John Dalmas - The Lion Returns

"Yes?"

"Then my comrades in arms, all with their hands tied, were lined up by your soldiers and used for spear practice. Mostly not killed outright. They were played with, stabbed, struck with spear shafts. Many were mutilated."

The voituk eyebrows rose mockingly. "Really! Then what?"

"I was held separately until someone decided to put me with the civilians."

"Civilians? I thought I'd ordered them killed too. Ah! They must have put you with the captive women."

His lordship's face worked, but he did not speak.

"That must have been enlightening. Well." The crown prince turned to his aide. "Trilosz, write a safe conduct for our friend Dog. Using his former name. And give him the sealed message I signed earlier, for the person who no doubt still claims to be emperor here. Then put Dog on a good horse. Have him escorted beyond our outposts, and released with his hands freed."

He turned back to Felstroin. "Take good care of my message. In it I tell your emperor what he must do if he wants to prevent the kind of things you witnessed after your capture."

With that, he turned his back in dismissal, and the general was taken away.

Kurqosz made no firm decision on his next actions till he'd received a review and recommendation from his high admiral. He had more confidence in Vellinghuus than in any other human.

Nine of his ships had been rammed and sunk, though some of their men had been fished from the water. Eleven others needed rerigging and other repairs, due to fire damage. Of the remainder, the hasty storm-damage repairs on thirty-eight had proven inadequate, and they'd taken water faster than their pumps could deal with. It had been necessary to transfer additional pumps to them, from other ships.

All told, only eighty-nine ships were deemed still serviceable, and they were more or less marginal.

There were three shipyards on the Ralligh River, close upstream of the city, with ship materials of all sorts including tall, white pine masts. The high admiral wanted to make use of them, to refit his fleet as rapidly as possible.

The crown prince decided to send the best seventy ships south, to bring as many of Chithqosz's troops north as they could carry. It would relieve the pressure on the dwindling food supplies of the Scrub Coast. The rest of the ships were to begin refitting at once. Meanwhile he'd give his staff seven days to gather further provisions from the countryside and prepare to march. Then he'd leave an infantry brigade at Balralligh to protect his base, and some engineer companies to assist in refitting ships. The rest of his army he'd march to Colroi, sixty-eight miles northwest, and capture the imperial palace.

Two mornings later, the seventy serviceable ships left the harbor and started south. They carried no sorcerers. On the second day, a storm struck, with strong winds and heavy seas. A number of ships lost spars, canvas, even makeshift masts. Three foundered. Nine others went aground while the fleet attempted to take shelter in the mouth of a large river. Of those driven aground, five were broken up by storm waves.

There was a minor town, a port, a short distance up the river, and an enemy garrison nearby. On the first night, the garrison sent some twenty fire boats down the river into the voitik ships at anchor. Fortunately for the fleet, the fire boats were mostly ineffective. They tended to deflect off the ships they struck, without setting them afire. Also, the layer of sand put in the bottoms of the fire boats hadn't prevented some of them from burning and sinking before they reached the fleet. Still, the storm wind whipped the fires that were started, and several ships took significant damage.

The vice admiral in charge of the expedition felt seriously at risk there. Surely the ylver would try other ploys. The patrols of marines he sent to reconnoiter and harass were attacked, and routed with casualties. But not before one of them had watched large rafts being built, and firewood piled. And there were carrels on the river bank, presumably of tar, and butchers' cauldrons for melting it. The admiral could imagine a string of fire rafts chained or roped together, floating down to hang up on his ships. That would be catastrophe.

So when the storm abated the next day, he took his whole fleet out of the river, and labored back northward through still heavy seas toward Balralligh.

When they arrived, Kurqosz had already left with his army, to capture Colroi.

26 The Willing and the Unwilling

The late summer evening was cool, hazy, and autumnal, and Macurdy was on foot, giving Vulkan a half-hour break, more or less. Something he did several times a day. He'd decided to get in better shape, and had taken to trotting instead of walking during the breaks.

This was good farmland, somewhat more cleared than wooded. And as much improved as roads had been in the river kingdoms, in the Marches they were better. Certainly the Imperial Highway was. It even had reliable and fairly frequent mileage signs. The last had read BLACK GUM 2, and Macurdy and Vulkan had decided to spend the night there.

To the west, across a pasture, was a sunset that reminded Macurdy of murky red sunsets he'd seen in Oregon, in the '30s. There'd been a series of them lately. He slowed to a walk. "That's quite a sky," he said, "I'd think it was forest fires somewhere, but if it was, we'd smell smoke." He laughed. "There are people who'd take skies like that for an omen."

‹As it may be.›

"People will make it out one, that's for sure. And afterward choose something that happened, and say that proves it."

‹True.›

"Got a candidate?"

‹The cause of these vivid sunsets is a natural event that will affect many vectors more or less importantly.›

Vulkan's bland certainty took Macurdy's interest. "Really? What else do you know about it?"

Vulkan gazed westward, and he didn't answer for half a minute. ‹Weather will be the mechanism,› he said at last. ‹Definitely the weather. Over an extended period.›

Macurdy looked at that without responding. Floods, he wondered? Blizzards? Heat waves? He'd know in good time, he supposed.

They arrived at the village of Black Gum, and stopped at its crossroads inn. Word had already arrived that they were on the highway headed north, and the stableman wasn't spooked in the least to see a man ride up on a great boar. He was, though, ill at ease about being left alone with it. "I'll send out a roast for him," Macurdy told the man. "He outeats me twenty to one."

‹An exaggeration,› Vulkan replied, making the thought perceptible to the stableman. ‹Ten to one would be more accurate.› The man blinked in surprise.

Macurdy went into the inn and ordered supper-roast beef, a large roast potato, boiled cabbage, a quarter-loaf of dark bread with butter and honey, and a mug of buttermilk. And an uncooked pork shoulder for Vulkan, which a pot boy took warily out to him.

Only after he'd ordered did Macurdy pay any attention to the conversation in the taproom. It involved some half dozen men-all who were there except for himself and the innkeeper. One man had the information; the others provided questions and interest.

The sentence that snagged Macurdy's attention was: "What do they look like, these voita somethings?"

"Too tall to go through doors without ducking. Red hair, great long ears like a goat… And they're sorcerers. That's the main thing."

My God! Macurdy thought. It's happened!

"Ears like a goat? Not likely," another man said. "Someone's put you on."

"Ears like a goat," Macurdy interjected. "I guarantee it." Then he turned to the message bearer. "How did you hear of them?"

"I stopped at the post station at Venderton. An express rider had just stopped for a remount and a bite to eat. He'd given the station keeper a bulletin on it, to post there. The keeper asked him questions while he ate, and I listened. Before I left, I read the bulletin. You can too, if you stop there."