had our share of fools, but never before a traitor. If that's what Bolor is."

He took a deep breath, scanning the shore. The vessel's officers had sorted out the rowers by now. All the long oars were in position, hanging just above the water to either side of the hull.

"And aye, I know Prince Garric doesn't want to rule with his sword," Waldron went on. "His sword or his army's swords. He's the right king for the Isles now, your highness."

He turned and glared at Sharina as though he expected her to disagree. "He's the right king, wherever he was born or whoever his ancestors were," he said forcefully. "On my oath as a bor-Warriman!"

Bedrin and several of his aides were talking with the sailing master beneath the trireme's curving sternpiece. There voices rose, but the words were still unintelligible to Sharina in the bow. The trumpeter blew a signal. Three of the following vessels replied, but the last did not.

Bedrin snapped a command. The trumpeter signalled again, still without getting a response.

"This is where the People landed," Waldron said, gesturing toward the shore. "Back when I was an ensign in Lord Elphic's regiment."

He spoke in a tone of quiet reminiscence; partly, Sharina suspected, to calm himself by retreating into the past where he could forget the voyage just ended. "Here at the mouth of the Val. They paddled their ships like canoes instead of rowing them, and the hulls were made of bronze instead of wood."

"Bronze?" said Sharina. "Weren't they awfully heavy, then?"

"Not particularly, no," Waldron said. "Except at the ribs and keel, the metal wasn't any thicker than your own skin, your highness."

He shrugged and went on, "I don't know how they could've sailed boats like that any distance, the way the sea would've worked them up and down, but they got here somehow. Thousands of them. For a long time afterwards, the price of bronze wasn't but half what it'd been in silver before all those boats were broken up and sold."

The last ship of the squadron finally replied with a quavering trumpet call. Bedrin shouted an order. The trumpet and curved horn called together.

The seated flutist began to play the rhythm of the stroke. The oars dipped down, splashed, and drew back in a bubbling surge. TheStar of Valles started toward the river mouth hidden for the moment beneath a blanket of mist. The hull steadied as her speed reached that of a man walking at leisure.

"Why didn't the People go on up the river, milord?" Sharina said. The question had occurred to her, but primarily she asked to make Waldron more comfortable by ordinary talk and to settle herself as well. "There's only fishing villages and small pastures in the marshes on this part of the coast."