David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Marshal Renold looked from Morchan to Garric, then blinked. "I'm not sure that would be possible," he said. He'd lost the belligerance with which he'd opened the discussions.

"I believe it would be," Lady Lelor said in a deliberate tone, her eyes on Renold. "I will certainly impress on Earl Wildulf my opinion that it would be a desirable way to display his authority."

"I'm not sure-" Renold repeated, then clamped his mouth closed over the rest of whatever he might have said. The muscles at the back of his jaw were bunched. There was clearly no love lost between the two envoys.

"I had more trouble with priesthoods than I did with usurpers," Carus said, shaking his head at the recollection. "I knew how to deal with a usurper, but I couldn't start looting the temple treasuries in loyal cities without having my own soldiers mutter that I was accursed of the gods."

"Financial arrangements would remain unchanged following the coronation?" said Master Colchas. The clerk reminded Garric of a small dog: tense and ill-tempered, but well aware that if he snapped at the wrong person he was likely to be kicked into the next borough. "Quite frankly, the Earl's revenues don't fully cover expenses even now."

"In the main, that's correct," Lord Tadai said easily. In contrast to Liane, who made a point of having relevant documents at hand though she almost never referred to them, the desk or table before Tadai was always perfectly clear. A squadron of clerks stood behind him, however, each with an open file box just in case. "That is, the assessment of the Third Indiction of Valence II won't be increased in the near future. You and I will discuss at another time a schedule for the payment of the arrears accrued during the past seven years."

Colchas cringed. "I don't see…," he began, then covered his mouth with his hand as if in an access of grief. "Oh, dear," he muttered through his fingers. "Oh, dear."

Garric permitted himself a smile. Valence III, his father by adoption, had lost control of everything outside of Ornifal-and indeed, almost everything outside of the walls of his palace-before a conspiracy of the most powerful men in the government forced him to accept Garric as regent and heir. The rulers of the western islands hadn't wanted to believe that anything was really different, but the arrival of the Royal Fleet and Army was changing their minds.

"There's the matter of the upkeep of the three Sandrakkan regiments of the Royal Army as well, of course," Tadai continued. "That is-"

The sky darkened. It had been a brilliant morning before the conference started, but Garric had been under the marquee long enough that clouds might've blown in from the sea. It wasn't until he heard the shouts of fear and anger from everybody who could see the sky that he realized something was wrong.

He was up from his stone seat and running outside before he thought about what he was doing. That was partly a reflex of King Carus, but shepherds as well as warriors are faced with sudden crises. The reflex that drew the horseman's sword slung on his left side, that was from Carus alone.

"Sister take him!" Lord Attaper bellowed. It was an improper thing to say about his prince, but understandable under the circumstances. "Don't let anybody knife his highness in this crowd!"

There were men coming the other way, getting under cover of the marquee while they looked back over their shoulders. Garric shoved them aside. Before he reached the open air, there were Blood Eagles battering a path for him with their shields and breastplates.

The shape of a filthy black giant hung over Erdin. It was a sooty mass rather than the slate gray of even the darkest rainclouds, covering the sun and perhaps a third of the sky. The air all the way around it remained bright. It was monstrously unnatural.

As Garric stared up at the giant's eyes and gaping mouth, he understood why men had run beneath the marquee to avoid looking at the hideous thing. Logically a double layer of sailcloth wasn't much protection, and for all its unpleasantness the thing seemed to be only a cloud. Logic didn't have much to the feelings the image aroused, though.

"Stand to!" Lord Waldron bellowed from the other end of the marquee. "Form on the standards, Ornifal! Cold steel's the remedy for all the kingdom's enemies, phantoms or not!"

Garric wasn't sure how much good swords would be against a cloud, but the image was already breaking into tatters that drifted eastward like smutty spiderwebs. He looked around him.

After the first frightened shouting, the troops had reacted pretty well. Squads were standing closely together, less formations than clumps but organized nonetheless. Most of the men wore only bits and pieces of armor, but they'd grabbed their shields and spears when the alarm came.

You couldn't train soldiers to deal with everything that might happen, but men whose response to panic was to find weapons and stand with their buddies were going to survive the shocks of war a lot better than other people did. Their commander was likely to survive longer too…

The image in the sky had completely dissipated. Had it blown in from the sea or just appeared in the clear sky like a meteor?

Liane was beside him, holding her closed travelling desk against her chest. There were undoubtedly secret documents in it, but Garric suspected it was her equivalent of his bare sword: the desk was a tool familiar from in other difficult situations, though inappropriate in this one.

He looked toward the mast of theCity of Valles; no signal flags were flying. He hadn't expected an answer there, but it'd been worth checking. A trireme was beached beside Zettin's flagship, though, between it and theShepherd. When had that happened?

"What Sister-cursed fool landedthere?" snapped Admiral Zettin, who'd been with the support staff behind Garric during the negotiations. His sword was drawn, and at a quick glance he looked like any of the other officers looking into the sky or around at their fellows. Then in a different voice he added, "Say-isn't that theSpiteful?"

Zettin was the former Deputy Commander of the Blood Eagles. He'd known nothing about naval affairs when Garric put him in charge of the fleet, but he understood training, discipline, and the unit pride that'll often carry a nominally weaker force through a stronger opponent. All those things had been in short supply in the force that Valence III had allow to decay. That'd changed abruptly under Zettin.

"Is there a problem, milord?" Garric said, sliding his sword back into the scabbard. At times like this he always felt embarrassed to have drawn the blade, but the one time in a thousand he mightneed a sword was worth slight blushes the hundreds of times it hadn't been required.

"What's that?" the admiral snapped before he turned his head enough to realize who'd spoken to him. "Ah! Ah, I'm not sure, your highness. You see, I left theSpiteful with the squadron on guard in Valles. If it's here-"

"Sir?" said a junior officer with a sparkling helmet and gold-chased scabbard mountings. "TheSpiteful 's brought a courier to Lord Waldron personally. They're talking now."

The young officer was one of the noblemen Zettin had brought into the Fleet to lead, rather than one of the mariners who were responsible for ship-handling. It'd disturbed Garric, raised a peasant even if his lineage did go back to the Old Kingdom monarchs, to think that sailors might perform better under the command of lisping young snots of the nobility than they would for professionals of their own class But they did. About the only thing these young officers were able to do was to stand on the quarterdeck, a target in dazzling armor for any missile the enemy wanted to launch, and look coolly unperturbed. For the most part they did that superbly, giving their own oarsmen something to think about besides the crushing disaster they might be rowing toward as a flutist blew time for their strokes.